Le Droit en Agen, France

I would like to thank everyone for checking this blog out but I'm starting it anew with a redirected focus.  Please see me under my new identity cuchulainn32.  Please friend me there.

cuchulainn32.livejournal.com

Andrea found this online over the weekend.  It's an interesting map showing the usage of different terms to describe soda, pop, or coke around the country by county.  I've noticed the colloquial names we give to the sugared drink as I've moved around the country and thought this was too good not to share.

theredrecruiter.com/our-blog/bid/17893/sodapopcokeoff

The guy apparently obtained his data by twitter.  Not necessarily the most scientific but terribly interesting nonetheless.

I think the most interesting is the impact of the St. Louis metropolitan area.  Strangely St. Louis calls the drink soda but is surrounded by coke and pop.  Interesting...

It has been a very long time since I have posted anything here.  I've wanted to I just often don't know what I want to tell you all about.  I don't have profound or pithy observations about life which come to dominate many other blogs I read.  But I want to stay connected with my friends and family.  So I've decided to refocus on the things I love.  I will now write about food and pottery with the occasional comments about my new life thrown in.  I think these entries will be more interesting for both you and me and consequently this whole thing might be more effective.  So without further ado...

A while back I began planning a meal once a week.  Andrea and I cooked up the idea as a way to share the load.  However, once I had license to do whatever I wanted in the kitchen I began to plan entrees and not just supper.  I've enjoyed trying my hand at new recipes and new techniques in general, but will always welcome constructive feedback.  (As of yet, Andrea has had very little criticism of my Tuesday night dinners!)

Most recently Andrea and I took a trip to a grocery store we thought would have real lard because we couldn't find any at our local haunt.  I've been working on our cast iron and wanted the fat to reseason everything.  We found the lard but also picked up some yuca root.  I ate it with frequency in Bolivia and crave it every now and again.  So I designed a dinner around it.

Though it seems like a bit much I found an interesting recipe for Caribbean fried chicken and decided to pair that with the fried yuca.  To round out the menu I added cornbread for something that was not fried.

The chicken was the star of the show.  The recipe called for curry as the primary spice but I found out too late that we didn't have any on hand so I modified the recipe and made southwest fried chicken with red pepper and cumin.  I dry rubbed the chicken and let set for two hours and then placed in milk as I heated up the cast iron in which I was going to fry.  I then dipped in flour and fried until golden, then finished in a 350 oven for about a half hour.  As that cooked I fried the potatoes and yuca.  I served all this with the cornbread I had made earlier.

I was also pleasantly surprised how inexpensive this all was.  The chicken was four dollars for the ten and the yuca less than a dollar for the whole root.  The potatoes and corn meal we already had, so not bad at all.

Andrea and I both thought this was a fantastic dinner.  The chicken came out perfectly, as you can see...



though I wish I had incorporated some of the spices into the flour to carry the flavor a little further and I wish I had the fry oil a bit hotter.  I had the heat low to protect myself but everything went so well I could probably take it up a bit.

On the pottery side I have been busy.  I've been working on a pie plate order that has been causing me some trouble.  The clay is especially hard to work with and I've had four or so crack on me.  So I take the time to throw some fun stuff for myself every now and again.  This amphora was made in May and just finished last week or so...

I began throwing the piece with only a vague notion of what I wanted.  I found out later that what I created is one of the most classic greek pottery forms.  I created the piece to practice working on the feet of my pieces.  I wanted a defined elegant foot to add another layer of polish.  It didn't hurt that the glaze turned out perfect either.  As you can see it is really shiny.  I have to be careful not to touch it too much!  I am extremely happy with this piece.  It has replaced my previous vase in our living room and I imagine it will be on prominent display for a long while.

If you come by and see it you're welcome to stay for dinner!

Yesterday there was a backup on the Eisenhower Expressway as I was driving home.

This is not particularly unusual but it seemed to have been caused by rubbernecking.  But this was no normal rubbernecking.  Apparently there were two small, dead puppies in the concrete median.

It was a dark day yesterday.

I was coming home from a long day of working with indigent criminal defendants in Rockford.  As Andrea is parking the car in front of our building she tells me we should be on the lookout for a lost kitty.  A black and white cat named Iron Man had just gone missing from down the street.  I chuckle to myself about the name and turn around to walk in the building.  I hadn’t gone two steps before I saw the feline.  I turn to Andrea in disbelief and ask if that is the cat we’re looking for.  She thinks so.  I drop my bag and we try to get near the poor little guy.  He will have none of it so I leave Andrea to watch him while I try and get the owner.  I run down the street and come to the house.  The nicest guy in the world answers and I tell him we think we’ve found his cat.  He is excited, grabs a can of tuna and off we go.  Poor Iron Man was just as unwilling to come to his owner as he was to us so we ended up chasing the guy for a little while just trying not to lose him.  (Ever heard the expression “It’s like herding cats.”)  We put the can of tuna down in front of the bush to try to lure the little guy out.  We managed to get about four other neighborhood cats to come by but not Iron Man.  About this time the cops drive by and ask Andrea if she had seen two guys running door to door.  She blurts out quickly that we are looking for a lost cat and that seems to satisfy the officer.

 

By now Iron is tired of being the mouse in our game of chase so he runs back toward a three story home that is rented next door.  I chase so as not to lose him.  But he clamors up a flight of stairs.  I can’t follow because there are some potted plants in the way.  Besides it doesn’t look like anyone EVER goes up to the third floor.  I climb back down because I might have been technically trespassing.  The owner meets me and we confer for a minute.  Finally I agree to knock on the door and ask if we could go up to their attic.  The man thought we were a bit off but it was okay with him.  So we climb up to a poorly lit recreation of the house on haunted hill.  Undaunted we go forward to find old musty wedding dresses and christening gowns but no Iron Man.  After a short while the smell and the creepiness of the attic overwhelm us and we turn to leave.

 

The owner is a little down.  After coming so close he was understandably upset.  He tells me that the cat is actually his four year old son’s.  Iron Man has been missing for two weeks or so.  He just put the signs up because they thought Iron Man was just hiding in the house.  Apparently he does that often.

 

He thanks me for helping him and mentions that it was National Citizenship Day.  (

( I guess he was right. ))  He was thankful there is people like us and he turned to leave.  He asks if we were really sure Iron Man went up to the attic.  I tell him I saw him on the first flight of stairs so I don’t see how he could have gone anywhere else.  He says that the village gave him a trap and asks if he could go get it.  I say fine.  I’ll watch the steps and he could go to get the trap.  We get the thing set up, exchange numbers and end an hour and a half of cat hunting.

 

Next day I go downtown for a job interview with the City of Chicago.  The lady claims she had a rough night.  I say, yeah tell me about it and relate the story to her.  She’s impressed.  Interview ends well and I hop back on the green line to go home.

 

Iron Man’s owner calls me on the way home.  Says he came home at lunch and found Iron Man in the trap.  He was so grateful and the kids wanted to meet us.  Could we stop by that night?  No problem.  We’d love to.  The kids are the cutest in the world, shy and precocious just like you’d expect.  It was a great ending to the story.

Maybe its sibling rivalry but I don't want to be left in the dust.  So here is a recap of the last month of my life.

 

For most of June I was working with the CLEO program’s Summer Sophomore Institute.  It is basically a camp where undergraduate sophomores can go to learn about law school admissions and law school itself.

 

I found the experience very rewarding and am extremely happy that I did it, although I was frustrated at times.  As a middle child I schizophrenia on a couple of issues.  Namely, I want to be loved by everyone but I also want to stand up and show everybody that I don’t need them.  Admittedly weird.

 

There were two TAs with the program.  The other was a female law student about my same age.  She was great, don’t get me wrong.  It’s just that she was so darn nice.  Let’s face it folks I’m not all that nice.  I might be empathetic, I might be polite, but I’m not touchy feely let’s all cry together nice.  So I ended up playing bad cop more than I would have liked.  And I gather that some students didn’t want help on the assignments with me because they were afraid of the withering criticisms.  Oh well.  There were plenty of students that I did help, it’s just that I want to help EVERYONE.  Ego ... weird.

 

Then I began working with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.  (As an aside I always think the two possessive nouns look weird in that sentence, but that’s how they do it.)  I can’t and won’t write a lot about that office.  I’m working in the Juvenile Justice division helping a team of attorneys prosecute juvenile offenses.  But because the alleged offenders are juveniles there are closed records and I’m not allowed to speak about it in too much detail.

 

I think it is sufficient to say that I love this job so far.  Admittedly, I’m just beginning and haven’t gotten into too much detail with any one file.  But the whole process just seems to agree with me.  We spend much of the day in closed court doing the work of lawyers.  I’m very happy with my work.  For the first time ever I am excited to go to work in the morning.

Andrea and I are in Indiana for a wedding.  We have a four hour lay over from the ceremony to the reception so I thought I'd drop a post.

First, there is a Hebron, Indiana.  Weird.

Second, despite towns such as Hebron, Indiana is full of hoosiers.  Seriously.

I have this weird fascination with Michael Jackson.  So does this bird.  Wait for the end, I promise it will payoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Bsu4z9Y3k

No more finals!  Now I prepare for work.

It goes without saying that Tim, Mexico, and myself all agree with each other and make for a good combo.  The day before yesterday we had a very busy day.  We started at a fantastic little coffee stand and ended at Salon Corona.  Kind of a dive, but the best Tacos al Pastor you will ever have.  Tim and I went back yesterday.

Yesterday Tim and I went to see the ruins of Teotihuacan, which is about an hour north of Mexico City.  Apparently the place was abandoned long before the Aztecs and nobody knows exactly who built it.  The pictures below do not really capture the scale of the larger pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun, which is the second largest in the western hemisphere.  Obviously we had a great time strolling down the Avenue of the Dead and fighting off the vendors.  Then we traveled back into the city and made a stop off at the site of Tlatelolco.

You will read that Mexico City is founded on the site of the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.  That is true but when Tenochtitlan was founded the Aztecs also founded another city, Tlatelolco.  It was a sister city but was independent as well, with its own monarchic dynasty.  There was a subsequent war of supremacy and Tlatelolco was absorbed into Tenochtitlan.  However, Tlatelolco was later the last stand for Aztecs fighting against Cortes.  There is a sign at the site which states that when the city fell to the Spanish it was not a victory or a defeat, but the painful birth of the modern state of Mexico.

PS you will probably need to right click on the pictures and choose view picture as they are much wider than what is viewable.

My brother and I have arrived in Mexico City.  We just checked into the hotel so I have not had the opportunity to look around yet.  But so far it seems nicer than people make it out to be.

It is warm here mid 70s I think!

Sorry  I cannot talk longer.  I am starving and we are off to eat.

Ciao

We decided to name our dog Fiona.  Clearly, we are REALLY excited to have her.  Yesterday she went into the vet and had a tooth pulled.  I took her to Lincoln Park in rush hour and the silly girl stood the whole way.  Near the end she finally figured out that it was safer to sit but by then it was too late.

We're also starting to wonder if she is cat tolerant.

We've been busy the last few days.  Andrea signed for our new apartment on Monday.  We painted a little and still found time to rescue a greyhound!  Her racing name was Mohican Doris.  We met her in a kennel in Chicago through Greyhounds Only, a local greyhound rescue organization.  It's funny because we looked at a number of dogs and it was clear that Mohican Doris picked us, and she melted our hearts.

Andrea looked online and found a geneology for our Doris stretching back 33 generations to 1820!  It looks like the dame's side originated in Ireland, although the line spent some time in the UK as well.  We'll have to give her a name to reflect this heritage...

They have to send her to a foster home for a couple of weeks so she's house trained and learns how to manage stairs so we can't have her right away.  But soon...

See Fiona's pedigree...
http://www.greyhound-data.com/d?dl=1028933&z=a9r3-n

The news is reporting that a gunman walked onto Northern Illinois University and shot 22 people, killing four as well well as himself.  I was nowhere near campus and I am fine.  As far as I know everyone I know is fine as well.  The gunman killed himself and did not enter the law building, Swen Parson Hall.  It looks like everything is over and I am fine but my heart goes out to those that were hurt and killed for no reason.

Right so enjoy a few of the pictures guys...

I finally received my grades from the summer session in France!  At least they were A's.