Friday, February 26, 2010

Bored of Pandora?

I was playing with my Stumble Upon button (which come to think of it I don't think I've ever blogged about and I should) and I stumbled upon a new music site. I haven't decided yet whether I like it more or less than pandora, and it definitely has some drawbacks, but overall I've had a lot of fun playing with it.This is a picture of the site.

The main drawback with it is that to really play around with the site you have to pay for it, which I refuse to do. But you can still have fun with the free options. What you do is choose what type of mood your in, energetic or calm, and dark or positive. You can also choose what decade you want your songs coming from, and what style of music. There are buttons at the top where you can say "play your favorite artists," "similar artists" and "discovery." Unfortunately you can't choose "favorite songs" which plays your fave songs (duh) but I don't really mind that. The "discovery" button searches for less popular songs which I think is pretty cool. The annoying thing is you can't skip around the map it's drawn out unless you get the "premium version". You can still tell it what songs you like and what ones you don't like tho, so I'm happy enough with it. The interesting thing (to me) was that when I was signing up all the questions were in french (or another similar language?). But it wasn't hard to tell what they were asking. You can also use it without signing up, but where's the fun in that? I've liked most of the songs they've played, once I got my settings in a good place, and now I'm rocking out! :) You should try it.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

This made me laugh today

Redneck Love Poem

Susie Lee done fell in love;
She planned to marry Joe.
She was so happy 'bout it all
She told her Pappy so.

Pappy told her, "Susie gal,
You'll have to find another.
I'd just as soon yo' Ma don't know,
But Joe is yo' half brother."

So Susie put aside her Joe
And planned to marry Will.
But after telling Pappy this,
He said, "There's trouble still...

You cain't marry Will, my gal,
And please don't tell your Mother,
But Will and Joe and several mo'
I know is yo' half brother."

But Mama knew and said, "My child,
Just do what makes you happy.
Marry Will or marry Joe,
You ain't no kin to Pappy!”

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

To do or not to do?

Applying for jobs recently has gotten me to thinking about what exactly I want to do for my career. And really, I have not yet gotten it narrowed down yet. My favorite options, in no particular order are:

~Become an EIT (on the way for that, I'm signed up for the FE) and then a PE. Meet lots of contacts in the professional world and find "a niche in the market," as my dad would phrase it. In other words, when I'm a PE I want to be meeting contacts so that I can open my own consulting business, hopefully by the time I'm thirty. I just need to figure out what exactly people would be consulting with me for. But I do already have a logo!This is me working at a construction site working for ECS. On my way to becoming a PE!

~Become a world famous novelist. Of course, that means I have to become any type of novelist first, but if I never write a book in my entire life then I'm going to be very disappointed with myself. Also, this is something that I plan on doing whatever my career is, and this would only be my MAIN career if I did become world famous. And rich.

~Open a bookstore. This is definitely one of my favorites. And the least likely. Belonging in this category is also opening up my own pastry shop. I've been doing a lot of baking recently, and I've discovered I'm pretty talented at it. What would be really cool is if I could open up a bookstore with a pastry shop in it. I guess I might as well serve coffee there too. But does that sound too much like Barnes and Noble or Borders? If I opened up my own bookstore I would want it to have some cool twist so that I could compete with the big boys.I've posted this picture before, but I haven't taken any other pictures of my baked goods apparently! I should have gotten a picture of my peach crisp... it's my fave so far.

~Work for Forella Group. Maybe expand what we do so that I can use my ME degree. I would want to become a PE before I did this though, Forella Group needs more credentials. Also, I could help Forella Group really grow and then open my own branch in another part of the country (Florida). That would be awesome.

~Go back to school and get my Masters or PhD and figure out what I want to do from there. I don't know what I would do with it though.

So those are the most likely options at the moment. Of course, winning the lottery should be in there too, but I'm just going to take that one for granted.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Automatic Replay

I have a new song I'm totally obsessed with and can't stop playing. Actually, I don't think it really is a new song, it's probably just the first time it's come to my attention. Whatever the case may be, I've been playing it over and over ever since I downloaded it... yesterday. But just because I've only had it one day doesn't mean that this will not be a long and hard obsession... I may need to make it my ringtone. BUT. I am almost embarrassed to admit this, but I'll do it anyways. The song is from the new Dante's Inferno EA game that's coming out. And boy did they do good marketing because now I'm not only obsessed with the song, but I want the game too. SO BAD. It reminds me of Diablo, and Diablo and I really had some good times together. Oh, and of course seeing the commercials for the game also really makes me want to read the book Dante's Inferno. It's next up on my list. The song is Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone) by Bill Withers. Check it out. Like right now.

This is a picture from the game... I know I'm a dork but it looks SO COOL.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

New Obsession


My newest *online* obsession is Post Secret. I read one of the Post Secret books ages ago, and I liked reading through it, but ever since I stumbled upon it online, it's become an obsession.


This is the Post Secret book that I read.

The only thing holding back my obsession is that they only post new secrets every Sunday. However, never fail, every Monday morning I go through my blogs starting with Post Secret. Some of them really hit home, and I feel like I have an identical twin out there somewhere in the world going through the same things as me, and I wish I could meet them. Other secrets make me really feel for the secret-keeper, and I hope that whatever it is they're wishing for comes true.

I like to imagine the stories behind all of the secrets. I wonder who I would get along with, and who I would think is just crazy, or conceited, or selfish. Some of them make me want to write a book about what I think the story could be. I think that it would be really cool to choose my favorite secret and publish a book with what I think the story could be, with the postcard printed on the cover of the book. And then maybe one day the secret-keeper will contact me and tell me I had it all right and they could correct me just on the details. Or maybe they'll contact me and tell me that I'm completely wrong and don't try to understand something I could never understand. Whichever way it went, I would love to find out.


This is my favorite secret from this week.


I like this one a lot too.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Snowed In Dinner Time!

The snow hit here pretty hard Friday night and into Saturday night, so a lot of people got snowed in. We had originally planned to make a big dinner Saturday, and we decided we still wanted to go through with it. There were escapades driving to the grocery store on unplowed roads, but unfortunately I had forgotten my camera. I wish I had gotten a picture of Kaitlin's car having to be pushed up a big hill, mais c'est la vie. However, I DID chronicle our dinner, kinda PW style!


The first creation was made by Kaitlin, assisted by Margaret. Some of them are triple decker crackers with a layer of peanut butter and a layer of chocolate. Others are just crackers with peanut butter in the middle and chocolate melted on top. They had a lot of trouble getting the chocolate to melt, but in the end, although they weren't pretty, they were delicious!


The next course was bread drizzled with olive oil and herbs and baked in the oven by Alex...


...with three different types of cheeses supplied by Margaret(gouda, smoked provolone, and smoked cheddar)...


...topped with caramelized onions cooked by Alex! I used to not be a huge onion fan, but recently I've really gotten into them. And these onions cooked with brown sugar and regular sugar were just delicious. The images of the bread, cheese and onions were after we had already started digging in, because I got so distracted by food I forgot to take pictures immediately! Also, we ate some of the cheese and onions with bread that wasn't baked, and that was really good too because the bread was sooooo soft.

Now to make things make sense food wise, I'm going to skip the fact that I started making the pie around now, and just start talking about dinner. But, before I can go into dinner, I have to mention the wine! When we went to Kroger this guy had a stand in the wine section where he was giving everyone samples of hot mulled wine and cheese and crackers. The wine was really good, and PERFECT for a snowed in evening, so Alex bought the ingredients to make it to go with dinner. I can't remember what they were exactly... something about a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red wine, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and whatever citrus-y fruit you've got laying around.


Not the best picture, but the wine was really good! We let the fruit sit in it for a while so the wine would soak up the flavor. Yum yum yum!

Now, for the main course, provided by Margaret! This happened to be an entirely vegetarian meal, which is certainly odd for me, but everything was delicious! The main portion of it was lentils and rice.


Margaret made a huuuuge pot of lentils and rice, almost twice as much as we could all eat. And there were 8 of us! I can't remember the seasonings that went into it, but the main point was just the lentils and rice. And then of course everybody made jokes for the rest of the night because we were all eating lots of beans.


The other main component of dinner was cabbage. I was really worried about not liking this because it's green and looks like leaves and I don't eat salad, but I looooved this. Margaret sauteed the cabbage in soy sauce, olive oil, and something else, I can't remember what. She said she was going for the chinese food dish of cabbage, and it really did remind me of that. There wasn't any cabbage left over after everyone was done eating. Part of that was because since it's such a light dish, it's easy to still pick at even when you're really full.


The master chef! Margaret cooking away on the stove. It looks like she's posing for this picture, but she really wasn't. While she was cooking she remained stirring at the stove almost the entire time.

And for the finale of the meal, which of course everyone was way too full for: strawberry rhubarb pie! I've never had rhubarb before but I love strawberries, so when Alex requested that I make it, I wasn't hard to convince.


Mixed inside the crust here are strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, quick cooking tapioca, salt, and orange zest.


This is the pie baking in the oven. I coated the top crust with boiled sugar water so that it would be a little glazed. The aluminum foil ball to the left is my extra pie crust that I didn't use stuffed with the left over cheese from the hors d'oeurves.


I had to cover the outside crust partway through cooking because it started to get too brown.


The finished pie! The outside edges were pretty brown, but not burned, so it was fine. Wow, it's so much easier to chronicle things step by step when you're the one taking the pictures! I kept getting in Margaret's way so I couldn't get lots of pictures of her cooking. And, the final food item:


The cheesy pie crust. Which actually wasn't that good because it had too much crust and not enough cheese. Oh well!

And that's it for our snowy dinner! :)