I went to the Irish Lion for lunch yesterday. We sat in the bar area, which is something I've never done, and the waiter was an older guy. I guess he must be the Irish because I couldn't understand a blessed thing he said. It was pretty astonishing. I remember not understanding the Irish I knew the summer I worked at the beach, especially the guys from Kilkenny, but their meaning was usually clear even if the details got lost. This guy? Off the charts.

Food was good, though.

Things I certainly will not miss about Bloomington

• The oppressive summers, although this year hasn't been so bad so far.
• The (sadly more pronounced and vocal) segment of the undergraduate population that feels entitled to everything and feels the need to talk about their sex lives very loudly on cell phones on a bus. It really is amazing how much my experience in this town has been tarnished by this smallish population of students. I would have enjoyed my time here so much more if these kids were either not here or less prominent. My experience with kids that age in Wisconsin is that this entitled rudeness is rarer, although the last time I spent time with Wisconsin undergraduates I was barely out of college myself, so I might not have noticed.
• That God-awful drive between Bloomington and Indianapolis. I only have to do it once more, and I'm dreading it.
  

Things I'm looking forward to in Wisconsin

• Being closer to our dear friends in Madison. We already have plans to go down there twice in August.
  
• Owning a home. I still can't believe that we bought a house, and it's a lovely, warm house in a good neighborhood. I can't believe how lucky we are that we get to do this.
  
• All the nature and wildlife. You would think it wouldn't be that big of a difference, but I think it is. Example: we went to a big furniture store in Eau Claire just to poke around. This store was close to the edge of town, but not by any means outside of town. Near an interstate, the mall, and two Culver's, that sort of thing. When I got out of the car I nearly stepped on a severed deer leg. Gross, but stick with me. All plausible explanations for how that deer leg got there in EC would make no sense in Bloomington. For example, let's say a coyote brought it there. It seems possible that the coyote found a dead deer hit by a car on the interstate and carried the leg a quarter mile or so to the parking lot where it got scared off. This would never have happened in Bloomington. Sure, there are coyotes in Indiana, but they stay (usually) well out of the city limits. Even if they DID come into the city, they certainly would not have brought along a deer leg. They would also not be in close proximity a dead deer. Sure, we have deer in Bloomington, but I've never seen a DEAD deer in the Bloomington city limits. Or, we could say that it fell off of someone's truck while they were parked at the furniture store looking at end tables. This would not happen in Bloomington. People would just NOT drive around town with a dead deer in their pickup. They would certainly not stop at a store whilst hauling a carcass. I dunno, for some reason this sort of closeness to nature (albeit gross in this case) seems like an adventure. There are more serene examples, like all the great hiking trails along the rivers and streams, the massive wooded park in the middle of town on the island, and a giant preserve just outside of town with a btterfly house. I just thought the deer leg was especially illustrative.
  
• Winter sports. The winter here in Bloomington has just stopped bothering me, and I really think I could handle a greater challenge. Give me more snow, more cold! I want to cross country ski!
• I'm looking forward to cultivating my Sconnie accent again.
• Being close to the Twin Cities. Should be neat.
• Getting to know my new neighbors. I just really like people from Wisconsin, as a group.
• I just mentioned Culver's, but to those of you who are unaware of this great fast food chain, it really is great. It's the only fast food burger that I like. They make their own custard at the store, fresh, and every day they have a different featured flavor, like rocky road or turtle or M&M or something. This may make losing the Idaho potato pounds a little harder, but it's so worth it.
• Living amongst football fanatics who are still smarting from the Brett Favre fiasco. Smarting sports fans make for good fun. I'm really looking forward to the Packers v. Vikings games this year. Speaking of which, check out this hilarious shirt. Give it time to sink in. I'll explain if you don't get it.
  

Things I'll miss about Bloomington

• All my dear friends. I had Elevensies with Suz and Brad yesterday. There were some brief remarks about how at a certain level of familiarity with friends, there's no problem with taking a forkful of someone else's Eggs Benedict even though you have syrup on your fork, or with drinking someone else's coffee, or dipping your home fry in their hollandaise sauce. In this category I would also put entering someone's house with just a knock and not having to wait for someone to open the door, borrowing cherished books or DVDs, inviting oneself to dinner, that sort of thing. I'm not looking forward to having to start all over in a new place, and it also seems like the older I get the longer it takes to establish this familiarity with people.
• My quiet and jungle-like neighborhood. No where else have I walked past butterfly bushes or day lilies taller than me.
• Working in a castle on a beautiful campus with so much green space.
• The comparatively long growing season and comparatively mild winter.
• Certain aspects of my job, mostly my co-workers. I'll miss debating with Margaret about whether co-workers should be hyphenated or not. (I would say yes because otherwise the word looks like it could be pronounced "cow-orkers," and who knows what a cow orker is?)
• The really high-quality undergraduates who are grateful for the advantages they've had in life and don't expect to get anything except through their own effort and hard work.
• Bloomington has a sort of quirky feel to it that I'm not sure exists many other places. Also, lots of bluegrass.
  

Moving is so much work, the most I've been cooking lately is pasta or beans and rice. Plus, I've been trying to loose some Idaho potato pounds I took home as a souvenir from our trip out west last month. I think Idaho sends the rest of the country its reject potatoes and keeps all the best ones for itself. I really can't describe how much better Idaho potatoes are, it's almost like a completely different food. The flip side is that I've completely lost interest in eating our inferior french fries.

Harper and I went for a walk this morning, it's beautiful and clear, a nice omen to the start of my weeklong workshop for teachers, which goes from this afternoon through Saturday morning. I'm not nervous or in any way mentally agitated about this at all. This is probably due to a combination of that I have no mental agitation to spare from moving, and also because I've done this workshop before and so many other events like it (35!) in the last two years that I know what could go wrong and how to handle problems as they come up. Last year it was mostly being really bored for many hours a day, punctuated by periods of running errands and putting out fires. However, as I officially leave the job in two weeks, I think I'll care less about the fires.

There's a dog in our neighborhood who always barks VERY aggressively at Harper whenever he's outside when we walk by. Today we were walking by as he and his owner pulled up. He was wearing a pink cone of shame. Heh heh.

On a related note, anyone who hasn't seen Up yet should do so immediately.

Cookie Backslide

Chris actually preferred my status quo cookies, the ones that are slightly gooey, mushy, a little greasy. So, I thought I'd try to adjust the Chocolate Chip Cookie #10 to make them a little chewier for him. I compared the #10 to the Nestle Toll House recipe, and the only difference, really, is that #10 calls for two egg yolks instead of two whole eggs, and the cooking time is longer but slower, since it's at the same temperature but all the cookies are in there at the same time (lowering the temperature of the oven). I thought I'd change the egg thing, adding one whole egg and one egg yolk instead of two egg yolks, just to see what happened. It was really unsuccessful. As you can see, they all melted together into a cookie glob. Very greasy.

It could be the eggs that did it. Or, it could be that my baking soda is flat and that's why the cookies didn't rise. But I think it went wrong from the beginning. I think I over-melted the butter. I sort of forgot about it in the microwave and by the time it beeped the butter was foaming, and the milk solids separated from the liquid. The butter and sugar just never creamed right even though I was beating it for something like 10 minutes, and it all went downhill from there.

I think in the future I'll not melt the butter. Actually, I don't know why it called for the butter to be melted in the first place; Alton kept making a big deal about how to properly cream something the butter CAN'T be melted. So it would seem to me that melting the butter is the WRONG thing to do, even if I hadn't over melted it. Hmmmm....