Some forgotten Google search brought me to the Daily Candy (no I don’t know what it is) website’s Haiku Story. The idea was pretty mediochre to begin with, but when you look into it a little there isn’t a single haiku involved! Just a quick refresher: haiku = 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, optional self-disemboweling.
Gotta give them credit I guess, they did manage to get the five syllable on the first line thing right 1/5 times. That’s 20%!
Wow, after a very dry winter, we are having a wet, rainy late spring! It’s very nice and refreshing; not at all life and property threatening like in some areas of the United States where major flooding is a very real danger. Memorial Day weekend, a major traveling and camping holiday here is predicted to be wet, cold and (of course) windy.
In keeping with my usual “this is what I did today” posts, you must know that I got my hair cut today! Exciting, huh? There was a massive heap of hair on the floor at the end, though I only got a few inches cut off plus a little layering. I have very thick hair. So, its about jaw length now, which my beautician claims is a “perfect” length for me. I can easily be persuaded to agree to nearly anything with the use of such words as “perfect”, “gorgeous” and “stunning”.........just so you know. Johnny should be home tonight, finally. So at least I’ll get him for a few days before he has to start “fire school” next week. Johnny’s friend Cody is slated to have his gall bladder removed tomorrow. Is that usual for a 23 year old young man? He had 15 gall stones; just amazing.
I’m getting ready for a few days off work; I’m going to Boise next Tuesday and will hopefully travel with my brother and sister in law from New Jersey, and my sister, nephew, niece and her boyfriend to California to attend the wedding of another nephew. Whew! Lost of relatives involved there, huh? I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time with my family.
Weightwatchers tonight; the weight is holding steady, but wish it was just a tad lower. We are at the end of a session, and worried about whether or not we will have enough members re-sign to continue. Sigh.
UltraDad got his new special order New Balance shoes the other day. Udad has some major bone spurs in his feet; these special shoes are an attempt to avoid surgery, or at least to postpone it for a while.
To end this exciting post, I leave you with a recipe that we enjoyed for dinner last night. It is uncomplicated and doesn’t take very long. I have a friend who has a sign in her kitchen that reads “If we are what we eat, I’m fast, cheap and easy”. I love that. She informed me, however, when I commented on it that her husband claims she is none of the three. So, without further ado, may I present “Salsa Chicken”
1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
2 ts taco seasoning
Cooking spray
2/3 c bottled salsa (try a fruit salsa, or your favorite tomato based salsa)
2/3 c shredded reduced fat cheese
1 4-oz can whole green chiles, drained and thinly sliced (I just used the pre-diced ones)
1/4 c sour cream
2 tb sliced black olives
Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Combine chicken and seasoning in bowl, tossing to coat. Heat large nonstick skillet, coated with cooking spray over med-high heat. Add chicken and cook for about 4 minutes or until browned. Arrange chicken in cooking-spray coated 8×8 inch square pan. Top with salsa, cheese and chiles. Bake at 475 degrees for 8 minutes or until chicken is done and cheese is melted. Top each serving with 1 tb sour cream and 1 1/2 ts olives. 4 servings.
It’s good served over rice or on tortillas.
Bon Apettit
UltraMom
I have a lot of posts that I’d like to make that I consider so much more important and worthwhile than this one, but I’m lucky enough to be really busy with current client work and generating proposals for new potential clients, and just haven’t been able to figure make the time for them yet. So you’ll get this question and usability gripe instead, and you’ll like it or at least I’ll pretend that you do.
I just opened up the Microsoft Office help on my mac to read up on templates, and the font choice is pretty ugly (I love those two words in combination) as well as being pretty small and tough on the eyes to read. Microsoft Office’s help doesn’t seem to use the built in Mac Help viewer and there isn’t any immediately evident way to change the font or font size. Since probably the only reason you’d open help is to troubleshoot something or research how to do something it follows that you’ll be doing at least a little bit of reading. Word being a document editing and layout application it seems pretty stupid to me that, if they are going to use their own help viewer, they wouldn’t give an easy and immediately obvious (using the same type of interface as the main application even) way of changing the display font and font size. I’m sure there is probably a preference setting or something to do it, but I’m in the help to find out how to solve a problem, not to get new problems to solve.
I’m also curious about their choice to not use the default help viewer. If I remember correctly, and I think I do, the Windows version uses the default Windows help viewer. I’m guessing that this is probably due at least in part to a rush to bring Microsoft Office to Mac Os X which had to have been a pretty major undertaking. Maybe later versions of Mac Office fix this or use the default viewer (I’m using Office X). Anybody know?
I have the same problem. Did you find a solution yet ? For now I am just using the Zoom functionality in OS X as a temporary work-around. I am surprised not many people have complained about this. I don’t see any postings online regarding the issue.
Haven’t found any answer yet. If you do happen to find one, please be sure to post it here so that others can find it! Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
We are alone again; moved Jim and friend B.J. back to Shoshone with Uncle Chuck’s trailor for summer lodging to begin their summer jobs for the Bureau of Land Management fighting fires. Hopefully it will be a safe and profitable summer for them. I went along to “help”, cause UDad wanted my company. We borrowed Uncle Chuck’s nice red pickup to haul the trailor behind, and I fell asleep almost before we hit the road. I actually rode part of the way with Jim in his car; no chance to fall asleep there with the loud music! He has quite the variety and we listened to a little Simon & Garfunkel, some Jennifer Love Hewitt (yes, she put out a CD) and some great hits from the 60’s.
It turned out to be quite a project getting the trailor all leveled, sewer hooked up, etc .UltraDad spent a fair amount of time crawling about on the ground with pieces of wood and a jack. Plus it was raining off and on. What took most of the time was unloading the weight bench, weights and recliner from the back of the pickup. Yes, I said recliner. Jim brought it from Boise and will lounge in it outdoors this summer. I don’t know how possibly they plan to use all the weights they brought. It seems that though the firehouse has a nice weight room, the employees are not really allowed to use it, at least not often, and for some unfathomable (to me) reason, the boys get great enjoyment from repeatedly lifting massive quanitites of weight with various body parts. I got a bit bored with all of it and went back into the dry, warm pickup to read for a bit.Those flying rocks can be dangerous! Glad you are both intact.
John told me alittle about that the other night when I called. How dangerous that could have been! I am glad you are safe! How is my ultra nephew and UltraGirl? Love AD
ridiculous, why?
or rather—how?
ridiculous as “irrelevant”
ridiculous as “silly”
or
ridiculous as “deserving of ridicule”
and then why?
i’m happy that you enjoyed the piece and were able to find it via my blog!
and happy to have been led here…
best!
richard
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the comment. It wasn’t fair of me to say ridiculous, it was lazy and I apologize. I meant that I didn’t feel that the animal references you brought up, especially the cold turkey one are a part of our national lexicon, and do not to the majority of people have an connection to the the objections expressed. I guess in short what I meant to say was that I thought that the depth you went to in analyzing the animal references in Vonnegut’s piece seemed rather strained, like you were just looking for something to write about rather than having an actual gripe about it.
I think my main objection was to the cold turkey paragraph which I thought was quite strained. I was very happy to come accross your blog via bastish.net though and plan to read it regularly.
Once again I apologize for the ‘ridiculous thing’, I’ll stick a pointer in the main post to these comments if you’d like.
Take Care,
UltraBob
Hey,
No problem or need to apologize. Your critique is fair, certainly. Though I think the analysis is also sound though not tailored to a mass public or part of a public debate, which I generally am more interested in publishing towards (as opposed to academic ivory tower hi-fallutinism). Let me assure you that I have an actual gripe with Vonnegut’s use of speciesist representation, which is not true of his earlier work as I noted. Part of a progressive politics today is, whether an animal rightist or not, getting conscious about our language and ideas and outing those that are part of a reactionary history. “Cold turkey” in itself may not have been worthy of a whole take on Vonnegut, I’d agree, but he in fact had numerous anti-animal represenational tropes in the piece and it was he that allowed it to be published with that image of the monkey as the statue of liberty. This makes it fair game for a critique from the standpoint of animals.
The reason it was written in a non-popular manner? I am in academe and occasionally publish things on the representation of animals, so this post was really just a draft for a possible longer piece in the future.
Anyhow, well met and like I said, no problem to agree or disagree with me—that’s not the point! Meeting and communication, this is the really interesting outcome of blogging. The rest is just ego.
Well, a little different Friday night than I’m used to. I actually had to think about dinner since Jim of the voracious appetite was about. I was planning tacos, but made kind of a yummy quesadilla. I sprayed corn tortillas with cooking spray and “fried” them; then layered in grated cheese, taco meat, sour cream (non-fat), chopped green chillies, olives and chopped tomatoes. I tried cooking in the skillet til cheese melted, but the “stuffing” kept falling out, so it was easier to make the “sandwich”, then cook in the microwave for 30 sec or so. Served with salsa, very yummy!
Then I “watched” White Fang with Jim. Remember, UltraBob, when you read that book on your teacher’s recommendation in about the 4th grade? I think you liked it, but I recall it being a little challenging. I think your teacher was impressed that you were reading books such as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, not realizing you were reading the Illustrated Classics series. Jim remembered reading this book while in Elementary School also. It’s sad when you know that Jack London died in his 40’s after a dissolute unhappy life, but he was a heck of a writer.
Anyway, I say “watched” because mainly I slept, rousing for 5 or so minutes at a time. While watching the credits, Jim laughed out loud. “Guess who plays White Fang? Jed!” Not quite what you would imagine for a ferocious wolf-dog of the Yukon.
Well, off to bed.
ultramom
We finally have Jim back home, if only for a few days. He begins his summer job fighting fires for the Bureau of Land Management next Monday. Jim was planning to come home a few days ago, but had some “circumstances”. The first was a plea from brother Johnny and friend Robby to stay for another day. The boys floated the Boise River in Johnny’s raft again (something I would LOVE to do, noone will take me :( ) Jim said they were floating near some low hanging branches, so Johnny and Robby ducked to avoid them. Jim decided he would just lift the branches over their heads. The next thing he remembers is tumbling over backwards into the river. A soaking wet Robby attempted to help him back into the raft, while a near-dry Johnny lamented “My hat got wet.”
Today Jim had the misfortune to lose his car keys. Another fun adventure! He never did find them, but our insurance handled the expense of making a key for him, so he finally got here about 9:45 P.M., and, of course, had not had any dinner. Fortunately, UltraMom, being the UltraMom she is, had some grub ready for him.
So, I gotta get to bed so I can work for 9 hours tomorrow while Jim and UltraDad probably do something fun. Poor me.
Okay, probably enough feeling sorry for myself for one night, though I’m really not. Right now the world looks pretty good.
Night All
UltraMom
test comment. Mom let me know if you get this notification. Johnny you too.
test comment. Mom let me know if you get this notification. Johnny you too.