MessyMissy's Place

Marmot Day was begun in 2002 in Owosso, Michigan, as a day of celebration for this animal which is usually considered as a pest. A luncheon is traditional as part of the celebration, and marmot jokes are also shared, among other festivities typical of any party or celebration. At 12:30 P.M., a marmot is positioned outside its hole, and if it goes into its hole, legend has it that summer is over; if it does not go into its hole, there will be one more month of summer.

Celebrate with Doughnuts and give to the Salvation Army.  2 great things, one great day to celebrate!

More about Donut Day

Happy Towel Day all you Hitchhikers!

From Wikipedia…

A manifesto was created to celebrate the first Geek Pride Day which included the following list of basic rights and responsibilities of geeks.

Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not have a significant other and to be a virgin.
4. The right to not like football or any other sport.
5. The right to associate with other nerds.
6. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
7. The right to have all the geeky friends that you want.
8. The right to not be “in-style.”
9. The right to be overweight and have poor eyesight.
10. The right to show off your geekiness.
11. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. Save any and all geeky things you have.
5. Do everything you can to show off your geeky stuff as though it were a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Don’t waste your time on anything not related to geekdom.
10. Befriend any person or persons bearing any physical similarities to comic book or sci-fi figures.

Try to take over the world!

Keep your fires burning and wait for the sun!  Spring comes!

I made some cordials yesterday and decided to play with the recipes a little adding some low glycemic level agave nectar to the Lemon and Raw Cane sugar to the Lime.  Since the Simple syrup makes up about half of the liquid for the cordials, making them differently like this could have a major affect on the over all product.

I went with the agave nectar in the Lemon cordial and the turbinado sugar in the lime mainly because the agave wasn’t going to compete too much with the lemon, the lime I’m nervous about, I don’t know how the molasses characteristics are going to affect the over all cordial.

The agave made the simple sugar a little less dense and seems to have incorporated well.  The lemon cordial is clear and inviting.  It’s been put up, so we’ll just have to wait about a month now to see how it turns out.

The turbinado sugar is a raw cane sugar, which still has some of the molasses surrounding the crystals.  Unlike the substitution amount for the agave (.5 ~.66 : 1), the turbinado is a one for one substitution with refined sugar.  It made the simple syrup for the cordial quite dark, which was interesting and will make the cordial a lot darker than the last of them I’ve made.  The molasses in the mix should make for an interesting complexity in the cordial.  Again though, we don’t get to find out how it tastes for a month.

The liquor store also didn’t have the Mohawk Vodka that I usually use, but hey did have some Popov, which since it is distilled in Connecticut, should have the same non-flavor & non-smell characteristics as the rest of the American vodkas.  This is really important for cordial making.  You don’t want to have the flavors and smells of the vodka competing with the rest of the cordial.  Makes it a mucky mess.

So today was the day of citrus…  I made a Lemon ice cream

The lemon ice cream is a little different than what I usually make.  It wasn’t heated prior to putting it in the ice cream maker.

I used this recipe from www.bellaonline.com:

• 3 cups milk – whole milk or 2%
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 tsp. lemon extract
• 2 cups sugar

Preparation -
Mix all the ingredients together until well blended. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions. The ice cream will be soft and creamy. For firmer ice cream, spoon it into a freezer container, cover, and place it in the freezer for about 3 hours. For easy scooping, remove the ice cream from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving.
I’m excited to see how it turns out.  I took some out a little bit ago and it does seem to be setting up right.

Not surprising I know, but I do.  I’m not great at video games, but I’m not the worst either.  I play my Wii and I like puzzle games… what surprises me is my fascination with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  I played The Call of Duty series as a first person shooter single player mode for COD 2 and 3.  I played the Single player mode for Modern Warfare 1 and got COD 5 for the Pacific Theater, but I just couldn’t get into that one… I guess I was WWII’d out.  I went back to the original Modern Warfare and made my first foray into multi-player mode. I got addicted to them and I got pretty good.  I even “prestiged” once to see what that was all about.  Yeah, that was about losing all my weaponry and having to earn it back, which I do have to admit was kind of fun.

When Modern Warfare 2 came out I made sure I had pre-ordered a copy for the hubby, but I found myself jonesing.  I begged and pleaded until I got my own copy. I think so far I’ve only made it through about half the Single Player mode, but I’m already getting close to prestiging in this version.  The maps are great and varied, though like in the last game I do have my favorites and I’m still trying to decide on which load-outs I like better.  The one thing I wish I could do though, is bring in the maps from the original and play them too.

I’m still getting use to the throwing knife and the “stickies”, but they do add a nice dimension to the play.  I’ll just have to keep working on it and get better as time goes on.  See you online!

Rawr!

Today is the day!  Days start getting longer from here!  That means spring is on the way!  Wooooooooooo!  That also means just a few more months until I can ride my motorcycle again too!

Now is the time to start looking at those seed catalogs!  Start planning for your spring garden…

Yes I’m serious!  It was even founded at Michigan State…  Check it!

Monkey Day…