Year: 2019

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Not exactly elegant but effective. Bowl of rice with green onions, black beans, mushrooms, and tuna; plus a thing of frozen dumplings for a side.

Willow’s deepest woe is that I come first in the pecking order. That is to say, she despises having to wait her turn.

This year’s Christmas presents are meet and gravy “Toppers”, because they love that and Wellness CORE mini meals were something like buy 6 get 2 free when I bo7htheir last bag of food.

Needless to say: they enjoyed the head start on yumnums.

TIL: The Three Sisters

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In looking up about how much effort goes into growing beans, I came across a reference to something called The Three Sisters: a notion of squash, corn, and beans being grown together. Wikipedia’s article on beans, describes it thusly:

In the New World, many tribes would grow beans together with maize (corn), and squash. The corn would not be planted in rows as is done by European agriculture, but in a checkerboard/hex fashion across a field, in separate patches of one to six stalks each.
Beans would be planted around the base of the developing stalks, and would vine their way up as the stalks grew. All American beans at that time were vine plants, “bush beans” having been bred only more recently. The cornstalks would work as a trellis for the beans, and the beans would provide much-needed nitrogen for the corn.
Squash would be planted in the spaces between the patches of corn in the field. They would be provided slight shelter from the sun by the corn, would shade the soil and reduce evaporation, and would deter many animals from attacking the corn and beans because their coarse, hairy vines and broad, stiff leaves are difficult or uncomfortable for animals such as deer and raccoons to walk through, crows to land on, etc.

I can’t help but think, that this is both a very clever idea, and rather like communities of people. Clever because while it might not be at the scale of modern industrial agriculture, it’s kind of genius to try such an experiment and see if it really works. Like communities of people because we’re likely stronger when we grow together  rather than gutting anyone who disagrees.

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If I was doing the Bart Simpson writing on a black board thing, I’m pretty sure there would be references to never eating so many beans again without a box fan and a gas mask.

Two helpings of beans and I’m pretty sure the world is in danger of being blown away……lol

Breezey rain

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For the most part, Willow doesn’t notice when it’s raining outside. She is kind of like me: unless the whole building is shaking from the thunderbolt, she’s probably not phased. Which is quite a contrast to little Misty, who will start hiding or jump on your head when storms get bad.

Going out for a walk is also essential to Willow’s mental health, so this creates a dilemma. Over the years: I’ve decided it is better to let her see for herself that it’s raining too hard for a walk rather than deny her. How that works out is usually like this:

  1. Willow sees it’s raining at one end of the breeze way.
  2. Willow sees it’s raining at the other end of the breeze way.
  3. Willow looks at me, and then comes back inside.
  4. Misty wonders if it’s her turn, as she looks at us both.
  5. Corky wonders where we went.
I’m kind of glad that Willow is smart enough to admit, inside is better than running back and forth down the breeze way, checking if the rain has stopped, lol.
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Not sure who writes release notes for Evernote these days, but I like the cut of your jib.

Release Notes for Version 6.22

Note: Versions 6.22 is supported in Windows OS versions 7 and up.

Windows 6.22

Fixed:

– If you opened a note via your shortcuts or after searching for a tag, any links to other notes in your account would be broken. That defeated the whole purpose of having links so we fixed it.
– Editing shared notes with images inside them would sometimes cause the app to crash. That’s now a thing of the past.
– Occasionally the app would crash when you clicked on a note in the note list, which you probably did quite often. But it should be smooth sailing now.
– If you opened an image pasted from Snipping Tools, the app would sometimes freeze, but no longer.
– You can now edit your notes to include hyperlinks with a UNC path (in other words, \host-nameshare-namefile_path).
– Updates to templates
– When you click on a note link in a tagged note, the app will now show you the note you wanted. A big improvement from before.
– We tweaked the text on one screen to make it easier to read.
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I’m not sure if spiking one’s evening tea with alcohol would be a success, or a failure, but I will admit the thought crossed my mind. Then again my choice of earl grey was based on it being the first teabag I grabbed, so what do I know? :^o.

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Of late, most of my time at home has been spent on programming. Today, I think I have a different plan. Called catching up on video games!

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Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you’re going to eat chili out of a can: Wolf chili is as good as you’re likely to get. Especially if you prefer chili without beans^, which are usually the kind that ends up more like dog food out of the can. The main reason I’ll buy canned chili with beans, is to have something less like dog food. Wolf brand chili  on the other hand, actually passes as an edible chili–despite its storage method.

In Florida: it wasn’t really that available as far as I can recall, I can’t remember eating it before coming to Georgia. Sometime after we had moved, my mother was thrilled at being able to find it at Wal-Mart, and always bought that when she could afford it. I think my father used to pack away plenty whenever he found himself back in Texas, or have relatives ship some once in a while, but that was all before my time.

In the end, I suppose I ended up a mixture of my parents, but I understand my father’s taste for the stuff. Typically, I aim for three kinds of chili.

  1. Cheap out of can that’s useful for cooking, the kind where it’s just going in a quick pan full of chili mac or something like that.
  2. Something to have for a snack once in a blue moon.
  3. Make fresh chili and try to have plenty of leftovers, instead of a massive gorge.

There’s nothing quite like a good freshly made chili. But if you can’t spend the day making yummy things, a can of Wolf Brand Chili does the trick. Actually, there’s probably two things that come out of a can that I actually have a high opinion of: Wolf chili, and that Ro-Tel stuff with the diced tomatoes and green chilis.

The cheap stuff is what I’ll usually keep stocked, since it’s useful for mixing into other stuff. Given the price tag attached to the good stuff, I rarely keep Wolf around the pantry, but you can bet sales are noted. And then there’s the holy grail: making my own.

I kind of debate whether making my own chili is cost effective. On one hand, batch quantity is quite large. On the other however is the fact that I’ll basically eat home made chili until I pass out, lol.

^ Some people wage holy war over the issue of beans and chili. My vote is eat whatever you want 😜.

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While I will admit, my main plans for Christmas involved video games, looking at my Steam wishlist sorted by price, the feeling is more like “Fuck me with a snowman, fuck me harder”.

Over the years, I generally made it a rule to only participate, much, in one of the major steam sales per year. In the past few years, I’ve mostly tried to avoid them all. But even an ostrich with his head buried in the sand can’t avoid them indefinitely…

A snowman makes a good frosty dildo, right?

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Resorting to the trap door clearance maneuver might be admitting default in trying to extricate all of your frozen french toast from the toaster. It is however a lot smarter than putting your fingers inside right after toasting something. Because that would be an oh so very stupid way of making a funny home video.

I find that Kroger’s frozen french toast sticks make a nice, simple, and cheap breakfast option. But it would be kind of nice if they weren’t split into the size of a large biscotti instead of something more like a slice of bread.