Quasijo - Supertiger

I haven’t posted in weeks. The news is:

My weekly wheat bread continues to bake up neatly.  And yummily.

I’m learning to de-bone chicken breasts.  I know that’s normally called “boning” a breast, but that sounds too kinky for this early in the morning.

I’ve developed a consistent coffee brew that I really like.  I’m going to share. I brew 45g of ground beans (and a pinch of kosher salt) in 48 fl. oz. of  water (or 1,361g if you prefer).  You can scale that up or down by the ratio 1g:1fl.oz. (or 1:30 if you insist on measuring metric units).  As for scaling the salt… I don’t know precisely.  After filling my filter, I sprinkle kosher salt over the top of the grounds.  We’re talking a fraction of a gram, here, which is less than my scale can measure.  It’s coffee; enjoy experimenting with it.

So, why salt?  Because Navy rules.  Also, it cuts the acidity of the coffee oils making it more palatable to drink black.  Additionally, the salt boosts the tastey flavors of coffee just like it does every other food on earth.  It’s a panacea!  You’ll want to use a pinch of salt on your grounds because when you go through coffee as fast as I do, you buy the store brand - which needs a little help.

The kitty on my belly needs loving.  Later.

The sourdough starter turned out very badly and had to die.  Whatever yeast it had to begin with were eaten by a smelly bacteria that took over one I put the jars into the fridge.  My regular yeast wheat bread continues to improve.  I”ll post pictures of my recent, pretty loaves later.

This post is about Seymour, my current personal project; that’s Seymour as in, “Feed me!”.  It’s a webapp I began writing back in February - the day after I made the NYC Stories post in fact.  The idea is it’ll keep track of your favorite restaurants and and suggest a place to eat when you can’t decide.  It will attempt to rotate your picks so you don’t repeat too often.  Sometimes it’ll throw in random new places that other users have set up and that seem to mesh with your faves.  I got the idea when my lunch crew’s food oracle refused to choose for us any longer.  That started a pre-face-stuffing conversation thread for the next couple of days from which I captured the basic requirements.

Oddly, after Maggie posted her request for a random resturaunt picker on her LJ, my foil Bigtimes generated almost exactly the same set of requirements as I did for Seymour.  Maybe now that I know of another group of potential users I’ll feel inspired by profit motives to write the database chunk of the app.

You can’t see it, though, because my camera is broken.  This time I made every mistake I know, but the bread blew up beautifully and tastes wonderful.  I have an idea that I made a couple of my classic mistakes more intelligently than usual.  I don’t care to elaborate right now (I ended up doing long rises in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature - oops, elaboration), but I’ll come back with more thoughts after my next loaf, which should be made this weekend, since I’m probably taking the rest of this one to work.

Shelly smells like maple and sausage - so that’s normal. Ciaran smells like a memory of cappuccino.

Also, Ciaran’s tail is broken or bruised or something.  It’s healing up very well and he still has feeling/mobility to the length of it.  There’s a crook in it, now, about four inches from the base.  That was hurting him earlier in the week, but it seems to be a non-issue, now.  He doesn’t complain when I touch it, and it’s moving more or less like a tail - go figure.  My big indicators are he still grooms it all the way to the end, it’s warm, and the end waves like grass in a gentle breeze.  Any of that stops and I’ll worry.

How come Mississippi and Tennessee got snow, but I didn’t?  That’s not fair.  Stupid lake effect.

I met a nifty woman on OkCupid. Finally.  I’ve had an active profile on that site since 1998 when it launched.  I search it weekly.  In ten years, I have now met one woman I really want to meet.  Granted, I met a half dozen wonderful women out in the real world in that same time frame.  I’m just blessed all around, I guess.

I can’t tell what the cats smell like because my apartment smells like baking bread.

I got stood up on a blind date tonight.  It was arranged through an OkCupid spin-off called CrazyBlindDate.com.  It’s kind of a neat idea, and I’ll do it again.  That’s the second bunko date they’ve arranged, though, so I’ll be out of patience soon.

I baked a third loaf of bread today.  It was too big for the loaf pan, but it mostly grew straight up because of the way I slashed it.  Came out looking like a lopsided mushroom cloud.  You know I liked it.

Shelly smells like maple syrup again.

Ciaran smells like recess.

Got to Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon.  I have, at last, seen the Statue of Liberty.  I came to see it - and other stuff - before, but only on very rainy/foggy days.  I had seen the dark patch of fog where it should be, but now I have seen the massive, copper bulk of the thing.  Hooray.

I went on a walking tour of downtown Manhattan, from South Ferry to Central Park and halfway back.  That was all mostly by accident, but I enjoyed myself.  I stopped in at a Korean Barbeque on 32nd Street; it was excellent.  I think it was called Chung Moo Ro.  Ah, yes.  Google found it at 10 W 32nd Street, just south of the Empire State Building.

I also dropped in at Gstaad and met Ande, Chloe’s sister.  She is a supermodel, as I expected.  I’m going to head that way again tonight if any of you cool cats want to hop a jet and meet me there.

Of course I did work this week, but that’s some boring stuff and now it’s time to forget about it.

Spore will be released Sep. 7th, 2008! Will be available on PC, Mac, DS, Wii, and mobile phone according to Wikipedia. I don’t know how the mobile phone version will work, and I don’t care. What I’d really like is a 360 version, just so I can play it in HD. Maybe the Wii will get a system update to make my dreams come true in the meantime.

I pruned my LJ friends list just now.  I don’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings, but damn y’all post too much.  JKOS.   I post everything wide open, so if you want to keep me as a friend that’s cool.  If you really really want me to keep reading your journal just reply to this post and I’ll add you back.

Fashion a Victim of Global Warming (12 Oct 2007 - NY Times, via Stuff.co.nz)

The founder of Milan Fashion Week, Beppe Modenese, told the New York Times:

The fashion system must adapt to the reality that there is no strong difference between summer and winter any more. You can’t have everyone showing four times a year to present the same thing.

He’s right, of course, and I’m concerned that this trend is also turning up in network television programming. Summer is lingering into Fall; we had a few days of cool weather this week, but now it’s hot again. Likewise, the Fall TV season has kicked off on some networks, but not others. Showtime has started their new season of shows; Heroes is back on; Comedy Central even started airing new Southpark episodes back in March they were so confused. Last year LOST had that six week break in the middle of the season. They film in Hawaii and the fall even caught them by surprise. I hope the television industry learns to adapt to the new climate conditions soon. I don’t care for these stuttered seasons.

Someone pulled the building’s fire alarm at 12:30 this morning. I was still awake, of course. There was no fire; it was probably those punk kids who keep pounding on my door in the middle of the night. I practiced getting the cats into their carrier and outside, so it was a productive interruption.

I went biking this morning for several hours. A guy from work and I went to the Wakefield park to try out their trails. We started out on a mountain-bike trail that was uphill both ways. Crazy, right? My bike was not built for that kind of riding. Neither am I; I’m way too wussy to power through banked switch-backs. Maybe someday… We finished off on the Fairfax County Cross Country Trail. Rode a couple of miles down that to a small lake and back. The CCT connects a bunch of parks in Fairfax and also connects to a network of trails that will take you hundreds of miles all over northern VA. Pretty neat stuff. I’ll be biking more of it while the weather holds up.

Cat smells: They smell pretty much the same as after I bathed them: clean and a little musky. Ciaran’s ears are cold. They remind me of artichoke leaves.