Socked with snow

Surprise, that scant inch overnight plus two in the daytime... more like six plus by noon.  Peak at rush hour, of course.  Bring back the below zero.  Oh wait, that happens today too.  Welcome to Minnesota. 

I was listening to a podcaster from Chicago talking about the unusual just below zero temps.  Unfortunately, for us it's below -15 that's been freaking endless.  People's cars start in their garage, they go to work, car sits in outdoor lot, and whammo- it won't start.   Makes for fun times. 

The lightrail is better but understaffed from sick calls and trains get stuck and block other trains from mechanical problems.  Buses, luck be with you, too.  Siberia has it worse, I keep reminding myself...

So, The Virgins was underwhelming, though I did finish it.  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was due and I could not get into it again.  I'm bad at rereading light material, and the tech references - digital watch as state of the art- are very dated now. 

I'm trying a new workout schedule, mostly based on the Furman FIRST 3-2 plan for an intermediate 5k.  Interval run, tempo run, long run, and two cross training days.  Biking and swimming, with skiing and snow shoveling to vaguely train towards a sprint triathlon.  But more focused on upping my base running pace a little.  I'm so slow I'm a little off their pace chart...  Hope to get on it.  We'll see.  This first couple weeks is to shake off the cobwebs and see if I can handle the workload.  It's a little easier to get to the gym with no dog clock, so we'll see...

So cold

It's wearing everybody down.  The streets and gas stations were full yesterday with everyone rushing around to get ready for the next plunge well below zero, after only two days of partial- warmer but biting wind- relief.

The CSA farm is still keeping me cooking new things.  For warmth, I roasted carrots, parsnips, and cauliflower with olive oil, garlic and thyme last night and this morning made soy honey pumpkin to go with the chicken I needed to finish.  Beet meze, beet quinoa salad and borscht are all in the fridge with carrot ginger soup.  I still have a celery root, cabbage, and parsnips to eat before the next pickup.  May have to make something for the party of a coworker who is moving to Florida- good timing on her part.

I'm taking swimming classes at the Y to further my triathlon goal and so far it's fun and productive.  The age range is broad and the teacher is skilled but mellow.  My motivation to walk ten blocks to the gym after work to practice is nonexistent, the gym is full of January members, and there's no way I'm running outside at night.  I've managed to do some yoga and Nordic tracking, with running and skiing warmer weekends, but it's the blah season.

The GF got Netflicks and we started watching "Orange Is the New Black," which is surprisingly watchable and addictive.  I tend to dislike many of the shows and movies that get raved about as great lesbian or LGBTQAYaYa treats, but once in a while...

Teen werewolf movie "Jack and Diane" not so much.  Hated the werewolfy interludes, tepid, treacly dyke drama, and gratuitous college rape video scene.  Yeah. 

"Making the Boys," a doco about Boys in the Band, was interesting, with footage I'd never seen of gay Hollywood in the 60s and interviews with a range of people that had informative stuff to say that was not duplicative of the many films made about the Stonewall era.  I hadn't realized how many of the original cast died not long after the movie came out, in the early first waves of the AIDS epidemic.

I'm reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which was good enough in the first 50 pages to make me buy it when the library ebook came due.  It just got nominated for a PKDick award and has interesting things about gender and occupations, in a space opera-y setting.  So far the genderfrack aspects seem tacked on and showy, but I'm not that far in.

Also The Lovers, which I read about in the NYT Book Review and am bored with.  I reread After Delores by Sarah Schulman in a new Arsenal Pulp Press edition and enjoyed it and the new preface by her, classic Schulman incisiveness.  I just found two bona fide new lesbian novels that look promising, off the shelf, we'll see.  Have to save them for a reading drought moment...

Actual writing work has been occuring, nothing to write home about but better than the deep freeze of December.  Thoughts stirring again.  A couple of my CW classmates have things coming out- novels and a short story in Asimov's this month for Domenica Phetteplace.  Yay.  The latest installment of the Nightshifted series for Cassie Alexander, although it sounds like it's ending.  Fun reads, especially if you like actual medical knowledge in your supernatural romance...  Inspiring me to get going.

Still sad

I had to put Dusty to sleep last week after her back legs finally stopped working.  It was very cold and snowing and I figured that was coming on one of those types of days.  She did enjoy eating snow and patches of sun, but little else, in the last month or so.

She could not walk well in even five inches of snow, and this made her very sad as a snow-loving dog from Hibbing, MN.  Even when shivering, she refused to wear a coat to supplement her thick Shepherd mix fur.  But she kept up a good front to the end, worried more about failing me than her own pain, it seemed.  A great dog, and my first.

Fox sounds

The mystery I'm reading prompted me to look up just how a fox sounds.  Of course the search pulled up my niece's favorite video...  Tosch tosch tosch tosch tosch tosch tosch...

The hunting and dog interaction videos are cool too, but the scream, wow.  My dog was very upset when I played those...

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/what-sound-does-fox-make

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Turnips

I'm browsing recipes this morning, while listening to Teenage Kicks on The Current, of course.  David Bowie turns 67 on Wednesday, she tells me, which makes me feel very old.  I'm having flashbacks of staying up late to try and tape videos (DC did not get MTV or any cable til I was gone, so no going to friend's houses for that).

Turnip tart, with variations from Stilton to goat cheese to vegan cream to simple carameized turnips, is looking like the best bet.  I used Daikon radishes, cabbage, and turnips in a kim chi vermicelli bowl for breakfast.  Golden beets will go part to juice and likely borscht, but maybe I can find something

new on the internets...

Boiling diced turnips in a little water flavored with soy sauce and honey is surprisingly good.  The CSA is keeping things interesting this winter, though each biweekly box feels a bit overwhelming at first, even split between 2-3 households.

We're having one and a half days of 20 degrees between deep freezes, so I'm shopping and maintaining the car, then holing up to write and finish watching a bad British sitcom before it's due.  Went skiing (cross country) on New Year's Day and fought finger frostbite half the time, though it was stil fun.  Not as crowded...

I did indeed finish Reamde in 2013, and enjoyed it to the end.  Neil Stephenson's other books that I read have lost me before or at the 3/4 mark, but this stayed interesting.  I'm now working.on a Sarah Schulman reprint, After Delores, and a gory Icelandic mystery.  Then I think the Tapir book is next.  A little shot of science in mid-winter goes a long way...  Anyway, happy new year and stay warm and dry if you can...