Frog and Goat

The weather has been amazing since the weekend and I have a serious case of spring fever. Just so you know.

I was listening to my Creative Zen via my iRiver transmitter today on the way home and I was rocking out to an Allison Moorer song when there was static in the speakers. This usually means the MP3 player has stopped playing or there’s something wrong with the transmitter. That Allison Moorer song has been iffy for months and it locked up the player (I had to reset it when I got home and the AM song has been deleted).

I tried fiddling with the player but as I was driving, I couldn’t spend much time on troubleshooting. So, I unplugged the player and pulled the transmitter out of the power supply (AKA cigarette lighter). The Honda’s door flap to the power supply has always been tight no matter how many times I’ve plugged something in there. Today as I was taking the transmitter plug out, the power supply door ripped my right thumb’s nail off. Not the whole nail but all of the nail above the fleshy end of my thumb. I was pissed and whacked the lid a few times. I was ready to screech to a halt, rip the lid off and toss it out the window. Then, back up and crush it and then roll back over it just to be sure it was dead.

Instead I just envisioned the pain the lid would have felt had I done that and if it weren’t plastic and metal.

We just watched the season finale of Battlestar (I can’t stay up that late on Sunday nights) and it was awesome. The awesomeness is set-off by the fact we have to wait until January 2008 for the series to resume.

We have one of those Rubbermaid mailboxes with the two slots underneath the main mailbox. Today I noticed something was in one of those slots so after running some errands this morning, I retrieved the something.

The something turned out to be a couple of Avon catalogs and some small samples. Clearly, the Avon lady has no idea who lives in our house. I sorted out the stuff into the recycle bin and trash can.

There are more important things to do today than my makeup. Meet the newest addition to our garage:

The box of plants yielded:
3 raspberry stalks
3 blackberry stalks
1 lilac
1 wisteria
1 fig

The box was so big that I think The Niece could stand comfortably in the box and be shipped around the world. She’d just need some snacks, a couple of books and a few of her dolls.

I have on my cranky pants today. Actually, I’ve been wearing the same pants for days now. I’m not sure what the root of the problem is but as I stage-whispered at work, “I’m just sick of the bullshit.” There were more than a few heads nodding in agreement.

On the happy side of things, the sun is out again and the temperature has soared. I made the unfortunate decision to volunteer for the lunch pick up today. Even though I only had to walk across the street and back it was enough to know that I really should be outside this afternoon. Instead, I’m sitting at my desk looking outside at the beautiful day.

The better-half emailed me a little while ago to let me know an order of plants came in. There will be a sense of Christmas morning when I get home as I can’t remember what I ordered from Raintree Nursery. I guess we’ll have to get cracking on preparing our garden and other flower beds. It’s getting to be that time again. I know there’s still ample time left for a frost to come by and zap plants, but as the days get warmer it really is hard to show restraint.

Five years ago, I set my alarm for 3 and instead of getting it right for 3AM, I set it for 3PM. This huge error caused me to not show up at my sister’s and I failed to take my sister and brother-in-law to the airport to begin their journey to pick up The Niece. I have kicked myself over and again. I was distraught, actually. I am one of those people you can count on. I’m always there–except for this one time. I was also seriously pissed at how my parents handled the whole thing. While there was joy and excitement because the first grandchild! was coming, there was also one of their kids who has NEVER failed to show up on time missing at 3AM. Car into ditch or other calamity—the message was who gives a shit.

My sister and I talked on Sunday about their upcoming trip to pick up Niece #2 (I still need to come up with a moniker for her) and I joked about being on time this time. She laughed it off and we talked about possibilities for this trip.

Yesterday I was talking to my mother and she mentioned that this time around I’ll have to take my sister to the airport. This, my friends, is what family is for–continuing to kick you in the teeth.

We purchased a 5 lb pork belly from the Belmont Butchery and the better-half set up a cure (pink salt, garlic, pepper and crushed bay leaves). The pork belly cured in the refrigerator in a big ziploc bag. The better-half smoked the bacon today and there was much rejoicing.

After curing for about a week in the refrigerator:

With the cure washed off:

After smoking for about 3 hours (the better-half was looking for 150 degrees):

We sliced off a side for a photograph. We took off the rind shortly after this picture (the rind is the skin–there was still some hair and nipples):

Here’s an action shot of frying bacon:

Here’s the last piece before we descended on it like jackals and the book that made us think we could make bacon:

We sliced the bacon as thinly as we could and cut some into thick chunks which we’re calling lardons. We have a few slices to take by the Butchery as they requested a taste. I could taste some garlic in the background and some smoke. Mostly it tastes exactly like bacon should taste–a little salty and a little smoky.

As it turns out we have another pork belly that needs the treatment. The Butchery was less than thrilled with the overall quality of the original pork belly and dropped the provider from their list. They gave us another pork belly and said we could go ahead and proceed with the sub-par belly if we wanted because the original belly wasn’t bad just not awesome.

We decided to go ahead and finish the bacon making process as we considered this a trial run. As a first time bacon maker, I feel like this is pretty good bacon. It will be interesting to see how the next belly with its better quality will turn out. If I was already dancing a little jig, I may have to break out a moonwalk.

You know, pictures are worth a thousand words so I’m going to cop out and throw on a bunch of pictures and call it a trip wrap-up.

Seen at MacArthur State Park:

Some bejeweled older woman would not shut up about raccoons are supposed to be only out at night. I had to get away from her as quickly as possible because she was more of a danger to me than the raccoon looking for water.

We sat in the sand and watched the waves for quite awhile:

Seen at Morikami:

We got home just a little while ago. On the way home we stopped and picked up Chinese take-out and I’m now doing some laundry. We had a nice time hanging in FL with my sister. Pictures and a longer post to follow.

I think it will be hard adjusting to non-80 degree days.

The soon to arrive Niece is pretty darn cute. I can’t wait to meet her in person.

Now, about the cry babies.

I went to class late this afternoon and we got our mid-terms back. I received a respectable 88 (and when you hear the lowest grade, you’ll agree a high B is respectable). Apparently there were 2 questions that flummoxed most of us so in reality I got an 84 but everyone who missed those 2 questions got back 4 points. Even with an 84, I blew past the average grade. Grades ranged from 50-92 (before the 4 points were granted). So, an 88 is like Einstein took the test.

Now you know I don’t care for this class and have yet to feel engaged in the subject matter, but I twisted myself in knots and studied like hell. Someone in graduate school got a 50 on a mid-term. 20% of our grade. And, then the class proceeded to whine and moan about the paper we had to turn in. There were 4 people who were given permission to turn their papers in during the week of Spring Break.

I seriously felt like standing up and telling them all to get a freaking grip. At this level there’s no room for babies. Get the work done. And for crying out loud, the paper we had to turn in isn’t even going to get a grade. It is so the teacher can give us pointers for when we write the entire paper that’s due next month. Babies.