I ramenized my noodles, though I only attempted this after I botched making a huge batch of fresh ramen noodles.  Those are four cups of flour I’m never getting back.

So I found Not Quite Nigella’s ramen noodle recipe and decided I would make a simple noodle soup with it.  Starting with a veggie broth base, a sautéed some onion and garlic and added 3 cups of the broth and a tablespoon of soy sauce.  I threw in some carrots, snow peas, and broccoli.  I baked tofu with a little oil and salt.  And then I set all of that aside to focus on the noodles.

Oh my G-d.

The noodles.

So I made the dough earlier in the day.  It was fine.  Quick and painless.  Then I went to roll out the dough.  I set up my hand crank pasta machine and rolled out a quarter of the dough into a sheet.  So far, so good.  Then I dusted it liberally with flour and tried to cut it with the angel hair attachment.  Huge disaster.  Even with the extra flour, the dough was sticky.  Ripping apart the threads would end up taking an hour.  An hour for noodles that really didn’t seem worth it.  So I abandoned NQN’s recipe.

But I didn’t have noodles for my noodle soup, so I decided to try something else I had bookmarked: ramenizing regular noodles.  I boiled 4 liters of water in a stock pot.  When it came to a rolling boil, I added 8 tsp of baking soda that I had measured into a little dish.  I then added a box of thin spaghetti and cooked according to the instructions on the box.

A word of caution: the liquid bubbles and fizzes, and the white foam grows to the top of the pot quickly.  Don’t walk away from the pasta for a moment or you’ll end up with a big mess.  I kept stirring for the 7 minutes, adjusting the heat.

I drained the pasta, gave it a quick rinse, and tried a bite.

Did it taste like normal thin spaghetti: no.

Did it taste like ramen: um… no.

But did it somehow taste like noodles that belonged in soup?  Yes.  They sort of felt like they were destined for soup.  So I curled up a nest of noodles in each bowl, dropped some tofu on top, and ladled the soup with vegetables.  It worked in the sense that everyone ate seconds.  I’d probably try this again in the future with another noodle soup creation.

Adventures in ramening.

Totally off-topic: this is your weekly write-your-Microblog-Monday-post-for-tomorrow reminder.

So Unpregnant Chicken tagged me for a meme, and I never get tagged, so… THANK YOU.

Here are my answers:

1. What is your favorite book or movie and why? It’s a three-way tie: Harry Potter, Phantom Tollbooth, and Handmaid’s Tale.

2. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a cardiologist. Like hardcore wanted to be one so badly and couldn’t fathom not being a doctor. Or I wanted to be a fish researcher. Or a writer. I ended up with only one of those three professions. (I’m not sure if fish researcher is a real job.)

3. Where would you travel if money was no object? Faroe Islands!

4. What do you miss most about childhood? My grandparents. I miss seeing them.

5. If you could have any fictional character for a pet who would it be? Definitely Tock from the Phantom Tollbooth.

6. Do you have any gross habits that you try to hide? I feel like I should start one to make myself more interesting.

7. Coffee, hot chocolate or tea? Coffee. Always. Everyday.

8. What is your favorite thing about blogging? The connections between people; making the world smaller and making friends with people I would have never gotten to meet otherwise.

9. What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done? Putting those things down in writing where my kids could find them in the future would be the craziest thing of all.

10. Do you have any hobbies? Game-making. Interactive fiction. Collecting copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

I have decided to tag everyone who is reading this to see who will answer these questions.  The ChickieNob helped me write them.

1. When was the last time you cut your hair? Did you like the haircut?

2. Grapes with seeds or seedless?

3. When was the last time you went to a fancy party? What did you wear?

4. What colour is your bedroom wall?

5. The worst smell in the world is…

6. Last thing you spat out.

7. Do you sing when no one is around? What do you usually sing?

8. Your least favourite name (and it’s okay if it’s Melissa; I can take it).

9. Did you like the food served at the last dinner party you went to?

10. What is your most prized possession? Would you kill a unicorn in order to save your most prized possession?

Cut-and-paste the questions onto your blog and answer them, and then pose 10 of your own.

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Do you know what Humble Bundle is?  It’s a site where you can pay-what-you-can for different games and books and such.  No Starch is offering a Humble Bundle right now with 5 books as the pay-what-you-can base, with lots of other books tacked on if you go over the base amount.  I own 4 of the 5 books:

• Ruby Wizardry: An Introduction to Programming for Kids
• Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things
• The Manga Guide to Electricity
• Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids
• The LEGO Adventure Book, Volume 1: Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More!

I just got the Ruby one, and that’s a summer project because I’m still finishing up Javascript.  And I’m reading Lauren Ipsum with a group of the ChickieNob’s friends.  I have three of the unlockable books, too.  The Wolvog has rubbed off on me.  I don’t think I noticed how many computer-related books we’ve collected over the years.

So, passing along word in case you want them, too.

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Over on GeekDad, we’ve started an interactive fiction club.  It’s like a book club, except for games.  And we’re all playing Adam Cadre’s Endless Nameless.  Anyone can jump in at any time.  You can read the background for the group over here.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “One Month & Pregnancy and Parenting Pressures” (A Few Good Eggs)
• “The Restaurant Approach to Having it All” (Stirrup Queens) — Thank you, Northern Star
• “Neville Longbottom is the Most Important Person in Harry Potter—And Here’s Why” (Tor.com)
• “Gifts of Infertility Series – #19 – Courage” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “To the Childless Woman at Walmart” (Waiting for Baby Bird)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Project Progeny captures the concept of hygge in a perfect post about friendship.  I loved this line: “There is no font that can imbue that word – friends – with the full weight of meaning I want to give it.”  The whole post made me feel warm inside, even if there is an ache between the words.

Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a brief post about her sharps box.   Getting rid of it brings just as many problems as keeping it.  As someone who is now going on 10 years of a full sharps box at the top of a closet (don’t judge), I was especially touched by this line: “There’s been a lot of change there, which will probably make me feel that much more left behind – like the journey really, really is over.”  Maybe that is why I drag my heels, too.

No Kidding in NZ has an important reminder on how infertility has the potential to bring out our best and not just our worst.  She highlights 10 times that she has observed people choosing the better route and how it has strengthened the community.  It’s a post to bookmark and re-read whenever you’re feeling down about the world.

Lastly, Hope Floats Amongst the Cherry Blossoms has a moving post about annulling her marriage.  She writes, “I’ve been told that the annulment process can be very healing.  That has not been my experience.  It just feels like it is opening old wounds and rubbing salt in them.  Maybe I waited too long to do it.”  It is a quiet post, but I love when she points out that she is so much more than one aspect of her life whether it is fertility or marriage.

The roundup to the Roundup: The ChickieNob asks you 10 questions.  A lot of cool books for a set-your-own price.  Interactive fiction club — join along! Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 30th and February 6th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I went to see the Imitation Game last week.  It was really upsetting; I mean, the end was upsetting, the rest of the movie was wonderful.  But that’s the problem with sad endings: it’s the note that you end on, so you walk out of the theater on that note.

The next night at dinner, we told the twins the plot of the movie.  We had just been to the Spy Museum where they have a room dedicated to the Enigma machine and Turing’s work.  I told them about the Turing test and the idea of the imitation game.  Which, of course, led us to the topic of Bina48.

Bina48 is a robot modeled after Martine Rothblatt’s wife, Bina.  If you look up Bina48 on YouTube, you can see her in action.  Her face moves.  She can listen and respond to conversation a la Siri.  Her “brain” is a replica of the real Bina’s brain in that Bina has given Bina48 her memories and likes and beliefs and personality quirks.  She’s Bina… sort of… without Bina’s emotions.

Terasem, Rothblatt’s foundation that made and cares for Bina48, is currently allowing anyone who wants to make a mindfile.  You can have this receptacle to upload your thoughts and feelings with the idea that the file could one day be downloaded into an robotic body made to look like you.  And relatives thousands of years into the future would be able to power you up and have an actual conversation with you.  They could ask questions and get answers.

Which is sort of cool… right?

Instead of making a small book towards the end of your life, curated and culled to what you believe will be the most important information to pass along to future people who want it, you could start uploading your You-ness at birth.  And as you age, you could keep putting information into your mindfile.  I could upload the recipe for my chocolate chip cookies and my thoughts about current events as they’re happening (vs. trying to remember them in retrospect) and go through the step-by-step process of constructing a book.  And then future generations would be able to sit with a robotic me (or, currently, a photo avatar of me) and talk to me.  They could ask me questions, and my avatar would answer them.

It’s not just helpful for the future.  I mean, it would be helpful now.  How many times do people ask me questions that my avatar could technically answer?  Like a recipe or someone’s email address or my thoughts on an article?

So… would you create a mindfile?  And let it be uploaded into a robotic body?  And would you want your loved ones to do the same?

I was driving the ChickieNob and a gaggle of her friends around, and one of them was talking about how much she loves winter because of skiing and snowboarding and hiking in the cold and sledding, but she also loves summer because of the pool and soccer and horseback riding and… She finished off her long list of activities she loves with a shrug: “I’m just an outdoor kid.”

Her list of activities sounded like my version of hell.

Like skiing, in general, is an activity I associate with the desolate world of Hoth.  Going UP a hill solely for the purpose of coming DOWN a hill without even the benefit of seeing a tauntaun?  Why not just stay at the base of the hill in the first place?  Exercising in the cold?  So I can sweat underneath layers of clothing?  No, thank you.

I feel equally about hiking — and really, viewing most things I’ll see in nature.  I feel like at this point in life, I’ve seen a lot of flowers, a lot of rocks, and a lot of pretty views.  I did the camping years and I’m full.  If I’m going to walk, I’m going to walk for the sole purpose of getting from A to B.  And it’s likely going to be in a city.  And if we’re not in a city, there better be historic ruins.    And I can tell you the months that I won’t be walking outside: the months when all the foliage is gone and most life forms are hibernating because it’s cold.

Plus I don’t like mountains.

Flat land.  I’m good with flat.

I’m a little better with summer activities, such as hanging out at the pool or beach.  But what I like about those things is that I am outside doing an indoor activity.  I drag my books outside and pretend that I’m indoors except that there is this strange thing called natural light hitting the page instead of the glow of a lamp.  I don’t mind biking, but only because I know that if I go biking during the summer months, I can hold that up as evidence during the rest of the year that I do go outside, and therefore feel let off the hook from participating in other outdoor activities.

I called into the backseat, “I’m an indoor kid.”

I like reading books.  And doing craft projects.  And not going outside.  And working on computer games.  And not going outside.  And writing and cooking and drawing.  And doing none of these activities outside.  I even like to run indoors.  And do yoga indoors.  And really, if we owned a stationary bike, I’d probably opt to do that indoors and skip the summer bike rides.

I would rather visit a really good library than witness a breath-taking view.  I am pro-museum.  I would rather see old buildings made out of stone than go witness stones in their natural habitat.

I am the sort of person who would probably feel a little sad and claustrophobic having to live in an underground bunker, but the reality is that I would soon realize that my life isn’t appreciably different.

The child was stunned by the idea of someone choosing to be indoors and then proceeded to try to convince me that I should want to be an outdoor kid, completely disregarding the fact that two people can have very different tastes, and what makes one person happy could make another person miserable.  I’m never going to be an outdoor kid.  I’ve never been an outdoor kid.  I’m an indoor kid.

Which are you?  An outdoor kid or an indoor kid?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Yesterday I was singing Peter Cetera’s always excellent “Glory of Love” from the hit movie soundtrack for Karate Kid II (don’t we all?), and I suddenly realized as I sang the chorus that I had no clue how he was planning to live forever.  I mean, forget how he was going to be hero; how was he going to manage immortality?  And give the object of his affection immortality, too?

And then I realized that I didn’t know how I felt about immortality.  Would I want to live forever?  And if I was going to reject immortality, could I choose a different superpower instead?

I think if I can order up my superpower, I’d take the ability to fly.  How about you?  Are you taking immortality, or are you going to request a superpower substitution?

And because I know you now want to hear it…

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.