Wednesday, June 18, 2008

I notified our worship leader that I was ready and able to rejoin the worship team if he wanted me to come back. He welcomed me back graciously.

I am scheduled to sing on the July 4th holiday weekend. I’m looking forward to it - it’s been more than a year since I sang anything more than during church and occasionally to Jesse or along with a music channel on TV.

Fortunately the set he has planned includes songs I already know and one new song that we have sung in church a couple of times already. Time for me to spend a little time practicing in the car in between audiobook discs, I think.

Denis suggested that we move our Disney trip a week later so that we could enjoy Stars Wars Days. We couldn’t do that, of course, sadly. Here’s a sample of what we missed.

[via llama butchers]

The barking started at 3:15am this morning.

Joy.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Annie woke up at 4am this morning, so I managed to watch almost all of The Last King of Scotland (minus the first 15 minutes or so because it started at 3:50am) before I got ready for work.

Let me tell you that dramas about evil, murderous dictators are not the way to start a day. That said, it was a very well done movie and Forrest Whitaker deserves his Best Actor Oscar.

Given the subject, I’m sure it’s no surprise to learn that there are very disturbing scenes. This is not for the faint of heart (or eyes).

3.5 stars out of 5.

It isn’t summer yet, but Jesse managed to pick up a summer cold last week and was sneezing, snotty, and coughing most of the weekend. He’s much better and was super cute yesterday. You don’t realize how down your kid’s personality gets when they’re sick when they still laugh and play and have generally good humor until they are well and back at 100%.

In addition, he’s been teething like a champ. Beau bravely stuck his finger into Jesse’s mouth last night to feel for the new teeth and proclaimed that if they all haven’t broken through then they are well on their way. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I seem to be coming down with the cold now. As I drove in to work, I could feel that tell-tale tickle in the back of my throat that signals germs doing early battle. So I’ve got that going for me. Joy.

Monday, June 16, 2008

For Father’s Day, I made a batch of Lemon-Poppyseed cookies for Beau.

Lemon-Poppyseed Cookies
makes 2-4 dozen, depending on the size of your cookies

1 lemon flavored cake mix
1 to 1.5 cups quick oats
1 Tbsp poppyseeds
1/3 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs, slightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix all ingredients together until a soft cookie dough forms. If dry, add up to 1 Tbsp water. If too wet, add slightly more oats.

On a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, place cookie dough balls about 1-2 inches apart - you should be able to get 12 on the sheet. With a greased flat-bottomed glass, press each cookie flat to about 1/4 inch thick.

Bake for 12-14 minutes. Leave on cookie sheet for 1 extra minute after taking them out of the oven before removing to a cooling rack.

They turned out great - subtle lemon, soft texture, yummy.

Last week we used leftover pork roast to make BBQ. It was delicious because I made this homemade BBQ sauce - way easy and yummy. I didn’t have apple cider vinegar, so I used apple juice with 1 Tbsp distilled vinegar added. Next time I make it I’ll use my small crock pot, which is currently sitting on the floor in my office at work. It’s still there from the last luncheon we had.

Since I had more leftover BBQ sauce, I used it on these country ribs in the crock pot yesterday. Also delicious. We were left with more than half of the ribs leftover and since they didn’t have many bones, I shredded all but two of the leftovers for BBQ sandwiches and covered the meat with the sauce in the crock pot.

Today, Beau started the dough for homemade hamburger buns in the breadmaker. The buns are now rising prior to baking. We’ll be feasting on BBQ sandwiches tonight. Can’t wait!

I caught this show on BBC America after taking care of Annie this morning. I laughed when I saw the title in the info box on the TV, but then stopped to watch in horror as a girl in her mid-twenties vomited in fear on her way to the dentist.

There is an epidemic of poor teeth in Britain. 1 in 5 people never visit the dentist. 1 in 10 is terrified of the dentist chair. Sugar consumption, eating disorders, and bad diet make Britain’s global reputation for being a nation of terrible teeth completely justified.

All might not be lost. Three of Britain’s top dentists have agreed to take on these four cases and see if they can do anything to save their terrible teeth.

The dentist tending to the terrified girl, who had not been to the dentist in more than 10 years, was fantastic. He was patient when she didn’t want to even sit in the chair. Instead, he took a quick, tender look into her nasty mouth while she cowered on a chair in the corner of the room. He gently used the mirror to just look at her teeth and when she scrambled away, he stepped back to give her space.

This same dentist saw the girl’s brother, too. His teeth were in worse shape and he ultimately needed 9 teeth pulled, with root canals and crowns on the rest.

Their mother was with them. What I want to know is why didn’t Mum take them to the dentist - make them go - when they were still children in her care. The state of their teeth was horrendous. And the show was fascinating.

... And the dog starts barking. 3:00 am.

I decided to ignore her, but she did her metronome barking for the next 45 minutes. I am not kidding. She barked one bark every 30 seconds or so for 45 minutes. So after laying there trying to go back to sleep unsuccessfully, I got up.

She’s starting the barking earlier and earlier each day. Yesterday it was 3:40am when the barking started. I got up because I misread the clock and thought it was 4:40am. I hate to think how early the barking will start tomorrow morning.

I don’t know what to do about this. We walk her when we go to bed. We make sure she has a full water bowl (because she’ll bark for water, too - she has always consumed large quantities of water).

This can’t continue, but there are no good options. She’s too old to have someone take her - that didn’t work when ECD took her. She’s too healthy to put down. I can’t put her in the pound. But I also can’t continue getting up in the middle of the night to release the dog from her crate.

“Just go back to bed,” you say.

It isn’t that easy. When I’m up, I’m up. I can’t go back to sleep after I’ve been up and moving for more than a trip to the bathroom or to check on Jesse. Especially that close to actual wake up time.

I’m at my wits end.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The The Other Boleyn Girl movie is better than the book in one sense - it’s much shorter. My chief complaint about the novel is that it is just bit too long. The movie nicely condensed a long-winded print story into a two hour movie that was pretty well done and acted. Quite a bit was axed from the novel to make this movie, but it didn’t take away from the overall story a bit. You still get the scheming of the Boleyn/Howard family to get one of the Boleyn girls, either Anne or Mary into King Henry’s bed. That they managed to get both there is amazing enough. That Anne schemed her way to the throne is more astounding, especially when you consider that this resulted in sweeping changes for the country of England that live on today. She turned out to be the ruinfor the entire Boleyn family, except for Mary. It’s a compelling story in history that is very familiar and yet not so.

TOBG gets 3 stars out of 5.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Two things…

1. Battlestar Galactica, Season 4, Finale: Wow. It wasn’t until the end that I realized that a crucial piece of information is still not out there. This was a good season that makes up for last season, which I thought was morose and odd. But I guess we needed it to get to the stuff that happened this season. I’m looking forward to the final season and the last of the answers.

2. We watched the first disc of the remake of The Andromeda Strain last night. It’s been 25+ years since I read the book by Michael Crichton, but so far it seems to only loosely resemble the original story. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, though.

The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to “collect organisms and dust for study.” One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town’s inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

It’s not fantastic, but it isn’t terrible either. I’m sure we’ll finish it tonight after church - I’ll revise the review when I’ve seen the whole thing.

[UPDATE 6/15]: Finished it yesterday. The book is worth the read. The original movie is very good. This remake is not great, not terrible. We laughed at some of the things that happened in the last 20 minutes or so. 2.5 stars out of 5.

3. Needing to catch up on the DVR: I have a lot of things recorded that still need watching - several episodes of Hell’s Kitchen, old episodes of Psych, a couple eps of The Mole to name a few.

Friday, June 13, 2008

It’s been a while since I visited Homestar Runner. I love me some Teen Girl Squad - here’s the latest edition.

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

I laughed when the results came up. I wouldn’t last 1 second, much less 1 minute. This is crazy.

[via Pisco]

Sweden’s subway map in English.

I think Dave sums it up best with his post title:

YOU GET ON AT EXHALE, THEN CHANGE FOR COFFIN OR AWFUL VILLAGE HOSPITAL

1. Work: I ended up getting a few invoices in the late mail drop yesterday. So I have a little bit to work on while at home. Since my boss and the Chief are out today, I’ll wait to do them on Monday so that they can do their thing to get them paid without the invoices hanging in the ether over the weekend. Confused? We pay most of our bills by ACH anymore.

2. Play: We are making a trip to the used bookstore today. We’re hunting for books for Jesse - Beau wants large picture books for teaching purposes; I want Little Golden Books.

3. Church: Our church is hosting a large homecoming, of sorts, for our overseas missionaries next month. It’s a week-long event and they have asked folks to step up to help with the logistics of hosting such a big thing. I volunteered to cook for some of the meals they have planned - group meals for planned events during the week, not the regular meals they will receive with whomever they are staying at other times, like breakfast.

I initially signed up for a couple of weekend day events since it’s tough for me to participate during the week with my job. And then I got a heads up that the leader of the food team was thinking about asking me to cook the meat for the large dinner where they’re expecting about 250 people. At the time I thought she meant that I would cook some of the meat for that dinner, but I got the email from the leader of the food team yesterday asking if I was up for the challenge of cooking all of the meat (pork tenderloin roasts) for the dinner. She’s estimating 10 large roasts - I told her that might feed everyone if the roasts are huge - you might be able to feed about 12 people from a large tenderloin. Any experienced cooks out there who can verify that quantity of meat will serve 250 people? Will we need more?

The problem is that the dinner is on a Thursday. I can’t take that day off. I proposed pre-cooking the roasts over the prior weekend (it will take the whole weekend) and then freezing them in the interim days before the dinner and then reheating them before slicing for serving. It’s the only way I can do it. She agreed that no matter what, it was probably going to have to be done that way. So it looks like I’ll be cooking a lot of pork tenderloin in a couple of weeks.

The good thing is that I can take advantage of my teleworking on Friday to start cooking then. I figure to get half of them roasted and into the freezer on Friday. Then I finish the other batch on Saturday before we go to church that night and I can take the lot of them to the church with us to put in the freezer there. At that point I have completed my task.

Now I’m working on a plan to cook 10+ pork tenderloins in my regular sized oven when I only have one roasting pan. I may see if I can borrow my mother’s roaster or I may just buy some of those aluminum roasters. And I’m hoping I can fit two roasts into one roasting pan and then two roasting pans into my oven at the same time.

4. Friends: My bridesmaid’s youngest daughter is graduating from high school next week. When I met Scot and Joanie, their baby girl was 9 months old. I remember her as this happy, adorable little girl with white baby chick fuzz on her head that stood straight up. Too cute. She is now a very lovely young lady. I know her parents are proud of her and I am, too.

5. Jesse: He’s teething again. I think he’s got multiple teeth making their way. I don’t know how they endure the pain of it. Poor little guy. Even with that he’s still way too happy. He’s amazing.