Wednesday, March 31, 2010

More posts, a word press, and a monster

This is my 34th post of this year. In the last two and a half months I have made as many posts as I did in from April to December of last year. I am pleased my habit of regular posting is developing. For this year I am averaging once every 2-3 days.

As an update to an earlier post, someone can be taken off of the online milk carton. His blog is back up and I am adding Grano De Mostasa to the sidebar. I met David through church a long time ago. Now he is one of those all too prevalent law students. He did the Jesuit Volunteer Corps so he is currently in his first year. When you are at his blog make sure you see what places he identifies as Paradise Lost and Welcome to Hell.

This drink has a name that sounds like it is fun for the whole family.

Jager Monster

1 oz Jagermeister
1/2 oz Amaretto
1 tsp Grenadine
Orange Juice

Combine everything in the same glass. The addition of the Amaretto is something I got from the The Bartender's Black Book by Stephen Kittredge Cunningham. It is a good reference with a lot of drinks and I would recommend picking it up if you want to make any amount of mixed drinks. I have one at home and it is often consulted.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Passover Seder and Unleavened Bread

There was another RCIA event this past weekend. It is not a standard event for people in the program, just something the team wanted to do to teach the people. In preparation for becoming Catholic, they prepared a Jewish Passover Seder. It is the ritual meal Jews eat every year to commemorate their liberation from Egypt.

While I have been to Catholic explanations of the Seder before, this was much more detailed and authentic. I directly participated in drinking the four cups of wine, washing of the hands, breaking one of the three matzo on the plate, eating a Hillel sandwich, dipping an herb into salt water, spilling ten drops of wine for the plagues, eating charoset (mixture of apples and nuts), and singing Dayeinu (about being grateful to God) among other things.

To get into the spirit earlier in the day, I made my own matza. Everyone got the recipe at the Sunday teaching earlier in the week, but I was one of the few who actually made it. The recipe is reproduced below.

Unleavened Bread

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp Crisco
1/2 cup very hot water

Mix flour, salt, and Crisco together - Put in a Tupperware type container and shake until it is the consistency of pie dough - crumbly.

Add water.

Shake about 3 minutes, or until dough forms a small ball. Then, take the ball and THROW it (not knead it) on your counter for about 15 minutes. (You may need to take an "arm rest")!

Divide into 3 parts - put on ungreased cookie sheet and flatten before baking to about 1/4 inch.

Bake at 350 degrees about 25 minutes.

NOTE: "Throwing" it on the counter is VERY IMPORTANT and for at least 15 minutes - if you don't, the bread will be tough.

In addition to this given recipe, I took a meat tenderizer and attacked the dough every few minutes to help soften it up. I also used the tenderizer to imprint a design on two of the pieces.

Back to the Meal
There is a lot of symbolism and meaning in the Seder. It focuses on how God brought the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt. The teaching on Sunday explained some of the background. I wanted to know more, so I stared my own online research. I have been focusing on Jewish sources to explain the Seder. I want to learn about everything in its original context, not from sources or people who cherry pick only the most helpful information for their interpretation. There are some Christian sources that ignore much of the Seder and there are some Jewish people who celebrate the Seder and say the messiah has come in Yeshua (Jesus). I will not attempt a summary, but the Unnamed Geniuses are here to help explain the Passover Seder.

All of this stuff is important to Christianity because Jesus and his apostles were Jews. The Last Supper was a Seder that was prepared and eaten in accordance with Jewish custom and law. However, Jesus does not finish it in the proscribed way. Four cups of wine must be drunk in the meal, but Jesus stands up and walks out before he would have offered the fourth cup.

A few points were brought up in what I heard and read:
  • The third cup of wine is for God's redemption of Israel. After this cup Jesus suspends drinking the fourth cup until He accomplishes His redemptive work.

  • Jesus is the new paschal sacrifice. Like the lamb offered in the Passover Seder, He is without blemish.

  • At dinner, Jesus says He will not drink wine again until He is in His Father's kingdom. He rejects wine offered to Him until His death.
There is a lot of information out there and I do not have a clear understanding of everything that is happening. I hope this will push you to read up on it or offer your own insights.

The Third Scrutiny
The Third and final Scrutiny for the Elect happened two Sundays ago. All the readings are online. The Gospel for the day was the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1-45. Refer to my post on the First Scrutiny for links explaining the Scrutiny since they are all very similar.

Next for RCIA will be the Holy Thursday mass, followed by a bunch of things on Holy Saturday before the Easter Vigil (which is another big bunch of things, three sacraments, and lots of grace).

Monday, March 29, 2010

Meet the Wolf of the Sea

On Saturday I finished reading The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. I really liked it.

To follow a tangent, Saturday was also a great food day. It started with a cheeseburger combo at In-N-Out in the early morning after watching Greenberg with Aden and Frank. For lunch I made a trip to the Hometown Buffet. I have not been to one since elementary school, and the drought has been my loss. I had to stop myself after a few plates of food because a few short hours later I was going to a Seder meal. Why I attended a Seder meal will be explained in an upcoming post.

Back to the story of the story. By an accident, the literary critic Humphrey van Weyden ends up on the sealing ship Ghost. The title refers to the ship's captain, Wolf Larsen. Much of the book is how van Weyden, or "Hump," responds to Wolf Larsen and his immoral ways.

My first thought is to compare this to the other great sea stories I have read, namely Moby-Dick. Wolf Larsen is a more interesting character than Captain Ahab. Both of them deserve places in the pantheon of mythical sea captains. If I said anything else in comparison, it would say more about Moby-Dick than The Sea-Wolf.

The worst part of the story is a plot line that emerges later in the book. It is not as good, memorable, or plausible as what centers on Wolf Larsen. However, if an expert in sailing ships or other things I am ignorant of wants to correct me please do.

The Sea-Wolf is similar to London's other works. It explores the conflict when civilized notions and value systems clash with harsh realities and tyrannical rule. I liked this book better than London's Call of the Wild.

The story reads well and I recommend it.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Forms due on the 15th and some comments

One downside to writing posts but not publishing them immediately is the identifiers of time. When I first drafted this, I said today because some of the events happened on that day. Now I have to change it to this week. On the plus side, I was able to come up with better phrasing in one part and learned some details to expand upon a point.

Due last week
Last week I filed paperwork to continue an alumni group with the University of California. The group has done absolutely nothing, but they have a website, working online signup form, Facebook group, and official recognition by the Cal Alumni Association. For reasons unknown to me, the California Alumni Association became the Cal Alumni Association recently. I had to change the name in a dozen places on the website (make that 18, I just found another place) and need to find a new graphic.

If you do visit the site linked above, take a minute to look at the people sitting behind the table. I am putting their pictures on an online milk carton. One has not posted on her blog for over a month and the link to the other's blog does not work :( I know where they are in real life, but they are missing from the blogosphere.

Next month
Now I am working on my taxes. Last year I did them without TurboTax or any other preparation software. This year I am going to continue the tradition. If I can get into the habit of doing taxes without software now, when my finances get more complicated in the future I will be able to handle them better.

In January I knew I needed to get three 1099 forms for my interest and dividend income. I received two of them in January and waited for the third one. As of earlier this week it was not in my possession; so I started a search. After looking through my bank's website and asking my Dad if the form had been directed to him, I learned something. If interest income on a bank account is less than $10, the bank will not send a 1099-INT and the interest income does not need to be reported. After checking online, my interest income for last year was $7.22.

Later on I observed a second interesting thing. My 1099-DIV did not list an account that had no dividends or distributions. I would have guessed the company would have listed the account and said it generated no income, but it omitted the account entirely.

Being a civic citizen
Doing your taxes by hand (without tax preparation software) is a good exercise to understand the government. Taxes show you what behaviors a government wants to encourage or discourage. It also shows how complicated it is to navigate the thousands of pages of regulation and rules. There was a time when we professed a government of the people, by the people, for the people. When I am doing my taxes, it looks like a government of the bureaucrats, by the lawyers, for the accountants.

Recent legislation is taking us further down the wrong path. Under a new law, people will soon have to talk about their health insurance when filing taxes. People who are able to buy health insurance but chose not to will be fined (but not "criminalized") by the IRS. You would have to be a slick lawyer to invent a justification for this.

I would like to recognize Derek for doing his taxes by hand. We need more people with that old-fashioned attitude.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Great Divorce

Last week I finished The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. It was recommended to me by Aden.

The Great Divorce refers to the gulf between Heaven and Hell. The book is a speculative vision of what the two places are like. It follows a character as he narrates what he sees and how he responds to his surroundings. The book describes some of the obstacles that prevent people from reaching heaven and different ways people can hold onto negative things.

I enjoyed the book. By comparison with the other two books I am currently reading, it was shorter and easier to read. This allowed me to spend more mental energy following the action and what it meant.

In the introduction, Lewis refers to a "Scientifiction" story he read that gave him some ideas he incorporates. While it does not match his description, I was reminded of the stories "Submicroscopic" and "Awlo of Ulm" by Capt. S.P. Meek (Sterner St. Paul Meek). Near the end Lewis footnotes an idea which is exactly the same as one from these two stories published in 1931. I read both of them in an anthology last month.

I do not want to say anything else about The Great Divorce, except that I recommend this easy to read book.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

A new bike, cuts on my hand, and 7-Eleven

A week ago my bike broke. I had to walk, gently ride, and finally carry it 2.25 miles back home. The gear shifter was destroyed because the rear tire hub failed. I was mad. The bike had worked wonderfully for over 18 months, but was taken to a bike shop just a month ago. After putting on new tires, a new seat, oiling everything, putting some other new stuff on and generating a $93 bill I thought the bike would would be good for a long time to come. I was wrong.

My Dad and I took the bike back to the shop and they said the hub failing has nothing to do with what they did. They said it was a cheap three piece hub and they fail often. The shop had a bike on sale they wanted to sell us for $250. I said I would think about it. To aid my thinking, I went to a biking superstore. It had ten times the floor space. I found a better bike there. It only cost $20 more and that was for the installation of a kick stand. I was very pleased and planned to never return to the other bike shop.

This new bike is sharp. More than looking good, I actually cut my finger moving it. I was able to apply a band aid and some antibiotic that expired in 1/04 on it so everything is better. Luckily my right middle finger is not used excessively in typing. One time last summer I was adjusting the spring on the garage door (the one with the warning tag that says serious injury or death could result if improperly adjusted by non-trained personal) and cut my right pinky finger. Normally, that finger is infrequently used in regular typing. However, I was doing some programing in PHP and HTML which require heavy usage of ; / ? : ' " ) = + and even some { } []. All of these are typed by the right pinky.

Springtime
Earlier today it became spring and this should be celebrated. When I lived at the Yee Tenement House, I involved my roommates in a celebration. We went to the local 7-Eleven and brought in the new season with a Double Gulp and some fine Hostess Twinkies. Well, that is what I did while Derek looked on with mixed feelings and Rohit bought a smaller sized soda.

Do you know how much soda is in a Double Gulp? They did not have the size on the cup I purchased, but from my past experience I know it is 64 oz. For comparison, that is half of a gallon, or 1.9 liters of soda. Double Gulps bring back musical memories of when I was in stage crew in high school.

Earlier this week, I went to celebrate early so I could take a picture and get it online. I bought the Double Gulp of Dr. Pepper, a Twinkie, and even threw in a Slurpee for my Mom. When I was paying for the items, the clerk asked if I wanted a donut for free. Few things in the world are better than free food so I took it.
7eleven Double Gulp and spring celebration
I consumed all three of the items when I got home. With all the sugar I could feel my risk of diabetes going up. It was glorious. I do not endorse doing this every week, but I would recommend you do something to celebrate the new season in a non-pagan way.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Irish Cocktail and Corn Casserole

In the past week I have read 100+ pages in three different books and over 30 pages of a textbook, but have not yet finished any of them. (Actually, since I wrote that line yesterday I finished one. A post will be forthcoming.)

As an update to a previous post about GRE scores, I have my actual report to share. My Analytical Writing score was 3.5 out of 6 which is in the 23rd percentile. For the other two sections, the percentiles are exactly what I guessed in the previous post, Verbal 90th and Quantitative 62nd.

As I said before, I know I can do much better on the test. While ETS says people who retake the test usually do not see a significant change in score, I have some personal experience that differs. Once upon a time back when Writing was a separate SAT II subject test (May 2003), I took it. The first time I got 520, which is the 21st percentile (from a chart I found). Before the test I had a lot of literal drama and trauma. It was one of the craziest and most surreal weeks of my life. When I took the test a second time without the extenuating circumstances, I scored 760 (or 92nd percentile). If I ever do retake the GRE, I will be preparing and aiming for 90th percentile or higher in all three sections.

Now for the next installment of Chris's Cocktails & Casseroles.

Plain and Fancy Corn Casserole

1 can creamed corn
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1/2 cup cut up pepper
Little cut up onion (I used half an onion, but use less if you like it less)
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2-1 cup shredded cheese, divided
2 egg yokes

Combine and place in an ungreased (I do not believe in ungreased, but you can try if you want to) casserole pan. Top with more cheese. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

I doubled this recipe and added a can of whole corn. It was delicious.

This recipe was on a card in my Mom's recipe box at home. The title of Plain and Fancy comes from the TV show of the same name in Buffalo many years ago.


Even though St. Patrick's Day has passed, there is nothing wrong with enjoying this next cocktail year round.

Irish Car Bomb

Bottle Guinness beer
0.75 oz Jameson Irish whiskey
0.75 oz Baileys Irish cream

Fill a large glass half full with Guinness. Then take a shot glass and fill it half full with whiskey and then float the cream on top of that. If you want to be fancy, slowly pour the cream on the back of an inverted spoon into the already half full shot glass. Next, take the shot glass and gently (or aggressively if you don't mind a mess) drop it glass and all into the glass with the Guinness. Immediately chug the drink, as the reaction of the ingredients will start to curdle.