DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Another story from the archives… written in April 2002 about a house I no longer own (although it is back on the market for 20% more than I got when I sold it).

I was up in the “crawlspace,” which is Californian for attic, doing something wholly unethical — I was setting out fresh boxes of mouse poison, having lost too many nights’ sleep when the little rodents would fall down between the studs of our bedroom wall and spend the next 48 hours thumping and scratching (eight inches from our heads as we lay in bed) until they finally died or crawled out.

I assume they can crawl out. If not, there are at least four dessicated mouse husks, and all manner of tiny mouse graffiti, I’m sure, on the back side of the sheetrock.

Anyway, it was raining hard, and because the roof is one of the few things we have not had to repair since we moved in, I crawled around with my flashlight on the theory that if we had a leak, this was the time to find it. And of course, I did; one of the rafters was wet, although not dripping, which would have been worse as the dripping water would eventually eat through the ceiling somewhere. You don’t really have to ask me how I know this.

I called a few roofers. Most chortled derisively. Calling a roofer during a rainstorm is like trying to take a dump during halftime. Roofers were working double shifts just to respond to emergency calls, and my moistened roof beam simply did not qualify.

We finally got it fixed… just in time for the skies to dry up for the year.

A Time Magazine article on the presidential election contains a revealing inside look at the dynamics of the campaign.

[T]he war rooms of the two campaigns are organizing to quickly seize any opportunity for attack. On the first floor of the brick-and-glass office building where Bush forces are housed in Arlington, Va., a bank of TiVos captures Kerry’s every word. A team arrives at 4:30 a.m. to sift through the papers and prepare responses before the sun rises. When Kerry unleashes even the mildest broadside, the young staff members go almost giddy, and a call issues: “Attack!” Comments from Kerry in the morning papers are incorporated into Bush’s noon speeches.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just debate? Oh, that’s right; Kerry suggested the same thing already.

The Time article also contains this stunning revelation:

[E]mployees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

As Ezra Klein writes,

It’s one thing to use 9/11 in an ad or talk about your role in keeping the country safe; it’s a wholly different beast to direct a busy agency that isn’t yet fulfilling its mandate to divert resources to helping you campaign. It’s disgusting.

(Seen at AntiPixel: Dept. of Homeland Photo Ops)

(I wrote this last September, shortly after returning from Greece. While working to un-lose our luggage, I lost track of this story.)

On the west edge of Ia, a long concrete staircase descends to a port town called Amoudi. By “long” I mean there are about 220 steps. The space between individual steps is sloped too, providing nearly another step’s worth of altitude change. (Here is a picture of the steps from Ia to Amoudi, as seen from our departing ferry.)

It’s a hard walk down, and a lot more work than it seems like it should be. We broke a sweat as we hiked downhill into the late afternoon sun. It was the second time in three days that I’d stopped to rest while going down stairs on Santorini… although the other time I had a 100kg suitcase in each hand.

Our goal: a sunset dinner at one of the tavernas at water’s edge.

We arrived an hour early, warmer than we’d hoped to be and in more dire need of rehydration. Fortunately, the tavernas in Amoudi receive regular donkey-loads of the Greek beer, Mythos. Mythos is pleasantly inexpensive, which is helpful to people enjoying them in quantity.

For dinner, we used the small-plates approach that had been so successful on previous evenings; we ordered one or two mezes (appetizers) at a time, spacing the meal out over 90 minutes. European restaurants never rush diners, so we were able to enjoy a leisurely meal as the sun went down.

Hiking back up the 220 steps after sunset was, curiously, easier than the descent, due to the cooler air. Then on the way home we stopped at one of the pastry shops on the main street of Ia and inhaled a piece of baclava the size of a cantaloupe.

Overheard at a party the other night:

…so I bought a new camera at the duty-free in Abu Dhabi…

I thought, “There’s a sentence I’m unlikely to ever be able to utter except in irony.”

I heard another equally-unlikely sentence at that party, which I planned to report in this space. I thought the pair would bookend the story of my plain-vanilla existence. But I forgot the other sentence due to yet a third sentence, which I myself said and then repeated numerous times throughout the evening. It was this: “Pass the wine!”

In completely related news — related not to wine, but to unlikeliness — my wife jumped out of an airplane yesterday. Yes, on purpose.

I’m not sure she’s really landed yet. I imagine we’ll have a brightly-colored nylon suit hanging in the closet within a matter of weeks.

The first thing I have to say is that the pizza party was a big success. All five pizza recipes worked well; two were surprise standout hits.

My grand plan for stress-free preparation was only a partial success. I had decided to manage this dinner party like I manage software development projects: break down each task into small pieces, assign time estimates to each, add up the time estimates to make a schedule, then work backwards from the due date to ensure that everything is finished when it is needed.

But just like most of my software development projects, this took about 20% longer than we figured.

The problem was that the schedule didn’t account for everything we had to get done. Interim cleanup is one example: had we not washed any dishes during the prep, the kitchen would have become unworkable, with every surface covered in stacks of used knives, cutting boards, bowls, saute pans, etc. We didn’t allow time for cleaning dishes, but it had to get done.

Otherwise, things ran pretty smoothly. Specifically, having a schedule for the ovens was a big help; the oven-roasted toppings were done on time, and the pizza stones had time to come up to temperature without delaying dinner.

The dough, mixed previously, had to be scaled before rising. This requires a dough scraper, a kitchen scale, a sheet pan, parchment paper, spray oil, white flour, semolina flour, water spritzer, counter space, and a clean plastic garbage bag. Each of the dough balls is rolled tightly and placed on the parchment (sprayed with oil, dusted with semolina), which sits on a sheetpan, which goes into a plastic bag that is misted inside with water. There the dough sits for two hours to rise. During this time, the gluten relaxes to such a great degree that shaping the pizza crusts takes only a few easy tugs.

I didn’t take any other photos of the prep — another task we didn’t put into the schedule was “shoot pictures (10 minutes).”

We had only one recipe mishap. The “Manchu Spicy Garlic Chicken” pizza called for carmelized onions sauteed with a brown sugar and vinegar glaze. The glaze, after cooling for 45 minutes, turned brittle. When it came time to spread the onions on the dough, I was surprised to pick up a rigid chunk of what was essentially carmelized onion candy. At first I began crumbling it onto the pizza, but then I thought better and tossed it in the trash. We served the pizza without onions, and nobody missed them.

Sullivan Street Potato Pizza, made with Yukon Gold potatoes and sweet yellow onions, was one of the group favorites. The recipe (as was noted previously) is from Artisan Baking. Because it’s a (vegan) cheeseless pizza, it can be easily served at room temperature, which is useful for pacing a five-pie meal with the limitations of a two-oven kitchen.

Smoked salmon pizza with creme fraiche, red onion, corn, and mint, was the bold experiment of the evening, and it turned out wonderfully. (It looks a little funky, but it tasted great.) We invented our own process for this pizza, based on a Wolfgang Puck recipe and a description of the salmon/corn/mint combination in an old food-section article in the newspaper. The individual flavors are surprisingly complementary. This was my personal favorite.

Within this five-pie feast I was running a dough experiment; the second batch had barely been kneaded, in an effort to make a crunchier crust. The results were clear: the fully kneaded dough was superior. The experiment didn’t yield a crunchy crust, but an overly-chewy one.

We closed the meal with Millenium Midnight Mousse Cake, which most guests ate with whipped cream. I was entertained by this because the pie itself is self-consciously vegan (made with tofu rather than butter/cream/eggs).

And then later I knocked back a tablespoon of fresh-ground flax meal in a shot of orange juice, a little fiber treat for my overwrought intestines. Good luck with that cheese, boys!