and who woulda thunk it, we found nuttin'.

"The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday

The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons."

You mean our president made us go to war under false pretexts? I can't believe it. But, at least, the country is rid of one very evil man [size=s](and thousands and thousands of innocents)[/size].

On another note, the United States Of Europe is making headway on its constitution. The EU Parliament has endorsed the document and now it will be sent to the 25 member-nations for ratification, several by referendums. Personally I can't decide if this whole EU is a good or bad thing. I am glad that it's giving the US another super-power to recon with (one with many positive differences to boot), but I hope that it doesn't end up homogenizing the diverseness that makes the individual countries so great, and hope that the real progressive social movements don't get hog-tied by the corporations that will also have freer reign within the Union.

Yes, a bit strange sounding. You'd be surprised at how yummy cinnamon is in seemingly unsuitable foods, spaghetti sauce for example (the recipe for which I borrowed from (e:Paul) 's nonna). This time it wasn't my intention however. I went to the coop to get some various flours in order to make a gluten-free pot pie. (e:Matthew) was just given a GF recipe book (The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods ) as a gift from one of his employers. It describes how you can combine all these other types of flours in different ways to achieve results similar to cooking with wheat products. Back at the coop, I was disappointed to find that they had not one flour on my list (which included tapioca, potato, and white rice flours). WTF? So the best I could come up with was this pre-mixed GF pancake and waffle mix, whose ingredients were very similar to the flour I was supposed to mix, albeit with a few extras, such as cinnamon and "natural flavors" (which I think are other spices in small doses).

So I got home and went to work. I had to finagle a bit, but then I never can seem to stick to recipes anyways, so I did what I normally do. I let my cook-intuition guide me. I stirred until the batter seemed about the right consistency, added the couple ingredients that were called for but lacking in the packaged mix, and voila! It came out pretty good if a little strange. Everything was about the right consistency (though the crust tasted and felt more like cornbread than pie crust) and the overall effect, once you became used to the salty/sweet synergy, was pretty neat.

Does anyone know where to get these weirdo GF flours? Maybe Wegmans? Or Feel-Rite?

we ((e:matthew) and (e:I)) went to see a movie. It was random. Pretty good. I have a picture as proof.




Now it's Saturday night, and I wonder what's on the menu. Just made some smash-ed potato-es. With garlic, parmesean, rosemary and dill, set to music of course. Tasty, as are many products which strive to utilize as many separate dairy products as possible. I've gotta change my userpic, it's starting to freak me out. So, anyone have any last minute suggestions for an awesome Buff-nite-out? Or in for that matter?

It's been awhile. Except for my erroneous post about the elephant, over two weeks in fact. I've been away from the computer a lot, and been engrossed with house guests and Dragonball Z (I found out I could download all the episodes auf Deutsch). I'm also lost in some new boring state of mind. The new place hasn't helped, in fact, I think the new ultra-comfort level may be making it worse. Why ever leave such a nice cozy space? I'm struggling with all the normal problems. What should I be doing with myself? Should I be doing something with myself at all? What is something? Should it mean something? Open-mindedness can lead you down a bewildering road. I've become so open-minded that I have trouble drawing any kind of conclusions. Especially when it comes to myself.

I always feel that something's got to change. I feel this way almost constantly, and have for years now. But looking back, things have changed. I've moved between places (cities, states, countries, continents), between friends, between different ways of looking at life. I've considered myself a student of math, music, politics, and science. I've tried-out a couple different relationships, and even altered the basic unit of a relationship. And after all that, I'm still looking for something.

The guy sitting behind the couch tells me now that the problem is that I'm trying to alter my environment when what I should be altering is myself. I agree to a certain extent. Maybe I'm set in this pattern of searching for a perfect world that I'm just not ready to find. Maybe I've been sitting in it for years and haven't been able to recognize it for what it is. Maybe. But maybe there really is some other type of experience that is out there waiting for me. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in infinity, which means there's always going to be many more experiences out there than I can possibly fit in one lifetime. And it comes back to the decision, which I'm so bad at, making a choice. So I slide along, waiting for things to bump me into new ruts, and never taking the wheel in my own hand.

when you have this:



In Aceh, India the elephants are helping with the relief effort. Wow.

Mexican food is my favorite. I like to eat it all the time. One of my favorite recipes is for tasty chicken enchiladas in a green (verde) sauce. They are tastalicious, and oh-so bad for you. Like all my favorites, it combines just about all types of dairy products: butter, cheese, cream, and you can have sour cream on top!!! Here's a link to the recipe (which I dabble a bit with, so feel free to dabble a bit yourself).



Voila! The finished product! And I can't believe I managed to post the whole thing before diving in.

Five major libraries (The Oxford University library, the New York Public Library and three big US university libraries - Michigan, Stanford and Harvard) have teamed up with Google to make portions (or in some cases, all) of their book collections available online. The idea is to allow Google users to search through the actual page-by-page contents of books when using the Google interface. The service is called Google Print and their web page has an example:

"To use Google Print, just do an ordinary Google search. For example, when you search on "Books about Ecuador Trekking" or "Romeo and Juliet," and we find a book that contains content that matches your search terms, we'll show links to that book at the top of your search results. Click on the book title and you'll see the page of the book that contains your search terms, as well as other information about the book. You can also search for other topics within the book. Click "Buy this Book" and you'll go straight to an online bookstore selling it. If the book was scanned from a library, click the library link to find a local library that has it."

This sounds pretty neat and I think it is about time that we get the books digitized and available to the masses. I'm just wondering what the catch is. According to Google, as long as the book is not copyrighted (which means most "classics" and stuff older than 50-100 years), it will be available in its entirety (which is already being done by a couple different services today: Project Gutenberg Literature.org Bibbliomania ). But there are already a couple sites that are charging for the same services (see Questia which charges $15.00/month, but to be fair also has Scientific journals and other online resources). Even if it's not outright charging for services, but only making users view an ad per page or some other obnoxious device, I'm sure that the now publicly-traded Google has something up its sleeve to please the shareholders. So I just hope that these libraries, for example, haven't given the rights to digitize their libraries solely to Google. Otherwise eventually we'll be left with a company or two controlling all this information, which for the most part should be public. Hmmm, maybe it'll all be fine and I'm a nut though...very possible.

We just got the last disc of one of our favorite Animes yesterday. It's called Fruits Basket (yes, exactly that way, not fruit basket or fruit's basket, but fruits basket, ahhhh...) It is the heart-warming story of Toru Honda who has just lost her mom and starts living with the Soma family, who happen to have a curse placed on them. The curse is that whenever one of them is hugged by a member of the opposite sex they transform into a member of the Chinese Zodiac. It's all very cheesy and just so strange sometimes. I would reccommend it to anyone that likes anime or Japanese culture (maybe that's stretching it). (e:Matthew) loves it too! [inlink]matthew,168[/inlink] [inlink]matthew,169[/inlink]

So this is from an episode we watched a couple nights ago. There's an interlude scene and then this totally unrelated thing happens (though the rice ball itself is a recurring theme).

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

The song is played as the rice ball moves from right to left across the screen (which reads furutu basuketo, or fruits basket). The lyrics: Sailor suit, sailor suit, a rice ball alien in a sailor suit. WTF, mates!?!

This is Toru's reaction:

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

God I love the whirly eyes and the teardrop of consternation.

And we finally met the character who has my zodiac animal. Hiro Soma is very smart but confused and irritable. He is very cute, especially when Toru hugs him as punishment for playing a trick on her, and he turns into his zodiac animal.

Picture from Thanksgiving evening with my inlaws. But really, if anyone ever has the urge to tear a tabletop apart feel free to give me a call. But know this! I am wily, nimble, and fleet-fingered!

I think I might take a stroll down to this here meeting (I stole the ad from artvoice):



I found this link to some of the things they've done and "plan" to do in the future. It has a very neat looking picture at the bottom which can be clicked on for more details of the various projects. I shudder a bit to think of a beach at the end of Buffalo River, is this a beach that people might possibly swim in? I guess there are kids swimming in the Scajaquada... I would guess that none of these things are actually ever going to happen, but it's nice to get the visions of what could be possible in a viable city.

And, the budget iissue is still looming over us. Our lawmakers found a little used loophole to delay another day. So maybe tonight...unless of course the next magic loophole is pulled from the hat.