Happy things - January Edition

Things that are making me happy today:

water.
avocado.
Gold Bond ^tm ultimate healing skin therapy cream.
my shell necklace:


the internet.
my foot.
coffee.
my Craig Ferguson mug.
the letter P. perpendicular, preposterous, periwinkle, portly, pie, prologue.
this picture wot my Pops took.
beta fish [i wants one!].
science.

What about you lot? What's making you smile today?

I gots a tattoo, y'all!

Well, you all know about Ina by now. What you may not have known, is how important Astrology was to her.

She was born on July 14th, and was therefor a Cancer. We used to have long evenings of pouring over her Astrology books, reading about our birthdays and marvelling at the descriptions of us.

She wrote poetry, too, and some of her goofier stuff is located here, which she hadn't updated it since 2004.

Anyway, when I was thinking of tattoos that I would like to get, Ines came to mind, and then the idea of a crab for Cancer. As I thought about it more, I realized that, yeah, Baltimore loves crabs, too, and I love Baltimore.

And so.


[Done at the Baltimore Tattoo Museum, by Josh Griffin.]

I love you, Ina. Now you are under my skin. <3

First Spam!

I got my first spam comment, y'all! HOW EXCITING.

And for a female urination device, no less! I HAVE ARRIVED.

Brownies!

I made these the other night, and then bragged about them on Twitter. My pal, Meghan, requested the recipe, so here we go!

Brownies Cockaigne [Slightly modified from the Joy of Cooking recipe.] - 30 brownies, but you'll probably eat the whole tray that night, anyway.

1/2 C butter
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 C white sugar
1 C brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 C flour

In a double-boiler, melt chocolate and butter. Let cool.

Beat eggs and salt until light in color and foamy. [I often do this by hand, and it is pretty rewarding if you are feeling the need to let off some steam. Otherwise, a mixer works just fine.] Continue beating and gradually add sugar and vanilla until well creamed.

With a few swift strokes, combine cooled chocolate mixture into the eggs and sugar by hand. Before uniformly colored, fold in 1 cup flour.

Pour batter into a greased and floured 9x13" pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Brownies are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out almost clean.

Notes: For a fudgier brownie, I like to use half white sugar and half brown sugar. And for a holiday kick, try mint extract instead of vanilla. Recipe works really well with Bob's Redmill TM gluten-free, all-purpose flour.

I keep baking chocolate on hand at all times for the express purpose of whipping up a batch of these at a moments notice. If you ever come over to my house for dinner, chances are, these are going to be for dessert.

dreams in review.

the following are transcripts of my recent dreams as e-mailed or chatted to various friends after they occurred.

5/24/09, as e-mailed to K.

so there was this crazy kind of sea monster that was terrorizing swimmers on some tropical beach. so we were part of this elite task force that dressed up like the monsters [by wrapping ourselves in seaweed from neck to legs and then wearing a weird coconut hat. I NEVER SAID THIS MADE SENSE] and swimming around, killing the monsters with crazy knives.

and then we were getting out of the water, and i was naked for some inexplicable reason, and jaime hyneman was off gathering everyone's towels up, and so i went over to get mine, but it got caught on his head and we fell over.

the end.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN.

7/26/09

R: morning chica
Me: i had really weird dreams last night
a sampling
R: oh?
Me: nina already had a baby a few days ago, and is now having a second
R: I'm sure she would be thrilled to hear about that one :)
Me: two: that i caught the baby, but couldn't put it on her belly because she was too far away on the bed
three: that she had the baby and i was feeding it cranberry juice
R: LOL
Me: four: that the priest who married my sister and brother left the priesthood so he could ask me out
R: ROFL
Me: five: that we were defending my grandmothers house from marauders, only they were really breaking in a few houses down.
six: i was crating lester in a window sill
R: like in a crate in a windowsill?
Me: no, like the window well of a basement window
R: huh
Me: i know
i only left him in there for a second
because even my dream self knew it was ridiculous
R: I love your subconscious so hard, even when it is weird.

11/4/09, as e-mailed to R and K.

i just woke up from a nap where I was dreaming that I was part of SG-1 [can you guess what i was watching before i fell asleep?] and there was a mission that was a little hazy, but i think we were swimming at some point and there were goa'ulds. Anyway, then we were eating lunch and i was piling all sorts of weird stuff on my tray and all I really wanted was pudding.

So. I'm going to make some pudding tonight.

11/23/09, as e-mailed to R.

last night i dreamed that I bought Cam a whole bunch of underwear [cotton boxer-briefs are cannon!] and t-shirts in super-girly colors. He was sweet about accepting them all, and then he noticed that I was wearing my M-9 [because i was totally on sg-1, duh] and he scolded me because we weren't on a mission.

I let him take it out of my holster [twss], and then we played catch in an alleyway behind my apartment building with a football. There may have been unnecessary tackling.

Then somehow he morphed into Jay Smooth, and he kept picking me up by my arm and leg and swinging me around in circles.

Bzuh? Totally posting that on my twitter to see if he responds. bahahahahaha

<3 happy monday!

12/15/09, as e-mailed to R.

last night, I dreamed that I went back in time to see my grandparents a year before my grandfather died and I accidentally let it slip that he'd be dead soon, and he just looked at me sadly and we went for a walk.

I remember hugging my grandmother and feeling like I was really tall and lumbering compared to her [which is accurate, because she was a wee slip of a thing.]

It was really. soothing, sort of. I was early to work, anyway.

There are millions more that I never wrote down, but babbled out to various people over the phone. Like the one where I was the leader of a band of survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse, and I was driving an SUV through a parade of Zombies playing brass instruments.

Or the one where I really had to pee, but couldn't find a bathroom that didn't have a group of people clustered around the toilet so I finally gave up and dropped trou in front of a bunch of strangers.

You know, the usual.