I am very pleased to announce that “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” has been picked up by the science fiction audio magazine Escape Pod.
I doubt seeing your stories in print would ever get old, but I have to say that the idea of someone actually performing my story leaves me feeling all tingly inside.
As some of you know, I get my fiction almost exclusively through audio, and in fact Escape Pod was the first audio short fiction podcast I ever listened to. Since then, I have listened to many, many episodes of Escape Pod, and in fact I even blogged about them (including a few of my favorite episodes) way back in June of 2011. Although there are dozens of really excellent audio fiction magazines I could recommend, the Escape Artist’s podcasts (Escape Pod for science fiction, Podcastle for Fantasy, and Pseudopod for horror) really are the industry standard for story selection, production value, and just generally putting out a quality product. Needless to say, I am thrilled.
As usual, I will keep you posted when the story is available.
Evie is still loving ballet, and was very excited about her big performance (although possibly not as excited as she was about missing swim class). This being her second year, she was even less phased than last year. I can definitely see her improvement, and the way she does the different moves and poses really starts to look like a ballerina.
If nothing else, she certainly has the smoldering look down:
This year, Sara volunteered me to help out backstage. I was more than a little nervous about this especially since I normally have no involvement with ballet whatsoever, so I had no idea what I was doing. Not to mention the fact that I would undoubtedly be the only daddy involved, so any stupid mistakes would only be magnified. I felt like I was representing my entire gender. My volunteer duties covered both the actual performance and the dress rehearsal, for double the fun.
However, the whole thing was a breeze. The kids pretty much take care of themselves at this point, so we really only needed to help them with their costumes and herd them in the right direction. Sara gave me tissues and lipstick to take in my pocket (I’m told all the best backstage mommies have lipstick in their pocket), and I managed to be Johnny-on-the-spot with both items, impressing several actual backstage mommies (thanks for making me look good Sara!)
For the actual performance, I couldn’t have had a better seat. I was just offstage, maybe 10 feet from the action. It was so much fun to see Evie performing. She just absolutely nails everything, with her usual meticulous attention to detail. You can see in the video that she is exactly on beat with the teacher on every step. One of my favorite parts of the video is right at the start of the free dance, about 2 minutes in, when Evie launches into it before anybody else even moves. I know she’s been thinking about this for a long time and practicing, so it was nice to see all of her hard work pay off.
Evie is such a little ballet teacher. When we were backstage, she was stressing over when we were going to go, warming up, and making sure everybody was lined up properly in the correct order. She was assigned to be the “caboose”, perhaps to make sure everybody in front of her was doing the right thing. Well anyway, that’s the way Evie took it, and she planned to do her job properly.
You’ll see what I mean at exactly 1:02 in the video. When Evie sits down, she catches the eye of the boy across from her, and then quickly demonstrates to him on how he should be holding his arms. This cracked me up so much, because it’s just Evie in a nutshell, knowing every single piece of the performance and “teaching” everyone how to do their part. You’ll also notice at the very end, when they all line up, she quickly corrects her feet to their proper position.
So anyway, without further ado, I give you the Dew Drops:
ETA: Since I wrote this post, Evie has informed me that she’s started a “dance school” for her classmates. She has choreographed a “tulip dance” (because “our arms look a tulip when we do the circle”) and she is teaching her pupils in preparation for a performance she’s arranging on the final day of school. She demonstrated a little bit of the dance for us, and I assure you it is as fully featured as the one performed above.
Naturally, the desserts are always the favorites at our house. In this case the Whoopie pies carried the day, with the rhubarb curd shortbread bars a close second. However, for my money, nothing beat the garlic & oregano butter / focaccia combination.
It was also a cool idea to get tomato plants. We’ve planted them in the garden, so hopefully they take off (I believe they had been started from seedlings, so two of them at least were little tiny baby tomato plants). If they do, they are certainly “worth” a lot of food compared to a loaf of bread.
Speaking of bread, that was a lot of bread! I was baking bread for 2 days, since I did 6 loaves for the swap, another two loaves for us, a couple of batches of granola, and a batch of oatmeal cookies on top just for funsies. Seems like it was worth it though, since Sara traded all the bread, including even the one that she had sliced up for samples. Besides, usually Sara makes everything for the food swap, but i do a lot of the eating, so it was probably time to pull a little weight.
As always, very glad to have an opportunity to try a bunch of unique homemade items!
Evie: “Would you rather be with a shark that ate yesterday, a tiger that ate yesterday, or a lion that ate 10 weeks ago?”
Me: “Well, the lion would be hungry, and I don’t want to be under water, so I guess I’d go with the tiger.”
Evie: “Wrong! You’d rather be with the lion because he’d be dead if he didn’t eat for 10 weeks!”
Ollie: “Here Grandpa, you can use some of our sun scream.”
Ollie: “Hey, did you write on my picture?”
Sara: “Oh, sorry buddy, I was researching tomatoes. I really like your picture though. What was it, a spider?”
Ollie: “A zombie.”
It’s actually a pretty good zombie picture. But how does he know what a zombie looks like??
The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.
The Reason:
I’m still trying to burn through some of my stored-up food posts, and that means pancakes! So you’re getting another First Friday Food that is not on a First Friday.
As far as the reason to make crepes, one day it just occurred to me that I could make crepes. With whole wheat flour no less! We’re always looking for good pancake recipes, and crepes are a significantly different form of pancake.
The Journey:
First off, I’d like to specify that I originally learned how to make crepes from an actual frenchman. I don’t have his fancy pan or fancy crepe-scraping tool, but make no mistake, I know how to get the job done.
All that being said, flipping crepes is no joke, even if you don’t flip them in the air. There is certainly a skill to it. Be prepared to have ripped up and shredded crepes, even after making hundreds and hundreds of the things. Making crepes is somewhat stressful, and requires your full attention. But afterwards, you get to eat crepes, and the ripped up ones taste the same as the nice ones!
The recipe calls for the ingredients to be mixed in a blender. Do it! I tried everything I could to avoid it, including mixing with a mixer. It doesn’t work. If you get chunks in your batter, they will stick to the pan, and then you’re not going to get nice looking ones.
Also, use a LOT of butter on the pan, in between each and every crepe. You really can’t over-butter it. Just remind yourself you’re cooking like a French person, and throw an extra pat on there. You’ll thank yourself when you try to flip one.
The Verdict:
Making crepes is not that difficult, but it is a LOT of work. You have to make LOTS of them, because people will eat them way faster than you can make them. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
But, might I add, they make you look very fancy pants impressive.
Crepes are so versatile. You can basically put anything on a crepe. Even setting aside savory crepes, you have jellies, jams, curds, marmalades, peanut butter, nutella, and just plain sugar. You could have these every day of the week and not get tired of them.
Well, not get tired of *eating* them. But you will definitely get tired of making them.
Put all ingredients in blender and mix well. Let stand about 15 minutes.
Melt and swirl around a small pat of butter in an 8 or 10-inch frying pan over medium heat.
Angle pan and pour enough batter on one side to thinly and evenly cover the pan. Very quickly swirl the batter around to cover the pan in one thin layer.
Immediately use your cooking spatula to push down the thin edges of the crepe around the perimeter.
After about 1 minute (and once it is golden brown on the bottom) carefully flip it over without tearing the crepe.
Fry for 1 more minute on the other side (until it is golden brown as well) and then roll up each crepe.
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