onelilly

Talk about polar opposites. From a movie about a guy who wanted a kingdom to a movie about a guy who wanted nothing. Both excellent movies.

Mongol came to the Regal on SW Park, so I was actually outside for a short period of time. Epic cinematography and engaging characters. It's mostly story driven rather than action, however the couple of battles are on a grand scale. The movie begins with Genghis Khan's childhood and leads up to his ascent to power. I just learned that this is the beginning of a trilogy. I'm looking forward to Mongol 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Stopped by the grocery store then made blueberry buckwheat pancakes, which led to...

I didn't realize Into the Wild was based on a true story until the credits. stopword mentioned the book on our hike, so I may have to give that a whirl after my current book. Into the Wild started off with a very zen "material objects bring unhappiness" message, but I wasn't prepared for the switch to happiness from human experience. After all, it was the human interactions he had on the journey to Alaska that contributed to much of his growth into manhood. The scene with the WW2 vet was heartbreaking.

BTW, I think I'd learn a little more about outdoor survival before spending a winter in the frozen tundra. I'm just sayin'.

This morning stopword, solteronita, and I decided at the last moment to do the Central Salmon River hike just outside of Zig Zag.

Instead of just jumping on OR-26 & heading to Zig Zag, we went the wrong direction and took the I-84 Columbia Gorge > Troutdale > Gresham > OR-26 > Zig Zag route. At least we got to see parts of Oregon we hadn't seen yet!

Two things were noted on our side venture:

1. Chainsaw carvings are apparently a big industry in central Oregon. Everyone wants a chainsaw carved bear in their living room.
   
2. I can totally miss a big sign that says "Mount Hood," but put a small sign that says "Sandercock Lane" on the side of the road and I'll catch it.

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And a few more here. I'm exhausted and have two glasses of wine in me.

heh. Sandercock.

+ brantastic was here!
- brantastic is no longer here.
+ we had so much fun together and laughed so hard.
+ we saw three moose and didn't get killed by any of them.
+ I have loads of photos to share in the future.
- I have to go through all of my photos.
+ I ate one thousand ice cream cones on my vacation!
- I ate one thousand ice cream cones on my vacation.
+ I have a hot date with Dodie tomorrow!
- My non-vacation life is kind of boring except for that last thing.
+ Season 4 of Melrose Place is currently downloading.

YES! I've met my first weight loss goal. I didn't have a chance to weigh myself Thursday morning, but as of this morning I'm back down to ten pounds lost. Except for the small box of KarmelKorn last night (hey, I had to reward myself for working on a holiday!), I've been keeping the daily calories between 1,400 and 1,600. It's surprisingly easy. According to the FitDay graph, I'm way ahead of where I need to be to meet my next goal (25 total pounds lost by my birthday, Oct 2).

Today is hike day. Still not sure where we are hiking, but a four-hour hike should burn roughly 2,000 calories. Unless I eat an entire pizza tonight, I should have a good start on losing another 1.2 pounds before next weekend.

The Good News: I found my tripod! Apparently it's been in the back of my Jeep since the last camping trip last summer.

The Bad News: As I'm running out the door to take pics of the Waterfront fireworks, I notice the plastic thingie that screws into the camera and then snaps into the tripod is gone. So the tripod is useless.

I tried to take some pics from the top of a parking garage anyway, but with 4 and 5 second exposures they turned out like crap, even when propped against something stable. If I could remember how to manually set the camera exposure I probably could have salvaged a pic or two. Looks like it's me and Into the Wild tonight.

We did get off work at 3pm though. When I take my holiday on the 14th, do you think everyone will get sent home early? I think not! Plus it was a productive day with the office being near empty, and everyone who had the day off were treated with a gloomy, rainy day.

So overall, not a totally bad day.

I read the United States Declaration of Independence again. It's really a powerful piece of writing. Maybe it's all that 18th Century intensity.

Now I have to go outside and hopefully see some fireworks from my house.

Lars and the Real Girl was fantastic. I was in the mood for something quirky, and Lars was perfect. Ryan Gosling was great as the socially repressed misfit.

Kelli Garner was adorably quirky and fantastically awkward. I didn't recognize her as the annoying ditz from Dreamland until I IMDBed her after the movie. As much I as I couldn't stand her in Dreamland, I adored her in Lars. I squeed every time she came on the screen.

Off to work!

I just sent an e-mail to six people where I referenced Fixed Assets... with no "t". One of the people is my boss. Another is the Fixed Assets Manager. Outlook needs a profanity filter not a spell check.

I sit here, pretending to work, trying to recover from the fight this morning, when the purple lady comes in beside me.

No coffee in hand, nothing. She stinks. Although she looks well fed and careed for, and just removed a laptop from her reusable grocery bag, she has huge scabs, like those from scabies bites, on her arms, and she smells as though she's lived near a dumpster. Like a homeless person. Her hair is unkempt, and she's obviously confused by her laptop cord, and how to deal with it.

Before she sits, she rearranges all the chairs at the four person table she has overtaken. One by one, she moves them each into the space between her table and another, selects her favorite, and places it nearest the wall. Then with the eye of an art critic, she arranges the other chairs appropriately. All four are different. She sits in the padded leather seat, and her bag goes in the seat to her right, a thin, red plastic chair. To her left, the orange cloth chair, a reminder of some long lost office, sits empty, and the wooden slope-backed chair sits in front of her.

She sighs, opens the free paper, and reads.

Heavy rain woke me up at 3:00am. At 3:05, it felt like lightning hit right outside my window. I jumped out of bed to see if I had been hit. Ten minutes later it lulled me back to sleep. I miss thunderstorms.

Last night I watched Green Street Hooligans. It gets three stars just for having Claire Forlani in it. It loses half-a-star because she had such a small role. It's about a guy who has everything, but has to lose it all and get into a lot of fights to learn about life. Oh. Oh, right. GSH tries to glamorize soccer hooligans. It doesn't work.

I also made a new South Beach dish last night, pizza meat pie. I'm set for food into the weekend.

I believe tonight will be Lars and the Real Girl. I'm starting to like Ryan Gosling, and this movie looks hilarious. He's so bad with women he gets a Real Doll and thinks it's real. The whole town goes along with his psychosis until he can work things out. This could be me in a year or two.

It's a shame devils_mouth deleted her LJ. She always understood my accounting posts.

An accountant with the Oregon Dept of Education was just found guilty of embezzlement. This is fairly common, but his testimony cracks me up.

Crosson said he took the money after other supervisors and managers signed off that the federal funds had been spent, leaving him with no way to reconcile account balances or explain why money was still there. He said his former boss told him, "and I quote, 'You're the accountant. Do something with it.' " So he put the money into his own account "while someone could determine what to do."

Basically, "We had this money I couldn't account for, so I put it in my personal account via a fake company until we could figure out what to do with the money. Oh, and then I spent the money I was holding on a house and car."

There's no job market for accountants with embezzlement charges.

It's really, really bad TV, but I worked twelve hours yesterday and this was the extent of my excitement. So for the three people on my FL who watched the Tila Tequila finale...

( Tila spoilers within )

And Real World tonight! Will is gonna eff up.

Apparently Matthew Fox has relatives in Bend, which may include his Mom. A co-worker just told me a rumor that he may be in Portland for the holiday weekend. For any locals, your job this weekend is to find him and coerce the ending of Lost out of him. Alcohol and threats of violence are both acceptable methods.

I finally set up a new account on FitDay. As an accountant, I have an appreciation for numbers. Quantifying and comparing data makes sense. I've felt gross for several months but didn't have a good perspective on how gross until this morning. My Body Mass Index is 30.9, which puts me at borderline obese (30 to 39 is obese on the BMI scale). Ouch. Of course, a big part of wanting to lose weight is vanity and confidence, but there's also some health concerns. There's a history of high blood pressure and bad tickers in my family.

( even more weight and diet stuff over here. )

Yet another food entry. "The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating." The summary:

1. Beets
   
2. Cabbage
   
3. Swiss chard
   
4. Cinnamon
   
5. Pomegranate juice
   
6. Dried plums
   
7. Pumpkin seeds
   
8. Sardines
   
9. Turmeric
   
10. Frozen blueberries
    
11. Canned pumpkin

I used to make killer buckwheat pancakes with blueberries. I almost bought the stuff to make them last night.

I could do everything on this list but cabbage and sardines. Yech.

New post at Kate On

Yessss! There are a few people who need to work on the 4th, so I'll be here to authorize journal entries and provide general assistance. The office will be nice and quiet so I can get some of my work done without interruption. I'll probably take my holiday on July 11 or 14 once we're done with Q2 close. Maybe I can make the Shaniko trip then.

Still buzzing from the weekend. That was much needed.

This was by far one of my favorite baking projects in a long while, and despite the nerve-wracking nature of laminated dough - even more "daring" was the fact that I baked all of this during a Midwestern humidity wave, and the whole thing didn't collapse.  I even used the Outdoors as my proofer, since at the time of baking, it was 89 degrees with 70% humidity.

The dough recipe is fairly straightforward - I made no substitutions or changes, though after watching some Youtubes of real danish bakers doing the folds, I realized that I didn't make my folds with the same precision, which made my ending braids slightly lopsided!  Another thing is that, since it was hot and humid, I wanted to ensure I used butter with as little water content as possible - beurre sec, if you can find it, which is the preferred butter for laminated doughs because it has as little as 8% water, whereas good 'ol supermarket butter can be as high as 16%.  The lamination (layers) in the dough are created by the steam of the fat melting - if there is a lot of extra water in there too, it can make the dough a bit soggy.  Beurre sec is very difficult to find though, so I just used good 'old European Plugra, which still has a lower water content than, say Land 'O Lakes.

The challenge allowed some individuality with selection of fillings - I generally find danish pastries to be too sweet; usually they are filled with goopy cream cheese and gloppy jam, so I turned to Rose Levy Berenbaums The Bread Bible for some suggestions of authentic fillings.  One suggestion she makes is for remonce, which is just a quick little almond custard made in about 5 minutes work with a food processor.  One recipe made enough for both braids - I just used a pastry brush to spread a thick layer of it on the bottom of the braid, and then - my favorite one - topped with fresh pitted bing cherries in the one, and fresh blueberries in the other.  In retrospect, I should have cooked the blueberries down a bit - they extruded a bit too much juice in the baking.  The cherries, however, melded into the almond custard and studded the interior of the bread with bright happiness.

Danish Dough

Source: The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard.

Makes 2-1/2 pounds dough

Ingredients
For the dough (Detrempe)
1 ounce fresh yeast or 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
Zest of 1 orange, finely grated
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
2 large eggs, chilled
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
3-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

For the butter block (Beurrage)
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

DOUGH
Combine yeast and milk in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed. Slowly add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice. Mix well. Change to the dough hook and add the salt with the flour, 1 cup at a time, increasing speed to medium as the flour is incorporated. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. You may need to add a little more flour if it is sticky. Transfer dough to a lightly floured baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Without a standing mixer: Combine yeast and milk in a bowl with a hand mixer on low speed or a whisk. Add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice and mix well. Sift flour and salt on your working surface and make a fountain. Make sure that the “walls” of your fountain are thick and even. Pour the liquid in the middle of the fountain. With your fingertips, mix the liquid and the flour starting from the middle of the fountain, slowly working towards the edges. When the ingredients have been incorporated start kneading the dough with the heel of your hands until it becomes smooth and easy to work with, around 5 to 7 minutes. You might need to add more flour if the dough is sticky.

BUTTER BLOCK

1. Combine butter and flour in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle and then beat for 1 minute more, or until smooth and lump free. Set aside at room temperature.
2. After the detrempe has chilled 30 minutes, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 18 x 13 inches and ¼ inch thick. The dough may be sticky, so keep dusting it lightly with flour. Spread the butter evenly over the center and right thirds of the dough. Fold the left edge of the detrempe to the right, covering half of the butter. Fold the right third of the rectangle over the center third. The first turn has now been completed. Mark the dough by poking it with your finger to keep track of your turns, or use a sticky and keep a tally. Place the dough on a baking sheet, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Place the dough lengthwise on a floured work surface. The open ends should be to your right and left. Roll the dough into another approximately 13 x 18 inch, ¼-inch-thick rectangle. Again, fold the left third of the rectangle over the center third and the right third over the center third. No additional butter will be added as it is already in the dough. The second turn has now been completed. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
4. Roll out, turn, and refrigerate the dough two more times, for a total of four single turns. Make sure you are keeping track of your turns. Refrigerate the dough after the final turn for at least 5 hours or overnight. The Danish dough is now ready to be used. If you will not be using the dough within 24 hours, freeze it. To do this, roll the dough out to about 1 inch in thickness, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze. Defrost the dough slowly in the refrigerator for easiest handling. Danish dough will keep in the freezer for up to 1 month.

Originally posted on abbacat.vox.com

WALL-E was incredible. When I first saw the trailers I knew I had to see it, but I figured I'd netfix it (yay for verbing nouns). lokitwospirit talked on the hike about how great it was so I braved the throngs of kids to catch it at a matinee. The kids at the theater were surprisingly cute and well-behaved. The parents, not so much.

Oh yeah, the movie. Great story. Great character development, especially considering the minimal dialogue. Great background message about the effects of consumerism on the planet. And hilarious! Kids movies have gotten so damn funny. I was cracking up at all the trailers.

To totally switch gears, I want to see Mongol, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film. So far it's only playing at the Cinema 21 on NW 21st. I'm hoping it'll come to the Regal on SW Park soon.


Edit: WALL-E spoilers in the comments.

Either the hike was tougher than I thought it would be, or I'm in worse shape than I thought. It's probably both.

solteronita, lokitwospirit, and I headed out for the Cape Horn hike (8 miles, 1400' elevation change) early this morning. We knocked it out before the heat kicked in (it's 99 now), but I still wound up with a farmer's tan.

At one point, I pulled a Bear Grylls and pointed out some cougar tracks. Turns out they were dog tracks. In my defense, they must have been really big dogs.



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There's a few more here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johro/sets/72157605867165356/