The holiday was good. The trip was successful. I did not wreck the car despite hitting a whiteout somewhere in New York. (I would tell you where, except the signs were covered in snow, and all I got was that we were 11 miles to somewhere at one particularly scary point. But we sort of are all the time, I suppose.)  The family cat slept through most of the trip in her tranquilized haze only mewling a few protests when I opened the window at tollbooths. When we arrived at the final destination around 3am, I realized that the past 14 hours had been the scariest of my life. It was the longest I’ve been behind the wheel, and today I pretty much feel like I could drive anywhere and through anything. But I don’t want to anytime soon.

Since I made the wise decision to clean everything before we left we came home to a relaxed weekend with nothing to do but restock at the grocery store. I’ve started cooking again this week and it’s wonderful not having anywhere I have to be after work and being able to make things the way I want them and not as prepared by grumpy greasy spoon cooks. Monday night I made stuffed red peppers, and last night I made my signature meatloaf. I wasn’t entirely pleased with how it turned out last night (I forgot to account for sausage shrinkage – ahem), but I must say that it made for a darned fine sandwich for lunch today. I’m proud enough of it that I will provide some actual content here by way of my recipe:

Eliza’s Extra-Hot Meatloaf

Mix ground beef and ground hot Italian sausage (in whatever combination you like, keep in mind that the sausage will shrink up more though) with:

• Diced red onion
• eggs
• Sriracha
• Packet of onion and mushroom soup mix
• Your favorite crushed pepper blend

Add to this mixture enough breadcrumbs (I like the Italian blend crumbs) to make it all stick together in a pre-cooked meatloaf-esue form. Shape into loaf in a baking dish. I usually go with a duck or a cat shape for the shock value, but do whatever feels right. Mom makes heart shaped “meatloves”. Cover and bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes. Uncover for the last ten or until nice and dark on the top.

You see I haven’t included measurements. This is due to having to adjust for different numbers of servings and learning how to just tell by how it feels when mixing. Last night I made enough for 2 +leftover sandwiches and I used 2 eggs and not all of the beef was defrosted so I put some back in the fridge to use for something tonight. Not very professional. My point is though that this meatloaf has flavor, or as D put it, “doesn’t taste like bread” so I don’t think you can really go wrong with any combination of these ingredients.

And make enough for sandwiches!

Today I’ve found myself in one of those awesome dilemmas that one really oughtn’t complain about: My signed (!!!) copy of Dr. Phil Plait’s Death from the Skies! arrived just in time for my Netflix’d Doctor Who Series 4 discs to show up.  Something tells me that Dr. Plait would understand perfectly if I delved right into some Whovian goodness with my sweetie and got those most sought after discs back in rotation for all the other fans too. Widely overlapping circles and all!

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Posted by eliza on December 3rd, 2008 :: Filed under Personal
Tags :: books, Doctor Who, kittenloaf, nsfv, recipies

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Vacation starts in 45 minutes! One of my coworkers who already left for the day called in a few minutes ago to warn us that the roads are getting really slick and traffic is already a mess. Yikes!

Tomorrow morning we’re loading up Mom and Catdog’s stuff and U-Haulin’ it 9+ hours NE to their new digs in Vermont. D is driving the truck with Catdog as a passenger and I’m following in his car with Mom and a tranquilized Squeee. I sincerely hope she sleeps through the whole trip, because driving that distance in the snow for the first time in several years is not going to be fun with a pissed off cat yowling behind my seat for hours.

So I guess technically vacation doesn’t start until sometime next week after we’ve gotten enough of their things unpacked to make it comfortable. But I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get!

I’d say I’ll trip-blog but who am I to make promises? That never works out.

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Posted by eliza on November 21st, 2008 :: Filed under Personal

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Maybe it’s got something to do with the mythical image of frumpy granola spinsters of science who are devoid of other interests, disparaging color and style as useless frippery.

I mean, if the women who are currently in the careers you wish to pursue would slight you for having an eye for good design, and denigrate your seriousness for your appreciation of aesthetically pleasing objects — would you still want to be in their clogs?

Of the hubub, Dr. Isis writes:

A woman who is aggressive, or who proclaims to anyone who will listen that she has the potential to achieve great things, is not a bitch. A woman who chooses to wear high-heeled shoes is not a slut, a bimbo, or a tramp. We need not be ashamed of the things that make us women (though, granted, we all embrace and express our femininity differently and that should always be acceptable). Neither our bodies, the social/gender roles we may choose to embrace, or our decision to or not to parent children, should ever have the capacity to limit our academic success.

Zuska also responds in The Proper Way to be a Woman in Science:

“If you disagree with what Dr. Isis says about science, or you don’t care for her interest in footwear, or you simply dislike her writing style, fine. But if Dr. Isis bothers you because she “makes female scientists sound like shoe fettish ignorant bimbos” then perhaps it’s worth spending some time thinking more about why that bothers you so. Who gains, really, if Dr. Isis is required to restrain and constrain her self-expression - and what are they gaining?”

My own take, as a non-scientist, but also as a woman who is interested in science, literature, design, etc., is simply this:

I don’t expect mathematicians to only discuss numbers, just like I don’t expect chefs to only be interested in food, in much the same way I would be dreadfully incapable of maintaining a worthwhile friendship with an artist who would only talk about her medium and focus area. I expect the people I surround myself with to be well-rounded. Why would my friends in science fields be any different?

Isn’t it refreshing to know that there are fashionistas out there who not only love science but have careers in it? Fashionista scientists! Tell your nieces and little sisters! Having other interests, even in fashion does not make them ill-suited for engineering, math, and science. These are fields that are certainly big enough to be inclusive. Let’s not push anyone away from such important careers because they speak to a different (and new, and much needed) audience!

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Posted by eliza on November 17th, 2008 :: Filed under Current Events, Elizapedia
Tags :: gender, science, youth

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This guy was hanging out behind a bus stop where I was waiting last night. I have no idea how long it has been there, and bet a lot of people walk by without noticing, thinking it’s just more construction equipment lying around. Very Pittsburgh.

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Posted by eliza on November 5th, 2008 :: Filed under Photos
Tags :: art, Pittsburgh

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Sam Ogden inquired on Skepchick last month about whether geek chic was yet another passing trend or if it has some quality that sets it apart and will help it endure. This got me thinking about where I’ve fit into the trend spectrum and how that has changed over time.

I look at trends and subcultures as a cycle of rebellion. That makes it sound much more negative than I intend. — Rebellion, to me, is not limited to aggressive upheaval of norms; I’m talking about even the smallest acts that teenagers commit in their quest for perceived individuality. (I will be the first to admit that my youthful interest in alternative genres of music was actually counter to the goal of setting myself apart.)

I grew up under the rule of my stepfather’s dictatorship. He saw little value in the things I was interested in: literature and art. One evening after school when I was in third grade he spent over an hour looming over me at the kitchen table shouting, “What’s 4×6? What’s 4×6? What’s 4×6?” over and over, without pausing. A year before that he’d broken the clock that my mother and I had had longer than him, pushing the hands around, thumping its face, demanding I tell him “What time is it now? And now? And now?” My best friend, Melvin, who did his homework at our house until his mother came home from work, shrunk down into his chair, frozen as The Monster (as we called him in secret) shouted at me to stop crying and answer these simple questions in a voice that could be heard. No stammering! No tears! Wipe that nose! It didn’t matter that I was at the top of the grade in reading and writing and got As in social studies and Pennsylvania history. The stars on my book reports and “Elizabeth is a joy to have in class” comments in letters from teachers meant nothing if I couldn’t memorize the multiplication table as fast as everyone else. Math was the most important thing and if I couldn’t get with the program I was a failure and always would be. I believed him.

“Great. Someday you can write a book about how mean I was to you.”

School became a nightmare until the principal of the arts magnet school came to see us in junior high. A whole high school with four different types of English every year! I was determined to get in and threw myself into preparing for my writing audition, and an application/sample for a summer arts program at the university I would eventually attend. Both accepted me. “Great. Someday you can write a book about how mean I was to you,” I remember him saying. “You’re not going to get anywhere else without math.” As if taking longer to solve algebra equations than some people meant I couldn’t do them at all.

Fortunately, when I was in high school his job as a cop kept him out all night and asleep most of the day. Keeping my distance, I focused on friends, novels, and my sketch and notebooks. Anything math or science related scared the shit out of me. (Not having books thrown over my head when I ask for clarification on things I don’t understand has definitely helped me get over that.)

My brother, eight years younger, got it worse. He was a happy kid and quite a ham on stage at Sunday school holiday programs. Today, I don’t think you could get him to open his mouth in front of more than one stranger. There can be no other word than abuse to describe the afternoons that poor child spent trying to catch footballs and not fall off his bicycle because “a real son” just could. Imagine a six year old who can stay composed and unflinching as a large chunk of glass is taken from his bloody knee, but pales and starts quaking when he hears, “Don’t worry, here comes your dad.” This was my brother’s childhood. He made friends with two physically and mentally handicapped boys and became another target for the neighborhood bullies that threw rocks and insults at them. Woe, woe be upon him if he didn’t win the resulting fights. (I had my fair share of tussles with their older sisters when I got home from the magnet school downtown.) Eventually we moved to the sticks of Western Pennsylvania and our differences, and our new seclusion escalated the bullying at home and in school. My brother snapped and went from a gentle giant into a rage fueled storm-in-a-can getting into fights at any provocation from his classmates. I graduated and moved on to campus. He got into computers, and video games – things that don’t require getting other people involved. We ran out of things to talk to each other about. I eventually was kicked out of the house and moved to Los Angeles. When I returned to this side of the country, my brother was unrecognizable – painfully shy and socially awkward.

Did I ever really like Nurse with Wound or Skinny Puppy?

The writer in me sees an alternative family history. If he’d only left us years ago, my brother would be a successful, beloved television meteorologist. (He had a thing for weather radio.) My mother would’ve gotten back in touch with her bohemian poet and fashion designer friends and would have built a healthy network of support to nurture her creativity. I imagine we would’ve stayed in Philadelphia. I’m not sure who I would be. I feel like my entire personality was shaped by rejection of his authority and prejudices. In my early teens anything that would piss him off became instantly attractive. Did I ever really like Nurse With Wound or Skinny Puppy? Or did I just really enjoy his confusion and frustrated outrage. Not that anyone develops alone in a vacuum, but would I have gone in the same direction without the fear of being even remotely like him urging me farther and farther away?

I suspect most teenage rebellion/subculture trends are due, in part, to some variety of daddy complexes. Which makes me wonder what the children of geeks will do when they want to be different. In the teenage quest for individuality, even if your parents are awesome, aren’t you still going to want to do something different?

Related links to friends discussing labels, identity, and teenage life:

Laura discusses being a gamer and geek.
Mark’s awesome series:

• Because nobody demanded it: Tales of a Teenage Pagan Superhero
• Tales of a teenage pagan superhero: Sarah and the Dragon Mage, part one
• Tales of a Teenage Pagan Superhero: The Cat’s Name Is Sun (an Interlude)

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Posted by eliza on October 31st, 2008 :: Filed under History, Personal
Tags :: growing up, school, subculture, youth

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October is passing quickly and so goes my last scramble to move out of the Hobo Alley apartment. I keep finding things that I’m not even sure how I’ve managed to hold onto through years of annual moves. And then, completely unexpected, a bit of the past found me.

The subject line read, “J. K. sent you a message on Facebook.”

“What?”

It said the same thing on the second read. And the third.

“Wait –No!” I’m not usually in the habit of talking to my inbox. The potentially dead aren’t in the habit of contacting me from beyond-the-potential-grave, either. My high school friends, especially the friends from the Philly years, reside in my memories in three categories: Probably Alive, Certainly Not Alive, Likely Dead. After my family moved, when calls home to Skillz had no new reports on our missing friend, I figured like so many people I knew, he was gone too. (This is not commentary on my friend, but on the overwhelming sadness of those years of my life.)

The good news is that my friend is very much alive. The bad news is that I’ve been too busy with the move to sit down and continue proper communication continuation. I have managed to get back in touch with Skillz, to bring him up to speed on these latest, most happy, tidings. We’re the sort who can maintain non-disjointed dialogue no matter how erratic the gaps in our conversations tracks are from year to year. I’m hoping that December brings enough of a slow-down for picking up some of these ties I’ve neglected. Correspondence has never been something I’ve done well with.

This has been the month of reminiscence; while assisting with preparations for her move to Vermont, Mom finally got me to confront the bins in the basement filled with my childhood things.

I found a box of old black and white marble composition books filled with tortured sentences straining to fit all of a week’s spelling words into one questionable line, and a mimeographed form letter from a teacher informing my parents that Elizabeth has been (check box) very good, did very well on his/her book report and (check box) played nicely with the other children this week. I found the adorable soft bodied black baby doll that upset my first grade friend Kelly’s sense of right and wrong or whatever. (I kept this doll in the glass cabinet with the fragile dolls I wasn’t to play with, because I felt she was too nice to crush in bed, but I remember taking her out of the cabinet and hugging her often. Like the special dolls, she didn’t have a name. In my five-year-old logic, once you name something it’s too real to keep behind glass.) An army of stuffed animals, a high school jacket, a few caps and gowns, awards, and a ton of personal ephemera in the form of notes passed in class to ticket stubs from Greyhounds, movies and shows. A menagerie of good times and terrible times all stowed away in a cardboard ark.

Another box held an entire parallel unexplored world in the form of photo albums I’ve never seen –or, as Mom insists –do not remember; the past reaching out and asserting itself, saying “These are the strangers you came from” and humanizing my biological father with snapshots he sent to Mom from Vietnam.

It’s been quite a month, and November promises to be similar. I’ll be driving to Vermont, following D in the moving truck. I haven’t really driven much in the past eight or so years after selling my car when I moved to Los Angeles. But everything old is new again, it seems, and survival is what we do.

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Posted by eliza on October 29th, 2008 :: Filed under History, Photos
Tags :: growing up

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On this Columbus Day let us commemorate the beginning of America’s downward economic spiral as we moved from bead-and-corn-based trading to the more modern coin-paper-smallpox-blanket system, by leaving early and going back to bed.

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Posted by eliza on October 13th, 2008 :: Filed under Elizapedia

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Henry died early this morning on the way to the emergency vet. I don’t know what happened, it was very sudden. After coming back home without him and barely being able to look at the other cats –especially Charlie– I went back to bed. Each time I woke up I thought, “what a horrible nightmare” before remembering that it really happened. He and Charlie were born in October, same litter. They will — no, Charlie will be three in about two weeks.

Normally, if I was anywhere near this sad, Henry would curl up with me and I’d fall asleep to his rhythmic purring. He’d stay as close as possible, with his face tucked under my chin and you can’t wake up like that without feeling like at least some things are all right. He was the cat every kitten-loving little girl wants; an oversized living teddy that follows you around, the sort that nuzzles back. It’s really hard to remember that he’s gone. It’s hard to sit here without him at my side, pushing his way onto my lap. Twice I’ve hesitated at the bathroom door, waiting for him to run in in front of me like he does. Or did. It’s so quiet without his chirping sounds, and hearing Charlie’s go unanswered sends my heart into further disrepair.

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Posted by eliza on September 29th, 2008 :: Filed under Personal

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Between the day job, and the side gig doing some basic website maintenance for some friends, and organizing/cleaning for moving, I’ve been neglecting my own online endeavors.

Things I failed to write about in a timely fashion:

1. Steel City Skeptics – There’s a bit of a crew growing locally, born of the local factions of this beloved series of tubes, and meeting a few times a month in various incarnations of the Center for Inquiry, Pittsburgh Freethinkers, and Drinking Skeptically. If you’re a like-minded Pittsburgher you should join us for “happy hours” on the 4th Friday of each month. More details at the brand-spankin’ new SteelCitySkeptics.net. This Friday happens to be that very special Friday in July. Cheers!

2. I’m now three chapters in to my young adult fiction novel. I was five chapters in, but I did some pruning. Slowly but surely, it is coming together. I feel this justifies all other aspects of my life that are in dissaray and neglect. Really.

3. Google Reader is about the only thing that keeps me sane at work these days. I am trying to not be a gushing Google fangirl, but to be honest, I’m more excited about Google products than I ever was about my Macbook and the iPod I forget about on a regular basis. I guess it’s a matter of usage time. Google is making my life better more frequently. I humbly request that they start producing pet supplies, coffee, and beer, so that I can just sign my paychecks over to them.

4. I’m bracing myself for cat wars and rage-filled displays of kitty egos when, by the end of summer, D and I Brady Bunch our feline crews together in one household. Four cats! This cannot end well, friends!

5. I’ve been at my current job for over three years now — breaking my personal record set at the photo lab starting back in 98. This makes for four and a half years of office work and frankly, I’m not sure if I’m going to make it too far past five. I have to update my clippings and start shopping my freelance work around. I’m tired of being the bummed out administrative assistant daydreaming about being a real grownup. 

6. So that this list doesn’t end on a downer, let me add that I am pretty excited about moving and some new projects that I’ll be able to start once things get settled. And lately, the coffee has been excpetionally delicious, and I’ve been having my fair share of fun thrown in the busy mix.

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Posted by eliza on July 22nd, 2008 :: Filed under Personal

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From a Cookie Magazine feature on actress & mom, Amanda Peet:

Peet’s analytical urges are comical when she’s talking about kids’ gear, but not when she’s discussing a subject she feels is among today’s most pressing public-health issues: infant vaccinations. “As soon as I was pregnant, the neuroses kicked in,” says Peet, 36, who is married to screenwriter David Benioff. She began calling her older sister’s husband, a Philadelphia pediatrician, “every five minutes” with all kinds of questions, especially about shots. “I asked him, ‘Why are all of these necessary? Why are some people staggering them?’?” Eventually her brother-in-law arranged a series of phone calls between Peet and his own mentor, Paul Offit, M.D., who is chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, and a board member of Every Child by Two, a pro-vaccine organization cofounded in 1991 by former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
“Once we had spoken, I was shocked at the amount of misinformation floating around, particularly in Hollywood,” says Peet, who quickly boned up on the hot-button controversies surrounding the topic, including the unproven link between certain vaccines and autism; the safety of preservatives like mercury-based thimerosal; and the fear that the relatively high number of shots kids receive today can overwhelm young immune systems. Her conclusion? Well, not only is Frankie up-to-date on her vaccines (with no staggering), but her mom will soon appear in public-service announcements for Every Child by Two. “I buy 99 percent organic food for Frankie, and I don’t like to give her medicine or put sunscreen on her,” says Peet. “But now that I’ve done my research, vaccines do not concern me.” What does concern her is the growing number of unvaccinated children who are benefiting from the “shield” created by the inoculated—we are protected from viruses only if everyone, or most everyone, is immunized: “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Rock on, Amanda! I hope the new X-Files movie is equally awesome! (So stoked!)

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Posted by eliza on July 9th, 2008 :: Filed under Current Events
Tags :: anti-vaxers, skeptical

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