Sculpin

There’s this hippie high-fiber cereal that used to be called “Optimum Zen”. I both bought the stuff occasionally (I’ll try nearly anything with ginger in it) and rolled my eyes at the name for being such a dharma-burger. But now that they’ve changed it to something blander, I kind of miss the old name. At least, I miss making cracks about how all that fiber leads to the direct experience of emptiness.

We’re going to build a rack for the bikes pretty soon here, so it will be good for them to stop by and eat.

That’s Montida L. of Thai Fusion, who was briefly interviewed by Q13 as part of a story about the upcoming Nickerson Street road diet. I’ve gotten all too used to stories about road diets that feature angry business owners pitching fits. So Montida’s statement struck me as refreshing, so much so that I wrote to thank Thai Fusion for being so friendly to bicyclists, saying that I’d be sure to try their place soon. The other owner, Ranee, wrote back to say, “Please do stop by,” and to let me know that it’d be fine to lock the bike to the patio railing if I get there before the bike racks do.

It’s just all so civilized. It’s a breath of fresh air. And check out the site — they’re allergy-aware (a whole gluten-free menu, neat) and they have a Thai coconut cheesecake and a street-food menu… And, ooh, they do a meing khum. I love meing khum. Right then. Definitely on the list of places I want to try. It’ll be a good tandem trip when I get my busted lumbar nerves more in order, but I’m not sure I want to wait that long.

So. Out there in the atheist blogosphere is this loopy scandal of sockpuppets and lies and misogynistic fixation and secret identities and provocative accusations and the kind of ugly pseudo-journalism that Bob Novak would have produced if he’d been a concern troll. (Oh, Chris Mooney. I remember when you weren’t so obviously full of crap. Those were good days.) At this point I’d need a wiki to keep all of it straight, but Zachary Voch does as good a job at untangling it as anybody.

So there’s a lot of anger flying around out there, especially between New Atheists and the Nice Police. One commenter on Butterflies and Wheels really– well, we all have days when we get an idea and run it into the ground, eh? He’s been advised to brew some chai and take a breather. It’s pretty good advice. I can think of some times when I wish I’d gotten and taken some advice like that.

As usual, as soon as food is mentioned, my attention is thoroughly diverted. One good thing I’ll say for all that mess is that it’s gotten me to revisit my old chai recipe, which I hadn’t thought to make in years. I do like it quite strong, so I think I’ll start calling it:

Predictably Vicious New Atheist Chai
(Hat tip to the spittle-flecked ravings of Jeremy Stangroom for inspiring the title. All ingredients are subject to rational argument. Though if you want to leave out the water, I’ll look at you funny.)

1 cinnamon stick, broken
4 cardamom pods, smushed
4 whole cloves
2 peppercorns
a 3/4″ chunk of ginger, sliced and the cut surfaces scored
2 cups water
milk and sugar to taste
black tea (optional)

Bring the spices to a simmer in the water, then let sit to infuse, covered, for a good eight to ten minutes. For a caffeinated variant, bring the mixture back up to a simmer after about five minutes, add some unperfumed black tea, then immediately turn off the heat again and let it sit for three minutes. Strain and serve with plenty of milk.

Hooping is canceled until future notice, very possibly until next year. There was an unrelated incident a few weeks ago that sent me back to physical therapy. I was pretty bummed. Not that it isn’t great to see my charming PT again, but I would’ve preferred it be under other circumstances.

Instead, I’ve taken up contact juggling, with the help of ContactJuggling.organd the old James Ernest book I happened to come across. It’s more contact dropping, really, and some contact carrying-the-ball-around, plus a few wobbly attempts at isolations. I have a lot of strength and dexterity to build. My left hand hasn’t been too great since I burned it, and lately I’ve noticed that both hands have gotten stupid and weak. I think it’s because I couldn’t do much in the way of daily activity in most of 2009. I didn’t stop to think about the effects on my hands of all that disuse. (So there’s my hot tip: if you’re ever stuck flat on your back for several months, work your hands.)

So, I am the very opposite of a natural contact juggler, if there is such a thing. But it’s fun all the same, even the donkeywork. If you happen to know of any great contact juggling resources, especially ones local to Seattle, please let me know.

In other news, my recent bloodwork came back looking pretty good after all. So, hooray! I do not have to do some long annoying round of endocrinology whatnot. Losing almost 25 pounds was effective for me. Given, with two skinny parents and three skinny grandparents, it’s not too surprising that skinny would be the better phenotype for me. I’m just surprised that it would be that much better. In fact, I’d like to lose a tad more (particularly if these findings hold up) but my dance card’s pretty full for the next couple of months. Practicing weight maintenance is plenty for the time being.

Somebody at work asked me how I did it. “I ate less and moved more,” I said, which was, oh, such the socially wrong thing to say. But beyond that, I’m not entirely sure how I did it; my list of rules didn’t really capture the process. I can tell you, though, that it took up an outsized chunk of mental processing power. Writers, you know how you can feel a poem or essay cooking in the back of your head, even if you’re not consciously working on it? It felt something like that. If I could run top on my own brain, I think I would have seen the weightloss process taking up a lot of my own personal CPU.

I found I had to let some other things slide while I was actively doing the diet thing. It was worth it to me because my blood had turned into an oily sludge that was threatening to kill me. Otherwise, not so much. As glad as I am that I lost that weight, I sense that it would have been exponentially more difficult if I’d been trying also to write a book, design an experiment, raise a child, or foment even a small revolution. There’s only so much passion and focus a person has to give, and dieting takes up a surprising amount of it. It’s made me wonder how much genius — particularly women’s genius — has been lost to dieting.