gadabout

Rainy Day

I made it to work today after a short drive through very heavy rain. All the good parking spaces were taken. I managed to stroll into the office with two very wet jean cuffs. Honestly, I really enjoy the rain but not when I wear it. I enjoy the rain in the way that kids enjoy the lions at the zoo: from a sheltered vantage point.

There are many things that I enjoy about rainy days. I like the sluggish feeling that the weather gives. I like the dark, dank greys in the sky. I deeply enjoy the greens that all the moisture draws out of otherwise crunchy-yellow grass. And I like making soup from scratch (well, mostly scratch).

Tonight I went straightway to the grocery store after work and picked up a package of chicken breasts (four or so), 1 can of corn, 1 can of black beans, 1 24oz can of diced tomoatos, a few green chilis, 1 bunch of cilantro, and a brick of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

Chicken Azteca

When I got home I brought about two cups of water in a saucpan to a boil while I cubed the chicken breasts. Then I let the chicken boil until throuroughly white to the core. Meanwhile, in a large cauldron-sized pot, I poured the whole can of tomoatos with juice, beans with juice, and strained corn to simmer. I seasoned the tomato mixture with a tablespoon of garlic salt, two table spoons of parsley, a table spoon of crushed red pepper, and a dash of the secret ingredient (I'm not even bothering to tell you about it because I know that someone who knows will divulge that information in a comment). I then pitted and cored the chilis, diced them, and added them to the soup. Once the cubed chicken was ready I put it into the tomato mixture. I saved the broth and cooked a cup of rice (whatever kind you like, really) in it and then added the rice to the tomato mixture. Then the whole shabang must be brought to a bubbling temperature before being removed from heat. Lastly, I cut the leafy-most part of the bunch of cilantro into the soup with my trusty cooking shears. The soup was ready once the cilantro had wilted into the brew.

I like this soup most with a heaping pile of cheese grated over my bowl and tortilla chips on the side. The soup also works very well as a dip (had I boiled off most of the broth and pulled the boiled chicken). It always tastes best with a little Azucar playing in the background.

Serves 6.

Small Victories

One of my favorite of the OS X's bells and whistles is the dashboard and its widgets. You can find and download a widget (quite often for free, I might add) for practically anything you may want to learn, monitor, reference, or waste time on. I normally try to be responsible with the widgets that I pick up. Most of them are art related. They tell me about paintings that hang in the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, works from a group of contributing artists at Candor, and the daily color scheme. My dashboard also tells me the word of the day, where I can find the cheapest gas price within my zip code, and what the clouds over my area look like. But the nature of one of my more recent downloads branches quite far from anything else that I use.

This little guy has plagued my dashboard for about two months. The sad thing is that I kept killing him over and over again. I would miss watering him for maybe two days and he would show up on my dashboard with ominous "Xs" for eyes. A wooden sign nailed to his carcass would tell me that my neglect had killed him. I had never owned one of those nano-pets that were so popular in the mid-90s so I blame my inexperience.

However, my resolve to nurture my new widget to the point of chi-pet adulthood grew. Finally, yesterday he donned a lush coat and smiled!

Now that I've won this small vicotory I think that I am going to retire the widget. If anything, it taught me that I can carve out at least a few seconds a day to nurture something. Now I'm going to invest my extra few seconds a day into somehting a little more tangible, a little less pointless.

Ashes to ashes, Dust to... Chairs?

One cannot create or destroy matter. Knowing this, one must learn to manipulate what matter he has to maximize its potential.

The 4th

We came. We saw. Shiny things exploded in the sky.