Birch and Maple

Meme Time, News

And now, for something completelydifferent, from the Very Good Taste blog:

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.

2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.

3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding - yumsters
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

~*~

I gave notice at the grocery store today as I've been hired by the place I've worked on and off at for the past 17 years. 4 full days a week...which is giving me some issues, but i'll have to deal, and $10.50 an hour! Woot~!

Oro

Seriously?

Have you ever wondered if your cashier is looking at the food your buying and thinking to themselves, Seriously?

Maybe it's just me. In any case, now that I am a cashier, I can definitely tell you that yes, we are thinking to ourselves, I Can't Believe Someone's Buying That!

Frex:

• premade bacon*
• Lunchables (prepackaged lunches for children)
  
• Fancy Feast (cat food)
  
• single servings plastic pots of dog food
• bottled gravy
• canned spinach
• canned potatoes - seriously?! how damned difficult is it to boil a damned fresh potato?
  
• jumbo chicken anything - what the hell is in those things?

Aw hell, I had this big long list in my head but it's all gone now. Honestly, though, half the stuff people buy is really easy (and lots cheaper) to make! I totally get buying stuff because after work you're just too tired to cook, yet I see the same people buying the same stuff week after week. And on a social welfare note, people on government assistance (I'm still in limbo regarding the food stamps) need to learn how to cook.

I'm just sayin'.

~*~

Dear Customer,

When you don't take your items out of your basket,
this pisses of the short cashiers immensely. Mostly
because it's very awkward to say, lift an 8 lbs watermelon
out of the basket when one can barely handle it in
the first place. Also, you're a lazy fuck.

Ditto for standing there and watching the cashier ring
your items (and there are always a lot of items) up
and pay, then watch the cashier bag your items. Especially
the heavy ones like bottles of soda. The fact is,
short people generally have short arms, which means
we can't necessarily reach to the bottom of the counter,
which is on a slope, which means that the cashier has
to leave the till/register and go to the end of the counter
to go back stuff and put them in your shopping cart, then
struggle to get by the customers getting their goods
in the aisle behind her them. All while you stand and
watch.

Do not throw money at the cashier, this makes them
feel like a pariah. Ditto for make sure not to touch
the cashiers hand as you pass money to them

Yes, while some baggers don't have a clue, this doesn't
mean you should literally shove your bagger aside and
imply they don't know what they're doing. Most baggers
will listen to your requirements and bag accordingly.

You are not doing the environment a favor by using
(expensive) paper bags. Besides how annoying they are
to load, it's much simpler to buy a tote bag - and what grocery
chain doesn't have them at the checkout aisle nowadays?

Yours,

A Cashier

~*~

And now, I must yawn.

Oro out (Anna, yes, I will get to your comment soon)(probably)



* er, I did once buy premade bacon...but it was from Marks and Spencers! That makes it okay...right? Right??

Dear NBC

Dear NBC,

Thanks for running that 'Having a Baby
Changes Everything' ad but a moment ago.

I think we knew that.

Yours, (still) Bitter Infertile

The (awful) Truth, Fantasy Island

First of all, wtf is up with Bloglines tonight? I mean, jeez, I don't have high-speed internet, the one thing I can rely on is reading my blogs every night, y'know? On the plus size, looks like Fairpoint is investing in the area for either fiber optic or dsl, and since we're less than 3 miles from the telephone exchange, it's looking good. Even though it's going to take a couple of years. Probably.

In other news, I still haven't been able to find anyone to fix my tv antenna, so it looks like I might - might - be able to spring for satellite either later this year or early next year, even if I have to quit my cashier's job. I don't think my back is going to improve any and I can't afford physical therapy...what to do, what to do...

I finished watching Season 9 of the X Files today. The (awful) Truth, the final episode? Man, what a stinker. And there are some good eps in the season, Via Negativa, Sunshine Days, Improbable...but they don't take away the bad taste in the mouth (I'm talking about you, Jump The Shark and William). Supersoldiers? A new alien conspiracy? Wha?

Cash is short, very short, very short. How short (doesn't that sound funny now?) is it? Well, I have a $1300 credit card bill to pay off and I have $29.85 in my checking account. I'll deposit $119 tomorrow, but won't get paid this week and will only get about $50 next week. The car is still making funny noises and I've got about $100 worth of bills to send out this week.

Oy.

My flowers are suffering in all of this rain. Oddly, the basement has been very dry.

~*~

Children mentioned for the rest of the post.

~*~

I have this fantasy, perhaps you share it, that somehow someone will give their baby to me. It would be an informal open adoption, where we would take care of the child, yet the mother/parents could visit and we'd all be on big happy family.

Or we'd live in the city, and my child would make friends with the kids next door, whose parents were drug addicts or something, and gradually those kids would just end up moving in with us, and we'd take care of them and they'd be happy, and when the social workers would come to see what was happening after the druggie complained that we were 'mistreating' her children, they would see the happy kids and decide that, yes, we were the best choice after all.

Then, of course, there's the one where I win several lotteries and rescue all the orphans in the world.

What's strange is that these fantasies have only become stronger since the Chieftain's birth. And how anything concerning harm to children has become like a knife in the gut. I thinkn it was DD (or maybe Thalia?) who talked about having to avoid the news. I ws so glad to read this because I was sure I was the only one, sure that somehow I'd become weak for knowing that I'm going to have to put away my true crime books, about having to turn off or not watch movies where children are abandoned or given up for adoption or anything, really.

Oh, and there's a strong possibility that the 5 eggs we had on ice might have been thrown out, as I haven't gotten my storage bill yet and it's been over a year, and we only paid for one year as far as I'm aware. I hope to hear back from the clinic in the next couple of days...preferably after Wednesday, as I don't think I could bear to be at work and see all the babies go by.

Oro out.

Ancient Chinese Secret

I've been meaning to post for ages, honest. And since I had the week off due to a back injury - in my sleep, of course - there certainly was plenty of time.

Anyhoo, the short version of Life Since I Lasted Posted is thus:

• has anyone noticed that Daddy LongLegs spiders seem to have extra long legs this year? What's up with that?
• Our latest houseguest was a bat.
• what's up with all of the slugs? Yeeuch.
• I don't hate my job, but I could live without being a cashier.
• My other part-part-part time job is going to be a part-time job come October, as the part-part-part time gal is pregnant and due in December and wants to 'take it easy'.
• I wish I could watch the Olympics on Eurosport instead of NBC.
• I'm getting old, I got distracted and tired during the opening ceremonies.
• still don't know if i'm getting food stamps

Yeah. pretty dull, neh?

Oro

Meme of Ages

Yes, it's another one, this time from TTC@ Infertility Bites:

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE

4) Reprint this list in your blog.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the
Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6
books from the list below.

5) Strikethrough those you hated or couldn't get through (my addition)

1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (book one only)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (a few only)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down- Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

A Reprieve?

Possibly. I shall blog and run.

~*~

Mr Oro, despite me telling him repeatedly not to, has 'fixed' the vintage hutch by glueing the foot back on. Which means that it'll be even more expensive to fix, so that's not going to happen unless the foot comes off again and whole thing crashes to the floor. I've just done a search on the maker and oh, my, maybe it's an antique after all.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

~*~

Speaking of money, I've reached a new low and have applied for Food Stamps. I've got more than $1000 left on one credit card (haven't used it for a month) but can't afford to pay more than $300 a month on it, and even that's more than half my monthly wage since it turns out that I'm working up to 20 hours a week, rather than the 20 hours I'd signed up for. I've also got expensive stuff to buy in the near future which will also cost 1/2 my monthly wage...

And now Mr Oro's old boss has emailed him, and there might be - might be - work coming his way in the near future. Could be 6 hours worth, could be 6 months worth. The question is, will he have to go back to the UK to do it, or will they ship stuff over here (it would be cheaper)? I keep telling myself that if he goes over, it wouldn't be any different from military spouses saying goodbye (except for the war part, natch)...right? And I could deal with that. Right? I'd have to quit my job (I'd have to do that regardless if he does get work, he can't program, test equipement, watch the baby at night and during the day while I'm at work) as we can't afford child care.

I can honestly say that never in a million years would I have thought that I would be on WIC, applying for FS and am contemplating applying for Fuel Assistance. We're going to put the 22 year old wood stove that's been in the barn, rusting away for a few years, back in the house, although when we're going to have time to black it is beyond me. The question is, it's supposed to have a catalytic converter but we can't get one now that it's no longer in production - how safe is it to run without the converter? Oh, there might be a fine if you do...must investigate further.

~*~

Sleep is for wimps.

~*~

Let's not talk about food or weight issues, okay?

~*~

I'm going to post pics of my crocosmia as soon as Scribefire, an otherwise excellent blog post add on for Firefox, gets this API bug fixed.

~*~

What's with the weather lately? When I was headed towards the hospital the other day, the rain and wind was terrific, so bad I could barely see out the windshield. Water was sheeting across the road and there were puddles in places I didn't know were shallow enough to have puddles. A couple of hours later I heard about the tornado in New Hampshire and reminded Mr Oro what to do in case one hit where we live. Tornados in Northern New England are rare, but not unheard of, in case any one was wondering. There have been 2-3 in Vermont in the past 20 years.

The rain and thunderstorms have been killing my flowers, dammit, and I really want my lilies to bloom (even though I don't remember planting 5 of them...1 definitely, and 3 iris, but 5 lillies? Nope!).

~*~

I must go eat Ramen noodles now, I iz hungree.

Oro out.

Catching up

I was going to write a no-doubt fascinating post about life, but it looks like I've missed my chance.

Mr Oro is still alive.

Barely.

O out

Words Were Spoken

Because when your spouse, angry at you for waking him out of his 9 hour slumber, tries to move an antique desk/hutch that two friends have brought out of the barn and left in the yard for you to clean later on, when he tries to move it by himself despite you repeatedly telling him you'll help as soon as you can, moves it and then breaks one its feet, angrily leaving the piece of furniture on its back in your front yard while he goes to take a shower, then returns to the living room and plops on the couch complaining about how tired he is after you've been desperately trying to get in touch with people to help you move said furniture into your house, well.

I think the fact that I haven't called him a fucking fuckhead bastard wanker to his face is quite an achievement.

Said seven foot tall hutch is now on its side on the floor of my living room, where it will remain until a) I can move it into the dining room or b) I get the 22 year old wood stove in the barn fixed and installed for winter. Oh yes, the money to fix the foot? It's not there, and I don't know when it will be because I have to pay off that damned credit card first (at half my monthly pay I've figured out it'll take 10 months to pay off, including fees, assuming the percentage rate stays the same)(and you know that's not going to happen)

Boy, won't my mom be pleased!

Oro, the angry, out

The Visitor

After the Bear I thought I was prepared for pretty much any visitor, but this morning's houseguest seriously freaked me out for a little while, and scared the Chieftain.

I was in the kitchen while he was on the floor in the living room, chilling while I made some tea. When I came back in he was a tad upset, but that's nothing unusual if I'm out of sight. Anyway, we removed to the long couch, and as he was still fussy I decided to go back and ge this bottle, which I'd left on the floor.

Which is when I saw IT.


Young and thin, only a foot long, wriggling for all it was worth under one the armless chair. Mr Oro eventually retrieved it, but people, really. A snake? In my living room? Wth?

~*~

Here's not so good news: my tendonitis is flaring up, and my left knee is getting very stiff. This does not bode well for my long term employment at the grocery store...must work on the ergonomics, but I am not hopeful.

Oro out