Mr Fancy Pants

It all started when I received a coffee press as a Secret Santa gift. One puts in fresh coffee grounds and hot water, then moves the plunger sieve thing and voila - fresh coffee. Actually, it sucks as a coffee-producing unit because there are always grounds in the coffee. But hey, it looks cool sitting there all glass and metal and mysterious. It's a good piece for the arty part of my table or counter. A real conversation starter. Well not yet, but someday. Anyhoo...my arty kitchen crap collection is started.



I'm a sucker for Ikea displays and cooking shows. I like how everything is neatly laid out in proper containers and dishes and stuff. Some of them are see-through cupboards or jars or what-have-you. Look carefully next time - all their pastas are there in glass containers like austentatious displays of cooking talent.

So anyways, I bought a tall glass container to keep up with the fancy pasta-displaying crowd. I also bought a giant box of spaghetti because I'd remembered that I was running low and needed a bunch to fill this huge glass thing. It turned out that I'd also remembered that I was running low on spaghetti on my last trip - but didn't remember that part until I got home. After today I now have a fancy glass container of spaghetti, a 2/3's used big box of spaghetti, and an unopened bigger one. But no matter.




Problem: The box of spaghetti is rectangular and big, and the jar needing the spaghetti is round and less big.


Background: This is an incredibly easy problem for someone with a physics, math, and engineering background - so no calculations are needed. I'll just attack it in a logical order, stepping through the potential solutions until one works:


Theories:

1) Tilt the box, grab handfuls of spaghetti, transfer to jar.

Result: Didn't work - too much spaghetti was coming out, and it was hard to get handfuls, but none was lost. In retrospect, I should've tried harder at this stage.


2) The quantity of spaghetti will easily fit into the round container, providing I kind of hold back the upper layer and rotate the box along its longitudinal axis to make a 'V' with a corner, then simply let the spaghetti slip in.

Result: It didn't work because it was coming out in the wrong shape and the...uhh...variable frictional coefficients were producing an...um...erratic effect - but I lost only a couple of spag's.


3) This is a 'square peg in a round hole' problem; I just have to equalize the shapes and the transfer is trivial. Squishing the box until its end is round turns it into a 'round peg in a round hole' problem. Fantastic idea.

Result: It didn't work because the round carboard peg was bigger than the round glass hole - but a fair quantity of spag's got partially into the container.



4) Assess the situation and check the inventory.

• Standing sheepishly with spaghetti all over the freaking place
• Blindingly obvious realization that it's not close to fitting in
• Messed-up box with spaghetti hanging out
• Breakable container jam-packed with spaghetti hanging out
• Spag's on counter, floor, microwave, and between hip and counter
• Feeling like a Three Stooges fire drill met an I Love Lucy skit

Result: Panic - though I was finally able to pull the two containers apart, shake them until the spaghetti was back in, and put them aside.

This made the rest of the kitchen look like a giant version of a Pickup Sticks game. Or a mammoth explosion at a pipe yard. Or the Whitemud Freeway at rush hour when it's snowing. Or...well, you get the picture. And the bonus was that I got to see it happen in slow motion right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I'm going to be finding pieces for years.


Spaghetti Everywhere


Mitigating Factor: Spaghetti is springy when just the tip is being held.


Analysis: The money saved by buying the big box instead of the convenient packages that probably fit right into the container - shot to hell. Oh, but I'm sure the ginormous box that I haven't opened yet will work just peachy. Nooooo problems at all. You know, I may just give it to a food bank to save my ego from getting another boot to the twig and berries.


Conclusion: Stupid spaghetti.

Pot Pourri

• Last winter I actually put my gloves in my Jeep's glovebox - it's not convenient or handy, but it felt good to do it once.

• Mormons are like a crazy version of Jehovah's Witnesses, yet both are nice, polite, and well-dressed.

• My spices are in my cupboard in alphabetical order from left to right. The exception was that my salt was on the left and my pepper was on the right. An OCD gal I know solved her sel-pouvre problem by putting them on the counter, where alphabetizing doesn't apply. I changed mine to have the salt in the front and the pepper in the back.

• Does anyone ever use SCROLL LOCK?

• A big block of wood appeared in my yard after a windstorm. I have no idea whence it came.

• Why does Wonder Bread have an expiration date when it lasts forever? I wonder.

• Native Indians were peaceful, lived in harmony with their environment, and never wasted a thing. One look at the bottom of a buffalo jump should dispell that last one. They were also known to be fierce warriors. When they say that they want their land back, I wonder if they're going to give it back to the tribes they conquered. I think not having a written history (evidence) helps them out here.

• I like big doors. The bigger, the better. Insanely huge wooden and steel castle doors are the best. Here are some Moroccan doors (save yourself eyestrain, I'm not in them).





• At one time or another my garlic, onions, and potatoes have sprouted on my counter.

• I believe that horoscopes are a hijacking and abuse of tenuous scientific principles. But then again, we Leos are sceptical, bossy, and lecturey. Oh, and all Scorpios are batsh*t crazy.

• Way back we learned that our taste buds were grouped together (ie. salty in front, sweet in back). It's a myth - they're evenly spread out. The wine snobs insist that different types of wines have different-shaped glasses to channel the wine to the appropriate buds. They're talking crap.

• Male clothing wraps left-over-right and female clothing wraps right-over-left (eg. button-up shirts). I wrap my robe left-over-right, but my towel right-over-left. Am I all gay/feminine when I'm just out of the shower and feeling superclean?

• In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy plays that record over the loudspeaker and Red narrates:

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

I checked. One of those "Italian ladies" was Swiss and the other was German.