BunkBlog

We have pictures!

Due to some absurd maneuvering by the Texas Legislature, combined with an attempt to be “helpful” on the part of Vinesse, I now have full wine racks and a few bottles still in a box.  Um…yeah.  I better schedule another wine and cheese party soon, and give bottles to each guest as they leave.

The silver lining in this, the bottle of Italian sparkling red that I loved from last month? Got another bottle today. Sweet.

After seeing the teaser trailer twice now, I figured I’d make an LJ userpic from the Transformers movie. Yes, it doesn’t come out until next July.

Happy Birthday to me. I made a cake. I’m told that I’m not using an authentic Bavarian recipe for Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, but I like it anyway.

The latest in “food you didn’t think anyone would be interested in” – hot pepper ice cream. According to one customer, “It tastes like fire with a side of fire.” Oh, that’s what I’m looking for in a cold tasty treat.

The Festival on the Concho has replaced the five years gone Fiesta del Concho, and it is a good replacement. For some reason, it was scheduled on the same weekend as the Fort Concho Frontier Day (formerly Days – go figure). Even with sharing crowds with the fort, though, the Festival was very well attended; I predict a return next year.

Alex and I went Friday night and Saturday. He got to spend a lot of time playing with squirt guns, bouncing in the infaltable houses, and we even hit the paddle boats for a while. Sausages in tortillas, fresh lemonade, all the usual carnival fare.

Now, a few days to recover.  Well, and work, but get real.

What is with little kids thinking they must be missing out on something amazing when they go to bed but the adults (or in my case, adult) stay up?  The Boy used every delaying tactic in his arsenal tonight, after a really full day. He had to poop, he had to call mom, he had just five more minutes of the “Ed Edd and Eddy” episode to watch, he was starving and would perish in mere moments without more sustenance… Finally get him to bed 90 minutes past bed time, and he says, “I’m not even a little bit sleepy you know.”  Three minutes later – zzzzzzzzz.  Yeah, right, not even a little bit sleepy.

The local Circuit City, like all other “big box” stores in this town, is more of a “not so big box” store. They’ve been here for about a year now, but seem to be in a constant state of stocking the shelves as if for the first time. Today, I went to the store to try to touch a Sansa e200, which I will probably end up buying as a replacement for my broken Karma. I went to the part of the store marked “Portable Audio” – that was where I’d seen MP3 players in the past, and the name seems to be apropos. The aisles were filled with telephones and CD cases. OK, so where might the portable audio be? After several attempts, I finally found a salesperson who pointed out the sign hanging above the computer section, “iPods and MP3.” A new sign, it is literally a section carved out of the middle of the computer section. There are hard drives on the left and laptops on the right. What the hell?

And that Sansa e200? Not on display. Best Buy has one on display, but it’s broken. I hate this town some days.

I have this cool folding hammock, which Alex insisted I set up in the den for him to lay on.  He never did.  But, the cat is now trying to figure out what manner of monster this is. She’s batting at it, making it swing, and then trying to determine whether she should jump on it or not.

Eventually, she determines that she’s better off on the bean bag.

We have a municipal pool here in beautiful San Angelo Texas, which opens tomorrow for the season. The hours are 11am-6pm on Saturdays, 1-6pm on Sundays, and 1-7pm the rest of the week (for open swim, which is all I’d care about for Alex). The pool closes for the season on the 13th of August.  So, it’s open 10 weeks of the year.  In west Texas.  Where it got to 100 degrees in April.  Where we use the air conditioning well into October most years. WTF?

What do you expect for 3 bucks per day, right?  So, what about the local swim & racquet club? It costs over 500 bucks for membership the first year (400 the following years – what a bargain for you). Their pool opened today (a day earlier!), and stays open until the 4th of September (three more weeks!). For five hundred bucks, I want to be able to swim on Christmas freakin’ Day, folks. At least the swim club pool is open 10-9 five days a week, and 1-9 on Sunday (like many things in West Texas, it’s inexplicably closed on Mondays).

The only way to use a pool here for the period when someone would reasonably want a pool to beat the heat is to own your own.  I live in bizarro-world.

Check this out.  The middle-school kids from Wall beat the Army for the first year ever.  They not only ran a total of nearly 104 miles over the course of the night, they also got faster as the relay progressed. Of course, at the end of the event, those 7th grade students were walking like I do when I’m feeling extra old.  hehe

For those keeping score at home, the following items are good, but time consuming:

• Sweet-and-sour Chicken tapas
• Glazed halves of cornish hens

The following items are good, and not too tough:

• Grilled shrimp with mango salsa
• Individual baked alaskas

And margaritas, beer, wine, cola, diet cola, iced water – always good things to have around.

And a dinner party down, with many dishes to clean.

BTW, the game “Battle of the Sexes” is rigged. The questions that only men are presumed to know are dead simple, while the questions that only women are presumed to know are so obscure even the women didn’t know them. WTF?

And now Cat has heard “The Doggie in the Window” – only took her 37 years. 🙂

Built one of Yamaha’s papercraft animals this weekend: a macaw. Now to let my hand uncramp from the knife-clenching. Of course, Alex now wants me to build a motorcycle. The macaw took three pieces of card stock; the motorcycles are over a dozen sheets each. Ouch.

 

 

For you LJ users, a pack of new userpics.  Go for it, Mike!

I can quit any time I want. It’s a good thing most of the programs on my MythTV box are set for “autoexpire when the drive gets full.” Here’s the latest status line.

297 programs, using 242 GB (246 hrs 31 mins) out of 345 GB.

Now, to be fair, I have a truly stupendous number of cartoons for the Boy, as well as a significant number of DVDs ripped to the hard drive (no need to mess with the disks, which is good if you’re six years old).

Pretty much everyone knows that cats enjoy giving presents to their owners. Holly was just mewling at the front door, and when I looked out she had some rather large lizard in her mouth. I got her to drop it so it could scurry away, but it did seem to be missing its tail.

This creature keeps giving me dead birds and live lizards. No matter how many times I discourage her, she just won’t stop. Has she ever seen me eating a sparrow or gecko? Why would she think I’d appreciate these things? I don’t assume she’d like Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

The latest in the world of “energy drinks,” Coca Cola Blak, is quite possibly one of the strangest beverages I’ve ever tried.  Coke and coffee?  I think I’ll stick with Dew.

Rachael Ray is my friend. I’ve been going through the recipes in her book “365 No Repeats” for the past several months, and Alex is loving most of them.

A couple weeks ago, I made a three-onion soup with cheesy bread – twice in a row, by request. Tonight was a creamy broccoli soup (with cheesy bread again, go figure), made with pureed broccoli and onions, cream, and chicken stock. Again, a big hit.

I love that my boy tries new things without complaint – some kids are supposedly quite evil about eating. I guess years of, “if you don’t eat it, you get nothing until breakfast” work, so long as you actually stick to your guns. I can’t imagine making two meals, one for me and one for him. Shoot, when I am not feeling well I have a hard time convincing myself to cook for the boy at all.

Alex has finished his second week with the “Kid’s Karate” program, and he’s starting to figure out his left from his right. All in good time, I suppose.

He’s very cute in his little white uniform, jumping around like a tiny kangaroo.

And so ends another week. Back to hanging out with my main girl, the cat.

Surprisingly, Alex is in love with a new recipe for onion soup with cheesy bread. Pretty simple soup (sauteed onions, leeks, and shallots in beef broth), but the cheesy bread had three cheeses – smoked gouda, gruyere, and cheddar.  I’ve got a bowl sealed up and waiting for lunch at work tomorrow, along with one chunk of bread.

The Boy actually requested the soup two days in a row.  Guess it’s a keeper.