I'm super excited. I'll be in Portland, OR from 5/26 to 6/5.

The last few days of the trip are to attend the Open Source Bridge Conference, which just looks completely awesome.

Very happy and this will be the first real vacation, non-family, long distance, etc, I've had in a really long time.

(e:James) is going to tag along too, so we'll hopefully paint the town red. James says that the town has the highest per-capita rate of both strippers and micro-breweries in the country, so we should have a lot of fun ^_^

4431m new record

Happy birthday to me :)

GREASY HONKY PIE

You will need the following:
- ground beef, maybe half a kilo? ish?
- family size box of mac & cheese
- a packet of taco seasonings, maybe two
- tater tots
- mashed potato, preferably left over from like 3 days ago
- delicious shredded cheese product of your choice
- casserole dish at least an inch or so deep
- an oven (you'd think this was obvious, right? guess again.)

01. bake tater tots on a baking sheet until crunchy as all hell
02. make entire box of mac & cheese
03. stir-fry the ground beef in the greasy frying substance of your choice
04. mix in the taco seasoning
05. lightly butter casserole dish, and line it with tater tots. LIKE A DELICIOUS PIE CRUST OF TATERY AWESOMENESS
06. mix the mac & cheese up with the taco-y beef. feel free to do this in a giant bowl, using your hands. hungrily devour enormous handfuls when no one is looking. share it with the doggy and then feel guilty for not washing your hands after. >_>
07. dump it in your tater pie crust
07a. if you're using a really deep casserole dish, you can put in a second layer of tots before adding the rest of the beefyroni.
08. smear mashed potatos on top in a shepherd's pie-esque manner
09. put it in the oven at like, 350 or something, til the mash on top gets crusty
10. dump a fuckton of grated cheese on top and put it back in the oven til the cheese is bubbly
11. NOM NOM NOM. try not to burn your mouth on eebil molten cheese, the napalm of the food world. enjoy with a sixer of xibeca or san miguel, or the incredibly cheap local beer of your choice.

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Birthday dinner, yum.

Ahi Tuna Tartare:



Panko Chicken:



Steak!:

ROME - A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church - which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI's oversight role in two cases - to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican's counterattack.

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I hope the Catholic Church collapses. Really. Not because I'm persecuting them, but because they're more of an entrenched bureaucratic institution than a vital cultural force.