Marilyn or Albert?
To see this in action you have to start with your nose right up to the screen, then step as far back as you can. One way your should see Marilyn Monroe, the other Albert Einstein.
Now look around. Is anyone watching you?
Cheese Souffle
I got this recipe from my mother.
She said:
This is from Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking by Meta Given, published in 1955. I’ve made a few changes and paraphrased a few things.
1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. flour
3/4 c. salt
dash cayenne or Tabaso
dash of dry mustard
1 1/2 c. milk
1/2 lb. sharp Cheddar, grated
6 eggs, separated
Have ready 2 qt casserole – do not grease. Preheat oven 300°F
Melt butter over low heat, blend in flour and seasonings until smooth. Add milk gradually and cook and stir until mixture thickens. Add cheese, cover and cook, stirring frequently until cheese is melted and well blended. Beat egg yolks thoroughly, then gradually mix still hot cheese sauce into them. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks. (Stiff peaks will stand up with slight curve when beater removed.) Fold slightly cooled egg yolk-cheese mixture. Transfer to casserole dish. Use a teaspoon to make a track all round the about 1-inch inside the casserole. This helps the crack to break in a more even line during baking. Place in oven with rack adjusted as near center as possible. Bake 1 hr or until puffed high and a rich golden brown. SERVE AT ONCE.
OR instructions for knowledgeable cooks:
1. preheat 300°
2. make cheese sauce
3. add yolks
4. fold into stiff egg white foam
5. bake 1 hr. in ungreased 2 qt casserole
6. call family/guest to table, take out of oven and serve.
Serenade
Jill: Oh, Jack. That’s the nicest serenade you’ve ever played for me.
Jack: Don’t patronize me, Jill. I can see Tonic has his paws over his ears.
Jill: At least he isn’t trying to sing with you.
Jack: Maybe it’s this guitar. I’ll bet I’d do better with the one in the garage. What do you think?
Jill: That depends. Are there strings attached? Eeeeeek! Run, Tonic, run! I’ll bet we can reach the car before he gets down.
Previously in Jack and Jill Beautiful Day
saturday photo scavenger hunt
The rules for Photohunt can be found here.
Today’s theme is String
Be sure to visit the home page.
Suzie’s House 83: Heavy Weighs the Crown
Previously in Suzie’s House, Ben was given an unfair F in class. He ran out of the classroom. Now Gene and Lisa, a straight A student, are going to the principal.
Principal Greear had a meeting with the school board coming up in little over an hour when Lisa and her friends walked in. Between the problems with the copy machine, Gertie’s nagging about the back up in paperwork while he was at conference, and the refusal of the school board to face the need for another mill levy, he’d had a trying morning.
At first he thought a moment or two talking to Lisa would be a welcome break. Lisa was a gifted girl who charmed him with her depth of perception and whimsical comments. He welcomed her warmly, until he caught sight of who was with her.
Benjamin Hammaker and Gene Thomas, both troubled boys headed for a bad end. He’d been meaning to have a word with the school psychiatrist about both of them.
“Mr. Greear, you’ve got to do something about Mrs. D.” Lisa said, the light of evangelism behind her eyes. “What she is doing is just wrong.”
Greear winced. Mrs. D. was another problem he’d been meaning to turn over to the school psychiatrist.
He’d never been fond of Deloris Dieter, but since her divorce she’d seemed a little instable, nothing he could do take action against, but enough to leave the impression of a ticking bomb.
“What did she do?” Greear laced his fingers together in front of him on the desk. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with anything that involved Mrs. D, Hammaker, or Thomas
“She gave him an F for no reason. No reason!” Lisa’s eyes widened with livid emotion. “She’s had it in for him the whole year.”
“Remember the time she broke his pencil?” Gene’s last name said to Lisa, then turned toward Mr. Greear. “She grabbed it right out of his hand while she was walking past his desk and just snapped it in two.” Gene smiled as if in fond memory.
“And all the times she’s pushed his homework into the trash can as if by accident. I’ve seen her do it,” Lisa said with growing agitation.
“And the way she’s always yelling at him when he isn’t doing anything different than the rest of us.” Gene added eagerly.
The two of them were egging one another on to greater levels of excitement, but Hammacker stood between them, studying the floor and not making a peep.
“The three of you left class because she gave him an F?” He arched an eyebrow at Lisa.
“No. Because she yelled at him and…”
“I want to hear it from him.” Greear nodded at Hammaker.
“I walked out of class,” the kid mumbled barely clearly enough to be understood. “I got so mad I just walked out.”
Ah. So that was it. Hammaker reached is breaking point and the other two were so moved by a perceived injustice that they went after him. They probably dragged him to this office. Were it some other kid, Greear would know how to handle it, but Hammaker presented special problems.
“How’s your mother?” Greear asked.
“I wouldn’t know.” Hammaker’s eyes burned, then cut to the side.
“His mother has nothing to do with this,” Lisa said sharply, leaning forward. “This is about Mrs. D. There’s something wrong with her. She shouldn’t pick on Ben the way she does, and she shouldn’t talk to anyone the way she did today. I think she needs to see a psychiatrist.”
“You’re probably right.” Greear sighed. “I’ll look into it. In the meanwhile,” he glanced at the clock, “you have ten minutes left of class. I suggest you spend them with Mrs. Sandvig in detention.”
Lisa looked startled. She’d never been sent to detention before. Then she nodded understanding, and guided the other two out.
Greear dropped his head into his hands. It would all come to a head now. If only it could have waited a few days. School would be over and it would no longer be his problem.
T13 42: Moving
1. Qwest couldn’t find “the box.”
2. Which means no phone.
3. Which means no dial up.
4. I wanted high-speed anyway.
5. Good bye Qwest!
6. The cable company doesn’t come in until Sept. 4th.
7. Yikes!
8. Hello library!
9. The library doesn’t like my uploads.
10. Hello cyber cafe!
11. There is no cyber café? In all of town? Yikes!
12. Hey wait. Sept 4th? Isn’t that today?
13. Yay! Hi everyone!!!
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By George! What Goes Around Comes Around.
During the course of the tempestuous relationship between Prince George and Princess Caroline, Lady Jersey has been a bone of contention. Let’s see how she comes out.
Caroline had a small problem with the Prince’s document. By and large, it seemed to point to Princess Caroline as the source of all the rankles and disquiet. Needless to say, this was not her view. As if she wanted that bitch Lady Jersey in charge of her bedchamber! No. She could not let this stand. She informed the Prince, through go-betweens, that since she could not count on her husband to protect her good name, she had to turn to the only man in England who would. Uncle George. To that end, she had written to the king, informing him of all that the Prince had done to destroy their marriage.
Upon hearing the news,The Prince sent a note to mom begging for an audience with her first thing in the morning. Once in her presence he laid out his version of events and what he planned to do about it. The Queen didn’t think the Prince had a leg to stand on. If she knew anything, she knew her husband. The King would never agree to a separation. The Prince felt he had to try.
He wrote a very long letter to the King, explaining himself and putting forward his plan to end the marriage. On May 31st, the King sent him this reply:
“You seem to look on your disunion with the Princess as merely of a private nature, and totally put out of sight that as Heir Apparent of the Crown your marriage is a public act, wherein the Kingdom is concerned; that therefore a separation cannot be brought forward by the mere interference of relations. The Public would have to be informed of the whole business, and the Public were “certainly not prejudiced” (the Kings quotation marks) in the Princes favor. Parliament would have to be informed, and Parliament would think itself obliged to secure out of his income the jointure settled on her in case of her husbands death.”
He went on to say that he was “certainly by no means inclined to think the Princess has been happy in the choice of conduct she had adopted; but if the Prince had attempted to guide her she might have avoided those errors that her uncommon want of experience (!!!!) and perhaps some defects of temper had given rise to.”
This was so NOT what the Prince wanted to hear.
Of course, word of the Princes marital woes made all the London papers. And, of course, the Prince was the villain. While this made the Prince understandably angry, it was nothing new to him. As far as he was concerned, it was just more of the same that he had been getting the whole of his adult life. Lady Jersey, on the other hand, wasn’t used to it at all. Things were being printed about her that were causing her a great deal of grief.
Worse, much worse, the Better Sorts were siding with Caroline. It’s hard to imagine that a woman as smart as Lady Jersey had never stopped to consider the public relations aspect of hitching her star to a guy as unpopular as the Prince. Perhaps she believed his unpopularity was strictly a middle and lower class phenomenon. If that was the case, she was dead wrong.
According to Lady Farington; “Lady St Asaph told Lady Beaumont that she was at a very large assembly at the Duchess of Gorden’s to which Lady Jersey had been invited-when Lady Jersey came the ladies made a line for her (got out of her way) and let her pass unspoken to.” Lady Jersey was realizing, too late, that she had painted herself into a very tight corner indeed.
Have You Ever Retraced Someone Else's Steps?
I went to step into the shower the other day and was confronted by this:
Of course my first thought was “When did the shower stall get wounded?” No, really. That was my first thought. It didn’t last long. I skipped right over, “How did that get there,” and went straight to, “Can I make the boy take it off of there, cause I know he put it there, or am I going to have to do it?”
I knew it was the boy who did it because he was the only one in the family who might possibly have stepped in the shower with a band aide on. Once there, he would probably be inclined to pick it off. He’s just wired that way. Once it was in his hand, what was he to do with it? Stick it, somewhere, of course.
I took a complete voyage in my mind in less than a minute – retracing someone else’s moments in life.
I think that’s what I love so much about Eve Dallas from the J.D. Robb books. Eve in a police detective who thinks through other people’s lives based on the clues before her. It’s fun to live through her eyes.
Do you do it? Do you like that sort of thing? Or do you go straight to, “Get in here and clean it up!”
.
Penut Butter and Jelly
What? Me, desperate? Just because I’m having trouble posting pictures, or getting my files together, and have all my recipes on my desktop when I’m forced to use the laptop….
Anyway, here it is. I’ve recently learned how to make the ultimate PBJ.
Spread the penutbutter very thick on one side of the first piece of bread. Put the second piece of bread on the first without adding anything. Spread the jelly thick on the third piece of bread. Place this on the other to slices.
Yum!
Beautiful Day
Jill: Is that what I think it is?
Jack: Looks like poop.
Jill: In out bathtub?!!
Jack: Smells like poop too. And not just here.
Jill: OMG! It’s here too! What could have happened?
Jack: Did you run a load of laundry?
Jill: Yeeeeesssss….
Jack: There must be a clog in the main line. It backed up.
Jill: Ewwwww!!! What are we going to do?
Jill: Not on your life. Here, I’ll call someone.
Jack: How’s it going?
Jill: Awful! Either no one answers, or they are busy, or they say we have to go through someone else. It’s almost supper time and I still haven’t found anyone.
(5 hours later)
Jill: I can’t believe how hard it was for them to fix it. The guy worked on it for hours! And well after quitting time too. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your life?
Jack: Nope. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Thanks Pioneer Sewer Rat!!!
Previously in Jack and Jill Smooth Operator
saturday photo scavenger hunt
The rules for Photohunt can be found here.
Today’s theme is Beautiful
Be sure to visit the home page.
Suzie’s House 82: Breaking Point – The First
Ben knew what to expect already, but he’d been real good about this paper. He checked his spelling twice and had Lisa help him with his grammar. The topic was “Write about something you care about.” He’d done that.
Just once he wanted to get a good grade out of English.
Mrs. D. took her sweet time handing out the papers. When she came even with his desk, she stopped. She stared at the top sheet in her pile for several seconds. He kind of thought she might actually say something to him, something she hadn’t done in a while. Her eyes darted to either side like she was checking everyone out, then she placed the paper on his desk in front of him slow and careful.
F.
She gave him an F. There were only two points off for spelling, and a bunch of little red marks over his commas, but not enough for an F. On the back of the last page she had scrawled, “Not an appropriate topic.”
“Not an appropriate topic?” Ben didn’t mean to shout, it just came out loud. “What do you mean it’s not an appropriate topic?”
“What did you write about?” Matt asked. He sat in the seat to the left, back one row.
“Skateboarding.”
“I do no believe skateboarding is near and dear to your heart,” Mrs. D. said like he was stupid.
“How would you know?!”
“You will not talk back to me, young man.” Mrs. D. hovered over him, glowering.
She was in the wrong, but she expected HIM to grovel. Just like his father. After school, he would have to go home and apologize for using the last of the milk on his cereal. It didn’t used to be so bad. Before, he could swallow his pride and let Mrs. D. yell because he knew if it got too bad, his mother would be there for him. Not anymore. Now his mother would rather play with her new boyfriend, and wouldn’t even let him come home.
Ben couldn’t even talk about it to his best friend, Gene, because Gene had it so much worse.
Why did all this have to happen to him? Just when he’d been so sure everything was going to be great, it fell apart. Why? What did he do wrong?
Nothing! That’s what. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he wasn’t going to take it any more.
“Apologize,” Mrs. D. snarled at him.
“No!” Ben lurched to his feet. Since she was on the side of his desk with the bar, this at least got him out from under her. “I’M not the one who should be apologizing.”
“What do you think you’re doing? Get back in that seat at once!”
He couldn’t stand it anymore. He couldn’t stand to be anywhere near her. He didn’t like the way everyone in the class was staring, either. Ben ran out the door. He left all his stuff behind and everything.
She shrieked at him, but hadn’t even moved from his desk when he ran into the hall. He didn’t know where he was going to go or what he was going to do. He just had to get away. He skidded around a corner, then slowed down.
“Hey,” Gene came up behind him. He must have run out of the classroom at the same time. “Mrs. D. totally sucks. She isn’t being fair at all. Like you said, how’s she supposed to know what matters to you? And she shouldn’t talk to you like that either. Wanna go get a pop from the broken machine down by the gym?”
Ben only nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. They turned around and almost smacked right into Lisa. He and Gene glanced at each other. Gene looked as surprised as Ben felt. “What are you doing here?” He sounded amazed to himself but he couldn’t help it.
“Come on,” she said with authority. “What she’s doing isn’t right. We’re going to do something about it.”
“Do? What can we do?” They were only kids. No one ever listened to kids.
“We’re going to the principal. He’s a friend of mine. He’ll listen to me.”
Thursday 13 #41: Moving Into a Mobil Home
1. It isn’t easy to go from 2,500 square feet to 1,120 square feet.
2. When I run the dishwasher, soapy water backs into the sink.
3. When I run the laundry, poop backs into the tubs.
4. The neighbors are only a few feet away where they used to be yards away.
5. Good thing I like my neighbors.
6. Garbage collection is included in the lot rental. Yay!
7. I feel more self conscious about what I put in the garbage.
8. This might actually be a good thing.
9. The floor isn’t quite level. Did my file cabinet really do that?
10. There’s some kind of sewer work going on in the park.
11. Maybe I should have stopped to read the notices on the manager’s board?
12. The school bus picks up a lot of kids from the bus stop across the street.
13. Including mine. Yay!
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By George! Are They Really That Happy?
To all appearances, the mismatch between Prince George and Princess Caroline looked to have worked out. Appearances can be deceiving.
Despite happy reports from Brighton, things were far from well by the time the new princess arrived. For one thing, the Prince had taken up with Lady Jersey again. This probably came as no surprise to those who knew the Prince best. It did not help matters at all that Caroline’s reaction to this was to heap verbal abuse on her wayward husband. There were right ways and wrong ways to handle the Prince. Princess Caroline found every wrong way there was and exploited them to the fullest.
The vicious cycle had started and there was no stopping it. For one thing, its two principles were too emotionally immature to break it, and an interested third party, Lady Jersey, was doing her best to thwart reconciliation. Not that reconciliation ever had a chance. As Lady Jersey well knew, these two people should never have been allowed to be in the same room at the same time, let alone be married.
By the time the baby was born the Prince could hardly stand the sight of his wife. He definitely couldn’t stand the sound of her voice. At one point the Prince cornered Lord Malmesbury and demanded to know why he had received no warning as to Caroline’s “true nature.” Malmesbury replied that it was by the Kings order that he went to Brunswick to fetch the Princess. It was to the King and the King alone, that he was responsible. His Majesty never ordered, suggested, or even hinted that he wanted His Lordships opinion as to the Princesses personality.
If the Prince had a problem with that, he could take the matter up with His Majesty. The Prince clamed up, but it “left a rankle in his mind.” There would be more “rankles” to come. Like someone that had loaned the Prince a large sum of money, Princess Caroline found herself persona-non-grata in the Princes life.
His Highness would disappear for weeks at a time, visiting friends in the country, hunting, or more usually, “redecorating” his new palace in Brighton. His new pavilion was well underway and, rather than make her climb all the steps Mrs. Fitzherbert had to climb, the Prince thoughtfully installed Lady Jersey’s bedroom next to his. The Prince’s no-show behavior would have been more bearable to Caroline if she had had some sort of support network to fall back on.
Most unfortunately, her English was still rudimentary, her personality still abrasive, and her judgment still nonexistent. Lady Jersey was also still her Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess. Quite a job title, that. The Princess had plenty of “rankles” of her own and Lady Jersey was at the top of the list. In April of 1796 the princess wrote to her husband that he had to find Her Ladyship a new job. It really burnt her bacon that she had to have her evening meal with this woman night after night. Sitting there, looking at Lady Jersey and knowing her dear, dear husband was making “The beast with two backs” with her was pain beyond endurance.
The Prince shot back with a letter of his own. The gist of it was, I’m no more happy being married to you than you are to me. Let’s both make the best of it by leaving off on complaining. As far as Lady Jersey was concerned, the Prince huffed, “Let me remind you, Madam, that the intimacy of my friendship with Lady Jersey… My mistress, as you so indecorously term her…under all the false colour that slander has given it, was perfectly known to you before you accepted my hand, for you yourself told me so immediately on your arrival here.”
He further pointed out that there were other servants she could talk to. It wasn’t as though Lady Jersey was her only option. To further prove that he Just Didn’t Get It, the Prince told his blushing bride that he was doing the best he could with limited resources. “I have been solicitous that you should have every gratification which the nature of the times, the manners of this country and the established customs of your rank would admit, with a due regard at the same time to the pecuniary difficulties I so cruelly and unjustly labor under.”
He REALLY Did Not Get It.
She shot back with another, longer letter. He didn’t care for her at all! He was nothing but a drunken, skirt-chasing lout, and his pal, Lady Jersey, she was nothing but a jumped-up whore! Or words to that effect. His response to that letter was another letter to her saying he had a perfectly happy home life until SHE showed up! And if she wanted to make nice and try to at least keep up a pretense of living together, he was down with that, he would be perfectly willing to give it a shot. As soon as she stopped being a flaming bitch! His happiness, which should, as a good wife, be her top priority, was “not to be effected by irritating insinuations or fretful complaints.”
He closed by hoping she would have the good grace to stop sending him annoying letters.
Her response to that was the longest and most incoherent letter to date. In it she demanded to know, in writing, what he expected of her. She also went much further than that. She said that if he desired to continue having it off with Lady Jersey, or any other home wreaking slut that was fine by her. She no longer expected or desired sexual contact with him. BUT…Under no circumstances would he, even in the event of the death of their daughter, try to produce another heir to the throne.
I don’t know if the Prince was familiar with the 18th century equivalent of “run this past legal”, but he should have been. He had a document drawn up, in French, so Miss Hissy Fit wouldn’t go off on him about misunderstandings, and then he signed it. And that, he hoped, was that. Nope. She had one more letter to write. The Princess, unlike hubby, did know the 18th century royal equivalent of “run this by legal.” It was, “I wonder what Uncle George would think of all this?”
Flickr
Several of you have commented on the Flickr widget on my sidebar. The thing about that widget is that it isn’t mine. None of the photos shown on that widget are mine. I don’t even have any kind of membership in Flickr. I simply clicked the little box offered by WordPress to get the generalized feed.
I love the little Flickr widget. Most of the time.
Lately, I haven’t been loving it quite so much. Sure, it spruces up the place. Yes, it gives me a chance to check out images I would not other wise know about. But it has also thrown some stuff in my face I don’t really want on my blog.
In particular I’m thinking about the bloody man. It was some old, bald guy with red smeared all over him. Um… excuse me?
Now and then the nudity gets a little out of hand. I may not be PG-13 in my books, but this blog is, and will remain so even when I have a choice.
Also, now that I’m posting more of my own pictures I find the ones on Flickr make me look bad by comparison. I simply can’t compete with the professionals.
But I love my Flickr widget.
So my question is, what should I do about it? Keep it as it? Get my own account and have my own images, such as they are, in place of the general feed? Ditch it completely? What do you think?
Melt Down
I was planning on holding the next round of the Whisper Meme in August. Up until Friday, I thought I was going to do that. Friday everything fell apart.
It started with a simple move, if moving can ever be said to be simple once you’ve acquired kids, furniture, and too many gerbils. To be absolutely sure I didn’t get caught in a bind, I had the phone company come in early to set the phone up in the new place. I’m on dial up, you know.
When I arrived with my office all ready to be set up and get back online I found a door hanger on our knob. It seems the employee from Qwest couldn’t find the box. Excuse me? Every box in the entire neighborhood is set up the same way. It’s right there on the side of the house where anyone and everyone can see.
Ok, fine. So I had to call and set up a new appointment to have the switch flipped. Lovely. I called on my cell phone and was informed the next time they could be in would be August 29th.
Uh… yeah. I said I’d get back to them.
So now I’m on a quest for a new phone company, and maybe high speed internet. No. Make that definitely high speed internet. After all, I already have a phone in my purse. I’m not desperate for a land line. It’s looking like I might actually get a land line and high speed for only $10 a month more than I’m paying right now.
That was part A in the Whisper saga. I’m having trouble getting online to do anything.
Here’s part B, which is actually a much bigger reason.
I’m moving my web site. I want to get it away from it’s current host, get my blog folded in with my main site, and get my email change to my own domain. Oh, and I’m going to completely change the way it looks and works while I’m at it.
No big deal, except I don’t know how to do any of the above. I need to hire someone. I was holding off on hiring someone until after I moved so I could use someone convenient. Guess what time it is.
The thing about Whisper is that it doesn’t work if the home page URL changes in the middle of it, and this one is going to run for six months.
So….
Please be patient with me. I’ll make it worth your while.
Shrimpy Salad
lettuce
carrots
cooked shrimp
Catalina salad dressing.
Tear lettuce into salad bowl. Layer in carrots. I like to use the pre-skinned baby carrots. layer in more lettuce. Add boiled, cooled shrimp. Top with salad dressing.
