Nutgraf

You know you’ve been in DC too long when you know for a fact that this has happened before:

Northwest Washington residents capture runaway horse

“A runaway horse, without saddle, bridle or rider, galloped through the streets of upper Northwest Washington on Sunday evening, provoking concern and astonishment, and many calls to the police.”

My parents love to tell the following story from when I was a tiny kid, and we lived on Yuma Street in Northwest D.C.:

A Park Police horse got loose and went galloping up the street past our house. It was followed closely by a cop on a motorcycle. Apparently I was so taken by this that I pulled a little chair up to the window so I could watch for it to happen again.

Let it be known that I was not wrong! I just didn’t wait long enough.

Seriously, good eatin'.

Trapped in the house – not even allowed to help shovel us out – I had to do something to earn my keep during Snowpocalypse 2010. While everyone else was out organizing massive snowball fights via Facebook, I went all clean-a-thon on my place – polishing the counters, vacuuming, reorganizing all of my clothes and sifting through the jewelry archives, squirreling away the good stuff into various hidey holes where I will never find it. And generally trying to keep moving constantly, to assuage my guilt over leaving poor, beleaguered spouse out there to fend for himself in the wilds of Bethesda with a shovel and a dream. So I decided to make stew while he liberated us from the Deathsnow.

Here are some Deathsnow pictures! I wasn’t able to stray far, and mostly trotted up and down our front walk, hitting azaleas with a broom to try to knock some of the heavy snow off of them.

But back to the stew: It’s a very good stew, and kind of the definition of comfort food. Takes a vigorous slathering with horseradish, and keeps well. And so I share it with you as a great thing to have in your arsenal.

It is an adapted version of the Beef Stew Gaston recipe from Joy of Cooking.

• Take about 2-3 pounds of stewing beef – however you define that.
• Whack it in a big pot with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and stir it around for a while as it browns.
• When it’s all browned up, scoop it out and discard the residual goo.
• Dust the beef chunks with flour, salt and pepper.
• Toss into your big pot and get to boiling: one cup broth (beef, veg… whatever you have around), one 15-oz can of tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes, one chopped onion, 3-ish cloves of garlic chopped, about 1/4 cup of chopped parsley, 12-15-ish peppercorns, one bay leaf, and one or two cloves. Cloves are a delicate calculation and it’s easy to use too much – do not overdo them.
• When that’s boiling, add your browned meat and simmer for about 3 hrs.
• After about 2.5 hours, add 2-3 peeled, chopped potatoes, 3 peeled, chopped carrots, 1-2 stalks chopped celery (all in big chunks), and a cup of red wine.

Enjoy with horseradish and more wine.

So what do you make/crave when it’s cold and shovely out?

Every adult should have a really elegant pen.

Mine? Is a gorgeous hot yellow Waterman Charleston fountain pen with a medium gold nib and a really nice heft to it. Look at it. Love it. When I use that bad boy, people think I know something. This pen is elegant and sophisticated, and these are traits I could stand to be associated with. It makes you feel good in the same way as your favorite shirt. Or like when your underpants and bra match. You feel like you’ve really got it together.

We e-mail and txt constantly – or at least I do. And that requires a lot of words, much more than it requires a lot of thought. With a big, heavy, gorgeous fountain pen? You think about getting comfortable and clearing your mind. With no backspace key or copy/paste function, you think about each word. When you mess something up? You want to start over, because the end result should be a beautiful and cohesive document.

This isn’t txting or pinging. And you don’t lol or ttyl. You compose a note. I’ll even admit that sometimes I’ll write a draft on a steno pad so that I don’t waste the good stationary and can concentrate on keeping things as pretty and organized as possible.

Using whole words and full sentences, and polite salutations. People like it. Go figure. You can say more with less.

There’s something about writing with a beautiful instrument that makes you chose your words more carefully. It lends a sense of ceremony to an important signature. Don’t sign your mortgage with that pen you got at the chiropractor.

People who take pens far too seriously:

• The Pen Addict
• The Pen Guy
• Sharpie Blog
• Unposted
• Ink Quest

Do you have a piece of advice to share? All topics welcome.

I have a couple of super cool but pretty worn old Scan wood tabley things. I love ‘em – they’ve got a great shape, good proportion, elegant and spare design, and have served me well lo these many years. I have treated them somewhat roughly and the tops are all marked up with old water stains and whatnot.

It's a nice lookin' console, no?

I’ve long wanted to try to tidy them up a little, but have no time, skill or patience for a real project, and so have mostly just halfheartedly rubbed them with furniture polish or wax, noticed that no miracles took place, and then promptly forgot about it for a while. Honestly, they deserve better treatment.

Since today is kind of a quasi holiday (quasi only because not everyone has it off), I finally consulted the Great and Benevolent Internet to see what gems of homemaker wisdom it might be able to provide. The consensus was that I should place a white towel or piece of flat-like cloth on the stain and gently iron it for a few minutes.

And holy shit, it worked.

The stains were not completely removed (really, they were pretty bad), but the big ones were definitely significantly healed. So, let it be known that even years-old water stains can be abated by gently ironing a white cloth on the wood.

Oh, Internet. Is there anything you *don’t* know?

Do you have a piece of housekeeping advice? I know there are some really awesome tips out there. Share yours!

After my last screed about how there’s no such thing as online privacy, I got more wound up about this subject. Many of us are willfully ignorant about the deals we make with various companies every day. Each day that you surf, blog, shop online, check e-mail or conduct acts of commerce or socialization digitally, you are selling your personal data. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that every time you use a credit or debit card you are creating a trail of data for the marketers to follow.

1) Know the deal you’re making.

Every site you use has (or should damn well have) a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of use document posted prominently. Any site that doesn’t consider this important enough to post does not deserve your custom. Here’s the tricky part – it is incumbent upon you to read them. When you visit their site, you are bound by their rules. No, they prolly can’t take your first born just because they said they could in their policy, but do you really even want to have that discussion? And you might be consenting to virtual cavity searches, giving up way more information than is strictly necessary and making yourself vulnerable to scammers and thieves. Is Farmville really worth it?

2) Remember that your data is their currency.

And why do they have such complicated policies? Because your data is valuable. Content is provided to you free of charge, but the providers you deal with have to make money. They’re not charitable entities, and even the warm, fuzzy nonprofitty types make deals to keep the lights on. Make sure their deals are deals you can live with. Know what you’re parting with, how they’re using it, and where you draw the line.

3) Don’t do things of which you’re not proud.

Since we’ve already established that there’s no such thing as online privacy, the only solution is not to treat it like a mystery spot where there is no memory and no consequences. Any anonymity you think you have is cursory at best. If someone wants to hold you responsible for your actions, they can. And the funny thing about digital media – it is preserved forever. If you had any idea what kind of information is held about you in marketing databases, you’d drop your teeth (as my mom used to say).

4) On the other hand, how much does it really matter?

Are you really any more conspicuous than anyone else online? And is your digital hiney hanging out in any really notable way? Kind of like the principle of herd immunity when it comes to vaccinations, there is some safety in numbers. Unless you’re the slow wildebeest who gets nabbed at the watering hole. Which would truly suck. Every time the Office of Personnel Management loses a laptop and compromises thousands of Social Security numbers, we are reminded that there is no real security, so we should just relax. In fact, OPM has a pretty swanky privacy center, no doubt created in response to their big, embarrassing breach last year.

5) Know your sources and your recourses.

I shouldn’t have made this one last only because it is a good principle to live by in general. And honestly, it has a nice ring to it. Know where you stand and the motivations of the people/entities you’re dealing with. Critical thinking will stand you in good stead online, in school, at work, at home and anywhere else.

• Don’t do business with companies that look shady, that you haven’t heard of, that don’t have a high online profile and that don’t Google up nice and fresh-smelling.
• Don’t use stupid passwords. See Twitter’s list of banned passwords, for some bad ideas.
• Read privacy policies and About Us pages, and keep a low profile on places with which you don’t wish to be affiliated at, say, work.
• Keep a vigilant eye on your statements and credit report (get your free report every year – make sure you know what’s in there!). Start any credit report request from the FTC.gov Annual Credit Report page to be sure you’re not going through a commercial trap.
• Know the policies of your credit cards and financial institutions, and keep copies of that contact information somewhere you can get at if your wallet disappears.

Comments invited:

What did I miss? Any experts I should talk to? How do you protect yourself online?