Mission: Party (Halloween Edition)

Alpha and Beta put together a Halloween party with over a dozen on their friends. We’re not typically party people, but we do enjoy the chance to have people over. I especially like it because it means I get a clean house. 🙂

We had a great time planning for, shopping for, and decorating for the party. (Really. The house looks great.) Beta enjoys decorating, planning, and being surrounded by large groups; I don’t know how she came to exist in a family full of introverts.

Meghan and I tend to take a particular approach to events: plan very little and let things come together naturally. The kids were happy to follow our lead.

One little personal detail: this party happened to coincide with our anniversary. It couldn’t happen any other day, unfortunately: Halloween is mid-week; we had a birthday party to attend on Sunday; and Halloween parties after Halloween are just no fun.

Fast-forward to the appointed day, and a nor’easter bore down on us from the early morning onwards. This wasn’t such a bad thing: I had wanted to keep the fireplace lit for the duration of the party and cold, bad weather is very amenable to that. Meghan made a (gluten-free) cake that made the house smell fantastic. Beta and I rearranged the seats into one long couch, plus another smaller love seat back-to-back with the big one.

Guest started arriving promptly at one, and very quickly we had a dozen teenagers, not related to us and all dressed in costumes, in the living room of our house. For some reason they all packed into the living room and refused to spread into the kitchen, dining room, or even the front room. The decibels rose and Meghan and I retreated, occasionally checking on the kids, the fire, and the food.

The first movie of the day was Young Frankenstein, chosen through first-past-the-post voting. (I believe it had two votes, which was one more vote than any other option.)

Around 4 pm, as the first movie was wrapping up, I headed out to pick up pizza and more soda. I came back to a relatively quiet room watching the Blair Witch Project. You kind of have to pay attention to the movie to get the full effect, but I there was also an air of the forbidden – that movie has a reputation.

As people finished up pizza, the movie was just finishing the setup and was about to get scary, the power went out. Whoops! We checked with neighbors to make sure it wasn’t just us, checked the power company to see if they knew yet, and lit candles and lamps. The kids took all this in stride and got busy socializing. I was honestly impressed how they acted — sociable and comfortable, even though many had never been to our house before.

Power was restored in about an hour, and the movie resumed. The end of the movie led to discussion of what the hell happened, because not everyone had paid attention in the beginning.

Unbeknownst to us during the week, Beta had been telling people that the party was planned to go until 10 pm. The first kids dropped out shortly after pizza, and most kids had left by 8:30 or so, but a couple stayed for the duration and were picked up right at 10 o’clock.

All in all, it seemed like everyone had a lot of fun. Even at the end, with three kids left, everybody was in a good mood.

Lessons learned: Megh and I now know to double-check what the plan’s details are before it’s announced, and Beta knows that a) 10 pm is just too late and b) nine hours is just too long. (She was exhausted, we all were, and I think she was glad to wrap up.)

Biggest lessons of all, though: Megh and I still know how to throw a good party, and Alpha and Beta saw how to make it come together by being a part of it and seeing how it’s done from the inside.

Flim Flam and Minutia

Sitting around the dinner table, Meghan shared a work story about hearing her name as she passed, only nobody said her name. The math teacher across the hall said, “bar graph.”

I also mis-heard it, at first, as “bargra.” I’m trying to get it to stick as her new name.

A minute later, Beta is sticking something between her toes while we’re talking and Meghan blurts out “Stop that! Now it’s all covered in toe groods!” (Nobody knows what that means or what she was trying to express, not even Meghan.)

And then we realized that Meghan accidentally revealed her orc-name: Bargra Togroods.

Last-Minute Chicken

This recipe is shamelessly copied from https://iwashyoudry.com/last-minute-chicken-recipe, which itself copied the recipe from “The Weekday Lunches & Breakfasts Cookbook.”

Ingredients

2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 ½ teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons paprika OR smoked paprika
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 ½ teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
Enough olive oil to coat chicken
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)

Directions

Combine the garlic, onion, paprika, oregano, pepper, salt, and olive oil into a freezer bag
Toss in the chicken
- Most pre-packaged chicken thighs get folded into themselves, so be sure to spread them out as you put them into the bag so they get evenly coated
Seal up the bag and mix everything thoroughly
Heat up a grill pan over medium-high heat, or a grill, while the chicken steeps in it’s spices
- If using a grill pan, add some olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan – but be sure to use a splatter guard
Cook the chicken until not pink throughout, about 5 minutes on the first side and three or four minutes on the other side

Garlic Roasted Potatoes

This is a great side for pretty much any meat dish, especially on a cool fall day. The smaller, skin-on potatoes are tasty and not nearly as bad for you as a full-size, peeled and boiled starch-bomb white potato.

Ingredients

3 pounds of small red, white, and/or purple potatoes
- Lots of supermarkets carry 2- and 3-pound bags of mixed, pre-washed small potatoes, which is really handy if you want more colors
Olive oil
6 cloves of fresh garlic, crushed
A couple of shakes of black pepper
a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons of minced fresh parsley (optional)

Steps

Preheat your oven to 400° F
Halve and/or quarter your potatoes; chunks should be roughly between 1 and 3 cubic inches
Toss the chunks into a freezer bag with the remaining ingredients, adding enough olive oil to coat the potatoes, then mix in the bag
Spread the potatoes into a single layer on a pan or baking stone
Bake for an hour, flipping everything over at least once to keep things from scorching

Stage Fright

Giving presentations at work has made me realize something.

I don’t actually have stage fright.

I’m simply afraid of not knowing what the fuck I’m talking about in front of other people. It happens more often than I care to admit.

I’m perfectly able to get up and talk IF I know the subject, have some idea of what I’m going to say, and have something (anything!) to refer back to in order to help keep me on point. Like a PowerPoint presentation, or an index card.

All these years I thought it was stage fright that gave me the dry mouth and jitters. Now I realize that I rarely know anything about anything, and have less to say about anything, and that’s what made me nervous. Who knew. (Obviously not me, hardy har.)

vim, screen, and bracketed paste mode

A little while back an update was introduced, somewhere, that has been driving me nuts. I didn’t record exactly when it happened or what changed. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.

The behavior wasn’t easy to pin down at first since it was the confluence of several things: 1) pasting 2) into vim while 3) using a non-xterm terminal like mate-terminal and 4) inside a screen session.

The behavior exhibits in several ways:

Pastes appear to be incomplete, or (more correctly) some number of characters at the beginning of the paste go “missing” and actually become commands to vim
Pastes are complete but they’re bracketed with \e[200~content\e[201~
- some people report 0~content1~ instead, but it appears to be the same phenomenon

What’s going on? It’s a feature called “bracketed paste mode”. You can google it read up on it, it has some utility. As far as I can tell it’s related to readline. But more importantly, there is a fix.

Add this to your ~/.vimrc:

" fix bracketed paste mode
if &term =~ "screen"
  let &t_BE = "\e[?2004h"
  let &t_BD = "\e[?2004l"
  exec "set t_PS=\e[200~"
  exec "set t_PE=\e[201~"
endif

source: https://vimhelp.appspot.com/term.txt.html#xterm-bracketed-paste

In which my new hat is almost patriotic (just not sure for which country)

My knitting mojo is back! I guess the job was making me more nuts than I realized. So glad I found a new one!

I cast on Scopes again. I love the pattern, it is super easy, and it looks amazing. I wanted to use up stash yarn (I’m not quite SABLE, but it’s getting close). Found yarn that refused to be a Christmas stocking, and cast on.

Looking at my color choices later, with the big, bold stripes, I realized something.

“I think I’m making a flag hat by accident.”

Quinn, who is sitting next to me surfing Reddit, looks at the hat, and starts googling for flags with white, red and green.

Depending on where you are in the pattern, a case can be made for the flag of either Hungary or Bulgaria. I still love it. I’m just going to call it the Hungary Bulgarian hat on the project page. ?

Robots

I did not believe.
He said
When my robots storm
your front lawn
you will understand.
Christopher Kline

Mathematicians

As a mathematician, I take care not to be caught doing philosophy. When I buy my copy of Philosophy Now, I ask the newsagent to wrap it up in a brown paper bag in the hope that it will be mistaken for a girly-mag.

Mike Alder, Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword

Cape Cod 2018

Another change of venue this year: Wellfleet, MA. We seem to be creeping further up the Cape every year.

Day 0: Driving and Arriving

We left the house around mid-afternoon, planning to arrive fashionably late. Our intention worked as planned; we rolled into town around 6 pm and got busy making a pasta-and-meatball dinner for everyone.

After a short dinner, we took everyone to the closest beach to let the little ones burn off some energy. The Fox family had been on the road since morning, and rolled in around 7pm; the kids were exploding with pent up energy and excitement.

mayo beach at sunset — Mayo Beach @ Sunset, Wellfleet MA

Day 1: Rain!

Meghan and I woke up on our usual schedule, 6am. (This continued for the duration of the week.) The weather was forecast to be poor, and it proved true for most, but not all, of the day.

We headed out to a full-size super market in search of a coffee maker (the house’s was AWOL) and groceries for dinner. I prefer to spend a little extra money rather than pack the car with perishables.

After breakfast, the weather cleared enough that almost everyone headed to the beach — I stayed home and napped to catch up on a week of poor sleep, and missed seeing a Great White shark off Marconi Beach.

Dinner turned out to be an unpleasant adventure: we had picked up a pair of roasting chickens that morning, but after unsealing the packages we discovered that the fowl had gone very foul. Tim and Kelly started cranking out their dinner planned for the following night, and Meghan and I dashed back to the store to get our money back.

After dinner and the little kids had gone to bed, we sat down to play Cards Against Humanity —with Alpha and Beta. It was a night that they will not soon forget… nor will I.

Day 2: Chatham

I woke up early to a beautiful day and took a bike ride around the perimeter of Wellfleet. The ocean side of the cape was still socked in with fog, but the land and western side were clear.

fog at white crest beach — The fog bank on the ocean side stopped abruptly at the edge of the water.

After breakfast we took a ride down to Chatham for some shopping and lunch.

Top Shark: Artist Mary Dunn Cauley, Middle Shark: Pati DuVall, Bottom Shark: Dennis Predovic

We introduced the Fox kids to Ponyo. Tim and Kelly don’t seem to be big on anime, but the kids were fascinated. (Sorry, guys!)

A documentary of Ted Williams premiered on PBS that night, which was important to Joan, so we cleared the deck, got the kids in bed, and watched with her.

Day 3: Marconi

We chose to go hiking around the Marconi Wireless Station on Tuesday.

Quinn and Beta looking out over the sea.

Listening to the Navy Band at the Old Salt Pond Visitor’s Center at the National Sea Shore.

Day 4: Biking and A Guest

Meghan and tried out the Cape Cod Rail Trail, which has a trail head in Wellfleet. Our goal when we started was Marconi Beach, but the ride was so easy we kept going and made it to Orleans before turning around.

Kappa sleeping on the couch, take 1. He refused to sleep in his own bed until we bought child-proof door handle covers. We found him like this on Tuesday morning.

While we were gone, the Foxes hit Mayo Beach in Wellfleet. When Meghan and I got back we headed to the beach with the girls as the Foxes were leaving. We stayed about an hour and a half, and came away with minor sunburns, but the water was warm and the swimming was easy.

We hosted a friend of Joan’s who lives on the Cape, and her young daughter, for dinner.

On this night an issue withe the youngest of the Fox clan, Kappa, not going to bed at bedtime became particularly troublesome. We pledged to find doorknob covers the next day so that he would have to stay in his room at night, even if he wasn’t going to go to bed.

Day 5: P-Town

After a very slow start to the day, we headed to Provincetown with Joan while the Foxes went back to the beach.

We started at the far eastern end of the main drag and worked our way westward. People watching in P-Town is always an adventure. The girls are still young enough to not really notice how bizarre the crowd is and have more fun shopping.

Day 6: Cape Code Lighthouse and Pilgrim Monument

Meghan, Alpha, and I spent the day being tourists.

We checked out the Cape Cod Lighthouse, where Meghan went up –and down– the spiral staircase of the lighthouse.

Quinn climbing up onto the light platform of the Cape Cod/Highland’s Lighthouse.

Quinn and Megh at the Cape Cod/Highland Lighthouse 7/27/2018

We then went to the Pilgrim museum and tower in Provincetown. I, however, was the only one to climb the tower.

View from inside the Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown, MA.

I was curious about how good a picture from this distance would come out. Very surprised everything is as sharp, considering the haze!

detail of view from top of pilgrim tower — The view of Provincetown Light from the top of the Pilgrim Monument tower

After dinner at home, the adults stayed up to watch Jaws with the RiffTrax overlay.

Day 7: Leaving

We were supposed to vacate the house by 9 am. We missed the time by less than five minutes (WE were ready, but the Foxes have a small army to move.)

We ate an excellent breakfast at Laura & Tony’s kitchen, and hit the road for home. Others in the party were hitting the beach one last time, but we were all ready to be home.