Roseyland

Today consisted of pizza and a movie. The movie was 2012, which was pretty good, but an hour too long. I might be biases though, because I drank a medium pop during the movie, and towards the end I think I came dangerously close to rupturing my bladder. TMI?

The pizza was Valentino’s. If you have never been fortuanate enough to travel to the great state of Nebraska and have a slice of Valentino’s hamburger pizza with a garlic roll, your life is incomplete, sorry. I also had runza and Spaghetti Works on this trip. Could it get any better? Oh yeah, the Turkey was good too.

I should be back to blogging on my computer tomorrow. I guess that means I won’t have an excuse for the short post filled with spelling and grammatical errors anymore. That sucks. Oh, the dog below is Bebe, he likes to jump and chase squirrels.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers beat the Colorado Buffalos today. Yay. They could have played better, but a wins a win. I think they have a shot of making the Big12 Championship a good game. I doubt they’ll win, but I’m glad to have one more game of Husker football to watch this year.

The pictures below are from a store in Omaha called Husker Hounds. It is packed with husker gear. I ended up buying two t-shirts and a fleece, when I originally had no plans to buy anything.

I hope you got some good Black Friday deals. Hopefully you found the perfect gift for me. I love gifts.

All of us here at Roseyland hope that you had a truly wonderful Thanksgiving. We had the standard Thanksgiving fare, you can see a picture of my plate below. A game of password was also played today. I’m surprisingly good at password. A head full of useless knowledge comes in handy from time to time. I’m watching a mythbusters marathon right now, so much better than pro football. I’m looking forward to watching the Husker game tomorrow. It will be nice to see a Nebraska game in Nebraska. You know, away from all the non-believers. If you are going shopping tomorrow, you are insane and need help, but good luck and have fun!

I’m in Omaha today for Thanksgiving. This is my first test of blogging from my phone. Hopefully some pictures show up at the end of this post. One is of my favorite meal from one of my two favorite restuarants. It’s spaghetti with white clam and beer cheese sauce from Spaghetti Works. My other favorite restuarant is Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ, which is in the south, mostly Florida. I’d say this looks pretty good for a post from my phone. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

I have absolutely no time to be writing a blog post right now, so let’s make this quick. Time to break out the bulleted list.

• I’m headed to the great state of Nebraska tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I know it will be fun once I get there, but right now I would kill to just spend the long weekend laying around my condo.
• The bags above are what I take on most trips. Actually, I usually go with a smaller roller bag, but it looks exactly the same. I love that backpack, it has an easy access slot for my MacBook. I always use a backpack as my carry on. I can’t fathom lugging around a bag that I can’t throw over my shoulder. I like to spend my time walking around airports when I’m waiting for my flight. I get bored just sitting around.
• I watched V tonight even though I had no time. My brain needed a break. I had to do some hard math coordinate system timing thinking today. I’m ticked that V isn’t coming back until March. Why do networks do this? This will probably kill V, because nobody will remember what it was by the time it comes back. I understand taking a break over the holidays when people are too distracted to watch TV, but March? Ugh.
• I’m not sure what I’m going to do about blogging when I’m gone. I don’t think I’ll have internet access other than my phone. I also won’t have much time. Either that or I’ll have a ton of time. You never know. I actually can blog from my phone, so I’m thinking that I’ll post a picture every day with a few sentences. We’ll see.
• Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Okay, I need an easy post tonight. How about a bunch of pictures of my cat Earl? Here is Earl right after I adopted him. Notice the giant ears.

I wake up to this view about once a month. I don’t know how he does it, but he loves to throw the cushion off the chair. Notice the duct tape on the chair. That’s because Earl tore the fabric.

Earl is a big fan of nooks and crannies. Here he is in the linen closet.

Earl has a feminine side. He love to accessorize. Here he is in a scarf. He also loves purses. More specifically, he loves digging through purses and removing the contents.

Earl’s arch nemesis is the plastic bag. He love to play with them, but then somehow they get stuck on him. At this point, Earl rationally decides that the bag has come to life and is out to kill him. He runs all over the condo as fast as felinely possible, knocking over everything possible until he becomes trapped under a piece of furniture. Then I rescue him from the evil plastic bag.

In my old kitchen, Earl could get on top of the cabinets. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it a lot.

This is Earl’s most famous picture. I tried to get it posted on one of those cute cat picture sites, but we were rejected. Bastards.

Earl loves to flirt with danger. Here he is getting himself trapped in a bunch of clothes hangers. If I didn’t extract him, I’m pretty sure mass calamity would result.

I don’t know what this is about, but whatever. If you are comfortable, you’re comfortable.

There you have it, a slew of Earl pictures. You know you liked it. You can see more pictures in my Earl Flickr set here.

Awhile ago, like a year ago, I had all these posts planned. I had the pictures all organized, resized, and ready to upload to my blog. Then I never got around to writing the posts. The baked bean post was one of these, and so was the bird nest post. Today is the last of these post. I’m going to show you how I make a tuna fish sandwich. I’m always looking for easy, quick, and reasonably healthy meals. This isn’t meant to be the world’s greatest tuna fish sandwich. I don’t include hard boiled eggs or fancy spices. It’s just quick and tasty enough for me.

Here are the ingredients. Dill pickles, because sweet pickles make me gag. Whole wheat bread, I could write a whole post about how I picked the bread I buy. Of course it has to be whole wheat, but I read somewhere that the bread you eat should have at least 4 grams of fiber per slice. I’ve tried every brand of bread with 4 grams of fiber per slice, and they all suck. I like the bread you see here because it is whole wheat and doesn’t contain any high fructose corn syrup. I don’t believe that HFCS is inherently bad, but it does get added to way to many foods that don’t need it, and bread is one of those foods. Wow, we are really off topic here, why did you let me do that? Mayonnaise, I would go with light Mayonnaise. I like the brand in this picture because it says it contains decent amounts of omega-3 fats. Maybe all mayonnaise does, but this one brags about it, so I buy it. Finally, one can of tuna packed in water. Why you would buy tuna packed in anything other than water, I don’t know. Also, I don’t like the newer tuna in a pouch for tuna fish sandwiches. It’s probably better tuna on it’s own, but it’s too dry to mix well with the mayonnaise.Yeah, I forgot to put the tuna in the picture of ingredients for a tuna fish sandwich. I’m awesome.

These are the tools you will need to make the tuna fish sandwich. Two plates, one bowl, and a fork. The bowl is for mixing the tuna and mayonnaise together with the fork. The first plate is for eating the sandwich off of. I’ll explain the second plate in a second.

Open the can of tuna, but leave the top of the can on so that you can use it to squeeze the excess water out of the tuna. Don’t use a strainer, because then you will have dirtied another dish, and that would be inefficient, thus violating Roseyland’s best practice #17: Thou shall not unnecessarily dirty a dish. If you are reading this blog, Roseyland’s best practices do in fact apply to you.

If you have a cat, yes I’m mentioning the cat AGAIN, deal with it. If you have a cat, once you open the can of tuna, you have about 5 seconds before all hell breaks lose. My advice, don’t fight the cat, just give him what he wants. Take that second plate, put some tuna on it, and provide it to the cat as an offering on the other side of the kitchen. Like so.

Now take the remaining tuna, put it in the bowl and mix with 1 or 2 spoonfuls of mayonnaise.

Put the mixture on top of one slice of the toasted bread. Oh yeah, I forgot, toast two slices of bread, and do it like 3 steps ago. Okay, put the tuna mixture onto a slice of the toasted bread and top with dill pickles.

Finish the sandwich with the remaining slice of toasted bread. Then serve like so.

That’s funny, when I made this, I was in this phase where I had a piece of dark chocolate every night with dinner. I always want something sweet after I eat, and that piece of dark chocolate was perfect. I should start that again. Also, iced tea. I love iced tea. There you have it, now you can safely make a Roseyland brand tuna fish sandwich.

When writing a blog, it’s important to choose timely topics. Nobody wants to read about yesterday’s news. Today, I bring you a story from the recent summer of 2008. One day in June 2008, I came home and noticed that my condo smelled like a wet dog. To the best of my knowledge, I did not own a wet dog. I looked all over the condo and determined that the smell appeared to be coming from the hallway. I looked in the hall utility/laundry closet. Everything looked normal. I looked in the washing machine. Nothing there. I opened the dryer, and the smell almost knocked me over, but still, I didn’t see anything. Here is the cat investigating the situation. You can’t tell from the picture, but he really wanted to find the source of that smell.

The smell was definitely coming from the dryer, but it wasn’t in the dryer. So I went outside to look at the dryer vent. This is what I saw.

I had a closer shot of the dryer vent, but trust me, you don’t want to see it. That’s my dryer vent covered in bird poop. Did you know that bird poop isn’t just white? It also has a reddish component. At first I thought there had been some sort of bird slaughter inside my dryer vent. Then I noticed that a bird would fly into my dryer vent every couple of minutes. Here is a picture of the bird.

The bird kept carrying things into my dryer vent. It appeared that he was feeding something. Great. I had a bird nest in my dryer vent. I called the condo maintenance people to see what they could do. You are probably wondering why I didn’t just take care of this myself. One, I don’t deal with wild animals. They are wild and will peck an eye out without a second thought. Two, it would have required me to spend a decent amount of time on a ladder right in front of my female neighbor’s bedroom window. Nothing good can come from that.

The maintenance guy came out and said that he could remove the nest, but there was a live baby bird in it, and we would have to leave it on the ground to die. He didn’t want to do that, and well, neither did I. Sometimes I think I’m too empathetic for my own good. I mean don’t most baby birds die anyways? Still, I didn’t need that on my conscience. So, I lived with the wet dog smell for 6 more weeks and then had the vent cleaned and covered with wire mesh. I have no idea if the bird lived, but he wasn’t in the nest anymore, so let’s say he lived. I didn’t live in a swampy smelling condo for nothing.

Today I’m going to share with you one of my favorite recipes. My Grandma’s baked beans. These are the greatest baked beans ever. They are a little bit sweet and pasty. I know pasty doesn’t sound like a good word for describing food, but I can’t think of a better one. These baked beans are cooked long and slow, and it causes the beans to break down. You can still see the individual beans, but you don’t feel the individual beans in your mouth, it all mushes together. Plus, they develop this caramelization on top that is delicious. Kind of like the blackened cheese on top of macaroni and cheese, but different. Here are the ingredients:

• 4 pounds canned baked beans, drained
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup light molasses
• 2 tablespoons dried minced onion
• 2 tablespoons dry mustard
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1 jar bacon bits

This is what the ingredients look like on my counter.

This next step is complicated, make sure you pay attention. Combine all the ingredients like so:

Mix together well, and put into a greased casserole dish. I prefer a large shallow dish, because it maximizes the top layer of caramelization.

Now bake in an oven at 300 degrees for 2-3 hours. I lean towards the 3 hour side, again because I like a nice gooey caramelized top layer. This is what it looks like when it’s done.

Notice the dark crustiness on top. That’s the good stuff. Here is what it looks like served on a plate.

My mouth waters just looking at these baked beans. They are great on their own, or as a cold baked bean sandwich the next day. I know the idea of cold baked beans sounds gross, but it’s actually really good. I was kind of disappointed in this recipe once I knew what it was. I wish it wasn’t made from so many pre-processed ingredients. I’d like to try it without using canned beans and with cooked fresh onions and real bacon. That would be a lot more work though, and it probably wouldn’t taste as good. I think I’ll leave a good thing alone. Here is a pdf of the recipe.

Hello everyone. Today is a big day. It’s my 100th blogging anniversary. Well, it’s my 100th post. That’s the same thing right? Regardless, this is a big deal, and I’ve decided to get you something. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have. It’s you who should be showering me with gifts and admiration. If it helps, consider this a gift for all of us to share. Without further ado, here it is:

Do you like it? I do. Boxing day is my new favorite holiday. I have no idea what Boxing day is, but judging from the picture above, it’s awesome. You are probably wondering where I got her, I mean it, the picture. I got it at istockphoto.com. That’s right, I paid for her, I mean it, the picture. Here’s another:

I think this picture is cool, but I can’t remember, are you supposed to walk towards the light or away from it? I was going to do this whole long post on where I find images for my blog, but then I thought that just posting a bunch of images would be more fun. I’ll give you the list version though:

• I feel like every post should have a picture. Pictures help set the mood and convey much more information than words alone.
• You can’t just grab any picture you want from the web and put it on your blog. You have to have permission from the content owner. Don’t steel, it’s bad.
• Whenever possible, I try to use my own images, but shockingly, I don’t have a picture of everything.
• If I can’t use my own picture, I try to find a creative commons licensed image. These are images that people allow you to use for free. There are different licenses, but most commonly the images are free for non-commercial use with attribution to the author. All of the images on my Flickr account are licensed under creative commons. The only thing I don’t like about creative commons is the attribution part. It isn’t exactly clear to me what attribution means. If it was just a link on the photo, that would be cool, but I think you are supposed to put a caption under the image, and captions suck. I’ve yet to find a caption scheme that I’m happy with. Currently I use tables, but the code for that is ugly. I feel like there should be a more elegant solution.
• When it comes to celebrities, or commercial products, or any type of image that is all over the web anyways, I just download the picture and use it. I don’t know if this is right or wrong, but if the image is everywhere anyways, I figure it doesn’t really matter.
• After all that, I’ve started using istockphoto.com. You have to pay for these pictures, but you don’t have to attribute them to anyone. It’s feels weird to pay for a picture, but the photos in this post only cost a $1.50 each. I certainly waste more money on less important things. Plus, I love browsing the images. Its fun. Seriously, you should try it.

Here is another picture. I already have lots of pictures of a cat, but I thought this image was particularly striking.

Here is a political picture for you. It’s a tea party with Alice and the Mad Hatter. Hmm. The Mad Hatter is crazy. A crazy person at a tea party. Interesting.

Just for fun, I thought I’d throw in the meaning of life, which is clearly defined in the equations below. I’d explain it, but it’s so obvious. I don’t want to insult your intelligence.

I both love and hate this next picture. I love Buddhism and the whole complex human relationship with spirituality and suffering and stuff. This image would be an awesome illustration of all that, except that it’s fake. The problem with a lot of istockphoto.com images is that they usually use models. Which is fine for some things, but I can tell that the woman in this photo is striking a pose rather than expressing any real experience. That sucks, because if this was a real picture, it would be amazing.

One more image just because I love you. You’re welcome.

See, sometimes models are good. This post cost me $10.50. I think that makes it my most expensive post ever. I doubt I’ll use istockphoto.com images very often, but it’s a nice option to have, if you can’t find the perfect picture any other way. So, what did you get me?