Year: 2014

The Benefits of Egomania

/ Shane / 1 Comment

A birthday usually seems to require a “year in reflection” type blog post, or maybe that’s just me since my birthday falls right at the tail end of the “2013 in retrospect!” Internet season. The thing is, I kind of hate writing posts like that because I never have anything to say. It’s always, “Yay, life is going great!” which is not particularly interesting to read about, much less read it over and over again.

It begs the question though; is my life really going so well, or am I just so egomaniacal that I always think everything I have is the best? I have a strong suspicion it’s the latter.

Everyone is somewhat egomaniacal, but I think I’m probably worse than most. I think you have to have a pretty big ego in order to be a writer. You kind of have to have the mindset of, “What I write is inherently interesting and people want to read it.” It’s even worse for a blogger, since by definition this is the place for trivial musings. It’s egomaniacal to think anybody wants to hear what I have to say. (Wait a minute, I’m doing it right now!)

So yes, I’ve got a case of egomania. But you know what? It’s not so bad. I never have to second guess any of my decisions, don’t have to worry about self-esteem or depression problems, and I’m so interesting to talk to at parties that it’s perfectly alright for me to go on and on and never give anybody else a chance to talk. Yes sir, it’s pretty awesome being me.

Egomania lets you make lemonade out of lemons. Egomania lets you ignore unsightly blemishes. People build entire careers (nay, empires!) out of egomania.

Forget about year-end retrospectives. Who cares how old I am? On my birthday, let’s just all focus in and remember what’s important: me. After all, what are birthdays for?

Humbly yours,
-The Management

Ice Skating

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Speaking of all of this ice and snow, Evie and I have been doing a lot of ice skating this winter.

I’d say she has continued to improve pretty steadily. I don’t know if it’s the extra practice or just being a year older, but she has taken a significant step forward this year. In particular she finally seems interested in skating by herself (as in, not holding onto my hand hand having me pull her).

Ice Skating

The nice thing about ice skating is that it’s really just a special time between the two of us. We don’t spend a lot of time together without Ollie or Sara, so it makes this kind of special. I also feel particularly proud watching her, since I’ve seen her go from not being able to stand, to being able to keep her legs under her, to really skating on her own and enjoying it. I can see that she feels proud of herself, which makes me feel proud in turn.

In fact, the other day I asked her if she had ever actually seen figure skating. I mean, everybody knows what figure skating looks like, right? But she never had. As soon as I tried to explain it to her, I realized how much she would love it. “It’s like ballet dancing, except on ice. It’s smooth and graceful, like they’re flying.”

When we got home, I queued up a video of Tara Lipinski at the 1998 Olympics. Evie drank in the whole thing with a rapt look on her face. I don’t know if it was seeing Evie’s eyes opening on this beautiful new thing, or maybe the side by side comparison of Evie learning to skate and then this tiny little girl skating her heart out and winning gold, but whatever it was, it got me. I just started sobbing my eyes out. Pretty soon Evie started sobbing too, even though she didn’t understand why I was crying. Heck, *I* didn’t know why I was crying. “I’m crying because you’re crying!” she said.

In any case, ice skating has done pretty well by us.

Now that Evie can skate by herself, I think we can start taking Ollie with us as well. We just took him for the first time this year and he did pretty well. I think that he’ll learn a little quicker than Evie because he has the twin advantages of not quite being so cautious, and being more of an outdoor kind of person. He really doesn’t seem to feel the cold, and consequently, he doesn’t want to come in off the ice.

The only downside is that the rink was recently sold to a new owner. There are now signs up about charging admission, and the price of skate rental has almost doubled. There have been conflicting reports about the price (people I know have been charged $3, $13, and $16, with no rhyme or reason as to why), and they don’t seem very diligent about who they actually charge, but if it starts to be expensive it will certainly limit the amount of time we spend over there.

In the meantime though, we’ll get in all the bonding time we can.

Baby, it’s cold out there

/ Shane / Leave a comment

As you may have noticed, we in the midwest are experiencing a few…weather difficulties. So far this week we’ve gotten ~20 inches of snow, 30 mph winds, and we’re currently experiencing windchills down to -50 F.

The National Weather Service says: “A prolonged period of dangerously cold and potentially life threatening wind chills will occur through Tuesday morning,” and “This will result in frost bite and lead to hypothermia or death if precautions are not taken.”

Of course, the government also recommends the citizens of Chicago should, “Store a good supply of dry, seasoned wood for your fireplace or wood-burning stove”, so it’s possible their recommendations are not exactly up to date.

We’ve been inside since Saturday evening, and the kids are starting to go a little stir crazy (the cat is currently paying the price for that). Unfortunately, our house is not the most air-tight of structures, so we’ve closed off as many vents as we can and turned the heat down to avoid the furnace running all the time. Consequently, we’re all wearing triple layers (including long underwear!) and huddling together under blankets in a few rooms like it’s the end of days. Oliver and I even wore our winter hats during lunch yesterday.

On the other hand, it’s kind of fun, and we all get to huddle together under blankets like it’s the end of days. Lots of tea and book reading and puzzles and scone baking going on around here, with some possible knitting in my future. We even re-activated Netflix!

I did go outside to make sure I could get the car started and down the alley, just in case school really is back on tomorrow like they’ve been threatening. However, just when I was about to try my luck, a 4wd van got stuck right at our parking lot. After spending 20 minutes getting him out, I decided the Fit didn’t have a chance and went back inside. All my fingers and toes seem to be intact (though it was touch and go for a little bit on the fingers…I warmed them up in my mouth).

Stay warm everyone! In another 5 months we’re all going to look back on this an laugh…

Whole Wheat Gingerbread Pancakes

/ Shane / 1 Comment

The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.

The Reason:

Although gingerbread kind of says “Christmas”, this is not a Christmas recipe per se, which is why it’s okay to post it in January. Anyway, I didn’t find this one until after the last food post was up, and it’s too good to keep it from you for a whole year.

And, pancakes.

The Journey:

I removed the brown sugar from the original recipe. It seemed like a lot of sugar on top of all of that molasses, but despite that the pancakes didn’t taste that sweet. Anyway, I get my sweetness by way of slathering on the maple syrup, which is much more directly on my tongue, so the pancakes themselves don’t need to be all that sweet. So I took it out and they were just as good without it, so you can thank me later. (Not to mention that I halved the salt like I usually do, so your heart can thank me later as well.)

Did I mention there was a lot of molasses?

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I’m not sure I’ve ever really shown my full pancake setup here, but yeah, we’re kind of crazy. I mean, you guys know I’m obsessed with pancakes, but we usually make a triple batch for the 4 of us. I am not kidding.

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And that’s just Evie’s plate!

 

The Verdict:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so:

pancake stack

The Recipe:

Recipe adapted from Cookie and Kate (coincidentally, second month in a row!):

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon powdered ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 tablespoons unsulphured molasses
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
  1. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar).
  2. In a smaller bowl, whisk the egg and then whisk in the milk, molasses, vanilla and melted butter. Slowly pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture, stirring as you pour, until the flour is just incorporated.
  3. Heat a griddle, cast-iron pan or non-stick pan over medium-low heat. It’s hot enough when a drop of water sizzles against the pan. Grease the pan with a pat of butter or non-stick cooking spray. Give the bowl one more stir and pour 1/3 cup batter into the pan. Flip when the perimeter of the pancake is no longer shiny (these pancakes don’t develop many of the tell-tale bubbles around the edges so they can be a bit tricky). Serve the cooked pancake immediately or keep warm in an oven set to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Repeat with remaining pancakes, adjusting heat as necessary to achieve pancakes that are cooked through and golden brown on both sides.

Shape of: “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation”, Form of: Live Theater

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I have some very exciting news to announce! Matt Haynes from The Pulp Stage has adapted my story “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” for the theater.

Matt emailed me out of the blue after hearing my story on Escape Pod. I probably would have just figured Matt was a Nigerian prince or something (I mean, come on. “We want to adapt your story for theater. Just send along your credit card information to cover the costs…”, right?), except he had just done a guest narration over on Toasted Cake, so I had actually heard of him just before he contacted me.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about this whole thing. So I’ve been published online, via email, in print, in audio, and now I can add live action to the list. It’s been a whirlwind to say the least.

I’m not sure about when they will actually be performing the play, but of course I will keep you posted. Unfortunately, the company is in Portland, which is a little far for me to go and see it. Not sure if I have any Portlandian readers, but if anybody is out that way, please go and report back! I’d love to hear how it went!