Monday, April 20, 2009
Your day's not as bad as you thought
For those times when you have trouble remembering that you really do have a good life, check out your typical work day.
Friday, April 17, 2009
For Friday: totally NSFW video
The artist of this little music video is "TastiSkank." This is pretty rude and incredibly funny and it's for every woman who's had a really bad lover. The language is definitely NSFW, but the production values are exceptional. And it's a good enough piece of music, too!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Quick Lemon Fudge recipe
One of the women in the Babe's bowling league brought in a pan of lemon fudge. Oh, it's all sugar, and really bad for me, but I loved it. We got the recipe:
Quick Lemon Fudge
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
3-3/4 cups powder sugar
1 tsp lemon extract
minced zest of 1 lemon
1 4.3 oz package lemon Cool & Serve pudding
1/2 cup milk
3-3/4 cups powder sugar
1 tsp lemon extract
minced zest of 1 lemon
1 4.3 oz package lemon Cool & Serve pudding
- Mix ingredients and cook over med heat until very thick.
- Pour into glass tray.
- Refrigerate until very firm.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Are you going to Hell?
If you read this headline and laugh out loud, you’re going to hell:
From MSNBC:
"Cops: Priest runs over Good Friday churchgoers"
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Blow job of the day?
This is a camera showing Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. (Why, what did you think I meant?)
A different view of Mt. Redoubt can be found here.
A different view of Mt. Redoubt can be found here.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
A cat haiku for Friday
I was looking up Ernest Borgnine on IMDB.com to see how old he is (92!) and saw a lovely haiku by a user named Crazykaese.
Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes,
Fear vacuum cleaner
Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes,
Fear vacuum cleaner
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Wipeout" on the banjo
I was in the middle of working on receipts for expenses and so on, when I got pinged by a cousin with this little nugget.
I think we've seen it demonstrated that you can play just about anything on a banjo. But it's not the banjo that's really unusual in this; it's the washboard.
Oy.
I think we've seen it demonstrated that you can play just about anything on a banjo. But it's not the banjo that's really unusual in this; it's the washboard.
Oy.
Bill Murray and being rich and famous
Was talking to Brenda on AIM this evening and it occurred to me that I'd not added this story about being rich and famous to my blog.
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany years and a couple dozen books ago, I was in the middle of my 2nd & 3rd books (it was a simultaneous thing--hint: don't do this). I remember coming home and walking in the front door and saying to Patricia something completely fatuous about being rich and famous. She looked thoughtful and said "You know, Bill Murray was being interviewed on TV today and the interviewer started flipping him a little shit and said, 'Well, you haven't handled fame very well.' And Bill Murray got really bristly and looked right into the camera and said 'All you boys and girls out there in Televisionland who think you want to grow up to be rich and famous, let me give you a piece of advice: try "rich" first and see if that doesn't do it for yuh!'"
I found that to be an excellent piece of advice and I've tried to practice this to a large extent: given a choice between "rich" and "famous," I've gone for "rich" whenever possible. And you should, too.
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany years and a couple dozen books ago, I was in the middle of my 2nd & 3rd books (it was a simultaneous thing--hint: don't do this). I remember coming home and walking in the front door and saying to Patricia something completely fatuous about being rich and famous. She looked thoughtful and said "You know, Bill Murray was being interviewed on TV today and the interviewer started flipping him a little shit and said, 'Well, you haven't handled fame very well.' And Bill Murray got really bristly and looked right into the camera and said 'All you boys and girls out there in Televisionland who think you want to grow up to be rich and famous, let me give you a piece of advice: try "rich" first and see if that doesn't do it for yuh!'"
I found that to be an excellent piece of advice and I've tried to practice this to a large extent: given a choice between "rich" and "famous," I've gone for "rich" whenever possible. And you should, too.
Twitter--oh, dear God....
So, despite a distinct feeling that I had Plenty Of Other Things To Do, I signed up on Twitter yesterday. This was largely in response to Brenda Huettner's noodging to do so, but I did sign up of my own free will. So, I encourage you to follow my tweetstream on Twitter if you're there, but it's going to be more of a tweetpuddle this month. I've got plenty to do work-wise this month and there's not going to be a lot of Twitter movement on my part.
Oh, and congratulations to Phylise Banner on her engagement!
Oh, and congratulations to Phylise Banner on her engagement!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Two websites you should try out
I wanted to take a moment amidst my suddenly hurly-burly schedule and let you know about two really cool websites.
The first is SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather is a website that tells you all sorts of interesting things about what's going on in the sky. The neatest part may be their satellite tracker: you enter your zip code, postal code, or country, then it shows you where and when to look in the sky for interesting manmade objects that are visible to the naked eye: the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle Discovery, several large satellites, and things like that. Very cool stuff! The whole site is worth romping around for all sorts of interesting astronomical happenings.
The second site is Wordle.com, a juicy little nugget for the literarily inclined. Wordle generates word clouds from text that you provide it by analyzing the frequency of words in the text and then assigning a greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently. You can then change the cloud by changing the colors, fonts, and layouts. It's really quite fun! Feed Wordle the text of your latest article, or a manual draft, or that novel you've been working on. Or go to, say, Project Gutenberg, and grab something and try that out. It's a great time-waster, as if I had time to waste these days. (One of the joys of working on database engines is that you've always got something interesting to work on at any hour of the day or night.)
Try both of them out sometime. They're a lot of fun!
The first is SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather is a website that tells you all sorts of interesting things about what's going on in the sky. The neatest part may be their satellite tracker: you enter your zip code, postal code, or country, then it shows you where and when to look in the sky for interesting manmade objects that are visible to the naked eye: the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle Discovery, several large satellites, and things like that. Very cool stuff! The whole site is worth romping around for all sorts of interesting astronomical happenings.
The second site is Wordle.com, a juicy little nugget for the literarily inclined. Wordle generates word clouds from text that you provide it by analyzing the frequency of words in the text and then assigning a greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently. You can then change the cloud by changing the colors, fonts, and layouts. It's really quite fun! Feed Wordle the text of your latest article, or a manual draft, or that novel you've been working on. Or go to, say, Project Gutenberg, and grab something and try that out. It's a great time-waster, as if I had time to waste these days. (One of the joys of working on database engines is that you've always got something interesting to work on at any hour of the day or night.)
Try both of them out sometime. They're a lot of fun!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Happy it's Friday
Last Tuesday, I got a phone call in the evening from Susan the Wonderchild, who said, perkily "I'm at Urgent Care because I broke my elbow." Well, I'm glad she was happy about it, but it did give me pause. Turns out that she was trying out for the Roller Derby and fell and her elbow hyperextended and blip! she cracked off the end of her radius. Everybody's gotta have a hobby, I suppose.
Now, something interesting about all this: when the doctor said to Susan "Would you like a prescription for pain meds," Susan said "No, I'm fine, I don't need them." I explained to her later that this was not the right answer; that, in fact, when the doctor asks you if you want pain meds, that you say "Why, yes, thank you, that'd be very helpful," and you give this answer if you're feeling better than you ever have in your life at that moment. You never know when you're going to need something powerfully narcotic and opiated that will help you deal with life's little exigencies, like when you've just dropped something very heavy on your foot. Susan has gotten this principle down, although it was certainly reinforced by the pain level when the natural endorphins wore off and her arm started throbbing. When the orthopedist looked at her arm two days later and he offered her 40 Vicodin, she said "Why, yes, thank you!"
She decided that she wanted a second opinion and liked the second orthopedist much better, so this afternoon, she had surgery with him. He replaced the bone chip and did a thing or two else. She's at home now and will be recovering. The nerve block they gave her has made her arm completely numb, which is very strange for her. Her friend Von, who the Babe and I both like very much, brought her home from the day surgery (although the Babe was able to be there when Susan woke up). Von's been playing cards with Susan this evening.
Speaking of 'home', I wanted to mention something else: Susan has moved back in with us. She'd been planning on doing this anyway, but this was planned for May or June. With the need to be taken care of and a few other things, she's moved back in today. We now have 4 cats again, too. We'll be getting a couple guys to schlep her stuff from her house to here and set it up again.
Now, something interesting about all this: when the doctor said to Susan "Would you like a prescription for pain meds," Susan said "No, I'm fine, I don't need them." I explained to her later that this was not the right answer; that, in fact, when the doctor asks you if you want pain meds, that you say "Why, yes, thank you, that'd be very helpful," and you give this answer if you're feeling better than you ever have in your life at that moment. You never know when you're going to need something powerfully narcotic and opiated that will help you deal with life's little exigencies, like when you've just dropped something very heavy on your foot. Susan has gotten this principle down, although it was certainly reinforced by the pain level when the natural endorphins wore off and her arm started throbbing. When the orthopedist looked at her arm two days later and he offered her 40 Vicodin, she said "Why, yes, thank you!"
She decided that she wanted a second opinion and liked the second orthopedist much better, so this afternoon, she had surgery with him. He replaced the bone chip and did a thing or two else. She's at home now and will be recovering. The nerve block they gave her has made her arm completely numb, which is very strange for her. Her friend Von, who the Babe and I both like very much, brought her home from the day surgery (although the Babe was able to be there when Susan woke up). Von's been playing cards with Susan this evening.
Speaking of 'home', I wanted to mention something else: Susan has moved back in with us. She'd been planning on doing this anyway, but this was planned for May or June. With the need to be taken care of and a few other things, she's moved back in today. We now have 4 cats again, too. We'll be getting a couple guys to schlep her stuff from her house to here and set it up again.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Boy howdy, it's a busy day today!
So, let's see: we stayed up late last night practicing a duet and working out some harmonies for "I Remember You" for the Springfield Jazz Singers and a musical evening we're emceeing next week. We're singing at the Unitarian Church this morning, followed by a break, followed by an appearance at the Springfield Arts Center with the Springfield Jazz Singers. After this, we come home and the Babe has to go into the office to get some work done and do a final review of cases for tomorrow and I've got an Excel spreadsheet to work on for my day job. Busy weekend!
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