Randomness

Have you ever wondered what Art Garfunkel was reading the month you were born? Yeah, me neither... but in case you're now curious and were born after June 1968, he's posted a list of every book he read between June 1968 and January 2006 out on his website. The internet is a cool and somewhat scary place.

(For the record, Art Garfunkel read The Brothers Karamozov, Making It by Norman Podhoretz, The Theory of Eternal Life by Rodney Collin and Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer the month I was born.)

I've apparently gotten quite a reputation at church for my cooking skills. So far this week I've been nagged repeatedly for my lasagna recipe and asked to share my techniques and general recipe for making hummus (I'm not sure why she thought this was difficult to make) and for that balsamic vinaigrette I like so much. Speaking of which... you know, there was a time not so long ago when I wasn't even entirely sure what a shallot looked like. Now they're a regular grocery item that we keep on hand at all times. Funny how things change.

I managed to track down some good quality corned beef the other day. All the stores I check last week were sold out and it just doesn't feel like March without a dinner of boiled meat, so it'll probably get tossed in the crockpot next week sometime. We ended up making Irish Stew for St. Patrick's Day this year (we just finished up the last of it last night -- yummy!!!) which is much more authentically Irish, anyway. Oddly, I learned absolutely no recipes from the Irish side of my family, probably because my grandmother just never really took to cooking and I didn't spend a lot of time around her mother (she lived in Napa Valley and my family just never managed to visit her for more than a day or so at a time).

rackham and I were originally going to head down to Portland this afternoon, but when it started looking likely that he wouldn't be able to get off work early, I changed our hotel reservations to just Saturday and Sunday... we'd started doing the math and realized we'd probably be getting to the hotel around 11:00pm, and then what's the point? So we'll be heading out tomorrow morning, which should get us there in plenty of time to meet up with my family at P.B. and Ellies for lunch. My grandparents are flying up from Sacramento and my folks will be driving over from northeastern Oregon... with my step-brother and his family driving over from Tillamook. Portland (where my two step-sisters live) ends up being pretty centrally located for all of us. And hey! There's also Powell's City of Books!!!!

While we're all together, I'm thinking I may get the name of the shoulder specialist my step-dad has worked with and likes so much (which could be interesting, because then I'll have to persuade the insurance company to cover it AND get over to Colfax, WA for the appointment). The cortisone injection hasn't had any effect (other than making the arm pretty much unusable for the first few days) and while I think my orthopedic surgeon is really good at what he does, I'm not looking forward to becoming a deep tissue pin cushion while he takes wild stabs (literally!) at what might be wrong. I'm also getting really sick of not being able to do something as simple as put on deodorant in the morning without having my shoulder catch and pop.

And now in the category of something I said recently that is the sort of thing you'd never expect anyone to say EVER: "You know, I actually really like cod liver oil."