Deviant Dispatches

I wrote an excellent blog this morning, but at the last minute, I've decided to save it for later. So instead, you get this. I took it last week, before all of Wisconsin became a winter wonderland again.

At work yesterday, I had to deal with lots of future perfect tense. For those of you who are unaware, the future perfect tense goes something like this: At this time tomorrow, I will have been  attacked by velociraptors. Future perfect tense is used when talking about the future, but in a historical sense. I know - it makes my head hurt, too. Which is why, when I ran across a sentence with an extra verb in it, my head almost exploded. I couldn't figure out what to do with it for quite a while, and then I subverted the issue entirely by just removing the second verb. I was so pleased with myself for it that I came up with an excellent slogan. Copy Editors Will have been subverting future perfect since tomorrow Awesome, right? ...Okay, fine. It's excellent to linguists and writers. Everyone else is taking a step back to avoid having geek spilled on them.

I have a new favorite pizza crust recipe. My old favorite recipe was very biscuit-like, with lots of crunch on the outside and soft poof on the interior. Its main problems were in being so crunchy and falling prey to pizza's Enemy Number One: sogginess. Sog does not a good pizza make. Going through my recipes one day, I ran across some recipe sheets meant to be kept in a three-ring binder that were floating free. I think they were random junk mail I received several years ago, and I kept some that looked decent. One was for a yeast-based pizza crust. Before this new recipe, the only other yeast crust I'd tried took forever. It's yeast, after all, and requires time to rise. I was under the impression that all recipes were that obnoxious, but apparently I was wrong. This crust is just as easy as the biscuit crust, but with a delicious bread-y quality: it rises well, is soft all around, and does a marvelous job of not getting uber-soaked in the sauce. Amazin...

While I love that, even if the weather is frigid, the winter darkness is slowly melting away, it does make me a little sad. Right now, the sun rises just as I do, and I get to see the glory of sunrise first thing in the morning.  A spectacle like that makes a day start off well. But as spring draws near, the sun will rise earlier and earlier, while I will continue to be a comparative lazybones who doesn't get up until 6:30. I'll no longer see the sunrise every morning. On the flip side, I will get to see the sunset. Right now, it finishes setting on the drive home, so I only catch a hint of the spectacular colors that once were. Soon enough, I'll be able to see it from my dining room every night. But that doesn't mean I won't miss the sunrise.

Last night, I took up a new knitting project. I was thinking of a relative I haven't seen in a while, and I wanted to knit something to show I was thinking of her. Many might think that, in deciding on a string of knitted, stuffed hearts, I fell prey to corporate marketing . Many more might agree, as I chose pink alpaca yarn for this craft. Honestly, I was just throwing together something I thought this relative would enjoy. Nothing more. I admit to being a bit distracted as I worked. We were watching Alien . Yes, Alien . I have made a mental note to myself that scifi thrillers are not conducive to good knitting, at least on first viewing. I began the project (chosen from here ) with no problems whatsoever. The stitches fell into place easily; the instructions were easy to understand. But with all of the hosting and egg-laying and gnashing of teeth on the TV screen, I missed a vital step in knitting the first heart: I forgot to knit every other row without adding...

With the addition of two cats to our household, I've been noticing smells a lot more lately, which has made me want candles. I usually have a few on hand, but my winter stash of cinnamon and pumpkin scents is running low, so I want to explore for other delightful fragrances. Naturally, this makes me wonder what the stinkiest, most disgusting candles in the world smell like. After smelling a few last night, I know I definitely hate mixed berry candles; I hate that combo as yogurt, and it would make me puke as a household scent. But the bacon candle might be worse. If you want your house to smell like bacon , then make bacon . Simplest solution in the world. This link talks about a series of candles designed to smell like New York at certain places and times in history. Some are meant to smell like tar and paint thinner. Unsurprisingly, the only ones still availabl e in that series are the ones that don't make you want to die. (Though black pepper and grapefruit might ...

Dear cats, Look at you there, pretending you're adorable when you're unconscious and cuddling with a knitted GIR . I am not fooled. Yes, your cuteness abounds. Your fuzzy faces are sweet, and you are so fun to watch when you play. But you have much to learn, young Jedi. Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger, and excessive meowing leads to suffering on my part. Just listen to you. On this occasion, it was rather cute, to hear you beg and beg as I prepared your dinner - Titania, you are an especially skilled biped. But lately, both of you - yes, even Oberon - have taken to whining whenever I'm in the kitchen, regardless of how recently you've been fed. The kitchen has people-food, too. Get used to it. I know you'll probably get over your obsessive nature in time, once you realize that we will always feed you when it's time, give you treats on a daily basis, and rub your bellies when you're drowsy enough to like it. In the meantime, ou...