Month: June 2009

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

Note to Coworker (and a political rant)

Shelly

Dear Miss Busypants,

Please refrain from grunting an unprovoked “Morning,” at me, as you walk past. If I’d spoken to you first, I could perhaps understand why you’d respond as if you were irritated, or as if you couldn’t be bothered. But I didn’t. I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, so why the hell did you have to say anything, if it was going to be a grumpy-assed grumble in my general direction? You can take your cranky “Morning” and piss off.

Alsotoo, would you like to talk about stress? The Indiana house and senate are required to pass a budget by midnight TONIGHT, otherwise, the state government will shut down. I could come in to work tomorrow to find out that I don’t have a job, so if anyone has something to be grumpy about, it’s me. Not, Miss Busypants McGrumpersons. She has made it clear, every time someone pisses her off, that she could retire at any time. Must be nice.

Oh, and the best part about this stupid budget nonsense? The state house and senate had come to a tentative compromise about the budget IN APRIL. Governor Daniels trashed it, by demanding that funding for the most at-risk public schools be cut. Yeah. That would be the same Mitch Daniels who was director of the Office of Management and Budget, under BushCo II. You remember, the guy who promised that the Iraq war would cost only $50-60 billion? The same war that has, to date, cost approximately $682 billion. And we elected this bozo as governor twice! What the hell is wrong with people in my state?

Uncategorized

Summer Brownies

Shelly

It’s too hot to turn on the oven, but I was craving brownies, so I thought I’d re-visit the thought of making them in the microwave. If nothing else, this is way cheaper and healthier than those microwavable brownie bowls from Betty Crocker.

This is basically my regular brownie recipe, halved, with a couple of tweaks.

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa (dark is best!)
pinch of salt*
4 Tbls olive oil*
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla (or do what I do, and just slosh a little bit into the bowl)

Add the dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly, then add the wet and mix. It will be fairly stiff (half-way between cake batter and cookie dough in consistency). Spoon into a shallow, greased soup bowl. (I used the left-over olive oil that had collected in the bottom of the measuring cup.)

Microwave for about two minutes. This is the only tricky part, since every microwave is different. If you don’t nuke it long enough, it’ll be too gooey. Not that I believe there’s such a thing as too gooey. Too long, and it will burn, and that would be a sad thing, indeed. My microwave seems to be permanently stuck on Chernobyl, so two minutes works well for me. This also assumes your microwave has a turntable. If not, you may want to rotate 1/4 turn every 30 seconds or so.

* The original recipe calls for melted butter. I didn’t feel like melting it, so I used olive oil. If you use olive oil or unsalted butter, you’ll want to add a pinch of salt. If you use salted butter, omit the salt.

My Garden, Photography

Daylilies

Shelly

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These came from a friend. I transplanted them after they’d bloomed last year, so I wasn’t sure what colors I was getting or even if they’d bloom for me, since I had to plant them in pretty much full shade. They seem to be doing okay, though.

The top photo is a Lensbaby 2.0 shot, but with no filters. I’m shocked that I was able to get the anthers (the polleny bits) in focus.

Crankypantsing

This Is Not a Post About Michael Jackson

Shelly

I’ve watched a too much bad television this weekend, and now I’m all cranky.

First, Bridezillas: The show is, frankly, horrifying, and not only because of the over-the-top, craptacular, childish behavior of the brides in question. In every episode I’ve seen, someone–or several someones–reminds the bride-to-be that this is “her day.” I’m sorry, but where I come from, it takes two people to get married. Has something changed? And worse, the “It’s your day,” crap is always said in a way that’s meant to excuse the bride’s horrible, abusive behavior.

Second, Raising Sextuplets: I don’t know if this one has started airing or not, but the promos piss me right the hell off. The voice-over introduces the mom, then the dad, then goes on to state that the mom is “raising sextuplets.” What the hell is the dad doing?! And really, after the Gosselin fiasco, do we need another reality show that pimps out people’s babies? I expect life is weird enough for kids from high-number multiple births, without taking away their privacy, on top of everything else.

Pets, Photography

Friday Cat Blogging

Shelly

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Polly, reclining in Harriet’s bed

Harriet may be unamused at times that her house has been invaded by kittens, but she’s (mostly!) being pretty good about it.

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Henry and Polly in their kitty habitat

I picked up a few new toys this afternoon, on my way home from PT. I stuck some of them up on the bookshelves, so they’d be out of reach. I figured I’d dole them out slowly. Polly and Henry had other ideas. I hadn’t turned my back for two seconds before they had the mate to this toy off the shelf. I guess that means the kittens approve.

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Angry little toy

Crankypantsing

Note to Coworker

Shelly

Dear Miss BusyPants,

Since you are constantly complaining that you have too much work and too many responsibilities, I am at a loss to explain why you have suddenly taken it upon yourself to track down and (re)label all of our unit’s book trucks. And, most importantly, why are you interested in which trucks are in my cubicle? It’s really none of your business, and I’m pretty sure you have better things to do than A) bother me, or B) spend 45 minutes flittering around the department, distracting everyone while you determine who has which truck(s).

In short, I realize that you think you should be in charge of the universe, but you aren’t, so please go back to your cubicle and stop bothering everyone. And by “everyone,” I mean me.

Thank you.

Crankypantsing, My Garden, Photography

Coral Bells

Shelly

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This was a Lensbaby shot, with a +4 macro attachment.

Did I mention the big, horrible computer crash here? Well, Cracktop crashed. Or, rather, the start files for his OS were permanently corrupted, which meant I couldn’t boot into Windows, so I had to wipe everything and reinstall from scratch. Good times. It could be worse, though. I only lost eight music files (!), a couple of weeks’ worth of email, and my calendar.

It took a couple of days, but I think I’ve pretty much got everything back up and running. I’m sure there are some small, unitasker programs I’ve forgotten about, but printers/scanners aside (and that’s a topic I’m still mulling over) the bulk of the software and hardware I use is re-installed. It took me most of the day yesterday just to re-download the Adobe software I use, onna counta IU’s server is crazy slow. And since the’ve broken everything up into separate parts, I had to babysit the downloads. Have I mentioned that I’m not the princess of patience? Aieee!

As for my scanner, since I still don’t know whether or not that was at the root of the crash, I’m not going to reinstall it, period. I just don’t trust it, so I’m going to buy a new one this weekend. I’m thinking about getting another all-in-one combo, only this time, a Canon Pixma, since I’m super happy with how long Canon inks can sit dormant without drying out. That should do nicely for occasional color printing, for arting purposes.

For boring old document printing, though, I’m thinking about also getting a monochrome laser printer. They’re uber cheap these days, as is the toner. Seriously. Monochrome printers are comparable in price to decent inkjet printers. Cartridges for the one I’m looking at are around $50, which is cheaper than most inkjet ink, and laser toner lasts a lot longer. It just doesn’t make sense to use an inkjet printer for plain old document printing any more.