This is how I want to start my day. Yum!
Found at Epically Epic Soap when it’s not sold out.
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Cooking: Chickpeas with Broccoli Rabe and Bacon
Chickpeas with Broccoli Rabe and Bacon from Cooking Light Magazine
Fantastic recipe. The kids loved it for dinner, but not so much for leftovers, but I thought it was great two days in a row. I doubled the recipe and used half broccoli rabe (leafy!) and half broccolini (fave!) and it was really perfect. Ayla says chickpeas are “a little dry” for her taste. A bit of prep work, but once it starts cooking it goes pretty quick. Yum!
From My Inbox: UPS Airlines
UPS Airlines
Just in case you need a laugh:
Remember it takes a college degree to fly a plane, but only a high school diploma to fix one; a reassurance to those of us who fly routinely in our jobs.
After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a ‘gripe sheet,’ which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics corrects the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.
Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.
By the way, UPS is the only major airline that has never, ever, had an accident.
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
P: Something loose in cockpit
S: Something tightened in cockpit
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what friction locks are for.
P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search
P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious.
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from the midget.
News That is Not New: Ayla Loves Chocolate
Ayla: Mom? What are you baking? What kind of brownies are those??
Jenn: They are regular brownies with chocolate chip cookie dough baked on top and then lots of chocolate chips thrown on it.
Ayla: Mom! You know me so well!!
Reading: A Short History of Nearly Everything
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
One of my absolute favorite books of all time – definitely in my top 5 of non-fiction books. I think this book should be required reading for everyone. This is my third time to read it and it is continuously entertaining and eye-opening. (Though, it does take a pretty fair commitment to get through it.) Here are a couple of quotes I like…
On humans:
…all of these evolutionary jostlings over five million years, from distant, puzzled australopithecine to fully modern human, produced a creature that is still 98.4 percent genetically indistinguishable from the modern chimpanzee. There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.
On why we should dial down our egos a notch:
Perhaps an even more effective way of grasping our extreme recentness as a part of this 4.5-billion-year-old picture is to stretch your arms to their fullest extent and imagine that width as the entire history of the Earth. On this scale … the distance from the fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is Precambrian. All of complex life is in one hand and in a single stroke with a medium grained nail file you could eradicate all of human history.
And my absolute favorite passage of the entire book on the subject of mitochondria:
We couldn’t live for two minutes without them, yet even after a billion years mitochondria behave as if they think things might not work out between us. They maintain their own DNA. They reproduce at a different time from their host cell. They look like bacteria, divide like bacteria, and sometimes respond to antibiotics in the way bacteria do. In short, they keep their bags packed. They don’t even speak the same genetic language as the cell in which they live. It’s like having a stranger in your house, but one who has been there for a billion years.
I wish the textbooks in schools were like this. I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more the first time around.
