Actual Conversation

R_: Today I learned that you can only make two cups of tea with one teabag.

Me: Yeah, the second cup is never as good as the first and the third is undrinkable, but you can make an entire pot of tea with one teabag.

Randolfo: It has to do with the order that stuff comes off of the tea.

R_: I bet if you mixed all three cups together you would have something that was drinkable.

Randolfo: Or continuously moved the teabag from one cup to another.

R_: That's what I need... A teabagging robot!

Randolfo: OOooh!

At which point they both burst into hearty laughter. I still can't decide if he was leading up to a teabagging joke or if it just happened. In either case I won the point since making a pot of tea is infinitely more practical than building a single-use robot, no matter how funny its name is.

Bet you can't figure out what they're talking about

Wilhelm: My position is that originally it tapered away for a long time but now it kind of just stops dead.  It's like one over X.

Randolfo: Eh, it's more like sine over X, cuz it falls away and then another peak hits you.

W: Sine of X plus a constant cuz it never falls to zero.

R: Eh, I still think it's more like sine of X.  Maybe with some kind of adjustment factor...

What are they talking about?  Bet you can't guess.  They're discussing the wine.  The wine we had with dinner.  Normal people use vague terms like "hint of freshly cut grass with peach overtones" but my engineers use functions of X.  What would I do without them?  By the way, the names I'm using for them were chosen by the engineers themselves.  Nerds...

Mmmmmmm... Gluten

Chocolate chip cookies are a staple of my lifestyle.  My family recipe makes the best, chewiest, most delicious cookies I've had anywhere.  I've made batches using this recipe hundreds of times, so I was a little perplexed when one of my engineers walked into the kitchen and announced, "You're doing that wrong."

"Doing what wrong?  I'm making cookies!"
"Measuring the flour."

I had in fact been measuring the flour.  Flour is a very important thing in baking.  It contains gluten, which binds the cookie or cake or bread together.  Without enough flour your baked goods might fall, or deflate when you take them out of the oven.  If, however, you add too much flour whatever you're making will turn out tough and dry because of the long chains of gluten that are contained in the flour.  I know all this because my information junkie friends told me so.

"I know all about flour, you've told me before." I snapped.  I mean really, if he thought he was getting any cookies when I was done he'd better be a little bit more supportive of my work.  Besides I had been measuring it very carefully.  I glanced down at the perfectly smooth and level surface on flour in my measuring cup, and then glared up at the engineer trespassing in my kitchen.

"But you're still measuring it wrong.  The flour particles are very light and squishy so they're easy to compact, but the recipes are designed using non-compacted flour.  If you measure by volume it's likely that you're compacting the flour as you measure it and are therefore getting too much gluten in your dough. The only right way to measure flour is by weight, not by volume."  He then wandered back out of the kitchen feeling very good about himself.  He felt he had saved the cookies.  Well, if he wanted to buy me a fancy kitchen scale, and find me some more space in my kitchen to store it he was welcome to.  In the meantime he can forget about eating any of my cookies unless he washes the dishes.

Playing with Fire

One of the things I never learned to do was barbecue. I was never really allowed to touch the exalted black box. It wasn't because the men in my life thought I couldn't or shouldn't, it was just because they really really wanted to. They loved to play with fire, so I never got to. Even on camping trips, if I wanted to start the campfire myself I had to be the first one awake and do it very quietly before my engineer brother woke up and took over.

So today when I decided to have burgers for dinner, there wasn't really a question of who would actually man the grill. R_ didn't even ask me if I wanted his help. In his worldview It isn't a question. He's an engineer, of course I would appreciate his help.

The first thing he noticed about my barbecue was that it was "hardwired." Typical not to notice the pretty plants around or the beautiful stone tables, but the fact that my barbecue had a direct gas line, that he noticed.

The burgers turned out perfect and were in fact delicious. Overall the experience was not nearly as frustrating as it could have been. Someday I'll wake up early in the morning and sneak outside. Alone in the world I will learn to cook with fire by myself without the hovering presence of an engineer. I will learn to barbecue. Until that day comes, I'll just have to take deep breaths and let the boys play with the fire.

Feeding the Bears

Bears in Yosemite can be dangerous, not just because they are wild animals, but also because they have been fed by humans and see humans as a food source. Normal bears avoid human contact, making a confrontation unlikely. Yosemite bears not only do not avoid human contact, but some actively seek it. They are begging for food, and if we had never fed them, they would have mostly left us alone. This is similar to my friend R. If I had never fed him, he would have wondered away by now. Just like the early Yosemite tourists, I fed the bears, and now I can't get rid of him.

Today we made shortbread cookies. They're very simple. I used a recipe from Miriam Peskowizt's book The Daring Book for Girls (an excellent book btw). There are three ingredients: butter, flour, and sugar. Our dough turned out a little crumbly, probably because we lack any kind of electronic mixing device so creaming the butter and sugar is difficult, but it did eventually get rolled out into a sheet ready to be cut with cookie cutters. I got out a glass to cut circles with. Shortbread cookies are supposed to be round. I cut one out, sptula'd it onto the cookie sheet and glanced up at my engineer. He was using a dinasaur cookie cutter. "Look!" he ecxlaimed proadly, "Shortbread dinosaurs!" I tried to explain why this was a bad idea. The thin points at tail and neck would cook faster than the rest, posibly turning a dark burnt brown before the centers were done, but all that resulted in was him reaching for the tin foil to protect some parts from overbaking. I was not about to let him start in building something, so I told him it would be fine and popped them in the oven. When they came out, the dinosaurs were indeed a dark unapetizing brown, but he happily munched away, eating heads first, and mumbling about the dinosaur shape effecting his perception of the cookie which makes it taste better. I let him have all the non-round cookies since no one else wanted them. There I go again, feeding the bears.

I Live with Engineers

Perhaps it's because my parents were engineers, or perhaps because I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, but I seem to attract nerdy friends .  They aren't the classic nerds with Scotch-taped glasses and no social skills; they are perfectly capable of holding an interesting intelligent conversation with one person, but would rather jump off a cliff than go to a loud crowded party.  They are engineers.  They build things, design things, solve math problems, find solutions, and are generally useful, as long as you don't expect the fraternity lifestyle.  Everyone I know is an engineer.  My life is full of them.  In many ways I prefer it that way.  I never have to fix the internet myself, or worry that I won't be able to solve a mechanical problem.  Because of their addiction to learning new things and researching interests they have new things to talk about almost daily and can find out anything you want as long as they have access to the internet (or a library).  The disadvantages of being surrounded by engineers also exist, and mostly manifest themselves when I try to cook.

Making food for my friends is a common occurrence.  It's one of the ways I show affection and appreciation.  Something about cooking for someone makes me feel like we have a real friendship.  However, cooking with some of my friends has pushed our relationships to their very limit.  Try asking an engineer to dice a tomato into 1/4 inch cubes.  Normal people chop the tomato into reasonably sized chunks that are mostly the same size.  An engineer is very likely to pull out a ruler and make each piece identically shaped and sized.  These kinds of skills are important if you are building a bridge or designing a microchip, but not exactly essential to making tomato sauce.  Try explaining that to an engineer.  Go ahead, I dare you.

I am not an engineer.  I have a degree in music and am about to begin a masters program in education so I can teach kindergarten.  I do not have many of the obsessions and quircks that my friends do, but it seems I cannot escape them.  My life will never be free from XKCD quotes and extraordinarily exact measurments.  But do I really want my life to be different? Only when I'm in the kitchen.