Happy November 30!
Foggy and raining here.
Do you love home-made mashed potatoes when they’re first made but hate how the soft, creamy texture that drove you to make them from scratch in the first place, is replaced by a dry, lumpy, unappealing texture when you reheat them? I’ve solved this problem…
The cause of it is not the storage or refrigeration; it is inadequate *preparation* for storage and refrigeration.
What you need to do is this:
While you’re serving the mashed potatoes, try to keep them as warm as you can. It’s okay if they’re not hot, they just should not be left to get cold yet. Then when you’re done eating, make some more hot milk and butter mixture like you would use to make more mashed potatoes (or, just reheat it if you had excess left over from when you made them originally). Now, using your mixer that’s still out, re-make your leftover mashed potatoes, adding the hot milk and butter mixture to again achieve the creamy texture that they originally had when you first served them. Mix in just a bit more milk and butter (1T to 3T depending on how much leftovers you have) to make them just a slight bit softer than you want them to be for eating. NOW store them in the refrigerator.
When you reheat them in the microwave and mix thoroughly, they will have that creamy, almost identical texture as if you had just now made them. I kid you not.
Happy Full Moon!
I don’t recall what its real name is but I call the November one the Love Moon.
Blue Moon is generally the second full moon in a calendar month (rare in November). Black Moon is the second new moon in a calendar month. I think the November one is traditionally the Beaver Moon but for me it is always the Love Moon.
The list I found from Jan-Dec is {Wolf, Snow, Worm, Pink, Flower, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Corn, Harvest, Beaver, and Cold} Moon, respectively.
If I were naming them, my first set of candidate names would be {Polar Bear, Snow, Precious, Zuni, Lightning, Diablo, Girlie, Leo, Chocolate, Magic, Love, and Blonde} Moon.
I was at the mall earlier, and saw a guy using a pushbroom, sweeping up pennies and algae into a pile where the water in the fountain used to be. I’d venture a guess that’s not within spec on the coin counting machine, but it was funny!
Also, some funny things my kids have said:
Jeremy didn’t want an alarm clock: “Alarm clocks distort me”
He used to refer to gibbous and full moons as a Loud Moon.
I fail to understand how “pop culture” writers can use the word “inimitable” (is this a contraction for in (un?) imitatable (sic) without the apostrophic contraction), a word that someone even as literate as me has to contextually bluff that I know it and hope for the best, and at the same time pervert the language to say “an historical” because people are too lazy-talking to put the accent on the hard ‘h’.
Getting that into the MoS, imho, is a political feat akin to a unanimous worldwide adoption of the Kyoto Convention. I wonder who {verb1, verb2, verb3, …} someone or who knew who to pull that off.
“An historical…” is an abomination to humankind. “An honor” and “a historical record” are different. More dumbing down of the language, like the lately-accepted interchangeability of the very different terms “I’m anxious to…” and “I’m… eager to…”! I don’t know where that manual that everyone is forced to use is printed, but I would venture a guess left coast, and it was an intentional attack on extraordinarily literate 80s graduates, just like the deletion of the last comma in a comma-delimited list (which, I’ve been told is called an “Oxford comma”). Every time I see that, it annoys me, 10 years in, 50 more to go. I’d like to recast the sentences that comprise their job descriptions.
I woke up feeling somewhat better and thinking, like many people have, that schools should teach a bunch of essential skills that everyone should know. Many of these things are normally taught by parents, which I presume is the ungiven reason for its absence in the curriculum.
However, I’d like to point out that not everyone has their parents, and even fewer people have good ones. And even the good ones can’t always know everything that belongs in this list.
I’ve been thinking for a long time how odd it is that in middle school, everyone was taught how to use a sewing machine, even though I only know one person who even owns a sewing machine. 40 years later, they’re still teaching this to my kids.
So, in this evolving post, I’m going to collect some things in one place that I think would be more valuable and better investment of time.
The first item that came to mind to commit to the list is “When to go to the doctor.”
You should try to know where your food comes from, and how to shop for groceries, to look at expiration dates, to read labels, about cooking safety, to buy locally when you can.
How to mail things. Most people waste so much money because they don’t know how to mail things. Everyone should know what a letter, a large envelope, and a package is, and what options there are to mail packages (including the online-only options). Learn how to use the post office website and the paypal Multi-order shipping tool to save money.
People do not evaluate risk well. It’s important to try to do a better evaluation of risk based on actual facts. For example, just because you are personally in control of your car does not mean it’s safer to drive than to fly.
Don’t ever use your teeth as a tool like to strip wire. You need them and they will crack later in your life if you do this.
Copyright law. Everyone should have a basic understanding of copyright, and who owns what. Unless you are paid to do it, or you relinquish your rights, when you create something, you own it. I’ll elaborate on this later.
If you’re eating something that’s too hot, don’t inhale to cool it off. Exhale only, or you could end up with the food stuck in your throat and choke to death.
Sometimes stores will sell things in a big package that costs more than two smaller ones. Look for the latest expiration date on anything that you buy.
I think that sex education in schools should be augmented with dating and relationship ed. For example, people who are inexperienced at relationships but who are rejected will typically internalize that there is something wrong with them. Rejection is simply a fact with no message.
Learn how to protect yourself from spam and spoof emails. Don’t click on links that say you “won” something. They harvest your email address and then spam you forever. Logan’s hotmail got compromised this way, and the next day he had 2000 spams and had to permanently set it to Exclusive mode.
Before cashing personal checks, call the issuing bank and ask them to confirm that the funds are in the account. Otherwise you may end up paying a hefty bounced check fee — for a check you didn’t even write. Ruint.
Well, that explains all the back pain I’ve been having!
My Valtrex prescription ended up only being $118 (instead of $190 they misquoted on the phone). Walmart was about $80 cheaper. I have no idea how CVS and Rite Aid can remain in business. Unbelievable.
Those fuckers are huge horse pills, I hate that. They said a common side effect is dizziness and I have a little of it but not too bad. Between only getting 3 hours of sleep last night (bed very late, up very early, yuck) and cooking dinner from 4:30 until 7:45 tonight, I’m fried.
But dinner was good, the kids loved it. When I was cooking, I made a game of giving them the Myers-Briggs test. When I was working at QI, I had a management course and they had a test where you get 15 sets of 4 words and have to choose one. Many of the words were not easy words, so I had to define them. So they learned about 25 new vocabulary words, learned about their personalities and the differences between us, and had fun for an hour and a half because it was a game!
It was hard though, having no sleep today and cooking for 3 hours, my back has been hurting but at least now I have an explanation. Some people have very severe pain, I just have light pain (most of the time) and bad itching. I have itchy spots on other parts of my body but they so far are not bad and usually short-lived before moving on (usually to a new location), not any worse than how my skin usually is. I hope it isn’t too late starting the meds because I’d hate to spend $118 for nothing. It feels very strange, like a sunburn on my lower back, itching around my waistband from my sides to just barely onto the front of my body. and if it’s itchy and you scratch or touch it, it usually hurts immediately, but not always, it’s unpredictable. I had a flash of pain that felt like I got stabbed in the back with an ice pick, but it only lasted the duration of a camera flash. And you feel like heat and movement, like there are tiny worms in there sometimes but not always. It’s constantly both itchy and hurting a little bit. The back pain is annoying, like I strained it, but I haven’t needed to take anything for it. I hope it doesn’t get much worse. I have spots on my body that if I press on them, feels like a bruise. It’s very strange. I don’t like it, but it is somewhat interesting. It feels a little bit like the body that I am inhabiting is not the same one all the time. It’s as different sometimes as the difference between what your body feels like when you are drunk compared to sober. It’s not very attractive to look at, so I won’t be finding any playmates in the near future LOL
My doctor was surprised that I got it so young. They usually do not vaccinate for this until you’re 50. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait that long.
I got three hours sleep today.
I forgot to mention yesterday that I had to appear for the dreaded drivers license renewal at the PA “Motor Vehicle Services Center”, which is closed Mondays and closes every day at 4:15pm. Isn’t that convenient for people that work.
The four highlights of my experience were:
I was not amused with my half hour wasted, but he was a commercial licensee and needed to recertify. They drove 45 minutes and had been waiting for six hours. Mark my words: One day, someone will go DMV and replace an expression.
The anti-highlights were the two hundred people there who did not speak a word of English, one of them with a cute little baby girl who desperately needed not only a diaper change, but a parent change. Isn’t the definition of ultimate failure as a parent, to impose upon the most important thing to ever exist in your life, such a disadvantage as not speaking the predominant language of the country in which you live?
I’ve been talking to a Blondie fan in Brazil who learned English because of Blondie, so she could meet other fans and communicate and have more personal choices. She’s more literate in English than most of the people I’ve encountered in waiting rooms in the last three years. Now there’s someone I respect. No wonder the economy is in the toilet.
Back to today:
At the traffic light in Kenhorst, I finally parted company with a 40-in-a-45-zone driver clogging a train of cars.
Entering the left turn lane and looking through aligned windows, I had the privilege of discovering the source of the impaired driving:
She had a cigarette in her left hand, and was texting with her right hand on a cell phone held midway between eyes and windshield.
Left palm on the wheel, right hand on the keyboard, no eyes on the road. WTF? Prison is my recommendation.
And prison for everyone who thinks that’s not more impaired than a .07 BAC, which is now just shy of a felony. The only reason it isn’t is it generates more cash per year than could be stuffed into the volume of my house.
My skin is disintegrating from my infection of no-longer-dormant chicken pox virus that I had 39 or 40 years ago. eeeek!
I wondered for 30 years what that song is about. I was writing on my friend Hayley’s facebook page and listening to music when it hit me. Here are my words, in original order, since I was writing when it happened:
I set my hand to writing you, and I’m scared to death I’m going to freak you out or that your fan mail will get lost on its way.
Dragonfly is parked outside. Do you get in?
Hover high level off. The time space tactics saved us then.
Grande Trex fans throughout the universe are well informed on the risks pilots take in entering this race.
We have retained as an added feature of daring, thrills, and excitement for this race, a feature, which I’m sure you’re going to like: musical override lasting three and a half hours…
…
The postulate for mischance runs high but not as high as the tension and competitive spirit right here, and all over the galaxy!
XXXX amazing
(blk) is having a moment of Blondie supernatural inspiration! !!! no words
The line in Angels on the Balcony: “The door swings open and it’s cold outside” which is one of my favorites of *anything* **ever**…
It’s a coincidence (spoken like the twilight zone “It’s a Cookbook!”)
I finally understand it, after 30 years!!! :: Everyone who matters to you, the door opens; they all come into your life when it’s cold!! October, November, December!!!
BLK supernovas!
5:09am 11/3/10
the season may vary but not everyone like me has such an uneven distribution, where are all these Cancers from?!
I want to do an online chat with Destri about his writing, it’ll never happen but I like Dreaming