ice cream making and ranting

Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop

2009-03-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

I was innocently reading the grocery store ads, and noticed an odd thing: Nabisco Classics Iced Animal Cookies, as well as frosted oatmeal cookies.

"Oh good," I think "all is not lost from the Mother's bankruptcy." Then, I did a little google research.

Nabisco doesn't mention these classics on their website. But, two very selfless bloggers have the story. Kevdo and Look What I Found.

Turns out, these new cookies are knock-offs. And Kellogg actually bought the Mother's recipes and will release their new cookies in July.

it has a flavr

2009-01-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

Seriously, more internet memes and dessert. Awesome!

Never gonna run around and dessert you

2009-01-14T20:51:00.000-08:00

There's not much I love more than taking an internet meme and making it into a cake.

Hanukkah Miracle

2008-12-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight I have Hanukkah/Kwanzaa story time. Complete with Kinaras made of beans and noodles, wooden dreidels for playing and marshmallow dreidels for eating. I've spend some of the last week reading up on the holidays I don't celebrate so I can convey them in a positive and learned manner. And I've spent a lot of time physically preparing everything for the crafts.

So, when I filled my gas tank for $23.50 today all I could think of was that I was being rewarded for my efforts. Maybe the fuel won't last longer than it should, but my money certainly will. I might just have some fried potatoes for dinner, to honor the miracle.

Qua-duc-ant

2008-12-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

OMG! First there was turducken. Now there is quaducant! Could be awesome, although, it's more than double the cost of turducken.

...is the new nose job?

2008-12-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what it's like where you live, but here in the greater LA area, I've seen quite a few billboards for the LAP-BAND popping up. They are slightly offensive to me, featuring a grumpy, ugly fat lady encouraging us all to go ahead an have a nice Christmas surgery.

But, I was completely unprepared for the radio commercial I heard this morning that went a little something like this:

You know, gyms just cost so much money... I think I should totally have elective surgery instead.

quite possibly, I've taken a little creative license with the part after the ellipses, but there's no mistaking the following:

1. They were comparing exercise with surgery.
2. They were implying that surgery costs less than $30/month.
3. They were implying that after the surgery there is no need for exercise.

I'm not denying the benefits of some kind of surgery for the morbidly obese. But the super, super majority of morning radio listeners do not need the surgery. And I just don't understand.

10 Gifts

2008-11-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

Another reason to add to the list of why MSN is sucky...

This list is titled 10 Gifts We Don't Want.

However, they are totally, totally, totally wrong. Anyone who doesn't think goldfish bookends or light bulb shoes are awesome doesn't deserve to write things on the internet.

Twilight in 15 Mins

2008-11-25T17:14:00.001-08:00

So, I'm a librarian. And I supposed to know something about every popular book there is. But, popular books are usually sucky. And, instead of reading them, I rely on my friend the internet.

Now, Twilight is not really written for people like me. And I take that into account. Possibly, my teen self would have even enjoyed the phenomenon. (probably not though, the style of the books is super wordy like a harlequin)

However, just to not sound like I'm 100 years old, I have to know something.

This is where Twilight in 15 Minutes fits in.

And 28 reasons the movie is better than the book isn't bad either.

Red, White, Blueberry

2008-11-04T22:48:00.000-08:00

In honor of election day I tried to incorporate red, white and blue pancakes into my standing pancake tuesday. Instead, i got non-partisan purple pancakes.

Also, enjoy pictures of the very delicious banana pancakes

Keep your fingers crossed for the bullet train to the future. Come one little train. I know you can.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-30T23:04:00.000-07:00

front
back

My sister's

Update: This year we decided to up our game and got some carving tools and tried shaving in addition to carving. I can assure you, the pumpkins are much cooler in real life. I'm not entirely sure if it's the low light itself, or my terrible, terrible camera.

Also worth noting, my Kon pumpkin from 2 halloweens ago is the #2 google search for Kon pumpkin

People will be very healthy, soon

2008-10-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

I'm a pretty big fan of pop psychology. I love it when people tie huge complex issues up into nice little dumplings of knowledge, even if they aren't necessarily true... and it makes me happy to know that there'll be plenty of deodorant to go around.

Full article

During a recession, laxatives go up, because people are under tremendous stress, and holding themselves back," said Shapiro, now chief executive of SAGE, a consulting firm in Chicago.

"During a boom, deodorant sales go up, because people are out dancing around. When people have less money, they buy more of the things that have less water in them, things that are not so perishable. Instead of lettuce and steak and fruit, it's rice and beans and grain and pasta. Except this time the price of pasta's so high that it's beans and rice."

A recent Nielsen report listed tobacco, carbonated drinks and eggs as especially vulnerable to recession, and candy, beer and pasta sauce as recession-proof.

ALSO

"Death rates fall, people smoke less, drink less and exercise more. Traffic fatalities go way down, which is not a surprise when people drive less. Heart attacks go down. Back problems go down. People have more time to prepare healthier meals at home. When the economy weakens, pollution falls."

OMG Sarah Palin has my coat!

2008-10-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

Found on a boingboing post depicting a photoshopped verison

This is the original.

Does this mean Sarah Palin shops at TJ Maxx? Because I'm pretty sure that's where I got mine. I'm sure it wasn't over $30. I've never actually worn it, because really, it's a little crazy. But now I can't really wear it, can I? It's been boingboinged for goodness sake. I can't wear the same coat as crazy book-banning, librarian firing, creationism lady. (Although I'd like to believe in a time when dinosaurs and humans lived in harmony)

My other moments of clothing famousness:

The 90's when Andrea on the original 90210 wore an ugly pink sweater that my mom had

A sweater I bought a few years ago from the Macys juniors department that was on both the Nick show Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide and Disney's Suite Life of Zach and Cody.

A crazy print shirt/tunic thing from Zara that Giada De Laurentis wore on her weekend getaway show to San Francisco.

That's all I can think of for now. Although not clothing. Hannah Montana has one of our pfaltzgraff patterns in her kitchen. And icarly has our fifties clock.

How about you?

Cake Games

2008-08-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

I don't really know the rules, but here's an exciting use of cake in gaming (not to mention marshmallow peeps)

Settlers of Catan

I'm still open for suggestions on how to use the castle cake in a game.

Beloit Mindset List 2012

2008-08-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

Well, they're at it again. Here's the newest list to come from Beloit College. And, I have to say. After all of my previous hate, this one isn't so bad. Did I just finally become accustomed to the stupidity? Maybe. But I think they're also making a better list. This one is more things that existed or didn't exist in a person's lifetime if he was born in 1990. It's not so much of "they can't possibly know or think this" it more objective facts.

So kudos Beloit, for finally having a decent person making the list. But all your points were lost when you made a page that can't be copied and pasted. Thank goodness for source code.

Here are a few to make you feel old:

We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"

McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries

There has always been Pearl Jam.

Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.

Students always had Goosebumps.

Olympic Nonsense

2008-08-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

This seems to be the first olympics that I've ever paid attention to. You'd think it'd be more interesting when I was younger, but apparently I've never watched before. Because, it seems, that every freaking sport is a surprise to me.

Last week I was shocked, and delighted to see that synchronized diving was an event. I had no idea you could synch that. Swimming, sure. But diving? Amazing.

And, who knew about women's softball? Not me.

But really, the big shock to me was today's 90 minute event of the women's 20K racewalk. Seriously? walking? Not even real walking. Mostly some kind of crazy waddle. What makes it a walk? These rules:

The first dictates that the athlete's back toe cannot leave the ground until the heel of the front foot has touched. Violation of this rule is known as loss of contact. The second rule requires that the supporting leg must straighten from the point of contact with the ground and remain straightened until the body passes over it. These rules are judged by the human eye, which creates controversy at today's high speeds.

Most olympic athletes are graceful at their sport. They have some kind of skill that is generally appealing. Unless you're really into ducks, I can't see how you'd find this sport attractive. It looks terrible for your knees, and even terribler if you had middle school kids around who would definitely mock you. I generally don't have much respect for marathon runners. It seems like a stupid skill to have, and is really terrible for your body. But 20k walking is way, way stupider.

If you don't believe me, check out the men's 50k on the 22nd.

And a shout out to Rakia Al Gassra for defying all odds, and being one of the first women to represent Bahrain. She was in Athens. And I saw her tonight, racing in her long pants, long sleeves and hoodie. A bold move, when the other women runners wear practically nothing.

Seriously, this olympics thing is just weird.

Gourmet Recipes at Discount Prices

2008-07-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I'll pretty much buy anything that costs $1. So, I was pretty excited to get my copy of The 99 Cent Only Stores Cookbook: Gourmet Recipes at Discount Prices, even at 10x $1. Not only was it going to be full of great ideas to use treasure from the 99 cent only stores, it was also supporting performance art. The author ONLY used ingredients she bought from the store. If they didn't have a box of sugar that week, she'd use a box of individual packets, even though she had perfectly good grocery store sugar sitting in her cabinet.

So, I spent a long time looking over the book, making shopping lists, planning... Unfortunately the results are not the most delicious food ever.

It started on a reasonably high note.

The Asian Soul Slaw (coleslaw with the addition of rice wine vinegar & sesame oil) was absolutely delicious, and is now our go-to coleslaw recipe.

and the Delicious Toffee Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies were perfectly fine, nothing special, but nothing wrong.

The next day didn't fare so well though

The Maryland Crab Soup was absolutely the blandest, milkiest, terribleist soup I've ever had.

and the Corn Pudding, was pretty much a corn omelet.

But I couldn't give up that easily.

Yesterday I tried Green Beans au Gratin. It was also fine, not as good as normal campbells cream of mushroom soup green been casserole, but like the cookies, there was nothing wrong with it.

I guess I'll try a few more things. But I'm pretty sure you get what you pay for, and you can't really have gourmet food at discount prices.

AX 2008

2008-07-07T12:15:00.001-07:00

Just a few days after ALA came Anime Expo. I only went 2 days this year, and I'm not sure I got my fill of cat girls for the year.

I did, however, get the Manga Cookbook that they wouldn't sell me at ALA. And an ice cream nyanko.

Flickr set here

Clearly larger than a 5 lb burrito

2008-07-03T16:40:00.001-07:00

ALA 2008

2008-07-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

I spent the past 5 days at the Anaheim convention center for the American Library Association conference. When I first walked in, I was sad to see everyone had their correct number of ears. But, by the end, loaded down by free stuff, I stopped missing the cosplayers.

My flickr set is here

Among other things I came home with:

16 bags (10 cloth-like, 1 oilcloth-like, 5 vellum or paper gift bag like)
23+ full books (8 advance readers, 13 regular, 2 blank paged-- i paid for 3 of the books)
various sampler books and cds
2 regular cds
6 different post-it notes (multiples of a few)
tomato seeds
2 pencils
7 pens (i totally m2issed the ball on the free pens. somehow, early in the convention I decided I didn't need any pens. I just don't know why)
8 buttons
library temporary tattoos
calendar
mousepad
stress tv
air freshener (from a book on tape company--it says "commute stinks"
business card holder
sunblock
choose your own adventure fortune cookie
flying, screaming monkey toy
2 packages of mints
so much free candy

I'd also like to thank ProQuest for all of their delicious free espresso drinks
And I'd like to boo TLC for never having a freshly baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookie when I walked by.

One of the days we had dinner with my old supervisor and friends. Ryan ordered the 5 pound burrito, it was more like a 10 pound burrito. Needless to say he did not win the t-shirt for eating it all. However, it made a tasty breakfast for us the next 2 days. (picture may or may not be forthcoming)

One major highlight of the weekend is pictured above.

The other was the book cart drill team. I'm hoping better videos will be posted later.

But for now, you can see part of the winner's video
although it's the beginning part before it gets really good and turns into thriller

Also, the entry from texas has some good hats

And, I met this monkey

Not April Fool

2008-04-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

I was watching an IHOP commercial yesterday, and I thought, for sure it was a joke.

Turns out it's real, and they're serving a Dr Seuss menu that includes green eggs and ham, crazy looking Who pancakes and the thing that makes the least sense of all: 7-up with Jell-o cubes in it

The pictures are clearly on their homepage

Worst of all, they've been serving it since March 3 without me knowing about it.... it's for a limited time only, so you better hurry along...

My new heroes

2008-03-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, my new heroes

Chefs make gourmet dinners out of ingredients from 99 cent stores

Winter of TV discontent

2008-01-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

It’s no secret that I love the TV. And, yes, I would marry it if I could.

But the writers strike really needs to end. My love is not going to wait forever. I’m personally willing to be a scab and write shows about libraries, unicorns and baking cupcakes, if they’ll have me. Also, if they need me to make the Oscars less boring, I have some ideas.

But the people who run TV have other ideas. Like the current Miss America Reality Check show on TLC. I guess I wasn’t paying attention earlier this month, but it’s a 4 part reality show ending in the Miss America Pageant on Saturday. Yes, All 52 Miss America contestants (including Miss Virgin Islands and Miss Washington DC) live in a house together and compete in challenges. Challenges, mostly entirely unrelated to being a pageant queen. However, no one gets voted off the island or anything. The top and bottom 3 for each contest are singled out but there don’t seem to be any consequences for winning or losing. But of course pageant girls are competitive, and they’re compete for anything (nothing?).

In the meantime celebrity judges try to get the girls to update their looks and stale pageant images. Which is a noble cause, except the judges’ tastes are just as arbitrary as pageant standards. My least favorite is Jeannie Mai, a makeup artist to the stars, or something. And, just about twice as bitchy and vapid as you’d expect one to be. If anyone has ever watched the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, she’s exactly like a 10 year older London Tipton.

What I don’t understand is the rules. How far in advance was this show scheduled? When the girls were competing in their individual state pageants did they know? Certainly, they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into in all their previous pageant practice. And what about the whole nonsense that Miss America is a scholarship competition? What does that have to do with living 10 to a bedroom on TV for a month? I only saw last weeks, but I do have to say at least, unlike other reality shows, there was a noticeable lack of girls changing clothes, and cameras in the bathrooms. Most likely, this is the one bit of control the Miss America organization had.

Please read tvgasm’s recap if you’re still interested. I don’t think I’ll be around to watch Miss America this weekend, I can only hope TLC is lacking shows and will repeat it indiscriminately.

Meanwhile, ABC has a different response to the writers strike.

#1 I’ve been noticing they’re editing General Hospital to fill more time than the shot footage should. More repeated bits after commercial breaks, and from Friday to Monday. Also, I don’t know if I’m crazy, but it looks like more commercials too.

But #2, came out of nowhere, with no pomp that I could find. Go to ABC’s streaming video site, you can catch up with your favorite shows like normal. But starting this month, they seem to be releasing a new episode of my so called life direct to the internet.
I don’t understand, but I’m not going to complain.

In other TV news, I’ve been thinking about getting the complete box set of the Twilight Zone. But I didn’t realize it was on twice at 10pm weeknights on the Sci Fi channel. Anyone have any opinions?

Also, if you're not a regular viewer of MTV's My super sweet 16. This is a zorse, and this is a zonkey. Awesomeness!

Happy New Year

2008-01-16T17:58:00.000-08:00

Pictures here,
not really of people, just turducken.

It's time to raise the curtain...

2008-01-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

Know what's f-ing awesome?! And, possibly, the best movie ever made? None of that AFI nonsense, Citizen Kane and Casablanca ain't got nothin' on the Muppets Take Manhattan.

Know what else is awesome. Drinking half a bottle of champagne.

Know what's even awesomer. Both of the above, together.

And how about a few awesome news stories:

1. Disneyworld restaurant bans children
I'll be sure to remember that when I make my trip out to Animal Kingdom

2. Scientifically infused Chocolate filled strawberries, and more

w00t!

2007-12-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

You've probably already heard how w00T is the Merriam-Webster word of 2007

And all this buzz is just as to be expected for technophobes explaining it to other technophobes.

What I haven't been able to find though, is the answer to my burning questions.

1. Does this mean w00t gets into a print dictionary?
2. If so, where does it go? W00t is spelled with zeroes. Does that mean it will be put before words that start with WA? Or, will it be filed (incorrectly, in my mind) as if the zero is the letter o?

My librarian head is just about going to break. I can't wait to get to the library this afternoon and talk to the other librarians.