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I'm in the process of moving to my new host. Things will look different soon.
The new site is ugly but functional. Hopefully we'll get a re-design in there very soon.
Please do not panic. Check in periodically for painful gnashing of teeth as I complain about the process.
Every morning I sit on the sofa, catch up with the news and blogs and forums and whatever other online dicktitudes I waste my brain power on.
Every morning before work I sit here listening to NPR and the birds.
And every morning the dogs find a way to curl up near me and nap. It is the most peaceful part of my day. I love watching the dogs sleep.
Who's the orc in charge of design and development for Saurumon? You can't just say "make helmets" and have 10,000 helmets made that look the same. Someone has to draw the helmet and say "make this helmet" to all the helmet makers. Same with armor. Then you've got things like that wolf shaped fiery battering ram. Some orc sat down at a flat drawing surface and took some nice charcoal pencils and thick paper and drew it out. Not like some 7th grade boy drawing his fantasy weapons in his notebook when he's supposed to be learning about the intricacies of the Teapot Dome Scandal. No way, this orc has skills! Design skills! He has to make it look good AND figure out the functional specs for it. What will it be made of? What will they burn in it to make the best and most fearsome fire but that won't burn out too quickly? How will the handles be positioned so that the uruk hai or goblins can carry it most efficiently and without getting burned themselves.
Somewhere there is an orc with a design degree, maybe even an engineering degree. Where do orcs go to college?
And do they have cram sessions?
Anyway, spent the day with Lord of the Rings playing in the background while I sat on the phone with the insurance company and tried to deal with stuff. I comforted myself by cooking a roast in the crock pot and making rice and gravy and asparagus. Comfort food even on such a humid day.
1/2 gallon 2% milk (i suppose any kind could work, i just happened to have 2%)
3/4 cup rice
2/3 cup sugar
cinnamon stick
spice mix
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger
1 tsp vanilla
rice, sugar, milk and cinnamon stick in pot over medium heat, stirring.
once it comes to a simmer add the spice mix.
Simmer over medium heat 45 minutes or so, stirring constantly, until it becomes thick and delicious. Stir in vanilla.
Cool, serve with golden raisins and pistachios
That's right, screw you, Martha Stewart! I can do what you do but I can do it without being forced to play lesbian housewife to a bald bull behind bars.
Burn? oh yeah! suck it up!
Spicy german brown mustard! Good for brats and happiness. On the counter I have a batch of dijon mellowing. Tomorrow I will divide it, half will be dill and half will be chive.
I feel all productive! I even cleaned the entire kitchen.
And in non-old lady news I have pics related to the birthday...
There, pictures posted.
Now for popcorn and movies!
A great big happy birthday to Anna! My lovely demon imp has her birthday today! We celebrated last night with copious amounts of thai food and liquor. Actually, Anna had copious amounts of liquor, Emily was on allergy meds and couldn't drink and I'm just finding that I just don't drink so much anymore. We managed to fulfill Anna's greatest fantasy by watching dinosaur movies all night.
Hot!
Of course we must mix the good and the bad until we get a lovely life slurry! The compressor for the AC in my car went out. Pain in the ass. My car started overheating and at first I thought it was another leak in the radiator tube something, but I had that fixed last year. Process of elimination and all that and I'm gonna have to get my car fixed.
In yarn news: I have a grocery bag packed full of yarn for 2 new projects and the cool part is that I paid for none of it. I need to spend the rest of my life doing projects for other people. The yarn shop is going to have me 'test drive' new crochet patterns for them as well. Nice.
So the other night I'm walking my dogs and on the other side of the block is an old lady. I groan a little on the inside. It's been noted here that perhaps my dogs are a little, say, energetic, and this is why I prefer to walk them at around midnight when there is no one around.
I'm also groaning because (as has been noted here) I am still recovering from hand surgery and I stupidly decided to take both dogs with me on the walk because i was feeling lazy, even though my right hand still has a tendency to let go of things like leash handles.
So, yeah, little old lady up ahead, the dogs are excited. She's looking at me with some intense but perplexing emotion on her face. Is she mad at me? did she poop her pants? Is she one of Teddy Roosevelt's scorned lovers?? I approach.
"mumble mumble mumble...poop?"
Oh my god! She pooped her pants and she wants me to help her! oh fuck, me and my unruly army of jackasses have been chosen by god to serve the elderly on some bizarre poop related crisis. I don't even know how to help an old lady who pooped her pants. I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe I misheard her, maybe she didn't say anything about poop. Maybe she said something about 'scoop' as in 'I know you love ice cream, let's go get a scoop'. It's a long shot but I look at her and say, "excuse me?"
"Are you going to pick up your dog's poop?!"
Well, this was certainly unexpected. What is she asking me? Of course I pick up my dog's poop, i'm holding a bag of it! I show her the bag, "I always pick up after my dogs", smile smile smile!
Wait, why am I talking to someone about poop? I don't know this person. When I don;t know someone I want to talk about things with a neutral odor like the weather or the moon. You know, things that don;t smell like fecal matter.
um...now she's really looking angry. What's going on. She points to the ground and says, "pick up your dog's poop!!!". I follow her finger to the ground. poop? there's just a piece of a branch on the ground, it's not poop. It's poop shaped and poop colored and...oh! Yeah. Crazy old lady.
I'm standing on the sidewalk with two jackass dogs and a crazy lady blaming the vagaries of tree construction on my dogs' anuses. I don't even know what to do! How do I explain that this is only a tree branch and even if it was poop (which it most certainly is not unless that dog in question has some seriouss dietary issues) it could not have come from my dogs as we had just come upon this spot and my dogs' buttholes are not equipped with Star Trek style beam up technology (as far as I know).
I look at her. I look at the poop branch. I consider my options.
I pull a bag from my pocket, use it to pick up the stick and thank her for reminding me to pick it up. We head on our merry way.
Sometimes the crazy people have to think they are winning. It's the only way to keep the earth spinning.
I was ging to post photos but the batteries in my camera died and I have to wait for them to recharge.
This and that, not much going on. David left yesterday and last night I was prepared to clean. I even started cleaning, but then I remembered that I could eat unhealthy amounts of meat covered pizza! I opted for that instead of cleaning!
My plan is to take one room at a time and give it a thorough ass kicking cleaning. Tonight I hit the living room and I am pretty sure it's never been so clean!
blah blah blah David goes away and I'm reduced to discussing my cleaning habits. Someone told me that she thought I was lucky to have so much time away from him, so much time alone to do whatever I wanted. I thought that was sad. Having one weekend or a week here and there to myself is nice, but 5 or 6 weeks will leave me lonely and nutty. I thought that maybe if she wanted 6 weeks or more away from her boyfriend, if she so disliked being around him then maybe she needed to rethink things. I don't know, that's just my opinion.
Anyway, I get a little nutty when left alone but Alex graciously pointed out that I get constructive nutty. I'll make mustard, jam and crochet projects! Photos soon.
What I do:
A bulleted list
* I made mustard this weekend. That's right, bitches, I threw down and called out my inner old lady and I made mustard. Mustard. It's currently 'aging' on the counter. Tonight I will grind it and can it in little jars. This is a spicy german mustard. Other mustards to be made: horseradish, dill, curry, chive and cranberry.
* I will also be making jam this week. Strawberry ginger and raspberry spice.
* David is getting ready. He's going. Sigh. He and Marshall are heading down to New Orleans tomorrow. They plan to take the sailboat out and explore the gulf. He will be gone for many weeks. I will miss him. Who'll call me 'Mubs'?
* Do not do that stretching thing where you interlace your fingers together, twist your hands palm side out and stretch if you have recently had surgery on your wrist. The pain can only be described as 'sharp' and 'excruciating'. It will bring tears to your eyes. It will stick with you for hours.
* Went to Penzey's this weekend. I used a gc from Alan and some store credit brought on by my dad giving me a Penzey's spice gift set he'd already given me. I shopped like a FIEND. I bought things that I normally don't.
* As such, if you would like to be invited over for ribs with a spicy rub, peppery pork chops or homemade italian sausage, let me know!
* I have too many crochet projects going at once. I need a good storage system to hold them otherwise my living room gets covered in all manner of half crocheted tidbits.
* Marshall is sitting next to me, he wants you to know how cool he is, he swears, he plays Go a lot, and he is wearing stripey pants. He owns a cute dog but his dog is not as cute as ghengis.
* I am going to miss the hell out of David. Anyone want to volunteer for distraction duty, let me know. I'm gonna need it.
* I have tons of photos that need to be posted. Soon. I promise.
Today is father's day and I wish I could spend the day with my dad celebrating the day and thanking him for all that he's done for me over the years, but he's busy.
He's busy being a hero. My dad flies Medivac helicopters, he flies critically sick and injured patients to the hospital when an ambulance would be too slow. He works very hard, he works evenings and weekends and for days at a time and he absolutely loves it. Thing is, this is his retirement job, this is what he does for fun now that he's done with regular work.
I'm sad that I can't see my dad today, but on the other hand, I'm glad that my dad is out there saving people and making someone else's father's day that much better.
Please, click this link and check out item number 18. Don't worry, I'll wait.....That's #18
Got it? Read it? Got the premise?
Yeah, okay, so adertising...specifically the cult of personality advertising aka bumperstickers. There's a car in the parking ramp where I work that sports a bumper sticker that says "Not Normal" and every time I see that car I think "your anti-Bush, pro-current alt-rock act stickers covering your black VW Jetta pretty much make it clear you are anything BUT not normal. Seriously. I bet if I met you, you'd be the most normal person ever. I bet you're just a regular person with a standard sense of humor, politics that run middle of the road, musical tastes, fashion tastes and food tastes that are not so different."
I'm not saying you're boring, I bet you're a perfectly cromulent person. You're probably charming and you probably believe fiercely in teh things you believe in. You believe enough to attach stickers to your car to that effect. It's just that if you feel the need to remind us that you are 'not normal' then you probably recognize that we have forgotten or do not seem to appreciate just to what degree you deviate from the normal and if the rest of us can not even see just how deviant or 'not normal' you are then...well...we are probably just seeing you for the normal person that you are.
I'm not ddissing your bumper sticker, it's a very nice sticker, I just wonder why. If you have to advertise that you are strange, not normal or a freak you probably aren't.
On the other hand, if you had a bumpersticker that proclaimed your adamant belief in your own bipedalism, I'd think that was pretty strange.
As for what is on my car? Not much yet. I have the parking sticker for the ramp, that pretty much lets you know that I am either staff, student or faculty at a little midwester arts college. I also have a one of those jesus fish reshaped into a science rocket and a minnesota public radio static window cling that I have not yet attached. I believe in science and I am a member of mpr.
My party....
2 pinatas! Pinwheel hats! Much grilling! A flask of Makers Mark! A kite shaped like a pirate ship! Devil Horns!
Did I mention 2 Pinatas? Did I? Because I just wanted to make sure you knew that at my party there was not one but two (dos!) pinatas! The second was a happy coincidence as David's sister (not knowing how much I wanted a pinata and not knowing that David got me one) decided that the best thing I could have on my birthday was something to beat up and then eat the candy from inside.
Wonderful.
Great big thanks to David and April for throwing the best birthday party ever!!! Everyone agreed that it was the best kind of birthday party a 7 year old (or me) could ask for.
I'll try to post pictures soon. Watch for them here and over on the side! I especially want to post pics of the pinwheel hats.
Feeds many
boil, cool and chop 5 pounds red potatoes.
While the potatoes are cooking/cooling make the sauce.
3/4 cup plain yogurt (or more or less)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tbl vegetable oil
1 bunch of green onions sliced thin
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped small
1/4 cup golden raisins
vegetable oil
1 tbl or more Penzeys Garam Masala
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 pinch amchoor (optional, i just happen to have it)
Mayonaise
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/4 - 1/2 cup frozen peas (thawed)
heat the 1/2 tbl veg oil in a small frying pan. Add cumin, mustard, fenugreek and turmeric. Heat, stirring constantly until the seeds stard popping. Dump the whole thing into the yogurt and mix well.
Saute raisins, onions and garlic in as little oil as you can get away with.
Add to the yogurt.
Add the rest of the spices and let this sit so the spices and the yogurt can get it on in their own special way.
When the potatoes are ready, add the yogurt sauce, and peas and gently mix.
Add as much mayo as you need to make sure everything is sauced. You could go with all yogurt, that's cool, but I found that people like the added dimension of the mayo flavor or something.
Garnish with the chopped cilantro that I forgot to buy or chopped pistachios or whatever strikes your fancy.
Things that are hard
* Getting up at ass am to go down to Roosevelt High School and help administer the ACT test to hopeful high school school students. I hate getting up that early, especially when you are being snuggled by a dog, a boy and another dog.
* Being in high school is hard. I felt bad watching some of those kids struggle through on that test. I did, however, chastise the girl who forgot a pencil. This is the test to see if you are prepared for collegem if you can;t even prepare for the test...well then...
* Reading about the roots of the palestinian.isreali conflict. It's hard, it's frustrating. You want to grab the UN and scream "why did you let this happen? why did you condone it?", then you remember that the UN is pretty much useless and you can almost always make a connection between the UN's ineptitude and some egregious human rights violation. It's so frustrating to read about this. I should go back to the Calvin and Hobbes book.
* penises
* Letting other people plan your party. I thought it would be totally chill to sit back and let other people plan my birthday party. No one has thrown a party for me since childhood. Now I know why, because I desperately want to jump in and start making food, orchestrating meal prep, setting up tables. It's hard. Really hard. Luckily it looks like the weather tomorrow should be lovely. If you'd like to join us we will be at Minnehaha Falls Sunday at 4pm. Bring your own meat to grill, we'll have the sides for you.
* Wanting very much to crochet cute little flowers but your hand hurts too much so you're stuck. That's hard too. I can't do much of anything today, my wrist and hand are all achey and painful. I crocheted a bit this morning and now it's done for the day. I need to do dishes and laundry and I can't (well, I'm doing laundry but not folding anything).
Rock on party people! See you tomorrow.
What I hate (the short list)
* Restaurant websites that offer their menus as downloadable PDFs only. I fucking hate that. How hard is it to format a menu on a page. I end up with all these oddly named PDFs on my desktop that I end up having to clean up. I just wanted to see if you had hamburgers or pancakes, I don't want to find your menu 3 goddammed weeks from now! You can easily format a webpage to display anything you want in any way you want! Don't get all uppity with the PDFs!
* Getting my period a full week early, without any warning. None. Just sitting quietly at the desk trying not to kill people and....SPLOOOSH. Fucking uterus. An entire week early. What the hell?
Okay. Calm blue ocean.
Things that I love (short list)
* Making Moon Patrol Generator Dinner! A fruit salad with fresh pineapple, strawberry, grapes and mango on top of Banilla yogurt with a dollop of peanut butter, a sprinkle of granola and a drizzle of honey. YUM. (in addition to the leftover enchiladas that i was supposed to bring for lunch but forgot).
* Dreaming about napping! How odd. I dream that I am so tired I must nap (and I am tired, insomnia is a cruel bitch). Last night I dreamt that I was talking to a neighbor and my sister came by with a big bundle of blankets and pillows. She told me it was time to nap and she brought me to the sofa and bundled me in good. Later I dreamt I was leaving Nordstrom at the MOA and was headed to Bloomingdales. Steve was at Nordstrom and he came up to me. We decided to go to a nap area and take a nap. Unfortunately, the news was on and we had to listen to the details of the death of what's his face in Iraq. Steve was confused so I showed him all these charts and graphs regarding the mission. This is what happens when you set your clock radio to NPR.
* Knowing that Ghengis won't run away when he's off leash.
* Watching Ghengis and David rough house and haul ass around the front yard with Ghengis off his leash (cuz he's a good little fella!).
I woke up Wednesday morning with my grumblepots face on, disappointed that all the planning that went into my world domination scheme was lost. I was so down. How come Satan never showed up? Why had the prophecy not come true? Why did I have absolutely no clean clothes to wear?
David cheered me up by pointing out that an army of winged demons was probably more trouble than it was worth. They're just a bunch of assholes and they don't really follow directions all that well and they probably have really high vet bills. What I don;t need in my life right now are stubborn assholes with high vet bills, I have enough of that as it is.
Someone else pointed out that you'd have to be pretty damned evil to have satan skip out on an appointment with you. That made me feel better too. I'm so badass that I get the best birthday AND satan is scared of me. Go me!
Speaking of high vet bills...
Maddie is getting better (yet again). Her kidneys and her liver are functioning as they should be, she does not hav parasites and she shows no sign of infection. SO she's either allergic to her food or the 5 weeks of antibiotics killed all the bacteria in her belly making it hard to digest food. We have her on a half mushy, half crunchy diet. She seems to be eating it and it seems to be coming out in a manner pleasing to those in the know.
You know?
Birthday party fun being planned for this weekend. I'm staying out of the planning (except to bug people to rsvp). I'm leaving the planning to David and my sister. I'm tired of planning parties, i want someone to plan the party instead!
And the obligatory food bit for Auntie Sue:
Made sweet corn and butternut squash enchiladas last night. The filling was spiced with deep, rich low tones, cinnamon, oregano, ancho chiles, raisins, cardamom, cumin and coriander. The sauce was tomatoes, tomatillos and cilantro. I left that as a bright, high note affair seasoning it with salt, lime juice, sanaam peppers and a touch of cumin. As I was assembling the dish I thought the sauce might be too watery, but it ended up being just right. The bright flavor of the sauce interplayed with the hominess of the filling. Will I make them again? hell yeah!
So, this seems odd, the horsemen have not yet shown up! They were supposed to pick me up to take me in to get fitted for my armor and scepter and throne.
It was supposed to happen today!
Today was surprisingly mundane and non-satanic! I brought maddie t the vet, I had vietnamese food for lunch, I ate some candy.
And in a decidedly non-hellish moment, my air conditioning got fixed.
What. The. Hell?
It's my birthday! It's the day! It's my birthday and it fell on THE DAY!!!! Why have I not risen? I'm gonna duct tape the dogs together to make a cerberus and and jam some chopsticks into my head for horns!
I WILL RULE OVER YOU!!!!!
Other than my lack of rising, I had a lovely birthday, David took me to the Udupi Cafe for South Indian food, we ate until our bellies hurt. I think my favorite was the veggies in the yogurt, carrots, eggplant and zucchini in a coconut and yogurt sauce. We also had masala dosa, I really need to learn to make these at home, they're like the Indian version of a burrito but the wrap is half way between crispy and chewy. These were filled with spiced potatoes and lentils.
Okay, I think I hear some horse hooves punding fire into the pavement...gotta go
edit
ooooh the air conditioning died again! There's hope.
Maddie is not longer vomiting all over the floor or shitting blood everywhere but she's still not eating her regular food, only soft stuff. She's lost so much weight. I may have to take her back to the vet. I'm so worried about her. She's so thin it's painful to look at her. David suggested having her teeth looked at, maybe she has a sore tooth and that's keeping her from eating.
I bought a lot of soft food today and will make another meat and rice stew, this time with a blade roast I have in the freezer.
This morning we went to one of Pablo's cereal parties where I ate two bowls of chocolate peanut butter cap'n crunch with whole milk. All that sugar and fat made me sick.
I made up for it though, I made a spinach/sweet potato/chick pea korma with mock duck, a veggie masala with spaghetti squash, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans and tomatoes. I also made garlic/onion naan for david and potato/pea naan for myself. So healthy I could have died!
Of course I chased it down with a cocktail made of tangerine orange juice and my grandfather's homemade cherry cordial.
So essentially, it was a day of food. Either Maddie's food and wondering what food will make it better, or my food and wondering if I can't just spend every hour of every day cooking for people.
I dreamed I was at a live comedy show. The show was interactive and the comedien came out into the audience often to ask questions.
Because it was my dream he came to ask me questions. He asked me what my sexiest fantasy was. I answered.
I told him that I wanted the Spice Girls to play suction cup darts on my naked butt.
yeah, i don't know either.
After my surgery they gave me a bottle of vicodin to take as needed (up to 8 in a 24 hour period). I took the vicodin. I took the vicodin and chilled and napped and watched movies and chilled and napped and had my picture taken to be placed next to the definition of 'chilled' in the dictionary.
Then I started to notice something strange. I was in love with everything! EVERYTHING! Whenever I went to bed it became the most comfortable bed ever. My naps on the sofa were the most comfortable naps ever. My dogs were the funniest things ever, movies had never been so entertaining.
The Friday after my surgery I was making a chicken sandwich (by which I mean I was gracelessly tearing chicken off the carcass with my left hand and slapping it on sloppily mayonaissed bread), I took the sandwich, my baby carrots and my spicy hummus and sat down to watch more Battlestar Galactica. The first bite was good, the second was better.
OH MY GOD!!! This was the best chicken sandwich I had ever eaten! I wanted to get on my cooking group and tell them the secret to the chicken sandwich, I wanted to figure out how to describe it on here so YOU, my faithful readers, would know the love of a good chicken sandwich.
I knew that even if I described it, you would not appreciate it unless you were here with me and I made it for you with my left hand. This was the chicken sandwich prophesied in the bible, "and, lo, the wrong armed temptress would create a sumptuous dish of fowl and multigrained manna and it shall be good".
Then I realized, whoa, this is just a chicken sandwich. It's good, but it's...not phenomenol.
It's just a sandwich.
That day I decided to stop taking the vicodin. I figured if I kept taking it then chicken sandwiches would only attain this level of attraction while I was on the pills and I would have to take more and more vicodin just to make the chicken sandwiches palatable.
My surgeon told me I had great self control and I didn't know how to tell her it had nothing to do with self control, I just didn't want to ruin chicken sandwiches.