Even though I have to work.

Is this an awesome week or what?

Happy Easter to those who celebrate.

I almost didn’t post this, but decided that today isn’t the day for my own personal beliefs and doubts to e important.

Even when it isn’t.

Jim at Wabi-Sabi made it to the Obama speech in Charleston last week, and has some thoughts on the matter and some pictures.

It’s nice to see the candidates paying attention to WV, and I can’t wait until the candidates head up this way.

I have to admit, however, that I was amused by the news of Hillary’s visit to Charleston. Obama went to the University of Charleston. Clinton went to Capital High, and was pleased that the gymnasium was filled with lots of teens. What the Gazette article doesn’t say, and what was reported by WV Public Radio is that her question and answer period was cut short when at 3:00 PM all the students left, since it was the end of the school day.

Makes me wonder how many of those students would have been there if they weren’t getting out of class.

Michael is significantly stronger than me, this is an uncontested fact. If a jar lid needs opened, a bolt or screw needs tightened, or something heavy needs lifted, he ends up on the job.

This is not to say I am incapable of these things, only that things I bolt sometimes work their way loose, and it takes me three times as long to carry heavy things, because I have to make multiple trips to his one.

And I’m okay with this. It’s not simply a male/female thing, it’s also that he has a greater ability to build muscle than I do (we participated in a research study on strength and muscle, and he has two body builder genes, while I have zero copies of the gene [not the scientific name, but I can’t remember the name given in the study, as it was about six years ago]). Do I take advantage of this sometimes? Of course. I don’t like carrying wood into the house one log at a time while he can do it in three trips. But I do try to carry my own weight.

So, if Michael is significantly stronger than me, why is it I have to go back and re-scrub every pot he washes?

While going through the great CD and DVD organizing project, I found several things that I have NO IDEA why they are in my house.

So if anyone wants ’em, you give me shipping and I’ll send ’em to you. Alternatively, you can come to my house and pick them up.

(more…)

The following conversation happened as we were coming home from the grocery store. Note of importance: My grandmother is very Catholic.

Michelle: What are you making for lunch?
Michael: I dunno.
Michelle: What are you making for lunch that that’s fish or vegetarian?
Michael: Oh. I don’t know.
Michelle: We could get take-out from Flying Fish.
Michael: YES! And I could get hush puppies! They’re vegetarian!
Michelle: No they’re not! THEY’RE MADE FROM PUPPIES!

To celebrate spring (since it’s not actually, you know, springlike here in WV) I made a new header image for the blog.

Now since I simply added this new image to the random rotation, it may be awhile before you see it. But when you see the purple crocus header? That’s the one I made for today. It would have a much faster experience, except that I decided to use Photoshop to do the image, so I could learn more about the program, it spent half an hour figuring out how to replicate a filter I use all the time in Corel PhotoPaint (I believe there has to be an easier way. But at least I got what I wanted.)

And I think it’s time I added more new header images here, as well as new splash images for my main page.

For some reason, everyone seems to be in the mood for biscotti. So here’s the recipe I use. These make very crisp crunchy biscotti that are best dunked in hot coffee, tea, or chocolate.

Almond Chocolate Biscotti

Recipe calls for almonds; I almost never have almonds, so use walnuts. I usually make half a without nuts for my grandmother.

3 eggs
1 cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 ¼ cup toasted almonds, coarsely chopped
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
7 oz bittersweet chocolate chopped into chunks (I used 1 ½ cups Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips)

Preheat oven 350 F

Whip the eggs, sugar and vanilla until the mixture thickens (It says it should hold its shape. Mine didn’t and were fine.)

Sift together flour, baking powder, add to egg mixture. Stir in nuts and chocolate.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper (my silicone baking sheets were perfect for this.) Form dough into two logs ~3” wide and almost the length of the baking sheet. Dampen hands and smooth each log.

Bake 25 minutes. Remove from oven and lower oven temperature to 300 F. Let biscotti logs cool a few minutes.

Remove logs from pan. With serrated knife (bread knife works best I think) slice the logs diagonally into ½ inch slices.

Place sliced cookies flat on baking sheets (you’ll need two) and bake 20 more minutes. Cool and store in an airtight container for up to a week. Biscotti also freeze extremely well.

from Room for Dessert by David Lebovitz

Just got some good news at work. Won’t be public for a few days, but I have hopes that it will make our lives a lot easier here in the coming months.

Wheee!

Happy Spring Equinox!

Go smell a flower!

ADDENDUM the First:
I should not, apparently, have pre-posted this.

No flowers here. Just 36 degree temperatures and wool coats. And temperatures in the 40s for the foreseeable future!

Oh yeah! How could I forget? It’s spring break in Morgantown! Maybe we’ll get lucky and won’t have a snow emergency this year.

As I have mentioned in previous occasions, our house is relatively small, early 50s house, and when we bought it, it had two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, kitchen, a hall closet that has to double as the closet for the master bedroom (because it has none), and an unfinished basement.

Since we moved in we built a computer room and bathroom in the basement, both of which are finished and heated.

But even with those two additional rooms, with three adults the house can feel a little small at times.

So I am always looking for ways to organize, which is why I ended up with a subscription to Real Simple, and I have to say that for the most part what I have tried as worked extremely well in cutting down the clutter (especially after we had to remove all tables from the center of the living room so my grandmother could maneuver her walker after her fall in January).

So my recent organization binge has been to ditch all the jewel cases for my CDs, and put them into an organizer (DVDs are next, as their cases are even worse space hogs.)

First and foremost, I have forgotten how much music I own. This is beginning to feel like a Sisyphean task, as I realize I have CDs all over the house (because I couldn’t keep them all in once place) including what Michael brought up from the basement last night, a paper box full of CDs I hadn’t seen in years.

It’s actually been kinda fun going, “THAT’S where all my Stevie Ray Vaughn CDs went!” and “HEY! I forgot I owned a White Zombie CD! Awesome!” Unfortunately, almost all my heavy metal was on cassette, and those got tossed when we were remodeling the basement, because I quite literally had no space for them. So there have been some pleasant surprises.

Of course there are also the times when I say, “I bought a Jewel CD? I own ‘The Best of REO Speedwagon’? What the hell was I thinking? I don’t think these have ever been listened to! Maybe they really belong to Michael.” (No, that won’t work. When I met him he only had Megadeth, Queen, and Weird Al Yankivick CDs. Yes, I know that’s really weird.)

I also discovered that I own a Green Jello CD. (That’s right, Green Jello, not Green Jelly.) I am pretty sure I have not listened to that since the novelty of the Big Bad Wolf song wore off.

So now I’m staring at this last box of CDs, at a loss as how to organize what I have left. (I have 7 U2 CDs. What goes in the eighth slot on that sheet? What do I organize ‘The Wonder Stuff’ with? It’s pretty much the only British Bluegrass Pop I have. I have no idea.) And as someone who lives to organize, this is become pretty painful. I’ve got about 12 sheets of sleeves left, so I can’t just stick the Klezmatics in their own sleeve and move on.

Of course it probably means it is past time for me to stop for the evening. And I should probably continue to resist the urge to put White Zombie in the CD player, because I can guarantee my grandmother won’t enjoy it at all. :)

Next project? Getting an external hard drive and putting all this music on my computer. (Looks at pile of CD cases.)

Or maybe not.

Until the three day weekend.

I can’t wait. I am going to sleep in as much as I can (which I can’t really do that much, since my grandmother refuses to leave her room until we’re up.) and take naps, and relax.

Considering the projected high for the weekend is 51, and that’s on Friday when it’s supposed to be raining (snow projected on Saturday) I don’t think I’ll be doing any gardening.

But I’m still waiting on flower pr0n from S.

Shawn mentioned he wanted to read the review of the new Serenity comic–well, it’s up over at Random Reading. It’s part one of 3, so we have a way to go.

But it’s Firefly! What more could we ask?

I found the following article in response to a question that just came up.

Soy Carbohydrates: The Flatulence Factor

And now you know too.