July 2008 Archives
Dear self: lrn2read plz.
Long story short: on Neopets, I just pissed away four 100 Dubloon coins, six bottled faeries, and a Christmas paintbrush (not Petpet) on a trade in which I wanted a Darigan or fire paintbrush, because I am an idiot and did not notice the word “Petpet” in between “Darigan” and “paintbrush.” And, as it turns out, of course I have no Petpets that can be painted Darigan.
And I know both of those full-blown pet brushes are worth hell of bank, and Christmas paint brushes are not all that hot a commodity, and nobody who didn’t just happen to have one of those brushes lying around gathering dust and really needed the Dubloons for whatever would have taken it, and this was still not a horrid deal. It’s my own fault, I should have double-checked, and I get the impression that this was an honest mistake and the dude was not actively trying to deceive me, and he gave me phat NP as well. And it’s just pixels, and I can make it back, but still: duh, hurr, orz.
Mmmmmojito.
Because I am always the last person ever to try anything anywhere, I just discovered that mojitos are awesome.
And if you take Bacardi frozen mojito mix + 2 cans water and leave out the rum, half-fill a glass with the resulting mixture, and top that up with some sort of lime soda (my preference is for this “Crystal Clear” stuff they have at Kroger instead of Sprite or whatever, because they have actual Key Lime flavor), you have basically the best hot-weather drink EVER. I want to drink this by the gallon. :9
A second lime+minty goodness experiment has also gone well. 1-liter bottle of aforementioned Crystal Clear key lime soda (or equivalent) + 2 mint tea bags poked right into the bottle (herbal or actual tea, both seem to work fine) + an hour or two for the tea bags to soak = mojito soda. Not nearly as sweet as the Bacardi mix version, very light and tasty, zero calories.
Either way, yeah, just hook me up an IV of lime, mint, and ice. Rum optional.
GREAT SUCCESS
I made two dishes from that silicone cup cookbook for dinner: the scalloped potatoes and the roasted butternut squash. Actually, I made the potatoes in miniature cake pans instead, because they were to be my main course.
On the potatoes, I ended up adding some onions and leaving the ham out (the recipe didn’t call for it anyway), and adding some asiago cheese and bread crumbs on top. The butternut squash recipe called for pine nuts to be sprinkled on just before serving. I left those off and gave them a sprinkle of cinnamon instead. I also added a little water to the bottom of the cups just in case the (yogurt-based) butter (substitute) wasn’t enough to keep the squash from drying out.
The potatoes could have probably used a little more liquid, but they were excellent.
But the squash… the squash…
Look, folks, I’m not a big squash person. I really don’t care for it that much. So when I tell you this squash was awesome, you have some perspective there. Seriously. I do not use the phrase “off the hook” often. This squash was off the fucking hook. In fact, here’s a diagram to show you just how far off the hook this squash was:
I could live on this squash. And then in researching things to see how else one might prepare it (pie, man, pie would be great), I found out that apparently butternut squash is actually pretty much interchangeable with pumpkin for a lot of things. Except it’s A HELL OF A LOT EASIER TO PREPARE.
But uh, anyway, yeah. SARAH HAS GAINED A LEVEL. SARAH HAS LEARNED NEW SKILL: “COOK BUTTERNUT SQUASH.” And now one little pan of scalloped potatoes and two little cups of pumpkin pie-candied squash are packed for lunch tomorrow. :9
Some people just shouldn’t use the U-scan.
I am looking at you, two people who stood at their U-scan while a line seven people deep was waiting to check out, you whose U-scan-using procedure went something like this:
- Scan one item
- Tell lengthy anecdote about relative to companion
- Put item in bag
- Listen to lengthy anecdote told by companion in response to your lengthy anecdote
- Scan another item
- Repeat steps 2 through 4 several times
- Look up and notice “15 items or less” sign
- Look at your basket of approximately 10000000000000 items
- Giggle, go “Oops!” and laugh at people behind you
- Repeat steps 1-4 until done or world ends or mob of people waiting for you to get the hell off the U-scan rises up and runs you out of the store on a rail, whichever comes first
One of the other three U-scans was taken up by a person who kept disputing every single price on every single item she scanned. Another U-scan kept going “OMG PROBLEM, PLZ WAIT FOR EMPLOYEE LOL” at its poor user every time she scanned an item (I don’t blame the poor lady for this one).
Those first two? They were still there after I had scanned my armful of items, paid for them, unzipped my reusable-shopping-bags-what-fold-and-zip-into-wee-squares, and stuffed all my shit into them.
Yeah, I’m finally on the reusable shopping bag train. Not so much out of OMG LUV 4 TEH EARTH as for practical reasons (grocery loads don’t always fit in my backpack, especially if I’m hauling the laptop that day, and reusable bags hold up a lot better when dangling from my handlebars). I have a few canvas ones, but I hadn’t used them much. Hauling them around and pausing to remove them from my backpack was kind of a pain.
So yesterday I went to Target, because they have some neat snacks and things the normal grocery store does not, and I realized halfway there that I had forgotten to roll up my big canvas shopping backpack and bungee-cord it to my package carrier. Crap. Oh well, I thought, I’d just buy a cheap tote bag or backpack or something if it came to that.
Well, right inside the door, there were reusable shopping bags. $1 each. The traditional kind, and these neat fold-and-zip ones. I just about swooned. Oh, convenient fold-and-zip reusable shopping bags, where have you been all my life?
I got a handful of them. Now they stay in the little side pockets on my backpack, so I can whip them right out and unzip them and shove shit in them as needed. Several of them could also easily be stuffed into my purse.
I also went to the Toys R’ Us next door to the Target and found this.
This was exactly what I didn’t know I wanted. In a nutshell: it is a cookbook that deals with using silicone cupcake cups to cook things. All kinds of things. From cupcakes to eggs to little mini-lasagnas to rice to quiche. Yes, it’s sold as a kids’ book, but how perfect is that for us bento-packers? So I decided I might like to try making some scalloped potatoes in a cup. Slightly different recipe from the book, but same general procedure.
Well, I got organic half-n-half and ham and cheddar and asiago and garlic. Notice what is not on that list. >_<
Oh well. I didn’t need to make them for lunch tomorrow, as I still have half of the chicken lo mein I got today in the fridge. I am going to bake up some pasta, though. Or maybe make a ham-n-cheese noodle bake or something. nom.
Finally, there is a tiny update over in 100 Candles-land: a new splash and a new preview.
It’s about that time again, isn’t it
Yes, Houston area motorists, it is time for your periodic reminder that a) there are people on the road who do not have engines and b) the law gives them every bit as much right to be there as you.
Cut because, uh, this is going to get kind of long and bitchy.
Awesome.
Richard Garriott is finally getting his space trip, looks like.
Haven’t touched an Ultima game in a few years, but the dude is still kind of my hero.
Please take care of it.
Oh hey, I was farting around with extracted textures and models in C4D and ended up with PSP wallpaper.
YES
Statler and Waldorf. You know, the two old smartasses from The Muppet Show.
They have their own YouTube channel. I don’t know whether it’s official or someone got hold of some Muppets or someone is really, really good at making counterfeit Muppets, but it matters not. STATLER AND WALDORF, MAKING FUN OF YOUTUBE VIDEOS, IS THAT NOT THE MOST PERFECT THING EVER?
If you only watch one of the Muppet videos they’ve subscribed to, it needs to be Habanera. The Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal do Carmen. XD
Bad MTV! No cookie! NO!
Sooooooo apparently MTV is planning to remake the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I am in so much agreement with the comment from Full Body Cast Frank:
“Now if they really wanted to do something smart with this remake, they send their casting director around the country to various Rocky casts and pull the best actors they could find from as many casts as possible — not necessarily as the main roles, but as all the extras. In the credits you recognize not only the extras, but what cast they came from. Play up the fact that this movie has evolved on its own because of the people who have been doing it every week for 30+ years. Invite those who have been a part of the past to be part of the future. Don’t just do a remake, do a remake with a tribute. Then you automatically bring the entire cult following into the remake by default, and it can be more than just another failed attempt at remaking a movie that was never that good to begin with.”
That. That right there. It’s such a simple and perfect solution that I can’t understand why in the world MTV didn’t think about it–oh, right, because it a) makes sense and b) would require that MTV actually give a shit about the original’s following.
As for my personal opinion: yeah, um. Let me just put that under a cut, here…
