Dance, Dance, Dance

Today I participated in a Day of Dance sponsored by our local St. Luke's Hospital.

Although this was the first year for the Day of Dance in St. Louis, we joined over 70 other cities who were sponsoring the event today. It was billed as "an energizing and interactive healthy living event" where you could "learn easy dance steps for better health". In addition to dancing instruction, the hospital had physicians and health educators on hand to provide health screenings and education.

I didn't decide to go until the last minute, but it wasn't a problem. Although my name wasn't on the registration list, I was able to sign in at the door. When I turned in my registration form, I received a goodie bag, a raffle ticket, and a form to enter a drawing for several large prizes.

The event was held in several different rooms at the Frontenac Hilton hotel. Most of the activity took place in a large ballroom. A stage and dance floor took up one half of the room; the other half of the room had tables sponsored by several vendors and different departments of the hospital. There was a great breakfast station set up out in the hall with muffins, fruit, yogurt, and drinks. All the health screenings were being done in a separate conference room.

The dancing instruction included a wide variety of types: line dancing, hip hop, Zumba, belly dancing, hip-hop, hula, and belly dancing. I tried all of them (although I did better at some of them than others), but passed on most of the "party dances" (Hokey Pokey, Macarena, Duck Dance, Conga Line, Cha Cha Slide, and YMCA) they had in between each of the scheduled events. I used that time to chat with some friends I bumped into and gather information from the tables. The last session was a demonstration and Q&A session by two members of the Kansas City Ballet; the young couple danced part of a Twyla Tharp dance that was choreographed to Frank Sinatra music.

There were a lot of women in attendance; young, old, and middle-aged. I even saw some moms there with their daughters. There were also a few men, who looked a little bored. The day was very well organized and a lot of fun.

Improve Your Brain

I received an e-mail today that said:

Try this. You gotta pay attention!

http://flashfabrica .com/f_learning/ brain/brain. html

1. Touch 'start'.
2. Wait for 3, 2, 1.
3. Memorize the numbers positions on the screen. You will only have about one second to do this.
4. The numbers will go away but there will be circles where the numbers once were. Click the circles from what was the smallest number to the biggest.
5. At the end of game, the computer will tell you the age of your brain.

When I clicked on the link, I was surprised to be taken to a page filled with a language that wasn't English! Turns out the page, Flash Fabrica, is a Japanese site for Flash games. There was an option at the top of the page to change the language to English. When I did that, I found there were actually many brain training games--including four brain age tests.

I played Brain Age Test 01-Instantaneous Memory. The concept was easy, but the game itself was challenging. There were ten rounds. Each round had somewhere between 4 and 8 numbers on the screen which appeared very briefly, then were replaced by circles. You had to click the circles in numeric order to get the round correct. I did a good job on the easy rounds, but messed up whenever there were more than five numbers I had to order.

At the end of the test your "brain age" will be posted on the screen. The lower your score, the better you did. I tried several times; my best score was 23, but the rest of them were about 30 (give or take a few years). However, that is substantially lower than my chronological age, so I should be happy.

Since brains, like the rest of your body, decline over time if not used, it's probably a good idea to keep the grey matter active. There were many other games on the Flash Fabrica site that looked like they might be fun and helpful for mind exercise.

A Good Impression

I attended a job fair for a teaching postion earlier this month. A week later I got a call from the district HR department asking me to come in for an interview. After setting up a date and time, the woman said, almost as an afterthought, that the interview would be videotaped. Today I went to a job interview that was videoed.

As if going on an interview wasn't stressful enough, I also had to worry about how I would look on tape! I did some research on the ins and outs of being onscreen. The most common tips seemed to be:

• Don't wear clothing with tight patterns or pin stripes, because it causes an optical illusion and looks bad.

• Avoid wearing black, white, or red, because they don't show up well.

• Wear makeup (foundation and concealer) to improve your skin tone.

I was in a quandary. My go-to outfit is a black, grey, and white striped pantsuit that I wear with a white top. Every time I wear it I get tons of compliments. Also, I never wear makeup other than mascara. I was 0 for 3 on helpful tips.

I tried putting together other combinations of clothes, but in the end I went with my old reliable outfit. I figured that it was more important to feel good than to worry about what I looked like. I bought the smallest (and cheapest) bottle of foundation I could find, hoping it would do the trick.

I was asked to arrive fifteen minutes before my appointment to complete some paperwork, which turned out to be reviewing and signing the application that I completed online and completing a child abuse screening permission form. It looked like there were multiple interviewers working today; the district must have a lot of applicants!

My interview was held in a room just big enough for a round table and two chairs. After the interviewer closed the door, she asked if I was aware she would be videotaping, then she began reading from her script. Before she started with the questions, she formally asked my permission for her to turn the camera (a small camcorder on a tripod next to the table) on. The interview itself contained a standard set of questions; each applicant answered the same things. I guess that will make it easy for the hiring manager to use the videos to compare all the job candidates.

When the session was over and the camera turned off, I was told I would hear within a few weeks if I would be called in for yet another interview.

Our Daily Bread

I've been trying to cook with more whole grains lately, including the bread I make in the bread machine. However, it's a challenge. White bread flour has enough gluten to make a nice fluffy loaf, but whole grains tend to not rise as high. It's a matter of getting the proportions right. Overall I've had pretty good luck.

Monday I was making a loaf of caraway rye bread. I put all the ingredients into the bread machine in the proper order, hit the Start button, and left to run some errands. I returned home right as the bread finished baking. However, instead of a nice loaf, the bread looked like this:

The brick-like blob was about a fourth of the size it should be. It tasted ok (if you like super-dense, cakey bread), but certainly wouldn't work for the roast beef sandwiches I was planning on for dinner! In all the years of using a bread machine, I've never had a failure like this.

After I changed my dinner plans, I tried to figure out what to do with the nightmare loaf. I have a problem throwing out any kind of food, so that wasn't an option for this yeasty abomination. A little Internet research revealed a couple of alternatives. Today I made bread soup so I could avoid wasting my bread.

I found recipes for Bread Soup from both Portugal and Italy. All the recipes called for white bread, so I couldn't follow any of them exactly-the caraway taste in my loaf was pretty assertive, and probably wouldn't go well with the Portuguese cilantro or the Italian basil. I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly, though, so changing things around wasn't new to me. In the end, I used a Tomato Bread Soup from Mario Batali as my inspiration.

I cooked onion and garlic in some olive oil until onion was translucent. Mario recommended fresh tomatoes, but I added a can of tomatoes and cooked the whole thing until the tomatoes begin to soften and break down. I cut half my mutant loaf of bread into cubes, and added it to the pot with some vegetable broth. The chunks were a little slow dissolving, so I used a whisk to break up the cubes, then simmered it until the bread absorbed most of the liquid. To serve it, I added a handful of shredded cheddar cheese to each bowl before I ladled in the hot liquid.

The soup didn't look great, but it was edible. Since today was Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, it was probably appropriate that my lunch not be too fancy!

For Me!

According to Dictionary.com:

Intention: the person or thing meant to benefit from a prayer or religious offering

One of the a customs of the Catholic Church is for priests remember specific intentions during the celebration of a Mass, also known as "offering a Mass" for something. For my birthday in January, one of my friends gave me a Mass card, which means she requested that I would be one of the people prayed for on a specific day at our church. Today was my turn when the Mass was offered for me.

An intention denotes that the person (or persons) is remembered in a special way during the prayers. While a lot of the Masses are offered for deceased people, they can be offered for practically anything: birthdays, anniversaries, or in thanksgiving for something. The person requesting the intention usually makes an offering, called a stipend, to the priest in order to apply the Mass to a specific intention. At most churches, you receive a card that you can pass on to the person you're honoring.

Our church publishes the list of intentions in the bulletin each week. We have two Masses on normal weekdays (more if it happens to be a holy day) and six on Sunday; each has an intention. I did a double take when I saw my name in the bulletin, because I'd almost forgotten about Marianne's kind present.

Since so many of the Masses are offered for dead people, the church has started putting the word Living next to those of us who are still alive. Now my friends won't be wondering if they missed an important bit of information about my health!

Overcoming Obstacles

Today I made an obstacle course for my cats.

Did you know there are agility courses and competitions for cats? I didn't, but according to the Cat Fanciers' Association they're starting to pop up at cat shows all over the world. The stereotypical cat is lazy, napping most of the day, and certainly too aloof to perform on demand. Jackson and Pepper, my two cats, certainly live up to that stereotype. However, they also spend part of each day running around. One minute they're sleeping next to each other and the next they're chasing each other around the house. Why not channel some of that energy in an organized fashion?

Pepper was MIA, so I decided that Jackson would be the recipient of all the fun. He was napping on top of the sofa in the family room, but opened one eye to look at me when I started assembling materials. I decided to use things that were already there as obstacles, but also set a kitchen chair in the middle of the room. I used a flashlight as a guide, because Jackson loves to chase after the light.

Jackson didn't do bad for a first try. He followed the flashlight beam across the coffee table, down to the floor, and jumped up on the fireplace hearth. After a quick unauthorized stop to use his scratching post at the end of the hearth, Jackson continued to the far side of the room, jumped on and off the other couch, then leaped onto the kitchen chair. Next he sauntered back to his original starting point, but this time going under the coffee table. As a finale, he rubbed his chin against the edge of the table, letting everyone know he'd been there.

He seemed to be pleased with himself, but obviously had enough of structured activities. Running like a bat out of hell, he zoomed through the living room, around the corner, and up the stairs to the second floor. Several minutes later I noticed him back in the family room curled up on top of the couch like he never left.

I wonder if I could ever get my pets to perform as well as the cat in this video:

One Of A Kind

There was an article about unusual museums in the Travel section of today's Post-Dispatch. Some of them were quite interesting:

• The Devil's Rope Museum in McLean Texas, which has more than 1,000 varieties of barbed wire.


• The Jell-O Museum in Le Roy, New York, that's all about the wiggly dessert.


• Leila's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri, where you can see locks of hair woven into intricate wreaths and displayed in frames.
  
  However, much as I would enjoy visiting these places, I don't have the time or resources right now. One of the museums, though, could be seen from the comfort of my computer chair. Today I visited an online-only museum.
  
  The Flashlight Museum includes the history and photos of flashlights dating to 1899. Stuart Schneider, the "curator", is quite the Renaissance man; the tagline for his Website is Unusual Museums of the Internet. You can find information on fluorescent minerals, cemetery ghosts, a Halloween museum, a Halley's Comet Museum, a Space Memorabilia museum and more. He's written several books and even manages to be a lawyer in his free time!
  
  However, I came to see the flashlights, so I clicked through to the Flashlight Museum. It was very interesting, containing galleries of antique flashlights and a very detailed history of flashlights and their uses. The information was arranged by category on several pages.
  
  I thoroughly enjoyed my "trip" to the museum today. There were no guards giving me dirty looks for getting too close to the exhibits. I could spend as much time as I wanted reading the labels and not have to worry about getting in someone else's way, and the "tall guy" that always seems to block my view of things wasn't there.

Whiter Than White

Tony and I are having some friends over for dinner tonight. We haven't seen them in quite some time, so we decided to go all out and eat in the dining room using the good dishes and silverware. Of course, that also calls for a tablecloth and napkins to complete the atmosphere.

I used a striped tablecloth and threw a bunch of beads down the center of the table in honor of Mardi Gras. As I was folding some plain white napkins to put at each place, I noticed that some them had yellow stains. That made me incredibly frustrated, because I know they were clean when I put them away! Before I went to the store to buy more, I decided to do a little investigation to find out if they could be cleaned. Today I used everyday products to remove stains.

According to Chef Noah, I could remove stains by using dishwasher detergent and bleach:

Mix one-half cup dishwasher detergent, one-half cup bleach, and one gallon hot water in a plastic bucket. Soak clothing in this mixture overnight, dump the solution and clothes into the washing machine, and wash as usual.

I mixed everything in a container, added the napkins, and left the whole thing in the laundry room. I couldn't completely follow the directions, since I needed the napkins tonight; after a few hours I threw the napkins in the washer. At the end of the cycle, I was pleased to see that five of the six napkins had no stains left, and the stain on the sixth was much less noticeable.

Chef Noah saved the day!

Cozy And Comfortable

I know some people wear loungewear out in public all the time, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I wear nice clothes when I leave the house but I change out of them as soon as I get home. In the cold weather, I often slip on a pair of flannel pants. My favorite is a black and white plaid pair that I acquired from one of my boys a few years ago after they outgrew them. They're very comfortable: broken in, soft, and a bit baggy. The farthest they've gone from the house is a quick jog to the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

I got a call this afternoon from my friend jd asking if I wanted to walk. After we arranged a time and place to meet, I got busy working around the house. When it came time to leave, it was too much work to go upstairs and change my pants, so today I wore flannel pants out in public.

I slid my walking shoes on, grabbed a jacket and a headband for my ears, and hustled out of the house. When I first got to the park, I was afraid I was underdressed, because the wind was really whipping across the track. However, after a few laps I realized the flannel was the perfect weight; it stopped the wind, but weren't bulky. Since the pants had pockets, I had a spot to store my cell phone and keys. It didn't bother jd at all that my choice of clothing was a bit unusual.

It was also an advantage when I got back home; I was ready to jump into making dinner, and didn't have to stop and change my clothes first!

No Reaction

I was making a big dinner tonight...turkey Salisbury steaks, stuffing cups, carrots, and chunky applesauce. I got busy and lost track of time; all of a sudden mealtime was imminent and I had to start working on everything at once. It was organized chaos!

My first task was to cut the apples. I didn't need to cook them till much closer to dinner, and I didn't want the apple slices to turn brown. I knew from past experience I had a couple of options to keep them from oxidizing. Fruit Fresh does a good job, but I didn't have any on hand. Lemon juice works really well, but I think it affects the taste, and I'd have to sweeten the applesauce at the end to compensate for the acid taste. Since I'm trying to avoid extra sugar, I discarded that option too.

As I was mulling over my options, I remembered a conversation I had with a caterer a few months ago. The apples on his fruit tray were sweet and beautiful, and I asked him what his secret was. He said he soaked them in lemon lime soda! Supposedly there is enough citric acid in Sprite or Sierra Mist so it will keep fruit from browning.

I decided to try soaking apples in soda to keep them from getting brown. I sliced the apples, put them in a small bowl, poured a can of soda over them, and covered the bowl. I let the whole thing sit for about an hour. At the end of the period I took the lid off and was pleased to see that the apples were still very fresh-looking. I poured off the soda and popped the bowl in the microwave to cook.

Even when the apples were cooked they were less brown than they usually are. The residual soda also gave them a nice flavor. I added a bit of cinnamon and set my experiment on the table with the other dishes.