Author: doug

We’ve recently switched to new bug tracking software at work.  It’s evidently got some psychoanalysis features built in as well.

Between Lis being on Weight Watchers, and me working in an office without a cafeteria for the first time in my career, we are doing a lot more cooking for the freezer.  Tonight’s meal (delicious, if I do say so myself) is beef stew with potatoes, carrots, turnip, kidney beans, and kale, served over pasta; very satisfying for a day where (as Pete from Channel 7 says): “arctic air payed us a visit today: pure, numbing, dense, and ubiquitous.”  And the best part: we get to enjoy it for 6 more servings.

Who can resist…

… a Parker in a box?

The moon is a harsh mistress.  It’s also famously difficult to photograph.  It’s so much smaller in the frame than you expect, and despite the fact that it’s dark out, the moon is in direct sunlight, so it’s quite easy to overexpose.  It’s also moving fairly fast, so tends to drift out of your carefully-composed frame.

Tonight’s moon is supposedly larger than usual due to being close to perigee, and so I figured it was a good candidate for today’s photo.

I have an old manual-focus 500mm reflex lens for my camera.  I attempted this shot a couple years ago with my old camera, but the new one has a few technical advances that make this lens easier to use.  Even with this extreme focal length (equivalent to 15x binoculars), today’s photo is cropped.

We had a minor snowstorm last night.  It did not live up to predictions, which was disappointing for me because I set up to take a time-lapse of the snow coming down.  The camera took a shot every 90 seconds for 16 hours or so, which I glued together into an AVI.  Pretty cool.  What I’ve posted here is just 11 frames at a small size; ping me sometime if you want to see the whole thing.

I went up to our storage unit today.  We packed away some stuff that we didn’t think we’d need — winter clothes, holiday decorations, spare computer parts, that sort of thing.  We had to retrieve our winter clothes a while back, and never did bother fetching holiday decorations.  But I stole a cable from my desktop system a couple weeks ago to fix my father-in-law’s computer, and now I need it in order to install tax software.  So I went to get the spare from storage. 

Stacked cardboard boxes don’t hold up that well under heat & humidity changes, so I also re-stacked things that had fallen over.

With luck our house will sell soon and we’ll be able to empty this out before we need our summer stuff.

Tonight’s picture is of nearly full moon shadows on snow.  I actually first took this photo (or one like it) last night just before bed, but Lis made me re-take it today to be within the letter of the rules for this project — which worked out well because the shadows are more interesting.

Recycling is somewhat difficult when one’s house is on the market and must be presentable at all times, though we’ve found ways to make it work.  It’s doubly difficult when yesterday’s 3″ of slush has frozen up into 1/2″ of ice over most everything overnight. I hope the last week’s boxes & bottles are happy in their new home.

Weather!  What a mess we had this morning.  3″ of slush all over everything.  I had to be in the office for some meetings today, so I took the train with Lis.  On such days, I often stop at Eatin’ Healthy, a place right across the street from my building, to get some breakfast.

For a few years now, we have been grinding all our own ground meat.  This practice allows us to control the cuts and fat content of our burgers, sausages, etc., as well as allowing us to cook our beef burgers as rare as we like them with a reduced chance of contamination.  Just-ground meat also tastes fresher.  Tonight’s dinner was turkey burgers; here I am grinding turkey breast, which I mix with a pomade of bread and milk for moistness, and cook in a very hot pan.