Handy, take 2

January 16th, 2009

I think I’m just a lucky person. Or unlucky… but I bounce back?

I got up this morning to shower, turned on the tub faucet, and it went “pffffttttt”. No water. Frozen pipes. It was supa-dupah cold here overnight, with lows of -12°… and I completely forgot to leave a faucet running. Oops. I called my dad, who suggested that if the pipes had not yet burst they surely would, so I should attempt to thaw them with a hair dryer. I couldn’t imagine that it would work, so I (naturally) second-guessed him and checked on the internet. Lo and behold, every website I read said to use a hair dryer. I bundled up and headed into the garage with my trusty Conair and set to work – it took 45 minutes, but I was able to get things flowing again. According to a local news channel, it is currently NA°, which is why I left the faucet in my bathroom running and the furnace at a nice, steady 71°.

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In other news, I mentioned the other day that I ordered a hard drive enclosure so I could take the hard drive out of the decrepit Gateway desktop and try to recover files. It arrived yesterday – can you say quick shipping?? – and I was able to mount the hard drive and get it up and running. There’s clearly nothing wrong with it, so something else in the Gateway malfunctioned… I’m not even going to bother trying to find out what. If I had to guess, I’d say the graphics card finally died, but it’s just not worth it to me to try and keep it going. I am relieved to know that I didn’t lose any data, though, and I’m glad I can keep that hard drive for additional storage. I consider that $39 well spent…

Piemaker

November 26th, 2008

Can I just tell you how disappointed I am that Pushing Daisies has been cancelled? I love that show… *sniff*

Oh, well. As a tribute, I made my first pie ever for the Thanksgiving feast taking place tomorrow. First, I baked four Sugar Pie pumpkins…
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I love the coloration on this one after it spent an hour and a half in the oven. So pretty.
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Next, I pureed the pumpkin using a blender (as opposed to a food processor, because I don’t own one of those fancy contraptions)…
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I think it turned out pretty well. I mean, what did people use before food processors were invented?
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After that I mixed the ingredients…
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Not pictured: 3 large eggs.
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in this bowl…
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My grandmother used to mix her pies in this bowl, too. She mixed everything in this bowl.
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And then I poured the mixture into the pie crust and placed it in the oven…
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New pie plate. Removed the glue from inside the pie plate with nail polish remover… don’t tell!
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And after 65 minutes, out of the oven came my first pumpkin pie…
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I’m so proud of myself. I committed to doing the dessert for tomorrow, so I’m bringing this pie, a sour cream apple pie, and a strawberry pie from Gray Brother’s Cafeteria. All of that for three adults and 2 preschoolers. Forget turkey coma… I’m thinking we’ll be in a sugar coma.

NaBloPoMo – Day 1

November 1st, 2008

It’s that time again – November is the REAL National Blog Posting Month, and I’ve signed up like I did in March. I think this will get me back into the swing of posting more often, because I’ve been very neglectful lately.

Mom’s here visiting this week, so naturally we’ve been spending a lot of time with my brother and his family. Tonight we went down to Conseco Fieldhouse for a free Blues Traveler concert. Ryan and I saw them ten years ago at the Horde Festival, and they were just as good tonight as they were way back then.

Blues Traveler

They only played for an hour, but they played some old favorites along with a couple of songs from their new album. The girls enjoyed their first concert, dancing along to the music and generally being as cute as they could be. Emma is not so happy with crowds and loud noises, apparently… after about 45 minutes or so she stuck her fingers in her ears and said “TURN TOFF”, which I took to mean she wanted the noise to stop. I love being there for first experiences like this… the girls’ reactions are always surprising, and always entertaining.