“Worst episode to date!” Ariel reports. And I agree. As she said, it wasn’t funny and also was homophobic and there were too many new characters and too many scenes.
Bunhead Bros was better. It had Ben Siemon and both Ariel and I really like him. Plus, they did roller derby names.
Paivi tells me that Turku is the oldest town in Finland. She also gave me a picture of a library, and that’s always a very exciting Postcrossing day.
Makiko sent me this absolutely adorable postcard and enough information about the postcard series that I could find the postcards on Etsy and order some.
It’s from a series called Tabineko (she says it means “traveling cat.”) It’s the cute little black cat that travels and as someone who lives with little black cats, I am a fan.
Note from the future: Now that I have two versions of the series, I see that there are two cats. The cute little black one that pulled focus and the orange-and-black spotted one.
The stamps and stickers were lovely too.
This lesson was about combining tangles.
From the top: Flux (plant leaf) with Fescue (stalk with seed); Knight’s Bridge (checkerboard) with Tipple (circles); the still elusive Mooka (wormy looking thing in the center) with Nekton (hashmarks); Isochor (curved lines) with Tipple (circles); Hollibaugh (pickup sticks) with Printemps (oval spirals); Shattuck (triangles) with Amaze (squiggles).
Overall, I think these things shared this space very well.
Ariel celebrated that Boo wasn’t around during this episode.
We both didn’t enjoy the guest on Bunhead Bros.
Rick Hawes brought his vest with all of his various paraphernalia. I came after the vest era of the Ramblers (sadly), so I loved seeing this. Aside from being a pillar of the Ramblers, Rick has been very active in the IAGSDC (The International Association of Gay Square Dancing Clubs, of course)
He’s currently serving as a caller for our lessons, but has served in possibly every role there is to serve in for the Ramblers.
He also has been recording callers at dances for decades, which means sometimes we get to dance to callers from the eighties and nineties when the gay square dancers were fleet of foot and the calls came fast and furious.
Rick is a treasure.
Because I’m trying out three months of Regal Unlimited, I’ve been spending more time in Regal theaters than I have in years. And I wanted to capture how fancy the design of Regal Lloyd Center theater is.
The very generic multiplex theater rooms are arranged on a corridor, but that corridor is lit up with neon as if it was the theater district. I especially like that neon pink triangle at the end of the hall.
Sadly, on a Friday night there were so few people, I could easily take a picture of the length of the theater complex.
I don’t love the multiplex, and my Regal Unlimited experience has reinforced why I stopped supporting the company but, even so, there will be a loss when this theater closes.
My mother requested a buttermilk cake with caramel frosting for her birthday, so I followed the Better Homes and Gardens recipe she sent me and made her one. The frosting had to be boiled and then beaten with a wooden spoon for 8–10 minutes, so it was not a quick cake to make. The frosting was a bit worrisome also as it was fairly thick, but once it cooled a little, I could pick it up with my fingers and mold it to the cake. I also followed the instructions and ran a warm metal spatula over it to smooth everything out.
I ran out of frosting before I could write Happy Birthday on it. As labor intensive as this cake was, it was a very good final product and I really liked the caramel frosting.
It was the Rosetown Ramblers 40th Anniversary and we had a big dance. I made cookies to celebrate.
I made the Family Sugar Cookie recipe from Home is Where the Eggs Are. I like the idea of having a family sugar cookie recipe, but this is not the one for me. Yeh uses almond flour to achieve a soft cookie. I didn’t like the speckles it left in the cookies, and it also clung to my teeth in a way I didn’t like. This recipe wasn’t a keeper, but I was very pleased as to how the cookies turned out.
Ariel didn’t love this Bunheads episode, though she did love the idea of Roman changing looks every episode without comment.
Some time in the last year or two, I switched from having garlic and ginger on hand to prepping them and freezing them. Up until this time, the process for garlic has involved me buying vacuum-packed garlic that has already been peeled, dropping it in the food processor, and then packing it into small-sized silicon ice cube trays to freeze.
As you might have guessed by this picture, the already peeled garlic hasn’t been available at WinCo the last few times I’ve been. I bought a bag of garlic heads and cue me doing a lot of garlic peeling.
That silicon tube garlic peeler works well enough that I’ve kept it around. It also works as a heat protector for my cast iron skillet handles.
