Man: Oh yeah?

Boy: Yeah. Was that Einstein’s theory?

Man: Wha? No.

Boy: Drats! I’m never going to hit on Einstein’s theory at this rate.

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.

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.

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

I got some pictures of momma, but the nest is about a foot taller than I am, so I don’t think I can get pictures of the babies without really upsetting the momma bird.  So far, she’s pretty much been ignoring us, even flying right over me to get to the nest,  but we’ve been really careful to not go near the nest.

Once my migraine subsides, I’ll try to get the pics off my camera and tweaked so I can share our mockingbird.

Also, the ducks have all hatched.  We’ve got a veritable gaggle of ducklings.  About 14 of them, swimming around the pond.  And it looks like our soldier birds (red-winged blackbirds) are nesting at the roots of the willow trees.  And the barn swallow fledglings are starting to appear from the honeysuckle.  Frankly, our yard is covered with birds.  It’s a carpet o’ bird.

The cats have taken to sitting on the baker’s rack in the kitchen, right by the window that looks out on a bird feeder.  They look like statues, except for the twitching of their tails and the occasional “maaaaap” sound.

Spring.  You know I love it.

Foreclosure Alley

For the past few years, the Inland Empire in Riverside County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the state – home to a major housing boom. But now the Inland Empire is pretty much the poster child for the foreclosure crisis. SoCal Connected tracked down some surreal sights associated with the crisis, including a guy who started a business turning abandoned, dead lawns green – with spray-paint.

It’s not easy being an Igor.  There’s all the lurching, and being woken
at every thunderstorm to throw the Big Switch, and being  fitted for a hump
can take days.  But there are advantages.  A damp basement to call
your own, (with fresh straw twice a year if you’re good), and all the worms you
can eat.  This is my Igor’s favorite way to eat worms.  He’s
especially fond of making it himself. 

Ingredients: 

• 16 Oreo cookies
• 3 cups chocolate pudding. (You can make it from the box variety, but for
  this, we used double dutch chocolate pudding from the local dairy, because
  while the cake may be a lie, I can have pie in 10 minutes.) You can also do this with a ganache…but
  really…why?
• Assorted gummy worms

Tools:

• Chef’s knife and cutting board if you want to cut the cookies first
• Spreader or silicon spatula
• Pie pan
• Mallet of some denomination (we used a meat tenderizer)
• Paper bag

Step One:

Cut your 16 Oreo cookies.  This makes it easier to smash them into crumb
size bits. 

Step Two: 

Put cut cookies into a paper bag.  Whack paper bag with mallet until
crumbs are achieved.

Step Three:

Put crushed crumbs in the bottom of a 9" pie pan. Press down lightly,
but don’t expect them to stick together like a real pie crust.  Spread
pudding on top of cookie crumbs.  The best way is to do big dollops and
sort of smooth the top together, else you’ll end up incorporating all the crumbs
through the pudding.  (Which is ok too. It’s mud pie after all.)

Step Four

Add worms.  Squish some into the pudding so they look like they’re
crawling out.  Voila: Mud Pie in under 10 minutes.

None of the walls are straight. Not one. There is not a single 45 degree angle in that entire room. The potty is crooked enough that I can’t even fathom how to work around it. I’ve already cut my tiles from 12×12 to 6×6, and that’s still not small enough I don’t think, to work around the weird damn angles.

Plus I have to take a sharp right out of the room where the potty is, to the room where the vanities and sinks and tub and shower are…and I have no idea how I’m gonna make that work.

And…to top it all off…none of the tiles are actually 12×12. They’re like 11 3/8 and 11.5, and 11.75….but none of them are the same damn size, making it almost impossible to get cuts where the tiles are the same size.

On the plus side, at least I’m not paying a contractor $100 an hour to realize how completely incapable of using a blue chalk line my builders were.

Also on the plus side, if I ever figure out a way to make it work, I’m gonna be so darn proud of myself.

And of course, if it doesn’t, there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in a small town in Texas this weekend. Yea and verily shall there be a disturbance in the force.