25 predictions over the next 20 years.

For some reason this stuff kind of freaks me out.

The final rundown

Here is the final rundown of the things that I made and sent off in the month of December.

baklava: a combo of this and this recipe, made with pecans
pistachio butterballs (like mexican wedding cookies with pistachios; from Dede Wilson's Unforgettable desserts)
salted caramel pistachio and pepita brittle
chocolate chocolate mint cookies (adapted from this)
cacao nib and caramelized almond biscotti (Also from Dede Wilson)
seven layer cookies
ma'amouls
cherry and pistachio nougat (from Craft of Baking)
chinese 5 spice cookies
penuche fudge (to which I added a layer of chocolate)
bacon fat doggie treats
pomegranate molasses cookies (adapted from molasses cookies)
rosemary walnut brown butter shortbread
matcha shortbread (Dede Wilson)
rugelach (dorie greenspan)
white chocolate walnut eggnog fudge

All in all I sent out about 10 packages filled with various of the treats above.  Many of these recipes I'd make again.

When I look at all of these recipes, I have to wonder what the hell else I do with my life?  For a while I'm on a baking moratorium.  I'm a bit tired of it, and I'm doing so much lab work (so much rain - no climbing outside!) that it's less appealing.  Plus Sunshine gave me her CSA box so now I'm focusing on cooking the veggies.  I made cream of mushroom soup with the chanterelle I found, and red endive, bacon and fontina pasta with some red endive from the CSA box and parsley from the garden.

A billion people are going to Bishop for New Year's, but I'm a bit turned off given that all of the granite boulders will be covered in snow. I'm cranking through a ton of labwork, so maybe I'll just stay that course. Then I won't feel bad about going to Europe.

I visited both Ethan and James last Sunday.  I got to climb with Ethan at MC, which is always a treat, given that he is bar-none the best climber I've ever climbed with.  Plus he has an easy confidence about his ability rather than a grandiose it's-no-big-deal attitude I've witnessed in good climbers before. Then we went to this kick-ass Mexican restaurant called El Metate and I got some amazing fish tacos. Damn I'm so jealous of people who live in SF. The restaurants in Davis suck.

On the way home from SF I stopped in Berkeley to see James.  We had a date, where we went to Walgreen's and then ate dessert in the Berkeley Bowl parking lot. I think it would be fair to call it a dessert sesh, except I just watched him eat the things I made and got his comments on them. I'm always trying to improve.

Finally, I've been reading a bunch lately. I just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Definitely recommended. I also recently read Alex and Me, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Cleft, and How to Talk to a Widower.  Most of what I read anymore was given to me - often nice easy-read books.

Oh right - I saw Tron last night with Bjorn and Mark. I'd give it a big fat "meh". Though the Daft Punk music and cameo was pretty sweet. CGI Jeff Bridges is totally creepy.

Mendo mushrooms

Above is the view of the ranch from Grandma's house.  The lens my camera won't completely retract at this point. I like to think of it as an asymmetrical vignette.  Anyway, here are the details from the mushroom hike at the ranch:

Delicious milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus) - These are fairly common. Supposedly they are edible but I've never tried them. They bruise green which is a bit of a turnoff:

Cowboy handkerchief (Hygrophorus eburneus) - these guys were all over the place. The are SO slimy (hence the name). Mykoweb says: "Edible, but too slimy to be of culinary value."

Yellow staining milk caps - I found a ton of these all under oaks and madrones. Boring.

Blewits (Lepista nuda) - These are common in Davis too. I found these growing out of a cow turd:

California giant chanterelle (Cantharellus californicus) - Uncle Alec found this impressive specimen.  I might try to eat it. It's pretty big! YUM!

Western Jack-o-lantern (Omphalotus olivascens) - poisonous, glows in the dark, and very impressive! Bay Area Mycological Society has a funny description of the poisons: " The toxins, similar to muscarine, present in a mistaken meal of Omphalotus may produce hallucinations (a plus for some), but will also open you, prodigiously, at both ends, for a not so fun time with fungus."

Bitter Brown leucopaxillus (Leucopaxillus gentianeus). This is an inedible, classic-looking mushroom:

Amanita ssp. - not sure what this is either, but it's very likely that it is poisonous:

Witches butter (Tremella aurantia) - This stuff is pretty cool. It looks a lot like snot stuck to dead tree branches. It parasitizes another fungus, the wood rotter, False turkey tail (Stereum hirsutum).

Pine spike (Chroogomphus rutilus, or C. vinicolor - I think). I've found a bunch of these in the Berkeley hills and in an area south of Santa Cruz.  They are edible and I've eaten them.

Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), or false turkey tail (Stereum hirsutum). These are edible, but they don't taste like much. I think some people chew on them like gum:

Fried chicken mushroom? These are supposed to be found in disturbed areas, but I found them on a rotting stump, which I guess could be considered disturbed.  Anyway, I took a picture:

Here are two more I'm uncertain about:

Finally, the Madrone trees are AMAZING this year. I have never ever seen them so covered in red berries.  Glorious.

Christmas with the fam at the ranch

Sigh. Another Christmas at the ranch with many relatives I have nothing in common with. I suppose that's typical. They all asked me if I lift weights.  One woman asked me if I was going to be a doctor, and I was like "yeah, but not a medical doctor" and she started to go on and on about some celebrity doctor guy, and asking "have you heard of him?"  I'm like "no, but I'm not going to be a medical doctor." She's like "oh but he's a chiropractor...blah blah blah".  I just listened - what was I going to say?

Dinner wasn't that fun...

My uncle (the one who writes letters to the newspaper about how global warming is a conspiracy) asked me how I KNOW that the Sierra Nevada lakes were historically fishless.  Put on the spot like that, I'm like "I just know..." and he's like "HAhahaHAhah".  I was thinking about it later and I could come up with a ton of evidence (fossil record, geology and hydrology, native american historical records, the fact that stocked fish do not produce a viable population in the long-term, frogs and other insects that were once everywhere cannot survive in the presence of trout, etc.), but putting me on the spot like that, and asking me a question that I liken to "how do you KNOW the world is round" I came up empty handed. If I were writing it in a paper I think it would be classified as "common knowledge" and not need a citation. This is good practice for...talking to people who are...ignorant? In the moment though, it totally frosts my cookies.  I can appreciate an honest question, but not ones that seem specifically designed to elicit condescending laughter for the benefit of the asker.

Glory glory hallelujah, praise baby jesus that my dad has this little Verizon portable wireless thingie so I can connect to the internet. I know it's sad that without the interwebs I'm completely bored, but to be fair it is dumping rain outside, so cut me some slack. I did bring my rain pants and rain shell though, so maybe I'll walk around in the mud and cow shit later. I hope his Verizon thingie doesn't charge by the minute...

Fortunately it did not dump rain yesterday afternoon, so I had some time to find a bunch of mushrooms.  Pictures will be coming.

I might go visit Ethan in SF tomorrow on the way home. If I'm not going to climb at Jailhouse Monday or Tuesday, I may as well get a good workout at MC. Plus I haven't seen him since before he went to China. Should be fun to hang out and hear about the trip.  I'm looking at plane tickets for Europe right now...I'd like to meet up with people for a month or so in the Spring. Maybe even 6 weeks! If not, I'll take another trip. I'd really like to go to Greece.

The clock just struck 10. My grandma (and my aunts and uncles) all have this clock on the wall that pipes a song on the hour, every hour.  And yay! There's a Christmas setting!  I don't think that I would like knowing when each hour of my life passes while I'm sitting in my house.  Kind of grim.

So, now just an interminable afternoon of looking outside at the rain, a dinner, more present opening (always awkward), and then I'm bailing tomorrow.

By the way, this is for James. Enjoy your Chinese turkey!

Merry Christmas and stuff to everyone!

Things I've been thinking about

I keep turning things over in my head that I've been meaning to write about, so before I forget I'll just go ahead and jot them down:

1) the beauty of the rant.  Ranting is awesome.  I love to rant.  I also love to hear other people rant (of course, when it's violent and/or hateful, that's no fun), especially if it's a passionate funny rant. This guy at Jailhouse named Craig is a world-class ranter - he gets so passionate about it.  Whenever I start to hear him rant I try to get closer so I can listen to the rant. Fortunately whenever he's at the crag I can always count on one or two juicy rants.  It's good.

2) You can look at the behavior of individual people the way you can observe animal behavior.  There are patterns - you can observe risk, reward, and past behavior and make damn good predictions.  However I'm never surprised when I'm surprised.

3) baking.  I've sent a crap-load of cookies out this year.  It's fun to get feedback. People love getting stuff in the mail!  I like to think that I brightened someone's day. Plus I've gotten to try a bunch of new recipes, many of which are quite good...some of which I wouldn't make again.

4) I get so excited when I get a batch of sequences back from Davis sequencing that I drop everything and run to the lab to have a look at them.  It's awesome!  You get a ton of data at once, and you know what you are going to have to do next. At this point it's looking like I'll be learning some new techniques for getting sequence data.  Kind of cool and kind of annoying.

5) I'm worried that I might get scooped by the guy I'm trying to scoop for the project I'm collecting data for (see 4). He has the title of a paper and "in revision" on his website...hmmm...I already told my advisor that I feel bad for spending so much money (a couple thousand already...and I haven't even collected a fraction of the data), but he said he didn't care.

6) my parents are coming.  My mom sent me an email where she laid out ever detail of their visit and exactly what I'll be doing as well.  Lauren and John say that this is what old people do.  Plan shit.

7) Surprisingly, I've been going out a lot lately.  Thursday was happy hour for Bjorn's birthday, Friday was Jailhouse, Friday night was a Japanese fry party at Lisa and Bjorn's house (lots of panko), Saturday was lots of lab work, Sunday was a gym session with Jake and dinner at Lauren and John's.  Winter is good for that.

Ugh. rain.

Day 3 of interminable rain. Going stir crazy. Went to the gym today...

Stuff. Blah blah blah, then more stuff.

No end to the rain in the 10 day forecast.

Why James is awesome.

It's raining here, so I'm lab-bound and gym-bound for a while. Add this to the many hours of darkness every day and you get a more angst-y version of me.  Scary thought, no?

I was talking with my friend James today about trying hard.  Six years ago today he fell while free-soloing in Joshua Tree.

James climbs a lot.  He aspires to do things that are very hard for him, and he gets them done. James isn't the most physically talented rock climber (most of us aren't talented - it's rare to be truly talented I think, so I don't feel like this is insulting), but he still accomplishes very impressive goals.  I'm a lot more impressed with people like James who face great odds (he's put together with pins now!) and accomplish goals than I am with people who find things easy.  Stubbornness levels the playing field: James has climbed more hard shit than most people who are naturally talented. He has more tenacity than anybody I've ever met.

James is inspiring to me. I'm not a talented rock climber by any stretch of the imagination. I actually have to try, and I definitely get scared, and bored, and give up on things.  If I don't pay attention, I put on weight, I get weak, and I have to work hard.  At this point, I'm less interested in what I could do if I were actually talented, and more interested in what I could accomplish if I were more like James. James is rad.

That said, I have worked hard this fall. After 2 days on a route called Cell Block, I think I could send it within a few tries.  This route felt completely impossible to me a few years ago.

I feel stronger than I've ever been before, and more mellow about climbing in general.  I'm hoping to send some stuff before the balance shifts more towards suck, as it inevitably will.  And I hope it stops raining!!!