Good bye carpet crawlies, heeellllloooo gorgeous!

The monkey and I spend 2.5 days putting down a new bamboo floor in our loft area.  It looked awful before, and now there is a floor!  Behold the loveliness:

I think we did a really really good job.  The monkey did all the color selection - and it looks awesome.  I did the cutting.  I think we make a good team.

Inception - Now in HD!

I buy things with my Amex card in order to get points to use for Home Depot gift certificates.  Then I use the gift certificates to buy things at Home Depot using my Amex, which gets me more Home Depot gift certificates. 

I must go deeper! This is Home Depot Inception.



Bamboo - Not just for skewers anymore!



So last night the monkey and I went to Home Depot, seemingly our favorite store ever because we go almost every week.  We drove to the Depot of Homes in order to pay for 1014 sq ft of bamboo flooring.  Our order was 43 boxes of genuine engineered, solid 5/8" bamboo flooring in the color "Toast".  It set us back ~$1700, which includes 6.5% mass sales tax and $65 for delivery. 

Cake balls. hehehehe. Balls.

For my last office Christmas party, I decided to bake something heavy with the eggs (thank you ladies!).

I made a sheet cake and lemon curd from my Martha Stewart 2003 cookbook.  I wanted to do something cute and an homage to my girls.  So I decided to make cake balls (hahaha) - which apparently are a huge thing on the internets.

So after baking the cake and curd, you just tear up everything and mix it into a big homogeneous lump.  Reminds me of how my little sister used to (and still) eats cake (smushing it up into a frost cake paste that usually came out looking gray).

Then you roll the mixture into balls (ha!) and refrigerate.  Then dip them in some colored chocolate and decorate!  I have a set of food coloring and sprinkly stuff in the pantry that I bought for the last fancy cake I made.  It came in very handy to dye the dipping chocolate, and the fondant for the accessories.

The results were these little chicks.  I think they came out pretty cute.

I ran out of yellow chocolate, so I made the snowmen. 

I also thought chicks + moustaches + tophat = funny. 



Cray-cray Bunguin.

I don't know when my resolution started to fail me, but I find way more often these days I am left feeling like my world is a only a few good shakes from crashing to the ground and shattering everywhere.  I used to be able to shake anything off.  I guess these days, I have so much to lose.  I worry that if I lose my job, then I loose the house.  Then I worry that the monkey will leave with no home to bear.  Then, I'm back at the beginning in a crappy apartment, or my god, my mom's place. 

Those assholes who say "it's better to have love and lost, than to have never loved" apparently never did it right, because just thinking about losing my love tears my intestines to shreds.  I can't even fathom what would happen if or when the real thing goes down.

This is what happens when you let your guard down.  I hope your happy, sappy.

Life sucks and then you die.

But at least there are a few good things in between...

When things suck so bad that everything falls apart, I think I need the following mantra:
"Shite happens.  I also shit.  Therefore, I make shit happen."

These are the days of my life.

Clean Up Day

Yesterday was clean up day!

The monkey and I were lazy last fall (mostly due to the fact that I was caught up in taking a grad class and had no time to contribute to the homstead).  We didn't do any cleaning before the havy snow. There was no raking of the leaves and there are little pieces of trash blowing all over the front of the yard.  Witness the crap:

Turns out, lazyness is a virtue! It was a much better idea to clean up in the spring rather than the fall.  The leaves protected all the plants underneath.  

While raking, we used every yard bag in the garage and still had at least four barrels worth of debris.  Since we needed extra bags, the rest of the day was devoted to a Home Depot run.  Therefore the clean up continued today, and the results were great.



I broke my camera.... twice.

I broke my camera when I was in Dubai last month.  I was in the desert... dropped the camera.... and suprise, got sand in it.  The camera would turn on and pop the lens out.  Problem was after almost completeling the startup sequence it would blink all angrily, and then close up again.  I banged on it, shook it, and it still would not stay on.  I figured there was sand stuck somewhere in the lens mechanics.  I actually though the camera was dead, and tried to get my company to cough up for a new one.  Let's just say that was a no-go.

So, rather than spending another $200 (which really my company should have covered), I decided it couldn't hurt to take it apart and try to clean it.  So I did, last weekend.  Take it apart that is. The first pucture is the camera completely apart on my dining room table.  The second is the lens mechanism. 



You can see the optical zoom component in the above picture.  It is still attached to the lens box (it is attached by two rails and can slide up and down to be put away or used for zoom).  The main lens is on the right, having been detached from the main box. 

I found a little round sand grain in the lens's gear box (upper left corner), removed it, put it all back together.  Low and behold, it worked! New camera!
I decided it would be a great idea to bring my freshly fixed spoils with me to DC last week.  I put it in a nice fabric bag, all sung and safe.  When I arrived in DC, I promptly realized I had used that same bag while in Dubai and there was sand in it.

I had to spend another hour this morning taking it apart and repeating the whole process. You think I would have learned the first time.  It's new home is going to be a plain old plastic baggie.

Meh.

I miss home.

I'm over DC.

On one hand, at least they have happy hour here.

On the other, no monkeys.

Monkeys win.



Waiting for spring to.. sprung?

Last year the monkey and I had a small impromptu garden in our backyard.  The people we purchased our house from had nothing but grass in the backyard, so it was a lot of work to turn over just a small plot.  Despite our lateness to the party, we actually got a decent yield.  No thanks to the evil squirrels and crafty chickens.

We had a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers, only a few peppers, but no squash (damn you squirrels!).

The Poopie Ladies

The monkey and I don't have any pets.  There was sak-dog, but she's gone now.

What we do have are these little poop machines who live in the shed in our backyard who lay us eggs in return for food.  It's kind of awesome.

I love the fact that our chickens lay us eggs.  I love the fact that they require the least maintenance I have ever encountered with an animal.  I however, do not love the fact that they poop everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  You know when an animal is not pet material when they poop in their own food and water without compunction.  Seriously, I've seen them parading around with streaks of poo-ey goo in their afros or on their back like it's nothing. No big deal, it's a just a little poo.

It wasn't so bad in the summer, because they run all over the backyard distributing the poo.  But in the winter. Oh. my. god.  When it snows, they won't leave the coop.  I have to shovel the run and coax them out with corn.  And then, just so much poo.  Dear lord, the poo.
I can't wait until we completely thaw out, and the poo-muck in their run subsides and the backyard is no longer a swamp.  Have you ever been on a slip and slide made of mud and chicken shit?  Not fun.  So trying to create some drainage in their run will be a project for this summer.  More digging, yay!



Breakfast Musings....

Conversation taken place in the shower half hour ago with the Monk-enator.

Bunguin:  "ooooo. i should make pancakes some morning with bacon inside them."

Monkey: " mmmmmm bacon."

Bunguin: "oh oh oh oh. or pancakes with sausage in the middle of them.  like a corndog.  i'm guessing you would have to dip it first, then cook it in the round somehow."

Monkey: "you know how that process ends. Poop."

End scene.

I hate the Facebook.

It's true.  I think the facebook is evil and a sign of the social apocalypse.  It's backward and prosophobic, but I can't support it.  { Monkey says: "Isn't that another word for a republican?"}  I think Zuckerburg is just collecting and compiling info so that, well who knows... use it against you.

So,  in order to be able to share pictures and brain farts, using more than 420 characters (FB, blech) or 140 (twitter), I choose this forum instead. 

Hey, it shows some growth on my part.