Intermediate Cooking Skills Quiz

1) Take a 20-oz Pyrex measuring cup, and fill it halfway with room temperature water.  Place it in a 1000W microwave oven, and heat at full power for 30 seconds.  Will the water be:
  a) nearly unchanged in temperature
  b) hot but not boiling
  c) completely boiled away
  d) superheated liquid, so that when you take it out, it explodes and causes 2nd-degree burns over your hand and forearm
  e) spilled all over when the cup broke because you shouldn’t microwave Pyrex
  f) pink because the cup’s red lettering melted and mixed with the water

2) Now remove the cup (wearing a long-sleeved oven mitt in case the above answer was “d”) and replace with 2 16-oz Pyrex cups, each half-filled with room temperature water.  Heat at full power for 30 seconds.  Will the water be:
  a) the same temperature as the previously heated cup
  b) not quite as hot, since the microwaves had to divide their energy across twice as much water
  c) completely boiled away
  d) only halfway boiled away
  e) spilled all over again with 2 broken Pyrex cups — didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?

3) Now take another 16-oz Pyrex cup, fill it with room temperature water, and place it in an oven set at 300 degrees F.  Wait for 20 minutes, and remove the cup.  Will the water be:
  a) spilled all over the floor because you forgot to put on the mitt before grabbing the cup
  b) hot but not boiling
  c) completely boiled away
  d) spilled all over when the cup broke because you shouldn’t put Pyrex in a 300-degree oven

4) Now replace the cup with two 16-oz Pyrex cups, each half-filled with room temperature water.  Wait for 20 minutes, and remove the cups (after putting on the oven mitts, of course).  Will the water be:
  a) the same temperature as the other oven-heated cup
  b) not quite as hot, since the oven heat had to divide its energy across twice as much water

Answers given in the first comment.

Public Service Announcement: Tax Deductions for Church Service Auctions

I emailed this to all of Highrock, but I hope it can be of use to CBCGB readers who recently ran their own auction, and also to other readers.

The general rule is: buyers can deduct anything they pay over the fair market value.  So if you bid $100 for a $20 Bertucci’s gift certificate, you can claim a tax deduction of $80.  For services that you buy, it’s much harder to place a value on the volunteer service time.  A reasonable estimate would be to pay Massachusetts minimum wage: $6.75/hour.

Servers cannot deduct their time, even at minimum wage.  But they can deduct any expenses they pay as a part of the service.

Example: let’s say Andy Noh offers a “service” of house-cleaning while wearing a gorilla suit (2 hours).  Let’s say Pastor Dave bids $100 for the service.

Pastor Dave gets a tax deduction of $86.50 ($100 – 2*$6.75).

Since Jean threw out Andy’s gorilla suit when they got married, Andy has to go rent one.  He spends $50 on the rental, so he gets a tax deduction of $50.

The church treasurer, Yong Shik, does not record either of those numbers.  So next year, when Dave and Andy file taxes, Dave has to remember to file a separate item of $86.50 for service auction spending, and Andy files an item of $50.

I compiled this information after talking to our denomination’s tax specialist, Karl Klackers.  Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more information.

IKEA Trip

Yesterday I got up at 5:30 to pick up strad and go to IKEA NYC.

Mike holding my stainless-steel countertop backsplash strips for return.
I mail-ordered but my designer vetoed.

“This one is too small,” said Goldilocks.

That’s because all of their chairs are Sandi-sized. 

Wood Finishing

Today I spent 8 hours at my new loft working on stuff.  One of the things I did was finish my kitchen pantry doors:

Of interest to photographers: I deliberately set the EV on my Sony DSC-P5 to -1.0, hoping to capture more dynamic range in the highlights, but all it did was darken the whole image.  Stinks.

The door on the right is finished.  Look at how it compares to the unfinished one on the left!  The varnish really brings out the texture of the birch, giving it a subtle flame maple look.  I can never really tell the difference between birch and maple anyway.

Which brings to mind a nagging question: why is it that woods are associated with different colors, when it’s only the stain that’s different?  For example, birch is often stained orange (so eyeman’s dining room table is probably birch).  But you could stain beech or maple or oak that same color.  Weird.

In my master bathroom, I’m going to stain the poplar trim with Minwax Jacobean, making it look like wenge, a dark chocolate brown.  Wood type doesn’t seem to matter at all!  I used the same stain on the floating mirror frame I made last year:

Zha Jiang Mian

is what we’re making for Soul Food this Sunday.  Historically, Highrock has stayed away from making Korean food, for fear of being seen as a Korean church.  But nowadays I see more racial diversity (yay, Harvard students!), there is interracial marriage and dating (YSK/EF, BGG/HL, and another new couple I’m not gonna out), and Highrock is known for a lot of stuff other than being largely Korean.

So, Zha Jiang Mian (Ja Jiang Myun, etc…) it is.  With rich spicy black bean sauce and fragrant roast ground pork and beef.  Shredded cucmbers, bean sprouts, and salty preserved radish.  And almond tofu for dessert!

If clieu starred in Troy

“I didn’t want to be responsible for 1,000 ships,” declares the damsel in distress.

Congratulations Edwin and Youngson!

Edwin claims to have email access in Maui during his honeymoon, so please drop him a line of congratulations!

Another Dating Discussion Post

Sunday night after service a bunch of Highrockers went to MP3 (Mike Perrott’s Phantastic Pad).  And an enormous dating discussion soon enveloped the whole group.

1) Hanracer and Songst want to run a “missions fundraiser” which will be an assisted one-time matchmaking service.  I didn’t understand the whole system, but it involved a questionaire and selection of semi-anonymous partners based on their answers.  All I remember is the last person gets screwed… er, shafted… er, suffers unfortunate consquence because they have no choice.  But you buys your ticket and you takes your chances.  They say it will lower the bar for dating pressure; I can see how that could work.

2) Then we had a spirited discussion of what defines a date.  Marmite says that a date is when the guy explicitly uses the term, as in “Would you like to go on a date?” or he does something obvious and cheesy like bring flowers and chocolate.  I say that it’s a date whenever it’s a 1-1 interaction and it’s ambiguous, meaning potential interest.  Iit’s all dependent on context.  If I ask marmite out for coffee, it’s not a date because our relationship is strongly defined as friendship.  But if I ask a girl I hardly know, then it’s a date because she’s wondering, “Does he like me?”  And I’m thinking, “I want to get to know her better” ’cause otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her out to coffee.

3) So finally I drove a few people home and almost came up with a systematic procedure.  Imagine that — The Highrock Rules for Dating!  It would go something like this:

- guy likes girl
- guy asks girl out to coffee
- if girl likes guy, she says yes or suggests other activities
- otherwise, girl says she’s busy
- if the guy is persistent after the busy answer, he asks again
- in no cases should the guy persist after 3 busy’s
- after 3 coffee outings, the guy would ask her out to dinner
- at this point, both of them should know if they want to begin a relationship
- dinner is the “Date”.  It’s just a formality for the DTR.  This should be successful.  Because if the guy wasn’t interested, he shouldn’t have asked for it.  And if the girl wasn’t interested, she shouldn’t have accepted.
- after the Date and DTR, they are now in a relationship.

But upon closer examination, these rules break down.  The problem is that many girls won’t know if they like the guy enough to accept the coffee date until after they’ve interacted with him.  And if he makes his interest known too soon, it can scare her off.  So they have to be “friends” first, a demilitarized zone where they can evaluate each other with little risk.  Then if there is mutual interest — both parties will know — she will be receptive to a coffee outing as described above.  But until then, the guy has to play the friends card unless he pursues the rare adventurous woman who will date strangers.  That explains why there is so little asking out at Highrock — the men instinctively know that they have to get the woman comfortable with them before asking them out for coffee.  It’s like painting a new house: most of the work is in the preparation.  9 more analogies like that, and I’ll have another top-10 list.

Poll: Cell Phone Service

Update: I tried Dave’s Sprint Samsung i500 in the MIT Chapel (brick cylinder) where it consistently got 1-2 bars.  My StarTAC got 4-5 bars — without the antenna extended.  I don’t know what it means for call quality, but 1-2 bar reception scares me.

I am considering switching to a PalmOS phone, but the only ones I’d consider are the Samsung i500 (daveswaim, bjiang) and the Treo 600 (philsailer).  Unfortunately they are both on Sprint, which has had historically horrendous coverage in Boston.  I’d have to switch from Verizon, which has the best coverage in Boston.  Phil is going to come visit my loft next week so we can do a side-by-side comparison.

So I’d like to poll everyone (you faithful readers) about how much you like your cell phone service, particularly in reception and number of dropped calls.

I use a StarTAC on Verizon.  Average 400 daytime minutes per month, almost all within Cambridge and Somerville.  I get about 1 dropped call every 3 months, and 1 missed call per month.  (A missed call is when someone calls you, but your phone doesn’t ring in time, so all you get is a caller ID or voicemail.  Last time this happened to me was a call from chef_boyardee a few weekends ago.)  I get 4-5 bars almost everywhere I go above ground.

Overheard at Shaw’s

Three pierced, tattooed, and skinny females standing around the bread aisle at Shaw’s.  Which, by the way, carries well over 100 types of bread.

Girl 1: “What bread should we get?  Is this good?”
Girl 2: “Yeah, but it’s expensive.”
Girl 3: “Hold on.  I just gotta stand here and scratch my ass for a while.”

I was creeped out, grabbed my Oat-nut (the bread), and high-tailed it out of there.  Very scary when girls out-uncivilize guys.