A couple quizes

You Should Play the Guitar

You're very independent - both in spirit and in the way you learn. You can teach yourself almost anything, even if it makes your fingers bleed. You're not really the type to sit patiently through a music lesson - or do things by the book. It's more your style to master the fundamentals and see where they take you. Highly creative and a bit eclectic, you need a wide range of music to play. You could emerge as a sensitive songwriter... or a manic rock star. Your dominant personality characteristic: being rebellious Your secondary personality characteristic: tenacity

What Musical Instrument Should You Play?

Well, I had to tweek the quiz to get my instrument (though I didn't lie) and I think it's a little sad that guitar = rebel, especially since I'm the antithesis of that (outwardly, anyway).

I've always followed those I've felt I should (e.g. parents, husband) without making a big deal about it. But I have no problem speaking my mind, too.

I am an independent thinker. Does that mean I'd be a rebel if I were forced more to be around those I agreed with less?

Your Psyche is Violet

You are spiritual, intuitive, and serene. People trust you to rescue them from bad situations, and you usually come through. While you are quite enlightened, you find that your path is very lonely. When you are too violet: you can't connect to ordinary life or ordinary people When you don't have enough violet: you lack wisdom and can't learn from the past

What Color Is Your Psyche?

Interesting analysis. Good enough.

Your Ideal Pet is a Cat

You're both aloof, introverted, and moody. And your friends secretly wish that you were declawed!

What's Your Ideal Pet?

I've come to a similar conclusion (about the cat-- not the similarity). I love the Idea of a dog, because it is more the way I want to be (active, outdoorsy, disciplined) but my lifestyle (indoors, sitting still a lot, preferring low-key company) really fits a cat better.

The right cat, mind you. None of these go-hide-under-the-bed or loud in-your-face types.

Jay enjoys the right cat too, which is very nice. The litter box is about the only killing point for having a good cat. Jay says we'd design a special closet for the litter box, with a cat-door and HRV intake, if we built our own house.

Bag give-away

Looking for alternatives to grocery stores' plastic bags?

Here are a few alternates you can sign up for to try out.

Cheers!

Preventing TP Unrolling

One from the Simple, but still works, catigory:

Hang your toilet paper so the "tail" falls against the wall, rather than over the top, and you should eliminate most "spinning" unrolls.

That is, the most common movement I've seen cats and kids use is the batting-down on the front of the roll. With the tail falling to the back rather than the front, this direction of rolling will not result in a pile of soggy tissue on the floor.

Silly, yes, but Works for me.

Avoiding Practice?

Making excuses? Probably. But they're real, anyway. And I as I've found the bast way to get my mind to stop spinning is the lighten the load, I'll "share with the class."

So I've started this "intermediate" guitar class, that is going to either make me a real guitarist or kill me (there's no need to be so melodramatic) or make me feel like I really missed something.

Theoretically (according to the syllabus) I'm supposed to be practicing 5 hours a week.

Why are you sitting here typing?! Mainly because the times most ideally suited to practicing-- such as now, when the kitchen is (relatively) clean and there are no current demands on my person-- happen to coincide rather strongly with nap times or bed time where, if the children are not already asleep, I hope they are rapidly approaching.

My current guitar assignments are not conducive to that.

But now, as I've been writing I thought it might be worth a shot (at least today, as Jay's here to stay indoors to hear the sleepers waking) to go set up in the garage and get a few minutes while I have the chance.

8 things from my kitchen

Creating my own meme because of what I want to talk about:

8 Random things from my cooking life.

1. I like my pasta slightly chewy. My mother would probably say "very chewy." I do prefer that to overcooked. I *really* dislike overcooked pasta-- all pasty and bloated-- it doesn't even have any taste left, and there's nothing to make it take on the flavor of the sauce it's in. Kind of like a drowned earthworm that can't hold any more water. Yeah, that nasty.
   
2. Nearly all the dishes I make require a lot of chopping. This is odd because I am not at all a fast chopper, and I'm really picky about pieces being too big.
3. I like mixing my food. That is, I rarely make separate veggies, starch and meat (though I almost *never* do casseroles). It's mixed in one pot, tossed like a salad, wrapped up in a shell, or a stir-fry/sauce over rice or pasta.
   
4. I detest dry food.
   
5. I like my cookies chewy (as opposed to crunchy).
6. When I'm seriously working in my kitchen I'm usually listening to a recorded book. I've decided this this because kitchen work is the only thing that keeps me in one place long enough to maintain continuity. Otherwise I'd listen to them more.
7. My favorite "menus" aren't a meal listed for each night of the week, but a list of meals I have all the ingredients for. This allows me to pick the meal I'm "in the mood for" that day, while still narrowing the choices and (buying) preparation to save frazzled brain cells.
8. We don't always put the lid back on the milk (this is no big deal because our milk hardly lasts long enough to pick up any sort of "off" flavor).

Woo hoo! I did it. I created my own meme (not that anything is completely original...). So I'll indulge in another first and actually tag a few people.

There's Kathy, Chrisd, and Christie, because they've tagged me before (even though I didn't always play back by the rules...) and then there's Becky and Prov31, because I'm curious about your answers, too.

As with all these silly things, your interest and time available naturally trumps my invitation, but if you decide to do it, please leave me a link (in case I'm slow getting back around).

Blessings on your day!