Hey gang, how’s trix? What’s cookin’?
*Update* Bumped for Saturday!
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Hey gang, how’s trix? What’s cookin’?
*Update* Bumped for Saturday!
{ 27 comments }
Still at work (it’s 4 PM here) installing drivers on a lab machine in hopes of running a test pass over the weekend.
Trix sux for me. Gotta cold….Â
But I’m just about ready to stick a pizza into the oven, and that will cheer me up.  It’s got a sour dough crust I’ve been fermenting 3 days, instead of the normal one day, so it should be extra tart. I just hope I can taste it.  Â
Then, I predict a nap.
1)Â Trix is for kids.
2)Â Chicken Marsala is cooking.
I lost $137K on Monday when a partnership I was in went bankrupt. I also managed to forget that my property taxes were due Wednesday, and had to pay a penalty of $200 when I paid them on Thursday.
Oddly, I’m far more upset with myself about the latter than the former – which was not unexpected – but I’m hoping that this is the last week like this for a long, long time.
foobarista’s last blog post..The Car “Format Wars”
I’m hoping to get a new dog this weekend. In July of 2007 while I was in the hospital for 12 days my Yorkie, Lacey, died a month short of her 16th birthday. So we have been looking for another for about two months. We were looking for a larger, well bred, healthy Yorkie. We did not want a tiny, baby face because they usually have some health problems. So we were thinking large Yorkie or a Silky Terrier, and have some of those breeders on the lookout for us. BUT yesterday in the Austin paper my 9 lb Yorkie was advertised. My son and his wife are checking it out for me tomorrow. We may have a new dog for Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I don’t waste prayers on getting dogs, there are bigger things out there for your prayers. Thanks.
My home is one of the lucky 50% that actually has power in New Hampshire tonight. My parents and my brother both live in Guilford and theirs is out, but my brother heats with wood so they are all holed up at his place tonight. According to the utility people they may not have power until Monday- that’s what you get for living on a mountainside, folks.
I have to admit I’m a little surprised we never lost power in this storm- we live on the heights and the wind can get pretty fierce when there’s nothing getting in its way, but we only had a couple flickers early this morning and most of Concord has power, except for the boonies and a few spots on the west side of the Merrimack.
Oh, and we also took the plunge and cut the wire- moved our home phone number over to a cell. Saves us $50 a month and no more annoying sales/polling/survey calls!
The motherboard of my PC went. Surprisingly, nobody around here will actually replace a motherboard that’s more than a couple of months old.
So, bought a new PC, which of course comes with Vista. So… learning the new OS, reinstalling all my software–and the endless updates and security fixes needed–plus endless rebooting.
But it’s a beautiful, if cool, night. The sky is clear, the moon is as big as a pizza pie.
Read an interesting book: Man with the Iron Heart, by Harry Turtledove.
Turtledove, for those who don’t know him, writes a kind of science fiction known as ‘Alternative History’, he posits that some historical event–usually a military one–did not happen and then explores what might have followed.
This particular book starts with the premise that the Nazi ‘Werewolf’ campaign for partisan activity was actually set up and activated. Two years after the war ends, the US (and other allies) have to keep large numbers of troops in Germany and they’re being killed off in various way reminiscent of Iraq.
There’s even a main character along the lines of Cindy Sheehan attempting to get Congress to deny funding for the troops and order their return to the US. Media are portrayed as well-meaning idiots.
When he writes under his own name–Turtletaub–the author is an expert on Byzantine history. He writes well on that, too, if that’s the way your boat is floating.
And for linky goodness, here’s a piece from Economist, reporting on encouraging developments for an anti-malaria vaccine (60% success rate) and a plausible link between Alzheimer’s and herpes simplex, i.e. cold sores.
A jab of hope
John_B’s last blog post..Saudi Women and Divorce
John B.
I have a friend who was partnered to a man who was in Hitler Youth. They were together for about 20 years. She has studied a lot of German history, history of WWII, mainly European history. So the last time I saw her I asked the question, "what do you suppose would have happened had the US lost the wars, European and Japanese? That threw her for a loop and she studied on it for several days. I got a VERY long email from her after a week and her answer was that Hitler was a coward and Japan would have won. I always find it interesting to ask the what if questions. I might just read one of those "Turtlelove" books. An interesting psuedonym in itself.
I couldn’t taste or smell the pie much. But it was good, and the texture was nice.Â
My prediction of a nap came true during whatever stupid movie we were watching (Sandra Bullock in some kind of premonition thing).Â
Then things livened up when I got bit by a spider while I was getting wood for the woodstove.  That freaked me out and now I’ve got an adrenaline buzz with a pulse of probably 140.Â
It got down in my glove as I was rooting around in the wood pile.  I felt a little prick, about like an ant. So I took off my glove and saw a spider where my thumb joins my left hand. I smacked it with my right hand and knocked it off. Don’t know what it looked like really, or its color or anything. Just “SPIDER!â€Â
I freaked for a couple minutes. I doused it with alcohol and ran it under water for a while. Slammed some vodka to try to calm myself down.   Eventually, I thought to take a look at the bite under a microscope.  It didn’t leave any parts behind, and it looks like it just pinched my skin. So I’m feeling a little better now. Time will tell…
Do you live in a part of the country where the Brown Recluse is found? If so I’d watch that spot carefully. Probably it’s fine, but watch it for a day or so.
jaymaster,
i’d watch it more than carefully. head to the ER if there’s even an outside chance it was a brown recluse. a quick google search should be all the evidence you need to treat a spider bite seriously.
in other news, got some sunday gravy cookin’ (on a saturday), and some hermits for dessert.
jaymaster: the ‘alcohol to calm down’ thing isn’t really the best idea when it comes to venom, either.
Depressing your nervous system can enhance the effects of a bite or at least disguise it from a doctor looking for symptoms.
Depending on the way your body and immune system work, spider bites can be dangerous even if the particular spider isn’t recognized as a major danger. Many spider bites necrotize tissue. They can kill tissue for several weeks after the bite and can lead to gangrene.
John_B’s last blog post..Caught in the Middle
Well, so far so good.  There’s a tiny little welt about the size of a pin head where the thing bit me.  No pain or anything. I feel like crap and am having a little bit of trouble breathing because of my cold, so hopefully that’s not masking anything.  Â
We’ve got brown recluse and black widows around here.  I’m kind of a bug-o-phile, so I know what they both look like.  I’ve actually got a pretty good collection of black widow bodies, but I haven’t found a brown recluse yet.  I’m 99% sure it wasn’t either of those. It looked more like a wolf spider or something like that. Â
Wolf spiders do bite under the type cicumstance you described, and they do have venom but it’s not the worst that could happen. Sounds like you are doing fine, spider bite wise.
Thanks Ruth!
It’s Saturday, December 13th and I am sitting in a hotel room in Erlangen Germany. (It’s ~9:00 PM here.)
I came here to attend a one week training class for the company I work for. But I am now finished with the class and I am starting a one week European holiday.
Today, I took the train to Nurnburg, and had a great time touring a cathedral and a castle. (…well, except for the part where I didn’t get off the train when I should have and took an impromtu tour of the Nurnberg train yard. <grin>) I then walked all over the central part of town and got to sample the largest outdoor Christmas market in Germany called the KrisKringleMarkt. It goes on all through December and there were thousands of people out and about even though there was snow on the ground and the temperature was about 30 (F). I loved it.
Tomorrow is Sunday and I will be staying in the local area . My intention is to attend Mass in the morning at a church down the block that was built in 1629. According to their sign, they are having their annual advent music program. I will sit in the back and try and remain inconspicuous. But even though I don’t understand German, I expect it to be a great treat.
I am starting to believe that the Germans are the friendliest people in the world. I love it here.
On Monday, I leave for Rome.
I’m getting the Yorkie.
Greenwell, did you have any of the "glow wine" while there? I’ve been buying a couple of bottles of Gerstacker’s Nurnberger Markt Gluhwein every year for the past 3-4 years. Good stuff! However, my local store didn’t get any this year. I guess I’ll have to learn to make my own; it’s basically just mulled wine. Just that bottle label makes me really want to go there some year.Â
Was that spider glowing perhaps? Are you shooting webs out of your hands and have an irresistible urge to climb buildings???
What’s cookin? Well there’s a pot of Japanese curry cooling on the stove, with Japanese rice in the rice cooker. It’s the cooker I bought in Nipponbashi Osaka about 13 years ago; 100 volts but works fine on the 115 v here. I buy Koshihikari short grain rice grown in California and have never had a bad pot of rice using that cooker.
I just paged through the Conservapedia article on Barack Obama. It was like a weird funhouse universe where all the conservatives conform to the worst stereotypes propagated by extreme liberals. And everybody had a beard.
Choey,
Negative to all.Â
 But I LOVE Kirsten Dunst!
James H: Conservapedia? Boy that sounded promising until I read that article on Obama. OMFG. Real conservatives are a lot less irresponsible than that. They ought to call it Right Wing Funhouse-o-pedia.
Dean E.:
I know real conservatives are more responsible, and one of those conservatives is related to me by blood. Then again, the proprietors of Conservapedia would probably declare themselves the "real conservatives." Which doesn’t make them so, of course.
–James H
The definition of "conservative" in my view is one who exercises restraint and wants others to do the same, one who is deeply suspicious of radical change or radical rhetoric.
Was it Buckley who said conservatives "stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’"Â Another way of saying the same thing you did, actually.
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