Wiped Out

Urgh. Tired. I lifted weights tonight for the first time in like 5 days. Who knew that short break could make me feel like this? So now I'm going to sit on my butt and play some puter games and relax.

The weekend was nice. Matt did his bit to make Bratfest a success. He consumed six brats and brought home one for the puppy. I won't eat brats, but I did have a couple hotdogs. We also discovered a new local band that we like. They were playing at Bratfest. They're called Exit and they're sorta Guster-esque and nice. We brought home a nice CD of theirs and I'd love to go to one of their concerts sometime.

Harry Potter and the Middle of Nowhere

I just hopped over to Fandango to pre-buy my tix for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Man was I surprosed to see that none of the theatres in our area have online ticketing!!! I'd never tried to get tix through Fandango for this area before. That's what's wrong with living in the middle of nowhere.

On the plus side, they are showing it on the IMAX, so that's a coup. 141 minutes of Harry Potter. All of the reviews I've read so far say that it's really different from the first two and better. Darker, but edgier and more realistic. I can't wait! Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Middle of Nowhere”

We ♥ Our Playstation!

We're spending our evening testing out some video games. We started out with the Alias Video Game which we rented from Blockbuster. That seems to have been a good move because so far, we're not very impressed with it. The dialogue is obnoxious and the skinning on the characters is hilariously crappy. We may try it again tomorrow, but it's nixed for now.

Now we're playing 007: Everything or Nothing, which is your classic James Bond video game and pretty darn good so far. The graphics are much more detailed in this one (though I'm not as much into the graphics as some … to me the story and gameplay are usually more important). I can't help but wonder what the graphics on the next gen of playstation are going to be like.

Bods and Mods

Urgh! I've had the worst headache allll day long. And after doing all of my usual tricks, it still won't go away. I've had a nap, taken sudafed, even had some caffeine (although I'm really no longer addicted to caffeine). And nothing I do seems to work. How irritating.

On a totally unrelated note, we have decided that our next PC will be a media center style PC. Matt's been itching to get another computer since the one he's working on these days is about 4 years old and slow and stuff. So we talked about it and decided that as a fun project, we'll make our own computer and a cool mod case to go with it. For those of you who aren't in the know, mod cases are not your standard off-the-shelf style computer cases. You can either take an off-the-shelf case and modify it (cut out parts of the panels, add funky lighting, paint it all weird) or you can totally go crazy and make a case entirely out of … say wood or cardboard and then add the necessary bits (power supply, fan, etc.) and you've got yourself a one-of-a-kind PC. Some people go totally crazy with them and put a refrigerator on the bottom or other neat stuff like that. I was going to paste up some links, but The Screensavers website has gone all wonky since Tech TV merged with G4 and now I can't find a damn thing. Continue reading “Bods and Mods”

As Seen on TV

I really love the commercial for Starbucks' Double-Shot Espresso … the one where they do the parody of the eye of the tiger to do … “Supervisor.” Makes me smile every time. It's almost as good as Weird Al's parody of that song, “The Rye or the Kaiser.” hehehhehe.

Fantasia got named American Idol. That's good. She was my pick behind Latoya. Although I like to watch the show I have not yet nor will I ever buy tickets to a show or buy one of their CDs.

Cooking Woes

Grrr. I dunno what's been up with me. Ever since we got back I've been very tired and outa sorts. I've had headaches and body aches and urgh. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was getting sick or something. But everything else is fine and I dunno, I don't get sick much. So I really don't think that's it.

My cooking attempts (at least at new stuff) have been rather disappointing. I've successfully made a couple of recipes and not liked them much and I've unsuccessfully completed a recipe … my average is certainly down right now. I have had considerable luck with muffins though. We found a couple of recipes we like and they've come out very well and I've even done some variations. I'll have to try to cook some more new stuff soon and do it succesfully! Otherwise I might lose morale.

Strawberries 'n' Cream Muffins

from: All Recipes.Com

Ingredients
¼ cup butter, softened
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1 egg yolk
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix

Directions
Cream everything but the cake mix together. Then add that in slowly. The batter will get really thick.

Chill it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. While they're chilling, heat the oven to 375. Grease some cookie sheets. When they're chilled, drop some dough in rounded teaspoons onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake 'em for 8 to 10 minutes at 375.

Nutritional Info (1 cookie(
97 calories; fat 5.3 g; cholesterol 16 mg; carbs 11.4 g; fiber .2 g; protein 1.2 g

from: 113

Ingredients
a few zucchini, or yellow squash
butter
salt
seasonings of your choice (lemon juice, seasoning salt, lemon pepper, whatever)

Directions
Grate up your zucchinis/squash using whatever means you deem necessary. We use our mandolin, which makes this go every so fast. A salad shooter, food processor or box grater would probably work well too though. Put your shreds in a colinder and salt them lightly. Leave them in the colinder for at least 10 minutes. They'll leak, so don't just leave them on your counter. After 10 min is up, squeeze the excess moisture out of them. Put a little pat of butter in a frying pan. You don't need much. I use less than a tablespoon for a TON of squash. Saute them until they're tender, but not squishy. Season them as desired … or just leave them alone. They're great either way.

from: 99

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cups low-fat buttermilk
1 large egg
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
1 cup blueberries
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 400°. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 5 ingredients (flour through nutmeg) in a medium bowl; cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal.

Combine buttermilk, egg, and rind; stir well with a whisk. Add to flour mixture; stir just until moist. Gently fold in blueberries. Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until the muffins spring back when lightly touched. Remove muffins from pans immediately, and place on a wire rack to cool.

Combine lemon juice and powdered sugar in a small bowl. Drizzle glaze evenly over cooled muffins.

Nutritional Info (1 muffin(
CALORIES 187 (23% from fat); FAT 4.8g (sat 2.7g, mono 1.4g, poly 0.3g); PROTEIN 3.7g; CARB 32.6g; FIBER 1g; CHOL 30mg; IRON 1.1mg; SODIUM 264mg; CALC 59mg;

from: Jess

Ingredients
2/3 cup (5 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large egg whites
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
2 chopped fresh strawberries

Directions
Heat oven to 350°. Combine cream cheese and butter in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at high speed until well blended. Add sugar; beat until fluffy. Add vanilla, egg whites, and egg; beat well.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and buttermilk to cream cheese mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Gently fold in raspberries and walnuts.

Place 24 foil cup liners in muffin cups. Spoon batter evenly into liners. Bake at 350° 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pans; cool on a wire rack.

Nutritional Info (1 muffin(
CALORIES 142 (32% from fat); FAT 4.7g (sat 2.4g, mono 1.3g, poly 0.7g); PROTEIN 2.7g; CARB 22.6g; FIBER 1.1g; CHOL 19mg; IRON 0.7mg; SODIUM 138mg; CALC 31mg;

More from Music City

Sunday was one of those annoying days when we woke up too early and couldn't get back to sleep (sunlight … grrrr), so we got up and did all that sorta morning routine stuff and took off. We went to Opry Mills, which is this shopping mall on steriods and has some of the most bizarre stores ever. They do, however, have some good outlet sorta stores and a HUGE Old Navy, where we got ourselves some clothes and a new set of accessories for the puppy. It's a cute leash/collar set with the red/blue star thing going on. We also got drinks at Aquarium. It's owned by the same people that own Rainforest Cafe, and it's almost identical in style, layout, etc. Even the menus share a lot of items. It was really neat though because it was very blue and soothing and calm and pretty. Lots of very neat fish too that Matt told me all the names of and I promptly forgot. Continue reading “More from Music City”

Home Again, Home Again!

Well, we're back. And we had a very nice trip to Nashivlle. There's too much to recount in one post, so I'll spread it out a bit.

Before we even got out of town though, we got into a traffic jam because there was “road debris.” The road debris turned out to be dirt that a dump truck had dumped all over the place. The driver and the police officer that was helping him out were standing on the side of the road wiping off their hands with paper towels. And Matt started laughing and said, “It looks like they're going to try to clean up that whole mess with a roll of paper towels.” Heheheh.

The rest of our trip to Nashville was largely uneventful. We grabbed this cool thing from Radio Shack so we could use the laptop and listen to MP3s and watch DVDs (well only the co-pilot could watch, but whatever) on the way down. That was pretty neat.

After we got into Nashville, we went to dinner with Matt's mom and his brother and sister. It had been a long time and we had a very nice dinner and caught up.

After dinner, we gave Theresa her graduation gift and Andrew his belated birthday gift. We got Theresa a t'shirt that says “Gettin' Lucky in Kentucky” since she'll be going to Western Kentucky University and I made her a black ID holder with lime-green details out of duct tape (I'll post instructions soon). We got Andrew a deck of Playboy playing cards. They're a dorm sorta thing, I guess. Continue reading “Home Again, Home Again!”

Idol, Not Idle

FINALLY! Jasmine was voted off. I've been gunning for her to go from the start. She really need to write a ton of thank-you notes to the folks in Hawaii for keeping her in the competition that long. I wish Latoya or Amy (remember her? the fun one with pink hair) were still in. But as they're not, I guess I'm hoping Fantasia will win. I think she's the greater talent. Diana's not bad though.

Even though I'm still interested, I must admit I've pretty much given up watching it. I've switched into my summer mode where I don't watch much TV. I like it like that. Lots of time to go on walks and play outside. Continue reading “Idol, Not Idle”