Today, I got a fortune cookie with no fortune. What does it mean?
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Domestic Goddess
Kind of. Not really. But sometimes...
Once in a while, I get the notion that I want to do something homey. Like cook. Or iron. Actually, forget the ironing. I can't do that without making things worse. I am a good cook, though, if I must say so, myself. (My lovely boyfriend agrees, at least to my face.)
A few weeks ago, we were visiting my boyfriend's mom, who has grapevines trellised over her backyard fence. She's been talking about getting the fence fixed, which means that the grapes must go. I think it's tragic.
So, to console myself, I offered to harvest the abundance of concord grapes before *sigh* they are no more.
Approximately 10 pounds later, I have no idea what, exactly, I'm going to do with all of these grapes, which are characterized by an amazing flavor and an equally large seed in each one. I froze some of them last year, but never got around to actually eating them. This year, they sat in my fridge for a week and a half, threatening to shrivel up before I got to them.
I figured that the most practical thing would be to make jelly.
So, I presumed that I should cook them down.
But first...
Pick each. And every. One. From their bunches.
Hours later (not too much of an exaggeration), I've got the grapes in a stock pot on low heat. I allow them to cook, assuming that, like tomatoes, the skins will eventually fall off and you can either strain them out or they will disintegrate. They don't disintegrate. Or fall off. Nor do the seeds go willingly from the flesh. And when they've finished cooking down, you've got a mush of hotter-than-hell grape juice that smells delicious, but threatens to both scald and stain you (and every fiber of clothing you are wearing).
By the time this mash has cooled enough to maybe handle, it's really stinking late. So, the grape mash goes into the fridge in the stock pot.
Step 2, the following day. No time.
The day after that. No time.
The day after that. Ah, some time. Run the grape mash through a strainer. Which turns out to be very ineffective. It actually requires pressing the grape mash against the strainer many, many, many times, only to be left with something that's still half grape juice, but refuses to be strained any further. I find that squeezing the shit out of it by hand works, though. And I even have enough foresight to wear some disposable gloves so as not to end up with purple hands.
The result...grape juice and what looks like bat guano, complete with seeds. It's disappointingly little grape juice, too.
Or, so I thought.
I find a recipe for easy jelly online (no, I didn't do that BEFORE I decided to do this), which calls for 3 cups of juice. Check. 5 1/4 cups sugar (!). Check. And pectin. Easy enough to get. Cool! I can do this!
I go to the store and purchase a dozen half pint jelly jars, some pectin, and canning equipment (a canning pot, tongs, jar grasper, jar opener, funnel, magnet...actually a pretty good setup, it turns out). I come home and measure out my grape juice. I have...12 cups of grape juice. Shit. I need more of...everything.
I go to the store and get more jars and pectin (regular instead of instant this time) and sugar. Did you know that one 4-pound bag of sugar is actually about 9 cups? ONLY 9 cups. Then, I set to work.
Add pectin to grape juice, bring to boil, stir in sugar. Whoah... That's a lot of sugar. This is going to require more jars.
I go to the store. Get more jars. And finishing jarring my grape jelly (after washing each jar by hand, then running through the dishwasher). I even processed the jars. Because there is no damned way we're eating 30 and 1/3 jars of jelly within 3 weeks. And each and every one of those jars sealed! (Hooray! I wasn't entirely confident about this.)
It actually turned out quite good. I just hope we don't get botulism. Do you suppose I should hold off on giving any of it away?
Once in a while, I get the notion that I want to do something homey. Like cook. Or iron. Actually, forget the ironing. I can't do that without making things worse. I am a good cook, though, if I must say so, myself. (My lovely boyfriend agrees, at least to my face.)
A few weeks ago, we were visiting my boyfriend's mom, who has grapevines trellised over her backyard fence. She's been talking about getting the fence fixed, which means that the grapes must go. I think it's tragic.
So, to console myself, I offered to harvest the abundance of concord grapes before *sigh* they are no more.
Approximately 10 pounds later, I have no idea what, exactly, I'm going to do with all of these grapes, which are characterized by an amazing flavor and an equally large seed in each one. I froze some of them last year, but never got around to actually eating them. This year, they sat in my fridge for a week and a half, threatening to shrivel up before I got to them.
I figured that the most practical thing would be to make jelly.
So, I presumed that I should cook them down.
But first...
Pick each. And every. One. From their bunches.
Hours later (not too much of an exaggeration), I've got the grapes in a stock pot on low heat. I allow them to cook, assuming that, like tomatoes, the skins will eventually fall off and you can either strain them out or they will disintegrate. They don't disintegrate. Or fall off. Nor do the seeds go willingly from the flesh. And when they've finished cooking down, you've got a mush of hotter-than-hell grape juice that smells delicious, but threatens to both scald and stain you (and every fiber of clothing you are wearing).
By the time this mash has cooled enough to maybe handle, it's really stinking late. So, the grape mash goes into the fridge in the stock pot.
Step 2, the following day. No time.
The day after that. No time.
The day after that. Ah, some time. Run the grape mash through a strainer. Which turns out to be very ineffective. It actually requires pressing the grape mash against the strainer many, many, many times, only to be left with something that's still half grape juice, but refuses to be strained any further. I find that squeezing the shit out of it by hand works, though. And I even have enough foresight to wear some disposable gloves so as not to end up with purple hands.
The result...grape juice and what looks like bat guano, complete with seeds. It's disappointingly little grape juice, too.
 |
| Grape guano. |
I find a recipe for easy jelly online (no, I didn't do that BEFORE I decided to do this), which calls for 3 cups of juice. Check. 5 1/4 cups sugar (!). Check. And pectin. Easy enough to get. Cool! I can do this!
I go to the store and purchase a dozen half pint jelly jars, some pectin, and canning equipment (a canning pot, tongs, jar grasper, jar opener, funnel, magnet...actually a pretty good setup, it turns out). I come home and measure out my grape juice. I have...12 cups of grape juice. Shit. I need more of...everything.
I go to the store and get more jars and pectin (regular instead of instant this time) and sugar. Did you know that one 4-pound bag of sugar is actually about 9 cups? ONLY 9 cups. Then, I set to work.
Add pectin to grape juice, bring to boil, stir in sugar. Whoah... That's a lot of sugar. This is going to require more jars.
I go to the store. Get more jars. And finishing jarring my grape jelly (after washing each jar by hand, then running through the dishwasher). I even processed the jars. Because there is no damned way we're eating 30 and 1/3 jars of jelly within 3 weeks. And each and every one of those jars sealed! (Hooray! I wasn't entirely confident about this.)
It actually turned out quite good. I just hope we don't get botulism. Do you suppose I should hold off on giving any of it away?
Monday, October 3, 2011
I know interesting people
 |
| Beautiful quilt stolen from Quilts By Jess' Etsy page. |
I've noticed amongst my friends some amazing talent flourishing. Or, maybe, I'm just noticing it.
Actually, I've known I have some pretty cool friends for a while. I thought I'd just take the time to brag.
One of my friends has been making quilts. Making them like a madwoman. Well, madwoman as in doing a lot of them, not that they look like Picasso's or anything. She makes bright and beautiful baby blankets and larger bedding (http://www.etsy.com/shop/QuiltsByJess), and then blogs about it (http://quiltsbyjess.typepad.com/blog/). What's even more cool is that she's a lawyer and a geek!
Another of my friends is another cool geek. By day he does computery stuff (don't ask me what he does, he's a different kind of geek than I am, so I only really understand that he does computery stuff) at a large financial services company. By night, he and some friends do a podcast on the latest technology, movies, games, etc. (http://thegeeklife.tv/). He also brews beer and mead (mmmm....mead....)
Then, there's my friend with an aquatic thumb--that's like a green thumb, but with fish, not plants. But, that's not her only hobby. She also raises and shows dalmatians (http://paisleydals.blogspot.com/), and has probably the most well-behaved dogs I have ever met. Most of her dals are liver spotted, which I had never seen before I met her. Her dog, Argus, is even a national champion! He qualified for and competed at Westminster this year. How cool is that?
 |
| Check it out! |
I have other cool friends, but I should probably leave some bragging for later.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Some people should be beaten
I don't drive very often. I'm quite proud of that fact. Mostly, because I don't really enjoy driving all that much. Plus, it saves me money. And I can read on the bus. The police (and pretty much everyone else) kind of frown on doing that while driving. (You hear that, Mr. Businessmanwhossoimportantthatthenewspapercantwait?)
I typically drive about once a week. Lately, that once a week has been on Sundays, driving to work because I've been incredibly busy. This doesn't generally make me happy, really.
Well, today I need to drive to work again. I go down to the underground parking garage--the underground parking garage that I pay extra for the convenience and safety of it in my "luxury apartment complex"--and about 2 parking spots away, I press the button on my keyfob to unlock it. It does. I hop in and stick my key in the ignition.
Then, I discover that there are things where they shouldn't be. There are some stamps on the console just in front of my shifter. There's a broken air freshener on the passenger side floor. My phone charger is not in the center console but on the floor.
WTF.
I remember that our apartment complex sent out an email a couple of days earlier saying that some people had their cars broken into and some stuff stolen. Well, Saturday on the way out, my boyfriend and I drove by slowly to take a close gander at my car. No broken windows, and I always lock my car. I also never leave anything of value in it.
This morning, though, I'm suddenly not certain that I'd locked my car. I had stopped by Wednesday morning to pull some marketing materials out of it from my trip to SD in order to bring them back to my office. Everything was fine, then.
I hop out of my car and open my trunk. Stuff that was normally at the very front of the trunk, nearest the back seat was pulled to the back of the trunk and rifled around. OH, I was pissed.
I pull my car out and drive to the front of the building to give the office staff some whatfor. Except they don't get there till noon on Sundays. I. Have. To. Get. To. Work.
So, I take a quick trot back up to my apartment (after locking the car, of course), and ask my boyfriend when the last time he drove his "good" car. About a week. Did you check to make sure it hasn't been broken into? Why....? Mine was.
He comes out to check my car out and notices something that I hadn't...they'd punched my lock in and pulled my door handle partially out.
Now, I'm furious.
They had wrecked my barely valuable car even more, and they hadn't even taken anything. Not the dollar I always keep in my center console for emergencies or the $3 worth of change there. There was nothing other than maybe 15 or 20 cents missing from the ashtray. Yet, I will have to repair my car or face the fact that it will be almost worthless for a trade and probably less secure because the handle is popped.
So, I get off to work almost an hour after I intended to, and I'm grumpy. Really grumpy. And I worked for 10 straight hours. I could have come home an hour earlier. But no.
Some people definitely need to be beaten.
I typically drive about once a week. Lately, that once a week has been on Sundays, driving to work because I've been incredibly busy. This doesn't generally make me happy, really.
Well, today I need to drive to work again. I go down to the underground parking garage--the underground parking garage that I pay extra for the convenience and safety of it in my "luxury apartment complex"--and about 2 parking spots away, I press the button on my keyfob to unlock it. It does. I hop in and stick my key in the ignition.
Then, I discover that there are things where they shouldn't be. There are some stamps on the console just in front of my shifter. There's a broken air freshener on the passenger side floor. My phone charger is not in the center console but on the floor.
WTF.
I remember that our apartment complex sent out an email a couple of days earlier saying that some people had their cars broken into and some stuff stolen. Well, Saturday on the way out, my boyfriend and I drove by slowly to take a close gander at my car. No broken windows, and I always lock my car. I also never leave anything of value in it.
This morning, though, I'm suddenly not certain that I'd locked my car. I had stopped by Wednesday morning to pull some marketing materials out of it from my trip to SD in order to bring them back to my office. Everything was fine, then.
I hop out of my car and open my trunk. Stuff that was normally at the very front of the trunk, nearest the back seat was pulled to the back of the trunk and rifled around. OH, I was pissed.
I pull my car out and drive to the front of the building to give the office staff some whatfor. Except they don't get there till noon on Sundays. I. Have. To. Get. To. Work.
So, I take a quick trot back up to my apartment (after locking the car, of course), and ask my boyfriend when the last time he drove his "good" car. About a week. Did you check to make sure it hasn't been broken into? Why....? Mine was.
He comes out to check my car out and notices something that I hadn't...they'd punched my lock in and pulled my door handle partially out.
Now, I'm furious.
 |
| Yes, it's that dirty. It gets driven maybe 1 time a week. |
So, I get off to work almost an hour after I intended to, and I'm grumpy. Really grumpy. And I worked for 10 straight hours. I could have come home an hour earlier. But no.
Some people definitely need to be beaten.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Lost touch
It's hard to keep track of people. There are only so many meaningful relationships that anyone can keep track of, let alone nurture, and inevitably, you lose touch with one another. It gets even harder when you move away or get a new job or start a relationship or a new family.
There are lots of people that I have lost touch with. Classmates, distant relatives, friends. It's almost always nice to bump into them and catch up. (Let's face it, sometimes it's not so nice to see how they've changed...or you have.) There are people that you sometimes expect to run into when you go certain places. There are people that you find in the most unexpected places or unexpected times.
Sometimes, there are times when you think of someone and you wonder where they are, and they somehow reappear, as if just thinking about them brought them back into existence.
Sometimes you think of them, then find they are gone, and it's too late to think of them earlier.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Trend Micro Titanium Follow Up
They say you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Can you check out the other end?
I said I'd follow up in a couple of months following my less-than-stellar experience with the installation of Trend Micro Titanium. Well, this is sooner than a couple of months. Alas, it is to report that I have uninstalled it and its little dog Safe Sync, too.
As I reported before, I had gotten a year subscription to try from BzzAgent. I had some reservations about removing a perfectly good computer security system, Microsoft Security Essentials, in order to simply install Trend Micro Titanium. Then, the Safe Sync irritated me by overfilling my allotted sync space and popping up every few seconds until I forced Safe Sync to close. Not good.
I figured I would ignore it, though, as long as it did its job. Ok, so every time I restart my computer, Safe Sync would restart and tell me that I should buy more space. Erk. Ah well, I can turn that off. So I did.
As long as I kept Safe Sync off, I was ok, right? Wrong. I came home the other day after a long drive from an out of town business trip. I shuffle into my office to do some gaming before unpacking and going to bed. At least I thought that's what I was going to do.
My computer is in stasis, having tried to restart for some unknown reason. Grr. Reboot. Check issues. "Your computer has recovered from an unexpected crash." Yeah, duh. Why? "Coreframeworkhost.exe crash dump." What's that? Google. It's a Trend Micro program that makes Trend Micro programs work together. Not cool. Still, programs sometimes crash, right? And it seems to be stable now that I've rebooted.
*grumble* No relaxing gaming before bed, though.
Tonight, my lovely boyfriend tries to download the latest update on our favorite online game, since I worked late and I might want to play the new expansion when I get home. Aww. Except that it won't update. He suspects Trend Micro. In the back of my mind, I do, too.
Still, I restart my computer. Things seem to be working ok... My taskbar's loading funky. Grr. Fine, I'll check Titanium. Sure enough, it's dead. It claims to have "caught 1 threat in the last month," but I can't expand it to find out what it is. It's grey and dead, claiming that I need to restart my computer. Uh. I just did that. Ok, fine. I'll do it again, since I need to see if my taskbar can be fixed.
Nope. Still weird. And Trend Micro Titanium is still dead.
That's it. Uninstall!
I uninstalled both the antivirus software and the Safe Sync. I reinstalled Microsoft Security Essentials. Viola! All is right in the world.
Except that I have to re-download the game update that got interrupted by this whole mess. I guess I get to go to bed sans relaxing gaming. Computer security FAIL.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
I'm famous
Yes, I'm famous. Only nobody knows it.
The university where I got my undergraduate degree is a land grant university, which means that it was established to teach practical agriculture, science, and engineering. To this day, it excels in each of those areas.
One of the best things, from the perspective of a student looking for that freshman 15, was that, as part of its agricultural teaching, it took dairy science very seriously. That means, fresh cheese and ice cream. I'm pretty sure that it makes some of the best ice cream ever created. As you wandered through campus, you could (and still can) get a heaping bowl of ice cream made by students at the Dairy Bar for $1. For that price, there was no such thing as a starving student.
Most of the ice cream flavors were pretty standard stuff--vanilla, cookies and cream, chocolate. More exotic flavors, such as butter brickle, butter pecan, and strawberry cheesecake rotated on and off the menu.
Sometime during my senior year there, I stopped by for a bowl of ice cream and saw that they had a contest for a new flavor. Being an avid Dairy Bar fan, I figured I could make a flavor that they couldn't refuse. Even if it was only destined for a rotation or two on the menu.
I grabbed a contest form and my bowl of ice cream and meditated on one of those uncomfortable outdoor patio furniture chairs that leave diamond-shaped indentations on the back of your legs.
What would be a guaranteed winner?
Thinking outside the box was something that I could occasionally do, and it seemed to me that the flavor didn't matter. It was the presentation that mattered. And if I presented the flavor in a way no one could turn down without seeming almost unpatriotic... Well, our mascot was plastered everywhere anyone might see should they momentarily be lacking school spirit. A blue and yellow jackrabbit.
Have you ever had Jackrabbit ice cream? It's lemon custard with blueberry swirls. It's available year-round at the Dairy Bar. And has been for the last 12 years.
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