this is what work does to you

You read some puff piece in the NYT about aging and health-related anxiety:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/fashion/26genb.html
… and all you can think about is how *this* is exactly why our health care system is broken.
The guy doesn’t discuss any out-of-pocket costs, even as he receives a huge variety of often-speculative tests and treatments that no doubt generated thousands of dollars in bills (for his insurance company). When a doctor suggests an exploratory test, but there’s no associated additional out-of-pocket cost, any rational person would say yes — it feels like getting something beneficial for free. But those costs will be paid eventually, in the form of higher premiums or sick people getting cut from the insurance rolls or the lab refusing to take any more safety net patients (because your insurance company reimburses more money for the same procedure, so they get crowded out). The system as it is currently constituted allows people with insurance to pretend like basic economics (every decision has an opportunity cost) does not apply to health care. And it’s ironic that this piece appeared at the same time as strident Paul Krugman op-eds without recognition that it is compelling evidence for cost control.

Dear WMATA,

If I wanted a commute to consist of a lot of minutes not going anywhere because of congestion, I’d buy a car.
… and gas, and insurance. Because at least then when you’re sitting in the middle of nowhere, you get a little sunshine. And you can sing to yourself without people looking at you like you’re crazy.

food update

Earlier this week, I went to a friend’s dinner party. Intent on doing something at least somewhat impressive, I offered to bring from-scratch gnocchi. How did it turn out?

Remember Mother’s Day when you were eight years old? When you wanted to make your mom brunch in bed? And you got up all early to start and banged around the kitchen and although you told her to sleep in and she did, you took so long that she woke up so you had to send your sibling in to run interference and prevent her from leaving bed so you could serve the breakfast on a tray? And how you used basically every dish in the kitchen and got mess all over all the counters and it took several hours? And then the end product was, well, a lesson in how cooking breakfast requires some skill or practice…

It was almost exactly like that. Right down to the flour dusting my tshirt and caked onto my hands.

They turned out edible, if a little bit malformed and bland. A decent start, I suppose, to acquiring a new dish, but not exactly at dinner-party-impressing level.

All the way to the conference finals and we DON’T HAVE AN INBOUNDS PLAY? How much are we paying George Karl to not be able to draw up a set play during a key stretch of the 4th quarter THREE TIMES ALREADY this series? Aiyah, Denver.

may

The problem of late is new — not the classic dilemma of stuff to write about, too busy to write it; time to write, nothing to write about. Rather, now it all seems to be about computer fatigue. I sit at a computer all day at work, and it’s fairly difficult even to read through my standard package of news site bookmarks, let alone synthesize something new and interesting. Not quite sure to how to handle it, vis-a-vis this space, although I am still thinking thoughts of similar quality and interest as earlier (whatever your opinion may be of those). I do my most interesting thinking in the shower or walking, and I still do both of those things. The problem is just one of delivery: refining and roughing into shape and actually manually entering here.

—–

One brief one: liking Mark Cuban because “he gets excited cause he’s a fan like you and me” is like voting for W because “he’ll be a good leader because he’s the kind of guy I’d want to sit down and have a beer with, if he hadn’t stopped drinking beer”. Take it from Denver, long-time home of the Barrel Man: you can be a SuperFan without having great seats, but if you’re representing an organization, you should be as professional as the rest of your staff. What would Strings (in denver) be like if Noel showed up tableside in an oversized tshirt with sauce dripping off his chin?

kitchen update

I have at-home-event-hosting anxiety.

And yet, I’ve also grown disturbingly unambitious when cooking for myself. I think the spark I’d need would be other people to plate food for. This, rather than a situation like tonight, where I finshed everything up and ‘plated’ it into a neat row of tupperware containers so I can take the same food to work for lunch three days next week. On the plus side, when I’m just cooking for myself, I can serve pasta with my hands, rather than with those funny-shaped scoops, so I guess there are fewer dishes to wash. So yes, tonight was, uh, pasta with a sauce made from what I had left in the fridge, as insprired by pasta carbonara. My thought process: “noodles. need sauce. hm, I have chicken in the freezer, and, uh, bacon… isn’t, ah, carbonara or something made with bacon?” *googles ‘pasta carbonara’* And, ta-da. It’s not actually faithful to any recipe, but I did pick up some tips:
-cook the bacon first then set it aside, so it gets the proper amount of done. this will also come in handy next time I sautee brussel-sprouts-and-bacon.
-reserve some of the pasta water to use instead of new water for the sauce base — it’s already starchy and a little salty and oily. and warm, so you get stuff done faster.
-I forgot the difference between corn meal and corn starch. So it all turned out kind of weird but still ok, I guess. It’s like when you mix up baking soda and baking powder and your cookies turn out flat.

Oooh, I should make cookies this week. It would be a good excuse to get flour, which I can then turn around and use to make bread or pizza dough or those other things my more kitchen-ambitious friends are ACTUALLY MAKING.