*snert!*

Snaffled from Bakayaro Onna:

Sylverthorne's Aliases

Your movie star name: Grapes John

Your fashion designer name is Kimberly Munich

Your socialite name is Kimmie Portland

Your fly girl / guy name is K Tur

Your detective name is Dragon Home

Your barfly name is Chips White Russian

Your soap opera name is Shawn Springhill

Your rock star name is Caramello Light

Your star wars name is Kimony Turand

Your punk rock band name is The Bemused Wing Nut

The Amazing Meganame Generator

*points and laughs* The Bemused Wingnut! *ROFL!*

Okay, I'm easily amused... So? ^^

*purr*

The ice cream machine is a success. *burp* ^^;

The first batch is delicious, and already there is discussion on how to improve. Mom has a hankering for peach ice cream, although I fear she will have to wait until summer for that - we can't get ripe, sweet local peaches out of season.. ^^
(And damnit, if I'm gonna do that, I want LOCAL fruit! *gripegripewoodenpeaches*)

I tell you what though, it's /messy/ - the lid has this little pour-spout thingie you're supposed to pour the ice cream mixture into. This requires a siphon to be effective. ... it made a mess. *wry grin*
First round, with the first half of the batch, we discovered that the freezer is /very/ efficient, and I had to hold the motor-attachment down until it could drive the paddle through the half-frozen mess. Lesson 1: assemble motor and paddle and plug together before adding cream-mixture.
Okay - second batch, we try that, using a different siphon. (Technically, /I/ tried that - by myself, since I had Andi stirring eggs for dinner.) Made a hell of a mess - because, naturally, raspberries do /not/ smash very well when you want them to. *sigh*
However, that works better, so I just have to remember to have a straw handy and someone else to hold/pour or prod. ^^

.. it's /really/ fast. My experiences (limited, admittedly) with icecream machines suggest that they take the better part of a couple of hours to mix and freeze your treat. This one takes less than one - it don't make much (and you /really/ have to be careful not to over-fill it..)- but it's /fast/! The Thorne likes. ^^

It was an Ebay find. We're pleased.. ^^

Bloody Murphy!!!

(Y'know, that sounds like it'd make a good name for one fucked up drink.. ^^)

What was I doing ..?
Oh yes. Murphy.

Yesterday, Andi drove out to Portland to harass the faculty (he got what he was after, at least..) .. however, on his way back the clutch fell out of the car. (We knew it was going - but.. o.O).

Mind you, this is on I5 - one of the main highways - near rush hour. He got it off the road and the four-way flashers on, at least, so that was okay - but since no one'd told him that that the way you handle a break-down on the highway here is to /stay/ with the vehicle (eventually ODOT or a cop will stop - occasionally you even get a Good Samaritan with a cellphone). What you do in Germany if that happens is get out and find a phone - they stick em along the highway every kilometer or so - (... that's a pretty good idea. Wish they'd do that here.. o.O) so that's not a big deal. They don't do that here, and he didn't have my cell with him... so he hikes up and hill and climbs the fence to get to a phone and calls home.

... Mom eventually managed to raise a tow for the car and figure out how the @!$%& to get him home, but we were bouncing off the walls pretty good by then...
So there's a shop in Portland putting a new clutch in it - /maybe/ we get it back by Wenesday. (Monday, if we're /very/ fortunate.)

All in all, a nerve-wracking experience that ended without any serious losses.

... Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike computers sometimes? We just replaced the RAM in mine (I had a full gig - this was not a cheap replacement) in the hopes of sorting out a problem with wonkiness (Every so often, my comp will do something /throughly/ weird - half-chalked up to Jet and Ayzur having fun in the depths - and crash something. Last time it was the whole fragging network...
So we replaced mainboard, RAM ... Andi tested the RAM in Merroune, and we find out that it's fine. (Merroune just gained a full gig of RAM. Heh.) Huh?
Obviously, that don't leave much, but process of elimination leaves the CPU or the PSU. *sigh*
Well, the latter's easy to test... >.<

In /good/ news - we've got our grubby paws on an ice cream machine (Did I mention this earlier?) and I have a recipe for raspberry icecream and about four-fifths of the necessary ingredients.. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to set that up... *purr*

Death! Death and grave inconvenience!

Grr!

I am going to have to buy a new hood for my tank. This, after trekking all over town hunting a 15", 14W florescent bulb for the old one.
I hit Petco first. (I'm too mean to buy fish from them - but I'm not too mean to do them out of other things. ... maybe not.)
No 15" bulbs. Lots of 18", a couple of 12" - no 15". And no one around to collar and complain to. Well, okay. I grab plants (the other reason I went in there - picked up some White Ribbon (dracaena sanderiana) and a bit of tropica fern (microsorium pteropus) and some green grassy stuff that is called Kyoto (Ophiopogon japonica) - I /don't/ recommend 'Aqua plant' - buy the damn things LOOSE. Seriously. GAHHH!) and head for the counter - and abruptly have more help than I need. *sigh*
Okay. /She/ can't find any 15" bulbs either. I bit my tongue on the 'I told you so' - but it slipped out anyway. Fortunately (not?) she didn't catch it.
The ironic thing is - they sell hoods that /take/ 15" bulbs. *sigh*
She suggests Wal-mart or Lowes. Okay. I hit Walmart. Nope - not in fish, and not in lighting. Okay. Lowes. Yes. Wrong diameter. *sighgripeswear*

Over to Kraemer. Get the helpful, knowledgeable fish-person. YES! Explain my bulb-woes. We hike back to the bulb-corner and, lo and behold, she has one! The last one. *thud* So much for the Petco lady telling me Kraemer was the wrong place to look. So I get the damn thing. I look at her fish and debate the addition of a small school of Whiteclouds to the tank - ended up I come home with just the bulb and plants, though.

... that's okay. Sunuvabitch don't work anyway. Grrr! So it's back to the drawing board... *sigh* Debating just buying a full hood and calling it good....

Massively obscene words!

*grump*

Want out. Want to not have to wonder, from day to day which one of us (me or my Mom) is doing the cooking. Want a kitchen that I don't have to hunt through, swearing, because no two people put things away in the same places. Would /really/ like a kitchen not over-populated with gadgets. (I'll concede, there are some gadgets I'd like for myself, but... those are mostly practical. ^^;)

Oh well. More random inanity, snagged from The Zone...
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Chakram of Desirable Balance. What's yours?

... Okay. ^^

*bored*

*snagged from B Onna's blog*

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... *SNERK*

Yes, yes, I'm going to bed soon... *boingboingsplat* ... well, eventually. ^^

*whapwhapwhap*

*smacks blogger repeatedly with a frozen salmon*

I /was/ going to post last night, but it wouldn't go through because they'd been 'improving' it. I /really/ wish they'd quit doing that...

I know I'm getting lazy when I spend a day on my footies and wind up half-unable to walk ..

Why did I spend most of the day on my feet? Well, other than the usual reasons, that is - last night I got it into my head I wanted a banana split. With raspberry sauce. So I went and got the required material. Ice cream - vanilla, chocolate and *sigh* strawberry. I don't /like/ strawberry-flavoured things very much.. but you can't buy raspberry icecream. You can buy raspberry sorbet, but that's not the same thing... (Admittedly, Andi tells me he saw raspberry ice cream in Whole Foods - but they wanted six bucks for a pint.. o.O) anyway. Chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, frozen raspberries (Not raspberry season yet, of course... and I can't get raspberry sauce, either. Grrr.) heavy cream (whipped cream. Yes, I prefer to whip it myself - I know what's going into it..) a little jar of marachino cherries and, of course, the bananas.
I also picked up some leeks - for potato soup. (Came out more like potato sludge, it was so thick, but /damn/ it was good shit..)

Ain't got there yet, although I /did/ make the raspberry sauce. ^^
(Which turned out /very/ well - nicely tart and very nice against the vanilla ice cream. ^^)

However, while Andi and I were discussing the kinds of ice cream you can and can't get your hands on, I discovered a recipe for raspberry icecream (Made with heavy cream - serious shit!) and said, rather wistfully, that I wished I could get my hands on an ice cream maker ...
He hit Ebay, and I /started/ to compose a post for FreeCycle - next thing I know, he's pointing me at an ice cream maker by some company I've never heard of. (Italian, specialises, supposedly. No, I can't remember the name of the company..) available on Ebay for a fifth of the normal selling price, no bids and it was closing in about two hours. Hm.
We batted it around for a little bit and I finally said to grab it. He grabbed. We have a new toy - or will, in a week or so. ^^
Now.. what'd I do with that recipe? ^.~

Later on, I'll go down and test Mom's mixer toy - the same one she used on the potato soup (Leeks, potatoes, milk and heavy cream, with a heavy hit of garlic and a little salt. Yum.) - and whip the rest of the heavy cream and make myself a nice banana split. The mixer-toy is effective - I have /never/ seen whipped cream that fast. I do begin to believe that it would make whipped cream out of skim milk... o.O

. ... it occurs to me that if I'm gonna keep doing this, I'm going to have to find a couple of suitable dishes... o.O

More than an hour later, I have had my split-cravings settled. My eyes were bigger than my belly, but I won't want another one for a good long time. ^^
This might be fortunate - that'll give me a chance to acquire some suitable dishes...

Now, if this will /post/ I will be a little less ready to send an annoyed email to the idiots at Blogger. >.<

Blah!

Actually, s'not /all/ bad...

I got my hands on the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack yesterday, and have been listening to it ever since. Is it bad that I can 'follow' all most all the parts, as long as I have someone else to keep me on key? (Particularly trying to follow the soprano bits - I haven't really the range to grab all those really high notes... although I can do the tenor parts just fine...)

.. and I cleared the sewing room a little - obstensively so that Andi and I can get to the ironing board, but mostly just so he'll have a place he can work in without getting in everyone else's way - the computer room is starting to get WAY crowded, with five machines all running at once down there and Andi's project in progress thrown in for good measure.
Mom isn't in a 'sewing' phase, so I'm hoping that will work out. And if it doesn't... *sigh* It's not like she will be doing serious embroidery, although if she winds up needing that, an iMac is a lot easier to shift than a whole fucking desktop system...

Damnitall, I want OUT!!!! *grump*
It's slowly coming together - they've gone to check out a car going cheap in Amity - I can only hope the damn thing runs, and won't need too much maintenance - it's an older Mercedes. While that sounds promising, I'm slightly skeptical - my experience with european cars is that they are finiky and require babying - /expensive/ babying. That is, admittedly, my /limited/ experience.... however, we haven't really got the money for something like that.. (Which is why we are avoiding domestic cars! Heh.)