Tastes of Truro

This past weekend was Truro's 300th birthday. To celebrate, the Truro Vineyard had a small "Tastes of Truro" event. It reminded me of the first year of OysterFest, before it got super crazy with crowds. This first-ever culinary event at the vineyard featured a host of Cape restaurants and artisans, live music and dancing. Truro wines were sold by the glass and by the bottle (a genius idea in my opinion)! The day was quite beautiful and I very much enjoyed myself. I also really enjoyed the Truro Vineyards Maritime Red. If you ever end up in the area, check out the Vineyard. During the summer, wine tastings are held outdoors under our tasting pavillion and it's just lovely.

10 years later

I had my high school reunion this past weekend. I went. 10 years is not long enough.


I had completely forgotten, but on graduation day, we were asked to put things in the time capsule for the 10 year reunion. So when I arrived and checked in, I was handed a large envelope. The large envelope contained 2 smaller envelopes. One was very thin and the other was very thick. I opened the thin envelope. It was a form listing my best and worst subjects, friends, favorite activities, what I'd learned from school & my family, etc. It was a pretty standard form which I got a chuckle out of.


I did not open the thick envelope right away. When I left the reunion, I headed off to an open mic night to hear the local talent (I was lucky enough to see my old piano teacher there! He played a folk song he wrote about cosmology - hilarious and I did not know he could sing so well!)


I opened the thick envelope after getting into bed. Inside was an 8 page letter to myself, a newsletter which I had created about what was going on in the world at that time (I was very into graphic design in high school. I would design newsletters for myself, programs for local youth theatre, fliers for my dad, anything I could think of.) And my own obituary. Yes, I know it's weird, but I think we were studying Jonathan Swift in British Literature.


It was completely bizarre to reacquaint myself with my 12th grade self. Good grief. I still have some of the same worries I did then! A weird thing: despite writing in my obituary that I studied mathematics in college & math being my favorite subject, I entered university as a political science major. Cause math is hard stuff, man. (I'm glad I changed my mind. And my major!) But the big surprise, my very dramatic 12th grade self who wrote her own obituary, wrote about her death at age 32. Oh boy. Well, it was nice to reminisce.

Functions are neat!

The functions below appear to be pretty basic. Some might even say linear & quadratic & exponential in nature (folks at the KC know they are polynomials. How do you determine these functions are polynomials? If you take the nth + 1 derivative of each function where n is the highest degree of the function - it will equal 0.)




If you zoom in on the same functions and look at the domain [0,1], we see some very different behavior.


On a domain of [-1,1], there are several neat patterns within the group of functions.


Think the functions are symmetric across the y-axis?





They are not. Because some are odd degree polynomials and some are even degree polynomials.





Math is cool.

Winter Treat

Both Stop & Shop and Trader Joe's have blackberries on sale. (The blackberries from Trader Joe's were perfect. The blackberries I purchased from Stop & Shop were a bit tart.)



I love blackberries. It's hard not to eat a whole container in one sitting or put a whole container on one bowl of cereal. And to have blackberries in February in New England seems so extravagant! But I couldn't resist and decided to treat myself.

I popped a berry into my mouth and was taken back to a childhood memory. When I was little we lived in the Berkshires. In the back of my grandmother's yard, there was a fantastic climbing tree and a neighbor named Oz who grew wild blackberries. He was an older gentleman with a big beard and a very scary looking scare-crow in his yard. This, of course, made him pretty scary to a small child. But he was harmless and very pleasant. My grandmother and Oz were friends and so we were allowed to pick his wild blackberries. I remember being very afraid of the scarecrow and sneaking into Oz's yard, grabbing some blackberries and then running back to the house. The blackberries were worth the fear. I was pretty young; we moved to Cambridge shortly after I turned 3.

Mix-A-6

I went to an IPA tasting at Cardoza's last week and ended up walking out with a mix-a-6 pack. (It's funny how those things happen.) Here are my choices/thoughts.


Troegenator's DoubleBock
It's probably not fair but I have a high expectation for a Double Bock (or Dopplebock - which rolls off the tongue much nicer). A few years ago Buzzard's Bay Brewery made a limited edition Weizen Dopplebock. Holy crap was it delicious! I got myself, my mom, and my uncle hooked on the stuff. They haven't made it since. ::sniff sniff:: Oh right, I'm writing about Troegenator.
I miss BBB's Dopplebock.

Southern Tier's Old Man Winter
It was tasty and drinkable but not really memorable.

Great Divide Brewing Co.'s St. Bridget's Robust Porter
This was a very nice porter. Mellow but not boring. It has just the right amount of roasted malt flavor. It's very robust and delightful to drink. I did not appreciate the pick-up truck silhouette of a woman on the label however.

Avery's Old Jubilation Ale
Basically I picked this one because 1) I've never tried it and 2) it's from Boulder and I love Boulder. Anyway, at first I found this ale had too strong of a barley taste. I ended up eating some Irish aged cheddar cheese and the taste really improved! But I still prefer Abita's Turbodog (brown ale).

Southern Tier's Raspberry Porter
I am not a fan of fruity beers. And I've hated all fruit Lambic's I've tried. But the Raspberry Porter was recommended by Derek, whose beer opinion I trust. If you like fruit and beer combinations, maybe this is for you, but I just didn't like it. It tasted a lot like Raspberry Seltzer.

Founder's Porter
This Porter is dark and rich and it has a strong roast flavor to it - like roasted nuts or malt (go figure). I'm not digging the roasted taste - it's too much for me. I prefer the Great Divide St. Bridget Porter, or Founder's Breakfast Stout.

Too many characters for twitter

I found this interesting:

"To say two people communicate successfully means no more than that they have arrived at a point where their mutual interpretations, each expressed in action interpretable by the other, are compatible – they work for the time being" (Glasersfeld, 1995).

Preemptive Vacation Message

I just received a preemptive vacation email message from a friend of mine. Rather than set up a vacation message that will automatically inform the sender that the recipient is on vacation, my friend sent out a group email to notify people she will be in the Caribbean sitting in the warm sun and won't be around to check her email, or shovel, or be cold. So haha.

Okay, maybe I ad-libbed a bit there (but not that much!). But considering I already knew she was going on vacation, I'd call this a case of "Rub-it-in-your-face-itis".

My dreaming self left a note for my awake self last night.

Apparently I dreamt that during the restorative process for Joseph Severn's Rhode Island house, the house burned down. It was a travesty which left many, including myself, upset. I, of course, did the obvious thing - speed off in my forest green BMW. I don't know the model but it drove amazingly well.

Yikes! I was only kidding when I said I wished gas prices would get back down to $1.32. But with $1.65 at Stop & Shop in NB, it's getting pretty close and pretty crazy.


I heard on the news last night that the heads of GM, Chrysler and Ford would be driving to Congress next time to ask for a bailout rather than take their own private jets. Nancy Pelosi has said, “We want to see a commitment to the future. We want to see a restructuring of the approach, that they have a new business model, a new business plan. There has to be compensation reform.” And indeed there does. There also has to be checks and balances on this restructuring. Will this fall on the companies' board of directors?

Frak. I don't know how I feel about this. I realize how devastating it would be for these companies & the American auto industry if they did not get this bailout. At the same time, their previous business ethics and practices are not ones I would reward. And I realize the bailout is not a "reward" but hell.

I'm not bummed that GM says it plans to eliminate Hummers. (It's fracking about time). But I am bummed about GM's plans to eliminate Saturn. I've owned two now. They have been very good cars to me and I am currently averaging 38mpg. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I can't help wonder who will be the next to travel to Washington to ask for some money.