It has recently come to my attention that some of my friends, whom I’ve known for years, haven’t heard me sing. This is a far cry from when I was younger, when all of my friends heard me sing, whether they wanted to or not. (It helps that I was in chorus and choir, some of that singing was with other people.)
I started working on this song a few years ago, well before I knew a target date for my black belt test. At the moment, I have somehow misplaced the lyrics for the second verse (and the beginnings of the third), and haven’t written the harmony. But I have my black belt now (though I couldn’t find my bow before the recording; it has since been located), so I wanted to go ahead and share this.
This song is dedicated to all the self-rescuing princesses in my life, and the people who helped us get to that point.
As I mentioned in my post about Blue Apron, I also tried out HelloFresh. I actually plan on trying a couple other delicious looking meal kit options, just to see what sort of variances are available, but in the end, I only really need one (if that).
My first impression of the HelloFresh recipes was that they were blander than the Blue Apron ones. I rescinded that impression with the second set of recipes; it must have just been the particular recipes I picked.
HelloFresh bags the ingredients for their meals (other than meats), and here are some of the results.
There are many similarities between the two meal kit services. You log in and pick from a variety of menu options for a given week. The typical box has ingredients for three recipes. In the Blue Apron box, most of the fresh produce is separate from the “knick knacks” bag for each recipe, and any meat is packaged separately; you store the produce as appropriate and refrigerate the knick knacks and meat. The HelloFresh box splits out the meat from everything else; all of the other ingredients for a given recipe are in a brown paper bag (labeled “this bag is greener than a salad”). An interesting difference between the two is that HelloFresh will send you two peeled cloves of garlic in the bag, whereas Blue Apron will send you an entire bulb even if you only need two cloves. We’re three Blue Apron boxes in… we’re never running out of fresh garlic.
The meals in both cases are tasty, and the recipes are easy to follow. In fact, there’s a real pleasure as a parent of being able to hand over a single sheet and pile of ingredients while I run off and do other chores.
There are minor differences in the website that could sway you to one or another – the HelloFresh website lets you skip meals far ahead of their menu planning, whereas Blue Apron dates become available as the menus are posted. We’ve decided to stick with Blue Apron for the moment, more because it was the first of the two we tried… that and I like their Mediterranean recipes.
Coming sometime soon… our thoughts on Meal Village, where instead of a meal kit, somebody else does all the work and you just have to reheat the meal.
Tonight, I will test for my Cho Dan, or 1st degree black belt, in the World Tang Soo Do Association. As part of our preparation, we take a written test (up to twice, if needed; I passed on my first attempt… both times) and write a thousand words about Tang Soo Do.
I failed my sanity check and wrote it as a poem. Enjoy!
Twas two weeks before Dan Camp when my teacher and friend,
as I was leaving the dojang after a fabulous class,
asked “Are you testing this cycle” Thus the planning began.
Was this a thing I could do, could I make it and pass?
If I test in September, and again in the spring,
I would visit Tikal as a new Cho Dan Bo.
Pre-Testing next Dan Camp could be a real thing,
But I found in October one goal had to go.
January’s test is usually late,
So we relearn what holidays help us forget.
Last year it fell on my own birthdate,
Testing so soon would be a close bet.
With regular practice and no real chance to rest,
Was I being too ambitious or just slightly insane?
I gave it my all, I gave it my best.
My knife skills were iffy; my shoulder, in pain.
My breaking was lousy, I can’t say that’s new.
But my one steps were solid, and I knew all my forms,
I was happy to pass and then learn Sip Soo.
But how did I reach this point that transforms?
When Cassandra, my daughter, had turned almost four,
we went to the fair to enjoy rides once again,
stopped at some booths, thought about them no more,
till a phone call came in, we stopped to think then.
Was karate something she wanted to try?
It’s truly hard work, not like Kung Fu Panda,
while really quite fun, Po’s too goofy a guy,
earning a black belt’s more than Hollywood propaganda.
Cassandra’s first karate class
Her first class looked great, she had a fabulous grin,
When I look back at it now, I see many a friend.
Some still do karate, others have left it since then,
I didn’t know yet that our hobbies would blend.
I promised her when I saw the first buddy week,
I’d try it with her, take my turn on the mat,
I didn’t know then that my body would speak,
to say my appendix was a bit of a brat.
I woke up that Christmas in a hospital bed,
worried in two months for my stair climb,
ninety-four flights up I would tread,
forty-some minutes was quite a slow time.
I sat three more months with my books or my hook,
crocheting or reading as she learned some new skills,
watching the classes my daughter partook,
while I thought about crafts and paying the bills.
Hugging Cassandra after my first karate class. This was before I even had a uniform.
Winter became spring, as May rolled around,
I was invited to class, to my delight and surprise,
not just for a week, a whole month I had found,
celebrating mothers with some pain in my thighs.
There was pain in push-ups and again in each crunch,
though I’m flexible enough, I always could kick.
I found there’s no pain in one single punch,
unless there’s a board or even a brick.
I know that my desk job does me no good,
sitting all day is hard to offset.
Needing more exercise, I understood,
karate was something I could not regret.
Training beside that cute smiling face,
spending time exploring one steps together,
driving towards one or other new place,
these are things that we would certainly weather.
I trained most of a year, and at a regional event
saw Grandmaster destroy a piñata with skill,
after our demo teams to great lengths had went
to show their moves, devotion, and will.
The next spring was a setback, unfortunate for me.
It would not quell my passion, this thing with my shoulder,
I pulled something wrong when cutting a tree,
it felt more like I had lifted a boulder.
Six months I sat out, sad to just watch,
knowing it would take time to achieve,
the skills she would learn as she stepped up a notch,
knowing my health would give no reprieve.
On the plus side I’m older, I had a clear goal,
she wasn’t quite six, she was quite content
to learn something new, she was on a roll,
as a Little Dragon, she made her ascent.
The next summer, my health again wasn’t that great,
I wound up in therapy for pulling my hip,
I sat for two months, as it messed with my gait,
and acquired a walking stick on our road trip.
Two thousand fourteen was a year full of jaunts,
Disney, Hawaii, and Guatemala anew,
some were a first, some were old haunts,
this time though, my skills travelled too.
With some consternation and also great joy,
after extensive searching and some interview pain,
I quit my old job for a new employ,
not working at home, but still, quite a gain.
The downside I found was I had a commute,
the length of which would not let me teach;
the earlier class I would overshoot,
the later classes just in my reach.
As time went on, I found my job shifted,
I bought a new house, left for an earlier drive,
the timing restrictions were happily lifted,
I could plan out karate, make sure I arrive.
I knew by this point that I do like to spar,
and I’ve come to enjoy even hapkido.
I’m not quite the addict that my instructors are,
that may be a change I yet undergo.
It took some time, moving’s always a mess,
and a birthday piñata claimed some of my time,
my first Prep class helped me obsess
on the skills I would need to advance my belt climb.
October added another workout,
bimonthly, with black belts, all of them skilled,
I gather there could be a larger turnout,
the space we were using is nowhere near filled.
The day crept closer to the August pre-test,
one skill, then another, I learned on the mat,
with time to spare, I completed my quest,
Ninety one-steps were learned, some fell a bit flat.
There was just one month till the test in the Dells,
just enough time to refine and improve,
and appear before judges with no whistles or bells,
working hard that day to make them approve.
Three days before, a crash dragged me from the mat,
my car was totaled by a distracted pick-up truck.
The doctor said your concussion will prevent testing for that.
Between the diagnosis and car shopping, I was stuck.
At Valpo, five months later, I pre-tested – again,
enjoying myself despite a horrible cough.
I’m ready for April, it’s time to ascertain –
can I break two boards in this final face off?
Shortly after moving into this house, I tried Blue Apron for a little while. Unfortunately, I tried it as we moved into harvest season with a surprisingly large number of squash… I couldn’t keep up with both of them, so I cancelled my Blue Apron subscription.
Blue Apron ingredients, recipes, and some of the meals produced from two boxes.
Last summer was… complicated. I never got around to re-starting the subscription. Now that things have finally calmed down a bit, we decided we could try it again.
Each box comes with ingredients and recipes that you order – my box had three recipes for two servings each. You can pick recipes each week or accept the defaults (if you forget to log in), or skip weeks when you won’t have time to cook them. All of the ingredients arrive in a freezer bag, with a pack of ice by the meats to keep them extra cool.
In addition to pretty pictures, the recipes are available on the Blue Apron website when you select your menu options for the week, so you can get a feel for how long each meal will take to cook. Two of this week’s recipes were 45-55 minutes, so I had to make sure I had that time to cook.
All of the recipes come with step-by-step directions, so you just follow along, preparing bits and cooking other bits generally in the recommended order. In my case, I occasionally add steps like “hide raw meat in microwave until oven is heated” and “hide cooked meat in microwave until side dishes are ready”… anything to protect the food from Arwen.
I normally cook from ingredients, rather than prepared foods, so that part isn’t really a change. The big differences are having the exact amount of ingredients needed to prepare the meal, and the ease of access to a variety of recipes, particularly with their recent addition of Mediterranean recipes. It allows me to explore new ideas – such as including capers and raisins in the same dish – without a remnant jar of capers remaining in the fridge. (To be honest, I think I already have one.)
So far, it’s a successful experiment. For comparison, I’m working through a HelloFresh order. In the end, I only want to order recipes and ingredients from one website… watch this space for my thoughts on HelloFresh.
I was in the shower, singing about the tigers that come at night and reflecting on Arwen’s latest attack on my toes when I remembered this poem I wrote a couple years ago. That particular tiger was far less painful than the kitten.
Arwen exploring the just-emptied freezer bag from Blue Apron
There’s a tiger on my toes,
I’m scared it will bite my feet.
I was sleeping beneath the stars
and now a tiger wants to eat.
I want to call for Mom,
but I think it fell asleep.
Maybe it won’t eat me
if I don’t move or make a peep.
I’d like to shift my foot,
but I may have felt a claw.
Will it wake the creature up
if I jostle its mighty paw?
As I lie awake in fear,
I reach to touch its fur.
I can feel the furball shift
and unleash a massive purr.
There’s a Tiger on my toes,
he sleeps there every night.
But when I’m half asleep
he gives me such a fright.
That was my first thought upon reading the question in Oathbringer. As it turns out, that was the character’s initial response too. It made me think about some significant first steps I’ve taken in recent years.
Followed a friend into our graduate program. This was significant because it didn’t match either of our majors, though it was my minor. It was that or law school; I think I picked the right one for me. That was the first step in my career in Information Technology.
Picked up a flyer for a fan-run Chicagoland convention while I was at GenCon. That convention is long since defunct, but the effects linger – I met my gaming group, and ex-husband, because of that convention.
Signed our daughter up for karate. It seemed like something good for her to try, and she was interested in what little she had seen (err… Kung Fu Panda). There is certainly an element of luck that went with finding the right school, especially since we hadn’t been looking for one.
That first year when I decided to clear weeds out of the old garden patch and plant spinach. I’ll admit, I had no idea what I was getting into… vegetable gardening is addictive.
As it turns out, the answer was actually “The next step.” Those were, of course, significant too:
Interviewing with a Chicagoland company when I finished my graduate degree. Having a degree is lovely, finding a company that will hire you to work with it is even better. And it’s the reason I ended up in Chicagoland.
The second fan-run convention I attended in Chicagoland was Capricon. Not only is it a great convention, I’ve made friends for life at it. It was an excellent next step.
The next step at karate was getting me on the mat with her. And again after my accident. That worked out well, I pre-tested for first degree black belt last weekend.
Gardening has turned into a series of next steps for me. When I moved to my current house, I actually moved a raised bed set in before I moved furniture to the house. It was early June, which is already a late start for gardening, and it turned into a fabulous harvest.
According to my cats, my first step should be to feed them. My next step should be to feed them again. They’re about to be disappointed at least once.
One of the first book reviews I wrote was for Gilded Cage, almost eighteen months ago now. Despite eagerly anticipating the sequel, I lost sight of it, and just realized today that not only is it out, it’s already available in paperback. Used! Needless to say, I am ordering Tarnished City immediately, and I have a co-worker who will want to borrow it as soon as I’m done.
I thought I’d share the review this week. And eventually, I’m sure I’ll have something to say about the sequel.
REVIEW. First published October 15, 2016 (Booklist).
At first glance, the world seems familiar in Vic James’s novel, but that illusion is quickly dispelled. The monarchy has long since been destroyed; the British aristocracy replaced with Equals, people born with magical gifts who lord over the commoners with their powers. The story starts just before siblings Abi and Luke begin their ten years of slavery, which is mandated for all commoners (i.e., those without magic). Unexpectedly separated, they quickly learn how little they understood of the Equals as their views of the world shift. Luke adapts to life in a factory town by joining a rebellion, while Abi and the rest of the family live together but grow apart while serving a powerful family of Equals. Nobody emerges unscathed from their slavery years, as the Hadley family can attest after mere months of service. The twists and turns make this book hard to set down; a second read may reveal many details that readers might breeze past the first time through. Readers will eagerly await the rest of the trilogy started here.
Some mornings, I feel like I’m using a cattle prod to force a sloth into motion. “Get dressed! Come to breakfast! Finish eating!”
And then there are mornings like this Wednesday, when it was in an astronomy geek’s best interest to be up and moving. In this case, it was to see an eclipse, when we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the super blue blood moon.
I first heard of blue moons in elementary school… “once in a blue moon, a new smurf is born.” Yes, really, I remember that episode, though their blue moons seem to be a bit too close together. Not surprisingly, my actual understanding of a blue moon – the second full moon in a calendar month (since 1946) or the “extra” full moon in a year with 13 – came much later.
The super blue moon before the eclipse started.
What made it stunning was the “super” part – the moon looked larger than normal because of it’s proximity to the Earth. Amusingly, I just saw the technical name for a supermoon (perigee syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system) as part of a trivia question earlier this week.
“Blood Moon” refers to the moon during a total lunar eclipse, so named because it can look red. I don’t think it look particularly red here. Unfortunately, it was also sinking in the horizon as the sun was rising, so most of my attempts to photograph the eclipse part are obscured by trees. It was awfully pretty, but not particularly photogenic, at least not on my point & click camera.
I spent a year abroad in college in the lovely, if somewhat dreary, city of Glasgow. It’s only dreary because of the overcast skies and rain, the people more than make up for it. I spent a decent number of weekends and holidays that year with newly found friends in Edinburgh, including Christmas Day.
I remember waking up that morning and finding my Christmas stocking, not in the living room near the tree, but on my bed with me. (Yes, I slept fairly soundly back then.) In all fairness, there was a large dog downstairs who might have gotten curious about the stockings had they been left in her reach. More surprisingly, as I reached into the stocking, I found that every gift in it was wrapped.
I think it was in high school when we noticed that our parents’ stockings had bare minimum content and started scrambling through our room on Christmas morning for assorted junk we could add to them. Most years, our stockings were about as random, it was just newer junk.
Oooh, wrapped stuff on a stocking.
I don’t remember anything in that Edinburgh stocking being junk. Fun and unnecessary, perhaps… I mean, does a college student really need Lego? (In my defense, I owned no Lego at all until that year. OMG, Lego Thor is awesome!) That year reshaped how I thought of Christmas stockings, and has certainly influenced the type of items that are seen in them at my house.
Here we are at the holidays again, and I found myself reminiscing about that year… and wrapping just about everything. Perhaps I should make some Yorkshire pudding this year too. Happy holidays!
I usually peer in the window, then wander off. It’s safer that way. But I was spotted and invited in, so I took a chance.
It feels like speed dating – is that still a thing? – where you rush in and meet everybody with at most a couple minutes to grasp each personality before moving onto the next. It’s not as structured, it just seems pointless to backtrack if your first impression is that you won’t click. Or that the rest of the household won’t click.
We’re either sleeping or in motion; we will not look at the camera for you.
My girls have fairly aggressive personalities. They’re not outright hostile, simply a handful, and I won’t subject a timid personality to that. I’m also not sure how they’d react if I brought someone new home. We walked out of PetSmart without adopting another cat.
It’s been over two years since we lost our third cat, Mungojerrie, at the ripe old age of 19. Well, our first cat really, since he was the oldest. I adopted him at 10 weeks old, along with his brother, Rumpelteazer. (Yes, they lived up to their names.) We had lost Rumpel to cancer eight years before. At the time, we had a third cat, Missy, who almost became friends with Mungo before she passed away. When we lost her, he was lonely, howling for attention in the middle of the night until we (quickly) conceded and adopted Diane, our beautiful black and white cat.
It’s a very comfortable tiger. Every cat should have one.
A few months later, we had a brief, and tragic, interlude with Marianna, a cat who gave the most wonderful hugs, but didn’t absorb salt properly into her system. This caused her to pursue odd food sources, including climbing into a garbage can for some French fries that had been thrown out. She was a strange one.
After losing her, we adopted June, our polydactyl tortoise shell (she’s a Hemingway cat… an extra toe on each front paw). She was a young mother, being adopted out at the same time as her “kittens” (they were as large as her already, and she’s not particularly small), and she rounded out the family perfectly.
Nap time.
This was the first time since we Mungo passed away that I’ve stepped into the room to meet the adoptable cats. I’m not sure we need a third cat, or that we’re ready for one, but there was a cute Siamese I wanted to meet. As it turns out, he was sweet, but too shy for this house. Maybe next time.
