1. Vacation.  There probably isn’t a need to elaborate further on that, but let me just call out that it is the holiday break, my projects are done, and I am in full-on not-thinking-about-work mode.

2. Skiing.  Elizabeth and I have decided that we need to take up a hobby.  We’ve been looking for something we can do together, that’s active, and that we both enjoy.  Skiing (of the downhill variety) fits the bill, and has the added bonus that it’s frigid cold and offers an unparalleled opportunity to wrap ourselves around trees at high velocity.

3. Lasagna.  Diggory got a great recipe from his mother for the stuff, and it makes for a fantastic meal.  Plus, it’s one of the very few dishes that actually tastes better as leftovers.

photo credit: gregor_y

You may be asking why Elizabeth went off to Spain, while I stayed at home and toiled mightily.

This is a good question.

In any case, she is home and she has posted some pictures and reflections on her shiny new blog.  Feel free to wander over there if you’re interested in Spain, architecture, or giant anatomically correct bull sculptures.

I only wish I was kidding about the bulls.

photo credit: Paulo Brandão

Blu-ray, as you are likely aware, is the current standard for high-definition content.  High definition, as in more definition than a DVD.  That point becomes important in a moment.

Coincidentally, we have also just procured a home server, and I am currently in the process of ripping our collection of movies down to it so that we can watch them on any of the TVs or computers throughout the house.  This is the advantage of a media server; your movies are always at your fingertips, and you don’t need to trudge over to wherever you store your little plastic discs and stuff said disc into your movie player of choice.

I’ve started with ripping our DVD collection, primarily because I don’t yet have a Blu-ray drive attached to my computer that would allow me to rip high-def movies to the computer.  My goal, though, is to eventually have our entire collection on the aforementioned server to avoid the aforementioned trudging about with little plastic discs.  Imagine my intrigue, then, when the Watchmen movie I purchased boldly declared that it included a Digital Copy.

Hurrah!  thought I.  WB has heard my pleas, and is providing me a quick and convenient way to get this movie I purchased (and I do stress purchased) onto the server so that I can enjoy it anywhere in my home.  I will be able to enjoy its high-definition richness and surround sound awesomeness wherever I choose, at a moment’s notice, without the fetching of pointless pieces of plastic.

I should live so long.  First, the Digital Copy is on DVD.  DVD, as in “I’m a format that is capable of holding roughly one-tenth the content of a Blu-ray disc.”  DVD, as in standard definition.  As in not high def.  As in, “I could have sworn that my decision to purchase a Blu-ray movie would have been a strong indication that I have both the means and the motivation to enjoy high-definition film.”

And second, the [insert adjective of choice here - be creative] Digital Copy, so far as I have been able to readily see, can only be loaded onto one computer.  So you drop the disc in the drive, go through some arcane ritual involving typing in a product key and swearing to seven different deities that you’re an honest-and-true customer, and then wait while WB drags the movie over to your computer and then locks it there.  I suppose, technically, that I would repeat this process on each computer in the house, up to whatever limit WB has imposed, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a digital file?  What if I want to watch the movie on a PlayStation?

To me, it’s as though they had promised me a portable copy of the movie, and then shipped me the disc and a bottle of crazy glue.  “Just glue the disc to your laptop’s DVD drive”, they’d say.  “There.  Now it’s portable.”

I don’t want to watch this movie on my laptop.  I want to watch it on my TV.  Or a different TV.  Or on a different computer.  Or pretty much anywhere I want to watch the movie that I just bought.  I want to put the movie on my server so that it’s available to me wherever and whenever I want.

No, says WB, you really, really want to watch this movie on your computer.  This computer, actually.  And only this computer.  And not in high-def, because high-def is for suckers.

I must say, these guys are making it hard to be a customer.

photo credit: DeclanTM

1.  Farmville.  Diggory introduced me to this goofy little Facebook app, which has since been sucking my time away like a Shop-Vac in a box of Cheerios.  Perhaps it’s because it connects with my fond memories of growing up on a farm.  Perhaps it’s the bright colours and pleasant looking fruits and vegetables it sends prancing about my screen.  Perhaps it’s because it is free and yet of comparable quality to a farming sim game I remember paying good money for about 10 years ago (Don’t ask.  Please, don’t ask).  Whatever the case, it’s one of those simple, simple games that I find myself almost unwillingly wandering back to from time to frequent time.

2.  Trail mix.  Elizabeth took it upon herself to make our own last week, after doing some quick math and realizing that she could manufacture trail mix at roughly one-third the cost of what the grocery store would charge for the pre-mixed stuff.  To her great irritation, Diggory and I then proceeded to scarf the whole gallon of it down in the space of a day and a half.  Elizabeth has threatened to visit all manner of horrors upon me if I do not ease up on my trail mix consumption.

3.  Mint.  We’ve been using this site to track our finances and attempt to uncover the black whole that seems to absorb a startling amount of our disposable income each month.  The black hole may or may not be chocolate; the jury is still out on this one.  Still, the site has proven a handy way for us to keep tabs on things and track where the money’s coming in and going out each cycle.  The good news is that it’s free; the bad news is that it isn’t available in Canada yet.

photo credit: kevindooley

Pie.

Just pie, today.  Elizabeth is baking up a storm here, and pie is one of the principal foodstuffs in production at this point.  She has gone to considerable lengths to make it cosmetically appealing, as well as tasty.

It will be out of the oven soon, at which point I expect it to disappear in very short order (mostly into the inner recesses of my own doughy self), but in the meantime I am amusing myself by gazing fondly at the picture I took of it before it went in the oven.

Delicious sweet awesomeness

A little while back, Elizabeth and I took a cooking lesson.  During the course of that lesson, which was in our home, the chef asked if we wanted to use our knives or his knives.

“Either one is fine with me,” I said.  “Our knives are right here on the counter; why don’t we just use those?”

Chef Glenn took one look at our motley assortment of blades and politely suggested we use his cutting implements.  He intimated that a good knife makes food preparation dramatically easier and more enjoyable.

He was right.

Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth and I trotted over to Macy’s and bought ourselves a proper set.  At least, a more proper set than the set we had.  The new knives will actually cut things, and you don’t even have to get a good downswing to chop potatoes.

Some of the things we were told to look for in a good chef’s knife were the bolster, the handle, and the edge.

The bolster is the piece of steel where the handle blends into the blade.  A thick, heavy bolster indicates a more durable knife.

You also want a handle where the steel runs from the blade all the way to the back of the handle, and the handle itself is riveted on.  I’ve heard that three rivets are preferable to two, since this generally indicates better construction quality.

Finally, for a chef’s knife you want a straight edge — not serrated.  Serrated edges will give the knife the illusion of being sharp longer, but they aren’t good for slicing things like meat and vegetables, since they tear rather than cutting.  A straight edge and a good knife sharpener will put you much farther ahead.

And for the curious among you, here’s what our full knife set looks like.

Not intentionally, unfortunately.  Elizabeth was whipping cream to grace the strawberries we spent last Saturday picking, and I popped into the kitchen to check on things.

“How’s the whipped cream look?” Elizabeth asked me.  I peered into the mixer bowl and deemed the cream still unwhipped.  “Needs a few more minutes,” I replied, and cranked the mixer to its highest setting and sent it on its merry way.

Turns out there’s a very fine line there between whipped cream and whipped butter.  We crossed that line, and not in a timid or exploratory way.  No, we launched across it, riding on rocket-powered dune buggies with air raid sirens strapped to their roll cages.  When I came back into the kitchen, we had a gooey glob of butter thrashing about in a sickly looking bath of buttermilk.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose.  I bolted out to grab another carton of whipped cream while Elizabeth pressed the butter, and for breakfast the next morning we had buttermilk pancakes with strawberries, whipped cream, and homemade butter.

I figure that fact that it was homemade counteracts all the usual health issues generally associated with butter — or whipped cream, for that matter.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

“I saw this guy speak today,” she said.  “They made a movie, and posted a big section of it on the website.  We should watch it.”

Innocently, I complied.

Now, when a movie advertises itself as being about the zombie apocalypse, or a witch hanging out in the woods, or a guy with an overdeveloped interest in chain saws, I expect to associate a certain level of fear with the film.  I can brace myself accordingly or (more likely) just avoid it altogether.

I had not expected a movie about economics to be pants-crappingly horrifying.  The image of the swelling US national debt, along with projections of where it’s heading, is frightening enough.   But when you couple that with the realization that debt payments have partially been funded by drawing on surplus Social Security, and that the aforementioned surplus is going to disappear pretty quickly as a whole lotta people get set to retire…

I spent much of last night trapped in fitful nightmares of a post-meltdown world that was curiously reminiscent of Fallout 3.

photo credit: i eated a cookie

There’s an advantage to this; with all three of us participating, it creates a circle of shame.  If one of us so much as mentions going to the gym, the other two assume that person actually intends to go, and are thus guilted into tagging along.  So now, rather than individually going when the mood strikes us, we end up going when the thought even crosses the mind of anyone else in the house.

Given that exercise leaves me in considerable discomfort afterwards, the gym tends to be on my mind quite a bit these days — usually preceded by an unflattering adjective or two — and so we end up talking about said gym and, by extension, returning more and more frequently.  I expect us to hit critical mass soon, where we will simply drag sleeping bags and the microwave down to this gaping maw of fitness and spend our every waking and sleeping moment there.

At the very least, our foray into exercise has proven to be more enduring than our detox attempt.

photo credit: adria.richards