In defense of distraction

This article is pretty interesting. Of course, it's also, ironically, tl;dr-ish.

“You can’t be happy all the time,” Gallagher tells me, “but you can pretty much focus all the time. That’s about as good as it gets.

Orzo-licious

In honor of it being almost summer and because I wanted to cook, here's a recipe for an orzo summer salad that I'm making right now.

1 cup orzo
1 red pepper - diced
2-3 sun dried tomatoes
minced parsley
diced green onion
handful toasted pine nuts
olive oil
feta cheese
salt/pepper

Boil orzo with diced peppers in the water to cook (because I like my peppers cooked vs raw - sue me!). Toast pine nuts in tiny bit of olive oil while orzo is cooking (watch those nuts carefully, they will burn in a heartbeat, FYI).

Drain pasta and rinse with cold water. Toss in pine nuts, diced sun-dried tomatoes, minced parsley, diced green onions and dress with good olive oil. Salt/pepper to taste. Put crumbled feta on top and mix. Cover and put in fridge for an hour. Very tasty cold summer salad and easy to make potluck dish for all you potlucking lesbians/other people out there.

Do it, you know you want to.

ETA: Finished product (sans feta cheese since I discovered my stash of feta had gone bad, so I added a bit of parmeggiano reggiano instead, but I assume the feta would be just as yummy):



ETA ps: This would be a perfect dish if one were still on a farm in Kansas (or pretending to still be there) or if one were coming off a 10-day lemon water cleansing thing or if one were hosting a house full of Orzonians as one is wont to do in these troubled times. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore, time to dig in!

per aspera II

So speaking of the Midwest/Great Plains, I am traveling to my favorite state tomorrow for some serious slow-down vacation time with my people. Very much needed = that whole big sky, lots of open space, no crowds, etc etc. I'm sure I'll be tweet/pic-ing while I'm there, probs lots of "I'm drinking beer, life is good" type tweets. That sure beats me having to tweet about someone taking a v. large dump on the Metro platform this morning which I mistook for a rotten banana until I realized that bananas are not that large. Yeah, good times in the city, I will miss it not. I also cannot guarantee that I will come back either. Good day!

That bird of mine

I share a lot of things in common with my dad. We don't talk about our feelings like any good Hoosier, we both love women and a good drink, and we both like to gamble. I mentioned before that my dad worked on the railroad for at least 40 years. He once told me after I finished grad school that he always wondered why I didn't choose a job where I actually made something useful, you know, like most folks he knew. A little time and therapy cured that sting, but you know, that's how it is in the Midwest, especially when you're of a certain age. Practical, biting, direct. But there's more to a person than just what they say. Words are one thing, actions are another. My preference is for the later as is his.

So yeah, I'm not sure my dad's ever going to understand or appreciate what I went to school for or what I do for a living. That's okay. I always know where I stand with him. I also know he's never going to say what I know he feels, that's not his style and never has been. He'd rather show those things in his own understated ways. Ways that don't have words. I know that's driven more than a few women away in his life, he's not perfect. We're a lot alike. But I like to think I'm at least willing to take all that useful information I learned in school and make something useful, like a change. Or a widget. Or love, not war.

All of the above is an aside to the fact that this morning, I talked to my dad and we were discussing gambling (our shared vice). He won at poker on Thursday by having a pair of nines in his hands when a pair of nines came on the flop. But more impressive is that he told me that some of his friends were going down to Louisville for the Derby and he gave them a couple hundred dollars to bet for him. His instructions were to only put money on the horses that were 15:1 or higher. Bet every horse whose odds were worse than that. The big payoff. The horse that won today was one called Mine That Bird, a 50-1 longshot.

Say what you will, but people often play things too safe. Sometimes you gotta put your money where your mouth is. Longshots rarely win. But sometimes they do.



ETA: Update from dad, he had $10 on that horse so the payoff was $500.