huevolution

Burgers, blue cheese and sweet potato fries

Huevo — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:20:12 +0000

This was dinner on Sunday and Monday. My wife made the sweet potato fries (and took the photo) and I made the (blue) cheese burgers. These will be worth any artery clogging problems they may cause in the long term.

Summer 2011 still life (Cherries and Cortizone)

Huevo — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:20:41 +0000

These are two things on my desk right now–cherries and anti-itch cream. This is what the summer brings, fresh cherries from Washington state and mosquitos from swampy pools of standing water throughout Cambridge. The fruit I like, the bugs…not so much.

The heat index is nonsense and TV weather folk are good lookin’

Huevo — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:31:04 +0000

Television weather folk live in the world of hyperbole and fear. For them every day in is a potential for disaster of unimaginable consequence. This apocalyptic-run-for-your-life approach to the weather has been especially amplified these last few days during the summer’s latest heatwave. What could be summarized in four words (“It is very hot.”), now occupies several minutes of TV news time. The headlines generally go something like this, “HEAT KILLS BABIES AND OLD PEOPLE–DRINK SOME WATER BEFORE YOU ALL DIE!!!” The weather is stealing the thunder (thank you very much) from the bread and butter of local news, murders. Well, murders and sports, but sports is another matter.

The heat index has been mentioned by everyone over the past few days. Weather people like to remind us that even though it’s technically 99 degrees it feels like 185. They call this magnified temperature rating the heat index. Not surprisingly a television weather forecaster from Florida invented this under the name “humiture” to account for Jacksonville’s mugginess.<http://www.news4jax.com/news/19262258/detail.html> I appreciate this forecaster’s passion for weather, but I don’t need another measurement. I know when it’s hot. The temperature in my room as I type this is 84 according to the wall thermometer. That’s fine, I get that. I don’t need another reading, or a handsome man in a fancy suit, telling me that because of pending work deadlines, unfinished business from childhood, humidity, and warm coffee, it actually feels like 128 in my world.

Anyway, as much as I complain about local weather news, I watch it all the time. It’s a guilty pleasure to watch pretty people read about terrible things. I wonder if it would be the same to watch ugly people reading about wonderful things.

another nod to coffee and failure

Huevo — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:56:29 +0000

Post-a-day 2011 is a failure. That’s okay. I didn’t think I’d get this far. I started this post-a-day project as a test of my ability to remain committed to something (other than compulsive worrying, net surfing, TV watching, junk-food consuming) for a sustained period of time. Much to my surprise, I kept at it for 7 months. I diligently posted everyday (or, in recent weeks, every other day) until I finally petered out on July 9th. I hope to get back into this, so here’s a(nother) caffeine jolt to get going again. Coffee is good. Some people think it’s good enough to sing about:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/07/of-the-bean-i-sing/

They call them pintxos

Huevo — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:48:54 +0000

In my mind, this was the best tapas experience we had in Spain this year. That’s saying a lot because my wife and I had plenty of great tapas experiences. The restaurant is called Bar Mugi, or maybe just Mugi, and it’s in the Indautxu neighborhood of Bilbao. In the Basque country, they call tapas, pintxos (pronounced pinchos). They could call them putrified zombie corpses and I’d still eat them. These were absolutely delicious. They had hot and cold versions and each plate was like a small work of art that tasted better than it looked. The bar staff and patrons were super friendly. There was nothing pretentious about this place. We didn’t find this in our guidebook, or online, we just noticed that it was always busy whenever we walked by. We decided to give it a try one afternoon and it was perfect.

Forgotten face

Huevo — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:22:04 +0000

Here’s another shot from last week’s visit to the Boston MFA.

Chihuly at Boston MFA

Huevo — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:20:06 +0000

In small things not forgotten

Huevo — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:29:55 +0000

This is a shot from part of the grand collection of ancient artifacts at the Boston MFA. This is, I think, an Egyptian object. It is one of many small and curious things that are displayed in the MFA. These little figurines remind me of Deetz’s classic book, In Small Things Forgotten where he uncovers much bout the early history of the US by looking at artifacts from Colonial America.

More Chihuly

Huevo — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 03:19:29 +0000

Here’s another shot from our visit last week to the Boston MFA.

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/chihuly

Shadows and explosions on Fourth of July

Huevo — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:06:29 +0000

The Fourth of July would be nothing, in my mind, without the legacy of Chinese explosives. That’s probably sacrilegious or, at the very least, unpatriotic but I can’t remember anything about Fourth of July Holiday other than fireworks and, perhaps, rousing renditions of the 1812 Overture (written by a Russian) blasting around shadowy summer nights.

This was taken a few years ago at our first Boston 4th of July celebration on the Charles River. The photo doesn’t capture the frequent and fervent “Yankees Suck!!!” chant that erupted continuously throughout the night.