This was a no-brainer. I really wanted to pick something that I cooked, but this meal jumped in my head the moment I thought of what I’d made an posted about this year. This wasn’t my recipe and I wasn’t involved in the cooking. I am, of course, speaking of the OhEmGee Chop. It was so tasty. The creaminess and the wine with the shallots. Ah. I’m drooling just thinking about it now. Onto books, we go!

Divergent by Veronica Roth was the best book I’ve read this year. (Non-school book, clearly). It is the story of a girl living in a dystopian future in a destroyed city of Chicago. Society is broken up into factions and she has to choose which faction will be her faction. But, there is a war coming. She needs to make her choice and keep herself safe and alive. I really enjoyed the main character and the relationships she developed. I am looking forward to the next books in the series. This leaves us with knitting.

While this probably shouldn’t count as the best thing I’ve knitted this year for two reasons: the first one is that it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. The second reason is that it is crocheted and not knitted. This wrap is much thinner in the middle than it should be (if I’d followed the pattern and not added and deleted stitches) but that actually just makes it a nicer scarf. I really like the colors and it quite soft and warm. I’m proud of my first big crochet project.

This year I’ve done a lot of cooking, reading, knitting and socializing. I’ve almost gotten so-close-I-can-taste-it to being done with my Qualifying Project and I’ve written and handed in what my advisor called a pre-dissertation-proposal proposal. It has been a busy year!

So, what’s on deck for next year? I’m hoping to move into more budget friendly vegetarian cooking. I also am planning on knitting garments. Oh, so many garments, starting with pairs of socks. I received a bunch of sock yarn a book on how to knit socks two-at-a-time. I also have all the materials to make my first sweater. My human-beings-can-be-terrible-too-post-Christmas-book this year is going to be Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Finally, I will be starting a new feature that I’m going to call, “Seriously! The Brain!” that features the fun and interesting things I learned last semester in my neuro-anatomy class. And, obviously I plan on moving forward with my PhD. I hope everyone has a lovely and safe New Year’s Eve. I look forward to the awesome things that 2012 will have in store for us all.

This song, another Jingle Spells find, cracks me up so much. This is a live video, which is a lot of fun, taken at a performance at the Amherst Museum in Amherst, New York!

(Walking up a hill a couple of blocks North of Sunset Park.)
Me: Man, I always forget this hill goes on forever.
Sister: It is one of the bigger hills in Brooklyn. The good news is I live at the top!
Me: Yay! (pause) Wait, why am I cheering that? If you lived in the middle of the hill, we’d be home already.
Sister: Shut up. The next block over the incline is actually steeper.
Me: Huh. Good to know.

New Member: So, I was thinking about using my new skills to make presents for the women in my life I give presents to, but then I just got so excited about Secret Stitches that I finished my Christmas shopping today and got everything wrapped up so I could focus on what I’m making.

We have a lot of fun in our little group.

I really want to get into detail, but I don’t want the information to be here so that my Secret Stitch can find the information on the internet! I can’t wait to post pictures when its all done, though!

I went about my morning business and fed the cats and started to make coffee. That was when I started to worry. It is unusual for Cooper not to come see what the food is when he hears it hit the bowl. So, I go and look for him in his usual places: the big soft chair, the cat tower. And, I can’t find him. That was when I started worrying, thinking that I might have to cancel my plans and run to the cat hospital because he’d hurt himself or he was sick. So, I looked in his hiding places and I still couldn’t find him.

By this time I was starting to freak out. He hadn’t come out. He wasn’t in his hiding places. Where could he be? And, then I thought, “What if he’s not here?!” If he wasn’t here, where could he be?

Well, my apartment has a stairwell that has a door at the bottom and a door at the top and I like to shut and lock the top door when I’m in the apartment and sleeping, just for one more added layer of locks. During the day, though, that top door is open and the cats play on the stairs. Remembering this, I went and checked the stairs. As soon as I opened the door, Cooper sprinted into the apartment and threw himself down on the floor and rolled over so I could scratch his belly. What a relief, finding him. And, even though he was locked out on the staircase all night, he didn’t seem too upset by the experience. But, in future, I will have to be more careful about where the little scamp is when I’m getting ready for bed.

I picked out a pattern and some wool from Lion Brand. I’m normally not so brand-centric with my choices, but they were offering a discount through the facebook group and the pattern is a lion brand pattern and seemed really easy, so I thought for once I’d use the yarn <a href=http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/90312B.html?r=1>the pattern</a> called for instead of substituting it with something I’ve spun or found at a fiber festival or on etsy. The yarn is lovely and variegated changing from different shades of blue, red and purple.

Here’s the thing, though. When working with a new craft, you have to learn how it works and figure out its rhythms. You have to figure out how to do it right. And, not say, add stitches at the end of the row.

Or, lose stitches as you’re going.

This is okay because this is a learning project and I was intending on making this wrap for myself anyway. But, these little hiccups are why you end making things for yourself when you are just starting out. The people in your life love you, and are happy to have hand-made things. And, my Mom would probably wear, at least once, any piece I gave her. But, I don’t want her to feel obligated to wear something that looks like a five-year old made it. That’s just no fun.

So, what you have to keep in mind is that the internal pallidum is firing at random to begin with, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous. (Yes, that is a deliberate Dickens reference.) So, starting there, at the internal pallidum which is firing at random, you have inhibition going to the thalamus. It is like the internal pallidum is telling the thalamus to chill out. So, the thalamus is chilling and not really communicating with the cerebral cortex. But, if the striatum (the blue line with the arrow pointing to the internal pallidum) starts firing, it inhibits the internal pallidum, which means that the random firing in the internal pallidum slows down and it stops telling the thalamus to chill out. So, the thalamus starts getting excited and, in turn, it excites the cerebral cortex (motor areas in particular). This is called the direct loop.

I find this whole diagram fascinating, but the direct loop is particularly exciting. It is so cool that using just 2 things (inhibition and excitement) you can get so much done. And, that when you inhibit inhibition you get excitement. Our brains are so cool!

But, there is some to recommend it, for one thing the characterizations of the gods are a lot of fun. As far the descriptions of the magic tricks that are Shadow’s head-clearing nervous habit. I’ve never wanted to learn magic tricks more. I also enjoyed the constant characterization of America as being a land that is bad for gods. However, it sort of annoyed me that the gods didn’t evolve as their people did. (I might not perform blood rites, but I certainly knew where Easter comes from.) So, I guess if this were a paper and I were grading it, I’d give it a B+. It is good, but quite frankly I expected a little more from half of the team that brought us Good Omens and the author that brought us Coraline.

The recipe was simple. It required sharp cheddar cheese, pimentos, some mayo and a few spices. They were all meant to go in the food processor. The cheese mixture was then meant to be spread out on bread and the sandwiches grilled.

I added everything to my food processor and while doing so I decided to augment the recipe a little bit. Since it called for mayo and spices, I decided to substitute half of the mayo for Kraft’s chipotle mayo that I happen to have in my fridge. I decided to do half because I didn’t want the flavor of the mayo to overpower the other flavors in the cheese.

As you can see, when it is all blended together it is an intense shade of orange. I slapped some on some bread along with slices of zucchini, tossed the sandwich into the skillet and grilled the bread to a crunchy perfection. The sandwich was pretty good, but you could definitely taste the chipotle mayo. Even though I’d halved it so as to not overpower the other flavors, I completely underestimated it because it still had its volume turned way up over the other flavors. I shouldn’t have substituted it at all. The zucchini (which VT recommended) was a nice touch, though. It tasted really crunchy and didn’t cook all the way through, so with each bite you got a satisfying snap from the zucchini. It last tasted nice next to the cheddar in the cheese spread. (I usually eat zucchini with queso fresco or mozzarella, so it was nice to see that it could stand up to a harder, saltier cheese.) I would make this recipe again, but I definitely would stick to the original recipe and not try to gussy it up at all.