Flecks of… Gray?

Base
½ cup butter
1½ cup flour
1½ tsp baking powder
½ cup milk or cream
¼ tsp salt

Fruit Middle
4 cups Rhubarb (or other fruits like Strawberry, Mango, Cherry, Peach, etc)
1½ cup sugar

Crumble Topping
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour

Press the base into a 9×13 pan, pour the fruit middle on then add the crumble topping; bake at 350°F for 30+ minutes.

I haven’t put up a favorite recipe in awhile but this is one of my very favorite desserts; it’s ridiculously good (for all the sugar, it aught to be!) and you can try so many different kinds of fruits in it. Here are some of my other favorite recipes.

Panasonic has this great feature on some of their phones that allow you to have them automatically not ring during the night. Our phone is set so that after 8:30p our phone doesn’t even ring irregardless of who it is. Now I’d like a features that block all those American numbers calling about car insurance and stuff (giving my # to the DNC list was a huge mistake, btw)…

Here’s their writeup:

Night mode (select models)
Night mode allows you to select a span of time during which the handset will not ring for outside calls. This feature is useful for when you do not want to be disturbed, for example, while sleeping or during the night when the baby is sleeping. Night mode can be set for each handset.

For background, I loved the re-original Battlestar Galactica (some weeks it was the best show of all time, other weeks, not so much), I wasn’t a huge fan of the Razor special and the Caprica prequel was terrible.

Now it appears as though they want to do a Razor type special event showing the events of the BSG series from the Cylons perspective. To me, this whole universe is completely spent story-wise; there’s nothing to say before the events of the BSG mini-series because it ends up being all unimportant and there’s nothing to say after the end of the series because it’s completely wrapped up at that point. The writers must be vaguely familiar with this problem which is why they’ve come up with the idea to tell the same story as before but just from a different perspective.

I’m not a fan of this idea at all, the story from the cylon pov was always the least interesting part of the show to me. I understand that they’re conflicted and complex characters and could make for interesting material but I feel that this story is completely told and benefits nothing from coming back to tell it from another perspective (ala Razor). That said, I’ll probably watch it…

Direct Link

I found this bizarre music video from Jan Terri made on a shoestring budget in the 90′s (not the 80′s!) and in my unkind spirit of laughing at people who try in earnest but ending up looking silly, here it is.

My favorite parts are the heavy leather, the window staring, the off-key singing, the hand gestures, the plotless story and the ‘bad’ boyfriend who cruises through a stop sign and parks in a no-parking zone.

These lyrics are going to be stuck in your head for some time now…

I don’t wanna lose you tonight
You’re the only thing that matters
I don’t wanna lose you this way
Just need your love

Over a year ago, I did a short list of movies that I was excited about; of the four, only Baba Mama was good. I was going through the trailers for movies at apple and these were the ones that looked like ones I want to catch.

Funny People from Judd Apatow (whose 40 Year Old Virgin I really liked)
Up from Pixar who haven’t released anything but awesome yet.
500 Days of Summer for Joseph Gordon-Levitt in an indie-type romance
Astro Boy because it’s a childhood favorite of mine
Extract from Mike Judge with Jason Bateman – looks funny
The Brothers Bloom has an interesting premise and is made by the guy that did Brick, which I enjoyed for its originality
Moon for Sam Rockwell, who I liked a lot in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and for sci-fi fun
Away We Go looks like a good summer romantic drama with comedy and even though I dropped the Office, I still have a soft spot for Halpert
The Boat that Rocked for seeing rebels with rock and roll in the 70′s – Heidi will like this one.
The Proposal looked sort of funny, this movie represents my weakest excitement, but it does have Sandra in it for my brother.
The Hangover for real chuckles from the trailer – stick around for the very end of the trailer for an awesome cameo
Julie & Julia for Heidi, I’d gladly skip this one
Taking Woodstock about finding the location for Woodstock is the one Heidi’s most excited about and I wouldn’t mind seeing either.
Bruno looks hilarious and I loved Borat so expectations are high
Toy Story 3 is still a long way away but will be a great addition to the story, I’m sure.
9 looks strange and exciting at the same time
Surrogates teams some futuristic sci fi with Bruce Willis and action – good combo
State of Play is a thriller that looks good – my favorite genre
Stranded is the documentary of the story that the movie Alive was based on
Where the Wild Things Are seems to be an exciting look at a popular book that I read as a kid from Spike Jonze who’s loaded with original talent

We’ll see which of these ones actually turns out to be any good.

pictures of t-shirts from printfection

I read somewhere that “The Wire” is the show that, “teaches you how to watch it”. This sums up my feelings for this show almost more than anything else.

It’s a completely unique show in that it has many deep character arcs that span multiple seasons to accomplish what a normal show would cover in a special two-parter. After I buckled down and watched the first season (it was kinda tough to get used to), I got into the second season thinking I knew what to expect and it spends a season re-teaching me that I need to learn how to watch it.

The themes of the show are massive, covering relationships, family, corruption and most thoroughly, politics. Most of the time, the politics fit in very naturally to the show because of all the long arcs and personal beefs, they’re easy to see unfold and their effects linger.

This show does still hang around with me even when I read the paper or watch the news as it gives me a whole different perspective on other things that are going on in the world that I know nothing about. Some of my favorite people/parts of the show are Hampsterdam, anything Omar does (well, almost anything), Stringer Bell’s smoothness, D’Angelo’s heart, the cell phone tapping cat and mouse games with the drug gangs, Carver’s character transition, Bubbles trying to keep his head above water, the unexpected awfulness of Snoop, in a weird way, the things that come out of Rawl’s mouth, and how it all cycles back (the last episode tying everything back to the original characters was great!)

The first four seasons were quite good making the 5th season that much more of a potent disappointment. I liked bringing in the newspapers to the fold and the focus on corruption in the police, paper and politically but I was so upset to see McNulty and Lester stoop to where they did; I thought it was a betrayal of their characters and it ruined McNulty as one of my favorite characters.

All that said, this is a hard series to really recommend to anyone. The language is pretty raw, any action is virtually non-existent, there are a lot of main and side characters to keep track of and the stories take FOOORRREEEEVVVEERRRR to unfold. Getting past that, it is a rewarding experience to journey with these characters and learn about the underbelly of a city and how it gets to be (and stay) that way.

You come at the king, you best not miss.

This post was because Chris asked for it, I’ll try to do a Shield comparison sometime soon.

For the last few nights when I’m throwing some stuff into the compost bin I’ve seen this little opossum. He’s a pretty cute guy and Saffron even had a chance to see him tonight, so I imagine that she’ll be wanting to check out that compost pail every few minutes to see if he’s back.

I don’t mind him around because he’s not inside my house, or busy creating one of my many molehills…

So, you’re sitting on the beach digging a hole. It’s getting to be a pretty big hole and you think, “I’m going to dig a hole to China!”

Got me wondering, what would happen if you were to dig a hole straight through the middle of the Earth, where would you end up? Of course, it depends where you start out; I took all of North and Central America as a reference and it turns out that we’ll pretty much all be popping up in the Indian Ocean or possibly (luckily?), Antarctica. The Hawaiians are about the only ones who are going to find themselves hitting land, coming up somewhere in Botswana.

So, unless you plan on digging at some weird angle and miss the attractions at the center of the earth (get a freezie!), I guess you could more accurately say, “I’m going to dig a hole to the Indian Ocean!”