All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

Toddlers. Movies. Camcorders. All totally unrelated.

Blurbs

In which a toddler is totally cute.

My co-worker, Bucket [he hasn’t updated his site since the last presidency, so don’t bother clicking on the link], had his wife and youngest kid here in the office this morning. I adore Bucket’s wife, MrsS. She’s superior in far too many ways to list. (I forgot to order freakin’ Girl Scout Cookies from her daughters, though. I wonder if it’s too late.)

Anyway. Chance, their youngest? Is so adorable. Tow-headed and shy, but not too shy. He had a little toy train with him. He wouldn’t high-five me, but I got several very cute flirty grins and giggles. When his dad put him down he ran the eighteen inches to his momma’s legs and grabbed on. Then his dad picked up his big foot and tapped Chance’s little diapered butt with it, and the kid immediately dissolved into giggles.

“Hey! You kick him in the ass and he giggles! That’s hot!” I exclaimed.

MrsS took one look at me and practically collapsed into giggles herself. “‘Kick him in the ass and he giggles!'” she repeated. “‘That’s hot!'” she finished, and giggled even harder. It was adorable – cutest thing I’d seen this side of Cute Overload in months. (Then later she called me “a skinny thing,” which of course endeared her to me for-fucking-ever.)

– – –
In other, totally unrelated news, here’s my updated Movies-I-Wanna-See (And-Ideally-In-An-Actual-Theatre) list:

– – –
In other other news, on Tuesday PenLohP dropped off this device she’d bought her daughter for Xmas. It won’t work. Since then, half the engineers in the department have played with it and none of us can make it work. This makes me suspect the damned thing is just plain broken, which is bad news because it ain’t returnable. *sigh*

Updates

Blurbs

In which I tie up some loose ends.

My recent rash went away all by itself. I think it must have been contact dermatitis because I haven’t had any problems since, and now my skin is peeling a little bit.

I didn’t hold out long: Bread got laid this morning. (Which didn’t keep him from nagging me for more the whole rest of the morning. I told him he was a royal pain in the ass and he giggled.)

He did not snake the drain on Tuesday, though, so we have to take twelve-second showers or the toilet starts bubbling. Ugh.

My Work Machine Joins the Aughts

Work

In which I get something new for once.

Last week, my monitor failed. It was all pink and evil and strobing madly when I came in one morning.

So I told the appropriate people and a replacement was ordered.

It came today.

new-monitor

Yay! New flat panel monitor with built-in speakers! (Wow, now that I’ve moved stuff, it appears that my desk sure needs to be dusted.)

In other news, BvB told me that teasing and ratting is back in. Therefore I’ve quit brushing my hair altogether.

Morning Sucks

Blurbs

In which my back hurts and I’m damned grumpy.

Bread woke me up earlier than necessary this morning, like he always does.

He probably used to wake me up early in an effort to share his love and tenderness with me, but now — since I’ve been asking him to give it a rest already for like seven years and he hasn’t — I have to assume he does it just to be a dick.

Anyway, in an effort to get the fuck away from him and stay asleep this morning, I pulled a muscle in my back really quite painfully — that was my first real conscious experience today: brief but searing pain! I was bound in the bedding at the very edge of the bed, and he was hemming me in and poking at me and breathing my air and in general having absolutely no respect for my desire to be asleep until the fucking alarm went off for work, and when I moved (okay, it was more like “when I twitched spastically”) I pulled something and it hurts and now I’m all Quasimodo and crooked and I’ll have to force myself to do some yoga when I get home even though all I really wanna do is take a pain killer and bitch about it.

Oh, okay, yes, I know, I know. When he wakes me up for l’amore sessuale he’s probably not actually thinking, “Gee, this is the 43rd morning in a row I’ve woken her up before dawn and boy will she be pissed,” but in actual fact is probably thinking something more like, “Maybe today I’ll get lucky!”

But I don’t care. I’m still pissed off, and he’s so not gonna get laid before noon ever again.

Big Companies Suck

Blurbs

In which I’m feeling aggravated.

My bank recently changed names from Central Valley Bank to Midwest One Bank.

In celebration of this, they’ve decided to charge my ‘free’ checking account $1.07 per month for the privilege of having a debit card.

Rat fuckers.

Work machine

Nerd, Work

In which you get to see my desktop!

I haven’t posted a pic of my desktop in like a thousand million quadrillion years, so here it is:

desktop-thumb

(Click to embiggen.)

I’m running Windows2kPro with WindowBlinds and Iconoid. Can’t remember where I got the wallpaper from.

Goddamn I’m cute.

Snake

Redneck, Rural, Rustic

In which you all immediately feel very, very sorry for Bread.

This morning, the toilet backed up. All over the bathroom floor.

When I went downstairs to get ready for work, the floor was wet and Bread had a box fan running to dry it. “You,” he snapped, “will not put any more kleenex in the toilet!” (Everything is my fault.) As I stepped into the bathroom, he said, “Don’t go in there, the fucking toilet overflowed!”

“I have to take a shower and get ready for work,” I replied.

“Fine! Whatever,” he said.

I stepped into the shower pan, took off my undies, turned the water on and bathed. When I got out, I threw a towel on the floor and stood on that to put slippers on, then went and dressed in the laundry room.

I gave Bread shit for blaming the overflow on me. “It’s not from kleenex. I suppose the fact that the plumbing backs up every year around this time is totally irrelevant,” I said.

He went on again about how my flushing kleenex down the toilet was going to stop.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, whatever, dude. You know more about plumbing than I do, but I fail to see how a bit of kleenex can hold a candle to an entire turd in terms of load on the system.”

“Trust me. Toilet paper backs it up.”

“Uh. Okay,” I said.

“You don’t have to run the snake!” he said.

“Oh, poor you. You have to do a chore today,” I said.

“I don’t want to do this shit!”

“Dude, it’s not like you’re busy. Plus, I’m guessing the toilet overflowed all over the floor because it was running, because you weren’t paying attention when you flushed it.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, frowning.

(Aside: the lever broke some months ago, so that one had to remove the top of the tank and plunge her entire arm in there to pull the stopper up in order to flush. I got sick of it right quick and solved the problem with some vinyl-covered clothesline wire and some packing tape. There is, as they say, nothing more permanent than a temporary solution, so if you come to my house in 2018 you’ll have to pull the green cord hanging out from underneath the slightly-ajar tank cover in order to flush the downstairs toilet. I guarantee it. The point of all this is that if the clothesline doesn’t retract properly, the toilet runs because the stopper’s still up.)

Basically, Bread hates plumbing, especially the part that deals with shit. He has a very healthy dislike for black water; it creeps him out. Our house is a zillion years old and we’re not entirely sure how the septic system works, but every year in January or February, we have to rent a snake and snake it out. It’s just part of living there.

“I hate this fucking place,” Bread said.

“It does present its difficulties,” I replied. I didn’t bring up the two thousand things I hate about it, because since he’s been home for the past three weeks and has done a little housekeeping of his own he’s started to regale me upon my return from work at night with statements like, “Now I understand what a pain in the ass it is to try to keep this fucking place clean! I spent all afternoon decobwebbing in here, and you can’t even tell.”

You’re preachin’ to the choir there, sweet thing, you’re preachin’ to the choir.

Potato-Corn Chowder

Recipes, ,

This is what I made for dinner tonight. On the off chance you happen to need a chowder recipe, here one is! (I majored in literature so I can say shit like “here one is,” and you all immediately understand that I did it on purpose, for, like, effect.)

potato-corn-chowder

Medium dice:
2 stalks celery
1/2 large onion
2 small or 1 medium carrot(s)

Sautee, in a large soup pot over medium flame, in:
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. butter

When veggies are tender, add:
3 c. broth*
1 c. milk

Bring to a simmer.

Dice and add to the pot:
4 medium potatoes

Add:
1/2 tsp. dried parsley

Simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 8-10 minutes.

Add:
1/2 c. fresh or frozen corn kernels

Remove 1/4 c. of the broth from the pot with a cup. Mix in:
2-3 Tbsp. flour

Whisk the broth/flour mixture until there are no lumps in it, then slowly add it to the chowder, stirring constantly, until the soup has thickened. Let the chowder cook a few more minutes, maybe five to ten, so that the flour doesn’t taste raw.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve. Like all soups, this chowder is great served with crusty bread and a green salad.

*For broth, you may use vegetable or chicken broth, or water. (I always use water and Knorr brand vegetable bouillon, because of all the veggie bouillon on the market it’s the only one I don’t hate.)

To make a non-vegetarian version: fry up 4 strips of bacon and put aside to cool, then sautee your mirepoix in the bacon fat (reducing or omitting the olive oil and butter) and continue with the rest of the recipe as written except add the crumbled bacon to the chowder along with the corn, or sprinkle it on before serving.

Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

Recipe Source
Author: Michelle Mook
Source: goblinbox.com

Weekend In Review

Blurbs

In which I do a whole lotta nothin’.

Friday we went out for a drink and were home by ten.

Saturday night we stayed in, although I discovered the next day that MissT had called me to see if I wanted to hang out. *sigh*

Sunday I slept in, then went to rehearsal. I’m still in love with the band, although it turns out we’re having a really hard time picking covers for our upcoming money-making gigs because we all have different tastes in music. GW likes 70’s guitar rock, I like Motown and funk, KO likes fusion and jazz, etc. Our list of possible covers to learn is totally schitz.

After rehearsal I dropped by to see Amazon Blonde and Truck. They were in their PJs nestled into the couch with both the TV and the stereo on. I played Truck’s acoustic guitar for awhile. Truck gave me a lecture about blogging about blogging about blogging, and Amazon Blonde said, “Yeah! What the fuck!” I love those folk.

I slept in again today, then got up and made beans and eggs and tortillas for breakfast. Mmm. As this is Bread’s fourth week home, I asked him if he was gonna get a job. He said he was working on it. When he asked why I was asking, I said, “Just ’cause we’re broke, that’s all.”

I need to go to the store for milk and bread and Tang and chocolate, but I’m really not feeling all that motivated. A nap sounds better. Way better. Although I’m so addicted to Tang I might end up going anyway.

Thunder Snow!

Weather

In which yesterday’s nice, sweet weather turns to snow.

Yesterday was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that, in Iowa in January, makes people mutter suspiciously to one another, “It’s too nice out. Probably gonna dump a foot of snow on us any minute now.”

And so it has begun. And it might keep up all day:

URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE QUAD CITIES IA IL
1121 AM CST FRI JAN 20 2006

A FAST-MOVING WINTER STORM WILL MOVE THROUGH THE AREA THIS AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT. SNOW WILL RAPIDLY DEVELOP THIS AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE INTO THE EVENING HOURS.

ADDITIONALLY… AREAS SOUTH OF A LINE FROM PROPHETSTOWN TO KEOSAUQUA MAY SEE THUNDER SNOW.

AN ADDITIONAL THREAT WILL BE THE SNOW. SNOW…HEAVY AT TIMES…IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP BY LATE AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE INTO THE EVENING HOURS. THE THREAT OF THUNDER SNOW IS QUITE HIGH WHICH WILL REDUCE VISIBILITIES TO NEAR ZERO IN LOCALIZED AREAS.

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE BY MIDNIGHT.

A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW… SLEET…AND ICE ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

Naturally, what this means to me is that my DH is in the next room right this very minute cutting a giant, gaping hole in an external wall of our future living room with his trusty Sawzall.

new window

There’ll be a nice new big window in it by dark, but still. Who cuts a 4′ x 6′ hole in his own house when threatened with thunder snow?!

(Okay, okay. I admit it. That warning’s not exactly for the county I live in. I just like the idea of thunder snow.)

– – –
Update: Check it out! A new Pella window, set in the hole:

new window installed