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Mein Camp

This weekend, I camped with some folks from work. One of these folks has a piece of land near Swansboro, and a fine campsite it is. It probably won't be so pleasant in August, but it's perfect in April.

He's also got a boat down there, and we spotted this ocean sunfish a few miles off shore:

The dolphins always dove before I could catch them.

The dock and storage shed are the only structures on the property. It was a very fine getaway.

Red and Green: The Stark Duality of Existence

I took this picture through our kitchen window. Minutes earlier, I helped my neighbor lift a pine tree 10" in diameter (it used to live right next to the leaning one you see here) off of his minivan. Minor damage. It was a sudden burst of wind that did it, and it yanked some shingles off of another neighbor's roof. Our house was sheltered by trees, fortunately. I'm able to lift a tree trunk because I'm so big and tough. And the tree was rotten. And I sawed the log in half. And I had help.
I made stuffed peppers because Lindz suggested the idea. When she makes a suggestion, it always turns out to be a good one. Except when she suggested General Tso's Marshmallow Peeps. That sucked.
I used the technique from The New Best Recipe.

Fruhling

It's Friday, and I'm drinking Schneider Weisse.



Lindz took some pics in the yard earlier this week. It's been unseasonably warm and lovely this week, but I just finished putting a tarp over a bunch of new plants in the hopes that this newly arrived cold snap won't kill them.

Pretzels

(listening to "Cortege et Litanie," by Marcel Dupre)
I can't come up with a word that describes the way fresh pretzels smell. It's bread, but there is something else there. Pretzels are bathed in hot, slightly alkaline water before they are baked (for the glossy skin and chewy texture). Perhaps that makes the smell slightly different, but I don't know how to describe it. It smells like it did when I made pretzels with my late grandmother as a kid. Exactly the same. I baked these pretzels for a potluck at work, but I felt some very personal emotions when I made them. These feelings were strong when I struggled with the elastic dough, seeking the perfect amount of flour on my hands. Grandma's knobby hands, with their flowerpetal-delicate skin, subdued the dough with infuriating ease. You are not a true master of something before you've done it a lot. Her pretzels were slender, shiny and consistent. They were laid out to cool on towels beneath the high ceiling of the bright farmhouse kitchen. It was a thousand years ago, and it was this morning.
I squeezed mustard onto one at midnight, and I felt that I had not wasted my time and flour.
As with my stollen, the pretzels taste pretty decent, but they are uglier than Grandma's. It is my fond wish that people eat them and are happy. I would hope that Grandpa would have given a herzlich "Ausgezeichnet."

Just get the hell out of office already, you crook

I haven't bitched about this moron in a long time. I guess I just need isolate myself from any form of news if I don't want to be outraged.