woke up early not so hungover just kinda bleh. i fell asleep on the toilet and cracked my head open on the corner of the sink though. then i got to feeling worse. septn most of the day pretty ungood and blah. got to feeling better by night but my neck and head still hurt. picked up some udon and hung out with baby charlotte. starting tuesday we'll be babysitting her for a few hours in the night while celeste goes to pilates.
crit?: 0ern and my ma and sis went to a wedding expo thing so i did the only thing i could do. i bought a bike off pete. hung out with him for a bit, then stopped by adam's shop briefly. flew home. such a quick bike compared to the green one. dinner @ my folks house then housewarming @ derek and liz's. i drank too much, but they live across the street so it was a short stumble home. i did bad things to good toilets though.
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Last night i did dishes and cooked dinner at the same time. we had asparagus artichoke ravioli with roasted garlic marinara flavored with wine. after dinner i had a hankering for pie so i said "boy pie would be nice right now" and ern says "i will do this thing you ask of me within two weeks" and i say "oh i meant going to the store and buying pie" and ern gathers her keys and wallet. i shit you not, i was just messing around and yearning for pie and she went and got one! after i figured out that she wasnt kidding, i put in flavor requests and she went and picked up a really good strawberry rhubarb (my 2nd fave after huckleberry) pie from whole foods (3 states away). by the time she got home pete beth and kendra were there so we all enjoyed some awesome pie with vanilla ice cream. she's the best, that lil' monchi of mine.
the movie was good, btw.
woke up early> went back to sleep> woke up late> late breakfast @ east/west in monkey village> drove out to sebastopol for shoppe errand> took off for a koi pond then decided to go out to the beach. lazed around in the sun and colelcted beach junk. ern sat on a rock and knitted this thing she's working on. watched the sunset then headed back to town> stopped off for coffee in sebastopol. home> fun> sleep.
crit?: 0woke up early. ern took off to the city for wedding shopping with her cuz solvay. i got a call to go fixit on a computer so i got some coffee and headed out. i stopped by the apple store to pick up a ipod shuffle and check out the mini too. while in the mall i picked up a perfume that ern likes. driving out to the fixit house, i saw a knife on the side of the road so i got off the freeway and looped back. it was a long weird knife, see here. fixed the computer and left. they called several minutes later. the virus i had gotten rid of had come back. 'twas a weird one. even though norton was coming back clean, it was seeding out whenever IE connected to the internet, though it wasnt network aware enough to realize it always had a connection. i added some hosts based blocking so that it couldnt retrieve it's payload and disabled IE in favor of firefox (which this user had been warned to use in the first place) and left it until i can get rid of it for goodsies. ern came home and we hung around till bed.
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last night i spun string around wooden sticks to use to tie the sausage off. those have been soaking in vinegar water overnight. dad made the seasonings for different lots of the ground from grandma's recipe. they've modified it over the years to cut back on some of the salt. bright and early we got started mixing the meat. almost half of the ground goes into a large sleaed box and the spices + broth + wine go in. we all stand around and squish it together so it gets juicy and mixed up. then we all stand around and make large meatballs out of it. while we're doing this, grandma is insdie rehydrating the sheep intestine. the sheep intestine comes salted in a box, where it is all dried out and brittle. she runs it under the sink and clips it to the length we need (3 sausages~ per strand, near 1lb each) then puts it into a small pot of warm water + vinegar. after the meat is balled, and the intestines flexi we begin the squeezing of meat into gut. a hand cranked table mounted sausage stuffer. i turned the crank the majority of the time, spelled twice by my little cousin. an end of intestine is hooked over the long stuffer snout and the meat is pressed intot he hopper with one hand, cranked with the other. the quality and stuffedness of the sausage is determined by both people so you have to work as a team to get it right. a team of 6 or so sausage tyers wait for the sausage to start piling up, then they grab the string prepared the night before to tie it. a square knot with a loop is put on one end, then square knots every 4inches or so allow the sausage to be supported by the string, not the casing so they wont rip when curing and drying. after they are tied off they are hung up on a ceiling mounted scale to be added to a weight based lot. for instance, ern and i are getting 25lbs which is a little under 23 strings. the preparing/stuffing/tying goes on until all the meat is processed. usually we break in the middle for a big reject-sausage lunch where we eat all the casings that split or didnt tie properly. this year though, we just powered through all the meat by noonish, then had lunch. after lunch ern and i packed up and skittered out of town. i got a triple espresso on the way out 'cause we got up ultra earlya nd making sausage (especially cranking) is tiring. we got back into rosa around 6 and i was ready to go to bed then.
crit?: 2today is day 1 of sausage making in ferndale. 350lbs of meat, 50/50 beef/pork are cut into small strips. the fat and silver is removed from teh beef and the glands and bones are removed from the pork. in the old days, it used to be a week long process, as they'd butcher the animals to start with, instead of buying the meat already quartered uptown @ the meat market. After the meat is cut into strips the .5hp meat grider is assembled and one person feeds pork, one feeds beef into the hopper. two others then scoop the hamburg away from the landing area and into piles. after all the meat is ground and the grinder removed, the hamburg is spread out on an inclined plank so the blood can run out and downhill. after we did that it was quits for the day (around 4pm) so i took ern uptown to look at all the stores/ferndale. she was way into it and wants to move there (which would rock) but the problem is always finding work.
crit?: 0crikey! someone from american greetings is dive bombing my gallery!
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home>work>lunch>bid>home>chores>packing (ferndale to make sausage for the weekend>ready the car mr bostrom>sleep
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home>work>lunch>home>ern's first day of class.
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lazy day. ran some errands, played prince of persia. not much else. watched amelie, made tj freezer fries.
crit?: 0home> gunshow @ sacramento with dad, saw some unbelievably nice knives> home> the mixx for dinner
crit?: 0ern just walked in the door. she got me chronicles of riddick and an xbox extension cord for no reason!
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well, i'm messin' round. that's for sure.we went to whole foods last night to get salads 'n sorbet. vincente ferretti was manning the produce bins. though he's taller, has short hair, facial hair and lost a lot of weight i still recognized him. we caught up briefly and it was pretty cool. apparently ern worked with him for a year or so, but knew him as vinnie. which is what he went by mostly but isn't his name. anna, a girl that bought a drawing or two @ the moxie show is vinnie's boss and recognized his name from the title. small world eh?
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i soldered a new pow-pow-power button onto kendra's phone for her. it's uggo-riffic. she came over to hang out and pick it up and stuff, then celeste brought over baby charlotte to hang out with ern as well. ern cooked dinner for hte girls and i hung out a bit and listened to her baby. the baby growls and makes this mischievous face. cute as all get out. ern took some pics, i'll see if i can snaffle a few from her. went over to silvanie's mom's beau's place to say good bye and draw. we ended up talking and stuff. they fed me too. called it an early night and came home for sleep.
got up, met parents, drove up to the madrona manor, went through numbers again, viewed the site. wrote a deposit check. the place will be the madrona manor, the day will be the first of october 2005. gotta do invites now. watched more movies. (we watched so many movies lately i cant remember half of them) the movies tonight were part of anchorman, which was horrible and embarrasingly unfunny, and open water, which was not a shiny happy thing. been playing prince of persia like whoa. 40% done with it. it's a very good game. we took down our tree and made christmas dissapear entirely. my good ol' recliner got to come back in the living room. which means we can now hear 1/4 mroe of my new speakers. that open water movie features Dolby Digital DTS 6.1 - ES audio track, which is one more channel than my dts processing receiver can. upgrade time? do i need a rear center channel?
crit?: 0new year's day.
woke up later than normal, called up some peeps for breakfast. ended up just corralling drk & liz. went to the pinecone out in sebastopol, then got cookies. rented us up some moovies and napped till it got dark. someone swiped drk's prescriptions from the party last night, which, btw, went on till 6am. lordy.