A Complete Bunch of Pants

I made stuff ...

2011-07-31T17:07:00.004-05:00

I was asked to bring a dessert to a thingie last week, and I decided to make something with peaches as I had just bought a bunch. This Martha Stewart recipe for Peach and Cornmeal Upside-Down Cake looked appealing to me ... mostly because it seemed really easy and all I had to buy was heavy cream. (Dang, heavy cream is rather pricey, isn't it? A pint of the stuff costs more than a gallon of milk.)

Well, it was really easy, although I'm not sure why mine looks so much different from Martha's:

Maybe I cooked the sugar/butter mixture too long? Dunno, but the cake was pretty damn good. It appeared to be a hit at the thingie (I brought along some Reddi Wip to top it with). I wonder how it would be with apples in the fall?

Then this weekend just for fun, I wanted to try making this Watermelon Pie recipe. I think I must have used a little too much watermelon, because after 4 hours in the fridge, the melon filling still had not set properly. So I was thinking the whole thing was a bust, but then I thought: what if it's a frozen watermelon pie? So I stuck it in the freezer. That set it up nice and firm, like a rock almost, so then I applied the whipped cream. I think to get the amount of whipped cream they have on their photo I'd have to double it. But whatever, here's what mine looked like:

Not bad, and it tasted pretty good, too. I want to make it again, but it was a little labor-intensive, so I'm not sure if I'll get to it before this year's watermelon season is over. Maybe next year.

Oh, and one more thing ...

2011-07-27T13:49:00.002-05:00

Whilst traveling down 15-501 past University Tower on Saturday, My mother said "I just love that building. It's so pretty." So take that, haters.

Delayed blogging: Doing Durham Stuff

2011-07-27T11:34:00.008-05:00

I meant to write this a few days ago, but I was either busy or lazy, so I'm doing it now, as I've been informed it's Anti-Procrastination Day. Not that I'm actually against procrastination. I find it very useful for those times when I just don't want to do stuff.

Anyway, my mom was in town on Saturday, so I needed to come up with some things to do all day so we weren't just sitting around saying "How are you?" "Oh, I'm fine; how are you?" One thing I really wanted to do was scour second-hand stores for a new (to me) kitchen table. Mom said she loves wandering around second-hand stores, so I figured we could kill at least half a day that way.

But first I wanted a post-breakfast boost, and I figured maybe Mom would like Gugelhupf. But apparently everyone in town had the same idea and the line was out the door. I didn't feel like waiting in it, so I decided we'd go to the farmer's market instead, which is right by our first stop, the TROSA furniture store.

I used to like the Durham Farmer's Market. But now I mostly avoid it, because it's really crowded, infested with stroller people and hard to navigate. It's also hella hot this time of year. Yeah yeah ... local, organic, small farmer blah blah blah ... I find the farmer's market a really annoying way to buy things and not even a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning. So we quickly found, bought and consumed some fantastic fried strawberry hand pies and got the hell out of there. On the way to the car my mom remarked about how unpleasantly crowded it was there, so I don't think it's just me.

Then we hit TROSA, Everything But Grannie's Panties, Salvation Army and the Habitat Re-store. Saw a bunch of tables that were either crappy, unsuitable or marked "sold." I suppose we could have gone to Raleigh and tried the fairgrounds flea market, but it was so hot out that I think we would have been miserable. Instead we went home and had homemade baba ganouj (which kicked ass) and sliced tomatoes from my garden.

After lunch we went to the awesome free wine tasting at Wine Authorities, where the theme was Basque wines. Look, here's mom drinking txakoli from the thingie whose name I can't remember:

And another of Wine Authorities guy (Craig? Yeah, I think Craig maybe) in his jaunty Basque attire, pouring wine (or actually probably cider):

The Wine Authorities tastings are always fun and very informative. I'm not sure why I don't go more often. Remind me to go more often. And if you want to come with, let me know.

We also stopped in at Bull City Craft, which is in the same shopping center as Wine Authorities, and had a look around. Seems to be geared toward children, which is great if you have kids. As we had no kids with us, we didn't stay long, but instead went to the new digs of the Scrap Exchange on Franklin Street. Their new space is gigantic and full of scrappy goodness, but it didn't seem to have working air conditioning. After about 15 minutes we both felt like we needed to get out of there, alas. I guess we could have then gone over and wandered around Golden belt, but we were both a little tired of being out and about at that point.

On our way there we had passed a guy on Alston Ave. selling watermelons off the back of his truck, and it seemed like the perfect day for one. So I stopped and got one (it turned out to be one damn fine tasty watermelon, too) on the way home.

I'd love to report that we ate at some fabulous, hip Durham eatery for dinner, but we didn't. My niece joined us at my house and I made pizza margherita on French bread using home-grown tomatoes and basil. It was awesome. Watermelon for dessert.

¡Gracias Esteban!

2011-07-27T06:24:00.002-05:00

Thanks, Stephen Colbert, for well and properly addressing the Summer's Eve talking vagina ads. (I tried to embed the video but it ended up being too huge for this bloghole.)

It came from the garden ...

2011-07-20T17:36:00.004-05:00

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

My friend gave me this plant and said it was a Thai cucumber. I'd never heard of a Thai cucumber, but it sounded cool, so I planted it. Now I have a rather large orange cucumber. When I go to sleep tonight, are little alien tentacles going to come out and suck out my brains? Or could it actually be a Chinese Yellow Cucumber?

UPDATE: I heard from my friend, who says it's a "poona kheera" cucumber. Here is a shot of it sliced. Tasty!

itI's hard to blog when you are at a complete loss for words ...

2011-07-20T10:58:00.006-05:00

I don't get flabbergasted that easily, but I don't even know what to say about this stuff. So much wrong on so many levels ... Do these commercials actually air on TV? Does this one:

... *sputter* ... christ on a cracker ...

Honey are you straight or are you blind?

2011-07-20T08:08:00.003-05:00

I think I may start actually writing blog posts again. For reals, man! \The problem is that I've ignore d this blog for so long I doubt I have any readers left. Oh well, that's the way it started way back when, and it wasn't so bad! I just have to figure out which of the many, many things I've stuck my nose into warrants babbling on about. maybe none of them! But again, that's pretty much the way it's been all along! So stay tuned. Or don't ...

Life is great, have a cookie ...

2010-08-31T11:52:00.000-05:00

I'm just not that into writing words right now. But I made cookies! The really cool thing about snickerdoodles is that anyone with a normally stocked pantry will have all of the ingredients on-hand. I'd post the recipe but I don't remember where I got it; google "snickerdoodles" and pick the one that looks simplest. That's what I did.

In other news, I'm still maintaining a semi-regular meditation practice. And I've learned the word "practice" is key. For a while I just felt like I was just struggling--struggling to maintain straight posture, struggling to keep my shoulders from tensing, struggling to keep a comfortable seat, struggling to keep my thoughts from running away with me ... and then I realized that the struggle is actually what it's all about. When you mention this sort of thing to experienced meditators they will often say "That's why they call it practice." Zing!

OK then. My life is awesome. Have a fabulous day.

I always liked the name Martha ...

2010-07-27T06:04:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I really love having a productive day at home completely to myself, which is what Sunday turned out to be. I did have tentative plans, but the extreme heat canceled them (I had been planning to go to the Durham Food Truck Rodeo* for my third time, but since it looks like it's going to be monthly I figured it would be OK to miss the one that occurred in 100+ temperatures). So I ended up spending the whole day (with a few small excursions to various stores) at home actually getting stuff done. And some of the stuff I did was cooking and baking.

It's the time of year when my friend Cindy's garden produces an overabundance of veggies, so Saturday I accumulated a kitchen full. I shredded a bunch of zucchini and stuck it in the freezer for future zucchini projects (I'm going to try a savory zucchini bread). I have way more tomatoes than I have time to do anything with, but I also don't have time to run around finding homes for them.But she had so many they would have just fallen off the plants and rotted on the ground because she doesn't have time to pick them all. So I took them ... I suppose the worst thing that could happen is they end up feeding the worms in my compost pile instead of the critters and bugs in her garden ...

Anyway, she gave me a couple of eggplants, and I really wanted to have a go at baba ghanouj, which I adore. I had tried many years ago to make some and it turned out horrible, so I was a little afraid to try it again. I think my mistake that time was that I didn't roast the eggplants correctly or long enough. So I looked online for some tips and I found a nice little video on Chow. Worked like a charm! So then I just followed this recipe, except for the part where it told me how to roast the eggplants, and I ended up with absolutely the best baba ghanouj I've ever had. Yay me! I'm definitely going to add eggplants to my garden next year, because this stuff is habit-forming.

I also had some lemons lying around so I decided to make glazed lemon-coconut bars. I started with this recipe but I completely didn't follow it because I didn't have Bisquick (I formulated a substitution with flour, baking powder and salt ... thanks internets!), I didn't have a half-cup of egg substitute (I used two real eggs instead) and I accidentally mixed the 3/4 cup of sugar with the base layer, so I had to add another in the top layer. Yes, I used twice the amount of sugar. Anyway, the result was delicious, but not terribly good-looking:

*The Durham Food Truck Rodeo looks like it will be happening monthly at Durham Central Park. Probably the best place to find out when the next one will be is the Durham Central Park blog. I had a great time at the first two and plan to go to them as ooften as I can in the future.

Have a seat ...

2010-07-20T11:29:00.004-05:00

I think I may have mentioned here the new meditation habit I'm trying to establish. Did I also mention that in pursuit of such, I was going to make myself a zafu, which is the Japanese way of saying "meditation cushion"? So anyway, I made the zafu (pictured above), and I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. (But I'm going to make another because I think I may actually be more pleased with one that's a little smaller in circumference.)

I used these instructions, which were pretty good. The one thing they didn't specify was finishing the ends of the pleated strip before you sew it to the top and bottom circles. I think that's sort of a crucial step, and fortunately I recognized it needed to be done and did it before it would have entailed any seam-ripping. The other thing it doesn't specify is how much one should adjust the length of the pleated strip to account for any decrease in the circumference of the circles. This is something I'll need to monkey with when I make my next one. Also, I'm going to add a handle to the next one, which will be pretty easy.

I stuffed it with buckwheat hulls from this place, which is actually local (Morrisville) so I was able to save a bit on shipping by picking them up. I think it's pretty cool that the woman started the buckwheat hull business to provided employment opportunities for developmentally disabled people. So if you need buckwheat seeds or hulls, that's where you should buy them.

Since I just used fabric I already had lying around, the only out-of-pocket cost to me was the buckwheat hulls (I used about $10 worth). It only took me about 2 hours to make, and I've got more time than money so it was really worth the effort (I would have spent at least $45, probably more, on an already-made zafu). The best thing is that I was able to make it to my own preference, which is important in a meditation cushion because discomfort can be a big obstacle to establishing a regular meditation practice.

Once I make my second zafu I'll still have enough fabric left to make a zabuton, which is a little mat you put your zafu on (it cushions your knees and ankles). Right now I'm just using an old folded-up comforter for that purpose. It works just fine ... but if it's cheap and easy to do I may as well make a matching one. Right?

Do you have to have a garden to have a garden party?

2010-07-14T21:23:00.000-05:00

Yet again, my bons mots have been wasted on Facebook lately, mostly because it's so easy to get a cheap laugh over there. No need for complete sentences! But Facebook is really sort of a black hole ... you post your most profound sentiment and maybe get gratified by a few comments, but then it just disappears beneath the weight of all the subsequent stupid stuff you say or post. And by you I mean me. At least if you put it in your blog someone searching the term "mr. ray's hair weave" could stumble across it years later and maybe, just maybe, appreciate your little pearls of wisdom. Or whatever they are. ("Mr. Ray's Hair Weave" is the second most popular search term that brings people to this blog behind the term "bunch of pants." I completely understand the urge to search on the term "Mr. Ray's Hair Weave", as I, like everyone else who lived in the DC area in the '70s or early 80's, would love to find an online video of the beloved Mr. Ray's Hair Weave commercial. So far, no luck. If you got here because of that search, you may or may not find this post interesting.)

But that's not why I came here today. I came to talk about tomatoes and basil. But I just expended all my energy writing that rather overlong paragraph above, so I'll talk tomatoes and basil another day. Except that I'll ask one question: What can I do with basil aside from making pesto?

I had a plethora but I'm not sure where I put it

2010-07-07T17:24:00.005-05:00

My friend Cindy gave me several massive zucchini, so of course the first thing I did was make some zucchini bread:

It's awesome stuff. I may have to make a ton more to use up all this zucchini. Then I'll walk around giving loaves away like I'm the zucchini bread fairy.

You didn't ask for the recipe, but I'll give it to you anyway (I've been using if for about 10 years now and I have no idea where I first got it or I'd give credit):

* 3 Eggs
* 1 cup Oil
* 2 cups Shredded raw zucchini
* 1 3/4 cups Sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon Baking powder
* 2 teaspoons Baking soda
* 2 teaspoons Cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon Salt
* 2 teaspoons Vanilla
* 1 cup Chopped nuts
* 2 cups Flour

Put zucchini in strainer and press or squeeze with hands to get excess liquid out. Beat eggs, sugar, and oil together. Add flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, and nuts. Mix together by hand. Add zucchini (minus liquid). Beat mixture. Pour into 2 greased, floured, loaf pans.
Bake 1 hr. at 350 deg. F. Recipe may be doubled.

Also, I got some really great news via a fortune cookie the other day:

When I first saw it I thought "a pony?" until I remembered that I haven't actually wanted a pony since fifth grade. So it must be the ability to smite people because I've always wanted that. Heads up jerks and wrongdoers!

I recently read a bunch of Albert Einstein quotations and the communication via fortune cookie reminded me of one of my favorites: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." I think I like the second.

Live in the moment and then just try to have really good moments ...

2010-07-03T12:16:00.004-05:00

Hi kids! I'm having a good life right now. Maybe that doesn't make for good blogging, but oh well ...

My gnome still hasn't made it home, but Rakka sent me a new one:

I need to get him in a frame and on the wall. I would say at least he'll be safe from thieves there, but apparently there has been a rash of break-ins in my normally boring (but wonderful) neighborhood. The thieves are only taking the computer and the TV from every house they rob. I don't know if the sound of my three bloodthirsty beastlets is enough to keep them out of my house, but I can take my computer with me when I leave and my television is one of the old heavy behemoth kinds that I would probably have a hard time giving away on Freecycle. My only worry is that someone breaking in would leave the door open and let the dogs out--they are really the only things I value.

Also, in vaguely interesting news, maybe, I'm taking the next logical step from a regular yoga practice and trying to meditate for reals. I mean, I've sort of tried in the past, but it was always easy to get frustrated and think it was a waste of time and then start putting it off because the kitchen needed tidying, etc. But now I've stepped it up and am getting serious about it. So my next project will be setting up a proper meditation place in my house. Currently I sit on a few throw pillows on top of an old comforter in the living room, but I've decided I'm going to make myself a proper zafu and zabuton and arrange part of my spare room as my sitting area. Yeah, hard core! The reason I'm DIYing the cushionry is because that stuff can be hella expensive. Oh yeah, I'm also going to make a yoga mat bag. I'll let you know how it all turns out...

Yes, it really is ...

2010-06-22T10:13:00.003-05:00

Stupid F-ing Awesome! Look where my gnome is!

You should buy stuff from her here or here.

2010-06-21T18:07:00.002-05:00

So is it a coincidence that my garden gnome was stolen from my yard and suddenly gnomes are popping up on overpasses and other high places all over Durham?

Possibly ... my gnome wasn't small and cute and easily hoisted to high places. He was 2 feet tall, made out of concrete and rather heavy. Still, I miss the little fella. If you see him, please steal him back for me.

In other news, my dog is totally effing cute:

and any day now my first tomato is going to ripen:

Or not ... I took that photo almost two weeks ago and the dang thing is still just growing bigger.

How are you?

I deleted this post

2010-05-27T06:16:00.005-05:00

So over a month ago I posted here about a local business swiping one of my photos for its web site without asking. The matter was resolved more or less satisfactorily to me, and the post had served its purpose. After a while, I saw no point in keeping it here and figured out of good will and equanimity, or something like that, I'd just take it down. So I did. And hid the comments, too.

Fabulous! Thanks for asking.

2010-05-20T13:00:00.001-05:00

I'm still having fun with money and food. Also cleaning supplies. I haven't really posted much about my coupon conquests because, well, wouldn't it just get a bit boring after a while? But also because I had established such a stockpile of cheap or free food and household supplies that I realized I could just not go shopping at all for a while. Of course I had to buy perishables (mostly stuff you don't usually find coupons for, like milk, fruit, veggies and eggs), but I really didn't need much else because I had stocked up in the previous months. So aside from a few odd incredible deals (like doubles at Kmart and triples at Harris Teeter), I just haven't been shopping much.

Until yesterday, that is. It's Harris Teeter Super Doubles time again (that's when they double any coupon up to $1.98 in value), and I had a great trip. I used my quota of 20 doubleable (is that a word? Is now ...) coupons, all but one over $1 (plus one non-doubleable $2 coupon). My order rang up at $56.23 (after "VIC" savings, which were $17.55), and I paid $12.62 after coupons. Here's what I got (You can click it to see it bigger, y'know):

The two Mystic Pizzas? Free! (There's a little line on the box that says something about it being the pizza that made the movie famous. I don't remember the pizza in the movie being frozen ... but I digress. But wait, that's not all I got free! Also free were the cans of Muir Glen tomatoes, two Reach dental flosses, two Kashi Cereals, two Hersheys Extra Dark chocolate bars and three McCormick spices. The rest of the stuff was just really, really cheap. (If you're wondering how I figure out the best deals, I use the lists at Southern Savers.) I plan to make at least a couple more trips before Super Doubles ends next week.

I've gotten so accustomed to not paying anywhere near full price for so much stuff in the grocery store that I think long and hard about buying just about anything that isn't. Do I really NEED this? I ask myself. Usually in the case of milk, eggs or fresh fruit and veggies, I'll answer yes, but I still look for those things on sale or frequent the places where they are usually cheaper. (Fruits and veg are usually cheaper at Kroger and Food Lion than at Harris Teeter, and often even cheaper still at Compare Foods.) Sometimes for other things I decide that no, I don't actually need it, which ends up saving me even more money.

So anyway, in other news, you didn't actually ask but I'll tell you that life is good. No, life is great. No, make that fabulous. The "bad" things that happen seem to always turn out to be good after all. I hope that's how it is for you, too.

Meet me after school and I will beat you like gorilla

2010-05-11T12:10:00.004-05:00

I think I got bored with blogging again. I'll go ahead and keep blaming the volcano. See, if I had taken my trip to Wales, I'd have easily had all sorts of new and interesting thoughts to share simply because my mind would have been in a completely different place. I had been hoping to come home seeing the world with new enthusiasm (or something like that), which is what always happens after I go somewhere. Then I would have written about it, posted photos, maybe even tried making new foods based on something I had eaten there ... but no. Alas. I stayed here and couldn't think of a damned thing to say that seemed interesting enough to mention here.

I'm trying to revive a less-than-successful meditation habit that I had tried to establish previously. It's not as exciting as yoga (which I'm also still doing regularly), but I can see some benefits. If you do it lying down it's a great way to fall asleep ... which is why you're told to sit up. But what If I really need the sleep? Seems like a win-win outcome to me ...

Oh, I suppose since I brought the subject up a few months ago that I should mention it now and be done with it: the swell fellow I had met back in January turned out to be not so swell after all. So now I get to go out on "dates." It's OK.

I did get mildly excited over the weekend about some rhubarb my friend Cindy gave me. Yum, rhubarb! I decided to try making rhubarb bars with it, but after the baking the result behaved nothing at all like a bar, but more like a cobbler:

It was damn tasty, though, and that's what really matters. I'd post the recipe, but I can't find it now.

At least the kitchen works

2010-04-21T08:05:00.005-05:00

Stupid volcano.

If you've been paying attention to The News, or maybe my Facebook status feed, you won't be surprised to learn that my trip to Wales did not happen. I'm more than a little bummed out about it, and I've shaken my fist at the volcano a few times, but there's really nothing to be done. The only positive is that Continental Airlines turned my non-refundable ticket into a refundable one, so I'm hoping that in however many weeks it takes them to process the refund, I will have a chunk of cash to apply to the debt on my new furnace.

I could have taken the whole week off anyway, but I decided to just take two days and save the rest for later. I may think of something fun and cheap to do with the time (like visit another friend out who invited me out to the Pacific Northwest, maybe? I can use frequent flier miles for that one ...)

So now I'm back to the same old same old, with no lovely memories of my adventures in Wales to shore up my spirits.

Maybe I need to bake a cake or something ...

It starts out as a flirtation and ends up an expensive habit

2010-04-13T11:31:00.004-05:00

Hi, it's me! I've started and not finished several blog posts over the last ... what? Two months? I can't be bothered to check. I've been doing the same old things:

Making some delicious food, including but not limited to: no-knead bread, lemon curd, coconut cake, little lemon souffles, "camping" doughnuts, lemon angel torte and frozen lemon yogurt. In case you can't tell, I'm really into the lemon right now.

Coupon stuff. Still saving lots of money. Too lazy to recount all the free and incredibly cheap stuff I've gotten over the past couple of months. My favorite deals this week were free nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat bread and 12 oz. of New England Coffee for 99 cents.

GETTING READY FOR MY TRIP TO WALES!! Less than a week to go! My mother has graciously agreed to stay at my house and look after my dogs. I hope she doesn't get too bored. She adores the $7 fabric store on 15-501, but how many times can she go there before it gets boring too? She's been to Durham before, though, so hopefully she can find her way to some fun. What's good for a 70-something woman to do in Durham?

I once offended a foodie by calling him a foodie

2010-02-22T09:54:00.002-05:00

Oh noes! All I can think of is food! A couple of years ago I lost 20 pounds and I've been extremely happy with the svelter me. (Also, it's helped my dog agility tremendously; I have way more stamina and my knees and feet don't get sore after a weekend of competing.) One of the things that helped me maintain my weight is the fact that I've never been overly interested in food. I mean, I love to eat and I adore yummy things, but usually I'd rather go hungry than put much effort into making anything. I guess I'm just lazy.

Now that the Swell Fellow and I have been cooking regularly, I'm thinking a lot about food, mostly searching for recipes that would be fun to try. When S.F. isn't around, I'm still not terribly inclined to expend much effort on my food, but I seem to have a lot more yummy leftovers hanging around, which means I'm eating really well without much effort.

Egads, the last thing I want to do is fatten up again. Good thing I have a treadmill! I bought it off of Craigslist last year, mostly because I wanted to teach the dogs to walk on it so I could exercise them and keep them fit for agility even when it was crappy a cold and getting dark really early. But I use it way more than they do. Mostly I walk on it, but I'm working in longer and longer periods of running. It's a fabulous way to not feel guilty about spending a long time in front of the TV. Joss Whedon shows are a great accompaniment to a treadmill workout.

Anyway, back to food ... I think I want to try my hand at something heavenly but not very healthy my mother used to make for us: pork tenderloin sandwiches. Oh, christ on a cracker those things were heavenly! The funny thing is that my mother was never a really great cook, but you couldn't tell it from her pork tenderloin sandwiches. If she could make them, surely I can too, right?

In other food-related incidents, my sourdough starter seems to have gone bad. Apparently it requires a bit more maintenance than the Betty Crocker cookbook let on. It's like the little tiny turtles I had when I was a kid: they look so cool in the store, but then after you get them home you realize you can't forget to feed them and clean their little habitat. So I've been looking into that as well, and will be collecting some of the links I find over at delicious (where I also seem to have accumulated a plethora of recipes over time).

NEW Feature! Unsolicited and perhaps even unwarranted product reviews!

2010-02-19T14:26:00.004-05:00

In yet another a blatant attempt to get companies to send me free ~~crap~~ stuff (HELLO, PILLSBURY! Have I not said enough how much I love your crescent dough? Oh wait, it's very nearly free most of the time if you combine the right sale with the right coupon ... so I suppose I can buy my own) I'm going to, maybe sometimes if I feel like it, post product reviews.

Today, We have one GOOD and one BAD. I'll do the bad one first so I can end on an upbeat note.

TAZO Organic Chai Spiced Black Tea. When I bought this (on sale and with a doubled $1 coupon at Harris Teeter), I thought I was treating myself to an indulgence, because even discounted it cost more than I usually pay for tea. I drink a LOT of tea, so I can't afford the good stuff. Good thing I'm mostly content with the cheap stuff. And I will continue to be, because this stuff is horrible. Bleah, even the memory of it is nauseating me. See, I don't really know from chai. Other than the odd bit here and there at Thai restaurants, I've only ever had Stash brand chai spiced tea, which is quite yummy. So I thought that being all hoity toity and expensive, TAZO would maybe be yummier. And they make it sound yummy on the box: "To create your own version of TAZO^® ORGANIC CHAI, you would have to accumulate many frequent flyer miles shuttling between Asia, Africa and Central America gathering rich black tea, sweet cinnamon, zingy ginger, spicy star anise and warm cardamom." But the predominant flavor of TAZO^® ORGANIC CHAI is none of these things. No, Tazo Organic Chai would be better named TAZO^® BLACK PEPPER TEA, because it tastes like I filled a tea infuser with ground black pepper and steeped it for several minutes. Even sweetening with honey didn't help. If you think I'm kidding or exaggerating, or you're thinking "Mmm, black pepper tea sounds delish," then I've got a box with 17 tea bags left in it to for you (I gave the stuff three chances before I decided I could stomach no more). Let me know if black pepper tea sounds like your thing and I'll figure out how to get it to you. (I'm even willing to send it to Guam if you want it, Santos!)

When I want to splurge, I'm buying Stash tea from now on (which is cheaper anyway).

Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters. ZOMG! This stuff is edible crack. I almost regret having tried it (it was on sale at Kroger and I had a stacking e-coupon+paper coupon combo that made it free) because now every time I'm in the grocery store I have to go check the price to see if I can let myself buy it. (Tricky, because while it's with the granola bars at Kroger, Harris Teeter stocks it with the nuts. I don't know where Food Lion keeps it because they don't double coupons so I rarely shop there.) Seriously, this stuff is good. The problem is the regular price is just completely wack and no one in her right mind should ever pay it. A 5-ounce bag, which they claim is 4.5 servings but in real life it's really two, or maybe even only one depending on how you're feeling, has a regular price of $3.99. But regular prices are for chumps. So I'll only be buying this stuff when the combination of sale price and coupons puts it at 99 cents or less. Then you better believe I'm stocking up. Not that a stockpile will last me very long because like I said, a bag can be one serving, depending ...

DISCLAIMER: In accordance with some new rules about bloggers and free stuff, I hereby declare that nobody sent me diddly in exchange for these reviews.

Did I mention there's free chocolate?

2010-02-18T22:30:00.002-05:00

Our Wednesday night recipe was something light and simple that I found over at Martha Stewart: Chicken Tenders with Cucumber Salad and Chickpea Couscous. It looked a little something like this:

I forgot to buy raisins, so the couscous did without, and I added carrots to the salad because I thought it could use a bit of orange color. It was all really tasty, and I'll definitely try it again.

Now what shall we cook next week? Something Mexican, maybe?

And now for the "Coupon Dork" portion of our presentation, a little segment called "How much did Lisa save at Harris Teeter Super Doubles?" See, every so often Harris Teeter has Super Doubles, during which coupons up to $1.98 in value are doubled (HT always doubles coupons up to 99 cents). It's really a lot of fun, if you're idea of fun is saving a bunch of money and getting stuff for free.

I've been twice already. It was so much fun the first time I just had to go back. Actually, they will only double 20 coupons per day, so you need to go more than once to take full advantage. Also, you can only use 1 coupon on buy-one-get-one-free items at HT even though each item rings up at half price, so if you want to use more than one coupon you need to separate the items into two orders.

On the first visit, the order rang up at $48.58 (most of the items were on VIC special; without that discount it would have been about $20 more). After the coupons were scanned I paid $14.16, $4.61 of which was for the produce (for which I had no coupons). Here's what I got (the photo is annotated because I'm that geeky; click on it for full effect):

On the second visit I picked up a few items that weren't on VIC special, but were a good price with the doubled coupons. It rang up at $41.97 ( would have been about $50 without VIC discount), but I paid $12.33. And I got free chocolate! It looked like this (except that I bought another bag of coffee that I forgot to include in the picture; click for the full annotated goodness):

Mmmm, free chocolate ...

You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you

2010-02-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

Once again, it's bullet point time here in Pantsville. It's because so many things I think or do just don't seem blogworthy enough for their own posts. I don't know why I think this way because, hell, its my damn blog and if I want to string together a few non sequiturs and call it a post I can, right? But I think maybe that's what Facebook is for. And now Google Buzz, which is Facebook with an edit button and without so many people.

Oh damn, my first bullet point was going to be about Google Buzz, but then I kinda just said what I was going to say about it.

We made another recipe. See, Wednesday night is sort of "Cooking With The Swell Fellow Night" because it's a night I don't have doggie classes and he doesn't have table tennis. Yes, he plays competitive table tennis. Anyway, on Wednesday we made salmon with spinach sauce (I'd link to the recipe but I think it came out of a cookbook. Like an actual paper one.) and steamed vegetables (you don't need a recipe to make steamed vegetables). Actually, he made the salmon and the sauce, with minor help from me, and I made the steamed veggies. We didn't really pay attention to the presentation, so the photo isn't fabulous, but here it is:

I made the sourdough bread. I didn't think I needed the vital wheat gluten Crystal had recommended (even though I had bought it ... see below) because I was using white flour. But the loaves still didn't rise well, growing out more than up. But it tasted great. I didn't take a photo of it. I'll wait for a loaf that doesn't look weird.

Valentine's day! Best one in ages! I got flowers, made cookies and we even made a vaguely heart-shaped pizza:

The cookies were just your average shortbread cookies, and I had meant for the royal icing to be smooth and more red. But I didn't have enough red food coloring and I didn't make the icing runny enough to pipe on properly (the recipe said "not too runny," but I think whoever had written it was thinking it would be used for flowers and shapes. So tip: for cookies you want the icing runnier.) After I wrestled with the decorators bag (I think the hardest bit was getting the icing IN the bag! Is there a trick? Mine got soooo messy ...) I decided that rather than getting the icing out of the bag, making it runnier and 'then putting it back in, I'd just spread the icing with a damn knife.

I made a cake yesterday, but not just any cake: it was an extremely ambitious cake. I used this recipe. It would have been far easier and less time-consuming to have tried a recipe that used lemon extract, but no, I had to aim high. I think I may have zested a lemon before, but I had never pithed one. By the fourth one I had gotten the hang of it and stopped cursing so much. Anyway, I think the cake was fabulous. It looked OK, too:

I realized only after I baked the cake that I don't own a cake plate, or even a regular plate large enough for a cake. I also realized after I wanted to transport the cake that I own nothing suitable for that purpose. I had only just purchased the bundt pan at a thrift store ($1.99 at Cause For Paws) last week when I decided I would try to make the cake.

So last week I bought the vital wheat gluten, something that's not cheap ($5.99 at Kroger) and for which I had no coupon. I also had to buy cake flour ($2.99), which was another non-coupon item. I was dreading the relatively expensive grocery trip, but then I got my quarterly Kroger coupons in the mail. Every quarter Kroger sends out coupons along with a dividend voucher based on how many "points" you earn through purchases. My dividend was $9, plus there was a coupon for $1 off my next order. I used those plus a few other coupon/sale deals to make a batch of groceries that rang up at $28-something (from memory here--I've misplaced the receipt) cost $13-something. Here's the haul:

The Oreos were free--I had gotten a coupon for becoming their fan on Facebook--and the Whoppers were on Manager's Special for $1 (I have a recipe I was thinking of trying that calls for malted milk balls). The Kroger mailing contained a $1 off $4-or-more fruit coupon, so that covered the apples and lemons, and a $1 off $4-or-more veggie coupon for the broccoli, asparagus and carrots. The chicken broth was on Manager's Special, and the Purex was a sale+coupon deal that made it something like $1.50. I didn't have a coupon for trash bags so I bought the smallest el-cheapo one, but that was a mistake because they really suck.

So, Wednesday night will be another cooking adventure, and it's my turn to pick the recipe. I have no idea what to pick. I'm open to suggestions. I was thinking maybe toad-in-the-hole, but that seems so unhealthy after this weekend's pizza, cake and cookies. I think something light may be in order. Any ideas?

Just fill it with random text and bake

2010-02-09T14:48:00.003-05:00

So really, all I seem to do these days is cook. I needed stuff to take to work for lunches, so I made a crock-pot pot roast. It actually behaves more like a soup because cooking the roast all night in the crock pot makes it just fall apart. Deliciously. I had no recipe. I just chucked the roast in and added onion, potatoes carrots and rutabaga. I had wanted to use turnips but Compare Foods, where I like to get my produce, was out of turnips. So I used a rutabaga and it works just fine. Then I added 2 cups of beef bouillon spiked with my secret ingredient: a big dollop of Marmite.

If my agility class is cancelled tonight because of rain I might just make some sourdough bread. And spend at least a half an hour on the treadmill ...

Because you're not made of invisible pork chops

2010-02-08T13:32:00.003-05:00

Should I just attempt to sneak in the substitution of "we" and "us" for "I" and "me," or do I need to be explicit? OK, well, previously mentioned swell fellow is still around. Shall I just keep referring to him as Swell Fellow? S.F.? He does have a name, so maybe I should just use that?

Anyway, he likes to cook. Me, not so much, although I have been making an effort. But I've discovered it's actually fun to cook things with someone else. Here's our most recent pizza:

Then we decided to try jaeger schnitzel, which was something he liked to eat way back long ago when he lived in Germany. From what I gather, "schnitzel" roughly means "cutlet." "Jaeger" means "hunter," and since jaeger schnitzel is made of pork, one presumes the prey was wild boar. Or maybe it got away and the hunters just stopped at the store for a tenderloin. Anyway, in our first attempt the schnitzel came out a tad dark:

So we tried again:

It was yummy. Here's the schnitzel recipe and here's the potato side dish recipe.

Oh, also, I made bread, just because the swell fellow likes bread and it's something I already knew how to make. I was feeling all domestic and shit. But my whole-wheat bread never seems to rise nicely, so I think I need to learn a trick or two. But it tasted just fine.

I just used the ordinary wheat bread recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. Maybe I need to experiment a little with other recipes. At any rate, making the bread inspired me to whip up a batch of sourdough starter, which will be all ripe in a few days. So this weekend I think I'll make some sourdough bread, or maybe try my hand at sourdough whole-wheat.

So now that I'm feeling bolder in the kitchen, I decided to try something I've been thinking of for a while: homemade yogurt. See, I eat a lot of yogurt, and it gets expensive. And while there are lots of coupons for the mind-boggling variety of newfangled sugary or nutrasweety yogurt concoctions with stupid names, there aren't quite as many for big ol' tubs of plain, unflavored yogurt, which is what I buy. So I read that one can make yogurt in a crock pot, and I decided to try it. I found instructions here. And sure enough, it works! I didn't take a photo, but imagine a crock pot full of yogurt and you've pretty much got the picture. It came out a bit liquidy, probably because I used skim milk (and even though I put some non-fat dry milk in as a thickener), but I use the yogurt to make fruit smoothies in my blender, so it really doesn't matter. It's easy! It's cheap! And because Durham doesn't recycle plastic yogurt tubs, I get to feel a bit superior about not contributing to the waste stream. (Not that I really do; I re-use and re-use plastic yogurt tubs like nobody's business. Chances are if anything is being stored in anything in my house, it's being stored in a plastic yogurt tub. And still I have half a cabinet full of them.)

So now I'm going to keep playing with the yogurt formula a bit. This time I used Dannon, just because that's what I had in the fridge (coupons!). But I think want to try starting a batch with some of the more expensive specialty yogurts (particularly Oikos and Chobani--they're quite yummy!). I've read that Trader Joe's Greek yogurt makes a great starter, too. Also, I want to try other methods of thickening it. I wonder what arrowroot or agar-agar would do? I'll have to research this ...

So now that I'm becoming kick-ass in the kitchen, what should I try next?

I'm trying to put the coup in coupon

2010-01-27T10:56:00.008-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to the dentist for a cleaning and the hygienist started grilling me about what I was doing differently. It seems that during the bit where she prods my gums and calls out numbers to the assistant who enters them into my computerized chart, a couple of the numbers were too large (they were "5," to be exact). She asked if I'd been lax in flossing. I said no, well, not really, I mean, not terribly, OK, maybe slightly ... but the one big difference between now and 6 months ago was that my Sonicare toothbrush had snuffed it and I hadn't bought a new one because, well, have you seen how much those things cost? So she said I was most definitely to purchase a new Sonicare pronto, and gave me a $10 off coupon.

So $10 is good, but not good enough. I kept my eyes peeled, and discovered that this week's Rite Aid Sunday circular had a $10 off Sonicare coupon in it. Rite Aid allows you to stack their in-ad coupons with a manufacturer's coupon, so now I had $20 off my Sonicare. But I wanted more. MORE! I also had a coupon for $5 off a $25+ Rite Aid purchase. So I ended up getting $25 off my Sonicare, thanks to the magic of coupons. Now I'm hoping the magic of Sonicare will save me on future dental work ...

So the better-living-through-coupons project is continuing apace. I probably don't save as much or as consistently as girlnblack77 (my mentor!), but she's shopping for a family and needs to buy a lot more of the kind of stuff you can save big on with sales+coupons. For example, she's more likely to take advantage of a $5 off your next purchase offer on 5 bricks of Kraft cheese than I am because, much as I adore cheese (my motto: "Even bad cheese is good cheese."), 5 bricks at once is a bit more than I would typically use before mold set in.

But I do get my share of fabulous deals, such as (you knew I was going to use bullet points at some point, right? I adore bullet points.):

The Heluva Good cheese that was on sale for $1 and free after the $1 off coupon.

The 2 boxes of Electrasol Finish Powerball tabs (which I would normally not buy at all in favor of some house brand dishwasher detergent) that were on sale for $2.99 but brought down to 49 cents each after my $2.50 off coupons.

The Bayer Aspirin that paid me money after stacking Rite Aid & manufacturer's coupons. It's technically not supposed to happen per Rite Aid's coupon policy; when the value of the coupons is more than the value of that product, the coupon value is supposed to be adjusted down to the product price. But the entire value of these coupons was subtracted from my order total, which means that Bayer ended up giving me a discount on my other items as well. Thanks, Bayer! Love your aspirin! When it's free, at least ...

The free Dove 2-bar pack and bottle of lotion I got when I complained because they have a bogus coupon link on their web site. The link lures you into signing up for their e-newsletter, but then after you do that and try to print your coupon, you get a message that "There are no prints for this campaign." Then why do they have a link that says "Print coupon?" Who knows. I complained about it and they sent me coupons for free stuff. (The link is still there if you want to complain about it, too ...)

The closeout-priced Dickinson's Pumpkin Butters that were free after Harris Teeter doubled my $1 off coupons.

I'm now being recognized as "the organized one with the book" by at least one of the cashiers at my Kroger. Last night he said "I ought to get you to do my shopping for me."

"The book" is the 3-ring binder I am now using to organize my coupons. I had been using a little plastic accordion-style organizer, but I was finding it got full quickly and didn't give me enough room to sub-categorize my coupons, so consequently it was taking way too long to find what I needed quickly enough.

So I splurged on some plastic baseball-card collector inserts for a 3-ring binder. (I didn't splurge on a binder, because I already had a few of those, but if anyone has one of those expensive fancy zippery Mead 5-Star binders lying around that they want to get rid of, I'll take it off your hands ...) Then I took some time and organized all the gazillions of coupons into their little pockets, and now it looks like I'm very organized when I go to the store. Never mind that I'm not completely happy with how I categorized things and I want to redo it somewhat, I can now mostly find the coupon I need very quickly (like when I'm looking through those closeout bins at the front of the store and find something at a price that makes it free or close to it with a coupon.)

And you'd think the cashiers would hate me because I'm holding up their line, but some of them get almost as excited to see how much is going to come off my total as I do. On Sunday one Kroger cashier very helpfully pointed out that I had picked up a bar of the the wrong kind of cheese to qualify for the 10-item mega sale. She could have just said nothing and then left me doing math in my head trying to figure out why my bill seemed way too high in the end, but she held up the line while I went back to exchange it for the right cheese. It's almost as if store employees like me even more now that I'm one of the coupon geeks than they did when I was just an ordinary shopper. OK, I know, I'm taking this a bit too far ... I'm sure they don't like me at all. They're just nice and friendly in a way I never noticed them being before.

All in all, even though it's more of an effort and not always so convenient, extreme couponing has made grocery shopping way more fun for me. It's like a treasure hunt, in a way. And the prize is free cheese. Free cheese!!

I had more bullet points than this but I've misplaced them

2010-01-21T15:13:00.004-05:00

Yes, it's been two weeks since I last blogged. I've been busy, and by "busy" I sort of mean "lazy."

That swell fellow I blogged about two weeks ago? Really swell, thanks for asking.

I think the homemade pizza has almost been perfected. It looks something like this:

You can achieve it using this crust recipe and this sauce recipe.

When life hands you rhubarb, make pie ...

2010-01-07T21:01:00.004-05:00

So getting stood up may have been an actual good thing (I think they call it a blessing in disguise around these parts). Not that I want to go getting all personal here again when I should be writing about badly-made food and power tools. But I had coffee with a really swell fellow yesterday.

Ooh, good band name: The Swell Fellows. Write that one down.

Ooh, check me out, I'm crowdsourcing!

2010-01-06T07:37:00.002-05:00

So for various reasons* I don't get too personal here, which often leaves me little to blog about. But I'm going to bend the rule a teeny bit because, well hell, it's my damn blog, isn't it? I can do whatever I want.

Anyway, every since The Former Mr. Pants and I split up, I've been working on a "new life resolution" of sorts, that amounts to: be happy, goddammit! OK, so it's a little more evolved than that ... I've been trying to maximize my good, happy and optimistic qualities and keep negativity to a minimum. It's a tall order and a daily struggle, believe me. I really had to do it, because otherwise I think I would have fallen into a pretty deep depression. The whole divorce thing was a big bummer ... but in hindsight, not as big a bummer as the marriage had been. See? That's being positive ... I am able to see what a good thing my divorce was. Yay divorce!

OK, so I don't write too much about this personal quest for happiness because that veers dangerously close to the kind of sappy earnestness that makes me cringe. Besides, other people write about being happy a lot better than I would. Also I just can't help being snarky and sarcastic, and I would just end up making fun of myself for trying to be happy. That would get confusing ...

Oh, but I digress, as usual ... those who know me outside of this blog know that in the two years since the former Mr. Pants and I split up I've done a wee bit of dating (most of it to one person, see snarky asterisk below). I could fill acres of cyberspace with my reflections on the topic, but I'm too lazy for that right now.

But I am curious about one bit of modern dating protocol ... or maybe etiquette is the right word. I'm hoping to hear some thoughts on this ... here's the scenario: I went out a couple of times with a guy. We had a few e-mail exchanges, some phone conversations, a few text messages back and forth, and I was thinking he was pretty swell. He seemed to think I was kinda swell as well, or so it appeared to me. We friended each other on Facebook, yay, and things seemed peachy enough. Then he stood me up the third time we were to meet.

He apologized very sincerely and admitted it was rude, but his reason for standing me up was nothing like car trouble or a ruptured appendix or anything unavoidable. It amounted to "Getting together with you turned out to be not so important to me." Of course, he phrased it much more tactfully and apologetically than that, but the take-home message for me was that he obviously just wasn't that into me. So I eloquently and politely declined any further involvement with him because, well, why invite heartbreak?

Anyway, I guess he did me a big favor (this is me being positive!), because better to find these things out sooner rather than later. I really did think he was a swell guy, and given some more time I probably could have wrapped my mind around him and tied it in a knot ... which would have made the heartbreak of discovering he just wasn't that into me much worse. So he saved me lots of anguish by delivering the message in a timely manner.

So my protocol question is: considering that I don't bear him any malice, well, not much at least, do I unfriend him on Facebook or leave it be? I mean, unfriending someone seems like a spiteful, bitter thing to do, and I'm all about avoiding spite and bitterness (all it does is feed on itself and grow until it takes over your life). Then again, it's not like I really consider him such a friend at this point ... but my friending policy on Facebook tends to be liberal and inclusive so maybe that shouldn't matter. I mean it's not like he's my enemy. The one good thing is that Facebook doesn't notify people when you unfriend them, so unless they are actually paying attention (and I have no reason to believe he is), they don't get a message that may amount to a big "f**k you." I've been trying to cut down on sending that message to people.

So what say you, oh trusted crowd?

*One of the reasons was that a major participant in my life for a small portion of 2008 and a large portion of 2009 had asked not to be mentioned here. But because all agreements with him became null and void the day he broke up with me via text message, I'll now say that he was the inspiration for the "Reverent Smiths Listener Dealbreaker" axiom I posited a few weeks ago.

Because your blog is always better than mine.

2010-01-03T11:04:00.001-05:00

She's my friend. And she's now Stupid Fucking Awesome.

Try one with a heap of scorn on the side

2009-12-29T21:48:00.004-05:00

OK, so I managed to make some "Coupon Pies." In case you're just tuning in, I have previously sung the praises of Pillsbury Crescent rolls/dough, and I have also wondered if I could manage to come up with recipes that use it and Green Giant Frozen vegetables, because they're two things that seem to be always on sale with plentiful stacking coupons available.

Basically, I took some of my leftover xmas ham, mixed it with some (cooked) Green Giant Broccoli in Cheese sauce (yes, I know it's possibly not real cheese, but it is real sauce) and wrapped it all up in Crescent dough sheets (one roll of dough, cut in half, one half per pie). I baked it at 375 for ... Oh, I dunno, a little while. Until it looked like it does in the picture.

The verdict: It was OK. I mean anything with ham and crescent dough is going to be at least OK because, c'mon, it's ham and crescent dough! But I think it would have been better with real cheese and not the cheese sauce that comes with the broccoli. Partially because of the taste, but mostly because the cheese sauce made the bottom a bit soggy. No one wants a soggy bottom. So if I were going to do it again, I'd either use fresh broccoli or buy the frozen kind that's not in cheese sauce, and just add real cheese.

Another thing I'd do differently is come up with a way to fold the top instead of gathering it together, or maybe bake it at a slightly lower temp for a little longer. This is because the part at the top where all the dough comes together didn't cook completely. So to get that part cooked without burning the outside, I think I'd need longer time at lower temp, Maybe. I mean, I really don't know what I'm doing, I just make it all up as I go along ...

Next year you're all getting decorative homemade crap, I promise

2009-12-27T21:15:00.008-05:00

I'm really jealous of all these people who come up with "A Year of ..." blog ideas and then get a book deal out of them, maybe even a movie deal, and maybe even another book deal, and so on. Because they never have to go back to that office ever again. I want to not have to go back to that office, but all the good ideas have been taken.

Maybe I should become Pillsbury's bitch. Oops, I almost typed "butch" there instead of "bitch." Well, if Pillsbury wants a butch, I'll be that, too, as long as it pays well and doesn't involve going to an office every day. At any rate, I hereby publicly declare my love for the Crescent Roll. Is there any money in it for me, Pillsbury? What if I decide to blog "A Crescent a day?"

Well, even if there's nothing at all in it for me, here's today's Crescent: I brought home some leftover ham from Xmas dinner at my mom's house. Normally, I make omelets whenever I get any ham, because nothing makes an omelet tastier than a bit of ham, IMO. But when I went for the eggs I noticed I had all these Pilsbury Crescent Rolls and Crescent sheets in the fridge thanks to the fact that they seem to be always on sale at Kroger, with plentiful e-coupons and paper coupons (in that nice 50 cent value that Kroger doubles!), making them nice and cheap. SO I thought I should roll up the ham with some cheese and a bit of broccoli (added only because I felt guilty if I didn't include a vegetable) in a sheet of Crescent dough. I'm sure there's recipe for exactly this somewhere on the Pilsbury site, but who really needs a recipe for this kind of thing? I baked it all at 375 degrees for somewhere around 15 minutes, until it was pretty and golden brown. Yum. It made 2 servings, so one was dinner last night and the other was lunch today.

Later this week, I'm making little piggies in blankets for a New Year's Eve potluck, with Little Smokies I got on sale/with a coupon at Food Lion and, yes! Pilsbury Crescent Rolls! But I need to come up with a vegetarian version, because there will be at least one vegetarian and one person who keeps kosher at this shindig. Carrots in a blanket? Broccoli in a blanket? And no, I'm not going to go buy little vegetarian sausages, because I don't have a coupon for those.

Hmmm, maybe I should spend that next year of my life refusing to buy anything I don't have a coupon for and then I can write a stupid book about it. I wonder who should play me in the movie?

Oh yum, I just thought about a possible combination of Crescent Rolls and that can of dulce de leche that's sitting in my cupboard right now ...

This blog item 99¢ off

2009-12-18T09:05:00.006-05:00

Furnace inspection guy showed up yesterday a full 45 minutes before the end of his 4-hour "window." The furnace passed inspection.

This has nothing to do with anything, but if I were to make a Liz Lemon-esque "Dealbreakers" list I think I would include: "Is more or less my age and still reverently listens to The Smiths." ("Reverently" not including occasionally listening to "Ask" and singing along with gusto, because everyone should do that now and then.) The reason: Smiths reverence past the late 20s often correlates with the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old. Trust me on this one.

I may have found a solution to my petsitting dilemma. I don't want to say too much because I'm occasionally just ever so slightly superstitious, and I don't want to jinx it. But let's just say that frequent flier miles and a faraway friend may come to my rescue. Yes, it will likely be cheaper to fly someone in to look after my girls than to pay a local person. Well, the environment will pay the real price because the plane ride carries a heaver carbon burden than a car driving across town, but I'll let your children worry about that. (Insert winky smiley emoticon here to indicate that my callousness is mostly in jest. Not that it will stop me from flying in a friend if that's what it comes to ...) Anyway, it will mean that I won't have the use of those FF miles for my own gallivanting, but after the Wales trip (the ticket for which was purchased long before the furnace fiasco) I think I'll have to shelve the globe-trotting while I rebuild my financial safety cushion.

I played Mr. Bluelight's little Christmas Countdown sweepstakes contest game thingie at the Kmart web site and I won a free bottle of Dawn Ultra Dish Detergent. I was running low on dish detergent. Go me.

If I could subsist entirely on Pillsbury refrigerated dough products and Green Giant Frozen vegetables I could probably eat incredibly cheaply for months. It seems that I can't turn around without running into coupons for those items, and they also appear to be always on sale somewhere.

Oh, and did I mention the $5 yoga class on Sundays. Yes! There is a $5 yoga class on Sunday afternoons! It's Bliss For Less! Plus, they give the money from those classes to various charities. (In December I think it's the Durham Rescue Mission.)

Visions of buy 1, get 1 free sugarplums ...

2009-12-17T08:49:00.005-05:00

I'm sitting at home waiting for the city furnace inspector to show up to tell me if my installation is within code or not. It's one of those "window" appointments where you have to be there for four hours and then five minutes before the end of the window he finally shows up, so you end up having to take even more time off work to get the thing done ... plus we're talking the City of Durham here, so it will probably be much worse than even that. See, I really love Durham, but I've discovered that the City of Durham is pretty much ineffective, inefficient and downright backwards in just about everything it does. (Please, please Inspector Person, prove me wrong somehow!)

So my new austerity plan is going really well. I've discovered that basking in the feeling of superiority I get when I conquer my materialistic impulses is far better than buying stuff. Unless there's a coupon involved ...

But no, even if there is a coupon involved I've been able to withstand, even if it stings. For example, for months I've wanted a GPS thingie and I've been watching the prices, looking for the big deal that will make me lock and load. So this week, I found it: Target had a deal on a Tom Tom where it was $99.99 and you got a $20 Target gift card with it, PLUS there was an online printable coupon for an extra $10 off. Here was my deal! But no, alas, a GPS is not a necessity. So I can't really buy it right now. Well, I could, but I'd only be sabotaging my "Pay Off the Furnace Now!" campaign.

There is one non-essential expense that I've already committed myself to, back before the furnace thing, and that's my trip to Wales in April. The plane ticket is already paid for, and I'm not so concerned about my expenses on the ground there (even though absolutely everything in the UK seems jaw-droppingly expensive ... or maybe that's just London), because I just won't eat a lot and I'm pretty sure I still have a free place to stay. The expense I'm really worried about is the dog-sitting. It will be between $60 and $70 per day, considering I have 3 dogs. If I had only one dog, I could probably find one of my dog friends to take it on for a week out of kindness, but when you have three no one wants 'em all at once. Even when they are as cute as mine. Last year I did a whole bunch of free dogsitting for The Former Mr. Pants, and I sort of feel like he still owes me. But he suddenly became disinclined to even return a simple phone call after his dog died and he no longer needs my petsitting assistance. So fat chance of me getting fair play out of him. The other option could be my mother. I happen to know that she was just going to write me a check for Christmas. I wonder if she would consider coming to stay at my house for a week in April instead? I guess it won't hurt to ask! Otherwise, it's one more reason I can't have that GPS ...

As for the couponing (and here's where this post gets extra boring if you're not at all interested in couponing), it's going OK in week two. It will be another month or so of Sunday paper coupon inserts before I have the stockpile of coupons necessary to do the deals right. See, the trick is matching the various coupons, store doubling policies, rewards schemes, etc. with weekly specials to stock up on the stuff you need when it's cheap. (There's way more on how it works here if you're curious.) Basically, it's like you're putting together this never-ending puzzle, but you don't get all of the pieces at once, so it only gets more put-together after time. I find it rather fun, but it does take preparation, planning and a bit of effort. I'd rather spend the time than the money at this point, and I think it will get easier when I get the hang of it.

Anyway, my savings in this week's trip to Kroger was not so dramatic as last, mostly because there were things I really needed to buy that I didn't have a coupon for (but I did find most of them on Plus card special, at least) and a couple of things that I needed and had a coupon for but were not on sale. Also, I bought an impulse buy: a bottle of Concha y Toro Riesling, but to my credit it was at least on sale (for $3.99). But still, it was a non-necessity and it pushed my bill up $4.00 that I didn't need to spend.

Nonetheless, before paper coupons and doubling were figured (but after Plus card savings and e-coupons), my bill showed as $63.44.(I have no idea if that included tax or not, because the before-coupons machinations don't show up on the printed receipt. I had to have a pen ready to write that number down.) After paper coupons and store doubling (50c or less at Kroger), it was $47.56. According to the receipt, my savings were: Manufacturer coupons=$14.50, Bonus coupon savings (I think this is the doubling)=$3.40, Kroger Plus savings=$20.05. Except that it doesn't seem to add up correctly, so some of those manufacturer coupons are obviously the e-coupons that were taken off BEFORE the $63.44 total showed. So I saved slightly more than it looks like, but not as much as last week.

All in all, I find the coupon thing to be a little entertaining. So yes, I'm spending more time on grocery shopping and yes, it's a bit of trouble, but I'm having fun with it. Maybe it will get less fun as I go along, but I'll be more efficient at it so it won't take as long. I think. Maybe not and I'll burn out on it. We'll see.

We had a ropey sound but we gave it some welly

2009-12-10T12:06:00.005-05:00

Since the big furnace purchase, I've been having a bit of financial anxiety. I thought I had been living sort of frugally, and in a way I had, but several large expenses over the past year (dog's broken leg, need to buy new glasses with expensive old people's lenses in them, a new laptop, the furnace) have severely dented my cash reserves. Upon close inspection of my finances, I've uncovered lots and lots of places where I could have been way more frugal. So I've kicked myself into a financial mode that I'm calling ... well actually I don't have a name for it. It's the mode where if it isn't essential (and I'm in the process of trying to redefine and streamline "essential"), it's out of the budget. I'm also using an Excel spreadsheet to track all discretionary spending (i.e., not utilities/mortgage/car payment) so I can break down how much really goes exactly where in an attempt to change some habits.

This is so not like me (especially the Excel part). I mean, I'm OK at being cheap--I love buying my clothes at Goodwill way more than buying them new, and I will often shop for non-perishables at the Raleigh Aldi during my lunch break (I wish there was one in Durham!) because their prices can be insanely cheap. But I really need to build my cash reserves back up AND pay off my furnace, and I'd like to do both simultaneously. That may not be possible, so I'll settle for not using up any more of the reserves while I discharge the furnace debt. Dang, I'm even toying with the idea of getting a roommate. Just toying at this point ... for a lot of reasons it's probably just crazy talk, but the idea is in my head.

I'm also looking into ways to bring in a little extra dough (without having to take on freelance design work, because that's something I've decided I don't enjoy at all.) I found one thing that is not to be counted on but, over the past two days, has brought me $30 for right about one hour's work. No, it's not prostitution, (I would charge more than that!) but I'm going to keep it a secret because it involves grabbing the jobs before someone else does, and the less competition the better for me. Let's just say it involves the intertubes and it's something I find quite easy and fun. Yay me!

I've also, with the encouragement and help of girlnblack, decided to give "extreme couponing" a try. It involves a little bit of work and organization, but apparently you can really play the system to get stuff almost for free. It takes a bit of start-up time to amass the proper collection of coupons, but I decided to try to do what I could to start out yesterday at Kroger. I had a batch of groceries that rang up (after the usual Kroger Plus card discounts) at somewhere around $33 (I wish I had written it down, because that amount didn't get printed on my receipt.) After all my coupons, including a $7.00 off the total one from the Kroger packet, I paid $16.34. Apparently, after a month or so of collecting coupons, it can get even better than that, with a lot of items ending up being free if you time the coupon usage just right and work the stores' doubling policies and whatnot.

And in other good news, my $100 credit from PSNC already came through, so not only do I not have to pay my November bill (which was amazingly only 1/3 of what last November's bill was), but I have $75 left over to apply to January's bill ... and maybe even beyond if my new furnace is as efficient as it's cracked up to be.

Being silly is serious business

2009-12-08T10:04:00.004-05:00

Really, it costs me nothing but a few minutes of my time to do these things. I just hope the mistresses keep coming out of the woodwork. A friend suggested this one:

Buy it! Buy it now! Buy several!

From your pocket to mine!

2009-12-07T14:36:00.004-05:00

Do you have extra money lying around? Well I don't. So when someone (on Facebook of course!) suggested that someone make a T-shirt that says "I had an affair with Tiger Woods and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" I decided that someone should be me. Why the hell not? I need the money. I have the technology. I had a few minutes to spare. Et voilá:

Buy one!! Buy one!! Tell your friends to buy one, too! I have to pay for my new furnace.

Blood from a turnip

2009-12-06T14:17:00.002-05:00

Any of you cool kids ever sold used books on Amazon? I've got sooo very many books lying around ... Chime in if you have any thoughts ...

Right back to boring again ...

2009-12-05T08:14:00.003-05:00

So I got a new furnace. And ductwork. Turns out there are more and less efficient ways to distribute heat/and air, and mine is now more. Funny thing, I can even look at the new ductwork and, applying my college-intro-course-level understanding of how the physical world works, see exactly why it's more efficient than the previous system. Yep, there's all kinds of efficiency going on over here at Casa de Pants.

Now I have to pay for it all. I already took a big hit earlier this year when my cute little dog Pinky broke her leg, and I really didn't want to spend down any more of my emergency cash because, well, I just didn't. So I'm starting out with the "12-month-no-interest" financing thingie that the installer people offered. Normally these deals can be bad news, because they're a way of suckering people into buying crap they don't need and can't afford, like rooms full of furniture and giant TVs and such. But I need a furnace and I was going to have to buy it even without a short-term offer of free money, so I took the offer. Of course, I have to give them ALL the money back before 12 months or they charge mafia-style interest on the whole amount, but I'm not going to let that happen.

Now I'm on a serious money-diet so I can pay this thing off. Essentially, I can officially afford to do NOTHING. Well, I've decided that yoga class once a week is still in because it's just too good for me to give up. And maybe once every couple of weeks I'm allowed to grab a beer or a taco with a friend. But I'm even cutting back on my dog agility which is really my Number One Favorite Thing in life. I was going to travel to the mountains in two weeks for my favorite agility trial all year, but I decided not to even after I was offered a free place to stay at a friend's house. I just decided the entry fees were money I really needed to not be spending at this point. (It's not cheap to enter agility trials.)

I'm also looking at other things to cut ... I would love to get rid of the stupid land-line, which costs almost $40.00 a month just to freaking exist. Not worth it, except that the are places in my house where I have a hard time getting a cell phone signal. So I'm paying almost 40 bucks a month just for the knowledge that I'll be able to call 911 if I need to. That's messed up.

Anyway, I could go on an on about all the things that just seem to cost too frakking much money and are not at all worth it. Maybe I will in coming posts ... it's my blog and I can bore you to death if I want ;-)

Helping to make this world better, one furnace at a time ...

2009-11-24T20:43:00.004-05:00

The bad news is my furnace is indeed kaput. Like the inexplicably popular mean girl in high school, it's pretty on the outside but rotten on the inside. It's a long story, which begins many years ago when the thing was first installed. Badly, it seems. Apparently, you can install a furnace in such a way as to slightly impede the flow of air through the hot bits so that they actually end up being a bit too hot. Huh. What a thing. Turns out, getting too hot on a regular basis is bad for the hot bits. They could crack. And cracked hot bits are bad.

I suppose the best way to consider it is that I'm lucky I found out before carbon monoxide eventually started spewing out and killing me slowly. Reminds me of the time when a couple I knew were feeling sick and tired and headachey for a few days, thinking they were both getting the flu. Then their cockatiel keeled over and they realized it was carbon monoxide. (The bird survived. They took it to the hospital with them and the nurses set up a little oxygen tent for it in a closet.)

Funny thing is, the cracked bits weren't what had made my furnace not work. That was a burned out air-induction motor. (Or something like that. I don't know. I only just learned about furnace innards, so my lingo may be off somewhat.) But the technician guy started saying "this isn't right ... that way this is installed ... the air can't be moving correctly through this thing ..." and whatnot, until he finally said "I need to look at that heat exchange unit because if you're going to spend $400 or so on a motor, I want to be sure the furnace is worth it."

I started thinking "No! Looking for trouble is bad! See no evil! Don't go in there! Oh nooooooooo!" But I just stood there ... well, crouched there because it was the crawly part of the basement ... and felt the dread growing.

Anyway, blah blah blah, lots of anguish and advice and estimates later, I'm getting a new furnace on Friday. And I'll qualify for federal tax credits for being so dang energy-efficient, too. And PSNC will give me a $100 credit on my gas bill, which will presumably be a little lower because of all the efficiency that will be going on around here. And I will use less energy or create less pollution or both or whatever, officially making me a Better Person. Yay me.

Boring beats bad any day

2009-11-23T13:23:00.003-05:00

Things were going swimmingly. Too swimmingly. I couldn't even think of anything to blog about because my mind was all "La la la la la, life is fine." Things were a tad on the boring side, but I've learned that can be a good thing, or if not, a condition easily alleviated with books and Netflix ...

Then I went to see my mum in Myrtle Beach for the weekend (she's fine, it all went fine and I bought a bag of toy plastic pirates). When I got home, I found the house a bit chilly. About 56 degrees ... but I had it set at 60 ... why hadn't the furnace kicked on?

I tried to get it to come on by turning the thermostat up to 70. Nope. I switched it from "auto" to "on." The fan came on, but it was blowing cold air. Feck. The damn thing's broken.

But maybe not! I've been trying to stay optimistic lately, so I tried to come up with happier scenarios. Maybe the pilot light just went out! I once lived in a crappy cheap apartment in Wisconsin with a three million-year-old furnace that had a dodgy pilot light, and I was always having to trudge down to the basement to re-light it if I wanted heat. Which was always, because it was Wisconsin, for crissakes. What a pain in the ass that was. I'm not sure what about that memory caused me to be optimistic, but it did.

So I headed down to inspect the furnace, fully realizing that a good homeowner would have had someone out to look at it back in September before it got cold. Oh well. Too late now. In fact, I'd never even taken a really good look at the furnace before, mostly because it's in the inconvenient, gravel-floored crawly part of the basement, not the convenient concrete-floored standy/walky part. That's what you pay a home inspector to do when you buy, right? He had said it looked great, so I just left it to do its job, which it knows better than I do. Why micromanage? (Yeah, I know why ... shutup, OK?)

Well wow, my furnace really is nice, as far as furnaces go! Way nice compared to the old Wisconsin furnace. I figured out how to get the openy part open, but there was no pilot light to be seen. There was, however, an instruction and warning sticker, mounted sideways and difficult to read. But I read it and learned that my furnace has a fancy new-fangled self-lighting pilot. Easy breezy, I thought, I'll just follow the instructions and get her going again.

The instructions involved walking back upstairs (through the outdoors, as my basement is exterior-access), turning off the power to the furnace, turning the thermostat all the way down, going back to the basement, turning the gas control to "off," waiting five minutes, turning it back on, going back upstairs, restoring power and turning the thermostat up again. Fine, I figured, it's not a pain in the ass if it works and saves me a repair call.

It didn't work. I even did it twice just in case I hadn't held my mouth right the first time. So now I'm waiting for the repair guy to call and hoping it ends up being some small, easily replaced part. Surely a furnace so nice and pretty wouldn't need to be replaced altogether. What would I do if I found out I needed a new furnace? Maybe move to Mexico where life is warm and cheap ...

This is where I would put the title if this post had one

2009-11-12T11:12:00.004-05:00

One time a friend (Let's call her Lisa, because that's her name, but it's not that Lisa, I mean, it's not the Lisa I refer to here sometimes as "the other Lisa," it's still another Lisa) told us (meaning some other friends and I) that she dreamed we had gotten her a birthday cake depicting a fire hydrant with the message "Have a Hound Dog Good Birthday." So of course, guess what we did for her birthday ...

So anyway, woo, today's my birthday. That's another thing Facebook is good for ... it tells people (some people ... not me, or at least I don't know how to get it to tell me) when it's their friends' birthdays. So it seems like people remember me but really Facebook tells them what to do.

Also, Star 102.9 FM, a radio station somewhere in New Mexico, sent me an email wishing me happy birthday. Maybe Facebook told them.

Also also, I completely forgot to not, as I do every year, to not my blogiversary. Six years ago last Monday I started this here little bloggy thingie. Yeah, I know, so what ...

If I could write you a song it would be about food

2009-11-03T06:41:00.003-05:00

Sometimes the uneventful life is the good life. But occasionally I like having some small something to rant about.

Saturday night I got zero trick-or-treaters. But I know they were out and about because I could hear people talking and laughing as they down my street. I have no idea why they didn't stop at my house. I had a light on in the screen porch, which is the entry I use for my house (and the easiest one to reach from the driveway.) Isn't that supposed to indicate that you're there and have candy to give? There was, however, no light over the front door, which I never use. That light burned out a while back and I never bothered to replace it. Maybe that kept them away?

So next year I'll do one of two things: A) put some sort of lanterns down the driveway to indicate that yes, I'm Halloween-friendly, or B) don't buy any fucking candy. I'm thinking B might be easiest. I wasn't really that upset about not having to get up and give out candy and deal with excited barking dogs over and over again.

Whilst awaiting the trick-or-treaters who stood me up, I made a pizza. I used a different crust recipe, which resulted in a really good thin and crispy crust. It would have been a fabulous pizza if I hadn't put too much basil on it. I didn't even know it was possible to have too much basil but, yes, it really is. I took a photo but the photo sucked. It wasn't an exceptionally photogenic pizza.

But my boots photographed very well:

It was never really like that even back when it was like that

2009-10-23T10:26:00.003-05:00

Three times over the past couple of weeks I've started blog posts, written a bit (in one case, quite a long bit), and then thought "Meh, boring." and quit. Is that writer's block or thinker's block?

Anyway, all this week I've been wondering exactly what illness I'm fighting off. My immune system is winning against something, but I don't know what. But whatever it is, it's never a good idea to Google the phrase "mild flu-like symptoms" unless you want to be convinced you're going to die soon.

You're too busy trying not to appear shallow to actually be deep

2009-10-09T08:04:00.004-05:00

So, Facebook sort of steals my blogging thunder. It's far easier to blurt out a however-many-characters-or-less status update than to actually write a blog entry. It's like the internet is killing the internet. Or something.

Anyway, I'm still wondering exactly how to work the whole Facebook friend thing. I thought it was supposed to be a place to "connect" (whatever the hell that means) with people you already know (even if you've never met them in person ... hi online friends! Love ya!). But I often get friend requests from friends of friends, i.e., people who only know me from comments I've posted on friends' status updates. I always feel in a quandary about whether to accept or not ... I usually end up doing it because, well I guess because I don't want to be unfriendly or anything ...

But sometimes I feel like I have too many "friends." I have such a huge barrage of status updates to sift through and I think I miss half of the "important" ones. I'll be talking to someone in "real" life and they'll say something like "I posted that on Facebook, didn't you see it?" Then I feel bad because it's like I'm ignoring them or something, when really I just didn't have time to get through all the posts from all the people whose lives have ever intersected mine ...

I know you can hide people so their updates don't show up, but then why am I their "Facebook Friend" in the first place?

Despite the effort required to write the damn posts, blogging is in some respects much easier. You're free to come read what I write if you want to ... or not. Nothing really to keep track of on my end. But then there are all of your blog posts waiting for me to read in my RSS feed ...

She turned me into a newt. I got better.

2009-10-01T08:06:00.002-05:00

I posted a couple of food pictures over at Flickr yesterday ...

They happened to be two things that were particularly delicious to me. So someone ... not a "Flickr friend" or anything, just someone who'd never commented before, came by and made a couple of comments implying that the delicious delicious food was gross. The comments have since been dispatched into electronic limbo, so I can't quote verbatim, but I'll approximate. On the flan photo, the person had written "WTF? WTF? Reminds me of this (with "this" being link to some horrid molded gelatinized creation of yore that you find in old cookbooks full of unfortunate recipes.) On the bacon bacon waffle photo, she had said something like "This is f*cked. What is this American fascination with bacon?"

A better person than I probably wouldn't have been pissed off by the comments, but I was. First off, what rock does someone have to live under to be unfamiliar with flan (i.e., baked custard)? And if you don't like flan (some poor souls don't, bless their hearts), wouldn't it be nicer and more polite to just say "I don't care for flan," or, better still, say nothing and go look at another photo? But it was the bacon comment that really pissed me off, mostly the implication that a love of bacon was somehow indicative of the general inferiority of Americans to ... well, I don't know what nationality the commenter is. And considering that I've eaten bacon in almost every country I've visited (somewhere around 12ish maybe, although I could be forgetting something), there's nothing at all uniquely American about bacon, or the love thereof. There's lots of stuff you can criticize Americans for and I won't protest, but bacon love is too universal among the bacon-eating peoples of the world to be one of them.

So me being me, my first impulse was to tell the commenter to fuck off. And I did, in those exact words, along with other words explicitly telling the commenter to go away and don't come back.

Then I remembered that I'm having a happy life right now, and snipey snarkiness, no matter how warranted, usually just makes me feel more snipey and snarky, i.e., less happy. Did I really want to get into a war of vitriol with some stupid random stranger on Flickr? Nah. Better to just push buttons to make her disappear and then go on with my life. So I deleted both of our comments and blocked her from my photostream. She can go insult someone else's beloved foodstuffs, and I'm free to look at my flan photo and sigh contentedly with the memory of how fabulously delicious it was.

I win.

I didn't tell you I was going but I'm back now

2009-09-29T12:43:00.004-05:00

I went

to Chicago for the weekend. To see my friend Jackie.

I ate too much.

As the result of a long story, we ended up having to go to Naperville. While there, we stumbled upon a pow pow. There was dancing.

And some laughs.

Herman Logan used to be a Fancy Feather Double Bustle dancer ... from bunchofpants on Vimeo.

Had fantastic seats for a White Sox game.

Too bad they lost to Detroit.

Also met a euphonium player wandering around the University of Chicago campus ...

... who took requests:

"Single Ladies," euphonium version ... from bunchofpants on Vimeo.

And that was just Saturday ... I stayed until Monday evening.

I'd go on but I'm actually a little exhausted.

I'll be the squirrel and you be the nut

2009-09-21T09:01:00.004-05:00

Doing things, doing things ... I always feel like I need to write about doing things (as opposed to just thinking about them ...). And by that I mean doing things other than sitting on the sofa eating Moose tracks and watching Desperate Housewives or The IT Crowd on DVD. (God Damn These Electric Sex Pants! You there, computer man, fix my pants!)

I did some radio on Saturday--Mondo Mundo. First time in almost a year. Things were going swimmingly until sometime in the second hour when I had it together enough to get more than one track cued up at a time, and of course I started pushing the wrong button to start the wrong song, pushing the wrong button to eject the wrong cd ... etc. I think my playlist kicked a little ass, though.

Also, I made pizza! It looked like this:

It tasted pretty good, but I made the mistake of trying to make it all "healthful" and stuff by substituting 1 cup of the white flour with whole wheat flour. I had forgotten that I just don't really like whole wheat pizza crust. I used "quick and easy" crust recipe I found on Allrecipes.com, but I think next time I'll see if a not-so-quick one tastes better. Also, what if I put butter in the mix instead of olive oil? That just seems like it would be yummier, but maybe there's some pizza-crust chemistry reason why I shouldn't do that ...

As for the top of the pizza, it all came out of a can (except for the cheese, which came out of a plastic wrapper) because that's what I found in my cupboard, and the decision to make the pizza was based on the fact that it was a dinner I could make without going to the store. So again, I guess Michael Pollan can bite me ...

I try to use my power tools for good and not evil

2009-09-14T08:12:00.004-05:00

I was afraid this place was in danger of becoming some sort of food blog because I posted so much about cooking, but fortunately I haven't cooked a damn thing in a couple of weeks. I baked some dog brownies (made with salmon, mmm!) and heated up or assembled a few meals (sloppy joes!), but that's about it. One night I had cheese for dinner. Yes! Cheese! Being an adult is fun sometimes.

Anyway, what I feel like now is a DIY maven. I fixed something. Fixed it good.

What happened is that my basement door suddenly wouldn't latch or lock. I store some good stuff there, stuff I don't want stolen, so I was a little distressed about the new lack of lockability. I'm not sure how it came about; apparently something (the door? the house?) shifted enough so that the latch on the doorknob no longer lined up with the strike plate on the door jamb. On another door, I probably would have been able to move the strike plate down a bit to meet the latch, but this door jamb is made of metal, and the recession for the latch is built-in. The only way to make it line up again would have involved taking the door off, doing something, I don't know what, to it and re-hanging it. No way I wanted to get into that. (Or I could have called up a handyperson, said "fix this" and then paid him or her whatever the price was, but I'm cheap and not very wealthy.)

So I had the bright idea to just slap a deadbolt on the thing, and use that to lock it instead of the doorknob. Brilliant! I go off to the hardware store (Triangle True Value at Woodcroft--they are very nice and helpful there; it's much less of an ordeal than wandering around a big box), and ask them to arm me with all the weapons I need to install a new deadbolt. Unfortunately, I had sort of forgotten the pesky but very important detail about the metal door frame until after I got home. Crap. How the hell do I make a hole in that?

Here's where I want to say something nice about Facebook. I posted my dilemma in my status update, and while I didn't get the exact solution, I got lots of helpful or encouraging comments. I decided that I would, by crikey, make a damn hole in the damn door frame, whatever it took.

It took a couple more tools: a titanium drill bit and a tungsten carbide cutter bit for my Dremel. I should have gone back to True Value and presented my dilemma, and the guys there would have armed me again with whatever I needed, but I was a little embarrassed that I had forgotten the part about the metal door frame when I was there previously. So I took a vague idea of what I wanted to the blue big box home store that just opened near me at MLK and Fayettville Rd. (it's shiny!), and wandered the tool corral. I found the drill and Dremel bits, but I wanted some sort of confirmation that they might work. So I finally cornered an employee who was trying to scurry by unnoticed, presented my dilemma and proposed solution to him and asked if he thought it would work. "Yes," he said. He seemed almost elated that what I asked required little thinking or effort on his part. For all I know the guy was an intergalactic visitor newly arrived through the rift and "yes" was the only English word he could say. Whatever. I was going to make a damn hole in that damn door frame no matter what anyone told me.

In addition to the tools, the task required a crapload of determination, strong arms and hands and a lot of swear words. (Do not skip that last step! You'd be amazed that the regenerative power of "F" and "GD" words when you are ready to give up on something.) I started by drilling a big hole with the titanium drillbit. On hindsight, I realized I should have gotten a bigger bit, because that was the easiest part of the whole job and a bigger starting hole would have gotten me finished much more quickly. I had been afraid that if something didn't work out, the bigger bit would do more damage than a smaller one, but the bit worked beautifully.

Once I had the initial hole, my plan was to use the Dremel to bore it out to deadbolt size and shape. The problem was that the tungsten carbide cutter wasn't ideal for the job. Even though on the outside of the package it clearly said "for wood, metal, blah blah blah," on the inside it said "not for use on metal." I decided to try it anyway, because the alternative was to go back to the store and I was burning daylight. So I started grinding away, but progress was slow. It was hard to see that the Dremel was making any visible difference, and it was getting damn hot and throwing sparks. (The is is a good place to note that yes, I wore eye protection and a dust mask.) I started getting a bit frustrated.

I decided to see what else I could do with the drill while letting the Dremel cool down a bit. What I ended up doing was treating the drill like a little Sawzall, just hacking away at the hole, which very slowly got larger. Then I'd put the drill down and Dremel a bit, switching back and forth between the two, stopping every now and then to see if the hole was big enough for the deadbolt. It was grueling, not very fun and all the vibration was making my hands hurt. But the longer it took and the harder it seemed, the more determined I became that there would be an F-ing hole in this GD door frame.

After I don't know how long, I did my deadbolt test and the thing worked! I now had a locking deadbolt. Damn! It felt good. This task was exactly the kind of thing the former Mr. Pants would have taken care of back when I was married, and I'm pretty convinced I did it quicker and more efficiently than he would have (not to mention he probably wouldn't have gotten around to it until after the lawn mower was stolen). Ha!

Now I need a new floor in the kitchen. I wonder if my super powers are up to it ...

Good food, bad photo

2009-09-01T09:08:00.004-05:00

I tried stuffed peppers last night. Not bad! I perused a few online recipes for inspiration, and decided to do a tomato lentil couscous filling, topped with cheese and some basil. The recipe might have even made Michael Pollan happy: nothing from a can or a jar! And some of the ingredients were locally grown (in my friend's garden), although a few were from Kroger, which means they could have been grown in Paraguay for all I know. Also, I have no idea where to get locally produced couscous or lentils. I guess in the perfect Pollan world I'd have to do without those ingredients.

The only thing I thought when I ate one last night was that it could have used a little more cheese. But then everything could always use a little more cheese.

I barely made a dent in the tomatoes, and I still have some peppers left. I ended up freezing a bunch of the basil ... I probably should have made pesto with it but I had to go to dog class and I just didn't have the time. I hope it survives the freezing, but just in case it doesn't I kept one sprig and and am trying to root it. I'll see if I can keep a windowsill basil plant going all winter and then next spring I will force myself to overcome my garden laziness and at least plant some herbs.

You must have the courage of your convictions

2009-08-31T05:42:00.003-05:00

I'm in possession of more ingredients and am trying to figure out what to do with them. My friend Cindy gave me a bunch more tomatoes (including lots of romas), yellow, orange and green bell peppers, some banana peppers (some hot, some not, but I've jumbled them all together and now I'm not sure which is which) and a bunch of basil.

The tomatoes and basil are easy: pizza margherita! But I've got way more tomatoes and basil than I need for that, unless I were going to make ten of them. So now I need to find recipes for the rest of the stuff. Easy recipes.

I should have done something with all these fresh things last night, but I was exhausted after spending the day training dogs at Cindy's house. Aside from being way out in the middle of Alamance county, the place is a little paradise with an agility field, horses, a huge garden and a really gorgeous landscaped patio area. She's got a husband who is constantly doing projects around the place. I've never seen him not working on stuff. I never had one of those ... mine watched movies all the time. Where does one go to get one of the useful ones? Not that I want another one. But I really could use a shed out back ...

Every time I phone you I just want to put you down

2009-08-26T05:31:00.004-05:00

Still more yoga ... last night I went to a "deep stretch" class. Meh, not deep enough. The stretch I need probably requires a medieval torture rack.

As for the cooking thing ... I think I've gone off it, at least temporarily. Last night I made garlic bread for dinner.

Restored, but not for long

2009-08-24T10:54:00.002-05:00

I went to the "restorative" yoga class yesterday. It was great--a little on the easy side, but very relaxing. I felt fantastic afterward.

Then as soon as I got to work this morning I was an aching ball of tension all over again. I think I tense up and become very uncomfortable as soon as I walk in the door. Plus my chair is horribly uncomfortable. My desk is uncomfortable. My entire existence is painful whenever I am here.

When I get home, I start to feel better again.

Yeah, I know. Don't even say it or you'll just piss me off.

He smelled his first poem on a buttery day

2009-08-23T06:29:00.002-05:00

I did some things I had planned to do. That doesn't always happen.

Friday night I made chilaquiles. I cut the tortillas into strips before frying them, just because I've seen it done that way at restaurants. But I didn't realize until I was making the stuff that I didn't have any jalapeños. I had thought I did, but no, all I had were green chiles. So it didn't end up very spicy, and the bit I ate Friday night was rather boring. (Not that I like things too spicy, however. A friend and I had ultra-spicy chilaqiles at a local taqueria that neither one of us could eat.)

Anyway, I tried figure out how to rescue the chilaquiles, and I saw I had some hot red enchilada sauce in the cupboard. So I layered the meaty/beany stewy stuff in a casserole dish with the fried tortillas and some cheese, and then I doused it liberally with the enchilada sauce and stuck it in the fridge. Last night I pulled it out at baked it at 350 degrees for ... I don't remember how long. Until it looked baked. It was delicious! Hooray!

If I hadn't been able to save it I think I might have gone off cooking for a while. One of the (many) reasons I don't cook much is that after all the effort, I often don't like what I make. Wouldn't it be easier just to have a sandwich? That way I don't waste my effort (and expense) for what could be a big letdown. A sandwich is easier to predict.

Also, I went and did actual yoga in an actual yoga class yesterday. Nobody laughed at me. Everyone in the class was a beginner except for one Experienced Yoga Girl who was slumming in our class because she was apparently trying to get her boyfriend into yoga. He put forth a brave effort, but I'm not sure if he was having a lot of fun. I actually did have fun, except for a few brief moments in a few poses, er, asanas I guess they're really called. Unfortunately, when I went in I had a tiny glimmer of a headache, and by the time class was done I had developed an actual migraine. So any yoga high I may have had was ruined. Still, my body felt much better than usual. I'm usually plagued by muscle tension, stiffness and miscellaneous aches and pains. At least one part of my body is in discomfort or pain at any given time. After the yoga, not so much.

Unfortunately, my normal schedule probably won't allow for a lot of yoga classes. I'm on a break from dog classes right now, but they start up again next week, plus I've got some weekend agility trials to go to. During the week I take three agility classes (one with each dog) and I teach two classes, so it's not going to be easy to make yoga class a habit. I think I'll go to a "restorative" yoga class today, and then maybe something during the week, but then I think it will be three weeks before I can maybe fit in a class. Bummer.

Just doing stuff because that's what I do ...

2009-08-21T12:32:00.003-05:00

My favorite guambat suggested I make some chilaquiles, and that's what I'm going to do! I decided thay should have chicken in them, because that's how I've always gotten them at a restaurant, and cooking chicken nets chicken broth, another ingredient, too. So last night I put a bunch of drumsticks (my favorite part of the chicken. White meat is for chumps.) in the crock pot for about 5 hours, and now I have both chicken and broth. Tonight I'll turn it all, plus a few other things, into chilaquiles!

Also, tomorrow I'm going to go take an actual yoga class. I've dabbled in yoga in my living room with the help of books (when I had a cat I would do "cat yoga," wherein I'd do a pose and Kitty would hop right up and make himself comfortable on me. I also did Gomey doggie yoga, wherein I'd do a pose and Mr. Gomez would push his head into the side of my body and knock me over. Good times.), but I've never actually gone to a class before. There's something intimidating about it. (Cue Piper Laurie saying "they're all going to laugh at you") But when you do everything right, there's a yoga high you can get, and that's what I'm after.

I like to laugh

2009-08-19T06:29:00.002-05:00

I watched this video many times this morning, and it never stopped making me laugh. What a lovely way to start my day:

Exploring the possibilities of mediocrity

2009-08-17T21:00:00.005-05:00

After making a tomato pie last week, I also made a quiche (I had an extra frozen pie crust, because they sell them in twos). It had lots of tomatoes in it (had a bunch of those left, too). It was OK.

I also started a "use up all the stuff in my cupboards and freezer" project. Because I had ground turkey and corn tortillas in the freezer (I got a package of about a million corn tortillas from a woman at work whose husband works for a tortilla company), and beans, green chiles and a can of green enchilada sauce in my cupboards, I made an enchilada casserole. It was OK.

The good part is that these things have provided me with stuff to carry to work for lunch every day. The bad part is that they've ensured my lunch is nothing to really look forward to. But it's cheap.

So I'm open to ideas for things to make for less-boring lunches. Bonus points if the ingredients are already in my cupboard or freezer. Extra bonus if it's something outlandishly easy to make. And I've already thought of pb&j sandwiches ...

Sometimes violence is the solution

2009-08-14T07:34:00.004-05:00

A couple of months ago my great little pocket camera (Sony DSC-W150) malfunctioned after I dropped it. When I turned it on, the lens would go in and out for a couple of minutes, and then it would give me the message "Turn camera off and then on again." Turning it off and on just led to the same thing all over. I've come to feel that I must have a camera with me at all times, so I ran out and bought another one (Sony DSC_S980), which is nowhere near as good as the broken one, but a lot cheaper. I really missed my good camera. The new one sorta sucks, really. It's slow to focus, slow to cycle, not as good in low light, doesn't give me nearly as much control in manual mode and it has a Sony lens, which is noticeably not as good as the Carl Zeiss lens on the W150.

The other day I decided to see if the Google could help me figure out how to fix the old one. Turns out the problem is very common: the lens, which extends when the camera is turned on, can get very slightly out of alignment if the camera is dropped. But the solution that seemed to work like a charm for everyone is: drop it again. Or maybe not drop it; most people had success just rapping it solidly against a table or a countertop. I was a little trepidatious about slamming my favorite camera around on purpose, but then I figured, hell, it doesn't work anyway. So I gave it a quick medium-hard slam ... and whaddya know, the damn thing works again.

This makes me very happy.

Things that make me happy ...

2009-08-13T14:51:00.003-05:00

Hello and welcome to the first installment of a feature I'm going to call "Things That Make Me Happy." I say it's the first installment, but for all I know, it could be the only installment. I'm not always so good on follow-through. But let's just pretend I am, for now ...

Today's Thing That Makes Me Happy (TTMMH) is: Scott Mills The Musical!

About 6 months ago, I got a little Sanza Fuze mp3 player, and I thought one good use for it would be to do something like learn Portuguese via podcast. That lasted about a day, and instead I got hooked on a few other podcasts, including a few from NPR (Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, Fresh Air and Planet Money), but most especially the Scott Mills Daily from BBC Radio 1. I have literally not missed an episode since I started listening (although Scott has--he does inconsiderate things like going on vacation, etc.) Anywho, a few months ago, a listener suggested that Scott & crew create "Scott Mills" The Musical" and perform it at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Surprisingly, Radio 1 ran with idea and the musical has been playing this week. I felt a bit of a twinge knowing there was no way I'd get to see it, so imagine my happiness when I discovered they are putting the whole thing online. Yay happiness!

What I'd really, really love, however, is if someone I knew became a diehard Scott Mills fan as well so I'd have someone with whom to laugh over things like The Barry Island Texter (Doot! Mun!). Or perhaps we could co-author a letter to Scott and listen for it to be read over the air by The Posh Radio 4 Lady ...

Anyone?? Bueller?

The not quite joy of cooking

2009-08-12T09:00:00.004-05:00

I saw Julie and Julia on Sunday. What a sweet, good-hearted movie. It made me really want to poach an egg. I've eaten poached eggs before, but never actually done any poaching of my own. So I'm adding that to my list of things to do, which is looking like this right now:

Decide on dates for Spring trip to Wales
Be a better person
Poach an egg

As part of being a better person (see item #2 above), I've decided I need to be more forgiving. So for example, I should forgive Michael Pollan for his blatant personal attack on my way of life in the NYT a couple of weeks ago. Well, the part about watching cooking shows doesn't apply to me because I don't have time for them, and I'm not sure I would watch them if I did. But it's true, I don't really cook. Sometimes I assemble a meal, and I occasionally bake things, but aside from a mad cooking kick once every five years or so, I actively avoid actual cooking whenever possible. So even though I don't believe that not cooking is as horrible as Pollan makes it out to be, I've started wondering if I could make myself enjoy cooking a little more, and if that in turn would put more joy in my life. I mean, I know a lot of people who really get into cooking, and it seems to bring them happiness. Shouldn't I try it? Or rather, give it one more try, I mean.

So Monday evening I was paging through Durham Magazine while waiting for a haircut (am I the only one who thinks Durham magazine is a big pretentious bore?) Anyway, a little recipe for tomato pie caught my eye. My friend Cindy had given me a whole bunch of home-grown tomatoes, and I was starting to get tired of tomato sandwiches. I could put them in a pie! OK, so really, a pie is technically more baking than cooking, but it involved chopping onions and sauteéing them in butter which most definitely is cooking. I quickly pulled my tiny notebook out and jotted down the recipe, and then after my haircut I went straight to Harris Teeter and bought the ingredients I needed. The recipe called for a pre-baked pie crust, at which Michael Pollan would undoubtedly sneer, but if I'd had to make a pie crust from scratch I probably would have skipped making the pie altogether. Baby steps. I'll get to making actual pie crusts one of these days. Maybe.

The recipe was a snap. It called for a topping of cheese mixed with mayonnaise, but I'm not a big mayonnaise fan and I was afraid I wouldn't want to actually eat the pie if it had mayonnaise in it, so just used cheese. (Maybe that's why I don't always like cooking--I have a hard time sticking exactly to the recipe sometimes, and I end up not always liking what I make. Maybe I'm sabotaging my own efforts to justify my laziness? Who knows.)

Anyway, the pie came out looking like this (and smelling heavenly!):

It was tasty, but way, way to liquidy. That's a problem with tomatoes--they release so much water when cooked. I had to drain the pan a bit after cutting out the first piece. Maybe a more experienced cook would know what to do about that. It tasted pretty good. Not to die for or anything, but at least it didn't make me want to throw it out and eat a grilled cheese sandwich instead, which is often what happens when I cook.

Oh! What's occurrin'?

2009-08-10T17:28:00.002-05:00

I have something else to be happy about: next spring I will be going to Wales! (Actual dates TBD.) I'll visit two fabulous Flickr friends, one of whom has somehow convinced his parents into offering me a room in their house! There will be castles and music and pints, and I'm hoping to catch a glimpse of the Torchwood SUV. Yay me!

In case you're wondering, I'm doing great ...

2009-08-08T09:35:00.003-05:00

I'm rethinking the whole blog thing ... seems I'm just not as into it as I used to be.

But today I've been feeling happier and more optimistic about life than I have in a while (even mowing the lawn just now felt fun! Crazy!), and it made we want to write something in this here blog ... well, now I don't what exactly. Um, hey, my lawn is freshly mowed!

Maybe I just want to be happy in public, but I'm too lazy to leave the house ...

If I'd had my head in the clouds I would have missed it ...

2009-07-10T14:40:00.003-05:00

If you see a piece of paper on the street you ahould always pick it up and look at it.

(See it larger to really appreciate it.)

Never say Neverland ...

2009-07-09T08:50:00.004-05:00

I was completely all meh about Michael Jackson in life, so I didn't see any reason to change after his death. No, I didn't watch any of the hoopla on TV. But somewhere I stumbled upon this link to Vanity Fair articles about him from 1994-2005 by Maureen Orth. I liked Orth's book Vulgar Favors, about Andrew Cunanen, so I decided to read the articles (every one of them, and they're not at all short) despite my meh-ness about Michael. Oh blerg! I am no longer meh ... more like a bit grossed out. Is it awful to really think someone is probably better off dead?

What year is it again?

2009-07-02T07:32:00.003-05:00

I'm not going to say how many years it's been since I paid for a City of Durham yard waste collection sticker. I don't want to embarrass the city by publicly announcing how long it was possible to go on getting my leaves and shrub trimmings picked up without paying for it. Apparently the city is now cracking down, however. Tuesday I found a little notice sticking out the top of my still-full bin that said my yard waste wasn't picked up because my sticker is expired. (Way, way, way expired, to be exact.)

Fine, I've had so many years of free pick-up that I suppose I'm getting a bargain for my $60 fee at this point. And the alternative would be to buy a chipper and then spend a bunch of my yard-work time running everything through it and then buying or building a bigger compost bin to accommodate it all. Meh. I'll give the city some money.

The little notice instructed me to call a phone number (which happens to be the Durham One-Call number), but I figure this must be something I could take care of online. I mean, how hard would it be for me to fill out a web form, have the fee either billed to a credit card or added to my water bill, and then receive my cart sticker in the mail? Well, apparently the City of Durham thinks it's still 1990, because my options are a) Print a PDF form off of the web site, fill it out, fax it back and then wait to see what happens or b) Call Durham One-Call and talk to a person, who possibly may hook me up with a yard waste sticker or, if my previous experiences with the City of Durham are any guide, will probably tell me to go to the web site, download the form, fill it out, fax it and wait.

To test my hypothesis,I'm calling the number right now ...

... wait for it ...

I am correct!! If you call the number and ask to order a yard waste sticker, the nice lady tells you to go to the web site, print the form, and fax it in. You can't see me but I'm rolling my eyes. Oh Durham, you're such a hopeless dork.

But what if I don't want a damn 95-gallon recycling cart ...

2009-06-03T12:28:00.004-05:00

So the City of Durham is going to deliver 95-gallon recycling carts to everyone and make us use them whether we need them or not. Don't get me wrong, I obey the law and recycle what it tells me to, not that I think doing so actually saves the world or anything, but I do it. I'm a relatively obedient citizen. But I don't even generate enough recyclables in two weeks to fill up my existing little 18-gallon blue bin, so what the fuck do I want a 95-gallon cart for? Could you at least let me fill it with all these excess yogurt tubs I've accumulated? NO? Bastards.

Forgot to mention ...

2009-06-02T09:14:00.002-05:00

I named my new dog Talladega. My friend Ryan calls her "Charlotte Motor Speedway." He's got the right idea ... I'm hoping she'll be fast. I call her "Tally," which turns out to be an excellent call name.

My favorite bit of Durham ruined by assholes ...

2009-06-01T18:41:00.001-05:00

Brontosaurus Damaged by Vandalism
Originally uploaded by Museum of Life + Science.

Someone has ruined a Durham landmark forever. The old brontosaurus at the Museum of Life and Science has been decapitated. This makes me incredibly sad and horribly angry at the same time. You can read more here.

Grrrrr...

Something came over me ...

2009-05-27T08:11:00.002-05:00

I got a new dog. Well, I'm pretty sure I did, at least, The rescue group will take her back no questions asked if I decide she's not the dog I'm looking for, but I'm pretty sure she is, unless I find out she has congenital knee, hip or elbow problems. She's a cutie. Look:

I wrote more about it all over at my other blog. The important point is I can't think of what to name her. I came up with four names: Caprica Six, Miss Demeanor, Alabama and She-Ra, Princess of Power. But I haven't been able to pick one. Then a co-worker suggested Eileen, which is funny ("Come on, Eileen!") and another co-worker suggested Talladega, which is a hell of a good name for an agility dog. But I still can't decide. You can tell me what you think by taking my stupid survey.

Gimme the 411 on tacos in raleigh ...

2009-05-21T10:37:00.003-05:00

I was talking today to folks at work about tacos and pupusas, and everyone said "We don't have any taquerias here in Raleigh." I know that has to be a lie ... but then I couldn't actually think of any off the top of my head. Then again, I don't really know Raleigh ... I just work there and then I get the hell back to Durham, where we have muchos tacos buenos (and pupusas too)! So I'm axin' ya: Where are the Raleigh taquerias? Are they any good? I've seen a few taco trucks, but I don't know where to find them at lunch time on a week day. I'd like to find a good place I can coax some co-workers to for lunch one day. Anyone? Bueller?

And indeed they did get on very well ...

2009-04-28T12:20:00.005-05:00

I've been busy lately, I suppose ... First of all, Pinky broke her leg, which I discuss over at the other blog I regularly neglect.

As a result, I've been engaged in some serious yard work to clear up the jungle around the edges of my backyard. Why would a broken dog cause a backyard overhaul? Because she only ever wants to poop in the bushes, and since she's not allowed off leash at this point, I have to follow her. But right now, the bushes are frighteningly overgrown and dense because the people who lived here for the past 16 years never, ever trimmed a single thing that grew in that yard. They also seemed to have gotten rid of 16 years worth of fallen tree limbs by piling them amidst the thickets, along with lots of stones and terra cotta piping. So now I'm clearing it all away and when I'm done, I'll have a lovely little nature path around the rear portion of my little estate.

'

Oh and also, as a state employee, I've been furloughed, sort of. I get 10 hours off and I'll be derprived of .5 percent of my pay for the next two months. Lucky to have a job at all, I suppose ...

infectious!

2009-04-24T13:24:00.000-05:00

Oh for crying in a bucket, people ...

2009-03-26T11:43:00.003-05:00

The reason we have blogs is so we can spout off whatever we think whenever we want. At least that's my reason. And here's my spout, in response to the following question posed By Matt Taibbi in this Rolling Stone article:

Does anyone know what the hell is going on? And on the linear spectrum of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now?

Bailing out capitalism to keep capitalism from eating itself does NOT equal socialism!! (See, I put that in bold because I'm yelling here).

Other than that it's a great article. It just kills me that everyone seems to think that what's happening right now is somehow aberrant, rather than just the normal boom-and-bust that's inherent to capitalism.

We're all just so damn cool, aren't we?

2009-03-19T10:24:00.003-05:00

So via Ross G.'s Facebook status update I discovered a funny video about Twitter and now I'm blogging about it.

The most salient quote seems to be "It seems like Twittering is just randomly bragging about your unexceptional life." Wait, isn't that sort of like blogging? Except that we use way more words ...

A movie review for busy people ....

2009-03-17T20:24:00.002-05:00

Rachel Getting Married: Lisa getting bored.

Hey girlfriends ...

2009-03-17T09:42:00.003-05:00

Are we really supposed to find Clive Owen attractive?

Wouln't you rather get naked in short selling with Paddy Hirsch?

Getting naked in short selling from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Word of the year?

2009-03-12T06:20:00.002-05:00

I still haven't bothered to try Twitter, and yesterday, Jon Stewart used a phrase that makes me want to do it even less: "Twitscape." Don't know if I want to be part of that.

Meanwhile, having a blast over on Facebook, even though people keep poking me.

It's calad!

2009-03-11T12:13:00.003-05:00

calad
Originally uploaded by donna di mondo.

The intrepid Donna Di Mondo, who first achieved legend status in my world for actually making the "Ring Around the Tuna" salad from the Joys of Jell-O cookbook, has come through again with the Danish Garden Salad, a.k.a. cake salad, or "calad."

Yum! (Not really.)

Now if you need something to cleanse your palate after that, take a look at her absolutely gorgeous Irish soda bread.

Chotda delivers!

2009-03-09T12:18:00.003-05:00

aspic of evil innards
Originally uploaded by chotda.

Chotda, a.k.a. Santos, decided to get all foodie with the heinous "Danish Garden Salad" idea by making an "Aspic of Evil" (a.k.a. Miss Congealiality).

God, I love the internets sometimes!

it's a cake ... it's a salad ... it's a cake salad!

2009-02-24T13:46:00.003-05:00

it's a cake ... it's a salad ... it's a cake salad!
Originally uploaded by bunchofpants.

I posted something over at Flickr that's sort of like a blog post. In the interest of ~~laziness~~ efficiency, I decided to just post it verbatim here and make it look like I'm a diligent and dedicated blogger ...

So someone else already has dibs on bringing Ring-Around-The-Tuna to the potluck? Don't fret! Thanks to the Southern Living Meats Cookbook (1971), you can one-up everyone else with this "Danish Garden Salad." (Can we really blame the Danes for this?) It's got Brussels sprouts and lima beans, so it'll be a big hit with all the kids!

I'd make this, but I'm far too lazy. Still, someone needs to make it and post photos in the interest of improving the internets. Here's the recipe:

5 10-oz. packages frozen Brussels sprouts
8 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1-1/2 cups cold water
5-1/2 cups hot chicken stock
1 cup bleu cheese
4 cups sour cream
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon basil
1/2 cup cooked sliced carrots
2 cups sliced zucchini
2 cups cooked lima beans
3 cups cooked ham strips

Cook the Brussels sprouts according to package directions, the drain and chill. Soften 6 envelopes gelatin in 1 cup water in a saucepan. Add 3-1/2 cups stock and cooki over low heat, stirring constantly, until gelatin is dissolved. Chill until thickened. Mix the bleu cheese and sour cream until smooth and fold into gelatin. Add seasonings, carrots, zucchini and lima beans. Reserve 15 Whole Brussels sprouts for garnish. Cut remaining Brussels sprouts in half and add to gelatin mixture. Turn into lightly greased 15 x 4-1/2 x 4-inch loaf pan and chill until firm. Soften remaining gelatin in 1/2 cup water in a saucepan. Add remaining stock and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until gelatin is dissolved. Chill until thickened. Arrange hame over congealed mold to cover top completely. Spoon gelatin over ham and chill until firm. Unmold onto chilled serving platter and garnish with reserved Brussels sprouts. May garnish with piped softened cream cheese, slices of hard-cooked egg, sliced truffles or rolled anchovy fillets, if desired.

streetwise, perhaps, but definitely not glamorous

2009-02-12T13:06:00.004-05:00

Could someone please explain to me why on earth I would ever want to Twitter? I mean, sure, I could see how cool it would be if I suddenly found myself in a unique situation, like for example having been taken hostage in a bank robbery, and then I Twittered the whole thing from inside the vault or wherever I happened to be, and then the whole intertubes would be abuzz for several days about how someone twittered the whole hostage ordeal and wow, look how the intertubes have changed our lives and aren't we all so cool. Yeah, I get that. But I'm not usually taken hostage, and I can't imagine having much of anything to Twitter about most of the time. And I get that Twitter would let me keep up with the doings of people like ... well, all the cool smart-and/or-famous people who Twitter ... but why do I need to do that?

Seriously, explain it to me. Convert me. Or don't ...

This just in ...

2009-02-06T07:10:00.002-05:00

Maybe you actually have to be a dumbshit to win on Jeopardy! these days. I wasn't watching last night, but someone on one of my e-mail lists was, and the answer to the question " 'Bull City' This place's nickname is derived from a product sold by American Tobacco" was ... wait for it ... "What is Raleigh?"

Oh hell, pass the Pop-Tarts, please

2009-01-09T11:56:00.002-05:00

Worried about Antibiotics in Your Beef? Vegetables May Be No Better.

Today, close to 70 percent of all antibiotics and related drugs used in the United States are routinely fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.

People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms.

Laminate them and turn them into bedside tables

2009-01-06T08:52:00.003-05:00

Since June, when I moved into my house, I have received six telephone books. To be fair, a few of them came packaged together, that is to say instead of finding a plastic bag containing one big waste of wood pulp at the end of my driveway I occasionally found a plastic bag containing two. I rarely even need one phone book because I do most of my phone-number-looking-up online. (To be fair, I did indeed have a mighty need for a phone book the time I locked myself shortly after moving in, before I had internet service, and I had to call someone to fix the damage I did breaking into my own home.)

Anywho, I don't need six fucking phone books. Who does? Sure, I can now just toss them into the curbside recycling bin, but I'd really truly rather not get them in the first place. Yesterday I saw a little thingie at Consumerist.Com that mentioned YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org, a site where you can opt out of receiving phone books. Well, symbolically at least. They send the names to the local phone book publishers who are legally free to completely ignore the request. Which is what I expect will happen, but what the hell ...

Yet we are the movers and shakers

2008-12-30T09:59:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I became seized by the urgent need to paint my bathroom (Above left: new color; above right: what it looked like when I moved in). I hadn't picked a color yet, or rather, I thought I had decided I'd paint it pink or brown, but I changed my mind and picked out a chartreuse color instead. It's a tiny bit shocking, which is the way I like it. I think it will look better once I get some sort of window treatment going on and a new shower curtain. I'm thinking brown for those things, maybe. Also I want to paint the ugly white laminate vanity, which will require some sort of smelly, heavy-duty oil-based primer, I think.

Also over my little navidad holiday I bought a treadmill, taught Lucy to walk on it, walked on it myself and saw two movies in actual theaters, which I rarely do (Four Christmases and Marley and Me. They were both OK.)

Over the course of the next two days I will be getting divorced and refinancing my house. Busy, busy ...

Is that a tamale in your pocket or ...

2008-12-10T09:04:00.004-05:00

My friend Sue is on a quest to find the best tamales in Durham. Problem is, she doesn't even like tamales so she's not a good judge (she's doing this for her dad, who does like tamales but isn't the type of guy who would go eat at random taquerías or, ¡dios mio! trucks or buses). I am very fond of the tamales at Tacostumbras, the taquería inside the Town & Country at University & Dixon (and I'm more fond of their tacos de asada, and fondest of all of the fact that I could walk there ... if it weren't always after dark when I feed my taco habit). So I'm putting the question out there: who's got the best tamales in Durham? Or: if you were going to give someone tamales for Xmas, whose tamales would you give?

Gracias.

Something that made me smile today

2008-12-09T13:47:00.004-05:00

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich
Dude, please! Yes, it's totally the Chicago way to do things, but you're not supposed to actually say it OUT LOUD!

How many bullet points make a proper list?

2008-12-02T13:28:00.002-05:00

I love using html list tags ...

Had a successful Thanksgiving dinner at my house. I supplied mashed potatoes, sweet potato soufflé, nibbley things and orange juice for the mimosas. I drank many mimosas, until I got tired of bothering to add orange juice and just drank straight champagne. We played Life:

Two of my friends brought young dogs they didn't want to leave home all day, and Pinky learned how to use Doggie Bitch Face to keep another dog (a cute little baby rottweiler) away from her yummy beef bone. She had never used Doggie Bitch Face before, and while I don't want her to make a habit of it, I must say she's got the cutest Doggie Bitch Face ever.

I went to the Pant's Mother's house in Myrtle Beach. Friday's weather was beautiful, and I had been hoping that Saturday would be a great day to take the dogs to Pawley's Island or something, but no, it poured rain instead. So my mother and I painted her living room a really awesome deep brick/reddish brown color (Behr Premium Spicy Cayenne, in case you're a color geek ... once I saw it on the wall I think I would have named it "Mexican Chocolate"). Now I have renewed interest in continuing to paint my casa crazy colors...

My back has been absolutely killing me over the past few weeks, so yesterday I had an rather expensive but astonishingly effective massage. For much of the day today I've been just marveling and how decent my back feels. But then I start thinking too much about how I need to be careful not to build all that tension back up again and it starts to make me really tense ...

Anyway, if anyone needs a kick-ass massage therapist in Raleigh I now know one ...

Perhaps I'm normal after all ...

2008-11-20T15:55:00.004-05:00

Ha! I knew I wasn't imagining things: Jezebel has Rahm Emanuel as #2 on its Sexiest Everyday Men of 2008. And Santa Salsera validated my opinion on him as well. The rest of the Jezebel list is neither here nor there ... I don't even know who some of those guys are. (Hmm, I'm sure I've heard of that Barack guy somewhere ... what band is he in?)

Sloth and silence

2008-11-19T14:21:00.004-05:00

Things have been happening at Casa De Pants, as in almost six months after moving in I'm starting to make it look like I didn't just move in. I needed some motivation, and it came in the form of a few people planning to come over and eat Thanksgiving dinner at my house. It's not like I'm having a party (so don't be miffed that I didn't invite you, 'K?), but several dog agility friends and I decided to have Thanksgiving dinner together, and one of them suggested my place. I figured staying home would be far better than driving to Chatham County, the site of the other possible dinner venue, so I said sure. This way I can drink a lot of wine and not worry about driving my ass home.

(Normally I would be having Thanksgiving dinner at the Pants Mother's house in Myrtle Beach. But the Pants Mother called up and said "Do we have to go to all the bother of cooking Thanksgiving Dinner?" What?!?! Hell yeah I want Thanksgiving dinner! Damn, who doesn't want Thanksgiving dinner? Turns out that neither she nor my brother really cares about Thanksgiving dinner. So I told her I'd just stay here and eat turkey with my friends and then head down to her place on Friday. She was very satisfied with that arrangement.)

So anyway, I also bought a new sofa. Actually a used sofa, from Once & Again consignment shop on 15-501. I had thought I wanted a sleek modern-looking sofa, but nothing I found seemed at all like the kind of thing I'd want to collapse on to watch a day-long Mad Men marathon. Then I saw this big fat thing with all kinds of pillows and I knew it was the place where I wanted to be lazy. It will be delivered Saturday. My old sofa will go live in the dog room at my friend Sue's house. I can visit it anytime I want.

I'm also the proud owner of a new electric leaf blower. A .59-acre lot collects more leaves than I want to rake. Damn, if I'd just gone and had kids way back when, one of them would surely be old enough to clear the leaves off my lawn by now. Obviously I wasn't thinking ahead ...

I admire your efforts to make me take it all seriously

2008-11-07T15:00:00.004-05:00

OK, I'll say it first. Rahm Emanuel is kinda hot. I especially like that he once told Tony Blair "Don't fuck it up." This is going to be fun.

UPDATE: Yes, yes, I KNOW Rahm Emanuel is a complete asshole ...

I apologize in advance to some dear friends ...

2008-11-07T09:44:00.003-05:00

... but had I been drinking coffee this would have made me spit it all over my keyboard:

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

They're both peppermint ...

2008-11-04T11:17:00.001-05:00

they're both peppermint
Originally uploaded by bunchofpants.

For a return to traditional zombie values

2008-11-04T07:19:00.002-05:00

This is way more important than your election: Simon Pegg reminds us that the undead do not run.

More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.

Oh, is that what they're doing?

2008-11-03T15:49:00.002-05:00

This is an actual headline from the Raleigh rag today:

Would someone please bring interesting back?

This post brought to you by Major League Baseball

2008-10-26T19:16:00.003-05:00

I'm multitasking ... writing this while watching Game 4 of the World Series. Except that at this point there's no actual baseball going on because they're doing all the recap/pregame buildup with a break every two minutes so Fox can cram as many commercials as possible into the beginning of the broadcast. I think there are three minutes of ads for every one minute of sports talk.

I missed the first three games because, darn, I was in London.

I had an excellent time ... but no, I didn't do all those many things one simply must do when one is in London. Good reason to go back, I guess. I did have a pint in a pub and a cup of coffee in the cafe in the Crypt (at St.-Martin-in-The-Fields), so alliteratively speaking the trip was a huge success.

I'm currently working on my cloyingly pretentious Madonna-esque fake British accent. I can say queue instead of line without even thinking about it now, and every once in a while I'll even pronounce a T sound instead of a D sound in words like "pretty."

I took some pictures. Coming soon to a Flickr photostream near you.

Coming home I was on the first international flight into the brand-spanking-new terminal at RDU. I saw a bit of it through the glass walls of the corridor that international arrivals are funneled through to Passport Control and Customs. Looks a lot like an airport terminal. Then I stood in line (oops, I'm supposed to say queue, aren't I?) for 45 minutes ... at least four times as long as I've ever had to wait to get back into this country before (all at far busier airports than RDU). I think other countries are perfectly well within their rights to make me wait forever to be admitted if that's what they want to do, but it annoys me (I mean, makes me cross) when my own country does it.

But back to baseball, it's the bottom of the 5th and Tampa Bay is making me very, very sad ...

Putting the "trans" in trans-Atlantic ...

2008-10-22T06:10:00.004-05:00

I've been posting so infrequently that no one will notice if I step away for a few days, will they? Good, because I'm heading off to London this afternoon for a long weekend. Maybe I'll take a few photos, but maybe not so many because I didn't bother to get a voltage converter for my camera battery charger, so once the juice in my battery runs out, it's out. Unless I manage to go out at lunch today and pick up a spare camera battery (it costs about the same as a converter, but would prove to be more useful to me in the long run).

Anywho, be good while I'm gone.

Perhaps this makes up for our current lack of Ethiopian restaurants ...

2008-10-15T19:48:00.002-05:00

Durham is on another "Best" list, this time it's Business Week's list of the best cities for riding out a recession. We're #3 (Behind Arlington, VA, and Washington, DC). Madison, WI, another kick-ass place I've lived, is #4. But it's too damn cold there. We're wearing flop-flops in October.

Does this security checkpoint make me look fat?

2008-10-06T12:09:00.007-05:00

I went to Chicago over the weekend. The most noteworthy bit was when I got to see the White Sox beat Tampa Bay in game 3 of their ALDS matchup. Well OK, I had to leave before the actual win to catch my flight home, but when I left they were ahead and they didn't score more after I was gone, so I'm counting it as seeing the win. Our seats were right above the Sox bullpen (thanks to the fact that a sister of the friend I visited works for the White Sox). See, I got pictures:

My friend Jackie and I did lots of other stuff in Chicago and I'll post photos on Flickr. Maybe. Sooner or later.

But the thing currently sticking in my memory is that I was pulled aside for a pat-down while going through security at Midway. It wasn't random, either--apparently the three layers of shirts I was wearing (hey, I was at a ball game in Chicago in October--I could have frozen my ass off) made me look suspicious, because the guy yelled out "Female. Bulky. Pat-down." Yes, dude called me bulky. Loudly. And then I caught him checking out my ass while I was waiting for a woman TSA worker to show up and pat me down. I wanted to say something like "yeah, my ass is so hot it'll make the plane explode, baby!" But it's not a good idea to mess with TSA workers because you're never sure which one is going to be stupid, easily threatened and on a power trip. So I kept my mouth shut and eventually got a quick, cursory pat-down by a woman who was way bulkier than I am. She was very nice, almost apologetic, and I was on my way very quickly. So it wasn't such a big deal, just my chance to play a role in TSA's theater of the absurd