dynagirl

Max McGee died this weekend, in typical Max McGee fashion — he was up on his roof, with a leaf-blower, and fell. The dumb dummy! Can you imagine what his wife was thinking? Mostly distraught, I suppose, but there HAD to be a part of her thinking, I fucking told him that would happen. He was a great character and a good man, and we’ll miss him.

Here are some choice quotes, which text really can’t do justice to –
“So, where do does dew come from? The ground, or the sky?”
“When it’s third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.”
“I waddled in about 7:30 in the morning, and I could barely stand up for the kickoff.”
“What’d happen if I put my microphone in my beer?”

The neighbors are having a big old tree removed and it’s been nothing but chainsaws all weekend, going well into the night. We just took a turn around the block, and it looks like they’ve got a long way to go. As annoying as it is for us, it must be worse for them. I guess that’s why the squirrels have been freaking out, too.

Even though it’s been a dream toy since I was ten years old, I was having a hard time justifying this most excellent sonic screwdriver — until I realized that it was a sonic screwdriver that could also detect cat pee. Spiffy! All those years, who knew the Doctor had a cat?

For some reason, we had the DVD of Point Break laying around (thanks, Ron!), and finally threw it in last night, figuring that at least the Rifftrax would make it vaguely watchable. Wow. What a turd! Also one of the gayest movies* I’ve ever seen. Name the best part:

1. when Keanu dove out of a plane with a gun and no parachute, chasing after Swayze?
2. when Gary Busey tried to crash the car into a plane?
3. when Keanu caught up with Swayze on a rainy beach in Australia, and let him go to surf the wave of “The Fifty Year Storm,” …and the other cops are all, “OMG! WTF? Oh well, we’ll get him when he comes back in” to which Keanu hoarsed out the reply, “he’s not coming back in”?
4. when Keanu walked away from the scene on the beach, and whipped his badge into the ocean?

We’re thinking it was during the interminable running scene, when Swayze, wearing a Ronald Reagan mask, threw a dog in Keanu’s face. Then he ran off to reload with some Weimeraners and Puggles.

*I ran the Milwaukee Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for two years, and hosted Bruce LaBruce; I know from gay film…

Two staple guns, three boxes of staples, no love. Grrreaergh. If you’ve ever wondered why someone would throw three “perfectly good” boxes of staples in the trash, well, now you know.

Fifty- or sixty-hour work weeks will do that, I guess. You should see my garden! I’m totally putting in drought-resistant plants next year. And by “drought-resistant plants” you know I mean “plastic.”

amazing slideshow of 35W
.
d00d.
fuck.

A guide to all of the jokes on Futurama that I have to ask Mr. Dynagirl to explain to me.

We’ve been able to manage being a 1.5-vehicle family for a few years now, with a driving car and a haul-shit truck (a giant gas-guzzling, back-firing, tweaky, exhausty 1986 Ford F150 that is horrible and yet awesome). Mr Dynagirl works out of town, so he drives; for about a year-and-a-half I worked along his route, so we could ride together, and for the last year I’ve been working on the opposite side of town but commuting with a friend. That luxury will probably be ending when Madison’s August Moving Party starts. Not only am I going to miss the drive-time company, we’re gonna need some wheels.

While I want to put this off as long as possible — I always find it nicer to spend new mone — this is kind of exciting. The last time I bought a car was 1994 (Holy shit, that thirteen years ago? No WAY). I’ve got some added needs/wants since my Saturn SL1. I learned how to drive stick in the parking lot of the dealer, and now… I can’t figure out how to drive an automatic. That’s probably a mental block, since, duh, it’s easy, and stick is just way more fun to drive. I’ve also gotten spoiled by the fahrfegnügen of our 2000 Passat (six cylinder). Seriously, that thing is like a dog when it hears the keys. “We’re going for a drive? Wanna go? Let’s go!!! Wrrroof!” Love love love it.

You can easily guess that I like cars that get awesome gas mileage (the SL1 got ~35mpg, back in ’94! I was a dork and kept a little notebook) and run forever. No matter what I get, I’m going to have to do something to be able to get my iPod hooked up to it, so that’s not really an issue; air-conditioning goes without saying.

I’d like a used car for a number of reasons besides up-front cost. It’s ridiculous that such a large machine as a car, with so much manufacturing technology and industry behind it, is so disposable. Why is something considered high-mileage already at only nearing 100,000 miles? Metal is good. Try getting a dent out of bondo. Oh, wait, it doesn’t dent, it shatters. I like the idea of a car that can be fixed without the aid of a computer. Cars shouldn’t come with operating systems; oh, hell no. My husband is great at fixing either, and, as cute as he is when he’s geeky, I do like seeing him sweated up working and on a car. (Oh! Banana*!! Sorry.) Plus, when the end times come, it’ll be good to have something more independently workable.**

So, here’s what I need:

• manual
• fahrfegnügen / low-end of “luxury”
• awesome fuel efficiency
• durable
• $5-8k
• dark blue, black, or dark grey preferred

Which brings me to a short-list of a (bio)diesel Volkswagen, Audi, or Mercedes. I love Volkswagens, I put Audi in the list only because they’re basically Volkswagens gone bland; Mercedes is unknown to me and quite alluring. Did you know that they have free roadside assistance for the life of the vehicle? No matter where you got it or when, you get a flat tire? Call ‘em up. That’s pretty rad. Also, I want to earn one of these:

*our safeword at work for TMI.
** kidding! really!!

We went to the Brewers-Giants game last night, and had a great time. Hats, bratwursts, expensive beer, and omg, the Brewers won. However… the amount, volume, and vitriol of the boos and taunts delivered to Barry Bonds (we were in the third-base bleachers) was so nasty that now I’m rooting for the guy! Don’t be mean.

The banners that just had * on them were pretty clever, though…

live every week like it’s shark week
by Wesley Willis

You are my special working hard bish.
You are the best in the long run.
You really whoop a snow leopard’s ass.
You really whoop a snow leopard’s ass.

LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!

Every week that’s like shark week is very special to me.
Shoutlet is the best in the long run.
I like you a lot in the long run.
You really whoop Saddam Hussein’s ass.

LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!
LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT’S SHARK WEEK!!!

You can really rock your ass off.
I like you well.
You really whoop a llama’s ass.
You can really rock it out.

Rock over London,
Rock on Chicago.

Shoutlet – we build excitement.

… so very overloaded …!

Peace Love and Barbecue
Big Bob Gibson’s Hickory-Smoked Chicken with White Sauce, pp. 55-6
We’ve spent two long weekends working on the house, and by Saturday evening all I wanted was to fuck up a chicken baaad. Between the gorgeous weather and not feeling up to going out, I figured, hey! grill! Sure, I’m tired, it’s 4:30 in the afternoon, I’ll need to go to the store, and this recipe wants you to barbecue the damned bird for three to four hours. What could be more perfect?

Talking to my coach (my brother, an aspiring competitive pitmaster), he said that while the 3-4 hours is ideal, it’d still be great if we just pulled it off the fire when we couldn’t stand the hunger any longer. We also didn’t have any hickory; just generic hardwood charcoal. You can see why we’re the farm team, and not in the majors yet.

The bird is halved, seasoned, and set in the middle of a two-sided fire. (In lieu of salt and pepper, I seasoned this one with Mr Mill’s Magic Dust.) As soon as the chicken comes off the grill, it’s dunked in a white sauce that’s made with mayonnaise, vinegar, and some other simple things. Hooootchiemama, this was terrific! The top photo shows a serving the “nice” way, but in reality, we pulled the meat off and ate it with our fingers. I can’t wait to try it with the hickory and the longer grill time. Wow.

Bill Clinton wrote this Sunday’s New York Times crossword.

* h-u-s-b-a-n-d would also answer the clue, but not in context of this puzzle ;)

Driving to work yesterday, my friend Bryan and I nearly got side-swiped twice before we even got to the Beltline; once there, they just kept on a-comin’ with the crazy-mofo driving. The Beltline isn’t fun any time, and with big construction starting this week, it’s not going to be any better, so we agreed that we’ll be taking the surface streets for a while. Just a few miles past that decision, a lone sign-truck blinked, “FREEWAY ENDS – EXIT NOW” — and three lanes of traffic stomped on the brakes, trying to get over to the exit. It wasn’t the construction that closed it; there was a really nasty accident.

We had two compasses, but no map, so we missed a turn or two. We didn’t know the grim impetus, and so got to enjoy a really pretty spring morning drive through rolling hills full of trees and brooks and farms where we saw at least three actual farmers farming. (The fields! They do not plough themselves?! Crazy.) Maybe my friend’s awesome new girlfriend isn’t nuts for pedalling all the way from Verona daily.

Parisians, around the turn of the twentieth century, enjoyed the talents of Le Pétomane, a professional farter. His stage name translates as “the fart maniac.” It’s more evidence that the French are the funniest people in Europe.

via… I suppose there’s better places to beef about this, but I don’t feel like raising that big of a stink. (Ha!!) It’s really stupid that my responses to the AskMe question, “are farts universally funny?” were deleted. The one moderator I’ve met in person seemed pretty humorless, so there you go. Maybe my second comment was misinterpreted as something other than a reference to the horrible beer farts that Molson lager generate. Who knows.

What the hell happened to me in my childhood that I think that people are good, and if I treat them nicely and with respect, they’ll return the favor?

I ordered these shoes yesterday at 11:30 in the morning, and they were here by this morning at 11am. That’s like, no way!! fast!

(The shoes look better in reality than in my phonecam, see here and here.)

There’s a few leftover boxes of phyllo in the freezer that I need to address; this took care of only one roll. Since there’s so many variations in the spanikopita recipes that I found, I just cribbed together the best bits of all the ones I saw, and added a few things that I thought would be good. Measurements are approximate, but this has:

• just under 3# spinach (3 10oz boxes)
• 2 small onions + 1 large shallot
• ~½ c. parmesan
• ~½ # feta*
• 2 T. Rosenburg I found in the freezer
• juice of one lemon
• a splash of vermouth
• 1/2 c. toasted pine nuts
• 4 eggs
• salt & pepper

If I’d had some parsely or dill on hand, that would have gone in, too. There’s about ten sheets layered on the bottom, then the filling, then five more sheets, more filling, and about ten sheets on top. In the background, you can see there’s a round pie plate where I laid out the extra phyllo from the roll, plopped in the leftover filling, and just folded it in on itself. That’s the one I’ve been snacking on, and it’s awesome.

*there would have been more but The Cheese Nibbler (um, me…) got to it

If you answered 1988, you are correct!

It’s been a while since I started a big project, because I finally had it drummed into my head that Swatching. Is. Vital. To. Success. While everything I’ve made turned out well technically, things never fit right. I had figured that since hats and small things seemed to come out ok, well, maybe I just somehow have gauge magic… Oh, hell no. So while there’s a number of things I’d like to make soon — Eris, Mariah, Cromarty, and maybe another Stornoway — I want to make sure to be using the right yarn, the right needles, and the right gauge. Last weekend I finally counted out all of the twenty-ish (there’s more not in the photo) swatches, washed them, blocked them, and am recounting. I’m glad I did the washing and re-counting: of the ten I’ve recounted, only two yarns kept their gauge! Eeks.

Meanwhile, I finally finished a simple pair of socks for Mr Dynagirl:

… and started another one for me. Both are Esprit from Elann.com. Phone Elf approves.

Wow, I think I sound bitter and cutty today. It’s probably just living on ice planet Hoth starting to get to me. I’m looking forward to spring.

We got 15-24 inches of snow last weekend, and then we got some more:

Here’s the view from my window at work (hey, at least I’ve got a window, right?!):

Our snowman has a much better attitude. Yay, snowman.

…that, as my brother quipped, it smells like Iceland in here. Meh.

OK, so I scheduled the flights following my usual jet lag minimization plan: fly to Europe leaving in the evening — you have a day and then you eat and take a melatonin with the “free” red wine, zonk out for the rest of the flight, wake up, and it’s morning in Paris. Returning to the States, fly out in the morning, staying up the whole time, and when you get home, you’re really tired (it’s 4-ish am to your body) but it’s time to go to bed anyway and within a day you’re pretty caught up.

(This plan also works with my general rule of not arriving / departing any time around the beginning of the US morning news cycle. Call me paranoid if you must but surely even some mean people have seen The West Wing or whatever enough to figure that out.)

This time, either it didn’t work, or I’m coming down with something (which would be weird because fatigue and fog are the only symptoms), or I left half of my brain in Paris.

Only rarely do people believe that mincemeat actually has meat in it, and I’m here to testify. It’s actually a very old technique for preserving meats through the winter.The day after Thanksgiving, my mother and I made it. She says that since a batch will make eleven pies, you pretty much only ever make it three or four times in your life.

The photo above is some raisins going through the grinder (which was crappy and got thrown out in favor of my great-grandmother’s); the meat itself wasn’t so Play-Doh Hair Factory dramatic-looking.

Furnace: ON.
It may be the twelfth of October, we may not have gotten new furnace filters and a check-up yet, but DAMN! it’s 56°F in here, 34°F outside, and it’s too hard to breathe while coding under a quilt.

I finally bothered finding some silverware that goes better with our dishes than more trad-looking set that I had gotten as a random Christmas present one year. This is Ecko’s “La Joya” along with the Pfalzgraff “Gourmet Green.” I’m also really digging their old “Canoe Muffin” (despite the name) and “Montalo.” Hooray again, eBay!

At the Great Taste of Madison, our Dude found his Walter.

Yesterday’s airport security lines and hassles from the travellers’ perspectives on Flickr. Oh, and a Russian dude slamming a bottle of champagne on Yahoo.

I have to fly to New York in a few weeks* and I hope this settles down a bit by then. I was going to be travelling light anyway; I’m just helping my brother drive a uHaul back here. It would be nice, though, if I can just pack a backpack with clean undies (no shampoo**!) and a book (no knitting! sad.) and my cell phone and not have to check anything.

* [OMG why is a one-way flight TWICE as much as a round trip?!]
**Some BoingBoing readers ask the obvious question, if these liquids are so potentially deadly, why are they being dumped out in large receptacles in crowded public areas?!

I’m sitting here at four minutes past midnight (on a FRiDAY; god, I am SUCH A FUCKING ROCKSTAR AND YOU KNOW IT), weaving in ends and doing miscellaneous finishing business on a baby sweater for a friend, and meanwhile, catching up with the TiVo — and I see now, why, as a child, despite being very much into musicals, I was fucking terrified of The Wiz.

BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING TERRIFYING.

omgwtfbbq?! This is one fucked. up. movie.
And I’m SO buying the soundtrack tomorrow.

*probably, then also on late night televison, under a misguided babysitter. This so explains both my fascination with Nipsy Russell and my fear of Big City Subway Turnstiles. AND WIERD SUBWAY MONSTERS AND THEIR CRACKHEAD MASTERS. (And crack. And tile.) No. You don’t ever want to be in the playground of my mind.

**although the fact that Toto is a miniature schnauzer makes me really happy… and also fits right into the 70s trippy milieu ( we had a schnauzer, too; albeit better groomed than this one ), as well as the linoleum yellow brick road that looks like the vinyl uplholstery on the kitchen chairs in my grandmother’s house.