Merry Christmas and All That Stuff

Sorry About Disappearing…

It has been an excruciatingly long month, so I apologize for the lack of activity.  December featured a hectic deployment (I can’t tell you about it or I would have to kill you), a surprise garnishment (I would have to kill myself, Merry-FN-Xmas), a mad dash to secure Santa’s approval, and a horribly unexpected death of someone I considered to be my second mother. The latter is going to be laid to rest tomorrow, so I am having a bourbon and coke in her memory as I write this.  If I start to misspell things or cease to make sense, please forgive me. I’ll correct it tomorrow.

I Will Miss You, Sweet Melissa

Melissa Jane Freeman Ball saved my life. Literally.  I checked out of the looney bin at 16 after trying to kill myself and went straight to her home in Louisa, Virginia. Her daughter is my best friend, my soul sister…we met in 9th grade, and became inseperable almost immediately.  We were both only children and she was the calm yin to my chaotic yang. Jack and Melissa Ball created the type of home I had dreamed about while growing up…loving, with two parents who loved each other, with a sister who complemented my weirdness with her own particular brand of oddity. They accepted me without question, took me in for entire summers, winter breaks, and easter holidays, and never asked anything in return. Jack and Melissa supported their daughter’s musical talent (immensely more than mine, though I can sing), and our first gig was arranged by Jack. We made $50…lol.

We called her ‘Mother Britannica’. She was a master of odd facts, something that I unconciously imitated as I got older (ask me anything about Henry VIII). The woman was an encyclopedia. And she seemed immortal in my eyes.

Vikki’s husband texted me late Thursday night and told me that she needed me, badly.  Keep in mind, we are now almost 4,000 miles away from one another, and I was having an adult beverage.  I logged into my Xbox LIVE account and he told me via message there that Melissa had passed away the night before.

Holy HELL.

I was stunned, and puzzled. She was in perfect health. Much later the next evening, Vikki finally called me back from her grandmother’s home in West Virginia. I was driving home from work when she told me what happened.

Melissa died of a massive heart attack. She felt as if she pulled a muscle, she said, so she sat down in the chair while her husband walked the dogs they were sitting for a neighbor. Less than five minutes had passed when Jack came back in and found her unresponsive. He’s an ex-firefighter, so he worked on her until the paramedics came. The EMTs worked on her for 45 minutes more. She never came back around.  Vikki says it was more or less instantaneous.

I drove down the road crying hysterically, and have had several moments where I’ve had to sit down and just pour it out.  She was a wonderful person, an awesome mother (even surrogate, to me), and now that I am a mother, I understand that I could have been a real nuisance growing up…but they always made me feel loved. They were proud of me when I went to college, when I started working at Microsoft, even when I divorced my first husband and married my current one.  Melissa drove Vikki and I to DOZENS of concerts–more than I could remember–and was a devoted Alice in Chains fan. I wanted to bring her some Seattle swag when I came to visit this summer.

But now…she’s gone.

Everyone, go hug the people you love. If you’re too far away to do it, call them, write them, text them….tell them that they mean the world to you. Because life is too damn short to not let everyone know that you appreciate what you mean to them.  At 11am PDT, I will be standing outside while the memorial service in West Virginia is conducted. My own lonely tribute to one of the finest people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

I leave this topic with this quote:

“When he shall die/ Take him and cut him out in little stars/ And he will make the face of heav’n so fine /That all the world will be in love with night /And pay no worship to the garish sun.” ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Okay, Let’s Talk the Football

I am watching the Bears at Green Bay with hatred in my heart. Just in general. Screw you, Lions, for winning. Screw you, C-Link, for showing the Lions won on the leaderboard IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEAHAWKS GAME!!!!!  After that, our offense sucked SO BAD. And Pete, really, when TJ got hit so hard in the third, you should have just put Charlie in. He deserved redemption, and really, what did you have to lose? Charlie has been proven to pull out miracles at the last minute. Charlie, bless his little heart, even did a rare post on Facebook after the game saying ‘we almost had this’. Charlie, who had his helmet on the entire game, and was ready to step in. SIGH. Yes, damn you, I am loyal to Charlie Whitehurst, because I don’t think he’s had a fair shake either in San Diego or here. But that’s just me.

So with playoff hopes mostly dashed, my boys are jetting off to various locations post-holiday. Jon Ryan, my favorite leg in the game, is heading back to Calgary…Earl Thomas is going back to Texas for a bit. They’ll be back for the game against the Cards, but right now, they’re getting some down time.  I love these guys, I really do, because they’re people first, NFL ballers second. There’s nothing stuck up about Corner Richard Sherman tweeting me a ‘Happy Anniversary’ on Christmas Eve, or Jon Ryan giving me a heartfelt thank you after I gave me condolences on his brother losing the parliament run he’d worked so hard to win in Canada. They’ve given me tickets…and most recently, the news that I’m getting a pro-shop gift card…for free. Merry Christmas indeed.

Anyhoo, back to what I see for the future regarding the Hawks. What I think should happen is this:  Cut Josh Portis. Put Charlie in as a third string QB (dammit, I hate myself for saying it), and draft a promising QB to study under Tavaris. Loosely. Unfortunately, we won’t get Barkley, who I was hoping for, since he’s decided to be BMOC for another year. Luck is going to the Colts, like it or not, since he already runs like a pro QB…he won’t need much coaching to do amazing things. I have a hard time believing they won’t swoop him up. RG3…well, that’s a long shot. I think we may end up with Landry Jones, unless we do some shuffling. Then, and only then, do we get RG3.

And really, what is broken with the Hawks? The QB, dammit. Our defense is solid. Most of the offense is right on time. The QB is everything. You can take this young team and add a good QB…we’re Bowl bound. This year is a no brainer, as far as I am concerned. Marshawn Lynch needs a franchise contract–and he better get it–so now all we have left to acquire is a solid franchise QB. Tavaris is tough, and I have come to respect him, but he’s not the future. We need a dynamic.  We need to give everything we have towards a quarterback. Period. Whatever it takes.

Charlie Whitehurst, I do love you. However, I understand the coaching staff’s job, and even though it pisses me off, I guess I get it. You are still magic 80% of the time, though….I think they ought to keep you on.  So I can passively stalk you. And so I can fight off all the haters at every damn game when I wear the #6 jersey. Bastards. Hey, Charlie…one request. I want you to autograph my damn jersey, please>?

 

Oh, bai Eagles…

Thursday Night Football

Some things are so good that to try to wrap them in words trivializes them. Last Thursday’s Seahawks’ game is one of those things. I could expound upon the players, the fans, the sucktasticness of the Eagles…but I’m not going to do that.

What I will say is that being at CenturyLink last week was like watching a sculptor finally reveal the face in the marble. I get it now. I see where Carroll was going with this.  And, like a lot of others, I like what I see. Thursday was about hard work and potential…and finally doing nearly everything right. The fans felt it…they hugged one another, fist bumped, some even cried. That, ladies and gents, is Seattle football. I’m not going anywhere.

Monday Sucks

I knew today was going to underwhelm. It’s cold, the ground is crunchy, and I hate this time of year. For a multitude of reasons, I suppose, but mostly because it’s NEVER ENOUGH. Never enough money, never enough work, never enough time with the kids, and so on. I spend November and December wanting to run away from home.

Work, I enjoy. I like what I do, the challenge of it. However, today was a day where I wanted to just beat my head against the desk…not because of my current co-workers, but because of some nebulous group who worked here years ago and made the WORST DOCUMENTATION EVER.  It’s like reading e.e. cummings upside down in sanskrit. I want to die. Dear project that must be done now: I need a translator. BRB. K, bai.

I’m a little bit of a facist when it comes to documentation.  DOCUMENT ALL THE THINGS!! People will never understand anything you tried to do five years from when you’ve first done it. Not only in the IT industry, where things change approximately every 3.67 seconds, but in life. Three hundred years from now, I know that if I don’t document important things, then I will be just another dead person. Who didn’t document stuff.

What was my point again?

Screw Andrew Luck and Black Friday

Around the NFL

I’m going to take a moment to get up on my soapbox regarding the NFL. Suh should be thrown out of the NFL. He’s a menace, a bully, a repeat offender…and a blatant liar.  They want to fine Kam Chancellor the equivalent of a middle class salary when he was trying to put his head and shoulders down, but they won’t remove a man who has a history of unsportsman-like conduct? Bullshit. Like that imaginary block to the back that the officials called that cost the Seahawks a win a few games back, this is just another example of what’s wrong with the league.

Let me be clear and say that if you intentionally lead with your helmet, or launch yourself in a obvious attempt to injure another player, then you deserve the penalty.  You could hear the impact from Chancellor’s hit on tape, and it was very, very hard. However, looking at the replays, it was obvious he was trying to correct and lead with his shoulder, and the other guy fell into him. Suh, on the other hand, has a history of making the game personal. His ‘excuse’ was crap…you don’t kick someone while regaining your balance. Or slam his head into the turf three times.  NFL, do the right thing and throw him out of the league. He doesn’t deserve to play the sport.

Tebow. Anyone else just really tired of hearing about him?  I get that he’s a super nice guy, relatively good looking, and very religious. Good for him. However, he simply sucks as a quarterback. The Broncos have been very, very lucky this season, considering how poorly he’s been playing the position. Releasing Orton was a mistake as well, especially since KC snatched him up (which, by the way, was probably not what Orton wanted…I’d bet he was hoping the Bears would grab him). Eventually, one of two things are going to happen: either Tebow will actually settle in and become as good as the hype, or his luck will completely run out and he’ll become a victim of the fans and the coach. I genuinely hope for the former, because he seems like a legitimately good person.

Something else I’m tired of hearing is that the Seahawks should suck just to get Andrew Luck. WTF is that about?  We’re not going to get Andrew Luck unless the Dolphins stop winning games, and intentionally sucking is going to decimate everything that’s right with the Seahawks by disassembling player morale. I follow a few of the Seahawks on Twitter, and that gives me access to some very genuine glimpses into the minds of the players. When they lose, it’s devastating. When they win, they’re elated. They apologize to the fans, and they thank the fans. I understand that the long range view is that they need another quarterback, but football is a fluid sport by nature and players come and go. These guys deserve to win when the opportunity presents itself. So, Seahawk nation, stop it. Victory is never overrated.

What’s in the cards for Charlie Whitehurst? I honestly don’t know. When he’s good, he’s very, very good. When he’s bad…well, I don’t want to talk about it. At 29 years old and with so many good college quarterbacks becoming available for 2012, I don’t know that this isn’t the end for Charlie. It’s depressing.  I’ve been a fan for a while now, and I’ve learned that he wears his heart on his sleeve to a great extent. I was at the Bengals game, and you could see that he was upset and dejected with his performance. What’s to blame?  Not enough reps? Thinking you were going to start the season only to be replaced? The no-huddle offense, or the fact that the offense is so young?

Whatever it was, he’s on the ropes now, and it makes me sad. I was on the sidelines pre-game when we played the Bengals, and he kept glancing over at the small group I was in…because, I suppose, he’s never seen anyone wearing his jersey. I know he’s pulled down 4 million a year for the last two years, essentially to warm the bench, but there are some things that mean more than money.  You don’t get into the elite club of the NFL by being bad at what you do.

Thanksgiving and the day after

Food. And a lot of it. My corn pudding looked awesome:

Aside from all of that, I did give up and go out on Black Friday. I did all the necessary shopping and am now flat-ass broke. Well, I’m not done shopping, which is what goes along with having three kids, but the big ticket items are accounted for. It was…stupidly ridiculous. Did people actually line up in the early morning hours? Because when I got there, they still had everything I was looking for in quantity.

/rant

I think that this just speaks to what I’ve always said about myself: I suck at being a girl because I think more like a guy than a girl.  I don’t understand the concept of liking to shop for anything. I own three or four pairs of shoes. I haven’t bought clothes for myself in over a year.  I do like to cook, and to challenge myself while doing so, but screw cleaning up after myself. I hate that shit.  I have tried at different points to be a stay at home mother, and failed. I get bored very quickly, and depressed. I have to be mentally challenged, and housewifery doesn’t do it for me.  I don’t mind being married to a gamer. I only get mad at my husband when he can play and I can’t (like when I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner and he’s playing Skyrim and I want to stab him). I work in a male dominated industry and I can hang just fine…less backstabbing and bitchery, in my opinion.

/end rant

Ukrops’ Lemon Chess Pie

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• Finely grated zest of 3 large lemons
• Juice of 3 large lemons
• 5 large eggs
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• One 9-inch unbaked pie shell

1. Preheat the oven to  325°F.

2. Combine the sugar,  lemon zest, and lemon juice in a medium- size bowl. Beat the eggs in, one by  one, then add the butter in a slow stream, beating all the while.

3. Pour the filling into  the pie shell, slide the pie onto a baking sheet, and bake on the middle oven  shelf for about 45 minutes or until puffed and delicately browned.

4. Transfer the pie to a  wire rack and cool to room temperature before cutting; don’t fret when the  filling begins to fall. This is what gives chess pies their silken texture. Cut  into slim wedges and serve, or refrigerate for 24 hours (which is what I prefer).

 

Recipe: Nanny’s Corn Puddin’

The only change I’ve made is cornstarch instead of flour.

•                     5 eggs
•                     1/3 cup butter, melted
•                     1/4 cup white sugar
•                     1/2 cup milk
•                     4 tablespoons cornstarch
•                     1 (15.25 ounce) can whole kernel corn
•                     2 (14.75 ounce) cans cream-style corn

1. Preheat oven to 400. Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.
2. In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs. Add melted butter, sugar, and milk. Whisk in cornstarch. Stir in corn and creamed corn. Blend well.  Pour mixture into prepared casserole dish.
3. Bake for 1 hour.

Recipe: Beef Short Ribs

Ingredients:

5 lbs bone in beef short ribs, cut crosswise into 2” pieces.

3 tablespoons vegetable oil 3 medium onions, chopped

3 medium carrots, chopped 2 celery stalks, chopped

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 750ml bottle dry red wine

10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley

8 sprigs thyme

2 sprigs rosemary

2 fresh or dried bay leaves

1 head of garlic, halved crosswise

4 cups low sodium beef stock

Oven to 350.

Season the short ribs with salt & pepper. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in 2 batches, brown the short ribs on all sides (about 8 minutes per batch). Transfer to a plate. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the drippings from the pot.

Add the onions, carrots and celery to the pot and cook over medium high heat, stirring often until onions are browned (about 5 minutes). Add the flour and tomato paste, cook stirring constantly, until well combined and deep red (2 – 3 minutes) . Stir in the wine and then add the short ribs and any accumulated juices. Bring to a boil, lower heat to medium and simmer until wine is reduced by half (about 25 minutes) Add all the herbs to the pot along with the garlic. Stir in the stock. Bring to a boil, cover and transfer to the oven.

Cook until the short ribs are tender 2 – 2 ½ hours (to test if the ribs are done, pull on a bone. It should slide out easily). Strain the sauce from the pot into a measuring cup. Spoon the fat from the surface and discard. Season with salt & pepper to taste. Serve in a shallow bowl over mashed potatoes with sauce spooned over.

Confessions and Obsessions: Or, How Charlie Whitehurst Was My Gateway Drug into Football

I have a confession to make. Well, probably several hundred of them, truth be told. However, that’s for many other blog posts after this one. I will start out my blogging adventure by explaining a few things.

The birth of Fraggingoddess

I wish it were more romantic, or at least more intentional, but ‘Fraggingoddess’ started out as an attempt to create a cool and memorable MSN Messenger account for my co-workers to use at Velocity Micro. What can be cooler than a woman who FPS’???  (I do it very, very badly, by the way, unless I am on a PC gaming).  I bought an Xbox, and that also became my gamertag because everyfreakingthingelse that was cool was taken already.  When Xbox LIVE launched Twitter on the dashboard, I had to create a Twitter account to test functionality (more about that glamourous life later), so I created…well, you get it, right? Now everything from my blog to my personal email address is Fraggingoddess. If I ever become a Microsoft FTE, I’m going to ask for that to be my alias.

Where I’ve been and where I’m going (maybe)

I wanted to be a paleoanthropologist when I grew up.  Now, I’m just waiting to see when I’m actually going to grow up, since that other thing isn’t going to happen unless I win the lottery or figure out how to reverse age. I have the same history as about a gazillion other women…fell in love with a jerk, got pregnant early, got beat up by that jerk, figured out I needed out, went to college, decided I hated programming, bluffed my way through my first job interview but got the job, spent the first three weeks teaching myself Visual Basic so I could do the job and not be a fraud.

Ok, maybe the last bit is not typical.  But…I digress.

I started out as a mechanical engineering clerk for a huge chemical manufacturer. I’ve worked as a sys admin in a jail, almost getting shanked in the process. I’ve helped win awards from PC magazines by providing high end customer support.  Ultimately, all roads led to Microsoft, the nerd nirvana, and I’ve never looked back. I spent two of the most amazing years of my profession working as a deployment night shift lead for Xbox LIVE, and got to see how one of the greatest companies in the world produces the greatest product in the world.  After that, I took a job as an operations engineer for another division of Microsoft, and I LOVE MY FREAKING JOB. I have the best boss, too, the same one I had at Xbox LIVE.  I’m just going to follow him all around Microsoft until I become a full time employee (with the alias frgingodes, bitches!) or until he gets tired of me and has me killed.

Football. DAMN YOU.

Ok, so to be strictly honest, I’ve been watching football since Elway became ‘Wrongway Elway’. I didn’t have a team I followed, but my family was equally divided between the Cowboys and the Redskins, and I liked neither. I mean, I lived in Virginia, and until the expansion teams popped up, there were the Redskins and…nothing if I wanted to follow the hometown team.  So,when I dragged my ass out to the Seattle metro area, this was the first time I lived somewhere with a sports team in residence. Even then, I was mildly disinterested in the Seahawks.

One of my former co-workers at Xbox LIVE put up on Facebook that he was not going to use his pair of season tickets.  It was right before Christmas, and my husband had never been to a NFL football game, so I bought them.

Damn you, Charlie Whitehurst. Damn you and your glorious mane of hair and your come-from-behind win to make the playoffs. I was hooked, and hooked hard, on Seahawks football. On the energy of the 12th man that leaves you slightly deaf after the game. On players who are so used to being the underdog, that they are humble and charming and just generally NICE people. Jon Ryan and Richard Sherman, Golden Tate and Russell Okung, I’m talking to you guys. You’ve bantered back and forth with me on twitter and I FUCKING LOVE YOU. But not in…that way. You know. Not the way I love Charlie. (Despite the way he’s been performing, and the fact he’ll probably leave the Seahawks next year, I am a loyal fan.)

This year we’ve been to one preseason game (Raiders) and one regular season game (Bengals). I actually won the tickets to the Bengals game from Premera the same day I got tickets from another former coworker for the Eagles game…but the Bengals tickets also came with sideline passes and a jersey. I drooled through warmups. One the Bengals players, a magnificent Rutgers wall of man named Clark, almost took my arm off as they walked off the field. I will allow it.

So next up is the Philly Eagles game, putting Hokie (Kam Chancellor) against Hokie (Mike Vick). I’m not conflicted. Go HAWKS! *Ahem*

What I’m Playing

Duh. Skyrim. After obsessively playing Dragon Age: Origins and associated sequels for two years (65 out of 75 achievements unlocked, bitches), then trying and hating Dungeon Siege III, Skyrim was the crack I was waiting for. I get lost in just walking around for hours.

I gnawed my fingers to the bone during the MW3 launch, by the way. After a couple of years of being on the front line for deployments at Xbox, one of more my erm…stressful…game launches was MW2. I totally couldn’t play the game after that.

Confessions

Thanksgiving is first and foremost on my mind right now, and since losing my grandfather last August, I can’t help but think of him this time of year. Not just because it’s the holidays, though it’s part of it. One of my clearest memories growing up was of him going hunting and bringing home a deer or turkey for the table. As he got older and couldn’t go anymore, you could tell it bothered him, and that bothered me.

In a lot of ways, he was more of a father than a grandfather. He taught me to be tough, to respect nature as part of our cherokee heritage, to use all of an animal and to be kind.  He was also a mean sonofabitch, opinionated, nosy, argumentative, and entirely assinine at times. He held me when both my sons died, and he pulled a rusted nail from my foot when I was six and told me how brave I was. I miss his bruising hugs and harsh words equally. And while I’m not religious, I feel him around me this time of year in some way.

I don’t tinker with holiday meals, especially being so far from home. Smithfield hams, a turkey, green beans with salt pork, stuffing, creamed potatoes, and deviled eggs, always like my grandmother and mother make it, are the centerpieces of holiday dinners. This year, I’m asking my grandmother for her corn pudding recipe, because I fear that we may lose her soon and I don’t want to lose that knowledge with her. Some things I can control, some things I can’t, and my heritage and history are things I can make tangible through food and through recording the stories I’ve been told. They are intertwined.

I bring the south here with me since I can’t go home due to the expense, through my food and my stories. I work with a guy from North Carolina, and was able to give him some pulled pork that tasted like the food back home.  I also shared that pork with my husband’s co-workers, and one of them, in turn, shared some incredible Mexican food with me that I would never get at any restaurant.

Speaking of, my husband just drove up. I’ll speak at ya’ll later on!

Let’s Get It Started…

I have had this blog reserved for like…oh, forever. I was updating my LinkedIn site (shameless plug: http://www.linkedin.com/in/heathertaylor) when I noticed I had my sad, empty blog as a link on there. So, I’ve decided to revive, aka start, blogging. Stay tuned for…well, something!