Cookies

I think I have remarked before on Brittany's making pre-made cookies: to send to a friend in the Army and for a guy on Valentine's. Since we are snowed-in by the Blizzard of '08 I decided to do a little baking today. I didn't want to take the time to place cookies on a sheet though, so I decided to make chocolate-chip cookie bars. When Brittany came into the kitchen as I was gathering my flour, sugar and chocolate chips from the pantry and told her I was making cookies, she asked me, "Do you have mix?" And when I said no, most people make cookies from scratch and the recipe is even on the bag of Tollhouse morsels, she was in shock. Apparently Brittany's mom had informed her it was impossible to make cookies on one's own- that it was too hard and they didn't come out well.

So mothers, do not fail your children as Brittany has been failed.

Tilted Kilt

Brittany is very excited that she has found a new job to supplement her Salvation Army internship income. She will be a bartender at a new bar about to be opened in Columbus, part of the Tilted Kilt chain. You really need to check out their website to know why I'm horrified.

Even worse, although she touts her bartending skills, she needs to start practising because she "sight poured" shots- i.e. knew what a shot looked like in a (particular) glass. She had never even heard of the variously named free/count/time pour that most professional bartenders use. Well, hopefully the outfit will look good on her.

Primary Colors

After her thinking that the presidential primary was in November, I believed that Brittany had been steered correctly in her understanding of American party politics. But, as is so often the case, I underestimated her ignorance.

On Monday I was discussing with Brittany the debate I had heard on NPR between two Democratic candidates for county commissioner (sadly they were both unable to put together a coherent sentence). I stated my belief that neither seemed worth voting for when Brittany replied that she hadn;t paid any attention to any of the races and so was just going to vote for "the Democrat" come Tuesday. When I said that since it's a primary we're voting between two Democrats she gave her patented blank stare.

Now primaries are odd things, the rules seem to be different wherever you are, as I am learning during this year's presidential campaign, but the basic idea is always the same: choosing who will represent a particular party in a general election. My vote has never really mattered before in a presidential election, but in the past I lived in areas so heavily partisan that only the primary mattered for local positions.

Jicama

Last night I went out to dinner with Brittany and we chatted about our weekends/days and she told me about a new fruit she had tried from the grocery store "JI-cam-a," which she accurately described as looking like a potato but tasting a little more like a bland apple. Now, I wouldn't expect someone to get the pronunciation correct as "Hee-kah-mah" if they've never heard of it before, but I did think it was pretty obvious that most of us don't describe it as a fruit. Even worse, when I said it was a little more like a potato in that it was a tuber, Brittany stared at me blankly, never having hear of tubers before.

I just mentioned this story to my officemate, let's call him B.J., and he too had never heard the word tuber before. Looking things up in wikipedia it does seem like the definition of tuber and root vegetable is a little more complicated than I previously thought, but it still looks to be an entirely pedestrian term that I thought most educated people would have heard.

The Grammy's

Watching the Grammy Awards Show with Brittany finally propelled me to update this blog. At some point soon I will add posts about the past month too, but now for the Sunday night drama:

Brittany walked in while Tina Turner and Beyonce (Knowles) were singing Proud Mary. Brittany said, "Wow, Diana Ross looks great!" And when I pointed out that it was really Tina Turner she explained that the camera shot was only showing the "INA" of the performer's name. "True," I said, "but Proud Mary is kinda a signature Tina Turner song."

Brittany stuck around for the montage of the music industry people that died in the past year, and it ended with Luciano Pavarotti. Brittany said, "It was nice that they ended those pictures with Pavarotti since he diad last year." I pointed out, "The montage was for all the people that died last year- that's why they did that."

Then Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban sang a duet of "The Prayer" in honor of those that died, and while Bocelli was introducing the piece Brittany wondered, "Why won't he open his eyes and look up, that's not a very good presentation style." I replied, "Well, he's blind." And Brittany said, "I knew something was up with his eyes."

Finally, Brittany jumped on the bandwagon of people against Amy Winehouse being "rewarded" this year because of her personal problems. Though I don't think Winehouse is any sort of role model, when an award is given for achievement and someone has produced the best song for a given year, then the award should go to that person.

Brittany Briefs

Many of the things Brittany says or does do not live up to a full blog post, so here I shall combine a few of them.

The first evidence I have to back up her statement that she is "the biggest nerd I will ever meet" is that she plays ARGs (alternate reality games). Tonight I have to take a picture of her standing outside a movie theatre at midnight holding an insignia with a candle burning within it.

Her friend Tim, one of the game night participants, is a single 30 year old guy who decided to have a vasectomy so he could enjoy his single days a bit more. Brittany informed me that all men with vasectomies set off the metal detectors in airports, and then when the wand indicates a beep where it inevitably will, they have to explain the circumstances. Wow- yet another occasion where a kernel of truth loses touch with reality. Certainly some men that get a vasectomy where a clip stops flow in the vas deferens and there are some metal clips available that can set off the detectors. But most of these surgeries, from a quick web survey, utilise titanium hemoclips which do not set off metal detectors. And these are just a small number of all vasectomies given. Most include the cutting of the vas with stitches or cauterization on the ends.

While doing laundry, Brittany praised me for cleaning out the lint trap saying, "Did you know that lint can be a leading cause of house fires?" I said yes, explained that I taught fire safety for a year to elementary school students, and added that the greater danger that is often ignored is the lint trapped in the dryer's plastic vent tube. (Aluminium tubing is much less likely to catch fire). Brittany ended the discussion, seemingly unaware that I was more knowledgeable than she with, "Well I just wanted to share; I'm full of random factoids like that."

Brittany bought a new iPod USB charging cable. I have no evidence that this is the case, but I fear she tried something like the onion in Gatorade charging method that is a hoax on YouTube. Sadly 5 million people have seen this clip, and some high fraction seem to believe, based upon other blog entries I've seen. Luckily some smart people out there have made spoofs that are pretty funny, including charging with an eggnog filled pepperoncini, a kitten, and a pumpkin. But it does seem sad that the skeptics don't even believe the truth about potato or lemon etc. batteries.

A Bad Birthday for Brittany

Brittany stayed in last weekend over her birthday, waiting for a male friend of hers to take her out. This guy, let's call him Mark, has been a true jerk to Brittany since she arrived in August. They had known each other for over a year via MySpace before she moved, coincidentally, to the same town he had his medical residency in. Although they speak on the phone more than ten hours a week, in six months they have yet to meet in person. But this is not Brittany's fault. Mark cancels, regularly, at the last minute. And every time he presents a plausible tale.

Well he promised to take her out to dinner on her birthday, a Friday, since he was supposed to get off work (more in a second on that) at 7 pm. At midnight he still had not left, so he promised to make it up to her on Saturday, when he was supposed to get off at 9 pm. At 10:30 he still hadn't off, and he never called, texted, or emailed to cancel entirely.

So Mark, though he is only a week older than Brittany, said he graduated college in 1 year and medical school in three so that he is currently a first year medical resident. Brittany has said she has spoken to nurses on nights he was on call and has received emails from a work email account, but I can find no list of residents with the hospital to check, and he doesn't have a medical license yet.

Anyway, here's his MySpace account: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=68831614

Any advice on how to find out the truth about him and why he has treated Brittany so shamefully?

Maybe I wrote too soon...........

On the same flight that Brittany took home bringing my passport she tried to take a bottle of water through security to the plane. She knew about the restrictions, she had her plastic baggy of travel size toiletries, but she still thought she could take a bottle of water.

To be fair, alot of seasoned travellers run into problems with the TSA restrictions. And they are ridiculous, as pointed out in a recent NYTimes blog.