Name these veggies

Huh

well that doesn't look good

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i know i know

I am back and I havent really posted. I have been really busy at work, what with taking over someone elses job, on top of my own.

But I have important news so I figured I would post.

Tonight, I bought myself a new laptop. Yay! I am the proud owner of a Gateway T-6836. I am pretty excited. Best of all we walked into Best Buy and walked out 20 minutes later with a laptop, a new printer and no service plan or extended bullshit plan or anything. 20 minutes! And it only cost me $660. After taxes! For a laptop and a printer/copier/scanner. Which is pretty cool no?

So I am learning Vista, so far unimpressed but not at tears yet.

I promise to post more soon.

Sailing pics

Our pictures are posted on flickr. So you can check them all out.

Have I mentioned . . .

the bathrooms at my work and the responses to it?

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Day ? - gloucester

spent the day in town. Had some run ins with the harbormaster. Not well organized or friendly. Had a lovely 13 person dinner on board for my parents anniversary. Today to the beach house.

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Day 6 - gloucester

After a rough ride here, arrived safely though wet. Joined by green wave, godparents. Extended cocktail hour featuring pomegranate margaritas and homemade sausage. Today is cloudy and sad looking but I slept in til 8.

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Days 4 and 5 - ptown

spent monday at beach saw huge seal, dinner on shore at cafe heaven to belatedly celebrate mattys birthday. Absolutely fabulous meal and matty made a friend of the waiter, pablo. Got him a free drink, free dessert and an invitation for later in the evening.

tuesday slept in til 730. Had breakfast on shore at edwiges. Another fantastic meal. Spent the day wandering the stores, streets and galleries of ptown. Also climbed the pilgrim memorial tower. Only 225 feet. Lunch at spiritus, my fave pizza place. Dinner aboard after cocktail hour and then a trip ashore for showers and ice cream. And a bit of people watching, including drag karaoke.

This morning up at 5 to depart by 6 heading to gloucester. Whales! At least a dozen, feeding playing jumping breaching. Amazing. All around the boat. We think humpbacks. Also a big school of tuna. Then weather got real bad, rain, huge following seas but good winds to sail in. Finished reading The Golden Compass. On mooring in gloucester awaiting next storm.

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Day three - Provincetown, a rainbow, go figure

Left onset at 8 and headed into the canal, very fast trip, sailed for a few hours on other side, finally! no whales or blues or mermaids, arrived in p-town, went ashore, thunderstorm, rainbow, lovely dinner on between the sheets. This morning up at 6 for fresh portuguese baked goods and restaurant search. Off to beach soon.

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Oh and happy watermelon day!

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Day two - Onset

Yesterday left after breakfast, no good wind, saw a shark, lots of asshole powerboaters in canal entrance. Crazy thunderstorm, vegan pate and pesto big hits at cocktail hour, stuffies and chowder for dinner. This morning up at sunrise for another day of travel. Cape Cod canal and provincetown.

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Day one - cuttyhunk, perfection

we arrived yesterday, spent the afternoon on the beach, had a lovely dinner, got up at sunrise for a row around the harbor before breakfast, preparing to depart now. Finally starting to relax.

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Happy Mutt Day!

35 minutes and I am so out of here! Yay! I promise to think about maybe posting while I am away. Maybe.

Last night we got Greek Lady for dinner and I made Walnut Mushroom Pate (substituting sage for tarragon) from the Veganomicon. I also made pesto with basil (from the garden), thai basil (from the garden), chives (from the garden), mint, oregano (from the garden), hot cherry pepper spread and toasted pine nuts. Those are both for boat happy hours. God I hope they make it through security.

Pretty boring night all in all. We packed, I cut Matty's hair, we finished watching the first disc of Season 3 of the Office.

Today is the last day of working with Peffin, the mosue tech and only other person working on L1s in my lab. When I come back, she will be gone and I will be alone. And I will be doing both of our jobs since she is not being replaced. Yay! I am so excited. Really. I am very happy about this arrangement. Because really, I didnt think I was doing nearly enough grunt work. And who doesnt like dealing with a smelly mouse colony?

Of course what is ACTUALLY good about the whole thing is that the reason today is our last day together is because after work today I am officially on vacation until the 10th! Yay! So the current plan is to leave at first light tomorrow morning and head to Cuttyhunk and spend the afternoon/evening/night there. Then Saturday head over to Onset. Sunday we go through the canal and head over to Provincetown. We will stay there until Wednesday and then head to Gloucester. We will be there until at least Friday. At some point Saturday or Sunday someone will get us from wherever we are and either bring us to the family beach house in Salisbury or to the Manchester airport. Sunday we fly home. Sigh. So excited!

Last puzzle for a bit.
Brad set out in a motorboat at 2 pm on Saturday with enough fuel for two days. He arrived at 2pm on Sunday with an empty tank. With no supernatural or weather phenomena, what happened?

Oh, while I am gone, could someone please get to the bottom of the Montauk Monster thing, cuz it kinda freaks me out. Awesome.

Happy National Cheesecake Day!

Nothing particularly relevant today as my brain is fairly fried from a meeting with Nina in which when essentially asked to make my life exponentially easier, said no. But in 26 hours I will not have to deal with work for 10 whole days.

Last night we almost had a dinner party. I invited Dan over so that we could discuss how to take care of my plants while we are gone. And Matty invited Joey without knowing I had invited Dan and was kinda surprised when he said yes, at least to stop by anyway. Dan came. Joey had better plans. We grilled the sausage for our trip. It smelled fantastic and we tried some of the bratwurst. It pretty much tastes like breakfast sausage. Which is yummy but not bratwurst. But that's fine, because who doesnt like breakfast? We also grilled up some cheddarwurst for dinner with some zucchini and bell pepper (half red, from the garden). And we had pickles (from the garden). Then Matty and Dan discussed iPhones and we had leftover pie from Dan's party on Saturday. I still love his frozen mocha cheesecake (which was fitting for a little early celebration of today). But his key lime pie and his peaches and cream pie are also fantastic. The key lime was so lime-y! Very refreshing.

After Dan left we watched the first three episodes of Season 3 of The Office. Good season start at least. I love that the topics are so offensive but handled in such a way that the episodes are so not offensive except to people who didnt find the topics themselves offensive. Know what I mean? No? Well whatever. It makes sense to me.

Alphabet Soup: The 18 letters below can be anagrammed into a five-word phrase describing something that's hard to find. The enumeration is 1 6 2 1 8. What is the phrase?
A A A A C D E E E H I K L N N S T Y

Happy National Lasagna Day!

Ok, enough REAL posts and RELEVANT topics. Warning: sausage pics below!

Interesting results in the herb polls. Looks like cilantro managed make both lists. Tying iwth mint as second most liked behind the ever loved basil. And tying for least liked with chervil and tarragon (damn licorice-y-ness). Dill also making an appearance on the least liked list. Lets see if we can get more than 4 people to vote about spices shall we?

Last night Matty and I had leftover barbecue pork chili from the freezer, mixed with leftover vegan chili from Dan's and leftover kale and mushroom sauce from last week topped with leftover tzatziki from last week. It was uber-yummy and fast as the rest of the evening was dominated by sausage stuffing. Warning - graphic stuffing pics to follow:






After the stuffing was completed we relaxed with a little Karate Kid. Wow. That's pretty much all I am going to say. I never took karate or any other martial arts. But pretty much everyone knew someone who did. And how much of that was because of this one movie and how awesome Mr. Miyagi is and how evil Cobra Kai were and seriously, who doesnt want to be able to do a move that has no defense? Though really, wouldnt ducking have helped? I mean it is not like it is subtle. But anyway. Yeah. Karate Kid.

Only 2 more full days and the rest of today til vacation!

What two six-letter words that are anagrams of each other can be used to complete the sentences below?
The irate custmore began to ______ the poor clerk. "I mailed in the forms, but was denied the ______ that you promised," he said.

Lukewarm Reactions to Favored Obama Veep Candidate

So Obama is starting to seriously float veep names and will likely make a choice very soon. This article (NY Mag) about a possible nod to VA Gov Tim Kaine worries me a bit. They go through the possible positives and negatives (as seen by the media) and I am not seeing a whole lot on the positive side honestly. I do not know anything about him besides this article so I cant add or detract.
+ He might deliver the red state -> blue state that everyone is saying he needs right now.
- He MIGHT deliver VA. Only 50% favorability and similar geographic favorability as what Obama already has.
+ He is a DC outside.
- Obama is getting slammed for being a DC outside.
- No foreign policy experience. Same as Obama.
+ Centrist
- Centrist
+ Can deal with Republicans and has experience balancing budgets.
+ "comes across as very warm. Empathetic. Normal guy. Not politician-y.", "has below-average looks." Honestly? This is a talking point? So sad but true.
+ "serve as ambassador" to "four key groups: Virginians, Catholics, working-class white voters, and Hispanics"

I do not know who he should have as his running mate. I do not think it should be Hillary. But I am not sure that this is the guy either. He needs someone who can get him the votes that he can't seem to. He needs someone with foreign policy experience (not because I personally think that is what makes a president, but because it seems like everyone else does.) He needs someone who can get religious, working class, white and Hispanic voters. And he needs to fulfill this "experience in general" void, whatever that means. I guess someone who has spent a significant time in office (aka older). And I guess someone with military experience. So anyone have any ideas? Oh an be sure to check out the comments to the original article. Priceless. Really.

Spicy!

So these will be the last of the herb and spices polls. We have had a bit of a weak turnout in our polls thus far, but some interesting answers. There are 2 new polls available, favorite and least favorite spices. Feel free to choose more than one for each category. If you are unsure about what they are, the title of this post is link to this site which should help a bit. Please leave comments too, we love to hear people's thoughts. Also, these polls will be open until after i get back from vacation to give people extra time to answer. So have at them!

Things that interest me

I am going to start reposting stuff here more often than I have been because I realize that some of my readers will end up reading/ this stuff more than once, some of you might not.

W


Quantum of Solace

Also, it is pronounced "cool"
And, because more things should be like ninjas.
And a fun blog on the lines of The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks and Failblog.

Happy Milk Chocolate Day!

Well as you might have noticed from my posts from Saturday, the main highlight of this weekend (at least for Matty) was getting his iPhone. But lets start on Friday which was pretty standard. Happy hour and dinner at Sidecar. I had the tomatillo gazpacho which was lovely but not green which I was kinda expecting. Matty had the fish and chips which he loved, but did not love him back. All night. After dinner, Lego Star Wars.

Saturday morning we were up before 7 and out of the house by quarter past to catch a train to the Main Line. We arrived in Ardmore at 8:05 and were in line by 10 past. The line stretched from the front of the building to the back, that is the first pic from Saturday. Suburban Square is an outdoor mall, similar to Garden City for you Rhode Islanders. Unfortunately, nothing except the Farmer's Market is open until 10. So I left Matty in line behind two of the most obnoxious, annoying, spoiled rich suburbanite 13 year olds I have ever had to deal with in person and wandered over there. Farmer's Market generally induced visions of hay and produce with calculators and money boxes. This place makes Reading Terminal look like a road-side tomato stand. So ritzy and Main Line-y. I got myself a sausage, egg and cheese pretzel roll-up from Stoltzfus (which was AWESOME!) and wandered around drooling at the meats and cheeses and produce and wine and everything. Then I went to relieve Matty from the kids for a bit. So kid 1, I will call "the annoying one" (TAO for short). Kid #2 (actually getting an iPhone) was named David. Some snippets of our time in line with them.
TAO: dragging his obviously new apple laptop from his backpack that he leaves hanging open, "I am totally going to have them clean the screen for me, because like, that's there job."
. . .
Older gentleman 2 people ahead to TAO, not realizing that TAO and David have managed to weasel between the person ahead of them and him: "I am going to go to Starbucks to use the restroom. Will you hold my spot?"
TAO: "Sure."
Older gentleman: "Thank you" and walks away
TAO guy who is ACTUALLY ahead of them: "Was he kidding? Of course I am not going to let him back in line."
Guy in front of him: "Well, since he is actually right in front of me, not you, and I am NOT and ass, I am going to let him back in line. He is going to take a piss, what is wrong with you?"
. . .
TAO: referring to the Coldplay concert that he had just gone to and was wearign the T-shirt from. "Well, I mean we had a VIP box, its not like we just went."
. . .
TAO: "Maybe I should get a 3G too," while playing with his iPhone which he had gotten in June.
. . .
TAO: After David complains that he had to spend 30 minutes on the phone with AT&T because he isn't actually eligible to get the iPhone at the discounted price and so his mother, who had to come down and wait in line for 2 hours because her son isnt actually old enough to buy an iPhone on his own, added another line to their plan and will have to pay the early termination fee on his current line, or pay for him to have 2 cellphone lines. "What are you whining about? Don't you understand that this is the best day of your life? You will always remember this day. You will tell you kids about the day that you got the iPhone 3G."

It was a delightful time all around. They ran out of the 16gig black within an hour and a half of us getting there. But since Matty is going to get a hard case for it anyway, white is fine. He actually got the second to last 16 gig they had. When we fianlly got inside we got to deal with Sybil, the world's oldest apple store employee. She had to be at least 70. She was a bit slow but not incompetent. Until we actually got it all up an running and she decided to play with it. Like we hadnt been there long enough. She wanted to play with the iPhone. We finally got out of there and to the train at 12:45. Oh, and TAO talked David into getting his mom to also buy, (in addition to the iPhone, a case, a Mobile Me account ($99 a month)) a red iPod nano.

We got a train back to the city and stopped at the Terminal to get lunch, a roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe from Dinic's which we split. Then we bought a 6lb pork shoulder, some sausage casings and headed home. Finally. Oh we stopped at the Gallery and bought Crosswords from the DS for our trip. When we got home I took a nap and then picked 6 cucumbers from the garden and we made a new batch of pickles. With garlic and serrano, mustard and corriander seeds. We made that spicy cucumber and peanut salad from a few weeks ago and then headed over to Dan's for his summer cocktail party. I made a lovely drink with JellyBelly Strawberry Daiquiri mix, citrus vodka and tonic water. Matty was drinking rum and diet cokes. A mistake. Dan made guacamole and vegan chili and grilled cheeses which were all yummy. As well as a peaches and cream pie, a key lime pie and a frozen mocha cheesecake (my favorite). We had a really nice time, met some new people, saw some people we hadnt seen in awhile . . . and then Matty had a drink too many. It started as it normally does, Matty being horribly inappropriate and yelling and then he couldnt walk straight, stand on his own or hold on any conversation at all. He finally asked me to bring him home and so home we went. Luckily it is only about a block to our place, though the stairs out of Dan's and into our place were a bit dicey. When we got home he was asleep before I finished brushing my teeth. He hadnt really eaten anything all day except half a pork sandwich and then half a grilled cheese. He had been up all friday night regretting the fish and chips and then we were up before 7 on Saturday. So that plus he doesnt drink rum and should never be allowed to mix his own drinks it all caught up with him real fast. Sigh.

Sunday we got up and headed to Marathon in University City from brunch before a 12:10 showing of The Dark Knight. We ordered at 11:15 (me a breakfast quesadilla, matty a sandwich) and since it was less than half full we figured we would have plenty of time. When the food still hadnt arrived and we hadnt seen our waiter at 11:45 we started to get concerned. A bunch of people who had sat after us had already gotten their meals and the table next to us (same waiter) who had sat before us were also still waiting. Matty and a girl form that table finally tracked down the waiter to ask what was going on and he was very defensive about it. our food arrived right then and we asked for it to be wrapped up since we didnt have time to eat it. Matty ran across the street to Fresh grocer to buy two slices of pizza for us to eat quickly before the movie started. I waited for the food and to pay. I understand that sometimes the kitchen backs up or is really slow. But no other tables except his seemed to be having a problem. But whatever. It had only been 30 minutes but we were in a rush. I was going to give him a full 20% tip and then he walked over to the table next to us and essentailly through a fit about it not being his fault and he didnt do it on purpose and there was nothing he could do. So he got 15%. I know I have never waited tables and I am sure someone will complain. But you have to handle that better. If there is a prolbem in the kitchen, at least go over to the table and mention what was going on. At least refill our waters. And then dont get pissed when people are upset. Or when they apologize and ask for their meals to go because they are in a rush. Ugghhh. So Matty and I stood outside the theater and inhaled a piece of pizza and then went in. Luckily our day got much better. The Dark Knight is awesome. It fully lived up to my expectations and the hype. It was creepy and dark and violent. I think it should have gotten the R rating personally. But it had a great story, great action, great acting. It was all just awesome. I wont say anything else because I dont want to give anything away. But if you are at all interested in going I would highly recommend seeing it. And I totally think Heath Ledger deserves at least an Oscar nomination.

After the movie we headed into the the lab (in a thunderstorm) for a bit and then went home. We watched a marathon of this season's The Next Food Network Star. Warning, that link has the winner in case you have been watching but didnt see the finale last night. We ate our brunch for dinner. It was very good, even after being carried around all day. And then we ground and seasoned the pork. Warning: graphic pictures below.












We are making bratwurst and Italian (with basil, garlic, onion, crushed red pepper and parmesan)

Only 3 more work days til vacation!

Crazy countries: Find two different wold countries that fit the blanks.
_ U _ T _ _ _ _ A
_ U _ T _ _ _ _ A

Alphabet Soup: How many common English words can you make from the letters below, using all six letters once in each word? (Try to find 5)
A E L R S T

In Puzzle Land, one teenager eats ice-cream cones at the rate of 36 in 3 hours. Her friend likes them even more and can eat the same in only 2 hours. How long will it take the two of them together to eat 36 ice-cream cones?

Success! Only took 5 hours . . .