Weekend!
With the second half of the summer gearing up, it means that we have to prep for all kinds of The Family stuff going on. Birthday parties for the nephews, going over to Mom’s to do some light tech support and make sure that her backups have been successful (and get a meal or two), and otherwise get the connection prior to school starting (at which point the business hurricane starts and we won’t see the eye until October or thereabouts).
So this weekend is going over to Mom’s to have a nice meal, a nice conversation, and make sure that her computer hasn’t caught a cold or anything. We also have to have a conversation about the things that would be appropriate to get for a teenager. (I know what I am inclined to get, mind… I am merely also pretty sure that we’re a ways away from me being able to just up and transfer my PS3 library given both the excesses of some of the games as well as the moderation and sobriety of the parents.)
Along with, yet again, another batch of chores, errands, and obligations to act as the mortar for the bricks of the weekend.
Thankfully, Friday night can be devoted to excesses in and of themselves.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Photo is “Footrace finish line, 1925” from the Seattle Municipal Archives, used under a creative commons license)
Four mice so far.Report
Seriously, time to call an exterminator. If you have that many mice, there’s almost no chance you only have that many mice.Report
But he’s catching them, so he’s the exterminator, right? It’s working…Report
@miss-mary A cynic might suggest he is merely exercising some mild artificial selection, helping future generations of mice to be composed of more trap-averse individuals, and hence shooting himself in the proverbial foot.
It all depends whether there are, like, 6 mice, or like, 15 of them.Report
Went through more thsn that many one time, just me the traps and the peanut butter.
You still being nice about it?Report
So far, so nice. Number 2 and number 4… I’m not positive that they aren’t the same one. So.. monitoring situation.
The only day I haven’t caught one is when I didn’t have a trap.Report
Have you considered a predator? You have a wee one so you probably know how “in” owls are now. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…
(I admit to being an unconventional vegetarian. I’m a big believer in the circle of life, I just don’t see the need for torture in the process. Can this fall under the no politics rule? 😉 )Report
You don’t want to have to call in Owl Exterminators.Report
Who?Report
@mike-schilling
You don’t want to have to call in The Who either.Report
Maybe you don’t — it’s fine for people of my generation.Report
I called The Who last time I had an infestation, and I tell you what, I won’t get fooled again, not anyway, anyhow, anywhere.Report
Will met the new mouse, but I’m pretty sure he was the same as the old mouse.Report
PLus 5 points to Hufflepuff. That was brilliant.Report
Fifth mouse escaped with the cracker. Generously left some poop behind.Report
I have called Delbert and he’s on his way.Report
Delbert is probably a better choice than Elmo Oxygen.
Or Dale Gribble.Report
AAANNND now I have been watching a “best of Dale Gribble” compilation on YouTube. I don’t think I realized how much I missed King of the Hill until now.Report
You’ve got me thinking about Dale with the raccoon.
King of the Hill had some of my favorite moments in the history of television. For example, when the guys met Kahn, or when Bobby asked if he could have a gun rack on his bicycle and Hank almost broke into tears as he said, “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that?”Report
“Dale, you giblet-head, we live in Texas! It’s already 110 in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
https://youtu.be/QUHoFotHj9kReport
Pocket sand!Report
When Kahn calls Hank and his friends “hillbillies”, it’s an offensive racial stereotype using an offensive cultural stereotype.
I love it.Report
That entire scene is damn near perfect.Report
“So, are you from China or Japan?”Report
Hehe… then, after saying he’s Laotian (“From the ocean?”), and explaining where Laos is, Bill repeats the question.Report
I caught the ninja mouse! Thrice it got the cracker without tripping the trap. It turns out, the secret is peanut butter.Report
There’s a boss mouse in there who loves crackers and keeps sending its minions to retrieve them, observing what works and what doesn’t. Eventually, they’ll figure the trap out entirely, then discover the source of the crackers, then take over the world! This is inevitable, as it is what they do every night.
The boss mouse looks something like this:
http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/tvbanners/464334/p464334_b_v7_ab.jpgReport
I still can’t figure out their fascination with that particular drawer. Kinda glad for it, though…Report
On the path from a to c?Report
Fish is bringing us a bookcase on Sunday. Now I just have to figure out where it will GO (or more precisely, how to fit it into one of the places I want it to go, and figure out which one of those will win). We don’t have any obvious room for a bookcase, but we really NEED a bookcase, even with all the culling I’ve been doing.
*ponders*Report
I collect only a few things. Bookshelves are apparently one of them, so I feel your pain ;). Unfortunately, I have a nasty case of trolls that insist in drinking my wine collection.Report
I’m in this weird transition period between the old job and getting used to the new job: I had obligations with the second job so my days off are wacky. I have to miss my sister’s wedding, which is a bummer because Husband #2 seems like a huge improvement over Husband #1. I haven’t found a new daycare that will accommodate the new work schedule so my friends and family have been pitching in.
Anyway, this weekend I will work Job #2 which is usually a kick ass gig. I get to watch Sons of Anarchy on the slow times, so that’s good ;).
P.S. thank you to everyone for the congrats last weekend. Hugs!Report
Mentioned this elsewhere…
I think Assassin’s Creed-ification is not correct. I think Grand Theft Auto-ification is more correct, right? Open map, lots of collectibles, side missions all over, hidden stuff to do.
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Fallout 4, of course. Then, you have the Uncharted’s, Just Cause’s, Dark Souls’s, Doom!’s (hard to believe), Kojima’s MGS, and others. But, I have to say I am most looking forward to No Man’s Sky. That is my kind of game. At least, that is my hope.
I only just finished AC4 and am working on Watch Dogs. I’m way way behind because I wait a long time until the games are really cheap. I do like playing the new rocket-car-soccer game from PS+ with my son.
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If you go here:
http://www.ebay.com/sme/so.html?_soffid=5006937604&_ssn=paypal_digital_gifts
and you buy at least $100 of gift cards, you get $15 off. Did I mention that you can buy Playstation Store and XBox gift cards? I bought 2 PS cards worth $100 for $85, even though I shouldn’t have bought them (money is quite tight these days).
Not a bad deal. I think you can only buy 2 cards at a time, but, in theory, could buy 2 cards multiple times, if you wanted to save even more.Report
Yeah, GTA3 did have those “collect the packages” things, didn’t they? In the days before achievements/trophies, even. (The only benefit was free guns back at your savepoint, if I recall correctly. Sure, they helped with the game… but there were no endorphins.)
Those never felt essential to collect, though. I never got feverish at the thought of finding the 100th one.
Assassin’s Creed? That infected my dreams.Report
What about Vice City and San Andreas?
San Andreas really hooked me, for various (and some obvious) reasons.
There were a lot more collectibles and side missions in those games, which were also pre-AC.Report
I have no real insight into any of this, since I am not really a gamer, but I gotta say, Vice City and San Andreas are awesome. I’ve been “hooked” by exactly 4 games in adulthood: Battlefield 1942 (Omaha Beach multiplayer is the most fun I’ve ever had playing a video game, especially with some of the mods), Call of Duty, and those two GTA games. If I were stranded on a desert island with just those 4 games, I’d probably be just fine.Report
One of my friends called San Andreas the greatest game of all time (and he followed that up with “it’s too bad that it sucks so much”).
Yeah, you’re right. That’s the game that finally perfected the template with all of the side missions involving tagging and riding BMX bikes and home invasions and odd jobs and dating (!?!).
And it did those things without conversations in one of the meeting rooms about “achievements”.Report
Follow the Train, CJ!
Young Maylay.
Jetpack.
Peter Fonda, man.
Wanna come in for some coffee?Report
Also, we did Wii U, rather than PS3. So, there’s a lot of games I haven’t played. My pc is very old, and not capable of playing anything new. I just received a PS4 as a Christmas/Birthday/Father’s Day gift of the century.Report
My PS3 died an ignoble death and my PS4 library consists of 3 games (Batman, AC: Black Flag, and the Williams Pinball compilation) and so I can’t tell you what to get…
But if GTA:SA’s template floats your boat, Batman is FREAKING AWESOME.Report
Yes, I got GTAV and Last of Us with the PS4 (both excellent, though Last of Us is truly extraordinary). I have a bunch of other games, so here are some of my recommendations:
The Unfinished Swan is really interesting.
Entwined is also really interesting.
Ether One is good.
I thought Far Cry 4 was excellent, though it’s the only one of the series I’ve played. It’s worth it just to fly around the Himalayas and play the Shangrila missions.
Flower is very different and calming.
Also, same thing for Hohokum.
I really liked Never Alone.
P.T. was some scary shit. Too bad about the game getting scrapped (possibly).
Playing Another World again, and showing my son, was a trip back in time.
I also really liked Valiant Hearts.
Batman’s not really my thing, but I’ve seen the gameplay and it looks cool.Report
One word: Banishment. I am being banished to upstate New York. What is worse is I am banishing myself. For a week!
More words: my Mum is coming down to visit her family in upstate New York and I am joining them for the week. She’s bringing my nephew. We’ll be staying at my Grandfathers cabin. This will be the first time I’ve been there since he died 5 years ago. I’m assuming it’ll either be:
A-utterly unchanged in which case I’ll have this weird time travel vertigo thing going on. Am I in my teens again? What year is it?
B- changed noticeably in which case childhood shattered. If you need me I’ll be curled up in a ball mourning the passing of time.
But maybe I’ll entertain myself by spoiling the nephew rotten. There’s Enchanted Forest up in Old Forge and IIRC they have some epic water rides.Report
“I remember this counter being taller. I remember this stuffed animal being bigger. I remember needing both hands to hold this glass. Huh.”Report
Smell will be integral. We were raised basically with no access to candy. There was no parental animus against the stuff exactly but simply “we’re not buying candy at the grocery store” plus “Your nearest source of candy is an hour away, by bike and you do not have a regular allowance” so candy was scarce around home*.
My Grandfather loved hot cinnamon gobstoppers, like love-loved them. He had a jar of them at camp so the entire living area had the faint smell of cinnamon. When we visited my siblings and I descended on that jar like hyenas on a limping gazelle. Despite our relentless depredations that damned jar never emptied out, it was like the reverse tragedy of the commons. I remember stumbling across an empty bag of those candies. As agnostic Jesus as my witness it was the size of a potato sack and I mean the old burlap potato sacks, not a plastic sack from the grocery store. My twelve year old self stood there holding that empty bag like some primeval human realizing the “lake” he was swimming in was a dinosaur footprint. Pupils dilated Hollywood animation style, I have no doubt.
Anyhow, if the camp doesn’t smell of cinnamon then there is nothing right with the world and the meteor might as well come land on upstate New York on Sunday.
*@zic will probably laugh but my mother always complained that she couldn’t grow any anise or mint** around the house because the “animals” always ate it down to the roots. Yeah *cough* animals.
**We even ate the goddamn catnip.Report
@north
That comment just made my day, and its only 7:30am.Report
I’m glad :). I am in a bus station in Albany at the moment.Report
Smells.
I hate aromatherapy; it masks real smells, and they tell you so much about your environment.
In my yard, there are wild roses, apple trees, sweet william, pine trees, clover, oregano gone wild, mint gone wild, spearmint gone wild, thyme gone wild. The lawn is being taken over by the thyme in a few spots, and when it’s mowed, it’s heavenly. There’s also a lot of ground ivy, which most people hate, but I love for it’s minty smell and small purple flowers. I battle it in my garden boxes, though. Being in my yard is a very smell-oriented experience; it changes throughout the year.
But my favorites are the scents of water lilies, bread baking (and I prefer the scent of Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast. I have not had good luck here maintaining a starter with good flavor; it think it’s that the wild strains are so dominant since it’s a wet environment; the starters all grow to taste like the local flavor, and it’s boring. And cinnamon. All things cinnamon.
Try this dish, my variation of a recipe from Morocco; a chicken tagine:
8 chicken thighs
olive oil a shallow pan with a lid lightly
1 cup of shallots, separated or 1 coarsely-diced sweet onion
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon harissa*
generous pinch of saffron
water
2 cups basamati rice
olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
1. salt the thighs, and then brown them in a shallow pan large enough to hold them all that has a lid. When finished, pour off the chicken fat that has cooked out of the thighs, reserve a tablespoon if it. Arrange the thighs, skin-side down in a single layer in the pan and add the shallots or onion, cinnamon, ginger, harissa, and safron, add 5 cups of water just off the boil 1/2-way up the chicken. Cover, and simmer about 20 min. Remove the chicken and degrease the broth so that there’s just a think layer of chicken fat floating on the top.
2. Heat a heavy skillet on low for a few minutes, add the tablespoon of chicken fat and a tablespoon of butter or olive oil, then the rice, stir it and cook it over a low heat until it just begins to pop. Pour the rice into the chicken-cooking liquid, be very careful doing this, it’s hot and will make the cooking boil up and steam. Stir in the honey and a bit more salt. Place the thighs on top of the rice, skin side up. Cover and simmer until the rice has absorbed the liquid, about 20 minutes. You can hold this dish like this for some time while you prepare the rest of dinner. But about 10 min. before serving, place the tagine under the broiler to crisp the thighs and make the lightest crust on the rice around them.
*This brand of harissa, Traditional Harissa Spread by Les Moulins Mahjoub, is gold to have in the refrigerator for adding to all sorts of dishes; kitchen-witch zic uses a teaspoon or two dissolved in olive oil to marinate pork tenderloin before grilling and stirs a teaspoon into soups, beans, and grains.Report
Where upstate? Yonkers? Yorktown Heights? Or all the way up there in Mt Kisco?Report
Nearish to Utica on an artificial lake called Kayuta.Report
As long as you’re in the area, take the family to Cooperstown. The museum there is not to be missed.Report