Jen's master scrabble move

From our game last night...



"Vaunting" all the way across to the triple word score. Awesome.

We have a table!

After only 6 months living in our house, we finally decided the time was right to get a table. Here it is!



Ta-da!



I also installed a whiteboard up in the office. I kind of want to cover the entire wall with whiteboads.

December Mushroom Hunt

A few days ago I got impatient waiting for the rain to clear and decided to go out hunting, rain or no. Even before I began the hike, I spotted clumps of mushrooms along the side of the road from the car. I had to pull over a few times, but eventually enforced mental blinders on myself so I wouldn't crash.

Within ten feet of the trail-head, I came upon this minor disaster. Where did you guys come from?

Aha! You delicious, inaccessible beauties!

Well, no matter. I hiked for a few more hours in a light drizzle. The forest was an utter chaos. There were several places where the main trail was blocked entirely by fallen trees, and there was, in general, a huge amount of debris. I spotted a lot of Boletes, but they were all too decayed to be of interest.

Sadly, there were no more oysters to be seen, but our regular chanterelle spot didn't disappoint, and I returned with a good, if dirty, haul.

I decided to make a creamy polenta with sauce of mushrooms sage butter sauce. (This is a little less than half the mushrooms)

By the time it was ready to eat, I was too excited to remember to take any more photos, though. The next evening we also made our traditional pasta with mushroom garlic cream sauce with the other half of the mushrooms.

Mushrooms outside our apartment!

It's been raining for four days, and these beauties appeared in the wood chips outside our apartment.



I'm not totally sure what they are. I brought one into the house to do a spore-print, and my best guess is that they're paxillus involutus, or Poison Pax. Very exciting!

Thanksgiving Mushroom Hunt

Over Thanksgiving, my sister and her husband and Jen and I went on our first mushroom hunt of the season. We found a few chanterelle, but the really big find was when Stephen spotted a huge oyster mushroom log. Here are two pictures of me posing with it as if I had found it (score!) Also pictured: my awesome new nerdier $8 glasses from the internet, and hair only slightly longer than my stubble.

We only took one bunch home, but it turned out to be enough for a largish stir-fry and two quiches! Cooking photos follow below.

A few of the ingredients for the stir-fry...

After cleaning a slicing the mushrooms &tc. Also, notice those delicious-looking egg strips! mmmmmmm.

Done!

And now for the quiches. I've really been into leeks recently, so this one is mushroom potato leek. And, of course, cheese.

Found some new books!

I've been running out of new books recently, but I happened across the following two great lists. They're summer reading lists for the St. Ann's school in NY (where my friend Nick teaches, actually).

1. http://www.saintannsny.org/depart/library/hsfacsummerread2010.pdf
2. http://www.saintannsny.org/depart/library/higschoolreadlist05.pdf

If you're using Google to find more, beware St. Anne's which is a totally different place with its own reading lists, and, apparently, far worse taste.

12 Rulers of Byzantium

I was looking for something to listen to while cleaning the kitchen this morning and found this wonderful podcast: http://12byzantinerulers.com/

It found just the right level of information density for me to follow while still doing other things. I'm hoping to start rectifying my general ignorance of all history. I think a lot of our high school math topics could be made more interesting by looking at how they appeared historically (who cared about them and why, and some of the personalities involved in their pursuit). As part of this, I think it would be nice to have a general sense, as well, of what else was happening around those times.

Anyhow, there it is!

Pythagorean Tiling

A few days ago I got the book Mathematics and its History by John Stillwell from the library, and last night I had a chance to start reading it. It had this nice diagram in it.

Do you see a proof of the Pythagorean theorem in there?

Apparently this tiling proof is attributed to Annairizi of Arabia, but there are others. I found this nice paper online called Paintings, Tilings & Proofs which discusses several different examples including this next one.



Of course, there are lots and lots of other proofs as well, many of which are listed on this page from cut-the-knot.