I meant to post this a while ago

So, this is a little out of date and a little late. But hopefully you'll forgive me.

I've decided that McCain needs to watch his back. Not because Obama has a slight lead in the polls, but because if he (McCain) wins, he'll die from poison in his food within three months of taking office.

This, I ascertained from the way Palin talks.

For example:

She's started reffering to the republican ticket as the "Palin and McCain Administration."

Plus, didn't she call McCain her 'running mate' a few weeks ago when the VP isn't supposed to call the president 'running mate'?

and there's the whole thing of her being a 72-year-old's heartbeat away from the presidency.

Debate vs. Economy

I still don't get why McCain wants to postpone the debate.

I mean I understand that he's trying to show that he's in touch with America and caring about what they care about and trying to be all sensitive and whatnot.

But I still don't get why the debate (which takes maybe 4 hours of time during the night when congress isn't even in session) needs to be postponed.

Heroes

So, for those of you that know me, You know that I LOVE Heroes. (okay, I know, I really LOVE a lot of shows. No. Really. A Lot)

Okay, the 2nd season kinda sucked, and I wasn't thrilled with Maya and whats-his-name. But I never hated Nikki or Molly (Shawn and Jamie hated both those characters with a fiery passion usually only reserved for the government....though I guess the last two seasons made it seem like Nikki's superpower was schizophrenia and Molly could easily be replaced with an iPhone with GPS locator).

That being said...Why the hell are they bringing everyone back to life? If Linderman (though he probably really is dead...in body at least) and Nikki came back, does this mean we should expect to see DL again since he wasn't killed by Sylar? Also, I was kinda sad that they dispelled with the whole "I want your BRAIIIINNNNNNSSSSS" thing. It was fun speculating on if Sylar was just screwed up or if he was over the edge ala Hannibal Lector in Hannibal.

All this is a REALLY long way to get around to the fact that Television Without Pity now has the HRG files--a blog written by Jack Coleman (aka Noah Bennett).

It's pretty awesome.

Tricky Dick

Judge Orders Cheney to Preserve Records.

Just the fact that he had to be told "you can't get rid of any records during your time as Vice President" pretty much means that there's something he wants destroyed. Which isn't good.

Besides, if I work for the government and there isn't any right to privacy for anything I do while at work, then there shouldn't be any right to privacy for the VP or the President for what they do in regards to the US.

Birthday Parties

So...

We're going to a birthday party for a 2-year-old. I don't know what to get a 2-year-old girl.

Sigh...

So, if you need us, we'll be the weird people hanging out at the Toys R Us without kids obsessively asking people what they would get for a 2-year-old girl.

On a side note, while perusing the Toys R Us website, I came upon these toys called "furberries" They are exactly like Popples, only apparently motorized and scented because you push a button to get the stuffed animal to come out. [old lady voice] Why, back in MY day we had no such thing as motorized stuffed animals and we had to pull the pouch over the animals instead of pushing some new fangled button!" [/old lady voice]

Now, if only I could put him to work

My cat is crazy.

Let me explain the reason for his mental retardation: Back when he was a kitten (about 12 weeks old), he was outside with his mom and brother. Something spooked him and so came running along the deck and turned to run into the house and, of course, bounced off the glass sliding door. He looked at the door like it was some magical force-field. He then ran to the back of the deck, turned around and booked it toward the door, probably thinking in his little kitty mind that if he just ran FASTER he could make it through the clear force-field. Obviously he ran head first into the door. Since then, the cat will scratch glass panes. It's probably started as him pawing at the doors and windows to see if there was something there and of course, since we would open whatever he was pawing at, he learned that if he wanted to go out, he needed to scratch the door.

Now, if it stopped at this point, it would make some sense. But it doesn't. He has since decided that any sort of glass or reflective surface is fair game. So he scratches the dishwasher door if we're ignoring him, he scratches the marble tiles in the bathroom if he's stuck in the bathroom, he scratches the mirror if he sees it. He also will scratch at the glass shower wall. From the inside. And we don't put him in there. Nor do we block his way out.

Now, I just need to figure out how to get him to do it on command so I can film it and post it here. Then I need to figure out how to put little scrubbies on his paws. Then we could tour the nation and he could clean peoples' showers. He'd totally be famous. Like the cat in the Staples "Copy Cat" commercial.

This post has no title

I must be going through menopause.

When I'm at work I think of something to blog about. But then I forget about it, almost as quickly as it came into my mind. It's gotten so bad with work related stuff that I have gotten to the point where when I think of something, I'll stop in mid sentence and tell whomever I'm talking to to email me so I don't forget about whatever flitted into my thought process.

Yeah, something must not be synapsing correctly. So obviously the most likely answer is that I'm going through menopause about 25 years early.

Random Tidbits

1. Go see the SNL skit about Palin and Clinton as played by Fey and Pohler. I found it on MSN, but I believe they got it from Hulu.com

2. having 5 cavities filled at one time makes you feel like you've been punched in the jaw.

3. I have never been punched in the jaw, so I don't ACTUALLY know what it feels like.

4. But I can assume, can't I?

5. Shawn is a nerd and he started a new website. He decided he was tired of You Tube and the constantly having to click on something--he wanted it more like Pandora. So he went and built a webpage. One that plays You Tube videos without having to click on stuff (other than the first video). You can find it at http://videochanger.com. So, if you want something changed, just contact him via his blog and let him know.

6. I bought some Farm to Work stuff last week because I was going through vegetable withdrawl (weird, I know). This week there were tomatoes (2 types), serranos, eggplant, okra (which I sold to Beachy for $1), bell pepper (which I traded), pears, red potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, cucumbers and zuchinni. I have already used the 4 tomatoes, an onion, and 3 serranos by making spanish rice tonight. Tomorrow we are having breakfast potatoes for dinner.

7. New TV shows start. Yippee! We shall be having a Heros watch party. which will likely consist of Shawn, me, the cats, and possibly Jamie. So, if anyone else is interested, let me know.

8. I read 2 books this weekend.

9. I really wish it had rained some. stupid hurricane and its going too far to the east.

10. At this time, in two weeks, I'll be in Colorado. Glorious Colorado.

Good Food, Good Wine, Great Friends

Shawn and I went to dinner with Bond and Dave last night. We went to the Trattoria Lisina. The reason we went there, as opposed to somewhere else, is that the place has a cheese plate. And I love cheese. When Dave and Bond took her parents out there, they saw the cheese plate and decided that we had to go out there sometime, just so we could eat the different cheeses.

And Oh. My. God. The food was delicious (I had the rotisserie chicken and Shawn had the Osso Bucco), and the syrah that David bought was wonderful (I don't know how he does it--every year for French Onion Soup night, they bring a great bottle of wine. I'm sure he'll claim it's just because he will order the only wine he can actually pronounce, and everything works out well).

Now, to the cheeses. Which is why you're all here, reading this blog anyhow.

The cheese plate, for whatever reason, is a dessert item. There is a rotation of about 9 cheeses, and the cheese plate comes with 3 of them. The house chooses which three. Last night, the cheeses were as follows: Gorgonzola, Caciocavallo, and Fontina. The plate comes with crackers, fruit and preserves. The cheese also have little signs so you know which cheese is which, and they also give you some history of the cheese. For example, caciocavallo is thought to have been originally a horse milk cheese, but is now made from more common cow's milk. We also ordered the Italian drop doughnuts (which are basically fresh fried doughnut holes) that are covered in cinnamon sugar and served with pastry cream and honey.

:::drool:::

Okay, we're off to go find some food...obviously I need it.

Politicians! :::sigh:::

From the New York Times: McCain's Barbs Stir Cries of Distortion, Republican candidate's attacks on Obama come under fire from all sides.

The first page outlines the distortions that McCain uses, the second outlines the distortions that Obama uses, and the last few paragraphs outline Palin's...They don't mention Biden. This is probably because he doesn't speak...like Teller of Penn & Teller. Until, of course, you hold him over a tank of sharks.

Finding something to blog about

sigh.

I need to find something to blog about. Because otherwise I might start blogging about politics...and I really don't want to do that. mostly because all it will accomplish is pissing off people.

Though, since I feel like giving Kristie a heart attack (mostly because she can handle it), and make Dave say "hell yeah!":

one of Shawn's coworkers yesterday said that he doesn't like McCain, but he really likes Palin. When the other coworker said "why?!" I said "because she's hot. duh."

[Insert Kristie clutching at her chest and Dave fist pumping and saying "hellz yeah!"]

Yeah, I don't think the Mormon appreciated me implying that he'd vote for someone because she was attractive. But when he asked if I liked her, I said no because I liked wolves, and polar bears, and not drilling in ANWR, and I could go on, but you get the point.

Which brings me to why she hates Texas. That's right. She hates Texas. She must. There really is no other explanation as to why she decided to get on an airplane and fly back to Alaska to deliver her high-risk-pregnancy baby after her water broke. The only logical explanation is that she did not want her kid being "a Texan".

CERN

Okay, maybe I just don't get it. I just don't understand why it's suddenly a big deal NOW that CERN has a super collider. It's not like it's a suddenly new thing that they built. It's been in the works since 1995. In fact, it was a major component in the book Angels and Demons.

Maybe it's a big deal now because people were so concerned about whether or not they could, they didn't stop to thing about whether or not they should.

Spaghetti Sauce Try Outs (part 2)

The sauce was a little soupy after 2 hours, so we followed protocol and took the lid off. An hour later we started boiling the noodles. Of course there was the boil-over fiasco. While I was talking on the phone with my mom. That was...Fun. Since Kristie says she'll kill anyone who overcooks the noodles, I decided to set the timer on the microwave (yes, the microwave will time things for 9 minutes).

While waiting for the noodles, I poured myself a glass from the left over Chianti and started the oven to make "poor man's garlic bread" Also known as Texas Toast with butter and some garlic powder. Shut up. It reminds me of being a kid when my mom used to make garlic bread that way (of course, if I had been on top of my game today, I would have oven roasted some of the garlic cloves and then spread that on the bread instead, but whatever, i forgot).

Anyhow, the review:

It was a very good sauce, and I would recommend that people try it at least once, and then change the amounts of spices to make it their own. My only disappointment was that I was expecting it to be stellar after having simmered for 3 hours. When I make it next time, I'll make sure that we use actual Italian sausage and I'd skip the chili powder. I would also use some more oregano (I think the stuff I've got right now is a little weak), and I'd use more basil (keep in mind that I used fresh basil so the amount was only an estimate). I might also throw in some fennel seeds.

Shawn thoroughly enjoyed the sauce and said it was the best meat sauce I've ever made (which is true except for this one time in high school, and that time I added too much wine and then had to add more of the other spices to even out the flavors...and it was the best spaghetti sauce evah). He thought the wine worked well, which is saying something because he normally will taste the wine and complain about it--the only other time I've made spaghetti sauce that he hasn't complained about the wine was when I used some leftover Shiraz from French Onion Soup night. His only lament about the sauce is that the recipe makes so much that theres a ton left over--2 full jars left over (normal size of the Classico).

Spaghetti Sauce Try Outs

For those of you who don't keep up with Kristie's blog, the Spiteful Chef:

I have agreed to make her Spaghetti Sauce and let her know how it turns out. So, here is my tale of attempting to make the sauce.

I agreed to this adventure on the evening of September 2. I had to wait until this weekend because it takes 3 hours of simmering. 3 HOURS! That doesn't even include the prepping. Just the SIMMERING!

Time restraint aside (hell, the Borscht I made in the spring took 4 hours, so this shouldn't be much worse), I looked at the recipe and thought it sounded good. And, as my dear husband is a picky eater (and yet he claims I'm the picky one), I had to let him read the recipe before we went shopping for all the ingredients. Immediately "1/2 Bell Pepper" was taken off the list. Some such nonsense of "intolerance and/or allergy". Though I will say that I will take this allergy to bell pepper over the allergy to basil and/or oregano that the rest of his family suffers from.

Anyhow, I write down the ingredients and it's off to the store. I went to the wine aisle to get some red wine (I got the Gabbiano Chianti Classico for like $11.50), and sent him to get the required meat. He comes back to tell me that they don't have hot Italian sausage so he grabbed some Jalapeno Sausage instead. Note who started deviating from the given recipe.

We get to the fresh vegetable section and then the hunt is on for mushrooms. I say 'hunt' because I have never, ever, not once bought mushrooms so I have no idea where they are even located. Because I am lazy, I got the pre-sliced Bellas.

I measure the butter (I used the non-salted variety) and oil and put them in our large stock pot (this is the ONLY time I have EVER measured olive oil). I then get out the garlic press and press the hell out of the garlic (which took me 20 minutes to peel by the way). It is at this point that Shawn starts telling me I'm deviating from the recipe. Yes, because I was the first one to deviate from the given directions. Anyhow, the garlic was pressed instead of minced because, as mentioned above, I am lazy.

I grab the onion next (one of the Farm to Work ones, incidentally) and I get out my Ulu knife and board. I start dicing the onion and my eyes start watering. I get half way through when I realize that my nose is running and my eyes are watering so much I can barely see. Shawn, who is washing dishes, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE KITCHEN mentions that his eyes are watering because of the onions. That is some strong onion. I finally get it diced to my liking and dump it in the stock pot with the oil, butter and garlic. Then I run to the bathroom to blow my nose and dab at my eyes like I'm some sort of southern damsel in distress.

Now comes the meat cooking. I put the hamburger in our Calphalon One Everyday Pan, and pull out the meat cutting board to start de-casing the sausage. I'm halfway through my 2nd one when Shawn asks "What are you doing?" "I'm de-casing" "Why are you doing that? It's not in the directions." "Yes it is, at the top" "Oh, would you look at that? Well, you should just cut them into rounds. Too much work to de-case them all." But I will have you know that I continued to de-case the suckers and then I cut them into rounds, and those rounds into 4ths. It just took me until my last sausage until I realized I was making it much tougher on myself becase I was using a crappy steak knife instead of one of my nice knives. sigh.

The meat is in the pan, it's cooking away and I go to pull out the grease jar. If you think you want to switch from using hamburger to ground turkey; don't. The smell of the old grease is enough to make me throw up in my mouth a little. I mean hamburger grease smells bad, but turkey grease is about 10 times worse. disgusting. The meat is drained of its grease and then added to the cooking onion and garlic medley.

Other ingredients are added (petite diced tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, bay leaves). And then I go and try to open the wine bottle. I cannot open wine bottles. I am a failure at this seemingly simple task. Shawn, the one in this little family of two who does not drink, is the wine bottle opener. Odd, that. He approximates "a third" and that gets added to the sauce mix.

I added a half teaspoon of celery seed (we didn't have celery salt, and I wasn't about to buy a spice that I would never use), and then a teaspoon and a half of kosher salt. I figured "2 dashes = one splash" and that's how much worchestershire sauce was added. I added a heaping teaspoon of dried oregano (from the garden, it's also been in the cupboard for a while, so I figured it probably needed a little more). And I added a teaspoon of the "Red hot chili powder" I don't know what it is, it's something that Shawn's mom gave us a while ago--she had bought some chili powder of some sort in bulk, and that's what she wrote on the baggy. Though we did debate on if we should add Ancho Chili, Chipotle Chili, or regular chili powder. We used the aforementioned "red hot" because it smelled the least smokey.

Then we come to the 1T dried basil. Well, this is a problem. Because we don't have DRIED basil. We have fresh basil. The interwebs says to add 3x as much if you're using fresh. And so I approximate this to be "9 large leaves or 2 sprigs" and so that amount is picked, washed and added to the mix.

We go to set the timer on the microwave only to find out that the microwave timer maxes out at 99:99, so we moved onto the oven timer. Set it for 2 hours (so we can check the consistency) and that's what I'm waiting for right now.

In the meantime, laundry is getting done, and bathrooms are being cleaned. It's like I'm all being domestic and crap.

Stay tuned for the "eating" part.

Things I'd like to see

Instead of having the normal Presidential debates and the VP debates, I think we should have the following:

McCain vs. Bidden
Obama vs. Palin
Michelle vs. Cindy

At least then the debates will be fair. Otherwise we end up with Palin winning the VP debate and Obama winning the Prez debate.

Also, I wonder how far you would have to push Michelle and Cindy until they started an outright cat fight. I think Michelle would throw the first punch, but Cindy would fight dirty. Of course, then Palin would enter the fray and beat the shit out of both of them. Winner? The viewers, obviously.

RNC in Minn

As promised, we watched McCain's speech tonight.

The man is not a very good public speaker. But then, we already knew that. And when he got to the part about Iran and their nuclear program, I half expected him to say that his first order of business as president would be to declare war upon them.

But really...

I still can't believe that his campaign video started out "Who is John McCain? He's a Mama's Boy"

Dentistry

Sigh.

I went to the dentist today. It had been a year since my last dentist appointment. I stopped going to the last dentist because they sucked at taking appointments--I couldn't make appointments 6 months in advance. Oh sure, they claimed I could, but I really couldn't. See, I'd make an appointment, and then, by the time the appointment came around, they would be all surprised to see me because I was either put on the hygienist's schedule, but not the main schedule, or vise versa. Once they forgot to call me to tell me the dentist went on vacation and so there were no appointments. The final time I went, the dentist himself had to clean my teeth.

The only good thing that happened by me going to that dentist was that it convinced me to start flossing my teeth daily.

Anyhow, I went to the dentist today. And the hygienist went crazy cleaning my teeth. Plaque buildup on the bottom front, and the back teeth, gums all sore and bleeding because of the cleaning. It got to the point where she had to get out a special little tool that had a tiny high powered brush that could break through the plaque, and it also shot water. She asked how long the previous hygienists would clean my teeth and I said I think every time I went to that dentist I was out of there in less than 45 minutes.

So, final verdict is that I have 5 cavities that need to be filled (of course the dentist said they're actually at the point that they could wait another 6 months or so before filling them, but why wait?). 2 of the cavities are under sealants that partially came off, but didn't come off all the way so there was no way for me to clean out under them.

Sigh.

I knew the cavities had to start some time.