For the first time in awhile, I have a proper, full-sized Phone it in Friday with three videos. It helps that I’ve been recording myself playing hymns a lot more.
Here are three recent videos of yours portly playing hymns; each is played on my maternal grandmother’s Kimball piano, which I had moved to the house this summer:
Yours portly, much like Michael Douglas, struggles with impatience when sitting in traffic, especially construction traffic when there appears to be no construction work taking place.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation has been resurfacing a portion of the highway that I take to get to work every day for over a month. That is fine—I like the smooth roadway. What is not fine is that they have been starting work during morning rush hour.
Indeed, they started the road work the first week that public schools returned to classes—right in front of the elementary school in Lamar! They continued making similarly boneheaded decisions like that throughout August. The first day I reported for teacher workdays, they were doing heavy construction at a busy four-way intersection that is the main thoroughfare for people coming and leaving town.
Last week, I sat for thirty minutes waiting for a worker to turn the sign around to “Slow” so we could get through. I should have been to work five minutes early; instead I was twenty-five minutes late. I was so frustrated, I began shouting at workers—dozens of whom were sitting on equipment gawking at their phones—to “get off your phones and get to work!”
That wasn’t very Christ-like of me, and I have repented for that, but it put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I did not have class first period that day, so I was okay; it just irked me to no end.
I was so livid, in fact, that I called my State Senator and left a message. I never have received a call back, but in my message, I begged him to talk to SCDOT to consider starting their work after morning rush hour—at 8:30 AM instead of 7:30 AM.
I also took a short video of the lazy sign worker ogling his cellphone:
In a sweet attempt to help me cope with the lack of air-conditioning in my car, Dr. Fiancée bought me a little fan in the shape of a robot-boy (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through the link at no additional cost to you). While the little guy can’t put out enough air to be a reasonable replacement for A/C, he’s a fun and whimsical little addition to my car.
He’s a very Dr. Fiancée-style gift. She is very good at finding thoughtful and unique gifts that are both practical and mildly absurd—one of many reasons I love her! She gets it from her mom, who is also a great (and prolific) gift-giver.
But I digress. I made a little video of my robot fanboy, and it’s quite ridiculous:
Yours portly is worn out after the second week of school, so I’m keeping it quick today: I’m sharing a video of some baked potatoes—and the recipe for making them yourself.
As readers know from my epic “Ululations for U-Haul,” I had to move a significant amount of heavy and large furniture from my future in-laws’ house to my humble abode. My house is not large—it’s roughly 1000-square feet—and already stuffed with my junk.
Fortunately, I’m excellent at Tetris and the grandson of a furniture store owner. I also grew up in a Victorian house that my mother crammed so full of knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, and gewgaws that I know how to maneuver around tight spaces overstuffed with furniture. As such, I’ve adapted well to my new hoarder-like conditions.
I documented the state of my home post-move, mainly for my future in-laws’ amusement. Then I uploaded it to YouTube, where it somehow managed to rack up 1,469 views (at the time of writing). Let’s get that to 1500, eh, dear readers?
Folks are probably tired of me writing about Civilization VII, which is shaping up to be one of the least popular Civ releases ever. That’s a shame, because the game is getting better and better with each update.
For awhile I thought that I was lying to myself about liking the game. Something felt off about it for awhile. But I realized that my main complaints—the dragging late game, the lack of visual information—were ultimately fairly minor. Every game in the series drags in the late game. If anything, Civ VII has a more robust late game than Civ VI, although it’s still pretty lackluster in the Modern Era.
Ultimately, though, I feel like the time I have put into the game has reaped dividends. There are times when it’s not always fun, but those are rare; mostly, I can’t help but keep playing (often to the detriment of my sleep schedule). That’s the mark of a good game in my book. Even when it’s a slog, there is some objective towards which I am working.
One thing about the game is that, in spite of its poor visual information (which has improved since launch, but I still can’t figure out which buildings I’ve built where in a city), the visuals themselves are stunning. It is a gorgeous game. The same quality that makes the visual information obscure is also what makes the game look great.
As such, I shot a YouTube short last week while playing a game with a buddy of mine. My World Wonders-encrusted former capital was just too sumptuous not to share.
Yours portly treats his car like it’s a mobile office and cafeteria on wheels; that is to say, I don’t fret too much over its aesthetic appeal. My cars tend to be full of dents, dings, scrapes, scratches, and chips. Their interiors are a collection of crumbs, papers, books, pens, and dog hair.
But even I reach a point where I want my car to look a bit better. When I had some time to kill before meeting Dr. Fiancée and her parents for lunch one day, I went through the five-dollar gas station carwash.
Yours portly has been making some adjustments to his diet lately. With the wedding coming up, I want to lose a few pounds so I’m not quite so chunky in all those wedding photos. I also want to feel better and to improve my health overall.
To that end, I’ve been doing a lot more cooking at home. It being summertime in South Carolina, my local Piggly Wiggly has tons of delicious, mostly-local produce available, so I’ve been eating copious amounts of veggies and fruits.
A local farmer is supplying fresh okra to the store, and it is very tasty. Okra grows in long pods full of tiny (and easily edible) seeds. It can be fried, roasted, pickled, etc.; all of these methods result in deliciousness.
Okra, for the uninitiated, is often served fried in the South, and fried okra is a favorite Southern side dish. When prepared as such, it’s chopped into little medallions or coins; breaded; then dropped into hot oil.
As I’m looking for something healthier and easier, I’ve opted to roast my okra. I looked up a simple recipe online and got to it (Robin would be proud)!
The recipe is super simple:
One pound of okra is anywhere from 120-140ish calories (the Internet has different estimates), so you can eat a lot of okra. One night this past week, I served fried eggs and tomatoes over a bed of okra (about 0.7 pounds of okra), along with some cheese and meat, and the entire dinner was roughly 450 calories for a massive plate:
Obviously, you could serve two or three people an ample portion of okra as a side with this same recipe, and often I’ll split it into two servings. But it’s been a great food for the summer and for weight loss, and it’s easy to prepare and very filling.
I made a short YouTube video the first time I roasted okra, which I’d like to share today:
During my visit to see my older brother in Indianapolis, we spent a couple of days in Chicago. On the second day of our trip, we visited the Field Museum. The Field Museum is basically a natural history museum, and it features one of America’s biggest—and oldest—attractions:
Over the course of the last two years I’ve composed a ton of music. I treat composing the way the Native Americans treated the mighty bison: I don’t waste anything. That means I probably release a lot of “filler” tunes, but I find that pieces I think of as throwaways compositions are sometimes the most popular.
I do not know if the pieces shared today fall into that category. But for whatever reason, I like writing pieces with “Roll” in title. These are always based, in part, on food.
The first of these was “Orange Roll,” an odd little piece in 5/4 time. The “Orange” comes from the fact I used an orange pen to compose it; the “Roll” came from the rolling feel of the melody.
Later, I wrote “Tomato Roll,” a clarinet duet in 5/8 time. I wrote the piece mainly because I spent way too much time drawing a detailed tomato in MS Paint as a way to illustrate a concept to my Economics students during a couple of days of online learning.
Finally, I recently composed “Crunchy Roll,” which is a bass guitar in 3/4 and 4/4, but with lots of odd timing.
But enough of my yakkin’—let’s boogie!
The Portly Politico 