The Savvy Life

Autumn is officially here and with the cold weather there is nothing like having a cocktail with friends and family to keep some warmth in our lives. One of the great things about fall is the availability of harvest foods and flavors. I think the cocktails we enjoy in this season should reflect the season’s offerings.

The Maple Leaf

Maple isn’t produced in the fall, but the flavor always seems so ‘autumn’ to me.

2 oz Jim Beam Black bourbon

½ oz Real maple syrup (don’t settle for high fructose corn syrup with maple flavoring, get the real stuff, it is worth the price)

½ oz lemon juice

Add the Jim Beam Black bourbon, maple syrup, and lemon juice in a shaker over ice. Shake thoroughly and pour into an old-fashioned glass filled with ice. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Pumpkin Martini

Pumpkins are closely associated autumn, there is no doubt about that.

1 oz Starbuck Cream Liqueur

1 ½ oz Stoli Vanilla vodka

½ oz pumpkin pie mix

Mix the ½ oz of pumpkin pie mix and ½ oz of the Stoli Vanilla vodka. In an ice filled shaker add the Starbuck Cream Liqueur, the rest of the Vanilla vodka and the pumpkin pie mix. Shake thoroughly and pour into a martini glass. Top with a spoonful of whipped cream and garnish with a cinnamon stick.

I first heard of this unique beer brewed from ancient yeast from the NPR show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and it captured my imagination.  The Fossil Fuels Brewing Co. of Northern California has done something amazing - I mean more amazing than brewing beer.  I think we can all agree that brewing beer is pretty amazing in and of itself.

Back in the beginning, or at least during the Eocine epoch, when the trees were growing, sap oozing forth, trapping life with its stickiness.  The sap hardened and over the span of time turned to amber.  Dr. Raul Cano took this amber and unlocked the elements of life it had captured.  Dr. Raul Cano and Chip Lambert isolated yeast strains from samples of amber.  These strains resembled Saccharomyces cerevisiae - common brewing and baking yeast.  The original research was creating a library of ancient organisms, the yeast was a glorious side discovery.  Chip Lambert described the process of going from discovery of the yeast to the creation of beer:

Some had biochemical profiles similar to typical brewer’s yeast, so the natural question was, “I wonder what beer made from these strains would taste like?”  The answer was, “very good”, as were breads made with some of the other strains.  It has taken a while to develop the idea, but the beer is excellent and…unique.

I couldn’t help but wonder about the first taste of a beer made with a yeast that is 45 million years old.  Chip assured me, “Of course there was trepidation, but like most chefs (I think, because I hate cooking, but I watched Paul Prudhomme do it once), you can always spit it out if you don’t like it.”  Luckily that was not necessary.  Chip’s reaction after that first sip was “Wow, this is really good beer!”

There still was something about this process I found a bit disturbing.  Could this yeast burst free from the lab?  Is it a threat?  I saw Jurassic Park.  I know what could happen.  Or at least my over active imagination assumed.  Chip straightened me out and gave me some scientific reassurance.

We call our strains the “Mothers of all yeasts” we work (cook, brew or make Vegemite) with today.  Physiologically, none of the ancient isolates are so unique that their modern counterparts are not identifiable.  Just as there are many organisms currently being isolated and cultured from extreme or unique environments on Earth (and Mars?) that humans have not or rarely have contacted and they do no harm, the ancient organisms utilize the same biological processes and succumb to the same stresses as the “modern” (that maybe a misnomer) microbes.

So that is the history of the beer, what do people really think of it?  Jay R. Brooks from Celebrator Beer News sampled Tyrannosaurs-Rat beer brewed by Guerneville’s Stumptown and compared it to an identical pale ale differing only in the strain of yeast.  “T-Rat is smoother, with softer fruity flavor characteristics and just a touch of lemony sweetness that isn’t tart.”

Sounds downright tasty to me.   Sadly, this unique brew is only going to be available at certain bars and pubs around Northern California.

I’m making it a personal mission to seek out this unique taste crafted with ancient yeast.  Part of the profit of the beer gets funneled into alternative fuel research, which makes the name of the brewing company, Fossil Fuels, a delightful pun.  I’m a sucker for puns.

I’ve been toying with this theme for a bit and finally just decided to put it into words and see how it looked.  There is so much to be explored in the world of Buffy and I am certain in all the academic papers written about the show and the characters that relationships have been fully covered.  Yet, I still wanted to put my two cents into the discussion.

Buffy and Angel

Talk about star-crossed lovers, the Buffy-Angel relationship is one that has seen more than its fair share of turmoil and tragedy.

True love is never easy and requires you to make some very difficult decisions. Now it might not mean you have to decide between killing your lover and saving the world or decide between sex and being a soulless demon, but sacrifices will have to be made and even then a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Willow and Xander

These two have been friends their entire lives.  They care for each other, are able to administer dope slaps to each other, and honestly love each other.  Your best friend may seem like the perfect person to date, but in the long run, it is often more important to have a friend than a lover.

Willow and Oz

They were a perfect couple, geeky and sweet.  Oz clearly was a stand up guy able to be rational as well as communicate his feelings and emotions fairly well.

The person you fall in love with may have issues that you have to deal with, such as medical conditions like depression and lycanthropy or possibly just unique sexual desires. You can choose to accept your lover’s needs such as to be locked in a cage three nights a month (could be for lycanthropy or a unique sexual desire) or you might end up dating someone who doesn’t reveal these traits to you at all, and tries to cover them up. No one is perfect.

Xander and Anya

This is the relationship that never should have been: ex-vengeance demon with dopey guy.  Yet, for whatever reason, they seemed to work together as a couple fairly well.  Anya made Xander try to achieve more for himself.  Xander made Anya aware that she has some negative tendencies regarding social interactions.  For all his lack of charisma, Anya feel deeply in lover with Xander.

The more you love someone, the more likely you are to hurt them and the closer you are, the more intense the hurt will be. Sometimes this hurt can’t be avoided, but if you at least communicate with your lover, you can at least mitigate the pain.  Leaving someone at the altar, even if for the right reason, is the wrong thing to do.

Willow and Tara

As beautiful relationships go, the Willow-Tara relationship is one of the best.  They not only had the love part of their relationship down, they had the nuts and bolts aspect of their relationship down (notice my restraint in not making any jokes about nuts and bolts… although I guess saying this sort of ruins the classiness of my lack of a joke).  They had a great level of communication, were able to be parental to Dawn, and in general were facing life together, until Willow’s addiction to magic came along.

If you love someone and they are engaged in self-destructive behavior that is not only hurting them but others around them, the best thing you can do for them is to step away, no matter how hard it might be for you.  For Willow to reform her ways, she needed to know that she was losing Tara.

Buffy and Spike

A vampire slayer with a vampire who kills slayers seems like a really bad relationship.  Yet, it somehow worked, to a point.

There are many times you will fall in love with the wrong person for the right reasons and the right person for the wrong reasons. The best thing you can do is to be honest about what you are doing with yourself and your lover.  The other lesson here is never to confuse lust with love.

I believe everyone has what I like to call a temporal radar.  Some people have a much better radarscreens that extends way out into the future, while others, like me, have radarscreens that at best extend out 12 days.  What this means is people track events and days differently.  If something occurs more than 12 days in the future, then it isn’t on my screen and it gets lumped in with all other dates.  So yes, looking at my temporal radar, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve all seem to appear on the same date. 

As you might suspect, there are consequences to having a limited view of scheduling.  I am reluctant to schedule anything that is off of my temporal radar.  Having one thing that I have to do that is beyond 12 days means I consider every day beyond that 12th day to be filled with an activity.  This is how, with only a few things on my schedule, I can feel overwhelmed.  It really links back to the fact that beyond 12 days, everything feels uncertain.

Some bad side effects of this beyond the always feeling overwhelmed is I can’t buy tickets in advance for anything.  I miss concerts of people I want to see because I can’t fathom buying tickets two months ahead of the event.  When people try to get me to commit to some date or another, I can’t… I won’t.  I leave myself huge amounts of wiggle room. 

I am curious if other people do have a temporal radar and if so, how far out does it go? 

I know, I know, if I was a true geek I’d have called it a temporal dradus.

I found the New York Times article, The Minimalist - 101 20-Minute Dishes For Inspired Picnics by way of Lifehacker.com.

With the Fourth of July looming on the horizon, there is no doubt summer is in full swing. I’m really interested in breaking from the ‘typical’ when it comes to cooking and I was intrigued by more than a few of these simple recipes.

For example, check out this take on black beans:

Soak a tablespoon or two of black beans in sherry or wine; toss with cooked rice, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil and cilantro.

Or how about this for a salad idea:

Cut day-old crusty bread into one-inch cubes. Just before leaving the house, combine it with chopped tomatoes (seeds are O.K.), chopped cucumber, chopped red onion and fresh basil. Pack dressing separately: olive oil, red wine vinegar, diced anchovies, capers, salt and pepper. Call this panzanella.

All I can say is adding one or two of these dishes to standard picnic foods of fried chicken and potato salad would really enhance the occasion.

MSN had an article the other day that I found intriguing. As I get older, I pay more attention to things like nutrition because I am a bit more aware of the causal relationship between diet and health. I spent a good portion of my twenties thinking I didn’t have to worry about what I ate. Then when I suddenly gained forty pounds and saw how what I ate affected my emotional state, I took a keen interest in all things food. Which of course led to a keen interest in cooking and thus a food afficienado was born.

Enough of the history and back to the nutrition discussed in the article. The title of the piece, “What Men Should Eat Every Day” is a bit limiting, because if you ate and drank all of this every day your diet would stop eating out of boredom.

I’m not a huge seafood fan so I struggle to eat fish once a week let alone every day. There is no way this article is serious about that suggestion.

The article makes some obvious suggestions and some not so obvious suggestions that I’m going to walk through.

Fruits and vegetables/fiber

If you don’t know already that most of your diet should have lots of fruits, vegetables, and fiber, then you’ve been living in a cave for the past twenty years. The only part of this that I’m going to dwell on is the fiber aspect. We all know fiber is the cleansing element, but it has other positive benefits as well. Consider what the American Heart Association says about fiber:

When regularly eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol, soluble fiber has been shown to help lower blood cholesterol. Foods high in soluble fiber include oat bran, oatmeal, beans, peas, rice bran, barley, citrus fruits, strawberries and apple pulp.

Insoluble fiber doesn’t seem to help lower blood cholesterol. But it’s an important aid in normal bowel function. Foods high in insoluble fiber include whole-wheat breads, wheat cereals, wheat bran, cabbage, beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, turnips, cauliflower and apple skin.
(June 30, 2008 http://americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4494)

So by adding oatmeal, peas, beans, brown rice, and strawberries to your diet, you are lowering blood cholesterol. Whole wheat bread, carrots and cauliflower provide the cleansing aspect of fiber. All of this satisfies the need to eat fruit and vegetables every day.

Folate

Honestly, I read this and thought, “What the hell is folate?” I’ll avoid the science of folate and focus on the legend of Popeye. Remember Popeye got nice and strong from eating spinach? It was always said spinach was high in iron and prevented anemia. Well, that is a lie, but spinach is high in folate and prevents anemia. Folate is also an anti-cancer vitamin, fighting off those free radicals that cause our cells to go haywire. So for good healthy blood and cancer prevention you can’t do better than folate.

I know I don’t get enough folate in my diet, but that is easily fixed. I just need to increase my intake of folate. Not that I’m shilling for a certain cereal but Cheerios(tm) provides all 400 micrograms of folate that is recommended. 1 cup of cooked pasta provides about 100 microgams. Half a cup of peanuts provides 40 micrograms. I’m used to reading labels for calories, but now I’ll have to pay attention to folate as well.

Tomato Sauce

Okay, this is easy for me, seeing that I eat a lot of pasta dishes, but I was a bit surprised by this inclusion. What is it about tomato sauce that provides a health benefit? Tomatoes are a ‘risk diminishing’ food. They lower the risk of all sorts of things men should care about - like impotence, heart disease, and memory loss. But unfortunately, just adding a few tomatoes to your diet won’t cut it. It takes 165 raw tomatoes to equal 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce. And ten tablespoons a week is the amount recommended.

Tomatoes are also a great source of lycopene, which is yet another cancer fighting substance. The way I see it, we can’t have enough defenses against cancer.

Nuts

Walnuts and almonds are high in omega-3’s. Sadly the only thing I could remember about omega-3’s was it was the anti-crazy stuff. Not have Omega-3’s in your diet made you crazy. Trying to get information about Omega-3 that doesn’t come from a company selling it seems to be sort of difficult. Omega-3 is a fat, but it is a good fat. The American diet in general lacks this kind of fat but is very rich in Omega-6. The ratio recommended by the FDA is 4 Omega-3 to 1 Omega-6. The normal American diet tends to be 20 Omega-6 to 1 Omega-3. That is rough. Nuts help bring this back into a healthy balance.

I don’t want to forget to mention that nuts are a great source of protein as well.

Fish

I can’t imagine eating fish every day. Even three servings a week would be a push for me for multiple reasons. First, I really think we as humans need to eat more local foods instead of flying fish in from the oceans. Local fish have a higher chance of containing mercury. While I love salmon, I flying it in from the pacific northwest seems like it should be a special occassion thing, not a weekly thing.

Fish is a quality source of protein with a lot of good fats included. It is a complete toss up. I currently eat one serving a week and trying hard to get it up to two servings. I’ve been eating mainly whitefish and cod, which are the blandest more boring fish around. My only other quality source is in the form of sushi.

Now I know some people who are afraid of all fish because of mercury.  I can only point those people to the FDA report regarding fish and mercury and shrug my shoulders if they still refuse to eat fish.  The key part of the report states:

FDA toxicologists have determined that for persons other than pregnant women and women of childbearing age who may become pregnant, regular consumption of fish species with methyl mercury levels around 1 part per million (ppm)–such as shark and swordfish–should be limited to about 7 ounces per week (about one serving) to stay below the acceptable daily intake for methyl mercury. For fish with levels averaging 0.5 ppm, regular consumption should be limited to about 14 ounces per week. Current evidence indicates that nursing women who follow this advice do not expose their infants to increased risk from methyl mercury.

I’m not a huge fan of fish and tend to have it cooked in the worst possible way for you, except when I have it as yummy sushi.  This means I am aware that it is possible for people just to not like fish.  Far better to say that then concoct reasons why you don’t want to eat it.  But if you are one of those people who doesn’t like fish, I really recommend that you sample the fish that is available.  Certain options, like halibut are quite mild in taste and when slathered in butter and lemon, are just down right delicious.

I for one am a huge fan of beer battered fresh water perch… which I think removes all health benefits from the fish.  I am trying to do better.

Coffee, red wine, and water

I refuse to perpetuate the 64 ounces of water per day myth. A healthy adult, in a temperate climate with limited activity and eating an normal amount of food needs only 32 ounces of water. This does not include any water that comes from other sources such as coffee and tea. As activity or temperature increases the amount of water needed also increases. Water is important, no doubt about that, but the prevailing ‘wisdom’ that you need to push 64 ounces of water a day is a bit absurd.

New research shows that coffee has increased health benefits. Beyond the anti-oxidants which we are already aware of, coffee helps relax blood vessels which can lower blood pressure. It helps reduce the risk of diabetes and reduce the risk of gallstones. There are other benefits mentioned, some seem like a stretch in my mind, but there are enough listed that I feel comfortable drinking my daily does of joe.

The other miracle liquid is red wine. Red wine is rich with polyphenols which is an antioxidant. It also recently has shown to limit the negative effects of red meat. Good news for red meat lovers like myself.

But that’s not all!

Red wine also has a chemical in it called resveratrol which comes from the skin of the red grape. This chemical seems to limit the number of fat cells that can develop from stem cells. So not only will red wine help fight the cholesterol but it also helps prevents getting fat. I appreciate that.

Wine is high in calories though, so it isn’t something you want to drink a lot of.

Milk

Milk builds strong bones. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never liked milk. It moistens cereal just fine and I’ll cook with it, but I’ve never craved a tall glass of cold milk. Cheese, yes. Ice cream? You bet. Milk? No.
This doesn’t change the fact that one of the vitamins in milk may be one of those super aweome nutritional elements that has been underestimated. Vitamin D. Also known as the sunshine vitamin, Vitamin D is responsible for some very interesting biological processes. Low Vitamin D in the blood has been linked to calcium deposits in the arteries which could lead to heart attacks. Increased Vitamin D has been shown to decrease back pain.

And in yet another bit of cancer news, Vitamin D may play a role in telling cells when it is time to die. While that doesn’t sound all that great, when cells refuse to die, they can become cancerous.  I may never get enough milk, but I can make sure I get some sun to let my body produce Vitamin D naturally.

We have a lot of control over our health and environment through our diet. By making conscious choices on what we decide to eat, when we eat it, how we eat it, we are making conscious choices regarding our health. Will I take all of these bits of advice to heart? No, I can honestly say that while I enjoy nuts, I don’t see myself stocking them in my limited apartment storage space for me to snack on. I will make more of an effort to include them in foods I make. Toasted walnuts on a salad are quite good.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. - Eleanor Roosevelt

If only I had every minute I spent looking around my apartment and my life wishing it was better organized, less cluttered, and purposeful. All that time could have just as easily been turned back into developing a plan on how to create organization, eliminate clutter, and have purpose. A plan guides action so the action isn’t wasted. A plan might help indicate areas of inefficiency, or stumbling blocks in the process.

Sometimes creating the plan itself is a trying process, but one very simple method is to jot down a simple definition of how each area of the living space is to be used.  For example, I love to cook, so my plan as it stands is to focus on making my kitchen more efficient and better able to store the staples of cooking.  Even with this simple plan in mind, I am able to better address the organization.  Since my goal isn’t to make it look pretty, I can do things that aren’t aesthetically pleasing but are pragmatic for the chore of cooking.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go till you come to the end; then stop.” - Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

Where to start is one of the hardest decisions to make when the goal is a full scale makeover of a living environment and the life that goes with it. The first thing to do is establish the priorities. Is there one area or another that is crying out for attention? Is the kitchen close to condemnation? Would Mom find the bathroom offensive? Is there little distinction between dirty laundry and clean laundry? Speaking of necessary distinctions, are the floors distinguishable from the ground outside? What about odors? Is there a lingering not-so-fresh scent that might indicate something is rotting in the couch? Identifying the key problems helps in developing a plan of attack.

Order is never observed; it is disorder that attracts attention because it is awkward and intrusive. - Eliphas Levi

It may be hard to determine the key problem areas. Consider the areas that play heavily on the mind. The areas that draw attention are quite possibly the areas in need of organizing, cleaning, or something. This trick works best when, unlike my apartment, the living space is mainly in an ordered state with only some adjustments needed to get it all aligned. This tip also helps in identifying areas to focus on during weekly cleaning.

I’m not fortunate enough to have this problem regarding my living space, but it does happen with my life. Like right now I spend a lot of time thinking about a friend of mine whom I’ve neglected to call for a long time. When I look over my entire life, while there are a lot of things I need to fix, this is standing out. This bit of social neglect on my part is causing me the greatest anxiety and needs to be addressed before all else.

I know that if I don’t, all other successes I have fixing everything else will be dwarfed by this huge failing.

We adore chaos because we love to produce order. - M. C. Escher

Last weekend I found a tiny bookcase in the alley behind my apartment. One of the benefits of living in Chicago is people throw out furniture all the time. The tiny bookcase was too small to really help do anything for my books, DVDs, or stuff like that, but it was perfect for putting in this area in my kitchen that is underused. I took several of my appliances that don’t get used often, like my blender, toaster, and coffee maker and put it on the shelf. I also emptied my cupboards which are in short supply to free up space for the items I use every day. So the cans of pureed tomatoes, cartons of oatmeal, and all sorts of other stuff got relegated to the bookcase. Since the location is slightly inconvenient, I had to make sure I didn’t put anything I use often there. Without all the appliances cluttering my main counter I find I have the workspace to do more things. Creating that order out of the chaos was remarkable and was so rewarding that I really wanted to create order in other places of my apartment, which led me to this whole sorting out my life thing.

Find a quick victory and it will fuel the desire to continue.

The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for. - Laura Ingalls Wilder

I know I’ve misappropriated this quote but I felt it was quite apt to the process of organizing my life.

In creating order out of chaos, it is important to remember the purpose for doing it. Having a neat and ordered kitchen means I can step into it and begin creating almost immediately without first having to look for the right tools, clean the dishes I need, clear off a work space, or wonder if I have all the right ingredients. The same goes for my desk. Getting it organized and cleared up isn’t just to make it look pretty for guests, but so I can actually use it for the purpose for which it is designed. Nothing is more annoying to me than sitting down at my desk, reaching to get a book or paper and having a cascade of crap that I’ve piled up fall behind the desk. I do know people who focus so much on keeping things neat and tidy that entire rooms sit unused for fear of creating any sort of muss and fuss. I’m sorry, but I’m not wealthy enough to devote square footage to a showcase room. I live a pragmatic yet hedonistic life, which means I need to use my space and ideally have such usage be a pleasurable experience.

I often will walk through office supply stores and become enamored with bins, crates, and all sorts of things that I convince myself will solve all my organizational problems. The tools of organization do not create an organized life. In fact, getting too many of them means they are something else that will need to be organized. Also, I find that I use the ‘tool thing’ as an excuse not to organize. I will convince myself I need a label maker to do a project correctly, conveniently ignoring that a sharpie and masking tape is a perfectly acceptable labeling system.

The topic of untangling the complexity of life has been one that I’ve been struggling with lately.  It isn’t something I’ve mastered and is definitely something I want to get done.  Everything from how I keep and clean my apartment, to maintaining relationships, how I do my job, to my finances, and my health all need to be sorted out and properly managed.  I thought that this sort of project is exactly the kind of thing that deserves to be blogged, yet, I struggle with the idea of how to start.

I was blessed today with two great starting points.  The first comes from Threadbangers Decor It Yourself on Cleaning Your Closet.  Now this episode of this video show was released awhile ago, but I don’t keep up on the vidcasts as much as podcasts, so it is just happenstance that I watched it this morning.  The general concept of cleaning out your closets is to first empty your closets.  This is also the way the show Clean Sweep makes people deal with cleaning out the junk in their houses.

Once the closet is empty, the next step is sorting.  What wasn’t covered in the vidcast I linked to is the important element of getting rid of the stuff that is no longer used or needed.

The other fortuitous bit of information that came my way today is from The Simple Dollar on Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document.  For the last couple weeks I’ve been morbidly considering what would happen if I up and died.  I’m in my late 30’s no family who lives nearby, no significant other, no one that is established within my life who would know what all I have and what to do with it.  Then I realized that I right now don’t know what to do with all of my stuff.  Now I’m not talking about just the physical stuff, but the financial stuff and the simple commonplace stuff as well.

The article is brief but touches upon all the important elements I know I need to consider.

Using both of these projects, closet cleaning and Master Information Document creation, I think I have a good start on which threads to start pulling in order to untangle my life and begin the process of sorting it all out.

Every good relationship starts with good communication.  Or at least it sounds good to say that but it may not be the case.  A recent research study performed by researchers at Indiana University, examined almost 300 undergraduates of both sexes to determine their ability to detect sexual interest.  They were shown 280 photographs of women and were asked if the expression on the woman’s face was friendly, sexually interested, or rejecting.

Oddly enough, men often mistook friendly for sexually interested and sexually interested as friendly.

What does this mean to us men?  It means that when that woman we are friends with is acting like she is into us, she probably isn’t.  I have a lot of female friends who get frustrated that all their guy friends want to suddenly date and get upset over the fact that they received ‘mixed signals’.  Yeah, no mixed signals, they were just being friendly.

More to the point, it is critical for a man who wants to enter the world of dating and have some sense of accomplishment to understand the nuances of body language.  Calling some elements of body language ‘nuance’ is a complete understatement.  The following is a quick guide to body language:

1. She is looking at you.  This isn’t foolproof.  If you are wearing antlers and dancing on the bar in a drunken rendition of the Electric Slide, she may be looking at you, but probably not in a good way.  Unless she jumps up on the bar with you, it is safe to assume she is gaping at the car accident.  What is key is the look, look away, and look again move.  What is difficult is catching this without staring at her.  She may then be looking up to look at you to see if you are still staring.

2. The laugh.  Did you just say something mildly funny?  Maybe you retold a witticism you heard from Jon Stewart, or retold that one story about that one time when you were in that one place and she laughed, not a soft “I’m supposed to insert laughter here” laugh but a genuine laugh?  Then she is digging you.

3. The questions.  Does she seem to ask a lot of different questions about you?  Unless she is trying to fill the silence with idle chatter and is asking you questions about whether you think it will rain or not, there is a good chance that she is into you.  Women who are interested want to know about you and will ask questions and actually listen to the answers.  How do you know this is happening?  The follow-up question.

4. The touch.  This is huge.  Does she find a reason to touch you?  Touch your hand, fix your collar, or just lean against you if possible?  This is the riskiest move she can make from her perspective - initiating contact, but is the most commonly confused by men.  The subtle pretense she used to initiate the touch is often thought of as valid by the man.  Adjusting a shirt collar?  It needed to be adjusted.  Being leaned against?  That other person needed to walk by and she was just making room.  The touch on the arm in the midst of a conversation?  She is trying to get your attention so she can say something or she is excited and doesn’t realize what she is doing.

There are countless number of books and websites devoted to interpreting body language.  After reading all of them, I’d still be an idiot about how to do it?  The fundamental factor involved here goes to the heart of a lot of dating issues:  fear of rejection.  The fear that the woman crawling over the table giving me that sexy look isn’t interested in me and if I make a move she’ll reject me will always be present.  Even if I am married to her.

As the study seemed to indicate, we have two options as men: assume every friendly woman wants us, or assume they don’t.  The option that seems safer to us indicates a lot about our personalities.

The New York Times has an article, You Use It Every Day. But Can you Make It Cook, in which Mark Bittman shares his revelations regarding the ability to cook in a microwave.

I own a superior microwave oven due to the generosity of a friend, but all it ever gets used for is heating up frozen vegetables and leftovers.  Sometimes it may get the glamorous task of heating up water.  Once in a great while it may be turned on to actually defrost something.  There are buttons on the front of it which I don’t even know what they do and my efforts to cook on a setting other than HIGH don’t tend to be all that fruitful.

Bittman’s conclusions are well stated in the article and I for one am going to revisit this device on my counter and see how much more I can do with it.  I’m keen to try out the eggplant recipe he recommends in his article.