Poked

"If I could call one last truce, we've given it all we've got. If we've got nothing left, this could be worth remembering with a smile upon my face." -- Brandi Carlile

Today was a rainy, snowy, rainy, snowy day in New York City. I love the rain and I love the snow, but the slippery sidewalks and unpredictable precipitation meant that two of my pet peeves monopolized the streets and eliminated any opportunity to enjoy the weather.

One of the annoyances -- slow-moving pedestrians who occupy most of the sidewalk and force me to break my stride -- has been discussed at length here. The other, luckily, only appears a few times a year: people who use umbrellas during a snowstorm. ('Snow' implies the solid form of water, people; suck it up and brush it off before it melts.)

It was snowing as I walked to the subway this morning -- and we're talking gorgeous, serene snow here, with big fat flakes that caught prettily in my hair as I walked. Of course, though, I was blessed with a double-whammy two blocks from the station: a large slow-moving man with an even larger umbrella. I couldn't pass him because the sidewalk was too narrow and too poorly shoveled, I couldn't even see beyond him because of the vastness of his umbrella, and I couldn't yell at him to move because our shared path was too icy to warrant it. Thus, I shuffled along behind him, growing increasingly more frustrated with every stunted step.

We reached the steps up to the subway platform and he closed his umbrella. However, instead of carrying it in front of him like a civilized person, he held it parallel to the ground with the sharp pointed end facing me. He then decided to swing his arms wildly as he climbed the stairs, and said umbrella point stabbed me squarely in the left thigh.

"Excuse me!" I yelled. He turned his head a fraction, pretended not to hear me, swung his arm again, missed me by inches. "EXCUSE ME!" I yelled again, and he turned and glared at me. "Watch the umbrella!"

He rolled his eyes and continued to mount the stairs even more slowly than before. He then "accidentally" misplaced his Metrocard as I waited to swipe through the turnstile after him, miraculously located it when I switched to a different turnstile, half-sprinted to ensure that he was in front of me as I climbed the second set of stairs to the platform, and stole the corner seat I was eyeing practically out from under me.

By the time I exited the subway near my office, the snow had turned to rain.

Keep Out

"There's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of your time." -- from Avenue Q

I'm sure there are a ton of ordinary little miracles happening around me lately that I can write about. I know that tons of stuff has happened to me that you'd love to hear and I've made lots of little observations you'd appreciate me sharing. But you know what? Lately, nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in my life has struck me as quirky and exciting enough to warrant a blog entry. Coincidentally, the weather around here has plummeted and is currently hovering around 0F, which reminds me of Dante's assertion that hell gets colder as you descend farther into it.

I owe this blog something, though, so I'm stealing other people's words to replace my own. I stumbled across 8tracks.com recently, a site which allows you to upload mp3s, create a playlist, and embed it on your website. So if you're sitting around at home this weekend trying desperately to keep warm, give this one a play. The track list is below the applet.



1. Into the Sun -- Locksley
2. Creep (Radiohead cover) -- Brandi Carlile
3. I Melt With You -- Saves The Day
4. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead -- Stars
5. Wonderwall -- Paul Anka
6. Burn -- Ray LaMontagne
7. You Belong With Me -- Taylor Swift
8. Hallelujah -- Gavin DeGraw

Eruption

"And suddenly, the whole world exploded." -- from Jersey Boys

Sorry about my absence; it's been a busy, fretful fortnight. I spent many long nights performing data abstraction, but I met a seemingly impossible deadline and have two new credentials to show for it. I was ill for two days last week, which I'm blaming on dehydration. I'm also rereading Jane Eyre and have written several drafts of a blog post in an effort to isolate my feelings about it, but it's still a work in progress.

In the meantime, here's a recipe for miniature cheesecakes that I invented tonight. The quantities and methodology don't differ too much from my Polish grandma's old recipe (save for lots of ingredient swaps and the wholly Italian use of ricotta), but for some odd inexplicable reason, these babies puffed up like muffins in the oven! It was all for the best, though -- I chilled the tray after I pulled it out, which caused the puffs to collapse upon themselves in superdense black holes of deliciousness. I either didn't beat the filling long enough or overfilled the trays, but for the first time in a long time, I have no intention of trying to rectify the culinary mistake.

Miniature Cheesecakes

Crust:
3/4 cup crushed Oreos
2 tbsp melted butter

Filling:
½ cup cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
½ cup ricotta cheese
½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Food-process Oreos and butter until a crumbly paste forms, then press into the bottoms of two lined miniature muffin trays. (One regular muffin tray or half a dozen small ramekins will probably work as well -- just add ten minutes to the baking time.) Mix filling ingredients until smooth, then spoon filling into trays within 1/4 inch of the top. Bake for fifteen minutes or until the filling starts to brown. Chill before serving. They'll look hideous but they'll taste delicious.

Four on the Fourth

"I wander lost in yesterday, wanting to fly but scared to try. But... if someone like you found someone like me, then suddenly nothing would ever be the same." -- from Jekyll & Hyde

Back in the day, I wrote three blog entries likening the game of chess to the game of love and explained how my playing styles in both games are shockingly similar. In the last of my three posts, I pinpointed the endgame as one of the weaker parts of my chessplay and likened my inability to achieve checkmate to my astonishing inability to seal a romantic deal. Anyway, after umpteen more failed exchanges with a favored opponent, I realized that the sense of frustration I was enduring felt EXACTLY like trying to win a rook-and-pawn endgame under time pressure with the fifty-move mark looming.

"If I see her standing there alone at the train station three stops from her home, I have half a mind to say what I'm thinking. Anyway, I don't know. I don't know." -- Sufjan Stevens

In accordance with the MTA's ridiculous new plans for beating their deficit, the W train is slowly being phased out of service and the Q line is being extended. Thus, I rode a Q into Queens today. It was an odd, odd feeling.

"'Would you like me to do it now?' asked Snape, his voice heavy with irony. 'Or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?'" -- J.K. Rowling

I received The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling's collection of fables "from the world of Harry Potter," as a gift and read it through in twenty minutes. Yeah, it was interesting and yeah, I love the fact that the title page states that the book was "translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger with extensive commentary by Albus Dumbledore," but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about the complete product. J.K. Rowling killed my favorite character in a really crappy way in the seventh book and nothing has really mattered too much since. Could it be that I'm finally starting to outgrow the Potterverse?

"He don't eat no meat? What you mean he DON'T EAT NO MEAT?! Oh, that's okay. That's okay. I make lamb. Come." -- Aunt Voula, from My Big Fat Greek Wedding

For a quick, easy, and delicious lamb marinade, whisk together 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/8 cup extra-virgin olive oil (or, for an extra kick, an infused olive oil from O&Co), six sliced-up cloves of garlic, half a chopped-up large white onion, 1 tsp dried or 2 tbsp fresh parsley, 1 tsp dried oregano or rosemary, pinch of salt, pinch of pepper. Throw all the ingredients into a large Ziplock bag, shake it up, then throw in 4-8 eight lamb chops, shake it up again, and place the bag flat in the fridge for at least four hours. Grill the chops without brushing off the seasonings. Alternatively, bake the contents of the bag (minus the bag itself, of course) for 30 minutes (which will yield medium-well chops) at 400 degrees. Let chops rest for ten minutes before serving.

Fifty Percent

"I don't pick out his ties or expect his tomorrows, but I feel when he's in my arms he's where he wants to be. We have no memories bittersweet with time, and I doubt if he'll spend New Year's Eve with me." -- Helen Reddy

Happy 2009 all. In direct opposition to this blog's theme -- my quest to find and capture extraordinary moments in ordinary life -- I'm spending my New Year's Eve in the most ordinary way possible. I didn't spend my entire day planning and preening and anticipating the evening; I spent the entire day in clinic trying to meet a data deadline. I'm not dressed to kill with my lips painted red and my curls cascading down my back; I'm wearing a tank top, pajama pants, and fuzzy socks, with my face free of makeup and my hair pulled into a ponytail. I'm not socializing with adored friends or attractive strangers; I'm channel-surfing between all three parts of That's Entertainment! and The Twilight Zone. I'm not standing or dancing or bursting with excited energy; I'm on the couch under a blanket and I just woke up from a little nap. I'm not enjoying a top-shelf open bar or even a keg in someone's living room; I'm swigging Moet & Chandon White Star right out of the bottle. I didn't even cook today, not even once; I'm snacking on Costco's hors d'oeuvres and ordered a pizza for dinner.

It's a painfully ordinary and slightly pathetic evening, but honestly, the thought of spending New Year's Eve alone on my couch felt more appealing than accepting any invitation I received in or around New York City. I've been in a bit of a funk lately; I've had a loud and stressful few weeks and desperately longed for a little time to think and decompress. And so far, it's been lovely. The one thing that could have made my evening more fulfilling would have been a handsome and quirky fellow to share my couch and kiss me at midnight, but that would have put a serious dent in the blessed ordinariness of my situation.

On a related note, what should my New Year's resolution be?

Christmas Wrapping

"When what, to my wondering eyes did appear? In the line was that guy I've been chasing all year! Suddenly we laughed and laughed, caught on to what was happening. That Christmas magic brought this tale to a very happy ending." -- The Waitresses

Happy Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and Festivus to all of you! I'm in the middle of another lovely, hectic holiday, so this will be a short post. (Luckily, I love hectic Christmases most of all.)

Perhaps as karmic punishment for the fact that I haven't actually done most of my Christmas shopping yet, I didn't get the one thing I really wanted for Christmas. I'm probably closer than I've ever been to that gift, though... but of course, I'm the worst judge in the world when it comes to these things. In any case, I hope all your wishes came true this holiday season!

And now I'm off to cook Christmas dinner... my second of three Christmas dinners. Peace!

Fifteen Milliseconds of Fame

"I'm a shimmering glowing star in the cinema firmament!" -- from Singin' in the Rain

My ass -- and the side of my face -- were on the five o'clock news today.

From Literatura Mundane

Click to enlarge... if you must.

Pizzelles

I put a curse on that plane. My sister is on that plane. I put a curse on that plane that it's gonna explode, burn on fire and fall into the sea. Fifty years ago, she stole a man from me. S'aprice l'uomo! Today she tells me that she never loved him, that she took him to be strong on me. Now she's going back to Sicily. Di returne Sicilia! I cursed her that the green Atlantic water should swallow her up! -- from Moonstruck



I love gifting baked goods because food makes me happy and I can't think of a better present for someone I love than using my time, my talents, and a few good ingredients to share that happiness. My culinary gift of choice during the holiday season is a package of pizzelles, a type of holiday cookie that, like me, originated in the Italian region of Abruzzi. The English translation of the word pizzelle is literally "flat, round, and small," which is a perfect physical description of the cookie. They're light, they're buttery, they're beautiful to look at, and because they're made two at a time using a special iron press, they represent a pretty significant time commitment. It takes a full afternoon or evening to make enough pizzelles to feed a decent number of people -- my normal recipe makes about eighty, I usually double it or triple it for Christmas, and each pizzelle needs to be spooned onto the iron individually and cooked for about a minute.




Thus, good company is mandatory on pizzelle day. I would sit with my grandmother as she made pizzelles every year until I was twelve, then she passed along her recipe to me and, until her death a year and a half ago, she sat with me whenever I decided to make them. She'd tell stories about the good ol' days, pass along tips for perfect pizzelle technique, describe evenings spent sitting with her own mother making pizzelles and having the same sorts of conversations. Last year was my first holiday season without her, but dwong and my cousin TD came over a few days before Christmas to keep me company as I worked the pizzelle iron. This year, I made them on a whim late on a Thursday night, so with no one around to share the experience, I created my own companions by watching Moonstruck on DVD as I baked.



Like my technique, I inherited my pizzelle iron from my grandmother. It's an electric iron, close to forty years old, and it makes pizzelles with a snowflake pattern on one side and a woven pattern on the other. We have a few earlier models around (which require the baker to stand over an open flame flipping cast-iron plates for Lord knows how long) and a few more modern models around (which are slimmer and lighter and don't run the risk of burns or electrocution), but I still end up using the same ancient electric iron every year. The pizzelle iron itself actually strengthens the cookie's ties to love and family -- irons are meticulously cared for and passed down for generations, and those open-fire irons I mentioned earlier were often custom-wrought to imprint the family crest onto every cookie.


Since those elaborate irons have fallen out of use, people must often rely on taste to identify a pizzelle's family of origin. And you wouldn't believe it, but every baker makes pizzelles so differently that this is more than enough of a cue. My recipe -- which also belonged to my grandmother before me -- makes crisp and lemony pizzelles. My aunt's pizzelles are paper-thin with a touch of orange zest, one paisano makes them softer with anisette, another uses almond extract, another aunt works cocoa powder into her batter. I think my recipe blows all of them out of the water -- and most people who try it seem to agree with me -- but, unfortunately, I won't be sharing it with you today. Typing out a recipe and posting it on the internet seems to defy the spirit of la famiglia needed to successfully make pizzelles -- and believe me, that's half the wonder of it all. If you come to visit me, though, I'll make you a cappuccino, pull up a chair, tell you a few stories about the good ol' days, and happily show you how it's done.

City of Strangers

"I'm just a someone in an old museum. I'm far away from home as someone can go, but the beauty is I still meet people I know. Hello!" -- from The Light in the Piazza

Not long after I started work at my new job and began commuting to clinic every day, I noticed that some of the faceless straphangers in the subway system started to look familiar after a while. After a couple of months (and because I don't caffeinate myself until after I get to work, yes, it DID take that long), I realized that I must share a commuting route with them. We're "the regulars" -- if I catch all the right trains at all the right times, I can guarantee that I'll share a friendly nod with at least one of them along the way. There's the lady with the pig-nose and the awesome shoe collection, the gent who prefers to ride the first car of the train and might be cute if he wasn't only about 5'1", the woman who crochets a lot more slowly than I do, the impossibly tall goddess who was definitely a model in a past life, the two men with spackle-splattered boots and tool belts who would definitely be cute if they weren't such dirtbags. They're my familiar faces in a city of strangers, and I have no idea who they are.

Lately, the last leg of my morning journey has been graced with a new familiar face. He's loud and he wears his arm in a sling, and every time I see him, he loudly announces to half of Manhattan that he's wearing his arm in a sling. He announces it when he plants himself between me and the platform edge even though I got there first, he announces it when he shoves me out of the way to get on the train before I do, he announces it when he wedges his way onto said train while people are still trying to exit it, he announces it when he jostles old ladies and small children and tired commuters to find a generously proportioned place to stand, he announces it when he's not given enough room around the handrail to wrap his entire free arm around it.

Today, after he and I exchanged our usual greeting -- he yelled at me and shoved me out of the way and I cursed him out in Italian under my breath -- I entered the train behind him. A few moments before we pulled into my stop, he oh-so-quietly slipped his arm out of the sling, held his briefcase with it as he used his healthy arm to rummage around for a tissue, blew his nose, and oh-so-quietly slipped his arm back into the sling. Sad; I thought I knew him.

Secret Identity

"I'm not your princess. This ain't a fairy tale." -- Taylor Swift

For those of us who conduct cancer research, all roads lead to ASCO -- the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. For one weekend a year, the best cancer scholars in the world come together to listen, learn, and, if they're lucky, present their most cutting-edge research to their peers. And because I work with a few pretty influential oncologists, I'm lucky enough to have a hand in some of it.

Trouble is, abstracts are due six months before ASCO actually occurs. June minus six months, carry the one, equals three Tuesdays from now. And since our protocols need to be perfect and the abstract first authors need their data well in advance of that deadline, I've been really, really busy lately.

I have six things due at noon on Monday, so Friday was a long, hectic day. I was so busy that I didn't have time to go home between work and the Archimedes Society launch event, a super-swanky cocktail party being thrown by my alma mater that evening. Thus, I slipped into my black cocktail dress while queries were executing, brushed on eyeliner while brainstorming ways of describing genetics at an eighth-grade reading level, toed around under my desk for my suede heels while overwriting files, and pinned up my hair while receiving emails from my PIs about last-minute changes.

I was ready to go by 6:00, but pre-party plans never materialized. Thus, I worked until 8, dressed to the nines and feeling sexier than I have in a very long time, surrounded by data and printouts and protocol disks and biohazard bags filled with tubes. Forget my usual work personas of The Mad Scientist and The Researcher -- that night, I was Diana Prince and Wonder Woman, Professor Jones and Indy, Bruce Wayne and Batman. I was Cinderella in the fairy gown scrubbing down one last fireplace brick before running off to the ball, and it made me feel incredibly powerful. For a few hours I was a geeky clinician with a glamorous secret identity and, for a few hours after that, I was a glamorous engineer with a geeky secret identity. Then, for a night and a day after that, I was able to unwind as a mere woman and find comfort in the eyes, arms, and presence of some of the people who know me better than anyone else. That may have been the best part of all.