Hello new year
Hi there. I'll feel a lot better about this journal thing when my scripts are working right. Of course it's a Y2K problem, and I only have that because I started out last spring with a two-character directory name for the year. It was pretty dumb, when you look at it now. The reason it doesn't really matter is that I'll just edit a few entries links by hand, and when the dates aren't crossing the 99-2000 boundary there won't be a problem.
In this household January tends to be jigsaw puzzle month. Arlene and I will buy almost any Springbok puzzle we ever find at a yard sale, if the seller says that it has all the pieces and the price is right. We have a zillion (that's ten to the second in this context) by now, mostly the 500 piece size.
Jigsaw puzzles are a study in pattern recognition and perception. For each puzzle you have to learn what to look for and you have to develop new systems of classification. Sometimes we sort the pieces carefully by color before starting, sometimes we just go through the box looking for edges, and sometimes we end up sorting by shape. Arlene feels strongly that pieces will sometimes change their shape to fit the space, because she claims she often tries the same piece several times before it fits.
Springbok puzzles, especially the older ones (before Hallmark Cards bought the company) have thick pieces that fit tightly. When we finish a puzzle Arlene will carefully lift the whole thing by the top edge, look at it hanging in midair, and say, “yup, it's a Springbok.”
Khatchpuri was on the breakfast menu here this morning. I don't know how to spell it, really, and I couldn't find it, no matter how I spelled it, anywhere on the web. It's a Georgian dish, more like a fried egg pizza than anything else. Anne and I split one in Yerevan, as you might have guessed. I made some pizza dough last night and let it rise overnight. This morning I took two fist-sized pieces of dough, flattened them out into pita-sized circles (a little higher around the edges than in the middle), sprinkled them with a little grated cheese and some paprika, cut a pat of butter into little bits and spread it around mine (Arlene is more careful about cholesterol than I am), broke an egg into the middle of each, and baked at 450 for about ten minutes.
“Of course!” I hear you saying. “I was going to cook that myself, and that's just what I would have named it, too.”
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