Saturday, November 24, 2007

First Snow...

...and it's still going. These photos were taken about two hours ago. Big, fluffy, relatively warm, white rain. It puts a freeze on things - tempers, insects. More to come tomorrow after B and I take some daylight snow shots.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Yonkers Survival Map

Due to a fantastic new job opportunity for Brittany, she and I will be relocating 2,000 miles away this January to Yonkers, New York. With a population of about 200,000 and located immediately north of the Bronx, Yonkers is the ideal suburb for us. It's big, but not too big, and it's a half-hour's train ride away from my favorite city on the planet. Yonkers Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonkers

The following map represents all my hours of Yonkers relocation and acclimation research up to this point. Use the controls at left to pan in any direction or zoom in and out to get a better feel of what's on my map. Click any landmark icon to learn about the location, see photographs, and visit relevant websites. Click "Map", "Satellite", or "Hybrid" to choose your view. Click "Map Overview" to get an idea as to where in the United States Yonkers is located, or click "Legend" to select which types of landmarks you wish to see displayed. There's plenty to discover by clicking, so have some fun with it.

Note: clicking around on the map might take you to the map website itself, located at http://www.communitywalk.com/yonkerssurvivalmap.

Yonkers Survival Map is intended to contain everything I need "for arriving at, settling into, and thriving in Yonkers, New York," including: airports, transportation stops, possible homes, places of work, grocery stores, government buildings, hospitals, entertainment and culture, bicycle shops, libraries...the list is always growing. If there is anything here you think I should add, leave a comment.

Yonkers Survival Map
by New Mexico Man and CommunityWalk

Explore weddings, venues, and vendors in Yonkers, NY, USA
CommunityWalk Map - Yonkers Survival Map

Sunday, November 11, 2007

How to Open a Coconut

How to Open a Coconut

1. Get a coconut. This is my coconut. It is a goodly coconut. God has blessed me with this coconut.



2. Locate the three small indentations that can be found on each and every one of God's blessed coconuts. Place the coconut on a towel and pierce the indentations with a hammer and a nail. Don't poke yourself.



3. See? I've poked out all three holes. It's already lactating.



4. Drain the lactating coconut into a bowl.



5. Rotate the coconut, shake the coconut, promise the coconut an afterlife, whatever it takes to drain the coconut of its lifemilk.



6. This is the fun part. Make sure you're on concrete or something. Wrap the holy coconut in a swaddling towel and crush its spirit.



7. Unwrap the broken shell of a coconut.



8. Gloat...



9. Gloat...



10. And gloat some more.



As for separating the meat from the shell, you're on your own. I have absolutely no idea how to do that with any level of efficiency. With this coconut, I ended up grinding it against a cheese grater, which was maddeningly inefficient and produced only about 3/4 cup of shredded coconut not much better than the dried stuff you can buy in the spice section of your local grocery store. Brittany made bread with my coconut doings but it tasted like rehydrated tree bark, so we set it on the counter and ignored it until it got moldy so we could have an excuse to throw it away.

That was months ago. I bought a Lunchables last Friday and took it to work. I forgot to eat it, and instead left it out, at the job site, unrefrigerated, all weekend long. On Monday it was still there, so I stuck it in my backpack for awhile just to see if I would eventually eat it. I did not eat it. I threw it away. It's in the garbage now. I did not check first to see if it was moldy. I just assumed. I'm sorry. In my defense, I was temporarily insane to buy plastic food in a plastic box in the first place. I'll probably do it again though.

Thanks for listening, I really needed to get this off my chest. You rock.

UPDATE: Brittany reminds me that it is I, not she, who made the crappy coconut bread. I stand corrected.