the making of things

I have been trying to make this photo into a userpic of Tori all morning with no success. Because I took it without a flash, it's just too orangey and dark. But everything I do to make it brighter washes out the color too much. I am not a natural with image manipulation software. I'll keep working at it though. It's just such a cute picture of her. Then I need to make another userpic or two of Lexi, because he's falling behind on image count. Don't want to favor one kitty over the other. It's not his fault that Tori is more photogenic.

The next two chapters of AGL are entirely and mostly written, respectively. My goal is to get at least one of them done before Thanksgiving. I think that's more than doable, assuming I get some time to work on them tonight.

Last night I made brownies for the office Thanksgiving party. I haven't made brownies in ages. I use the recipe in The Joy of Cooking, which is excellent. I think I may have used a pan that's a bit too large, though -- they're a little flat. I'm planning to frost them. Maybe with mint frosting, maybe peanut butter (Cook's Illustrated has a peanut butter buttercream recipe that I want to try, it sounds yummy). Unfortunately, I won't get to eat them until Wednesday. Fortunately, that's what the bowl is for.

Also last night, I made a new music game. That'll go up in a couple of hours, around 9:30 PST or maybe a little before. See you then.

tuesday music game

You know the drill. Guess the song from the first line. More lines will be added as days pass. iTunes et. al. yes, Google no. All songs guessed last time!

( Lyrics behind the cut... )

good morning

A quiet library, my iPod with the spiffy new headphones, a cup of coffee, an interesting project to work on, a song meme running merrily along (and you all are *way* overthinking the theme). What more to ask for? Well, maybe some kittens.

Update -- the theme is guessed. Nice work, folks.

christmas carol meme

From iamleaper.

( It's true, and I don't care who knows it. )

Wow, four posts already today, and it's only barely noon. Time to put down the keyboard for a little while. (Well, except for doing work. Ah, work.)

cooking

It is approximately a million times easier to make frosting with a stand mixer than without one. Holy cow! I had no idea. I love frosting, but I almost never make it because it's such a pain, even with a hand mixer. This may change in the future.

I decided on peanut butter for the brownies in the end. I was curious about the buttercream recipe (it's quite tasty), and the flavor combination seemed more fall-like than mint. Also, my mint brownie recipe requires the mint frosting layer to stand for four hours before you can add the chocolate frosting layer, and I just don't feel like getting up early in the morning to finish baking. Orange was mighty tempting, though. I'll have to search out a recipe for chocolate-orange frosting the next time I make brownies (which may be next week, depending on how ambitious I'm feeling).

So the office Thanksgiving potluck is tomorrow. One of the admissions reps is deep frying a turkey. I've been hearing for years how good that is, so I am dying to try it. Also, I'm madly curious to see the frying rig -- I've heard stories about that as well. He's going to be doing it on the roof of the parking garage. And then of course there's the short day of work, with which I will not argue!