Man, I feel like such a junkie. Spaced out a lot. Popping pills all the time. Not getting my work done. Etc.

See, there are worse things than the flu. I'm going to get better one day soon. And I'm not going to need to go to rehab. And I don't need to worry about getting arrested. Swell.

I'm doing research for when I talk Josh into quitting with me and we go on a big trip all around the world. We're looking at probably doing a northern hemisphere only trip, leaving South America and Australia for another trip, probably 2 other trips. (South America is just in a different direction, as for Australia, it makes sense to include either Australia or China/Japan, but not both. We are leaning toward China for now, but I go back and forth day by day.) Today's topic: ticket prices, as you might have guessed.

( preliminary looks at prices )

One way ticket from Rome to Reykjavik: $900+
One way ticket from Rome to London: $65
One way ticket from London to Reykjavik: $223

Does not compute. Josh suggested that perhaps this was because the layover time is super long making it not feasible. But come on, it's London. So maybe you have to spend a night or two and go see a show... I think I can manage that with my $600 savings, thank you very much.

(All hypothetically speaking at this point...)

So what do you think... really bad head cold = swine flu? Or just really bad head cold?

Josh is on day four and mostly better, after 3 days off work last week. I am on day two and very tired, after 1 day off last week. We both had our seasonal flu shots a while ago.

Either way, sharing a cold? Still not as romantic as it sounds...

I put what I'd hoped would be the final coat of polyurethane on the table I got a while back for my office at work. (Sadly, I didn't do a good job and it will need another final coat eventually.) It looks pretty nice and is small and round (3 ft round with a pedestal instead of legs), so we decided to put our ugly kitchen table in my office at work and this one in our kitchen. Did the exchange tonight, and I think it will be a nice improvement in the kitchen. (Our kitchen is TINY, so making optimal use of it is important.)

Additionally today, I got to play with the scroll saw as I was helping Josh work on the speakers he is making. A scroll saw is a saw with a little tiny blade that allows you to cut out fun shapes. I've probably said it before, but I will say it again: the scroll saw is way cool and lots of fun. You can do fun little shapes and it totally feels like sewing... except you are cutting wood instead of joining fabric.

Also working on Josh's speakers, I got to use the router. A router is the tool that is used for things like the nice rounded (or more ornate) edge of a dining room table, or for the top of a baseboard. In our case, we were using it to make the entrance to the port rounded. It was fun also.

Anyhow, all this leaves me thinking I kind of want to make a china cabinet. I'm just thinking about all the cool stuff I could do with a scroll saw and a router... and a big pile of wood and lots of time on my hands. Well, maybe someday. When it's not about to be freezing cold in the garage for 6 months. In the mean time, I will probably just make myself one more shelf for the china cabinet I have now.

Or maybe I will get another china cabinet off craigslist. I like this one. Though I'm not sure that's really the "style" I want in my dining room, I think I could do nicely for books and games in a living room someday and would go really nicely with our antique couch and victrola players. Price is right too. Too bad it's 2 hours away. Don't like it that much.

The Wisconsin Tourism Federation has changed it's name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin so as to have an acronym that isn't quite so... funny.

There are a few names every child should learn as young as possible...

Do you guys remember when you were really young, your parents quizzing you to make sure you knew their names and your name? I remember arguing with my mom that I didn't need to know what other people called her, but she said that I could get separated from her in the grocery store and if that happened I was supposed to go up to someone who was working there and ask them to make an announcement for her to come get me, and they would need to know her name since there are always lots of mommies at the grocery store. So I learned what everyone else called her, but never actually got the opportunity to do this.

Well, today it happened at St. Vincent de Paul. Though not to me. They made an announcement that went something like this: "Mommy, would you please come retrieve your missing child from the checkout counter. She is... ... um, your daughter."

Post w/ photos of Apostle Island trip

Yeah, it really did look that tropical...

There were a large number of kids at Squirrel Moon this year, mostly not dancing, just hanging out and playing while their parents danced.  Anyway, one of the mother's had a cute story about her kids that came up when Big John was complaining in rather strong terms about the heat at Pine Woods.  Specifically, she said that she's been telling her five year old not to use the F-word.  Her 5-year-old uses the F-word??  Well, in a matter of speaking.  Her 5-year-old complains a lot about things being fair between her and her sister.  "But Mommy, it's not FAIR!"  And her mom is like, "Don't use the F-word with me!"  It's pretty obvious that it's going to come back to bite her someday... but she told about how recently they'd been singing songs out of "Rise Up Singing" with their Quaker group (I need to see if I can hang out with these people!) and one of the songs was about the F-word.  The chorus goes like this:

  We sit down to have a chat
  It's F-word this and F-word that
  I can't control how you young people
  Talk to one another
  But I don't wanna hear you use
  That F-word with your mother

And of course her daughter wants an explanation.  Which is of course that this song is about a mother who is really really frustrated with her kids complaining about things not being fair. So far she buys it.  I'll be interested to hear the reaction when she gets old enough to find out what the F-word really is though...

On Tuesday night, I decided to make a squash tureen, like described in Animal, Vegetable, Miricle. 



( Approximate recipe, more photos, lessons learned... )

Josh got me china for my birthday! Pretty china that we found at a second hand store this evening. It's 10 place settings (dinner plate, salad plate, dessert plate, soup bowl, fruit bowl, cup, and sauser), plus a few serving dishes. Seems to be in excellent shape, aside from one of the small plates has a little chip.



The pattern is Georgian Eggshell G3391 from Homer Laughlin. It seems I can also buy a few more kinds of serving dishes off ebay, and interestingly the Georgian Eggshell seems to apply only to the shape/design of the actual china, where as the G3391 refers to the painting... there seem to have been lots of different patterns painted on the Georgian Eggshell dishes. While I don't see this anywhere on the dishes themselves, this pattern seems to be referred to as Cashmere a bunch on ebay.

Wish list: 15 inch platter, 12 inch platter, 8 inch platter, round serving bowl, square luncheon plates, sugar lid, gravy boat, whatever else can be found...

Work documents probably shouldn't include the word "automagically." This makes me sad. It's such a fun word.

PayPal ran my $2.09 purchase as a cash advance. Incurring me a $15.00 cash advance fee, and $1.75 in interest.

ETA: After 25 minutes on hold with PayPal, they've assured me that it wasn't run as a cash advance, and my credit card company was clearly in error. Bah. Now what? Why can't we just all go back to exchanging sheep and chickens face to face like civilized people?

Got back last night from our Sea Kayaking trip in the Apostle Islands up in Lake Superior. Our route in Google Maps.

It was quite an intense trip. I had really no idea what I was getting us into when I signed us up for it. I didn't realize what big islands they were, or how far apart they were. If I'd known that we were going to be making a 5 mile crossing between islands in a pea soup fog, there's no possible way I would have made the trip. Also, I didn't really think about what a totally different set of muscles it would be than I use for other things, like hiking and biking.

However, it's good that I didn't think about or know those things, because it was also really awesome. ( Rundown of trip, now with photos! )

And then there was that time I paid my rent late because my land lord moved to a new address and didn't tell me. Yeah. Seriously. At least we have her telephone number and she isn't going to charge us a late fee for it.

In other news related to money and paying bills, there is a $15 charge on my credit card for CASH EQUIV FEE*FC*. I'm kind of at a loss since this is a card I only ever use online at PayPal (since PayPal wont let Josh and I both hook up the same credit card to different PayPal accounts... grrr). It looks like a fee as if I forgot to pay, or took a cash advance, or something. And while I did forget to pay last month after using it for the first time in like a year, I also remembered before the payment was actually due and have verified that the payment did in fact post a full week before the due date, so there shouldn't be any penalty...

I would whip out Quicken for some clues, but sadly Rose (the computer with the latest copies of the Quicken files) is sadly without power. We haven't been able to find her power cord since Josh kindly brought it to D&D with him last week and left it in the car in case I wanted it. And then either it was swipped out of the car by a theif who was too stupid to steal any of the more attractive electronics, or really he brought it in and it is at Jamie's house. And I can't just login to the US Bank website to check that card (and find out if the one $15 purchase I can think of this month could have extraniously have ended up on the wrong card), since US Bank is keeping me out of their website for my security. Nice.

Sigh. At least I got paid today, otherwise it would be all bad news and I'd be afraid to touch anything financial for fear of totally blowing it up.

Spent some time sanding on the new table I got for work (it's quite a nice table except for where the previous owner spilled nail polish remover on it), which could have gone faster except I was short on course sandpaper and Josh was out with the car playing tennis. Nevertheless, I'm probably about half or more done with that.

Prior to that, All Things Considered was interesting about a guy who travelled around living under various universal health care countries and then wrote a book about it.

While listening, I spent some time trying to get a compiler working on my N810. While I was at first unsuccessful, I spent more time over the Futurama movie with it, and Josh explained some of the errors to me, and lots of googling later, I now have 'Hello World' working in the terminal. Tomorrow: hello world in GUI and then see about downloading the source for the crappy camera controller and get started on seeing if I can use some cleaver algorithms to make it useful. This is a fun toy.

Well, our community garden at Epic isn't doing so well. Okay, so the lettuce is doing GREAT, but I seem to have killed most of the squash (I couldn't bring myself to just cull, I tried to transplant, which seems to have caused them to all die). And I love squash and am not a huge fan of lettuce, so this makes me sad. The tomatoes that we planted are still scrawny, but some of the volunteer tomatoes look like they might manage to bare fruit before winter. We'll see. I want my own land to plant a garden on, where I can do starts and stuff, and have it just be there instead of a few miles away so that I see it everyday and can improve the soil year over year. And plant perennials. :-(

Anyhow, what there was truly a lot of when we were there today was acorns. Lots and lots of acorns from the giant oak trees towering over our plot. We gathered about 2 lbs and brought them home, on account of I'm pretty sure I've heard of people eating acorns before and not dying (actually, of people eating acorns as a normal part of their diet). Well, it seems they were actually a major staple of many Native American diets, and thanks to the internet, I have information about how to treat them such that they should be yummy. Unfortunately, it's not exactly going to be a fast process, I don't think, since first we will have to shell them and then we will have to soak the bitter tannins out. But it sounds cool. And they are supposed to be healthy and yummy. Plus cheap, local, organic, and independent of the man.

I love Wikipedia. I love Google. And I love Mother Nature.

I am now the proud owner of a Nokia 770. Her name is Forget-me-not, and she is a 3-year-old internet tablet divice, new to me today. 8 oz, 5.5 x 3.3 x 0.7 inches, 800 x 480 pixels. Not as nifty as the N810 model I was looking at, but I will be trying to hack the OS tomorrow to make it think it is. Then perhaps I will be able to make Skype, Google Maps, and Marketplace work. In the mean time, it was only 20% the cost of a new model, so hopefully a good way to find out if I can really make a little divice like this work for me... even if I eventually want the one with something like a real keyboard. Wow this is slow, but I am still pretty impressed that they managed to put (almost) the whole internet in such a little package!

I think I just got my geek card revoked on account of not having heard of the macbook air until I saw one tonight in Best Buy. That thing is seriously sexy.

( What I did today... Sewing... )

( About that sewing desk, including photos )

Anyhow, tonight we are going Contra Dancing. It's actually time to go now. But before I go, I wanted to show off my mad hair styling skills. I didn't realize I had enough hair to do anything so fun! Also, want to show off my mad self-portrait with a camera skills. Mirrors are fun.

( OMG HAIR )

I want to take the following trips this summer:

Canoing in Kickapoo
Kayaking in the Apostle Islands (probably with a guided tour)
Backpacking in Shanandoah
Backpacking in Colorado

Plus, this winter I hope to be home for a "family" reunion with some old family friends before New Years. (This will be a high priority if it actually happens.)

Realistically speaking, there is probably not enough vacation time for all 5 trips, but we'll see.

Also will be going to Squirrel Moon, but that doesn't involve vacation time. (We will be camping this year.)

I don't think there are any of these that we'd object to having others tag along on... except the reunion, that would be weird.

( Notes to self that probably no one else cares about )

I want to buy some sort of small PC/iPhone/blackberry/some such. I'm going to say what I want it to do, and you guys are going to let me know if you are aware of such a product currently on the market.

1. I don't want to pay for a data plan. If it is also a phone and I can get basic service only, that's cool, but not necessary since I already have a phone. I want to get on the interweb using wi-fi.
2. I want a decent amount of storage, probably a real hard drive, since I want it to hold the master copy of my My Documents directory.
3. Appications required: web browser, PDF reader, Word (or equivalent), and Excel (or equivalent)
4. Plug and play drive capability, preferably without an actual cord (think like a flippy USB connection)
5. Relatively high resolution screen, and decent capability for human input.
6. Ability to play music would be nice.
7. Built in radio, GPS, and compass would also be nice.

Do they make such a thing yet?

Grammar and non-linear composition does not play well together.

So, I've had this awful cough for a week now. Medicine is of little help for it at this point. It's not too bad when I am sitting up or standing, but as soon as I am horizontal, it starts up again. This makes it hard to sleep. Which makes it hard to get better. I was up until around 2am this morning (tried to go to bed around 11pm), and managed to sleep until about 10am. So of course I am still tired, since 8 hours isn't nearly enough when I am sick. Walked to the hardware store for some stuff, and now am really tired. So I guess I should take a nap. Weekends are so precious though. Hate to spend them sleeping. So lame. I want to be doing stuff!

Everyone woman should have one of these. I'm trying to think of an appropriate product to compare it too, you know, "Best thing since _____," but I simply cannot think of anything awesome enough. (Men probably don't want to know...)

That was only because you hadn't seen "The Clone Wars".

It gives bad a whole new meaning.

I did enjoy the drag queen hutt though. Almost made that 10 minutes of the movie worth while.

I think this confirms my suspicion that the original three movies were only good by accident.

On getting the new sewing machine working. ( Blow by blow... )

I did some practice stitching on a rag. I set the Singer to 6 stitches/inch and it covered the rag in 11 seconds. I set the BabyLock to 4.5 mm (which should give it the advantage) and it covered the rag in 17 seconds. Yay 35% higher speed!

So aside from putting that knob on upside down and the labels therefore all being wrong, it seems to be in great working order, and will be a useful supplement to my other machine.

Also, it means I can loan a machine to Danielle at work without being without. Or better yet, I can invite her over to sew with me.

ETA: Silly me, the catch on the knob can be uncaught by pinching with pliers just so (think like certain kinds of child safety caps that you sometimes find on household chemicals--remembering those is how I figured it out). It's fixed now too. Perfect.

The woman I purchased the sewing machine for $5 from yesterday said that it worked. And, strictly speaking, it does. But it clearly desparately needs a tune up. It goes slow and groans like at the very least it is desparate for oil. The knob to which I think adjusts the pressure on the presser foot also seems to have some more serious threading problem that worries me a little... the threads no longer thread, they just push right by one another. Not sure what to do about that, but I'm thinking I might just need to see if I can purchase a replacement knob.

At any rate, it's still got the instruction manual (which I just ironed), so hopefully I can take the whole thing apart, clean it, and put it back together... as I'm told you are supposed to do periodically with these old Singers and see what that buys me.

But first, I'm going to make waffles. Because my husband asked for them. And he never asks for waffles. Normally he makes them for me.

Today was Verona's community wide garage sale weekend. We went out and purchased a lot of stuff we don't need for dirt cheap. It was fun though.

Vice clamp - $7.50
2 corner clamps - $5.00
4 shirts - $7.00
2 pairs cross country skis, poles, and 1 pair boots (fit me) - $2.75
2 pair nice chop sticks - $1.00
Halogen lamp - $10.00
Old Singer sewing machine - $5.00
Cassette walkman exactly like the one I have (had??) and couldn't find when I wanted it last month - $1.00
2 Wine cozy things - $2.00
Goose down onezie - $2.00 (No, we have nothing to announce... except that Josh officially has a hope chest now. Well, officially has a metaphorical hope chest, there is no actual chest involved.)
2 cookies - $0.50

I think I need to get more exercise. During our trip, it seemed like we were walking around all day every day, and I really liked it. Yes, it made my feet hurt something awful, so maybe it was a little much, but mostly it was great. I was afraid that when we got back, I was going to feel like I needed a vacation after our vacation, because it had been so GO GO GO the whole time. On the contrary, I went back to work on Monday (after getting home late-ish Sunday night), and I was so happy to sit at my desk. I felt like I was thinking more clearly than I had in a year. And probably I was. After all that exercise and stimulation of the trip, sitting at my desk doing work really hit the spot. And I just felt so alive. Then I got that timely article from my father-in-law.

I think I should really make an effort to get more exercise into my everyday (or at least every weekend) life. I think I'd be a lot happier. Of course, I've known this for a long time. The thing is, it's just not that interesting to always walk around the same neighborhood. I'll keep up a faster pace if I'm interested in where I am. I'll walk further if I'm exploring an exciting new area. And it seems, in addition to my job, most of my other interests involve being at home and relatively sedentary. I feel like I need to change this. But how? I don't know. I'm going to work on it.

I'm going to work on it as soon as I'm well, anyway. Here's the thing, I feel like I'm mostly over my cold, but the last few times I've gone out and tried to do some more strenuous exercise (which could potentially help with the wanting to get more of it without dedicating too much time), I've gotten really light headed and had to stop. When I biked into work yesterday, I had Josh walk me up to my office when we got there because I was afraid I was going to fall over. WTF? It was only a 2 mile ride, even if I did take it a little fast. I'm going to get my iron levels checked one of these days soon, but they've been totally normal for years now, so I don't really think that's it. Hopefully it's just that I'm not totally over this cold, or at least will otherwise pass. But it's frustrating when my body just wont do what I tell it to, especially without much faith that this is going to go away with practice. Eh, I guess I should make it a point of testing whether or not it will.

Also, the bike thing is something I've experienced before. I think I'm totally fine while I'm on the bike, but then I stop, get off, and all of a sudden I can hardly stand up and my vision goes dark around the edges. It's really frightening. What if that not being able to stand up or see had come over me while I was breezing along at 15-20 miles per hour? Of course, it never has before, but it doesn't make me all that interested in getting back on the bike. Maybe it's just a "I stood up to fast" thing... it is like that, only much stronger... but at any rate it's really frightening.

I don't have time to post now, but here are the things I want to write about when I find time.

1. England trip
1.a. London
1.b. Photos
1.c. Driving on the wrong side
1.d. Lessons learned
1.e. Exercise
2. Exercise
3. D&D
4. I want a kitten

In other news that will be fast to write about, during D&D 2 nights ago, there was a huge thunderstorm. Then there was one of the most amazing rainbows I have ever seen. It was twilight and the rainbow was very bright. A nice complete arch, at least for as much of they sky as I could see. Doubled in some places. It was also very pink against the deep blue sky. And most incredible of all the aspect ratio. It was the tallest rainbow I have ever seen. It seemed much taller than it was wide, something I've never seen in a rainbow before. I suppose that has to do with the sun being so low. I wish I remembered better the lecture I went to at Rose-Hulman about rainbows. Sadly, at the time of the lecture, I hadn't had anything even remotely like a real physics or optics class (not even high school physics yet), and it was mostly over my head. And it was a long time ago. And I was really busy having the time of my life and didn't bother to do the "homework" that was assigned and might have helped it stick with me. The DM still wasn't ready, and I was done leveling my character. So I went outside and stood in the light rain to watch it until it faided away. It was absolutely fantastic. I wish I'd had my camera with me. Instead, I will have to do my best to remember it.

Entries about trip posted, first 7 days. I'll be coming back and adding photos later, which will probably make them rather more worth looking at. But I wanted to get what I have so far posted because my mom wants to know where I went and what I saw before her trip in just a few days.

Last night Josh and I made Chili Spaghetti (Cincinnati Chili over spaghetti with cheese on top), only we substituted spaghetti squash for the spaghetti. We first saw this substitution of squash for pasta at Chris and Newt's house a few years ago, and I must say neither of us were too keen on the idea at the time. However, Josh and I both really like Chili Spaghetti, but it bothers me that we've never been able to come up with a vegetable that seems to complement it properly.

Well, now we have. Chili over spaghetti squash is certainly different, but quite yummy (possibly yummier, but that's a matter of opinion) and probably a pretty big improvement on the health of the meal.

Yay squash! And on that note, I've signed up for a community garden plot at Epic (though I wont necessarily get one, they are concerned they may have too many applicants and assign by lottery... though I'm trying to figure out how with the bagillion acers Epic owns they can't just make more plots, hopefully they will figure that out). I'm rather excited about the prospect of a garden plot at work. I will be able to go visit it over lunch. I've also been looking at seeds and picked out a dozen or so squash I want to plant (not even counting spaghetti squash). I don't think I'm actually going to plant that many, but it's really tempting because squash is so yummy! And seed savers has seeds available for kinds of squash I've never seen, let alone tasted yet. Mmmm squash...

I had a nightmire last night in which I was having trouble getting Epic letters to print out onto the shirts I have packed for our trip to England.  I was awake at 3:30am... not so much worrying about it as trying to figure out why I had been worried about it.  That's almost like a combination of all the things stressing me out right now, it would be a perfect combination if I was then planning to feed those shirts to everybody as the vegetarian entree at Laura's wedding tomorrow.  Fortunately I woke up before anything like that could happen.

So, evidently postage rates have gone up since we last purchased stamps.  Our tax returns are back, shy 1 cent... so I guess we wont need to file amended returns, only corrected returns, which will be a little easier.

I wonder when that happened though.  Last I checked, rent checks were still getting cashed every month...

Due to interest rates having fallen, and incomes having risen such that we may not be able to write off the interest anymore, we decided a few days ago to pay off my student loans in full.  I went online, signed in, and checked the amount required to pay them off and got ready to make a payment, including transfering the needed amount to checking.  Said "amount to pay off", good through April 6th was $14,011.90.  I was already to do on Saturday it when I realized that my automagic payment was due and scheduled to go through today (Monday), and I didn't want to screw anything up since it takes 3 business days for requests to be processed so I decided to come back and deal with it after the payment went though.  This morning, the $133 payment posted to my accounts.  And the "amount to pay off" is now $13,396.24, pay off good through April 9th. 

How the heck did my amount owed go down by over $600 in 2 days and one $133 payment???? 

And can I do that again please?  About 22-23 times, as soon as possible would be great...

Yesterday, Josh and I bought an amazing old RCA Victrola cabinet for $195 off craigslist. It came with it's original receipt from 1945 when it sold for $495 (which would have been almost $6K in today's dollars, so we're talking about a nice piece). The woodwork is amazing, though it needs some cosmetic work where it's been scratched up over the years, which we know how to do.

Our intention in buying it was to build a subwoofer into the bottom (where the original speaker is currently built in), and store our stereo equipment inside and on top. Here's the thing, it still has it's original combination record player and radio (short wave, AM, and FM), the built in speaker (12 inch driver and tube amp), and it all still works. Of course, "still works" is a relative term: it sounds like a radio from the 1940s, and the sound is mono.

On the one hand, it seems kind of cool to modernize this outdated piece of furniture, give it new life as it were. And it would be prominently placed in our living room, and we love it. On the other hand, since it all still works, it feels like we are going to be cutting up a really cool piece of history if we proceed with our plans. (Of course, we have little to no interest in owning the thing if we can't make it into something "modern" and useful... because we really don't have the space for an antique gallery in our home.)

Opinions as to whether or not our plans are bordering on criminal would be appreciated.



The rest of the photos, including insides and 1945 receipt: http://pics.livejournal.com/sillygoosegirl/gallery/0004dzs8.

ETA: We've now taken out all the electronics.  I tend to forget this, but it turned out that like so many nice old things, this one was clearly designed for easy disassembly, probably so you could get in and repair any part of the electronics that might break.  Other than pulling a few staples holding wires securely out of the way, everything was easily unplugged or unscrewed.  We could put it back together in an afternoon, if we wanted to.  I feel pretty good about that.  So now we can pretty easily store the electronics until we decide what else we might want to do with them.  Furthermore, I came up with the brilliant idea of instead of building the subwoofer into the cabinet (Josh was making me nervous with talk of adding reinforcing because he's not sure all the walls are strong enough, plus putting in goo-stuff to seal it), slapping together a really basic/ugly subwoofer out of MDF just the right size to slip into the bottom cavity.  We think this will be easier than building the subwoofer actually into the cabinet, plus it will mean not actually making any permanent alterations to the cabinet.  Plus it will mean that the subwoofer can come out for moving the piece, which is already extremely heavy. 

Watched King Corn tonight. Not surprisingly, mostly just repeats of stuff in the first section of Omnivore's Dilemma, but I don't think Josh is going to read Omnivore's Dilemma, so now he knows more about what I am talking about.

It also occurs to me that at "South Dorm Vegetarian Night" they didn't really eat what they thought they were eating. The deal with "Vegetarian Night" was to go to Black Angus and "eat things that eat vegetables." Except most beef in the US doesn't eat grass anymore, they eat corn.

I think the first I was really aware of the excess of corn in the US food system was two years ago when we were planning a backpacking trip during Passover with Rachel and Benj, and had difficulty finding food to bring that didn't contain corn (since normally when backpacking we eat mostly prepared foods). And I thought that was bad, before I realized that the principle ingredient of the beef and eggs we ate that weekend to avoid corn and other grains was, in fact, corn. As far as I know, Passover rules don't disallow eating things that ate grain, but it would be an interesting experiment...

As for me, I had corn at 3 meals today. At breakfast because I mistakenly put white corn meal into my muffins thinking it was whole wheat flour (switched their canisters recently) and didn't get it all out. At lunch when I ate more of those muffins, plus the nachos Josh made. And also at dinner, in the bacon I cooked our potatoes, in and the cheese we put on our broccoli, and in the butter we put on our asparagus. And this was in a meal that was practically all vegetables (potato with some bacon, that cabbage and apple dish, broccoli with cheddar cheese, and asparagus). And for all I know, there was also corn involved in the making of the vinegar that was in the cabbage dish. And this is making everything (except those corn chips) from scratch. (Though I'm sure if I was having this conversation with my dad, he'd point out that "scratch" is what we feed the chickens... hmmm, I think there might be something deep to that.)

I also hate bonuses.

1. In January of last year, I quit my job and got my final paycheck in Illinois, which also included a contribution to my 401k.
2. In March of last year, I became eligable for the 401k at my current job in Wisconsin and set my contributions such that I would end the year with a total 401k contribution just below the federal limit.
3. On December 22nd, I got a bonus, and they made a contribution to my 401k putting me above the limit.

Crap.

So I do the run around with Fidelity. They tell me that payroll at my company will magically know what happened and take care of it. I don't really believe them because payroll at my current job doesn't normally talk to payroll at my old job. So I get the run around from payroll where they tell me to talk to Fidelity, then eventually send me a form to fill out and send to Fidelity. Said form has all kinds of questions on it which I cannot answer, like does my company use Fidelities "discrimination testing" (whatever that is). I send the form back to payroll with my pertinent info.

Eventually, I contact payroll again because tax day is coming and I want to get my taxes in on time. They tell me that I should be hearing from Fidelity any time, and no, I wont be getting a corrected W2. This seems odd, but I figure they probably know what they are doing, and if not, if they aren't going to give me a corrected W2, then that's their problem.

So Tuesday and Thursday nights Josh and I do our taxes... which involves all kinds of unsavory activities, like filling out the AMT form--which was, I do believe, created by Satan--to prove that we do not actually owe AMT. On Thursday, I get the promised check from Fidelity (for some punny amount, made even more punny by having lost well over 25% of it's value), along with a letter saying to keep the paperwork and that I will get a form in January of next year so I can deal with it on my taxes for 2009. I still think this is kind of a strange way to handle it, but then again, I didn't expect it to make sense. So I believe them.

So yesterday we put our tax returns in the mail.

And then today I get another letter from Fidelity explaining that the form coming to me in January of next year will be a 1099 allowing us to claim the loss on our 2009 taxes, but don't forget to claim the extra income on your 2008 taxes.

So now we have to go through all the paperwork again, so that we can send an extra 25% of the amount to the IRS, about 99% of an extra 6.5% to Wisconsin, and about 1% of an extra 3% to Illinois. Too bad I can't just cut the checks just like that and put them in the mail...

Home made laundry soap is even easier with a food processor. This, a great idea from Josh.

Before, I grated the soap (which is pretty easy, it's really soft). Today I sliced the bar of soap twice long ways and 4 times short ways then dropped it in the food processor with the borax (1/2 cup) and washing soda (1 cup). Let it run for a few minutes to get a nice fine powder. Could hardly be easier...

However, I did have to cut the project slightly short (3 bars of soap worth instead of 4) when I ran out of washing soda. It's still like a 6 month supply or something.

All my work last weekend really paid off. It's noon on Saturday and the house is already nice and tidy. The laundry is already done (including some hand wash stuff that's been waiting for months). The kitchen is clean. Josh vacuumed. I even put in an hour and a half of work work this morning. So I have this whole weekend laid out ahead of me, and no idea what to do with it. Plus, I don't feel like I want to crawl under a rock and hide until I feel happier. This hasn't happened in, like, ages.

I think maybe I'll sit outside and do some reading. Plus, play with the new firmware on my camera. Anyone (Jen???) have suggestions of software to use on my new RAW format photos? I'm excited to now be shooting in RAW mode... but I no longer have access to all the code I wrote at work at NG to process 12-bit color images. Plus, I don't own Matlab or have it at work anymore... (I still can't quite believe how sad about that I am). I miss that job and I miss Lisa.

Lookie what Josh found for me!

Firmware hack for my point and shoot camera, supposedly allowing it to do stuff like saving in 12-bit RAW mode and time-lapse. Should be sure to make time to learn how to use it before we go to Britain. Should probably also buy some more memory cards.

Also, even though it's the first day of Spring, it's been the least Spring-like day we've had so far this week. But Happy Equinox anyway!