Town centre

IMG_0619.JPG

This is right in the centre of our town, and I've barely given it any thought until today when I was driving around with the camera?

Day out

I have a nice day out of the office today, one day after my birthday. So far, so good!

I'm catching up on my stored episodes of Battlestar Gallactica, which should help the Tivo some, it's been getting a bit full recently. I've got plans after this to grab my camera bag and go for a drive in the midday sun, it's bright and sunny out there, if a little cold in temperature today.

It's a nice day so far.

Weekend cooking

Every other weekend, or more often sometimes, we spend a day in the kitchen cooking.

This isn't just cooking up a quick meal, or anything like that, but serious levels of preparation, shopping, trashing out and cooking up.

As you may know, Dancer has many intolerances and allergies, which makes eating out tricky. Not only that, but eating out is expensive, less healthy and less convenient during a work week. So we cook up enough food so that we can take both lunch and dinner to the office.

Today we were marinating chicken breasts, pan frying potatoes, we had halibut, steaks, home made tomato basil soup, stew, mushroom soups, home made gluten free bread.

We started the first chop at about 2pm today, and packed away the last container about 10pm today.

This is what the interior of our fridge / freezer looks like after that kind of damage!



It's hard work, but frankly I love spending the time with Dancer in the kitchen, we put on a few movies (6 hours of the BCC adaption of Pride and Prejudice this time around!) and we usually get through a bottle of wine (to drink)

And we're set for the week. No more cooking now for another two weeks (we have a couple of things to finish up this turn though)

Poor grill

IMG_0506.JPG

After yesterdays lovely, warm weather, and us breaking out the grill, it only seems right that we get snow overnight.

It's MARCH, people! Snow should stop by now!

Grilling

IMG_0502.JPG

Quick, simple, snow still on the group, but it's time for the grill to be unearthed again!

Pet food recall

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/20/national/main2587087.shtml

As many as one in six animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer last month after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country,

This is quite horrific, and we personally know of at least two people - one who's cat died, the other was seriously ill and ran up over $3k worth of vet bills. Both of them fed their cats foods that are listed on the recall list.

We are lucky, our guys only eat dry food, and while the company is affected, the specific food we have is not.

If you have cats or dogs, please go and check your food against the recall list, just to be sure.

I love my Craftsman

IMG_0212.JPG

One hour, 50ft of driveway, 5.5hp of snowblowing power.

Snow be gone!

More on that weather!

New Englanders love their weather as much as the Brits.

On Wednesday, it was nearly 70f recorded by our office. We were in tshirts, shorts, windows were down, shades on.

Driving home tonight we have severe winter weather warnings. 6 - 12 inches of snow over night. 3 hour drive home from work with accidents everywhere. Sleet and rain tomorrow that is likely to freeze overnight, and thaw, causing floods during the days.

Dogs won't go out, I've just cleared the driveway, as we nearly didn't make it down after our drive home, and that would have sucked!

We're planning on a nice, cuddly, warm Saturday in!

Time for your close up!

Brutus

My new camera arrived, and we got some great pictures of the puggies!

Pain

Oh man. I woke up in the worst pain today. All of my muscles felt like they were on fire, especially my back. It hurt to touch, even lightly. It was one of those "I could've laid there and cry" moments and would've if I had thought it would help. I've only had that level of sensitivity a few times and it's not pleasant. It started last night when the muscles in my chest started spasming, and would ease up. If I were more paranoid, I'd think heart attack, but I could tell it was muscular.

I tried stretching this morning (didn't help) and the shower really sucked. I'm praying for the painkillers to kick in, or for someone to shoot me, whichever comes first. Because I'm telling you right now, this pain needs to go away. I'm at work flinching if something touches my back or my arms, that includes air from a fan. If it wasn't for the static, I'd leave my fleece on just for padding. Ouch!!

I've been in one of my moods with the Celiacs again. It sucks that I can't just get a birthday cake or just go out to eat, but rather it still takes all this planning and hassle. I did compensate a bit by making some brownies, but still, I miss the days of just being able to DO things and EAT things without all the hassle and bother that goes with it some days. Even so, the brownies rocked. :)

On a happy note, yesterday was Brutus' birthday!! He's 4 now! I can hardly believe it. So I made doggie cookies last night for them. They seemed happy enough wtih it. ;) They also got a nice walk yesterday afternoon, and tons of cuddle time. I think Brutus had a good birthday.

Home today

I'm working from home today so the guy can come on out and fix the window in the car. Once it's patched up, I'll go find a good car wash place with hoovers and suck all the glass out and wash the car up. By the time Dancer gets home tonight, it should be clean, shiny and good as new.

Today I also read that iRobot have made a roomba just for pets. This, along with their awesome looking scooba, are both high on my "I want" list. We already have a Discovery model, but it's wheels locked up and I'm working with their Support group to get it fixed up hopefully! If I can get it working again, they do upgrades for Pet owners which certainly doesn't suck (groan)!

Back to laundry, puppy cuddling and work.

Pancakes

Who doesn't love pancakes? A big stack of fluffy pancakes with butter running down the sides and covered in maple syrup. Or maybe covered with a fruit sauce and whipped cream?

I love pancakes. Always did. However, with Celiacs pancakes as I know them are a thing of the past. No more flour, egg or butter means most of the pancake ingredients are gone. I did attempt gluten-free pancakes before but this was before we worked out the dairy and the eggs. Those were pretty good. The last attempt I did with G.F pancakes minus the egg and milk ended in disaster. The batter was way too thin and didn't hold together enough to even cook. We were still in the old apartment when I did that.

Here recently I've been craving bread products, mainly croissants. Call me weird, but I miss breakfast sandwiches. Today, I wanted pancakes. So while my Geek went and got some stuff at the supermarket I set to work in the kitchen. Remembering what went wrong the last time, I decided to add a bit more of the egg replacement, guar gum and xantham gum. It looked great until I added the liquid. It was insanely thick!! I'm talking dough consistency! I decided to go ahead with it anyway and see what happens.

I scopped the "batter" into the pan with two spoons and waited a few minutes, then flipped and squashed them down so they were flat. They turned out really tasty, though the flavor of the dough was a bit flat. Needed a pinch of salt. In lieu of butter and syrup, we used Geek's favorite - lemon juice and sugar. Yum! So I'm happy it worked out as well as it did. I'll keep tweaking this one, but it's easy to deal with too thick than too thin batter. I just need to throttle back on the xantham gum or use guar exclusively. I'm sure Geek won't mind being my guinea pig. :)

300

D and I went to see 300 last night on premier night at the local dive movies.

Awesome movie! The visuals, cinematography and effects were stunning and beautiful. Some of the battles and action scenes were so well done, some of the best I've seen, and I definitely enjoyed and appreciated them.

The story line was as thick as my pug. Just not much too it, beyond the obvious main line, the back stories and development were thin on the ground, but everything else made up for that!

I'll be going with Dancer next week, it's her Birthday and she needs treating to a night at the movies :)

The bad with the good

It always happens, you have a good run, lots of nice and fun and rewarding experiences and things happen to you and your loved ones.

Then something bad happens. That happened today. Not too bad though, fortunately.

Normally, we take my car to the office, but this morning I knew it needed gas, and we were tight for time, so we took Dancers. It had the GPS on the dashboard mount, and mine didn't. We parked in our usual spot at the office.

At lunch I went out with a friend for lunch, Dancer stayed. We came back and parked in our usual place again, around 1:30pm.

When we left to go to the dance class, I noticed that there was glass on the ground. And no glass in our passenger window. Nor was their a GPS on the dashboard mount, nor a dashboard mount. Or cable.

So yeah, someone smashed and grabbed. I called 911, they came out very quickly and promptly and I filed a report ... obviously nothing will happen and no one would be found, but I wanted it for the insurance report.

Unfortunately, the glass repair company can't come out until Monday, so we found some clear plastic and taped the window up. Fortunately my friend had driven himself in, and not come in with us like normal, so he drove Dancer home (missing her class, unfortunately!) and I had a cold, loud drive home with tarp on the window. It's in the garage now, safely home, and I'll work remotely on Monday to get it fixed up.

Hopefully thats all the bad we face this time around!

New hobby

I love taking photographs, I always have done. I've never really had the chance to sit down and learn the technology or jargon behind it, and develop the skills to consistently take good photographs though. It's a bit hard to learn this stuff on a point and shoot digital :)

So as an early birthday present from my wonderful wife, I've just purchased a new digital camera. It was actually a bundle of a new camera and two lenses.

The camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, and it's coming with two lenses:

- EF-S 18-55mm II
- EF-S 75-300mm III




I also ordered a high speed compact flash card, and reader at the same time.

Now I just can't wait for it to arrive so I can get to use it!

Interestingly, shipping got delayed due to security checks ... both the vendor and American Express called me to confirm it's a real order, from a real customer with a real credit card. I imagine cameras are favourite purchases of people with stolen cards, so I definitely don't mind them double checking!

Cold week

It's been cold here.

I mean *cold*. Cars don't want to start, dogs don't want to pee and humans don't want to walk around in it. In the mornings there are usually several dog walkers going past our house, but not the last few days.

The snow has frozen solid. I can walk on the top of a few inches of snow in my slippers and not leave footprints.

The automatic sliding door on the front of our office building won't slide properly, it's that cold. Neither would the sliding hatch on the drive through window this morning when I picked up my coffee. Even the gas pumps are slower.

Nights I've been to the gym, I have to take great care to dry my hair before I leave, it will freeze solid on the walk back to the car. Same in the morning after a shower.

I just wanted to give you an idea of how cold it is. I've never felt cold like this in the UK, never. Outside, right now, is 24f (-4c), and it feels comfortably warm, and I didn't take my coat with me. Thats how cold it has been.

So what does the extended forecast for next week predict? Almost 60f on some days (15c).

Got to love that New England weather! After this week, that will be tropical.

The back garden

The back garden

We've had snow and horrible cold weather recently, but at least it's pretty!

Why the new blog?

I've had a web presence since the late 90's, and have had a blog since 2001. I started on the old blogspot, before buying my own domain and hosting, and migrating to Moveable Type. I used this for a few years, but left when they screwed up the beta testing of version 3 and switched to Expression Engine.

I still have this installed, and use it for several blogs, both of my own and other folks.

But 7 years of blogging carries a lot of baggage. I've done a lot, changed a lot. Got new friends, new interests, new relationships. I'm also a lot busier than I used to be, and don't have the inclination to spend my free time playing with code, adding plugins, making sure everything is running smoothly.

So I've come full circle, and we're back to Blogspot. It's changed a lot since those early days, so I'm still finding new things.

The theme of this blog is a new start. Feel free to leave comments and subscribe to the feed. The readership base will change, and we will both be posting here together instead of our own seperate blogs, but we're the same people :)

So welcome!

First post

Obligitory first post.

Hi, this will be a new home for us on the interweb thing