"Nope, it's okay. It's like a decoration on my antlers."

There seems to be some sort of bet involved. Indeed.

For years, I've wanted to get a set of really good cooking pots. I had my eye on Paderno, and I do have one Paderno pot and it is a DELIGHT to cook in, but it's so expensive, I didn't think I'd get it any time soon. We had to go to Canadian Tire today because one of the headlights on the car burned out, and it's cheaper to replace it right away than risk having to pay a ticket, and they had Paderno on 71% off! A $700 set down to $200! (To put this in perspective, my Paderno Dutch oven cost me $113 after tax, on sale.) Come on! That's practically a burning bush right there!

I haz them! (Through shameless use of puppy eyes, and the advice of a random stranger, I even get to take part of the cost out of the household expenses.) So SHINY! *huggles pots*

Just a reminder to everyone to keep in mind the age of certain inventions.

A 1967 Impala would not have airbags. Yes, I realize that it was completely rebuilt at one point, but given the character of the person who rebuilt it I doubt it was modernized.

So, if you are in a collision, or involved in an abrupt stop, in said Impala, you will not wind up with a facefull of airbag. You will wind up with a facefull of steering wheel, dashboard or seat back, some bruising, and quite possibly a concussion of some degree depending on what you hit.

Dear Humanity,

I would very much like to have faith in you - in your ability to think, to determine cause-and-effect, to do your damn jobs, to just in general NOT SUCK. I would really, but...you make it really damned hard like 99.99-to-the-infinite percent of the time. Hopefully in my next turn 'round the reincarnation spiral, I'll wind up in a better position to smack some sense into you. Dammit.

Upside the head,

Seryan

I attempted to make candied ginger today. The best description of the end result was FUBAR. Apparently I am not to be trusted with anything involving sugar syrup because I forget how easy it burns, get bored, and wander away. I should do what I do with lemon pie filling and bring a book to read while I stir.

The house smelled REALLY good up until the burning, anyway. :(

And I have just realized that if I latch the door to my office, I cannot open it from the inside. Fortunately, I have gotten myself stuck in here with a screwdriver set. Let's see if I can take the doorknob off and save myself yelling for help that will never let me live it down.

Oddly, this bothers me less than fubaring the ginger.

Edit: SUCCESS!

All my coworkers are wearing black shirts today. Freaky.

Explain to me, LiveJournal, why you think I need to see stroller ads? Is it just me, or has baby stuff become more aggressively marketed since the economy tried to make it's little handbasket voyage?

Edit: Hahaha, brilliant: http://notalwaysright.com/fast-food-for-fast-thinkers/3204

When you can find

Receipts
Pay stubs
Menus
Coupons
More receipts
Wallet
The Wall
The Division Bell
Hemispheres
Hair elastics
Hair clips
Eight billion dead batteries
Remains of a packet of live batteries (yes I recycle them! They're jsut for when I forget to charge the rechargables!)
Hairbrush
Mini first-aid kit
Bubbles from a friend's wedding five years and three purses ago (wtf?)
Various other sundries necessary to life

But not the lip balm you used THAT MORNING it may just be time to clean out your purse.

So Long, Guy Who Refused to Marry Interracial Couple - Lowering the Bar

Yup, he's resigned. Good riddance.

I wrote this for the 2009 AU/Fusion Challenge over on deancastiel, and it is ALL intravox's fault for showing me the prompt list.

Minor spoilers from Supernatural Seasons 4/5. It's AU, so nothing from the show really is referenced except the names of the characters.

Title: Once Around the Block
Author: seryan
Rating: PG
Genre: AU/AR (AU: Castiel is a socially awkward computer programmer who is working on artificial intelligence, Dean is one of his AI's that takes on a mind of its own.)
Word Count: 1614
Summary: Approximately 25 years in the future, a shy artificial intelligence programmer named Castiel designs an AI to run his computerized house and serve as a companion, housekeeper, and occasional sounding-board. The results aren't quite what he expects.
Author's Notes: Thank you to intravox for beta-ing, catching where I'd messed up 'it's' and 'its', and correcting my tenses. Of course, it's also her fault for getting me into this... Also, I may love the Impala just a little too much.

( Castiel had wondered about five minutes after the AI came online if it had been a mistake. )

Consumer's Suit: I Was Duped by the Loops Made of Froot - Lowering the Bar

That sound you hear? Is me banging my head softly, oh so softly, on my desk.

It's become more of a symbolic gesture, really...although I did once actually bang my head on a desk in high school. It was the only way to get someone to shut up and listen.

I slightly burnt the bottom of the pickles when I was cooking them. Some of the veggies are slightly scorched, but I canned them anyway. :/ We'll see. I got 3L of pickles out of the deal - I didn't want to make a big recipe for a first try. I'm debating whether to make big lots of soup and chili and can those as well, or wait to see if what I did today turns out alright. (Ie., is not filled with botulism, even though I boiled and sterilized everything.) Definitely going to buy a pressure canner at some point, though.

I am going to attempt canning. We had a lot of cucumbers this year, and I love mustard pickles. Of course, I've never actually canned anything before, but fortunately the recipe is fairly clear (and I suspect the one my grandparents used) and a more experienced relative is only a panicked phone call away.

I wanted to make wine from the grapes, but cannot afford the supplies. I used to have a carboy, but it got left behind when I moved from Halifax. So I would need new equipment. Ah well, perhaps next year.

I finally got around (yes, I'm lazy) to creating an herb garden. The herbs in question I got from places like Canadian Tire and Home Depot at the please-god-take-our-stock-pleaseplease end of the season, so they're either free, or cost less than a dollar. They're also perennials, so either my lateness won't matter, or I'll have a ready-made bed for planting on time in the spring. They've been doing just fine in their pots on my back step, so we'll see. I took the lazy way out, and just covered a section of grass with newspaper, layered some compost on top, and spread topsoil over the rest. Apparently it worked for a coworker.

Oldest hominid skeleton found, pushes back history of humankind a million years - Yahoo! Canada News

From the article:

Some details about Ardi in the collection of papers:

-Ardi was found in Ethiopia's Afar Rift, where many fossils of ancient plants and animals have been discovered. Findings near the skeleton indicate that at the time it was a wooded environment. Fossils of 29 species of birds and 20 species of small mammals were found at the site.

-Geologist Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to use volcanic layers above and below the fossil to date it to 4.4 million years ago.

-Ardi's upper canine teeth are more like the stubby ones of modern humans than the long, sharp, pointed ones of male chimpanzees and most other primates. An analysis of the tooth enamel suggests a diverse diet, including fruit and other woodland-based foods such as nuts and leaves.

-Paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo reported that Ardi's face had a projecting muzzle, giving her an ape-like appearance. But it didn't thrust forward quite as much as the lower faces of modern African apes do. Some features of her skull, such as the ridge above the eye socket, are quite different from those of chimpanzees. The details of the bottom of the skull, where nerves and blood vessels enter the brain, indicate that Ardi's brain was positioned in a way similar to modern humans, possibly suggesting that the hominid brain may have been already poised to expand areas involving aspects of visual and spatial perception.

-Ardi's hand and wrist were a mix of primitive traits and a few new ones, but they don't include the hallmark traits of the modern tree-hanging, knuckle-walking chimps and gorillas. She had relatively short palms and fingers which were flexible, allowing her to support her body weight on her palms while moving along tree branches, but she had to be a careful climber because she lacked the anatomical features that allow modern-day African apes to swing, hang and easily move through the trees.

-The pelvis and hip show the gluteal muscles were positioned so she could walk upright.

-Her feet were rigid enough for walking but still had a grasping big toe for use in climbing.

The Way the Future Blogs, an online memoir by science fiction writer Frederik Pohl » Blog Archive » Some Feedback. Finally

Baen Books is going to reissue <u>The Way the Future Was</u>! This is great!

I am such a nerd!

If you ever wind up with hot pepper oil burning your skin, take a painkiller, wash your hands thoroughly, then apply hydrocortisone creme. Wash your hands again after half an hour, and reapply the creme. The burning will go away. I may have learned this from the Internet, but it works. (Yes, I know you shouldn't take medical advice from the intertubes, but I'd rather do that than call the clinic and say "Um, I was stupid, and...", especially if I don't have alcohol to blame it on.)

Now, let us never do that again.

Just for fun, because I am self-banished to the upstairs to avoid spoilers as Steve plays through ODST, make up the most RANDOM way we could possibly meet, and leave it in a comment.

When people tell you to wear gloves while handling fresh hot peppers (picked yesterday! I grew them myself!) they aren't kidding. It burns, and it doesn't stop burning, either. Ow! Gives your food a real kick though, I will say that.

It was finally not windy enough today that I could spray my lilac bushes for powdery mildew. The leaves and stems of the zuchhini plants were similarly affected, but apparently zucchini is too delicate to have sulfur spritzed all over it, so I had to cut away most of the plants. Oddly, those are the only two things in the yard that seem affected.

My grapes are turning purple, and almost ready to pick. Does anyone have a good homemade wine recipe they'd like to share? The ones I find online are either made from juice, or a tad too confusing for me to follow. While I have made wine before, it was from dandelions, not grapes, and I seem to recall it being fairly simple.

One of the tomatoes has begun to ripen. Finally!

Something bolluxed up the wheel of the grocery cart I was using tonight. Upon inspection, it turned out to be a small piece of Lego, of a color Steve has been collecting. MOST RANDOM GROCERY TRIP EVER!

Today I copy-pasted some text from a PDF, and in true PDF fashion, some of it got screwed up. In fact, it got screwed up in such a manner that if you read it to yourself in just the right mind-frame, you'd sound like a Dalek.

So I did. In my head, but I did.

Steve: Hey, if you're going upstairs, can you get me my hat?
Me: Sure. Your +4 Hat of Lawnmowing?
Steve: No, my +10 Against the Day Star. It's my Photonic Inhibitor Helm.
Me: *tosses him the hat* Inhibit those photons! That'll learn 'em!

Oh god, what a long week. I blame the full moon.

I made completely the right career decision in not being a secretary, btw. I can feel my blood pressure spike every time the phone rings. *sigh* There are days I am really tempted to break my own rule about not writing about Job online.