Category: Household

New Fear Unlocked

A wasp or hornet (I’m not good at identifying them, but it wasn’t a honey bee nor bumble bee, it was smooth, shiny, black & yellow & stingy) was clinging to the shorts. WHY it had crawled between shorts and underwear in the first place, I cannot begin to fathom. But in the cool, pre-dawn basement, it was nearly motionless.

Took the shorts over to the patio door, opened it, flicked ’em outside.

But this has now unlocked a new fear – of being stung in the balls.

How far into autumn/winter will it be before the risk of stingy fuckers hiding in my underwear basket has returned to effectively zero?

OK, here comes a shitpost… Years ago, when my daughter’s boys (in their teens now) were toddlers and a bit thereafter, daughter’s family bought a house in Richfield, with the Southdale Public Library basically in their back yard. (We also lived in Richfield, so this was handy for baby-sitting.)

They went about remodeling the kitchen – themselves.

Then my idiot former son-in-law realized that cutting and installing the counter-tops was probably beyond his skills and tools. So he hired someone for that step of the process… ON CRAIGSLIST.

Goes out to the garage while the guy’s working, to find him cutting the big corner mitre cut using a jigsaw… a saw specifically designed to allow you to cut a non-straight line… a saw that sucks pucky balls at one specific thing: cutting a straight line. Fired him on the spot. But wound up with a horrible kitchen counter anyway.

I like to think that guy eventually did get better tools and better skills, but nevertheless never really grasped the goal, the vision, the reason we do things the way we do them.

What made this story pop into my head? Well I’ll show you.

Therapist: What's been bugging you lately? Me: Saw this at a house I showed the other day. Below that, a corner kitchen sink, wherein the cabinets have two 45-degree jogs, but the countertop has a 55-degree jog and a 35-degree jog, and the sink is aligned parallel to, but not centered upon, the short middle askew section.
SPAM Single package on a green cutting mat. Also on the mat are two slices of yellow/orange American cheese, two plain mini bagels, and the screw-ring for a half-pint canning jar.
Half of the ingredients. Seen later: eggs, Slap Ya Mama, butter.
Two frying pans on a gas cooktop. One has butter melting, the other has 4 halves of plain mini bagels on it, cut-side down, to toast just the inside surface. In the background, a couple spatulas and a couple eggs.
Butter the bagels, and place cut-side down on a frying pan over medium-low heat. These take longer to toast than the rest of the cooking, so I start these first.
The green cutting mat again. But now the SPAM has been cut into a circle by using the canning ring like a cookie cutter. The slices of cheese have been separated from each other, and also each cut into circles. The off-cuts with holes in them are also sitting on the cutting mat.
Use a half-pint canning ring as a sort of cookie cutter, to turn the SPAM Single and the cheese slices into circles.
Close-up of the circle of SPAM, being sliced to half-thickness with a fine knife blade.
Slice the SPAM to half thickness. Otherwise it would be too much SPAM for the final sandwich – overbearing flavor ratio.
Two eggs with broken yolks frying in a nonstick pan.
Crack eggs into other fry pan over medium-lower heat. Break the yolks. As the whites start to cook, pile or fold or otherwise gather them in so the final fried egg has a smaller footprint.
Same two eggs frying in a pan, but now they have spices sprinkled on them.
Season to your preference – we prefer a hefty dash of Slap Ya Mama.
Closer photo of the SPAM circles, now having been frying in the same pan as the bagels, and have been flipped once. The surface of the SPAM has patches of brown.
Fry the SPAM for a couple minutes, flip, couple more minutes. Goal is to get a little browning on both sides.
Bagel halves are now shown on a small blue plate, with toasty light brown patches on them. A circle of cheese is draped on the left edge of the blue plate.
The bagel halves get removed from the frying pan when they’ve gotten your preferred level of toastiness.
Round pink plate in the foreground, blue plate in the background. On each, one half of the bagel has had the circle of cheese and the circle of SPAM added to it. The other half of each bagel is waiting to go atop the fried egg (not yet shown).
Slider assembly begins.
A big fat weirdo peers giddily from behind a blue plate with a breakfast slider on it. He looks very pleased, but somewhat unhinged. The slider looks delicious, though, if you're into that sort of thing.
The obligatory command: Enjoy!

Conflicting Factors Influencing My Brain Stem

…and how they present challenges to restful sleep. While we’re at it, I’ll talk about an iOS App that I think should exist, but I have not yet found. My wife and I both snore. In my case, it’s severe Sleep Apnea for which I wear a CPAP, but that doesn’t guarantee that I’m 100%… Continue reading Conflicting Factors Influencing My Brain Stem

Moved The Tune-A-Tenna

I had a few problems with the initial location where I’d put the Tune-A-Tenna. Due to surrounding structures, etc., I could only orient the legs E-W, which is the shorter dimension of my lot. Too close to my wife’s office, so QRO was out of the question (while she’s in there). Metal mast interacting with… Continue reading Moved The Tune-A-Tenna

Exfoliation For Men

When men get to a certain age – and when I say “certain,” I mean I have no idea what age, and it’s probably different for each fella – their heels start to crack. Especially in Winter, especially way the godforsaken-up-here in Minnesota. Sometimes it’s merely annoying. Like hearing Velcro sounds when merely walking barefoot… Continue reading Exfoliation For Men