Blue Bayou

Steph likes to play on VMK.

That's Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom.

At the real Disneyland, and in VMK, there is a restaurant called the Blue Bayou. It is set near the Pirates of the Caribbean in New Orleans Square.

In VMK, they serve gumbo, mint juleps, and monte cristo sandwiches.

Steph has had gumbo before, but wanted to try the other two. Using the combined powers of Google and Wikipedia, she tracked down recipes for both (the julep being made with non-alcoholic creme de menthe syrup and limeade.

We bought a loaf of artisan bread, and sliced it thin. Buttered the outside of the bread, put slices of ham and turkey on either slice, a slice of swiss in the middle, pinned it together with toothpicks, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and pan fried it on both sides.

Steph was very pleased. She kissed me on the top of the head to thank me.

Six Weird Things

I've been tagged with a meme by Maureen McHugh.
I've supposed to write six weird things about myself.

This is going to take a bit.

1. When I was in the first grade, we were coloring in class. The teacher had a big box of crayon pieces, gathered over the years, in the front of the room, that I decided to dig through to find an interesting crayon than the eight-pack that I had as my school supplies. I found a short stub of a bronze crayon. I had never seen a metallic crayon before. I took it back to my desk, and stared at it. It had a scintillating surface of tiny speckles of colored light, and as you moved it, the colors twinkled and shifted. I stared at it for about ten minutes, and then threw up. I couldn't look at anything made of bronze for years. I wear a bronze dragon buckle (created by Metal Dice Unlimited, numbered 109/250) with my jeans, but I never look too closely at the surface of the buckle.

2. When I was born, the tops of my ears were curled down, so I had pointed ears. When my daughter Stephanie was born, she had only one pointed ear.

3. The earliest dream that I can remember involved a figure, wearing a hideous mask, standing before a wall of fire. I was told that I could have anything that I wanted, if I would just jump through the fire. I was too afraid. The figure then removed her mask, and revealed herself to be a beautiful woman. She offered me some sort of physical relationship that I didn't understand if I would just jump through the flames. I explained that I did not want to, and that I had all of the companionship that I needed (e.g., I had my stuffed animals). She was very angry with me. I was probably about three.

4. I joined Mensa my sophomore year of high school for extra credit in my Advanced Senior Math class.

5. On a shelf in my library, I have a section of a fan blade from a B-70 Valkyrie. There are nine holes that were chem milled though the length of the fan blade, to keep the blade from melting during operations. My dad was the one who figured out how to do that.

6. When my mom was in high school in Minnesota in the forties, she read a collection of science fiction stories from her school library. When I was in high school in the seventies, in San Diego, she described to me some of the stories, and told me what she thought the collection was called. I then found it in my school library. I still own a paperback version of the book, _Adventures in Time and Space_.