Saturday roundup and rambles

Death Valley is officially the hottest place on earth.

If you haven't yet checked out Nice Guys of OKC, go NOW. Here's a basic summary with some good pointers for the guys who are confused about what the problem is.

On a related note: you're not a man if you have to be a douche bag to earn your "man card":

Turning your female partner into a castrating mommy figure who you rebel against by drinking shitty beer with your buddies ain’t manhood the way that Steve McQueen would have done it.

But why, Mr. Solomon, must you undermine your own point by equating manliness with meat-loving?

Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson, from “Parks & Recreation,” is a mustachioed, meat-loving man who loves woodworking and being emotionally distant, and he can follow the lead of Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope. 

Would Mr. Offerman the vegan be any less of a man?

On that note, here are some vegan cookie recipes and pictures of some of the awesome vegan food we made over the holidays.

Chocolate chili macadamia cookies

Vegan ravioli

The ravioli filling (pumpkin and spinach/artichoke)

 

Avocado chocolate cake

Seitan (about to go in a stir-fry)

The stir fry, with spicy peanut sauce

Avocado cake dipped in chocolate fondue

Home-popped popcorn (with olive oil, salt, and chipotle)

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It's the time of year to reflect on... the year. I'm not really interested in rehashing things that I've already hashed about (mom conflicts and epiphanies, relationship and dating sagas, six countries--though only one of which was new), but I do want to hash about technology. The inspiration to hash came last night, on the train--for which I'd bought and shown the ticket from my phone--as I was reading the New Yorker on my iPad. But particularly when I tweeted to complain that Amtrak hadn't updated the train status on its app (we had to stop for a medical emergency, but the app was still showing an on-time arrival, and continued to do so through the actual arrival time). Amtrak immediately responded to my tweet and let me know of the updated time (I thanked them but informed them that the point was that the app still wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing). For not the first time, I got an immediate customer response by kvetching on Twitter. But this trifecta--buying and showing the ticket on my phone, reading an issue that I hadn't yet gotten in the mail on my iPad, and dealing with an issue on Twitter--was not even on my horizon a year ago.

This time last year, I didn't have a smart phone and barely knew how to use one. When my coworker or then-bf was driving and asked me to do something on her or his iPhone, I would start out by poking at it like a monkey. In late March, I got my own smart phone--and it took me a good couple of months to figure out how to use it. In August, I opened a Twitter account to (1) share shorter, not-quiet blog-worthy mom statements and (2) call out AAdvantage for trying to screw me out of my bonus miles (and it kind-of worked). In November, I won an iPad. So here I am. I am now in a position to refer to the "devices" on which I access the internet, etc. I use apps. Yes, I know that everyone else was doing this five years ago, but it's new to me. It's kind of crazy. But I love it.