ACLU, EFF, and I all agree. Mass surveillance is bad. Just say no. Privacy matters. If you wonder why then consider this Wired article.
Privacy matters.
Author: rebekahgolden
Recipe: Spanikopita Muffins (first try)
Base Savory Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg
1 cup whole milk
Special Muffin Ingrediants:
1 cup frozen spinach, thawed & squeezed “dry”
6 oz Feta cheese
1 cup pine nuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Fill muffin tin with cupcake wrappers.
Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in one bowl.
Stir the melted butter, egg, milk, spinach, and feta cheese together in a separate bowl.
Add the flour mixture slowly to form a batter.
Add the pine nuts and give a final stir.
Use a 1/3 cup measuring cup to fill each cupcake wrapper.
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Approximately 35 minutes. (Know your own oven.)
Future note: Try adding caramelized scallions with the spinach!
Snow in Portland OR
It’s snowing in Portland. Has been since Thursday. Before I begin showing off snow pictures like the rest of the city, here’s a little reminder as to why not to drive in Portland in the snow. You may be able to drive in snow but most of the rest of the city cannot.
The snow started Thursday:
The snow today:
Difficulty Level in Life and Video Games
I recently upped the difficulty level on a video game I play a lot. I like the challenge.
A while back John Scalzi wrote about how various things effect the difficulty level of life.
A lot of people comment on how rough I’ve had it with my health lately. I agree. It has been difficult. I wouldn’t choose it and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The sick part was bad enough and now recovery has aspects both boring and challenging. A head cold will still wipe me out when sinus pressure meets surgery site.
If I focus on the challenging part though this whole experience becomes something interesting. What helps improve my health, what makes it worse? How can I grab back the life I want? What about life has changed such that I want to do more or less? A health scare really helps set priorities.
Going back to work exposed me to germs and got me out in the cold weather freezing my poor nose. Of course I’d catch a head cold. Sick, bored, unimaginable pain in my head. It’s very tempting to wallow in sad. I’m working very hard at staying focused on the interesting parts of getting better, the process, the stages, the moments.
First Day Back at Work
Today I returned to work. I felt nothing changed and everything changed. My team moved offices, my bosses and the work I do are the same. I spent the day catching up on email. Reached inbox zero. Not as hard to do as work queue zero. Also put my desk together. Facilities was sufficiently busy that I asked for the tools instead of the work and got to play with small power tools. Had lunch with my coworkers, caught up, again not much has changed. Two months is both eternity and no time at all.
One coworker was surprised to see me taking the stairs, another that I really am not bothered by noises that would send me into fits before the surgery. Everyone was happy to see me. I was happy to see everyone.
I finish the day not tired so much as excited and a little confused. I will be tired shortly. I know I’ve said it before but it felt like I wasn’t gone at all and yet I missed some things but I was missing things before because I wasn’t thinking clearly and now I’m thinking clearly and it’s all so clear and I’m so there, here, where I am when I am yet there’s this gap.
Tomorrow when I go in my desk will be ready, everything I need ready at hand, a ticket already pulled from the queue, inbox will be slim and I will engineer. It will be good. Today was good too. It’s all good.
Photos of Me
I am fortunate enough to have a friend who is a photographer. That means when we hang out if I want my picture taken she is happy to take my picture. Even happy to arrange a photo shoot. I consider this to be something of a graduation photo shoot. I’m graduating from being sick to being well.
We went up to Mt Tabor with a little yellow umbrella I brought. I feel so in the now having these pictures. I am not me of ten years ago or five years ago. This is me now. What I look like, how I feel, the whole package. No misplaced sense of my self. No image of me in my head that is years out of date. Just me in the now.
Here are the pictures she took.
She edits and adds as she edits. My new user icon is from the set and here’s a preview of one of many fantastic images she captured.
This is her web site. I don’t know how much time she has for her freelance photo work but if you live in Portland and need photos taken you should consider sending her a note via her site. She’s still underselling herself and her work is amazing.
Hanging with Babies
Sitting around in a cafe hanging out holding a friend’s babies (he has twins) is a huge drain on my vestibular (balance) system. Who knew that trying to compensate for wobbly, bouncing creature holding would be so tiring?
Tips: Fat Free Cream Cheese
Fat free does not taste the same as fatty. Fat free cream cheese in particular has a strange flavor to it. Like a soft bland cheese instead of a slightly sharper cheese. I can only think of it as a sort of anti-umami.
There are times when fat free is necessary. The issue is how to fix that bland flavor, to make the fat free cream cheese taste better. I tried salt, all sorts of spices and flavors that should have added the necessary bite. After lots of experimentation I finally hit on it.
To make fat free cream cheese have the correct level of umami sprinkle dried chives on top.
Know Your Seasons
Imagine needing a surgery like mine but not having to get it done ASAP to ensure job security. Check your inner clock and ask yourself “when are the big cold seasons in the area?” In Oregon January is the month of the miserable head cold. Sinus pressure and recovering from ear related brain surgery sucks. If I could have chosen a date based on nicest post-surgery healing I think I would have gone with June or July.
Also I have little pity for the other people saying “Day 12 of stupid head cold” on my social networks. I may instead be overdoing the self pity.
Head Colds Suck
That blown up feeling in my head never felt so bad as now in my right ear after having had ear surgery. (Yeah, I call it brain surgery because they cut into my skull and touched my brain to move it out of the way to get to my innermost ear but right now with my head cold I choose to call it ear surgery.) Ow.
Rebekah Golden 