This evening’s trek to town was much more relaxing and enjoyable than my morning trek to town, which involved the completion of two root canals and the news that those two teeth need crowns. Now, I’ve seen some comedians whose routines were much like the experience of having root canals performed, but I can safely say that Kathy Griffin does not fall into that category.
I have been a huge fan of Kathy’s since – well, since forever, really, and try to catch her D-List show whenever possible. Someone who revels in their D-List status and makes a living snarking on the rich and shameless? Sign me up.
If you get the chance to see her live, I highly recommend that you do so. Even if you haven’t had major dental work done that morning, your jaw will be sore at the end of her show from laughing so much.
Another trip to the NOC today. Unfortunately, during rush hour. But someone has to go and get the new cage prepped to move gear in, and since we keep tripping one of the big breakers to a circuit feeding multiple racks, the sooner that’s complete, the better. Yours truly gets to move 27 servers, a switch, and four PDUs from our overflow area. Yeeha.
Time for the drive home: the way west.
I love this time of day, even if I don’t love the traffic.
Through the construction zone near the Road to Nowhere (more about that another time).
I love this. Amazing what you can get from an accidental shot.
For football fans, this time of year is the best: both college and pros come to the end of the season, which means multiple games throughout the week, and the very end of the year brings the bowl games, with multiple games on the same day, starting early and ending late.
One of the other things all this activity brings is even more strange and bad things from the mouths of the announcers.
Tonight I heard Sterling Sharpe say “I don’t got none o’ that.” while referring to an Oklahoma State fan decked out in his Cowboy duds, complete with large belt buckle. This is as bad as anything Emmit Smith managed to stumble through in what I hope will be his one and only season on ESPN.
During the Minnesota game yesterday, I caught this gem: “How many defensive touchdowns has Minnesota scored on defense this year?” Well, that would be all of those defensive touchdowns, just by definition, since the offense can’t very well score a defensive touchdown. I’m sure he meant “How many defensive touchdowns has Minnesota scored this year?” (six interceptions returned for tds for 2007, in case you’re curious), but that struck me as quite funny while I was checking through all the games.
I know it must be hard, speaking extemporaneously during a live broadcast, but at least in the first case, I would hope they would be able to speak in a grammatically correct way.
Once again, here we are at the end of one year and the beginning of another. Once again, it will be time for people to make a list of resolutions the cynic in me says they will never keep. Ironically, although I have never really been prone to making such lists, I had started one the other day, and one of the items on that list was to be less cynical about people and their motives. Another is to be calmer in the face of abject stupidity – I suspect that these two actually go hand in hand. Years ago – and this is many years, since it was two exes ago – I had a fairly profound interest in Zen Buddhism. Not to the extent that I am a particularly spiritual person. I am not. I am also not a religious person, much to the dismay of my sister, who is, and who finally settled on Catholicism as her religion of choice. Most of my interest in this is for the human factor, and to me it’s a lot like any other stress-reducing pursuit. As I was reviewing the past couple of years and all the assorted activities that have occurred, I told myself it would be worth my while to take up that interest again, and so I have. I expect this will help immensely in dealing with the people we have to deal with every day, and also help with the anxiety that every day brings as a result of that one singular day when the biopsy came back positive and the snowball that developed from there.
I also told myself that getting back out in the yard and working around the property will help, both physically and mentally. Getting the greenhouse built – what, you didn’t know that was planned? – will enable some experimentation with growing things out of season, inasmuch as anything really is out of season down here. This is Florida, after all. Plus, I’ve decided to take up another hobby: soap and candle making. Not very complicated (or, rather, only as complicated as you make it), relaxing, and in the end, a useful product, all of which satisfies both the left and right brain requirements. Who knows, that might be another side to the business here as well, but we’ll need a snappy name for it. My lack of sleep combined with one side of that (the soapmaking) may bring about echoes of something else entirely, but I think leaving out the underground fighting and general mayhem won’t be a real issue to overcome.
With all of that, plus two additional brands to finally launch, 2008 should be very active indeed. Here’s hoping it will also be happy, prosperous, safe, and healthy for everyone.
“Where are yooooouuuuuu?” asks one of my loyal, even if slightly deranged, handful of readers.
Well.
I’ve been busy with work-related stuff, trying to get some things done for the end of the year. I’ve also been dealing with a couple of the absolutely, without a doubt, unquestionably dumbest, rudest people I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Let’s face it, if you call me by something other than my own name, when my name is in the dozens of ticket responses you’ve received, including the very one you’re quoting, then you are indeed a rude jackass. If you also can’t read plain English and suggest that we’re lying about something, you’re just ratcheting down our already low opinion of you. By the way: if your domain expires, and you don’t notice the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere for three entire months, don’t whine to us about how important it was to you, and that you were “busy” getting married and working. I’ve been dealing with cancer-related crap for over two years now, and I’m guessing that my employees, the state, and the feds wouldn’t accept that as an excuse if I neglected to pay them or file paperwork because I was “busy”.
In any case, I finally unloaded the camera the other day, and was shocked to discover about 500 pictures on the thing. That’s a lot of review and selective editing to be done. First, though, the goal is to complete the rollout of our gift to our clients before Santa shoves his butt down the chimney (what? no chimney?) so I can move on to other things. And since it’s just me on the job today – everyone else is at the football game or off having other fun – and since it’s quiet, I’m hoping to use today to bang out quite a number of things on my todo list, if only to see if there’s any hope of shrinking that before the new year rolls around.
Hope everyone is well and enjoying their holiday. Be safe, be well, be happy.
There are few things in life for which I will get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning after going to bed around 3 or so. Since I’d not done a lot of the things I had wanted to do earlier in the week, there was quite a lot of prep and cooking to be done on the big day. I hauled myself out of bed and got my thoughts together.
One of the benefits of getting up before the sun is watching the sun come up over the barn and trees. On this particular morning, the colors were even more striking, as we were expecting rain and this lent an extra vivid start to the day.
The colors faded rapidly as the clouds moved in, and that was my hint to get started on what would be the real show of the day: the food.
Our family gatherings for Thanksgiving tend to be huge. Between family, friends, and assorted guests, in the past we’ve had up to 80 people at any one meal. This year, we were expecting to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 people. Between moves, sudden other engagements, scheduling conflicts, and miscellaneous issues like flat tires, we wound up with a much smaller, much more intimate gathering: 12 people, four animals.
This, when you think about it, can be a good thing, really. At times when there are dozens and dozens of people wandering around, sometimes it’s difficult to really touch base with some people you might not see very often. Now that we’re living further out in the country, it makes it doubly so.
The amount of food I’d planned did not change. That is, after all, one of the joys of a holiday like Thanksgiving: leftovers. Fewer people equals bigger doggie bags.
As I was spending most of my time cooking, one of my sisters wound up with the camera for much of the evening, so many of the photos here were ones she took throughout the festivities.
Mom had the right idea to start the day: coffee first, before anything.
Through the window, we could see the rain beginning to fall. Since we weren’t really planning anything outside, this was not weighing too heavily on our minds.
Fat Man was up first. Like Little Boy, he had spent a luxurious evening soaking in the brine. After a shower…
he was ready to meet his match: aromatics.
I like to keep it simple, and I don’t like to stuff my bird with stuffing (dressing, to those of us down here). Aromatics only, please, along with a good dose of this
under the skin. Finish with a nice rub of various spices, and the big guy is ready to go.
Except that we discovered a 20 pound bird will not fit into our standard roasting pans. A little improv, maestro, if you please: a giant steam tray, with racks in the bottom, made for a nice bed for the bird. And then, another problem: no twine. No problem.
Some judicious use of cheesecloth to tie the legs, a little tuck of the wings underneath, and we were okay to go.
Low and slow: the bird went in for his marathon cooking at 8 AM.
After some hours, his tan was shaping up nicely.
Not to mention creating some great drippings for gravy later.
Little Boy went on the smoker about half an hour after the big guy went into the oven for roasting. But the day is not just all about turkey, of course. There were also rolls to be made.
Fresh, day-of-event, pull-apart rolls.
Seriously, though, it’s the people. What would happen to all the food if they weren’t around?
Susi and Samir took a stroll about the grounds.
Gabrielle stayed inside and kept us company.
While Ricky and Mom also took a stroll outside and then came back in…
Gabs showed us how she was enjoying the mushroom turnovers.
Then she showed us all how to be quietly beautiful.
Ricky was very serious, or just looked like he was about to go into a coma, probably because he and Gabs had been at his mom’s earlier for an early dinner.
Barb arrived, alone, a few hours after her own early dinner with her group.
Frank arrived, either a bit out of focus, or the recipient of my sister dashing around snapping pictures right in everyone’s face. Probably the latter.
Angie looked fabulous, as usual.
All, right, I hear you: enough with the people. Where’s the food?
Tarragon pickled mushrooms and onions, crabcakes, mushroom turnovers.
These didn’t last long.
Or these.
Or those.
Or even those.
We also had assorted other stuff: sweet potato casserole, shrimp, stuffing (with and without sausage), mashed potatoes,apricot glazed carrots…
broccoli gratin , cranberry compote, brussels sprouts, those aforementioned rolls, crabcakes, and pickles. Everything was labeled.
Because you have to know what you’re eating. The ham is hiding over there on the right. The butternut squash soup is in the crock on the left.
There was also focaccia, which disappeared before a good picture could be taken, a hawaiian dessert that mom made that likewise disappeared, cinnamon raisin bread…
assorted cookies, fudge, pie.
After stuffing ourselves and watching more football, things finally broke up and everyone went home, no doubt to sleep and then get up in the middle of the night to tear off a piece of turkey as a midnight snack.
Overall, a highly successful evening. From this dinner, and for the next four days, I ate turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry compote, and gravy. Over and over, for each meal. Not a bad way to get some food into yourself.
We’re making our way toward Thanksgiving day pictures, really. With tons of images to sort and resize, and rolling out our upgrade gifts to our clients (and let me tell you how much it warms my cockles to have some idiot bitch about how long it takes to get through hundreds of servers to give them something for FREE), there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done so I can whittle down my to-do list. We’ll get there.
Anyone who has ever been to Jacksonville will tell you the city is always under some kind of construction. For the past however long, there has been a major construction zone where I-10 and I-95 come together, to expand the amount of traffic the interchange can handle. One of the things that happens during all of this is of course changes to the various exits along the way. Normal, functional people who know how to merge and deal with traffic such as, oh, that sort of traffic you might encounter going to a football game, have no issues with this. Either you manage to make it over, or you just head up to the next exit. Simple, right?
Except for the total moron who stopped dead in the left hand lane – the very lane other people are also in, looking for an opening to merge right in order to get off at one particular exit. This idiot didn’t just stop: they slammed on their brakes, even though they’d not yet reached the area where the exit was even available. We all know what happens then: the person behind them has to slam on their brakes, and the person behind them, and the person behind them.
So today, for the first time ever, I was involved in a traffic accident. I rear-ended the guy in front of me after slamming on my brakes to try to avoid him after he slammed on his brakes to avoid the guy in front of him, who slammed on his brakes to avoid the guy in front of him, who slammed on his brakes to avoid the jackass who stopped in the middle of the damn highway because apparently the concept of merging and changing lanes was simply too difficult to grasp.
So I’d like to thank that jackass, and toss in the two troopers who showed up and decided that it was two separate incidents instead of one caused by that singular act. And I’d further like to thank the first trooper for not handing out a ticket to anyone in the first pair even though clearly one of them rear ended the other (because they “gave conflicting stories”, so he didn’t write one). Even further, I’d like to thank the second trooper for taking almost 25 minutes to type up a simple report and a ticket. For me. Because here, the person at the very back of the line gets screwed. Which is precisely what happened: I get the damage (the guy in front of me has a minor crack in his bumper, while my front bar is crumpled right into my front bumper and my left headlight is now out of alignment; the guy in front of him has minor bumper damage, and the guy in front of him has a small crumple in the hood and bumper damage), I get the insurance premium increase (because I am the only one who got a ticket out of this, and the very nice claims woman says they have to put me down as at fault), and I get the ticket (for “not exercising due care”, worth 121.50)
To sum up: I got hosed for an accident I did not cause and could not avoid.
And the jackass in the white Chevy Blazer who started it all? Drove off, and probably – unlike the rest of us – made it to the game on time.
“What do you think about Thanksgiving?” my mom asked me the other day.
What do I think about it? I love Thanksgiving. It’s absolutely my favorite holiday: fall, food, family, friends, and football. Everything is wrapped up into one tidy package for our enjoyment and amusement.
“The reason is that Angie [my aunt] has decided that she’s not going to have Thanksgiving at her place this year, ” she continued.
“Well then, ” I said, “we can have it here, can’t we?”
Of course we can. And since I am continuing to slowly but surely return to health, how about a menu devised and prepared by yours truly with an assist from my sous chefs here? And how about making just about everything from scratch and telling people to bring no food, only ice and whatever they might want to drink beyond the normal things we generally have?
A fine idea.
So, for those of you joining us for Thanksgiving this year, here is your menu. If you have any special requests or dietary restrictions that aren’t covered (the latter is unlikely, looking over things), let us know so we can make arrangements for those needs.
Appetizers:
Mushroom turnovers
Four cheese phyllo puffs
Shrimp cocktail, traditional
Onion confit and brie crostini
Roasted butternut squash dip
Miscellaneous chips and dip
Cheese plate
Roasted vegetable dip
Pita triangles
Soups:
Roasted red pepper and sweet potato soup
Mains:
Roasted turkey, traditional
Apple-oak smoked turkey breasts
Glazed ham, traditional
Crabcakes (with 2-3 aiolis)
Shrimp, three ways (traditional cocktail, tequila-lime, asian saute)
Sides:
Roasted garlic and buttermilk mashed potatoes
Apricot-glazed carrots
Stuffing, traditional, two ways (with and without pork)
Creamy baked corn
Sweet potato casserole
Green peas with pearl onions
Broccoli gratin
Brussels sprouts
Chestnut-fig stuffing
Brown sugar glazed sweet potato wedges
Cranberry-apple compote
Gravy
Every so often, I look at this blog and wonder if it’s worth the bother. I think my life must be terribly uninteresting and the failures here at the homestead have far outnumbered the successes in the gardening realm. Still, on the rare occasions that someone does come by, as my aunt and uncle did this weekend, and looks at the place with their eyes instead of mine, it reminds me that being too close to something can give you tunnel vision sometimes.
So here’s what’s been going on around here of late, beyond the workaday crap that made August a hellish month, stress-wise – a month in which I managed to lose eight pounds, dropping me to 100 even. I’m working on keeping the needle there and climbing, and thus far, the “keeping the needle there” part is working out better than the “climbing” part.
I had worked my ass off to prep a bed of corn, which started out well.
Very well.
And then, there was zero rain. None. Zilch. Nada. So I was trying to water. Then I had some kind of animal run through this back side of the plot – probably the damn dog next door, who is forever running all over our property. And then these critters showed up, along with the corn earworms.
I don’t think I could have done enough to turn that plot into arable soil that would sustain growth to maturity. Between all of those factors, the corn withered, and eventually had to be cut down. A total loss of the time and effort spent.
I’d put in a line of limas, which I hate, for other people to eat. Out of eight seedlings, two survived. Neither has put out any beans as of yet, although they both have flowers.
I had also set up several cucumber plants, of two varieties: picklers and lemon cukes. One of each survived, and this lone pickler, along with one lone lemon cuke, are the output so far.
