I Love Sox!!

To Ramekin or not ramekin, that is the question. I don’t know that J has enough ramekins for the chocolate lava cakes. The recipe I am looking at calls for 6 of them. I know she has one. Maybe a few more glass dishes that are ramekin like. The recipe did say that a muffin tin could also be used in a pinch and I know that J has at least one muffin tin. I didn’t think ahead about this otherwise I would have brought my four ramekins (I think that’s how many I have) or brought some of my muffin tins. I think I have at least three tins of varying sizes. Well, we will do what we can. The whole thing is supposed to take half an hour to make, which means an hour for unprepared and infrequent cooks like me. I guess it might be a late night snack since we won’t be having dinner, if we go out today, there was snow, until around 7:30. Which means 8:30. And then an hour drive back. Which makes 9:30. Oh, but I can make the batter ahead of time…hmm. There’s a thought. Maybe I will make the batter at some point today and then all I will need to do is bake them…

Nope, didn’t make the batter ahead of time. It seemed like we were all going to just go to bed after getting back from dinner so making the chocolate lave cakes was not going to happen tonight. I will make them tomorrow.

Yes, we got some snow. Not the devastating huge snow storm that was prognosticated. Though it isn’t over yet. And who knows how hard hit the rest of Maine was. Nope, ended up being a not too terrible an event around here. Woo hoo!

P has is developing a game that is based loosely on scrabble tiles. It keeps changing. We played a few rounds this afternoon. After we were done, P came up with another, good, rule change. He is teaching himself python so he can make a program out of it. Rock on!

Before heading to dinner at a place south of us, we had a present opening session. I did not give particularly good presents to my nephew and his spouse but the ones I did give were slightly better than nothing. They gave me great socks!! Lots of great socks. J&P also gave me good things. And I think my few presents were decently well received.

Birthday dinner

Dinner was good. I was minorly miffed because my steak was over cooked. But I asked the party to have a vote and the consensus was that I shouldn’t complain. Poo. I brought it home anyway. And some other bits. It’ll make an ok lunch meal I guess. Fun evening.

All in all, I think we all had a pleasant Christmas Eve and sister/mom/spouse birthday.

Augustus for President: I felt naked being out in public without my badge. I am a teeny bit upset with myself for forgetting to wear it. I will admit to being a bit distracted. The place we were going to dinner was an hour away on potentially unhappy roads, the family was not moving with any urgency and I didn’t pack the shirt I had thought I had packed so that I would look sort of presentable at dinner. And I forgot the badge. Poo.

I did ask G about possible attorneys general and she said she had some thoughts. And that if she did get a role in my government, she wanted to be solicitor general. Sold!

I Didn’t Put on Socks Yesterday!!

How scandalous to not wear any socks all day yesterday! Hmm, thinking about it now, it really isn’t all that scandolous…nevermind. I will wear socks today, though. I need to be out and about in the world. If you consider the grocery store, the world. There are other things I could buy, but that might not happen as they aren’t totally necessary.

I’ve started playing with Wick Editor a little bit. It looks and feels a bit like Flash, which I got decent with back in the day when I was working at Macromedia. I think I will be able to build a web based animation that will be able to do what I want to do. Though a friend, hi EL, has offered to help me out so I might be able to do something in Powerpoint at some point as well!

I come back to the same question – why the hell is Apple making is so hard to create little standalone apps on our own devices! I tried sharing my wick created HTML file with my iPad. Well, Safari won’t open a local file. And Chrome doesn’t seem to be able to either. I downloaded a recommended app (that wants $20 a year to work) that had a free trial and the file loaded – but not the sounds. Very very frustrating.

I have been coming to Maine for years and years (and years). And on most trips I make at least one shopping excursion to Hannaford and the little plaza that it is in. For the longest time, I saw the other place in the strip which was called Job Lots. For some reason, I thought it was a job placement place. I don’t remember when I realized that it was like Big Lots – a place that takes discontinued and over stocked items and sells them for a good price. Well, I went in there, for maybe the second time, today and bought a couple of door stops so that maybe the bed I sleep on when I am here, won’t roll away from the window when I prop all the pillows up!

The big storm decided to head back out to see and not to come all the way up to Maine! Yay! No rain for the wicked. Though, this area is in something of a drought and any rain would be welcome. But it does make life more pleasant in my humble opinion when it isn’t raining. Maybe I will head to Augusta tomorrow and try to do some dashing there. Or not. I don’t think I really have to. Maybe I will just get donuts and pizza here and pretend I went to Augusta.

Tonight, I am making dinner. I have decided to make pork chop marsala. I wanted to make this for DM but she didn’t like mushrooms, and they are an important part of the recipe. Hey, did everyone but me know that baby Portobello mushrooms are sometimes called Cremini mushrooms? I also got some stuff to make a dessert – we will see if that happens tonight or not. Er, let’s not talk about the dinner…

Augustus for President: When I take the trip next February, I will almost certainly pay for a couple of months of the Full Self Driving package – even though it will not be the most current version because my car doesn’t have the more recent version of the computer hardware. I think it will make driving around the country a lot less stressful. And I will probably also spring for a couple of months of Premium Connectivity. And I am also thinking I might spend the money and get starlink mobile to take on the road so that I don’t ever have to worry about not having an internet connection. Not that I worry that much about anything most of the time…

An After Picture – I wouldn’t eat these if I was starving…