Sunday: laziness is good

Although tomorrow is another work day.  I guess one nice thing is that next weekend is a long weekend, due to Prince Kuhio Day.  I didn't take any pictures today, because I made the same thing as yesterday for dinner.  I did steam the asparagus today, which did a better job of consistently cooking all the stalks.

So since I don't have pictures, let's play the most disturbing version of Chutes and Ladders ever.

• Emo Ash.
• Not a pokemon.
• Squirrel!
• Too bad Kodak is pretty much gone now.

Saturday: Errandventure!

Last night, I turned on the bathroom light, and was greeted with the standard flash-pop of a lightbulb dying.  This time it was the main overhead light, which apparently was contributing the majority of the illumination in the bathroom, given that I've had two (out of four) burnt out bulbs above the sink for months now.  This prompted me to take a trip to Target to get various things (including light bulbs) that are cheaper there (like laundry soap).

However, first, I wanted to have some lunch.  Since Target really doesn't have much nearby that sounded good and was open, I had to expand my search to include the airport area.  That led me to Ninja Sushi, which had decent reviews, and would fit with my running theme of Saturday Sushi-day.  They have this nice cartoon:

Similar to how pizza places have meat lover's and pepperoni lover's, this place has ahi lover's:

Plus unagi.

which has five decent ahi nigiri, and four spicy ahi.  I would have preferred the spicy ahi to have a bit less giant chunk of onion, but it was still very tasty.  Their sushi rice is better than the place near work, and similar in style to the Kuru Kuru rice.

On the trip to lunch and Target, I noticed that the highway was a parking lot, and so after buying lightbulbs and laundry soap, I took the long way to WF.  Groceries were easy this week, as I mostly just needed some veggies.  This also covered the ingredients I needed for dinner:

Seriously, camera? Why do you hate the correct orientation?

Bangers and mash with onion gravy, asparagus, wedge of Cotswold cheese.  The WF bangers are good, with a nice fine grain.  They're a bit bland, but adding the onion gravy helped a lot.  I forgot to salt my potatoes, which was a major mistake.  I also know that Cotswold isn't an Irish cheese, so this isn't an authentic St. Patrick's Day meal, but I like Cotswold a lot, and it matches well.  I did come up with a good cooking tactic for the bangers that I think I'll be using for bratwurst and things like that in the future. My cast iron pan lives in the oven.  I preheated the oven, and when it hit 350, I turned it off, and put the sausages in the pan and let them cook quietly while I made the gravy.  Once everything else was finished, I turned on the broiler, and moved the pan up to the top rack.  The carry-over heat from the pan seared the bottom of the sausages, and the warm oven largely baked them.  Broiling finished it off, and kept the pan hot so I could quickly cook the asparagus.  This is going to basically be the dinner plan for the next few days.  I'll need to come up with something else for the end of the week, but I'm kind of thinking fish again for then, so I'll want to get fresh anyway.

• I really like this idea, and wonder if I could retrofit my suitcase.
• Squirrels are super friendly, and in all the times I went out and fed them, I've only been bitten once.  He didn't even break the skin, and seemed as surprised as I was when he bit down and got a finger instead of a peanut.
• My initial thought was that this was a dumb idea to watch basketball, but after thinking about it, it seems like if you were planning on getting the surgery anyway, you might as well do it when you'll have stuff to watch.
• I heard this claim yesterday on LRC (from David Frum, who of all the horrible right wing commentators, is generally the least horrible), and it seemed suspicious then.  It's nice to see the numbers worked out a bit to show that the ACA is still a good idea economically.
• Interesting description of D&D 5th edition.  A lot of these complaints seem to be "that's stupid because it's not like 4th edition."  However, most of those things they're complaining about take the game back to how it was in 1st and 2nd editions.  I think that's probably a good idea, even if I'll never buy it.
• Nom.
• Texas is probably going to elect a crazy person as senator. :(
• Oh, Tea Party. They way you don't bother vetting your crazy people is kind of horrible.  "Hiatus" is the best you can do? Not "sorry we hired a psychopath to be our spokesman?"

Friday: apparently I only have unhappy links today

• Cops suck.
• Cameramen suck.
• Fucking pep bands suck.
• Pizza cones suck for not being here right now, in my hand.
• Florida sucks, and in addition, lets murders go if they "took a class in criminal justice."

So, let's have a happy squirrel:

And another:

And then some happy puppies:

Thursday: That salmon probably wasn't going to be any good

And so, because of that (and not having anything for lunch tomorrow and not wanting to eat out again), I went to the store to get some groceries.  I stared at the fish for awhile, and was finally convinced to try opah.  I brought it home, and seared it in the cast iron pan, and came up with this:

That sandwich was clearly not going to fit into any human mouth. I looked at it, and tried to come up with various ways to do it, but ended up just eating it with a fork, and enjoying how good this would have been in sandwich form.  Crunchy crusty bread, salt and pepper opah, avocado, lettuce, tomato, more crunchy crusty bread.  After a few bites, I got a bit of sriracha, as I wanted a bit of spice.  Opah is definitely on my list of fish to get again after this.  It has an almost chicken like texture, but with a good fishy flavor.  I bet this would work well in a curry, too, or with some other sort of rich sauce.

• And now I want doughnuts.
• I would like more Dr. Horrible.
• More Baman/Piderman? Yay!

Wednesday: blah

• It's almost like the pope is completely isolated, and has no clue how things look to the outside world.
• According to Dr. 1932, it's impossible to talk to Mars.
• Oops.  That's kind of awkward.  It's even worse when you decide that some topics aren't appropriate for your paper.
• I don't have a problem with the Olive Garden. It's not fancy, but it's a place where you know what you'll get.

Oh, I forgot to post this

It turns out that I was right in assuming a lot of people are violently stupid.  Also: racist.

Tuesday: math and skipping menu plans

But there was math to do, and math was partially done.  It turns out that some math is harder than other math.  Let's do a simple math problem instead: How many credit card applications will Chase and United send me?

A fuckload.

• I caught this show while flipping through the channels.  The people on it are the least sane people ever.  The one lady in Salt Lake City claimed that she knew the government was going to take over everything, because she "did research, and started putting together the clues." 
• Now I want a Boreto.
• History channel.  I guess given link one today, I can group National Geographic channel in here as well.
• Unnecessarily silly setup for this map, but I never knew that the Californian central valley once had a huge lake.

Monday: naps and scallops

I took a nap when I got home instead of making dinner right away.  This prompted a few changes to the plan.  Instead of scallops and salad, I went with a scallop po boy:

This was an incredibly messy sandwich.  I quickly coated the scallops in some corn meal, and pan fried them in some butter.  I toasted the bread in the oven, and dressed the sandwich with tomato, lettuce, and sriracha.  It was tasty, but the bread kind of crumbled, and the scallops didn't really want to cooperate with bites.  I should have sliced them after cooking, but the crust was already falling off.  The solution is probably to slice it before cooking.  Still good, and these garlic sunchips matched well.

• Squirrel!
• Bunny!
• This is kind of an odd ad.  It fits in the one time where a vacation in the USSR wouldn't be that unusual.
• Oh yeah, pizza!
• This comic presents a humorous joke.
• This article presents the exact same viewpoint as that comic, but the writer is actually serious:

Sunday: I fucking hate daylight savings time

It's annoying, it doesn't actually save any energy, and it's double stupid that it's not synchronized in any way.  I wonder if tomorrow's morning telecon is going to be missing people because the times are confused.  I thought that I wouldn't have to worry about this for the time being by moving to Hawaii, which doesn't observe DST.  However, I discovered today that Verizon is reporting the wrong timezone to phones, so if I use the network time (like I have been), I'm now in the timezone "GMT-10:00, GMT-9:00".  Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but I had planned on getting up this morning and doing stuff, but was still really sleepy when my alarm went off.  Had I known that I had another hour before I was actually supposed to be up, I wouldn't have just turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep.

Anyway, I then went and got sushi:

You can get kalbi in sushi form.

and then groceries, so I could do the menu plan for this week:

• Monday: Scallops and salad.  I think I'll make a quick dressing with wasabi and ginger (note to self: I think you're out of ginger), and then put the pan-seared scallops in with the salad.
• Tuesday: Salmon. Maybe do this the same way, with a salad?
• Wednesday: Leftover salmon.  The filet I got is probably too big to finish in one sitting.
• Thursday: I bought some "Irish Bangers" at WF today, so I think I'll do a bangers and mash with them. Saturday is St. Patrick's day, which would probably be a more fitting day for this meal, but the sausages were on sale today, and I didn't want to wait.
• Friday: No plan.

Today's links:

• This is pretty much terrible.  I would really have expected that someone in Austin would have suggested that this was maybe not the most tactful way to get internet to people.
• So, is it just me, or do points one and two contradict each other in this story about a study (on healthcare/ACA/medicare/etc), and isn't point three basically just saying "the economy took a fast trip to shit-town in 2008"?
• I could really do with some foie gras helper.
• These sandwiches look delicious.

Saturday: Super lazy day

I've done pretty much nothing all day today.  Here's a picture of a cat licking a dog with long fur:

• Squirrel!
• Baby clothes.
• I guess that's all I have today.  Here's a well animated short if you have four minutes to kill.

Ha ha, totally a conflict of interest

I used to like you, Greta van Susteren, once upon a time. Mostly because you went on Space Ghost, back when he had a talk show.  However, you're a scientologist, and, apparently, willing to be noisy when someone makes fun of your husband's boss (ex-boss?).  So, you know, DIAF and all that jazz.

It's not even like I'm a big fan of Louis C.K.  I just hate you, Greta.

Louis C.K. Withdraws as Host of Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner

Sarah Palin's Scientology link, and Greta Van Susteren's massive conflict of interest

Friday: Did you know they have pizza on the internets now?

It gives you all the ease of ordering pizza without having to deal with the bother of actually talking to someone to order.  It makes me feel better to know that I'm not the only one who occasionally gets cravings for Pizza Hut.  I didn't get their box deal, largely because the random sales they had online were a better deal.  I didn't take any pictures, but I still have piles of pizza and breadsticks left, so maybe tomorrow.  Instead, have a picture of how long space travel would take in cool retro-style spaceships (you'll probably need to clicky-pop):

Today's links will either be to an animal or in quote form.

• Bunny!
• Squirrel!
• "We must also openly acknowledge that we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world."
• "[...] unicorn servants will feed you doughnuts off their horns."
• "We are batshit insane, and after a decade of fuckup after fuckup, we hope you'll let us lecture you about how we need to have secret space commandos, because TERRORISTS!"
• "It should be anyone's right to what kind of health insurance they have. Just because I had to use bankruptcy to get rid of my medical bills doesn't mean I shouldn't be the lead plaintiff in the case against healthcare reform, because COMMUNISM!"
• "We object to the release of this report on the grounds that it is horribly damaging to our client."

Ok, some of those may have been paraphrases.

Thursday: I hate headaches

I had planned on going to see this show at the Academy of Art tonight.  However, after having a headache build up all day, and then dealing with the traffic results of people who don't know how to drive in the rain, I didn't feel like it.  I'm now looking for a biography that has decent reviews, but haven't had much luck.  Oh well.  At least I've already seen something that Thutmose III made:

In London, of all places. Turns out you'll never know where you'll be in 3500 years.

On an unrelated note, here's a sleeping Snorlax:

• TSA: still useless, now doesn't want anyone to know.
• Keri Byron from Mythbusters has a Boston Terrier.
• Wait, what? Who replaced the fascist Pat Robertson with the hippy Pat Robertson?

Wednesday: blah blah

I wish we had more monkey serums these days.

• Squirrel!
• Pokemon Snap!
• Panda Wizard!
• Puppies!
• Why some people are lucky I can't set them on fire with my mind!

Tuesday: More rain

I didn't take a picture of dinner tonight, but it was leftover Bolognese with ditalini.  Mostly because I wanted to get rid of the ditalini so I would only have like 9 kinds of pasta instead of 10.  Very tasty, though, and a good thing to have on such a rainy, dreary day.

Instead: internet pictures:

Cast iron pans are the best pans.

• I almost feel like I'm picking on Mitt Romney. Almost.
• I really want this mug.
• I've enjoyed the new thundercats, so this is good news.
• This, however, is just useful information about when and how to decant wines.
• Baby squirrels aren't as cute because they're not fuzzy.
• Regular squirrels are extra cute, though.
• Hieronymus Bosch is another of my favorite arists.
• I thought that this article was ignoring a particular survey.
• "What's interesting, though, is who [Spiderman] goes to for financial advice: A billionaire who's gone bankrupt three times, a Norse God with an infinite supply of magic dwarven gold, and an actual communist."
• This is pretty much bullshit.

Monday: rain

It's been super rainy all weekend.  I suspect that's why this little guy:

decided to come inside and hang out next to the exhaust fan on my work computer.  At least he didn't jump into my glass of water and drown.

• This is a continuing lesson on why I'm done with comics.
• I can't wait for Baman/Piderman to come back.
• This should be a fun point in the inevitable Obama/Romney debates.
• I guess it's St. Patrick's day soon?  I think I like my recipe better (which I don't seem to have online? Here's colcannon instead.)
• Why?  It's been like twenty years since the last movie, and that one kind of stretched the limits of sanity.

Sunday: lazy day

This looked like it was better focused when I took it.

I finally made the bacon/avocado/lettuce/tomato/nothing starts with i/cheese sandwich today.  Other than the tomatoes I bought being a bit sour, it was tasty.  Salty delicious bacon doesn't hurt, either.

• I guess I don't really see how anyone would ever think that a new math book was needed.  I don't think school level math has really changed in the last hundred years.
• It turns out that being the conservative party means that eventually all your supporters die.
• Or, you fight so hard against yourself, that they all get disgusted and stay home.
• Wizardism!

Saturday: mostly naps and menu planning

Today's plan was to get Girl Scout cookies.

I was successful.

I didn't check to see what the current status of palm oil in GSCs is, but it seems like they're still not terribly sustainable.  I also didn't bring this up with the girl who was selling me the cookies, as that seemed like it would be needlessly mean (although I do take issue with her assertion that "thin mints are the best because they're on top!"  You stacked those boxes into that pyramid, Little Girl.  Arbitrary stacks do not make samoas not the best cookie).

I think this weeks menu plan is going to be:

• Sunday: I still have bacon, so those BALTiC sandwiches I never made last week.
• Monday: Leftover bacon sandwiches.
• Tuesday: Probably another day?
• Wednesday: My plan for the rest of the week is to use up some of the stuff I have frozen, so I'm thinking either chili or spaghetti.
• Thursday: I'm thinking I might go to this talk, since History channel can't talk about Egypt anymore unless it involves aliens.  That means it'd probably be a good day to eat out.
• Friday: leftover freezer leftovers.  I really need to work through some of the piles of food I've made and forgotten about.

Random picture time:

Bunny!

What are you doing, puppy? You'd be 147 dog years old if you were old enough to drink!

Big O for President!

• Worst apology ever.  Besides, he doesn't give a damn about personal responsibility, he wants to clearly vilify people who are his enemy, and does it in the harshest way he can think of.
• At least his sponsors are realizing that maybe paying for someone to spout hatred on the radio isn't the best business decision.
• This is a followup on the Cato stuff.  I think it's kind of funny that a group of people who largely spent their time coming up with studies that they had an answer to before they started are now finding that they're being taken over by people who want even more control over that fake research.
• Pallet cleansing hedgehogs!

Friday: I accomplished things today

Which was good, but probably too boring to talk about.  Now if I could just figure out that one last remaining issue so I didn't have to use a crappy ad hoc workaround.

Why do webpages insist on trying to prevent people from saving images? If I can see it, I can save it.  And I will, even if just to spite you.

• Squirrel! With Cookie!
• My entire plan for this weekend is: "Go find girl scout cookies." Since they probably don't take credit cards, I suspect that plan will need the prelude: "Go find cash."  So maybe I'll rob a bank or something.  Also, look at these cupcakes.
• My Chevy Celebrity never looked this crappy.
• Look at this ad for Jello from 1914.  Now, can you imagine anything you could plausibly advertise with that picture these days?  I mean, I think they stopped selling Holy Fuck, Creepy Old Man Will Eat Your Children brand cereal in the fifties.
• I've mentioned this before, but it's worth pointing out again.  Tuition costs are rising because state governments are abdicating their responsibility for funding education.
• Seriously, conservatives, I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't a big fan of calling people "skanks."
• Miley Cyrus is now forgiven for that shitty ass movie I sat through on a flight from Texas to Honolulu.
• Finally, if I had a million dollars, I'd definitely be buying this.  Rene Lalique is one of my favorite artists of all time, and his work has a brilliant art deco style.  If nothing else, check out the slideshow.

Thursday: I have no good title for today

I did forget that I went to Grylt for lunch yesterday:

Since I follow them on twitter, I get the daily announcements of soups.  When I saw that yesterday, I suddenly had a giant craving for tomato soup.  I had to add a bit of salt to it, but it had good flavor and a nice texture with lots of pulp.  The sandwich was good too, with juicy chicken and a bunch of veggies (and an aioli, not the oil the web-menu claims).

I also can't wait for more pictures, but I assume Julie and Colby are super busy right now. :)

• Hooray, infighting!
• I like the Betty Crocker cookbook I have, because it's a good place to start for recipes, which I can then modify as I see fit.  However, having a basis is important.  Here's how she's looked over time.
• Metapod suddenly makes sense.
• I remember seeing the Call of Cthulhu movie, so I think I'll have to check this one out as well.  Amazon has it being sold by the producers, which makes it easy to order without having to set up new accounts on some shady site.