e=mc^2

My theory of relativity deals with time: The time needed to pass until the next date seems disproportionally longer the further in the future the date is set to, and vice versa.
I am impatient, when it comes to dating. I can perfectly well explain many reasons for my impatience, but it does not help with the reality of dealing with myself 24/7. Yes, there are distractions, for example last night I tricked myself into being busy by cooking dinner my friends and spending the evening with them. Tomorrow I might go to a concert, tonight perhaps for a swim, if not for a bike ride, depending on the weather. But inside I know that all those distractions are just temporary and weak fixes and do not seem as an adequate supplements. So, I still can't wait for it to be a Saturday, and although I know I am setting myself up for a possible disastrous disappointment, I am willingly doing so, because I HAVE A DATE this Saturday, and it has not been canceled yet. I remember my recent other second date with someone else where things turned from pink to gray. I can't do much about it, only try to make sure that I won't do anything stupid. But I am excited and I feel good amount of excitement from my date as well, when we speak on the phone.
Do you remember the moments when you have met someone and everything felt just right, like you were almost falling in love at the first sight? Well, when you are almost forty, it seems almost impossible without feeling slightly silly, because our "life experiences" taught us differently. And rationally, since we all hope we are somewhat rational, we should take things slowly and be cautious. I disagree with my friend calling me needy, when I am impatient, impatient to either make one more step into a possible falling in love or as much possible hitting my bottom again hard. But I cannot believe, that all men are jerks and that nobody is willing to risk as much as I am. So, I am going to let lose, lift the foot from the brake and experience the free fall.
Poor Chompy is up to a few more sleepless nights with me. But she knows I already love her and that there is room for more.

time

My anger has cooled down, I am still in wondering about the reasons...  I will keep being curious about what makes people do things they themselves said they hated...Slaps from life almost always come from totally unexpected direction, but often for the same reason.
Things seem to be stalled for months and than in one week they start racing. Spring is here and I am not the only one feeling it. One could almost wonder, why is it either desert or when it rains, it pours?
I came to realization that a week is a healthy amount of time to clean oneself inside and to take a new breath. And by new breath I did not mean a new bread, such as cranberry-walnut one:

Or walnut onion, also delicious (don't look at me as if I am crazy!)

There is a program on NPR, and a total stranger, whom I know only through a few e-mails reminded me of it, called "This I Believe". I had a really nice evening with a guy today and this I want to believe: that he is not a jerk. No red flags, not a single sign of jerk-ism, so far. Maybe I want to believe too badly, I hope I still can. He seems worth trying the truth of "third time is a charm".
Good night!

roast beef for one

During the whole week, after that not so lucky last weekend, there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel (not literally, but I feel like overdramatizing right now). I did not have to face my demons most of the days, managed to stay calm and cool and was looking forward this weekend with one foot on the ground. As it happens, one foot is not enough.Well, the "weekend" happened, only with a different turn than I expected.
It does not matter what happened now, but I came to conclusion that when you want to tell bad news and also have promised to visit the bad news recipient, don't join those two things. At least not when the visit is promised to me. Phone is perfectly fine, especially when used early.
Plan B, Hana? 
It took me an hour to comb some hair out of the dogs (have a feeling Chompy is getting bold spots around her shoulders... could it be from the harness?), than out of me and when I went to look for the knife and started fixing the doorframes in order to finish my November paint job, I got tired. Well, the paint caulk needs to dry anyway, and I will try what Mitch suggested. So today is just prep work, I think. I hope to be done soon and take the girls out to Vedauwoo. They slept the whole time after we came from our second walk yesterday.
I tried making roast beef according to ATK (surprisingly Julia Child does not seem to have a recipe in her bible) and it does not seem noticeably more tender, but it is still good. The guacamole is chilling in the fridge, mashed potatoes with root veggies as well (and they were great), and I'll have the cranberry-banana-walnut "bread" for breakfast for another 4 days easily... make it 2 days...:)

And that in the background is future Pan Pugliese-Laramiese 3 :)

cloudless day

It was really a nice day, and so was yesterday. I guess it was a repayment for having to get up an hour earlier, especially appreciated after a weekend of not enough sleep. The last Sunday, a cloudy cold day, left me with some extend mixed feelings and definitely not 100% happy. I was happy to get home, walk with Chompy and lit the fireplace afterwards. It was a cloudy day in more than one sense. I faced some of my own demons and did not realize how fast I was going until I saw the cop turning around ... but it was not too bad. Well, being forced to step down from the "pink cloud" to the reality of Earth makes one wonder around,b doesn't it?
So, sunny days with air smelling of rotten leaves and rotten grass are greatly appreciated. So much, that I went to the garage, found the bag with dirt and re-potted the poor amaryllis bulb waiting for a new chance in the basement. And roasted chicken with root veggies smell from the oven and evening seems to start nicely.
Another try of basic hearth bread is started. I guess I did not document sacaduros made on Saturday, but you can believe me that they were yummy, especially when fresh.

insomniac

Chompy must hate me, she had to find the darkest spot in the bed, in this case the geometric center of the bed, since I am up at 4:30 a.m. A few months ago Hana suggested I could start a blog and I used it as my diary, in a way, in those first days, when I was thinking I was "kind-of-dating" this one dude... How important is the first in-person contact, one wonders... in that case it apparently did not work.
But I cannot sleep tonight again and I cannot blame overexercise as I could have on Friday. I cannot blame accidental overeating either. I can blame myself, yet I can't do much about it.
Sometimes you almost give up, as I almost did for at least a while, on active trying to reach out and search for someone. Two days before my "planned break" someone wrote to me a brief "Hello, how are you" e-mail and I got all of sudden very good feeling out of it. As if I believed he knew what he was doing, that he could see through the self-description posted by myself, and uncover at least a layer from the fact, that I am a human being with a soul and a heart. I have met this guy afterwards, two days ago, and what could have been an one-hour drag date from which we both would try to find a way out, turned out to be a whole afternoon of talking and fun of being outside in the park and around a lake. Many, many first date rules were broken, but we both laughed and enjoyed each other, laughed at the rules and were finding commonalities and differences between the two of us. It's far fetched to say we know each other, but my seventeen year old-frozen soul woke up and I found myself kissing him under a tree half way down the trail, the first place nobody could see us from above. I found myself letting go of the fears most of us have inside (supposedly as a protection against getting hurt). I found myself slapping his ass on a street when he asked for it, literally. And I found myself holding his hand in the car, warming up my hand and warming up to the reality of holding hands with a "person of bones and blood", person with desires, wishes, needs and heart to give. I still kept some of my guards up, although I was not constricted in any way and had a great time. My occasional glass-half-empty view vanished as he called the day after and not just to politely say that he won't come again. So, it is understandable that I am looking forward the coming weekend and my brain is imagining all the possible things that could happen, which did not happen for some time, and much more. It's almost 5 o'clock. He's getting up 140 miles from here. I don't know how exactly I'll go through the day after only 4 hours of sleep, but I guess I'll have to manage. It is not the physical closeness I am looking forward the most with this guy, although it is a big part of my excitement. It is the human closeness I feel he wants to get and to give. I have to tell you, if I am wrong, I will hit my bum really, really hard this time, because my feet are not on the ground anymore.

Yes, Chompy, I am going back to sleep, or so I hope.

spring is in the air

This week was petty nice, I have to say. Most of the annoying ice from the snowmelt water collected around the corners disappeared. It was warm at noon almost every day... and by midweek I got an email from a guy from Denver, who showed interest in me online the week before. On Friday the weather turned around and it snowed, but it was not too cold. I was like a pig from biking that one day. Chompy was not overly excited about having wet feet and I was pretty busy at work. Managed to go for a swim and than for a hamburger with some beer and that was how I celebrated my name-day ahead. Oh, every holiday has to be celebrated by work, so I prepared for making bagels again. They are a bit supersized.

Nevertheless, I slept like a c..p, my back hurt and burned from the swim and my belly kept making funny sounds from the hamburger. Maybe I am getting old...  I did not sleep half of the night so I was glad my first date with D-guy was not today.
The bagels turned out pretty good, this method does not make them very chewy, so next time I'll try the other way of shaping them.

After two walks with Chompy, some cleaning and some wood chopping, chilling in front of the fireplace seems like the only thing we can do right now. I am surprized she does not keep a grudge against me for brushing her earlier.
Spring is in the air, snow melted almost completely today and I feel like a seventeen-year old again. Butterflies in the stomach from tomorrow. 

being

I have finished reading the Kite Runner. I knew the book was sad, haven't seen the movie, but did see movies from Iran and they had very similar spirit in them. I liked this book very much, it is an excellent story and it made me cry several times. It also made me remember my old childhood sins. It made me feel good too, I guess as I felt that I understood the narrator, that I felt for him, that his story and his humanity spoke to me.

On Monday I worked on some data and decided to listen to radio show I've partially missed the Saturday before, on This American Life. I recommend this show to everyone. I came across an episode from a few weeks back, half of it was a story of chimp Lucy who was raised up among people from baby age, could use sign language, make tea, showed emotions and was completely attached to humans. It was one of those stories about how human desire to understand and study the rest of the world makes us to interfere too much, to screw thing us really bad. The story of Lucy is is tragic, extremely moving and touched the bottom of my heart, so to speak. I listened to it again today, not sure why.
http://audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast702lucy.mp3

I think it calmed me down. I guess it made me put my feet on the ground and let go of my small silly angers. I just wanted to share this story, it is not long. It is deep. I found the story beautiful.
Here are some pictures http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/.

Lucy from Radiolab on Vimeo.


I have also continued with baking projects from CJBB (crazy Jewess bread bible). Since there was a slow-cooker version of a french onion soup being ready on Sunday, I had to make baguettes to go with, haven't I?









They took 2 days to make. Although pretty good, it's not gonna become a regular recipe in my kitchen.
This poppy seed filled babovka on the other hand, that was a different story :-)