The mountains are calling

 

The plot summary of Jane Eyre never encouraged me to read the book. Besides, it seems almost superfluous when threads and themes from the story have infiltrated every corner of the gothic novel genre since. Sad governess? Check. Creepy house? Check. Somewhat (okay, a lot) dysfunctional love interest? Sigh. 

 

However, after watching the 2011 movie version, I am intrigued by a different theme — superstition. Jane has a traumatic early experience with a supposedly haunted room, her best friend is of a decidedly ethereal bent, and everyone insists on telling ghost stories all the time. Then the creepy house business gets started and it would be fully reasonable for Jane to give way to assumptions of the supernatural. However, she remains stubbornly rational in the face of Rochester’s purple prose and the general atmosphere. 

 

Arguably part of her behavior is explained by repeated setbacks and disappointments. Still, she is perhaps one of the most disciplined characters in fiction. Despite the setbacks and misbehavior of her peers, she remains perhaps the most professional governess in existence. “My employer keeps flirting with me? I remain professional. My employer is flirting with someone else? I remain professional.” 

 

I also am eternally delighted by Judi Dench as the housekeeper, whose face perfectly predicts each looming cataclysm but she is too respectful of Jane to do anything beyond giving very cautiously phrased good advice. 

TL;DR I got stuck on a bus for 6 hours that drove down an unmarked trail and got stuck in a blizzard, in the desert, but the bus fortunately did not roll over.

( Read more... )

 <a href="http://snowflake-challenge.dreamwidth.org"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/mL4rxW8.png" title="source: imgur.com" / width=300></a>
In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane. 

Number one Happy Place is sitting in my apartment with a fresh pot of tea, a book, and a view out the window where I can see the trees and passersby. Double plus bonus if I have the mental wherewithal to play some music, bake some cookies, and write a letter to a friend, but I will take the tea and book if nothing else. 

If I'm really in a rough spot, I need to level up to the number two Happy Place, which involves outdoors, surrounded by plants, whether it's a garden or a forest. Weather permitting. 

And if we're talking tough times, Happy Place number 3 typically requires a trip out of town to be sitting with tea and cookies within sight of mountains (double points if ON the mountain), talking with a friend. 

 So I'm trying to figure out this dreamwidth thing, and am subscribing to some people's feeds (blogs? Entries?) based on keyword (i.e. no one told me I could find the others who have read Sheri Tepper and Kage Baker!) and if they seem to have interesting things to say. The interests metric is intriguing but I'm also hoping this doesn't contravene some unspoken rule that I'm supposed to, idk, message first. Somebody let me know...?

Do not heat particle board to high temperatures in ovens.

Do not respond to concerned citizens of the makerspace requesting that you stop burning particle board in public spaces by saying, "No, it's fine." 

I was at the Lewis Ginter botanical gardens the other day. In a word: gorgeous. In many more words: The woodland gardens were the most striking. Every twist in the path was a new little vista, there were little streams everywhere, it seemed, twisting among rock and surrounded by lush growth of dozens of different types of plants. There's even a tiny floating garden, though there was no guy in a kayak when we saw it--there was a new 1 foot tall bamboo fence, and a turtle sunning himself just outside it.

I cannot imagine how much more I would have to learn to be able to work on anything resembling a garden this amazing. And fresh out of school (and secondary training) is such a great time to be talking about new challenges. But maybe it is. 

I would like to make little backyard gardens and figure out how to let them have self-cleaning water features. Swimming ponds are one way to do it (given how many pools are out there not being used on a daily basis...) but require a lot of space and water. And deserts may be a place where a rock garden is really the only way to go. I really like a well-done water feature, though. Most of the gardens I go to have some ponds and fountains and streams, but the water is only clear when it is brominated or otherwise kept clean of live things. Otherwise it tends to be full of algae and pond scum. A small amount of pond scum is maybe to be expected, but this was the first gardens I have been to that seemed to have some well-managed water areas with plants happily growing in them.

A bit like climbing the rocks at Devil's Lake and slipping but catching oneself and that moment you don't know whether you are hurt and surrounded by granite or just startled. I think there is some granite.

Avis: "They are so entertaining when you program them with a sense of independence!"

Be the person carrying a AAA card.

Seriously, they could turn my last three interactions into a commercial for their insurance.

One friend locked herself out of her car.
On a road trip, another friend and I got a flat. At 9 pm. In the middle of the desert.

And most recently, a fellow bellydancer from practice left the headlights on in the 26 degree (Fahrenheit) weather that passes for spring in the upper midwest. The car battery was not happy. It was sufficiently unhappy to require a jump, but with the way the car was positioned in the parking lot it was virtually impossible to get another car within hailing distance of the jumper cables.

So we waited an hour for someone from AAA to get done jumping all the other cars in town that had dead batteries, and then drove around an extra half hour to make sure the battery was recharged before she parked for the night (and double checked the lights).

However, it worked out okay. I haven't had a good chat with this friend in months, since we have equally mad schedules, so we're all caught up now.

Yay.
Having tea now. Sitting in a car with a dead battery for half an hour in winter is chilly work. First time in ages I've managed a full-body freeze shimmy.

 www.shape.com/healthy-eating/healthy-recipes/10-healthy-cookie-recipes-fall I wanted to make high-protein cookies. Unbeknownst to me, quinoa is not a miracle carb composed solely of protein. Alas. The reason quinoa is special is because it contains All the Amino Acids, including lysine (this amino acid was a plot point in Jurassic Park). Also it has calcium.

I guess there are some issues with the popularity of quinoa, since it makes the price go up and there are concerns it may become unaffordable to people who depend on it, since it grows where no other grains will.

The recipe was a disappointment too. Cooked quinoa does terrible things to baked goods' texture. 


Here's my list of foods I like that might have protein in them:

Quinoa: 8 g protein / 1 cup serving (185 g)
5 g fiber out of 39 g total carbs (the rest is starch)

Popcorn: 1 g protein / 1 cup serving (8 g... which means by weight it has something like 12 g of protein for 100 g. But no one would eat twelve cups of popcorn in one day, right?)

Spelt: 11 g protein/ 1 cup serving (194 g)
8 g fiber out of 51 g total carbs

Whole wheat: 16 g protein / 1 cup (120 g)
15 g fiber out of 87 g carbs
(All-purpose enriched flour is just a tad lower, 13 g protein)

Black beans: 15 g protein / 1 cup (172 g)              (and 15 g fiber)
Adzuki beans: 17 g protein / 1 cup (230 g)            (17 g fiber)
Edamame: 17 g protein / 1 cup (155 g)                  (8 g fiber, 8 g fat)

1 egg (50 g): 6 g protein, 5 g fat          About 2/3rds of the protein is in the white.


Chicken breast: 43 g protein / 1 cup (140 g)  <-------------------Gold standard of protein
Salmon: 39 g / half filet (154 g)        (13 g fat)
Tilapia: Same.............................. less fat (~5 g)
Beef is roughly equivalent with 44 g protein for a weight of 154 g but with 19 g of fat, and, of course, a serving size is smaller.

Skim milk: 8 g protein / 1 cup (247 g)    -------And 12 g sugar!

Mozzarella: 7 g protein / 28 g
Cheddar: 7 g protein / 28 g   (and 9 g fat)

Whole milk yogurt: 9 g protein / 245 g                     (and 8 g fat) ------------So basically Cheddar is condensed whole milk yogurt.
Nonfat yogurt: 14 g protein / 1 cup (245 g)
Cottage cheese: 23 g protein / 1 cup                      (9 g fat if not low-fat)
Cottage cheese 1% milkfat: 28 g protein / 1 cup (226 g)         (2 g fat, 6 g sugars)
This explains why bodybuilders favor cottage cheese. 

Walnuts (english): 4 g protein / 28 g   (and 18 g fat, wowza)
Walnuts (black): 7 g protein / 28 g    (and only 17 g fat!)

Peanuts: 7 g protein / 28 g     (and 14 g fat)
Defatted peanut flour: 31 g protein / 1 cup (60 g)

Wheee, numbers.