Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

• Finally on a new web host, A Small Orange. My previous host NetBunch was bought out by WebHostPlus (who suck). You can read about this fiasco and others. Sad really. Modus operandi of WebHostPlus seems to be to buy a host with clean IP addresses, move their spammer customers onto the clean IP addresses, and move the new customers onto the old, dirty IP addresses the spammers have used up. Worst part is, they can’t even be bothered to do an efficient migration for their new customers, resulting in downtime and loss of email.
• Dina’s grandmother liked my dark chocolate covered roasted almond clusters. So much so that she asked me to cook them for her. According to Dina, no one’s ever been asked to cook by grandma before. Tasty, liked by everyone, and good for your heart. I also made garlic roasted almonds. Those were very good, but didn’t turn out as well. Need to figure out how to get the garlic to stick to the almonds properly.
• Beef tongue. Mmmm. Totally a texture thing.
• Made pasta sauce. Forgot to put in the fresh basil leaves at the end. Dammit.
• Going to try and make pork hocks some time this week. Not sure how to do it without a pressure cooker. Google’ll tell me though. I’ve been enjoying cooking by scanning the first 5 to 10 recipes that Google gives me and then adapting to my own tastes.
• Can you tell that I’m looking forward to being the primary cook in the household for the first time in years?
• Ana Sortun, chef and owner of our favourite restaurant Oleana, has finally released a cookbook. I’m looking forward to playing with it.
• BU graduation went shockingly well, despite the incessant rain. Life is easier to take when there are no scheduling conflicts.
• Conversation w. MC:
  NV: Lotsa people blame my good behaviour on Dina.
  MC: hehehe, keeps you inline? You’re no block element! ;-)
  NV:

  <style>
  .Dina { display : inline; }
  </style>
  </span class="Dina">Nick</span>

  
  MC: that’s awesome, inline element and everything
• Been up and down all week… at times at peace with myself, realizing that pretty much all my problems are figments of my overactive mind. At other times, the figments take over, and I’m grumpy, unmotivated, and lethargic. Add too much caffeine, lack of sleep, and lack of feeling of making progress, and it’s been one roller-coaster of a week. I’ve been avoiding people and social situations as much as possible.
• On the good side, poker has been going well.
• I’m getting frustrated with sexism again. When I was younger and more idealistic (yet somehow, still cynical), sexism against women bothered me. Partly I wanted my female friends / girlfriends / future wife / future daughter to be allowed to be all they could be. Partly, it just didn’t sit right with me. I tend to believe in meritocracies. Now I’m running into sexism because I want to be a stay-at-home parent, a role traditionally reserved for women. The worst offenders this time around are women. Part of me thinks “No wonder women can’t achieve equality. They’re their own worst enemy. Someone is volunteering to share the burden of child care, and they heap scorn on the volunteer.” I’ve learned to accept the taunting from my friends that I cook (quite well), clean, sew, and actually enjoy doing other household chores given time. Now, apparently, I have to learn to deal with surprise at the fact that I can do these things, mainly from women.
• Big preparations for Alex are mostly done. Now it’s just the continuous stream of little things left.

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