For Fried Chicken, try thawing chicken breasts in a mix of the following"

1 cup buttermilk (you can use Saco brand from the baking aisle)
1/2 cup milk

a quarter-teaspoon each of the following:
--rosemary
--salt
--garlic powder
--onion powder
--sage
--pepper
--salt substitute (works better than Accent)

After at least a day in this mix, bread and batter as you usually do and fry using your usual method. It makes for wonderfully savory, tender chicken, and the flavor that it imparts onto the breading is simply to die for.

I've got really, really bad hard water. Without a faucet filter, it is literally undrinkable. I tried to boil some of it a while back to see if it would make for better cleaning afterward—the hot water is kind of wimpy around my building—and afterward wound up with this filmy, chalky substance caking the inside of my only good pot.

Suddenly I had a good reason why my faucet filter was wearing out so fast!
Still had that film on the pot, though.

I'd thought that old cooking grease—you know, where it's gotten so hot that it forms an adhesive?—was trouble, but this was beyond me.

Until I remembered basic chemistry, that was.

If you ever get this problem, take a sponge, throw some hot water on it (as hot as you can handle it), and apply the dish liquid directly to the sponge. Take a capful of apple cider vinegar—really, anything but balsamic will work, due to sugar content—and pour it into the offending pot. Wash with that solution well, then rinse. That film comes right off and leaves the pots really nice-looking.

To-Do list completions:

Stories 6/11—started outline for next part.
Fics—been too distracted by the potential of the funny that is the Xigbar/Roxas crazy brothers!aesthetic.

The new list will be up soon, barring disaster.

To Do:

 

Finish long-standing fic project:  Organization Therapy.

Grocery Shopping…because I’m sick of soup.

Original writing:  Enoch drabbles—have the first part finished by 2-November.  5/8.

            Related:  find betas for the Enoch drabbles and actually see if I’ve got something.

 

Check to see if Spring schedules for college are released yet.  (Probably not, but it pays to keep abreast.)

Work estimates of November/December workload.  The slow season sucks.

 

There’s more, but it’s like twelve in the morning, and I can’t think of it.  I’ll probably wind up adding to this.

Can't get a stain out of that bright beige carpet?   If it's colorsafe, mix a shot of vodka that you've soaked a few lemon peels in for two weeks with some dish liquid and, after diluting, apply to a hand towel that you've soaked in water.  Hit that with a steam iron for a few minutes, then buff the carpet in a circular motion.  It'll come right out.

Just be sure to test it on a hidden area.  You don't want to bleach the color out of your carpet.

The local Barnes and Noble has started offering free wireless access.  Now, that means that I can make a beeline for my favorite table with a bottle of Jones' Bohemian Raspberry (…no, I'm not joking) and get on the internet.

For Free.

I feel quite happy and fuzzy.

I keep forgetting to do a permanent log-in on this machine.  Probably because I haven't finished all the payments yet and I am understandably paranoid.

That, or I just DON'T REMEMBER to do it.

Either way, I've got a lot more on my plate than I have had in recent days.  So much, in fact, that I have resurrected that thing that used to keep me so busy....

THE TO-DO LIST.


There's original writing to be done, and fic to be written.  If you've got requests, either put them in a comment directly on the list, or nudge me on MSN.  …Well, I might not be physicall ONLINE at the time.  Shoot an offline message.  I enjoy crack pairings.  I'll gladly drop what I'm doing (as long as it isn't food!  Give me some allowances) to think of a way to make it work.  It's a fun excercise.

(…I want Sweden/Finland.…I blame TQ.  England/Anybody would be nice, too.)

It only just occured to me a few days ago that I haven't got a scrap of moderately suggestive art on this new machine.

Now, I realize that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but.....

One needs a reference point when writing certain things.



....I don't even have any fluff.
I better get to work on that.  I like fluff.  Sometimes it's the best mood-lifter.

Right now, I’m sitting on my couch.  The stove has two things on it—a pot of water with a glass water bottle filled with almost-boiling water, and a pot of water with said bottle’s plastic lid in it, with a bit of baking soda in it to take the funny taste out of the bottle’s contents.

 

 

( Itenerary for the day… )

 

Homemade ramen.  I go to the local Asian market, purchase chuka soba noodles, and add them to a fast stock of diced chicken and vegetables with red miso.

I made creme brulee the other day.

I neglected to take pictures of them, though. I have a single rammekin floating around still, and when I get the chance, right after toasting that delicious sugar topping, I will take a picture!

*insert place holder here.*

It's a little out of season right now (and possibly a bit dated), but it's stuck in my head, so here goes.

A Russian named Rudolph looks up from his paper one morning as he hears an annoying clatta-clatta noise on the tin roof.  After a moment of consideration, he concludes, "It's raining."

His wife looks up at the noise too, thinks about it for a second, and concludes, "No, it's sleeting," as she listens to the racket it makes.

"It's raining," insists Rudolph.

"You haven't even looked outside," his wife points out.

"It's raining."  He looks over his paper at his wife as he asserts,  "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."

Serves me right.  It is almost two in the morning and I have been playing WoW for the last three hours.  I leveled my shaman up to forty-six, and trained away my profits on the ding.  I'm going to be selling a lot of stuff to make up for that, and grinding up to forty-seven after that.

After that I will get ready to crash.  I actually have to be up.

Last few days have been insane.  Went to Delmar and did lots of crap.  Bought a skirt, some music, a plushie ( I <3 the Moofia!) and a top.  Today I added more music to that.  Spent way more money than I planned on, but I still have enough money to make the rent, which means for now I am cool.  Also have enough drinks on hand so that I don't get bored with the selection.

It is time to get out of dodge.  Peace out.

So. This vulture walks out of his office at the end of the day, all ready for vacation. As he makes his way to the airport, he picks up a briefcase and three dead gazelles, and he gets to the security checkpoint with no problem. But after he gets that far, the officer stops him.

"Sir, I'm afraid I have to stop you there," he says.
"What's the problem, officer? Nothing unusual here," he says. "Just your average business vulture off on his way to vacation."

"Well, that may be so, but you're going to have to put some of that--" and he points to the baggage and gazelle carcasses here-- "and take it to the baggage counter."

"Well, ok. But why?" the vulture asks, puzzled.
"Easy, sir. Passengers are only allowed two pieces of carrion onboard."

There are a few things that I don't really like that make no sense. Spiders, for one. Never could stand the things. *shudder.*

The combination of red and yellow I just saw in nature is another.
I can't explain it. For some reason, it just freaked me the hell out.

At work there is this picnic table. We don't have an actual break room so we have to take breaks out at the picnic table. That's what we did today.

But there was this...this weird--this THING on the side of the table. It was this red, oddly gelatinous...mold-thing growing on the side of the table. Slashing across it was this yellow, raised...STUFF.

And it freaked me the @$^$%& out.
I ran.
From a mold.

Yeah, it's irrational. But I just don't like the LOOK of it.

moar funny pictures

What, may I ask, is the problem with taking the time to enjoy parts of life that usually get ignored?

I ask, what is the godsdamned problem with taking time out to see something in something that you might not have seen before?

Cheaping out on experiencing things just because you can get more of a thing, doesn't make it something better just based on quantity.  What happened to people looking for better, not just more?

I'm the brokest person in this thing and yet I take time to look for quality in things I grab a taste of.  What, does that make me stupid or something?  Does it make me silly?  Does it make me unreasonable?

I can't just sack quality for quantity.  Sometimes cheap crap really tastes like cheap crap.  So I'll gladly take less of the good stuff because it will satisfy me better.  If that makes me crazy, then so be it.

Maybe I should be taking this philosoply and applying it to other parts of my experience.  Today I'm not so sure I'm thinking right.

Someone give me something to listen to other than this song!  It's starting to take over my head....but I don't mind too much.  I would mind less were it not for the fact that the lyrics are not concrete.

It would bother me less if it weren't for the fact that when something has lyrics, I have to have them exactly right before I can be certain about the choreography.  But the more I listen to it, the less important that they get throughout, because by a certain point in the track the mood of it takes over and the lyrics become an afterthought…

And even the mood of the track isn't consistent!   It starts off so dark, and then it goes—
*incoherence*

Nngh~! 
Agh, just listen to the track in a quiet room with your eyes closed and a calm mind and see what happens to you, and you'll see why I'm going out of my head right now.

*flail!*

Right about now, I am transferring the remainder of the photos from the Treo and card onto the machine. Before I finish uploading, I've noticed that there are a lot of them that need a bit of polishing. (The camera's all of 1.3 megapixels...not bad for a phone, but not stellar by any stretch.) Some came out good, others dark and...others didn't come out at all, really. So it's going to take a while. Next day I'm stuck at home, I'm taking care of that issue.

Need to hurry up and upload pics from the con I went to onto my photobucket page.  Right now I don't feel like screwing around with the storage card though.

I need to hurry it up though.

I managed to net an epic Cid.