Roy

Meet Max

2009-06-01T05:26:29Z

Progress as promised

2009-05-02T21:31:54Z

If you go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/miche.cowan?fgl=true&pli=1, you can see a selection of the pictures Michelle and I took on our week long trip through New Mexico. I was originally going to wait until I wrote some commentary, but realistically, what are the odds of that ever getting done?

Back from New Mexico!

2009-04-27T02:04:43Z

I just got back from a week long road trip through a large percentage of New Mexico with Michelle. It was super fun. This entry is a promise to post pictures in the not too distant future.

Today's the day

2008-09-06T19:56:04Z

In just a little over three hours, Michelle and I will be married. Tomorrow we're off to Catalina for a very short honeymoon. I'll be posting some pictures when I get them.

Wish us luck!

Two Years Later

2008-07-03T07:04:07Z

Two years ago, I made a post (albeit a tightly locked one) about a great first date I had with Michelle. Now, two years later, she's just finished moving in with me and we're looking forward to our wedding in September. Things are better than I could ever have imagined.

Scientist Smackdown!

2008-06-30T20:25:29Z

It's on the execrable "Conservapedia", but Professor Lenski's letter, where he basically tells a bunch of creationists exactly what he thinks of them and their attacks on his research is well worth reading:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog#Second_reply

Cajun Pizza!

2008-03-14T04:47:51Z

At the risk of echoing bearddevil, here's the pizza I made up for Michelle:

1/2 yellow onion, sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced
2 links andouille sausage, diced
1/2 lb small shrimp
Cajun seasoning
1/2 jar sauteed onion and roasted garlic pasta sauce
1.5 cups reduced-fat Italian four-cheese mix
Pizza crust

Melt a little butter in a large saute pan over medium high heat and soften up the onion some. Toss the bell pepper in and mix. Turn the heat down and add the sausage, heat until the sausage warms and releases delicious sausage oil. Dump the onion/pepper/sausage (topping) onto a plate. Heat the shrimp in the sausage oild with some cajun seasoning. Add the pasta sauce and heat through. Pasta sauce goes on the crust, cheese goes on sauce, toppings go on cheese. Bake it 8 minutes at 450 and enjoy.

Goes well with Sparkling Chimayo Cocktail:

1 cup gold tequila
3/4 soda water
2 TBS creme de cassis
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
1 bottle Martenellis Sparking Cider

News You Can Use

2007-10-23T04:15:38Z

How To Fight Monkeys

jackshandy @ 2007-10-05T16:25:00

2007-10-05T23:32:13Z

Read, read part of, ~~hated~~

~~Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell~~
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables (Sections in translation and sections in French)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
~~The sound and the fury~~
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything (I need to finish this one -- had to give it back to my sister)
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The ~~Catcher~~ in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (In translation, plus sections in the original)

Joy

2007-09-10T05:14:15Z

A week ago tonight I proposed to Michelle.

She said yes.

Fun weekend stuff

2007-09-01T21:32:50Z

Last weekend Michelle and I went camping at Wheeler Gorge north of Ojai. We were worried that the Zaca fire would be a problem, but it turned out to be great. They had the road north of the campsite closed for fire trucks, so there was very little traffic. Also, lots of people had apparently been scared off. We had a whole loop of the site basically to ourselves, and a large area with a tree for shade. The weather was hot but gorgeous, there wasn't any ash or smoke at all. We went hiking on a short trail and played a bit in the river.

Today we went to the farmers market and made gazpacho. It turned out well, which is good, because we ended up making more than half a gallon of it. We used "Italian Red" tomatoes which had a nice amount of sweetness. Adding basil and balsamic vinegar helped as well.

Hiking again

2007-06-25T02:42:57Z

As part of my plan to do more hiking this summer, Mike, Michelle, and I went hiking on the San Ysidro trail. It goes all the way up to East Camino Cielo, but we only went up to a little waterfall that's beside the trail and a little way beyond, about 4.5 miles total. It was a beautiful day for hiking, since it was cooling off while there was still plenty of light. Someday I will come back and hike the whole thing.

jackshandy @ 2007-06-18T00:19:00

2007-06-18T08:18:41Z

This weekend was the massive gaming birthday party of ptevis.

I started with a couple fairly silly bluffing games. First was Cash and Guns, a game of Mexican standoffs where you try to get as much money as possible without ending up dead. The second was "Liar's Poker", which involves bidding on what hand can be formed from all the players' cards while only holding three of the cards yourself. Then I ran "It Was a Mutual Decision", a roleplaying game about a romantic breakup where if someone behaves badly they just might be a giant murderous were-rat. I think it produced a lot of great, interesting moments, as well as a few horrific ones. After that we had a truly awesome lamb dinner cooked by Paul. I played a game of BattleLore and then a two-player game of Taluva. I always enjoy BattleLore, but my victory was marred by finding out my opponent had accidentally given me much better units, giving me a huge advantage. Taluva makes a great two-player game, I think I like it best with that number. It lets you plan fairly exactly. It's also just a beautiful game to see set up.

Sunday I started off playing Anitike. It was a new game for me, and I enjoyed it, probably partly because I won. I played Ra, which I always enjoy though I never do well. Then we played a round of Poison, which is a fun game if you like the card game "Hearts" and doing addition. We played two games of Tongiaki, which is a game about expanding through Polynesia. The first game was with four players, the second with three. It's a very different game with three, since it makes it much more likely that any expeditions sent into the unknown won't have sufficient diversity to survive the voyage. I lost a second game of BattleLore after dinner. We finished the night with Betrayal at House on the Hill, a game with some really interesting stuff but a ludicrous number of errata, misprints, pieces, and scenario balance issues. I tend to like playing it but also get frustrated at how much better it could be.

A quick slideshow

2007-05-30T02:37:10Z

I threw this together from some of the photos we took on our trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/rpollock/MadagascarSelection

At the End of the Earth

2007-05-26T14:20:58Z

Well, currently I am stuck in Madagascar. The national airline cancelled our flight from Tuléar to the capital yesterday with about three hours notice. Our international flight left in 14 hours. It takes a minimum of 18 hours to drive the 250 miles -- the roads are not exactly good, in fact, it took us over an hour to drive the 17 kilometers from our hotel into town. We tried to charter a plane; they were turned back 15 minutes after takeoff. I'm not sure they were a legal commercial outfit. Finally, we just flew on the national airline today. Today, they were merely two hours late.

Air France only flies out every two days. Luckily, it looks like we have seats on tomorrows flight. Then I still have to get across the country -- right now they booked me on a Wednesday flight home and calling internationally or using the internet is painful enought I'll just see if I can do better when I land in the states.

That said, the rest of this vacation has been pretty cool. We saw some awe-inspiring terrain and a huge number of unique and beautiful animals. I'll use any down time I have once I'm back to try to post some photos.

Circuit City wouldn't sell me a Wii

2007-04-21T17:20:56Z

They have them in the back of the store, but they aren't selling them till tomorrow so they can have an "event" with people lining up outside the store.

I have gout

2007-04-04T22:17:12Z

That's the working theory, anyway. They won't know for sure unless they still have some fluid left from the synovial tap they did on Monday. I'm glad the doctor didn't think it was worth doing another synovial tap. Those things are not very fun. If he's right the new drug I'm taking will fix things up in a couple of days. Meanwhile, maybe I should get a cane.

The international dateline ate my St. Patricks day!

2007-03-17T22:54:17Z

On the plus side, the flight over wasn't too bad, despite being in coach.

Tasty salsa

2007-03-04T07:28:53Z

As part of a weekend of tasty food, we made salsa to have with our chili shrimp tacos:

.8 lbs tomatillos
1/4 cup onion
2 serrano chilies, seeded
2 T cider vinegar
1 t sugar
kosher salt
3 T cilantro
1 avocado
1 T lime juice

Chop everything and then put it in a food processor. It is nice and smooth and has lots of flavor.

Real life mimics The Onion

2007-03-02T17:25:41Z

Swiss Accidently Invade Liechtenstein

Fido

2007-02-01T08:24:09Z

Michelle and I just got back from watching Fido. It is a really funny, really twisted black comedy. It satirizes the '50s and dog movies, and it has zombies. The audience reaction seemed positive. I hope it gets a wide release. Meanwhile, everyone who's in Santa Barbara should try to see the Saturday showing at the film festival.

Laziness FTW

2007-01-31T07:58:42Z

Based on prior experiences with the health care system, I've decided the best thing to do if I'm billed for the wrong amount is do nothing. My dentist had been billing me for $23 extra (supposed to be a reduced "you're in the right mob...I mean plan" rate). I could have called my insurance company, or the office, and tried to get it straightened out. But why should I be doing their accounting for them? Sure enough, it worked. After six months of sending me bills, they stopped. After my last appointment, I got a new bill, showing a correction to my old bill. They also charged me the wrong amount by $2 for this time. And they say they billed it to Blue Cross of GA (GA is sort of like CA -- if you can't type). Oh well. It'll work itself out eventually.

PIE!

2007-01-29T09:08:30Z

Michelle and I made a very tasty Apple-Pear pie tonight. It also featured golden raisins, lemon zest, and a crumb top crust. It will definitely get made again.

jackshandy @ 2007-01-16T00:59:00

2007-01-16T09:01:53Z

There is frost on the roof of my car. It's been a long time since that's happened.

jackshandy @ 2007-01-01T20:32:00

2007-01-02T04:32:57Z

I just got back from spending New Year's Weekend in Monterey with Michelle. It was a wonderful trip. We drove up Saturday, and stopped in Morro Bay to have a picnic lunch and look at the eponymous rock. We got into Monterey in the early evening, just as it was getting dark. We were staying in the Pacific Grove Inn, which is a cute little bed & breakfast in Pacific Grove about a mile from the Monterey Aquarium. That night we had a good dinner at Passionfish, where I particularly liked the pear bread pudding dessert. They also had a very nice wine list, we had French Viogner "Cave des Chante-Perdix". It was a short walk through downtown Pacific Grove, which was fun because the Christmas lights were all still up.

On Sunday we got up for the breakfast, which very reasonably lasted until 10 AM. Then we walked down along the coast trail to the aquarium, stopping to go out to Lovers' Point, which was right where our street met the trail. We saw lots of neat stuff at the aquarium, I think my favorite exhibit was the jellyfish, although the sea otters and the great white shark were also both quite neat. We had split some Thai soup for lunch, then walked back, stopping to mess about with some tide pools. They didn't have a wide variety of life, but they were filled with hermit crabs. After relaxing some, we had tea at 4. We tried to go see the monarch butterflies in a preserve they have, but it wasn't a very impressive preserve and had no butterflies.

For dinner, we drove down to a restaurant on the harbor called Fresh Cream. We had a bit of an adventure getting there because of the First Night celebratory traffic. However, it was well worth it. The view out over the harbor was nice, the service was excellent, and the food was superb. Michelle had local crabcakes and a fillet minion with portabella mushrooms, I had lobster bisque and an amazing rack of lamb with a mustard coating that was almost like a light breading. We split a plate of truffle mashed potatoes and a bottle of Shiraz. Dessert was wonderful, we had an apple tart with a beautiful spread of sauces around it, some hard-glazed strawberries, and the "sac au chocolat" which was a hard chocolate shell in the form of a shopping bag with a delicious mocha milkshake inside. After dinner we walked around the pier a bit before driving back to the hotel and staying up to toast the new year with Rose Sauvage champagne.

Today, we went to George Washington park, where there were a ton of butterflies. Then we had a nice drive down Route 1, stopping at the scenic outlooks and Big Sur national park. We had lunch in tiny Lucia, in a little inn with a great view of the Pacific.