Vacuum Decay, Duck Fat, and Mr. Clean
September in Texas is like March in the Northeast. There's this feeling that the worst weather is behind you. Maybe you even have a nice day where the high is in the upper 80s and the morning is downright nice. And then it comes back to clobber you with a stretch of triple digits where everything is sticky and the mosquitoes come out in force. In Philadelphia we'd have a springlike day in March and maybe even try to golf, only to have it whipsaw back with a snowstorm and a week with highs in the 30s and howling winds.
People ask me how I deal with the heat in Texas. First off, it's much better than the winter in the Northeast where you're basically trapped inside for the better part of 4 months. Here, the mornings are acceptable, even on the hottest days. I usually get out and go for a walk of 1 to 2 miles each morning, sometimes with Cleo who likes to sniff the news. On the weekends I usually find time to sit by our pool and take a quick dip to cool off every 30 minutes or so.
There's no equivalent to managing the winter in the Northeast. So suck it.
How I’m feeling
My cough has gotten significantly better over the last week or so. Why? Who knows. Theories abound:
I have an inhaler that I've used a few times. Perhaps it's helped open up some airwaves.
I may have had some sort of lingering healing from the lung biopsy that may now be behind me.
I may have had some sort of lingering bacterial infection that finally healed.
The big tumor in my right lung is getting smaller and no longer pressuring my airway.
Let's hope it's number 4. Other than that, the other side effects have been pretty manageable. The biggest thing right now is a shoulder issue that I've had for years, but has gotten progressively worse since I started treatment. The prevailing theory is that my inflammatory system is (ahem) inflamed due to the medication, making what would normally be manageable aches and pains somewhat less so. I finally got an MRI and saw an orthopedic doctor to assess on Monday.
He's diagnosed me with shoulder impingement syndrome and gave me a cortisone shot. He indicated he didn't think surgery would be needed, and recommended a number of exercises. The shot should help relieve the pain within seven days of injection, before our trip. We'll see how it goes.
What I'm thankful for
My mom. Just knowing that she's there for me, cares about how I'm doing, and loves me unconditionally are all things that I've sometimes taken for granted and shouldn't. She's about to go on a big cruise on the Nile through Egypt and I admire her adventurous spirit for doing so.
A memory
Christmas of 2009, I had one too many drinks over at Brendan's parents' house and asked him if he wanted to run a destination marathon. I wasn't a runner at the time, but it sounded like something we should do. In 2010, Brendan, his brother Rory, and I ran the Prague Marathon in early May. I went from 0 to 26.2 in a little over 4 months, with most of my longer practice runs done over the Philadelphia winter, either on Forbidden Drive (as weather would permit) or on an LA fitness treadmill. There was one March trip out to Chicago where Brendan and I ran 15 miles (or so) along the lake. You could see our breath and we were wearing winter hats and gloves. He smoked me.
I developed shin splints and back pain and walked bits and pieces, but managed to complete the race in about 4 1/2 hours. A word of warning – Prague is very hilly and covered in cobblestones. But it's breathtaking too – grand churches and palaces are interwoven with narrow lanes, hills, and the Charles River. There's a statue on the bridge over the Charles River – if you touch it, it means you're coming back to Prague. I touched it when we were there when we were 20, and touched it again when we were there for the race. I guess I'm going back. Amy, pack your bags.
Diana (Brendan's wife) and Lennis (Rory's girlfriend, and now wife) joined us on the trip and it was a really fun group. Following Prague we went to Budapest, where we somehow thought it'd be a good idea to get massages at one of their legendary bath houses. It was not the Zen-like experience you get at the typical American spa. I was taken to this room that felt a bit like a Soviet era apartment, where a man who looked like Mr. Clean proceeded to stretch my race-weary legs. All I remember from the massage is the pain, the footsteps, and the laughter. It wasn't my laughter. The door to the room was slightly ajar, and I'd hear footsteps come down the hallway, pause, and then laughter from Mr. Clean. And then laughter from the owner of the footsteps. No words between them – just laughter.
It was all very traumatic and something that I'm finally ready to talk about, at least a little.
The rest of the trip was special. Brendan and I recreated a hike in Budapest that we did in our 20s up the hill on the Buda side, overlooking the Danube. We took an overnight train to Belgrade where we learned that the city had been razed to the ground 45 times. The city was hard but beautiful, and we were convinced there would be a 46th. We drove throughout the Serbian countryside to see the town where Diana's father's family had fled when he was a baby during WWII. We ate pickled vegetables at a roadside Serbian restaurant and saw a double rainbow over the countryside after it rained. In Rome we ate gelato and then saw a sight and then ate more gelato and then saw a sight and then ate more gelato. The trip was a year or two before Brendan and Diana had their first daughter.
I hope I see Brendan at Christmas again this year and that we pick a place for our next race. He broke his leg skiing this past winter, so I'm fine if it's just a long weekend somewhere centered around a 10K.
What I'm looking forward to
We've made plans to solve our annual Thanksgiving challenge! More often than not, we make it back to the Philly area and stay at my sister's for Thanksgiving. It's always good to spend time there with my mom, Amy (sister), Andy, Natalie, and Peter, but it conflicts with what Amy (wife) would typically do – go to Chantilly, VA to be with Martha, Jim, Peter and Sophie.
This year, we're renting an Airbnb for a week in Virgina with my side of the family, and we'll do Thanksgiving at Martha’s and Jim's. Best of both worlds, and it'll be great to spend a week in the DC area with family. It'll be a chance to see the sights, have some game nights (my mom loves Cards Against Humanity), and just spend some good quality family time.
Something I recommend
I routinely listen to the "Rewatchables" podcast. It's part of Bill Simmons' Ringer network. They do a different movie each week, and I'll often try to watch the movie before the podcast, typically while I'm cooking dinner. This past week they did Aliens, which I hadn't seen in forever. Amy and I watched it one night earlier this week. It got me thinking about the top 10 Alien movies – I'm excluding things like Star Wars, which really isn't about humanity engaging with aliens:
Alien
Arrival
Aliens
E.T.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Starship Troopers
Independence Day
2001: A Space Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Contact
Honorable mentions include Mars Attacks, Men in Black, and District 9. I’d probably put either District 9 or Mars Attacks in there in place of E.T., but the sheer cultural impact of E.T. sort of requires it to be on the list. And yes, I considered Howard the Duck.
Curious if I missed anything…
What I ate
The other night, I cooked up veal chops with a red wine veal/duck demi-glace, duck fat roasted potatoes, and zucchini with a dill and cumin cream. Afterwards, I gave the veal bone to Cleo. She's able to have it until we hear the first cracking sound, at which point I trade the bone for a piece of leftover meat. The bone cracked in about 45 seconds.
It was the first time I made this and without doing too much self back patting, it was aces.
Veal Chops with Red Wine demi-glace
For the Veal Chops
Veal chops – 1.5 to 2 inches thick
Olive oil – 2 TBSPs
Salt / pepper
Unsalted butter (1 stick, cold, cut into cubes)
4 sprigs rosemary
4 cloves garlic
For the Demi-glace
1 shallot, minced
3/4 cup red wine
1 cup of veal/duck demi-glace (I use D'artagnan – a beef or veal stock would work too)
Preparation
Salt veal chops in the morning and let sit in fridge for the rest of the day. Pull them from fridge 1 hour before cooking to allow them to get to room temp. Pre salting helps flavor and tendorize the meat.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Pat veal chops completely dry. This helps ensure a good sear. Coat lightly with olive oil.
Heat oven safe skillet (I use cast iron) to medium high heat. Add 1 TBSP (or so) of olive oil to pan. Once oil starts to shimmer, sear veal chop for 3 minutes on each side. You want a brown crust.
While chops are searing, add butter to the skillet. Then add rosemary and garlic. Use a spoon to baste melted butter over the veal chops.
After you've seared both sides, put in oven for 6 to 10 minutes. You want an internal temp of 130 degrees, so best to check it at 6 minutes as veal chops will dry out if overcooked.
Remove from oven and transfer the veal chops to a plate and let rest for 10 minutes.
While veal chops rest, make your pan sauce:
Strain fat and garlic / rosemary out of veal chop pan
Transfer garlic and rosemary back to pan. Place pan over medium/high heat
Sauté minced shallot in pan for one minute
Add red wine and demi-glace to pan to deglaze the pan. Scrape the browned bits from the veal chop. This is flavor country.
Heat over medium-high heat for 5+ minutes until the liquid reduces into a syrupy consistency. You want the liquid to reach an aggressive bubble, but not a full on boil while it is reducing. Add a pinch of salt.
Strain contents of pan through a fine mesh colander into a bowl so you're left with just the liquid. Push the garlic and rosemary with a wooden spoon against the strainer to drive as much liquid as possible through that flavor bomb.
9. Plate the veal chops, pour demi-glace over top, and serve.
For the Duck Fat Potatoes: NYT recipe
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014541-duck-fat-potatoes-for-two
For the Zucchini and Squash with Dill, Cumin Cream:
1 zucchini, cut into rounds or cubes
1 squash, cut into rounds or cubes
1 cup of sour cream
1 TSP cumin
2 pinches of fresh dill, finely chopped
Salt
Juice from 1 lemon
Olive oil
Preparation
Make the cream by mixing the sour cream, cumin, dill, lemon juice, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
Pan fry zucchini and squash in olive oil until browned on all sides. Salt while you're cooking.
Spread dill cumin cream on a plate. Serve zucchini and squash over the cream.
Random thought
The Universe is going to end in one of five different ways. At least that's what Amy says. It'll either be a Big Crunch, a Heat Death, a Big Rip, Vacuum Decay, or the Bounce. Basically…gravity will reverse, or everything will just go cold, or it all just tears apart, or a bubble expands at light speed and destroys everything it touches, or the universe collides with a parallel universe and creates a new Big Bang.
Or, or, or, or…
So Amy's reading a book about the end of the universe and I think it's making me a nihilist. The sad thing is that whichever way the universe ends, we won't be there to see it. It's billions of years away and almost certainly long after the sun will eat the Earth as it morphs into a red giant before becoming a white dwarf. This will also almost certainly happen after humanity is dust. Apparently the universe ending isn't about us, which, as narcissists, is very disappointing.
All of it makes me wonder if the geniuses that back all these different theories up with math are just gaslighting us.
We're probably just living in a simulation. That makes the most sense to me, while not making any sense at all. And if we are living in a simulation, it means that there is a God. Which may or may not be comforting. Perhaps it's not the sort of smiting God of Judaism or forgiving God of Christianity or the commanding God of Islam…but rather it's some alien kid in its basement playing some futuristic video game where we're all just sentient characters and that alien kid is our God. But does that alien kid have a God? Or is the kid just a simulation as well? If I play a video game and the characters in that video game have developed some sort of sentience and choose to play their own video game with characters with some sort of sentience….and you keep going down that rabbit hole where does it end? More importantly, where does it start? There's probably some astrophysicist who can turn the whole thing into a loop that never has a beginning or an end. Are we all just simulated gods of simulated worlds?
As AI advances and data centers provide more computing power, will we be able to develop sentient beings that aren't aware of our existence? Do androids dream of electric sheep?
I'm not sure if that's what they mean by the multiverse or not. I'm not sure if that makes more sense than vacuum decay or God creating the world in seven days and subsequently being so unhappy with the people that he created that the only way he can forgive them is by sacrificing his son. I mean, he made the rules, right? Are our sins his reflection in the mirror or did he just create something that he thinks sucks? Is he just playing a game with our universe and also playing another game with another?
There's a line from the play J.B. that is patterned after the book of Job that goes:
If God is God he is not good
If God is good he is not God
Take the even
Take the odd
I would not sleep here if I could
The good news is that once Trump got re-elected Amy and I put together a 'go bag' and stocked up on bottled water to prepare for the Apocalypse. So whatever happens…
We're ready.
