Frog and Goat

We have a foot, maybe a little more. When I opened the front door to take this photo some snow fell into the house. I guess we’ll be spending some time today clearing paths. I’m pretty sure I won’t be going to the office tomorrow.

I’m dating myself, but here are videos for bands I once saw at Richmond’s Flood Zone.

Fighting Gravity (although I think they were called Boy O Boy at the time):

Shawn Colvin:

The first time I ever saw them was at the Flood Zone:

Cowboy Junkies singis a song about Richmond sometimes:

I never went to a Dave Mathews show there even though for awhile the band played every Wednesday night. Lame. Who knew they were going to be HUGE? Maybe all those people who showed up every Wednesday.

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My friend J is a county music fan and I’m a fan of hers so I do things for and with her that I might not normally do. Way back during the Flood Zone years there was a place on Midlothian. It was basically a honky-tonk. We saw Collin Raye before he was huge. We drove home from that show with pennies under our tongues. Doesn’t he have a nice voice?

After laughing (again) over the horrible stank in the grocery store line last night, I can’t believe I didn’t post what happened the last time we went grocery shopping.

We put all our stuff on the conveyor belt and the Very Christian Checkout Clerk asked the better-half if he had any raw chicken. (Aside: She spouts Christian stuff every time I go through her line and she wears a gazillion Christian flare items on her smock.) I swear we both had the WTF look on our faces. After recovering, he said no. Then there was a slightly inane conversation about raw vs. cooked chicken and then we found out why the VCCC asked us about raw chicken. She claims she got sick from touching a package while performing her duties. She also added it had been about 1.8 years since her last illness and the she was felled by the raw chicken. Seriously?

Two odd points:
She kept track of time between illness and she got sick from touching raw chicken? Really. Think she marked her calendar everyday? Not sick again today, hooray!

She got sick from touching a package of chicken that leaked? How about she got chicken juice on her hands and then she touched an orifice. There are sanitizing wipes at every checkout line so why she’d get that funk on her hands and not clean up is SUSPECT. Also, could she really trace it to the chicken on the conveyor belt? Maybe she also marked her calendar for that?

At least she wished us a blessed day when we left. I told her to watch out for the raw chicken.

We have a prediction of snow for the weekend. Depending on exactly where the storm goes we may end up with as much as 10 inches. This news prompted us to talk about what we need to get from the grocery store. We’re not the people to flock to the store just because a storm has been forecast, but, honestly, we haven’t been to the store in a week and so we nearly are out of milk. The toilet paper stock is just fine, thanks.

If you’ve ever spent time in the Richmond area, you’ve heard the jokes about how bad weather and Ukrop’s, our local grocery store chain, go hand-in-hand. You can’t possibly survive a storm of any sort without making a run to Ukrop’s. We’ll see how the joke changes now that the Ukrop family has sold out. Personally, we shop more at Kroger and there wasn’t a Ukrop’s nearby when I was a wee lass so I’m not really that crushed that the chain is changing hands. Well, I certainly went off topic.

Here’s hoping for some snow.

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We just got back from the store. Someone farted the stink of death around us. The guy behind us may have been the culprit because he backed up or he just backed up because oh-my-lord. It may have been the little pasty girl in front of us. Whoever did it is most certainly cleaning out their drawers now.

We looked around for recipes and cobbled together several to make haggis on Sunday afternoon. This post really isn’t about the recipe. It’s about the mechanics.

First you start with a trio of meats and a half pound of suet:

That middle one is a heart. It’s really weird having a heart in your refrigerator. When you realize you have to touch a heart, you pour yourself a Southern Tier IPA and get out the oats:

Then, you get the heart out of the bag and admire how clean it is and you silently thank whoever cleaned it for you because you know cutting out all those arteries and who knows what else would have icked you right on out:

We boiled the meats (beef liver, pig heart and veal sweetbreads) for about 1 1/2 hours. The house smelled like crap or death or something quite unpleasant:

But, then the house smelled better as the aroma of the toasting oats took over. Mainly I put this picture in so you could catch your breath if this whole post has made you ick out.

So, you probably think three organs cooking in a pot would be the worst. Then you must know that haggis is traditionally cooked in a sheep’s bladder or its bung. You can’t really get that around here. So we bought a Genoa sack from the Belmont Butchery. Like everything this was made in China (really):

With the skin sack cleaned, the better-half started the grind. Don’t worry if it looks like some jack-legged thing, everything is very clean:

The main meats went through and then the suet. To the bowl we added a mix of spices, the toasted oats and two finely shredded onions. The broth we saved from the boiled meats went in the mix to bring everything together.

The better-half held the skin bag open and I stood on a stool to spoon the mixture into the bag…the bag was 32 inches long and I needed the extra height to see into the funnel he was holding at the open end.

The haggis went into a really large pot of water and cooked for about 2 hours. The house really started to smell yummy.

The outer part of the sack started to split and we didn’t want to risk plucking the haggis out of the water with tongs thereby puncturing the remaining layer so we made a sling out of cheesecloth.

When I cut into the haggis, the surface tension rippled the skin back in a really magnificent way.

Then we stone cold munched. We have so much leftover haggis that I froze three quart bags of it. We had some for dinner last night and we have even more leftover that will go nicely with some baked beans later this week.

We got a jump on Burns Night yesterday. We made haggis for most of the afternoon. After a good five hours, we sat down to the delicious football of ground meat. It was awesome. We served it with neeps and tatties and beet greens. The neeps and tatties are traditional, the beet greens were something healthy so we didn’t immediately burst into a cholesterol fit.

We listened to this as the better-half presented the haggis:

We’ll be celebrating again tonight with a good Scottish breakfast.

Later, I’ll post the process…be ready for photos of all the nasty, tasty bits.

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I looked it up…here’s where I first had haggis. Lovely pub.

Late yesterday afternoon I let Simon out on the screened porch. He likes to hang out there and he uses some of the wood out there as a scratching post. I totally forgot he was out there. I guess an hour passed before I realized the error of my ways. I always leave the door to the porch obviously unlocked so that I know he’s out there if it’s too dark to see him. The better-half tends to dim the light out there so it’s easy for us to remember and easy to see him. This way is better because it’s more obvious.

Anyway, I realized the door was in the state of “cat on porch” and then I went out to look for him. He wasn’t there. I walked around the house and he wasn’t in the usual spots. The better-half turned on the flood lights and opened the back door and started calling. Simon ducked his head around the side of the house and slowly trotted back in.

I felt so bad that Simon ended up with quite a few Greenies in his bowl. Mr. Cat had quite an adventure and ended up with extra treats. I’m sure in his mind it was quite a good night.

The better-half went out this morning and fixed the spot in the screen where Simon ducked out. A little while ago we let the cat out on the porch and within seconds he was checking that spot to see if freedom was still possible. When it wasn’t, he came back to the door and asked to be let in.

Oh, it’s been awhile since I bitched about work.

This morning someone asked me if I’d seen the missing keys. I said no. What I wanted to say was if I’d seen them they wouldn’t be missing. Truthfully, what I really wanted to say was quit coming down the hall to ask me stupid shit. This someone already asked me this week to check the contents of a CD she found in a laptop’s drive. Seriously, you couldn’t just start the CD while it was in the laptop to see what it was? You had to come all the way down the hall to ask me? It’s like I’m working in 1995 and my machine is the only one with a CD drive.

A manager wore a purple velour warm-up suit to work yesterday. She worked all day dressed like she was going to the gym or Target on Saturday. WTF.

There’s been a thought running through my head for at least a year and a half and probably a little longer. If I were industrious, I’d look back through some old off-line journals and pinpoint the exact genesis of the idea, but I’m not industrious so you’ll just have to trust me that it’s been awhile. The thought? Continuing my education.

I know. I just finished a degree in May 2009. It was a kick-ass, life-altering experience. Even when I was whining about having to write yet another paper. Even when I was complaining about the frenetic pace of reading. Even when I had to work in groups that were less industrious than me (and, as we know, I’m not that industrious). All of it was worth more than a cold beer and a remote control and you know how much I love those two things.

So, I’ve applied for an Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) program at another state university. I had originally thought about a Ph.D., but I don’t want to be an academic as much as I want to be a practitioner. Most people have never heard of the Ed.S. degree, but that’s OK. The people who work in university settings have and that’s really where I’d like to be—working in professional development.

I talked to my supervisor when I returned to work from winter break and she’s supportive. She’s going to work with me to figure out if I can continue to work even if it is at a reduced pace/reduction in hours. I’d really like to keep that position in some capacity because the work will be there and that means some cash flow on my part. I’d also like to work in some capacity at the new university as a graduate assistant, as an intern or something for the experience…not exactly what I thought I’d be doing as I approach my 42nd birthday, but what the hell. Life is short, might as well do something you love and let the other stuff sort itself out. Of course I could be talking out of my butt and the school will say,” Thanks for your tuition, but don’t quit your day job.” Or, worse yet, that they’ll say they’d rather not have me join them.

The school is not close to my house, at all, so if some of the classes must be completed on the main campus, then I’ll have to find cheap housing there and I’ll learn to love the commute back and forth between my regular life and my student life. The better-half is completely supportive of this decision and he’s been the little birdhouse in my soul.

It’s over 50 degrees here for the first time in weeks and I’m going to knock off work early. I have ants in my pants and I want to dance.