Happy New Year from Teddy!

Celebrating New Years the only way I know how.  By watching internet videos of cute animals

Christmas dinner: The Eatening

I just posted about making Christmas dinner, but I thought that the Christmas dinner itself deserved a separate post.  Kate and I got out our wedding china for the first time (is that right, Kate?) and set everything up to look really pretty.

(Kate went kind of nuts with the "background defocus" feature on our new camera)

And we set all our food out to enjoy.

 For those of you not familiar with the Haglund Swedish feast (or at least, our modified version without pickled herring), you see from left to right, crackers, mashed potatoes, limpa (heavy rye bread), roast and sausage, and fancy cheeses (also bought on sale at Kroger.  We can't afford to be too fancy).  You might also notice some mis-matched china.  I meant to blog about that a long time ago, and maybe still will one of these days, but that was bought at an estate sale here in Ann Arbor and we just wanted to get it out and use it too.  It's kind of a peachy-pink color, and Kate really fell in love with it. 

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas dinner!

I'm only posting this 5 days late.  That's pretty good for me.

So, the date is December 24th.  It's Kate's last day at Barnes and Noble.  I'm home all alone, so I decided to make Christmas Dinner.  And in the finest of family traditions, I made a Swedish feast.  The recipe was documented by Sara in her recipe book.  It has come in quite handy over the years.

To start, I chopped up an onion (sliced half and diced half) and sauteed it in a little bit of oil in our dutch oven (Thanks John and Dan!)

Then, I browned a beef roast.  I found this particular roast on sale at Kroger.  Thank goodness for sales.  It's about a pound and a half, which is a lot for two people, but it is just right for two people who want leftovers for several days.  You just want to sear the sides, not actually cook the roast just yet.  A couple minutes on each side is perfect.

Then I put the lid on and let it cook over low heat for a few hours.  I deviated from the recipe a bit by adding a healthy (huge) spoonful of minced garlic.  Because I love garlic more than I love recipes, which is saying a lot.

After cooking for a few hours, I added another onion.  Not just any onion, mind you, but an onion with 4 cloves stuck into it.

I'm not sure why we stick the cloves into the onion like this.  All I know is that it seems to please the Swedish dinner gods, so I do it.

Next I added a single bay leaf.

Yum.  Partially cooked roast and raw onion and bay leaf.  After this, I put the lid back on and put it in the oven (I could have left it on the stove, but the oven was already warm from baking Limpa bread, and I needed the stovetop space)

While the roast cooked in the oven, I cooked up some sausages. 

And, of course, threw them in with the roast about an hour before I took the roast out.  And that's how you make a delicious Swedish dinner roast.

Merry Christmas!

Hail the heav'n born Prince of Peace! 
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Ris'n with healing in his wings.

Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.

Hark!  The herald angels sing Glory to the new-born king!

The problem with special effects

A few years ago, a young director named George made some awesome movies with revolutionary special effects.  But the movies were awesome because of the characters and story, not the special effects themselves.  A few years after that, George decided to try it again.  He made more movies, but these leaned more on the special effects and less on the characters and story. 

What's wrong with that?  Special effects are cool, and they can make a movie cool.  True, but the problem with special effects is that they are getting easier and easier to make.  So, anybody can make a movie with great special effects.  Even people who don't make movies for a living.  If you want to be better than them, you have to give us more than shiny computer effects.

In other words, once amateurs can do stuff like this, the pros really need to step up their game.

Christmas, Christmas time is here

Well, folks, Christmas is upon us.  Kate and I are back in Michigan after a trip to see parents and in-laws and hospitals.  Next time we should probably leave out that last one.

But, as Christmas approaches, I thought I should give a plug for Worldbuilders.  If you don't know them yet, go to the link and read up on it.  Or read the rest of this post.

Worldbuilders is a charity run by Patrick Rothfuss, author of the Kingkiller Chronicles (big, thick fantasy books about a red-headed wizard.  Kind of).  The gist is this: Pat and several other fantasy authors organize donations to Heifer International, and then match 50% of donations with their own funds.  They (the authors) also donate autographed books and other such neat stuff, which is given to people who donate.  The details of how that works are on the worldbuilders site, so check it out if you're interested.

The point, though, is this: because of Pat and these other authors, your charitable donations go farther.  My family decided this year that instead of giving eachother lots of stuff we don't need, that we should buy a cow for a family in Africa so they could rise out of poverty.  And because we did it through Worldbuilders, we gave $500, enough for a cow, and they gave $250, enough for a water buffalo.  That's right.  A water buffalo.

So, give it some thought.  Every bit counts.  Click over to Worldbuilders and check them out.

And Merry Early Christmas.

Army Drill Team

Well, with Kate sleeping off her Kidney infection, I find myself with some spare time.  So, to help me pass the time, I watched this.  It's pretty remarkable.  The Army Drill Team marches and whatnot without music or drums to keep them on beat.  Check them out.

Best Hospital Ever

Well, friends, here we are.  Kate and I took a trip to Texas for Early Christmas (since tickets are expensive at real Christmas).  Saturday we flew into Dallas airport and got picked up by Kate's folks to go to Daingerfield for a few days.  Kate wasn't feeling super great, what with the travel stress and all, but we weren't terribly worried.  Sunday she woke up with a fever of 104.  Which isn't good.  So she spent all day feeling pretty miserable.  Monday she wasn't any better, so we went off to the doctor.  After some blood work and an ultrasound we ruled out gall bladder (which was the doctor's first guess), so we checked into the hospital for some more tests.  Doctor thought it might be the appendix, which we really didn't want because that means surgery.

CAT scan showed no problems with appendix, but a big kidney infection.  Which is actually good news, because there is no surgery involved.  Just lots of antibiotics.

So, here I am on Wednesday morning and I've got lots to be thankful for.  The hospital is really nice.  Kate has her own room with hard wood floors, a really nice view, and even a little patio outside.

Not that we can use the patio (the door to the outside doesn't open) but it gives the illusion of being able to go outside, which is almost as good.


Kate has gotten lots of visitors.  It's nice to be in a hospital close enough to home where people can come by.  Her Dad brought flowers, and John and JaNae sent flowers too.

All in all, we are very lucky.  While I was writing this post, the doctor came in and told us that we are free to go as soon as Kate's IV is done.  I am very ready to be sleeping on something better than this

Christmas tree

Well, friends, now that I am done with my Thanksgiving posts, I get to move on to Christmas.  I've been wanting to show our Christmas tree for a while.

We went fake, which I really thought I wouldn't do, but it was such a good deal we couldn't resist.

We don't have much in the way of decorations, and it doesn't smell like Christmas.  Which at first seemed like two big problems.  But at the checkout line they had cinnamon-scented pinecones.  We tied ribbons around them and put them on the tree.  Looks like a decorated tree, smells like Christmas.

The only other ornament we have is this beautiful piece that Mom gave us last year.

Near the end of the 19th century, Wilson Bentley was the first person to photograph a single snowflake. He was fascinated with them. Over his life, he photographed over 5,000 snowflakes and never saw two that were the same (which, as far as I know, is where we get that little factoid that no two snowflakes are the same). This ornament is crafted from one of those pictures. It is a beautiful ornament that Kate and I will have on our tree every year.

Merry getting ready for Christmas!

Thanksgiving: Apocalypse

Well, in case you didn't know, John and JaNae met up with Kate and me for a Thanksgiving at Niagara Falls.  There are a couple of other posts about the trip.

It turns out that Niagara Falls is a ghost town during November.  Tourists just don't want to come when it's cold, it seems.  Now, when I say "ghost town" I want you to understand that it was so empty we were wondering if the world had ended.  After dinner on Thursday, we walked over to the falls.  No one was on the streets.  No other cars, no other people.  As we walked, we passed a creepy building that was blaring Christmas music out of a staticy speaker.  It was spooky.

When we walked a bit father, we saw a strange display of a bear holding four flags.  American, Canadian, UK, and what I can only assume was the Flag of the United Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland.  It was a green flag with a yellow mushroom cloud in the middle.  A little farther and we saw a bear holding two little cubs...and stomping the head of a third.  It was weird.  They look like they were supposed to be cute instead of terrifying.  Which made them even more terrifying.

The next day we decided to do a bit of exploring.  The spooky building was a bit less spooky in the light of day, and it even said they had a free observation deck for you to look out over the falls, so we decided to go in and check it out.  And it got even more spooky.  It was a completely disorganized array of T-shirts, food stands, and abandoned equipment.

I want it noted that we weren't somewhere we weren't supposed to be.  We didn't sneak into the employees only section.  This was the store.

Thanksgiving: The Aviary

Like I said in my main Thanksgiving post, John, JaNae, Kate, and I went to an Aviary while we were in Niagara Falls for Thanksgiving.  It was super-fun.  This post will be pretty light on the text, I just thought with all the pictures I should break it into its own place.

 Pirate wife!!!

The first part of the aviary was a reptile room, where you could touch all the animals.  This was a fun little iguana named Fernando.  He was very slow and just sort of walked around and sat under his heat lamp.

 One of the staffers walked around with a giant snake.  It was really big.

 There were two turtles who just wanted out of their enclosure.  This little guy just kept trying and trying to scratch his way out. 

 After the reptile room, we went into the small bird room.  This is the only picture from the small bird room.  I liked this one because it looked like a coloring book picture of a bird that a 3rd grader colored.  Purple, yellow, red, everything.  Just a bunch of colors.

After the small bird room and a nocturnal bird room (no pictures...it was dark) we went into the big bird room.  Both big birds and a big room.  This bird was huge and he just sort of sat there up near the top like he was king of the world.

At least, he looked like the king of the world until this Phoenix flew by (maybe it wasn't phoenix. It was hard to tell).

I tried to get a good picture of this one, but he was tough to get.  He was a really pretty green and black.  I've got more pictures below.

And that's about all we got from the aviary.  Fun!

Alloy of Law

Well, I said it somewhat in jest, but it turns out Brandon Sanderson described this book pretty much exactly the same say I did.