Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

In 2005, the National Retail Federation decided to call the Monday after Thanksgiving “Cyber Monday.” It’s supposed to symbolize a busy day for online retailers and be their promotional equivalent to the brick-and-mortar stores’ Black Friday.

However. The name? Would not have been my first choice.

Didn’t anyone tell the NRF that “cyber” as a verb means “to have cybersex?”

Or did they hire the same marketing consultants who originally gave Procter & Gamble’s “Dreft” detergent the name “Dreck” without realizing that it was a Yiddish word for garbage?

To be fair, “cyber-” has been used as a prefix for computer-related terms (cyberspace, cyberpunk, cybernetics, etc.) in the same way that the far more popular “e-” and “i-” have been used. It’s not exactly a new word, and hasn’t always been associated with cybersex.

There was also an enemy race of cyborgs on Doctor Who in 1966 called Cybermen. In 1968, DC Comics introduced Doctor Cyber, a female supervillain who fought Wonder Woman. In 1991, Marvel introduced a supervillain of the male variety by the name of Cyber.

But whether it’s used as a verb, adjective, supervillain, or flavor additive, I can’t be the only one who remembers the dirty “wanna cyber?” question of the 90s. I’m sure the power of One More Annual Marketing Tactic for retailers will supercede my association of the word with something dirty.

Next year, though, I hope you’ll join me in snickering at every Cyber Monday sale you see on our Grate Interwebz. And maybe, as the tryptophan coma sets in on Thursday, you’ll turn to your loved ones and ask, “Wanna Cyber Monday?”

It was unseasonably warm on Halloween* this year. On Saturday, November 1, Ben raked leaves and I spent some peaceful time lying in one of the piles before we shoved them into bags. The sun was extraordinarily bright, as you can see from my squinty eyes in this photo.

Then we had beautiful fall weather for a couple days, and a cold front came in with some rain. It snowed in the mountains, and then last night the rain turned to snow here in Utah Valley. I woke up on the Day After Obama Won to see a soft blanket of snow, only an inch or so, covering the yard. It was really beautiful. It mostly melted by the afternoon, but not before Ben took this sweet photo of a wilting, snow-covered jack-o-lantern on our front porch.

*Oh yeah, Halloween. I Twitter my thoughts but then sometimes forget to expand those thoughts into blog posts. Some friends came over and we ate chili (Ben made an amazing Beer Chili that I have demanded he make again soon) in pumpkin-looking bread bowls and drank hot mulled apple cider (that was spiked with rum for a few of us). Tons of kids came to the door, so it’s a good thing that our friends brought extra candy. Read more…

Because I wish I could see my friend Bryan in the Lincoln Lodge Halloween comedy show tonight. Especially after watching his heartbreaking portrayal of Frankenstein in this video :

Go see it tonight at 9 if you’re in Chi-town! I’ll be at home in Utah, eating chili in pumpkin-shaped bread bowls with friends and passing out candy to little costumed beggars. I dug up some purple and orange strings of lights that I might hang on the tree next to our front door, and I’m putting out several glass candle holders with tea lights to illuminate the porch. We have a couple pumpkins out there already, but they aren’t carved yet and I doubt they will be tonight.

My friend’s 13-year-old daughter plans to hold a scythe while wearing all black, including a black faceless mask, and stand very still in our yard before scaring the bejesus out of as many people as possible.

It’s been relatively warm today, reaching almost 70 degrees, so I think hanging out on the porch will be a good possibility. If we get cold, I’ll have some mulled cider on the stove to warm us up… and adults can get extra warm with a splash of rum in their mug. Rummmmmmmm…

Ahoy, ye scallywags! It be the International Day of Talkin’ Like a Pirate.

In addition to the Pirate Keyboard I passed along ta ye last year, I want ta make it known that ye can start yer readin’ all manner of Pirate books fer free! It be a highly legal opportunity from me good friend, Google Books.

I say ye start wit’ Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island if ye haven’t read that one yet. Y’arrrr likely to find there be a pirate, or hundreds o’ pirates, in all he writes.

Aye, there be also a pirate, goes by the name o’ Hook, in the tale o’ Peter and Wendy by a landlubber named James Matthew Barrie. That’s a picture from the book ta yer left.

And there be Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate: A Romance, tho’ that’s on me own list of books to read while at sea with a good, strong brew in my hand. Surely there be booty involved in that one.

And don’t ye be fergettin’ ’bout the tale of Blackbeard, the fearsome Pirate of Roanoke! A real life figure he was, not just a tale. Now thar was a pirate to behold. Why, he woulda takin’ the free Google Books and found a way to pirate them, of that ye can be sure!

There be another colored-bearded fellow by the name of Blue Beard, whose pirate tale (oft labeled a “fairy tale” fer some reason, tho’ I’m hard-pressed to be finded any fairies in such a tale of delightful pirate horror) was written by a Frenchman, Charles Perrault, but told fer many a year before that. Ye can read the English version of Blue Beard as recorded on paper by Andrew Lang on page 290 of ‘is Blue Fairy Book.  Pirates and fairies… arrrrr, what a strange combination that be!

May yer Talk Like a Pirate Day be well-researched and may yer life be full o’ many Pirate adventures. And treasure.

Don’t ye be fergettin’ the treasure!

What better way to celebrate the independence of our nation than with Muppets? (With illegal fireworks and homebrew, you say? Well, to each his own…)

Here’s a new clip with a Sam the Eagle who, despite sounding weird because he’s not being voiced by Frank Oz, is still a bumbling ball of blue Muppet joy with his Declaration of Independence: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect unton, establish justice, and keep the world safe from weirdos…”

And here’s an oldie but goodie: a 4th of July/Christmas Medly with Hal Linden from The Muppet Show Season 5.

I don’t really have any plans for this weekend, except for trying to pry Ben away from working on the house for long enough to barbeque some large slabs of meat and fresh pineapple. Have you ever tried grilling fresh pineapple slices? Seriously, even if you’re the most serious meat-eater, there is something delicious about sweet, juicy pineapple with grill marks on it and the heady flavor of charcoal. It probably wouldn’t taste the same on a gas grill, but I’ve not tried that so I don’t know.

Now if I could build myself a Sam the Eagle muppet, he might not have the same opinion about grilled pineapple. He might be inclined to say that it’s un-American (in what would definitely NOT sound like Frank Oz’s Sam the Eagle voice) because it doesn’t sound like traditional American fare.

But pineapples are from Hawaii, right? Which became the 50th state in 1959. So pineapples are, therefore, QUITE American.

In conclusion: Grilled Fresh Pineapple = Magically Delicious, and possibly Patriotic.

Leap Day is the day I remember specific people’s birthdays: my little cousin Sophie is 12 (it’s her third birthday) and my friend Jon from college must be 28 (ooo, lucky number seven). I thought that Mozart was also a Leap Year Baby (learned somewhere during my early public school education) but I can’t find any evidence of that.

In other Numbers Notes, I find it interesting that I will be turning 29 in this Leap Year. And my fourth wedding anniversary is sneaking upon me. I hadn’t realized that being married in a Leap Year was considered bad luck in Greece. Oh well. I also walked under a ladder that year and spilled a ton of salt. Plus, a black cat has crossed in front of me almost every day for seven years.

February 29 is also the one day of the year that it is traditionally okay for a woman to propose marriage to a man. There are some interesting vintage postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that really encourage women to put on their scarlet bloomers and grab a guy by the balls, which of course was totally inappropriate back then. (It’s much more common nowadays.) Way to embrace women’s suffrage… give them one "free" day year!

However, I’m amused by the fact that if a man declines a proposa under that tradition, he has to "soften the blow" by giving her a kiss or buying her gloves, a silk dress, etc.  I’d be proposing like mad during that time period just to get a bunch of lovin’ and cool swag. If a guy accidentally took me seriously, I would have said j/k because there doesn’t seem to be a traditional penalty for that. Other than breaking a guy’s heart… oh, cry me a river. Payback’s a bitch!

Wow, I suddenly feel very cynical. I assure you that everything’s just fine with me. *twitch* 

More cleaning and doing shit around the house today. The pressure is on because my former host parents and little host sister from Norway are coming to visit us in a month. Even though our house has gradually improved in the nearly two years that we’ve been here, both in terms of clutter and home improvements, there’s a still a lot that’s potentially embarrasing to show our international visitors.

We still don’t have our skylights replaced nor the roof around them fixed. The general contractor we’re dealing with now has been slooooow to keep in touch… but that’s still a huge improvement over the people who would never call us back. I wouldn’t put money on having new skylights before my Norwegians arrive, but I have a secret burning hope that they will be. Chilly winter weather is also a factor, which brings me to my next topic…

My main task today was sorting through various piles and boxes of clothes to give to charity. I diligently recorded each item so that we can claim them as a deduction on 2008 taxes. Nevermind that most of the clothes in the bags and boxes should have been donated to charity in 2003 or eariler… including one sweatshirt of unknown origin that I wish I had known I’d had for the Cheesy Christmas Sweater Day at work. Check it out:

My favorite part is that it’s a cheesy knitted pattern that is puffy screen printed onto a standard sweatshirt. Also, it serves a double purpose as delightful holiday apparel and a souvenir from Charleston, SC. Why, Lord, why? Also, why is it in a box of my old clothes?

I honestly don’t remember where this sweatshirt came from. Nor do I remember wearing it, though I guess it wouldn’t have been totally out of fashion in the early nineties in the podunk town where I grew up. And it’s been washed a couple times at least. Here’s a closeup of the puffy printing over the actual weave of the sweatshirt:

I went to Charleston once with my family when I was in high school, but I’m pretty sure it was springtime. It’s likely that this gem of high fashion was given to me as a gift… maybe from a parent who traveled to Charleston on business? In any case, it’s now buried in a bag destined for the thrift store. 

Though I’m mildly tempted to pull it out so that I have something to wear at this December’s Cheesy Sweater Day. Meh. I’d rather pare down my closet at this point. Besides, I still have a few sweatshirts from high school plays that I can’t bear to part with yet–I mean, they have my name on the back and are the ultimate proof that my sixth grade dream (to be in high school plays and musicals) came true.

So tomorrow I’ll drop everything off and be done. Clothing I’ll probably never wear again will become clothing I will officially never wear again. I hope that my mystery Christmas sweater finds a good home with someone who genuinely likes it or with someone who purchases it as a purposefully Cheesy Sweater. Or maybe it will end up with someone who loves it because it reminds them of Charleston, SC.

Valentine’s Day is not usually celebrated in our house with much more than a card. And how fitting that there’s even a card, considering that it really is a Hallmark Holiday. But once in a while, we’ll cave to commercialism and buy or do something sweet on this day of forced romance.

There was a sweet card waiting in front of my computer yesterday morning from Ben (who was already off to work when I got up), and coffee was fresh and hot in the pot. My plan was to make a nice dinner, because I don’t think I’ve ever done that on V-day before.

So I took a lunch break to pick up the necessary food items, and I also bought a relatively cheap but surprisingly pretty splash of red, white, purple and lavender carnations. Yep, I took that photo all by myself.

(I figured Ben wasn’t going to get me any because I/we don’t agree with spending 3x the amount of money for roses or flowers on a specific day–plus, we’ve been together forever and don’t need the holiday. Just give me a plant or flowers some other day when they’re cheaper, you know? We don’t even acknowledge Sweetest Day because we’d never heard about it until 2000, plus it’s right around our birthdays.)

On the menu: Peppered Filet Mignon in a balsamic red wine glaze, with sides of caramelized green beans and scalloped potatoes.

Please note that these were recipes I decided to try out for the first time, knowing full well that if I fucked it all up, we could have a nice, romantic burrito dinner at Taco Bell under the magical glow of fluorescent lights. Or, more likely, the emergency frozen pizza that’s in the freezer.

But, as you can tell from the photo (that didn’t turn out as well as the the flower photo), the food made it onto the plate.  I’m not a well-seasoned chef, but I can usually follow a recipe… and this dinner was delicous. It’s still hard for me to swallow the fact that I made filet mignon, but it was incredibly easy and AMAZING to eat. I’m not much of a red meat eater, but DAMN it was good. And the meat wasn’t even as expensive as I thought it would be (about $6 for two hermetically sealed, bacon-wrapped filets). We won’t be waiting until next February to have this meal again.

I shared my recipe for Cincinnati Chili, so I’ll keep up the tradition.  The timing was the hardest thing for this meal, but I managed to get everything onto the plates while they were still hot. I would say that it took a little under two hours from the time I started peeling potatoes until we started eating.

Here’s a rough outline for timing it well, in case you want to try this meal yourself:

1. Prepare the scalloped potatoes and put them in the oven (bonus points for a pretty casserole dish; I would like one of those next time, but my old Pyrex standby worked well)
2. Open a bottle of wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon) and pour yourself a taste
3. Set the table all pretty and pull out all of the serving utensils you’ll need
4. Pull out the filets, lightly pepper both sides, and let them rest on a plate on the counter (watch them closely if you have sneaky pets who like raw meat)
5. Start the green beans
6. Start searing the filet mignon
7. Finish the green beans and put them in a casserole dish, then bring to the table
8. Pull out the potatoes and put them on the table.
9. Turn off the oven and place oven-safe plates inside to warm up a little
10. Put the filets directly onto warmed plates and serve immediately.
11. Feast.
12. Leave a comment on this blog entry to let me know if you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Baked Scalloped Potatoes     

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 large peeled, sliced potatoes (I used Idaho)
• 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup   
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1 onion, sliced
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 2 or 3 quart casserole dish.
   Layer potatoes and onions into the casserole dish.
2. Combine soup, milk, salt and pepper in a bowl, then pour soup mixture over the potatoes and onions. The soup mixture should almost cover the potatoes and onion; add more milk if it doesn’t.
3. Cover dish and bake in preheated 375 degrees F oven for an hour or so, until the potatoes are cooked through. At 30 minutes, you could remove the casserole from the oven and stir once before returning it to the oven (I forgot, and they were fine). Remove from oven and serve.

Caramelized Green Beans with Walnuts

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound frozen cut green beans, somewhat defrosted
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (almonds would also be delicous–I’m trying those next)

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add green beans; cook and stir for about 5 minutes. Mix in the walnuts, and pour in water. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, or until very little water is left in the pan.
2. Add the salt, white sugar, and brown sugar; stir until beans and walnuts are evenly coated. Cover, and cook over medium heat for 5 more minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before serving.

Filet Mignon with Rich Balsamic Glaze

INGREDIENTS

• 2 (4 ounce) filet mignon steaks
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• salt to taste
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup dry red wine

DIRECTIONS

1. Sprinkle freshly ground pepper over both sides of each steak, and sprinkle with salt to taste.
2. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Place steaks in hot pan, and cook for 1 minute on each side, or until browned. Reduce heat to medium-low, and add balsamic vinegar and red wine. Cover, and cook for 4 minutes on each side, basting with sauce when you turn the meat over. (Cook a couple extra minutes if you like your meat medium-well done… but by God don’t ruin a good piece of filet by cooking it until it’s well done!)
3. Remove steaks to two warmed plates, spoon a little glaze over each, and serve immediately. 

It’s okay to take a picture of your masterpiece before devouring it.

I almost forgot it was Groundhog Day. Then I remembered, and checked out the official site wherin I learned that groundhog megastar Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and therefore we can expect six more weeks of winter.

I wonder how far this prediction spreads? Phil is in Pennsylvania, and I’m in Utah. Are his predictions regional or strictly domestic? Do they apply in Canada or in Europe? There has to be a cutoff at some point, because that prediction cannot have much credence in Australia, where it is currently summer.

After learning that there is an official 2008 Punxsatawney Phil groundhog Ty Beanie Baby (wow, they still make those?), I learned some interesting facts about Groundhog Day, especially in answer to this pressing question: 

How many "Phils" have there been over the years?

There has only been one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years! Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking the "elixir of life," a secret recipe. Phil takes one sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic and it magically gives him seven more years of life.

Wow, that doesn’t sound like stuff of legend at all! I wonder if a pilgrimage to Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania on February 2 allows said pilgrim to obtain the secret recipe to the elixir of life? That would explain why so many freaking people show up between the hours of 3:00am and 7:00am for the cold, cold festivities. I don’t mind the cold, but those are definitely sleepin’ hours for me during the winter months.

The groundhog.org website is improved over last year’s version, which I originally discovered via a magical Google search. I do have a vague recollection of an exclusive 2007 Groundhog Beanie Baby. But I still have one pressing question about the spelling of "Punxsatawney," referencing both the city and the groundhog: why is that letter S in the word when clearly the letter X serves the double purpose of representing the sounds of both K and S?

According to this friendly little educational calendar snippet, the name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location "ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." Still doesn’t answer my question, especially because in that pronunciation, a K is used instead of an X. Maybe I’ll learn more on February 2, 2009.

Unless I can get an invite to the elusive, exclusive Groundhog Picnic? That sounds like fun.