Am I really as neurotic as I feel?

As little kids, grownups ask us what we want to be
When we're grown up
Princess, ballerina, fireman, astronaut
We will be amazing when we grow up

As high school students, grownups ask us what we will be
When we're grown up
Engineer, writer, scientist, teacher
We will be fantastic when we grow up

As a grownup, nobody asks us what we will be
When we're grown up
For you see, just because we're a grownup
Doesn't mean we're grown up

After we pass, we wonder what we could have been
Had we ever grown up
Princess, ballerina, fireman, astronaut
We were something, even if we didn't grow up

Posted by: greeneyes at 22:56 | link | comments

Ye olde recipe

Per barkalot's request, here is the recipe for my peanut butter bars.  These are sacred, the recipe is sacred, so treat it kindly.

Cream:
1 stick butter (you use margarine and the gods of baking will hunt you down)
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar.

Add:
1 egg
1/3 c peanut butter (I never measure this, btw, I just scoop a bunch in)
1/2 tsp soda (the baking kind, not the carbonated kind)
1 tsp vanila
Dash of salt (don't forget this...salt enhances the flavor of sweetness)
1 c oatmeal (quick oats or old-fashioned, but no instant)
1 c flour (all-purpose, of course)

Put in ungreased square pan.  Bake between 325 and 350 for 25 minutes or so (it's thick, so I bake it a little lower and a little slower so the top doesn't get too dark).  Check at 20 minutes, and if it's not done check every couple of minutes afterwards.  If a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean, it's done.  Remove from oven, top with a bunch of chocolate chips (about 3/4 cup, if you must have a measurement, but I just put some on until it looks good).

While the chips are melting, mix up this frosting:

1 huuuge tablespoon peanut butter (again, I never measure)
1 c powdered sugar
a bit of water, just enough to make of frosting consistency
Mix together until it's smooth.  You want to be ble to spread it easily, but you don't want it too runny.  But either way, it will taste good, so don't worry.

Spoon on the frosting.  Swirl chocolate and peanut butter together.  Make pretty patterns if you want.  Or not.  It will taste good regardless.  To make a 9x13 batch, just double the recipe (the frosting part does fine as it is).

Enjoy!!

Posted by: greeneyes at 21:30 | link | comments (2)

"It's a shame, but some people just so desparately WANT to believe in things, they force rational thought to the side."

I think it's safe to say that everyone's been guilty of this at some point or another.


And damn this changing of the clocks...it's 9pm, and I'm exhausted.  Of course, I was up until 2:30 (newly 1:30) last night and got up at 8:2- (formerly 9:20).  I'll let you do the math; consider it your Monday morning mental challenge.  :-)

Posted by: greeneyes at 21:03 | link | comments

Sudoku

I love sudoku puzzles.  I know, it sounds ilke the latest Pokemon craze, but it's not...it's just a craze.  The little number puzzles are awesome.  I love numbers, I love patterns, I love logic.  There are definite answers...no ifs, could have beens, or fuck I messed ups (though you do have those moments working on the puzzles, trust me, but they're usually fleeting).  I'm about to go off on a tangent that is neither here nor there, but I'll spare you the gory cynicism and instead just urge you to try a sudoku.

Posted by: greeneyes at 19:06 | link | comments (2)

This is why Beth is my best friend, why she's been my best friend for years and years, and why I hope she's my best friend for years to come:

If I wait until she's had a couple glasses of wine, catch her off guard, and tell her a stupid joke, she will laugh until she cries.  The joke?  What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?  Elephino (hell-if-I know).  Get it?  It's stupid.  But she had just said "'ell if I know" in the kooky British accent she does, so it was the perfect opportunity to throw the joke at her.  She laughed until she cried, so I snorted, and all was right in the world.

We can spend 5 minutes on the phone (both of us driving across the state) trying to figure out when the last time she puked was (January 1, 2004, around 4:30 in the morning if anybody's interested, not Girls' Night Deux about 5 months earlier, which was the other option).  This took some figuring out of various  timelines, such as how long I've lived where I live, when Kim got pregnant, and when Girls' Night Numero Uno happened, which was the same night my car gor broken into, if you're interested in that too.  After that got figured out, we laughed hysterically, of course.

We think it's totally groovy that we wave to each other because we're driving along in our respective cars, exactly 50 miles apart, facing each other.

It's beyond awesome that I'll call her up to listen to the radio show that I found about creation/evolution only to remember just as she answers her phone that her radio doesn't work, but it's okay because she was just about to the corner where I was turning to go to Kim's and said "Is that you?" and I turn and see her car, so we keep talking on the phones until we get to Kim's...which took all of 2 minutes, and we were waving to each other pretty much the whole time.

There are few friends I don't want to live without.  She's one of them.

Posted by: greeneyes at 17:22 | link | comments (2)

Cookies!!

Barkalot sent me cookies!  They're so fabulous!  And just what I need on yet another not-so-fabulous day (it wasn't even ghetto fabulous).  When I got up the stairs to my place and saw no box, I said (out loud, in a very odd voice) "No cookies?!?"  But then I went inside and there was the box on the counter...I forgot my roommate had this morning off.  Yum.  It took me a while to open the box (it always takes me a while to open a box) and I didn't cut myself...or that's what I thought even after the scissors came into contact with my finger.  But then a hint of blood showed up, and while there's no seepage, there is open skin.  But it's been a couple of weeks since I got cut by the knife while cutting up broccoli, so I was due.

At least it wasn't an exacto knife.  To the thumb.  Thank goodness for thumb nails and thumb bones, eh?

Hey, at least I didn't tell you about the time I got a gash from a rusty truck door...or how the hole where the camera went into my knee didn't heal right, so there's a bubble scar...or how I got a big hematoma in my arm while I was donating platelets because a clot formed in the tube (high platelet count) and it all backed up (that thing was really cool)...

What?  Oh.

I applied for my passport today.  112 bucks, baby.  6-8 weeks.  I really hope it's closer to the 6 weeks than the 8 weeks, but 8 weeks is still in December, so I'm not really worried.

Thanks for the cookies, barkalot!!

Posted by: greeneyes at 18:24 | link | comments (10)

Posted by: greeneyes at 19:02 | link | comments (8)

sigh

Posted by: greeneyes at 09:51 | link | comments (5)

Fast, normal, slow

So, genius that I am, I just realized you can play songs fast, normal, or slow on Windows Media Player.  Interesting.  The Spider-Man theme song, as sung by Michael Buble, almost sounds like a techno song if you blur your ears a bit.  This is probably too fascinating, but I'm tired.  I'd blame it on the wine, but I had just one glass, and I finished it about 45 minutes ago.

It's the simple things, really.

I wonder who sounds like the Chipmunks...

Posted by: greeneyes at 22:13 | link | comments (1)

I went for a bike ride this evening; my first since last Tuesday.  Sunday was the first day I'd been able to go up and down stairs without gripping the rails, hoping they'd support much of my weight, and could lean on the rails just a bit less.  The pain was better still today, and since the longest I'd gone in 3 months without riding my bike was 2 days, I was itching to get out.  Plus riding my bike has been quite beneficial to my mental health, and without it...well, let's just say I need it.  It's going to be a doozy of a winter, I imagine.

I started off pedaling too quickly, and my trachea and lungs weren't too happy about that.  The coughing and phlegm showed up fairly quickly, and even now 2 hours after the end of the ride, they're still hanging around.  It's sexy when a woman sounds like an old man with her barky cough, admit it.

And for you astronomer-wannabes...(from Yahoo! news)

On Sunday, October 30, the Red Planet will be 69.4 million kilometers (43.1 million miles) from Earth -- a distance that in galactic terms is less than wafer-thin and will not be equalled until 2018...

In the runup to Sunday, but also for much of November, Mars will appear as a big orangey-yellow "star" in the east, an object so bright that it should be visible in almost any conditions of light pollution, says the US publication Sky & Telescope.

Weather permitting -- on Earth and also on Mars, where there are some worrying signs of an impending dust storm -- anyone with a modest telescope should be able to pick out some of the features that make Mars so special.

Man, I hope I remember that.  And I need to make friends with someone who has a telescope.  Fast.

There's other stuff on my mind, but I don't have the motivation (or the memory, for some of the things) to type about them.  Perhaps tomorrow.

Posted by: greeneyes at 20:06 | link | comments