July 29, 2005
Not naked as in bereft of rind, but still naked in a way nature never intended oranges to be. There's a story here. It's short, but makes up for that by being entirely pointless and probably boring.
My wife, Liz, works for a rather large medical practice. A dozen doctors, plus nurses of various kinds, administrative staff and auxiliary support adds up to some seventy or so.
On Friday's they'll often do a "theme" sort of thing, good for morale I guess, where everyone dresses in Hawaiian shirts or some such. Often, food is involved. Today's event was bizarre, it was "bring your favorite dessert" day. I suspect that the practice may be secretly planning to expand services into the nutrition field, or perhaps even dentistry, and this is a ploy to jump start the customer base.
So Liz mentions the upcoming "bring your favorite dessert" day, which automatically translated in my mind to "untested recipe on unsuspecting guinea pigs" day.
At home, if I make something new and I'm the only one in the family that likes it (and why would I cook something I wouldn't like?), then I'll eat it Thanksgiving turkey-style, until I can't stand the sight of it and then throw whatever's left away. Then I'm sick of it and don't want it for a long while... until I get a hankerin' and the whole cycle repeats anew.
But I love these office parties. They give me a chance to whip up something new and experimental without worrying about who's going to like it. If the wife and kids enjoy it, it goes into my recipe binder. If not, oh well.
So I made orange cookies. I don't remember where I got the recipe, but it was a long time ago. I know John posted something similar once, and I've seen variations here and there. I'll post my version sometime in the next few days.
They're pretty good, and (score!) Liz and Robyn like them.
But they call for lots of grated orange zest, so for lunch today, I've got these two naked oranges in front of me.
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July 27, 2005
When they came out with Uh-Oh's a while back, I thought it was cute. White cookie with chocolate creme. Not as good as classic Oreos, but tasty.
Their latest is Golden Oreos. Vanilla cookie and vanilla creme. They even suggest dunking them in chocolate milk. Cutsie, but again, they're pretty good.
But they ain't the original.
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July 25, 2005
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July 24, 2005
Two small dice-sized plastic pigs that you roll like dice. Depending on how they land, you score points. Kinda like barnyard craps, where you keep throwing until you pass the pigs or Pig Out and lose all your points for that turn. If the pigs touch after the throw, that's an Oinker and you go back to zero for the game. Pigs is clean.
And the pigs themselves are a marvel of engineering. They can land on their feet (called a Trotter for 5 points) or on their back (Razorback, also 5 points). Landing on their nose and front legs is a Snouter, worth a big 10, and occasionally you see a Leaning Jowler, where the pig balances on one front leg, his snout and an ear (15 points). Double 'em up and score big with Double Razorbacks or Double Snouters and the triple-20 of the pigs universe, the Double Leaning Jowler.
As rare as Double Leaning Jowlers are - I've seen four or five in my years of playing pigs, including tossing a couple of my own - the rarest positions are the ones you want to avoid. Piggyback is self-explanatory, and Makin' Bacon should be too. I've seen a couple Piggyback's, and only one Makin' Bacon. The penalty for throwing these is severe: immediate loss of the game. Like I said, pigs is clean.
So next time you're with friends, at home or it a bar, crack open a few beers (helluva drinking game) and introduce them to Pass the Pigs. You can find them at many toy and game stores (Spencer's Gifts used to sell them I know). *snicker* I should've know that Amazon would have them.
And if you wanna get a better idea of what I'm talking about, I found an online version that plays just like the real thing.
Heh, he said Makin' Bacon... heh heh.
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10:15 AM | category: Square Pegs
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The next time we were at Wal-Mart, we picked up a cheap plastic hummingbird feeder and a couple of packages of nectar mix. I've checked on it periodically, but couldn't tell if it had been discovered.
Yesterday we were sitting in the car, getting ready to run some errands, when Liz alerted me to the bird feeder. Out little friend had returned. We sat there for a few minutes as she (dulled coloration, I'm assuming female) hovered and sipped from the feeder. She's fast too, when finished she zoomed up and over the house like a fighter jet on fulll afterburner.
I just sat there grinning like a little kid, tickled to death to see that our feeder was being used, and maybe we'd attract more hummingbirds to the yard. Liz commented that I was soooo easy to please.
Exactly.
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06:34 AM | category: Square Pegs
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July 22, 2005
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July 20, 2005
Your front window's broke,
The gutters need cleanin',
Closet door stuck,
And your washer ain't machinin'.Da roof been leakin',
Carpets need cleanin',
Room needs paintin',
And the hot water's broke.(that's approximated by the way)
Ok, so the idea here is that you should call a handyman, right? Probably some ultra-cool handyhomey.
Not quite. The music fades to background and a veddy English voice starts to tell you about a plumbing company. Yep, just plumbing. I guess the rest of your problems are trivial as long as you got hot water.
And the company name is distinctly Anglophile. I mean, "White Boys with Monkey Wrenches" would be more 'street' than the actual name of the company.
Incomprehensible.
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July 19, 2005
My wife Liz had her sinus surgery yesterday and everything looks good (I'm calling it sinus surgery because they stuffed a camera and laser and bone shaver up her nose). It's too early to tell for sure, but now that the pressures on her optic nerves have been eased, we expect her vision problems to go away. She's also still a few days away from being able to go back on her regular medications - you know, the ones that keep her out of her wheelchair. During the last week or so we were treated to a fast-forward version of the physical deterioration that she went through over the course of about 10 years, before the current generation of drugs were developed and available. Personally, I'm a fan of big Pharma, and anyone who bitches about them ought to pick any three family members and imagine them dead and gone, because odds are they would be without those "evil profit-sucking global monsters".
Me? I'm exhausted and wrung-out and working my way through a nightmare list of things to get taken care of around the house. Happy as hell to do it too, because Liz is gonna be ok.
Thanks too for all the kind words and good thoughts and prayers, they're appreciated more than I could ever say.
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09:27 AM | category: Square Pegs
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July 15, 2005
You know what that means, right?
I'm all alone at the top of the second division!
All Half bow before me, for I am mighty.
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Talk to you later when they get it fixed.
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July 14, 2005
Don't remember where I heard that...
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July 13, 2005
We like to avoid the turnpikes and toll roads (probably $30.00 in tolls each way, I kid you not!), so we take a slightly longer but much more scenic route. I can't recall the precise road numbers right offhand, but we passed Yale University, and I had to laugh at Sodom Road. Who would want to live there?
We also passed Liberty Road, and it was cool that someone had fastened an American Flag to the streetsign post.
I thought it was great that the place where we met for lunch was on Boston Post Rd, aka Route 1. If you follow that road south long enough, you can hang a right in Woodbridge, Virginia and be within a few minutes of my house. Of course, down here Route 1 is known as Jefferson Davis Highway.
A note about the casinos in Connecticut (is that spelled right?): Both are nice, in very different styles. Foxwoods is Atlantic City nice, but Mohegan Sun is Vegas nice. If you've never been to Las Vegas, then you wouldn't understand. I much prefer Mohegan Sun, because there's so much to see and do, even if you don't gamble.
I gambled a grand total of $5.00 in two days at the casinos.
As we neared home, we were listening for traffic and weather reports. Apparently just south of us they've gotten hammered by rain. We heard that trees are down on the interstate and other major roads, and Route 1 is blocked by a mudslide. We've gotten a few sprinkles and that's it. The storms seem to be staying south too.
We have two very happy dogs.
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July 11, 2005
Jerry Vale was in the audience. Cool.
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July 09, 2005
(posted from the road, in Scranton, PA)
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July 08, 2005
- Christine Aguilara
- Hanson
- Pat Boone
- Tiny Tim
- Roseanne Barr
Yeah, call me barbaric.
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July 07, 2005
Brown, who turns 39 on July 22, played the first 16 of his 17 seasons with the Raiders, and always hoped to be remembered as the organization's greatest receiver. He was the last former member of the Los Angeles Raiders and the person young players turned to for advice.The self-proclaimed "Mr. Raider" holds most of the club's receiving records, and his 240 games with the team are the most in franchise history.
Brown was a first-round draft choice by the Raiders in 1988 out of Notre Dame.
Thank you Tim Brown, you've always been a class act and quietly built your credentials proving that you're one of the all-time greats.
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This is a police matter only long enough to stabilize the situation and to do the forensic investigations. After that, it becomes a military action to find and neutralize the monsters who intentionally target civilians.
ACLU, obstructionists and revisionists, and the rest of the human ostriches who refuse to acknowlege reality, please crawl back under your rock, slither back into your holes, and rebury your head in the sand, respectively, so that the rest of us can deal with this terrorist threat.
(revised after reflection that this could be an IRA action, although I think that's a rather remote possibility)
UPDATE: Helen of Everyday Stranger has posted that she, her beloved Angus, and her coworkers are all safe and accounted for.
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July 06, 2005
Jolly good, that.
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