Freedom in the Hills of New Hampshire

Because mine can.

I’d decided I wanted to use castiron cookware after I started using a castiron skillet that belonged to my landlord. It worked pretty darn well and I was rather impressed with it’s heat distribution qualities and it’s heft. I read up more on castiron (primarily from wikipedia) and upon learning it’s almost comparable to copper as far as heat distribution goes and way cheaper, was sold.

The fact that this stuff lasts forever with proper care–and is not irredemable from improper care–encouraged me more. Teflon pans simply wear out too quickly. A couple years of heavy use and the non-stick coating wears off, the pan deteriorates and you have to buy a new one. Castiron, on the other hand, has some serious staying power. Not only that, but you could totally bludgeon a burgler with any of those pans (okay, the 8inch one maybe not–it’s a bit small). If you’ve just used the pan, you can bludgeon him AND give him some serious burns. It almost makes firearms look obsolete.

There are a few difficulties one must keep in mind when it comes to castiron. The whole pan gets hot while you use it, so potholders are a must. Heck, the whole pot gets hot when you wash it in hot water, too. All washing has to be done by hand and it involves a lot of scrubbing, especially when your preseasoned pans aren’t quite seasoned enough to be perfectly non-stick. I bought some lard to use to season my cast iron several more times in hopes of getting a nice non-stick surface out of it eventually. You also have to make sure you keep it perfectly dry to prevent rust–but if it does rust, just scrub the rust off and reseasono it. No need to throw it away and buy a new one. The weight of the castiron might also be a concern, but I personally look on it as a bonus. What better way to keep one’s muscles from atrophying than consistently picking up heavy things? Unfortunately, I can’t pick up my big 13-inch pan one handed at all–my wrists simply aren’t up to the task and I’ve got to dedicate more time to stregthening them. Fortunately, I had time to consider all of this things before I bought it.

The total cost of my cast iron was $395, including shipping, and you can see the results up top. I got: a 13 inch skillet and lid, 10 inch skillet with lid, 8 inch skillet, a wok, a kickass double sided griddle, a dutch oven (not pictured, it arrived later), and a deep frying basket for the dutch oven.

Now that I think about it, I probably could have found a lot of that used or in stores around here for less. It would have saved me a bit of money, at least. But if I consider the fact that this stuff will last me more than a lifetime, I think it was a pretty good investment. If push comes to shove, I can also use it in weightlifting exercises.

Am I the only one who can’t understand what the hell the big deal is with this Tim Russert guy’s death? When I first heard about it (on Fark, no less), my reaction was “Who the hell is he?” Then I read about it on Lew Rockwell and it rang a bit bigger of a bell when they mentioned what an asshole he was when he interviewed Ron Paul. Yeah, okay, but so were a lot of people who interviewed Ron Paul from the mainstream media.

This must be a certified Old People story. It’s meant for those who still get their news primarily from the Alphabet Soup TV channels instead of online blogs and news outlets. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and seriously watched the evening news. I might have been in Germany when I did it. Or Finland. I always watched the news in both those countries–it’s a surprisingly good way to improve your vocabulary.

But I digress. I’m really looking forward to the day when the last well-known MSM personality dies and there’s only silence to greet it.

With the countdown at 19 days until my last day work (19 work days, not total days), it’s time for me to start gathering stuff for me to do while I’m at home all the time. This is for two reasons: 1) to keep me from feeling completely bored and useless and 2) to keep me from annoying the crap out of my husband while he’s trying to get work done at home.

Fortunately there are a lot of things that I want to do that I decided I didn’t have the time to do while I was working. So, here goes:

1) Learn Finnish. This is necessary so that I know what my husband is saying on the occasions he wakes up in the morning and starts speaking to me in Finnish. It’s also necessary because our goal is to raise our kids at least bilingual in Finnish and English (but more likely with a lot of German thrown in as well). My husband will aim at speaking to them in Finnish 100% of the time and this will be a lot easier on me if I can understand what he’s telling them. I also aim at eventually getting Finnish citizenship, which requires me to live in Finland for 4 years (it would be 5 years if I weren’t married to a Finn) and speak fluent Finnish or Swedish. Lasse likes to tell me that I should just learn the Swedish, since I already know German. The problem with this is that Swedish is sounds like horrible butchered German to me and I can’t stand it. Plus, I already speak two Germanic languages. I think my language repetoire could use something a little different.

To this end, I have ordered Finnish: An Essential Grammar and Beginner’s Finnish. I already bought Finnish: An Essential Grammar years ago as an ebook because the actual printed version cost $90 or around there. However, I tried opening it today and apparently I need a password. I have no idea what my password is so I figured I’d screw it and get a hardcopy that doesn’t require a password to open. Plus, I trust the printed word a lot more than the electronic one. Beginner’s Finnish will hopefully have a lot of exercises for me to use to build my vocabulary, which I sorely need. I’ve used the online Finnish School and while it is good for various groups of words (such as colors and months, etc), I need it used in conjunction with sentences in real life situations. We’ll see how it goes when they arrive. As with all things, what will determine my success in this matter is how often and how long I sit down and actually do it.

2) Gather and organize baby stuff. I’m saving this until I quit my job on purpose because I figure the last 8 weeks of pregnancy are when everyone’s going to be watching me for nesting symptoms anyway, so I might as well give them something to watch and me something to do. Porcupine Kate has kindly offered to help me make diapers (yeah, we’re using cloth and making our own, but more on that later I hope), so that should be a neat project to keep me busy.

3) Get back involved with the New Hampshire freedom scene! This is a very important one. Ever since Lasse immigrated, I’ve pretty much signed out of it. I keep loose tabs on what’s going on, but only very loose tabs. With election season coming up, I’ll definitely be able to find some campaigns to help with. Since I’m now living on the West Side (cue the eerie, creepy music), I’ll definitely help on Rep. Joel Winter’s (D-Hillsborough) re-election campaign and quite possibly Keith Murphy’s election campaign. We can always use more good people up in Concord. If the Manchester spending cap thing is still going on, I’ll help with that, too. And it’s never too early to start getting organized and ready for the 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum, especially since I’ll have a newborn to deal with the 3 months leading up to it.

4) Write more. On this blog and off it. Since I stopped attending school, I’ve stopped writing almost entirely, which is extremely depressing. For some reason, school trained me to only be able to write when I’m ignoring someone. Got to break that habit.

Well, we’ve been moved in to our apartment for about a week in a half now and we couldn’t be happier with it. Of course, we had about 1.5 days where we had the apartment to ourselves before my family came to visit, but that was our fault for moving in so soon before they came to visit.

The move itself was a bit hectic and made worse by the fact that neither Lasse nor I had ever rented any thing in the US before. But it was made a bit easier by the fact that we didn’t really own any furniture. The only large items that had to be carried in were our desk, our futon (which was in pieces) and our bed mattress. Unfortunately, it also meant that we had the problem of every room in the apartment (and there are only 4 of them, not counting the bathroom) echoed.

But no problem! With IKEA only slightly over an hour away, we got in our car and headed south to buy a dresser, a king sized bed frame to go with our mattress, a table and four chairs.

I’m pretty sure that my husband and I are the main attraction at the IKEA loading zone when I pull in with my tiny little Honda Civic and we proceed to squeeze, push and shove a ton of furniture into our tiny little car when everyone else has enough sense to use an SUV. The IKEA employee who helped us load it told us it wouldn’t all fit. Well, he was wrong. It fit. Oh yes, it did.

Admittedly, the ride home was a bit uncomfortable, especially for my husband and Greybeard was riding a bit low, but who says compact cars aren’t good for anything?