Liloia.com

Old Posts - Still Funny

Tara makes me laugh every single day. Not just some days, or weekends or holidays but every single day. I can always count on the fact that she will say something that cracks me up. It is for this reason that I no longer drink milk in her presence.

Tonight I was popping old posts back onto the site. We are up to 1444 entries and we have only 2 months remaining that need to be added. Here is a line that she wrote almost 5 years ago in this post talking about a beetle that bit her.

"It's apparently a stag beetle and it's no wonder he's going stag; he's a jerk."

Pot calling the kettle...ouch

This weekend Tara made some unbelievable hot sandwiches in the oven and used our cast iron skillet to hold down the bread, thereby "grilling" the sandwiches to near-perfection.

While the sandwiches were on the counter cooling a bit before I cut them up, I accidentally skimmed my arm across the (clearly visible) skillet handle about 10 minutes after it had come out of the over.

DSCN0795 by taragl

As you can see, it is a great skillet that retains its heat very well, and has an excellently shaped handle. The funny thing is that because I don't have feeling in the part of my arm near the center of the handle (long story - another post) I didn't feel the burn until it got to the outer pink area you see in the shot.

Kids, stay away from the stove. Momma's cookin'.

Brian Runs For Cancer

No, he isn't trying to get Cancer...but if he runs fast enough he may just beat it. One of my friends Brian has been selected to run in this year's Boston Marathon and is doing so in memory of his mother-in-law. An admirable choice all around, and for that I reason I turn over the remainder of this post to his voice and ask that you consider donating to his cause.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As many of you know, for the past several months I’ve been training in hope of running in the 2007 Boston Marathon. And, as some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to be selected to receive a number for the race through the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. That’s right, I’m an official entrant in the marathon. Watch out Kenyans! Every year thousands apply for numbers through the marathon’s charity program but there are only a limited number of spots available. In return for this privilege, I’m now trying to raise money for the NOCC and I’d like to ask for your support. Ovarian cancer research is a very worthy cause and one that hits close to home for my family.

Fourteen years ago my wife’s mother, Patricia Sollitto, died of ovarian cancer after battling it for six years. She was only 54 years old at the time of her death.

Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2006, there will be 20,180 new cases of ovarian cancer and 15,310 women will die from ovarian cancer. If diagnosed and treated early the 5-year survival rate is over 90%. However, if caught in stage III or higher (after the disease has spread to other organs), the survival rate can be as low as 29%. Unfortunately, almost 80% of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease because the symptoms (particularly in the early stages) often are not acute or intense, and present vaguely. In most cases, ovarian cancer is not detected during routine pelvic exams. There is currently no consistently reliable test to detect ovarian cancer.

To find out more about my progress in training or to donate, please visit my website: Brian Runs For Cancer. Or, you can go directly to the donation page here.

IMPORTANT: In order to meet my goals, you must complete the following fields on the web form.
Reason for Donation: Boston Marathon
Gift made in memory of: Patricia Sollitto
Send Notification to: Brian McDonough
Address Line 1: 1 Argyle Street
City: Melrose
State: Massachusetts
ZIP/Postal Code: 02176
Division Name: MA Massachusetts
Division Donation Information: Division Special Event - Boston Marathon

Thank you.

Brian McDonough.

The Myth of More

My brother Sean gave me Thoreau's Walden this Christmas—a fine book that perfectly captured my state of mind this winter. I'm a little troubled by the excess I see in my community; and even more troubled by the excesses that are seeping into my life.

For example, this Christmas we dragged piles of presents to New Jersey and dutifully doled them out to friends and family. In return, we drove back to Vermont with a reciprocal carload of gifts. Here's a question: Did any of us need more stuff?

This is not an indictment of the sentiment of giving, nor the items themselves—which were lovely and much appreciated—but the tradition of stuff-giving in today's world.

Take a look at this Verizon commercial showing how we get sucked into holiday gift one-upmanship:

Dad: Okay, let's review. Sarah, you got the new Cherry Chocolate phone.
Sarah: Thanks, Daddy.
Dad: Keith, you got the new Envy. And you both got the network. What'd dad get?
Sarah: Aftershave.
Dad: No, Dad got hosed.

Besides the fact that Verizon named their phone for a mortal sin, which is a sign of the impending apocalypse by itself, the "stuffism" in this commerical has run amok. No doubt the commercial works if you accept a few premises:

-- Exchanged gifts should be equal in value
-- Children need and deserve expensive gifts
-- Children should have the means to get their parents expensive gifts as well
-- Aftershave is an unacceptable gift

In the words of Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own." I'm no aftershave expert, but if the kids bought Dad's favorite brand, which he'll use, what's the problem? The problem is that Dad bought the phones with the expectation of getting something equal in return. And just how do you calculate what's equal to a gift? Weight? Volume? Price?

I saw a preschooler with an iPod today and it epitomized excess. Our kids get more and appreciate less. I'm inclined to believe that a doll meant more to a girl 200 years ago when she might get two in her lifetime. It's telling that Trevor received v.2 of a certain toy in December and was asking for v.3 by January.

We're all being sucked in by the Myth of More. More is better. More has better features. More equals satisfaction. More is cool. More gets us closer to happiness. We need more.

People are being suffocated by their possessions. Family life is being crushed under the weight of their houses, cars, and plasma televisions. We lament the demise of the single-income family, while spending that second income on HDTV and trips to Applebees. It's hard to escape the orbit of More.

More is not a recent problem. Thoreau talks about the habit he noticed in his contemporaries of discarding torn clothes instead of patching them:

"No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience....It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon."

Would anyone today bother to patch a pair of torn jeans? Would you attend an office party with a patch on the elbow of your suit jacket? Of course not. Our communities place value on extravagance over thrift and excess over simplicity. The word coined for this phenomenon is "Affluenza," as if it's a disease that needs to be cured. Problem is, no one drops dead from affluenza so there's no incentive to change our unhealthy ways.

January is cold....

After a very long Fall which seemed to have lasted forever, Winter is finally here in Vermont. I realize that in the rest of the country it has also finally shifted to Winter, but here in Vermont as well as many other northern states, this is a rarity.

Winter for us usually starts to kick into gear sometime in early to mid-October with some colder weather and from time to time snow has appeared long before Halloween. In chatting it up with some other Vermonters, the sentiment was consistent that while it was nice to have warmer weather, it just didn't feel right.

This weekend we headed up to the Lake Champlain Islands to meet with our contractor and have lunch at our new favorite place -- Hero's Welcome Cafe. This place is a general store, supermarket, gift shop, candy store, book store, and deli all rolled into one. For anyone who is making the trip to the islands this is a great place to stop as it embodies everything Vermont and Champlain Island Life. From the locals hanging out and signing IOU's to the locally made products, to the "Imortant Times around the world" listing the "official" times for North Hero, South Hero, Grand Isle and Isle LaMotte the focus is clearly on home.

We have gone up for lunch four times now on the way home from our visits to the new house. It's the closest (decent) place to eat and the charm of the establishment confirms all of our perceptions and hopes of what living on the islands will be like.

In talking to one of the employees of the store (could be the owner, I'm not sure) I chatted with him about the fact that the southern portion of the lake has already frozen, but the northern side was still quite liquid. He reminded me that the portions we were seeing from the road were all bays and other inlets so it is easier for them to freeze and that farther south the lake is still wide open territory.

He also mentioned that an old-timer was in earlier that day and said the latest he had ever seen the lake freeze over was January 15th. Since we have long since passed that mark, there is actually some concern over whether that will even happen. It may not seem like a big deal, but there are a lot of Winter sports that take place on the frozen lake each year such as Ice Skating, Hockey, Parasailing, Snowmobiling, Ice Fishing, and the list goes on.

Anyway, have a great week wherever you are and stay warmer than I am!

Bye, Christmas

The tree is coming down this weekend. This year, it took about three minutes to choose a tree. The guy who sells them near our house never has a bad one in the bunch, so there's no need to pick through each specimen and waste everyone's time. And they're so fresh they would easily last until March with a little water every day. We tell him the height, he pulls one out and we pay for it. Done. Everyone feels a little bewildered at the speed of it all.

This year, the tree opened up into a wide, full shape. There was one big hole in the branches that we turned toward the wall, but it was otherwise excellent. If there's any part of Christmas I like the best, it's a tree packed full of white lights.

Ambassador Well

A former resident of our property once warned us about an old well in the back yard covered by a car hood. It took about 12 searches over many weekends, but I finally found it in a tall pile of junk and uncut hay.

The car hood in question is labeled "Ambassador," which isn't a car I'm familiar with.

It was weighted down with a chunk of concrete and underneath are a few pieces of rotting wood. It's a big, circular, stone well—the kind you think of when you hear the word "well" and the water level is right up to the top.

We wondered what to do with such a thing, then decided that an Ambassador car hood weighted down with a chunk of concrete was a good solution. Luckily, we had just those two things nearby.

Treasure Hunting for Adults

The Vermont Liloias were sitting around one day and we said to ourselves, "Selves, even though there are barely enough hours in the day to finish what's already on our plates, don't you think we need to take up a new hobby in which we can wander, lost, in the woods and along back roads for hours on end?" And the answer was yes. Which is how we became interested in Geocaching.

The premise is that some sadistic person hides a very small thing in an very hidden location and you have to walk the earth like Cain in Kung Fu and find it. Only you can use a satellite global positioning system to help you, which Cain didn't have.

The only cache we've found so far was one hidden in a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway. Which is a testament to our roots. You can take the kids out of New Jersey...

After two hours of wandering the same fifty-foot patch of Vermont forest in a light winter rain, emotions start to heat up. I'd be curious to know if any other marriages have hit a rocky patch during an argument over latitudes and longitudes.

So far the most astute comment on the whole Geocaching business has come from a blind woman, walking with her companion past us in the woods:

"Sounds like a treasure hunt going on over there!"

Beef Stroganoff

I don't know the history of beef stroganoff, but it always struck me as a throwback to 1950s crockpot cuisine; in the same category as macaroni and cheese or cream of mushroom casserole.

I found a recipe for this odd little beef dish in Everyday Food and, in the spirit of expanding my repertoire of recipes, I made it for the family. (And when I say *I made it* I mean that I instant messaged Dave the instructions from work while he made it at home. Which still counts because I was the project manager.)

Well it was a hit. Trevor raved and had two helpings, then asked for it again the next night, but Dave had already claimed the leftovers. Beef stroganoff revival for everyone!

Chocolate Crackles

Chocolate Crackles by taragl

This month, I made four batches of chocolate crackles from Martha Stewart's Cookies book and every one turned out perfect.

The trick is to roll the dough in granulated sugar first to absorb moisture, then in the powdered sugar to give them a snowy, cracked look after baking.

With all of the melted chocolate and cocoa powder inside these, the texture is more like a brownie or truffle than a cookie.

Corporate Office Emails

Even though I work from home, I still get emails for the office that I am based out of in my inbox every day. Usually it's information like, "The water cooler is not for making iced tea" or "For the move to the new office make sure your blue files are in black boxes and your black files are in the blue boxes. Also please note that our mover is colorblind"

But today, I got this gem:

From: Gina Secretary
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:05 AM
To: THE WHOLE FREAKIN OFFICE
Subject: Own a white BMW-plate # 123456?

If so, your headlights are on and draining your battery as you read this.

Nostalgia

With the new implementation of MT 3.3, I was inspired to once again take a crack at getting our old entries back on the site. If you notice, there is an 11 month gap in the monthly archive pages on the left side of the site, and all of those entries are sitting right on my desktop.

They are unfortunately not in a format that I can just dump into the site, so instead I am forced to manually clean the HTML out of them and repost them with corrected dates and times listed. It's a long process, but well worth it.

As of next Monday, it will mark 5 years that we have been using Movable Type for our blog and over 7 years of blogging. Many of the posts from the original home-grown version of the site (pre-June 2001) were lost to an old Berkeley database snafu, but we press on and archive more regularly now.

The entries that we are adding back in range from November 2001 to March 2003. As we add them back in, you should see new monthly categories added to the left-nav.

The nice part about having to edit every single entry is that I get to reread things that were important, upsetting, funny, sad and ironic from a different time in my life. Some people keep diaries, we keep a blog and this one is a true journal of our trip covering basically all aspects of our path through adulthood. We obviously don't post every single little detail (Dear Diary, Tara and I fought about the proper method to eat a burritto tonight....) but in reading through the old posts, I can visualize the past and rediscover some great moments with family and friends.

Why do I bring this up? Well, because I have never been the kind of person who takes a lot of pictures, writes letters to people, or does as much "family" stuff as everyone tells me I need to be doing. I don't really buy into it.

That said, one look at our flickr account, my moblog, this website and my numerous email accounts will tell you that everyone is exactly the same as they were 100 years ago.

Only the pen and paper have changed.

New Jersey smells bad... and other obvious facts.

The entire state of New Jersey sickened Manhattan yesterday, which has happened in the past, but this time it was triggered by an unidentified chemical. Officials were quick to point out that while nauseating, New Jersey is not actually hazardous to your health.

Back online

We were offline (or at least not posting to the site) for the last few weeks. Not to mention on and off for the last month or so before that. Something was wrong with our database and we kept getting errors when trying to rebuild the pages and adding new entries.

I checked a variety of possible problems, and after being totally stumped we decided to start fresh, delete the old site and upgrade our version of Movable Type from 2.64 to 3.3 (a decision we have been putting off for a few years now).

I backed up the database, downloaded copies of all the template files and made copies of everything so at the very least and worst case scenario we could manually rebuild the site after we were done with the process (if importing entries didn't work). Right before I zapped the database and started fresh, I checked the site one last time.

It was working. Fine. With no problems whatsoever.

I don't know what happened or changed or whatever but I was glad for it. The last time this happened, we ended up losing a lot of entries that I am still chipping away at putting back in after 4 years of carrying these files around with me in whatever email system I happen to be using at the time.

I upgraded it without issue and now we are happily using v3.3. Now I just need to figure out all the bells and whistles on this version. :)