Best present ever!

I caught Biscuit being cute:

It's not as good as the Mittens one, that's for sure, but I got a kick out of the way he made a beeline for under the tree as soon as it was up. Like he's channeling Mittens' spirit or something.

Can you believe I only have 11, well now 12, posts labeled as "cats"? I'll have to get to work improving that number.

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Less grainy ice cream

My ice cream is grainy. That's from too much ice crystal growth. So, I've just spent the last couple minutes looking up how to get homemade ice cream to be less grainy. I have several options:

1) add about 1 tsp vodka. The alcohol helps prevent large crystal formation.

2) cook ingredients to 170F, put in fridge for a while to chill and mellow before adding to ice cream maker. Does something sciencey with proteins and enzymes.

3) remove milk completely from the recipe I'm using, fill in the volume with the cream and 0.5/0.5. There's a lot of water in the milk, no matter what grade it is. So, remove a source of water and remove a source of crystals.


Option 1 is appealing because it's easy and I like alcohol. Option 3 looks appealing because it's easy and I apparently like being fat. Option 2 is not appealing, as it adds infinitely more work to the process. But this option is probably the real way to do things, like the way professionals do it, you know?

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Christmas (un)wrap-up

So. It's Sunday after Christmas. I have to go to work tomorrow, after taking all of last week off (some voluntarily, some not). I had a killer cold that really knocked me on my ass worse than a cold usually does. Seriously: I slept in my recliner for two nights so my head wouldn't fill up. It worked in that regard, but the day after the first night's recliner sleep I was really sore. That achyness made me feel way worse on Day 2 (Wednesday) than I normally would have. I was pretty good on Christmas day, after guarding the Christmas tree all night long. Hubby got me an ice cream attachment for my electric mixer. We tried that last night with peppermint (that's why I put so many candy canes on the tree), and it worked pretty well. I've only had a small spoonful of it today, but initial predictions are that it was a success. My parents got us some brain food: lots of puzzles of different types Hubby specifically asked for almond roca, which he got in his stocking. "Not as good as I remember" is what he says about that. I got him a bitchin' flashlight, so now he's reading up on the latest in the flashlight world. Also he got a hat. Pictures coming, as soon as I edit his face to spare (me) the shame.

We ate Christmas dinner at a friends house. They had two of their kids (the two they have with each other, the other two were off with the other parents) with them this holiday, ages 8 and 9? 8 and 10? 9 and 10? don't remember, but they still believe in Santy. Anyway, they apparently snuck down at midnight (just missing Dad putting bikes and things together) and then tried to wake Mom up at like 3, but were allowed to get up at 7 or so. Dad was pissed because the girls didn't freak out at their awesome presents (because they weren't surprised)! But of course he can only yell at them for sneaking, he can't explain how he wants them to be excited over his presents, because they aren't from him! They're from Santy Claus!

Friday I used another box of kleenex because the other nostril was running like a faucet. Saturday and Sunday we did absolutely nothing. It was awesome. Except tomorrow we have an appraiser coming because we're applying for a refi! So I've been trying to clean a little. So, we have a 5/1 ARM (30 years!!) and the rate is 5.875% during these first 5 years years of fixed rate. We've been thinking about refinancing for like a year now, so we're finally doing it. Looks like we can get a 30 year fixed for 5.0% That'll save us a couple hundred a month. I was hoping to get down into the 4s, but I guess this is good enough. And the best part? The loan will be sold off the Fannie Mae. Yes. It still exists, apparently. Hubby says "Isn't that what got us in trouble in the first place?" Oh! and the lady we talked to was the same from the original deal, and she actually recognized us! After more than two years! I mean, she didn't blurt out "Mr and Mrs ___!! So nice to see you!" or anything, but she did acknowledge we looked familiar. Anyway, by getting this payment as low as possible, it'll help if we ever try to rent the place out if we have to move away ("Army!!" said with fist shake like Kirk saying "Kahn!!") to either make more money on rent income, or be able to offer lower rent and still breaking even, etc. I have never rented a single family home before, so I really don't have any idea what kind of rent a family pays to live there. I thought that our mortgage payment was going to be too high of a price to ask for a family to pay. But I could be way off. Either way, saving money is good. So the inspector whatever guy is coming tomorrow. If he needs to get into the attic space, the hole is in my closet. I better hide my dirty underwear.

More Holidays adventures: apparently we're going on a dinner cruise for New Year's Eve. This is news to me, because I thought the guy of the couple we're going with had a gig and we were going to watch him play. I love being kept in the loop! So I have no details on the dinner at all. Don't know where it is or anything. Also, I'm suspicious of the fact this thing hasn't been sold out for months already.

OK, I'm tasting my ice cream: Pretty good, not as good as my mom's but way better than when I did it by hand last year. The flavor is just fine, but the consistency is a touch grainy and icy.

Oh! how could I forget the week before Christmas. Thursday was our holiday party, for which I may get a Commander's coin for my picture taking (even though I only took a couple, the emcee stole it and took tons of really excellent pictures of people, but she's already getting a coin for emceeing). After that was drinking at the local bar for four hours. The party was held on base, so no alcohol at all, and we were glad to get to the bar. Then the next night was more drinking at a work friend's Christmas party. They live out in the middle of nowhere in a house the same size and build quality as my parents' but for half the price. Literally half the price. I Zillowed it. This guy's house is freaking amazing. The great room has a full two story ceiling, and the Christmas tree at 13 feet still looked small. OK, it looked like a giant when you were standing next to it, but when you look at it and all the space it still has to take up, then it looks small:
OK, fine. It doesn't look small any way you look at it because it was a giant freaking beautiful tree. And real too.

The iPhone takes really horrible pictures, by the way.

Friday after Christmas we had lunch with friends and their new baby:
Too cute to not take a picture! And note to my mom, who's reading this I know: They came in with your binky banky wrapped over her. They all absolutely love it, and are very thankful. Binky means blanket, right? and not bottle? Ba ba is bottle? EDIT: WB thinks "binky" means pacifier, and I think that sounds right. So how about "banky" for blanket? Click for full post and comments

Got a little treat coming

for my hippie parents. I'm going to wait until it's dark so you can see the flames...

Nevermind.

It was going to be a picture of the Time cover of Obama in the fireplace, but then I got sick for freaking three days, Christmas came and went, and also the magazine is buried at the very bottom of the trash can.

Oh well, it would have made me look like a racist anyway.


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Waiting til the last moment

After finally watching The Dark Knight (awesome!) we went out for some lunch. I was just thinking a place in the mall, but as soon as we got into town we realized that was an unrealistic option. You see, it's the Saturday before Christmas, so apparently everyone in the county has descended on our one mall to do their last minute shopping. The streets all around the mall were packed, the streets going into the mall were backed up. So yeah, we drove right on by for another place.

Doesn't anyone shop online? I am expecting two last presents that I got online. No actual interacting with (ugh) people for me.

PS. About the movie: I tried to rip the movie onto my computer, as I do with most rentals, but I was getting an error on a certain part of the disc. The last time that happened I was able to get around it, but not this time. So we put in the movie, and guess what the first thing up was (before previews)? Yeah, a redone story using Casablanca footage about "Rick" (the Bogart) and "Lisa" (Ms. Bergman) and the evils of piracy. Hmm. I get the hint, you DRM loving assholes. But it won't stop me from trying to rip the next good movie to come into my possession.


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Christmas pictures

Look at the candles on the coffee table. They were a freebie Christmas present (meaning I didn't have to wait to open it!) Apparently river rocks make for a heavy box to ship.

(Click for bigger)

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Tree is up

It's a fake prelit (white lights) we got a couple years ago. It has approximately 1,000 candy canes on it, as I am planning on making peppermint ice cream sometime. I didn't have time to take a picture of it, I'll do that tomorrow maybe. Biscuit has already discovered that under the tree is a good hiding place, but there's no water for him to drink. I wonder if he was expecting that from his past life before I got him?

Also done today is a batch of sugar covered nuts and a loaf of banana bread. The nuts could have come out better because the lady who did them before (who I got the recipe from) used pecan. I used walnuts, and I have to say even though I don't really like pecans, walnuts are not very good for this:

1 egg white + 1 Tbsp water whipped until foamy.
1 pound pecans not walnuts stirred in until covered
1 cup sugar + 1 tsp cinnamon stirred in until covered

bake 250F spread out in a large cookie sheet for 1hr, stirring up and turning nuts over halfway through.

The pecan version was so good. But the walnuts just have too much of a flavor for this to work.


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Putting things on animals

Click all pictures for bigger. Especially the last one.

God, I thought the other one was on my side. Gonna have to kill him too.

As soon as I get out of here, I swear all you bitches are gonna die for this!

I'm trying to hibernate, bitches

Santa taste yummy

I haven't done anything to Saffron yet. I have a feeling she'll just sit there, because any attention is good attention.

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Not what he had in mind

Hubby and I were at Target looking for things to put on animals. He also wanted a Santa hat. This is what we found until we finally found the Santa hat section (in the food section, duh!) Who would wear this? And how worried should I be that this was the only one left out of two slots?

PS. Here's a tip for going out shopping during the busiest time of the year: don't let your 1 year old kid who's not all that great at walking yet loose down the main aisle in the front of the store. It causes just a few holdups.

That trip to Target was as life-force draining as a trip to Walmart.


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I have gas

I just bought premium gas for $1.39!!! How'd I do it? By going to Safeway and plugging in my old phone number from before moving out to Maryland. Some other guy's name is now on "my" Club Card receipts, but crap. That's my phone number, buddy! Anyway, the current price for premium is $1.99, so that's a savings of 60 cents PER GALLON!!! I actually feel a little bad about using up (OK, stealing) this deal. But it's my phone number!


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Shoot me please

So tonight at the pottery place there was a tableful of moms. One in particular spent the entire four hours I was there talking about how many ounces the baby ate at each feeding; how many hours the baby slept for the first six months; weaning off the bottle. Agh!! I was sick of it, and even the two ladies I was with said how they are so over that part of their lives (they both have grade school aged kids). But I still had fun, as usual. All I know is those moms need to have conversations about worldly matters. Even talking about whatever insipid TV show they're watching would have been better.


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Color me mine

It's a lightup Christmas tree, if you can't tell.

PS. It came out really well. The white was opaque as promised.


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Confirmed: Pantene is telling the truth

I use Pantene shampoo and conditioner. Have been since high school. When I started coloring my hair I made sure to use the color protecting formula. Now I'm tired of dying my hair so I've got some pretty good roots going. Well, I was using the color formula just to use up the bottle, thinking it wouldn't make much difference. Well let me tell you, it does make a difference! Who'da thought? The undyed roots had such a gross residue after washing, it was like I didn't get all the conditioner out, even when I would make extra sure to rinse super well. Well now that bottle is done, and I got some smooth formula. My hair is back to normal!! No residue!! Thanks, Pantene, for all your animal testing to make such a good product!


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Pop, don't look at this unless you like drool on your shirt

I don't know how to do "below the fold" in a blogspot blog.


It's my dad's Christmas present, which came today so I had to play with it. Already managed to lose a piece. Also, I wanted to see if I could get pictures of a model to look like pictures of a life sized car. The headlight picture I took look pretty life sized, but then he would have seen the color. Click for full post and comments

My surprise [Updated]

is that I have put together all my purdy pictures on another blogspot site in the hopes of selling them and making some money. But now I've decided to donate any money I get from that to the charity writersblock is working her ass off for: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Traning. She's going to run a freakin marathon! It's to fight cancer, yo. So get on it and spend some money.

Here's her TNT site

But of course when her deadline is up (end of December) I'll go back to keeping all that sweet sweet cash.

UPDATE: Only two weeks left. Go to the TNT site and donate! Now!

UPDATE: GOAL REACHED!! Hooray! Yippee! Awesome! Yay!

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Cold feet

Biscuit was very excited to be let in this morning.

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Yes, I really am that much of an idoiot idiot

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Something's missing

Now that it's Christmas time, I like to do a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream (spray kind) with sprinkles on top. All that is stirred with a candy cane. So I'm doing up my drink (nothing says class like Nestle instant hot chocolate and spray Rediwhip) and realize the old candycanes I had extra from last year don't smell right. They smelled like plastic and not like peppermint. So I threw those out. I'm drinking my missing ingredient drink, thinking it could use some punch or zing or something. "If only I had a source of peppermint" I thought. It was good, because anything with Rediwhip is good. But it was missing that last little bit.

Today I looked at the cupboard as saw the peppermint schnapps. dammit!

Today at the commissary I got candycanes and freshened my multi-year-old hot chocolate.


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Me likey

So I grabbed a Kleenex off of a secretary's desk and said "this thing smells funny." Turns out Puffs makes kleenex imbued with the power of Vicks vaporub. Needless to say, I've been inhaling deeply on my crack-filled snotrag, just because I love that stuff so much! (er, the Vicks, not the snot.)


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Look what my mommy made

It's a baby blanket for a friend's newborn. She is coming to terms that she will never make one for her own grandchildren.


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Uh, I think something might be moving in...

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I was going to blog something

but I forgot what it was. It was about something I did today. hmm. used a $25 gift card for Applebee's. Oh yes, now I remember. I downloaded the free app for my iPhone that tells you the name of a song you let it sample, called Shazam. It works pretty good, it records for maybe 10 seconds, and then spits out the artist, song name, album name, cover art, if any, and record label. This is all from some giant database, and so far it seem pretty inclusive. It doesn't know the Thai artists Hubby has on the computer, but it did know all the Dance and Techno we plugged in. Oh! One cool thing is it links directly to a Youtube video of the song, if there is one. It also links to the song in iTunes, so that's probably why it's a FREE app. So at Applebee's I was testing the Christmas music they had playing. Even with people talking in the background, or the football game going, it could still pick it up. I was impressed, but then I am easily impressed. Hubby's got a godawful remix of "We Will Rock You" all done up rap-style, but it's bad rap (I mean worse than the usual stuff, I'm talking Rapture awful). So I hit record during the chorus, which is not sampled, but resung by the "artist", and Shazam! it came up with the right answer.

So anyway, that's what I did this weekend.


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cat blogging

I can't help it.

He's just so cute!

The vase on the table is my latest creation at the paint pottery place. It took lots of attempt to get a picture where Biscuit actually held still for the 1.6 sec exposure. That cat is a licking fiend. Also, he shouldn't be laying there. But he's so cute and I can cuddle up with him.

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I got rick rolled

And I'm not talking about the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I was looking for a Bioshock 2 trailer on Youtube. It was right after I found a crappy video of a kid videotaping his TV while the trailer rolled, and right before I found a good quality trailer. It started normal, and then HE popped up on the screen with his dumb ass little video. Well played, sir.

In other XBox news, I updated my Live account so that we can instantly watch Netflix through the internet. It is awesome!!! So far we've only watched the current season on NCIS. But when they say instant, they mean it. You go through the computer to put things on your instant watch queue (different from the send them by mail queue) and within a couple seconds the videos in your queue pop up on the menu in the Xbox. Awesome! There's not a whole lot of good movies in the watch instantly selection yet, but tonight we're going to watch Pirates At World's End.

The video quality of a watch instantly Netflix program is pretty good. If you hit "native resolution" on the TV, you'll see the video is actually quite low resolution, but it's HD (depending on program) so once it stretches out onto the TV it still is pretty good. Better than non-HD TV programming, less than HD programming.

Oh jeez. I just remembered the last part of my XBox rant. To get the Netflix functionality to work, you have to get the update called "new Xbox experience" or something. It changes the whole menu system of the interface and it is really really stupid. You have to pick an avatar for your profile, and it is so much like the Wii I can't believe Microsoft isn't getting sued. IF I WANTED WII CHARACTERS ON MY SCREEN I'D BUY A STUPID WII!!! Since I don't have a Wii, I must not want to look at those stupid little poorly drawn characters. It really pisses me off how childish and dumb looking they made the whole thing. It was just fine they way it was before, assholes. Click for full post and comments

Turkey Day 2008

So, I'm responsible for the turkey, cornbread, gravy and pies for dinner at a friends house today. It's my first turkey.

Last night: get turkey into brine:
- bought a brine kit from Crate and Barrel, because it had spicy goodies in with the salt. dunno if that makes a difference.
- washing the bird: I realized once I had that sucker unwrapped in the sick I have no effing clue what I'm doing. I washed it some, pulled some yellow gunk off, pulled out a few feather buds. eh, hope it's good enough.
- bird in the brine in the cooler, surrounded by ice, and totally covered in the brine.

Today: what the freak was I thinking:
- woke up at 9 (dinner at 2) got the cavity packet prepared: onions, carrots, celery, spices.
- got the veggies into the bottom of the pan, and washed off the bird.
- rubbed olive oil and herbs all over, and it was icky. most of it rubbed off whenever I turned it over.
- trussing the sonofabitch: I couldnotforthelifeofme get those motherf'ing wings to fold onto its back. And then all my goodies were falling out of the cavity.
- 10:15 finally got the f'ing thing trussed, I guess, and in the oven. This is only supposed to take a couple hours, since there's no stuffing, so we'll see.

- 10:30 starting the gravy. Giblets are gross.

-11:00 first rotation of the bird. It actually went better than I thought.

-11:20 second flip, no incidents

-11:40 last flip, burned my arm on the pan. dammit!


8:00pm, after dinner:
-Turkey came out really well. I cooked it for 2:15, and the pop-up did not pop, but the juices were clear and the real thermometer read over 170F. My cornbread was delicious as always.
-gravy from the turkey didn't actually come up to much volume, and I added not very much flour so it wasn't very thick. I used all* the drippings, and then didn't add any salt. I though it tasted pretty good, if thin.
-The meal consisted of: turkey, ham, scalloped corn, corn bread, sweat potato casserole, mashed potato, baked bread, stuffing with sweet sausage (yum!), pumpkin pies, apple pie. There may have been one or two more items, but I don't remember. I do know I didn't see and cranberry sauce.

whew! I'm tired. Time for a third piece of pie and some TV.

Happy Thanksgiving!


*no I didn't, apparently. I found another half a cup of drippings in the freezer that had been separating, and I forgot all about it! Click for full post and comments

who knew?

Apparently Target is the place where all the young skanks hang out. It's freakin 40 out. Put on a damn jacket!


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Foxy

There was a fox in my yard yesterday. In broad daylight. Carrying something grey and furry in its mouth. And it was trotting around the yard, I think looking for a place to hide and eat. It came to maybe ten feet from the back door, so I got a pretty good look at him. No, there are no pictures of something so cool, of course. I was on the phone.


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I'm as mad as Elaine with her sponge problem

I think my deodorant is discontinued. I've been using Secret since forever, because I sweat like a pig, and it's the only one that worked. I use the soft solid one, where you squeeze the white goop through the holes (it's not the gel). Also, I use unscented. So at first when I couldn't find what I wanted I chalked it up to the commissary sucking, whoch is does, regularly. But now I can't find it at the regular grocery store either. Not only is it hard to find unscented anymore, but today I finally sucked it up and got regular solid. Poop! I'm mad!


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whoa

It's snowing right now. Just a little, but the flakes are bigger than yesterday's. Isn't it a little early for snow? Al Gore must be in town.


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Yay satellite radio

I like satellite radio just so I can see the artist name and song title as the song is playing, rather than hoping the DJ remembers to say the name sometime during the day. So, imagine my surprise when a song comes on from GnR's new album. The first little bit of it sounds exactly like Collective Soul, so here I am thinking I've got a new album to buy. But a glance at the title set me straight. It's a pretty good song, can't remember the name though. Not good for taking 17 years to make, but still.

Also, the regular radio around here kinda blows. There's not a lot of choice for one thing, and also the stations themselves aren't very good. I guess Seattle knows music better than Bal'more and DC. So, because of the suckage, I haven't heard any Tool except from my iPod. Satellite radio to the rescue! I've been listening to a station I guessed to be the best bet, and sure 'nuff, Tool was on today. Yay!


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More drinkin' and paintin'

Just a small bit of what my friend is painting.


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Drinkin' and paintin'

I'm here right now. Notice the top of the bottle.


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Cat blogging

is good for you.
Every once in a while Biscuit gets tired of laying on the floor or our chairs, so he'll get up on our laps without me even having to hunt him down and hold him against his will.

I found a flea on him (the cat, not the Hubby) the other day, so I went out and got the goop you squirt on the back of the neck. So now I've got a greasy little booger running around. But I did learn that that goop stuff actually kills fleas and ticks. I guess I just thought it repelled them like old fashioned flea collars. So that got me thinking about what an ingenious killing method that is: apply to skin, skin absorbs and body possibly metabolizes the goop, creating a compound that kills the things that will eat the blood! Awesome!

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Boring lizard post

I feed the Beardies superworms (big meals worms). The worms go in mealworm bedding (chopped up wheat), and somehow through some miracle of life that I don't understand, the worms never reach their pupal stage until I, say, try to feed a gecko who just lets it sit in its cage forever. Anyway, I had a problem with the last batch of mealworm bedding: it had been on the shelf too long before I bought it (online, otherwise I would have found a different bag) and had moths living in it. So, being the cheapskate that I am I thought I would salvage the two bags. I sifted through both bags and removed any moth larvae I found. I thought I was in the clear until a few weeks later when there were some moths flying around the house, and I saw the little larvae crawling out of the bucket I have the superworms in. Also, my spare bag has a new batch of moths in it. Oh! and the best part was when the larvae I missed chewed their way out of the ziplock bag the extra bedding was in. And it's been a couple months now, but I still have stray moths every once in a while. But I won't change my ways even after this situation: $30 for 1000 superworms is nothing to sneeze at, so I'll stay with this method.

So, the moral of the story is to just throw that crap out if it's gone bad and don't try to save it. It was nothing but trouble.


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ugh

1) Don Johnson is a horrible singer. And I use the term singer loosely. Real loose. About as loose as it gets.

2) The last trees in my yard are letting go of their leaves, and I'm watching my leaf pick-up job grow and grow.


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This took four weeks to get

It's big black and beautiful. It's a 550, and there were none in Maryland, so this came from NC, and it took the trucking company a couple weeks to pick it up and make their way up the I-95 corridor to here. I've been wanting a new car for at least a year, and I couldn't turn down 0.9% financing. It's like free money! No. Seriously. It's free money.

As for the buying experience: This is the third car for me to buy, and this group of people really were the best at their jobs. After buying the Jetta I felt like I had been raped and I just needed a hot shower. I felt disgusting (not because of buyer's remorse, just because those guys were total creeps). Buying the Wrangler was easy, since it was cash during Chrysler's employee price event on 2005. Those guys were cool, because we spent a solid two hours just shooting the breeze while I was trying to decide if I was buying a car or not. The main manager guy had a pimped out Wrangler that was lifted, big nubby tires, painted an awesome lime green (sounds bad, but Wranglers can pull off the weird colors) and had strip lighting all around the inside I think. They were just cool guys. And those two dealerships were in the same town in WA, so it's not a regional attitude thing. But BMW. Man. I mean, you still have the main manager guy who's a slick talker, but there's just a different atmosphere all around. I shall record my happiness in my survey, whenever it comes.


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Boring fish post

I changed the CO2 tank on the discus tank today. So I'll have to look back to see how long that lasted. I also need to subtract a couple weeks from the total because I added too much peat extract and the pH stayed low without the CO2 turned on at all.

Also, it should be noted that discus are more robust than some would have you think. My two canister filters sat rotting for weeks (because I forgot to plug them in when I last cleaned them!) so without thinking I just plugged them in. Well, there was some anaerobic processes going on in those weeks, so some foul smelling water came out of them. Anaerobic bacteria produces H2S I think. Anyway, this is a poison to fish, and I have no carbon filtration. So I did exactly what you are not supposed to do and yanked the Magnum Hang On Tank filter off the other tank, put the wet micron filter away in a plastic bag, and gave the whole thing a quick rinse. I still had the carbon filter module that came with it, so filled it up, rinsed it out, and hooked it up to the front of the discus tank. Everyone is still alive, so I must not have messed up too bad.


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Biscuit doesn't feel good

I took the little dude to the vet yesterday finally for his shots. Got him tested for some nasties. He's healthy (and neutered already). They scanned him for a microchip, and he didn't have one, thank god. How could I tell his owners that I've keeping their cat for two months and didn't even think to scan him for a chip? So thankfully I don't have to go through that. He got rabies vaccine, along with two other ones I don't remember, and they were all shots under the skin or into muscle in various places on his body. He was poked and prodded and he didn't like it, but he wasn't too bad to handle. He was fine once we got back home (via the BMW dealer to pick up my new car! yay!)

So now today he's very sore in at least one area of injection, but I don't feel any swelling. He's moving very slowly and hisses if you touch him in the wrong spot, but he did eat, so that's something. I'll give him a couple days to recuperate, then I'll start worrying.

UPDATE: this morning he is much better.


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More eagles

My pictorial representation of Freedom; thank you veterans:



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Pretty tree in my own backyard

It's pretty, but I'm not looking forward to all that raking. (the clean break in the leaves on the grass is from the lawn mower. It's very good at sucking up leaves, but you have to empty the bag every freaking 5 minutes.)

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Confirmed: cats are assholes

Turns out Rachl Lukis is right.

This morning before my very eyes:

Then later:

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Eagle goodness

Uploading videos to Blogger is pretty slow, and it cuts the quality WAY down. The weirdness at the end is something I can't fix because after uploading it twice they both came out the same way.


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I got close to an eagle

Look what I did today:

This was with the 300mm telephoto, right at the base of his tree. He was probably 50 feet away maybe? f/8; 1/100 sec.

So instead of spending ten thousand freaking dollars on a big lens, I'll just have to get right up close to him. And there were maybe 10 other photogs there, all with bigger lenses than mine. So they probably were getting shots of his freaking eyeball or something.

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Halloween rundown

Most creative costume tonight:

Terry from Reno 911!

The boy was like 12, so I'm thinking if I had joked about if he gives handjobs through car windows at red lights it would a) be inappropriate, and b) go right over his head.


Most uncreative costume:

Wearing your sports uniform.


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Toasted pumpkin seeds

For one pumpkin's worth of seeds, I put about half a cup of extra virgin olive oil (regular would be fine too) into a ziplock bag with the seeds. Blend them together and pour it out onto a baking sheet. I added about 1 tsp worth of salt at this point, with stirring. Spread the seeds out onto the tray and broil with tray on middle rack for 10 min. I tilted to tray to drain some oil, and added another 1tsp salt, with stirring. These seeds came out mostly lightly browned, with a few darker but not burned.

You can add all sort of spices, but I stuck with salt.


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Happy Halloween

yes, my kitchen is orange.


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Don't think so

Seen at the commissary tonight:

OK, so only Washingtonians would get it. Or anyone who's been inside SeaTac.


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Vote

I faxed my request for an absentee ballot last week. Yesterday a voter card came in the mail. So now I guess I'm waiting to see if an absentee ballot is coming, otherwise I'll vote in person for the first time ever! Actually, wait a minute. I think I went to a polling place with my mom the first election after I turned 18. Huh. That just popped into my head after having totally forgotten about it. Well anyway, at least I know where to go now, since I actually needed a voter card.

UPDATE: got the absentee ballot today. Now I should research all the local stuff. League of Women Voters has a very extensive site full of non-partisan information on candidates by state. (basically it's an online version of the voter's guide).


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Pottery and alcohol DO mix!

I went to a "ladies night" at the local paint pottery place last week. It was awesome, because it's BYOB!!! So I was slamming bloody marys, and my friend was sipping red wine. All very sophisticated, I tell you. I picked up my pieces today:

It's hard to tell in the picture, but there are two colors of blue: a darker regular sort of blue, and a turquoise color. I had already had at least one bloody mary by the time I was done with the teapot, and had put it away on the drying shelf when I started to cup. I forgot my color scheme and got the blues backwards. YAY alcohol. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. /Homer

Oh man, don't even get me started on the ladies who were Very Serious about their Art. I would usually be the one to get Very Serious about my Art, but I can tell when it's time to just chill and not act like a geek. Also I recognize the fact I have not painting ability whatsoever. Click for full post and comments

Oops, my mistake

I use Picasaweb for online photos, because that's where photos uploaded to a Blogger blog go. Those crazy Google folks are always tweaking things so I wasn't surprised when I couldn't for the freaking life of me find the delete button. But then I got to thinking that disabling the delete button would be a good thing for Google: your album gets totally clogged up with duplicates and other bits and pieces, and then you have to upgrade to the pay version for more space! Genius! Then I got pissed off, the more I thought about it. Then I found where they hid the delete button, so that threw my theory out the window. Sorry Google. My bad. Click for full post and comments

Eagle hunting

Hubby and I went up to the Conowingo Dam today, because our neighbor told us it was good eagle country. Mostly I wanted to see pretty trees, with only a little hope that there would be birds there. So after a short walk

and scouting out the water for birds,

(I believe the lower bird is some sort or cormorant)

I saw evidence of a very ambitious beaver. This tree is a foot diameter

and a total goner. I'm surprised it did fall own in the wind yesterday.

Then I went down to the water, to maybe get some pictures of the shore. The trees weren't doing much color-wise, but I thought it was pretty enough.

I was getting ready to pack it in when hubby pointed out raptors up in the sky (lots of seagulls, so I was looking for something more interesting).

(in one of these frames, the bird is pooping)

Why, that sure looked like a gen-you-wine bald eagle! So I was snapping like crazy. Saw a juvenile swoop in and get a fish (sorry they're overexposed, I didn't have time to check settings!)

So once a fish was caught then all the birds came out to try to steal it.

There was a heron on the beach with the eagles, trying to get in on the fish action, but there was also this guy just posing for me.

I spy with my little eye...

...an eagle swooping in to snatch some fish.

(there are actually two eagles in this picture)

Finally I decided 180 pictures was enough. The ones where I didn't use the tripod didn't come out very well, and were very shaky (even with vibration reduction turned on!). There were some serious guys showing up just as we were leaving. One guy had a lens that was seriously 6 inches across, and like a foot or more long! A 500mm lens is 10 THOUSAND dollars! So I guess that means I'll never get the pictures I have in my head, where you see a nice crisp close up of an eagle in a tree. 

But, man, it was awesome. I'll definitely be back for another chance to hunt birds.


PS. I don't know how to force a picture to get a link to the full version during the upload process. So most of these pictures have a big version if you click on them, but some don't.

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