BLOG: (ZERO, ZERO, ZERO): Things I Did in October

Let's just jump right in, shall we?

PHOTOS: I'm still working with my 11-year-old, 2-megapixel Canon point-and-shoot. Despite being unable to capture the smallest, most vibrantly-colored blooms with it, I'm pretty pleased with this month's photos anyway--lots more lovely autumn light and flowers (most of the plants aren't mine):

(This was much darker--blogger made it look practically like daytime.)

(Up from under the hibiscus! Why didn't I think of this before?)

(Shot through a beveled-glass windowpane.)

(Joey's much too photogenic to be confined to the pupdates.)

BOOK REVIEW:

How Did It Begin?: The Origins of Our Curious Customs and Superstitions, by Dr. R. & L. Brasch

At first I was a bit leery of this book since I'd found it on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble and started noticing awkward phrasing and typographical errors almost from the beginning. It calls itself a "revised edition," yet, by the end, I had found dozens of mistakes. Judging from information offered in the blurb and the introduction, I get the impression that this was merely a book in progress when the author (Dr. R., a British rabbi who lived in Australia) passed away and his wife (L.) decided to publish it. Thus, despite the kinds of red flags I usually associate with hack writing and misinformation, I felt I could go ahead and take in the facts presented in this book with maybe just a few extra grains of salt and a few extra dictionary and Google checks (for example: Palantine is not an alternate spelling of Palatine, despite the fact that the author spelled it that way five times).

I have a great interest in the origins of customs, objects and words, and this book provided many explanations I had not heard before, even having read an excellent book in the genre called Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things many years ago. Unlike Panati's, however, How Did It Begin? contained almost no references and felt much more off-the-cuff than the scholarly Origins. Another maddening feature of the book was that, despite a line in the introduction about how one must cast aside many false explanations of things in order to find the truth, false or "less likely" explanations were often presented before the true or "more likely" ones without any note that they would prove to be incorrect. This kept me on my toes the entire time because I never knew when I was being led astray. Plus, a wide selection of the author's personal prejudices were a recurring annoyance (I will refrain from providing examples in order to keep my good mood).

Despite my misgivings and frustrations, I did end up enjoying How Did It Begin?. Even just watching TV, I'd notice all sorts of things connecting back to what I'd read. I found myself wanting to tell my mom and sister the "funnest" facts--how Chinese people used to pay their doctors only as long as they stayed healthy and stopped once they fell ill; how the first Cesarean section after which the mother survived was performed in 1500, not by a doctor, but by "an accomplished sow-gelder" who simply wished to save the life of his wife (who later went on to give birth to six more children); how Australian soldiers are called "Diggers" because they were once stationed on the Sinai Peninsula where drifting sand necessitated the continual re-digging of trenches ("We aren't soldiers, we're diggers!" one Charles Everitt complained); and so on.

All in all, because of its division into short chapters and subheadings, I'd recommend this book if you need something to read in fits and starts--on public transportation, during jury duty, etc. But if you're looking for something with better flow and more attention to detail and accuracy, I'd recommend the book by Charles Panati instead.

HEALTH GOALS:

I ate better and ran more in October. I noticed that my hip bones (those upper corners of the pelvis) have become faintly visible, though it only made me wonder how much of the change in my body this year is evidence of improvements to my health and how much of it is little more than objects under the skin becoming more visible due to aging-related loss of collagen (perish the thought!).

I ran out of B-12 dots about mid-month and thought I would just switch to eating eggs every day since

the new fridge had FINALLY arrived, but I neglected to do this and did not realize my mood had gradually been tanking and my brain filling up with fog until the day before yesterday. I think from now on, I will simply keep the stuff on hand, and if I have failed to eat eggs in any given day, I will take the silly pill.

AT LONG LAST I have made at least a first draft of my...

System for Choosing Less-Fattening Sources of Protein

I did not catalog nearly as many foods as I had intended to, but I can add new things as I go along.

100 RECIPES GOAL: This entire October write-up is so late because I was reluctant to write up my recipes. I only made two of the titles below into links (the blueberry crisp and the oatmeal) although there are links to half-assed write-ups of the other recipes in the sidebar. For example, the eggplant couscous and the green pilaf were very good, but the recipes were long, and I felt discouraged about copying them out since I get few if any hits on my recipe entries. If you are interested in the missing recipes, just send me a tweet.

#49. Reverse-Engineered Amy's No Cheese Pizza