bravebaronbboys

leapin_jot @ 03:05 pm: Updates from the Sick Bed (actually it's a couch)
I feel even worse today!  How wrong is that???  If I have to be sick during the holidays, it should at least come and go quickly so that I can get back to my merry making.  I've had some stomach twinging today too, so now I'm worried this cold is actually the flu waiting to strike me down.  Evil, evil viruses!

But on to more important things...

Still cooking, and I have discovered that cooking the Country bread recipe (which includes actual milk and an egg as ingredients) on the French Bread setting works well.  With the longer rise time, the bread isn't nearly so heavy or dense.  I'd like an even longer time,  I think, but none of the pre-sets have longer settings.  The dough only setting has very short kneading and rising times.  Would it work to run a dough through the dough setting twice?  On the other hand, I could just try adding more yeast or less flour.  I think I'll try that first.  Though actually the French setting worked well.  Maybe I shouldn't fix something that isn't broken?

I tried the French Onion Soup recipe that is under the express bake setting portion of my cookbook.  It doesn't look too good though.  We'll have to see how it tastes after it cools.  I don't think I like the express bake option though.  I mean, how hard is it to wait four hours?  I'm thinking that I'm going to cook everything on the French Bread setting from now on.

I just watched a documentary on jump roping.  Apparently they're trying to get into the Olympics as a sport.  I say go for it!  It will give the Gymnastics division some competition in terms of female viewers.  What caught my attention though is that at one point during the documentary, a team was practicing in an LDS meetinghouse gym.  I guess that's okay?  Because people do just go up to church to play basketball, but it's a little unusual.  With two to three congregations sharing a single meetinghouse, demand for facilities frequently exceeds the availability, so the church buildings don't often get used for non-church related functions.  It was just strange.  Or is it more stange that I'm obsessing about this?  Well, I am sick, all obsessive behavior should be excused, yeah, and stuff like that.

Now I'm watching the Soft Rock Music station on cable, and I'm looking at a picture of Faith Hill who is singing "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" despite the fact that Christmas was days ago, and I realized that Faith Hill looks exactly like Brittney Spears...wonder if they mixed up the pictures?  Weird stuff.  Maybe I should go take a nap.

leapin_jot @ 07:13 pm: Cooking, Sickness, Re-reading HP, and Unbelievably...football.
I have been pretty sick the last two days with a bad cold--had too much fun playing with the nieces and nephews during Christmas...have I mentioned my super cool marshmallow shooter?   Good times!

But I get so bored when I'm sick.  Plus I just got this super cool bread machine, so I've been cooking.  That's probably not good because I'm just spreading germs.  I have been washing my hands frequently though.  Really what is there to do when you're sick?  I made the raisin and cinnamon bread recipe that came with the bread maker, but all the raisins fell to the bottom of the loaf.  On the plus side, the bread is softer and moister than any of the other loaves I've made.

Of course, I've been reading too.  I'm re-reading HP1, with semi-tentative plans to read the other six books too, but I'm not going very fast so far.  It's funny to be reading this first book.  As I read I'll sometimes hear the actors saying the lines or see the scenes from the movies.  Even funnier though is coming across the supporting characters that I've read fan-fics about and thinking about their various added histories. 

I've been using the Vicks scented Puff's tissues, but I don't really notice any difference since my nose is too stopped up to smell them.  I hope I get better soon though.  I have plans! 

We've got tickets to the Texas Bowl on New Year's Eve.  I'm not actually a football fan, but Julie told me about the deal on the tickets right after I had seen the movie the Blind Side--awesome movie!--and going to see a football game just sounded like fun.  Hopefully I won't annoy my grandfather and brother too much with questions because frankly, I just don't get most of what is happening during football games.  I'll have to be sure to bring my HP book just in case.  Unfortunately the HP books are not available on Kindle...sadness.  I guess I could invest in a book about football, but that would definitely be going overboard.  I wonder if there is an iPhone ap for that?

chrysantza @ 10:22 am: Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the boy who buys the beef
May not be SFW (no sex but lots of gore), definitely not kid safe, but funny as all-get-out: a nice little video about body-snatching and dissection:



Happy New Year and all that stuff! :)

Tags: lulz

leapin_jot @ 09:42 pm: I volunteer to live on bread and butter
I'm making my first loaf of bread with my new bread maker. Of course, I went with the French-style recipe. I love French bread! Don't know if I've mentioned this before, but when I lived in Annecy, France--a good sized town, but not a city--I made it my goal to try a baguette from every bakery in the town. I didn't get anywhere close to meeting that goal, but I sure loved trying. Course, I had no idea how fattening bread was. Gosh darn, but it's so unfair!

Anyways, I'm SO excited about my bread maker. I've wanted one for years! I think I'll try a new recipe every day until I go back to school. I'm sure I could find someone to take the other half of several loaves. Luckily the ingredients for bread are cheap.

Does anyone have a recipe or book of recipes that they recommend?

I also made a sour dough starter. It won't be ready for a few days. I know that San Francisco is supposed to have the best--is it bacteria?--for sour dough, but I'm hoping that living so close to the Gulf, I'll be able to make a good sour dough too. Probably makes no difference, right? Still, I can hope!

Tags: bread

leapin_jot @ 01:48 pm: Merry Christmas
Hope everyone is having a happy holiday!

We are having agreat time at my sisters house with her two kids and my brother's five kids. As a good aunt, I came prepared with my marshmallow gun.

Now I'm ready for a nap. Love days like this.

Merry Christmas!

chrysantza @ 09:51 am: You'll see him when he's sleeping, you'll know when he's awake
Great fun!

Norad Santa Tracker. Now you can know where Santa is just like he knows where you are! Doesn't say if he's been "good," though.

Tags: christmas

theljstaff, posting in news @ 11:37 am: LiveJournal Major Notes: Get your holiday fix!

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

Tags: holiday coupons, lj_photophile, ljlimericks, my guests, red ribbon vgift

chrysantza @ 11:51 am: Happy Solstice!
Happy, happy, happy Solstice to everyone! May you have much love and joy and good cheer and squirrels!

chrysantza @ 02:25 pm: $60 for designer pet bowls??? Well, it's YOUR money.
On the MUA messageboards, some girl was wondering if she should get a pair of $60 designer pet bowls for her little wee doggies.

My thoughts:

1) Think of all the makeup you could buy for that

2) At $60, the damn pet bowls had better open the pet food cans, serve the food, and clean up afterwards.

3) They're DOGS. They don't care about designer whoozeewhazzits. My cat is as spoilt and pampered as they come, but even she doesn't notice that her bowls are $3 from Cost Plus. As long as they have tasty food in them.

Again, I love animals, but I think buying designer pet food dishes says a lot more about the owner than it does about the animal. I have yet met a literate dog or cat, let alone one who knows or cares about how much Mommy paid for the dish his food (the real interesting stuff) comes in.

Tags: wtf

miss_daizy @ 12:07 am: Wow! I can't believe how many TOTALLY UNSOLICITED donations some of you have sent! I appreciate all of it, even those who only sent in 10 or 15 dollars. Every little bit helps no matter how inconsequential. My thanks to those of you who've offered prayers instead. Some might say that actions speak louder than words but I'm grateful anyway.

Many of you have asked about my epic AU; Dumbledore After the Frightening Fifth Year. Don't worry; the Daffyverse will gone on! The AU sequel Dumbledore Investigates a Magical World International Treason is planned out and as long as I and my laptop (I prefer a MacBook Pro) hold out, the canon I've created shan't die.

miss_daizy @ 02:38 pm: Well, that was interesting in a "I'd rather be bored" way. I fell down the steps.*

Then I went to the ER where the doctor told me I had an extremely rare and completely untreatable disease that is causing my ankles to melt. I'd tell you the name of the disease but no one but my doctor has ever heard of it. However, I'm keeping my chin up because thankfully my chin isn't melting too. Always look on the bright side; that's the kind of person I am. Please don't do anything for me even though I have to make some very expensive renovations to my home (apparently a jacuzzi slows the melting process down.) Of course I appreciate all your well wishes but what ever you do, don't send a check to me in MY NAME at MY ADDRESS! I'll manage to install the elevator on the small stipend I receive from the services I provided to the CIA on my own.

ETA: Oh no! My devious cousin who I was I employing as a dog walker for the past few months (obviously, I need one because my ankles are melting) managed to get access to my bank account and has stolen what little money I do have. But don't worry about it and whatever you do don't send a sizable check in MY NAME to MY ADRESS!

*_{I really did fall down the steps but I just got a few bumps & bruises}

ETA again: Well, it seems a doubter has hacked my lj to confuse you all into thinking the worst of me. Sigh...it's tough enough dealing with melting ankles without the haters, you know?

chrysantza @ 11:25 am: I realized, if I don't hop to it, I won't get to use my Christmas Skwirl icon
Eight weeks since I posted - wow. What can I say but RL got me by the short 'n curlies! ;)

I think Catalunya is run by twelve-year-old boys:

Caganer

and

Tio de Nadal, aka The Poop Log

Have yourselves a poopy little Christmas, everyone!

Tags: christmas, funny

theljstaff, posting in news @ 05:07 pm: LiveJournal Major Notes: My Stats, My Guests, Holiday promotion, Yandex search, Whitelisting!

Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here.

Introducing My Stats. If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now see detailed reports on how many people are visiting your journal, friends pages, and entries (wherever they're posted on LiveJournal). You can also view data on comments and RSS requests. My Stats is only available to Paid and Permanent account holders, but you can upgrade anytime. (FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!) For additional details on this feature, read this article in paidmembers.

Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar.

Happy holiday promotion!

We're delighted to tell you about our holiday coupons, which will help you share the love with your LiveJournal friends! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send up to 10 LiveJournal Basic/Plus users a $10 coupon for an annual paid subscription now through January 15th, 2010. Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts. If you're a Paid/Permanent user, you can send out your holiday coupons now!

Tweaks and Enhancements

1. The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly.
2. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything!
3. TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd.

You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

Tags: holiday promotion, lj_photophile, ljlimericks, my guests, my stats, sponsored vgifts, whitelisting, yandex