Rigel

Maple sap needs to be concentrated into syrup by boiling it down and evaporating most of the water away. It takes something like 40 units of sap to make 1 unit of syrup. --Rigel

Pancakes with Grade B maple syrup--maple syrup is graded upside down from the days when people wanted it to taste like cane sugar rather than maple, so Grade B is more mapley than Grade A. And I add cardamom and sometimes cinnamon to the batter when I make my own from scratch. --Rigel

Another voice wishing you a happy birthday CaptainRick! --Rigel

Even if you're not near the GSP, you might live near an exit of the NJ Tpke or I-295 or I-195 or somesuch. Lots of highways in New Jersey. Philly accents maybe. Nobody has Bawlimer accents except Bawlimorons Baltimoreans. Not Queens, NY--oopsy geography--try Nyack, NY. (Not to be confused with the Three Stooges "nyuck nyuck nyuck.") Actually, exit 14A off of I-287/I-87/NY Thruway/Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway. There are also the mountains of Northwest New Jersey. Not big mountains, admittedly, but the hills there are picturesque enough. I just spent a pleasant weekend near there. --Rigel, geographer and mapfreak

Nice photos. Gives a real feel for the town. I also liked the upcoming attractions at the Count Basie Theatre, named for a man who was born in Red Bank. Of course, the song that came to my mind is "The Long Branch Branch of the Red Bank Bank"--even if it is, technically, about a financial institution in the next city over. --Rigel

It can't hurt to eat healthily and not smoke. At least none of you had the stale tobacco smell clinging to your clothing when you returned from your little outdoor expedition. And Drewbie--the fact that Robbie is committed to a relationship with his boyfriend doesn't make him any less pleasant to stare to look at. --Rigel

It was wonderful getting to meet the people behind all of the virtual monikers IRL. Everyone is even more interesting in real life than they are on the forum, and the extra dimensions aren't just because they are physically present. RKnapp is taller that I imagined he would be; Trebs looks healthier than I imagined he might be. I'll second Sat8897's complaints about the cold--but it didn't seem to bother the birds that flew around inside the hall, and I'll add my own kvetches about the loud (and not very talented) band that was blatting away at great volume, making it hard to converse for a bit. ["Kvetches" is one of those words like "tchotchkes."] And the amethyst items that Trebs picked up do NOT qualify as tchotchkes. (We were discussing that term as we wandered through Union Station, but before the amethyst crystals beamed Trebs into that store like some sci-fi magnetism ray.) For anyone looking for CJames in DC, the Billy Goat Grill is on New Jersey Avenue, NW. It's been a strange day being a local surrounded by hordes of tourists, none of whom quite know where they're going or how to get there or how to negotiate the Metro system faregates. They've taken out all of the mailboxes and newspaper vending machines from downtown as security risks, and replaced them with dozens and dozens of port-a-potties. Now I ask you, if you were going to blow something up, wouldn't you rather blow up a port-a-potty and raise a big stink? At least nobody will need to "void where prohibited." I can hardly wait to meet again. --Rigel

A 2007 metallic sand-colored Toyota Camry. It's got enough room for road trips hauling several people and musical instruments and luggage and camping gear. But from day to day I use public transit and save the car for local grocery shopping trips and weekend jaunts. -Rigel

Prepare to pack warm clothes, long underwear, and winter-strength parkas. The most recent forecast for the DC area calls for a VERY cold Friday, with evening temperatures in the single digits (Fahrenheit)--and that's without the wind chill. By Sunday brunch, it may have warmed up to almost freezing (~32F, ~0C). --Rigel

Let me suggest picking a place near a Metro station, but that being said, it can really be ANY Metro station. If Robbie (or anyone else) is concerned about parking, you can park for free on weekends at any Metro station with a lot (the ones out in the 'burbs, mostly--see http://wmata.com/rail/maps/map.cfm for a map.) What kind of cuisine/restaurant do we want? Any dietary considerations? (I'd like a vegetarian option myself, though I'm also a pescavore.) The Mall itself offers food in several Smithsonian museums and National Gallery of Art restaurants and cafeterias. Within a couple of blocks, there are food courts and also restaurants at Union Station (Union Station Metro/Red Line) and the Old Post Office Pavilion (Federal Triangle Metro/Blue or Orange Lines). There are lots of places near Dupont Circle on 17th Street. which I suppose qualifies as one of the "gay" districts of DC. Do Dan and Trebs have commitments on Sunday that suggest they'd be downtown for lunch? There are also ethnic cuisines of almost any description available, though I'm sad to report that my local Ethio-Caribbean and Italo-Brazilian restaurants have both closed. Then there was the Ethiopian restaurant (near Silver Spring Metro/Red Line) I took Little Buddha to after he wrote about Ethiopian cuisine in SOOTB. (By the way, Little Buddha, to answer your challenge, the only Uighur restaurant I could find in the DC area was out in Gaithersburg a little past Shady Grove, and it closed this past summer.) --Rigel, your DC-area tour guide

It's the kind of overcrowded weekend where you'd just have to consider bringing a sleeping bag and staying in John's dorm room or something like that. Dang--Saturday is the one time in the whole four-day weekend when I have a prior commitment (not inaugural-related). Otherwise... --Rigel (who knows too many good places to gather, but I'm not sure what kind of place y'all want)

Best wishes and prayers that everything works out as it ought to for you, and that you manage your way through it. Fortune has already smiled on you in the most important ways--it sent a good lover like Dan into your life to help through these times. So I hereby amend the best wishes and prayers--for BOTH of you. --Rigel

The first moments when you realize your parents aren't immortal is always one of those landmarks of growing up and maturing. Realizing that your father won't be around forever is hard enough, but realizing that you might have to take care of him instead of vice versa--that's one of the rare-gift moments when you will realize eventually that nurturing can be a two-way street. The reversal won't be a sudden instance, but a long gradual process. Look inward, and believe it or not, I'm confident you will find the resources to deal with this emotionally. And then look outward (as MikeL suggests) and find real-life resources to help you deal with it logistically. --Rigel

Trebs-- One other idea is just to shave your head--so when the hair falls out, it'll just look like the bald look you're deliberately going for. Seriously, the hat idea isn't bad--I had a good friend who underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer, and she wore berets, cloches, and other head coverings that made a fashion statement her friends all admired. We were particularly fond of the styles that made Sue look like someone out of a medieval painting. I've always been a hat person myself, with a collection of berets, "baseball" caps (though with other kinds of logos on them rather than ball teams), crocheted kippahs, panama hats, straw boaters and gamblers, even an occasional fedora, not to mention Svan, Bukharian and Azeri hat styles. Think of it as an opportunity to put on on a persona as a well as a lid. The straw hats or caps are what I wear in the summer, but the weather has just turned colder here, which got me to sport the tweed wool berets this weekend. Maybe if you and Dan come to DC in January, we'll have to arrange an East-Coast GA get-together there then, in amongst all the other festivities. Inauguration Day immediately follows the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend (except in Virginia, where it's Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson-Martin Luther King Jr.-Robert E. Lee Day--talk about schizophrenic holidays), so lots of people might have a long weekend suitable for travel and celebration. If we can arrange to meet up, I promise to model some of my headgear. Good luck with all the medical treatments, and keep planning for the future. --Rigel

Okay, it's still less than 10 words: "Hello there, young lovers, get out of my car." (Actually, that was written by a songwriter as a VERY short song.) --Rigel

Happy Birthday and best wishes for getting back into good health as quickly as possible. It sounds like the hardest part now will be waiting for results. Let me share with you the prayer you need to recite: "Lord, give me patience to wait--and give it to me NOW!" Perhaps our biggest worry is that if you continue to consume blood regularly through these transfusions, you'll turn into an inspiration for Dan to write vampire stories. --Rigel

Breezewood, Pennsylvania, the only place where there's a traffic light in the middle of an interstate (I-70) in the United States. Host to a branch of every chain motel and fast-food chain in America. There ARE beautiful mountains all around, which you sometimes get to look at caught in the traffic jams caused by the traffic light in the middle of the interstate. Breezewood--Such a lovely name for such an ugly place to go.

"Breathe No More" reminds me of a great Youtube video of the late Klaus Nomi singing "The Cold Song" from Purcell's 1691 opera "King Arthur." It includes the line "I can scarcely move or draw my breath." At the time of this recording, AIDS-related PCP (pneumonia) had destroyed Nomi's lungs making singing difficult. It was one of his last public performances. Klaus Nomi is worth discovering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Nomi. His output ranges from opera to pop to camp, often performing while dressed up in a futuristic Weimar tuxedo or other unusual garb. --Rigel

The Pacific Northwest, which is anything and everything from Yellowstone-Grand Teton National Parks to Alaska, and everything in-between. Overseas, I'd like to see New Zealand, the Alps, Scotland, and the Caucasus Mountains. (Can you tell I love mountains?) Culturally, I'd love to have encounters with the Dutch, the Austrians, the Irish, the part of Eastern Europe where my father's mother's family came from (I think it's mainly Belarus these days, but my people always ignored national borders, which changed too frequently to develop nationalities), and I'd like to see Great Britain. And for music, Id like to spend time in Mali, Georgia, Madagascar, Wales, and Appalachia. Of course, I need to retire from work to be able to have to time for all this, but then I won't be able to afford most of it. --Rigel

Hugs and prayers to you. With sympathy, --Rigel

So it's not too late to wish you Многая Літа (Many Years). --Rigel

Rigel is the star in the foot of the constellation of Orion the Hunter. "Rijl" is arabic for "foot." I love stargazing, and it's one of the few stars I can reliably see in my light-polluted inner suburb. --Rigel

Alas, today is the first anniversary of the massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, which serves as counterfactual evidence to your statement. Remembering the Hokies today.

Nah--the REAL Yankee term would be "tiny lobstahs."

There's a wonderful article in the Forward newspaper here--http://www.forward.com/articles/12994/ --about Jewish synagogues that were originally founded as gay or gay and lesbian or GLBT (depending on the particular year and what was the correct terminology)--but which now accept straight members. The existence of such institutions is a welcome reminder that not all religious organizations are bigoted against folks with non-dominant sexual preferences or orientations. --Rigel