I’m about to start baking a doghouse cake (carrot cake with cream cheese icing…which should make decorating all kinds of fun), and make chocolate dog and bone for Igor’s birthday. And like any impossible task, I have to try and get the whole thing done before he gets out of school. I’m apparently quite insane.
Been going to the gym every day right after I drop Boy at school. This is week two I think…or maybe week 3. I think 2. I started after my birthday. So far I haven’t missed a day. I’m doing treadmill, and bike and then a full circuit of the weight machines. I hope to be in bikini shape by next summer. Yay. 
So, I’ve been working on teaching myself how to bake different artisan breads without using any machines or complicated tools (other than the oven, naturally) …but today for a picnic, I just wanted some plain French baguettes. Which are so yummy.
I figured as long as I was making them, I’d do an instructable on them.
So, in case anyone else is carb starved and must have easy to make bread, I give you:
How to make traditional baguettes by hand.
Here’s a slideshow of how to do it from my flickr stream.
The ongoing saga where I have to replace my aging laptop… Chapter 3 – My brush with hipsters
So…I almost drank the Apple Koolaid, and bought one of the new top end iMacs…with the Radeon 4850. But lo, I was saved from going to the smug side. (Or in Apple Terminology: iSmug.)
I called the apple store that is “local” for a given value of local, and asked if they had it in stock. The girl said yes. I even made her verify that it was in stock, because it’s a special order system. She put me on hold, then came back and said “yes”. So I drove an hour and a half in rush hour traffic to get to the store, had to park almost a half a mile away…in random rain sprinkles….had to go into one of the malls (NorthPark) populated by the plastic people that make me twitchy, finally got to the store, and they said “Oh, yeah…that’s a special order…you’ll have to order that from apple.com.” Then the little tween trendoid with more hair gel than sense suggested that perhaps I hadn’t talked to anyone at the store, because “nobody *here* could make that mistake”, implying ergo, that *I* was the one who made the mistake.
WTF?! Oh lord, was I pissed. Too pissed to deal rationally with anyone in Hipster Station. Genius bar my happy ass. So…I drove home…in rush hour traffic, and the rain, and with school zones every 30 damn yards…which made me even more cranky. And I called the store, and worked my way up the management chain to a “regional director”.
Who offered the following solution: They would order the 4850 card, take apart one of the macs in stock, put it in, and give me a 10% discount…but it would take 2 weeks, and my computer would show as refurbished, and therefor not eligible for warranty. I said “So…do you see how that’s not really a solution?” She said that she’d be happy to give me a discount on one of the older iMacs and I said “Again…not really a solution, is it?” I felt like I was in the Dead Parrot sketch.
So, for making me drive 3 hours in the rain, in rush hour, on a Friday, in Dallas, to go to the Hipster Station in the heart of Trophy Wife Central for no reason, Apple is now on The List. Oh yes. That List. Nobody wants on The List. Mind you, they’re not as high on The List as Dell…but they are on The List none the less.
Yea and verily have they made me a cranky Deva.
I promised pics of the duckling flotilla, the mockingbird nest, and to round out the 4×4 square, I threw some pics of KARED. (Killer Attack Rose of Evil Death)
1. mockingbird_nest 013, 2. mockingbird_nest 011, 3. mockingbird_nest 008, 4. duckling_flotilla 005, 5. duckling_flotilla 006, 6. duckling_flotilla 009, 7. duckling_flotilla 013, 8. duckling_flotilla 013, 9. duckling_flotilla 007, 10. duckling_flotilla 014, 11. duckling_flotilla 015, 12. duckling_flotilla 016, 13. duckling_flotilla 008, 14. duckling_flotilla 012, 15. Texas wild roses – heritage breed, 16. Texas wild roses – heritage breed