Wednesday, July 07, 2010

It’s really, really hot here this week.

A HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM EDT THIS EVENING.

STRONG HIGH PRESSURE WILL REMAIN OVER THE MID-ATLANTIC TODAY. HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO BE AROUND 100 DEGREES. THE COMBINATION OF HEAT AND HUMIDITY WILL PRODUCE HEAT INDEX VALUES OF AROUND 105 DEGREES DURING THE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING HOURS.

It’s 0930 and the current temp is already 90F.

Fortunately, our AC is keeping up with the heat. Unfortunately, poor Molly Ann seems to have the hottest room in our house. Our house faces south so she gets all day sunshine and we think that the placement of the desk over her vent is keeping the cool air from moving efficiently in her room. The vent is not obstructed - the desk is open, but the air is not moving despite the vent being open.

We have a box fan and we set it up last night, but it wouldn’t turn on. Would you believe that is our only fan? It’s a good thing our AC works. *knocks wood* Anyway, Beau is heading to Walmart to buy a fan for Molly’s room, if there are any still to be had.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

I finished reading a fun book yesterday. Chris at Rude Cactus mentioned it a couple of weeks ago and since I’ve tried books that he’s mentioned in the past and thoroughly enjoyed them, I thought I’d try this one, too. I quickly looked it up at the library website, saw that it was not available in an audio version and promptly put the hardcover on hold.

The first novel of Marshall Karp, The Rabbit Factory is a fun detective novel in the classic sense.

Welcome to Lamaar Studios. Once a small Southern California animation house, it has grown into an entertainment conglomerate encompassing movies, television, music, video games, and a sprawling theme park called Familyland.

When an actor portraying Familyland’s beloved mascot, Rambunctious Rabbit, is brutally murdered on park grounds, Lamaar executives fear that their idyllic image of ‘50s America will be shattered. Feeling pressure from the studio, LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs must conduct their investigation while avoiding the public eye.

But as more murders are committed, Lomax and Biggs uncover a sinister plot. Someone has a vendetta against Lamaar, a vendetta worth killing for. With the media closing in and political pressure mounting, the partners must race to discover the Lamaar-hating madman before he brings the family entertainment giant to its knees.

The mystery is intriguing and takes several surprising turns as the story progresses. The characters are colorful and hilarious and touching. The dialogue is very witty. I highly recommend the book. I’m looking forward to reading Karp’s 3 other novels. I give this one 4.5 stars.

Warning: There is adult and sexual content and language.

Bonus Material: Karp has a blog - Lomax & Biggs - that I’ve added to my list in the sidebar because I have a feeling I’ll be visiting often.

On Sunday, we headed west to The New Homestead to spend the 4th with my parents and Uncle Bill. The morning was a flurry of activity - prepping food, prepping an overnight bag, prepping the kids, packing the car. No matter how long you spend away from home, when you have a child under 2 years old there’s always too much crap that goes along for the ride. The one item we ended up not using at all was the pack-n-play, so I think we can probably get rid of that all together, but we won’t just yet.

Food we contributed included:

1. Beau’s homemade buns for sliders. I totally forgot we also needed buns for the brats, but we made do eating those sans buns.

2. Moroccan beef kabobs. I had a seasoning packet for these that I bought in Morocco at Epcot 2 years ago. We all agreed that it was not nearly as flavorful as we expected. I’ll say it - they were boring. I could have seasoned them better myself. The beef was good, though.

3. Grilled Potatoes. Uncle Bill said it best - ultimately, while they taste good, they are potatoes and maybe not worth the work to grill them. Especially in beastly heat, which we had on Sunday (although today will be worse - forecast high for today is 102F. Kill me now.) The herb used this time was fresh rosemary, which was the better choice. I think the next time I do these, I’ll try roasting them in the oven.

4. Crock Pot Rice Pudding (I tweaked the recipe in the link, so the page may not load for a while). Mom wanted to borrow my extra crock pot since she hasn’t unpacked hers yet. I didn’t want to take it empty and since rice pudding is a favorite of hers, I decided to test the recipe again. This time I started with uncooked rice and tweaked the custard and cooking time a bit. This needs more tweaking. There are two issues - the rice layered into the bottom to almost form a crust of sorts (despite frequent stirring in the first 45 minutes of cooking) and then the custard cooked on top. Also the consistency of the custard was odd and it did not look pretty or even like you’d want to eat it. However, the flavor was exactly the same. So that’s the good thing. Mom said it was delicious, which is important. So I’m going to continue to work on this recipe until it’s perfected.

We also had the aforementioned bratwursts (sautéed in butter and onions and then poached in beer and then finished on the grill), baked beans, cole slaw, and homemade chocolate coconut milk ice cream (made by Marmie and Pop). The ice cream was very good - had the consistency of ice milk, but it was rich and chocolatey and each bite ended with a hint of coconut flavor. The downside is that it hardens to a solid block of chocolate ice after an extended period in the freezer. Uncle Bill brought a delicious apple pie, too. All in all, we ate well.

We watched A Capitol Fourth on the huge HDTV, all the while trying to keep Jesse’s interest in it to make it to the fireworks. Molly was battling sleep, which is an ongoing issue that I won’t go into in this post. Ultimately, he seemed underwhelmed with the fireworks once they came. He was way more interested in playing with the toys in Marmie’s boxes. We hit the hay as soon as the show was over.

Monday was a quiet day. We were planning to hit the road before lunch, but we ended up helping them with a problem with their cable and TV. Well, we didn’t solve the cable problem, Comcast will have to do that, but we did help them to move the big TV to the basement for their home theater and then to install the new, smaller TV for the living room. And then to tweak the entertainment center into it’s new, smaller size and into it’s final placement in the room.

The New Homestead is coming along nicely. I know it isn’t fast enough for Marmie and Pop, but the renovations to the kitchen, garage, and laundry are beautiful. Even with the boxes still all around, you can see that is going to be a lovely home when it’s all finally put together.

We enjoyed our short visit and brought home weary kids who went to bed without much argument, thankfully. Beau and I managed to watch a movie last night and I even managed to finish reading a book in dead tree form. Reviews of both to come.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

This is timely for our Independence Day holiday weekend.

“Subjects.”

That’s what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch.

The rest of the article is fascinating. Go forth…
[via OTB]

[via Thinkling Bill]

Thanks to Beau’s cousin, Karen, I have discovered Smitten Kitchen. Dear me. And I mean that in the best possible way you can say, “Dear me.”

This recipe is in our future, but of course, I’ll have to replace the bleu cheese with something else.

And then there’s this, too.

I’m attempting a pineapple upside-down cake with fresh pineapple this weekend - for Beau. He loves his fresh pineapple. And I’m going to make another batch of crock pot rice pudding, this time for my mother. I’ll do this batch with uncooked rice to see how that improved the recipe. I’ll post more, with pictures, after baking.

On that, I’m going to try to take better pictures of the recipes I present here. No more quick shots with the Blackberry. I’m going to attempt to take good shots of the food I make. If I can get good shots of my jewelry, I can get good shots of food.

Friday, July 02, 2010

I’ve been blogging for about 8 years now (the actual anniversary is in August). That’s just cuh-razy. You’d think at this point my readership would be through the roof. However, that is so not the case. I think I can count on one hand the number of regular readers, outside of my family, who still visit ye ole blogge. I can lay the blame squarely at the feet of Facebook. I spend way more time over there, post way more often, and comment on stuff there as opposed to the blogs that I visit. And yet, I still have a deep affection for my blog and the folks who do still read my drivel. There are several of you who have been with me going back to the beginning and you deserve better. So it’s time to make a change and a commitment.

I commit to you, dear readers, that I will post more meaty content here at Lintefiniel Musing. I promise more humor and news commentary. Maybe some politics - that’s a big maybe given my employer and the climate today. Definitely some spiritual stuff. Less complaining (this is something that I need to do in real life, as well). More TV, movies, books? This means I’ll need to watch more TV and movies than I am currently, but I can work on that. I can’t talk about work stuff anymore - frankly it’s way more boring than at the courthouse and I’m not at liberty to share most of what I see or do. And there are no colorful personalities in my immediate daily worklife. I know - sad. (Not really - I’m happy for no drama, believe me.) You tell me - what do you miss that I used to do here? What wouldn’t you miss if I stopped doing it here? [Added Later] More recipes? More jewelry/business talk? Help me help you.

And I commit to commenting more faithfully at the blogs that I visit, too. Because I do visit quite a few, but I’ve been too darned lazy to take the time to say something, anything, to my fellow bloggers.

Also, and this will take a lot more time and effort than my job and family may allow, but I think it’s time for a visual change as well. I’ve been thinking of switching to WordPress, but that’s a rather large job that may mean the loss of years’ worth of posts. In the meantime I hope to work on a new template, a freshening of the look here. A wider format, for sure. Techies, prepare yourselves for questions.

Let me know what you think…

SchoolHouse Rocks rocks.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Dune. I’m talking about the book, not the movie.

Yes?

No?

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

I have snippets for you.

1. I am posting recipes to Tasty Kitchen, which is a subsidiary site to Pioneer Woman. My username is jenspeaks. Feel free to “friend” me over there if you wish. So far I have 6 recipes on file over there, including this wondrous crock pot rice pudding recipe that I made this weekend.

In other crock pot news, on Sunday I put 6 frozen chicken breasts into the crock pot with 1 whole bottle of BBQ sauce and cooked it on low for about 4 hours. Then I shredded the chicken and let it stew in the juices for another 45 minutes or so. It’s all kind of easy and awesome. Molly loves it, too.

2. My daughter is in full cling-on mode lately. She wants to be held all the time or just to be with, which is making bedtime a hard thing. My poor friends on Facebook bear the brunt of my venting on this topic every night. I’m so fortunate to have great friends, experienced parents who have offered encouragement, prayers, support, and advice through it all. Just today I received two wonderful messages from friends that really encouraged me and confirmed some decisions we have made as parents. I’m grateful.

3. We’re heading to The New Homestead for July 4th. We’ll spend Sunday and part of Monday with Marmie and Pop. I’m excited to see the progress they’ve made on the house, which continues to be a saga. Note to self: take 2 gates for the stairs. Anyway, it’ll be fun to hang with them and Uncle Bill, grilling meat, eating homemade ice cream (made with coconut milk so that Beau can eat it), watching the DC fireworks on Pop’s enormous HDTV.

We were supposed to go out on Saturday, but I’m kind of glad we aren’t now - I’m hoping to get to church as a normal family, all of us together. We haven’t done that in months because of our vacation, Jesse’s random fevers and subsequent coxsackie diagnosis and then Molly’s fever and fear of coxsackie outbreak. So far she’s good - no sign of the mouth sores. In the meantime, my Chief told me he had it and went undiagnosed for 5 weeks, which seems kind of crazy. And he said his mouth burned like crazy, which makes us feel even more terrible for Jesse. Even my boss said he must be a scrappy, tough little kid to take that kind of pain. Wow.

4. Did I mention that I get to go to Georgia in September for a week of training? Woo.

5. Here’s some real random for you. So there’s thought that we’re descendents of Stonewall Jackson - not direct, but maybe through his sister because we have a Jackson woman who married into the family. But I did some research on Stonewall’s family and discovered that he only had one living sister and her name was Laura Ann (our family member is Alma). And the married names don’t match. The only possiblity is maybe a cousin of his, but I think that rumor in our family is just that. There’s nothing I have found that would confirm our relationship to Stonewall.

Oooooh…

Monday, June 28, 2010

I think the time has come. I knew it was coming from my early years. I knew it was coming soon based on familial trend. I knew it was coming sooner based on my spouse. I think the time is here.

Bifocals.

I see close up stuff better if I lift my glasses up and away from my eyes. I think it’s a sign.

Dang it.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Took Molly to the pool for the first time in her life. She loved it. This is my favorite picture - took it with my Blackberry so it’s fuzzy, which stinks. I still like the shot, though.

I’m still struggling with my hair, even after the good hair cut a couple of weeks ago. Now that it is fully humid most days, I have the opposite problem of most wavy/curly haired people. My hair seems to reverts back to straight traits and goes flat in the humidity. *sigh* Oh, crazy pregnancy hormones that switched up my hair after 40 years. It is still the weirdest thing. I would much prefer for it to go more curly. And because of the specific cut I got to emphasize the curl, it won’t look right it I straighten it out. I think. I’m not willing to test my theory and end up with a result that would be embarrassing to be out of the house with all day. Of course, I work with mostly men, so they won’t notice.

Anyway, I have tried several different Hair Care products - curl enhancing gel, wave enhancing mousse, anti-humidity hair spray (that one is actually a keeper - it does work for the most part), wave enhancing shampoo and conditioner, etc. I recently bought a curl enhancing and conditioning cream and I’m still unsure about it. I like the conditioning part - my colored hair appreciates that and it does feel softer, but I think it bogs down the curl.

I saw an infomercial for Wen. Has anyone tried it? I’m thinking about it. Thinking hard about it.

Friday, June 25, 2010

I think this lady flunked Geography 101.

[via Malkin]