Turkey

So, this morning I threw the following into my crockpot:

• 1 frozen turkey tenderloin
• 1 bag o' green beans
• four diced potatoes
• four chopped green onions
• two cans of chicken broth
  

It turned out pretty damned good. I'm eating it right now.

I don't know all the details but apparently George took a turn for the worse yesterday and wound up on life support. They took him off life support around noon and expected him to pass sometime this afternoon. I feel bad for his family. I'll miss the big grumpy guy, especially in the mornings.

Bug Sex

Aside from the two mayflies being intimate on the window behind my cube, nothing much happened today at work.

I'm most of the way through Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. For a classic, it's really breezy and fairly easy to read. I intend to finish reading it while I eat my leftover spam sandwiches. One of these days, I'm going to cause a rift in the space-time continuum with my odd combinations of food and books. Then again, I'm sure Hesse got hungry for processed meat while he was writing it.

Lethargic Day

It's not even lunch time and I've already taken a nap, complete with bizarre, half-remembered dreams.

I got back from the party at the wee hour of 10 last night. The appetizers were plentiful and I had a couple gin and tonics. The frozen custard from Spanky's might have been what kept me awake for an hour or so after I went to bed, my mind buzzing with sugar.

No big plans today. I'm planning on finishing the Tim Powers book I'm reading before I go over to Carrie's later.

Still a sizeable block of ice in the basement shower this morning. It should be gone by this evening.

The Ice Age is Over!

A little while ago, I checked on my slowly thawing beer fridge. The ice in the freezer portion hadn't melted but it had detached from the wall of the freezer. So now there are two blocks of ice in my basement shower. Once about ten pounds, the other about twenty. It's going to take a couple days for them to melt, I bet.

Took Belle over to my parents's this morning for her exercise. They're on yet another fishing trip so we were only over there for an hour and a half. Belle got a good workout as we walked the farm roads. So did I but I also got something I didn't bargain for: ticks!

I picked two of the arachnoid vermin off of my ankle and found a huge one in the middle of my back. Luckily I learned flexibility during my travels in the orient and was able to get it off. After that, I took the second shower of the day. There could still be a third shower. It's almost 90 out.

Party tonight celebrating one of Carrie's co-workers getting her PhD. I'm not all that excited but there's free appetizers and an open bar so I think I can make it work.

Defrostification

I opened my beer fridge for the first time in a month and a half last night. It had so much frost in the freezer section there was a glacier pushing against the door. I unplugged it a few minutes ago so it'll defrost tonight. That's one of the tasks on my list while I let my steak marinate for an hour and a half. It will likely be the longest hour and a half of my life.

I can no longer read news stories on the internet where people can leave comments. It seems like a lot of people read Yahoo news because they don't have enough chances to be assholes in their everyday existence. Within three posts, someone insults someone else, be it about politics, science, or religion. The religious crowd likes to throw God into all the science articles. Any article with a mention of religion brings out the science police. And everyone else just waits for a chance to bring up politics. People are pricks, I guess my point is.

Not much else going on besides my eternal war against my own starvation. Tonight I'm making beef broccoli and roasting asparagus in the oven. Tomorrow is spam sandwiches and eggs. If anyone wants to come over for dinner, the price of admission is 1-6 alcoholic beverages.

Canned Fish Craziness Concluded

Joe and I decided we'd had enough of the canned fish and decided to finish things today with anchovies and smoked oysters, a canned fish double header.

First, we tried the anchovies. They didn't look too gross, just like fish fillets. They didn't have a fishy smell. The taste: salty. I can't convey the degree of the saltiness. My uncle once tricked me into tasting the salt block my grandpa put out for deer and the anchovies were saltier than that. They were also saltier than the ocean water I tasted at Tybee Island last week.

Once I recovered from the anchovies, we tried the smoked oysters. I think I would have been okay with it if I hadn't bit the cracker in half and looked at what I was eating. They tasted more like creek water with a hint of smoke than fish. It was the greenish substance inside that I suspect was oyster shit that turned me off of them.

At least the crazy experiment is over.

Canned Fish Craziness

Before I left for vacation almost two weeks ago, Joe asked if I'd ever had sardines. I said I hadn't. Joe said we'd try out some canned fish products when I returned. I promptly forgot about it, although it wasn't that unusual. Joe and I tried devilled ham together months ago after having a conversation speculating about what it actually was. Weeks after that, I brought him a can of Spam as a gift after he said he hadn't had it before.

Yesterday, Joe came in with four cans. One was sardines, the second kippers, the third anchovies, and the fourth smoked oysters. I was intrigued but also slightly horrified. Yesterday, we sampled the sardines. They looked like minnows, smelled like minnows, and just taste horribly fishy. Not appealing. Today, we had kippers. Once I got past the look and the fishy smell, they weren't bad. The fishy taste was masked by a smokey taste. I'd probably eat kippers again. I'll just say right now I'm not looking forward to the smoked oysters.

A guy I work with had a massive stroke while I was on vacation, so much so that it's doubtful he'll ever be able to return to work. They didn't expect him to survive last weekend. He seemed to be getting better but they detected more bleeding in his brain today. He's not even that old, only 52, but he hadn't been to the doctor in over a decade. The doctors said that once he's able to be transported, they're taking him to South Carolina to be with his family while he recovers. It's just a sad situation.

Carrie's due over any minute. I've got a pork roast going in the crock pot right now with salsa. We'll be having pulled pork burritos shortly.

Vacation link

I took over 6 gigs of pictures so this is just a sampling:

http://s240.photobucket.com/albums/ff19/deadlydan/Vacation%202010%20Sample/

Post Vacation

Well, I'm back. And tired. And there's a frozen pizza in the oven at 7am because I didn't leave much in the way of food when we took off.

The first day went pretty smoothly, aside from driving through a deluge of biblical proportions through Tennessee. We dined at Hillbilly Willie's, a BBQ joint that proved to be spectacular. The second day was a different story.

After braving the streets of Atlanta, Carrie started feeling queasy. I thought she was just nervous or carsick. How wrong I was! Turns out Carrie had some kind of stomach virus, a fact that became all too apparent the instant we entered our room at the Savannah Planter's Inn and she bolted for the bathroom. Carrie was down after that. I walked the streets of Savannah until I was able to procure Theraflu and Sprite. Way too many places in Savannah close at 6pm, btw.

Carrie slept through most of the third day, letting the Theraflu do its job. I hoofed it around Savannah, snapping pictures and eating at various places, returning periodically to check on Carrie and bring her soup and replenish her Sprite supply. By the evening, she felt good enough to sit out on the square.

On the fourth day, Carrie felt well enough to travel again so we took the trip down to Tybee Island. We had fun playing on the beach and taking pictures but the place was filthy! The restrooms were in a state of extreme disrepair and there was seagull shit everywhere. I did manage to get a picture of a jellyfish, which a local gentleman told me was a sea cabbage.

Day four was primarily about leaving Savannah, though we did visit Bonaventure Cemetery before we left town. We also hit Hilton Head on the way up to Charleston. Hilton Head was the most touristy place we visited on the trip. It was so commercialized. I never understand why people would drive a thousand miles just to eat at an Applebee's in another city.

Charleston was great. Carrie was feeling better and it was much less touristy than Hilton Head or even Savannah. We took a carriage ride on the morning of our first full day there, then ate at a pirate themed restaurant called Buccaneer and hoofed it up to the Aquarium. I think all the walking we did on vacation offset everything we ate.

From Charleston we left for North Carolina, specifically Asheville and the Biltmore Mansion. The Biltmore was amazing. Too bad they don't let you take pictures inside. My every instinct was to start snapping pictures until they tried to haul me out of there.

Yesterday we started for home. It was about twelve and a half hours but we made it. The GPS started having us do weird things once we got off 24 and got on 146. We did discover a chocolate factory in a small town that we mean to visit on a day trip in the future though.

It's good to be back home but I have a lot of laundry to catch up on. Vacation is already seeming like a dream. Time to eat some pizza, I guess.