The forecast for today was a little snow in the morning, probably tapering off by 9am. Less than an inch accumulation.

In reality, the snow started early this morning and kept going, and going, and going…

We don’t have the 20″ that occurred in December, but it’s sure been purty! We had about 2 1/2″ when I took out the trash. We’ll probably wind up with 4″ total. But it was slickery snow and they ended up letting the kids out early today and canceling all evening activities. I stayed the full time cuz I was going to walk home anyhoo. Got a bit of tech stuff done, which suited me just fine.

Tomorrow night’s when we’re supposed to get a proper snowstorm. With freezing rain and real accumulation. Makes me wonder what we’ll really get instead… 😉

PS: I made elsaf‘s mushroom soup recipe (which she got from Anthony Bourdain) tonight. Delicious! But I’m sleepy now! Let’s hear it for sherry in soup!

The lady who runs The Kitten’s Pyjamas blog has cast Leo in the role of Gigantopuss. Click here to see Leo take on the Freeway!

PS: Happy Birthday, drednort!

Thanks to Amy & Rachel, I have a variety of cheeses that I’ve been sampling these past few days. I’ve now tried them all but the Coombe Farm Cheddar, which I’ll probably open tomorrow. I have discovered two very important things.

1. I really don’t like blue Stilton. The flavor is too overpowering. I need a recipe for the blue stilton to go IN, and I think I’ll like it better.
2. Sage Derby is a happy cheese! I was trying to come up with the best description for it while my folks and I were trying it Sunday. And that’s the best way I can describe it. It’s happy!

Today, I tried the Saxonshires, and I like the combo of flavors as well as the individual cheeses. Unfortunately, I don’t know which cheese is which in the combo, but as I liked them individually, I know I’ll be safe getting the individual cheeses on their own some time.

The Dorset farmhouse cheddar is very good. It’s softer than US cheddars (and is white, like a cheddar should be) but not mushy like mozarella. It has a nice bite, but doesn’t overpower like blue Stilton.

I think my idea for soups & cheese&crackers is a good ‘un. I need to make a stirfry tomorrow to use up the last of the cabbage (which is a key ingredient in mom’s veggie soup), but I then intend to get back to making soups. Elsa’s mushroom soup and Amy&Rachel’s spicy lentil pot (AKA wedding soup) are next in line for manufacture. I bought a blender this weekend just for the purpose of making the pureed soups like those.

Check out this week’s Guest Cat spot at The Kitten’s Pyjamas. You’ll see a rather familiar sight – my Leo! Woohoo! They were looking for more cats to feature during the Guest Cat spot, so I submitted Leo. Thanks to moosifer_jones for mentioning that they were looking for cats. 🙂

Today was a good day. Firstly, there was snow! YAY! Secondly, dad preached at the UU. It was basically a sermon about science and literacy. Really well done – and I’m not just being biased cuz I’m a scientist, neither. 🙂 Then, mom showed me how to make her vegetable soup. While it cooked all day, I cleaned up the place some, and when it was supper time, the folks came over and we had veggie soup, cheese (cheddar and sage derby – both very yummy), crackers, and pineapple. For dessert, dad and I had fat free pudding and mom had sugar free Jell-O. We watched The Princess Diaries 2 while we ate (and after we were done eating).

So, definitely a good day. 🙂 Tomorrow I have a day off of school, and I don’t have anything planned, yet. Sounds like a good day to me!

Yay! It’s about time! The Madcow cluster (which my LJ is apparently on) has finally been fixed. The last to get done. And it was done before 10pm PST tonight (which is when they originally figured it).

Of course, I don’t have anything, really, to say right now. I did earlier, when LJ was down, but I forget what it was now. 🙂

Ah well, back to cleaning the house & watching Monk!

It was ages ago when gregmce mentioned DVD Profiler in an e-mail to a list we’re both on. Heck, could be over a year ago now. At the time, I installed the free program and tried a few of my DVDs. Apparently, I entered 3 of ’em, but IIRC, I had troubles with some of my R2 discs, so I sort of lost interest. Tonight, however, while looking around my computer for directories that I could delete, I found DVD Profiler, downloaded the latest version, and checked it out. And ended up inputting my entire DVD collection!

So what is DVD Profiler? It’s basically a database for your DVDs. It has hundreds of thousands of DVDs by UPC code (and many other bits of info). Type in the UPC code, and it’ll include a photo of the cover & back panel, the actors present, etc. So for 10-12 numbers typed in, you have everything you need to know about the DVD. It’s sweet – and what’s more, it found every DVD I owned but 2. The one, Jackanory: Alice in Wonderland, I wasn’t at all surprised about. But the other one was Daria: Is It College Yet? Since it had the other Daria DVD in its database, I was a bit surprised. I probably should have looked for it by title, but I just typed it in and moved on. Heck, it had The Airzone Solution and The Mumbo Jumbo in its database – and they’re pretty obscure!

Now, the most coolest aspect of DVD Profiler is that you can upload your DVD database for public consumption – woohoo! So I’ve done that, if anyone’s terribly interested in seeing it. Here’s my DVD Collection! I like the idea that I can double check while I’m off vacationing that I don’t already have a particular DVD. (Yes, I own so many DVDs that I’ve bought doubles on accident. Of course, I have a number of titles that I bought doubles on purpose.)

DVD Profiler has a free version to it, which is what I’m currently using. But for $30, you can get it ad free and get free upgrades. I’m seriously pondering this. I like ad free. 🙂

(You can’t imagine how much fun I’ve had doing this… Damn, I am SO Anal!)

Like most people in town (at least, the ones of us who have basements), I have a damp basement. What with the thawing and flooding and all, my basement is particularly damp at the moment. And the main reason (well, other than the thawing and flooding) was because my dehumidifier was dead. Tonight, however, I had Bachelor Dad at my disposal. (Mom was off at a Craft Night.)

After allowing my father to buy me supper at Friendly’s, and eating his free sundae so that Lactose Intolerant Father wouldn’t get sick, we went to Lowe’s in order to buy a dehumidifier. They had many on display – all by Whirlpool. Dad explained how they worked (they’re basically air conditioners that collect water from the condensation on the cool coils) and what “50 pint” vs “25 pint” meant. The 25 pint one was the cheapest at $128, but the 65 pint would collect the most water for the least amount of energy (and was $100 more than the 25 pinter). I was all set to get the 40 pint one for $158 when we saw another brand – Roper. It looked identical to the Whirlpool 50 pint job, but cost the same as the 40 pint one. And it turns out, Roper is a Whirlpool company.

I also picked up a 50ft garden hose in hopes of moving the dehumidifier to the wetter side of the basement. Once we got it home (dad even carried it into the house and down to the basement – what a guy!) we checked out the wetter half. It looks like we’ll be able to eventually set it up there, but for the time being, it’s right next to the sump pump, where the old one used to stand. It’s running as I type – woohoo!

This will not give me a dry basement, but it ought to help cut down on the moisture. (And, as always happens at this time of year – it’s too damn damp in the basement, and too damn dry in the rest of the house. Heh.)

I’m rather fond of cheese. I mean, I did write a poem about cheese, didn’t I? 😉 So, for my birthday, Amy & Rachel decided to get me a gift certificate to igourmet.com. When Amy was telling me this on my birthday, I pictured “IgorMay.com” That’s Igor as pronounced in Young Frankenstein. So Igor may, but Igor may not…

Anyhoo, the gift certificate arrived today. I’ve been perusing the website for awhile and there’s a LOT of good things on the site. But I decided to stick with English cheeses, this time. Here is what I chose:

• The Dorset Drum English Farmhouse Cheddar (the best cheddar, according to the website)
• The English Cheese Assortment (contains Coombe Farm Cheddar, Royal Blue Stilton, and Sage Derby)
• The Saxonshires (a five layered cheese containing Double Gloucester, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Liecester, and Cheddar)

I figured this would give me a nice assortment to sample. My next task, when I’m out at Walmart or Meijer or something, is to get a decent cheese knife. I’ve got nice cutting boards which are great for showing off a nice sample of cheeses. (And you know, when talking about all the cool Christmas presents, I forgot to mention the cheeses that elsaf‘s brother’s GF sent along to judiang & me. Very tasty cheeses, though the cheddar was the most popular with my family & friends. Elsa also gave us some of the chocolates that they made during their Chocolate Party.)

So, let’s hear it for cheese! 🙂

Interestingly enough, I did write a post on the first of each month in 2004. Cool. 🙂 So here we go. Wonder if it makes any more sense than my usual posts?

Thanks to my using Judi’s computer while writing this entry, there’s still 25 more minutes left of my birthday. You know, I still dunno what GIP stands for, if it stands for anything… So, this is gonna be a very disjointed post. You know you’re addicted to LiveJournal when you suddenly think of an LJ icon you can design… I always wanted a surprise birthday party, and today, I finally got my wish. If you read about my quest to purchase Big George as read by Sylvester McCoy, you may be happy to know that it finally arrived! I have wonderful friends. So, fellow geeks, anyone know how to set up an ad hoc Peer to Peer network between two machines with 802.11g wireless cards? I’m sure there are people out there who can decide they’re not going to worry about something and then don’t worry about something. When I was much younger (high school age or so) I would occasionally get lockjaw thanks to my gritting my teeth while sleeping. This weekend was a fun one. As gregmce and warinbabylon have mentioned in their journal entries today, it is World AIDS Day.

Nope, I’m afraid it’s not any more sensible than my usual posts. Sorry!

I saw the head bus driver at the post office today and asked why school was closed. She said it was because of too many roads (in the country – this is a rural area) flooded & closed. They wouldn’t be able to pick up the kiddies for school. Ah! So it wasn’t frozen rain after all. (Mom & I were suspicious since it didn’t look terribly icy.) Hopefully the flood waters will go down and we’ll be able to have school tomorrow. Not that I would complain if it were canceled, but we only get 5 Calamity Days a year. Would like to have a few for SNOW DAYS. 😉

Been goofing off today, as I’d planned. I played a little Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth, but it crashed and I decided to work on something else instead. Then I wanted to play City of Heroes for a bit, but first it had to download some expansion packs and install them. And when it finished that, it kept locking up! Still, every time I’d played before, it told me that my NVidia drivers were out of date. So I downloaded them and voila! I got to play. My hero, Violent Viola on the Freedom server, finished her first mission and is now at level 2 – woot! We lost connection with the map server, however, so I decided to quit for now. Gonna have to have gordon_r_d teach me how to do screen captures so I can show her off to you.

Well, now that I have some time, I should mention all the cool things I’ve received for Christmas and my birthday. My family and friends are very generous and I loved everything that I got. I already mentioned what judiang & elsaf got me for both, though Judi went over & above her friend duties and also got me Mary Poppins 40th anniversary DVD and The Princess Diaries 2 for my birthday. I am a BIG time Julie Andrews fan. 🙂

My sister & Rachel got me a cool anniversary set of Colorforms! I made a Colorform dude today, just to play a bit. They also got me cute socks with a kitty on ’em! Mom (or was that Santa) got me 2 pair of my favorite FoxSox and my cousin Deanna gave me another kind of FoxSox – yay new socks! Deanna also got me a magnet toy set (like GeoMag only a different brand – and larger spheres!) and a BW3’s gift card. I might get to use that tomorrow night!

The folks got me a number of things – I mentioned the Dragon book already. They got me 2 Linux books, a book on children’s science books, and a Chicken Soup for the Soul – teacher cartoons. Lots of books to read! I also got a set of bamboo cooking utensils, several nice outfits, a gift certificate to the Night Sky cafe, and a few other things. Thanks parental units!

I received a few other gifts from friends abroad, which were wonderful surprises. A t-shirt for the University of Gallifrey, The Best of the Two Ronnies DVD, a Bill Bailey DVD, and a Bonzo Dog Band CD.

So I’m having a good time today going through my new things. I watched the Two Ronnies today and last night finished Mary Poppins with commentary. I have so many DVDs to watch now, I won’t have to rent anything for AGES! Now if I could just refrain from buying more DVDs until I get my unwatched ones watched. That didn’t work with books, but here’s hoping I can have the willpower with my DVDs. (Who’s kidding whom, here?)