Stories: Costuming-Halloween 2004

I enjoy costuming though I don’t usually have time to build costumes as I would want to. This time, I have an old Halloween story to share.

Why Halloween? I was rumaging through some old notes and I wanted to eliminate some papers and transfer it to digital. I happen to like this story, which I wrote long hand and dumped in my files.

Each Halloween, my father’s office had a themed party as many do. One year, my father was one of the 102 Dalmations and he and his department paraded for fellow office workers to “Who Let the Dog Out?” Another year, they did the Addams’ Family and my father did and uncanny imitation of ‘Uncle Fester’. My father then decided in 2004 to dress as a famous and popular singer.

He spent a couple weeks putting the costume together in his free time. He didn’t do any sewing or anything, but he did go shopping and searching for the correct components. On night before the day of the event, he refrained assistance and put he costume together for the first time. I was busy at the time and didn’t realise what he was doing until he walked into the room and made me do a doubletake. The black wig was long and shagy, the black makeup was actually pretty precise for someone who doesn’t do make up and the whole outfit was amazing. He got compliments and suggestions from us and then set it up for the next day.

I didn’t see him as he went out the door to get to work. When he returned for the night, he brought with him a few interesting stories. He won in two categories: Best Original and ‘Most Like…’ in addition, a second costume he bought and loaned to a co-worker won Most Silly. Of course, I was not really surprise the giant Whoopie Cushion would win that.

My father told how he wore his costume to work and entered the building complete with gait and movements of Ozzy Osbourne. A man in the office approached my father and asked, “Was that you crossing the parking lot?” My father answered in the affirmative and the co-worker replied, “Oh Good! I was afraid old Ozzy was here to collect his debt!”

When the presentation time arrived, he entered the floor with Snow White on his arm. As he reached the center of the room, he stopped and looked at Snow White with a slightly confused look, “Uh… uh… uh… .Sharon?!” he asked, affecting the speech of his character. He caused a riot of laughter from all in the room, including his companion. My father’s Ozzy Osbourne was a hit that lasts to this day. The resemblence is a bit uncanny and each time he dresses as Ozzy for Halloween, I am taken aback.

Recently, he showed me his work ID and it sent me into howls of laughter, that I actually ended up on the floor laughing. For whatever reason, he was allowed to use his Ozzy photo as his official ID.

Do you have any silly costuming stories to share? Post a comment and let me know.

Cooking: Mini-Review of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

I like to cook. I don’t make many actual recipes, but I do like to play with a few things.

Lately, my favorite kind of cooking starts with olive oil and spices in the frying pan. Eggs? Sauteed onions (and other available veggies) and herbs with eggs scrambled on top. Rice? Sauteed onions, garlic (and other available veggies), spices and rice. Delicious. Pasta? Sauteed onions, garlic, italian spices, other available veggies, then tomato paste/sauce on top… on top of pasta. Chicken breast? Sauteed onions, garlic, spices… and then in goes the chicken breast with vinegar and other interesting spices. Yes, and I do have sauteed onions, usually with sauteed mushrooms, all on their own as a topping or addition to things like potatoes, roasts and rotisserie chickens.

Basically, if you walk in when I am sauteeing something, you never know where its gonna go and I love starting things that way.

I have a wonderful cookbook called ‘Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (Broadway Books, 9780767921220). I am nowhere near a vegetarian, but the tips and recipes offered in this cookbook are well worth the lack of meat. Actually, there are many recipes that either go extremely well with a meat dish or can be easily modified with meat. The best part of this book is how it is organized. The author chooses a vegetable type, tells you what it is, what it is good for, how to clean, store and cook with it, and then continues to give a range of recipes from basic to complex with each vegetable as a central feature. I have been introduced to a few exotic vegetables and given a load of information about veggies I thought I knew already. This book has taught me how to sautee well and how to make soups and dips and pancakes. In addition to veggies, there is also information about grains and pastas as well. The author offers tips and serving suggestions in the margins, as well as suggested substitutions. There are also beautiful full color photos of some entrees and sides as well.

My copy of the book is always out, I have a few bookmarks at favorite parts and it is starting to look well used. I used to follow a different recipe for pancakes, but once I tried the suggested recipe, I will never go to another. They are delicious as all get-out. When I have a random ingredient and I am wondering what to do with it, I will look it up in this book and more often than not get an inspiration from the preparation section if not an actual recipe I can use at the moment.

If you like cooking and don’t want to look through a hundred different books for tips, tricks and recipes, this book would be an excellent resource for cooking, cleaning, preparing, and storing fruits, vegetables, grains, breads, cereals and condiments of all makes and kinds. When they say Cooking for Everyone, I do believe they really mean it.

Commentary on an Article on FastCompany.com: Fast Analysis: Data Consumption Surpasses Voice Calling by U.S. Cell Users

NOTE: This was supposed to post a while ago. For some reason it never uploaded so it may be a little aged.

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There’s a subtle, but potentially hugely important, change happening in cell phone use in the U.S.: For 2009 figures, the amount of digital data sent over cell phone networks surpasses voice traffic for the first time. The future has arrived.

~ Fast Analysis: Data Consumption Surpasses Voice Calling by U.S. Cell Users by Kit Eaton

This thrills me beyond explanation. I have always had a hard time using phones because I have a hard time hearing. Finding out that many other people also use mostly data makes me feel justified when I insist that people text message me.

The U.S. has finally caught up with the SMS trend, many years after it exploded across Europe, and CTIA data shows that the number of text messages sent by the average U.S. user leaped 50% in 2009 from the previous year.

I never understood why text messaging of any sort took so long to take off in the US. From the minute I heard the term “SMS” from my friends in foreign countries, I wanted to be right on that train. It took until the age of Twitter to make it a reality here. How interesting.

And remember that by far the greater number of phones still in use on these networks aren’t the data-munching smartphones like iPhones or Android devices–they’re the old-style dumbphones, which may be capable of limited Net browsing and picture messaging, but which still serve the primary task of phone calling and SMSing.

Where I am at, I would not have believed this if I was told it vocally. I use a dumbphone and about half the people I talk to do so as well, but the other half is all smartphone. I personally use an ancient bar dumbphone that is pay-as-you-go everything. Nearly everyone in my office is moving to smartphones if they are the least tech savvy. I am going to follow that trend soon since I have begun texting and communicating more and more in the last few months. I am turning green with envy to get a smartphone with apps… but at the moment I will be content knowing that the dumbphones are being used just as much as I would hope they would be.

And when that happens, something odd will happen to the cellphone providers themselves–they’ll be relegated to merely being vanilla pipes over which your lovely smartphone data flows.

Aren’t they already? LOL thanks Kit Eaton, this was a fun article for me.

Crafting: Needle Felting Post

I had a most amazing Sunday. I spent it at Kinokuniya at Bryant Park on the 2nd floor learning dry felting from Carol Cypher.

I met Carol previously also at Kinokuniya when she was teaching beading and I made a wonderful bracelet using Japanese Cube Glass Beads in the color of blue, green and purple. I will have to link to it since I don’t want to Carol to lose her bandwidth because of me so please find it here: http://carolcypher.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/cubebeadbracelets.jpg.

Anyway, this time we learned needle felting where you take a ball of roving roll it into a tight ball and stab it repeatedly with a special needle. It is very therapeutic especially if you have a bad day already.

Anyway, I did a whole write up at my crafting blog: http://nscr-crafting.blogspot.com I hope you check it out and comment! It was fun and I would love to do more!

[EDIT: After my hack on Tuesday, I fixed this post to be correct.]

Food Talk: Chicken, Rice and Veggies

I have mentioned in several places that I have interests that are wide and varying. Well here is another new type of post. Food.

I like to cook, I don’t like my current kitchen, this keeps me from cooking. However, I have recently done something that I thought tasted fantastic and I thought I would share.

This is a rice dish. I previously cooked and refrigerated rice with no salt or butter. In this case it was Jasmine White Rice. Delicious all on its own. However, I need to dress it up so I usually add it to something else. My favorite additions include scrambled eggs/frittata, soups and random meats. This night, I was out of pepper and oil and out of my usual additions, however, I did have a nice bit of marinated chicken breast. To compensate for my lack of oil, I added a layer of water to my frying pan and made sure it was boiling before I started trying to cook. To be fancy, I added a bit of sea salt.

Once the water was boiling I added in the marinated chicken breast. Flipping it almost immediately and cooked it all as if I was using oil. It did an interesting thing, I released flavor into the water and then absorbed it back as the meat cooked. About the time my pan was trying to dry out, my chicken was mostly done. I added some more water, a smaller amount this time around, I just wanted to loosen the drippings. While the water was reclaiming the drippings, I took one part of my chicken breast and cubed it with my spatula, leaving a nice fillet part for a topper.

After the new water was heated and the chicken cubes were finishing cooking, I added my cold rice, some chopped garlic and a diced stalk of broccoli. The rice ate up the water rather quickly, so I added about a tablespoon more water, stirred it all around until the drippings were no longer on the bottom, but threatening to return. Then I turned off the heat and let the food settle while I retrieved a plate and sliced some sharp white cheddar and checked some random veggies I had in a boiling pot of water. The veggies were done.

I pulled the plate around, scooped a good helping of the rice and chicken onto it and placed the fillet on top. I then surrounded that chicken with the cheddar slices. While that began melting, I added the veggies around the perimeter of the plate. I wish I had thought to take a photo of it.

All in all, it was a satisfying creation and I was proud of how I didn’t add extra oil or use that tempting butter. It also made cleanup easier. Hmm, must remember that part.

I do stuff like this a lot. If I find something missing, I try to find a way to substitute. I have had a variety of interesting things. A Mexican/Italian fusion was attained by running out marinara and yogurt. I added salsa and beans to my fettuccine. It was so tasty, I did it deliberately the next few times. I have a love/hate relationship with eggs. When I want to eat eggs, but don’t want to soft/hard boil them, or deal with yolk from sunny-side up, I usually do a variation on frittata. I hit up the refrigerator searching for left overs. So far my favorite mix has been scrambled rice. Preferably with Basmati Rice.

Do you Franken-food your meals? Tell me about them!

Tags: chicken, rice, vegetables

Gundam in Tokyo

The US Team for the World Cosplay Summit (WCS) 2009 are in Tokyo and sending over pictures… I have to say I am extremely jealous of the team but I don’t think I could ever win a place in such a team. Guess I will have to get to Tokyo some other way. But LOOk at this AWESOME Gundam pic! I had nooooo idea they had such a thing out there! I wonder what other cool anime related statues they have out there….

NYC Randomness: Harmonica in the Subway

In the subway today, a man as playing an Harmonica. He was simply traveling from one place to another. He had no hat out, wasn’t asking for money. just playing.

He caught my attention, not just by sounding his instrument, but by his initial tune. “Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?” followed in medley style by “If I Only Had A Brain” then on to some other music. It was pleasant. I’d have given him money if he was on the platform.

Tags: New York, random, subway

Upgrading

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and am now playing with more options and a new theme while continuing my normal daily work.

Tags: upgrade