Thursday, July 08, 2004
Do not use stale flour. This is a good rule to follow. I made some pancakes today using a recipe that Alton Brown taught me. However, I thought that I had replaced the flour in my grandmother's flour container since I had moved here. Well, I hadn't. Actually, it's not even the best container for flour and I should probably not use it. The absolute best place to store flour is in the freezer, and when dealing with whole wheat flour it's the only way to go as whole wheat goes rancid fairly quickly (we're talking about a month). White flour isn't quite as picky, it just goes stale after a few months. Anyway, pancakes with stale flour are not Good Eats. Blech.
Regarding Good Eats, and it's host Mr. Brown, you can buy his house on Ebay these days. Ok, so it's not his house, it's his producer's house. But it's the house wherein resides the kitchen that was used for seasons five though now of Good Eats. I guess they'll have to find a new Good Eats kitchen soon.
Library, Library, Library. I am now the proud owner of two library cards. One for the Aiken, Bamburg, Barnwelle, Edgefield regional (ABBE) library system in South Carolina (Wherein I am a resident) and one for the East Central Georgia Regional (ECGR) library system in Georgia, encompasing Richmond, Burke, Columbia, Glascock, Lincoln, and Warren counties, wherein I work (Honestly, I can't remember if it's Richmond or Columbia county...). Rock on. My grandmother had lunch with the director of the one on the Georgia side yesterday and he mentioned that I should be able to get a card because I work in the county, and I knew this already but had not done anything about it. Her reminding me of that caused me to go do it.
So I checked out books. More than I can read before they are due back... Ah well. Here are the books I got:
Nemesis by Isaac Asimov
Unaccompanied Sonata by Orson Scott Card
Schubert: The Music and the Man by Newbould
Of Other Worlds a collection of stuff by Mr Clive Staples Lewis
and Narrative Poems by the same Mr. Clive Stapels
In adition to these titles I have in my current reading list:
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett (Always a BAD idea to go to a bookstore just to find a book to kill time when you're already reading something light like that)
And that book on musical acoustics that I picked up a couple of weeks ago.
Yes... It's a good thing library books are free...
In other news, my car decided that it was too hot to use AC today and so it refused to do so. I checked the presure and, indeed, it needed some more coolant and I added some, as interesting of a task as that is when the hose you have for the job doesn't lock down properly. I lost about half a can of coolant and froze my fingers a bit. Fun stuff.
Weather.com says that it is only 89 degrees today. Bull shite, I say.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Reading the book on musical acoustics, and the one I had out from the library last month on Baroque music has made me miss the academic music world. I am looking forward to graduate school, as much as I am not ready for it. Yeah. I'm ready for the next step in my life.
My dad is home from the hospital today! Last night on the way home from work I called mom and she said they were not letting him out today as they had originaly said, but today they did anyway. Great stuff.
Otherwise, today was uneventful. I picked a few more roma tomatoes, got some red Better Boy's out there now. The eggplant continues to grow. Red cayenne peppers are all over. I hope I'll get some bells soon...
I also changed the water in my beta's tank and got a light for him. I got it at walmart, a little halogen dealy, cost me about $5 on clearance. Bulbs for the thing likely cost more than the light itself. It's sort of like one I have already, but it's got a gooseneck stand instead of a telescoping one, and it has a difused cover on the top side so it lights from top and bottom. Anyway, none of you care about this detailed description of my light. Suffice it to say, it's perfect for lighting the tank and showing off mr beta.
Moo.
Monday, July 05, 2004
Oh, I almost forgot to report on the state of the garden! I have eaten the green tomato pictured in a pervious post, I dredged it in some flour, egg, and bread crumbs and fried it up in some rapeseed oil. The peppers are hanging on a thread to dry. The roma tomato has been joined by six of his brothers. Yes. And the eggplant is growing larger by the day. Soon it will be cooked up and yummy.
Most of you probably know by now, through one means or another, that my dad had a double bypass done on Friday morning. For those who might not I will recount the tale here.
Apparently he had been having chest pains since they were here last month, and had made an apointment to have it checked out. However, somewhere along the line someone miscommunicated or misunderstood and his appointment was made for Monday of this past week and he thought it was Wednesday. So Wednesday he went to the hospital and his doctor was not in, so they kept him overnight for observation and the next afternoon did a heart cath on him. They found two blockages which couldn't be corrected with stints, so they scheduled him for a double bypass the next morning.
Friday morning at 6:30 they started the operation. Sometime around noon (11 their time) my mom called me and said that the surgery had gone great and he was fine, though quite asleep. I talked to him yesterday and today and he was pretty doped up on morphine.
Anyway, so he is doing well, recovering from the surgery. He'll be in the hospital for about a week and then he will ahve about five or six weeks of recovery time at home. Keep him and us in your prayes.
I was in Norcross, GA (suburb of Atlanta) on Thursday when I found out about all of this, visiting with my good friend Mike Roderick. A great time was had by all, and there was prayer for my dad, as well.
Mostly, I was concerned about how my little sisters would handle it all. They spend the night a few nights with a couple from dad's church and that was the first time they'd been away from my parents overnight with the exception of spending the night with my sister at her house last month. Mom said they were a little upset but handled it pretty well.
I'm glad that this was caught before he had a heart attack. They said it would have most likely have been a fatal one if he had had one.
In other news, today my grandmother saw in the paper that Jessy Norman will be in town giving a concert on the 28th of August. She has never missed a performance of Jessy Norman in this area (Jessy's hometown) and will not miss this one. And she is buying tickets for my sister and me.
I would like to take this moment to gloat to all those of you who I went to college with or know who Jessy Norman is because I will be seeing Jessy Norman in concert (for FREE) and you will most likely not be! Muwaha!
I leave you with this:
Klasinc&Loncar Duo (Just trying to help it get picked up by Google spiders, I maintain it for them)