November 25, 2006

Answer to the Peeling Question

I peeled exactly one plethora of apples. And half a thumb... but no one really cares about that.

Just in case anyone was wondering, a plethora is equivalent to about 100 pounds of apples. Which is around 250 or so individual apples...

And before anyone asks, yes, we did have an automatic peeler available, but it wastes too much apple. Unfortunately, I am a much more efficient peeler by hand. (Less peel, more apple left over.)

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November 23, 2006

A couple of quick Thanksgving questions...

One. Since Thanksgiving was officially recognized as a national holiday by President Lincoln during the Civil War, do any Southerners celebrate it?

And Two. Can anyone guess how many apples I peeled this week?

Posted by GEBIV at 12:48 PM | Comments (2780) | TrackBack

November 19, 2006

And I thought silent movies were a lost art...

Do you hate crime?

Do you like seeing a criminal fall on his head? A lot?

If so, head on over to The LawDog Files and check out the video here.

WARNING! WARNING!
DRINK ALERT!!!!!

Put down any beverages before starting the video. I am not responsible for any ruined monitors or destroyed keyboards.

Posted by GEBIV at 11:51 AM | Comments (59) | TrackBack

November 11, 2006

Odds and Ends

Michele, over at Letters from NYC, posted a delicious looking recipe for Kung Po chicken. Apparently in response to my whining about loosing my favorite Chinese Restaurant. Now, all I need to do is get a gas range, a wok, lots of ingredients, and the will to cook... Maybe Michele will invite me over for dinner? I'm only about 8 hours away...

I just adopted a stray cat that's been living in the back garage for the last month or so at the Car Wash. She's a little black and white cat that I've been calling Oreo. yeah, I know. Real original. She's real affectionate - almost agressively so. Don't pull your hand away too soon when you're petting her. If she's not ready for you to stop, you'll be pulling back a bloody stump. But anyways, since after a month, no one had shown up looking for her, I let her move into my house. I'll have a picture of her some time... if I'm not too lazy.

Hey Look! I'm catblogging!

While I was in Target, buying a cat toy (Unfortunately, I like the laser pointer a lot more than Oreo does.) I overheard a woman on a cell phone telling someone that she was at Target. But she pronounced it "Tar-zhay." Does using a French pronunciation make it more of an up-scale store? Does it really fool people into not knowing where you're buying cheese whiz and crackers?

That's all for now, i guess.

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Yesterday...

All my troubles seemed so far away. And then I woke up.

I should have known it was going to be a long day from the beginning.

First, on my way out the door to walk to work (I live next door, and the parking lot for work is actually farther away than my front door, so 'driving' to work would mean I'd have to walk farther...) I slipped on a pair of work shoes. I was going in about 10-15 minutes early so I could get a cup of coffee before my shift started, and everything was looking good.

As I poured my coffee at work, I noticed that my left shoe felt like it wasn't fitting right. I sat down, pulled it off, and discovered that it didn't match the right one. Great. I had one non-slip shoe on and one no-tread-left shoe. Both were black, so that explained why I made the mistake... I guess.

So it was walk back home, and find the correct left shoe and then walk back. Coffee time all gone.

Now, we get swamped with customers. And I use 'swamped' in all it's damp and humid glory. After putting a coupled dozen cars through the wash, my glasses were so fogged up I had to take them off... working blind is soooooo much fun.

Well, eventually, the rush ended and I went back home to put in my contacts. I hadn't worn them for about a week after getting some bad eye strain around Halloween. I was halfway back out the door when my left eye started to bother me again. So I pop the contact back out and look at it a little more closely than before.

What do you know? Part of the edge is missing and it's now an oval instead of a circle. Well, that would explain the eyestrain... So toss that one and dig out another from the package. Gonna have to go get that perscription filled again soon now.

After that, there were no more surprises, but a long slog of a day.

At least the Sabres won again.... I just wish they wouldn't keep spotting their opponents 2 goals before they start playing themselves.

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November 08, 2006

Another cool thing I missed.

There's a Solar transit of Mercury going on as I type. By that, I mean that the planet Mercury is passing between the Earth and the sun, and appears as a black circle on the face of the sun. Don't go outside and look for it though. It's too small to be seen with the naked eye. Even if the brightness of the sun didn't blind you first anyways.

If you know what you're doing, you can use a good pair of binoculars to project an image of the sun on a flat (preferably white) surface. And I'd have done that myself if not for one, now two things.

The second of the reasons I can't do that is the sun has set here and so would be unable to be viewed. Even without the first of my problems. Namely that IT'S BEEN CLOUDY ALL DAY!

Bummer.

But through the magic of high speed internet, I thought I was saved and would be able to view the transit, remotely. Except that every single website showing a live webcast (that I've been able to find) has been intermittent at best, and completely down at worst.

I'd link them for you if they were working, and I wasn't so lazy. But a couple good places to start (and incidentally, two websites that I visit every single day) are:

SpaceWeather.com

and

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Oh well. Maybe I'll have better luck with Venus in 2012

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November 07, 2006

Well what do you know...

I'm not in Reynold's district. I thought I was last election (2 years ago) but I may be wrong. Or I may have been redistricted....

Or I may be crazy. House of Representative districts are so hard to figure out some times. Thanks to Gerrymandering!

I just wish that we had paper ballots here in New York sometimes. (We still use the big green lever machines) Because I'd love to do what Spacemonkey did and write myself in for all the unopposed races!

Posted by GEBIV at 08:11 PM | Comments (2748) | TrackBack

Well what do you know...

I'm not in Reynold's district. I thought I was last election (2 years ago) but I may be wrong. Or I may have been redistricted....

Or I may be crazy. House of Representative districts are so hard to figure out some times. Thanks to Gerrymandering!

I just wish that we had paper ballots here in New York sometimes. (We still use the big green lever machines) Because I'd love to do what Spacemonkey did and write myself in for all the unopposed races!

Posted by GEBIV at 08:11 PM | Comments (2708) | TrackBack

November 06, 2006

Hey, Guess What!

I'm one of those lucky people in Tom Reynolds' Congressional District! Oh Joy.

So the choice is between RINO, Tom Reynolds (And I don't hold any of the whole Foley scandal against him. From what I understood, he believed a friend's word that nothing un-ethical was going on. And was lied to.) and on the other hand, John Davis. Liberal.

And to make it worse, Mr. Reynolds has been running on a 'Vote for me! I can bring pork to the area!' campaign. I hate pork (The political kind. Not the bacon kind.... mmmmmmm bacon.) Even when it's brought home to Western New York. What we need isn't more public spending, Federal or otherwise. What we need is LESS TAXES!

I guess in this case it really does boil down to who I want in control of the House. Ain't no way I'm going to help put Ms. Pelosi, the Liberal's Liberal in charge of that.

But I'm voting Conservative, not Republican. Maybe that'll help a little bit with letting those guys know where they're getting the votes from. And who knows, maybe they'll actually listen to us the rest of the year....

Yeah, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Posted by GEBIV at 09:38 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

November 01, 2006

Bring Back Manchuria(n)

Well, I had a disappointing dinner yesterday. All evening long, I held off eating anything. No snacking. No grabbing something out of the cooler for a light meal. I even turned down Ted's Hot Dogs!

A little aside. Ted's Hot Dogs are to your typical hot dog what prime rib is to a McDonald's burger. At least to Western New Yorkers. They are so good that when family -now living out of state- come to visit, one of the meals is always Ted's Hot Dogs.

So there I was at the end of the day. As I closed up the Car Wash for the evening, I pulled out my cell phone, checked the speed dial for Manchurian Chinese Cuisine and ordered one of my favorite meals. Kung Po Chicken with Lo Mein Noodles. Mmmmmmmm....

Ten minutes later, I turned my Jeep into the plaza parking lot. Then I noticed something a little different. Instead of Manchurian Cuisine, the door now said Jade Dragon. Uh oh.

When I went in, I saw a waitress I recognized and said hi, and mentioned something about the name change. She replied that it wasn't just a name change, but that there were new owners! Now I was more than a little worried. She asked if I had ordered my usual. (Kung Po Chicken was just about the only thing I ever ordered there.) I nervously replied that I wasn't sure what I ordered.

Well, my food came out to the counter and I paid for it. (About the same as before, but I don't really care about price if I like the food.)

Well to make a long story short. It just didn't measure up to the old Kung Po Chicken. I don't know which way is 'authentic' but I know what I like. I like a spicy chicken dish with lots of sauce, peanuts and spice! What I got was a sauteed vegetable dish with some chicken and a bunch of peanuts on top. OK. But not great.

Oh well. I guess it's like the French Onion Chicken I used to get at another restaurant that closed - Kung Po Chicken is something I'll have to learn to cook for myself.

But I almost forgot the strangest part of the whole night. The new restaurant had the same phone number as the old one. I didn't think that was possible.

Posted by GEBIV at 09:23 PM | Comments (1561) | TrackBack