"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."
-Jean Luc Picard

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Hairball's big adventure

While I was out on Friday, I took some pictures.



It was a beautiful day on Friday. It started out in the 30's but FalWinSpri is just about over as the high was in the 70's today. (We don't have distinct seasons where I live, so FalWinSpri is what I call the 4-5 months of the year when the daytime highs are generally less than 80 degrees.) I know some of my readers up north are sick and tired of winter. Look at the sky in this picture and think how pretty it will be in your location when Spring comes.



Here I'm pumping some gas. It was incredibly thrilling, let me tell you! What? Oh, it was $1.65 a gallon.


I went out to the wholesale club today and look what I found! Click to enlarge to get a better view.


It's individual portions of hummus with a portion of pretzel crisps. Okay, so maybe you don't want to make your own hummus, but do you really need pretzel crisps packaged with it? Dumb, dumb, dumb!


Remember that fabulous recipe for casserole of tongue I posted a few days ago? Well here's some tongue so everybody can make some this weekend. Whoot!



Okay, well how about some cake? Here's a strawberry King Cake.


Uh, should the strawberry portion of the program be oozing out like that? I think it's more of a cake wreck myself.

This next one I call Sybil.


If you enlarge it so you can see the label, it says "Cinnamon Coffee Cake King Cake" Um, I guess it's only got two personalities so we should call it Sybil light. It's also looks like part of it is gone there on the left. Could somebody take a sandwich over to the bakery folks so they don't have to eat the baked goods? Thank you!


I saw some Easter decorations while I was out reminding me that Easter will be here pretty soon. Shrikes everywhere know that means we can look forward to Sandy's Bunny Cake showing up on our televisions!!



Sorry, I can't find a picture of hers but, you shouldn't have to wait too long till it shows back up again. Whoot!

Here's some cast iron pans anxiously awaiting owners who will not make Sandy recipes in them.



My grandmother had that pan that looks like little ears of corn. I always wanted the cornbread from that pan instead of the big pan.

Can anybody identify what these two items are? (No, they are not implants so quit snickering!) My cashier had no idea and had to ask me what they were, so I thought I'd see if anybody else had trouble.


Okay here's a big hint. ;)



Lastly, I made a pilgrimage to the Kitchen Aid Standmixers that were on display.



A moment of silence please to honor those mixers kept in bondage by Sandra Lee and who therefore will never be allowed to reach their full potential.



Have a good weekend everyone!!

Hairball gets handy. She's got a drill, run for your lives!!

I haven't spent as much time in the kitchen as usual. Been busy doing other things like this.



The poster is a running joke in the Hairball household. It's currently on the closet door in the craft area/study/kitty room.

We have cable right now but, none of our televisions are new enough to have digital tuners. Not a big deal unless you get in a situation where a big storm hits and knocks off the cable. I've lived through storms before where we lost power for a while and having our little five inch TV and our power source has been really helpful. Trust me, if you've ever had two adults and three cats taking shelter in a small bathroom, you want to know ASAP that it's safe to come out again. So we bought a digital converter for the little TV and I hooked it up last weekend. We have three channels here in Hairballville that are broadcasting in digital and we couldn't pick up a single one.



So I went over to YouTube for help. I watched several videos about making an antenna until I understood what was involved and chose two. First, I made a small one similar to this one.


Mine wasn't an exact copy though as I didn't have any washers and I could only round up three wire hangers so I had to supplement with copper wire. I picked up one digital channel very clearly and briefly picked up another one but, the signal was too weak so the picture was stationary and pixelated. I set my antenna up in several locations and set the converter up to scan again but, I never could get that second channel back again.


Next I tried one like this.


Once again, mine is not exact as I don't have a signal booster. I can pick up one local station and I learned that the second station I briefly picked up with the other antenna, is only broadcasting at 50% strength but plans to ramp up to 100% by the end of the month unless there are weather delays. Here's my ugly antenna.




I told you it was ugly but, I had everything already so it was really frugal and it will only be used during bad weather when the cable goes down. Obviously, I've been on Martha Stewart's hit list for many years. I think I finally knew it was over between us when she tried to convince me that even though I lived in a small apartment, I really needed to have a special pan just for omelets. Yeah whatever lady, I like Alton Brown better than you anyway because science is sexy!! LOL

I'm going to wait and see how things are after the available stations are broadcasting at full strength before thinking about spending any money upgrading my Franken-attenna.

I also got to use the drill in a culinary manner. Here's a clue.



Soon, all will be revealed....