90secs - "Drawing with Caleb." My nephew and I had our first extended "Buddy Time" http://ping.fm/rTdUo *SMILE*

After playing at the beach, nephew, brother, and my wonderfully pregnant sis-in-law came over for sunset and pizza.

Caleb and I had our first "buddy hang out."

He has stronger communication skills every time I see him. Like noticeably in a matter of a week. I’m telling you, I am in love with this beautiful child.

Originally published at LifeStudent WordPress Hub. You can comment here or there.

I am desperately in search of this dress. It was part of Old Navy's collection in Summer 2007 and was available in four colours - purple, turquoise, black, and grey with black patches. After buying the dress in turquoise and realizing it was the most comfortable thing ever, I promptly bought it in all three of the other colours (ridiculously cheap in ON's end-of-summer sale, bonus!), and lived in the dresses through the end of my summer music festival jaunts last summer and the start of said jaunts this spring.

However, because I have worn them to death and because the one unfortunate thing about them is that they do shrink considerably (lengthwise) on first washing (even in cold water, sigh), I am looking for replacements. Does anyone have the dress in an XL or XXL in any of the colours and is willing to sell it at a reasonable price? Or can anyone find any on eBay? All my searches have been grand failures so far.

I have at least three multi-day music festivals still to go this summer and would be very happy to have The Dress to throw in a bag and go!

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=07032008

Achewood strip for Thursday, July 3, 2008

I did a story about a dance group today and was watching the practice, and taking photos. The teacher started giving critiques to the girls, "More energy. Smile! Point those toes."

I explained to the teacher that I danced for 16 years, and that I was having a hard time not critiquing as well.

I started yelling some of the classic comments to make the teachers and parents laugh. "Your arms are not noodles. Smile! Make it look fun! Make me excited"

The girls were dancing to Footloose. This made me feel ancient because I did dance routines to the "Footloose" soundtrack when it first came out, when I was eight years old.

It's reassuring to know that I could make a good dance teacher, if all my other careers fail. I might not be able to teach the girls to dance, but I can sure shout out the directions

Worked the Day Jobbe, spent a bunch of time in the small room, went out for a Mexican lunch, wrote almost 1,000 words on “The Forests of the Night”, hit the beach twice, once for sunshine and once for fireworks.

A good enough day. I shan’t need to send it to the Returns Desk after all.

The inevitable photo:

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gapersblock/merge/~3/326353664/

Larry Harmon, the creator of popular children's icon Bozo the Clown, died today at 83 years old. Chicago's rendition of The Bozo Show remains as one of the most popular children's programs in the history of television. While Chicago's version of the Bozo Show was helmed by Bob Bell and Joey D'Auria, the local show stood as the longest running of all of the Bozo shows. It went off the air in 2001.

http://unapologeticallyfat.blogspot.com/2008/07/recipe-box-spicy-dandelion-greens-vegan.html

So I've been crunching recipes for a workshop I'm doing at the Mothergrove festival next month on incorporating wild plants into cooking. I made this one last night to test the recipe, and while I overdid the red pepper a bit (I think I drank half a gallon of ice tea), it turned out surprisingly well. The taste is a bit like mustard greens or endive.

Dandelion greens are full of iron and calcium (more than spinach), vitamin C, and A. Before they produce flowers in the spring the leaves are mild and perfect for salads. After the flowers appear, the greens get bitter, but the bitterness can be alleviated by pre-boiling and tempering with sweet ingredients. The high iron content makes them a traditional medicine to treat anemia and jaundice.

Make sure to correctly identify dandelion greens, as there are several look-alikes which are not poisonous, according to field guides, but are decidedly more bitter and even a few mixed in can throw a dish. Here's a decent intro to plants that are commonly mistaken for dandelions. Hairy/spiny leaves, branching or woody stems, or leaves growing from the flower stem itself are all signs that you do not have a dandelion.

Also be sure to avoid collecting greens in lawns that have been treated with pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers not intended for food crops within the past two years. Do not collect by roadsides where runoff could contaminate the plant. Always wash wild-collected plants thoroughly before using. People with latex sensitivities may have a reaction to dandelion leaves and stems, but anyone introducing a new plant into their diet should do so slowly and cautiously in case of allergic reaction.

Spicy Dandelion Greens
4 side-dish size servings

2 lbs dandelion greens, about 8 cups by measure, which looks like many times more than you need, but the volume will shrink considerably during cooking. Discard any that are discolored or insect-eaten.

1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes (to taste) or chopped chile pepper to taste.
3 medium cloves of garlic, crushed
1/4 cup pine nuts (optional, but tasty)

3/4 cups raisins (regular or golden) if using greens harvested after flowers appear on the plant in spring. This is to offset the bitterness, so it isn't necessary if using young spring greens.


bring water with 1 tablespoon sea salt to a boil in a pot large enough to hold the greens.
wash the greens well, removing any stems left on the leaves. Cut into rough 2-inch sections cross-wise (across the leaf)
Boil greens for 4 minutes
Drain in colander and rinse well with cold water, pressing the leaves to remove as much moisture as you can.
Heat olive oil in pan or wok until hot (medium-high heat) but not smoking.
Add Garlic and sautee for 30 seconds
Add the greens, pepper, pine nuts, 1/2 teaspoon salt and raisins. Sautee for three minutes or until moisture is removed from greens.
Add lemon juice and continue to sautee for an additional minute, or until greens start to crisp a bit around the edges.

Enjoy!

If you don't have a safe source for dandelion greens nearby, you can substitute any bitter green in this recipe, including mustard greens, endive, escarole, turnip greens or chicory. The cooking time may need to be adjusted; turnip greens need to be boiled longer, endive can be just blanched or skip the boiling and go right to the pan, and so on depending on the bitterness and toughness of the greens.

http://bigfatdelicious.blogspot.com/2008/07/obesity-may-offer-some-protection-after.html

Really?
Why is it always a paradox when doctors/researchers find out that being fat can be beneficial if you have a catastrophic illness?

Paradoxically, obesity may offer some protection against heart-related "events," like heart attack, in people who have a stent placed to prop open a clogged coronary artery, research shows.
In a study, researchers found that obese patients who had stents placed in diseased arteries had a lower incidence of adverse cardiac events than their normal-weight counterparts.

Could it possibly be that when something requires surgical intervention of any kind, it's helpful to have those fat reserves to call upon? If you don't have those fat reserves, your body is going to go after your muscles (and your heart is a muscle, your body doesn't distinguish between leg muscle, say, and heart muscle, it just goes after muscle if there's no fat to burn).

Khattab's team analyzed the outcomes at one year for 607 patients with coronary artery disease who were treated with stents that release the immune-suppressing drug sirolimus.
The group included 176 normal weight patients, 289 overweight patients, and 142 obese patients
At 30 days, the incidence of adverse cardiac events was 3.4 percent in the normal weight group and 3.1 percent in overweight patients, compared with just 2.8 percent in obese patients.

So yeah, TEH FATZ is going to kill us, but it looks to me like it's more dangerous to be normal or thin if you have blocked arteries and need a stent placed.

At one year, the combined cumulative incidence of death, heart attack, stroke, and repeat angioplasty or other "revascularization" procedure was higher in the normal weight patients (10.8 percent) and the overweight patients (11.8 percent) than in the obese patients (7.0 percent).

Ya know, I think I'll take my chances with being "super morbidly death-looking-for-a-place-to-happen obese". At least if I have a catastrophic illness, my odds of surviving it are a hell of a lot better than if I were thin (which ain't happening anyway).