I'm baaaack!

And feeling a lot more like myself. I got a lot of really great stuff for Christmas too... more than I expected, or than I really should have. I have the best family and Christmas is always so much fun with them. It's worth the long drive.

Here's a list of ten things I didn't get, and I hope you didn't get either (unless you wanted one of them).

1. Potted poison Ivy
2. Orange polyester pants suit
3. Chicken Pox
3. A great dane puppy
4. A paper cut
5. A hangover
6. The Diary of Tom Riddle
7. Frostbite
8. Paperclips (Jana Clips would have been cool though)
9. Rabies
10. A turkey bone stuck in my throat

Coming soon... my predictions for 2009. Can you predict how many posts I'll be able to get out of the subject?

Merry Christmas

I'll be back after Christmas some time... probably the following Monday or so. I hope you and yours have a great holiday.

Manic Monday: Candle

Recently Andy has been talking about making a baby... which isn't really a good idea right now for a lot of reasons, but let's assume we weren't dead broke and living four hours away from each other. Then, we'd just have to worry about the fact that I'm 36 and getting older all the time. Wouldn't it be cool if there were some kind of human egg candling machine that a doctor could hook me up to? It might go something like this:

Doctor Competent made me sit, in my street clothes, in a nice comfy easy chair and handed me a glass of juice and a current copy of Newsweek (As long as I'm fantasizing...) while he revved up the non-invasive machine. It looked a lot like the one Bones scanned people with on Star Treck.

"Let me see here... there are a lot of old eggs in there. Chromosomes doing some scary stuff... Oh! Here we go. This one's perfect. You ought to be ovulating this one out in March. No breast cancer, schizophrenia or alcoholism on it either. Yep, that's a good egg."

***

Of course, with the traditional en vivo fertilization method (you know, the fun part of making babies) we'd want to use, there'd still be plenty of guess work and mystery in the whole process.

Pancakes: My Perspective

I've been making pancakes for a very long time, although I started out only making them from boxed mixes. Remember, I was raised by my Dad and I've been cooking since I could see over the edge of the stove. Also, I was a tall kid. Dad gave me some advice that I think only a father would give. He said, "your grandmother's pancakes were always thick and raw in the middle. Don't try to make thick pancakes". So I always added a lot more milk to the mix than the directions called for. My pancakes aren't perfect, but nobody has ever turned their nose up at them... well, unless I was busy at the computer and forgot to run in and flip them over before they burned.

I don't use a recipe any more but I made pancakes yesterday and paid close attention to how I did it, so I could report to you, my nonexistent reader.

Marilyn's Not Too Bad Pancakes

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (white flour can be substituted)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 egg
2 1/2 cups of milk
1/4 cup of vegetable oil (or melted butter or whatever fat you have on hand. Do not substitute olive oil. I tried that once because I wanted healthier pancakes. It was a bad idea. Butter is yummier and I can taste the difference.)

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients and mix it all up. Heat a greased skillet up to just hot enough for a drop of water to sizzle on it. Pour the batter onto the pan using a soup ladle or spoon or something. Cook the pancakes slowly if you possibly can, turning them only when the tops have bubbles all the way across them and don't look so shiny anymore.

I always turn the oven on to warm and slip the plates in there so I can keep the old pancakes warm while I cook the new ones. I like serving them with warmed syrup on warm plates, especially when the house is cold, like it will be from now until April. I have no idea if any of this will be helpful to the pancake challenged out there or not, but it's how I do it.

A Post to Keep My Toe In

Although, really, if there were one part of me you'd want to keep, it would not be my toe.

***

Here are seven strange things about me because I recall seeing that as a meme and I've used up my whine allowance for the month.

1. I like having short hair but I don't really like having it cut. I do really like my hairdresser though. She's Jessie over at Jasmine's Hair Design here in town and she has great taste in sign makers. Jasmine likes that the sign has her name on it.

2. I don't like the cold but I do like the mountains so I guess I have to put up with it. Besides, we don't really have much in the way of tornadoes or hurricanes here. Everything's a trade off, I guess.

3. I hate when politicians use the phrase, "litmus test". I just do not see what it has to do with anything they are trying to say. It would be like me talking about how to grow my business and using the words baking powder. "I'm really looking for the business baking powder." Isn't that silly? In that I realize it's a metaphor, at least it's a little better than the litmus test thing. I don't think even half of those guys know what a litmus test really is.

4. I like to float a whole canned tomato in my bowl of potato soup. It's yummy, but everybody I know thinks it's strange.

5. The electron transport chain is my favorite part of the Krebs Cycle. It's where the magic happens. Biology is full of magic, if you look for it.

6. My favorite way to let off steam when I'm mad is to split wood, but this year we're just using slab wood and there is no need to split it. Revving up the saw to cut it doesn't really have the same effect.

7. My hair has a slight reddish tint to it, though it really looks brown. Back when I was teaching seventh graders, my students told me it was a stupid color to dye my hair. However, it's my natural color. I don't dye it. I'm not too worried about it because I don't feel that thirteen-year-olds necessarily know what's best for my head.

Random Junk: The Sequel

Spock looks funny with a beard but Uhura has great abs. Wish mine looked like that. Maybe I should do sit-ups.

***

Sorry I've been away. My body was taken over by an alien being, but you'll be glad to know I've regained control. She wouldn't let me spend my free time doing anything other than reading Host (by Stephanie Meyer... author of Twilight).

***

I think the alien must also be responsible for the tenacity of this cold, which given its advanced medicine is just darned mean.

***

Cheerfulness will resume in April. Good day to you!

I said Good Day!

I Heart Dave Barry

I've been absent lately and I have no good reason; no bad reason either. I just couldn't think of anything to post and I have a cold and I was feeling sorry for myself... but that reminds me of my favorite Dave Barry joke. I like to tell it at twelve step meetings when they start laying the cliches on a little too thick. Come to think of it, I should probably try and make it to such a meeting as soon as I am noncontagious. My blood cliche levels are low and that probably accounts for some of the unmanageability of my life.

Oh, here's the joke: I was feeling bad because I had no shoes and then I met a man that had no feet... so I took his shoes.

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Things I could get you for Christmas

...provided you paid for shipping.

Here are ten things I can afford to give for Christmas.

A hug: I don't really like giving these out, but the price is right.

Melted Snow: or unmelted snow if you send some dry ice.

Dog hair: Very soft and short. Prone to exacerbating pet allergies. Good for revenge against those with such allergies.

A ten inch board: such as those used for siding, complete with tongue and groove but cracked or knotted so that it was no good for siding (or whatever it was going to be used for).

A bumper sticker that says Calvillos Mexican Restaurant in blue on a white background: Good for pet hair removal.

Mismatched used children's socks, size very small: Two or three per person.

Cardboard: However big a piece you want. I probably have it.

Four inch piece of silver Christmas tree garland: Heck if I know what you'd want it for. Barbie wig?

Used paperback copy of The Clan of The Cave Bear, missing cover and first ten or so pages: Other than that it's still good. It has been well loved.

One red Stabillo brand pencil: These are supposed to be good for writing on things and then washing off. I usually get blue and it works great, but the red kind doesn't wash off like it's supposed to. You can grade papers with it.

If you want any this and have PayPal to pay actual shipping cost. Email me at marilynzelha at yahoo dot com. :)

Economics?

My weirdo, antimaterialistic philosophy isn't likely to become popular any time soon and that's just as well as I make my living selling mostly new stuff and so does everybody else, really.

As things get tighter and tighter around here I've been thinking about the economy and Andy and I were talking about it the other day. What we don't really understand, having tried really hard for the last decade to borrow as little as possible, is that instead of revving up the economy at the production level the government seems intent on revving it up at the credit level. Isn't that kind of like pushing a string from one end and expecting it to move at the other?

I know I'm totally unqualified to talk about economic issues but that's the beauty of blogging. I can spout my half baked ideas and my readers can correct them. Wouldn't it be better to spend money on things like the auto industry and the aircraft industry? It seems like producing things would create jobs and jobs would put money in people's pockets that would then make it to the banks that would then think about loaning money and then people would be able to buy houses and cars. It seems like we ought to pull that string from the other end rather than push it from this one. I could be wrong though.

Manic Monday: Shopping

I present you with Marilyn's Myths of Shopping, just in time for the holidays.

1. New is better than used.
This is a myth. New is not always, lately not even usually, better. There's a reason that antiques cost so much. Stuff is better when it has been around a while. It's especially better if it has been around a while and it still isn't broken. That shows it was designed well. New stuff almost always breaks easier and rarely looks any nicer than old stuff even a week after it was purchased. If you don't believe me then I sentence you to a reading of The Velveteen Rabbit.

2. Name brand is better than generic. (Here, I refer mostly to food products. Clothing and other products fall under myth #1, but not generally this myth.)
This is backward. Anybody without an unlimited income should know that less expensive is better than more expensive. It is true that some few products are inferior in their generic incarnations (sliced, processed cheese seems to fall into this category) but most of the time generic is just exactly the same as name brand. Why on earth do you pay more for a logo on a can of cranberry sauce? Do you really think the stuff is going to taste better? In blind taste tests it is indistinguishable.

3. You get what you pay for.
It should really say, "you pay good money for what you don't think through". Research and leg work are part of the overall cost of any item and if you pay in those commodities, you save a ton in terms of cash.

Live Better. Spend Less. Be a cheapskate! (Read The Tightwad Gazette books if you think I'm on to something here. They are great.)