Monday, October 13, 2008

Rhinebeck Rolecall!

Okay, I was going to follow that up with a silly obscenity, but not everyone is an LSG wench and therefore I just couldn't bring myself to actually do it. Still, if any of you are headed up to upstate NY this weekend for the sheep and wool festival, it'd be awesome to meet up...or at least I think so. ;) I'll be headed up there too early in the effing morning on Friday with Lickmysticks, ScottishNana, and Fussygusset, and I'm pretty sure we're actually attending the festival both days so something should be workable! Of course, we're also attending the Ravelry party Saturday night too,so if I don't see you at the festival (and you're a ravelholic like me) I'll most likely run into you there!

I'm certain that this year's experience will definitely outshine last year's. Oh, the festival itself was nice, but we took a Yarn Safari bus and we arrived late so shopping time was minimal. Also, on top of that I had to listen to some woman chatter on about her shawls (which I'm sure I would have loved if they hadn't been knit out of the scratchiest wool possible and in hideous colors)which got sickening after a while. We missed the Ravelry party, missed a lot of the stalls because we had to rush, and got home waaaaay too late because we were on a bus which had several stops to make on the way back home. Boo. So yeah, this year ought to be way better.


On the home front, everything's going well. I am currently a quite happy little housewife, thanks to my wife finally graduating from the Academy (for the Bristol County Sheriff's Department)!
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Doesn't she look hot in her uniform? She graduated as class valedictorian and class treasurer with a 97.0 G.P.A., which I'm told is one of the highest G.P.A's ever to be seen in that setting. I can't begin to tell you how insanely proud I am of her. She's always wanted to do something like this and well, I have to say that I think she'll be good at it. True, right now she's at the bottom rung with the title of Corrections Officer, but I don't see her staying there for long!

We wound up going out to celebrate the Friday after her graduation, stuffing our faces at a Chinese buffet with most of the rest of her class before heading down to a local bar that just happened to have an actual mechanical bull. And yes, I rode the mechanical bull. Just about everybody did because we were all that blitzed out of our minds.

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The picture is horrible, I know, but that's what happens when drunk people take pictures of drunk people. That my friends is what two shots of SoCo and lime (which I actually dislike), four lemon drop shots, and two Boston Lagers look like on the face of a lightweight. And yes, I'm hugging the stupid mechanical bull, and looking fat and awful and well, drunk! The thing of it is, I'm not a huge boozer, but once in a while I like to cut a little loose. However, mixing the beer and the hard liquors was probably the worst thing ever. I had such an icky hangover the next day that didn't actually take effect until about twelve hours after I woke up. It was weird. One minute I was feeling good, and the next I was feeling awful! Welp, guess that teaches me. Still, if I hadn't been drunk I probably would have never even thought to get on that stupid bull, and it was fun! If you haven't done it and you have an opportunity to, I suggest you try it out! Really, I do.

So, day after drinking, me,the wifey, and my SIL Pam decided to head out to go apple picking. It's a fall ritual that my family has pretty much upheld yearly, so I was naturally not going to disrupt tradition! We had a blast and it was a perfect day for it. I was a tad disappointed though, because it was so late in the season that all the good apples had been picked (or at least the ones that were low enough to grab without a ladder) so we had to kind of hunt and stalk a ladder out before we could get to the fun!

Moi!

There I am, apparently finding it all to be just "too much". :) Hehehe, in reality I probably had the beginnings of a headache when Pam took that picture....

Wife

It's a good thing that DW was more than willing to climb the ladder though because neither myself nor Pam really wanted to actually climb to snag the fruit. I have a bit of a fear of heights so and I get a little bit of vertigo now and then so that piled on top of the beginnings of a belated hangover would have just made it all so much worse.

After apple picking, we grabbed some food and then I went home and felt ill the rest of the night. The rest of the weekend was pretty much pleasantly inactive.

On the knitting front: I've been trying to knit the Through the Loops Mystery Sock, but have had to keep frogging it out. First, it was because I cast on too few stitches to do the cabled version so I had to frog out both cuffs (I'm knitting one sock off of each end on two sets of the same size DPN), which sucked. Then I cast on the right amount but twisted the stitches somehow and didn't realize it until I was halfway done with the cuff. I got sick of all the frogging, and I'm starting to hate the yarn I'm knitting them in so I may just wind the yarn into a cake so it looks neater and offer it for trade and try to cast 'em on in something else! I love mystery sock KAL's because I can keep up with them damn it.

In the meantime, I cast on for a pair of Bronte's Mitts in some Artyarns Silk Rhapsody. It's like heaven. I don't even like mohair, but I love this stuff! Too bad it's so expensive otherwise I'd frickin' have a whole closet full of it! It's super soft, super squishy and just so yummy! Plus it smells like lavender because I still have a whole bunch of my lavender stuffed sachets in my knitting bag!

Other than all that, life's fine. I kind of have an unwanted pet spider that lives outside of my front corridor window. My wife insists on naming it Emily, but I would rather call it Filbert. It's an ugly sucker though, and HUGE. It's got this weird, bulgy body that goes to a point and is brown with darker stripes. Gross. I hate spiders, I really, really do, but as long as this one eats up all the icky beetles (which I hate even more than spiders) that keep trying to get inside my house, Filbert can stay.

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The picture kind of stinks, because we were only able to get the spider's silhouette, but trust me, it's better this way. I've quite possibly spared you all a bunch of nightmares, preventing you guys from seeing how ugly it is and all. At least the picture does give you an idea of it's size though so you can tell what I'm dealing with. If Filbert does turn out to be an Emily, I already told DW that she has to "man up and kill the thing"!

Alright, I've pretty much run out of things to say, so, just remember, if you see me at Rhinebeck, wave and come and talk to me! I love talking! A lot. Sometimes too much according to certain parties...


Oh! Wait. There's one more thing...

My creation

Tag if you haven't seen this thing before or haven't done one yet! Here's how to do it!

Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
Using only the first page, pick an image.
Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the bighugelabs.com mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you wanted to be when you grew up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Add one of your own flickr images.


And I think that should be it...nope. Wait, one more thing. I have another recipe for you folks to try if you like! Once again, it's chicken (I seem to be cooking a lot of it lately), but it's equally as yummy as the last.

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Terriyaki Style Chicken

By: Yours Truly and published for the first time ever, here, on this blog. Wahoo!

What you need:
Chicken parts ( I use wings because I like them better, but it comes out just as yummy if you use thighs or drumsticks!)
Soy Sauce
Honey
Minced Garlic
Hot Sauce or Cayenne Pepper
Molasses or Dark Brown Sugar (the Molasses works better for this I find)
Salt and Pepper

Sprinkle your chicken parts with salt and pepper and broil for five minutes then put in a roasting pan. Mix 2 parts Soy Sauce to 1 part Honey and add the molasses or brown sugar to taste.(If you use sugar, please, make sure it's dissolved fully in the liquid before you pour it over your chicken). Mix in at least three tbsp of minced garlic (I like to add a little more because I love garlic!), and add in hot sauce or cayenne to taste then pour over the chicken. Add a little bit of water to thin out the liquid. Lower the heat on your oven to 250 degrees (use an oven thermometer to help you figure out when the oven actually reaches that temperature) and then cover the meat with some foil and place in the oven on a rack placed in the center. Slow roast for three-four hours (chicken will get a rich, dark brown color from the liquid, and the meat will be very tender...almost to the point where it falls off the bone) and voila! Terriyaki style chicken.

This recipe is easily made for two or a whole bunch of people. Just make sure to get that chicken really coated well with the sauce before putting it in the oven! Also, if you have a crock pot, by all means, dump all the ingredients in and let cook in that, just be certain to broil the chicken first or the meat will be mush! :) Enjoy! And as always, thanks for reading!

ETA: There will be no fun Rhinebeckishness...sadly I got a sickie and was unable to go... :(

4 comments:

Courtney said...

I sooo wish I could go to the festival and even more important I would LOVE to go to New York someday and visit! Congrats to the Wifey!!

Anonymous said...

I'll have fun vicariously through you since I can't go. Take lots of pics.

Anonymous said...

The spider is a girl and her name is Emily and I WILL NOT kill her. She's eating all the bugs. Anyway, I will miss you this weekend but I'll probably entertain myself by playing video games and rifling through your things...

<3
~DW~

tinkguy said...

I love the mosaic!