Odds and ends
Why I don't cook
Two weeks ago, this happened... I'm quoting from an e-mail:So, the idea to make pizza entered my head a few months ago. I bought a pizza stone and then my mom gave me some Chef Boyardee "pizza in a box." It had some mix, sauce, and cheese. Just add water. I finally used the mix but scrapped the rest. Things started going terribly wrong immediately. First, I didn't know on what to actually make the pizza. Can't do it on the stone. It has a very rough, porous surface that would just get the pizza stuck. So, I decided if I laid out a bunch of aluminum foil, I could make the pizza on that and just slllllide it onto the stone. The pizza stone box suggested using corn meal to "dust" the surface to prevent sticking. Well, the corn meal was much less like dust (or flour) and a lot more like sand. Which means it's not easy to get an even dusting. Instead I got some piles... but I went with it. Well, I put on sauce and tossed on some toppings. And then went to put it on the stone and realized that it was totally stuck. Since the foil had no structure to it, the pizza had to be lifted like it was in a sling. I finally put a piece of cardboard under it and tried to sort of pull the foil like a conveyor belt so the pizza landed on the stone. But I started too far from the edge and it stretched and became oblong AND longer than the stone on the far side so I had to wad it up there. After cooking, I found that the damn thing was now stuck to the pizza stone around at least 40% of the surface. So I had to sort of tear out what chunks I could. And then after I started eating what little bit I recovered, I realized I had forgotten to put any cheese on. The pizza stone is also ruined as there is no way to get the dough off it without destroying it. I knew there was a reason I don't cook.
I will try again, though.
Movies
I've managed to watch a lot of movies lately.Let's give a brief run-down.
Avoiding highly technical details, I'll assume many of you have heard of digital cable. In the old days, some people could just jack their cable into their TVs and turn on any channel, others needed a cable box if they wanted premium channels, and still others needed a box for every channel. This also applied to the TiVo. Then came digital. And to use that, you had to use the box. But you got more channels, and sometimes it looked a lot cleaner. But the latest TiVo has slots for special cards that lets it decode the digital cable. And I had a guy come to "install" them on Thursday. We spent four straight hours and accomplished nothing more than sticking them into the TiVo box. The guy knew nothing of use so this is not surprising. I spent a lot of time on the phone later trying to find somebody with enough knowledge and/or authority to do some things that I knew would help. With no luck. With the cards in, I had many, many fewer channels. On Sunday, another guy came and relatively quickly fixed the cable company's problems. They had put my information in wrong so that's why nothing worked. Of course, the guy was supposed to come between eleven and two but he actually came closer to four. And when that was done, the TiVo was failing to get program information for every channel between 22 and 100. Needless to say, this is a problem. If it doesn't know what's on a channel, it doesn't record it.
Luckily, my backup plan - the so-called Fake TiVo - is still in action, more or less. I upgraded that on Friday. Of course, I can't currently watch anything on there. It's recording, but it only shows a blank screen when I watch a show. I'll eventually fix that, too.
And to wrap up some of the other nice things, I had diarrhea yesterday and felt like crap (no pun intended) most of the day, this morning I dropped a new, unopened OJ carton (it's a half gallon that looks like a milk carton with a round spout toward the top) directly on the spout, which was punched back inside the carton. It's sure hard to pour now. And today at work I got a migraine. I thought I might vibrate into another dimension from all the caffeine in the four Excedrins I took right before lunch.
Simpsons quote of the day: Marge, playing the slots, to Homer - "Go home! You're bad luck."
Two weeks ago, this happened... I'm quoting from an e-mail:So, the idea to make pizza entered my head a few months ago. I bought a pizza stone and then my mom gave me some Chef Boyardee "pizza in a box." It had some mix, sauce, and cheese. Just add water. I finally used the mix but scrapped the rest. Things started going terribly wrong immediately. First, I didn't know on what to actually make the pizza. Can't do it on the stone. It has a very rough, porous surface that would just get the pizza stuck. So, I decided if I laid out a bunch of aluminum foil, I could make the pizza on that and just slllllide it onto the stone. The pizza stone box suggested using corn meal to "dust" the surface to prevent sticking. Well, the corn meal was much less like dust (or flour) and a lot more like sand. Which means it's not easy to get an even dusting. Instead I got some piles... but I went with it. Well, I put on sauce and tossed on some toppings. And then went to put it on the stone and realized that it was totally stuck. Since the foil had no structure to it, the pizza had to be lifted like it was in a sling. I finally put a piece of cardboard under it and tried to sort of pull the foil like a conveyor belt so the pizza landed on the stone. But I started too far from the edge and it stretched and became oblong AND longer than the stone on the far side so I had to wad it up there. After cooking, I found that the damn thing was now stuck to the pizza stone around at least 40% of the surface. So I had to sort of tear out what chunks I could. And then after I started eating what little bit I recovered, I realized I had forgotten to put any cheese on. The pizza stone is also ruined as there is no way to get the dough off it without destroying it. I knew there was a reason I don't cook.
I will try again, though.
Movies
I've managed to watch a lot of movies lately.Let's give a brief run-down.
- Thank You For Smoking. I liked this. It was, in my opinion, rather balanced. Smoking is probably pretty bad for you. But you are the one who decided to smoke and you can hardly say you didn't know it could hurt you. Personal responsibility is a nice thing.
- Music and Lyrics. This one I actually saw at my old theater. A lot had scrambled around but the assistant manager was still there and let me have a senior citizen discount. And Snoopy got the children's discount. ;) Anyhow, I enjoyed this one a lot. It's exactly what you think it is. It's not brilliant or terribly witty, but I found it pretty funny and was hardly the worst movie to take your girlfriend to.
- The Departed. Lots of hype, tons of well known and respected actors. Academy Awards. And I didn't like it. I found it confusing many times. There were too many miscellaneous characters who were never developed and weren't very useful. It was too long. Half the movie is the main character swearing at each other and throwing punches. Then everyone gets shot. I just don't get it.
- Ghost Rider. As the result of an accidental shell game, I managed to get in to this movie for free. So it was worth the $0 admission. This is no Batman Begins or any X-Men movie. I love the subject matter, but the execution was frequently poor. The devil character never seemed all that evil, scary, or powerful. It never made sense why the devil needed someone to fight his battles. Or why this character would or could harm evil people. Nicholas Cage is generally not very good, ever. I had low expectations so it could have been worse.
Avoiding highly technical details, I'll assume many of you have heard of digital cable. In the old days, some people could just jack their cable into their TVs and turn on any channel, others needed a cable box if they wanted premium channels, and still others needed a box for every channel. This also applied to the TiVo. Then came digital. And to use that, you had to use the box. But you got more channels, and sometimes it looked a lot cleaner. But the latest TiVo has slots for special cards that lets it decode the digital cable. And I had a guy come to "install" them on Thursday. We spent four straight hours and accomplished nothing more than sticking them into the TiVo box. The guy knew nothing of use so this is not surprising. I spent a lot of time on the phone later trying to find somebody with enough knowledge and/or authority to do some things that I knew would help. With no luck. With the cards in, I had many, many fewer channels. On Sunday, another guy came and relatively quickly fixed the cable company's problems. They had put my information in wrong so that's why nothing worked. Of course, the guy was supposed to come between eleven and two but he actually came closer to four. And when that was done, the TiVo was failing to get program information for every channel between 22 and 100. Needless to say, this is a problem. If it doesn't know what's on a channel, it doesn't record it.
Luckily, my backup plan - the so-called Fake TiVo - is still in action, more or less. I upgraded that on Friday. Of course, I can't currently watch anything on there. It's recording, but it only shows a blank screen when I watch a show. I'll eventually fix that, too.
And to wrap up some of the other nice things, I had diarrhea yesterday and felt like crap (no pun intended) most of the day, this morning I dropped a new, unopened OJ carton (it's a half gallon that looks like a milk carton with a round spout toward the top) directly on the spout, which was punched back inside the carton. It's sure hard to pour now. And today at work I got a migraine. I thought I might vibrate into another dimension from all the caffeine in the four Excedrins I took right before lunch.
Simpsons quote of the day: Marge, playing the slots, to Homer - "Go home! You're bad luck."