The Twelve Pains of Christmas
The Great Butter Meltdown of '09
The other day I did eventually overcome the difficulties of butter melted into my oven to bake five dozen and change chocolate chip cookies. I ended up unscrewing the bottom pan of the (cold) oven, pulling out the broiler tray beneath that so I could get to the actual innards of the thing to find the mystery pools of crusted butter. Gee whiz, what a pain! The cookies, however, came out just fine -- although it must be noted that I am now a convert to dark chocolate chips. Although I generally do not care for dark chocolate by itself, its use as a cookie chip I find greatly superior to the traditional semi-sweet chocolate morsel. So it shall be from now on... that is, once I finish using up the 72-pound bag of semi-sweet morsels I bought at Sam's Club.
I chased down our mail carrier during her appointed rounds to give her a happy snowflake tin of cookies and a thank you card. She hugged me and said nice things about my mother (also on her route). Then I drove out to the Toyota dealership where the Service Advisor received the cookies in stride, seemingly without surprise or real emotion on the topic. His reaction seemed a little odd and underwhelming to me, but oh well, me saying thanks was the point. On the other hand, the mechanic who received his snowflake tin of cookies from the underwhelmed Service Advisor made it a point to chase my car down in the parking lot (as I made the 27th part of a 32-point turn to get out of a tight parking space after someone blocked me in) to say thank you for the gesture. That apparently had the intended effect; he probably doesn't receive a lot of direct thanks, and I really am grateful.
"Capitalism" Movie Review
Departing slightly from Christmas, I took advantage of the Toyota dealership's location right next to a dollar theatre (technically a $1.75 theatre) to go see Michael Moore's latest, "Capitalism: A Love Story." It was okay. It really took him a long time to get to the point in this one. The first hour moved so slowly that I literally dozed off for a little while at one point! By the second hour when Moore starts talking about the bailout and recent events, then it moved faster and was much more interesting. Nevertheless, despite that the topic is rich fodder for a Socialist whackjob like Moore (mind you, I like Moore's work, but that doesn't change the fact that he is a Socialist whackjob), I found this film to be less compelling that his other works, particularly "Sicko." The thing is with Michael Moore that even if you walk into the theatre agreeing with his general worldview, he still sounds crazy. I imagine that if you walk into one of his movies generally disagreeing with him (nevermind why you would do such a thing, this is Imagination Time), nevertheless he must make all moviegoers open their minds and think about at least a few points in each film. I'm not sure that he does so in the latest about Capitalism. At once, he goes so far as to sound like a Socialist whackjob, and yet doesn't go far enough to really make the moviegoer ask those nagging questions after leaving the theatre. Overall I rate this one, "Eh." I suggest that if you like his work, Netflix it. And if you don't like his work anyhow, this one is doubly not worth your time. Watch "Sicko" instead as it's really compelling, I think.
Sidenote
In this age of cell phones, there really is never any reason to park your car in front of somebody's house and honk.
"Now why the hell are they all blinking?!?!"
Ian and I went out this morning to hang the exterior Christmas lights on our house. Bob Rivers' comedy Christmas song, "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" really sums up our experience today. As is said in Galaxy Quest: "This episode was badly written!" We bought new LED icicle lights from Walmart. Gee whiz, it's true that you get what you pay for! These things have plugs only at one end. Apparently instead of stringing them from end-to-end as one might plan, the suggested ability to connect 21 strings together means from the center, should you wish to illuminate your residential spider web with effing icicle lights!! By the way, did I mention that they're blue and white stripes in alternating "icicles?" Add to this that our house has no - none - nada - zilch - zip -exterior outlets outside the front of the house. I think possibly the same guy who designed Walmart's selection of Christmas lights also designed our house. Who does that? So we have them plugged into the garage with an extension cord running to our porch. The overall situation with our limited ability to plug things in means that there are lights only on the porch, not on nearby trees and shrubs as we hoped. On top of spaghetti covered with cheese, our house is also made of brick, and other "impenetrable building materials" that require use of a manly drill (which we received as a wedding gift in the form of a gift card but have not yet actually purchased) or a panicked phone call to waywalker. Why did you people let us move to another state unsupervised, anyhow? Hobbits really shouldn't be left alone to play with electricity.
Pink-nosed and giggling over our remedial lights display, Ian and I hugged each other, decided we will buy no house which has no exterior outlets, and we had a good laugh while we put this together today! I'll see if I can take a picture for you that captures the exterior yuletide glory of our home for you.
You may even get to see a photo of the really happy display I made for our incoming holiday cards out of some "pom-pom" ribbon, and other festive patterned ribbon and keychain loops. The cats think it's a great toy for them, too, thus pleasing all species of animate mammals in our household.
Love & Kisses,
Traceroo
P.S. I really need to make myself a Christmas icon.
The other day I did eventually overcome the difficulties of butter melted into my oven to bake five dozen and change chocolate chip cookies. I ended up unscrewing the bottom pan of the (cold) oven, pulling out the broiler tray beneath that so I could get to the actual innards of the thing to find the mystery pools of crusted butter. Gee whiz, what a pain! The cookies, however, came out just fine -- although it must be noted that I am now a convert to dark chocolate chips. Although I generally do not care for dark chocolate by itself, its use as a cookie chip I find greatly superior to the traditional semi-sweet chocolate morsel. So it shall be from now on... that is, once I finish using up the 72-pound bag of semi-sweet morsels I bought at Sam's Club.
I chased down our mail carrier during her appointed rounds to give her a happy snowflake tin of cookies and a thank you card. She hugged me and said nice things about my mother (also on her route). Then I drove out to the Toyota dealership where the Service Advisor received the cookies in stride, seemingly without surprise or real emotion on the topic. His reaction seemed a little odd and underwhelming to me, but oh well, me saying thanks was the point. On the other hand, the mechanic who received his snowflake tin of cookies from the underwhelmed Service Advisor made it a point to chase my car down in the parking lot (as I made the 27th part of a 32-point turn to get out of a tight parking space after someone blocked me in) to say thank you for the gesture. That apparently had the intended effect; he probably doesn't receive a lot of direct thanks, and I really am grateful.
"Capitalism" Movie Review
Departing slightly from Christmas, I took advantage of the Toyota dealership's location right next to a dollar theatre (technically a $1.75 theatre) to go see Michael Moore's latest, "Capitalism: A Love Story." It was okay. It really took him a long time to get to the point in this one. The first hour moved so slowly that I literally dozed off for a little while at one point! By the second hour when Moore starts talking about the bailout and recent events, then it moved faster and was much more interesting. Nevertheless, despite that the topic is rich fodder for a Socialist whackjob like Moore (mind you, I like Moore's work, but that doesn't change the fact that he is a Socialist whackjob), I found this film to be less compelling that his other works, particularly "Sicko." The thing is with Michael Moore that even if you walk into the theatre agreeing with his general worldview, he still sounds crazy. I imagine that if you walk into one of his movies generally disagreeing with him (nevermind why you would do such a thing, this is Imagination Time), nevertheless he must make all moviegoers open their minds and think about at least a few points in each film. I'm not sure that he does so in the latest about Capitalism. At once, he goes so far as to sound like a Socialist whackjob, and yet doesn't go far enough to really make the moviegoer ask those nagging questions after leaving the theatre. Overall I rate this one, "Eh." I suggest that if you like his work, Netflix it. And if you don't like his work anyhow, this one is doubly not worth your time. Watch "Sicko" instead as it's really compelling, I think.
Sidenote
In this age of cell phones, there really is never any reason to park your car in front of somebody's house and honk.
"Now why the hell are they all blinking?!?!"
Ian and I went out this morning to hang the exterior Christmas lights on our house. Bob Rivers' comedy Christmas song, "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" really sums up our experience today. As is said in Galaxy Quest: "This episode was badly written!" We bought new LED icicle lights from Walmart. Gee whiz, it's true that you get what you pay for! These things have plugs only at one end. Apparently instead of stringing them from end-to-end as one might plan, the suggested ability to connect 21 strings together means from the center, should you wish to illuminate your residential spider web with effing icicle lights!! By the way, did I mention that they're blue and white stripes in alternating "icicles?" Add to this that our house has no - none - nada - zilch - zip -exterior outlets outside the front of the house. I think possibly the same guy who designed Walmart's selection of Christmas lights also designed our house. Who does that? So we have them plugged into the garage with an extension cord running to our porch. The overall situation with our limited ability to plug things in means that there are lights only on the porch, not on nearby trees and shrubs as we hoped. On top of spaghetti covered with cheese, our house is also made of brick, and other "impenetrable building materials" that require use of a manly drill (which we received as a wedding gift in the form of a gift card but have not yet actually purchased) or a panicked phone call to waywalker. Why did you people let us move to another state unsupervised, anyhow? Hobbits really shouldn't be left alone to play with electricity.
Pink-nosed and giggling over our remedial lights display, Ian and I hugged each other, decided we will buy no house which has no exterior outlets, and we had a good laugh while we put this together today! I'll see if I can take a picture for you that captures the exterior yuletide glory of our home for you.
You may even get to see a photo of the really happy display I made for our incoming holiday cards out of some "pom-pom" ribbon, and other festive patterned ribbon and keychain loops. The cats think it's a great toy for them, too, thus pleasing all species of animate mammals in our household.
Love & Kisses,
Traceroo
P.S. I really need to make myself a Christmas icon.