Ravings of a Textual Deviant

One my my help-desk working buddies sent me something that lands squarely in the category of things I couldn’t even begin to think about making up. Slightly edited to protect…those who are clearly incapable of protecting themselves.

As you know, I deal with the ridiculous every day. Every once in a while, something comes along that goes from ridiculous to sublime. Today, something went so far past sublime that I don’t believe English has the words to properly express the abject, chaos-laden stupidity. We are currently working on a project to convert our older Windows 98 machines to Windows XP. To do this, we are sending our higher end flash drives for the reimage. The customers are instructed to ship the drives back to us when the image is complete.

One customer did not ship the flash drive back.

Instead, they shipped a flagpole.

Let me repeat, a flagpole.

Now please understand, this was not the kind of flagpole that attaches to the side of a house. Oh no, this was the kind of multi-hundred (if not thousand) dollar flagpole that is erected in front of a school. This is the kind of flagpole that comes with a big honking gold eagle on the top. This is the kind of flagpole that… how can I say… IN NO WAY RESEMBLES A 2 OUNCE FLASH DRIVE!!! Eloquence fails me. I have no way to make this funnier (or make sense). This is almost the platonic ideal of idiocy.

Pray for me to whatever gods will listen.

I suppose it would be terribly wrong of me to pray for more too-weird-to-be-fabricated incidents.

A & K came in for the weekend, to hang out and help with H’s bridal shower on Sunday. They arrived late on Friday…but not too late for a round of chocolate martinis and homemade chocolate-chip cookies. None of us were surprised that we slept late the next morning.

We had absolutely gorgeous weather, and Housemate put his considerable omelette-making skills to use for our benefit. For months, I’ve been waiting for a warm, sunny weekend morning to eat a leisurely breakfast on the patio. Not only did I get to do so twice in one weekend, I got to do so with good friends, gazing out at the lovely new plantings Housemate put in last week.

Then, we began our whirlwind of activity—shopping for chocolate being a crash-priority task. World Market had a dazzling array of truffles, and we spent rather more time than planned finding a gift, cards, and generally oooing and aaahing over a wide variety of item entirely unrelated to our quest. Still, one must have one’s priorities. We also made a brief stop at a bookstore; all of us have strong bookstore tropisms, and the collective pull was irresistible. We managed a strategic strike on one supermarket, and an extended trip to another. (Neither A nor K live near a World Market or a Trader Joes, so one must make the most of the opportunity.) Later, back at the ranch, A. whipped up a chocolate angel food cake and some raspberry-amaretto sauce. I mixed up a batch of dip (nonfat Greek yogurt thinned with buttermilk, Green Goddess salad dressing herb & spice mix, and chives. Needs a bit of salt, I thought, but still quite tasty.) Everything that had to be done got done in good time, and that’s what matters.

We managed to pull purselves together just in time to meet a larger group of friends, including the bride, her mother, and groom , at the Belgian restaurant in Borad Ripple. I was very, very glad they have call-ahead seating, because nearly everyone else in Indy had the same idea and was waiting for a table with seven of their friends. Fortunately, the weather was nice enough to sit outside, which we did. For the record, the largest-sized order of frites is more than enough for eight. K. and I shared the Provencal moules frites (more frites!). I had the Riesling again, and it went very nicely. I also noticed that they have a cheese plate, which is something I missed on my first visit, shame on me. I also didn’t manage to save enough room for dessert, but H. heartily approved of the crepes suzette, and Housemate had a Nutella crepe, also very good.

Sunday dawned bright, clear, and delightfully warm. I rolled out of bed and immediately set to constructing cucumber sandwiches and deconstructing fruits and vegetable for the party trays. K. had stopped at a Polish bakery on her way through Chicago, and had some delightful cookies. Housemate made deviled eggs, we put together iced tea and lemonade, the flowers arrived somewhere in the midst of the excitement (everyone adored the flower arrangements, B., if you’re reading this), then the other co-hostess showed up with balloons and streamers. Next thing I knew, my yard was ready for a party.

I can state without fear of hesitation that Douglas Adams’s theory of restaraunt attendance also holds for bridal showers; neither the number of people invited, nor the number who RSVP’d had anything to do with the final headcount. The important thing, though, is that we had enough of everything for everyone who did make it. Gifts were opened, food consumed, silly games were played, the sun shone the entire time, and much fun was had.

All in all, it was a very good weekend—busy, slightly hectic, but very, very good.

In which our merry band makes a great deal of trouble and no friends.

Yes, we were stupid enough to into the Ghost Lord’s lair.

Twice.

Urgon was of a notion to rid the world of the Ghost Lord; Darya was happy simply to keep him on the sidelines. Urgon got pretty insistent, though, causing Darya to throw up her hands and exclaim “Give him a lich and he has to scratch it.”

The reptilian receptionist turned out not to be a blue dragon, but some sort of intelligent, magic-using, and eminently cranky forty-foot-long demon with far too many legs and a spine like a slinky. It took some doing—

“If you can’t reach the back, bang the hell out of the sides,” someone suggested.

—but we dispatched it, and only two of our number were swallowed whole and had to cut their way out. Needless to say, we took its stuff and proceeded further into the lair. Blue shoes, matching blue handbag, and full set of blue luggage, YES!

Therein, we found goblin guards (now deceased), Madame Stormcaller (also now deceased), a recently-used sacrificial altar, complete with handy-dandy in-floor blood drain, causing much discussion;

GM: The room smells of decay and death.
Urgon: What an interesting smell you’ve discovered.
Darya: I’m going to call it “Jersey.”

And, in reference to the aforementioned oubliette

Medrin: Keep watch and make sure that nothing comes out of the hole.
Mal: What hole?
Darya: ANY hole!

We also found a shrine to Tiamat, strength-and-stamina draining feline ghosts (guess who found that out the hard way?), and a room full of fog, really unpleasant undead with screechy voices, a dire lion apparently content to stay at the bottom of a glowing pool, and some predictable art. Our mages had just long enough to look at the floating stone cube that displayed pictures of increasingly-agitated feline ghosts before we decided that a strategic retreat from the undead was in order.

Having already taken some damage from the ghosts by the time we reached the screechy undead, (”Take backup that isn’t me,” Darya muttered before they entered the room) we spent some time hiding in an extradimensional space in order to heal up and restore ourselves to our complete faculties and strategize. As undead don’t provide any decent footwear material, Darya suggested a simple, straightforward method; “beat it until it stops moving and then we can set it on fire.” Then, we went back in to confront the Horrid Tabernacle Chorus. We managed to hold them off long enough for one of our mages to attempt to destroy the floating cube. Mind you, this is the same mage who’d earlier said that he needed “boots of screaming and fleeing,” but nevermind that now.

That got the Ghost Lord’s attention, which was a damned good thing as all we’d wanted to do was talk to him in the first place. He wasn’t feeling terribly chatty, but we did manage to get him to listen to our offer. He was willing enough to stay neutral in the war in return for his phylactery, and Darya remembered to include safe passage for the group in the deal. That last part was agreed to only grudgingly, particularly as it applied to the mage who damaged the cube. Still, mission accomplished, and we left without further delay. We could hear extremely unpleasant things beginning to happen to deceased goblins and Madame Stormcaller on our way out. Darya’s not convinced that the Red Hand’s army is going to see that as remaining neutral, but hey, confusion to the enemy. So long as big, bad, and deadly leaves her allies alone, she’s happy to look the other way.

Cedric, our halfling priest, had some serious qualms about dealing with the undead that he hadn’t voiced strenuously until the critical moment. We managed to convince him to go along with it for now, but Darya owes him a postwar return trip to the lair in order to Deal with the Ghost Lord Once and for All.

Fine, whatever. When the time comes, she’ll go in, but she’ll go in with every priest, mage, and warrior that she can beg, borrow, beguile, bribe, or bully.

All we have to do now is survive the war. Or, as Anja said to Darya, “We’re off to kill red shoes!”

It has been determined that the problem with the shed door was screw failure, and so the current plan is to fix it, rather than replace it.

This is a good thing, as we can now get back to re-landscaping the area around the back patio. Housemate did a hero’s work on one side yesterday—clearing out some psychotically aggressive forsythia, getting massive roots and stumps out, levelling the area, breaking up the dirt, choosing replacement plants, getting them all in, edging the planting bed and getting everything cleaned up before it rained.

Truth to tell, the garden shed has given me its all. It wasn’t in terribly good condition when I bought the house, and that was over six years ago. It’s badly sited; the roof doesn’t get enough sun to keep the moss from growing, on account of a large tree nearby. Furthermore, the shed is directly in the path of water that runs into the drainage ditch behind the house. Consequently, the floor really ought to be up on risers, but isn’t.

It’s not hard to see, then, why I wasn’t terribly surprised that there’s a hole in the roof. Housemate assured me that it wouldn’t be too difficult to fix…all it needs is some plywood and shingles. So, while I was home for lunch this afternoon, I looked out and saw what looked as though it might’ve been a sheet of plywood lying on the ground by the shed.

Except it wasn’t.

One of the doors had fallen off. Housemate is fairly certain he can fix that, too, but he also pointed out that it ought to be on risers, and both of us had enough questions about its structural integrity before the door fell off that I don’t know if it’s a good idea to even try. Personally, I think that Murphy is rarely so kind as to give that much advanced, crystal-clear warning of an imminent disaster, and I ought to just replace—and resite—the shed.

So…any advice on shed replacement from the Reading Public?

I did finish up the planned baking from last weekend. The chocolate-chip cookies turned out beautifully. The apple-buttermilk scones are awesome. I ran into a problem with the peach and oat muffins, though. Either my oven is considerably off, or the recipe understates the amount of time needed to bake the muffins. I took them out after the maximum suggested time, and they were still squishy in the center when I checked a few minutes later. I ended up putting them back in the oven to see if they’d finish up, and while the centers got nice and firm, the bottoms got overdone at best and burnt at worst. I had a similar problem with the pear gingerbread being underdone, but that doesn’t tell me whether my oven is off, or the book. I suppose a decent oven thermometer will have to settle the issue. However, should you decide to acquire a copy of Morning Bakes, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Thus far this weekend, we’ve had a wide variety of unpleasant precipitation, so I decided it’d be a good time to get some baking done. And wow, have I ever. So far, the count is:

1 “Madeira” cake (actuallly Nigella Lawson’s Madeira cake recipe from How To Be a Domestic Goddess, which I only just acquired, so I haven’t had much of a test-drive yet.) The cake doesn’t actually have Madeira in it BTW; and I added 1/4 tsp lemon extract to the recipe and sprinkled 1T rather than 2 of sugar atop it before baking, but it is otherwise unchanged. It’s wrapped, labelled, and in the deep freeze right now, so no reviews yet, other than it smells luscious.

1 country apple cake (Morning Bakes, one of my favorite baking books), half-eaten already as of last night, as Housemate strongly approved of it. I didn’t make any alterations to the recipe…but if I were going to, I’d use more apple slices between the cake base and the topping. Still, all in all, it’s delicious.

1 pear gingerbread cake (also from Morning Bakes), which is the only reason that we have any apple cake left. I took it to our bimonthly D&D game and served it with butter pecan ice cream. I think I probably should’ve baked it 10 minutes longer than the hour it was in, as it had some structural integrity problems. Still, quite delicious, even if it did make about 15% more than necessary to fill my loaf pan. (I ended up having to clean the oven after making it, which in itself resulted in quite a lot of smoke.) Note that if you attempt the recipe, the batter is very, very liquid when it goes into the pan. I think that next time I do this, I’ll probably acquire a mini-loaf pan and split it up, in order to reduce both baking time and mess.

1 batch orange marmalade muffins (Morning Bakes), in the deep freeze, awaiting next weekend’s houseguests.

1 loaf Irish breakfast bread (Morning Bakes), less some of the sesame seeds because I ran out. Likewise in the deep freeze, awaiting next weekend’s houseguests.

For tomorrow, I am planning a batch of peach and oat muffins, a batch of apple buttermilk scones (both from Morning Bakes; did I mention how much use I’m getting from this book?), and a batch of chocolate-chip cookies, because Housemate is so very fond of them. Maybe even a double batch…

Anyway, as promised, the Pear Gingerbread recipe, from Morning Bakes, more or less. I didn’t have corn syrup or apple pie spice, so I used 5/8 C turbinado sugar dissolved in 1/6 C water and boiled to make syrup; and 1/4 tsp. each of nutmeg, mace, cloves, and cinnamon, respectively. It’s a bit more work than your average quick bread, but worth it.

1 firm pear (I used a red Bartlett)
1 2/3 C self-rising flour (I don’t actually buy self-rising flour; for 1 C self-rising, I use 1 C AP flour, plus 1/4 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt, per Substituting Ingredients: An A to Z Kitchen Reference; this book, in combination with How to Repair Food, are priceless, I assure you. )
1 tsp baking soda
1 T ground ginger (my tablespoon measure doesn’t fit in the ginger container, and if yours doesn’t either, 3 tsp. is the equivalent amount)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp apple pie spice (I combined 1/4 tsp each ground cloves, ground mace, ground cinnamon, and freshly grated nutmeg)
1/8 tsp (more or less) ground black pepper
1 stick unsalted butter, chilled and diced
1/2 C molasses (grease the measuring cup with butter beforehand for more accuate measurement and easier removal)
1/2 C light corn syrup (personally, I’m suspicious of corn syrup, so I substituted the homemade turbinado sugar syrup)
2/3 C dark brown sugar (I just used the brown sugar that I had. I don’t usually buy separate “dark” and “light” brown sugars. Only so much space in the pantry, y’know.)
1 1/4 C milk
1 large egg, beaten

Grease a 9 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 loaf pan very well. Line with waxed paper or parchment paper, if you have it handy. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F, or 175 degrees C, depending on where you’re from. While you’re at it, lay down some extra foil on the oven rack, just in case of overflow.

Melt the molasses and corn syrup together over low heat, and cool to lukewarm. Dissolve the brown sugar in the milk over low heat, and likewise cool to lukewarm. While things are cooling, core and dice the pear into approximately 1/2-inch chunks. Sift flour, baking soda, and spices together, then stir to combine. Using either a food processor or a pastry cutter, add the butter and and combine until it forms fine crumbs.

Beat the milk mixture into the dry ingredients, quickly followed by the molasses/corn syrup mixture, then the egg. When the batter is smooth, pour it into the pan. Sprinkle pear chunks on top. They’ll sink into the gingerbread as it cooks.

Bake for 45-60 minutes (or longer, depending on your oven). When a skewer or toothpick comes out clean, it’s done. Let it cool in the pan. Note that because of the fresh fruit contained therein, it won’t freeze well.

Saturday, 3/10

Saturday was probably the nicest morning of the entire trip—sunny, slightly warmer, and a bit less windy than the previous week. The first part of our last day in Dublin was spent wandering around the north side of Dublin, just north of the river, and making our modest contribution to the local economy. We got some photos of James Joyce’s statue, and that of Daniel O’Connell, as well as the GPO and the base of the Spire of Light. We wandered into a few fabric stores, one of which was called “Hickey’s” (not making this up), had a bagel in one of the innumerable shops, and found ourselves on Bachelor’s Walk, right along the river. Purely by chance, I found a bead store, and as I have recently begun thinking that I may need to take up dealing to support that particular habit, I had to go in. (In the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” category, the place ships to the US if your order is over a certain minimum.) We crossed back over the Ha’penny Bridge, dropping in on the Forbidden Planet science fiction/comic shop as we headed back into the southside. We wandered through a square and checked out a couple of the funky little shops.

That afternoon, we hied ourselves off for a last does of edification at the National Museum of Natural History, which is, without a doubt, the creepiest museum I have ever been in. It’s as much a museum museum as a natural history museum, if you get my meaning. It doesn’t seem to have changed very much from its opening in Victorian times, and is packed full of insect-y things pinned into glass cases; pale, squishy-looking things in large glass jars, and a staggering array of fauna and sometimes, their detached heads, taxidermied within an inch of their…well, lives, isn’t really the right word, is it? All of this is documented by cards that have been neatly typed on now-antique typewriters, or documented in the excruciatingly neat handwriting of a corps of forgotten but dedicated and anal-retentive taxonomists.

The ground floor highlights Irish wildlife, complete with massive skeletons of the extinct Giant Irish Deer, a large, disproportionate-looking giant sunfish, and an eel that choked on a frog. A basking shark hangs from the ceiling, and there are in-habitat displays of some of the mammals and birds. I couldn’t help but hear the Arrogant Worms’s “Mounted Animal Nature Trail” playing in my head.

The first floor (which is one floor up from the ground floor, as is common in Europe) is a general exhibition of “international” animals, which is where a staggering array of megafauna have been stuffed and crammed into cases. Several of them are also out on daises, such as the giraffe and the walrus, along with disembodied heads mounted on all four sides of the square pillars that stretch to the lower gallery. From the open ceiling three stories up hang the skeletons of two whales that beached themselves decades ago. The southern wall features a display of birds that died along the Irish coast in the course of their migrations. Or should that be attempted migrations?

The Lower Gallery, which is simply a walkway all around the perimeter of the second story, shows the evolution of vertebrates. There’s an interesting display of nests, as well as the skeleton of the dodo that was the model for the drawings in the original printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, the model appears to have been rather overweight and not in the best of health at the time is sat for the picture.

The Upper Gallery, a walkway all around the perimeter of the third story, shows the evolution of invertebrates, with beautiful seashells in cases next to parasites best not thought about. It also has the only contemporary exhibit in the museum, which shows the photos of animals that are now extinct in Ireland, but still found in other places. The photos were taken by various Irish celebrities, and it had the expected conservation subtext worked into the photographers’ comments about how amazing it had been to travel to foreign parts and see these magnificent animals.

From there, we went on to Archbishop Ryan Park, in Merrion Square. It’s laid out as an English garden, generally, but also has a heather garden, playground, and display or working antique Dublin lampposts. There’s a statue of Oscar Wilde lounging on a large rock on the northwest corner of the park, along with two square columns, each topped with a small statue, with Mr. Wilde’s quotations scrawled on glass in colored marker in various handwriting styles.

Dinner that night was at Ocean, in the Grand Canal dockyards, and very pleasantly close to our hotel. Along with Queen of Tarts, it was one of my favorite places to eat. It’s small, and it was a bit too chilly and windy to eat outside, but the walls are glass, so it was the next best thing. The entire place is very contemporary, with brushed nickel, pale wood, and living room-type furniture rather than tables and chairs. The food was amazing; I had an enormous seafood salad with lots of vegetables, topped with tiny shrimp in a creamy sauce, a raw oyster, smoked salmon, and what I am fairly certain were pickled herrings. We sat looking out at the dozen or so sky cranes in the immediate area, the light-up sculpture across the dockyards, and the sunset. It was a lovely ending to our visit, and the last relaxing time we had until we arrived back in Indianapolis.

What with the seder and all, I haven’t gotten around to mentioning that Housemate got the bamboo flooring finished, trim put back up, and cleanup dealt with in record time on Monday. There’s just a smidgen of touch-up and finishing work left to do, but the hall is effectively done, and improved by orders of magnitude. It’s much brighter, looks cleaner, and honestly, I’d never guess it was the same room if I didn’t know. I can’t wait to get the art back on the walls.

Alaric, the Third Assistant Royal Gardener, peeked through the briar hedge, staring openmouthed at the sight of his coworkers and employers in their magical sleep.

“Faerie magic,” said the pixie, breathlessly. She’d seen it all, and told him the tale.

“No job, and tomorrow’s—would’ve been—payday,” he thought.

He slouched off to the pub, where he told his woes to a rapt audience.

When he’d finished, a traveler threw him a coin. “That was great! Tell us another one.”

Alaric blinked. He reckoned he’d just made a…whatsit, a career change.

“Once, there were these dwarves, see. Seven of ‘em…”