Casey's Domestic Experiments

Kombucha in the Jar

2014-07-22T18:44:00.001-06:00

I wasn't real sure about this whole kombucha thing, but The Fella had heard of it before and is slightly familiar with it and thought it'd be fun, so we opted to give this a go too along with all of our other fermented goodies. Kombucha is a slightly effervescent fermented black tea drink that you brew with a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast). Not the most appetizing thing I've ever heard of, but after reading about it on a fermentation group on Facebook and hearing what The Fella had to say, it sounded like it'd at least be a fun science experiment if nothing else. So, when at Safeway, I grabbed a couple bottles of GT's Enlightened Kombucha...definitely not what I thought it'd taste like and I wasn't sure I could get on board with this. Due to the way kombucha ferments, it ends up with a bit of alcohol. Not much alcohol, usually less than .5%, but sometimes you end up with a wee bit more in there. So because of that, some brands like GT's has a few forms of kombucha that don't produce alcohol. Those ones are usually also flavored with fruit juice of some sort. Yeah, I wasn't totally digging that at first. After a few bottles of it, I don't mind it as much, but we'll see what I think of the regular kind without it. I can't find the bottled regular kind where I'm at, so I'm brewing it...which is also a heck of a lot cheaper. I can find it for about $3 a bottle here which is more than I'm willing to pay, especially when I'm not really digging the fruity kinds.

You see that little disc thing? That's a dehydrated Kombucha SCOBY I acquired July 9. I didn't know this, but apparently it takes 30 days to re-hydrate. Makes sense now that I think about it, but I didn't think about that at the time. Ooops. Now this little lady is wallowing in tea and trying to regain some life. It's also recommended that you don't drink this batch since it's mostly to rehydrate the poor dear, so that means I'll be waiting another 7-30 days for my first batch of kombucha from this SCOBY. Not what I had in mind when I started. I'm one of those instant gratification people and I'm not overly patient with this kind of stuff. I know! It's ironic that I ferment stuff because that stuff takes time. Lol. Worth it though since I end up with some tasty fermented foods, but still a bit exasperating to wait for at least a week to taste most stuff. Anyway, back to the kombucha... So with the knowledge that my kombucha experiment is suddenly taking longer than I thought it would, I found a place that sells lovely, blubbery SCOBYs, not dehydrated ones...and they were on sale at that time...so I ordered one...

While the dehydrated one was cheaper, I'll encourage other folks like me to suck it up and pay more for a

lovely, blubbery one in some starter liquid. IT IS WORTH THE MONEY. Or, if you find someone willing to gift you one or send you one for shipping costs, go that route. I'm not impressed with my little dehydrated one so far since it takes so freaking long just to rehydrate it to even start brewing. I'm hoping it hangs in there and fattens up a bit and thrives because it's one sad little bugger. The one I just nicknamed "Big Momma" on the right, now she's full of spunk and apparently liking her new home. I've had her since Friday and she's apparently doing well and happy. Why do I say that? Because I found a baby SCOBY in the jar last night. She's thin, but there and becoming more SCOBY-like. Total win in my book since I now have the start of another that I can fatten up and use. WHEE! Perhaps it's not the most exciting thing for some folks, but I think it's pretty awesome to see. :D

Garden Progress!

2014-07-12T13:13:00.001-06:00

And since I forgot to post garden progress yesterday...here it is! We built a 12 ft x 12 ft offset tiered garden patch. It seems to work pretty well. Although next year we either need to move the zucchini, cucumbers, and squashes...or just not plant so many of them. The yellow squash and the zucchini squash are overtaking the garden plot. LOL. I got the top tier completely weeded and just need to get the bottom tier done. That's not happening today though. It's way too hot for that right now. Oh, and that background photo for the blog? That's actually a photo of the lettuce when they had just sprouted! :D It kinda makes me happy to use that, especially since I'm posting garden stuff on here right now. :)

There's about 8 pepper plants, 6 strawberry plants, mustard greens, mesclun, and lettuce

eggplant, sad looking broccoli, basil, and ittle-bitty oregano plants

Squash invasion!

lots of weeds, tomatoes, squashes, and cucumbers

Fermenting and Gardening Away!

2014-07-11T12:21:00.001-06:00

A couple weeks ago or thereabouts, I posted about making sauerkraut. It's delightful! I fished the peppercorns and dill sprig out of it and managed to fit it all into 2 jars! I think they might be pint sized, I forgot to compare and check to see if they were that or quart. :blush: Ooops. I got them at a yard sell for cheap, so it worked for me at the time. LOL. You can see where we already enjoyed some prior to me jarring it. YUM! It has a nice bit of heat to it and a lot of garlic flavor.
My next project was to do some regular sauerkraut (so we can enjoy some during the week without wiping out co-workers with the garlic aroma) and let it set longer. I also read about fermenting Salsa Verde, so I decided to give that a whirl as well. Besides, the Salsa Verde gave me a reason to check out some homemade airlocks too!

I didn't use a recipe per se for the regular sauerkraut--just sliced a head of cabbage (it was about 2.5 lbs prior to slicing) and added a couple tablespoons of salt, massaged and beat the cabbage, stuck it in what I'm referring to as my "kraut jar", added a bit of brine, then weighed it down with a fruit bowl, custard dish, and ziplock bag partially full of brine. Hey, it works and it's fairly inexpensive to do. LOL.
For the Salsa Verde, I used this recipe from Domestic Soul. Instead of culturing it with whey though, I used some of my brine from my garlic kraut stuff. I probably didn't need to use 4 TBSP of it (recipe only calls for 2), but I wanted to make sure I had something to kickstart it since I'm a bit paranoid. I checked it a few days later and it was perfect! I think I'll add some corn and ground cumin to it next time though. It's pretty dang tasty, so I'm thinking it's a win. I'm not sure just how well my homemade airlocks actually worked since this was a short ferment and there really wasn't that much bubbling. Nothing molded which is always a good thing. LOL.

The airlocks you see up there? Not too hard to make. Just get some of the plastic lids that Ball makes (or even the Mainstays WalMart brand), drill a hole, pop in a grommet (I used a food grade silicone one), then stick an airlock in there. I got the airlocks for pretty cheap off of Amazon.com. I wasn't sure which style I'd like more, so I ordered a 3 pack of 2 different styles to check out. With it being a short ferment, I just used water. Next time I think I'll use brine just in case it gets in the food and to keep it from molding. Not sure if it makes a difference one way or the other, but I'd really hate to be growing stuff in one of those. LOL.
This weekend's events will (hopefully) be: making yogurt, feta, and red sauerkraut with apples. Since I'm trying a longer ferment time with my regular green sauerkraut, I'm going to attempt the red kraut in a canning jar with an airlock. We'll see just how well this works, but at least hubby and I were able to find some half-gallon sized canning jars so I should have enough space if I split it up into whatever jars it fits it! I'll post another blog post when we get stuff done (or started in the case of the kraut) and get some photos of it. Until then though, I guess this is it. :waves:

Close up of the Salsa Verde. Ooooh! Pretty!

P.S--And I realized after posting this that I didn't address the gardening-- our garden is doing well...it's kinda huge, actually. LOL. I'll do a separate post for that one another time though.

Lacto-Fermented Sauerkraut (Cthulu included!)

2014-06-27T20:03:00.001-06:00

Someone from plurk got me interested in fermenting stuff. Not sure why I suddenly jumped on board with this, but it seemed intriguing...and we now have a good sized garden which should hopefully produce lots of veggies. At least that's the hope. Anyway, back to the fermenting bit. So I became intrigued with the idea and was directed to a Facebook group called "Fermenter's Kitchen" which led me to a post about using whatever pickle recipe you like and modifying it to work for cabbage. Oh, what a dangerous idea. I'm not a huge pickle fan. Not sure why because I like the spices just fine other pickled items I've tried I like, but pickles just never caught on with me for some reason. Sauerkraut on the other hand...well, let's just say that I rather like it with various things. After a bit of research and some questions, I delved in and started my first batch June 18, 2014! Whee!
I didn't think to take photos while making it, so you just get a few of it in various stages of fermenting.

This is the sauerkraut right after I put it in my handy-dandy jar. It's looks so pretty and green! I'll include a list of what I put in there too after I'm done with all the photos.

Off to the right are photos from about 5 or 6 days into the ferment. I had a bit of an issue trying to keep most of my cabbage bits under the brine. FYI-- A stainless steel steamer thing might seem like a good idea at the time, but it's really not. I had some odd gunk in there from the brine de-greasing it. Remove gunk and steamer and use a small fruit bowl and custard dish with a gallon ziplock partially filled with brine, stack like so, and viola! No more gunk and most stuff stayed submerged! Boom. Awesomeness abounds!

And here's the photo from yesterday. A little over a week into fermenting. It's rather warmish in the apartment (about 72F-78F, sometimes up to 80F), so we figured it'd ferment a bit faster. We had some kraut on a sandwich with some cheese, meat, cheese, and Parmesan ranch dressing and it was delightful! Had a bit of a bite to it due to the chili flakes in there. Mmmmm.

And you see that dill weed sprig there? Hubby and I decided that it looked like a sea monster...or Cthulu. Hence the Cthulu in the blog post. LOL.

OK, time for the recipe.

Deli Style Sauerkraut

4 TBSP pickling salt (Salt to taste. You don't have to use quite this much, but make sure you get at least a 2% brine in the jar.)
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp, heaping of ground coriander
2 TBSP of dill weed (you could probably use dill seed, but I'm not sure how much.) I just pinched off a good sized sprig
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 heads (I only used about half a head) of garlic, minced
a 2-3 lb head of cabbage

Chop cabbage into thin slices. Place cabbage and salt in bowl and massage and knead and pound the cabbage so it can release some water. Take your time and get what you can out of it. I mixed in my other spices after that and let mine set in the bowl for about an hour before putting it in the jar. You can let it set in the jar overnight or just add water to cover the cabbage. You probably want it about an inch or so over the cabbage. Place a weight on top if needed to bring the cabbage below the brine. You don't want anything hanging out at the top for too long or it will start molding after a bit. Just let it sit for however long you want (some prefer 3-7 days, others 4-10 weeks...or more). Taste every few days to see if you like how it tastes. :D

Not Another Horror Story Part 3

2014-03-25T13:43:00.002-06:00

Part 1 and Part 2 of the saga.

Part 3 of the thyroid saga. Whee! So I left off at surgery being set for March 11 where they'll remove my whole thyroid due to Hashimoto's and a 3 cm nodule. Whee!
Since Denver is about a 3 hour drive and I'd spend at least one night in the hospital and need to be at the surgeon's office Friday for a post-op check up, Fella and I decided to head to Denver the night before the surgery and stay in a motel till Friday. Given the distance and the price of fuel, it just made more sense to do that. Both of our jobs gave us time off until Monday, so we were good to go! And since I have an aunt that lives within 30-45 minutes of Denver, she met up with us Tuesday and stayed with the Fella while I was in surgery until the weather got bad enough that she felt it might be best to leave.
Prior to surgery I'd searched the web and found quite a few forums and such discussing thyroid issues and surgeries and a large number stated how they wish they'd never had the surgery. Not exactly comforting when you're about to do it yourself. LOL. However, after some of the rollercoaster of medical professionals I'd been to, I can see why. You get the wrong person or someone screws up and you have a hefty price to pay for it. They cut through the vocal cords and you're pretty messed up from it emotionally and physically. They remove all of your parathryoids or damage them severely and you're on calcium supplements for the rest of your life. It's a good surgery when done well, and a nightmare if it isn't. I ended up with a general surgeon that wasn't sure she could do it, so she referred me to someone that does this all the time. How come I was so blessed, I'll never know. Most I can figure is that God has His hand in it and I'm not sure why.
So Tuesday morning, day of surgery. I hadn't had anything to eat since the night before and nothing to drink (including water) after midnight. Not exactly my idea of a great way to spend the morning, but it is what it is. Glad I hydrated myself well the day before or that'd have been hell since my surgery wasn't until 1:30pm. We didn't have to check in at the hospital until 11:30, so my aunt, The Fella, and I went over to Denver's Museum of Nature and Science and did a quick 2 hour stroll through there. Great way to get your mind off of things and it was neat to see a lot of the stuff in there. Headed over to the hospital, found a spot to park, and went to get checked in. Got all of that taken care of and left Aunt and Fella in the waiting room so that the nurse could weigh me, measure how tall I was, have me change into the hospital gown, get my IV started and they could do whatever other pre-surgery stuff they do. Talked to the surgeon for a few and after she left, Aunt and Fella got to come hang out with me for a bit. They did the pre-surgery pregnancy test (no surprises there!), got me entered into the system, we met the anesthesiologist (who was awesome!), and after a bit they wheeled me into the operating room. I vaguely remember talking with the nurse and anesthesiologist after getting on the table and next thing I know someone is trying to wake me up...
I was hearing "Casey? Are you awake?...Are you with us?..." I tried answering, but it wasn't working so well, so I gave them a thumbs up. LOL. Then I sort of remember hearing the surgeon tell me a few details from surgery and I was fighting to open my eyes and keep them open. I remember being in a little bit of pain. No idea how long I was in the recovery room, but after some time I managed to come to enough that I could keep my eyes open better and someone asked if I wanted some water. I croaked out a yes and managed to get a sip of water down without choking. I don't remember the trip to my room, but I woke up again or became more coherent there. Not sure which. LOL. I wasn't in my room for very long with Fella came in. He said my aunt left early due to the weather (it was snowing and flurrying some), but wanted him to let her know when he saw me and how I was doing. They more I sat there and interacted, the better I did and it helped when I got more water into me. The more I croaked, the better my throat started doing and I started clearing out some of the phlegm. Fella mentioned what the doc told him (which matched what I vaguely remember her telling me). Here are some of the things I noticed after surgery:
Effects of Anesthesia:
I wasn't cold. At all. I couldn't figure out why Fella was constantly asking if I was cold...and why he got his coat after awhile. After the anesthesia wore off, I realized why-- the room's thermostat was set at 60F. Oops?
TMI, but the first couple of times you have to pee, it's kinda tough. You *know* you have to go, but it takes a bit to convince your bladder to cooperate. Once you get enough water in your system, that'll clear out the anesthesia and you'll be more "normal".
I wasn't sick which surprised me. When I had my tonsils removed when I was 5 or 6, one of the few things I remember was throwing up. This time though? I wasn't nauseous and felt just fine. Woohoo!
When I was sleeping while it was still pretty well into my system, I'd quit breathing a little when dosing off. Nurse said that was a normal side effect, so when you jolt awake, just calm down a bit and take some deep breaths. Once the anesthesia cleared out more, I didn't have an issue with it.
Effects of Breathing Tube and Oxygen Thing in Nose:
Sore throat, but not horrific. Between pain killers and Cepocal lozenges I did ok.
The phlegm. You will cough up some weird gunk. Just go with it and try and be careful when coughing because it does hurt some. You'll be doing this the next few days, so just roll with it. They give you this spirometer thing that they want you to use. Do it. It'll help with clearing that gunk out and keep it from settling int and becoming an infection. And if they let you take Mucinex, that helps too. Between that and lots of water, it'll help clear it out pretty well. Mucinex and water will thin it out a bit too and if you have sinus issues like mine, you'll want what help you can get.
That oxygen thing in your nose? It will dry your sinuses out. Denver air is pretty dry anyway, so after a bit my sinuses were parched, cracked, and bleeding a little. Nasal spray or a sinus rinse/neti pot will help with that. I was kicking myself for forgetting my NeilMed sinus rinse kit because the nasal spray just wasn't getting it and boy were they unhappy!
Recovery wise in the hospital, I did pretty well. My throat hurt some, so I hugged my ice pack...I hugged it a lot. LOL. Swallowing stuff hurt, but it was manageable if it was soup or soft food. I didn't keep up on my pain meds as well as I should have and the next day when they were discharging me and with all the commotion, I really let it slide. Bad idea. Try and keep up with it if you need the pain meds. I regret not doing that. I took the initiative to make sure I got up frequently. Partly because I had to use the bathroom, partly because my butt hurt from sitting mostly straight up. Uh, ouch. The nurses showed me how to turn the compression cuff things on and off and how to connect and disconnect the hose things and how to silence the O2 monitor temporarily so that I could use the bathroom or move around some without them having to come in all the time or see why my O2 monitor thing was making a lot of racket. LOL. It was nice to just know I had that little bit of freedom if I wanted it and could call them if I needed something if I missed them when they were checking in. Oh, and I had a drain in my neck too. That wasn't too bad though. I usually didn't notice it at all unless I accidentally move my hand or the ice pack across it and caught it.
Next morning, Fella came back to hang out and the doc came in a little later. She went through what she did and found in more detail. The thyroid was way more inflamed and scarred because of the Hashimoto's Way more scarred than what the ultrasounds were showing. She ended up taking about an orange and a half sized thyroid out of my neck. Obviously, that isn't normal. LOL. 2 of the parathyroids were just fine. Once she had to cut out of the thyroid and moved to the muscle on the left side of my neck and it should work in time. The other parathyroid, well, she isn't sure if the thyroid ate that one or if it was hiding in my inflamed lymph nodes. The lymph nodes were really, really inflamed which is why I felt like crap all the time. And because of the size of the thyroid, nodule, and the weight of it, it was beginning to damage the cartilage of my trachea. It thinned out a small bit of a couple of the rings of my trachea. Not bad, but enough that there'l always be a little bit of a weak spot there because of it. Heavy exercise is probably the only time I'll really notice it. My calcium levels weren't bad and they were going up, so that was good. I was at 8.4 before I was discharged and she was hoping they'd be 8.6. They still decided to release me since I was in the area and had an appointment on Friday.
When we got to the motel after they discharged me, I was in some really bad pain. And because I had been hunching and due to how they position your head while in surgery, my shoulders and the back of my neck hurt really bad. Fella got me some heat packs, so that helped a lot! Over the next couple of days stuff improved and stuff wasn't as stiff and painful.
Friday, the surgeon removed the steri-strips, took out the thin thread of a suture they used, and put on a new steri-strip and told me to leave it for 2 weeks before taking it off. We went over some stuff (like take the 6,000 mg of calcium until they get my calcium results back) and were on our way home to Nebraska!
Monday we got the calcium results back-- 9! I was able to halve the amount of calcium I'm taking from 6,000 mg to 3,000 mg and will have to take it for the next 6 weeks. And the pathology stated that there was Hashimoto's and the nodule, but no cancer which was what we wanted to hear. YAY!
So far I've healed up pretty well. It took me about a week from surgery to regain full range of motion in my neck again and I've not had any side effects. The hoarseness is pretty much gone. Unless I talk a lot for a long time or try to sing, I do just fine. I've done really well with taking the levothyroxine and haven't had any troubles with that so far. We had an appointment with the Endo on the 19th of March and he said we'll test my blood mid-April and see what adjustments we need to make. It'll take some time to get the levels right, but it's been 2 weeks after surgery and so far I feel great. Now that the inflammation is gone I actually have energy. I can breathe normally and turn my hear without any trouble. I feel more like me, not crap heated up and walking around. And for that, this was definitely worth it.

Not Another Horror Story Part 2

2014-03-25T12:08:00.001-06:00

Part 1 of this post is here.

I mentioned in the previous post where I started with noticing issues and what happened to me. I split the post into two parts because I didn't want the monster post to be a book and because there really are two parts to it. There was a bit of time where I didn't do anything about it. Too many other things going on and the ENT pretty much told me he didn't want to deal with it unless something new developed. I left off with the ENT visit in mid-late April...
My fiance immigrated over the beginning of September, we married the end of September, went on a honeymoon the first week of October, and started adjusting to life as a married couple that had spent more of our relationship on opposite sides of the world. We'd been through a minor holiday, a major one (Thanksgiving), and were getting to celebrate our first Christmas together. Fast forward to mid-December. And I was fed up with the thyroid and nodule. Not sure when the inflammation started to never change or when the hoarseness really started to stay more than go, when I started to get tired and never regain my energy, but somewhere along the line it took hold and didn't go away. It was worse. I couldn't sleep well because I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep at night because it felt like I was being choked. I always felt like I was in that pre-cold/flu stage where I wasn't actually sick with something, but felt like I was coming down with something. I had no energy, heck a lot of times I was coming home and would nap on the couch, then sleep the whole night through, and wake up still feeling tired. I knew my neck was more swollen and it always looked (to me) like I'd swallowed a rat and it got stuck. I decided screw it. I'd met my deductible with insurance for the year and we were still on the same plan (not an ACA compliant one, but with the extension we could keep it for a little longer), so I decided to heck with it. I'm going to see what I can get done.
I made an appointment mid-December with another of the PAs and my hubby and I went in. He didn't have his Employment Authorization Document yet, so he couldn't work and wanted to be there. I'm so grateful he was. Anyway, we explained what was going on to the PA she agreed that the thyroid was definitely enlarged. She asked if I'd been to see an Endocrinologist. I'd told her no and that was the end of it. Another ultrasound and another TSH and Free T4 test later we determines that my thyroid levels were normal and the nodule was unchanged (although, now I was hearing 3 cm, so I'm not sure what was up with that). She conferred with the ENT and he told her that since my levels were normal, that it wasn't an issue and he personally wouldn't do anything about it. Uh, yay? That still didn't explain a few things though. So I requested a copy of my blood tests because I wanted to see the numbers. Turns out back in March, my TSH was way on the high end of normal and their range was .34-4.82 and I was at a 4.49. my Free T4 was a bit high, but not out of range as well. It was .94 and the range was .59-1.17. In December my TSH was better at 2.56 (same range) and my Free T4 was up to .99. Apparently something got my TSH back down to a better part of the range, but it still didn't explain why I felt like crap. I was a bit desperate at that point.
Well, Christmas came and went, so did the new year. I still felt like crap and wasn't getting any better, so almost a month after the appointment in December, I was making another. By that time I was kind of a wreck. Work has been a bit stressful, I felt like crap, I wasn't getting any help outside of "Well, wait and see if it goes away. These things take time, sometimes up to a couple of years." By this time The Fella had gotten his EAD and applied at a place and we were waiting to hear back, but hadn't. I was starting to get depressed. I had a headache that was there fairly frequently and just really wasn't doing well, both physically and mentally. I made one appointment, we went over to the clinic to check in and the doctor I was seeing was called out on an emergency and I would have to reschedule with him or someone else. Rescheduled the next day for a different doctor. Thankfully, this time we were able to keep the appointment and no one was called out. We told her what was going on and got the recurring question of "Have you been to see an Endocrinologist?" and told her no, no one had referred me. She decided that that might be a good place to start. She didn't know what was up, but it didn't seem like a thyroid problem, so she thought the crazy expensive bloodwork he'd do would give us an answer. About 10-15 minutes in the office. I'm seeing a trend with the docs around here I think. You spend a lot of time waiting and then see them for 10-15 minutes, then you're gone. Oi. Anyway, she set me up for an appointment with one nearby for the following week.
We made it up to the clinic for the appointment and met with the Endocrinologist. I guess he hasn't been in the area long, the doc pointed out that they had a new one at that particular facility, but after meeting with him, it was a breath of fresh air. First thing he asked me was why I thought it was my thyroid. Pretty blunt, to the point, and kinda surprising when you aren't expecting that. I told him what I'd been going through, how I was feeling, etc. His next response was that he didn't think that was my thyroid because the changes in being too cold and too warm and a few other things were too quick. He explained that they thyroid is an organ that slowly changes stuff. It'd be stuff that happened over the coarse of several weeks, not every other week or so. He said he had an ultrasound machine in another room and asked if I was ok with him taking a look at my thyroid himself so he could see what might be going on. I was totally ok with that (someone was actually listening and considering what I said and not immediately dismissing me, WOOHOO). I'm laying on the little bed while he's doing the ultrasound and he doesn't say anything. Not one word. He lets me know he's done, grabs some tissues so I can wipe the goo off my neck, and asks if anyone has ever told me I have a very unusual thyroid. I told him I hadn't been told that and made a comment about this not being in my head then? He chuckled and said maybe not all of it. We went back to the first room we were in and he explained that there were some things he didn't have and answer for, so he did want to do some bloodwork. What he could tell me was that I had some very strong visual indicators of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and that the nodule was a good size and near my collarbone, hence why it was bothering me. It was just in a bad spot and it was big. He couldn't believe it was still functioning, actually. It looked that bad. He didn't think it'd continue functioning for too many years though. He said while it was enlarged, he didn't see the type of swelling I was talking about, so next time it happened I needed to call and he'd get me in to look at it. The Fella and I were both just happy that someone was taking me seriously and actually acted like they were interested in helping. This was HUGE for us!
Got a call about a week later with the results--normal! I was confused. Nothing was mentioned about the 2 thyroid antibody tests, so I was doubly confused. This seemed promising. Well, later in the day it felt like my neck was swelling again, so we called to see if he could get us in. He was as good as his word and got me in that afternoon. I left work early and headed up there with The Fella in tow. Earlier that morning he got a call from the place he applied at and they wanted him to come in for an interview that Friday! Anyway, the endocrinologist ultrasounded my thyroid again and didn't see any noticeable change and wasn't really sure why my neck was swelling like that. One theory was the change in fluid levels since the nodule is cystic with some solid components. He said that given how I felt and with the discomfort I was obviously having, he definitely recommended having the right side removed, possibly the whole thyroid if I was ok with that. Fella and I were both totally ok with that and then he brought up how he generally refers people to the ENT. Yes, that ENT. The one that travels down to the clinic I go to and had seen in April and the PA consulted with in December. Fella and I were polite about him, but stated we'd already dealt with him before and were told he personally do anything about it and asked if there were other options (part of why I'm so grateful for the Fella is that he is more than happy to speak up for me about stuff and support me when I'm worried about burning bridges). The endo stopped a moment and said there are other people. There's a general surgeon that's a lady if I was more comfortable with her and thankfully didn't push the issue. He said it's my neck and I definitely have a say in what goes on there. He wasn't so sure that the inflammation would ever go down. If I was this uncomfortable right now, having some or most of it removed would be a good idea. He thought that with only have removed that it might help, but thought there was still a good chance I'd be on meds anyway given how the thyroid looked and that it'd most likely quit working in the next few years anyway. So, he called the general surgeon's office and said we'd hear from them within the next few days. It wasn't an hour later and we got a call from them saying that she only does consults on Fridays and wanting to know which Friday worked for us. They had an appointment open for 9:30 which gave us time to meet with her, then head back home so Fella could make his interview. Finally some progress!
We met with the general surgeon Friday and discussed what was going on. She agreed that this definitely needed to be taken care of. What got me is that at one point she looked at me and said, "I don't think you're scared of the surgery. You seem ok with that and have mentally prepared yourself for it. You just want someone to help you and you don't feel that you're getting that. Am I right?" Boom. Dead on observation. After emotionally choking out that yeah, that was indeed the case, she explained what she'd do, what the complications could be, recovery, etc. She was confident with the surgery, but wanted to do the right lobe first to make sure nothing was damaged and then do the left lobe later. Sounded pretty reasonable to me. We set up a time 2 weeks later for surgery and were good to go! And while I wasn't excited about the ENT assisting, I was willing to bury the hatchet and move on.
Tuesday, the day before surgery-- We're at the office I work at, Fella got his job ans was supposed to start the beginning of March, and prepped to head up to the city a couple hours away since surgery was early the next morning. It's mid-morning, I'd gotten a lot done before I needed to leave and was finishing up a few things when I got a call from the surgeon. She said that she'd really been thinking about this a lot lately and the more she thought about it, the more uncomfortable with the surgery she was. She said due to the particulars of my case, she was worried that she might damage something and that was the last thing she wanted to do to me. And while she hated to tell me that and make me feel like I was being passed around, she felt it was the right thing and wanted to know if I was ok with being referred to someone that does this far more frequently than she does and specializes in it. While extremely frustrating, I did (and still do) agree that that was a good idea. I like her, but if she isn't comfortable with it, then referring me is a good idea. She asked which direction I wanted to go-- Rapid City, South Dakota, Omaha, Nebraska (figured that was a bit far), or somewhere else. I asked her to see what was in Denver, Colorado since that's about 3 hours from where I'm at and it's big enough to have a number of doctors that might handle this. Got a call a little later saying they found a lady in Denver and that they were faxing stuff over there. Her office would call within the next few days.
Well, a few days later, there was still no call. So I called the surgeon's office making the referral. Turns out the fax didn't go through, so they had to resend it. LOL. A little delay, but not bad. Heard back the next day and the office in Denver set up an appointment and wanted me to get copies of the bloodwork from the endo and fax it over. Got that taken care of and lo! while reading looking at the tests, it turns out that the antibody tests showed positive for Hashimoto's. I guess the endo figured that since he told me I had Hashimoto's before the test, that part didn't really need to be revisited. Not sure. Either way I knew and had copies of stuff. LOL. I got a copy of the ultrasound images from March 2013 and December 2013 for them and the general surgeon sent me the stuff from the biopsy to take to Denver. Whee! In this time, the Fella started work the last week in February and since he was working nights could come with to the appointment. His workplace was awesome about letting him take time off for the surgery since we let them know we had medical stuff for me when he interviewed.
March 5th and it's the day of my appointment in Denver! We found the office pretty easily (had more trouble finding where to park) and waited a bit before heading in since we were a bit early and they were on lunch. After killing a little bit of time, we went to the office and checked in. I forgot to mail the discs down, so the doc checked those out while we did paperwork, then went and sat in one of the rooms while she glanced over a few more things. The vast majority of the office was introduced (it's not very big), so we got to know most of them and could ask any of them anything we needed to. The doc came in and we discussed what she saw with all the stuff she looked over. She said it was obvious I had Hashimoto's. You could see it in the ultrasounds and didn't really need to do the antibody tests unless you wanted to have that confirmation as well. Then we discussed options--Partial or whole thyroidectomy, the pros, the cons, the maybes, the treatment options, recovery, and what she thought. A lot of what she said matched the endo, so it was good to have confirmation that one or both knew their stuff and were in agreement on it. Apparently, my nodule was tucked under my collarbone a bit which is why I was rather aware of it. It was stuck and had no way to really move with my neck when I'd turn my head. Heh. No wonder I was having troubles turning my head to the right comfortably! I opted to have the whole thyroid removed. Due to how ratty the left lobe looked, she said it was very likely I'd still have to take meds anyway and they'd still have to monitor the left lobe almost yearly to make sure it was still working, there were no nodules, etc., but then they wouldn't have to worry about damaging all the parathyroids. I only need one that works, but the more of the 4 that work, the merrier. I was sick of dealing with the whole thing, so I said to take it all. We set up a time for March 11th, then got my blood drawn for Vit D and went home.
I was originally going to add the surgery in this post, but for the sake of how long it already is I think I'll do one that's dedicated to the surgery and recovery.

Not Another Horror Story! Part 1

2014-03-25T10:09:00.001-06:00

One thing I've come to realize is that most everything I've found online regarding thyroidectomies is that most of the stories are horror stories. I'm not saying there isn't good reason for that-- I'm pretty sure there's a perfectly good reason for this--but not everyone that goes through this has a terrible story to tell about it. I think the access to people familiar with these issues are surgeries is a big part of why there are a vast amount of not so good stories online and with living in the panhandle of Nebraska and after what it took to get to where I am now from where I was last year, well, I can see why people run to google and hope for the best with their own surgery after reading stuff online.
My own story started the end of February 2012. I made some pretty awesome calzones out of some homemade bread dough for dinner that night. Mmmm. Toward the end of dinner I was taking a bite of the calzone and some chicken hit the floor...so, I leaned over to pick up the food on the floor. While leaning over, I swallowed the bite I had in my mouth. Nothing unusual with that, except for the fact that I suddenly felt something move on the right side of my neck near my collarbone. I'll admit I freaked out quite a bit about it. Stuff moving in your neck is *not* normal. It's creepy as heck actually. Once I calmed down a bit, I texted a friend whose husband had been through EMT training for the local volunteer EMS service and asked if they'd be willing to come over and make sure it wasn't something that required an ER visit and could wait until morning. (Hey, you feel something move in your neck and tell me how well level headed and clear minded you are after that. lol) They came over with another friend that was an EMT as well and checked my vitals, poked what was definitely a small lump, and asked some questions. We decided the spendy ER visit wasn't necessary, friend hung out for a couple of hours to make sure I was definitely ok, then I headed for bed. Didn't really sleep well that night, but I gave it a good go.
Next morning I told the bosses what was up, made a doctor appointment, and was in the local clinic mid-morning. Great way to start off the month of March. Sitting in a clinic with a PA (Physician's Assistant) and telling her what happened the night before. After a bit of discussion and some neck poking, she determined there was definitely something not right and my thyroid seemed a little enlarged. I wasn't feeling any pain though, which puzzled her. She checked the schedule for the ultrasound and asked what worked for me to have it done. My bosses are pretty lenient about letting us employees take care of health issues as long as we let them know we're doing it, so I told her the first available opening she could get me in-- that afternoon. After having the ultrasound done and getting the results back on it later (gotta love the URGENT note on there), she had me come back to get my TSH and free T4 checked. There was a good sized nodule on the right lobe, about 2.7 cm or so and my thyroid was inflamed. She told me to take Aleve (Naproxen Sodium) a couple times a day for a week and ice it if I thought I needed to so we can see about bringing down some of the inflammation and she'd get back to me Monday or Tuesday when she got the blood results back.
One thing to note-- try to get copies of your tests. You might not understand them, but it's always good to be informed as to what your levels are and what the outcome of something was. That being said, I didn't get the numbers for my TSH and Free T4. I was told they were "normal" so I trusted that and went with it. They were technically in the normal range...but on the higher end. I'll get to that bit later though. At some point during that time, we set up an appointment to have a fine needle biopsy done on the nodule the 14th at a hospital a couple of hours away.
March 14th, 2013-- morning of the biopsy! I don't have issues with needles. As long as I don't watch them go in, I'm perfectly fine. I have a tattoo and several piercings. I was never bothered by needles then either. I loathed that biopsy though. The actual procedure itself wasn't bad. I just really had issues with being able to feel the needles move through the tissue. Not cool. Not cool at all. They do numb you with a local anesthetic, but you are pretty dang sore after that. My neck hurt until the next morning. Ouch. And turning my head? Not good. I'm glad I thought ahead and asked a friend to come with to drive in case I couldn't. I totally needed her help on the way home and it was nice to have some support.
A few days later I got the results back from the biopsy-- benign (YAY!). PA asked if the Aleve helped with the inflammation. Not really. So, she prescribed me some steroids to see if that helped. I'd never taken steroids before, so I'll hit on that briefly--it made me ravenous. Now, I generally have a pretty good appetite which just befuddles people because I'm pretty tiny. I don't look like the kind of person that can eat a whole lot. I can...and I definitely did while on the steroids. And while on them, I was pretty willing to eat stuff that I later decided really didn't taste very good. While on the steroids those frozen Del Mex tamales tasted like heaven! After the steroids? Jeebies. Please tell me I did not eat those willingly. ROFL. Hot flashes? I totally had those. Restlessness and needing to be constantly doing something? Oh yeah. Lack of concentration? I had that in spades. Not fun. Worst thing was the morning I almost passed out in the shower though. Not sure what brought that on, but I started noticing that my hands were tingling and I was getting a rushing waterfall sound in my ears that wasn't from the shower. Started to see a few spots and the lightbulb went off that I better get down before I fall down. So, I sat down took some slow deep breathes and soon enough the feeling went away. I guess I know that steroids and I don't really mesh well. After a week of those, I called the PA and let her know that while they did help some, there was still inflammation...or so it seemed to me. She set up an appointment with the ENT for one of the next times he was down (about a month later).
About a month later-- ENT appointment! It's mid-April. Since the initial diagnoses of thyroiditis and a nodule, I'd been keeping a mental list of what I had noticed. Issues turning my head, feeling like stuff was caught in my throat a lot of the time, etc. Met with the ENT that morning. I was told to show up about 30 minutes early to fill out paperwork since he's a visiting physician. Filled out a crap-ton of stuff, went back to a room, talked with the nurse. She was having a bit of trouble with the computer and couldn't seem to get the ultrasound to pull up in there. She went and conferred with the ENT and about 5 minutes later he came it. Let's just say that appointment didn't go well in my opinion. I have no idea to this day if he ever saw the ultrasound. Not sure if it'd have made a difference one way or the other if he had or hadn't. I was in the office no more than 10 minutes. He asked about my symptoms. I told him what I had going on. He felt the nodule and this is part of where I have an issue with him. I'm pretty petite. At 5 ft 4 in and at the time about 115 lbs, you do *NOT* need to press hard enough on that nodule that it feels like you're trying to pop it out the back of my neck. It hurt when he did that. I'm not normally quick to cry, but that was almost enough to make me cry. Then he sat down and basically told me that I didn't need surgery, he didn't see any swelling, just come back in a year and have the bloodwork done and an ultrasound done. If the nodule has grown significantly, they'll biopsy it again. If it started to hurt, then come back in ASAP. Then asked if I had any questions. I asked him several times-- what do I do about the swelling? His response, "What swelling? I don't see any swelling." I told him that the PA recommended taking NSAIDs and icing it. "Oh, I suppose you can do that if you think you need to. But I don't see any swelling. Someone *thought* they saw swelling on the ultrasound, but there's no swelling." I was pissed. My appointment was at 9:50am. I was out of the doc's office about 10:10am. 20 minutes in the room and most of that spent with the nurse or waiting just to be told, "I don't see any issues. You have a bit of a big lump there, but it's nothing." While I get that surgery isn't and definitely shouldn't be first resort, I'd like to hear a lot more than "Ignore it and come back in a year." I was having some issues with feeling like there was something caught in my throat and had trouble turning my head to the right because I could feel the nodule or muscles catch. I was starting to experience hoarseness at that time as well. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed with that appointment and really didn't get off to a good start with the ENT.
After that, I kinda got caught up in some other stuff involving work, planning the wedding, messing with immigration stuff (keep in mind, my fiance was still in Germany during all of this), and a bunch of other stuff. So with being told to wait for a year and having other stuff to deal with, I just sat the medical issues on the back burner for awhile. It doesn't mean they were gone, just not top priority.

Rather Delayed Update

2014-03-24T20:27:00.001-06:00

Well, it's been awhile. In that time, The Fella got his employment authorization document (Early January 2014), got a job, then got his green card! Whee! It's been quite a ride lately. And best part-- he's eligible for health insurance and other benefits at the end of this month. YAY!

The other major thing that's come up is having my thyroid removed. Not sure if I mentioned it in a past post, but I found out in March of 2013 that I had a nodule on the right lobe of my thyroid and was told "possible thyroiditis". I was prescribed steroids for a week, then told to take Aleve for a week. I had a fine needle biopsy done on the nodule shortly after stopping the Aleve and found out it was benign. Still had some troubles, but with all the immigration stuff and wedding planning (amongst other things), the thyroid thing took a back seat until a couple months after the wedding. Then, I just couldn't handle it anymore. I was tired, my neck was uncomfortable. I was having difficulty breathing (always felt like something was stuck in there and made it difficult to get comfortable at night to sleep). Stuff like that. Yet on the other hand, I wasn't experiencing many of the symptoms of being hypo- or hyper-thyroid. I was really cold a lot of the times (not totally out of character for me) and I started always feeling like I had a cold or the beginning of a really bad cold. I finally decided to go in in December. They ultrasounded they thyroid and nodule again and checked my bloodwork again. All of my stuff came back normal. No idea why.
In January, I was *really* fed up, not feeling great, and was sick of dealing with it. Went back to the doctor and she referred me to an endocrinologist. In the end, that was one of the best things that could happen. Talked to the Endocrinologist the end of January and he did some more blood tests and did a quick ultrasound at his office. Consensus-- I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and the recommendation was that due to that and the fact that the thyroid was rather enlarged and inflamed (because of they thyroiditis) and wasn't going down and that I had a 3 cm nodule; it was recommended that I have the right side of the thyroid removed...at the very least. A total thyroidectomy was recommended if I was willing to go that route. Got a referral to a general surgeon and saw her a few days later.
Well, we saw the surgeon beginning of February and set a surgery date for the 19th. The plan was to remove the right side, make sure the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve and my vocal cords were undamaged, then do the left side at a later day. Whee! Well, that was until I got a call from the surgeon the day before surgery saying that the more she thought about the particulars of my surgery, the more uncomfortable she was with it and wanted to see if I was ok with a referral to a person that does this surgery all the time. So, they found a person in Denver that does this and referred me down there.
So, at the beginning of March, The Fella and I found ourselves in Denver consulting with the surgeon. And much to our joy, she was friendly, informative, listened, and was totally ok with doing this surgery. It was brought up again that I could have half the thyroid removed or all of it. She discussed the pros, cons, and maybes of what both entailed and what I had to look forward to as far as surgery and complications and what options I had for medicines and treatments. By that time, I was totally fed up with the thyroid, how crappy I felt, and was ready to be done with the whole thing. So, after a bit of discussion the plan was made to remove all the thyroid...the next week.
March 11th was the big day! Went to Denver the night before, met up the next morning with one of my aunts that lives in the area to check out the Museum the next morning before surgery, then headed to the hospital to get checked in. Surgery went splendid! There were a few surprises, like the fact that my thyroid was more scarred, enlarged, and otherwise in rattier shape than they thought. My lymph nodes were really inflamed since my body was attacking (and had been for quite some time) the thyroid and trying to kill it off, and there was a small amount of damage done to the cartilage of my trachea. Not much, just a bit of thinning on a couple of the rings, but enough to weaken that spot some. The surgeon said she was really glad I decided to have it all removed at the same time because of that. They managed to save 3 of the parathyroids for sure (not sure what happened to one of them) which is awesome! You only really need to have one functioning one, but as she said, the more she can save, the better off I'll probably be. The parathyroids control your calcium levels. So if you don't have any, you're on calcium supplements the rest of your life. Not exactly and ideal thing. Anyway, after I got out of recovery (vaguely remember some stuff from when in there, but not much) and got to my room and kinda rejoined the world on the same mental plane of existence, I was doing pretty ok. Sore and in pain, but not doing too bad. Spent the night in the hospital and was released the next afternoon. The first few hours out of the hospital and some of the next day were CRAP. I didn't keep up on my pain meds when we were getting the discharge time worked out, so I was in some serious pain when we finally got to the motel room. Popped 2 Norco, then snuggled with my favored ice pack and a couple of heat packs. Ice for the surgery site, heat for the back of my neck and shoulders because holy crapola did they hurt! Some of that is from how they have your head positioned during surgery, some is from hunching after surgery as a form of comfort and protection for your neck. Heat packs are your friend. Oh, and definitely sleep as upright as you can handle. Trying to get up from laying on your back hurts and if you're like me and have sinus issues anyway, laying down after they've aggravated your throat with that breathing tube is a bad idea. Gunk will drain and collect near the back of your throat which is not fun. Especially since you're coughing up gunk anyway.
Fast forward to Friday-- post-op check up with the surgeon that morning because she wanted to take out the thin suture she used and steri-strip the incision. She did that so that I'd heal up with a less noticeable scar since I apparently have very fair, light, delicate skin and no wrinkles to hide a scar in. I'm just so happy to have the thyroid gone, that honestly, as long as it didn't look like someone did a botched job of cutting my throat then I was good with the dissolvable stitches or a suture like what she did. LOL.
As of tomorrow (Tuesday, March 25), it's been 2 weeks since surgery. And I feel *GREAT*. I'm sure I'll come off of that as my natural thyroid hormones fade out of my system and I'm totally dependent on the synthetic hormones. But honestly, the fact that I can breathe normally again, swallow without hindrance, and move my head to the right comfortably without feeling a nodule catch, those alone are worth this. I've seen some pretty horrific post-op horror stories about this, but I didn't run into that with mine. It pays to have a good surgeon, I'll grant that. I honestly think if the first surgeon did it, I might not have had as good a recovery as I did. It took almost a full week after surgery to completely regain my range of motion with my neck, but with a bit of stretching and gently moving my head around I got the full movement of my head with no trouble at all. I still have to keep the steri-strip on until Friday, but from what I've seen of the incision site so far, it looks like it's healing up really well! YAY!
And that really long post is pretty much what's going on around here so far. LOL.

Crafty Stuffs!

2013-12-03T12:20:00.001-07:00

There are a few days in the year when I absolutely refuse to go to the stores or anywhere there's the potential for an extremely large mass of people....Black Friday and that entire weekend would be one of them. I generally don't really check for much in the way of deals unless there's something I know I want and want to see if there's a deal, or if I see a deal and decide I want whatever it is. LOL. I'm just not a people person (especially if it involves large groups of folks that are crazy for deals) and I usually just get what I need or want as budget permits because as I learned this weekend that you have to be super quick with the Amazon Lightning deals (well, pretty much most online deals) since there are thousands of people that want that as much, if not more, than you do!
I did manage to find something that seems like a good deal --especially since I missed out on several Amazon Lightning Deals of a smaller, but similar bundle-- was that Silhouette has several holiday bundles for their machines! So, I showed the hubby and asked his opinion...and got a good approval of it and apparently he wants to use it too. LOL.
I've always liked the concept of the Cricut (it's the only one I'd ever heard of. Who knew there were other machines?!), but wanted something that allowed me to do more than what Cricut offered. I don't want to buy the cartridge/die things all the time, especially if there's only one or two images in the pack that I want. And fonts? I have crap tons of them already, so why do I need to buy a die with them? Great concept, but I wanted more. Well, that's where Silhouette appealed to me. You can use your own stuff, they have a lot of great single images on the online store for a good price, and you can use your own fonts. That just appeals to me. A bit more expensive initially, but for me it pays off in the end.
I don't have the Cameo yet since it hasn't shipped as of now, but I'm really anxious to play with it and see what all I can do with it! Everything I've seen people do online has been amazing and it's really making me impatient to get the danged thing. Once I do though, I'll have to check back and let you all know what I think. Whee!

From Miss to Mrs.

2013-11-06T08:16:00.002-07:00

Long time, no post! Lots of stuff has been going on and I think it just might have settled down...maybe. Time to play catch up.
The Fella had his interview June 11, 2013 and all went well and ended with an approval! :D It took a bit of time for him to sort through his stuff, sell some, store some, put in notice that he was quitting, notifying people, etc., but he got it done and flew over here September 4th. YAY! While he was getting his stuff in order, I was getting my stuff and some of the wedding stuff taken care of. Once he got here, there was more wedding stuff to take care of, getting his social security number, adding him to the bank account, lease, and a few other things, and some other miscellaneous stuff that I can't recall. LOL. Everything worked out and we got married September 27th...then honeymooned in Vegas for a week. Whee!
Since then we've been working on getting my name changed on stuff which is taking a bit since the government was shutdown and I had to wait to change my name on my social security card, hence delaying some stuff. Whee? We've definitely been enjoying the married thing though. Something about it is just...wonderful. Not sure what makes it different, but it is. Huh. Anyway, we filed for the Adjustment of Status, Employment Authorization Document, and Advanced Parole last week and got the text stating they received our crap. Now we're back to the waiting game. Fun times.
Other than that, that's pretty much it. Been keeping entertained at work and such, but nothing overly exciting. Well, nothing I want to post about online anyway. LOL. As usual life happens and sometimes the stuff in life isn't fun to deal with, but you kinda have to. :)

Approval!

2013-04-10T19:10:00.001-06:00

Click for a larger version

This morning I woke up to a text on my phone telling me that my case status had been updated! I checked out the uscis.gov website and I found out that the USCIS approved The Fella's visa! YAY! We still have a lot of stuff to do yet, but at least we're over the "worst" bit of it. :D Now I have to send a copy of the initial application packet and some other paperwork to him. :D The US Embassy over in Frankfurt will send him a packet stating some stuff that he needs to gather and some paperwork that he needs to fill out. There's more than that, but I don't want to bore you with all the gritty details. LOL. Still, this is a *big* step forward.
I was really surprised to see this notice though. Right now, California Service Center (the center our paperwork was sent to) is horribly backlogged. So backlogged in fact, that they're still working on visas from July. Freaking. July. Very little of August and September have been touched as well. They're supposed to be doing these applications in the order they're received and while I am extremely grateful that we have our approval, there should be no reason whatsoever that a bunch of people from late November and beginning of December have gotten approvals while people from July are being told that USCIS is doing what they can and they'll just have to wait. It's bullcrap. So anyone with a K1 visa from before November, I'm sorry you're waiting. :( You should have had this long before now and I really hope you get your visas approved soon!

E-Readers!

2013-02-19T12:40:00.003-07:00

I'd been considering getting a dedicated e-reader for awhile. I have a 1st Generation Kindle Fire and while I really like (ok, love) the thing, the battery life is kind of crappy for plane rides, car rides, or a quiet day reading. Even while stopping to do paperwork or answer the phone on my slower days at work, I still usually end up having to plug my Fire in towards the end of the day, even though the Wi-Fi is off and I've turned the screen brightness down. When I'm near a power outlet--basically at home or work, and a few vehicles--that's not an issue. Long plane rides though, not so much. LOL. Hence, the reason for a dedicated e-reader, and not another tablet style e-reader.

After looking around a bit, I opted for a Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. The price wasn't too bad ($119) and I have the option of adding more memory which really appeals to me. I also get a little built in light for when I don't have as much ambient light around, so win for me! What I didn't know though, was that the fiance is apparently part Betazoid and was thinking an e-reader (Kobo Mini) would be a *great* Valentine's Day gift. LOL. Imagine his surprise when a few days before Valentine's I'm going on about how I like my Nook...and my surprise when I get a Kobo Mini in the mail the day after Valentine's. Now I have 2 e-readers. Whee! In lieu of that, I decided to put together a post on the pros and cons of the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight and the Kobo Mini. I haven't used any of the standard Kindle readers, so I'll not touch that subject.

*Also as a side note-- I sideload everything via Calibre. It's free, easy to use, and you can keep all your books in one spot and have a hard copy. I found it simpler and more intuitive to work with than Kindle for PC, Nook for PC, and Kobo Desktop App. Of the 3, Kindle for PC is probably the best set up and easier to use, but does us no good with a Nook and a Kobo. LOL.

Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight-- One of the better known (right along with Kindle) is Barnes and Noble's Nook. They have one without the GlowLight for $79, so if the $119 is a bit more on the steep side price-wise, I'd suggest just going with that one. The GlowLight is nice to have, but not totally necessary unless you have very little light nearby. It comes with a computer cable/wall charger which is great because you don't have to charge it in the computer unless you want to. I love that it has expandable memory! You stick a mini SD card in there (it doesn't tell you which way on the slot or, so be careful when loading it and don't force it). Being able to use a mini sd card also means you can unmount the card from the Nook, then load it in the card reader on a computer. Considerably more convenient in some ways, especially if you can't find a cord right off the bat. For flipping pages, you can use the touchscreen or the page turner buttons on each side of the Nook. Top button moves the page forward, bottom button moves the page back. Perfect for if you have a dog on your lap and can only use one hand (or eating, or having a cup of tea...whatever problem you have). I think that's probably my favorite feature because it never fails that when I read at home, Bear *has* to sit in my lap and demands to be petted. LOL. Another favorite feature is the fact that you can customize your screensaver for it. All you need is a grayscale 600x800 photo (there are plenty pre-made, free screensavers for the Nook online), load it onto your Nook (BN.com tells you how, just check out FAQ or Support), and change it from the Screen settings on the Nook. Boom. No more creepy dead author screensaver. LOL. Worst surprise ever was seeing that screensaver pop up the first time. Less than 30 minutes later, I had that resolved.

Pros:

Expandable memory
Customizable
Page Turner buttons on each side, or you can use the screen
Great battery life
computer cord/wall charger included, it's also the micros usb so you can use another charger in a pinch
Lots and lots of free ebooks and you can Lend some books or rent from your local library (if the library has that option, not all do)
All sorts of covers and accessories are available and you can get them most anywhere
Convenient tech support if you have a store nearby

Cons:

Price. $79 is pretty reasonable for the basic Simple Touch (pretty average price for ereaders), but the GlowLight version is another $40...just for a built in light.
It doesn't allow you to set it to shut off after a certain amount of time, you can set how long before the screen times out and goes to a screensaver, but not shut off.
I'm listing this even though it's common to all e-readers--ebooks are DRM. I know *why* it's that way, but it's a huge pain in the butt when you buy a freaking book and can't read it on whatever device you own. I'll get more into this later.
Can't share snippets of non-Nook for PC side-loaded books. So if you like sharing what you're reading on Facebook or Twitter, not a great option unless you buy books from B&N.
Doesn't show percentage wise how far you are into the book, just page x of xx. I like percentages. LOL.

Kobo Mini-- While they aren't a big name like Kindle or Nook, they're still pretty good. If you want something that isn't well know and a bit more...open, for lack of a better word...they're a good option. At $79, they're comparable in price to your other e-readers as well. Multiple language options and while they have their own version of an epub file (ke-epub) and you can buy your ebooks and read them anywhere. Not sure if it wreaks havoc with certain countries that are funny about copyrights, but it at least sounds more open. The smaller size is perfect for if you want a reader that fits in a purse or pocket without being obvious. I have a good sized purse and my Fire and the Nook stick out a bit or reach close to the top of one of my pockets. I do have a lot of crap in the purse though. LOL. 2 GBs of internal memory so you can store about ebooks on there. It's a great travel sized e-reader! It's about the same height and only about 2 inches wider than my Motorola Razr phone, so not much bigger than your average smartphone. It's fairly customizable too. I can set the screensaver/sleep screen to the book cover or a sleeping Kobo design. I can also set it to shut off after a certain amount of time (YES!) so I don't drain my battery as much if I forget it's on in the case...for about a month. lol.

Pros:

Small size
Timed shut-off
Computer cable, but no wall charger. Not too big of a deal since it's a micro-usb.
Surprisingly clear text for such a small thing. You can change the font size and type too and find a more comfortable sized text.
Great battery life. I actually have better battery life on this than the Nook.
Can share snippets of side-loaded books to Facebook.
Has some fun little awards for little things like "Finishing your first book on your Kobo," "read so many books," etc.
Reading stats! They show you how long it takes you to read a book, average time per page of the book, percentage done, etc.

Cons:

Setup can be...interesting. It takes awhile. You can set it up wirelessly or via computer, so that is a nice option. Tried both and they're about the same. You do need a Kobo account, so set that up first.
A little laggy at times. Touchscreen can be a bit more temperamental than the Nook. Not terribly bad though.
Due to its smaller size, I really don't recommend this for people that need large print books or if you have a more difficult time with smaller printed stuff. Use a bigger e-reader. Your eyes will thank you. LOL. I wear glasses, but I don't have a problem with the text size. My corrected vision is really good though, so if in doubt, don't get the Kobo Mini, but get a Kobo Touch, Glo, Nook, Kindle, whatever. lol
Not as many accessories for it, so if you like to accessorize your gadgets you'll have to be more creative with this
Again, with the proprietary ebooks.
Desktop app sucks. I'm not a fan of it as you can tell. LOL.

It basically just comes down to what you prefer. I found I actually enjoy the Kobo Mini a lot more just because it's so much easier to keep with me all the time. I like the Nook a lot, especially for reading in bed or the lower light at home, but the Kobo Mini was really more of what I wanted in an e-reader when I was trying to find one.

As for Calibre, ebooks, and DRM-- Part of why I use Calibre (and not just because it's easier for me to use), is the fact that with the proper "unofficial" Calibre plug-ins, I can strip the DRM off of my ebooks. It takes some experimenting, but it's really not hard. Now I'm *not* advocating stripping DRM off of ebooks so that you can sell or disburse ebooks to the whole internet or "stick it to the man" and upload them for anyone and everyone that wants them. That isn't fair for the authors that took the time to write those books.
However, as many others have said, I paid for the books and I want to read them on any and all of my devices. I see nothing wrong with stripping DRM for that. /rant

And that's just my 2 cents worth on those two particular e-readers. :)

*Oh, and the particular ebook you see on screen is "Winter's Heart" by Robert Jordan. His Wheel of Time series is amazing! If you like epic fantasy, check it out. ;)

The screen saver on the Nook screen is one I made from a photo I took in Paris. :D

Ramen Salad Recipe

2012-12-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

I can't get plurk.paste to load, so I'm typing up a Ramen Salad recipe here instead. :D It'll do.

I'm lazy and usually just use a bagged salad, then add the dressing and topping to taste. I generally don't mix everything together if I take it to a potluck or something just in case someone is allergic to nuts, but it's a lot more convenient if it's all mixed together before you leave for wherever you're going. You definitely want to have the topping and dressing prepped ahead of time because they need to cool down before you put them on the salad.

Ramen Salad Recipe

Topping:

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, melted

2 pkgs Ramen noodles, crushed (you only need the noodles)

1/4 C. sunflower seeds

1/2 C. slivered almonds

Heat oven to 350F. Mix ramen noodles, nuts, and butter together and spread on a cookie sheet. Stick in oven and toast until light golden brown.

Dressing:

1/2 C. sugar

1/4 C. vinegar (I use rice wine vinegar, but any kind works)

3/4 C. oil (I use olive, but any kind will work)

2 teaspoons soy sauce

Mix all dressing ingredients in sauce pan and simmer until sugar is melted or boil for 2 minutes. Place in fridge to cool.

You'll need around 6 cups of whatever salad you'd like to use, Just mix salad, dressing, and most of the topping together in a bowl. Sprinkle leftover topping on top before serving.

K1 Visa Paperwork!

2012-11-26T13:34:00.001-07:00

Thursday November 15, I sent in a good sized box of paperwork (US medium flat rate mailer box) to the USCIS. Tracking number shows they received it Nov. 17...then we didn't hear anything for awhile...until Sunday Nov. 25, 2012! Woohoo! When you send in all the paperwork, there's a form you can include that allows them to reach you by email, text, or both, rather than just by mailing you a hard copy. We sent that for in, and last night we got both a text and email saying that they got the paperwork, assigned us a case number, and let us know what service center (California or Vermont) was going to process the paperwork. :D Talk about a happy moment!
Now, we have to wait for awhile, and if we don't receive any RFEs (Request for Evidence), we should get another text, email, and hard copy stating that they want my financial info. Whee! The ball is finally rolling!

Proposal!

2012-09-24T21:25:00.001-06:00

I'm a little late in updating this, but now is as good a time as any to start this. :D The end of July, the Fella flew over to the US on holiday to visit friends of his and to visit me. He flew into JFK, then down to Charlotte, NC to visit a friend there for a few days before flying back to NYC to head over to Pennsylvania to visit a few friends there. A few days after he arrived in PA, I flew into NYC, we explored the city for a few days, then headed out to PA to hang out with his friends there for a week. :D After that week was up, we flew out to Nebraska so he could spend about 3 weeks with me! :)

Part of the plan when he visited was the we'd head up to Montana to visit my parents over Labor Day weekend. We did that (so nice to not have to make the 10 hour or so trip by myself) and he got to meet my parents, siblings, and grandparents. The morning we were leaving my parents' house he proposed to me! :D Now we're onto the next part of our journey together...

With him being a German citizen and myself a US citizen we have a bit more of a hurdle when it comes to getting married. We have to decide what country we're wanting to live in, the pros and cons of both countries, how it'll affect our families (mostly the one moving), etc.

He's been wanting to move to the US for awhile anyway, so that decision was pretty easy. We still looked into what it'd take for me to move to Germany if we went that route and decided that'd be harder.
There are a lot of good points to both countries. Major deciding factors is that if I immigrate to Germany, I have to show a certain amount of proficiency in German, have to go through their driving school and retake my driving exam--practical and written, he has to show that his home is large enough for both of us. However, the wait time on the visa isn't as long and the visa fees are way cheaper. The other stuff is nowhere near as cheap though. If he immigrates to the US, visa and immigration fees are higher and take longer and we have to file a work authorization form after we marry so he can work. It usually takes 5-8 months to approve the K-1 (fiance) visa and about 3-6 months to approve the work authorization form.
All my family (excepting 2 of my cousins) live in the US. All his family lives in Germany. Needless to say, both sides are affected on that and affected just as much.

As I said, we'd decided on him immigrating to the US. So now we're getting finances in order and figuring out different things (like what possessions to keep or get rid of) so that we can start getting paperwork for the K-1 visa put together and we can file. It'll be a bit before we get to that point, but I'll update when we're there. :)

So now you know what's up. It'll be interesting to see what happens from here!

Post Germany Trip

2012-05-23T14:00:00.002-06:00

Well, I made it to Germany and back in one piece. Yay!  I absolutely loved it over there. Such a beautiful place to be!  I even got to go to Paris! I'll admit that I have mixed feelings about Paris after having been there though, but first let me give a synopsis of the trip.

Flew out of Denver 5 May and landed in Frankfurt 6 May. I didn't have trouble going through US security--there's a reason I'm stating this and you'll see what it is later--and made it to my gate early. We ended up boarding and leaving early, so that was pretty awesome! I had a pretty uneventful flight over and we landed in Frankfurt early.  Clearing German Customs and claiming my baggage and meeting up with my boyfriend went well and without any trouble. Yay! Since there was construction on the Autobahn on the way up, he (The Boyfriend) opted to take a different route home. We took a few wrong turns, so we had a very scenic drive back to his place over near Heidelberg.  It was fun and definitely worth it.  I got to see some gorgeous scenery that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I got to meet his family, then I did the "I made it here alive" call to my parents and posted on FB for everyone else before called my cousin to figure out when to meet up with him. Not a bad first day there I'd say.

Monday-Thursday we went and checked out Heidelberg, Mannheim, and different sites in the area. I got to see Heidelberg Castle, Luisenpark, Sinsheim, and a few other things, including a fair/carnival in Mannheim!  Friday-Sunday we went to see my cousin and his family over in Grafenwöhr (he's in the military and is stationed there). I haven't seen my cousin in quite a few years and hadn't met his wife or kids yet, so that was really awesome!  It was good to get to see family I hadn't seen in years.

Monday-Wednesday was more local sightseeing and hanging around the house and trying to decide where to take a spontaneous mini-holiday to. We opted for Paris (he's been there a few times before, so he knew how to navigate the city some and what was awesome to see) so we bought plane tickets and made reservations at a motel and flew out Thursday afternoon.  The next morning we did our own super quick tour of Paris and went to the Eiffel Tower, walked around Notre Dame, checked out Montparnasse Tower, Centre Pompidou, Hôtel de Ville, Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville, Père Lachaise Cemetery (we checked out Jim Morrison's grave--awesome!), Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, and back to over near La Grande Arche de la Défense where we were staying. I know we saw more stuff just walking around, but I can't recall what they were.  I became somewhat well acquainted with the Paris Metro and RER since that was our main form of transport besides our feet. My legs hated me for 2 or 3 days after that, but that's ok.  We got back Saturday evening, then I unpacked and repacked so I could leave Sunday.

Sunday was a bit rough. I did not like leaving, but alas, it had to be so. Made it to the airport, cuddled with the fella awhile, then cleared Customs (didn't take long), cleared Security (who eyed my bag with a bunch of Ritter Sport chocolate bars kinda funny, but let it through), then went to my gate to wait. Here's where crap started to kind of go downhill. Plane was supposed to leave at 1:30, but sometime around 1 they were asking all the Economy Class passengers to limit themselves to one personal item/bag on the plane and check the other because the plane was full. Sometime around 1:30 we were starting to board. We ended up taking off about 2ish. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we actually landed on time in Denver at 4 pm. Yay! Mobile phone battery died 10 minutes after landing, so I was incommunicado for the rest of the day. Cleared US Customs and Security (the lines were just really, really long), then waited almost 45 minutes for my luggage, handed in my Customs Declaration form (a matter of seconds), and headed for the front door to wait for the shuttle back home. That was about 5 or 5:15. Well, since my battery on my phone was dead, I missed the call that the shuttle was running late because the one van broke down, so they had to wait for the other to arrive and instead of picking me up at 6 as planned, it'd be closer to 7. Oi. There was another person waiting for the shuttle too, so when they didn't show up and were about 30 minutes late her daughter called and found out what happened. The shuttle didn't show up until 7:30. It's about a 3 hour ride home and we had to stop for fuel at Fort Morgan, CO. I didn't get to town until 10:50 and it was after 11 by the time I walked home. Dropped my luggage off, then went to reclaim Bear from a friend's place and talked to them a bit, so it wasn't until 12am when I got home for good. Notified other people that I was home, alive, and safe, then went to bed close to 1am. Talk about a long day! By that time I'd been up over 24 hours (I did nap for about an hour or so on the shuttle ride home). And guess what? I had to get up Monday morning so I could go to work!  At least I made it home ok and got about 5 hours of sleep.

Oh, back to my mixed thoughts on Paris-- Parts of Paris were just beautiful! We were over in the business district, so the area wasn't that bad and a bit cleaner. The places we ate at over there had at least one person on staff that spoke enough English for us to order without major issues. We did eat lunch somewhere in the middle of Paris which had awesome food and although the staff didn't speak English we were able to point at the pre-made sandwiches and get some food.  On the other hand, Paris seemed to be a rather dirty place and a lot (not all, but a surprisingly large portion) of the people were quite rude. The Metro usually stunk. Where I had been in Germany was much cleaner and although a lot of the people were brusque, I wouldn't call them "rude." I'll admit though that I'm from a small city (about 900 people). Until this point in time, Denver, Colorado was the biggest city I'd been in. There are some really dirty parts to Denver, but something about Paris just really didn't appeal to me. I'd definitely visit again-- there were things that I didn't get to see this time that I'd love to go see. Personally, I couldn't live there though since there though. WAY too many people.  I've never been able to figure out the French language, so I think that's part of why I didn't care for the place either. How they say words and how they're spelled usually don't match, so you're left wondering what the heck they just said. Or at least I am. I tried to learn a bit of French one time, but other than counting to 10 and saying please, thank you, shit, big, small, exit, and cabbage, I really don't know much.

As for German it was easier for me, but that's partially because I'd learned some of the basic sentence structure and pronunciation rules in 5th grade and I've always had a fascination with the language. I know a little bit, but nowhere near enough to have a conversation. After 2 weeks there, I do understand a bit more, but I definitely couldn't communicate by myself. With the help of a dictionary or phrasebook I can kind of make what I want or need known. Still have a lot to learn of the language and culture though.

Some major differences I noticed between the US and Germany:

They really like carbonated mineral water (I dub it "fizzy water). That stuff is vile and evil in my opinion. Generally in the US we only use something like that for mixing drinks. It has not other purpose. lol
They don't believe in lines...or at least lines as the US understands them. If you're waiting in line in the US, people generally don't cut in front of you. Not quite the same in Germany. There's a line looking thing and where ever there's an opening, someone (generally more than one someone) will make a move for it no matter if they're farther back in line or next in line. The opening is free game for all.
The cashiers in stores get to sit down on chairs at the register. I haven't ever seen that in the US. All our cashiers have to stand. It's enough of a difference to make me notice it.

That's about all I can think of right now. I had a blast going though! I can't wait to go back. :)

May You Have...

2012-04-27T08:59:00.000-06:00

A while back someone posted a link for making your own stenciled pillow. I love typography styled stuff. It's simple, clean, and just nice to look at. I really like reading, so maybe that has something to do with it as well. LOL. Anyway, I decided to try my hand at making one last night!

It actually wasn't too bad, just time consuming to do. I really wish I'd gotten a better paint marker though. I'll use this one up, but I'm definitely going to have to either order a better one or pick one up next time I'm shopping in a bigger city. This one did the job, but it took for freaking ever and toward the end I was really having troubles getting it to do more than one letter before I had to put the cap back on and shake it again and I managed to get a few ink/paint splatters on the case. Ooops!

I found the quote I wanted to do, printed it off, then I got to stenciling it out on my pillowcase. I put a bit of poster board in the pillowcase so that the marker didn't bleed onto the other side.

After getting it all stenciled in with pencil, I then went over it with the marker. I managed to freehand it since I had the penciled in bits to guide me and I don't think I did too bad at all!

Now I just need to heat set the paint, stick a pillow in it and all will be well. :D I'm trying to decide if I'm ambitious enough to trim the excess on the one side down and add a zipper to it. I have no sewing skills whatsoever, so I probably ought to leave well enough alone. Maybe. LOL. I have another pillow case to use, so now I just need to decide on a quote for it! I'm really contemplating using the one in the tutorial link, but that's a huge quote and I'm not sure I have that much ambition. We'll see. It took me about 2.5-3 hours to stencil in with pencil, then go over with the paint marker. Now that I've got the hang of it, it should go a bit smoother next time!

Deutschland?

2012-04-26T12:03:00.000-06:00

To preface this post-- Man, it's been awhile! Ahem. Now onto the good stuff.

In 9 days (May 5) I'll be getting on a plane and flying to Germany. I'm quite excited about this since I've only ever been out of the US once and it was to Canada. Saskatchewan is just beautiful, by the way, but it's still close enough culturally that it didn't really feel like it was a "foreign country." Germany, well, that'll be a different sort of endeavor. Grocery stores aren't open on Sundays (not that I foresee that being an issue for me. lol), you pull up to the light you're stopped at (as in "right under the blasted thing," not pull up to the line on the other side of the intersection like we do here), most people there speak another language... and a few other things like that. It'll be fun, interesting, and exciting! And before you ask, yes there will be many pictures taken. I think everyone I know has told me that I have to take them. Rest assured. There will be photographic evidence of a trip. LOL.

So, that's it for now. Yeah, a bit of a floppy ending to such a post, but it's all I can think of for a conclusion. LOL. I probably won't be online much while I'm there, but check out my plurk account to keep up with what's going on. You'll have to add me as a friend since my timeline is private, but plurk is actually a really fun community. :D

Rocking the Boat

2011-03-16T20:16:00.000-06:00

Do you ever have those moments when you're idly browsing a social network or scouring the web for something and come across a gem that you really needed, but didn't know you didn't know you needed it until then? I just had such a moment. All it took was seeing a link to a blog post on Facebook and boom! I had a figurative slap to the face with a large, blunt object.
This one, simple quote was the main reason-- "In short, we cannot grow, we cannot achieve authentic discovery, and our eyes cannot be cleansed to the truly beautiful possibilities of life, if we simply live a neutral existence." Wow. How often do we settle for not “rocking the boat?” How often do we stand by and watch life pass us by, simply because we're comfortable (or at the very least not totally uncomfortable) where we're at? How often do we close our eyes or our ears so that we don't have to acknowledge something because it's too hard, too painful, too inconvenient? I'm not saying that being neutral is totally bad—it's not—but too often we use it for an excuse, a reason to not do more or be more than we could. Sometimes, we use it to hold back.
Life is a choice and everything in life is hinged upon the decisions that we make. It's what helps us to grow and to learn. So if we're totally neutral all the time, do we grow and learn? My guess is no. We might grow some and learn a few things, but nowhere near as much as we could have. It makes us like a stagnate pond with very little influx of new stuff and no outlet for everything else.

May You Always...

2010-12-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Not sure what it is about the past couple of weeks, but they haven't been that easy on me. Not bad, just frantic, busy, and occasionally overwhelming. Some of it is the holiday season and some of it is work. Don't get me wrong on the holiday bit, I'm not a Scrooge, I just miss my family this time of year. Today on twitter I saw someone retweet a tumblr post: "May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart might desire." Something about it just touches my heart right now. And you know what? I have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea in a warm house, laughter to cheer me, and some people I love near me. What more can I desire?

Aeble-what?

2010-10-27T21:40:00.006-06:00

I've been known to find some different (and on occasion, bizarre) foods. It was when I was doing some searching for Aloo Palak that I found--by a rather circuitous route-- Aebleskivers. To be honest, I'm not a fan of pancakes at all. Not sure why, I think it's something about the flavor and texture, but something about these little round Danish pancake balls really sounded interesting. So for kicks and giggles I found a cheapish pan, scoured the web for recipes, and gave it a whirl. Happily, I rather enjoyed them and have made them rather often for a quick brunch or snack to have on hand. After some time, I was a bit tired and bored with just the plain ones. After yet more scouring of the the web I found a winner-- Cheddar Jalapeno Cornbread Aebleskivers. I can't seem to find a reference to the first recipe I used (I'm beginning to think maybe I just made cornbread and added stuff to it), but tonight while satisfying my Cornbread Aebleskiver craving I found a keeper. This tasty little recipe comes from the blog "The Other Side of Fifty".

First whisk some flour, cornmeal, salt, brown sugar, baking soda and powder, cayenne and black pepper together in a medium bowl. I really recommend adding a touch less than the 1/2 tsp of cayenne called for if you're not a fan of spicy stuff. This was almost too much for me and I love spicy stuff, so I'd probably do a scant 1/2 teaspoon the next time.

Next, whisk some buttermilk (this will help tone down the cayenne quite a bit), melted butter, and eggs in a small bowl. Not the most appetizing look concoction. Now dump that lovely stuff on the dry ingredients and mix until combined. You don't want to overmix it, just get everything moist.

Done with the combining? Now add your diced jalapeños to the mix (if your using them) and give it a good stir. At some point in time, you'll want to melt some more butter and heat up your aebleskiver pan. It usually doesn't take too long to do that, well at least with my little cast iron pan it doesn't anyway.

Now you're going to want to brush the wells of your pan with some butter and add a Tablespoon or less mix to it. Add a chunk of cheese, add a little more mix (try not to overfill) and let the sides brown, flipping once each side is done. There are a couple ways to flip these things, but my personal favorite is using a knitting needle or bamboo skewer and flip them a quarter turn each time the side is brown and holds together. This takes some practice, so don't worry if they look funny. The first time, batch, and attempt with new recipes usually do look funny until you get the hang of it. The other way to flip them is to brown one half and flip it all the way over and cook the second half. Oh, and if you have an aluminum pan use a bamboo skewer so you don't scratch the non-stick coating. I have better luck with a knitting needle on my cast iron one, so it's just a matter of trying one and seeing which suits you better.

Once you're done browning the little lovelies and making sure they're cooked all the way through, enjoy! I love eating these with a bowl of chili. It's just a different variation of cornbread, but I think that's what makes it fun. :)

Foggy Musings

2010-09-20T10:02:00.000-06:00

One wouldn't think that Nebraska would get pea-soup thick fog some mornings, but it does. Coming from South Central Montana, I'm not really used to seeing fog, let alone that much of it. Sure, every once in awhile there'll be those pretty little wisps that wreathe the mountain tops, but that's usually it. In the panhandle of Nebraska on the other hand, there are times that I'm lucky to see a car length in front of me because the fog is so thick. That's not an everyday or "every time it's foggy" sort of thing but it happens. This morning was one of those mornings. I could see about a car length, maybe two, in front of me and that got me to thinking about stuff. I knew the road would take me to where I needed to go, but I really couldn't see well enough to know what was more than 20 or 30 feet in front of me. I had to trust that the road was going to be the same it usually is and lead me to work. When you think about it, life is the same way. God gave us a direction to take. We can't see the big picture about where it leads, or all the bumps along the way, we just have to trust that He'll take us where He wants us to go and that He'll be there for us when we need Him. Now, we don't have to follow the road He set for us since that's a matter of free will, but that's like getting turned around on a country road in the fog. You know it leads somewhere, you just don't know where or if the road is washed out or a bunch of other things like that. You're trusting in your own strength to bring you through and that that road is leading you to where you want to go. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather take the route where I know I have help if I get a flat tire in life.

Yep. Those are the kind of strange musings I have when driving 26 miles to work in the morning in the fog. Sometimes it puts stuff in a different perspective for me.

Pumpkin Gnocchi

2010-09-14T20:26:00.003-06:00

     It’s not quite fall yet, but I’m starting to see pumpkins and Halloween candy in the stores, Thanksgiving decorations, and cooler mornings and evenings. I love this time of year. I’m not sure what made me think of pumpkin gnocchi earlier, but it sounded like the perfect thing to do for dinner tonight. I didn’t exactly plan it out too well because all I had was regular spaghetti sauce and Kraft Parmesan cheese to put on them. ::lol:: That’s OK, they turned out pretty dang tasty anyway. :)
     I wasn’t sure if I still had the pumpkin gnocchi recipe I used last year, so I did a little internet scouring to see if I could find it (which I did), but I found this recipe as well. I decided to give it a whirl and I’m glad that I did. It was excellent! I’m currently assuming that you want to see my photos, so here you go!

   First, I dumped a 15 oz can of pumpkin (*not* pumpkin pie filling!!) into a bowl. If it’s watery, make sure to drain the water off of it first. You can use homemade pumpkin puree, but I was going for quick and easy tonight. Especially since I didn’t want to turn the stove on when it was about 90F out.

   Next, dump your spices and flour in there and mix it up until you get a soft dough. You don’t want it too sticky, but not too dry either. The recipe called for a dash of nutmeg, pepper, and salt. I added a little bit of cardamom just because it sounded perfect for it. Don’t get too carried away with the nutmeg (or cardamom) though. This isn’t a pumpkin bar. ::lol::

    You’re going to want to divide the dough into 6 pieces and roll them into a 1 inch diameter log. Cut into 1 inch pieces, and if you feel so led, use a fork to imprint them so they look more like potato gnocchi. It doesn’t change the flavour any, it just makes it look cool. I think. Heaven only knows the real reason behind gnocchi imprinting. LOL.

   Gently place your gnocchi in a pot of lightly salted boiling water. They’ll sink to the bottom when you first put them in there, so don’t worry about them. Keep an eye on them though, because when they start floating in a few minutes, they’re done.

     As I said, all I had was spaghetti sauce and Kraft Parmesan. LOL. Personally, I like mine with pesto and freshly grated Parmesan, but you really could use anything.
   If you by some chance won’t cook all the gnocchi at once (say, if you’re single like me), place them on a cookie sheet or something lined with parchment paper or wax paper and stick them in the freezer for a little while before sticking them in a freezer bag to use later. You want to freeze them on the sheet first, so they don’t stick together. or all you’ll have is a frozen clump of gnocchi that tastes goopy if you just stick them in the bag and freeze them.

Buon Appetito!

A Finished Foggy Dew

2010-06-16T10:51:00.002-06:00

I finished my Foggy Dew shawl the other day! It looks gorgeous! I ended up running a bit short on the original color I was using and has to switch to another color, but the brief contrast on the edge really sets it off (in my opinion). I’m much happier with the color change, than I would have probably been if I didn’t run short. :D It worked out alright anyway. I definitely want to do this pattern again some point in the future—sometime after I do a ton of the other patterns I have faved and/or queued. ::LOL::

Speaking of said shawl, I’ve been wearing it quite frequently since I finished it. I get chilled easily and my bosses are adamant about running the ac once it hits 69°F or 70°F in the office. ::brrr:: Even though the vent next to me is closed, it doesn’t help much, especially since it’s only about 18 to 24 inches away from me. ::lol:: It gives me a good reason to wear my shawl, but that’s about all I can say for it. OK, enough whining about the cold. ::LOL::

In lieu of the fact that I had quite a bit Mervielle du Jour Moth Skinny Bugga! leftover from the border of Foggy Dew, I decided to use it on Liz Abinate’s Traveling Woman shawl. It caught my eye sometime back and I have enough yarn to do it, but not so much that I’ll end up with a bunch of waste yarn. :)

Adventures with an XBox 360

2010-06-07T21:41:00.002-06:00

A friend convinced me to get an XBox 360 about 7 months ago. I'm really glad I listened, because I have a blast gaming on it. I never thought I'd enjoy online gaming, but with the right people, it really can be a lot of fun. There was just one minor downside to this that I discovered about a month later-- I couldn't game or talk to some people on the XBOX Live network. Now that might not sound like a big problem, but it can be. You can't hear certain people in the game unless you join a party hosted by someone else, heck you can't even join the same multiplayer match unless someone else hosts it. If you like gaming with the person that can be a huge problem.
Well, it was a bit of an annoyance for some time, but we just got around it by having someone else host the games and join a party so we could hear what the other was saying. That worked well enough...until I got "Red Dead Redemption." If you invite someone to your multiplayer session that you can't connect to, it boots one of the "incompatible" players. Not much fun at all. That led a friend and I on a search as to how to fix that. He found a video that got me started in the right direction as to how to fix it. Well, after a few failed attempts, I got it sorted out. Here's how for those experiencing similar issues.
1. Opening ports is definitely the first place you want to start. It's not too difficult if you have a router that lets you forward ports. Portforward.com is a great place to learn from. You'll need to forward or open the ports listed on the XBox Live site-- basically TCP 80, UDP 88, TCP/UDP 3074, and TCP/UDP 53. Test the connection. It should tell you if you have a strict NAT or not when you test you XBOX Live connection (it won't always tell you and I'll explain that later). If you can connect to those you haven't been able to, then huzzah! :D If it doesn't work, you can try setting up a DMZ for your XBox's IP address. As for how to do it (if the router is capable of it), you'll have to look at the router manufacturer's site or google it.
2. Well, I tried the above and it didn't work for me. XBox Live said the connection was fine, but I still couldn't connect to some. I figured "aww, screw it" and decided to connect directly to my modem, no router involved. I tested the connection and lo! Strict NAT. I get my internet through CenturyLink (formerly Embarq and CenturyTel). Apparently, there are XBox Live compatible ISPs (nuts, I know) and the modem I have through CenturyLink (a 660R) apparently causes trouble. After a bit of googling, I found that I didn't need to get a new modem, I just needed to put it in "bridge-mode". Bridging the modem was a piece of cake. MUCH easier than forwarding ports even. I don't totally understand how it works, I just know that it did work. ::LOL:: Sorry, this isn't really an exciting post, but I'm hoping that it helps someone else out. It's a flipping pain to search most of the known web and not find what you're needing. I'm one of those "hands on" people. I look at the piece of tech, goof with it, and sometimes I can get it to do what I want it to. If you have questions, I'll see what I can do to help. The links should help point you in the right direction though. :)

Happy Gaming!