make your bed

Dear Internet,
For the last few weeks, I had been working on the piece that was living in this space before opting to scrap all 1500 words for another day. It wasn’t that it was bad, but there was something in the tone of the piece that I couldn’t shake as being comfortable sending out to the world just yet.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the scene from 8 Mile in which Rabbit realises bearing all of his business public makes his haters powerless against him. Not recalling the exact quote, I went digging for the script to help jar the time and location and ended up reading the whole damn thing in one sitting. While it’s speculative that the movie is based loosely on Eminem’s life, reading the synopsis to John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, it doesn’t take much to see where the rest of the inspiration came from. Now I’m keen to read some Updike.
Everything is connected.
Everything.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2011, 1999

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes for June 21, 2014

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,
You can follow me on Pinterest on what I’m readingwatching, and listening.

Reading

I finished a few graphic novels this week, the short story Beyond Lies The Wub by Phillip K. Dick, and dug more into Steam Rising by Pratchett. I’m behind on reviews, so those will be coming up in the next week.

Watching

Lots of shows ending recently or that we’ve caught up on. You know what starts tomorrow? The last season of True Blood! If they end the season like they did the books, I am going to be HELLA PISSED.

  • Game of Thrones
    One can simply not write about Game of Thrones finale without planning on spending days on deep analysis for every scene. So instead, I’ll leave you with this:
    dragonroar
    Until next year!
  • Silicon Valley
    Despite my earlier reluctance at this show, it’s grown quickly to be a fav as it’s started to get its feet. TheHusband would rate this as the second best show on TV right now, after Game of Thrones. Plus, while it’s written by Mike Judge, it has all the ambiance of Party Down. And of course, Gilfoye has quickly become the favorite character, with Dinesh not too far behind. AND THEN the finale had the best dick jokes to top all dick jokes.
  • Veep
    Selena is now president, Amy is running the show, Dan is more or less stable, Jonah is still Jonah, and one day I hope Gary will find himself.
  • Doctor Blake Mysteries
    I was borderline loving this show but it’s now fading into a deep like. The finale at the end of S1 (Doctor Blake heads to China to see his long lost daughter) was tidily summed up in the season opener and left alone. The lady doctor who is now helping Doctor Blake in the morgue is only ever seen — in the morgue! And the big reveal at the end of S2, which we all know was coming, left me feeling like this show is getting kind of flat. Instead of structuring big, compelling characters as it started in S1, it’s now becoming freak of the week.
  • I Never Knew That About Britain
    Eight short episodes exploring the variety of different things that either were started, famed, created, or otherwise in Britain. It’s puffed up on the history rather than getting in depth, and we’re looking at maybe 3-4 items per 22 minute episode, and the setting is fast paced. But overall it was entertaining and informative.
  • Halt and Catch Fire
    This show has been on for a month and I cannot believe I forgot to add it. But yes, new AMC show on the beginnings of the PC wars in the early ’80s, complete with girl hacker totes styled on Angelina Jolie’s character in Hackers. Lee Pace plays a fast talking, possibly borderline genius and his Patrick Bateman potential serial killer lifestyle who thinks he can potentially (possibly? maybe!) change the world. One side story I hope that will be developed is Donna Clark’s, Gordon’s wife, struggle as a woman coder in early ’80s Texas. Watching her face and body movements as she was cuckhold by her boss, I was hissing, “Yesssss — exactly that!” at the TV screen. Also the big contrast between Donna and Cameron, the AMC’s version of Acid Burn, would be interesting if they play it out. One woman flipping off the patriarchy, the other attempting to live with it.
  • Rectify
    S2 started this week — and I promptly fell asleep because I was so tired. Here is a recap I gave last year, and hopefully after rewatching it this week, I will have be more coherent in my description.

Weekly watching: A Place To Call Home, Mr. Sloane, Fargo, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Louie, Penny Dreadful, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Elementary

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012

Recipe: White Bread (Throbbing Manor variation)

Dear Internet,
With the fairly big change in our lives happening in a few weeks, we’ve been hunkering down on costs whenever we can as whatever monies I make the first year writing will more than likely not match (not by a long shot) what I make at the current job.
One of our biggest expenditures is food: take out, specialty, high end, doesn’t matter. If we could put it in our mouths and digest it, we were more than likely buying it. Having the means to eat anywhere you want to, dining out for lunch nearly every day, or the near daily shopping trip to a great local bakery hasn’t helped either. It was shocking adding the receipts into YNAB over the last few months, because wow. We dropped how much on a single dinner and didn’t blink?
Right. Time to change.1
The other big component to this is knowing what ingredients are actually in our food. I had lunch with Kolene at Curry Kitchen2 recently and feigned surprised when I found out the naan had milk in addition to being slathered in butter. I wasn’t really surprised, but I have been in deep denial about how a lot of the food I eat is dairy free.3
The other component is learning how to cook, something I’ve moved from thinking about to seriously thinking about in the last year or so and need to start actually practicing.
(This is an awfully long intro to a damn recipe, but keep up with me here.)
With all of this swirling around, TheHusband and I have been doing pretty great on getting the food budget under control, not eating out unless it was foretold by the gods, and finding ways to maintain most of our food lifestyle without skimping on anything. With all of this in mind, it was also important for me to document what we’re doing because not only will be helpful for later recall but also for others.4
Bread was something that I’ve made frequently in the past to know I was good at and could also cheaply replicate at home. I had not found a good white bread recipe for sammiches yet, so I asked my pal Frank for a non-bread machine recipe, which he gladly supplied.
How awesome was this recipe? TheHusband and I killed half a loaf with dinner. It is THAT good.
It is, however, not that great for sammiches. The innards are tad too soft and any weight given in the sammich building would probably tear it apart. It would also probably not work well as French toast either. It would work for plain eating with a spread or for sopping or even just tearing hunks off to nibble on.
Plus the recipe is super easy. AND, since I’ve successfully used vegan milk and butter but a real egg for the recipe, swapping in an egg replacement would make it totally vegan. SCORE.

breadintooven
Egg glaze is on and ready to be slipped into the oven.

Also remember recently when I said, “At some point in my life, I’ll learn how to be a better food photographer”?
Yeah, I decided this was now the time.
freshbread
Bread after it has cooled and on the rack. TheHusband was chopping bacon in the background to top our green beans.

White Bread – Throbbing Variation. Adapted from Frank Skornia, who adapted it from Peter Reinhart
Ingredients
2 teaspoons (.22 ounces) active yeast
1/2 cup of hot water (around 112 degrees)
4 3/4 cups (21.5 ounces) unbleached bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons (.38 ounce) salt
3 1/4 tablespoons (1.66 ounces) sugar
1/4 cup (1.33 ounce) unsweetened almond milk
1 large (1.65 ounces) egg, slightly beaten, at room temperature
3 1/4 tablespoons (1.66 ounces) vegan butter melted or at room temperature (I use Earth Balance since it has the best consistency and taste to cow milk butter)
1 3/4 (or 2 1/4) cups  (14  – 16 ounces) water, at room temperature
1 egg, whisked  until frothy, for egg wash
Directions

  1. Proof the yeast by adding it the 1/2 cup of  hot water and let sit for about 5 minutes until creamy. If using quick yeast, you can skip this step but make sure to add the 1/2 cup of water into the water total later in the recipe for a total of 2 1/4 cups
  2. While yeast is proofing, add flour, salt, and sugar into a mixing bowl  (hand or stand) and blend
  3. Add the yeast mixture, milk, egg, butter, and 1 cup (1 1/2) cups of water with a large metal spoon (or on low speed of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment) until all the flour is absorbed and the dough forms a ball. If the dough seems very stiff and dry, slowly add water until the dough is soft and supple.
  4. Sprinkle flour on the counter, transfer the dough and begin kneading (or mix on medium speed with the dough hook), adding more flour, if necessary, to create a dough that is soft, supple, and tacky but not sticky. Continue for 6 to 8 minutes. (In the electric mixer, the dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick ever so slightly to the bottom.) The dough should pass the windowpane test.
  5. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a clean cloth and ferment at room temperature for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size (the length of time will depend on the room temperature). Trick: Due to weather (windows are open!) or to save time, a trick to get dough to rise quickly is to warm the oven up (200F roughly) and then turn it off. Now pop the bowl (and thus use a clean towel and NOT plastic wrap) into the oven, close the door and check back in an hour. The dough should have doubled by this time.
  6. Remove the fermented dough from the bowl and divide it in half for sandwich loaves and shape the dough. Lightly oil two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2-inch loaf pans and place the loaves in the pans. 
  7. Mist the top of the dough with spray oil and loosely cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Proof the dough at room temperature for 60 to 90 minutes, or until it nearly doubles in size. I also did the same trick here with the oven but I did NOT cover the tops.
  8. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F for loaves and brush the loaves with egg wash.
  9. Bake loaves for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating 180 degrees halfway through for even baking, if needed. The tops should be golden brown and the sides, when removed from the pan, should also be golden. The loaves should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom. (My oven is quick so I baked for 35 minutes on the nose and they were perfect and I did rotate about 20 minutes in.)
  10. When the loaves have finished baking, remove them immediately from the pans and cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour before slicing or serving.
  11. DEVOUR

Also make sure to check out Frank’s adaptation as he includes how to use this dough for making dinner rolls, hot dog, and hamburger rolls. Also thanks to Frank, I learned about the windowpane technique and how to shape loaf dough. Frank, you rock!
xoxo,
Lisa

1. Even if I somehow make a trillion dollars off my future endeavours, it certainly would be in our best interests to have better control over our budget so we know if we’re buying a pied terre in Paris’ first district or some kind of ramshackle ruin in the wilds of southern Italy. Bad comparison as we want both, but you catch my drift.
2.The owner kept making fat jokes at my expense while also referring to himself – things along the lines like I didn’t worry about starving to death waiting for the naan while rubbing his own protruding belly.
3. It’s been nearly three years since I’ve had mac and cheese. Some days, I would give a year of my life to eat mac and cheese.
4. People love, love, LOVE any posts I do how-tos on whatever.

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013

shoes

Dear Internet,
It is nearly two years since my surgery and where I should be versus where I actually am are two wholly different things.
Whenever I get angry about the state of my feet, I seem to conveniently forget I was laid up for four months after surgery number one, on a wound vac for another two, then laid up again for another two months before finally being released from care nearly a year after the first surgery. Of course I’m not going to be where I think I should be at — nor would anyone else.
Logic and rational are not players in this game. When the world in my head is crashing, far easier to blame something you cannot control versus something you can.
In this case, the size of my feet.
This was much of my attitude this morning on my way to work. TheHusband had gifted me with a pair of fairly expensive ballet flats for the holidays, a pair similar to the brethren I purchased last summer. Instead of leather, however, the fabric was cloth so when I slid my feet into them the shoes had no stretch.
That is something I have to account for now post-surgery: my feet will be different sizes during the day and I need shoes to be flexible to fit that criteria. The company’s reputation for customer service was earned when a new pair in leather arrived on my doorstep, same size as the previously purchased pair, which I threw into my travel bag when I hopped a flight to San Francisco for a job interview in April.
During that trip, the new pair felt odd but I couldn’t put my finger on why the shoes felt weird. They went on easily enough but they didn’t fit right. I sized the new pair against their brethren and found the new pair was 1/2″ shorter than the pair I had been wearing for months. I contacted the company who sent me out another pair in the same size — maybe the first replacement was a mismatch? Nope. The now third pair of flats were matched up against my happily worn pair also had the same problem. Perhaps my original pair was the mismarked ones then? I sent the request in for another pair to exchange, this time for a size up which arrived the day of my birthday.
A size 12.
For some reason I’m recalling my first pair of adult shoes was purchased when I was 9 or 10, in a woman’s size 10. I have always not been tall, so size 10s at a young age made sense to me. I wore 10s for most of my early teenage years and into my 20s when the 10s stopped fitting — weight gain, arthritis, life — moved me into 11s. A few years ago when trying to size running shoes, the sales person tried to convince me I needed 12s not 11s and I laughed in her face. I don’t care WHAT your scale says, I wear 11s and then proceeded to stomp out the store in due form.
Because I apparently cannot have fat feet.
Feet change and they grow (and shrink!); they are not consistent no matter how much we want them to be. The part of our body that we abuse the most, we treat with so little respect. This is not a treatise to feet, but maybe it should be.
I tried on the 12s, which fit like a glove out of the box. I attempted to get over myself on the shoe size prejudice. A size meant nothing if they fit well and were comfortable and this was true of the new pair. My right foot, now an 11.5w thanks to the surgeries felt great. The left foot? 10.5b felt a little loose. I can make this work, I thought. I added on a pair of secret lady socks to keep my feet in place (leather!) and went about my merry little way.
Except yes, my feet do change. By the time I was leaving work nine hours later, my right foot had ballooned (as it tends to do after a day where I’m on my feet a lot) and was snug in its shoe. The left shoe, however, flapped off my foot like an evil clown smiling to children as I walked.
I angrily walked to my car, feeling as if my frustration of my life was based solely on this pair of ill-fitting shoes. Why couldn’t I own a nice pair of shoes that fit?  How was the first pair I purchased a perfect fit but its brethren were horrible matches? Why was everything so complicated? Why were people such assholes? Why can’t we have nice things?
Why am I so angry over a pair of shoes?
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe:

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes for June 14, 2014

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,
You can follow me on Pinterest on what I’m readingwatching, and listening.

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Cunning Tales from a Systems Librarian

  • Librarian How To: Graphic Novel Collection Development in Academia
  • But what about the MENS?? 
  • About my article in American Libraries on libraries, technology, and gender
  • How To: Free Comic Book Day At Your Library

Listening

  • Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles – Dr. Throne
    She’s the illegitimate daughter of a blue blood, he’s the wealthy son of a upstart. Will their love ever come to fruition? Will the fates continue to thwart their plans at happiness?
  • The Archers
    I found it way easier to just download the weekly omnibus rather than attempt to catch it every day. Will the sheep scab destroy Brookfield? Will Clarrie ever get over her late-life crisis? How are Pat and Tony going to handle the loss of organic status?

Reading

Finished

Watching

Weekly watching: Game of Thrones, A Place To Call Home, Mr. Sloane, Fargo, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Louie, Penny Dreadful, Silicon Valley, Veep, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Doctor Blake Mysteries, Elementary

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010, 1999

Towel Birthday: Now I am 42

Dear Internet,
Today is my birthday, which is both a bizarre and wonderful thing.
42!
Fjörutíu og tvær.
Pedwar deg dau.
Daichead a dó.1

FORTY TWO.

(It apparently does not get any better when not said in English.)
If this was 1514, I’d probably most assuredly be dead, probably from childbirth. And probably would have owned no property of my own. Or been educated Or would have been considered a full fledged human. But hey!
It’s not 1514.
It really is the little things. Like clean water, soap, and science.
Where was I?
I’ve been thinking about how to document this year and since it happens to be Throwback Thursday (#tbt), a trip down Lisa memory lane seems like a good idea. Below is a sample of the pictures I started curating a few years ago to document how I aged.  You can see the rest over at Flickr.

1972. I’m the one in the middle with my maternal grandparents and my two older cousins. They were 4 and 2, and I was 4 months old or so.

Christmas, 1975. I would be about 3.5.

Spring 1979 right after Jeff, my brother, was born. Yes. I am a little Catholic school girl with ribbons in her pigtails.

Sometime in 1989. The eyes? Violet contacts that I rocked for about a year or two. The lipstick? Frosted. I tended to rock punk rock hair and preppy clothes — a style that has not changed two decades later.

1998. Pictures, taken with a B&W webcam, of me and TheHusband from 1998.  The images were tiny enough that I just put them together in a single image. Our secret to staying so young? Virgin’s blood – duh.

2005. Taken before my undergrad graduation, but right after one of the most expensive hair cuts/colors I ever paid — about $350 dollars. My hair was bad ass.

 
2014. Taken last week.
And remember: 42 is the new 28.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 1999


1. “Forty two” in Icelandic, Welsh, and Irish.

A Husband’s Lament To His WIfe On Her Birthday

[Ed. It is tradition that TheHusband and I exchange prose or some kind of creative work on various holidays. This is his contribution for my birthday this year.]
Oh Pookie Bear! As your trusty squire, shall I regale you with adulation of your bravery, your honor and your conquests of wanton maidens?
Nay?
Shall I exalt your victories to the filthy commoners? Perhaps the tale of how you tamed the Nemean Lion, convincing it to perch upon your head for eternity, its mane becoming your mane! Or, your legendary slaying of the Hydra Aunt. Luring it out of the swamp with the promise of Thanksgiving leftovers and nickel slots. Only to charge it on your trusty steed Pugacles, lopping both heads off with your sword and bathing in the sanguine maelstrom of victory!
No?
That isn’t doing if for you?
Shall I sing the bardic anthems elucidating your great beauty? The Song of the Resplendent Cheekiepoo is always a favorite among the grunge infested plebian mobs. Or, perhaps, one of favorites from the Primevalvision Song Contest? How did that Yotvingian tune go?

Something
I have to tell you something
It’s been on my mind so long

Then he mentions something about the greaves he is wearing today, oned call love and the other called Hispania? It never made any sense to me; but you sure seemed to enjoy it.
Absolutely Not?
Must you be so curt?
Shall I order up a doxy with a socially acceptable level of feculence to rub your weary shoulders? To massage your mystery lump? Your lone vulnerable ounce of flesh. Covered by a leaf just before you were bathed in dragon’s blood as an infant. No one knows about it but, I, your trusty squire, and, uh maybe the strumpet I’d hire as a masseuse.
Go to hell and die?
Really? That type of language is unbecoming of one so noble, one so fabled, one so grand, so….
Leave you the fuck alone? May I ask why?
Cat gifs.

This day in Lisa-Universe: 20121999

Librarian How To: Graphic Novel Collection Development in Academia

 
Dear Internet,
As my tenure at MPOW gets closer to the end, I’m in the process of writing lots and lots of documentation for my successor1. One of my projects I’m most proud of, and hope will be continued, is my graphic novel collection (which will always be mine no matter what). Since I seem to be fielding lots of questions from people in all sorts of places about graphic novel collection development in academia, I usually point people to my project Graphicdemia since that has all of my resources. But there are a few questions I have not really answered such as WHAT I’m collecting and HOW I’m marketing the collection to my community.
This post should answer those question. (Warning: Some of the content is culled from stuff I’ve written in emails, comments, and documentation so it may sound a bit familiar.)
Collecting graphic novels at a community college is a weird niche. We’re not a research institution nor are we a public library, so our needs are different and are often left unaddressed. If you look at a lot of professional publications, they more often than not push their recommendations towards public libraries (mostly) OR gear their recommendations for research libraries. Thus, trying to collect and being active in this area  while considered a niche area is is kind of difficult at times.
With that being said, when I started ramping up the collection in the spring of 2012, it contained less than two dozen items and as of today, now contains closer to 300 items.
Not too shabby.
How do I decide on what to collect?
The collection is split into two with history, how-tos, criticism, and biographies of the creators located in 741.5s. Graphic novels themselves are located at the beginning of the fiction collection with the local call number Graphic Novel, are alphabetized by the creator’s last name, and have a “Graphic Novel” designated sticker on the spine.
librarygrcc
We did this for a couple of reasons.
While the collection circulates, much of the circulation was happening outside the community via interlibrary loan. As I will later note, we were doing quite a bit of promotion within the library, but since the core collection was still stuck in the stacks (and students seemingly hate browsing the stacks just for fun), we weren’t seeing a lot of internal traffic happening with the collection. The librarians had recently decided we were going to clean up our fiction collection (adding more local authors, getting in more popular materials, updating existing copies) and I thought this would be a good time to move the core graphic novel collection to the beginning of the fiction stacks for better visibility. Our fiction stacks are prowled through quite a bit and the hope was to increase circulation within the local community by their shelf-reading.
This tactic worked. Our circulation has improved dramatically.
How did I select works? Works were selected with the following criteria:

  • If the work is geared for ages 16+
  • Preference is given if the work is an anthology, biography, historical (fiction or non-fiction), cultural, literary, standalone, regional, or independently published
  • If the work is currently not fairly represented in MeLCat (our statewide consortium) or in GRPL or KDL
    • Example: Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, which came out in March and was highly anticipated, is not currently showing up in MeLCat at any of the over 300 libraries in the state. So I ordered it for MPOW.
  • If the work is being used for an event on campus, classroom, or other college related activities
  • As space is limited, and GRPL is located across the street, long running or complex series’ and manga will not be considered unless they fall into the above definitions

Because of the nature of the collection, I use the following for collection development resources:

I bought criticisms, how-tos, commentary, and anthologies in addition to the stand alone books because I wanted to provide historical and popular thought to the collection. While it is important to me that people read comics, it is also as important to know the hows and whys comics are the way they are. I attempted to keep these titles more mainstream and less academic-y but still provide diverse thought and various reading levels.

On to promotion! You’ve got the collection started, now what?

  • Like any good librarian, the first thing I did was create a Subject Guide. In addition to keeping in line with the template the librarian’s developed for the guides, I decided to also add tabs for blogs and journals; reading lists and collections; museum, societies, and careers; conventions (local AND national) and comic book stores; and then a direct link to our graphic novels board on Pinterest.
    • Monthly, I would also update the “New Title” section of the guide to showcase latest titles received at the library.
  • I routinely advertise to various departments (English, History, Art, ESL) who also create assignments based on the collection though we do not have a graphic novel class yet! 
  • I blogged about graphic novels on MPOW’s blog, which also cross-posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
  • As previously mentioned, I curate a board on Pinterest that is updated monthly with new titles and links back to the library’s catalog
  • I advertise through various college communications for events (banned books week, free comic book day, etc)
  • When we were doing displays throughout the library, I would create and rotate themed displays featuring graphic novels
  • We created promotional materials (bookmarks, mini posters) to display or hand out
  • I contacted our local public library system to partner with them for various events that could not be handled here at MPOW for whatever reason
  • I contacted our local comic book store (LCS) to also do promotions and events as well as to buy our comics through them (support local businesses, yo!)
  • I also did outreach to various student groups on campus that might be inclined to read comics (anime club, gaming club, etc)

As I mentioned last month when I wrote up Kristin’s panel at C2E2, colleges AND other educational institution can get involved for either local or national events by doing the following:

  • Partner with your local public library AND LCS to do cross-marketing for their events
  • Create displays around the library to promote the events
  • Create Pinterest boards to showcase your graphic novel collection
    • Also utilize social media
  • Volunteer at LCS and/or public library for the event (if applicable)
  • Work with departments to use graphic novels in their instruction, promote their teachings / class list

In addition to all of the above (phew!), you can also join the Graphic Novels in Libraries mailing list, while geared towards public libraries, is chock full of info. Additionally, there are several MOOCs happening dedicated to comics and graphic novels. Coursera has a class starting in August and Canvas Network has class going on right now.
And as always, all of this information (and more) is always available at the Graphicdemia project page.

Bagged & Boarded: Athos in America

athos Athos in America by Jason
[Amazon | Worldcat | GoodReads | Comixology]
Rating: 4/5 stars
tl;dr summary: Six thinly connected short stories by the master of minimalism. A must read.
Review: This is my first Jason book and it won’t be my last. You would be hard pressed to find another engrossing, and quickly read, collection wrapped up in 200 pages but here we are.
Beautifully drawn, complexly connected, and raw, Jason’s stories illustrate the underbelly of human condition dressed up in anthropomorphic animals. This does not (surprisingly) detract from the stories but make them more strongly felt. The last story, Athos in America (which also names the book), is the prequel of sorts to Jason’s The Last Musketeer, which is also heavily recommended and reviewed.

This day in Lisa-Universe: 1999

eat all the things

Dear Internet,
One of the duties I’ll be taking over when I become writer in residence of Throbbing Manor is food prep and cooking, so this weekend seemed like a good time as any to start oozing into that roll.
At some point in my life, I’ll learn how to be a better food photographer.
This weekend, however, is not that weekend.

Shredded broccoli and carrot salad.
Shredded broccoli and carrot salad

First up on the list was to find and make some kind of cold salad with broccoli as an ingredient to complement the sausage and peppers we were having for dinner. We had purchased a small broccoli head last week and it was starting to wilt in the fridge, so it needed to be used ASAP. I found this broccoli stem and carrot slaw recipe that ticked all the boxes and let me use up a few items that were getting close to be past their peak.
I had no idea what a cornichons (mini gherkin) were, I cut the mayo nearly in half, used half a white onion instead of a whole red, and we ended up adding a few dashes of salt to amp up the flavor. Instead of a Granny apple, I used a Pink Lady and I didn’t have Dijon, but used brown mustard instead.
While the salad turned out to not to be a good choice as a complement to the meal since the sausages were spicy,  it was still a delight. We noted the flavors of the salad and the meat were dueling it out on our tongues and as a stand alone, the salad would be delish or as a side to more toned down meat like chicken. We both liked the different flavors, the salad’s crunch, and my substitutions worked really well together, making this salad fairly flexible.
granolabark
No-bake granola bark

While the broccoli slaw chilled in the fridge, I turned my attention to this no-bake 5 ingredient granola bar recipe I had recently discovered. I was drawn to the recipe because we already had all the ingredients and the idea that the bars could be formed without baking was greatly appealing. The lack of added sugar was also a big plus. I added in a dash of shredded coconut to the recipe for added flavor and added dried apricots to the mix as well. Apparently I didn’t press the mixture hard enough into the pan because after 20 or so minutes in the freezer, they came out more like bark than bars. TheHusband declare he loved it,  and it’s something we can always make again since we normally carry all the ingredients in the house. We’re keeping the bark in the freezer to keep fresh and to nibble. Next time I’ll just need TheHusband to come down and use his manly strength to press the bars more firmly.
Vegan nutella

Lastly, I made another batch of vegan nutella. While it is super easy to make, I still hate de-skinning the hazelnuts as the skin bits get everywhere. Regardless, my toast this week will be partying hard with this on top.

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While I’ll more than likely never get beyond as a very amateur cook, there is definitely something to be had for eating something knowing, “I made this.”
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 1999