Closer and closer to Halloween

On Friday, Evie and I tried our most ambitious baking experiment yet: a pumpkin roll.

Pumpkin roll is easily in my top 2 deserts all time. I could probably eat one by myself, in a sitting, if I had to. But this is the first time I ever tried to make one. People kind of talk it up like it is hard, so I was a little worried, but honestly it wasn’t really that much trouble. And it was deeeelicious (even though half of it was eaten by a bunch of barbarians).

On Saturday we hit up the Halloween thing at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where we are members. It was a cold, wet, miserable day like you wouldn’t believe. The kind of day where nobody should be outside, everyone should be inside, under blankets, with something warm to drink. So traipsing around the zoo wasn’t really the greatest idea. Especially since Evie couldn’t wear her coat, because that would have ruined her awesome bat costume. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but most of the indoor enclosures were closed for the day, meaning we couldn’t get out of the elements. Luckily the bat enclosure wasn’t closed, so we were able to get some pictures of Evie in her bat costume looking at the actual bats. We did not stick around for the music or trick-or-treating, but Evie did ride on the carousel, so she was happy.

Finally, on Sunday we carved pumpkins. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that Evie requested that her pumpkin be crying, with tears running down its face. That being said, I am quite proud of the way hers turned out, very sad looking. Evie was a good model, fake crying for me whenever I needed it, to get the look right. She wanted my pumpkin to be angry / scary and Sara’s to be happy. She helped do hers, but got bored long before everything was done. That’s okay, I had fun doing it. Plus I have a bunch of roasted pumpkin seeds to eat now!

One last thing to mention about the weekend, I opened my first jar of pickles! They were very good. If I had been given that jar by my grandma, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But, since I was the one actually making them, I was maybe a little over critical of them. They were a little vinegary and a little salty. Still, all in all, not too shabby for my first time out!

Fences

When i was in college, I probably had 20 or 30 nifty little programs that I used for various things on the computer. Eventually over time, most of those programs were eclipsed by, or absorbed into, the standard set of software, in some cases by Windows itself. Also, I don’t use a computer the same way I used one back in college, so some of the apps probably became less useful to me personally.

So it’s not often these days that I come across a neat little program for the computer, but a co-worker referred me to one the other day, called Fences, which is used to clean up your desktop icons. Interestingly, the makers of the software are a company named Stardock, who make another program I used to use, a Windows skinning software called Window Blinds.

Basically, you make little areas called Fences, into which you drag and drop your icons. These areas can then be named with some logical name for the grouping, such as “Games”, “Photo Editing”, or “Random Junk”. Then the areas can be moved as a group, keeping icons logically together. You can also resize the fence to be smaller, which will give it scroll bars. For example, lets say your desktop is cluttered with a bunch of text files that represent notes to yourself. You can make a group called “Notes” and drop them all in there, and then make that group small enough to see only one or two icons. Then, if you want to see the rest of your notes, you can just scroll within that group.

Another nice side effect is that you can double click on the background to hide or show your icons. So, for example, if you have a really cute picture of your daughter on the desktop that you just need to show off, you can hide all the junk. You can also decide what to hide or show, meaning you can have sort of a normal mode with some icons and an advanced mode that reveals the rest of your icons.

I found it useful, both at home and at work, and I thought you might too.

A spoonful of honey?

Sara read an article that stated honey was more effective as a cough suppressant in young children than actual cough medicine. I’m not sure if this is the same article or not, but I did find this link, which I assume refers back to the same study.

This is a pretty good tip since A) we already have honey, B) honey has no side effects, C) honey is bound to taste better than cough syrup, no matter how many artificial flavors they jam in there, and D) I’m assuming honey is cheaper than cough syrup (though I’m not sure). Also, the article points out that the FDA has recommended you don’t give cough syrup to kids under 6, but honey is okay for kids over 1.

In short, why wouldn’t you give your kid honey instead?

So, is it true? Well, Evie has been sick lately and we gave it a try. We’ve had mixed results. The first time it worked really well, and her cough more or less disappeared for a couple of hours. The second time, it didn’t seem to do anything at all, though maybe her cough would have been that much worse with nothing. The third time it seemed like she was coughing less, but it’s hard to tell.

So I guess it’s just one of those things; until we can invent a time machine and go back and try it both ways, once with honey and once with cough syrup, we’ll never really know if she would have coughed less with the syrup. I will say this though, Evie was begging us for more “medicine”. Somehow I don’t think that would have happened with the cough syrup!

Did someone say Zombie Pirate Party?

Not really my type of music but, for what’s it worth, I seem to remember that my friend 85 liked Voltaire. I think they have a violinist. Anyway, the music seems appropriate to a zombie pirate party. I can buy the people in the picture as zombies, but they don’t look particularly pirate-y.

“Daddy is better than ice cream”

She probably only said that because I made her eggs for a snack and then we baked banana bread.

I’ve been on quite a baking tear lately. Evie loves to do it, measuring, dumping, mixing, and it’s something that can pretty easily eat up a big chunk of our day (in a good way). And the best part is, you actually have something to show from it! Something delicious.

So, after our excellent trial of making some Halloween cookies, Evie and I took it to another level. We started by making banana bread on Friday. Then, on Sunday, we made waffles in the morning, followed by oatmeal raisin cookies. Finally, I took on my most ambitious project yet, making homemade spinach/chicken/bacon calzones from scratch (meaning using the bread maker for the crust).

The calzones were a lot more work than I was expecting, perhaps cooling my ardor for baking a little bit. They turned out good (despite Sara’s efforts to sabotage my recipe), but I’m not sure it was worth the effort. Still, I think I will try to think of baking as a fun activity to do, like going to the park, or doing a craft project. My mom is an excellent baker, and when I was growing up, I remember that we almost always had some sort of baked desert lying around somewhere. That is something I remember fondly from my childhood.

Finally, since we were talking about my waffles and all, Sara and I were having a little debate. Obviously, we will settle this like adults, with a web poll. The results of this poll are final, and cannot be questioned in any way.

Literary Critic

Evie does not like the title of the following book:

She really can’t see why they named it that. She says that a better title would have been, “One Fish, Two Fish, One Fish, One Fish”. I have to admit, I can kind of see her point there.

“Mommy, you’re a good girl. Daddy’s a mean old daddy!” I don’t even remember what I did to deserve this anymore, but she repeated it several times throughout the day. In fact, at one point she took it back and said, “You’re not a mean old daddy anymore.” but then later I earned it back somehow.

We were driving and she kept saying “I see the Eiffel Tower!” I had no idea what she was talking about (how does she even know what the Eiffel Tower is?) but eventually Sara figured out that she was saying that when she saw a water tower. She’s obviously easy to impress, I’m thinking about taking her around and showing her all the “wonders of the world”, without ever leaving our neighborhood!

It reminds me of when I was younger and we were driving through Chicago. I saw a multi-level department store with a little spire sticking up with a sign that said, “Sears”. Logically, I asked my mom if that was the Sears Tower. She laughed at me and said no, the Sears Tower was really tall. I pointed out that we were on an elevated highway and this Sears Tower was even taller than we were, so it probably just looks taller from the ground. So the moral of the story is, don’t laugh at your kids or it will scar them for life and then they will grow up and expose you on their blog. And also, kids are easily fooled.

Two of the craziest news stories

Okay, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you’ve probably seen these. But they are worth mentioning nonetheless, just in case.

The first was that boy in Fort Collins that was (n’t) up in the balloon. It’s not nearly as interesting now that the whole thing is all over, especially since we know now that the boy wasn’t actually up in the balloon. But I was following it real time, and it was fascinating. Basically, this family has like some kind of crazy homemade aircraft / balloon at their house. At the time, it looked like a kid had climbed inside and the balloon became un-tethered from the house somehow. At one point I remember that the news helicopter was racing after the thing. It had risen to just under 10,000 feet and was in danger of entering some major flight zones or something. It was like a movie. Of course, it turns out that the kid was hiding in the attic, but it was a wild ride while it lasted.

Okay, the second one comes complete with some gut wrenching video. This lady was standing on a train platform in Australia on a windy day. She stops to do her hair or something, and in the worst-luck-god-really-hates-me-timing, a gust of wind blows the baby’s stroller forward and off the platform onto the tracks, just as the train is pulling up. The video is so heart wrenching, the way she slips when she starts after it, the way she is left holding her arm out for the baby after the train comes through. The good news is the baby was fine, just a scratch on its head. If you watch the video, you won’t even be able to believe it.

Which leads to the obvious question, what the heck kind of stroller was it, and how can I get one? That thing must be built like a tank.

Mint.com

This whole post is more or less a commercial, so feel free to skip it.

I became aware of Mint awhile ago from a friend on twitter, and I thought it looked pretty cool. I promptly filed it and forgot it. However, it came up again recently when I discovered that the site was co-created by a co-worker of mine’s son. So I took another look at it, and I have to admit that it’s pretty nifty.

Basically, it is a free online application that allows you to track your finances, similar to Quicken or some other financial software package. You hook it up to your accounts, like your bank accounts and your credit cards, and then it pulls in information from them. From there you can see all your balances and make nice graphs and charts, as well as categorize expenses and set up budgets. You can also get text or email reminders about things, like when your credit card is almost full, or if you’ve spent over your budget in a category.

Then, Mint takes this a step further. It can analyze your spending habits and not only give you tips about it, but it can actually search out deals for you. For example, it can suggest credit cards with lower interest rates, or savings accounts with higher interest rates. This is obviously how they make their money, by getting referral fees, but do you care? It’s good for everybody.

So anyway, I just thought it was a neat little site that some people might be interested in.

That is all.

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Caffeine is the enemy

Fall makes me feel like drinking tea. So the other night I opened up some new White Chai that I bought and gave it a try. Not too long after I started to feel very light headed, and then eventually sick to my stomach. Finally, I had to lay down for a while until I felt better. That’s right, a cup of tea laid me out. That’s the kind of party animal I am these days.

So of course, I had to try it again.

Though I hadn’t had this particular tea before, the ingredients of the tea were pretty standard. I thought maybe it was a coincidence that I happened to feel sick after I drank the tea. Also, I hadn’t eaten any supper that night, so there was a lot going on. The second time, I had eaten a huge super, so I wasn’t going in on an empty stomach. This time I didn’t feel sick, but I did feel pretty light headed for a while. Of course, that could have been the power of suggestion, after the previous night.

The only thing I could figure was the caffeine. A while ago, I decided to cut caffeine out of my life, where possible. I drink caffeine free pop and I drink decaf coffee. If one cup of tea can give me a caffeine buzz, I guess it’s working! I searched the box for information about the caffeine content, but I didn’t find anything. I can only assume this means it has the regular amount of caffeine, that is, it is caffeinated, but not ridiculously so. In fact, it is white tea, which I understand to be the least caffeinated tea.

So my question to the tea drinkers out there is, how much caffeine is in tea? Has any one else come across this? Is there something else in there besides the caffeine that could be hitting me?

#1 place not to live

Alright, I was alerted to this video via SModcast. Basically, it is a village in Columbia where there are only two ways in and out: either a massive, dangerous hike half way around a jungle, or a ridiculous, crazy zip line across a perilous gorge. The Columbian government says it is not worth building a bridge across the gorge, because there are too few people living in the village. For the record, I don’t necessarily disagree with that. I mean, come on, you just *have* to live on the other side of a perilous gorge?

Anyway, in order to get to school, the kids don’t have time to do the hike. So they are forced to use the zip line twice a day, every day, back and forth. They also carry all of their groceries, etc. in burlap sacks at 30 mph over a 1,200 foot drop over a raging river, using rope slings and a wooden hand brake. The video is only a few minutes long and well worth the watch. And don’t worry, they save a shocker for the end.