Hermitage

Humboldt

What the hell, man?  This is a new record: 3, number of the episde in which a main character dies.  Serenity doesn’t count as 1 because it’s a follow-on to a series.  Maybe Billy, Ph.D. can bring her back or something; maybe with the freeze ray he didn’t use to stop the world when it mattered.  Stupid super villian.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog: 4.5 herrings

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.

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.

It’ll be a day or too before I know whether I picked up any nasty bugs that’ll make the sponge inedible. So far it looks like a success.  My house kind of stinks, now, though.  That’s a typical, temporary side effect of growing a starter; it’ll stop stinking in a day or two.  That’s pretty much the same time that I either throw the stuff away or pour it into jars and tuck it in the fridge.

Good times!

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.