how cute is my evilkitty? he's got his mouse toy in the food bowl...hee. i guess if you are going to hunt animals, you should remember to eat them for dinner.

why can't you buy empty olives?

there is this pork dish that i really like and its got green olives in it. i don't make it all that often but decided to this week. i had the pork in the fridge and i thought for sure i had all the other stuff in the pantry. except then i was about to make it and discovered i didn't have the olives. so off i run to the store to discover that you can't buy empty olives. they all have onions or pits or pimintos inside and i didn't want any of those in my dinner. does anyone know why you can buy empty black olives but not green? or if you can, does anyone know where?

the recipe calls for a pork loin which normally are over in the meat section but generally in a long tube sort of shape. sort of like a big sausage just not ground up meat. ok. talking about raw meat is sort of...eeiihh (the sound is accompanied by a shoulder/hand twitch). so anyway, like most items in the prepackaged meat section, you can't really choose how much you want, you just buy the package. so i normally use half on this recipe and freeze the other half for a couple of weeks for another favorite pork recipe. i will try to remember to share that one in a couple of weeks.

roast stuffed pork loin

4 T olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
about 4-5 slices of bread torn up, i prefer wheat
1/2 cup dried figs, chopped
1/2 cup green olives, empty and chopped
1/4 cup almond bits
1 T lemon juice
1 egg yolk
1 lb pork loin
salt and pepper to taste.

preheat oven to 400. heat half of the oil in a skillet. saute the onion and garlic until softened. remove from heat and stir in breadcrumbs, figs, olives, almonds, lemon juice, egg yolk, and seasonings. mix well. butterfly the pork loin long ways so that it makes a long rectangle rather than a square. wrap the pork around about half the stuffing. use remaining oil in bottom of oven proof pan and cook stuffed pork for an hour. make stuffing balls out of the rest of the stuffing, toss into pan and cook for 15 more minutes. i think this goes well with just about any veggie or salad side item you might like. the original recipe said this dish was also good served cold but i've always reheaded my leftovers. the dish scores well in leftoverability and you could bake the second half of your stuffing in a separate dish to better accomodate any vegetarian diners you may have.

offbeat, weird, and strange

thirteen bits of news you might have missed(week #6) 1. snake eats electric blanket it took a snake named houdini about six hours to completely eat a queen sized electric blanket cord and all, but only an 18 inch incision in the snake to operate it out. so what were the snakes parents doing for the six hours while houdini was getting extra fiber? 2. bear driven to eat pizza and booze if you are going to leave food in your car, either don't park close to the bears or don't buy highly desireable munchies. 3. thief pays the guy back a guy steals a bike. a guy feels bad. a guy does not return the bike but instead leaves a sorry note and a wad of cash for the exact value of the bike. 4. what is a paperclip really worth? a guy starts a blog and is willing to trade something for a lousy red paperclip. he keeps trading for better things until he finally has something worth trading for a house. his wife really likes the new house. i'd like a new house. 5. more people give back things that don't belong to them a homeless man who is dumpster diving for returnable bottles, finds a whole stack of bonds. he returns them and gets a very small % of their value as a reward. i guess a $100 is more than he started the day with but $21,000 would have been better. not that i'm advocating stealing. apparently a lot of people besides me thought he should get more than that. follow up story 6. someone is stealing only one letter: R some lunatic in toledo, ohio is running around stealing all the r's from various signs in town. normally people steal letters to make new words on the signs. my favorite was at my alma mater. by removing and breaking some letters, they made georgetown college into forget college, and on the big homecoming weekend...hee. however, these new signs don't say anything funny, they are just missing r's. 7. what a weird thing to put in your checked luggage now, i travel with a lot of stuff. half my shoes and nicknacks even, but i have never travelled with a skull. eww. 8. zippo convention first it was treckies and comic geeks and of course sturgis for the motorcycle people, but now there is a whole thing for people who collect zippos. everyone i know who has one loves it. i think i own the only unreliable zippo ever made, probably becuase its cursed. if the person who gave it to me dropped dead, i would not be torn up about it at all. 9. soccer fans are nuts this is kind of like nursing homes across the street from cemetaries. except exclusive like a country club. i've never been dedicated enough to anything to really really really want to be buried right beside it. not sports or shoes or anything. 10. monster eater retires i don't eat a lot at one time, but i graze all the time. this guy! wow! grazes like a mad man all the time. except now his doctor says NO! so's he's quiting cold turkey and all the local restaurants are breathing a sigh of relief. 11. more strange soccer fans a guy trying to pass of a fake passport was also trying to pass himself off as a soccer fan. except that the team he choose and the country's passport he choose didn't match up at all. 12. none of the above how is this helpful?? a guy runs for office and along with trying to get his own name on the ballot, he also wants 'none of the above' listed. and while yes, i often go into the voting booth thinking that i want none of the above, how is voting that way going to help anybody? 13. plane crash but still i do's when my husband proposed, it was, thankfully, much less eventful and had fewer ambulances. its actually a cute story and i'll share it sometime. i'm not sure what this guy's goal was, other than to give a ring. in the end, she said yes, but the ring was lost.

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i wish i had a camera phone

yesterday morning, i pulled out of the driveway and headed down the first street. as i approached the stoplight, i thought i saw a dead animal in the road. but as i got closer, i realized it was a pair of boxer shorts. (lets not even get into why i thought boxer shorts looked like dead rodent).

but why on earth were they in the middle of the road? how did they get there? why would someone just suddenly in the middle of the intersection decide to take them off? after having lost their shorts, what could have possibly happened to the poor person next? i wish i had a camera phone so i could have snapped a shot and showed you just how weird it was.

what a way to make a living...

i've been at my current job for nearly 3 years (i was with a temp agency for the first three months so the anniversary where i get a raise is a ways off from my anniversary of entering the building). i generally try to be generic while talking about work. i don't think anyone there reads my blog, but you can never be too cautious, eh? i do like my current job better than prevous ones, so i'd like to keep it a while longer. when i describe my job to people, it always seems to sound like dull paperpushing. but in reality, there is never dull moment. i review files for people have applied for things. you wouldn't believe the stuff people write down, even when they know strangers are going to read it. you wouldn't believe the names people give their children, knowing full well said children are going to be teased and beaten up all through middle school. you wouldn't believe the creative excuses people give for why they originally lied about something they wrote somewhere. this always drives me crazy. why do people lie about silly things and cause themselves more grief than if they just told me about it upfront? and i'm so sad that i can't provide any real illistrations, but for privacy reasons, i must laugh at the examples all by myself. generally i review all these things in my office, but if you've been playing along with the home game, you've probably noticed that i travel a lot. i get to go places for work about once a month, sometimes more. its nice to go places on the company dime and its fun to meet new people.

but my department is really kind of the step child of the company. sometimes when i'm visiting other departments, its clear that they would rather i not be there. with every trip, i am prepared for that kind of reception and take it in stride. my office also somehow has the smallest budget (though its possible every office thinks that...the grass is always greener or something). and it would be wrong of me to blame everything on the budget: i do have bad karma with office equipment. for a year or so, my phone has been on the fritz. sometimes it works great. sometimes nearly not at all. the little display thingy that should tell me who is calling and what time it is and if i have any messages, sometimes it just doesn't work. but we are supposed to be getting a new phone system so no one wants to buy me a new phone and then turn around and buy me a new phone. i get that. mostly. except its been a year. and my laptop battery is completely dead, so if it is accidentally unplugged, it turns off imediately. and since the outlet is a bit shaky and near a filing cabinet drawer, just guess how often this happens. then last week my company email decided to go haywire. even though the IT guy did some weird-over-the-internet-possession of my computer, it cannot be fixed until he sends me something in the mail. i was fine with all of this until today which put me over the edge. my printer started jamming. i called dell and its under warrenty. they are going to send me a new one, soonish. i spent most of the day working in someone else's office, she was out on vacation. after lunch, i wandered back into my own office to get something and now one of the lights isn't working. that takes skill, to get that many things to go wrong in one room. there really isn't anything else in the room that could be broken. i guess the screws could come loose in my desk and it could just fall apart to the floor. if this were a bad tv show, that is exactly what would happen tomorrow. i guess since FOX hasn't called yet, i'm safe.

late in the afternoon, someone from a different office called me to ask about something. i relayed this whole sorry tale to her and she laughed but remind me that i should be thankful to be alive. apparently her friend's aunt's caterer had been driving saturday night and took the off ramp to leave the highway and head home. another driver under the influence of lots of things took the same ramp, only driving on it the wrong way. they hit head on but everyone was mostly ok. my coworker's friend's aunt's caterer got out of the car, to check out the damage, and was instantly run over by another driver and killed. i know i know, i'm almost sure i saw an email forward about this not two weeks ago. even though i'm not about to suggest you tell ten friends to read this entry, i am going to suggest that you just be happy to be alive.

mirror mirror on the wall

a friend of mine, dt, once said something about me being vane, and it always bothered me. i just never thought of myself as being vane. there are lots of days when i shower, dress, and dash out the door without thought of fixing hair or makeup. i'm not a slave to fashion. at the very minimum, i want my clothes to be more or less clean and somewhat recently in style. other than copious amounts of hair dye, waxing, and a few tattoos, i've never outright altered my appearance, and if i could change anything, it wouldn't be something visible to just everyone. i want to have movie star abs. you know what i'm talking about, you see the half naked girls in the movies or in the magazines at the checkout stand. i don't want their fame or fortune or weird lifestyles, i just want their abs. but sadly, unless my fairygodmother gives them to me, its probably not ever going to happen. they simply require more sit ups a day than i am willing to do. sigh.

before you start to think i'm a complete sloth, i have signed up for a walkathon this fall. 10 miles. wow that seems so long when you put it into print! and i've already started training for it. i'm walking several times a week and i'm keeping myself accountable to a couple of people i've met through TT. they are all starting to get into shape for their own reasons, but we email back and forth about what we have done and encourage each other. if you'd like to be a part of that, stick an email address in a comment.

and so, after that, i really need to get up off the couch...

new home

welcome to my blog's new home.

i know, i know...everything is still in boxes and the banner and sidebar are a wreck. i'll get everything spiffied up soon. all the other postes were just cut and pasted from our old home, but you are welcome to read/reread.

thanks for stopping by during this transition!

who's ready for popcorn?

Thirteen Favorite Movie (and 1 TV) Quotes (Week #5): 1 A Few Good Men: Lt Daniel Kaffee: you can’t handle the truth! 2 A Fish Called Wanda. Wanda: To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I’ve known sheep who could outwit you. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs, but you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape? Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don’t understand it! 3. Alien: Resurrection. Johner: I heard you, like, ran into these things before. Ripley: That’s right. Johner: Wow, man. So, like, what did you do? Ripley: I died. 4 Apocalypse Now: Lt Colonel Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. 5 Breakfast Club Bender: What do you guys do in your club? Brian: In physics we, uh, we talk about physics, uh, properties of physics. Bender: So it’s sorta social, demented and sad, but social. Right? 6 Buffy, season 5 Xander: I’m sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, its over. I’m finished being everybody’s butt-monkey. Buffy: Check, no more butt-monkey. 7 Dr. Strangelove: President Merkin Muffley: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room! 8 The Godfather: Michael: I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse. 9 Mallrats: Brodie: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega. 10 Mystery Men The Shoveler: we’re not your classic superheros. We’re not the favorites. We’re the other guys. 11 Pulp Fiction Mrs. Mia Wallace: a five dollar shake. Buddy Holly: how do you want that shake: martin and lewis or amos and andy? Mrs. Mia Wallace: marin and lewis Vincent Vega: did you just order a five dollar shake? Mrs. Mia Wallace: ummhh. Vincent Vega: that’s a shake…that’s milk and ice cream. Mrs. Mia Wallace: last I heard. Vincent Vega: that’s five dollars? You don’t put bourbon in it or nothin’? Buddy Holly: no. Vincent Vega: just checking. 12 Silence of the Lambs: Dr. Hannibal Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. 13 When Harry Met Sally: Another diner in the café: I’ll have what she’s having.

do i look at it or do i eat it?

compared to normal weeks, during this past one, i've been inundated with food sculptures. actually it was only about three encounters, but i mean really, how often in your everyday life do you encounter food sculptures?? i think with this, three qualifies as overwhelmed.
so.
i was watching old episodes of west wing, the episodes where CJ is completely enthralled with the butter sculptures, which to my delight, are real. there is a sculpture of the Last Supper with the Christ made out of butter and (if you watched the episode, you already know this) the butter on the table is, of course, made out of butter.

and!! i'm so excited because i also discovered there is a butter darth vader (i know i'm showing how completely a geek i am with this...)

well. a couple of days after all this excitement, i went to a wedding which had an ice sculpture (sorry, i did not take my camera so there is no picture). and then as i was surfing other blogs, i came across watermelon sculptures.

in honor of the terribly hot and humid summer that is going on:

and really, nothing says true love like watermelons...hee...so andrew, my dearest, this is for you!!

after all this, i just got to wondering, is food sculpture really all that prevelent in society? i just don't see it this often, but maybe i've been going to the wrong parties? i generally think i've succeeded if the food i've cooked isn't poisonous; i'm not normally going for fine artistic value, you know? but maybe you are aiming higher than me. if so, amazon.com would love to sell you 'entertaining edibles: 50 fun food sculptures for all occations' by sidney escowitz. all occations?? so suddenly i'm wondering, would my life be quantifiably better if i incorporated food sculptures into my tuesday evenings? no, honestly, i think i'd just get beaten up more often.

however, even if i never attain such grandeur myself, google did teach me all about other food sculptures. there are apparently many contests all across the globe for various types of food sculptures, none of which i will ever win but that is quite alright. here is a cheese and dried tomato sculpture of the nina, pinta, and santa maria. i'm not sure if columbus would be proud or not.

look alikes?

exhibit A: the oldest man to play professional baseball. he's 83 and struck out. (for the full story, click here)

exhibit B: one of the youngest ceo's out there. he runs some company doing something. (i don't really care what, but if you do, you can click here).

is it just me or do they kind of look alike? i mean, clearly one is way older but for two people who aren't related, i think they look similar. or maybe its just that all weird white guys kinda look alike? maybe they both feel the same happiness with their success?

a little spice goes a long way

from october to april, i spend my monday nights feeding the homeless men in the lexington area. it is a program affiliated with rescue mission called room in the inn. several groups in lexington take part in the room in the inn project. each take a different night. they pick up the men, serve them dinner, try to engage them in normal adult conversation, and then provide overnight accomidations, buffet breakfast and a sack lunch. lexington does not have a particularly harsh winter and so therefore we have a high homeless population. most of the homeless men i've met have jobs. no one i've met has struck me as particularly unbalanced. if we smell alcohol on you more than once, you are kicked out of the program for good, so i know at least on monday nights, these guys are sober. i don't understand homelessness and probably never will. but its a good program and i'm glad to be a part of it. this is the first summer that we've done anything during the summer. there really isn't a need, its just that we've developed friendships with many of the men in the program and want to see them over the summer. so on the third monday of every month, we are having dinner but none of the overnight stuff. during the winter, the menu is all planned out and i'm given specific tasks, like bring two potpies and here is the recipe. during the summer, i just need to show up with a dish or two of something. tonight i'm bringing curried chicken salad and whole wheat pitas. i got the recipe from my boss's wife, who is just the cutest, shortest, sweetest person you could ever meet.

curried chicken salad

3 cups cubed, cooked chicken (or a couple of cans of chicken)
1 cup sliced grapes
1 cup cooked rice
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 t salt
1/8 t onion salt
3 T lemon juice
1-2 T curry power (i think 1 is sufficient but maybe you'd like more)
toasted almonds to taste

mix everything all together and serve on bread or mixed greens or crackers or whatever you like to eat chicken salad on top of. i'm a fan of chicken salad and tuna salad and macaroni salad, etc. this is a great variation. its still cool and creamy but the rice and curry give it a little something extra. enjoy.

colorado springs has a lot to offer

Thirteen Pictures of Colorado Springs 1. Colorado Springs a long time ago: 2. Colorado Springs today: 3. i got lost on the way to the hotel. all i knew was that the road name started with A and was kind of a weird word. now, i normally don't swear much but i was driving around and around and around some more because all three of these streets intersect and i could see the stupid hotel but just couldn't get to it. 4. these are the apartments where i am working this week. can you imagine waking up in the morning and looking out your patio doors at those mountains? 5. i found a whole shop that just sells penguin stuff! i thought i'd died and gone to heaven. 6. Colorado Springs is apparently the bunny capital of the world. these are just two of the thousand i've seen since sunday night. 7. i just thought these apartments looked more interesting than mine: 8. there was a farmer's market/craft festival while i was in town (that is the banner) and the odd brightly colored archway is the entrance to a hotel (thankfully not where i stayed). 9. it hasn't rained here in months...until i showed up. it rained every day i was in town and wow, storms on the mountain top are rather impressive (though this picture doesn't really capture that). 10. even though i was on the mountain top and being really stormed upon, i mean like serious wrath of God bearing down on me, i still wanted a picture of me by the wood bear. i don't remember what the guy taking the picture said but clearly i was cracking up at the whole situation. 11. but God keeps promises and when the storm ended, there was a rainbow 12. just me standing by a fake buffalo. hee. 13. pretty rocks

secret to?

the whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well (Horace Walpole). i think what he's saying is somewhere between variety is the spice of life and we can't be great at everything.

i was always glad i choose to go to a liberal arts college. it seems very important to be passionate about one or two things but to be able to hold your own in a conversation about just about anything else. so many people can only talk about one thing (usually either their kids or work). but does horace mean that this is the secret to having a happy life? a contented life? a successful life? the secret to just surviving life? i think this advice is just for having an interesting life, a life not terribly dull or overly stressful. but the advice does not discuss any type of relationship with people or the divine, so i can't believe that it will result in a happy or contented life.

happy memories and a small bit of paranoia

i'm out of town for work again this week. does anyone know what is the official term for sticking stuff onto your ipod? neither downloading or uploading seems right. either way, for a variety of reasons, i stuck a good portion of harry potter 5 onto the ipod before leaving. i didn't think there would be a movie on the flight (and there wasn't) so i thought it would be good to listen to while hanging out in the hotel fitness room (and it was this morning).

book five is mostly about early teen angst. unless you could afford therapy, you probably remember this time in your life. sure sure, there were some good things that happened to each of us then. i love music and took both piano and clarinet lessons. i enjoyed playing, it was just the dull daily practices that i hated. i remember bringing a packed lunch to school a lot and always having star crunches inside. i probably haven't eaten one of those in fifteen years but back then just loved them. i remember a couple of fun birthday parties at chucky cheese's (before it became chucky cheese). i remember going on terribly boring field trips but being so estatic about it; you don't have to go to classes if you are being bored out in the real world. we went to look at indian burial mounds, we saw old trains and train tracks, at some point we took an overnight to memphis to visit graceland and the mud museum. its on that trip that i have my first memory of my husband, so clearly it wasn't all bad.

but i also remember being slightly paranoid. there was a group of popular, cute, rich girls and i always felt like they were talking about me, laughing about me. apparently that is not particularly uncommon at all. some researcher have determined that over 40% of people regularly worry that negative comments are being made about them. mostly i just ignored the girls. but as it turns out, i wasn't just being paranoid and they were halfway miffed that i ignored them. they stepped it up a notch and started leaving nasty notes in my locker. i don't remember it all coming to a head, i think mostly they got tired of me and moved on to harrassing someone else.

so like all the other books, both good and bad things happen to harry in year 5. of course, everyone continues to believe that harry is paranoid or just out right delusional about voldemort's return. on the whole, though, it makes me glad that my early teen years are over a decade in the past.

i love taking little quizes

(week #3) Thirteen Religions I Could Choose:

someone emailed me a link to this quiz, and i took it because i take all little quizzes. this one i find fascinating. there are 20 questions and the Belief-O-Matic ranks your answers with the religions you match with most closely. i did not think that 20 questions would be enough to really match me, but i am a methodist and it matched me with liberal christian protestants. of my two favorite college professors, one was a quaker and the other always called me a zen baptist, so maybe the 2nd and 3rd choices make a bit of sense too. the link above will also give you info about any of the religions listed, should you want to know more about them.

Mainline to liberal Christian Protestant (100%)
Orthodox Quaker (96%)
Zen Buddhism (87%)
Eastern Orthodox (82%)
Roman Catholic (79%)
Mainline to conservative Christian Protestant (73%)
Unitarian Universalism (72%)
7th day Adventist (66%)
Reform Judaism (64%)
Sikhism (58%)
Baha'i (49%)
Scientology (37%)
Nontheist (9%)

Warning: neither Belief-O-Matic or this blog writer assume any legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul.

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someday

i have no official life to-do list, no top ten things i'd like to see before i die, no 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days. mostly i just try to get through today's tasks and go to bed early. but someday, i'd really like to see the northern lights.

real life heros

from the local news in the tuesday paper:

Surgery on Sunday: A Lexington-based nonprofit program provides free outpatient surgeries to the working poor without health insurance.

A new survey released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta shows the enormous scope of a very serious problem. In 2005, 41.2 million Americans, or 14 percent of the population, lacked health insurance -- in Indiana, it was 15 percent. While Kentucky isn't among the states cited in the report, Census figures show that 14 percent of Kentuckians, or more than half a million people, lacked health insurance in 2003-2004.

But now there are about 300 doctors, nurses and others volunteering their time for a new charitable effort called Surgery on Sunday that aims to help uninsured, working-poor residents who might not otherwise get care.

Believed to be one of the few of its kind in the nation, the program operates from a HealthSouth outpatient surgery center in Lexington that is otherwise vacant on Sundays. "This is what most of us got into medicine for -- helping someone who otherwise couldn't be helped," said Dr. Andy Moore, the program's founder. "This is just pure joy."

For the full article and ways you can help too, please visit here.