What-What?! Week of November 22nd

We had another windstorm, and were without power again for a day and a half.  Didn't lose any food this time, which is nice, but there was some damage...

This is about fifteen feet of fence that was blown over.  Now it matches the 8 foot section that blew over on the opposite side.  The other side seems pretty easily fixable, but this side I'm not so sure.  The wood itself isn't totally jacked, but it needs new posts put in, and the existing ones are really in there.  We'd have to take apart a lot of it to get the old posts out, and at that point, it's worth exploring other ideas.

Our backyard tree lost five large branches, including this giant one.  Happily, none fell on the house, though one did hit the fence, but it was undamaged.  There are also about a million medium size branches strewn about, which I started cleaning up yesterday.

Peter had a friend from work come over with his truck, and they took the vast majority of the carpeting bits we ripped out of the house to the dump.  Now we have oodles of space in the garage.  I'm thinking we'll put some metal shelving up to hold canned goods, which will alleviate some of our space issues in the kitchen.  It's nice and cold out there, too, which'll help things keep.

Latest Project: Shadowrun Site

This is my most recent project, a website for the Shadowrun 2050 roleplaying game that the husband and I are currently playing.  Shadowrun is a cyberpunk world setting, and us players are a group of people doing less-than-legal 'runs' (jobs) to get money.  It still needs a lot of work in details, but the meat of it is done.  I have to completely redo the slider feature on the front page to make it work like I want, but I need to think about how I want to do that, and possibly look over other people's solutions.  Other things I need to do include updating the readme, and making an interface so it's easier to add information to the Updates, Runs, and Characters sections.

...And I need to start on other projects, too.

Next week is Thanksgiving, which means a four-day weekend, yeah!  We have yet to buy a turkey, because we simply have no space for it.  I made a joke about buying another freezer a month or so ago, and I keep trying to decide if I should take myself seriously.  Our freezers have been nothing less than packed for weeks, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon.  We just got a 40 pound order of chicken two weeks ago, and have another 40 pounds of beef ordered for next month as well.  No idea where we're going to put it.  But we won't run out of meat any time soon.

What-What?! Week of September 6th

Last weekend I didn't post, because we were without power from 11am Saturday morning, until about midnight Sunday, for a total of over 36 hours.  There was a giant windstorm, and greatest point, there were 170,000 people without power.  Entire trees were being pushed over.  We had gone out to McDonald's to eat, and there was a tree right by the parking lot that had been cut in half, with the entire top of the tree lying on the ground!  It was a demonstration of the awesomeness of wind power.

The husband and I played Descent in the dark.  It's a dungeon crawl game.  Our lighting sucked.

For us, we had part of our fence line knocked over, and a large branch fell from our tree.  A few days ago, I realized that another large branch had fallen off the tree as well, but is now caught up on a few other branches.  So we're probably going to work it out of the tree today, 'cause I don't feel good about how well it's up there.

Pile o' sticks.  Children for perspective.  Not that you know how big my children are. :P

The kids and I were out on Friday, picking up all the sticks we could.  There are still tons and tons of little bits all over the yard, but they are difficult to round up.

Not Alton Brown's Gumbo

I did make some kickin' gumbo this past week, though.  Inspired by Alton Brown's recipe, though honestly, I tend to look at Alton Brown's and Cook's Illustrated recipes, and say to myself "Whelp, not doing that".  Because I am not putting the roux in the oven for an hour and a half, nor am I buying fresh shrimp and making a seafood broth.  I just don't have the time or energy for that stuff.  So this is what came about...

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of Sausage (Andouille would be the most authentic, but I used Kielbasa)
• 1 tin of Sardines (mine were packed in water, but oil or tomato juice would be fine)
• 1 can Chicken broth (or two cups homemade chicken broth)
• 1 can Diced Tomatos, drained
• 3 or 4 stalks of Celery
• 1 Onion
• 3 Carrots (or not -- these aren't very authentic, but my kids will eat carrots, so in they go)
• 1 Bell Pepper
• 4 tablespoons Flour
• 4 tablespoons Oil (I used peanut, but veggie oil or even butter will work fine)
• Pepper
• Thyme
• Cayenne pepper
• Salt

Cut up sausage and vegetables.  Brown the sausage over medium heat in a large pot.  Add oil and flour, and let cook for about 2 minutes.  Add vegetables, and let cook until the onion is translucent.  Add chicken broth and stir until thick.  Open the can of sardines and smash them up with a fork, then add the contents of the can to the pot.  Add tomatoes to the pot, and simmer on low for about 20 minutes.  Add spices and salt to taste -- TASTE before you put in the salt.  I barely had to add any, since both the sausage and the sardines are quite salty by themselves.  Serve over rice.