HSU IT Department

Winter storm Riley decorated our little corner of the country last night:

(click to embiggen)

sshg_giftfest has begun posting! And the opening double-header is awesome. Go ye and marvel :)

Also, here is a picture of a new trick our cat learned. Are we nervous? Um, yeah...

(click for larger view)

My new look, as of 5pm today :)

( ooh shiny )

The news has really been getting me down lately, all the hyperbole and knee-jerk reactions and frantic pace and depressingly stupid words and actions by that weird guy who's been hanging out in the Oval Office recently. When I get down, one of the things that makes me feel better is cooking, so Friday night I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (mmmm) which made both me and Mr Psmith very happy.

This morning I got ambitious and decided to try a recipe Mr Psmith found last week: Sweet Potato-Green Onion Pancakes with Poached Eggs, Holiday Ham and Pepper Jam. It sounds rather involved just from the ingredients in the title, but actually wasn't that much work. The most tedious part was grating the sweet potato (those little suckers are dense, man). I didn't bother with poaching the eggs, just rinsed and wiped out the pan I used for the pancakes and fried them over easy, while the pancakes were finishing up in the oven.

The end result was DEFINITELY worth it -- an elegant and satisfying combination of flavors and textures. And pretty to boot!

You've heard of Bluebeard of course. And, if you're a fan of Blackadder, Captain Redbeard Rumm.

Today, I present for your edification and jollification: CATBEARD!

(aka, Mr Psmith and Xena, one of our torties. She likes to hide in his beard. Freya, our other one, was off either climbing or destroying something, per her usual MO.)

Mr Psmith's biggest tarantula, Shelob, molted last week. He asked if I would kindly allow him to pose it on my face. In a moment of insanity (or possibly due to the three glasses of wine I had had), I said yes.

( WARNING - BIG SPIDER UNDER CUT! )

The cat's new favorite spot. Can you see her?

Heh heh:

This is the wine I bought yesterday. Yup, the label glows in the dark. Now I am uneasily picturing it glaring at the inside of my cupboard:



My nephew P. is on a swim team, and this year all the members decided to decorate their car trunks and do a little trick-or-treat lineup in the parking lot. This is how he and his dad (my brother) decorated theirs:

So it's still snowing here (ugh) but Mr Psmith and I were amused the other morning to wake up and see that the nasty weather hasn't stopped the mice in the neighborhood from venturing out on their daily rounds. I can only imagine what their sub-surface tunnels must look like, and how annoying it must be when the walls start to melt!

View from our front porch:



Close-up of the plunge into the snowbank: