howeird | Entries tagged with cooking

Not depressed anymore. Not too thrilled that all the news channels have forgotten that there is news in places other than Sandy Hook, CT. I really don't need or want to see next-day interviews with any of the victims' family members, or clergy or shrinks. In a week or two, I do want to hear what law enforcement has pieced together as a coherent theory of what led to the crazy guy's acting out his delusions.

To me, the tragedy is just one more proof that there are no gods, nothing supernatural is watching over us, and things do not "happen for a reason".

There was a good football game on the tube, Nevada vs Arizona. A wonderful high-scoring game with almost no defensive plays, with less than 2 minutes to go, Nevada was ahead 48-35 and the announcers were doing their usual going overboard singing the praises of the Nevada coach and how he has beaten a ranked team in a higher division. As they were pontificating, Arizona scored twice and won by 1 point.

My traditional lunch for a college football game is hot dogs. A while ago I was all out of buns and almost out of hot dogs, and Costco had both deeply discounted, but you had to buy a wagonload. I had divided up the buns into packs of 4 until I ran out of zip-locks and threw the remaining dozen into the freezer with them. When I opened the freezer to get a couple of buns I saw there were far too many left, taking up valuable ice cream space, so I pulled out that dozen bag (plus two for lunch) and grabbed the Fannie Farmer cookbook and found a recipe for bread pudding. It needed some tweaking, but I had all the ingredients, once I realized there was an unopened carton of "best of the egg" in the fridge "best used by 9 November 2012".

( recipe and such beneath the cut )
Cut yourself a piece of pudding, add a dollop of hard sauce and let it melt. A short shot of microwaves can be used to encourage this.

Serves about 12.

While the pudding was baking, Milo disappeared. I could not find him anywhere. Domino was on the top level of the cat tree, a place I have never seen her go before. Hmmmm. How does one lose a 16-lb cat indoors?

Speaking of lost, the other day I reported that I could not find my Polaroid tripod. I found it, it was in the bedroom closet under my scuba gear bag, which had fallen over behind the shirt rack. There was also a monopod which has small tripod legs which can extend. Now all I need is a remote.

Found Milo in the bedroom sleeping among my T-shirts. Two black ones were at the top of the stacks, and his dark fur blended right in.

The bread pudding was marvelous, the hard sauce was very hard in the alcoholic sense, but melted at room temp FTW. I ate three slices, almost decided to have half the pan as dinner.

It took me so long to write this, dinner will be very late. ;-)

The pudding project derailed my plans to go see a movie, but so did the football game and a lot of online "research". No way am I going to the cinema on a Saturday night with several blockbusters in their first weekend. Maybe tomorrow. I may go to Cheetah's.

Plans for tomorrow:

Football
Massage maybe
Janice at 2:30 to give her a calendar and a key, but that's just for an hour, probably
Movie maybe

Current Mood: half baked
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Got to work early, 8 am for the 9 am team meeting so I would have time to talk to the IRS. Their machine said they were closed for the holiday. We should have been, too, but I guess they make up for it with a 2-day turkey day.

Set up my personal laptop for VPN, which I thought I had done last summer. I guess not. Or maybe they changed the routine when Google bought us.

Lotsa work at work, again. Some automation clean-up, and some verifying fixed bugs, low-hanging fruit department.

Lunchtime the plan was to go to the new nails place next to the new Wing Stop, and get my nails done, but if they were booked, go have lunch at WS. Nail place said come back in 45 minutes so I had lunch (WS is hella slow, 15 minutes for 8 wings with no orders ahead of me). Back to the nails place and the nice lady got out a bowl of soapy water and a soft brush and got the WS sauce off my finger tips.

She did a good job, quicker than most places because she skipped a couple of unnecessary buffs and files. I will return. It's much closer to work than Satan Row, less expensive, and the waiting area is comfortable enough. And there are plenty of places to eat nearby. I'm not all that thrilled with WS, they do not offer wings with no sauce. FAIL.

Back to work, got a call from the sleep clinic I'd gone to last time, we made an appointment for 11/27 to do it again with a CPAP machine in the mix.

Home, turned MNF on right away, turned off the crock pot which had filled the apartment with chickeny soupy aromatic goodness, unloaded the dishwasher, checked email on my phone and there were two messages which needed answering so I fired up the PC.

At halftime I decanted the chicken gizzard soup into 4 1-quart containers. It was just barely cooled off enough to not melt the containers. One fit into the freezer, the others are in the fridge. It needs some rice or barley, I think. Simple recipe ( behind the cut: )

The football game was torture, it was raining pretty hard, but that went away by the 2nd half. Very close game, Steelers won it with an interception/FG in overtime.

Dinner was turkey pot pie.

Plans for tomorrow:

Work
Home early for a shower and then off to the nostril appliance sleep study at Kaiser. (overnight)

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Newer Furball Hall

Mostly for

yourbob but possibly useful trivia for Thai food fans. I've mentioned often that Thai restaurants in America usually have good food, but it is not necessarily authentic. One thing they all tend to do authentically is curry. So here is a little tutorial on Thai curries. YMMV.

Massaman curry is for wimps. It is not spicy at all, and goes with vegetables, especially potatoes. I have heard it called Pattaya curry.
Green curry is mild, and goes with beef and pork
Yellow curry is a little stronger, and goes with chicken and shrimp
Red curry is strongest, and goes with anything (because the curry will drown out the taste of anything)
Penang curry is actually from northern Malaysia, and is a lot like Indian curry. It is almost as spicy as red, and is mostly used as a dip for roti. It Goes well with beef and lamb.

The curries named for colors should be those colors. Massaman is grey, Penang is red-orange.

Now for the confusing part. You can order any of these to be mild (1-star) or spicy (5-star) or any of the stars in between. They just use more curry paste per serving. And thereby hangs a tale:

I was In Love™ with a woman who lived in Boston, and I went to spend a week with her there. One of the conditions was I teach her to make Thai food. For starters I decided on Green Curry Beef. We went to the market and were able to find all the ingredients, including

my favorite Thai green curry paste. We went back to her place, and I started showing her how to mix the paste into the warmed coconut milk. She was insulted that I was only using about a teaspoon of the stuff, telling me she loved spicy food, and she could handle anything. She insisted on two tablespoons of the paste. We were making three servings. After cooking it all up and serving with a plate of white rice, she took one bite, said "that isn't so ba....." and put her head under the kitchen faucet. I tried to cut a serving with more coconut milk, but the curry had embedded itself in the beef, and the meal was a total loss.

So even though the curry may be relatively mild, it depends on how much is in the dish.

Current Mood: pedagogic
Current Location: Home

Well hello there, using Dragon naturally speaking to dictate this and we'll see how it goes.

Okay well the first rule was it doesn't provide punctuation. So I have to provided myself! Even spaces.

Spent the morning playing with TiVo the new Wi-Fi was not very good or should I say it was about the same as the old Wi-Fi. That almost made me late for work but not quite - I got there about 10. And there was a lot of stuff to do. There were some bug reports to look at. And that was a thrill because they are written by people whose native language could be anything from Chinese to Hindu to Spanish and on rare occasions English. And these are all for a product that was suppose to have been end-of-life about two builds ago. But as with any company that is very customer conscious every time customers say no we need this piece of equipment will put new features in it and that's where we are right now.

So all day was spent looking at bugs that had allegedly been fixed by engineering and finding out if they really were and if they were closing them and if they were not reopening them and that really was all day and right about the end of the day, as I was looking at one last bug before I left, I found another bug on that same feature. That was a good place to turn off the computer and the decide to finish that bug tomorrow because writing bugs takes a long time.

Lunch was at a place called Dusit, a very tiny Thai restaurant which I have not been to enough, it was the first one my boss took me to when I was hired in 2007.

During the day I received e-mail from the theater inviting me to be one of the ensemble in Anything Goes. I can't say I agree with their choice of casting, so I had to think about that for a while and decided to ignore it since the e-mail said some people might not get back to them for a few days. More on that later…

Had a one-on-one with my boss it was mostly going over the bugs that I'd been working on all day, and talking a little bit about the transit of Venus photos that he'd "supervised" yesterday. And we were joking about the fact that he has a telescope in a box under his desk that he has been using as a foot rest, while I have a telescope that's been in my closet for months, because for both of us it's just been too cold outside to do any astronomy at night. Hopefully, the weather will get warmer and we will be able to use those wonderful toys.

After work was the expedition to buy the makings for chicken soup. But first as usual I stopped off at Starbucks and had a soy frappuchino and a morning bun. So the first stop after that was Safeway which traditionally does not have chicken gizzards which are essential in my homemade chicken soup, but one can always hope. I did manage to get some essential chicken soup ingredients like bananas only because they were on sale for $.49 a pound. But seriously I was able to get barley, split green peas, dried lima beans. yellow onions, carrots, celery, salad onions which I ended up not using, and about 96 ounces of chicken broth, low-sodium style. As usual, Safeway did not have chicken gizzards, but they did have a sale on chicken thighs and drumsticks (as one unit), so I bought a pack of that.

Since it was on the way home I went to Lucky's, which did have chicken gizzards so I bought twice as much as I needed, and while I was there I stocked up on hummus. Oh look! According to my receipt I actually bought the chicken broth at Lucky's.

Home, there was a box with Dragon naturally speaking inside of it, but that had to wait until I chopped up stuff and made a cauldron full of chicken soup, and set that on half heat. Easy to say but it took about an hour. And here it is about three hours later, I turned the heat down to simmer, and that will be on very low heat overnight sort of like it was in a crockpot.

Next order of business was to send e-mail to the producer and tell him that as long as they were okay with a non-dancing ensemble member, I would love to be in the show. He replied that they wouldn't have asked me unless they wanted me, and welcomed me to the show. So now I am really interested in seeing who they cast in the big parts that I wanted.

And after that I finally got around to sending in my bio and picture myself and a sample of my photo art to the WorldCon art show people.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Ye Olde Towne Band rehearsals

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Home of the Lost

Was up till 3 am copying stuff from the main PC to the Ultrabook, mostly by wifi. Woke upo at 8 with Domino on my tummy. Rolled over and went back to sleep for "an hour". Woke up at 11. Decided to try for the 2 o'clock manicure slot, which left me time to remove the giant slab of corned beef from the crock pot and slice it into freezer bag portions. It did as much shredding as slicing, which is the brisket part I really love. I heated up a piece of garlic bread, put some horseradish sauce on the plate and had a portion for brunch. Yum.

Manicure place at noon - she actually took me at 12:30, which gave me a little time at Clocktower coffee shop with the Ultrabook. It's raining, so I put it in a Fry's cloth shopping bag.

After nails were done I went to the PA Fry's and found a serviceable case for the 13.1" screen. Also found a nice sleeve, but since it was in the Apple section it was 3x what it was worth. It's not an Apple case, it just happens the fit the 13" Macbook. I'll order one online.

It has been raining all day, pretty hard at times.

I'm in the Starbucks sliver store (it's long and narrow) using the Ultrabook. Been here since 3:30, will leave by 4:30 to get home, grab the camera and my Roller Derby ticket voucher. Derby in south SJ, one of the sk8ers is a woman I met about 15 years ago when her then boyfriend was a leading man in a G&S production I directed at Stanford.

Current Mood: wet
Current Location: PA Starbucks

Didn't get around to an entry yesterday due to Stuff™.
Friday:
Work started out well, one of my team-mates loaned me two of his machines so I could run some of my tests which checked that the settings of a new feature were transferred to a backup machine and back again when the main machine went south. Backup has to be identically configured to the primary, and we have a shortage of machines and a glut of projects, so this was very nice of him.

1 pm meeting my boss invited me to - engineering design meeting for a feature in progress for which I will be writing the test cases, and possibly be running the tests, though I think we have two others on the team better trained to do that latter. It was a conference call with the developer on the pone and the rest of us in the room. There was an hour available for 4 hours' worth of content. They mostly discussed minute details from the point o view of design philosophy and I didn't really get anything out of it for QA work. But I had to be there to find out that I didn't have to be there.

This threw lunch into the 2:30-3:30 realm, I ate at a distant Togo's. The GPS does not know about the new, closer one and I forgot. I also forgot that there was a package at the apartment office to pick up, and they close early on Fridays. The new Togo's is two blocks from the apartment. :-(

Home after work, and tried to resurrect the corned beef from Fibber McGee's which had been soaking in jasmine tea. The tea had de-salted it to the point of edibility, but the meat had been baked, so all the fats and such, which boiling preserves and makes the meat not a building material, was gone. It was a disaster, still. But I did have some baked beans and home-made pickles and macaroni with string cheese and Parmesan on top.

Compensation time. I grabbed my wad of $1 bills and went to the Cheetah Club, which was almost empty, due to the heavy rain. I got there ion time to see Serenity pole dancing. She is about 5'11" in heels, has long silky black hair, and a lithe figure. And she is hella athletic, in a graceful way. She does this move where she holds the pole with her hands at 2 and 5, arms out straight so her body is arm's length from the pole, and she bicycles with her legs. Gotta have strong everything for that move. I got a chance to chat with her later, she seems to be pretty smart. Maybe I can get her to model for my photo group.She was the only one that night doing any major pole dancing. The place was packed in about an hour and a half. I finally left when a couple of stiffs sat next to me who had just come from smoking a pack of cigarettes. Eeeeeew.

Since I was halfway there, I went to Safeway, picked up some essentials. Bananas were still 59 cents a pound, but they looked edible this time. Celery and bleu cheese dressing, the limes looked good for a change, and I plopped several into a bag, not counting, even though they had lost the price tag. Looks like it was 7 for $3.50. Not too bad. Also bought a packaged corned beef slab, about 3 lbs. And assorted ice cream. And bread - whole grains & nuts, plus a sourdough baguette.

Got home about 1:30 am, read a couple of chapters of Starship & Haiku, with Domino on and off my lap. Bedtime was about 3.

Woke up at 9:55 am, plenty of time. All I had on the agenda was a photo shoot a mile down the road at 1 pm. Made eggs on sourdough for breakfast, while watching an episode of the Shark Tank. Walked to the apartment office, collected the package. It was an order from Ribbons Galore of a batch of con ribbons. Three different ones which share the same design but different colors & second line of text. They look great. I just need a con to go to now.

The shoot was okay, except for one asshat photog who thought it was all about him. The model is a super-petite hard body from Europe who was very pretty, but was having some trouble with her eyes, maybe the lights were too bright or she had decided not to wear her contacts - she rarely opened her eyes all the way. She also did not understand my directions very well. To make thing even more challenging, the battery in my light trigger was fading, and a lot of shots were lost because the flash did not fire. But I think I got some good ones, enough to make it worthwhile.

Went to Lowe's after the shoot, but they don't stock this battery. Neither does Fry's. Radio Shack did, so I bought two.

Gassed up the car on the way to Rad Shack - Costco looked like an hour's wait so I paid the 10 cents/gal more at Shell.

Home, put the corned beef in a pot, it is simmering - should be done in one more hour (2.5 hours was the estimate on the package). The photos are all on the PC and converted from raw to jpg. After I finish this I'll take a look at what I've got.

Plans for tomorrow:
10 am photo shoot, different model, same location

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Home of the Weird

The morning started with my JC Penney order for another set of curtains showing up as back-ordered until January. Which was good news, because I really wanted to get wider ones. So I called and canceled, then went online and ordered in-stock wide panels for about the same price. It was quite a wait on hold, so getting to work on time did not quite happen, but only by a few minutes.

Work was busy, I got to watch a lot of TV, thanks to the nature of many of the tests. Lunch was at the Korean buffet called China China. Home after work, in the mailbox was a used rare CD I'd been waiting for for a couple of weeks. Debra Byrne, New Ways To Dream. She's an Australian stage star, and when I heard her singing melodies from Sunset Blvd I had to look her up. This was the album I wanted, but it apparently is the only CD of hers available. I'll listen to it in the car tomorrow. Earlier in the week I played both CDs of Alaskan Marian Call's new double album, something fierce. I saw her at a con concert a while back, have been following her on FB as she played all 50 states last year. In person she is magnetic with a touch of flamethrower. She has a wide vocal range, and can skip a couple of octaves seamlessly. Unfortunately, the majority of her tunes showcase this feature, and it gets annoying after a while. I was more about supporting a talented, determined artist than about the music. Not that there isn't some good music on the CDs.

On the whiteboard by the door it said "turkey legs". I had bought a pack of three, and the last couple of times I have done this I had put them in the fridge, intending to cook them but forgot and ended up throwing out "Viking meat". Viking food is any food which looks like it was left by the Vikings around the time of Eric The Red.

I also had a bag of Pepperidge Farms stuffing. And an onion. Usually I bake turkey legs in some white wine, with sliced onions, garlic, and maybe a carrot or two. Out of carrots, and the onion was going to be chopped and added to the stuffing. There was a bag of frozen apple slices in the freezer, and behind the cheap white wine in the cupboard was a flagon of cheap sangria, so I marinated the turkey in sangria with the apple slices on top, and eventually baked it that way. The stuffing needed celery, which I didn't have, so I chopped up an apple, added the chopped onion, and butter, and I also added some chopped walnuts. And that got mixed with a couple of cups of chicken broth and baked in a Pyrex bowl for half an hour. After the stuffing was done I heated up a can of turkey gravy (left over from the failed experiment called "what would a cat eat on a liquid diet?") and poured that over the gravy, and had that as an appetizer. I ate the smallest turkey leg when the three of them came out of the oven an hour later.

All this while half-watching the Steelers and Browns do some amazing things on defense and nothing special on offense. 14-3.

One of my Round Tuit list items was to see what is out there for fixing the problem iTunes has with titles, artist names and album art. I use an iPod in the car for music, and my in-dash system will display by artist or album and will show the album cover if it's there and tagged correctly, but 80% at least of the tunes are missing the album art or show the wrong album, and/or have the composer listed as the artist, or some other database glitch. This is pretty annoying as a customer, but much more annoying for me, since I have worked at several companies testing that the data they received from what is now called Gracenote (it used to be CDDB) was stored correctly locally and all the elements displayed correctly. This technology has been solid for at least 15 years. Apple is supposed to be better than that.

So I found a program for the PC which is currently massaging the 5,000 or so titles in my iTunes collection, and seems to be doing a decent job so far of analyzing the audio, finding it on Gracenote, and re-cataloging. Too soon to tell, but if it does well enough for the $50, I'll review it later.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe see a show.
Maybe set up the telescope for Saturday morning's lunar eclipse.

Current Mood: giggly
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Was out and about in plenty of time to not be at my favorite produce stand before they opened, partly because I forgot where it was. Had I remembered it used to be called Sunnymount, I would have known it was not too far from the Mountain View border. Instead I went a few freeway exits too far into Sunnyvale. They had some good looking Persian cukes, and small fat domestic pickling cukes, and I needed 7x4 (four per jar, 7 jars) but instead of being logical and buying in groups of 4, I bought 14 of each. Once home I needed to chop the tops off most of the Persians because they did not fit in the jars. And a couple of the jars were a very tight squeeze, but that was okay because the cukes shrink when they are put into the canning boiler.

Or that's how it had been my last 4 tries. This time two mason jars cracked - one in two places, one in three - which ruined those cukes. I'm left with 5 survivors, and a kitchen which smells like vinegar.

Cleaned up everything and was done in plenty of time to visit my friend in Fremont. Got there early, so went to the Starbucks across the street for half an hour. Found her apartment, we had years of catching up to do so an hour turned into 2, and it was going to be iffy if I could make it to the movies to see the part of Captain America which was interrupted by yesterday's (false) fire alarm. Made more iffy by looking up the show times and seeing it was 20 minutes earlier today.

It was no hassle getting the ticket stub exchanged, except it had to be done at the Guest Services counter inside not at the ticket booth, so that delayed me a couple of minutes. Walked into the theater exactly at the point where the screen had gone blank yesterday. Amazing.

The plot was uneven, there wasn't much acting except for Tommy Lee Jones, and they found one special effect and stuck with it over and over again. Cinematography, costumes and stunts were brilliant. Pretty good score, too. The closing credits were worth staying for, all 40's style art. Then came the white on black obligatory list of everyone who as much as breathed in the vicinity of the production companies (two screens' worth of finance departments, a line of trainees for nearly every function, etc.) but after that was over and the musical numbers credits whizzed by too fast to read, they showed what would have been the next scene, which segued into a promo for the sequel. Well, not really a sequel but the next movie in which Captain America is a major player.

Again had half an hour free, so I just sat on one of the benches and enjoyed the mild summer weather and the occasional people-watching.

BASFA was fun, light turn-out, though. Lots of auction items did not sell. People liked the pickles I brought to sample, but not enough to take the unfinished jars home with them, so when I got home I shared them and all the other jars of similar flavor with the disposal. Took today's batch off the granite countertop and put them on the knick knack shelf which is a good place to cool. All of them seemed to have sealed well.

Gave the cats their dose of Advantage, only 5 days late. I can't remember if I gave them their dose last month. :-(

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Nothing planned for the evening.

Current Mood: complacent
Current Location: Furball Hall

Started the day with a look at my account on the Blue Cross web site and confirmed I am still covered. Called CVS and the pharmacist was able to save me about $1k by submitting the prescriptions to them instead of the the fly-by-night insurance company my current contractor offers. He said I could pick up the meds this afternoon.

But life happened.

I had a lunch date in Unon city at the home of Pannee, the woman who teaches the Thai meetup's cooking classes. She and her husband are delightful people, and she wanted me to meet a nice Thai woman who is single. "Noi" turned out to be a very sweet woman, cute, and a little shy. Only a little. She had me read her palm first thing. I had learned to read Thai by studying a palmistry book, but it has been 30 years since I did a reading in Thai, so our hostess had to help translate a little. Noi's hand is very straightforward - good heart, good mind, she will live to be at least 70, and like me, her travel line does not intersect her heart line, which is bad news for our relationship. :-) No, I do not believe in palm reading, but it is entertaining and allows me to innocently hold hands with lovely women, which is why it is on my calling card.

Noi is an LPN, she does in-home elderly care and right now is looking for clients, so if you know anyone within a reasonable commute from Fremont/Union City who is looking for routine in-home nursing care, let me know and I'll pass it along to her. She is also a licensed cosmetologist, and can do haircuts and manicures in addition to the usual LPN duties.

Lunch was excellent - Pannee's own recipe for spicy chicken wings, Som tom (papaya rind salad), and a noodle salad, which she said was a Chinese dish her father taught her. Noi brought watermelon, which was our first dessert. Pannee's husband Warren was there too, he is a great story teller, and so if Pannee. They got me to sing a couple of bits of Thai songs I sort of know, and Pannee sang us a couple of songs about her home town Chiang Mai. Noi is from Khonken, up in the NE, which has its own language and songs too. The next dessert was mango with sticky rice. And later on Noi brought out more watermelon, and even later Pannee handed out pineapple ice pops.

We just kept talking out there by the pool, having a great time, and it was 5:30 before we broke it up. Pannee suggested I stop by a Chinese restaurant down the hill on the way home, but there's also a Marina Market there (jam packed with Asian food) so I went shopping first. The restaurant was full with a line out the door, so I took a rain check on that, and drove home. By then it was too late to go to the pharmacy, but that can wait till tomorrow.

The additional printer came in handy again, printing envelopes. The bottom feed on the main printer doesn't handle those very well.

Caught up on Facebook, enjoyed the many Reaver songs people were making up on

lemmozine's page. I came up with a good one too. The main idea was to take a song about Rovers and re-purpose it to be about reavers - a la Serenity/Firefly. Almost as good as brunch at Conflikt.

Caught up on email, too. Sent in my bye-bye note to the contract agency. They get as little notice as my conscience would allow because of their massive lack of communications skilz.

Plans for tomorrow:
Call the IRS to find out if the CPA has contacted them yet about the parental 2009 taxes. And if he hasn't, to start the wheels rolling myself.
Work
CVS and get meds
BASFA to drop off with

johnnyeponymous a PS2 for WorldCon and also see

yourbob if he makes it. And the Usual Suspects.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Furball Hall

Spent the morning at the computer doing photo editing of Westercon & 4th of July fireworks pix. All of the con was done but decided to leave uploading the July 3 batch till tonight.

Grabbed my fishing rod & tackle box, but forgot my extra weights and swivels. GPS did not have Pacifica Pier as a POI, so I selected a gas station on the coast highway and then turned off the route when it looked like it was taking me short of Pacifica. I should have followed it, the route I took was a lot longer than it had to be (Hwy 1 exit from 280). But by some miracle I found the beach, parked on a side street, and discovered I was only a block from the pier.

There is a charmingly sleazy, run-down café

built into the same little structure in which the pier's public restrooms are located, and I stopped in for a bowl of clam chowder. They claim it is the best in town. It may be, but doesn't hold a candle to Ivar's. There was only one employee on duty, which apparently is the norm, so it's a while before getting your order in and another while before getting your food, but it was a fun place to watch the locals mock the tourists, and each other.

After scoping out the pier, I went back to the car, got my rod & tackle, shoved a windbreaker & Kindle into my knapsack, grabbed my camp chair and headed back. I set up about 2/3 of the way to the end of the pier, and quickly discovered I really needed those weights. In fact, I really need to buy some huge weights to fish in that surf. I figured some work-arounds with the line weights in the tackle box, but got no bites. In the 2 hours I was there, I only saw one (too small) fish pulled in. The fog rolled in with alacrity, so I folded up my chair and packed everything back to the car.

Called Janice to let her know I could make our 5 o'clock coffee klatch, then stopped at the PO to mail an eBay sale, B of A for some cash, and then over the hill and home.

After coffee (actually a Java chip frapuccino) I tackled my to-buy list. Walgreen's for conditioner and a sharps container. They didn't have sharps containers. CVS for Breathsavers and a sharps container. They no longer sell home sharps containers, only travel ones which don't work for insulin pen tips. Was en route to Ranch 99 for bamboo steamers, but got trapped in the wrong lane, so continued on to Felipe's Produce for pickling cucumbers. They sell the big ones, not the gherkins, so I only got 45 instead of 50. About $7 total. Good thing I went there first, they closed as I was checking out. Ranch 99, got what I thought were 10" bamboo steamers, and then bought some bamboo to steam. </joke>. Bought some frozen won tons, and ha gow/sui mai for steaming. Those were on sale for about 30% off.

Home, discovered the steamer was 12", and did not quite fit in the assigned cabinet. Can't latch the door. But 12" is a good size for the wok, so I may not give them to Goodwill and buy a set of 10"-ers.

While I was fishing, my recruiting agency sent me all kinds of email, including the online time card system login, and a note from my handler saying she will visit me Friday. The handler takes over from the recruiter when the job has been landed. So I am set for a 9 am start Thursday, orientation at 9:15, and then meet my manager and start to save the world, as we know it.

Plans for tomorrow:
Pack two in-dash nav/audio systems sold on eBay, and ship them.
Find my recruiter and give her a bunch of paperwork, and maybe be treated to a meal.
Call the contract agency's benefits provider and ask if I read the fine print correctly that they will not cover my insulin. WTF?
Maybe make pickles, now that I have all of the ingredients.

Current Mood: vacated
Current Location: Furball Hall
Current Music: White noise from the desk fan

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: Furball Hall
Current Music: SOusa channel on Pandora

I had one an hour ago, can't remember it.

Today started at Best Buy, 10:30 dropped the car off to get the old in-dash unit pulled out and the new one installed. He said it would take an hour. It took 2 hours. I spent most of that on the benches outdoors around the plaza, then into Starbucks when it got cold and windy and looked like rain.

They have a fixed price, and it is pretty reasonable for work done on a unit they didn't sell.

First thing I did is back into a very low wall where I thought there was road, getting out of their very long driveway. No real damage at 3 mph, but I did take make an amateur embossing of the wall on my back bumper. It'll come off the next car wash.

Sat in the back parking lot setting up the easy stuff, pairing the bluetooth with my phone (it also does audio over bluetooth) and making sure everything worked. I'll do the radio presets tomorrow.

Went shopping for assorted groc, hit three stores in all. My next batch of pickles will be gherkins. I bought enough for 6 per jar (the bigger cukes were 4 per jar) and another jar of grape leaves for crispness. This time it'll be my own pickle recipe. Got Siberian pirogi this time (Ukranian last time) and cheese bourekas, which are puff pastry goodies we used to get at the Sephardic temple bazaars. The Crossroads World Market has some neat stuff. Too bad their challah was a week old. At Milk Pail I think I found

susandennis' famous sheep d'argental cheese. Ate some of that after lunch on Ritz crackers, and it was excellent, with a bit of an after-bite. Love the strong aroma. Orange rind.

Home, unpacked the documentation which came with the new car unit, and discovered the installer had not read the instructions, and did not mount the removable nav unit anywhere it could be reached without taking out the whole unit. I called to find out if I was mistaken about that, but nope. This is a Tom Tom which needs a PC on a network plugged into the USB port on the nav unit in order to update maps. The unit comes with a free update which has to be used in 90 days. He ignored the mounting hardware for it. I'll bring that in Tuesday morning, so he can correct the mistake.

I have reservations for camping out at Del Valle Tuesday night, I think I have to be there by 4 to not lose the spot. This is going to be interesting, because thunderstorms are forecast for tomorrow, and I won't know if it will be good enough weather for fishing until Tuesday morning. I'm not keen on camping in the rain. Let me rephrase that. I'm not keen on packing up a wet tent and dealing with cleanup/dry-out after.

If prospects for job interviews Tues/Wed come up, that takes priority over camping. At the moment that does not look likely, but things can change quickly on a Monday.

Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt
Watch the rain

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: Furball Hall

Last night I marinated the turkey drumsticks in Madeira sprinkled with Hungarian paprika, thyme and fresh ground Indian pepper. After about 3 hours, sliced up an onion and put that on top, covered with aluminum foil and popped into a 400° oven for an hour, I set the oven to 375, but this oven has a way of its own.

After an hour flipped the drumsticks over and gave them another 10 minutes uncovered. The whole apartment smelled yummy all night.

This morning was kind of lazy, due to the new BP pills making me get up every hour on the hour to pee. :-( Stayed in bed reading Mark Twain for a couple of hours, Domino kept me company. She loves the Kindle, it makes a great face scratcher. Did the usual job hunt on the PC while nibbling on a PB&J sandwich. The new seltzer siphon is working great, made my usual lime-ade to go with the sandwich. That's my staple drink, hald a smjall lime or a quarter of a big one squeezed into a tumbler of seltzer & ice. Keeps the scurvy away.

At about 4:30 email from a friend reminded me I had promised her my four free July 4 Shoreline Amphitheater tickets. I'd been joining her crowd on and off for the last dozen or so years, but last year was not fun for me. I don't particularly like what passes for the SF Symphony in the summer, and while the fireworks are great, I can see them from my apartment balcony without the wind, mosquitoes and drunks. Not to mention the traffic. And I'll probably be at Westercon anyway. So I printed up the coupon and a copy of my PG&E bill, and drove to the box office to get the tickets. I will tease her a bit before I admit I have them.

Checked the snailmail box on the way to the car and my unemployment check was there. Should have been there yesterday. So I deposited it after getting tickets.

On the way back stopped off for an iced tea at Starbucks, and the services was spastic and slow. Took them 10 minutes, and there were only 2 people ahead of me. While I was standing there the phone rang, someone I could not hear above the horrible music and blender noise. Asked him to send me email. Found a table and started to get online, but the too-loud music and inane loud conversation at the previously empty next table drove me outside. Sent email to the guy whocalled and told him I was ready to take his call now. Which is when some bozo pulls up in front of where I'm sitting in a tricked out muffler-free monster pickup truck, opens the door and sits there smoking and playing bad music even louder than they were doing indoors. Someone else started smoking and talking on the phone in front of his truck, so I moved around the corner.

Phone call came in, it was someone from a contract agency which provides fodder for Cisco. This was the next step in that call from the telephone sweatshop Indian a couple of days ago. This fellow actually knew what he was talking about, and we did about half an hour of interview. He said he would pass my resume up the ladder.

Back home, vegged until a little before 7, time to go to rehearsals. It was lip torture. We played mostly numbers with parts at the top of the baritone range, and both me and the fellow who sits next to me pooped out on the last two numbers, and played an octave lower. Sunday's concert is going to be interesting, because we play for longer than we do at rehearsals, and except for two pieces we went over for the July 4 event we'll be playing those and more Sunday.

Home, heated up one turkey leg, some of the onions and sauce. Nom nom nom nom. Dessert was a shake with chocolate milk, chocolate syrup, malted milk and frozen banana sections. Also nom nom.

Plans for tomorrow:
Call the nails place and see if they can fit me in to repair a broken acrylic coating. It's too soon to do the whole nail fill, and I don't want to go through the long weekend with this jagged nail.
Choice in the evening between Baycon, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court at Pear Ave or Tongue of a Bird opening at the Dragon. Probably the Mark Twain piece, since they close this weekend and Dragon openings are a bit gala for me. I'm probably blowing off Baycon again this year. Westercon is Real Soon and I am hoping I am employed soon so I can afford to take time off for Worldcon.

Current Mood: sore

My parents made me an avid fan of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, mostly by watching their movies on late night TV and a little bit from listening to records.

One of my current projects is to put titles and artists on the 200+ recordings I've transferred into iTunes. Some of these, maybe all of them, ought to be re-recorded (I have my parents' collection of 78s, 45s and 33 1/3s). But for now I'm just labeling what I have, which is a bit of a challenge because of the path these clips have taken. When I was a radio/TV major in 1969, I had access to a professional radio studio, and put all the parental 78s onto cassette tapes. I labeled each tape with the name and artist of each track, and also typed up a list.

A few years ago, probably when I was working in Redmond (1997-ish) I scanned the list into a Excel spreadsheet, and have worksheets sorted by tape#/side/track# and by artist. I think it was at my father's request, but when I transferred all the tapes to CDs, I did them by genre. About two years ago I ripped the CDs to my hard drive, and either the program I used did not have CDText capability, or the CDs did not have CDText embedded, but either way I have no titles on the files and iTunes just labeled them Track_1 Track_2 and so on.

So last night I started listening to each track, editing the titles into them, adding artist names if I knew them. Somewhere in CD4, I start hearing duets Eddy & MacDonald were famous for. But the baritone did not quite sound like Nelson, and the soprano, well it was hard to tell because 78s don't do well in the higher frequencies. I was convinced it was them, and blamed the many layers of re-recording on the "not-quite". So I looked up the song titles (I knew them all, of course) in the spreadsheet, and only see Nelson & Jeanette listed for two of the duets, but on another tape, which probably means another CD too. The spreadsheet listed "Kirsten & Knight" as the artists. Kirsten who? Online searches did not find a Kirsten Knight, or a soprano Kirsten from that era. Knight I was able to identify via Amazon as Felix Knight, a well-known musicals star about 8 years younger than Nelson.

I went downstairs and found the album the recordings were from (it was an album with a dozen 78s by the same orchestra on the Angel label, of favorite love songs). In very small print, it said Dorothy Kirsten and Felix Knight did the vocals. Dorothy was a major opera star who had some brief forays into radio and movies, and recorded for Angel. Reviews I have read hint that she was not the strong coloratura MacDonald was, but held her own in moderately challenging leading roles in Pucini operas. As I was putting the album back, next to it was an album with the highlights from The Desert Song, starring Felix Knight. Now I know where I heard that voice before. Interesting, because Knight was a tenor in that role, but Eddy was a baritone.

Had a call from a recruiter last night whom I had been working with, Tivo wanted to do a phone interview, so I told her Tues-Wed any time is fine, just let me know. Had the interview at 1 this afternoon, French fellow, it took a bit to understand his English, but he asked some good questions, and only one stupid QA theory question, and only one stupid in-house jargon question. I think it went well, but we'll see. Tivo is a reasonable commute, except for Hwy 237.

That done, it was time to do something about the three tubs of chicken liver and one or two of the three onions I'd bought last night. Long story short, there are now three tubs of chopped liver on the fridge which include an onion and some scrambled "best-of-the-egg" mixed in. Mixed in a little too well, though. I did not expect the dough blade on the food processor to be nearly as energetic as it was. So I fried up another onion with some sliced garlic, and will mash that in later. I figure half a tub's worth on some sourdough will be dinner tonight. Or part of dinner.

There are also three turkey drumsticks in the fridge which need to be cooked. Should go nicely with the third onion. I wonder if I should marinate them. I have some Madiera and also some el cheapo red wine just sitting there waiting to become part of a recipe.

We'll see. Right now I'm in Santa Clara, having dropped off some stuff at Goodwill. Somehow I missed the turn into the Sunnyvale branch. It's not on my GPS. Strange, that.

While I was waiting for the Tivo call, a recruiter in New Jersey with a mostly understandable Indian accent called about a contract in San Jose. The job description is one I can actually do, so I broke my rule and told him to go ahead and submit my name. Probably should not have, he is merely a phone bank person, the company his email said the job was with is a recruiting firm.

Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt stuff
????

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Santa Clara

( Cut for kindness )

Current Mood: hungry

Wi-fi does not seem to be connecting this evening. Hmmm. And someone has brought into the starbucks a pizza from Pizza My Heart next door, and the smell is very disorienting.

So, today was a long-awaited Thai cooking class at the home of the teacher in Fremont/Union City. P was supposed to have taught the last class a couple of months ago, but had a catering gig to do, so it was taught by someone else, on the grounds of the Thai temple. It was cold and rainy and windy and not that much fun. Janice drove this time. And I remembered to take my camera. I took the 50mm 1.4, thinking we would be in a well-lighted kitchen or dining room, but would have been better off with the 18-50 2.8 since we were mostly out by the pool, and there were no good angles for group photos at 50mm.

And of course the skies were overcast and it looked like rain.

P was helped by her husband, W. IRL P is a preventive services nurse, who had her own restaurant in San Carlos for a while. W is even more at home cooking, he is the head of food services at UCB. He kept talking about his time in the CIA, but that turned out to be the Culinary Institute of America. W is American, but speaks a bit more Thai than most men who marry English-speaking Thai women.

Both of them delightful people, and wonderful at teaching restaurant-style food prep. We had three items on the menu, Tom Ka Gai (soup), Tamarind Prawns and Chicken Laab. I had never heard of Laab not made from pork before. P had us slicing onions, squeezing limes and shredding roast chicken while she showed us the already-prepared prawns and oyster mushrooms. She is big on shortcuts, and shared her favorite brands of tamarind paste, fish sauce and pad thai mix. She also had prepared galangal and lemon grass for the soup, and while we were shredding and slicing she deep fried the canned pineapple chunks in corn oil for a couple of minutes, just enough to soften their bite.

The prawns were deep fried in corn oil too, with the pineapple added and tamarind paste. Thinly sliced red bell pepper was added, and red chili peppers. This was drained and put on a serving platter with beautifully done green onion trees and butterflies carved from carrots.

After we devoured most of the prawns, she put the soup pot on, water & fish sauce first, then raw chicken breast which she had prepared in advance, galangal, lemon grass, lime juice, oyster mushrooms, cilantro, sliced green onions and finally the coconut milk. She said adding the coconut milk too soon makes it oily.

While that was simmering, we mixed the shredded roast chicken with red onion, mint, cilantro, and a few things I was not paying attention too. P brought out a tray of romaine lettuce, cucumbers, sliced bell peppers and carrots, which were eaten with the chicken laab.

Lots of great conversation, beside Janice, P and W were S, an Asian-American software engineer who grew up partly in Korea, L who is a public health nurse and D, a software engineer from southern India.

After the class, Janice took us to Sweet Orchid, just off Decoto Road, which is owned by a friend of hers. It is a small bakery/gelato shop which also has a variety of self-serve soft ice cream in tropical fruit flavors.

Home, changed the litterboxes, petted the cats.

Plans for tomorrow:
Process the photos from the cooking class
point P and W to my Drink Tank article on the Authenmathai
Pet Club

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Late-nite Starbucks

Two weeks or so ago, a recruiter called asking if I would be interested in a QA contract for a well-known company which paid barely more than unemployment insurance. I said if they were paying that little, don't bother, and then promptly forgot all about it.

Last week another recruiter emailed with an identically worded advert from the same company, sans salary. I told her I had already been contacted by another recruiter about this job, so no, she can't represent me. Her advert had an hourly wage on it which was a bit lower than what I usually get, but high enough to not refuse outright. I agreed that if she finds that the hiring manager has not seen a resume from me, she could send it in. Yesterday she called, the company (of course) has not seen my resume, so I said she could have her people send it in. This morning someone called wanting to have me add a paragraph of skills to the resume, but I managed to convince her that the last thing my resume needs is more words.

Truth is, every time I have provided a list of skills, it has been a FAIL. There are too many things I can do, poorly, which I'd rather not, and too many tools and such I know how to use which just make managers' eyes cross. Yes I can ( cut for geekTMI )

Am in the late-night Starbucks, just in time for their 3pm-5pm "Frappy Hour". Frappucinos half price. They have 3x as many baristas on hand as usual, and it is a virtual FrapFactory. Way lots of people-watching, which includes eye candy but also some diverse characters which could come in handy if I ever sit down and write a novel.

A woman walked in about half an hour ago wearing a blouse which looked like a silk/polyester mix, semi-translucent off-white with a hint of silver, denser vertical bands of material (or maybe material doubled over and stitched) tightly cinched at the waist which strongly accentuated her narrow waist and made the most of her small breasts (there was a bra underneath). She was wearing light beige cargo pants which were tailored in back to leave no doubt that she was wearing a thong underneath. Very slender athletic figure. And she was working it all the way from the door to the "order here" spot. The only thing that spoiled the look was the wedding ring and diamond solitaire. And the thought popped into my mind, "looks like some else has rented her first."

But I digress.

I was up early again, a good thing because in another 5 minutes I probably would have fallen out of bed. Pumpkin had splayed out and was pushed up against my side, nudging me towards the edge. Also good because it had cooled off overnight, and cucumbers were waiting to be made into pickles.

This time I was a lot more organized, now that I have done the process once before. ( Read more... )So just as everything was ready, I had to turn off the stove, put on shoes, and drive to the produce store for 8 more pickling cucumbers. I stopped along the way at PAMF and picked up the CD of my angiogram. I bought 10 cukes just in case.

The drive may have cost more than the $1.20 for the cucumbers. :-(

So, back to the kitchen, ( Read more... )

Watched Divorce Court while waiting for the pickles to cook. I like the judge, she has a way of cutting through the BS without being Judge Judy about it. And she's more articulate. And also more about pushing her book, her Facebook page, etc.

Back to the kitchen. ( Read more... )

Popped the disc from PAMF into the PC, turns out to be a DVD, and the images are in a proprietary format with a totally useless reader application. It's supposed to be able to export to an AVI file, but when I gave it my preferred settings it crashed each time. Will try again later using the defaults. The disc came with a printout with a detailed description of what they did and what was found. I will have to spend some time researching online to understand all the words. But in a nutshell, my arteries are not healthy, but they are far from bad enough to panic about.

After pickles & cardio, I took myself here. Mocha coconut frap is okay, could use more chocolate.

Plans for tonight:
Pack
Plans for tomorrow:
SJC Amtrak around 10, catch the southbound Coast Starlight for Santa Barbara with, if they are running on time, a long enough stop to hear Justin Au and pieces of the Red Skunk Jipzee Swing Band at SLO station. Unfortunately, their redheaded lead singer is not expected to be there. Santa Barbara by about 7 pm if all goes well. Not that I expect the Coast Starlight to ever be on time. I've been surprised before, though.

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Location: Late-nite Starbucks

I had the cucumbers and Mason jars, and thought I had all the spices and was just missing a canning kit. As I was sitting out on the shores of Shoreline Park Lake, enjoying the sunshine and happy I wore my mid-fall jacket because it was nippy and windy, it dawned on me that if anyone had home canning supplies it would be Walmart. I figure there are two demographics which would be regular buyers: the hard core affluent cooks (Williams-$onoma customers) and the low-income folks who can stuff because they have to (Walmart).

Jackpot. Found the special utensils which Macy's wanted $30 for priced at $7, a huge granite cooker with canning rack for $19 ($50 elsewhere) and kosher dill quick mix for $2 ($8 for the not-quick mix at Draeger's). While I was at it I picked uphalf a gallon of vinegar for $2.28.

The process was fairly simple, but time-consuming because my little electric stove is underpowered for the large amounts of liquid which needed boiling:
( Read more... )
This made 6 quart jars, about half pickling cukes and half Japanese cukes. The pickles should be ready to sample in a week.
The grape leaves make the pickles crisper, from all I've read.

As I posted earlier, it was a cold and cloudy morning, which is a bummer because Songkran is my favorite holiday, and I had been planning on going for weeks. But the main thing for the holiday is it's to celebrate the start of the hot season, and there are water fights for the kids, and milder water splashing for the adults. The temple also has a recital of classical music & dance by the kids, which looks best in sunlight. And Thais are a lot less tolerant of cold weather, all the best eye candy would have been bundled up. :-)

So I went to the beautiful nearby park, set my lawn chair in the sun, and watched people for a few hours. Then had lunch at the lakeside café, a place I went to a lot when I worked nearby. I was surprised to be able to grab a signal from Google's free wi-fi, I'd never been able to before. Then I saw there was a new relay in the parking lot. Up till recently the nearest one was at Google HQ about a mile across the lake.

Plans for tomorrow:
Make appointments for the cats' annual vet visit and the car's recall notice. And maybe the ophthalmologist.
Try to learn music & monologue for auditions Wednesday, though I am 80% leaning towards canceling, because the location is a PIA to get to. When they first sent out the notice they said it was in the SF financial district, which is easy enough to get to on BART, but it's actually in Chinatown.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Did not buy any frozen foods when I was at Lucky's picking up bread & fruit, because the freezer part of the fridge looked jam packed last time I peeked. Wanted to finish off the crab which meant I may as well pull everything out of the freezer, reorganize it, and put it back in some semblance of order. Was surprised to find more raw chicken, steak and parsnips than I remembered, and a whole huge bag of frozen veggies I didn't know I had. Now everything is nice and neat and easy to find, the crab has been et, as well as the half-full container of chicken soup (there are still 5 full ones plus 2 Tom Ka Gai - Thai coconut chicken soup). Freed up another container which was half filled with cooked wok-able beef chunks, which I mixed with a bag of caramelized onions. Only ate 2/3 of that, bagged the rest for the fridge. Domino loved the bits of beef I broke off for her.

Updated my Outlook calendar and a doc that I keep on the iPhone with all the data for my upcoming Reno trip. That took a lot more time than it sounds.

Plans for tomorrow:
Deposit unemployment check
Ranch 99 - buy a better wok, and get crab eating utensils.
Buy a ream of printer paper
Carousel curtain time is 8 pm - have to be there by 7:30. I am pissed that light rail circumcised its schedule, and no longer has a train running after the show is over, so I have to drive. Traffic between Mountain View and San Jose is a nightmare between 5 and 7:30. Maybe I'll go around 2 pm and visit the Tech.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Home of the Weird
Current Music: Scott Joplin Channel on Pandora

ต้มข่าไก่ Dhom Ka Gui, which is often spelled Tom Ka Gai, is Thai coconut chicken soup. Last week in the cold and rain of Berkeley it rejuvenated me, and reminded me of just how much of a comfort food it is. And it is incredibly healthy - very little sodium, lots of lime juice and lemon grass and after all it is chicken soup.

So since I am on a Thai cooking jag, I went out and got the ingredients, and made two batches at home today, about 1/4 was dinner and I am still yummified. Very quick and easy to make, and delicious. I think I would like it better as duck soup, but was too lazy to go to the Chinese restaurant for take-out roast duck. And had not thought of it until after my two trips to Ranch99.

The recipe was out of Nancie McDermott's Real Thai , IMNSHO the best Thai cookbook ever written. Nancie was in my Peace Corps/Thailand group and this is her first cookbook - she has since made cookbook writing her profession.

The continuing saga of preserved turnips took another step forward, I think, this morning. I unpacked the turnip shreds from the brine (the recipe said >12 hours, it was more like 15) and since I did not trust the plastic peanut butter container I'd used for that step for the next step, I went out in search of Mason jars. Came up empty, but bought a big pickle jar, emptied it into an even bigger pickle jar, washed it out and plopped in 4 garlic cloves, the turnip shreds and filled it with white vinegar. That will sit on a shelf for a week or three. I may need to dilute the vinegar with water, but maybe not.

While I was on the pickle run, I also got some more eggs, so maybe tomorrow I'll whip up some Pot Thai. Need to do that soon so the chives and basil don't spoil.

Took a break and went to Starbucks, only to find them closing early. Continued on to the late night one, found a spot to sit, logged in on the netbook for a little but mostly read from a book I bought at BASFA last week, Michael Palin's Hemingway's Chair. I figured a book by this Monty Python alumnus ought to be interesting, and it is. Superbly written, and the chapters are short which somehow makes it harder to set down.

Plans for tomorrow:
Call PA Medical Foundation to find out what the bogus $500+ charge at the end of my bill is about. Looks like they are charging me for Blue Cross payments which I already made through my paycheck.
Do the laundry
Check the job listings

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Home of the Weird
Current Music: On My Own - Les Miz

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Writing Wrongs

Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with cooking

Back to Normal

Nailed it

Currying F(l)avor

long night's journey into day

Installathon

Two-fer

TGIT

It's all in the timing

Lunch Took All Day

Gone Fishing

You Can Tell He's Jewish

Insert Clever Subject Line Here

Lip Torture

What Am I - Chopped Liver?

Some Thai Cooking Class Photos

Cookin'

Another Day, Another Job App

Finally

Two Projects Done

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