My Signature Pizza

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I made my “homemade” pizza tonight. Pillsbury roll-out crust, Ragu Homemade Style pizza sauce, mozzarella of course, with deli-thin pepperoni slices, red onion, kalamata olives, and roasted red peppers. It needs a signature name. It’s been giving me trouble in the rental house’s oven, which runs 25-50 degrees too hot. But tonight I got it perfect, I hope I can reproduce it now. The crust was crisp without being crunchy, not chewy at all, and although thin, it was sturdy enough to hold the toppings without drooping. The platonic ideal.

I think the higher you set the oven, the farther over the desired temperature it goes. I should test that theory with an actual thermometer.

Sick Bug

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Today was rough. Riley got another stomach bug, his second since we moved here. He spent the morning throwing up, clinging to me like a cobweb and crying pitifully for milk and food that I didn’t dare give him. The pediatrician gave him a shot of Zofran. That’s probably over-treating him by a fair amount; by the time we got back to the house, he was feeling better enough to start acting like a tyrant. 😛 He wouldn’t drink his Walgreens-brand clone of Pedialyte, but he did have enough good ol’ water that hopefully he’ll be fine in the morning. Poor little guy.

New Year, New Plan

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2007 was weird and hectic — especially for my wife, who finished her residency, gave birth, passed a medical board exam, started a fellowship, and found a job for the following year on top of our two moves and child care. We’ll be moving again in 2008, this time to Atlanta but hopefully this is it for a good long time. But other than that, the coming year should be a bit quieter.

Best wishes for a healthy and happy 2008!

Minivan thug dream

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It’s so rare that I remember a dream, but I did yesterday morning because I was in the middle of it when my wife woke me.

In the dream, she and I were out walking, and we saw our minivan pull up in a nearby parking lot. That didn’t seem unusual; it was as if we’d left it with valet parking and this is where they brought it. But then two big guys got out of it, and they were wearing ski masks. We walked over to them, and when they saw us coming they pulled the masks off and stuffed them hastily away in pockets, trying to act innocent. My dream self realized that they had already stolen our bicycles (which we don’t even have anymore in reality) from the van. (Why they would’ve needed to wear the masks for that stage of the heist is beyond me, but there you have it.)

This knowledge emboldened me, and after that point they didn’t seem so physically big anymore. One was kind of squat and out of shape, and the other was lanky. I grabbed the tall guy’s ankles and had no trouble holding them still, and he was suddenly lying on the grass and somehow unable to reach me with his arms. I knew that my wife had the other guy similarly under control, and we were waiting for the cops to arrive when I woke up. I wonder how it would’ve turned out.

Today’s Misguided Inspiration

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As my wife was showing me the utterly ludicrous fee she has to pay to take her anatomic pathology board certification exam, I realized that there is probably a niche market for obscene check designs. You know: rather than a sports team logo or kittens or whatever people normally get, you’d have variations on the bird, the full moon, the kissing and sucking of various body parts, to strike just the right note of seething resentment with your payment.

I wonder how hard it would be to start a check printing company… Nah, I really don’t think I’d want that much association with such a thing. Plus I’m sure that if I’ve thought of this, someone else has too.