Thanksgiving Eve

Last night J. and I went on our pre-Thanksgiving shopping trip; my assignment is to make apple and pumpkin pies and bring them to my parents' house in Delaware, where we'll be having the festivities. We wound up buying about 14 1/2 pounds of apples; six Granny Smiths and three Romes for the pie, and an assortment of Romes, Galas, Honeycrisps, and Staymans for eating. J. consumes pretty much nothing but apples, bananas, and distilled water during the workday; he's still avoiding sodium as much as possible, and the food available on campus (he works at a university library) isn't exactly low-sodium, low-fat, or low-anything, except maybe low-nutrition.



Figuring out which aisle the canned pumpkin would be in was a bit of a challenge—is it a canned fruit or a canned vegetable? (Trick question: it's a baking need.) My recipe calls for a 16 oz. can; naturally, they only had 15 oz. and 32 oz. cans. Humph. Their packaging was doubtless designed by the same people who sell hot dogs in packages of eight and hot dog rolls in packages of six. (I settled on the 15 oz. can.)



I'll be baking the pies tonight; J. mixed up a batch of refrigerator biscuit dough last night, which he'll be taking to Delaware as-is and baking when we get there. I also bought walnuts in the shell for our pet mice, so they can have something hard to chew on and something tasty to eat. We cracked the shells to give the mice a head start, but there's still plenty for them to hone their teeth on.



That's about it, I guess. Happy Thanksgiving, all you U.S. people; and, um, Happy Thursday to everyone else.

Misreading of the day

If you just glance at it, "Medicare" looks a lot like "Mediocre"; for a brief moment I wondered why Reuters had the headline "Senate Passes Mediocre Reform Bill." Quite frankly, it seems like that would be a better way to put it anyway...

We are really not amused

In fact, we are downright pissed off. My whole frippin' computer at work has apparently been taken over by a virus; gggrrrrr snarl snap bite. Hard drive wiping and reinstallation to ensue...



Well, at least that explains how the asshat spammers got into my mail server. I think I'll go assign some random passwords again.

PSA

By virtue of having once mentioned Paris Hilton, I've become a search result for people looking for that sex video. Therefore, this Public Service/Paris Sex Announcement: No, I don't have it. And I'm not going to mention the URL's I've been getting hits from, because then I'll wind up getting search results for that for months, like I did when I mentioned...um, just imagine the letters that the symbols/numbers are replacing: m@nst3rc0cks.c0m. (And I still don't know why I got referrals from there in the first place.)



As long as I've got the words "Paris Hilton" on this page, I may as well repeat what J. said the first time we talked about her:

Incidentally, what the hell is up with the name Paris Hilton? As J. put it, "Do you really want to give your daughter a name that implies that thousands of people have slept in her?"

The answer may not be "yes," but my oh my, is that implication being made...about as often as she is, apparently...

Friday Five

1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.

• Finish the Christmas stocking I started making for J. last year



• Make the fruitcake I got the ingredients for two years ago (candied fruit doesn't go bad, does it?)



• Vacuum (hey, it could happen)



• Work on my Web site, and maybe get my blog moxified



• Send my Christmas cards before Christmas

2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.



Oh, jeez...I mostly lost contact with them because I wanted to. Next question.



3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.

• I'd say "dance," but I believe that's impossible; me:dance :: shellfish:quantum physics



• Speak Welsh



• And Irish Gaelic



• And that African language with all the clicks



• Anything well enough to get me famous enough to get on the Daily Show (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...Jon Stewart)

4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).

• Pay off the mortgages on the houses of all my family members



• Donate a building to Yale (which I said I'd do on my application, although it was tongue-in-cheek rather than an out-and-out bribe)



• Upholster a room with cashmere



• Raise Arabian horses



• Get my goddamn thighs liposuctioned (they're disproportionately large, so no matter how thin I am I look like a Stone Age fertility goddess from hip to knee)

5. List five things you do that help you relax.

• Alcohol



• Xanax



• Hot baths



• Orgasms



• Backrubs

Proofreader, please

Or at least someone who knows English sentence structure. In the ack-basswards headline department: "Poll: Pa. falling out of favor with the president." The article then says that the president's approval rating is falling in Pennsylvania. So, M(r|s). Headline Writer, what you mean is "President falling out of favor with Pa." (Or maybe "in Pa." would sound better.)

Crime and...something

I'm going to try to limit the Michael Jackson postings, but I do have this to say: exactly how much of a scumbag are you when a state passes a law specifically because of you? (And how much more of a scumbag are you when you then run afoul of that law ten years later?)



Blah blah blah innocent until proven guilty. I get the feeling that his problem is that he's too innocent, in his own mind; he seems to have an overwhelming naïevté that prevents him from seeing any of his actions as threatening, dangerous, or, heck, even disturbing to anyone else. (The root of "innocent," by the way, isn't "not guilty"; it's "not harming"—"in + nocens," the present participle of "nocere," "to harm." And yes, I know too much Latin.)