Nothing Good Happens After 2 a.m.

It is further into the wee hours of the morn than I might care to say.  And in general, though I occansionally write in a sleep deprived stupor, I am hesitant to share what I've written, or even to read it myself, after a good night's sleep.  I will say that this one is not my fault.  Damn you Patrick Rothfuss.

Since I've been home, I realize that I've been passively longing for the...perks....of living here.  I sat down nearly twenty two hours ago to finish reading Rothfuss' "new" tome, The Wise Man's Fear.  It is a hefty behemoth of a novel nearly a thousand pages long and written in pure gold.  Regardless, this is not the point of my thoughts...merely the vessel.  This afternoon (well, yesterday afternoon if you are to believe the clocks) I witnessed several truly remarkable events which I had always taken for granted while living at home.  It's common knowledge to our family that a red-tailed hawk prefers a certain electric wire as a perch; this happens to be a scarce twenty feet from my window.  While the hawk was absent from the perch, her voice was not.  It was a delight to sit in my room, listening to the screech of the hawk (and while screech is commonly used to describe the noise a hawk makes, I hesitate to use it as it denies the hawk a true description of her voice....I shall have to think on this more when I have more wits about me).

Around midnight, the coyotes started barking and howling.

The most uncommon event of all happened around 3:20.  In all my family's years of living at the house (which isn't too many, I suppose...but it is worth noting that I am the unique member to have witnessed this piece), only one similar sighting has happened.  I was taking out the garbage one night, probably about nine years ago.  The sun had set, leaving only a dim glow behind the mountains and a colorless world on the front range.  I looked up from my menial task and there, sitting atop an evergreen as a star on a Christmas tree, formed the unmistakable silhouette of a great horned owl.  This morning gave me a second "sighting," when outside my window I heard the soft, piercing hoots of an owl.  Whether or not this was the same owl (or even the same species) I haven't the foggiest idea.  But I'm a romantic at heart, and it's good to know that my owl has stuck around.

In addition to delving myself deep in the Rothfuss' text and keeping an ear pressed to the window, I also kept an eye on my cat through all of this.  She gets frighted by engines.  By garage doors.  By my dad tromping up the stairs.  Yet even though I know that at least some of these sounds must be unfamiliar to her, she barely heeded any of the signs I heard.  I knew that in a fight, she could not come out unscathed versus a hawk or an owl.  I shudder to think of what would happen if she stumbled into the pack of coyotes.  Yet she ignored the hawk, played through the coyotes, and slept through the owl.  In fact, the only animals that held her attention all day were several moths at the window screen (which she tried to swat, even through the barrier) and a rather noisy bee, also at the window screen.  However, I noticed that she kept her distance.  Rather than sitting on the windowsill to watch the bee as she did with the moths, she sat on the chair next to the window to watch.  And she didn't swat.  Given that she was adopted about 6 months into her life and spent the next 11 months as an indoor cat, I would think that she would have no experience with bees.  I wonder if this is instinctual behavior or learned behavior....

Goddammit.  I've turned into a biologist.  And animal behavior seems to be my newfound passion.  Ted Mosby was right....Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.

Packing

I know it's been a long time since my last post.  Forgive me.  I was finishing my Master's "thesis."  Then trying to find a job.  And recovering.  And moving back home (with my parents....yuck!).

Anyways, the Price is Right problem is being put on the back burner for now, because it's an involved problem and I don't feel emotionally ready to tackle the whole thing just yet.  So instead, I present a problem on packing.

Traditionally, packing spheres into a three dimensional space has proved to be 1) very inefficient and 2) difficult to solve.  I was having this exact problem today when I tried to pack some 2-dimensional spheres (ok ok, I'll call them rings...) onto a rectangular tray.  You see, this is very important, because I need to maximize the number of rings in order to obtain the maximum number of Utiles (ah, you didn't know I was going to throw economics jargon at you did you?) from this particular exercise.

You see, anybody who knows anything about something must know that onion rings are delicious (the proof is left to the reader).  And if you're going to go through the trouble of making onion rings at home, you know that you have to maximize the number of breaded goodness that comes out of your oven.  So here I was, making a delicious batch of onion rings for myself, and here's my original solution to my "ring packing problem."

NOT ENOUGH!!!

  At this point, however, I still had some rings of onion to place on the baking sheet.  And then the most obvious solution to the "sphere" packing problem dawned on me......

Nest Them!!!!

 You're welcome, math.




p.s.  The recipe I use makes delicious onion rings without having to go through the both of deep frying at home is Chef John's recipe (over at Food Wishes) with the following changes:

1) No Cayenne Pepper.  It doesn't go well with the cheese.
2) Reduce the cooking time by about 2 minutes.
3) Once the rings are "done" cooking, sprinkle Parmesan cheese over top (if you notice, I put down some foil on the pan...this makes it a lot easier since you don't have to worry about getting the melted cheese off later).
4) Place the rings under the broiler for about 2 minutes to allow the cheese to melt and the breading to completely brown.