Joan's randomness: November 2008 Archives

Courtesy of my daughter, Sarah:

It's a turkey... made from an apple, raisins, mini marshmallows and candy corn. This was a Girl Scout project this week, and it looked too cute to eat!

Here's wishing all of you and yours a very happy, plentiful Thanksgiving. Click for a holiday food surprise.

(And click here if you're not sure what the heck to do with that turkey!)

It's Saturday in York County. (And heavens, we've had "bad weather." We need bread, toilet paper and milk, ain't so?) So where do you go?

Well, if you're MY family, it's definitely here:

In our case, we headed out to the West York Wal-Mart today for our big grocery order. Holy cow, was that place packed. And the turkey section... boy, was that a madhouse!!While we were there, we ran into my friend Nina's parents and younger brother, doing their shopping.

So what's with the bread-milk-toilet paper phenomenon? I don't know, but our commenters on the winter weather story yesterday even picked up on it.

Guess that qualifies as a true "Only in York County."

Really, I don't like snow. But there's something about the first snowfall of the year that does make me a little happy.

I took this picture of the tiny bit of accumulation driving north on Bull Road outside of Dover, while running errands today.

This really doesn't do justice to how peaceful and pretty it looked.

Meanwhile, I'm just glad I don't live a little further east; my mother-in-law, outside of Philadelphia, got 5 inches this morning!

Those of you who know me well know that I am NOT a cook. We're very lucky that my mom lives with us and sees to our dietary needs, because otherwise, Hubby would be eating even more ramen than he currently does.

But Sunday night, Mom was tired and I was feeling ambitious, so I made dinner. And, in the style of my friend Megan, I thought I'd take some pictures and show you how it came out.

What I made was chicken fajitas with orzo pasta.

To make the orzo, I just browned it lightly in an oil/butter mixture, then added a little bit of water and simmered it. When it was done cooking, I added some onion powder, garlic powder and grated parmesan cheese. (Mom remembered later that I should have added a boullion cube, but instead, we put seasoned salt on it after we served it.)

We had gotten a package of pre-seasoned chicken fajita strips from our recent Angel Food order. So I didn't have to do too much to them... just threw them in a skillet with a bag of mixed frozen red and green bell peppers.

Here they are cooking:

The one thing I did add was a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic. We like things garlicky.

I managed to set the table with the tortilla fixings while it was cooking. Here's the finished product!

Bonus cooking experiment: When I was done, I took the leftover tortillas, sprayed them with some olive oil, and sprinkled them with seasoned salt and garlic powder, then baked them at about 400. Homemade tortilla chips!

Yesterday marked the last day to redeem points in Pepsi's PepsiStuff promotion.

Now, I drink a lot of Diet Pepsi. I mean, really a lot.

How much, you ask?

Well, some of you know that last Christmas, I acquired an iPod nano. As of today, I have 201 songs, 13.8 hours of music, on said iPod. And it's only a little more than half full.

And all but about a dozen songs on there came courtesy of the good folks at Pepsi and Amazon, who would give you an MP3 download for every five Pepsi codes you put in. (There's one code inside the cap of every Pepsi.)

Here's the bad part: In theory, this means I drank about a thousand Pepsis since the promotion started in, I think, January of this year.

Why is this bad? Because I'm sure it's closer to 2,000. I didn't save every single cap from the bottles, and I didn't bother cutting the codes out of my 12-packs of cans when I got those. And don't get me started on all the sodas I've drank this year in restaurants...

Yikes.

That's my Brownie Girl Scout! She just started this year and really loves it. She had a ceremony on Monday night where she, as a new Brownie, got "baked" by the existing Brownies in the troop, and she got her first patches.

Now, tonight, I have to go pick up the nuts and other goodies that she sold as a fundraiser.

And soon enough, it'll be Girl Scout Cookie Time... my diet is already in danger!!

I was hoping for more response on my intentions to see David Byrne in concert and perhaps get a tattoo of some of his song lyrics.

I wanted to give a big "thank you" to my sister Louise, whose husband sports a massive number of tattoos, for some good advice on safety, should I go that route.

And I want to say hi! to new commenter Laura, who is also a David Byrne fan and a soon-to-be Yorker. Laura, if you're going to the show, you'll have to let me know.

Meanwhile, in other concert news and weird relatedness, one of my staffers, Matt, went to see Smashing Pumpkins in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday... a day after I posted about a real-life pumpkin smashing!

Those of you who've been reading for a while know that, since this summer, I've been on a quest to get a bit healthier and lose those last ::cough:: pounds. Wait, sorry, you didn't hear that? Sad to say, it's somewhere in the 25-or-so range.

Here are some previous posts about my health and exercise efforts. The short version is, I've been exercising with my best friend, and for the last couple of months, we've been doing that at the local Planet Fitness.

Well, I made a big leap this weekend. Instead of just going as his "guest," which means I never go more than a couple of times a week when we get together, I sprang for my own Planet Fitness membership.

Here's my new membership card. Aren't you proud of me?

So far, I did some cardio on Saturday, when I joined, and again last night. I'm hoping to go again tonight and do some weight training.

Wish me luck!

I got this joke third-hand... it's from a Web site called "Traditional Amish Enterprises," which was referenced in a colomn in the Lancaster New Era called "The Scribbler," which was reprinted in the Pennsylvania Dutch Heritage Group's November newsletter.

And now you get it!

Did you hear about the Amish flu?
There are just two symptoms. First, you get a little hoarse... then, you get a little buggy!

I kill me.

Here's the Girl, in her Halloween skeleton finest:

She had fun! Hubby came home from work, and joined by him, Big!Fluffy!Dog! and my best friend's two kids, we made a quick loop around our neighborhood, which took less than an hour. That's OK, they got plenty of candy.

And, because I live in the greatest neighborhood ever, I got my own treat - several of the families in our neighborhood were passing out adult beverages to the grown-ups with the trick-or-treaters, something to keep us warm and mellow on a chilly evening with screaming children everywhere.

Lots of fun!

... and because I do, here are a couple of sites around the good ol' Internet that regularly tickle my funny bone. As a warning - some of these sites contain posts that might not be suitable for work or kids; other times, they contain stuff so funny yet so appropriate that I'm showing it to my 8-year-old. So use some good judgment.

Passive-Agressive Notes: passiveaggressivenotes.com

You almost have to see these to believe them. Like the note taped to a work fridge that says "I know the Dow just dropped 600 points. But please don't eat lunches that are not yours. Thnx."

Failblog: failblog.org or, to see only G-rated "fails," failblog.org/tag/g-rated.

Here's a good newspaper-related fail:

see more pwn and owned pictures

Finally, here's a Youtube video that almost makes me want to turn vegetarian:

So, tickle my funny bone some more... where do you find funny stuff online?