Mishaps and other haps

I stopped by Magic Mill on the way home last night (well, I was driving the round-about way) and picked up small quantities of various magic substances. Then I came home and made muffins under the guise of watching Finding Neverland. The muffins included the following:

Whole wheat pastry flour (I use this in most things I bake)
Oat Bran
Rolled Barley
coconut
almonds
sunflower seeds
2 bananas
dried nectarines
carob chips

Since my “insert any ingredient here” muffin recipe has disappeared, I opened one of the last remaining books on my bookshelf (most are in boxes), flipped to a random muffin recipe, and scanned it for some measurements.

I would like to call these muffins “Internecine Muffins” because the word nectarine reminds me of the word internecine (the words have nothing to do with each other), but since I tend not to make the same batch of anything twice, it probably doesn’t matter whether I name them or not.

I caught the end of Finding Neverland while the muffins were cooling– theme of what “family” means was in there– I guess this jumped out at me because it has been a very prominent thought/observation for me the past few years. If a place feels like home, maybe it is because of the people in it.

I finally surpassed my expectations in terms of ridiculous character names with “Marshmallow Fletcher”. I was much more amused by this name than other people– it registered more on the eyebrow-rolling scale for them, I think.

We spent a few hours making new characters last night because Deathwish and Singularity are both missing from gaming this week and in their absence, we have elected to play a d20 Modern module in lieu of our normal weeknight games. When we have our peeps back, we will return to our regularly scheduled gameage.

It was neat to make 15th level d20 Mod. characters, though, because we have never played a d20 Mod. game long enough to have high-level characters.

In an instance of cognitive collision (or strange, psychic voodoo), which seems to happen often enough when we are in the same room, Mlitiagrl and I both decided at the same time that our characters were from (or living in) Louisiana. This led to some practicing of Southern accents on the part of Mlitiagrl and PhysOrg– less successfully by me, which is truly ironic (or coincidence?). Once the exaggerated bits mellowed out a bit, they did sound almost convincing.

There was some ass-kicking– an awful lot of it was done by Elliot, Inle’s character. Mlitiagrl’s character saved Magicless Dave from being ineffective and administered large clumps of healing after we thrashed through 2 wombats … I mean combats.

Lots of fun. I am looking forward to continuing this on Thursday …

Artie & MrGuff’s sci-fi film fest doesn’t start until next Saturday, but I watched several non-sci-fi movies this weekend to kind of warm up for the approching movie madness. They were all well worth seeing:

Lemony Snicket (2nd viewing)

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (the least serious movie I watched this weekend)

Amelie (which I have seen many times, but I turn it on now and then when things are quiet– I think it might be my favorite movie)

Howl’s Moving Castle (I was really touched by certain moments in this movie and I want to see it again before it leaves the theater– it’s about a boy who lost his heart in order to make a pact with a demon) “I finally found someone worth protecting with my life. You”

Batman Begins

Brand-new babies are teh neat

The latest issue of the UW-Madison alumni magazine features an article about Natural Ovens bakery (in Manitowoc, WI) and the project its owners are involved with in Appleton. They have underwritten a program to bring healthier foods into a school for behavior-problem kids and it has been so effective in changing behavior (documented by tracking suspensions, expulsions, etc. over five years) that the whole school district is starting to pick it up. Vending machines have been removed from school and whole grain breads and vegetables are becoming commonplace. What a change from pizza squares, fries, & soda!

I took the article to work for a co-worker with whom I have had conversations about vegetarianism and nutrition. She made a bunch of copies and has been sharing it with friends and relatives, so I feel good about that. One of her sons had attention-related problems when he was young– on a doctor’s advice, she removed white bread and sugar from his diet and started paying more attention to what he was eating. It made a world of difference.

I’m not sure that a better diet would be a catch-all for attention disorders and behavior problems, but if it meant that fewer kids would be prescribed medication or would need to be disciplined for bad behavior, wouldn’t it be worth it?

Nutrition seems like an obvious factor to consider, but look at the rates of obesity and heart disease in this country. If we cannot even connect the line between physical health and diet (or don’t care enough to act on the evidence), how can we possibly be expected to perceive that behavior, well-being, and mental health may be affected by nutrition?

ref: dictionary.com

sanc·tu·ar·y ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sngkch-r)
n. pl. sanc·tu·ar·ies

3. A place of refuge or asylum.

Moving is only a month or so away now, so I visited the new place last night to take a look at a sofa that my roommate-to-be was uncertain about keeping. We decided to keep it for the time being– it offers additional seating and it kind of contributes to the cozy. There are a lot of places to sit at the new place.

I really like the way the shared living area is set up. I am not big on planning layout and decorating and I am happy having someone else make those kinds of decisions. The furniture I am bringing with me seems to replace key things that the old roommate will be taking away with her when she goes– it seems like all of the pieces will fit.

*****
On a completely unrelated tangent, I was reading an article about Social Security in the NY Times this morning and I am very glad that I am contributing to a retirement account. Everybody should do that as soon as they start working full-time. If you wait until you think you can afford it, you may end up not having enough put aside. I would not want to rely on Social Security in order to be able to afford housing, food, medicine, etc.

I have also heard quite a bit about retirement planning at work lately, as we are trying to expand our services as a company and are branching into a little bit of what might be called “considering future needs” (we are being careful not to claim financial planning expertise since that is not what we do).

Nice weekend so far:

Talked to sister last night and Mom this morning.

Spent time with people last night.

Had a very good nap.

Purchased berries and deposited them into the freezer yesterday.

Made smoothie for breakfast this morning.

I wrote the following as a slightly tongue-in-cheek e-mail to my mom and sister today, but I think it is worth preserving here:

I just picked up a Real Estate book and discovered that the houses in my neighborhood start at about $600,000.

That means by my recently-invented rating system, I live in a Class 3 neighborhood.

Class 0 houses are houses that no one wants to buy. They are typically under 800 ft., the roof is caving in, and someone was murdered there. We won’t talk about these, but they are affordable.

Class 1 houses are real fixer-upers that are generally under 1,000 sq. ft. or houses in the suburbs that are slightly larger and lack amenities such as a basement (an oddity for Wisconsin). These range in price from about $85,000-150,000.

Class 2 houses are your obvious cookie-cutters with no yards and lots of snot and playsets from the neighborhood kids. These are what most middle-class Madisonians aspire to, despite the fact that they all claim to hate cookie-cutter houses. Watch them settle for less! These typically run in the $200,000-$300,000 range.

Then there is a slight monetary gap …

Class 3 houses start at about $500,000 and range up to at least $850,000. These are also cookie-cutters, but they are disguised enough that people think they are buying something unique. “McMansion” is the technical term. They typically lack yards since most of the acreage of the lot is walled-in, air conditioned and figured into square feet.

Class 4 houses start somewhere above $1,000,000 and have no ceiling on value. They tend to have more acreage.

Class 5 houses are historical landmarks of some sort. While these may have a set value, they are really priceless and unique. They also may be horribly unattractive. Example that comes to mind is Taliesin.

It has been a busy week at work. We have a new temporary person starting, our technician is on vacation, and everybody needs something because it is a busy time of the year for new projects and the like.

Since it is summer, I have joined a couple more games in the past few weeks, so now I am up to four (one game only runs every other week, though, since the GM and one player live in Oshkosh).

I gamed Monday night (Eberron– we sometimes switch the game we are playing if we have all of our people). We’re still saving the vampire combat for Mlitiagrl’s return to the game. However, we know it’s a vampire now. After much buffing, Spruce still failed his Knowledge Religion check, but he was lucky enough to stumble into a temple. After a lot of research and a lot of consulting, Spruce still didn’t figure it out, but the twelve-year-old acolyte looking over his shoulder said, “Oh, that sounds like a vampire– cool!” Well, that’s the story, anyway. I thrive on playing incredibly dense characters.

Last night I visited with the chelovyek’s family. Treatment for his mom will be starting soon, so keep your fingers crossed.

Tonight I will probably stay in, tackle some laundry, give my mom a call, pay some bills … Netflix just sent me more movies, so if I cannot be motivated to pack some more boxes, I will at least have things to watch.

I succeeded in cleaning out more kitchen stuff on Sunday and I shredded the last of the papers I wanted to shred, so my household is getting pretty slim and trim.

That is all for now– hope everybody is having a good week.