BunkBlog

Tonight’s culinary excursion was Galbi, a Korean barbecued rib meal. The fried rice was an unqualified success (even though I think I could have done better). The ribs, on the other hand, not so much. Oh, they taste just fine, but the Boy complained about the spiciness, and the Woman just wants ribs to have barbecue sauce on ’em in the Texan tradition. Oh, well. Nothing ventured, and all that…

Alex and I found some great deals at Toys R Us today. He spent ten bucks and got 5 Transformers, four of which turn into a super-dude. I spent three bucks and got a Lego Star Wars Battledroid worth 40. Oh, yeah.

I would like to take a moment to point out the Robosapien has dropped in price by 20% since Christmas. This would be a fine addition to any house with a 34 year-old man and 5 year-old boy. *hint*

Focus on the Family Attacks Spongebob Squarepants

Um, he’s a sponge. He doesn’t even have any genitalia. Why is the Far Right so obsessed with sex anyway? Must be some frigid women over there.

Anything that Dr. Dobson is afraid of is something I’ll support wholeheartedly.

Made Chicken Cordon Bleu tonight, for the first time. I’m not a fan of asparagus, but when it’s wrapped up with Swiss cheese and ham inside a breaded chicken breast, it’s pretty much untasteable. Alex, ever adventurous with regards to food, not only ate lots of chicken (pulling the ham and asparagus out to eat first of course), but more asparagus and parmesan sauce than I had. He’s a good little piggy. All you parents who can’t get your kids to eat veggies – hah! Neener neener! 😉

It’s always nice when a culinary experiment turns out well. Next test dish is Penne with Asparagus and Pistachios. Sound unusual, and ya gotta use the asparagus before it turns to compost in the fridge. Rotten asparagus is gross, I’m tellin’ ya.

I owned the Battlestar Galactica Boardgame, when I was young. I remember the black holes were used to sneak behind your enemies and shoot them with your tiny plastic Viper fighters.

I also remember having a Viper toy that shot a plastic dart out of its nose.

So, with that in mind, is it any wonder that I’m really digging the remake? Yes, I am a big geek.

Most recently finished book – L.E. Modesitt’s The Ethos Effect.

Although I usually like Modesitt’s science fiction, this one was written a bit differently. I guess I’m just noticing the Tom Swifties too much or something.

Anyway, throwing out the sometimes leaden dialog, the ideas of this Parafaith War sequel are interesting. One of the things SF excels at is showing us extremes of contemporary situations so we can see them from a different viewpoint. Things in this one that you may have heard about in recent years in real life: racial profiling, incarceration without trial or charges, religious fundamentalists driving bad government decisions, and military actions with no apparent logic behind them.

Olive oil is good for you. Like you didn’t know that, right?

Good thing we use lots of olive oil in our cooking already. Like in the frittata and foccacia we made for dinner last night. 🙂

According to Om Malik, Six Apart to buy Live Journal…

So, I can’t escape Movable Type, can I? I changed my site to use WordPress because I didn’t like the way MT was moving (Pay up, bitches!). I keep my LJ paid up even though I use my site to post mirrored items to it. Why do I do such a bizarre thing? Because LJ has features nobody else does. LJ has threaded comments and userpics and mood icons and all that jazz, but most importantly – Livejournal has Friends Pages. Having a single-stop place to look at an aggregated list of posters you like to read is a Good Thing, and not one that Typepad has any interest in implementing. Also fairly important – LJ has no ads and lower fees for paid accounts. TypePad does not have a free user level, so I can only imagine what they’ll do with the five million free LJ accounts. If they’re doing this to gain users, they pretty much have to let the leeches hang on.

If SixApart buys LJ, I hope they leave it alone as a wholly-owned subsidiary, rather than merging it into the Typepad mess.

Disseminated by superflow

A few months ago, I had a dream in which LiveJournal and everyone on it went completely nuts for a day. The entire world had turned upside-down and inside-out and nobody was their normal self anymore. And it was such a good read, that I think it should happen for real.

January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore. I say, let’s do the same: January 27th, 2005 should be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics. Are your pets talking back at you now? Has your child suddenly grown to full adulthood? Does everyone at work think you’re someone else now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Did Zoroastrian missionaries show up on your doorstep with literature in 3-D? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat?

Let’s have a day where nobody’s life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let’s all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what’s there. It will be beautiful.

For consideration: this only works if you spread the word, of course, but three and a half weeks is forever in LJ Meme Time.

Code 46 was the movie of the evening last night. I’m a pretty fair afficionado of future tales, and this one was not so good. I think the director was trying too hard to make the movie look like Bladerunner, and the writer was trying too hard to change the language of the future to some Spanarabichinglish goulash. When you notice the Spanish and Arabic and Chinese words too much, they aren’t really natural, are they?

Anyway, the story was decent, but Tim Robbins was doing his best Keanu Reeves impression throughout the film. I know he can emote better than that. What was really entertaining was watching the “making of” featurette and hearing them talk about how Robbins and Samantha Morton had such great chemistry together. Apparently they watched a different movie than I did. For an “idea” story, pretty good; for an engaging piece of cinema, mediocre.

Forty cents is all that stands between me and a commission check from CafePress – my first in over two years. This has more to do with the change in the minimum check amount (from 10 to 25 dollars) than any slacking of interest in my exclusive wares, or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Well, this has been a full weekend. I’m almost glad to go to work tomorrow – they don’t expect me to do as much there.

Friday, we had the “open one present” wait for Alex. He was about to explode by the time we called it “eve” and said he could open one. He got a cool RC Corvette in that round. Circuit City’s “get it free after rebate” system is a good thing for parents.

Friday evening, we headed out to my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law’s house (don’t try to figure out how this makes us family – it’s Texas). They are some of the most fantastic people around, and they wanted a house full of people for Christmas. We were happy to oblige them. Our contribution to the potluck included baklava, cheese and crackers, and a veggie tray. Somehow, we came back with more than we took over, including some presents for Alex and us’ns.

Saturday morning, we put the turkey in the oven. Twenty pound monster, it was. We put lemons and limes in the body and a tangerine in the neck; that was the moistest and most succulent turkey any of us had ever had. Alex got to open all the presents under the tree, and then more presents when the relatives came over in the afternoon. After all was unwrapped, he asked plaintively, “Why didn’t Santa bring me what I asked for?” As if he didn’t have a bushel of presents. His Oma (Dutch for grandma) contributed 25 bucks to his college fund, which will have a more long-lasting effect even if he doesn’t appreciate it yet. Much eating and drinking and sitting by the fire ensued. Everyone left with jars of homemade cranberry butter (which has no butter but can’t be called jelly because it lacks pectin) and most were given other leftovers as well, including more baklava and pumpkin pie.

Sunday saw the rise of the after-Christmas sales. We’ve already got most of the shopping done for next year’s presents, at least for the kids. It’s a very liberating feeling. They’re even wrapped and in the closet now. Mostly, this is just a good idea to avoid adding more work to the time which coincides with Finals week next year.

More photos of a cute boy and his toys are coming soon, no doubt.

We’ve posted more Christmas photos on the site. We’ve got pictures from Alex’s pre-K holiday program, the light displays here in San Angelo, and some of Alex looking cute.

I’m thinking a double batch of baklava for January’s big event, but I’m flexible. Maybe several kinds of cookies instead. Or a super-duper cheesecake.

In other news, my cow-orkers really need to stop trying to interest me in inane chatter. Interesting conversation, I’m all over. Crap about sports or local “celebrities” – please make it stop.

Thank you, please drive through.

And today marked the third (of three) test finals for this semester. I hereby declare the 2004 school year officially done. One more semester, three more classes, five more months, and I shall be a college graduate. No measly Associates “degree” like my benighted veteran friends think of as an accomplishment, but a real-life, everybody believes it’s real, oh-my-jebus how did it take me until 2005, Bachelor’s of Science degree.

Now, I just have to wait for my grades. Two in Maryland, one in Romania. Anyone want to bet which one is not last?

My annual (or so) Black Forest Cake is online for viewing. We only gave half of it away this time. Oh, yeah, semester break is gonna be pigout time.

Of course, this photo was taken before Alex picked all the cherries off the top. Little monkey.

One of the cool things San Angelo does every year – Christmas lights along the river. I was able to get some pretty decent pictures of several “days of Christmas” themed displays, as well as this Santa’s Toy Company display.

Well, I’ve finished my homework for the semester. The “big project” (a massive 10 page research paper) is complete, with much websurfing for source materials. Next week, 8:00 am for each of three days, are my finals. Although alloted 3 hours each, I’ve never spent more than an hour on one of my finals and I’m only one semester from graduation, so I doubt this will change next week.

Amusingly, the one closed-book final I have is for the most basic class. I finally got around to taking my freshman science classes this semester and next semester, and that’s the only test which doesn’t allow open book and open notes for the final. Go figure. I guess I’ll have to open that book for the fifth time since buying it. 🙂

The gallery has a few more photos from this week.

This cheesecake was quite yummy. It has cranberries in the middle of the cream cheese, and a little egg nog in the batter too. Mmm….

And, I think we have just about enough darned pecans!