Oh No!!

July 25, 2005

The berry season is almost ever, we are picking the very last of the raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, marionberries, and boysenberries. You might find a find enough for a pie or two. Peas are ready and the first of the beans. See you soon...

Farmer Don Kruger

Must... pick... more... berries...

Overheard this morning on CNN

Paraphrasing...."The President is the only one with enough resources to fix these problems with the levee and make the city safe again." -a former mayor of New Orleans

My heart goes out to the victims who have perished in the recent hurricane to pass through Gulf Coast. But seriously, former mayor, here's the problem with your levee....it's above the mean elevation of your city meaning that your city is built below sea level!!! Did you not see this coming someday?

I implore anyone to give me one good reason why New Orleans should NOT be allowed to become a modern day Atlantis.

The Summer Bounty

Our backyard garden with tomatoes all along the fence with zinnias & petunas in front. Fennel & the grapevine (under the holly tree) and then our blueberry bushes on the far right side. I've never seen such giant tomato bushes. The tomato plants to the left (that are tied up) extend past the fence which is 6 feet tall!



Ken loves sunflowers so I planted some for him earlier this year. They say everything grows in Oregon, which I believe from this picture. 12 ft sunflowers. Can you believe it! Also check out the two giant zucchini that Ken's holding. Just one of them fed 20+ people (for two meals and still had leftovers)! Under the sunflower was sugar snap peas & snow peas that we ate earlier this summer, but they're long gone now. Oh, that building is our shed/garage. Picture was taken from the back porch. You can see the rose bush garden behind.



A closer look at that rose bush garden... basically 8 rose bushes came with the house and were planted smack dab in the center of the yard. Ken's beloved corn wasn't getting enough sun on the side of the house, so we hauled in a ton of compost and made a makeshift bed between the rose bushes. Then we moved the corn in between the roses and brought my zucchini plants over too.



Not everything is huge in the garden though. Ken hand planted a ton of carrot seeds this spring. I weeded them... all the time. Behold the (very mini) bounty of carrots. Nevertheless, here's Ken being very proud of his carrots (and holding my favorite tomato).

It's all balance, right?

High heels on a woman is a beautiful sight.... especially when that woman can go about her business without worrying that she's been standing on her toes for hours held up by tiny toothpicks. I can do some heels but I'm about as steady as a mountain goat -- falling off a cliff. It's just not a pretty sight. In Tucson, we'd have girl nights and drink old fashioneds and practice walking around in heels. The alcohol helped, but in hindsight I think it was the sticky floor from those drinks being spilled that kept us upright... kind of like fly paper, if you will.

Anyway, I've been searching for shoes for Whitney's wedding in three weeks. Usually, I wear some type of flat sandal or heels that have thicker "heel" for lateral support. Shoes like this are impossible for me, whether they're 1/2" or 3 inches off the ground. I am no weeble. I wobble. And fall down. Hard. However, the strapless-kneelength black dress that we're wearing looks best with heels. A flat shoe won't cut it, so I have been searching for quite a while. Also, I've been looking for a shoe that doesn't have an ankle strap that will visually cut my leg in half... if that stupid subscription to In Style has taught me anything, it's don't pick a shoe like this with a shorter dress... it will make your legs look shorter than they are. I've been looking for an upper part that looked something like this... back strap for support that didn't go all the way around the ankle. Front part that had nice lines (although the heel here wouldn't work for me). Anyway, I finally found my dream shoe yesterday in Seattle on my way to Pike's Place. An inch to inch and a half heel.... not a finger heel, but the dream heel that is thin when you look at it in profile, but thicker when you see it from behind. Finally, a heel where I won't twist my ankle with one false step.

It will take two steps.

Seattle Coffee Tour

Went up to seattle on wednesday night for Drew's defense yesterday. He did a great job and was very, very happy to be finished... especially since he leaves on Saturday for Rochester, NY to get married.

Anyway, his talk was at 2pm, meaning I had the whole morning to amuse myself. Iced white mocha at Vivace and then took the bus downtown to Pikes Place market to be a tourist for a while. Yeah, that place is awesome. Makes me sad Portland doesn't have a daily market like that.... I would love to buy all my fish and produce from open air markets if I had the chance. Anyway, did the length a couple of times and then walked around the corner and grabbed a pastry to go (for lunch/snack later) before I found the Crumpet Shop wedged in between two chain coffee houses. Lots of tea and the owner said they've been there for 30 years. I'd never had a crumpet before, but since a lady was standing in line to buy a pack of crumpets to go (plain), I figured they had to be good. I ordered a fresh crumpet with smoked salmon blended with cream cheese topped with cucumbers and a large iced vanilla latte for a total of 5.50. And it was awesome. Ken would love that place -- he's not really a coffee drinker but found that he loves chai (tea infused with sugar, spices & milk) -- so a tea house that makes their own chai could be his dream come true. Anyway, caught the bus to UW. Another cup of coffee. Listened to the talk and then went with my boss and Bob to Ivar's, a salmon house on the water for happy hour. Very fun and it was a beautiful day as well. Left Seattle around 6:30 (another cup of coffee, this time decaf) and headed back to Portland to find an empty, dark house around 9:45. Turns out Ken got called down to California for work and flew out around 3 that afternoon. He gets back this evening, but I sure did miss him when I got home.

TGIF.

Word Verification

As you will find when posting a comment to our blog from here on out, we have enacted the word verification option in an attempt to curb the Comment Spam we have been experiencing. The latest episode came when Lisa's last post had 7 comments all in a matter of a 1/2 hour. Hopefully this will eliminate the spam.

We at 'Livin' la Vida Roko' apologize for putting you through the hassle of typing in just one more word. Hopefully you can forgive us.

Food Fights, science style

I've been very frustrated for the past couple of months with a craigslist poster who maintains that there's no way to remove excess salt from a soup/dish. Felt like we all were getting bullied around, yet I couldn't quite frame my argument. I'm sure at least one of you have heard the trick of using a potato to absorb excess salt. Or, if you don't use a potato, you may have heard of being able to mask small amounts of oversalting by balancing it with a bit of sugar. Haven't tried the potato thing, but I've definitely done the latter and it works. I know the sugar doesn't remove the salt, but who cares if you don't perceive a dish as being unpleasantly salty anymore? Anyway, s/he still gets in a huff about it when ever the topic is breached. Infuriating.

This weekend I was talking with a teammate of Ken's (who has his doctorate in chemical engineering and specializes in thermodynamics) and told him of my frustration. We talked about it for a while and then I got this today. Love it.

Hi Lisa,

I can assure you that ClayMonkey is full of s**t (and I don't mean salt)! His (faulty) logic is that the potatoes absorb both salt and water in the same proportions as exist in the soup, leaving the concentration within the soup unaffected. Well, we know the potatoes remove salt from the soup, because they end up tasting salty. But if they were to remove a proportionate amount of water from the soup as well, they would have to swell in volume considerably. That is simply not observed. There may be an exchange of water between the soup and the potatoes (which have their own initial, salt-free liquid content, a point that ClayMonkey has obviously overlooked), but there is essentially no net movement of water from the soup to the potatoes. Since the potatoes remove salt from the soup, but no net water, the soup's salt concentration must decrease.

Let's run a few numbers to make sure. Suppose we put 100 grams of salt into a liter of water, for an initial concentration of 100 g/l. Now suppose we add a liter of potatoes. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that the potatoes are 50% solid and 50% liquid by volume, and that the potato solids absorb salt only 1/5 as readily as the liquids do (you can change these assumed values to see what happens, but the conclusions will remain the same). Okay. We now have 1.5 liters of water, 0.5 liters of potato solids, and 100 grams of salt in the pot. At equilibrium, the concentration of salt within the liquids should be essentially uniform, both inside and outside of the potatoes. Let X represent that concentration (in g/l). The concentration within the potato solids will then be X/5. The total amount of salt will be 1.5 liters times X plus 0.5 liters times X/5, which must equal 100 grams. Therefore, X, the final salt concentration within the liquids, must equal 62.5 g/l. Remove the potatoes, and the remaining broth will still have a concentration of 62.5 g/l, which is 5/8 the original concentration. Case closed.

Of course, as ClayMonkey would point out, you could also reduce the salt concentration to 62.5 g/l by simply adding another 0.6 liters of fresh water to the original liter of broth. But then you'd have 60% more broth than before, and you'd have to add 60% more of every other ingredient (except the salt, of course) if you didn't want to water down the recipe. You won't have that problem, though, if you use the potatoes to lower the salt concentration. Assuming that the potatoes do not expand or shrink by more than a negligible amount, the final volume of the broth will be essentially unchanged as well. Now, for even more fun, let's return to our example. The broth ended up with a salt concentration of 62.5 g/l, but if that's still too salty for our tastes, we can just repeat the process with another equal volume of potatoes. The second batch will end up at 39.1 g/l, the third will be at 24.4 g/l, the fourth at 15.3 g/l, and so forth. In fact, each repetition will reduce the concentration to 5/8 of its previous value, so with enough patience, you can reduce the concentration to practically zero. The bottom line is that ClayMonkey can go ahead and eat his soup with a 100 g/l salt concentration if he likes, but he's an idiot if he thinks he has to. Feel free to tell him that a Ph.D. chemical engineer said so!

Bon appétit!

Aaron

Classic. I get this a few hours later.

Hi Lisa,

After I sent you my earlier treatise on soup and potatoes, I realized that I could have been more precise with my argument that the potatoes do not take on additional water. Originally, I said:

>Well, we know the potatoes remove salt from the soup, because they
>end up tasting salty. But if they were to remove a proportionate
>amount of water from the soup as well, they would have to swell in
>volume considerably. That is simply not observed.

It would have made a stronger argument to have said:

Well, we know the potatoes remove salt from the soup, because they end up tasting salty. But if they were to remove a proportionate amount of water from the soup as well, they would have to increase in mass considerably, which would be accompanied by either a considerable increase in volume (like a balloon filling with liquid) or a considerable increase in density (like a dry sponge soaking up liquid). Well, these effects are simply not observed. Potatoes are nothing like balloons or sponges.

Now I feel better. I didn't want to leave any wiggle room for additional debate.

Chow (instead of Ciao, get it?)!

Aaron

Seattle Bound

Off to Seattle this afternoon for Drew's defense tomorrow. See you friday!

Softball Tournament

Ken's softball game was this weekend. 19 people camping next to the softball fields 18 miles from home. Necessary=no; Fun=yes. Got to do a whole bunch of cooking and hanging out with people we're just getting to know. The bacon-wrapped brats were a huge hit. Also, the group got a keg yet still managed to finish two bottles of Jack Daniel's & a bottle of tequila.Games in the morning were early (9 & 8 am, respectively), but we had coffee & camp chairs & mimosas -- which was very fun. Here are a few pics of the weekend:

Ken at bat:



The Rogue Softball Groupies:


Saturday night started out easily enough:


But quickly progressed downhill. Ken was trying to show a 4-year-old how to make a Taryn Fire Mask. Not surprisingly, the kid got scared and ran away:


Ken had so much fun making the mask that he started going to the bad place. He was joined by his foil bunny sidekick:



Meanwhile, Brian got super drunk on beer and couldn't find the fire. Literally. He asked me if they moved it. He then drank a 16 oz cup of JD and went beddie-bye. We all tucked him in:


Good times.

No sleep for the weary

Ken's in Seattle today after getting home from work after 1 am and leaving for the airport at 5:30. I think he'll be quite ready for some sleep this weekend... except that he's in a camping/softball tournament this weekend where he has to play at least five games.

I've been doing the food manifestos for the weekend trip with another girl. Kind of weird to split a job I'm used to doing by myself... especially since all my weirdness becomes quite visible. Case in point: i've just made the dream excel spreadsheet for the cost breakdown of the meals. Complete with who's eating what meals (and if they are), an automatic "COUNTIF' equation that breaksdown the grocery cost based on how many people are coming. The spreadheet automatically adds the totals for each person and crosschecks itself. I think it's my proudest spreadsheet to date. And it's totally reusable... just need to delete some names/costs and it's good to go again. If anyone ever needs to breakdown costs for a weekend, this will have you covered. Like I said, my weirdness is becoming very visible. I ordered 2 magnums of champagne from costco, but the sad part is if I were with the Tucson girls, we would have ordered 5+. It's weird planning meals for people that you don't know very well -- what do they like? dietary restrictions? are they meat & potato folk or gourmets? Do they like thai food and hate mexican or vice versa? Keeping it way simple this time and inexpensive.... don't want to be that girl who overspent on food. Here's our menu:

Friday: Bacon-wrapped Brats & Burgers; Banana Boats & smores
Saturday Breakfast: Bacon, Eggs, Sausage Links, Coffee, OJ, Tortillas for wraps
Lunch: Quesadillas, Apples/Bananas, PB&J, Summer sausage, crackers, Cheese
Saturday Dinner Hobo Packs (karl made these once for us; ground beef and/or sausage with all sorts of veggies. Wrapped in foil and thrown in the fire coals. Feeds a lot and everyone makes there own. Dessert is campfire baked apples with various toppings (like banana boats, but with cinnamon sugar, caramel, granola, raisins, etc.
Sunday AM: Omelets in a bag, bacon, coffee

On a different note, work's been good on my end... no data lately but I'm getting a gigantic crash course in DNA, PCR, insertional mutagenesis, making & screening clones/mutants/etc. Wow. Very cool to see how things work and why they do/don't. I'm feeling much more comfortable with the whole molecular biology realm, which I feel is giving me a bit of freedom. If you know what something is, how can you be scared of it?

Farmer's markets today after work to get produce for the weekend. Then grocery store to pick up the rest. Ken gets home around 6 tonight. Will be great to see him; I bet he's beat.

Blogger Spam

Anyone know how to get rid of the annoying blogger comment spam that we seem to have started to receive. Check out what I mean in the comments of Lisa's entry below.

10 Year Reunion

Julie, ask and ye shall receive.

lisa-i want to hear more about your 10 year high school reunion-how did youfind it? did you think that people were the same or different? at mine, i thought a lot of people were the same except the hot guys from back then looked old now and balding, etc. jules

Surprisingly, I didn't have the same experience at all. I expected that to be true... or they would be bragging about what they've accomplished... or all the girls were pregnant... (Basically a scene out of Romy & Michelle's). Instead, I had a totally different experience. Here's the breakdown: out of a class of 314 or so, 170 alums showed up. About half were married/half not -- such that it wasn't a big deal one way or the other. Some brought their spouses/longterm sig. others/partners/etc., but not that many. Some of those who were married had kids, but most didn't. I could count on one hand the number of people that had either gained weight and/or were balding. One hand. So I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone looked the same but older & better. I found everyone to be really nice and more fun and happy. Kind of great to see everyone in a better light than the stressed out awkward kids that we all were in HS. When I asked what I do, I told them scientist or that "I'm in science". Seemed to be sufficient since I wasn't quite in the mood to discuss research. Only one person pressed me on it, to which I respectfully avoided the question. As for people changing since HS, the quiet ones came out of their shells; the popular ones tended to revert back to their own circle since some didn't really know too many in HS outside their immediate friends. It was funny that an ex-quiet kid came up to me and said "Y would talk to me in HS and he still won't talk to me now". Meanwhile, some of the popular kids told me that they felt really uncomfortable because they didn't know anyone. Hilarious.

I told Taryn it felt like my wedding because I made a lot of rounds to talk to everyone.... only this time I didn't know people very well. Everyone was in the same boat though. As long as you're friendly to everyone and acknowledge to yourself that you won't remember everyone and they won't remember you, I think you're golden. Besides, everyone was rather drunk. A few really drunk. Who could blame them? It's an awkward situation. In all, I was there for 6.5 hours. Got there at 8, left at 2:30 am.

My parents picked me up the next morning to take me to PA. I had some great stories, but my head was a sack of rocks and I was too tired to tell them.

In terms of aftermath, our local newspaper ran a story about our reunion (Julie & Taryn, you can read it here). And this email came out about a week later:

Hey (girl's name), It was really nice to meet you last week at the reunion. I hope I didn't come across as a cheese dick. I haven't meet anyone I've found really attractive in quite a while, and that has started to bother me. I know we didn't get much of a chance to talk, but you seem really cool. And I think you are very pretty. So, thats all I wanted to say. I'm glad we meet. -(boy's name)-------------

then this came about a half hour later:

I sent that to everyone didn't I.... How awkward, Oh well. -(boy's name)-----------------------

Classic.

Bite of Oregon

I am so sorry I forgot to mention you. Don't worry, we'll come visit this weekend. My belly will be warm and waiting for you.

$5 entry fee. Food vendors from around the state. Local Beer (Widmer). Local Wines. And Music?...

Violent Femmes, Little Richard, Steppenwolf, & The Decemberists, among others. What?

Food Reading

Before my 12 hour (!) trip from back east last week, I stopped in Marsha's favorite little bookstore in the airport terminal looking for something to entertain me on the plane. Browse, browse, browse. And then I found it.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but if Jake Gyllenhaal raves about it, it's got to be good. Riiigght. Actually, think about it... I know it sounds ridiculous, but if a book can capture the attention of someone who could instead get laid by Kirsten Dunst or do all sorts of fun things that celebrity-dom may bring -- and he'd still rather read some book about the history of salt, then perhaps it's worth a look-through -- especially if you love reading about food. Needless to say, I was 200 pages in when the plane landed. Definitely entertaining.

If salt's not quite your thing, what about this one that I read about yesterday in Bon Appetit. Here's the article by the gothamist on the author. Basically, one guy photographs everything that he eats in a year. Everything. Kind of bizarre reading about salt and then seeing the description of this book. In Salt, Kurlansky goes into detail about what people ate at various points of history... now here's this book with an accurate description of what one person ate in 2004. Imagine seeing the same book from someone who did that in 1885? 1940? 1982? Very cool to have a record of it. Little mini food time capsule. I wonder which of our foods will be a mark of our time like mallomar (1913), Maypo (1953) or salmagundi (1747) and which will persist for generations like A1 Steak Sauce (1824) or pumpkin pie (1653)? (via Food Timeline)

Lisa, version 28.2

I have always been a late sleeper. Late to go to bed, late to rise. The worms are always gone by the time I make it on the scene. It's actually quite frustrating to be labeled as lazy just because I wake up later than 'morning people'. Seriously, if Suzy Sunshine (morning person) and I each paint a room -- she does it in the morning, I do it at night -- how can she be considered more productive? Is it because she did it 'first thing'? Well, what if I told you that actually I painted that room the night before.... or also that morning (but at 1 am). Argh. Alas, the world is prejudiced against late sleepers. It's a 9-5 world. Even in science when you can theoretically make your own hours, there's still an expectation of you being there at a certain time. Sweet, now I can fight with everyone else over whose turn it is to use the centrifuge, pcr machine, etc.

When I was back on the east coast last week for 10 days, I still slept until 10-11. Typical. But as I was talking to Ken over the phone, we figured that maybe when I got back and "gained a couple hours" that I would try getting up earlier -- since he knew how much it bothered me to be labeled as lazy (see above). Monday morning 6:30 am. No problem. Got up, watered the plants, drank coffee in my PJs... very fun. Next morning, a little harder but still pretty fun (although I was exhausted last night and went to sleep at 9:15 -- did I forget to mention that my body loves a good 8 hrs of sleep, although I have been known to go for 10-12 hours on many occasions). This morning, despite my early-to-bed thing, I woke up exhausted at 7 am. No watering plants; double the coffee. What gives? I'm only on my 3rd day and my body is revolting. What happens come this winter when there are no plants to water AND it's dark in the morning?

Dalai Drama

Our lab is all atither today about a petition that came out protesting the Dalai Lama speaking at our neuroscience convention this year... quite a buzz stirring; even Nature is in on the action. The petition was at 159 when I saw it just this morning... close to 500 now.

Riding in Portland

The new road bike is awesome and riding around Portland in such a breeze. Bike paths everywhere, most people are aware of you on the road.

Took a tour around SE Portland and into Milwaukie this morning. Nice 1-1/2 hour ride. The best part was riding in the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge along the Sweetwater Corridor on the east bank of the Willamette River. What a breeze. I think Lisa needs to see this.

Since I realized I was in the neighborhood, I figured I'd pop in on Adam and Emily. Front door was open, but no one answered so I didn't knock any louder. I realize people sleep longer than I do.

Back East

I've been back East since last Friday. Did the reunion thing, saw my folks' new house and now am down in Ocean City, MD at the beach. Writing this from the front porch after a day on the beach. Sounds exotic, but would it help if I told you that it's muggy and I'm sunburned (stupid Oregon albino skin). Anyway, it's been such a peaceful break back here. My parents have been spoiling me with lattes in the morning, blueberry pancakes, grilling out & cocktails in the evening. I go back on Sunday morning and arrive in Oregon around 5. I'm actually kind of excited; I miss Ken.

Their new place is great. Love the layout. I got to help my mom plant some new 'friends' (although we needed a pick to get through the hard soil embedded with giant rocks). They're near all their buddies up there and loving it. They go to the beach every other week or so... until they get tired of it and go back to PA. Then they go back to the beach when they feel like it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Have I told you they love being retired?

The music on the porch just came on and my dad is making Mt. Gay rum punches now. Oh happy friday.

My new ride

The 2004 Trek 1500



Just picked it up yesterday after a few weeks of hunting around and trying various others in the same range. It sucks trying to find a previous year's bike in the most popular size (56cm).

Weather should be prime for a nice early morning ride this Saturday. Can't wait to try it out on a longer ride.

August Birthdays & Anniversaries

August Birthdays - Emily Bailen (8/16), Marsha Penner (8/21), Karl Newell (8/23)

August Anniversaries - None that we know of