Look ma, no fingers

You would not believe how long it takes to grate baby carrots. I need a food processor.

Carly(via Blackberry)

My pc now has more memory than I do

A friend of mine helped me order some additional memory for my pc... it's about 3 years old which means I might as well throw it into the pond behind my house, as far as technology is concerned. But since I cut down the money tree in my yard a long time agooooo....


So it's a Dell tower, and they have this bizarre way of opening up. When I used to help with LAN support eons ago (when all you had to be capable of was following a few basic steps), covers used to slide off. So I tried about three times to get the cover to slide, forwards, backwards, up... not happening. By accident I figured out that the PC opens rather like a book or a clamshell up on its side.


Then I saw the dust. Oh yeah....

This gives you a little bit of an idea. The inside was just CAKED with all the gross things that internet stories tell you actually make up what we call "dust".

I have no working "dustbuster" right now, and so... I used my hairdryer on the cold setting to blow the dust out. It's all over my desk now. It was not a perfect plan.

But hey, you should see how fast my pc boots up now.

Plans

Every now and then my sister in law and I like to get together, and just cook for hours. We let other people clean up the mess we make - they get the glorious meal - everyone's happy. We've made lobster thermidor and other complex dishes. Since neither of us has any real culinary training it is often (what's a nice phrase?) an adventure, in timing and general execution, but we eventually finish the dish and it tastes well.

This is what we have on deck for Saturday....

• Appetizers: Brie baked with ??? on top. (To be decided, she's assigned that one, not me.) Crackers, some cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks with ranch dressing for the kiddos.
• Spinach salad, with mushrooms, egg, and a warm bacon dressing; sourdough bread
• Cornish hens, stuffed with shrimp, andouille sausage, rice & cornbread (we'll bake plain chicken for the kids and just let them try a little bit of the stuffing, it's kind of out there for them....) Green beans with almonds & a touch of lemon on the side
• Junior's recipe: carrot cake/ cheesecake cupcakes. I'll be making these Friday evening

My sister in law will also visit the wine store and get something nice to go with all of this (perhaps more than one bottle, something for the early stuff, and then with the main meal. But the cooks can't have tooooo much or I, um, we will end up sitting on a couch staring at the tv....)

Is anybody hungry?

Well now

Crazy busy times. Hmmm. Where was I ? Besides falling into myfacespacebook and not wanting to get back out...

• I submitted the last few yearbook pages (first of two deadlines) and got them in just under the wire. No stress. Hah. People are mailing me great pictures, but in a way that they compress to a really crappy resolution once used in the online yearbook tool ::::bangs head on desk:::
• My mother came to one of my son's basketball games. (We've had 5 in the past ten days, just saying, aaaaaaagh....) I was pretty much a wreck about how THAT would go. She sat (in her coat) with her hands clenched for the first half. Then (apparently when she realized each half was only 15 minutes and it was a good game and there were no giant crowds to be suffocated in) she took her coat off and actually seemed to have a slightly good time. Baby steps.
• I am the (entire) nominating committe for next year's PTA elections. This, you see, is the way to keep my name completely off the ballot. (I have begun turning over some of "my" events to other people. I want my free time back. I've served my tour of duty. I can't take the crazy anymore. I would say 85% of the parents there are wonderful, kind, people. However we have a few that just like to start trouble. I'm tired of the nonsense. Use your brain, contribute positively to what's going on, or go away, people. )
• I am secretly hoping my daughter will be chosen for the May crowning (to crown a statue of Mary with flowers, old tradition in some churches, May is the month we honor Mary)

On deck for the week ahead:

• Lost! Top Chef! Getting good. Survivor, Amazing Race, I don't have time for this much TV, people!!! I heart my DVR.
• Saturday my sister in law and I will be cooking a feast. Because, Valentines day + restaurant = crappy service + high prices = no way. I'll post our menu separately.
• Sunday, more basketball, maybe my parents will come again. :::cue scary music::::
• Monday is a bank holiday... could be my last ever, who knows.... friggin economy...my job is not 100% secure right now, but is anyone's?? Monday I will sleep in and be generally lazy. Then maybe I'll finish THE MURAL. I know.
• Entertaining / cracking the whip on my kids for a week of vacation. Whyyyyy we need a vacation week now when I am too poor to go somewhere warm.... I dunno.
• Nagging aplenty for Honors Band practice to occur in my house. I finally got them to START, by threatening Bad Things, and they realized "hey... this music is hard...." -- YA THINK???????

Hi there

Crazy busy the last few days. More at lunchtime. (Banana muffins....mmmmm)

Carly(via Blackberry)

Hopes & fears

Dear Mr. Obama,

If you can land this economy the way "Sully" landed that plane on the river, and get us out of this mess, now would be a good time to do it.

( I spoke to a friend yesterday who is out of work and her husband basically said to her, "don't worry about matching your salary, just GET a salary" )

Carly(via Blackberry)

Days

This morning something I read made me find the calculator app on the blackberry. My father's side of the family tends to live to about 95. Which makes his angst about dying soon all the more puzzling, but whatever.

I figured out using conservative estimates that I still have about 15,000 days to live, and only a third of that will be days I have to work, worst case.

So I'm gonna have a good time.

Carly(via Blackberry)

Duck, part deux

I took my son to basketball practice yesterday. It's a tiny gym and I was sitting along one of the side benches using my crackberry to play on myfacespacebookpage. Which I am totally hooked on, so I was rather absorbed, when I heard a noise.

I looked up and with one hand I tried to shield myself, but the other hand was holding the berry, so the basketball beaned me on the head.

So after that plus what happened last summer, I'm very glad my son doesn't bowl very much.

If only all curves were this easy to adjust

Ok, so I have no idea how or why to properly do tonal curve adjustments, but these were fun.

You can go to my flickr feed and look at the originals of these shots, as well as other variations. Someday soon I'll learn how to make a more ::::ahem:::: natural look.

And yes, I took them out the window of my car on the way to work this morning. With my left foot. It's an automatic transmission. And it was 15 degrees this morning. Just saying. And that giant chunk wasn't actually taken out of the pillar; it was a convenient effect of the sun.

Not habit forming

The sunrise was pink this morning. Isn't that supposed to mean something bad? ( something like "you will freeze so much you might snap in half today")

I took pictures going over a bridge, and when I got to work I could see they're not bad... I'll put one or two on flickr later.

Carly(via Blackberry)

Top chef

Every week when I watch Top Chef I try to figure out what the hell some of the ingredients are.

I just finished reading "The Sharper Your
Knife, the Less You Cry" - I really enjoyed it, especially the whole idea of leaving the corporate world behind and going to Paris.

And on anothe plane alltogether, what is hulu? Seriously? I just don't even have time to google it. Stupid Alec Baldwin. Damn basketball. (My kid's tournament ended tonight. They got shellacked but he went 100% on the foul line)

Carly(via Blackberry)

A tiny little Flickr

I put a few photos from 2005 on my flickr photostream. Funny how I gravitated to sunny warm pictures at the lake. BECAUSE IT"S 23 DEGREES HERE.

Little throwaway lines

I love quirky news stories like this because of lines like "and an undeclared eggplant."

You just know that somewhere a writer was cracking up in his cubicle/ home office/ neighborhood wifi spot, writing about this goofball and dreaming of being able to win the lottery and quit her job and buy a kayak. Wait, that's me.

Groundhog recipes, anyone?

So in my attempt to ignore the snow I will offer up a few good things.

My son made a buzzer shot last night. His team was already comfortably in the lead but still. (I missed it. Wasn't there.)

My glasses are fabu-- well, they're a bit skewed and don't sit level on my face. The young woman was so busy remarking on "oh I remember THESE glasses" that I wonder if she was the one who built them in the wrong frames. At any rate she was making the tilt worse and I couldn't bear her anymore. I will go back to "the real eye doctor" tomorrow and see if they"ll adjust them.

I have figured out that everytime I snuggle with my tiny neice and nephew I get a cold then a sinus infection. Damn. But to balance that I heard they might start to SELL WINE AT THE GROCERY STORE. Awesome.

Carly(via Blackberry)

Overheard in panera

"Every night I go into the medicine cabinet and decide what pill I'm going to take to help me get to sleep"

-attractive, 30 ish blonde, to her friend, who did not reply

Well, I am happy to say I trekked up to the mall AGAIN and this time my glasses were right. I am not sure why some people are so dramatic about getting used to progressive lenses. Mine seem fine. But then, maybe I"m also going senile too.

Carly(via Blackberry)

The Office

This episode is so funny (Lecter!!) that I *almost* don't care about losing the football squares game.

(Beth, we just use a regular squares grid and fill it evenly. And your new email doesn't work for me)

Carly(via Blackberry)

Aaaaagh

So every year we make a grid with the seven of us repeated over and over. (My four, BIL, SIL, and nephew) right before the superbowl starts. Last year I almost left off a column doing it in a hurry. This year I didn't label the teams until the middle of the first quarter. Oops. I guess "bookie" is not a career path.

Last year the bets had to do with NYC - who would pick a video to play in the limo on the way down, etc

This year it was Q1 a cd , Q2 winner gets lunch of thei choice cooked by the other family. Q3 was a DVD and Q4 was dinner.

So my daughter won the cd and I was THISCLOSE to a lobster roll for lunch one day soon. Then that effing 100 yard return killed me.

No problem, I won the DVD (I'm thinking the entire boxed set of Friends) and my son was SO close to getting us salmon for dinner (seriously he loves salmon ) but NO! NO! That last touchdown screwed it all.

Now I gotta make my nephew tacos or something. Crap.

Carly(via Blackberry)

Lostpedia

Lostpedia is my new way to waste time today. (Thanks to Lindsay's comment on Sarah's blog. Got that?)

How could a team of writers keep SO much information straight??? I'd love to hack my way into whatever tools the WRITERS are using to keep data organized.

Dear Michael

A bong? You were photographed using a freaking BONG, at a college party? You've got to be kidding me. And your excuse is "a youthful mistake" ??? I call bullshit, on that, and on the people working for you who tried so dilligently to hush the whole thing up.

Unbelievable moron. Some hero/ role model.

Why HIPPA laws were invented

The other day at the urgent care center a man in his mid 60's came in after we did. ("We" being myself, sick, and my child, who said "I think I have strep". Cha-ching. TWO urgent care copays. Drinks are NOT on me today.)

He sat a short distance away from me, and I didn't really notice him until he went up to the window. The nurse/ receptionist asked what the problem was with his finger - apparently he was vague on the form.

I heard him say "Well, I shut it in my car door, the other day. I thought it seemed fine because I could bend it and all. But now I think I have ( an infection maybe? he said omething unitelligible, to your basic eavesdropper, with pointing going on) and I thought about usinging one of my power drills to drain it but I thought maybe that wasn't the best idea."

I died. Right there. Because he came back over and sat relatively near me and I could NOT burst into hysterical laughter. Died, I tell you.