Yes, our government has put up a website to further panic inform the citizenry.
Thank heavens we have good folks to help us interpret the useful information there.
My favorite from this site:
“In case of explosion or fire, bitchslap anyone that comes between you and the nearest exit. “
Mostly a quiet week down here, which is why I haven’t posted anything (well that and LJ getting hammered by DDOS attacks). A couple of items of note, though…
Had a pretty good phone interview on Wednesday with a potential employer. This is going to be an interesting one. Professionally speaking, the position is an excellent challenge – document, optimize, and learn everything a manufacturing line, then disassemble it and move it to another location. There is simply no better way to learnt he ins and outs of manufacturing than this, short of designing and building it from scratch. The downside? The line is currently located in St. Johnsville, NY – that’s about halfway between Albany and Syracuse, in case you’re wondering. I would be there until about the end of the year or so, then the position and the line would shift to Carol Stream, IL – that’s just northwest of Glen Ellyn, outside of Chicago. Now, they’ll pay relocation and (I would assume) temporary living in New York. There’s a lot of questions about what Takaza would do in the meantime, logistics of relocation and when, that sort of thing. Anyway, the next step in the interview process would be to fly up to New York, tour the plant, and interview with folks there. Next, there would be interviews either at the company HQ in Connecticut or at the Carol Stream facility. I should know either today (unlikely, this late in the day) or early next week if I’m into the next round of interviews.
Other stuff this week – made an interesting sugar-spice bread yesterday – orange zest, sugar lumps (that melted on baking to make amazing pockets of syrup in the bread), cinnamon, and allspice. Very tasty, but a bit strong for my tastes. Fortunately, Dan likes it, so that’s cool.
Went benchmark hunting today, and did just terribly. 0 for 6. Two of those were destroyed (the price of progress), the other four I just couldn’t find, even though I’m sure I was within a ten-foot radius of them. From now on I’m staying away from the markers described as being “two inches above the surface of the ground” – keep in mind all these descriptions are at best 23 years old, and a lot can change in that time. I’m sticking with markers that are on buildings, road structures, and the like. Either that or I need to start carrying a shovel and a metal detector…
Tonight? Probably going to do dinner with Thomas & Sherry and Donald & Janelle somewhere. Tomorrow we have the Gang Secret Santa party – this should tell you how difficult it is to match everyone’s schedules around the holidays 🙂
An evening of folk, covers, and rock goodness tonight as I sub tonight on Reverend Radio. Tune in and enjoy!
I’ll be on Reverend Radio again tomorrow night, from 7 PM – 1 AM Eastern time. There’s be some folk, a great collection of cover songs, and some good ol’ rock. Should be fun.
This is a lot of effort, but it’s really worth it, in my opinion – the resulting product is fabulous! Brioche, for those unfamiliar with it, is a fabulously buttery, slightly sweet bread that can be enjoyed on its own (with a nice coarse-sugar coating on top). This is a great pairing with savory Italian sausage that really works well.
It’s sleet, that’s what it is! We have about 1.5 inches of sleet on the ground here, topped with a nice glaze of ice. Takaza actually made the effort to drive to work this morning – he drove about a mile (and got tailgated by a dickhead in an SUV) before he decided it just wasn’t safe and turned around and came home. About ten minutes ago his boss called and told him to not even bother trying to come in today. Yay! I know it’s not much compared to what folks up the Eastern Seaboard are seeing, though. Two feet of snow is never fun, and I know from experience that northern Virginia and Maryland just aren’t prepared to deal with that much snow at once. Y’all stay safe and warm up there, eh?
So, weekend recap. Right. On Friday, Dan treated me to a nice surprise for dinner – dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Very yummy, though we agreed we now need to go to The Angus Barn (a local favorite) to compare the two restaurants. It was a delicious meal, and the company (Thomas, Sherry, Donald, Janelle) and conversation was quite enjoyable.
On Saturday we had the same folks over and I made a nice simple dinner – Sausage baked in brioche bread (I’ll post the recipe and comments in a bit). With the accompanying cheese and crackers and wine (a nice Chateauneuf du Pape) and other munchables, we had a very tasty meal. Dinner was followed by gladiatorial combat and general socializing.
And on Sunday, we did…nothing. And it was good. (OK, Dan resurrected his iBook, that was about it)
So today…I’ll be making some nice bread – not sure what kind just yet. And doing a spot of cleaning. Oh, and job-applying, of course.
So last night shortly before we headed off to bed, Takaza set his iBook to download the 10.2.4 update for Mac OS X. That’s when things started to go horribly wrong. First Mail crapped out and ICQ wouldn’t fire up, then he rebooted. Now it’s not recognizing the mouse or the Airport card at all. This is probably going to require a call to AppleCare, but if anyone has any suggestions we can try, they’d be appreciated!
First off thanks to all of my friends for yesterday’s birthday wishes. Yep, I’m now 35 – not a particularly momentous age except that, as Steviemaxwell mentioned, I am now eligible to run for president. I’m thinking of announcing my candidacy on the “Peace, Love, and Taffeta” ticket…
We commemorated the day yesterday by going to dinner with Donald (me_not_you), Janelle, Thomas, and Sherry at Spartacus Grille, a fabulous Greek restaurant. The flaming (of course) saganaki with shrimp was delicious, and my flame-grilled rack of lamb was quite tasty. The ouzo provided a fitting end to the meal.
My latest obsession is a fabulous book that I’ve mentioned before: Cookwise, by Shirley Corriher, who has appeared several times on Good Eats as their food scientist in residence. I’m only through the first 60 pages (the science of making bread) and I already have at least four or five different recipes I want to try, including Sausage in Brioche and Great Whole Grain Bread. Yeah, the bread machine is easy, but there is a visceral pleasure in making bread by hand. And really, the quality of the handmade bread is much better, in the end.
One more Good Eats tip: the other day I made Alton Brown’s Gold Cake (his version of the classic yellow cake), and the cake itself was fabulous. Since FoodTV’s recipe archives aren’t the most reliable, here’s the recipe:
Alton Brown’s Gold Cake
Well, you get all geeky, that’s what you do with a GPS.
Since we agreed that geocaching was something that’s more fun when done together, I found something else to do with the GPS while Takaza is at work – benchmark hunting. This is even more pointless than geocaching, but it’s just as fun. I tracked down two benchmarks on Friday (which was a good excuse to get out of the house, since there was a realtor showing it). The first one was hard to find (in the floor of a bridge, under some mud) but I got to meet a very friendly local dog who really liked having his ears skritched. The second one involved running through traffic to find the marker on the center pillar of a bridge. This was lots of fun and is definitely something I’ll be doing more. We met up with some of the gang for dinner on Friday, then went to see Bowling for Columbine. It was an interesting movie, deeply flawed in a lot of ways (though I generally agree with Moore’s politics).
Saturday morning I was up far too early to go to a local SCA event to see the knighting of an old friend. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the short time I was there but it also reminded me why the SCA is fun, but not really a place for me. I met up with Dan and friends over pizza in the afternoon and then we adjourned back to the house. Dan and Sherry made dinner while I bummed around and took a much-needed nap. Dinner was pleasant, and was a nice reminder that Dan should cook more often 🙂
We were late getting started on Sunday, but once we got rolling we hit four different local caches. When we pulled up to find the first cache a group of people were getting in their car and driving off. I turned to Dan and said, “Do you think they’re geocachers?” He said, “Nah, couldn’t be.” Then they pulled their car around and asked us if we were geocachers! It turned out they had only found the first of two caches in the park, so we gave them the coordinates for the other cache and we each went off hunting. We had a good day – four caches attempted, four found. Lots of walking through the woods (and off-trail navigation) and some good reminders that our GPS is only accurate to within 10 meters (30 feet). We learned a lot about triangulation and how to think like someone hiding a cache. All in all, we had a blast.
Not much to report about yesterday, except that I had to go to the unemployment office for my bi-monthly employment search review (or as I referred to it, my bi-monthly self-esteem removal). After some shopping, cooking (and a house showing wedged in there), the gang came over for our bi-weekly Mage/Werewolf game, which was fun too.
And now I’m trying to wake up and figure out what to do today. I think I’ll follow steviemaxwell‘s advice and start planning my campaign…
First off, I got a wonderful early birthday present from my darling husband Takaza last night: a Magellan Meridian GPS. With this little toy, we’re going to do some fun geocaching – I can’t believe that there are 27 caches just within a 10-mile radius of our house! I guess that’s what happens when you live in an area full of technogeeks. This seems like a really fun thing for the two of us to work together on, plus it gets us out of the house, which is always good. I also want to try hunting down benchmarks, something that Barbarian suggested when we were last in Chicago. Looks like there’s dozens of them in our area, as well.
Need to run some errands today – drop off a copy of our commitment ceremony invitation to Dan so he can show it to his cow-orker, who was just proposed to and is trying to figure out all the details so they can get married in May (!). Also, I need to stop by Wal-Mart to see if they have a new cutter for my electric razor, too (yeah, I can order it online but I want instant gratification, dammit!). And just for fun maybe I’ll stop by the NC State Farmers Market and see if they have some good fresh produce. Naturally, I’ll have the GPS on during all this so I can figure out the other fun stuff it does…
That today is Mirkowuff‘s birthday. It’s a secret, though 🙂
Happy birthday, Radiowuff!
There was a husky who updated his LiveJournal frequently. Then he didn’t. Oops.
So anyway, to pick up our narrative where we left off…
First off, the radio gig last Thursday went pretty well. I don’t think I ever had more than six or seven listeners at one time, but that’s cool. I inadvertently made my playlist to freakin’ huge – I started it playing at 7 PM, and when I woke up at 6 AM the next morning it was still going. If called upon to substitute again, I reckon I can just pick up later in the playlist and still play music that almost all the listeners haven’t heard yet.
Hey, I’m on the air! Tune in to Reverend Radio until 1 AM ET (or later) tonight. Enjoy!
Looks like I’m going to be filling in for ashmcairo tonight on Reverend Radio!. To listen, just click on the previous link, think click on the “Play” icon.
I’ll be starting tonight at 7 PM, Eastern Time. The first hour or two will be devoted to a Celtic tour of Europe, Canada, and the United States. That will be followed by a Celtic rock set, some folk, then some plain ol’ rock ‘n’ roll to close out the show, sometime around 1 AM ET. Tune in and let me know what you think, either by e-mail (duncan at wolfhusky dot org) or on FurryMuck (DuncHusky).
And here I was thinking I was the only one feeling vaguely queasy about those catfight Bud Light ads:
The prize for actively attempting to repel potential customers goes to Bud Light, for a series of spots as tasteless as the beer-flavored water it was promoting. While I’m for truth in advertising as much as the next guy, I’m not sure it’s in Bud Light’s best interest to portray its base of core customers as leering, sniggering jackasses whose only concerns in life revolve around affordably priced light beer and the width of their girlfriends’ hips — in other words, just the sort of fellows you’d want your stoned teenaged daughter to avoid if the world were anything like its portrayal in a Bush administration anti-drug ad. Even worse, the generally nasty, uncivil and sexist tone of the ads made me feel like a humorless old man, like I should start pulling up my pants to my sternum and yelling at the neighbor kids to get the hell off my lawn. I can’t forgive that any more than I can forgive Anheuser-Busch for selling terrible beer. As it stands, whenever I think of Bud Light in the next year, the only thing I’ll remember is that it’s the brew of choice should I ever find myself needing to drink beer through a clown’s ass.
(From the fine folks over at Teevee.org)
Y’know, for a weekend that was supposed to be relatively quiet we’ve sure been busy.
Friday was a bit odd because schools were still closed due to the inch of snow that we received on Thursday. Well, that and it was about 10 degrees out and the roads were still icy in places. That had the benefit of making Takaza‘s commute easier (no buses to slow down traffic) and our friend Janelle’s day a lot easier (she’s a high school counselor for Wake County Public Schools). So Janelle and I met Thomas near NC State (where he works) for lunch, and there began to foment plans. Janelle and Donald had a slight problem – the coldest day of the year, and no power. We made tentative plans for them and their three cats to maybe crash at our place, but the power came back on at 3:30 PM, so all was good. Nevertheless, we all gathered at our place that night and I made some yummy chicken and dumplings. We had some fabulous champagne and a very tasty rioja to go with it, and after dinner the Food Coma claimed Thomas, Sherry, and Janelle. I t was a quiet, but pleasant night.
Once we got moving Saturday, we met the same folks over at MacGregor Ale House for lunch. Mmm, tasty. From there, we parted ways – I headed back home, and Dan went over to Donald and Janelle’s to prepare a character for our upcoming game, a combination of Mage and Werewolf. I like it because I get to resurrect an old friend – Reuben, from Triangle Ascension. This was a chronicle that we started five (!) years ago, and I bowed out of when I moved to Illinois. If you’re interested, I wrote almost all of the plot summaries in Book I, and of course all of Reuben’s diaries. I still regard “When Reuben Met Dog” and “Loved Ones Lost” to be some of the best fiction I’ve ever written. I have no plans to write anywhere near as obsessively for the new chronicle, but we’ll see what happens.
Anyway, I relaxed at home, took a nice bath and a nap while Dan was working on his character, then joined everyone later for a lovely evening of pizza, wine, milkshakes (not necessarily in that order), and watching and critiquing a dog show on Animal Planet.
Today? Well, once we get going, we need to clean the place up a bit and run to the grocery store for our weekly shopping. Then we’re hosting a Super Bowl party, Tivo-style. This means we get to fast-forward through all the silly talking heads and boring crap and watch the important stuff: the commercials and the game (if it’s 49-3 in the third quarter, we’ll probably be fast-forwarding through the game, too). Being more of a college football fan than a pro ball fan, I barely even know who’s playing so obviously I don’t much care who wins. I do like to watch a good football game, though.
Oh, and by the way – welcome to LiveJournal, Tincrash!
Just to keep things standardized, the new Midwest Furfest banner can be linked to at http://www.furfest.org/images/banner.jpg (where it always was, actually). You can also find useful buttons and code for embedding such at our Link to Us page.
Here’s a little something for your web pages:
Here’s the code:
<a href=”http://www.furfest.org/”>
<img height=”60″width=”468″ alt=”Midwest Furfest” src=”http://www.furfest.org/images/banner.jpg”border=”0″></a>
(Thanks to Puma and Rustitobuck!)
Let it snow
Let it snow
Let it sn…ah, screw it.
Sure, it’s only an inch or two but when you have precious few snow plows and NO salt for the roads, well, things get nasty very quickly. Takaza made it into work today, but reports that the roads are treacherous and slick. With the temperatures not supposed to get above freezing, any snow that gets melted by traffic this morning is sure to refreeze into ice. Joy.
I reckon I’ll just stay home today.
Now that clowns are living in Tremaine‘s underpants, can the invasion of the squid people be far behind?
So Duncan, how did you spend the weekend?
Went to airport at around noon with tickets for 6:50 PM flight, hoping to slip onto 2:40 PM flight. We flew out at 6:50 PM. RDU is not an interesting place to hang out for six hours.
Canadair jets are not made for people who are 6’3″, 270 pounds. Particularly not in the window seat.
Dinner at Outback was nice – see Takaza‘s journal for who was there.
Today’s agenda: Hook up with steviemaxwell and Cheetah and go see The Lion King on IMAX. Also must hit Penzey’s in Oak Park. Then dinner with Linnaeus, Aureth and Jenwolf.
You may now go about your business.
Hey! takaza is filling in for ashmcairo tonight on Reverend Radio. Check it out for good 80’s rock, and whatever other weirdness he decides to play.
This is a recipe from, of course, Cooks Illustrated. It’s a great recipe because it can be done on a weeknight with minimal fuss and makes a truly fabulous roast chicken quickly.
Been bouncing all over Cary and South Raleigh today. After meeting Thomas for lunch at a nifty little diner that’s an NC State institution, it was over to one of my favorite restaurant supply stores to pick up a few accessories (our rubber spatulas have seen better days), then got a quick haircut, picked up a few items from the grocery store, and then got some stamps and dropped some bills in the mail. Oh, and catching the last few chapters of Harry Potter on audio as I was driving. Whee!
We fly out for Chicago on Thursday afternoon, but I’ve got a lot to do before then – last-minute prep stuff for the Midwest Furfest meetings, doing laundry and packing for the trip, housecleaning for the open house our realtor is throwing in our absence. I need to go start prepping dinner before Takaza gets home – recipe to follow, of course!
Not much to report on the last few days – cleaning in preparation for next weekend’s open house (as in toothbrush-on-the-baseboards cleaning), walking a couple miles each day, enjoying yesterday’s 70-degrees weather (before it goes down to the forties this weekend, yeah, I know wah wah wah…). In lieu of any news, I present you with some choice clickables that I’ve come across lately:
Takaza mentioned this already, but Cedar Point has announced their new roller coaster for this year. Think Kings Dominion‘s Hypersonic XLC, only a lot taller and faster. Where XLC is 195 feet and 80 MPH, Top Thrill Dragster will go 420 feet straight up and hit speeds of 120 MPH. Yes, that’s 110 feet taller than Millennium Force. Dig that corkscrew on the way down, too – way cool! (Yes, I have now gotten in touch with my inner roller coaster geek).
Courtesy of BoingBoing (and the referral credit goes to them), I see that Linksys now has an 802.11g wireless access point out for only $139. I really like that it’s backwards-compatible with 802.11b, but a little leery since the official 802.11g spec isn’t due to be released until later this year. This may be a case where the early spec becomes the de facto spec, but we’ll have to see how it plays out. 54 Mbps sure would be nice, though.
You always knew, didn’t you? Now there’s proof! Here’s some Lord of the Rings slash art which is actually quite well done. (Work-friendly inasmuch as a naked male haunch is acceptable…). There’s also stuff from other genres, including X-Files, Highlander, Smallville, and Miami Vice (!). Link courtesy of the Daze Reader.
Finally, what do you mean you don’t read Animated Movies every day? If you are a fan of animation, this is THE place to get the latest dirt and links to some great in-depth background articles. If you were reading, you’d know all about Disney’s next animated feature, the upcoming two-DVD set for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the latest on the animated adaptation of The Polar Express. Enjoy!
Every time I serve this I get requests for the recipe, most recently New Year’s Eve. So here it is:
So, the new year means everything is different, right? Right? Ah well, maybe not.
Not too much has happened in the last week, which explains why I haven’t posted much. The one item of note was Takaza‘s company’s holiday party. See, it was supposed to happen in early December, but got postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.
On Saturday, Dan and I showed up at the Raleigh Elks Lodge at noon (-ish) and started to help set up – we were providing the sound and music (with equipment rented by Dan’s employer, of course). Pretty basic stuff – four large speakers, an 8-channel mixing board (way more than we needed), and a microphone. Music was provided by my laptop, and the 3,300+ MP3 on it. They had also rented plenty of other entertainment: a pretty good pinball machine, air hockey, ping pong, and pool, plus a karaoke machine. Thank heavens the karaoke went unused all night, since it was right next to the mixing board. I wound up handling most of the music since Dan was part of the organizing committee and had to help out with running the party. Even though I have a couple hundred Christmas tracks that I’d accumulated for the party, at this late date they were kind of out of place. Instead I set up a playlist of 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and a couple of recent tracks for background music and just let it run for the first three hours of the party (I’d looked around for decent cheap [free] DJ software and in the end couldn’t beat the old reliable – it was nice to be able to set the playlist and pretty much walk away and not have to worry about it). At about 10 PM, the free beer they were providing started kicking in and I started getting requests for dance music, so I pulled out the Haddaway, C + C Music Factory, and the like (think “dance music for children of the 80’s”). This seemed to go over pretty well, though I took some flak for not having any country. Oh well – we’d asked for requests before the party, and no one volunteered anything, so they could just suck it up. I thought we did a passable job, though I was shocked when Dan in to work on Monday and not only got some compliments for the music we played, he had someone mention that they might need someone to do music for an upcoming wedding. Oh my.
On Sunday, we did…nothing. Again. I could learn to like this. Unfortunately, Dan was feeling crappy, bad enough that he took a half-day on Monday and stayed home on Tuesday. According to the doctor, it’s what could a (possible) precursor to strep throat – he’s on antibiotics now, feeling better and back at work today, so with luck the worst is past.
What to do today? I need to get some forms together to cash out my flexible spending plan from last year – I certainly have plenty of receipts for them from my gym memberships. Also, I need to put in some job applications to keep the Employment Security Commission happy. I also need to start doing some deep cleaning around here – I figure that once every couple of months you have to really scrub the place down to keep it looking spiffy for prospective buyers. I think if I concentrate on one room per day I can have it looking good for when we leave for Chicago next weekend, which coincidentally is a weekend that we’ll be having an open house.
Then there’s next week – we fly out Thursday afternoon for Chicago, probably hanging out with small groups of friends on Thursday and Friday. We’d kicked around doing a big gathering of folks, but since we’ll be doing NoCoasterCon on Saturday, the MFF Post-Mortem Dinner Saturday night, the MFF Board Meeting Sunday at Noon, and the MFF 2003 Kickoff meeting right after that, well, I thought we’d probably get all the large-scale social interaction that we wanted out of all that. Best to keep things simple while we can. Let’s see, a few more posts then I’ll actually go be useful…
We brought in 2003 with a quiet party, just a few friends over. We made some tasty deep-dish pizzas, had tiramisu and banana pudding, and drank a wee bit of wine (four…no, five dead soldiers in the recycling bin). I should have taken pictures, but it’s impolite to embarrass your friends.
Before we went to bed (very late) last night, Takaza and I discussed the past year. 2002 was a wild year, with lots of ups and a few downers. While I could have done without the downers, they provided me with opportunities for growth and a chance to re-examine what is really important to me. First off, any year spent with Dan is a good year. That’s a fact. In addition, this year taught me the importance of my friends – rustitobuck, linnaeus, datahawk, partran, mirkowuff, brophey, rasslor, aerofox, loriana, hartree, Jen, Tracie, the NC Gang, and everyone else who graced our house this year, or who were just a part of our lives. Y’all have kept me sane, made me feel loved, given me the support I needed when things were down, and made what could have been a crappy year a pretty darned good one. Thank you all very, very much.
And for the new year? I don’t make resolutions, but I’ll bend that rule here: I resolve to spend more time with our friends and to make our lives, and theirs, richer for the experience. Peace, everyone.
Q: When you’re unemployed, how is the weekend different from the rest of the week?
A: Um…
Anyway, at least I had more company. Takaza had to work Thursday and Friday (and Monday and Tuesday of this week), so that left me to my own devices for those days, which was odd after having him around for the Christmas five-day weekend. I filled the time with a bit of hiking (I discovered a lovely new place for hiking – White Pines Natural Area, a lovely all-but-deserted area at the confluence of the Deep and Rocky Rivers. It’s a 45-minute drive from our house, but the walk was worth it: kind of hilly, nice flat stretches along the river banks, not a soul in sight. The temperature was in the low-40’s, perfect for a winter hike. Didn’t see much local fauna, probably because they heard me coming from miles away.
On Friday night, we did something a bit atypical for us: we went and hung out in bars 🙂 After shooting some darts at Hot Shots (our usual hangout), we walked next door ad grabbed a spot at the bar at MacGregor Ale House and found a new addiction: NTN Network trivia games. Pretty addictive, though unfortunately it was extremely smoky and afterwards I felt like I needed to fumigate all my clothes.
On Saturday we drove first down to Jordan Lake Dam, which I had stopped by on the way home from White Pines and thought Dan would like to see too. We took a bunch of pictures of the dam and the water rushing torrentially out of the spillway. The Haw River, which the spillway runs into, is actually at a higher level than the spillway exit. The water trying to flow into the spillway meets with the water rushing out and creates a tremendous froth which is simply awesome to stand next to and watch. Dan even took some short Quicktime movies showing the power of the water. Yeah, maybe it just appeals to the engineer geek in me, but I thought it was cool.
After visiting the dam, we drove up to Triangle Town Center and I got some pictures of their very furry Christmas decorations there, and we picked up a few small items. The alleged sales were rather underwhelming, though we picked up a couple of calendars at 50% off. I found my next book purchase – Cookwise, by Shirley Corriher. She’s the food scientist on Good Eats, and the book is fabulous. In the section I was reading, she described not just some good bread recipes, but what each ingredient did for the finished product, and the chemistry behind it. This is a book for me! It’ll have to wait until we have a bit more disposable income, though.
We drove around Raleigh for a bit looking for dinner after we left, and wound up going to Playmakers. We grabbed some dinner, enjoyed a drink at the bar, and played more NTN trivia. A nice way to end the evening.
And on Sunday? On Sunday we didn’t do anything. And it was good. (Candle-lit showers are good too. Oh yes. I recommend them.)
Got shopping to do today. Preparations for tomorrow’s New Year’s Party – need to make tomato sauce for the homemade pizzas we’re doing, and get stuff for the artichoke dip, too. Thomas is bringing his tiramisu, and Donald and Janelle are bringing some delicious champagne too. Yay! It’s a nice day out, so I’ll probably walk a bit too, and listen to some more Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
I have gathered all of the recipes I’ve posted into one place, and I’ll be sure to put other recipes I post there too.
That having been said, here is the recipe for
Duncan’s Cornbread Dressing
I’ve just put up pictures from last night’s Orphan’s Christmas party for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
Doesn’t seem too different from any other day of the year, and that’s actually pretty much OK by me.
This is the first year that we haven’t really decorated the house at all for Christmas, which sort of makes sense given that neither I nor Takaza celebrate Christmas. It seems odd, though – the break from tradition, like something is missing. It’s not too big of a deal, though. Maybe next year, wherever we are, we’ll string some lights on the house or something. Or not.
So, we exchanged gifts over the weekend to commemorate the Solstice – the beginning of a shared tradition for us, I’m hoping. Things were modest, given my employment situation, but we did well: I got Dan a nice set of darts, a How to Host a Murder game, and Unexploded Cow. After exiling me from the house for a bit, I came home to find his gift for me was a series of chocolate discs (dark chocolate with white chocolate letters piped on – eat your heart out, Jacques Torres!) that spelled out 9-0-M-I-N-U-T-E-M-A-S-S-A-G-E-1 PM MON. And that’s what I got – a lovely 90-minute massage from a massage therapist we know in Durham. It was a wonderful gift – perfect, because it was so nice to relax and de-stress.
So on Monday, after a slow start, I went and got my massage (heaven!), then we met up with Thomas and played some darts and pool and drank beer (well, some beer – I’ve found I’ve developed quite a taste for Smirnoff Ice, too). Sherry joined us when she had finished her shopping and we walked over to MacGregor Ale House for dinner. Dan also discovered the joys of NTN Network, which means we may be spending more time at the Ale House for a while 🙂
Yesterday we had Thomas, Sherry, Donald, Janelle, Beth, and Franklin over for Orphan’s Christmas dinner. It was all quite fabulous – Thomas brought a turkey (brined as per Saint Alton’s instructions) and we indeed deep fried that sucker. It was pretty impressive – 375 degree peanut oil makes quite a fuss when you dip a water-laden turkey into it. But the 12.5 pound turkey was done in 40 minutes (even a bit overdone – we could have pulled it out a few minutes earlier), and it was delicious. Nice, crisp skin, moist meat, and not greasy at all (to me, anyway). I made my mom’s sausage dressing, Beth made a green bean casserole, Janelle made some mashed potatoes, and we were good to go! Sherry made some yummy peanut butter cookies with mini-Snickers in them for dessert, and Janelle also made a chocolate-Macadamia nut torte that was quite tasty as well. We sent everyone home a little before midnight, fat and happy.
And today…today we rest.
I wish all of our friends out there a joyous holiday, whichever it may be. I hope you are with ones you love, or at least in the minds and hearts of ones you love.
You know what makes everything better? Homemade peanut butter cookies. Oh yes.
By the way – if you’re in the Chicago area, you need to fill out Takaza’s poll! Let us know what plans you think we should make for Friday night when we visit on the weekend of January 17-19.
Two things I forgot:
1. chronocoon has finally gotten around to posting a page with his music on MP3.com. He’s a talented musician – you should check out his page, download some of the songs, and buy his album! (If you liked the piano playing in the lobby at MFF, many times that was Chrono playing…)
2. We’ve stopped buying sandwich bread altogether and instead are making our own in the spiffy bread machine my parents got us for our commitment ceremony last year. I make a loaf of bread per week, and I have found a recipe for buttermilk bread that is amazingly easy and perfect for sandwiches.
Check out the recipe here…
For all you concom geeks, here is the demographic breakdown for the attendees of Midwest Furfest 2002. This is a more complete form of the summary that was posted to the MFF-Staff mailing list. These results will also be sent in for addition to the Anthropomorphic Fandom Convention Information Sheet.
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…
Oh wait. Wrong shtick.
So anyway, I’ve been puttering along on my job search since Midwest Furfest, tossing applications off from place like Monster and Flipdog with little expectations of replies. Certainly no phone calls from recruiters or anything like that. Well, on Tuesday that all changed. I got calls from three different recruiters, and one other one on Wednesday. It appears that the hoped-for break in the logjam in the first quarter of 2003 might actually be coming to pass.
The first recruiter had a possibility in Boston. I told him I would consider it, but I really was centering my search in the Chicago area. No problem – he can get more info to me and we’ll see what develops. I’d be stupid to flatly turn down anything. The second recruiter didn’t have much for me specifically, but we chatted about my resume for about a half and hour and she’s got a good picture of me and my credentials. The fourth recruiter had a project engineering position in Kalamazoo that requires seven year’s experience in managing capital projects. I only have two years under my belt, so I don’t really think it’ll go anywhere, but who knows? Can’t say I’m wild about Kalamazoo, but I could do worse.
The third recruiter I talked to, though – she had a job I’m really excited about. It’s in Belvidere, Illinois, just five miles east of Rockford. I thought it was pretty far out until I did some checks on Mapquest – Belvidere is about as far west of Chicago as Joliet is south of Chicago. That’s not so bad at all. The job is with Green Giant, which was owned by Pillsbury, which was purchased by General Mills a few years back. It’s a systems engineer position, and according to the general job description sounds like it would be something I would really enjoy. What really got me interested is when I looks at the job benefits – domestic partner benefits mentioned prominently, new employees get three weeks of vacation. Hell, at my last job I was still three years away from getting anything more than two weeks of vacation. Not that it would ever apply to us, but I also noticed that fathers of newborns (and those adopting!) get one week of paid leave – if nothing else, I really like the thinking behind policies like that. I should know in the next few days if they are interested in a phone interview, even though that wouldn’t take place until after the first of they year.
In other news…
Not too much going on. Got some Christmas shopping done. Got our tickets for the trip to Chicago in January as well. We’ll be at NoCoasterCon, then some meetings for Midwest Furfest. Got the budget for Registration for MFF 2003 put together as well. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, but right now I’m guessing we’ll see about 20% growth (down from last year’s 32.5% growth, but better than the prior year’s 8.1%). This would give us a total attendance of 820, with 128 sponsors. I’ll probably be modifying those estimates on the fly as registrations come in.
On the to-do list:
Make bread today.
Watch the finale of The Amazing Race tonight.
Watch the Survivor finale tomorrow night (not that we really care. This season has been a real dud).
Watch the super-duper edition of Fellowship of the Ring this weekend (we never got around to seeing it in theaters).
Go see The Two Towers this weekend.
Meet Thomas (and Sherry?) for darts and beer Monday afternoon (need to look up other game rules so we can play something besides Cricket and 301/501).
Prepare the menu for the Orphan’s Christmas Party we’re having on Christmas Eve (mmm, deep fried turkey…)
Think about the menu for our New Year’s Party. The only definites are artichoke dip and Thomas’ delectable tiramisu.
Here is an amusing story about how a guy in New Orleans got screwed selling an Powerbook to a guy in Chicago on eBay. He sends computer, gets a phony cashier’s check (deposits it, bouncing, fees, etc.). He gets pissed. Using reverse phone number lookups and other net tools, he figures out where the guy is, then takes his case to a couple of Mac forums. He then sets up a sting operation with the local authorities (after some false starts) and nails the evil-doer. And all this took place in the last two weeks. What a great story – check it out.
– Try out a new recipe from Cook’s Illustrated for four-cheese pasta casserole (Italian Fontina, Reggiano Parmesan, Pecorino Romano: good. Gorganzola: bad). For a first, I think we finally found something that Takaza likes that I don’t. Go fig.
– Drive Takaza into work at 7 PM so he can let the BellSouth repairman in to fix their phones. Hey, it gets me out of the house…
– Take car into dealership for two new tires courtesy of some unknown Technical Service Bulletin (“Sorry, we can’t show those to the public.” Riiiight…). This means I now have replaced all four tires on a car that is less than 19 months old. No charge for the tires, anyway. At least I got the oil changed while I was there.
– Do laundry. Strip the bed. Flip the mattress. Make the bed. See the househusky in action! yay.
– Check airfares to Chicago for our January trip (courtesy of earlier bumpings on United, we have a voucher for one free ticket and $100 off another ticket). There’s a 5:25 PM flight we could make with the comp time Takaza got from last night call-in, but it’s $40 more than the 6:50 PM flight. Nuts. Eh, we’ll take the later flight and get in at 8:10 PM. Easier to get out of O’Hare then, anyway.
– Takaza’s Holiday party, postponed from last week due to the ice storm, has been rescheduled to January 4. Damn. I was so hoping it would be on the 18th, when we’re in Chicago. Oh well. Scrap all the Christmas music we were going to play, start laying in a supply of general “winter” songs and dance music. I’ve got 8.5 Gb of MP3’s on my laptop – if they can’t find something they like in that, they need help. Guess I should pick up more 80’s stuff, though.
– Word has it they’ll have karaoke. Kill me now, please.
– Walk. Two miles around the neighborhood = 2 chapters of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Only 20 chapters to go! (Yes, I’ve read it before, but I’m listening to the audiobook this time around – I’ve forgotten enough that it’s entertaining all over again).
– Make pizza dough. Home made pizzas tonight, yum!
– Plans for the weekend? Not much. Invitation to Rob and Janet’s Sunday afternoon for gaming and socializing. Not sure if we’ll go or not, but the socializing would be nice. Oh, for those that know them: Janet announced this week that she is pregnant again. Congratulations to them! Looking further out, we’re hosting an Orphan’s Christmas on Christmas Eve. Good company, good food. We’ll have to fire up the fireplace and at least make an effort to make the place Christmas-y (or at least Solstice-y?) Maybe some pine centerpieces and stuff.
Isn’t it a good thing I’m easily amused?
Hey kids, it’s time for some new pictures from Duncan and Takaza! We’ve got shots from our trip to the Chicago Wolves game, the most recent ice storm, and just hanging around the house. Duncan-Bob sez check it out!
Datahawk was nice enough to try out a couple of different recipes for snickerdoodles while she was here, and though the recipe from Penzey’s was tasty, the winner is the recipe from The Best Recipe.
My, it’s been an interesting week-and-a-half. If I posted more often y’all would know more about it, but instead you get…
Yet another of Duncan’s weekly recaps!
Still recapping last week’s post-Midwest Furfest fun…
Today is World AIDS Day.
For your consideration:
I have been very fortunate that AIDS has not touched my life directly, but it has touched the lives of those near and dear to me. Consider these figures from the National AIDS Trust for 2001:
5 million people were newly infected with AIDS.
3 million people died of AIDS.
40 million people were living with AIDS.
By the end of 2000, 21.8 million people have died of AIDS.
What you can do:
Know the facts. Know which activities are safe and which are not. Don’t guess – this is your life at stake here.
Get involved. Help with an AIDS service organization – monetarily, or by donating your time. Attend fund-raisers, and support their causes by word of mouth where you can.
Help your friends and loved ones. Support those whose lives have been touched by the AIDS epidemic. Your love and support will be appreciated.
So, Midwest Furfest. Right.
There was a convention called Midwest Furfest. A silly man volunteered to run Registration, and in the course of events wound up doing a little bit of work for Publications and Security along the way, plus whatever else needed doing. Occasionally, he got some sleep, too, though not enough.
One day, he might write about it in more detail, but not now, except to say that he survived, the convention ran well, and he is now going to go sleep for a while.
Last day at home…
My job today is to pack up the last little bit of stuff (laptops, cooler, suitcase) and stuff it into our already extremely-full car, then go through the house and give it a thorough cleaning in the event that someone wants to see the house while we’re in Chicago. Hmm, I need to call the realtor too, since some kind soul left the door on top of the flyer container open during the downpours over the weekend and all of the flyers within got soaked. Oh, and I’ll probably stop at the grocery store on the way up to pick up Takaza to pick up some munchies for the road, too.
Let’s see, we’ve got about seven hours of driving to do tonight to get us through to Morehead, Kentucky. We’ve got a good audio book to help speed along the miles, so that will help (all 20 hours of it! Yeesh) Then another seven or so hours to get us up to the convention hotel, where we’ll get in around 2 PM, hopefully. Wednesday night will bring an alarming number of folks to our hotel room to help stuff bags with flyers, con books, pocket programs, and other goodies. Thursday brings more preparations, though really the only thing I need to do that day is pick up the chains and stanchions from the rental place and then set up Registration once Rusty gets on site Thursday afternoon. I’m sure stuff will pop up in the meantime, though, and I know Takaza has a bunch of stuff to do so I’ll probably wind up helping him.
Well, time to get motivated. Hope to see y’all at the convention!
Yes, it really is 7 AM on a Sunday and I’m awake. I’m a morning person, what can I say?
So, the latter half of the week was quite busy. Between having my car worked on (24,000 miles on it and both front hub bearings need to be replaced – that ain’t right!), picking up the con books and the pocket programs, last-minute errands to Office Depot and such, and, oh yes, a dinner party on Friday. I am insane, yes, why do you ask?
Actually, the dinner on Friday was fun, but exhausting. Wisely, I let Thomas handle the main entree – roasting a couple of chickens in his shiny new gadget. Call me a purist, but I think I’ll stick to old-fashioned oven-roasting methods. We also had some soup, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, crackers and cheese, spinach dip, and beef stew. In other worse, like most Gang events of this type, enough food to feed an army. For dessert, I make a yummy tasty White Chocolate Creme Brulee that was fabulously easy to make. I’m not a big fan of white chocolate and I loved this.
