I’m supposed to be well enough tomorrow to go back to work, but last night I was still running a fever of 101. Since my doctor did confirm it was the flu, he prescribed Tamiflu. It seems to be working, as I do feel better than I did, but damn that stuff is expensive and my insurance doesn’t cover it. Luckily, I had some money stuck back. It seems that every time you save, some emergency comes up. At least though, I am at a point where I can start saving little by little. Anyway, hopefully there will be no more fever today, and I’ll be feeling better tomorrow.

On a day that I should be able to celebrate: Alabama is expected to begin issuing marriage license to couples today (if Clarence Thomas doesn’t grant an emergency stay before 8 am). However, I seem to have the flu. If it’s not the flu, it’s a very bad cold: coughing, headache, body aches, fever, congestion and nausea. Ugh! I guess I will be spending this morning in the doctor’s office.

FYI: It was confirmed to be the flu.

How’s it hangin’ is a very informal way to say hello to your fellow. What is actually hanging, is evident from the following example.

– Hey, Joe, how’s it hangin’?
– A little bit to the left.

The standard answer seems to most often be a literal answer as to how your penis really is hanging: long and to the left, tight and to the right, etc.

Yesterday a friend and I were discussing which side men “dress” on. Dressing left and dressing right are terms that most men, at least those who wear suits, know. It’s a term used by tailors when fitting suit pants. To “dress left” means that one keeps one’s male appendage shifted in the general direction of the left trouser leg. Likewise for the right.

I’ve been a bit fascinated by this topic since I first saw it on an episode of Friends when I was a teenager. Chandler went to get a suit tailored and the tailor grazed his privates to see if he dressed left or right. Chandler was horrified, but Joey explained that he thought that’s how all tailors determined which side a man’s privates hung. Chandler says that tailors usually just ask you instead of checking for themselves. (I may have some of the details wrong, but I do remember this episode.)

Straight male friends have always been fond of asking, “How’s it hangin’?” This always kind of excited me because it always made me think of my straight male friends’ penis and how he was hanging. According to a study I read, 75 percent of all men dress (hang) to the left, whereas, 25 percent dress to the right. There are several theories about why this is.

According to medical researchers, most men should dress left. This is basic biology, The left testicle is lower than the right. Thus, some men theorize that it was made to swing to the left, and swinging right would be uncomfortable. Some even go further that left dressing men are happier and more creative, while right dressing men are often in a bad mood.

Another theory says that most right-handed men dress to their left, and vice-versa for lefties, due to the way men return their penis through their pants’ fly. Some (including myself) have speculated that it is due to masturbation. The erection conforms to the curve of the palm, whether for a leftie or a rightie. Over time the penis is permanently changed. My guess is that it is really more revealing about which hand is dominant. I dress to the left, and I am right handed.

I came across one guy who theorized that after seeing lots of men naked that most gay men’s flaccid penis hangs towards the left and most straight men’s penis hangs to the right. However, my guess is that this particular man has seen a greater number of gay men than straight men naked and thus he has not only seen that most men hang to the left.

So, how’s it hangin’, guys?

Several cities in Alabama broke temperature records yesterday for the coldest temperatures on January 8th since those records began being taken. When I left for work yesterday, it was a bone chilling 14 degrees. I know people who love up north think that’s nothing, but I live in Alabama, and we rarely get this cold. The warmest it got all day yesterday was 33 degrees. Today, the high is expected in the 40s, but the weathermen have been off quite a number of times this week.

Even worse than the cold yesterday was the fact that when I go to my classroom, I had no heat. Inside it was 53 degrees, so we had class in a different room that had heat until it could be repaired. It turned out that the four heaters in my building blew the main circuit breaker. Honestly, it never really got warm in my room. My building is the only building equipped with electric instead of gas heat, and the bad part of that is that the electric heat is a heat pump. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the “joys” of having a heat pump, but they are bit very good at keeping places warm. They will heat for a short while (which is the emergency heat kicking in) but mostly it tries to draw what heat is available outside to indoors. When it’s 14 degrees and most of the day is below freezing, there’s not much heat to draw in, so it blows cold air.

Honestly, I don’t mind the cold as long as I can be warm inside. I’d much rather cold weather than the oppressive heat of the summer, but still, down here we aren’t used to it being this cold.

My kittens are fascinated by the bathroom too. I think I’d get along quite well with this guy. Having two calico kittens myself, why not make it three. Whereas his kitten is not out of my league, he sure is, but I’m a cat charmer and I might could win him over. Now if I just had a body like his…

I admit that the first part of this post is a bit silly, but I was too tired to right much of a post after an exhausting day yesterday. In total, I spent eighteen hours cooking (six of those were spent sleeping, but the black-eyed peas were in the crockpot during that time). I started the night before by boiling the chicken for the dumplings and making some extra broth for the greens. Once I got up at 7am I was cooking solidly from then until lunch was served at 12:30. Everything seemed to turn out deliciously, at least I enjoyed it and everyone else said that they did. Some of the older family members had been cooking this meal for over sixty years, so if it met with their seal of approval, I think I did pretty good.

There was only one food item that I was not happy with and that was the cracklin cornbread. I foolishly used a cracklin cornbread mix from the grocery store instead of making cornbread and adding cracklins. It turned out to be sweet cornbread, which I personally hate. Cracklin cornbread needs to be savory, not sweet. Luckily most people ate it with their turnip greens which are naturally bitter and hid the sweet taste. I won’t be making that mistake again. I did sneak over to the neighbors for a few minutes, and I ate a piece of her cracklin bread and it was delicious and perfect. It bothers me when I serve something that is less than perfect. When it comes to cooking, I am very much a perfectionist.

According to tradition, the New Year’s Day meal will bring you fortune in the year to come. Here in Alabama, we usually have greens (turnips or collards), black-eyed peas, hog jowls and cornbread. This has been the traditional meal served by my grandmama all my life. When she became too frail to do the cooking, I began to help, and since her death, I have done much of the cooking but with help from others. This year will be the first time that I am cooking the whole meal for the family and friends. We will probably have between 12-20 people, so it’s a lot of food to cook.

Since our family and friends are split over collards and turnips, I am cooking both, and hopefully they will being us plenty of wealth and prosperity in 2015. The greens are supposed to represent folding money. Collards and turnips are green, so is our folding money. It’s all about wealth, prosperity and good fortune as the New Year begins. Some folks say the more greens you eat on New Year’s Day, the more prosperous you will become during the year ahead.

I put the black-eyed peas in the crockpot last night so they will be ready by lunch time, we all need the good luck they are supposed to bring. If you search the internet, you’ll find various stories as to why eating black-eyed peas is supposed to bring good luck. One of those is going back to Civil War times when the Union troops stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, livestock and whatever else they could not carry away. Northerners it seems, considered black eye peas, field peas, and field corn to only be good for feeding animals… thus… they didn’t steal it or destroy it. As the story goes, this then was the only food, along with maybe some salt pork, that was available at the time and Southern soldiers lived off it for awhile. It was their good luck to have had it.

We will also have hog jowls, which many of you may say yuck to this tradition, but we get them sliced like thick bacon and deep fry them, and it’s like eating the best bacon you’ve ever had. Pork traditionally brings wisdom in the new year, and around here hog jowls have always been the pork of choice. The important thing is to include pork as the meat of the day as opposed to some other animal meat. Pigs it seems, root or forage in a forward direction. This moving forward is seen as a symbol of moving forward in the New Year. Serving chicken, or a winged animal that flies, would represent your fortune as possibly flying away from you (however, since chickens rarely fly and they are seen as prosperous around here, we eat them anyway).

In addition to the traditional foods, we usually also have chicken and dumplings, which I will be making this year. I am also roasting a chicken. We decided on chicken over a turkey or ham because we didn’t want to make dressing which would be a requirement if we cooked a turkey. Of course to go with the pot likker (or liquor, if you prefer) from the greens and peas, I am making cornbread. It’s the one time of the year that I get cracklin cornbread (Cracklings or cracklin are pieces of either pork or poultry fat trimmings that have been fried until brown and crispy and it makes the most delicious cornbread). I will also make some regular cornbread for those who don’t like cracklin bread. We are also having homemade from scratch macaroni and cheese, no blue box for us.

For dessert, I have made a cranberry cake, and my mother is bringing a chocolate pie. Also a friend of ours is bringing apple pie and a few other desserts that I can’t remember. Of course all of this will be served with some sweet iced tea.

Many would consider this type of meal to be a “poor man’s meal.” It was often thought that if you “Eat poor on New Years, you’ll eat fat the rest of the year.” Whatever your reasons, eating this traditional New Year’s Day meal is a great way to start off any New Year. I’ve been doing so all my life, It’s just the good thoughts behind starting off another year with a hope for prosperity and good fortune. All in all, it will be quite a feast, and I love it. I wish all of you could join us.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Just in case you’d like the traditional foods all in one pot, here’s a recipe from Southern Living Magazine (which I’d substitute the ham for hog jowls).

Hoppin’ John Soup

Yield: Makes 11 cups
Hands-on: 30 Minutes
Total: 2 Hours, 5 Minutes

Ingredients
1/2 (16-oz.) package dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and sorted
2 pounds smoked turkey wings
1/3 cup finely chopped country ham (or hog jowls)
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
2 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 celery rib, diced
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 (16-oz.) package fresh collard greens, trimmed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Hot cooked brown rice
Cornbread Croutons
Flat-leaf parsley leaves

Preparation
1. Bring peas, turkey wings, and 6 cups water to a boil in a large Dutch oven. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and simmer 45 minutes or until peas are tender, skimming any foam from surface. Drain peas, reserving 1 1/4 cups liquid. Remove turkey meat from bones. Chop meat.

2. Sauté ham and next 7 ingredients in hot oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add peas, reserved 1 1/4 cups liquid, turkey meat, collards, hot sauce, and 6 cups water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium, and simmer, stirring occasionally, 30 minutes. Stir in vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Discard bay leaf. Serve over rice with Cornbread Croutons and parsley.

Let your imagination run wild with this lovely picture. To be honest, my internet connection is so limited at my parents’ place, where we spent Christmas night, that this post is by necessity brief. I hope that all of you had a very merry Christmas.

It’s the first weekday of my Christmas Break. I’m gonna sleep in a little and then go and finish up my Christmas shopping. Wish me luck. I hate the crowds at stores during Christmastime, but I haven’t had time before now. I will smile, be cheerful, and wish people Happy Holidays.

It started mid afternoon yesterday and seemed to jut get worse as the day went on. I took some medicine and slept off and on until this morning when I had to get up and go to work. Thankfully, today is a half day and then I am on vacation for two weeks.