Post-Thanksgiving Tragedy

So it was a beautiful 75-degree Saturday in Tucson, and I decided to go for a swim. Yes, of course, you're all jealous. Well, on this gorgeous swim, I had forgotten to take my cell phone out of the pocket of my swim trunks. Hence, no more phone.

I'd elaborate, but the truth is pretty clear. Instead of entering into a new contract or buying a $300 phone, I decided to pawn a replica of my old phone off eBay for $35. We'll see how this works, as I usually don't buy anything off eBay. Send me your best wishes!

Austria-Hungary Returns...sort of

If you hate American media for its bias, don't fret. Our solution is a simple one. Enlist another news source to present the news from the opposite biased point of view. At least then there's more information in the public marketplace, and people are free to make their own decisions. Freedom of speech allows, no, encourages slanted fearmongering propaganda. That way, people are forced to use their brains to sift through all the garbage, and they don't turn into vegetables. Good idea!

Still not convinced? Then take the case of Budapest, Hungary. On Thursday, the mayor of a Budapest district came up with an entirely original way of dealing with the biased media. You'll have to read it to believe it.

Oh, how I'd love to see Tucker Carlson upstaged by some 10-year-old paper boy, or a right prim gentleman named Clyde. Vive Budapest!

The Baker

So this weekend, I decided to have one big cooking day. Not only did I make myself chicken, broccoli, and angel hair stir fry with Soyaki (easily the best sauce ever invented - Thanks Tracy - sold at Trader Joes), but I baked an apple crisp, some brownies, apple bread, and I also made homemade apple cider.

Although, to be fair, the apple bread was an apple muffin recipe that I had to finagle. The cooking times and temperatures were a bit varied, so I'm not sure exactly how I did it, but I'll have to try again and make that alteration.

And the cider, well, it wasn't really that I made cider. Nor did I really make anything like it at all. But I had a whole bunch of apple peels left after the crisp and the bread, and I didn't just want to throw them out. So I boiled them in water with cinnamon (is adding cinnamon to boiling water ok?) and then poured out the liquid after 30 minutes or so to make a sort of apple tea. Seeing as how I didn't measure the liquid to the peels, it was kind of watered down, but it did leave that nice brown speckled trail in the glass when I took the last sip.

It's delicious having stores of food around the apartment, although I think it undoes all the running I do with the basketball team every day. Oh well. If anyone has a good cider or apple bread recipe, please do send it along.

Woohoo Arizona!

Wow, in what appears to be a stodgy conservative state, Arizona voters passed many liberal propositions in the elections. Way to go, us!

We have followed in the footsteps of New York and New Jersey by outlawing smoking inside in public places. This is the best news since it passed in New York. No longer will we have to choose between taking a half hour shower before bed and spending an hour the following day washing the smoke out of our sheets.

There's other news, too, but I'm sure you can read a better report elsewhere.

Ban that smoking! Go AZ!

~GM

Coach Hakim

Well, I've begun coaching basketball for the first time in my life. Admittedly, I have some idea of what I'm doing, as I played organized basketball for seven years (up through eighth grade and then again in 12th), but I still find it confusing to know exactly what to do. Today was our first day, so we ran a lot, then practiced footwork, bounce passing, chest passing, defensive posture, the triple-threat position, layups, dribbling, and foul shots. Yeah, a lot of stuff. I want to get into playing and teaching defenses, but how can I do that if my kids don't know how to dribble or throw a pass? And won't they get bored (they will) if we keep stressing only fundamentals?

I am extremely excited for the season to start, and for the opportunity to completely blunder my strategies at no risk since they're mostly 5th and 6th graders. Sometimes today I felt like too nice of a coach, but then again, they're 10 and 11. I'm not going to yell at them to run. Plus, I ran with them the entire practice! Every sprint! Every lap! Ugh... I hope it all works out well.

We're gonna play the Princeton offense and the Temple defense, with a smattering of the Arkansas transition game. Well, we'll at least try. At least I have one of those neat clipboards that's also a whiteboard with a basketball court printed on it. I love it! Give me your vote of confidence!

In other news, there was a contest on Weekend Edition the other week from Will Shortz. Compose a sentence in which the last two letters of a word become the first two letters of the following word each time. So I submitted:

Another erudite teacher eradicates essential alternative venture; reason: one neo-conservative vendetta.

Which I thought was pretty clever, and semantically fluent, if not stunning. But he didn't even read it on the air! So much for NPR's liberal bias. The winner was:

Emma made delectable lemonade despite terrible lemons.

Which I thought was cute, but not nearly as creative, and not much better than my second entry:

Wanted: edible lentils.

Oh well, maybe a victory on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me is all I'm destined for. And it would be good enough.

~GM