Archived entries for
- After a weekend of finals, I could sure use another weekend. Anyone have a spare weekend lying around that I could borrow?
- I gave the No-Knead Pizza Dough recipe a try this weekend, with mixed results. The dough had great texture and was nice and light and airy, but it was so fragile that it was really tough to stretch and get thin. After much effort, I finally got it thin enough, and it came out nice and crispy with lots of soft bubbles, which was fantastic. It lacked flavor though, which was surprising considering it was fermenting for 24 hours, and it definitely needed salt. I think I might stick with my usual recipe, but this definitely has potential.
- Want to kill a lot of time and look at the most incredible photo of the inauguration? Check this out. You can zoom in so tight that you can make out who each and every person is. Go try to find Yo Yo Ma taking a photo with his iPhone. It’s like playing Where’s Waldo?
- Awesome new Clif Bar flavor: White Chocolate Macadamia Nut. I guess this takes the place of my daily Peanut M&M fix which I’ve given up. Damn, these things are good.
- Someday soon, I get a bigger office. Not that I know what to do with more space. Maybe a hot tub or something.
- Looks like I’ll be “forced” to take two weeks of vacation over the course of the next few months. Sure, twist my arm.
- Am I the only one who looks forward to getting my W2 so that I can do my taxes and hopefully get a nice refund? Hopefully, we will be adding to the Vacation Fund and the Get a New Oven Fund.
- Due to finally finding a pair of brown shoes that I like, I’ve been wearing lots of brown. I think brown is my new black. Because I wear a hell of a lot of black.
- It’s not allowed to snow anymore because I have nowhere else to put it. Sorry weather gods. Try again next year.
- Happy January 20. Today is a good day.
- I went to the dentist last week and found out that I got my first cavity in 15 years. Shocking! I have no idea how it happened, but I’m blaming the Peanut M&M’s. I haven’t touched a single M or M since then. Cold turkey! I need new, non-cavity forming snacks.
- I wisely spent four hours on Thursday night taking on a final for school rather than wait for the weekend to do it. That left me with an unprecedented three straight days and nights with no school work to do. I had forgotten what it felt like to sit on my ass and watch TV all weekend. Nice.
- Due to my poor blood circulation in my hands, I went on a search for really warm gloves for when I’m out clearing snow. While I wasn’t quite ready to spend more than $150 for gloves that the guys on Everest use, I was willing to shell out some cash for some good ones. Alas, the ones that I bought still aren’t good enough. My search continues.
- Speaking of which, how early is too early to fire up the snowblower? I never want to be that guy who wakes up the entire neighborhood. The rules are different than lawnmowers, I know, but I always wait until some one else it out there first. Does it matter if it’s a weekday or a weekend? Apparently, 6:30am was the approved time on Monday morning, but I still felt a little bad about it.
- We went to Dim-sum on Sunday with some friends, which would more be classified as the Lovely Tess’s official first date. She and her new boyfriend are quite smitten with each other, although, like a good Carpenter lady, she denied him a kiss at the end. Still, she carries his picture around and makes googley eyes at it. We’re in trouble with this one, I tell you.
- I apologize for my tardiness the last few weeks. I’ve been, um, a little busy on Monday mornings of late. I promise to do better. I’m also working my way through a month of photos, so don’t be surprised to see Christmas photos show up soon.
- After giving up after numerous attempts a couple years back, I I decided once again to attempt to make fresh mozzarella using a recipe in this month’s Gourmet. It was an all day affair (2 hours of cooking at exactly 90 degrees, 3 hours of draining, and another half an hour of forming the final balls), and the final verdict is: yeah, it’s just not worth it. The cheese came out hard, dense, and lacking creaminess. And it didn’t melt. Yes, you heard correct. When baked at 550 on top of a pizza, it just sort of softened slightly and got a little weepy (as did I). It was also a little too salty, but I suppose that was my own fault. I’m officially done with it. I will now and forever buy my fresh mootz, just like everyone else.
- Call me what you want, but unless the Pats are playing, I couldn’t really care less about football. Sure I’ll watch the Super Bowl like everyone else, but something is definitely missing from my January weekends without the Pats playing a do-or-die game. Oh well, there’s always next year.
- Apparently, the year of the Dada is over. I am once again not allowed to push the grocery cart with the Lovely Tess riding in it. That was certainly short-lived. I think it lasted all of a week.
- This might sound a little crazy, but the winter is not killing me nearly as much as it used to. Maybe it’s because of the new snowblower, maybe it’s because it seems to keep snowing on the weekend when we have nothing else to do and can just stay inside all day, or maybe I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that we will never move away from the Northeast. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t rather than every day be sunny and 72, but I’m tolerating these months a little bit.
- After 20 years of use, I finally replaced my bedside clock radio. The thing was ancient, kept drifting off radio stations so that sometimes I would just wake up to static, and my iPhone kept making it make these weird shrieky noises in the middle of the night from the radio interference. I replaced it with an iHome IP9 dock. Not only does this get rid of the need for a separate charger by my bed, now I can wake up to the song of my choice. Even better, it chooses a song from a playlist so that I don’t have to wake up to the same song every morning. It even gradually raises the volume as it plays so as to not be totally jarring. Finally, it sets the time and date and adjusts for daylight savings time automatically. Who knew that clock radio technology had improved so much in 20 years?
- I’ve slowly become and IM and texting sort of guy. Just like the kids! Email is still my dominant form of communication, but I now appreciate the sheer immediacy of texting and IM. Now if I could just get everyone I know to start using Gmail and Skype…
- For the first time ever, I managed to NOT buy Girl Scout cooking this year. We have 3 unopened boxes at home and I have another unopened box at work, so why buy more? It frightens me how long those things last. Mmmmmm, preservatives!
- I’ve become a fan of Mint as a place to track our monthly spending. Back in the day I used to use Quicken, but it was such a pain to categorize everything by hand that I eventually just gave up. Plus, the Lovely Suse would cringe every time she heard the “Ca-Ching!” sound coming from the computer as she knew that I would see what she was spending money on. Mint makes it dead simple and with a little training, it does a great job of figuring out what categories various transactions fall into. That way, we can really see how much we spend on groceries every month or how much we’re eating out. Let’s just say that Whole Foods sees a lot of us these days. Any guesses as to how much we spend on groceries in a month?
- Check out that form! That girl knows how to work the camera. Unfortunately for both of us, our Wii bowling prowess did not translate into real bowling skill. We need more practice.
- Back at work after 2 weeks off. It might take me a little while to shake the cobwebs free.
- I had a good list of things that I wanted to accomplish while on vacation. I think I completed two of them: cleaned out the basement. Cleaned out our tool drawer in the dining room. That’s it. Pathetic. Although I am very happy about the basement being clean. That pretty much took two full days.
- 2009 is apparently the year of the Dada. Which means that I once again get to push the shopping cart when the Lovely Tess is riding in it (I used to get a “No no no!” and my hands pushed away). Unfortunately, it also means that when she wants to get up at 5:30am on a Sunday, she’s calling “Da-deeee!” followed by pulling me into the kitchen to give her breakfast. I’m still not sure how I feel about the year of the Dada yet.
- As much as I like having the Christmas tree in the house, I’m always happy to get rid of it. As soon as Christmas is over, I want it out of the house. Yesterday was the day, and I’ve never seen so many dead pine needles in my life. It’s nice to have the house back to normal.
- I once again chopped off a chunk of the tip of my finger with a knife. I do this about every other year, so it’s no big deal. Luckily, it tends to grow back, which is nice.
- For all of those people who still haven’t figured it out, our holiday card was not Photoshopped. We actually made 10 different t-shirts for her to wear using printable iron-on transfers. My Photoshop skills are not that good. I think we need to start working on 2009′s card ASAP.
- I have 28 vacation days to use this year. And I plan on using every single one of them, thank you very much.
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