Non-stick Eggs

My poor non-stick skillet is losing the "non" part of its name. Scrambled eggs have become a cleaning challenge and no matter how much butter or oil I lay down on the pan beforehand, I end up with a crust of eggs fused to the skillet.

This morning, for reasons I can't quite explain, I decided to do things different. I whirled my eggs with about a quarter cup milk for each egg in a blender, adding in spices, and poured that into the skillet. As I cooked the mixture, stirring constantly, some interesting stuff happened. The eggs started to precipitate out of the milk. While the eggs were busy becoming solid, the milk was starting to cook off. I ended up with some scrambled eggs and a little liquid left over, and more importantly, there were no eggs stuck to the pan. Hmm. 

I would try to reduce the amount of milk I used, but the effect is intriguing. The eggs are a bit more rubbery and crumbled than I like, but put enough cheese in it, and it's all good. It's certainly worth not having to scrub the pan, and also I know that non-stick skillets aren't that great for you. This may be the beginning of something good. Or odd. Probably odd.

Tumbling Act

I dropped off the stock for the invitations at Signal Graphics this morning. I decided I'd take a shortcut to the bike path, since I had already crossed Lincoln and gone down the big hill. I got over to Cherry Creek and found a ramp going down to the trail. At the top was a steep hairpin turn I had to make. I started the turn, saw how steep and tight it was, and I freaked out. I stopped and before I could get my foot out, I toppled over like a tree hewn by axes. Wham!

Fortunately, not much was under me when I fell, and I partially landed in grass. The asphalt and whatnot did get a go at my left leg, but mainly left me with scrapes. My sandal was tangled up in my brake lever on my handle bars. I extracted myself and realized that my phone was in my left pocket. A quick panicked check found in mercifully unaffected. All in all I got out of it with little more than a few bloody scrapes, a slightly jammed wrist, and bruised pride. 

The ride home was much less uneventful. I stopped by the library and picked up some reading for the Mexico trip. I went back to Signal Graphics, and they had done a great job printing and cutting the invites. It was also shockingly cheap, and they even shrink-wrapped the whole lot when they were done. They even did some color correction for me when the screen on the invite was printing out purple rather than blue. Kudos to you, Signal Graphics!

Nutshell. Contents: One Weekend

As the snow came plummeting out of the sky, wet and heavy, I was driving up 36 to Boulder. I safely made it through the mess and we went and had dinner with Kerri and Doug at a place called The Full Belly, which was quite good. 

The next day, Jen and I did some preparation for an upcoming trip to Mexico before coming down to my place. I worked on laying out the invitations and Jen worked on getting the mail merge ready. We had hoped to go to Doors Open Denver, but the constant heavy rain kept us indoors. Jen then went to have dinner with a friend and I finished up the invitations.

On Sunday I joined my parents for lunch after church. They're going to be around for the summer working as campground hosts. I also helped out with their computer. I fixed their sound card but lost their Internet connection. Whoops. I left there and went over to the Tech Center to have dinner with friends and then went to the Comedy Works there.

And then I came home. The End.

Well, I guess I'll also mention that today we finished up the project for the problem client today. I am free. Freeee! I had a celebratory ice cream sundae (with pumpkin chip ice cream!) from Little Man. Then I immediately went to work on another project that is super cool and has someone else doing the heavy thinking on it. Hopefully the clients are a bit more professional, too. 

Confused

This evening I heard a sponsor mentioned on NPR. It was whatever movie house that put out the movie Role Models. They were promoting the unrated version of the movie. The movie is sort of a bawdy comedy about two irresponsible, crude guys doing community service by mentoring kids. What marketing person thought that the audience for NPR overlaps with the audience for an unrated version of a raunchy comedy? Either someone's an NPR fan and just wants to support it, or someone is very confused.

That said, the movie did get 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it may not be that bad.

Beasts in the City

On Tuesday night I stayed around after work and went to a fantastic RMAUG presentation by Barbara Binder on Photoshop. I learned quite a bit. With my head full of Photoshop lore I rode home in the dark for the first time in a while.

As I went by the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte, I spied Canadian geese asleep in the shallows near the old power plant. I continued up Cherry Creek, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the silhouette of a red fox outlined against the light reflecting off the creek. I let out a surprised, "Woah!" and swung my bike around to a stop. I watched the fox for a few seconds and then a runner coming up the trail behind me freaked the fox out. It was between the two of us and ran in circles a bit until in went around the runner and disappeared down the trail.

A fox in downtown Denver. It is so odd. I wonder, though, if it is related to the one I saw a couple years ago on Easter. How many (non-metaphorical) foxes can there be in downtown Denver?

Easter Wester

I had a great, high caloric weekend. Saturday I did a few chores before going up to Boulder to hang with Jen. We ran some errands before grabbing some Cinnabon cinnamon rolls for Easter morning. I will confess that I don't think I have had a Cinnabon cinnamon roll before. My mom is a master of the cinnamon roll, so I have a pretty high bar for this particular confection. Jen was shocked, shocked!, that I had never had one, so we got a third roll to have right then. It's pretty darn awesome stuff. It's hard to go wrong with that much butter and pecans.

Afterwards we made our own diet killers: vacumn cleaner cookies. They're named such for the speed at which they disappear. We made some to take to Easter and some for that evening when we went and had dinner with Jen's friends Josh and Kara. Josh is going to be the pastor who marries us, so it was cool to get to spend time with them.

The next day we got up and went to the CU campus, where we took in an Easter service in Mackey Auditorium. It was pretty awesome, and felt good to have a big to do. It made Easter feel so celebratory. Afterwards we went to Jen's parents' house where we had a big dinner, and I mean big, with her family. It was a great time, and I lazily digested ham and potatoes while watching some of the ever amazing Planet Earth series, being mesmerized by birds of paradise and terrified by acrobatic great white sharks.

I then shuttled Jen off to the airport for a Nebraska adventure and returned home to read Anathem until 2:30 in the morning, something I don't think I've done since I was in high school. It's so good. Neal Stephenson, everbody. You need to read his stuff. Do it. Get going. Go. Read and become smarter.

Presenting at Adobe Camp

Denver's got a cool new conference, The Rocky Mountain Adobe Camp, and yours truly will be presenting at it! The camp covers several different areas of the Flash Platform, and there'll be a host of awesome presenters speaking in several different tracks. The camp gets going on June 22nd.

I'll be presenting about doing SynSWF development for Connect in the eLearning track. Developing custom apps for use with Connect is an underdeveloped area right now, so hopefully I can get some people excited about it and share some of the cool things we've learned here at RealEyes about creating apps that bend the rules of what you can do in Connect.

Hope to see you there! Make sure you get in for some early bird registration specials!

Tower of Odd Smells Gazette

The weather this morning continued to be reminiscent of the Oregon coast. I climbed the steps this morning to the gym. And this morning a few revelations happened. I had wondered how the white cushions were going to work on the rooftop patio. Well, this morning they were gone. I'm guessing they were taken in to avoid the rain we got last night, but I would not rule out foul play. 

I also noticed this morning on the way to work that a mysterious nook in the lobby had been filled with an interesting piece of sculpture: guys rappeling down the wall on ropes. It reminds of the scene from The Blues Brothers where all the S.W.A.T. guys are going "Hup, hup, hup" constantly. The question answered was: how would they keep people from stealing or vandalizing what was there. The answer was a sheet of plexiglass added to the front.

Also this morning, as I mounted the stairs to the Tower's pinnacle, I discovered more traces of the puzzling and elusive Stair-climbing Puker. The sign of this creature was a giant pile of puke on the 10th (!) floor of the Tower of Odd Smells. Evidently the Puker had been eating Doritos and black beans and let fly with a prodigous orange-colored display of barf that dribbled throughout that particular section of stairs. This was a colossal effort on his or her part, and would, I believe, in scientific parlance be called a Gigantospew, also known as a Wonder Chunder from Down Under. Who are these people?!

In non-vomit related news, I also broke my personal record for running a mile. Back in my flower of youth, I ran the mile in about 10:15 to 10:30. Today I ran it in 9:30! And that's after already running for 25 minutes. Of course it was on an elliptical, so I didn't have to deal with knees and ankles being ground under my plodding girth, but I will take it! I will leave the vomit.

Sins of Emission

The air was nostalgic for me today. With the coolness, wind, and humidity, it felt like a early Fall day on the Oregon coast to me. It made for a great ride home, as hurried as I was. See, I had left work early, but not as early as I would like. My goal was to get my car emission tested so I could get it registered.

The testing center closes at 5:30. My plan was to leave work at 3:30, ride home, leisurely get to the testing center, get tested, go to the store and have a productive evening. Well, I didn't leave until 4:20, as I was trying to finish up a troublesome bug. I rushed home, hustled up to get my things from the apartment, and then literally ran to my car. I sped down to the center, taking some unusual routes along the way. 

I pulled into the bay at the center at about 5:05. That was when I had the revelation that they don't take credit cards at the center; only cash and checks. The attendant confirmed this for me. I had to curse and turn around and go find a bank. I had to fight through traffic to get over to it. I ran in, grabbed $40, ran back out, and thanks to a bold fellow traffic fighter, I was able to get back onto Evans and headed back towards the center.

I arrived with minutes to spare and was the last car to get through the center. Daria passed with flying colors, of course. I then had to fight my way through traffic to the store and back home. Whew!

Fortunately, through all this my phone was back up and running. I was able to use this time to download my apps again and starting inputting my data again. Yay for having a phone again!

Sad Phone

Uh, just in case you were planning on calling me, that might be difficult for a while. My phone lost network connection today, so I called T-Mobile to ask for help. They said everything looked fine on their end, so they suggested I do a reset of my phone. I did, and it worked right until I tried to sign in. The phone can't connect to the servers to do the necessary restart stuff. Soooooooooo, no phone for me right now.

UPDATE: I talked with T-Mobile again (thank goodness for Skype!). Unfortunately the word from T-Mo is that the Denver area is currently experiencing a data outage with no estimation of a time that it will come back up. So until it does, I can't sign into my phone. Arrrgh. I got a $5 credit for my trouble, though. Wheeee.

Quickly, Children!

So, before I forget, here's the round up of my weekend. Saturday saw me cleaning the apartment rather thoroughly. It was all in preparation for Jen's folks coming down for dinner on Sunday. Things got clean. Jen came down and we ventured down to Colorado Springs. We wandered around the Garden of the Gods in the snow and wind until our faces were too numb to enunciate clearly. Then we hopped in the car and went to the Phantom Canyon Brewing Company and had some of their sinfully good soup and other food.

The drive home was adventurous as the light snow in Colorado Springs turned into furiously blowing snow as we climbed the Palmer Divide. My fuel light came on, so we got off the road at Larkspur and went through the snow there to get gas. After we got back on the road the windshield began to blur. I finally gave in and attempted to use the wipers to clean off the muck. Unfortunately, no wiper fluid came out and the grime was merely smeared across our view. We made it to Castle Rock on prayers and a small patch of visibility in the lower left-hand corner. 

We filled up the washer fluid reservoir, but still nothing was coming out. We figured that the fluid had gotten low and frozen. Fortunately we were able to avoid spray on the windshield for the rest of the drive. By the time we got home, the windshield fluid was flowing again.

Sunday we went to church and I cooked while Jen helped a friend move. I made a mango pie and some Thai soup for the dinner; my first for the future in-laws. We had a good time with Jen's folks and they liked my cooking. After everyone left I looked at the mountain of dishes and opted to leave that for Monday. I cannot wait to have a dishwasher. Three more months...

Art Comes to the Tower of Odd Smells

The management of the Tower of Odd Smells has been doing some renovations of the building. It's mainly been repainting and recarpeting. My thoughts run the way that if they're going to make some improvements, they might address the water coming out of the walls and stuff like that. 

Yesterday, though, I came home to find the lobby all nicely decorated with art and furniture and all sorts of breakable looking things in a wall of cubby holes they recently installed. Call me cynical, but anything that isn't bolted down or indestructable is not going to last long in this building. In fact, the lights out front frequently get knocked over despite being bolted into the cement. They used to bring the pillows in at night off of the previous couches. 

The bright-eyed optimism also extends to some other improvements. This morning I discovered that the rooftop patio was outfitted with scads of swanky looking patio furniture ... the cushions of which, are white. White furniture outside? In an urban environment where it snows? Hmm. Still, the rooftop patio now actually looks like some place I wouldn't mind relaxing. I just need to get it in before birds and Mother Nature have their way with those white chairs. In fact, that and the new gas barbecue up there have me plotting a party. We have to enjoy these pretty things while they last.

The Lazarus Project

I wish this is as cool as it sounds, but the Lazarus Project is the nickname I've given the project I'm working on for RealEyes. It has earned this name because it looked dead. I poked it. It was dead. But now, unexpectedly it has risen back to life after two days. And it's not undead. It's alive and perhaps better thant it was before. Like Lazarus, its resurrection is due to a Jew; namely my boss. He has some very good powers of persuasion.

Of course, it remains to see if its resurrection is a good thing or if I'll soon be scrambling to find a holly stake and a head of garlic. But it looks like this thing will be completed on our terms and without the stress-inducing deadlines. Time will tell.

Completely off subject, I also watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. It had a good tone to it, despite some just random oddness and stretches of disbelief. It had its high points and certainly some low points, but it ended on a nice note I thought. I'm not sure what would have been a completely satisfactory ending for me. Still, it was a great series and I'm glad it wasn't stretched into X-Files style garbage; a shambling, rotting mockery of what it was. Kudos to Sci-Fi for letting go. Of course there's that Caprica spin-off in the works ...

Strudel Pictures

Okay, now that I'm off the bad project, I can actually put up the pictures from Elizabeth's birthday party with all the strudel baking. Enjoy!

The birthday girl.

Elizabeth and Jen work the amazingly elastic dough.

Mark and Lisa are decked out and ready to make strudel!

Brushing the strudel. Note the transparency of the dough.

Strudel!

Ultra yummy pork rouladen! Soooo good!

April Flowers and Showers

Astute readers of this blog may have noticed me whining commenting about how busy I am at work. I've been working on a project that has not been going smoothly. Finally, yesterday, it all blew up. I'm not going into details, but suffice to say that I am very glad to be done with this project and the client. It feels like a weight has been lifted from me. And it helps that now my next two weeks are free and won't be spent hunched over a laptop.

Today, I came into work and had a box of flowers delivered to me. My first thought was that Jen was sending me a "Congratulations on the death of your project" bouquet, but no, my amazing gal sent me a bouquet and a sweet note to celebrate April Fool's Day. I think this may be the first time I've received flowers, and it certainly is the first time I've received a present for April Fool's Day.

It also happens to be my 2-year anniversary at RealEyes. It's been a great experience so far, and I have learned soooooo much (especially about dealing with clients in the last month). I'm looking forward to more fun projects (unlike this last one).

Now I get to watch the snow fall outside and relax. My Bible study was cancelled tonight, so I get to catch up on everything that has fallen behind in the mad rush to get the project done. I sense some Battlestar Galactica in my near future...