Accidents will happen, and thankfully in my case they’ve been happening in the kitchen and are not a repeat of the slicing of my thumb from a few years back.
During my past two commutes I’ve witnessed the remnants of two bad accidents. Last night’s had the intersection of Buford Highway and North Druid Hills fubar, and today’s, which included a motorcycle down and its rider being strapped to a gurney, happened at North Av and Moreland. People, please pay attention and drive safely — everyones’ life depends on this.
Need A Bean Soup Recipe?
When I arrived home a little after 7pm I was surprised and dismayed to see so much fluid remaining in the crockpot and that, even after ten hours of cooking, the beans were not tender. Dinner fail. Having a thawed burger patty in the refrigerator I employed “Plan B” by making the burger while snacking on the baked bean soup until the beans were tender.
My fear of the concoction being incredibly salty did not come to fruition, most likely in part because I added an equally insane amount of chili powder, and two teaspoons of sugar once I realized my gaff. The soup is edible so I shall eat it for a couple of days as I start making a shopping list so I can make some baked beans this weekend the good old fashion way — inside a bean pot in the oven.
As for the bean failure my friend Bill correctly guessed that my beans were “old” (more than a year old I’d say) and explained that old beans don’t cook was well as new (fresher?) dried beans.
ITP Flickr Pic
I call this “Accident #1”
While waiting for the bartender to bring the bottle of wine whose label I wanted to snap using my iPhone I noticed this pattern in the camera. I think it’s fairly neat, and not having anything more superior to present to you, this is today’s photo.
The Department Of Lost And Found
I seem to be losing (and having to find) things more often these days. Last night while sorting laundry I thought I had lost the bag of hash clothes (containing my “better” tights) only to find that I had already put those clothes in the hamper — something I rarely do since I normally try to keep my nasty hashing clothes separate.
With the release of Apple’s latest mobile operating system I decided that I should download it and place it onto a thumbdrive so that I wouldn’t have to perform the 3.5GB download again at work. Unfortunately, my fancy-pants 8GB thumbdrive has given up the ghost. Now if I can only remember what I did with the 8GB USB drive I won this Summer…
Perhaps my inability to keep track of all of the thing I own is a clear sign that I still own too much shit. Oh well, that’s a problem for another day.
When Is An Energizer AA Battery Not Like The Others?
Coincidentally the rechargeable batteries in my home Apple keyboard/trackpad and the rechargeable batteries in my work Apple keyboard/mouse needed to be recharged on the same day. I popped the newer batteries I keep at work into the charger I keep in my desk and noticed that these rechargeable Energizer batteries were 2000 mAh batteries. When I did the same thing at home I noticed that the rechargeable Energizer AA batteries that were in my keyboard were 2500 mAH batteries and the rechargeable Energizer AA batteries that were in my trackpad were 2450 mAh batteries. WTF?
Note to self: start paying attention to details again…
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – fat and still not 100% healthy, but mentally okay
Current Music – silence as I download everything the internet has to offer
Website Of The Day – I’ve been singing the same two songs in my head recently. Luckily, I like each. If I didn’t I could go to Unhear It and listen to another song to hopefully unstick the songs from my head.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – situps (25)
Morning Weigh-In – failed to check
Pages Of 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die Read – 77
Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~13 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Pushups – 30, Situps – 150
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 0 (0)
Vegetarian Days – 0, Carnivorous Days – 22
Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0
November Goals
– Not to get sick for the entire month
– Not get fired from my job
– Ride my bicycle no fewer than 100 miles
– Run no fewer than 50 miles
– Determine the fate of Sharpened Stone, LLC
– lose five pounds
– eat vegetarian at least one day a week
2010 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 185 pounds (starting weight was 198 pounds) [update: On July 1 I’ve sadly gained weight; I’m at 203 pounds]
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
– Earn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Sharpened Stone.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Enter no fewer than three photographic competitions / gallery showings
– Get the Black Sheep stats out of Excel and online, completed
– Ride in no fewer than two 50 mile or 50K bike rides, completed
– Complete my Taco Mac Passport requirement of 125 beers, completed
The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in PHP and CSS Objective-C
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
that battery section had me going…….what?????
We are having our office Thanksgiving dinner today, and instead of us all bringing pot luck, we decided to have our soda fund pay for it to be catered. I feel a little guilty, I rarely buy any sodas, but oh well, I’ll eat anyway!
I hadn’t noticed that variation on AA bats. Our crack administrative assistants at the office thought they’d be clever and order rechargable batteries… of course, there are no chargers to be found, so they spent more money for less battery.
I’m currently waiting at the farm for the shipper to deliver my horse. He picked him up at 04:00 Monday and his current ETA is 11:00 today. 31 hours on a horse trailer- there might be an unhappy camper.
-FP
Or a horse happy to romp around on grass instead of being in a trailer. 😉
Sorry about the brain hurts. I was stunned how much variation Energizer has had for essentially the “same” battery in just a few year’s time.
if you’re going to salt dried beans, you need to do it a long time before cooking. You can salt soaking water and let them sit for like a day, then some salt will get into the beans as they get tender, and then you can cook them. If you salt up your water and immediately cook dried beans, they won;t soften properly, it inhibits water getting into the beans. So there you go.
so Steve – what is your horse’s name?
OOOOh! OOOOh! Mr Kotter! Mr Kotter! I know! I know! 🙂 It’s “Mack” (unless Steve gives it a renaming as if it were a hash horse.)
And thankfully your horse will have a name else you’d have to ride it through the desert. And if I’ve now stuck that damn song in your head feel free to try today’s Website Of The Day.
Woo Hoo! The shipper just called and he’s an hour out. Paulie is correct, Mack is the childs name.. I’m not sure you can rename a horse like a hasher, although one of Debbie’s previous horses was Lily, but her competition name was “Spot On” and I wanted to call her Spot… I could yell across the pasture, “Here Spot!!”. (I thought it was funny- Debbie did not.)
I’m with you Barb, I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention mAh on my batteries. I thought I was doing good but making an effort to only buy things that take AA batteries (I’ve had to make a few AAA exceptions).
We had no TDay activities at the office. I guess they did a potluck at the Tucker location but I really just can’t be bothered. On Monday they are having a ‘pizza party’…again not dealing with Tucker traffic, not for Papa John’s pizza, yuck.
I’ve never cooked dried beans, I have some, after finding out about ‘old beans’ I should probably toss them. Right now my biggest food related problem is what is the best way to get all the food I’m bringing from ATL to Cinny? I wish I was staying here…who else is traveling?
Before you toss the beans think of if there’s some need for (inert) dead weight — see also the photo I posted of the crockpot with the (very same) bag of beans used to keep the lid on.
I’ll be staying in town and having dinner at Sanitary Not!’s house with the Raleighites (Raleighans?) I’ve been blessed this year with four dinner offers, something for which I am truly thankful.
Have safe travels, Martha. And if you happen to find some beer that you know is unavailable locally, I’ll be happy to reimburse you upon delivery. 😉
Debbie’s family is coming to the farm, so we’ve already started cleaning up.
And for any folks who would have a problem with the TSA (none that I can think of read this), remember Greyhound still runs.
We will be frying turkeys at my house with Allan’s parents. (Paulie, consider this invite #5) & everyone else, if you want to come to Marietta, let me know.
I just had some friends fly to Houston last weekend, they said security was the same as always……. they didn’t even get the new scanner or getting felt up option.
Martha – put some of it in a cooler, that way you have a cooler to fill up with beer & Skyline to bring home 😉
I’m with you on Papa John’s – YUCK! I’m a total pizza snob.
I thought about putting in a Skyline request too since I’ve never had it.
Oddly, for as snobbish as I am about everything, I like Papa John’s pizza — which probably means I don’t eat pizza often enough.
Papa John’s sauce is too sweet to me.
I don’t know if we could get Jerry to part with any Skyline, but I’m sure we still have some, we will have to have a Skyline night sometime so you can try it.
enough about the ‘old beans’ … you salted them wrong
I followed the directions, though I way oversalted them. I was just giving Martha suggestions as to what she could do with her beans instead of tossing them out.