Busy

I'm going subsurface this week. We're in the throes of Oktoberfest over here - I'm surrounded by men in leather overalls and funny hats, screaming machinery, and a boatload of onions and beets. CEO Anton is having a blast - the picture seared into my mind from yesterday is him during lunch, holding full pitchers of dark ale, having the time of his life filling the cups of customers and telling jokes.

The tour guides I'm in charge of are a sweet, funny bunch of absolutely beautiful women (one of them got an offer yesterday to be on the show "America's Next Top Model"). They're doing well with the tours, and seem to be managing themselves just fine, which gives me a few extra minutes to sit at my computer and tackle my ever-growing mound of paperwork.

And write a quick blog post, of course. I'll resurface sometime next week. Wish me luck! Tally ho!

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever

This recipe comes from my mom, who in turn got it from her cousin Teresa, who only allowed her to copy the recipe if she promised that she would only use Jif-brand chunky peanut butter. She and I have both kept to that promise, and have never had reason to regret it.

These cookies are phenomenal - soft, pillowy, and a little crumbly. I've had a number of peanut butter cookies in my short years on this planet, but these take the cake.

Peanut Butter Cookies
Makes: 3 dozen-ish

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chunky peanut butter (must be Jif!)
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, cream the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and butter until soft. Gradually beat in eggs, vanilla, and peanut butter.
3. In a smaller bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking soda. Gradually add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture.
4. Roll dough into small balls, and place on a greased cookie sheet (or a sheet lined with parchment paper). Press balls flat with a dinner fork in a crisscross pattern.
5. Bake cookies for 10-11 minutes; remove from oven. Allow cookies to sit on the cookie sheet for another 2 minutes (cookies will appear slightly under-done). Transfer cookies to a cooling rack until they have reached room temperature.

You Gotta Love Wikipedia...

British Tea Ritual

Even very slightly formal events can be a cause for cups and saucers to be used instead of mugs. A typical semi-formal British tea ritual might run as follows:

1. The kettle is boiled and water poured into a tea pot.
2. Water is swirled around the pot to warm it and then poured out.
3. Loose tea leaves are then added to the pot while the kettle is reboiled.
4. Water is added to the pot and allowed to brew for several minutes while a tea cosy is placed on the pot to keep the tea warm.
5. A tea strainer, like a miniature sieve, is placed over the top of the cup and the tea poured in.
6. The straight black tea is then given to guests and they are allowed to add milk and sugar to their taste.
7. The pot will normally hold enough tea so as not to be empty after filling the cups of all the guests. If this is the case, the tea cosy is replaced after everyone has been served.

Whether to put milk into the cup before or after the tea has been a matter of some debate and has traditionally been seen as a class divide. Working classes who could not afford good quality crockery would add milk first to ensure that the sudden increase in heat would not crack the cups, whereas middle and upper classes who did not need to worry about this would add milk afterwards so that guests would be able to take the tea as they personally preferred it. This latter tradition has been considered the correct one according to etiquette. However, some hold that adding milk second tends to scald the milk.

There is also a proper manner in which to drink tea when using a cup and saucer. If one is seated at a table, the proper manner to drink tea is to raise the teacup only, placing it back into the saucer in between sips. When standing or sitting in a chair without a table, one holds the tea saucer with the left hand and the tea cup in the right hand. When not in use, the tea cup is placed back in the tea saucer and held in one's lap or at waist height. In either event, the tea cup should never be held or waved in the air.

Drinking tea from the saucer (poured from the cup in order to cool it) was not uncommon at one time but is now almost universally considered a breach of etiquette.

* - Vintage Gold teacup painting courtesy of Jennifer Bellinger Studio.

My First Grown-up Race

I may have jog-walked the vast majority of the time, but dog gone it, it was still a race!

Amanda signed up first for the Nike Plus Human Race, and then begged and pleaded and cajoled until Melissa, Traci, and I signed up as well. Amanda and Traci are both experienced marathoners, the kind of people who run 4 to 6 miles daily, and so they teamed up as the running half of the party. Melissa and I formed the “Let’s-be-logical-about-this-There’s-no real-need-to-run-like-madwomen” walking half.


The week before, we went to NikeTown and picked up our nifty race packet, complete with shirt, tracking chip, PowerBars, and granola. For those of you who have never visited a NikeTown before, the experience can be a little daunting – floors and floors devoted solely to workout gear. I mean, is it necessary to offer over 100 colors and sizes and styles of workout tank tops? It all seemed a bit much, but then again, I’m not an athlete.

The race day itself was much more fun than I expected. As soon as we arrived at Soldier Field, we joined a mass of more than 14,000 runners sporting little red t-shirts, wrap-around sunglasses, and iPods, all of them stretching, warming up, and standing in long (and I mean long) lines for the porto-potties. Jumbotrons everywhere flashed ads and race records from the twenty-some cities who had already hosted races, and the announcers shouted directions over the din of the crowd. Melissa and I, who had placed ourselves in the 12-minute mile starting bracket, had to wait 15 minutes to start running as all of the race participants were funneled through fenced-in chutes at the starting line (very similar to the chutes used during calf-roping competitions, except slightly wider).

The race route flanked Lakeshore Drive, so that we were able to run right next to Lake Michigan during the second half, and it was dark enough that we were treated to a beautiful view of Navy Pier and the big lighted Ferris wheel as we worked our way north. I love Chicago in all if its forms, but I especially love it at night. It is truly a beautiful city.

Melissa and I ran during the first half-mile, and for a stretch in the middle, and for the quarter-mile home stretch at the very end. At that point, it didn’t matter whether I walked or ran – my body was fairly numb from my bellybutton down. We eventually found Amanda and Traci, consumed a good amount of complimentary bottled water and granola with yogurt, and made our way to the interior of Soldier Field, stopping every two minutes or so to stretch our unforgiving muscles. In fact, my hips refused to forgive me until two days had passed, and then only grudgingly.

The Fallout Boy concert was great, if very short. We didn’t get to Soldier Field until the concert was already underway, so I have no idea how much we missed. We got to hear three or four songs, including Dance Dance (my favorite), and stood close enough to the stage to have our DNA recombined by the thumping bass. Rock concerts may not be my cup of tea, but even I could not deny that Fallout Boy does a great live concert.

Fun times, great music, free food, and a complimentary t-shirt. Maybe I’ll participate in another race, but only if the race participants wear the same shirts. It’s easier to not feel self-conscious about jog-walking like a senior citizen if you can blend in with the crowd.

The Funnies

Who doesn’t love the newspaper funnies? Every morning from childhood to high school, Dad would bring the paper in from the mailbox, and I would pounce upon section C as soon as he reached the kitchen table. Not that I found them all funny – on the contrary, most of them could barely muster enough substance to be called distracting – but they still seemed to strike a chord within me. Perhaps it was that desire to make fun of their labored humor, an urge that has followed me all my life, and heralded my love of Joel, Mike, and the Bots.

Now that I’m an adult, my tastes have changed a bit. I actually read other portions of the newspaper, for one. But I still turn to the comics at the very end, saving them for dessert. The Chicago Tribune offers a wider variety of comics than the Idaho Press-Tribune, though the greater amount of comics does not change the fact that the large amount of comic strips out there simply aren’t funny (at least, not in the way they intend).

Fortunately, as always, the sprawling internet enables people with greater wits than my own to address these flaws on today’s funny pages. I have recently discovered several blogs and websites that I would mildly or highly recommend to those who have grown up reading, loving, and scoffing at the funnies:

The Comics Curmudgeon: Witty man (and technical writer!) Josh takes on a wide array of the funnies daily, selecting the most ridiculous of the day and ripping them to shreds. Recommended. Warning: Regular profanity.

Mary Worth and Me: A more family-friendly, yet still cynical, exploration into one of the longest-running soap-opera comics of newspaper history. Recommended.

Mary Worth, Style Maven: Tina, grad student and seamstress, comments on the visual oddities of Mary Worth, and occasionally recreates the strip's fashion faux pas using her sewing machine skills. Mildly recommended.

The Amazing Spider-Blog: Takes on the legendary Amazing Spider-Man strip, and peels back the veneer of coolness to reveal that Peter Parker does little else besides watch TV and whine. The writer makes his posts a little more upbeat by having a daily “Things I Like” (TIL) side note. Mildly recommended.

The Luck of Dennis St. Michel, Viscount Stokington: I’ve saved the best for last. This brilliant piece of work takes the characters from the funny pages and plunges them into a Victorian novel of manners and intrigue. You need to be well up on most of the comic strips out there (Apartment 3-G, Popeye, Marmaduke, Slylock Fox, and many others), as well as Jane Austen, Romantic (with a capital “R”) and Victorian novels, and British history and fashion to get all of the jokes, but those without all the inside knowledge can still find it hilarious. Enjoy as Sir Dennis turns mercenary to woo the Lady Margaret (Dennis the Menace), help Kit Walker (The Phantom) exact revenge on Sir Julius Dithers (Blondie), rip the bodice from Madame Morgan (Rex Morgan, MD), and evade his demented enemy Calvin Hobbes (rather obvious, no?). Highly recommended. Make sure to start reading at the very beginning!