Going to the Bathroom with Dog

When Euclid knows I'm going to use the loo he rushes to join me. He's a social fellow. Doesn't want to miss out on a family pee.
   Now I have an extra incentive to change the TP roll when it's empty. I used to, um, have aggravating TP replacement habits. Roscivs would hide rolls around the house because when the TP from my bathroom was gone I would take TP from his bathroom....
   I never do that any more! My TP habits are great!
   Anyway. The dog. I toss the empty cardboard tube on the ground, and Euclid vanquishes it. In the master bathroom it's especially fun because there's so much room for it to roll around.

Jewish Trivium & Happy Income Redistribution Day

• Did you know that the back half of the cow isn't kosher? Kosher beef has lots of rules. It's more complicated than "don't eat cheeseburgers". Brisket is a classic Jewish cut; it's cheap (historically) and from the front of the cow.

• Did you know it's possible to make so much money that you're not allowed to put any of it in a Roth IRA?

True stories.

Lazeez -- No, Alazz

I was asked to bring a vegetable to Sunday dinner. A cooked one. (A raw one, beet-and-carrot salad, was already being provided.) (Of course, there weren't just two vegetables. There were cooked carrots, too; there are always cooked carrots. Ok maybe not always but 90% of the time.)
   (There were homemade pickles, too, and the pickles are always; 100% of Sunday dinners.)
   I didn't know when dinner was going to be, so I wanted to prepare something that would be decently yummy hot, warm, or cool. I also wanted to use nettles. Nettles (a) have such a short season and (2) are uberduber healthful and (+) they're local and (iv) I already had some.

Here's what I did, and it was the best nettle preparation I have ever eaten. (The first time I prepared them was last year and I boiled them. I was afraid of the stingers. :P AND I was serving them to guests. I didn't want to sting my guests.)

Put nettles (I used .5 lb total in two separate batches) in a skillet-ish pan on low-medium heat. Add raisins. (1/4 c?) Add a little bit (a few Tbsp?) of coconut oil in one crescent of the pan, shoving the warming nettles to the gibbous remains. (I was using my 14 inch pan.) When the coconut oil is about half melted add spices to it. I added ground mace, ground clove, and ground ceylon cinnamon. Then add salt. Then let the coconut oil finish melting, mix the spices as needed, then mix in the nettles and raisins bit by bit. Stop cooking when it looks and smells done.
   Nettles are often compared to spinach. They are more delicious than spinach. They are much less watery, so these were almost crispy! Wow. Yum. And the type of fat, and the seasoning (bakery-ish) increased the temperature range at which it would be yummy.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to do this again before nettle season is over. I cook nettles infrequently enough that I might not be able to remember this if I don't record it.

So. For the record.

mind blown like hot glass

During a recent morning conversation Bjorn gesticulated a graph of the matter in the universe, showing me where most of the matter is {hand wave} and that it's hydrogen {hand particle}, then helium, then &c. &c., and the rest is here {wild graph gesticulation} in the tail {wag}.
   'What about dark matter?' I said. 'Is it in the tail?' Not in the tail. From there, somehow, by some parallel move, or some tangential veer, or some unobserved cat, the conversation came to this ... Maybe, he said, maybe dark matter has its own periodic table.

!