Dear Self,
You are a sad, helpless, horrid creature. You are an empty shell of organic matter simply waiting to drop dead. Your only modus operandi is to love yourself. Your only care in the world is the satisfaction of your 5 dull senses. I look at your life and I see no love. I look at your heart and I see no good.
You insolent fool. You ponder the depths of human knowledge, but you ignore the mysteries before you. You engineer even light and invent new devices, yet fail to be awestruck with wonder at things great and unknowable. What will it take for you to see clearly? What will it take for clarity?
“There are no good answers. There are no new answers. There are no happy answers. There are no satisfying answers. There are no clear answers. There are no accurate answers.”
Stop believing the lies in your own mind. Do not listen to the late night whispers that haunt your slumber. Awaken to the possibility of truth and reality. Be upheld by the potential for joy in confusion. Find comfort in the unknowing glories of life’s unexpected gifts.
And while the brevity of existence bears no lasting significance, there is a truth to be known. There is a reality to be discovered. There is a mystery to be cherished. It is all there.
So quite pouting, stop whining. Get off your lazy ass and discover life. It’s been there all along. He’s been there all along.
Love,
J
By golly, I seem to have run out of things to say in the past few weeks. This itself is a rather remarkable occurrence - those of you who know me can attest to my usual verbosity.
So I just thought I’d give y’all a simple life update: I have finished Psalms and am currently reading Proverbs, have been awarded funding likely through the end of my Ph.D, have been involved in some wonderful weddings and have finished another year of classes.
The future holds even more excitement - research leading up to my 2nd of 3 tasks to complete my Ph.D, a drive to Wisconsin and back, a trip to Seattle and Vancouver, and sending my wife off to Africa for a few weeks while I get trained to assist some local high school teachers in the classroom.
Ah, life is exciting, bizarre yet routine, and delightful.
Senior Design Robotics Competition
[video]
[video]
Whilst mine online presence has taken the backseat burner of late, I have still had the opportunity to experiment in the kitchen. So behold, a duo of my latest creations:
Indian Crepes Gone Wrong
I was given a most generous gift of Indian goodies a short while ago. I thought it would be a good time to cook one of the items in the pile. So I made what was supposed to be some kind of Indian Crepe…but my skills in both pouring and thin batter-like substances are nascent at best. Thus, I made a mix between a strangely flavored pancake and mashed potatoes.
I then topped off the pan-cooked/fried dough with onion and tomato cooked in a whole lot of garam masala and garlic, then topped with fresh chopped cilantro.
Despite my epic failure with the dough, the meal itself was actually rather satisfying and tasty.
Blackberry Cream Scones
So the other day I made a blackberry cream sauce as an accompaniment to some pound cake. I wanted to use up the leftover blackberry and luckily was scheduled to attend a pot luck in the near future. So I came up with a wonderful idea: substitute the heavy cream I typically use in scones and make blackberry cream scones. The result was…well, a cookie made love to a muffin who was previously married to a scone, resulting in the following:
They tasted fine, though only the color of the blackberry came through. And people actually ate them!
1st Anniversary - Come and gone without a hitch! (Pun intended)
“Any generation gaps that exist between teens and adults today is superficial compared with and far outweighed by the generational commonalities…most problems and issues that adults typically consider teenage problems are in fact inextricably linked to adult-world problems.” — The American University in a Post-secular Age
For the first time in my life, my All Star Ballot contains no Phillies players…
I’ve got a golden table….
Spent last weekend in New York and had a blast with my good friend Jeff. Since the wife was away, I gave myself permission to do my hair in a new and exciting style while we “partied it up” in NYC…
I was wondering if any of my readers out there or anyone who reads this on Facebook has a copy of Rosetta Stone in any language. I’m in the mood to learn a new language and was hoping someone would have some dusty copy of the software I can borrow for a little while.
I’m open to any language. Seriously, any language.
Enjoyed a nice, albeit wet, Phillies game this past weekend!
Today I tried to take my kitchen to Chicago. I made it my goal to create a Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
All homemade pizzas need a custom, homemade crust. But, in a stroke of pure genius and incorrect formatting on Food Network’s website, I ended up with this:
Yes, that is the largest pot we own, filled to the top with a massive, inhuman blob of dough. You see, food network’s dough recipe has 11/2 cups of water. And, as any good engineer would do, I simply used 5 1/2 cups of water. Unfortunately, the correct amount was 1 1/2 cups of water. Not wanting to waste my recipe, I merely scaled the necessary ingredients…mainly flour. So much flour that I ended up having to combine white and wheat flour. The kitchen was certainly a mess.
And obviously I put together two Chicago style pies. In case you’ve never been to Chicago or had an authentic Chicago style pizza, they are incredibly thick. And the sauce is on top. I tried to be relatively authentic, although I had to top the thing with a nice layer of parmesean cheese.
But before I baked the pizzas, I had to use some of the other dough. Thus, I needed to get creative. My first creation???
A garlic-knot inspired french bread, slightly undercooked. It is nonetheless tasty.
So after cooking the “Garlic French Baguette” I stepped up my game and cooked the two pizzas.
While not exactly the same as chicago style, they were quite good. You see, I made the sauce myself by using chopped and crushed tomatoes, some sugar and absolutely insane amounts of garlic, oregano, basil, rosemary, and crushed red pepper. The sauce mixture was simmered until it became a thick paste, which I used on the final pizza product. It tasted full-bodied, flavorful and had a subtle yet pleasant spiciness to it.
But, I still had quite a bit of dough left. Unaware that I could save the dough for later, I decided to bake a loaf of pizza dough bread.
So if you’re looking for some homemade bread, we have a LOT. Please, stop by, pick some up…
…there is also still pizza left.
[video]