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A Twisted Day In The Life Of...
Anenigma
Danielle
Geek In Black
Glibbertysmidgeon
Go Fug Yourself
The Invincible Revenge Of Mr. Brick
The Marj Memoirs
Mark Pickerel
Waiter Rant
Warren Ellis
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I know, i haven't posted photos of the tasting of the cake, but let me assure you that it tastes as wonderful as it looks.
I have been sick for the last three days. At 7:00 last night my mom brought me a box of Puffs Plus tissues. It's 2:50 P.M. right now, and i have used a third of that box of tissues. And i didn't need any for the 9 hours that i was sleeping. Puffs Plus are the kind that have lotion in them, but my poor nose is still sore and red.
I hadn't been sick in three years, but I think i ruined my health karma over Christmas since this is the second cold i've had in three months. Kevin's mom had a cold, and i mentioned that people with MS are thought to be less suceptible to common bugs like colds and the flu, since MS is thought to be caused by an over-active immune system. Not a week later i was miserable and stuffed up. It only lasted three days, and i think i might kick this one today, so at least they don't linger as long as they used to. I say that with my fingers crossed.
My "survival kit".
I've spent the last couple of days updating the look of this blog. I liked the feel of the old template, but it was just one of Blogger's 30 that they offer. If i want people to come back and keep reading, it should be memorable and a little more unique. I downloaded this template off of Blogskins.com. If you are diligent and really search, you should be able to find something that suits you and your needs. It's a bit frustrating, though, as most of them seem to have been made by 13-year-old Japanese girls. I sifted through various skins for a long time trying to find something that wasn't too cutesy or cluttered. I think this one has a clean, relaxing feel.
In addition to the new template, i signed up for Audioblogger so i can add little sound clips and commentary to give my entries a more personal feel. If you have access to free or cheap long distance, i suggest checking it out.
I also added links to the left sidebar, attempting to increase my traffic. I submitted my blog to Popdex, Daypop, and Blogdex, which are all search engines that crawl weblogs and news sites. I also signed up for SimpleAds, little text-based ads that show up on other SimpleAds users' blogs. In exchange, you host two ads on your own blog. They're very unobtrusive, and kind of neat, but for some reason they aren't showing up in my sidebar. I'll work on figuring it out, but in the meantime, go sign up for your own! If you click my sitemeter at the bottom of the sidebar, you can track my traffic and see for yourself if it increases or not.
Comments are always welcome!
** EDIT **
The SimpleAds did not work out as well as i would have liked. The code was interfering with my template and just making everything run slower. I deleted the code and my account. I hope other people have better luck with it, it's really a neat idea.
Recipe: Angel Food Cake
If you can, i highly recommend watching the corresponding episode of "Good Eats", entitled "Let Them Eat Foam". Angel food cakes can be tricky, but Alton Brown does a great job of explaining why each ingredient is essential, and how the angel food cake is built. I'm a visual learner, so watching an expert tackle it first made me a lot more confident!
I've made this recipe three times before. Twice with vanilla extract, and once with imitation strawberry extract. This time i'm using a combination of imitation strawberry and banana extracts.
The first time i tried my hand at this, it came out PERFECTLY. The second and third times were not as impressive. I agonized over the recipe for awhile and decided that i must not have been putting enough of the dry ingredients in the egg batter (The recipe is a little vague about the dry ingredients. Fold most of the flour, sugar, and salt mixture into the batter.), as i'm quite good at whipping up medium peaks.
I decided to give this recipe one more shot, and if i fail this time, i'll find another angel food cake recipe.
The second step in the recipe requires whipping the egg whites, warm water, cream of tartar, sugar, and extract to medium peaks. When the egg whites start to stiffen up and can hold a little bit of shape, and you can see tracers following the beaters, you know you're close. This is what medium peaks look like. Sorry for the dark photo.
Another sign that the batter is the right consistency. When you spoon it into the pan it shouldn't level out. If it keeps its form, it's probably right. To level it out before baking, just put the pan on a flat surface with your hands at 9:00 and 3:00 on the edges, and quickly (but gently!) swish the pan back and forth 90 degrees or so. Pretend you're a DJ and you're scratching records on a turntable. I hope that's an alright explanation.
When you're baking an angel food cake, it's important to treat it very delicately. In effect, the batter is nothing more than a catacombs of egg whites, air, and sugar, with the flour mixed in to give it the texture of a cake. So, if you handle it too roughly, you'll break the bubbles and the cake will fall flat. This means no jumping around in the kitchen at any point between separating the eggs and serving the cake!
It's also very important to let the cake cool upside-down for at least an hour before removing it from the pan. Those bubbles need the stability of that center spike for awhile after you take it from the oven.
The moment of truth. It's time to take it out of the pan. It didn't fall in while it was cooling, so that's a good sign! Since you don't grease an angel food cake pan, slice between the pan and the cake with a sharp knife (i use a serrated bread kife). Separate the cake from the bottom section of the 2-part pan the same way.
Gorgeous! I'm going to let it cool overnight before slicing into it, but if it tastes half as good as it looks i will consider it a success!
I'll post photos of the tasting in the morning. And hopefully there will be an audio clip to add to this soon!
My computer was down for a week. I bought it used a year ago and it came with a bunch of miscellaneous software, including Mac OS X Panther Update discs. After accumulating a bunch of crap for the last year my computer was dragging pretty badly, and a friend of mine who works for Apple's tech support recommended reformatting at least once a year. He also assured me that the Update discs would be fine for the reformat.
After wiping my hard drive, i discovered that this was not the case.
Luckily, i have a friend who bought Panther last year and she let me borrow her install CDs. They were at her mom's house, so i had to wait a little while, but the week that i spent without a computer wasn't as painful as i figured it would be. Now i'm just working on resetting all of my preferences and such.
Clinique Pore Minimizer Instant Perfector
I bid on two full-size tubes of this on eBay, plus two sample tubes of their Superbalm lip balm (The Superbalm is also wonderful. I have it in clear/plain, but it also comes in tints and flavors like raspberry). There was a sample of the Pore Minimizer Refining Lotion with all of the Clinique stuff that i got from Kevin's mom and dad for Christmas, and i really liked it. I thought this was the same, but it's not. It's better.
It's tinted, which is excellent because i don't always want to wear a full face of makeup when i go to the grocery store, or the library, etc., but i would like to look a bit more polished than i do with a bare face.
I don't have freakishly large pores, but every girl dreams of having skin that looks as unblemished as porcelain. Just a tiny bit of this stuff makes my complexion flawless. It's enough to even out some of the pink tones in my skin, and smooths it out more than i figured it would. It's really light and makes my skin feel velvety-soft, and over time it helps the walls of your pores to become more elastic so they look smaller and more refined.
I don't think i can say enough good things about this product. GO BUY IT!!
No makeup, just the pore minimizer.
Still no makeup! But i am wearing the Superbalm.
The Straight Dope: Do some tumors contain the beginnings of a baby?
Um. eeeeek! seriously. read that. it's pretty creepy what the human body will do to itself.
In the last 24 hours i've experienced an enormous burst of productivity. In addition to cleaning off my computer desk in the wee hours of the morning and thus letting a little sunshine into my work space (there was a big, broken television blocking the window), i did laundry, swept the floor, and this morning i baked.
I went to bed around 5:00 A.M., thinking i was tired.. But after lying in bed for awhile, reading and crocheting and reading some more, i just couldn't sleep. I got up and goofed around on the internet for awhile, copying recipes from www.foodnetwork.com. After a couple hours of being lazy, i cleaned up some dishes, cleared a space on the counter, and started chopping apples and walnuts, whisking eggs with brown sugar, and scooping the batter into lightly-greased muffin tins. For all of my hard work, i was rewarded with 12 lovely, delicious Apple-Nut Muffins with Streusel Topping.
I highly recommend this recipe. It was quick, very easy, and with the exception of buttermilk, i already had everything in the house. I fixed the buttermilk situation by substituting fat free French Vanilla yogurt for the buttermilk and the melted butter. I also put 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour in the batter, and only 1 cup of all-purpose flour.
Glibbertysmidgeon � The Lucky People
My ex-boyfriend's wife wrote this essay. It reminds me of something i might have written before I got boring and stopped having anything to say.
Chinar's muse for the day...
Today's post is about an "Anti-Valentine's Day" bash. They seem to be popular these days. I remember when i threw one in high school, and only single people were allowed to attend, and the dress code was black-only.
[hotter amelia] everyone cheats on me
[hotter amelia] they say they love me .. then leave me for the prettier ones
[erynthesmitten] I never cheated on you with someone prettier, amelia.
[erynthesmitten] Only someone richer.
[hotter amelia] so you leave me for the uglies? oh .. that helps my self esteem
[erynthesmitten] Aww, amelia.. You're ALWAYS the most beautiful. Sometimes i just need someone to buy me a car. A Benz. With heated seats and leather interior.. mmmm..
meish dot org :: be my anti-valentine
Right now i am sitting at the coffee bar i mentioned in a previous post. Probably the one about me being a slave to my television. I'm drinking a strawberry cremosa and marveling at how cool it is to be able to use the internet without a cable hooked into the side of my trusty iBook.
And now, i think i will pirate some music while i type the rest of this entry.
My fucking phone company pisses me off sometimes.
When i had my big exacerbation this summer and wasn't working, i couldn't pay my phone bill. So they shut it off and it just kept racking up charges, which is what i expected. After a few months i got a bill that said, "We waived $160 of your phone bill! Pay us $35 and we'll turn it back on!" This, i was not expecting.
I called them and asked them what the catch was. They said there was no catch, they just weren't going to charge me for usage for months my phone had been disconnected. Pay the $35, we'll turn your phone back on. That's it.
So, i paid them $35 and they turned it back on. But, within two weeks, they shut it off again because when the new billing cycle hit they had charged me to reactivate everything on my phone. So my monthly bill was twice the normal amount (the normal amount being $70), and if i go over $125 they shut me off until i pay enough to get back under $125.
I've been struggling to get caught up since Christmas, and have been sending them $50 a week for the last month. You would think that would get me squared away.
Last night i called to get the balance on my account. The automated system told me it was $64, that my last $50 had been received on the 9th, but that new charges from the last 48 hours may not have been posted yet. I thought, "Sweet! I haven't made any long distance phone calls or downloaded anything.. So no new charges. And i just sent them another $60, so i'm in the clear until next month."
I just tried to make a call and phone's been shut off. When i called them to ask why, i was told that my current bill is $134.
Now, the billing cycle ends on the 7th day of every month. In the past they have always updated my bill on the 8th, so if my bill for the month is over $125 that's when it gets shut off. I'd been waiting for the text message telling me that my phone was going to be shut off, but i didn't get it on the 8th, the 9th, or even the 10th, so i thought i was ok. No such fucking luck.
The $60 i mailed yesterday will take me down to $74 when they get it, so my phone should be back on by Wendesday of next week. If i send them the remaining $74 on Tuesday when i get my unemployment check, i'll be caught up. But that means i'll have to go another week without TV and i'll be deprived of bidding on Clinique skin-care products on eBay. :(
I made arrangements today to pay off the remainder of my medical bills from this summer. The hospital waived the fees for my MRI and my emergency room visits since i'm a broke-ass mofo, my neurologist never billed me (probably to ease his conscience about never returning my calls after diagnosing me and putting me on Prednisone), and i highly suspect that my GP didn't charge me the full amount for the two visits i made in July and October. The MRI alone would have cost me $2,000.00.
I think i'm getting off pretty easy only having to pay the $284.00 bill from the radiologist who read my MRI, and the $106.00 in accumulated bills from two visits to my GP (one of which included lab work). After reading so many threads on the MS boards i post on, i'm very thankful that (for whatever reason) i've managed to come in contact with medical professionals who seem to understand that the average uninsured person cannot afford to pay the same prices that insurance companies pay.
I am going to use my $666 (heh heh) tax return to pay all of this off, and will still have a couple hundred left to spend on something else. I'd like to spend it on something ridiculously frivolous for myself, but i'll probably either give it to my mom to try and get her debt paid off so we don't lose the house, or i'll spend it on Kevin's birthday present. I spoil that guy too much.
Considering i'm fat, uneducated, and in poor health. But, hey, at least i'm honest!
I am worth $1,930,066.00 on HumanForSale.com
The problem might just be that i haven't been sleeping well and the fatigue is getting to me, but all day long i've been mis-reading stuff. Now, it's not uncommon for me to type a word and have it come out jumbled, or think of a word i want to type and have it come out something completely different.. Or even to SAY something completely different from what i mean (tonight, having put a sandwich aside for her to eat when she got home, i called my mom at work and told her not to go out after dinner because i had work for her..), but i am usually pretty good about comprehending what i'm seeing.
I was baking an angel food cake just a couple hours ago (which i've done several times, and mostly just use the recipe for amounts.. i'm pretty good about remembering the process pretty well without it), and decided it would be a good idea to read over the directions before starting, since my head has felt pretty muddled today. After reading them very carefully i proceeded to put the cream of tartar in with the dry ingredients, instead of with the egg whites and liquid ingredients like you're supposed to. When i realized what i had done, i put it in with the liquids too, because Alton Brown explained how important it is to use the cream of tartar to balance the pH of the egg mixture.. And so i ended up with twice as much as i needed. AND THEN i put the sugar in the egg whites too soon.
And i could have sworn that when i read the recipe before starting, that was what it had said to do.
The cake is still cooling so i don't know how badly i fucked it up.
If i'm lucky, it might turn out alright. I hope so. I made some awesome strawberry-blueberry cream cheese icing for it.
Our TV is kaput. When i got back from BC almost a month ago, the TV was kaput.
Nothing in this house is ever new.. My mom figures that if she can get a used washing machine for $100, why should she spend $500 on a new one? Same goes with televisions. We've probably gone through four or five $20 garage-sale TVs in recent years.
I live in a very small town where there is absolutely nothing to do. Although, i did make a discovery today. More on that later. Back to televisions. Without TV, i spend most of my spare time online for lack of anything better to do. Sometimes i read, but it's not often that i have reading material that keeps my interest. And i cook and bake. But not enough to keep me busy all the time. So, the obvious answer to my boredom is, "buy a new television".
I went out with my sister A, who is in town for a couple days, and we bought prenatal vitamins (she's due in July), and looked at TVs at the local Radio Shack. Being that i live in a small town, the selection at the Radio Shack was pretty terrible. There were two options under $100, and they were 13" and 10". The other two options were a 20" Magnavox for $129, and a 27" JVC for $229.
I would go with the quality television if i thought it actually mattered. Kevin and i are planning on moving in together eventually, and he already has a 27" JVC and wants to get a big-ass flat-screen TV. So if i bought the quality TV, we would really have no use for it and i would probably leave it here. Looks like i'm going with the "high-quality crap" 20" Magnavox.
So, the other interesting thing.. The Radio Shack here is in what used to be a bar. Rather than tear out the bar, and the stools, and refinish the surrounding area, they turned it into a neat little coffee bar with comfy couches. I made a fool of myself finding out this information, but i also determined that they have wireless internet access. And if you bring your own computer and buy a coffee, you can sit and use their wireless signal all day long.
Just the other day i was talking to Jen on MSN, and she was using her laptop at a local cafe that offered free wireless internet. I commented that i wished there were somewhere like that here, and viola, there it is. Of course, Joe Read's is open until 11:00, and Radio Shack is only open until 6:00 or so. But still, it will greatly enhance my music-pirating abilities. Yay for advancing technology!
[erynthemitten] i actually have a lot more toys than just those two, but the rest of them are retired.
[AMAZONIA] you retire them .. do you have a little ceremony ? do they get a pension for work well done
[erynthemitten] sometimes i will buy them a stale sheet cake with their names misspelled and put it in the conference room with some deflating balloons and yesterday's cold coffee.
[erynthemitten] you know, make sure they know how much i've appreciated their service.
[[Kiss me there]]
I've been posting on diaryland for three or four years, and i'm a loyal person so i feel a little weird abandoning my old weblog after so long. I'll still hold on to the account, and maybe even post on occasion, but this blog will be easier and more convenient to update.
maybe the new space will inspire me to write more. Oh, and there will be no expectations. When i first started posting on diaryland a few years ago, i was one funny chick. now i'm just boring. here i can be boring and nobody will care. well, i won't lose any readers for it anyway.
I feel like it's the end of an era..
This is my awesome, wonderful boyfriend, Kevin. Awww, Kevin!
This is also Kevin. Awww, Kevin!
