LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

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Fail

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I watched Alton Brown make some buffalo wings the other night, and even though buffalo wings kinda creep me out, it was an entertaining show. Lloyd, as you may know, LOVES buffalo wings – they are often a staple at Bad Movie Night.

At Wal-Mart today, I bought some chicken legs to boil for chicken broth to keep around for soup. I really only need the bones for this purpose, and wondered what to do to them so we could eat the meat tonight. Why not buffalo legs!? Genius!

Yeah, no.

Turns out that we only like chicken legs that have been fried, fried, fried until they are so crispy they cut your lips. I baked these guys naked (heh heh, naked guys) in a 450 degree oven for about 50 minutes then tossed them in their respective sauces (jarred pesto for me, our hot sauce-mustard-butter-creation for Lloyd), and dug in. Bleh. We spent a couple of minutes wondering, “Are these done inside?” and really, if you have to ask, they probably aren’t. So they went back into the ripping hot oven for 15 minutes more, but were still…..soft…inside. Soft, like, ‘I’m going to die of food poisoning tonight’ soft’, even though they were totally done. We ate celery and bread.

The bread was excellent.

Every piece is like a roll!

Friday Night Live

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Three screens of glory
wii sports, guitar hero III and DDR

It’s Friday night, 9:50, and I’m sitting in the computer lab at Lloyd’s school while the middle schoolers party, party, party. I watched them run around and play for a little while. For me, it’s like visiting the zoo – “Look at the seventh graders in their natural habitat, wary of the larger, more cunning eighth graders…” Cute & all, but eventually you want to visit the gift shop.

My own little party.

I’ve spent most of the past hour browsing some pretty interesting websites, and one that I think you should all go visit and submit something to is www.tradetricks.org . This guy has people who give some pretty sound, quick advice for their respective fields. Examples come from a D.J., a furniture refinisher, a mom, a reader – it’s pretty eclectic. The one that I will remember came from a reporter. He said

If you have to interview a grieving family after a death, a good question to ask is: “Did he have a good sense of humor?”This will almost always shake the family out of their grief, making it easier for them to talk to you, and bring up an anecdote that really shows the character of the dead person.

Not that I need an anecdote or anything, but that might make conversation less awkward, eh?

By the time you read this on Saturday, Lloyd and I will be preparing to stand outside, yet again, for Ron Paul. The weather will be a roasty, toasty 14 degrees. I must REALLY love Ron Paul.

UPDATE:  Lloyd has just announced to me that we we NOT be going outside to hold signs.  It’s too dang cold.  Woo-hoo!  That means that today is devoted to Ukulele Day!  (Which means, of course, that something will go horribly wrong.)

To my fans

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I like to buy multiples of things.  Not everything – just certain things.  Early in the marriage I had a thing for clocks, lamps and fans.  I don’t need to buy the clocks and lamps anymore, but fans are difficult to pass up. Not counting utility fans like the vent fan over the stove, the fan in the furnace, etc., I have ….. I’m not telling.  It’s embarrassing.

Anyway, when I went to buy my super pillow, this little guy was on clearance.  I had several bouts of ‘put it down’ when it was on the shelves at Bed, Bath & Beyond this summer, but now he’s come home.  It has floppy fabric blades, for cryin’ out loud!  AND it folds up!!!  I love you, little fan. I’ll use you once then put you on a shelf to get dusty.

It's fanerific.

Noodley-oodley

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Somethings are just better when they’re homemade – bread, pizza, wine, ice cream, cottage cheese, noodles, ….. um, maybe this post is going nowhere. Let me tell you my noodle story.
I keep lurking on these cooking blogs where seemingly normal people are making fantastic-looking food in their normal kitchens and then photographing it to make it seem unattainably beautiful. I read one and wanted to make noodles from scratch. I’ve watched Alton Brown do it on t.v. with all the pasta machine doo-dads, then I read about people who have done it only using flour, an egg, some salt & water and a knife. I wanted to try that. I’m glad I did, but I might not ever do it again. These noodles turned out ok, but nothing can beat Kluski noodles. A good day is chicken soup with Kluski noodles.

Assemble software.

stir with hardware.

kneaded and ready to roll

It was difficult to stop rolling. So fun!

I omitted the cutting picture. How much of this could you take?

I seem to be using lots and lots of flour lately. I don’t know what the obsession is. I think I like that flour doesn’t talk back to me. Or pee it’s pants. Much.

MyMiniCity WordPress Plugin

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This WordPress plugin displays statistics for your www.myminicity.com town. It also provides links to the various URLs associated with your MiniCity as they are needed. I spent a while looking for a plugin that would do this, and finally decided that this would be a good chance for me to learn how to write WordPress plugins. So this is my first plugin, and it could probably use some work. But it wouldn’t be working at all if not for the Ronald Huereca’s How to Write a WordPress Plugin article.

Sauturday

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I was tired last night and didn’t get around to posting. I can’t think of anything interesting to say this morning, so I’ll tell you about Bejeweled. It is a terrible little game that will take over your life. Brad introduced it to us last week, and we sat around for many an hour saying, “Just one more game.” My best game happened before church on Sunday, when I just kept getting good turns over and over and over. I was literally sweating, because my hair wasn’t dry and we had to leave in twenty minutes. (“Just one more minute….”)
Anyway, if you want to try to line up three sparkly jewels in a row to make them disappear, try this. Don’t blame me if you lose your job because you forgot to go. Click the pic.
Would you like to play a game?