Honestly, I’m starting to think that working with squirrels is more trouble than it’s worth.
We have a fake plant in our office. It’s kind of annoying, because we can’t get rid of it.
It sort of came with the space. And it seemed like a good idea at the beginning – back before we moved in more people and equipment and just plain stuff. After a while though, it became just another thing to bump into or trip over.
We tried sending it to Property Disposition and were told not to bother. “Nobody,” they said, “would ever buy it.” And they’re probably right. It would just crowd up their warehouse of junk, and heaven knows we can’t have that.
So we’ve started slowly distancing ourselves from the plant. At first, we’d set it outside our door when we opened in the morning, and bring it in when we closed. Then we just stopped bringing it back in.
It started with a little pantomime. The last person out of the office in the evening would close the curtains, turn off the light and step out into the hall. They’d lock the door and then “notice” the plant, sitting there all forlorn and forgotten. But they’ve already locked up, and their keys are in their pocket… Surely it’ll be ok to leave the plant out there overnight! Nobody would steal it, after all…
And (unfortunately) no one has. Yet.
More subtle work ensued: the last person out would adjust the plant, straightening it out so that it presented its best side to the hallway. Coincidentally, this would nudge it an inch or two away from our door every night.
This week, they put new carpeting down in the hall. And when the carpet crew moved back the various hall benches and stuff, they put our potted plant a good ten feet away from our door. As a matter of fact, it was now perilously close to blocking access to one of the courtesy phones in their alcoves outside our door.
This was a great opportunity.
Back in the pre-cellphone days, there used to be three pay phones, one in each of in these alcoves. Now there’s just one pay phone and one “internal calls only” courtesy phone. The middle alcove has a hole in the wall where the phone used to be, but is otherwise empty.
Well…. was otherwise empty.
Now it has a lovely potted plant that mostly conceals the hole in the plaster. Looks like it belongs there…
Tagged Personal Blather
Ages ago, when my Wife and I were dating, we were in a locally filmed movie, shot by a friend’s co-worker.
We played zombies.
It predates the Quirkblog, so I don’t have any old posts that I can quickly link in to help describe the experience. The short version is that it was a lot of fun, zombie makeup is tasty, and we were never paid the $5 we were promised as part of the Zombie Horde Recruitment Signup.
A lot of things never happened with that movie. Somehow, between the end of production and the beginning of the marketing phase, it just kind of… vanished. Even the director didn’t have a copy of the finished DVD until very recently.
When I say “finished” I mean in a playable sense. There’s no cover art. It’s just a plain silver DVD with the title written on it in magic marker. Fortunately, I can fix that.
Ta dah! 15 minutes in Photoshop and we’re good to go…
This is from one of my mom’s recipes, modified for use with the new Bread Bot. I did up a batch of it last night using the alternate “Pull-Apart” directions at the bottom. It produces a nice light loaf of bread with a spicy kick that creeps up on you.
METHOD:
Add ingredients to mixer bowl in order listed. For the yeast, create a depression in the pile of flour and make sure the yeast doesn’t fall into the water. Bake on machine’s basic setting.
ALTERNATE METHOD:
To bake as pull-apart bread, you will need a conventional oven and the following additional ingredients:
Use bread machine to make dough, using above recipe. Remove before final rising phase and place on lightly floured surface. Cover and allow to rise for about 15 min.
Melt 2 tbsp margarine in a small pan. Roll out dough into a rectangle. Brush half of oleo over surface.
Cut dough into 4 equal strips and stack. Cut crosswise into 4 equal stacks. Turn on end and arrange in a greased 9 x 5 x 3 pan.
Cover loaf and let rise in warm place until doubled in bulk (about 30-45 min).
Sprinkle tops with parmesan cheese and bake at 350° for 30 min.
Tagged Recipes
And there’s a new comic up, too! It’s a suggestion for my sis-in-law who gave her two week notice and is wondering what to do with the dwindling time she’s got left at her old company.
This site features a twenty-frame animation that shouldn’t be viewed by anyone with agoraphobia.
It’s the full Moon. Actually, it’s about 20 full Moons, taken at the same scale and the same orientation. As a result, you can really see the little variations in angle and distance caused by the Moon’s elliptical orbit of the Earth.
Tagged Personal Blather
A friend and fellow World of Warcraft gamer’s birthday is today. He jokingly said he was 77 years old.
Not everyone realized this was a joke.
And, of course, it got embellished. He quickly became a 77 year-old power gamer, dating an 18 year old he met via MySpace. I’m curious as to how far this whole thing is going to go….
Tagged Personal Blather
For Christmas, we got a robot that makes bread. I fired it up tonight and made a loaf of their basic farmhouse white to test things out.
Kneed! Kneed like the wind, robot minion!
Completed loaf of bread…
Tagged Personal Blather
So… George Lucas is the Grand Marshall of the Rose Parade this year. There are three Lucasfilm floats. And a cadre of marching Imperial Stormtroopers with a band.
Has anyone notified Msr. Gonqweasel?
Tagged Personal Blather