In an effort to whittle down our pantry, I created the following casserole and invited over three other couples (incidentally, by "invited over" I mean "imposed on the Kapoos to host our impromptu dinner party"). It's inspired by the Black Bean Chilaquile recipe in Low-Fat Favorites from the Moosewood Restaurant (which I'd already packed and couldn't have referred to if I'd wanted to), but fairly significantly different from the source material. Here it is:

At least a few hours in advance, make up a hot sauce of some sort. I used two small cans of tomato sauce, a bunch of ground red pepper, black pepper, oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder. It was only modestly successful, but at least didn't detract from the recipe. Put it in the fridge (more time might have helped--I only gave it 4 hours or so). 

Brown a bit of ground turkey (it could have been left out--the amount also could have been increased--I used less than a full pound because I wanted some to eat today, but wouldn't use it all) with an onion. When that is almost done, add some garlic. Then add one 14-oz can of tomatoes, two 14-oz cans of black beans, one 16-oz bag of frozen corn, a liberal dose of lime juice, salt, and pepper. Let cook for a while. Thaw one package of frozen spinach.

In a bowl, mix together 1 1/4 c flour, 3/4 c corn meal, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 c sugar, and then add to that 1 c milk (using vanilla soymilk--the only milk we had that wasn't long soured--added a nice sweetness, actually), 1/4 c vegetable oil, and 1 egg (beaten). Basically, it was the cornmeal recipe on the cornmeal cannister.

Put the main meat/bean/veggie mixture in the bottom of a 9x12 baking pan. Layer over that the spinach, then the hot sauce (prepared salsa would have been good too), then a mexican cheese blend (or cheddar or whatever), then the corn bread mixture. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes. A bit of salsa on the side went very well with it.

I'm late to the story and don't have anything profound to add, but I wanted to make an observation about the death of Michael Jackson. Here's the thing: for over a decade, he's been something between a one-man punch-line and a freak show as far as most people are concerned, and he was the former for even longer than that. Here's the amazing thing, though: no matter how irrelevent he seemed, when he put out a song it went straight to the top of the charts. He really was the king of pop, and it wasn't just a case of "any publicity is good publicity." He's put out good songs, good videos, good tours throughout his active career and even after his active career was over. It's (well, perhaps) a shame that he didn't get to perform his planned farewell tour--I wouldn't have been the least surprised if it was brilliant.

Bernie Madoff got the maximum sentence of 150 years in jail. I guess he's had at least 20 years to live high on the hog, so now the bill's finally come due. If it's carried about, along with the $171 billion forfeiture, I guess it's the best we could hope for. I can't help but wonder how many smaller swindlers are still getting away with fast ones in the financial world and, for that matter, how much legal swindling is still going on, but I guess we'll have to be content with our bread and circuses.

Last night, I had quite probably the worst headache of my life. It's in our nature not to retain clear memories of pain (so I'm told), so it's hard to make the comparison, but I'm pretty sure this is it. I've never had a migraine, so this sort of thing might be old hat for migraine sufferers, but for my part I'd not like to go through it again.

The thing is, it looked to be such a great night! I spent the evening playing a game with Lauren and cousins and an aunt and then Lauren, my cousin Maddy, and I went to a drive-in to catch a double-feature, Terminator Salvation and The Hangover. I was tired going into it, but I was determined to gut it out and figured I'd enjoy the movies enough to keep me awake for both. And it was only $5 per person to see these films! Clearly, we were poised to have an amazing night, right?

Famous last words. As the movie went on, I started to get a headache. Not surprisingly, I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I might have. Lauren and Maddie were ambivalent about staying for the next movie, and though I wanted to, I cast the deciding vote for heading home, figuring that I didn't need to sit through two hours of movie with a headache and then get home at 1 am--which would feel like 2 am since I'm still on Eastern time. Anyway, at $5 for Terminator, I'd already gotten my money's worth.

Sounds like a good decision, right? Probably was, but it just got worse from there. It was hard to drive home with someone pushing knitting needles into my head, and no one staying in our cabin had any kind of pain relieving medication, so I just went to bed. Drinking water made my stomach upset, even though I was pretty sure I needed water, and being cramped into a double bed with Lauren wasn't exactly conducive to feeling good either, so I took the other double bed in the room. For that matter, it hurt like crazy when she spoke and even more when I answered. I spent the next two and a half hours (that's 210 agonizing minutes) unable to sleep, trying to slow down my breathing and relax, trying to get my pillow more comfortable, rolling over in different positions to change where the pillow was inflicting its pain on my head, sitting up to relieve the pressure on my head, massaging my neck and scalp, stretching my back and neck, and when all those things failed, whimpering in pain. It was probably mildly more comfortable for me not to be sharing a bed with Lauren and probably a whole lot more comfortable for her not to be sharing a bed with me.

I finally got to sleep, only to wake up three hours later. My head felt pretty good, but I really had to go to the bathroom. Before I was finished in there, my head was miserable again. Not as bad as it had been, but it took me a while to get back to sleep. When I woke up probably three hours after that--again for the bathroom--much the same sequence played out, though my headache was a little better when I laid back down.

When I got out of bed a little before 10, I felt better still, but definitely not 100%. I had to bow out of the water park trip and resign myself to a day spent sitting around. Even now a few hours later, while I feel okay (and took some tylenol of some sort), I also feel like I'm only a few quick motions of my head away from feeling awful again.

I'm guessing it's partially a hydration issue--we basically sat around yesterday in overly-air-conditioned cabins not drinking enough water (and the water I had was laced with tea!)--and partially a tension issue, as the folding canvas chair we watched the movie from neither promoted good posture nor were comfortable anyway. So I'm drinking as much water as I can stomach and taking it easy today. Tomorrow, I'll be spending most of the day driving in order to get home and get the rest of our stuff packed--not a fun way to spend the day, but necessary.

I've seen this meme in the blogging world and on Facebook, and I've now been tagged in both media, so what the heck. I've seen it introduced in two ways:

The thematic content is fifteen books of great importance - recited without looking them up. Material that sticks, like, forever. Now, tag fifteen friends

or

I'd like to introduce you to some of my friends. The following books (or in some cases, series) have played influential roles in my life. Overall, these are a few of the literary touchstones in my life. Pick one up and enjoy!

In no particular order:

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
• Walden by Henry Thoreau
• Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn (it probably would have been his Ishmael if I'd read it first, but I didn't)
• Some combination of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil and excerpts from other works by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kauffman
• Any good collection of the poetry of John Keats
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
• The Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Ultimately, this is probably a pretty transitory list. This was off the top of my head, but already I'm asking myself, how could I not include

• The Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust (or his To Reign in Hell or Agyar)
•  John Gardener's Grendel
• The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• Better Off by Eric Brende

And I could go on... I've read over 400 books since I graduated from college 10 years ago, and I don't know how many before that. It sometimes feels like a life lived through books. I can't pick fifteen (and don't even ask me to pick a "favorite" book--I wouldn't know where to begin! Looking over the list, it's a lot of fantasy, a lot of non-fiction, and liberal sprinkling of "literature," which seems intuitively right, all things considered. I could probably come closer on this assignment if I made two lists of 15, fiction and non-fiction, but I've already invested this much time and there's beach living to get to, so I'll leave it at this for now.

I would encourage any and all of my readers to post such a list, even if it's as flawed in the execution as mine! Post it in the comments or link to your own blog there.

Let's start the entry with a short quiz, shall we?

1) Going away on vacation for a week right before moving, without having the whole house packed up, with just a bit under three days to finish packing when you get back is:

A) A bad idea
B) Quite enjoyable
C) Almost unavoidable
D) Best left to professionals
E) All of the above

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm choosing E. This is, in fact, a complex and paradoxical process. Lauren and I are currently in Canada, in a beach town on Lake Huron where her family has a little cottage that they basically have one week out of the summer. I can see the beach and the water from where I'm sitting, and it's another beautiful day staring us down. Two days in the sun without getting sunburnt, for me that's, well, two-thirds of a victory. Whether or not I make it through the day unscathed, we will get up early tomorrow morning and drive to the Buffalo airport, from whence we shall fly to Memphis, there to be picked up by my mother. We'll drive up to western Kentucky for my mom's family's reunion, a tradition dating back to the late eighties or early nineties, though I haven't been in a few years. 

We'll drive back at least as far as my mom's on Sunday and then we have to get the rest of our apartment packed before Thursday morning. We'll wander homeless for the weekend and move into our new place in Indiana on Monday. 

Fortunately, I'm quite able to put off the panic that should be afflicting me and just enjoy the beautiful weather and the company of good people. At least for now. Anyway, we're virtually professional movers--at least, professional consumers of moving companies--considering how many moves we've undertaken in the past few years. After all, this will be the fourth summer in a row that we've moved. Fortunately it's the second summer in a row for me and the third for Lauren that we've had a moving company do all the heavy lifting. Whew!

While packing (ugh!), we came across Mucca, our Italian cow hand puppet who accompanied us on our trip to New Orleans this past spring. Really, Mucca hasn't been pulling her weight lately, so we put her to work packing up our stuff. 

I think it's pretty clear from the photo that Mucca is tired of packing. Look at those eyes.

Mucca plows on with the work. Even lacking thumbs, she's determined to get this box packed and ready to go.

Well shit. This packing crap is just too tough. Time for some warm milk and then to bed.