However, she had bought some peaches whilst in west/central mass this weekend, and had ALSO tasted some grilled peaches at the wonderful, wonderful restaurant, Hope and Olive.

So, she suggested we try grilling the peaches.

Says I, “Ok. So how do we do it?”
And she replies, “I dunno. Put them on the grill and do your grill thing”
Me: “oh. Ok. Well, maybe we just eat peaches.”

…time passes, and we eat tacos…

Me: “I suppose we could try them. Just grill them?”
Jess: “Well, I was thinking a sauce would be good…”
Me: “Such as…?”
Jess: “Well, I didn’t grab the brandy…”
Me: “Honey might be good?”
Jess: “Yeah, that could work…”

… more time..

Me: “We do have Maker’s Mark.”
Jess: “Which is?”
Me: “Bourbon.”
Jess, face lighting up: “Oh, yeah, that could work. So, I guess we throw them on the grill, and then honey and bourbon for a sauce. They had ricotta cheese at Hope and Olive. I’ve got vanilla yogurt…”
Me, starting to get excited: “Ooo, yeah that sounds really really good.”

So after the tacos, we started. We sliced the peaches in half and pitted them, and I went out and put them on the grill over medium low heat. Meanwhile, Jessica snatched up a sauce pan and began to simmer the bourban and honey, stirring all the while.

I came back into chat, and looked into the sauce, and suggested a little bit more honey, which we added. Jess came out, looked at the peaches, and told me they needed more time. I went back in, and noticed steam rising from the sauce. I suggested we be cautious, lest we boil off all the alcohol.

All told, we grilled and simmered for about 10 minutes. Give or take. I went back out to take the peaches off the grill, and Jess broke out the yogurt. Each half peach, just lightly charred, with glorious runnels where the grill grate had been, got a generous dollop of yogurt, and then the sauce was spooned out over each one.

Then we dug in. Our eyes grew wide, and I was the first to swallow my delicious morsel and speak.

Me: “HOLY CRAP WIN!” I am nothing if not eloquent when good food is involved.
Jess: “MMMMMMmmmmm!”

So yes, these were a gigantic win. Amazing.

I actually took pictures as Jess was putting the sauce on, but I managed to delete them in my infinite wisdom. (Unix side note: when using the “date” command to insert the date when moving files, do NOT forget to put a space between date and the format string, even if it line wraps. Forgetting will actually result in losing the files you were trying to move. This could be disastrous if the files are more important than pictures of delicious peaches.)

Pseudo-recipe:

4 peaches, halved and pitted
Greek vanilla yogurt. Use the real good stuff.
About 1/4-1/3 cup bourbon
Less than 1/4 cup honey. a few tablespoons.

Grill the peaches pit side down over medium low heat. Combine the honey and bourbon in a saucepan and simmer over low heat. Do both of these, simultaneously, for about 10 minutes, or until just right. Remove the peaches, pit side up, on a plate. Put a dollop of yogurt in each pit, then douse the lot with the sauce. Consume ravenously.

Ideas for variations:
Use rum instead of bourbon.
Use any other variation on creamy substance. Creme Fraiche would probably be amazing.
Hit the peaches with butter before grilling. Should give it a pie-esqueian flavor.

Sorry for the no pictures. I’ll be kicking myself for awhile.

What I do know is that he is tall, blond, and stereotypically german in a actually positive, but negative seeming way. He’s (mildly) psychotic. He’s (seemingly, but not really) violent. He’s brash and crude.

Of course, more of this can be chalked up to the fact that he’s ex-bundeswahr more than his germanness. :-)

I’m gonna try and keep better track of his quotes, but a smattering of generic examples.

• He repeatedly calls anyone he thinks is stupid (not in the class, but references to people out side of the class retarded. (His word choice, verbatim)
• He told us that the rheinland area of germany (where I’m at) is full of retards, and also mentioned that they had thought about making it a parking lot, but that had fallen through.
• He told us in order to get the sound of ch in words with long vowels (a u and au, I’m missing one…), that we should go home and choke our significant other. The sound that would emerge is what we’re going for.
• He also repeatedly referenced choking us out if we mispronounced certain words, to include pronouncing them like a pfalsich local (ie., the people we’re most likely to talk to.) This especially includes Vogelweh. (fogulveh, in real haphazardly done amateur phonetics).
• I was able to go through what the basic (real basic) grammatical structures were, so he tried to get me to jump on gerund (I failed.) Just after that, he started talking about a dipthong, and then said to me that I shouldn’t get excited, he wasn’t talking about thongs. And oh by the way, rhineland women were lawfully barred from wearing thongs, because their asses are too big.

In short, he’s frickin’ hilarious. Class is going to be fun. And not studying, I am QUITE sure, will be met by a merciless mocking. Which is awesome.

More on that later. For now, check out this post (whiny gen x bs), and this response. Fun stuff.

A welcome to Alex…my new roommate. Who also blogs (and has been leaving me very kind comments.)

Alex’s blog is now in the blogroll, so you can check it out there.

You should check out his blogs, which have some great pictures of life here on main street. However, you might need google translate to read it…it’s in french. :-)

Alex is a geek, per the hierarchy, and has already helped me with my blog. He pointed out that my old captchas weren’t working, and then helped me put together a quick sql statement to convert my old quotes database into my new one. :-) Rock. On. Which is why I’ve got the quotes back on the ol’ sidebar. yay!

Tonight I went out to a contra a dance an hour or so away with a small array of very entertaining people fronted by J, who runs this blog.

Anyway, I had a great time, and if you followed that link and know me at all, you realize that this is a very good group of people for me to fall in with.

And, as for the last bit of that title, the nickname is “Bible Spice”. LMAO.

I got it here.

Anyhoo…I hope the debate got tivoed. If it did, I’ll likely watch it tomorrow. After fucking working. Blarg.

In response:

First of all, your usage is improper. LMAO is an emotional and physical expression, and doesn’t work when used as a pure abbreviation. One uses emoticons and their related txt shorthand to express emotional and physical communication that is not normally communicated in text or speech. This is intended to directly combat the inability of casual text based correspondence to communicate mood and feeling without delving into deeper and not necessarily more meaningful vocabulary trees. When used appropriately, it can mitigate the loss of connection caused by having a purely electronic conversation.

I should also note that for all that we worry about “neural pathways”, etc, sports records continue to be broken, sports and physical activity numbers continue to go up, and in general, folks continue to muddle through. We have more kids who are obese or completely overcome by electronic distractions, but frankly they are only more visible because as a society we don’t suppress and compress people into a very narrow “normal” the way that we used to. People are not different than they always have been, they are simply more visible because they’re not ostracized as much.

Video games also have a lot of POSITIVE influences on development, although like anything else the rule of “everything in moderation” still applies. As an expert opinion, I will site “The Kids are Alright”, which is a book written by a baby boomer who set out to write a book about the horrible effects of gaming and modern culture on kids, and then as he did the research and actually studied the evidence, came to the conclusion that things weren’t anywhere near as bad as they seemed…and likely were far better than in the tv and drugs generation that he grew up in. I keep recommending you read it, and you never have.

The next few decades are no more likely to be very interesting than your own generation’s control…which has produced such stellar examples as GWB and a country willing to let him get elected twice. I hardly think that the kids growing up on games that require thinking about consequences and living in an interconnected world where consequences are both immediately visible for instant feedback and historically trackable for going back and thinking about it can really do worse.

In a conversation I had yesterday, I pointed out to the guys in my office that the supreme court struck down DC’s gun law, that the argument that they made was reasonable, even if I don’t agree with it, and look! lots of liberals are saying the same thing…ergo trying to convince them that they won the whole gun battle, we don’t much care anymore (we have bigger fish to fry), so can they please stop not voting for democrats solely because “they wanna take our guns.”

Seriously, What. The. Fuck.

This turned into a major argument, where I had to repeat over and over again that I had no interest in gun control laws because they don’t work, but that I personally believe that the 2nd amendment only protects the right to form (and arm) well-regulated militias. But I’m not interested in taking away guns, because the cats out of the bag.

And all they can hear is “you want to take our guns! most important supreme court decision ever! you can’t pick and choose from the constitution!”

You can’t pick and choose from the constitution.

From the same people who are ok with getting rid of habeas corpus. From the same people who are ok with dropping with protections from unreasonable search and seizure. From the same folks who don’t understand that the judiciary’s constitutional job is to block the will of the people, expressed through the legislature, and prevent the majority from trampling on the constitution. From the same people who believe in the “unitary executive”. From the same folks who think that all of a sudden, the president has the right to make the budget and to make treaties and declare war.

These same people are telling me that I can’t pick and choose from the constitution because I think their argument that the constitution protects their individual right to bear arms is, while valid, not correct, that I, not they, cannot pick and choose from the constitution.

I am so mad I could spit.

The block is that I think traditional american dating patterns, typical western dating patterns, are a retarded way to meet and get to know people, especially if you’d like to find someone to spend the rest of your life with.

I mean, from what I can tell*, this is how dating works:

Person A is at some public venue, and sees a person that appears to be attractive or at least interesting to them, based almost entirely on visual cues. Person A approaches person B and begins a conversation with zero value.

A: “Hi, I’m A”
B: “Hi.”
A: “So, having fun?”
B: “Oh, yeah, I’m having a great time!”
A: “What’s your name?”
B: “Oh! I’m B”
A: “So’d'ja meet some friends here?”
B: “Yeah, we come down here after work a lot. It’s a good place. You?”
A: “I’ve never been here before, but I like the it. The DJ is really good.”
…

Gag me. I have watched/listened to/and once or twice even participated in one of the introductory conversation many times, and with rare exception they make me LESS interested in 1) talking to the specific person and 2) talking to any individual ever again.

There are exceptions, I won’t deny it. Some of the folks up at castletown and I have had conversation that are worthwhile.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes these conversations can be fun. Occasionally you’ll find something (unmemorable) to talk about and laugh about together. But I cannot for the life of me recall what I’ve talked about on those meaningless but fun conversations, and that adds to the meaninglessness of the whole thing.

Moving on.

So, armed with at least a basic attraction to the other person’s physical presence (by which I mean to include things about they way in which they hold themselves), and, I suppose, a lack of annoyance inducing by their speech patterns, person A now asks for a phone number.

Anyway, I’m getting out of my depth here, but it seems to me that now you’re in interview mode. Rather than showing the other person who you really are, you now go into a CYA mode of trying to show your better side while still being “fun”. “Fun” is of course the most important thing for you to be, although you’re left to figure out what the other person thinks of as “fun” from your limited store of data, and vice versa. Whatever you do, however, do NOT be yourself. For instance, if I may quote the article “Impressively Proper” from this month’s St Louis’ Sauce Magazine, “‘What you decide to order could be a big deal. You want to stick with things that aren’t overly complicated”, yada yada, tons of rules about how you shouldn’t act normally at first.

Basically, my view of dating is that you put off actually getting to know the person for as long as possible, get some physical and mental play out of it, and basically avoid the real parts of the relationship to get you started. And that’s backwards to me.

It’s been a well known fact among those who know me well that I prefer to date friends, recommend dating friends, because to me, friendship is absolutely key to having a successful relationship. And all the best couples I know reinforce that concept. Mom and Dad. Joe and Theresa. Flip and Shelly. Andy and Asha. Nathan and Laura. They’re all FRIENDS. And most of them were friends before they were lovers.**

So for me, in a perfect world, the dating would start after you’ve already gotten to know a person, had some good conversations about meaningful stuff with them, gotten mentally close to them a bit. Then you can start exploring the romance. Anything else seems backwards and destined to be doomed to failure. And I should note that meaningful stuff doesn’t have to be weighty topics. It can be long drawn out discussions of hobbies or stores, but the interesting part is how it relates to who they are. You don’t get them on any real level in those safe, fake conversations with people you’re “dating”, because that might display something that isn’t palatable to the ‘everyperson’ out there. Dating is like big-box retail shopping. You’re only allowed to display the stuff that is going to have a chance of being bought by every single person that walks into the shop. Friendship is more like the long-tail method.

Anyway, so as far as I can tell, everyone I know around here subscribes very much to the “dating” method of doing things, and on top of that, they also do the ‘once I know you well enough to call you a friend, you are off limits to romantic consideration’. So where does that leave me? Well and truly isolated.

Of course, there hasn’t been a lot of real depth to most of the friendships I’ve cultivated around here, either. There are maybe two, three people that I’ve really gotten to know on any kind of level, but they both have many other pulls on their time, so I don’t get to see them nearly often enough to fill my needs.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that I have to work to get any physical contact (i.e., hugs and cuddling) around here. Don’t even get me started.

In conclusion: if I am going to continue to live far removed (in space and time) from the friends and family that I really know, and if I want to have any shot of finding someone locally to fill my closeness needs, then it looks like I’m going to have to break my mental block and do things ass-backwards. Blah.

__________________________________________________________________
*I have been on, to my recollection, one traditional “date” in my life. It was the summer I worked Goucher’s reunion, with one of the other reunion workers. I would’ve been…between sophomore and junior year, she had just graduated. I had a good time, but I don’t remember what happened afterwards. I don’t think I ever called the girl afterwards, because I didn’t know where to go from there.

** Despite hating this word in this usage because it cannot help but sound trite, I can’t think of a more accurate, single word to use here.

Now, part of today’s cleaning has been finally getting rid of all my AC memorabilia. I’ve thought about taking it down before (and yes, I know everyone has recommended that I take it down a loooooong time ago), but it just never…I guess I wasn’t quite ready. I should’ve been. Lord knows that the way I’ve been treated I should’ve been happy to take the stuff down and put it away. But I haven’t been. Still, the events of the past couple of weeks have helped me to move on. Thanks Mother (Ball) and FS. And, I suppose, thanks to Duke, for sucking up to AC and framing me for something I didn’t do on AC’s blog. It’s helped bring me to the “moving on” point. It’s time.

Not saying I’ve moved on…but I’m definitely moving on. :-)

Now, in this cleaning, I’ve not only been throwing out little green stickies that say “I love you” and whatnot (which, you know, the end of a relationship always sucks, especially when it ends with the other person refusing to acknowledge your existence for months, because you end up wondering “Was it real, or was she fooling me and/or herself”. Its a very irritating feeling.), but I’ve also (continuation of previous sentence long ago) done all the cleaning things that I very rarely do…like dusting and vacuuming. (sp?).

On the note of the AC removal, this is a call for pictures. Most of the pictures around the house were of AC or AC and me, and I have all these frames that are now empty and needing pictures. So if anyone wants to send me pictures in the smail…that’d be great, mmmmk?

And last, but not least, a couple of pictures from Andy and Asha’s wedding. (Andy and Asha need a BLOODY BLOG, DAMMIT!).

One final note…you can get all the pictures I took here. Email or call me for a password.

Someone had posted his opinion of Americans and their creationistic bent on digg, and, somewhat surprisingly for a digg site, he was getting hammered with commenters.

During this time of stress and conflict, Damien kept his head and argued eloquently and efficiently.

I don’t know how I ended up back at the site, but I’ve left some comments here if you wanna search for ‘em, plus Damien’s comments are always sweet.  He just has no tolerance for stupidity.  He also is some kind of kindred spirit, as he’s got lots of good stuff going on (firefox, contempt for idiots, sarcasm, a love of john stewart and steven colbert, etc).

Anyway, he doesn’t appear to post much more often than I do, but its always good.