How smuggy can you get?

I had to put the icing on the cake. My Prius now has an Apple sticker on it.

A collective noun proposal: A smugness of Prius drivers.

The Smug gets thicker!

Yesterday, I took the Prius to the dealer to have the security system installed and the paint and upholstery protection applied. When I picked up the car, the service manager gave me a prize!

Now, when I shop for groceries, I can be greener yet! And proudly display my dedication to the environment! (We already use canvas bags but we need to increase the smug level in these parts.)



By the way, in case you're interested, here's a link to an excellent episode of South Park on this very subject.

It wasn't the swine flu but...

I uploaded my latest YouTube masterpiece on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday it got a handful of views. The views came mostly from you, my loyal readers. A few people happened to find it by searching for terms like "dehydrator."

Thursday there wasn't a single view of it. I was bummed.

When I checked first thing on Friday morning there had been one more view of it. Before he went to work I whined to Jerry that it looks like dehydrator videos aren't as popular as Blendtec Blender movies.

Then things changed.

I was burning a vacation day Friday (I've maxed out on how much I can accumulate). So I was always near a computer. About an hour after Jerry left for work I checked again. There had been something like 20 new views of the movie. A few minutes later there had been five more. And through the day the view counter just kept rising at a pretty steady rate.

I had gone viral!

YouTube gives us insight into how people discover our videos and where they are watching them. That information shows up the next day. So I was looking forward to Saturday morning to see what had happened and where it was happening.

Nothing.

Sunday. Nothing.

YouTube's Insight feature was broken. Their support page said their engineers were hard at work fixing the problem. Right. They were at home enjoying the weekend. Lazy engineers.

So I had to wait until this afternoon to see what happened.

Sure enough 94% of the views had come from email or other non-web page sources (like instant messages). Somebody found it and told two friends who told two friends and so on till all the world was getting in on it (just like with shampoo)!

Well, not the whole world. It has had 183 views now. It's been seen in at least 40 of the states. There have been only a few views in the rest of the world. And the pace of new views has slowed to a crawl. But there is potential to become the next Numa Numa dance.

Wish me luck!

Crack and cheese

Recently, one of the items in the list of the most-E-Mailed stories from the New York Times caught my eye. It was their food blogger's quest for the best macaroni and cheese recipe. The one she settled on as the best is Martha Stewart's "Perfect Macaroni and Cheese."

Last night was nobody's birthday but we decided that we'd try it out.

It's the cheesiest! It has about 12 ounces of cheeses. (We halved the recipe.) According to the NY Times blogger, this stuff is nicknamed "Martha's crack-and-cheese" because it is so addictive.

The Crack-and-Cheese fresh from the oven:

And on our plates:
You'll notice we had some wine with supper. Because of this, after supper I took a nap from about 7:00 till I went to bed around 11:00. Then I slept through the night. It doesn't take much wine to put me out.

Jerry said the mac-n-cheese is "rich." He says that when people want just a sliver of a cheesecake because it is so rich he has no trouble eating a large helping. So you know this mac-n-cheese is rich.

But it's not going to be part of our birthday celebrations. We'll stick with our traditional mac-n-cheese recipes. In the meantime, we'll have to try some of the runners-up in the mac-n-cheese quest.

Speaking of Martha Stewart, she sure does live a charmed life. In a recent posting on The Martha Blog, she told us how convenient it was that she "happened to be in the Tampa area" for a book signing one Saturday and the Super Bowl was played there the next day. "Gee, since we're in the area, why don't we just drop in and watch the game?" So she watched the game from the 50-yard line right behind the Steelers. Too bad they put up some sort of screens around the half-time show so she didn't get to see Bruce Springsteen. But she tells us that he sounded good.

I never have such good luck.

I've been Blogging for a year!

It was a year ago I took Colleen's suggestion that I start a blog featuring my gadgets and cooking skills. It's been a fun hobby. Then the idea spread to the whole family (more fun yet!). If this were Amway, Colleen would be rolling in the dough (and I'd get my cut, too). But it's not...sorry Colleen!

Lately, I haven't been posting much and too many of the posts I have made have had a terribly limited audience. Making captive audiences watch slide shows of family holidays is probably one of the techniques used in Gitmo to extract information. I hope our pictures haven't been used there by the Evil Empire our current administration.

I'll continue with the family photos but I need to dilute the torture content of my blog. I need to post more of own my experiences. But things to write about haven't been occurring to me. Recently, one of the quotes of the day on my iGoogle page was from Jack London: "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." I've been depending on inspiration striking and that just hasn't been happening. I will have to change my approach.

I'm setting out with my club. Wish me luck.

Tony Alamo in the news

After I graduated from New Mexico Tech in 1978, Poss and I took a road trip to Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. On the way there we had a meal at a restaurant in Alma, Arkansas, where I had grits for the first time.

At the restaurant I picked up a tract where Tony Alamo tells us of his life and conversion to Christianity. I seem to remember that the restaurant was owned by Mr. Alamo. What a thrill it was to eat where a great evangelist spreads the Word of the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation! As Poss and I drove east, I read his story. The nutcase somehow got stuck in my brain. He occasionally shows up in the newspaper and the stories often somehow seem to catch my attention.

His sainted Susan died in 1982 and Tony was planning on her resurrection. He's been jailed for tax evasion from his sequined jacket business (he apparently didn't pay his cult members followers wages that should have been taxed). He's apparently been charged in various child abuse and brain washing incidents.

Today's news article was about a raid on his compound for a child pornography and abuse investigation. According to Mr. Alamo, little girls reach the age of consent at puberty.

And Poss and I ate at his restaurant!

Anyway, I saved his little tract all these years as a souvenir of our trip to D.C. It's not worth reading but here it is anyway. (The blots are Windex.) The news stories from today are interesting in a very scary way.


And as I was commanded, I didn't destroy the tract and am now passing it on!

Heaven on Earth

We watch the HGTV program "Divine Design." In it, Candice Olson remodels a room in a client's house after getting a feel for what the client needs. The client doesn't get to say what the finished product is supposed to look like and can't see the work in progress. At the end of the program we get to see "the reveal" where the client squeals with delight over all the perfect elements in the room. Candice signs off telling us "How Divine!" the result is.

I find that a bit beyond arrogant for her to declare her own work to be divine. She could at least get the client to make that declaration. (The results are usually nice but a bit too cluttered.)

Today, I made bread. I modified a recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Bread Bible." This is a "bible" the author herself tells us. The Word of God. Was it written by God herself or did Ms. Beranbaum simply channel it? That is a pompous title for the book. But I bought it anyway.

The book takes itself way too seriously (even if it had had the title "Bread Recipes"). She expresses the ingredients based on The Dough Percentage. That might be useful if I were loading my mixer with a hundred pound bag of flour but I'm not. Nor are any of her readers. As a result, her lists of ingredients have 2.4 grams of yeast. (Well, she does give us the measurement in teaspoons but we're supposed to measure by weight to get the best results.) My scale's accuracy is to two grams. One that is accurate to tenths of a gram would cost a fortune.

In the list of ingredients measured by volume she tells me to use "2 1/4 cups plus 2 1/2 tablespoons" of flour. Then, even though she uses this hyperprecision, she told me to use a very imprecise "scant 1 3/4 liquid cups" of water. My snit level rises there.

The book is filled with other overly precise statements. The recipe I followed tells me that the "dough will weigh about 44.25 ounces/1258 grams." "About"? I could swallow "about 44 oz./1250 grams" but to go to the quarter ounce or to the gram is ludicrous. Especially after we're told that the amount of flour that is needed is influenced by the humidity we're experiencing while mixing the dough.

Then the book is filled with instructions that I find badly written. It gives us lists of ingredients for a step, tells us to assemble the ingredients and do a step, do another step then add an ingredient that was in the list for the first step. "Your bread will be ruined if you add the salt too early! IT WILL KILL THE YEAST!!!" she tells us but she kind of lets us goof because the salt is included with the list of things for step one. She doesn't tell us to add it in that step but she could as least not include it in the ingredients for that step.

(Adding salt then isn't a problem. Just ask AB. Some of his advice in his bread making episode were to let us know that some bread cookbooks are too fussy. I think this is one he was telling us about.)

But this is the Word of God. I need to go to confession to ask forgiveness for using the Lord's name in vain.

Anyway, after I get over my snits about all these things, the bread she has me make is pretty good. I just hate her instructions.

I made her "Basic Soft White Sandwich Loaf" and added Asiago cheese to it. It turned out nummy. Especially toasted and buttered!

Here's the finished product.

Heavenly (if I may say so myself)!