Huzzah!

(original post on livejournal 01/02/2013)

Or something.  lol

Got a wild hair last night and decided to hook up the landlord's A/V setup in the living room.  He'd been making noises about paying someone to come in and do it, because it was pretty complicated, and I just figured that I've hooked up some fairly complicated setups working for a previous employer, so I might as well see if I could do this one.  Turned out it wasn't so complicated.  I mean, everything was labelled and it was just a matter of connecting wires to the right IN or OUT from the right OUT or IN.  Besides, he only has a receiver, a combo DVD/VHS unit and a laserdisc player.  Two things to connect to a receiver then connect that to the TV.  Easy.  Speakers were already done, so Ta Da!  He still wants to get the whole thing connected to a computer, but he's lacking some pieces for that, so it's not on me that it's not done.  Having this all connected does give me the option of watching more things on a TV screen that's bigger than my laptop screen, and in surround sound.  Could make rewatching BSG better.   Or not.  When I watch on my laptop, I wear headphones, so I don't really miss any dialogue.  I might miss dialogue if I watch without my headphones.

Wrote some more stuff.  Posted it over at lucywritesfic.

I'm not making resolutions; I never do.  However, I do have mental sticky notes to myself all over the place, and one is to keep exploring this writing thing.  My pieces so far are short, mostly smut, and I'm unreliably stricken by the muse.  But it kinda feels good to finish something and be satisfied with it, even if no one ever reads it.  Not that I don't grin when I notice something has gotten hits over at AO3.  Heehee.

The person I've been bouncing stories off of has been in the midst of a brand-new love affair and her happiness over that has pretty much taken over her life.  I'm thrilled for her, and I'm also waiting for some of the shine to wear off so that there's room in her life for other things again.  Friendship can be so complicated.  :sigh:

Another mental sticky note is to write in my blog more often.  I use to have so many things to say and wanted to share them.  Maybe it's just December that sucked the energy out of everything fun.  For me, anyway.

Last year, in January, I won a Kindle Fire.  It took me a day or two to fall completely in love with the thing.  I never imagined I would find digital words as compelling as actual books in my hands, but truth is, in my efforts to downsize my possessions as much as possible, ebooks fit my new lifestyle so much better.  I still have thousands of print books, and I'm still reluctant to give up my old favorites, or the ones I haven't read yet.  No idea how long it would take me to get through my TBR pile.  There are dozens of books there.  Anyway, in the process of learning to love ebooks, I made much use of the local libraries' catalogs of works, and found a few that I could not access on my Kindle.  So I bought a Nook I found at a fantastic price.  It's the first-generation Nook with WiFi and 3G internet.  It does some things that my Kindle doesn't do, and BN lets people lend books to each other, which is pretty dang nifty.  Still, I don't love it like I love my Kindle.  Maybe I never will, but I wonder if some of it is that I just don't know all the things my Nook can do.  Does anyone have a Nook that they adore?  Can you teach me to love my Nook better?

Another of the weird things that happened in 2012 (how strange to type that instead of 'this year') was people finding my reviews on Amazon and emailing me asking me to review their stuff.  I thought I would love it.  I love reading more than almost anything.  Maybe not more than my grandson.  I also love sharing what I think about a book, or at least writing it on my blog where someone might or might not someday read it (lol).  When I first started getting these requests, I was really flattered and tried superhard to turn the review around within a week, and I did pretty well with that for a while.  I realized, though, that the request obligated me to read the book, even if it sucked, and I'm not really comfortable telling an author directly, "I can't finish reading your book and then reviewing it because it's just not readable."  Whether it's grammar or plot or characterization or spelling or whatever else, I don't mind detailing what I didn't enjoy about a book, and also sharing what I did enjoy, if anything, but I don't like telling the creator directly that I can't even finish it.  No matter what reason I give, the subtext for them is that the book sucks, in my opinion, particularly if I can't even finish reading it.  I also got bogged down because I read four or five books in a row that were just short of awful, but since I had committed myself, I had to slog through.  Avoiding going back to a terrible story made me read less, making it take much longer to finish each one.  The last review I did, a week or so ago, is from a request I got in October.  That's just too frakking long.  And I look at my list (yes, I had to make a list) and see three dozen books on there, and just don't even want to read anything on there, even though some of it's got to be good.

I made myself go to a Meetup last Friday.  I joined a social Meetup a couple of months ago, just ladies looking to make new friends.  I need to socialize more, keep myself from isolating so much.  I didn't know what to expect from a group of strange women, but I had a lot of fun.  Their Bunco rules are different from the rules by which my church ladies play, but not so different that I couldn't adapt fairly quickly.  Several of them were just as irreverent and raunchy-humored as I am, and I doubt a single one is under 40.  The only negative about it is that this group of ladies always plays in a back room at the local La Madeleine.  I may be the only person in the State of Texas who does not adore La Madeleine, but I just don't like the food.  On the way home, though, I decided that from now on, I can eat before I go and just get iced tea there.  That way, I don't have to eat something I don't enjoy, and LM still gets their toll for me passing through the doors.  On another note, their pumpkin pie was good.  They had a flaky yet moist crust that I've never experienced before.  Even my mother never made a crust like that!  The pie crust tasted good, not floury, and I need to know how they did it.

Enough rambling.  

Reviewers to trust, or to avoid

When you are looking at cookbooks on Amazon, look for reviews by either "Gramma" or "Lucy Ditty."  I've noticed each lady tends to give fair, unbiased reviews featuring her own honest opinion  Both ladies have apparently been cooking a long time, and review a LOT of cookbooks.  Gramma's profile says she owns something like 600 hardcopy cookbooks, and who knows how many digital.   Even though the vast majority of books I "buy" are free for my Kindle, I have begun to look for a review by either lady before I'll bother getting the cookbook.

On the other hand, "Harriet Klausner" reviews other books, fiction mostly.  She reviews so many every day, I cannot imagine how she has time to read, much less the two books a day her profile states.  Very few of her reviews show less than four-star ratings, and I'd take her opinion with a large grain of salt.  I've noticed that she's started posting reviews as "A Customer" and then signing her name at the bottom of the review.  I see her name and I just don't even bother reading.

Apple-flavored pot...

roast. 

That is what I am eating.  Yes, at 2:30 in the morning.  The Potatoheads made it in the crockpot (their new one from christmas), and it's ready now, so we're eating it now. 

We are indeed a weird family.

Want the recipe?  I'll ask Mrs. Potatohead.

Recipe - of sorts

I like chocolate chip cookies.  I like oatmeal cookies (with cranberries).  I love oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  Betty Crocker has a bag mix for Oatmeal Chocolate chip cookies, and on a whim I decided to add some frozen cranberries.  Mmm mmmm mmmmmmmm! 

The cranberries added a touch of tartness to the cookie, keeping it from being too sweet, and the frozen cranberries made the cookies a little moister. 

I did try it with fresh cranberries - not so good.  They are too juicy.