Not so On Demand

OK...here goes my first bitching post.
What is with this phrase "on demand" that cable channels like to throw around?  On demand means when I think of something I want to watch and it has previously aired on your channel, I should be able to go to your "on-demand" website and watch it.   YouTube can handle this-I demand to watch every Weird Al Yankovic video ever made!-but HBO, with a show that they produce? Noooo.
I'm almost ashamed to admit this but feel I have to in order to tell my sad sad tale.  OK, here goes.  *sighs*  I'm trying to watch Season two of True Blood.  As a southerner, I am deeply offended by  the bad accents on this show.  I mean they are horrific.  And when I say "horrific" I mean North and South miniseries-oh, my stars, that Orry Main is a handsome devil!-horrific.  The only one who had a close to authentic accent was Rene and we find out in the last episode of season one that his accent was fake!  I mean, I've heard a few real acadians (in ADDITION to Justin Wilson) and his accent was pretty damn good.  I digress...
Anyway, I couldn't get Season One from HBO ON Fucking Demand.  I kind of get that-it's out on DVD and they are trying to run a business.  So I order it from Netflix.  It's five disks so it takes me nearly 2 months to get through Season 1, one disk at a time.  After finishing episode 12 yesterday and dropping that little red envelope in the mail, I go to HBO On-Fucking-Demand to pick up where I left off, at the beginning of season Two.  Not AVAILABLE on HBO On Fucking Demand!!!  Why!?  Completely asinine!  HBO, I subscribe to all your bullshit channels through Dish Network.  WTF?  I paid my money, I want some on demand action. And just to rub salt in the wound, they are starting to re-run season one in the coming weeks, after I just dropped the last DVD from Netflix in the mail.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to get these free online (preferably on a Mac, as we have a Mac mini hooked up to the TV) without downloading some sketchy software.  Oh, Pirate Bay, where were you when I needed you?  What? Tied up in Court?  Oh, that's too bad.  Now my tale doesn't seem so sad.  Never mind.

Because I just couldn't leave well enough alone

After 3 months of looking at the walls in Jackson's room, I've decided that I have to paint. So...the process of paint selection begins. Hopefully I'll have something selected before he's in college.

Sir John Soane's Museum

I started collecting rocks as souvenirs when I studied in Europe in my third year of Architecture School. We had a free week and Rebecca and I were yearning to hear someone speak some form of English so we went to England and Scotland.  After a trip to Canterbury, we stopped near Dover to see the famous White Cliffs and I was surprised to see the beaches were composed entirely of rocks Having only seen the beautiful powder-white sand from beaches on the Gulf, I was completely amazed and took some of the rocks with me. It turned out to be a great souvenir so I did it a few other places that had cool looking rocks. I've amassed a collection and was starting to think I should display them in some way. I found these glass apothecary jars and added the labels so they seem like specimens. It reminded me of Sir John Soane's Museum, which I visited on that same trip to Europe.

Dead Sea Creatures and other Beach Finds

This is some of our collection of pretty rocks and sand dollars from our many trips to Fort Funston on the weekends.  It is a dog-friendly beach so we take Archie there as much as we possibly can.  And he inevitably finds some dead sea creature on the beach and rolls around in it.  It's been forcing us to keep up with regular baths so it does have a fringe benefit for us.  We were almost to the end of our walk down the beach and were foolishly thinking he wouldn't find anything dead but, he did.  And he rolled around in it for a good 45 seconds.  When we went a few weeks ago there was a huge dead sea lion that had washed up on the beach.  THANK GOD he didn't see it or we would have never gotten the stink off of him.   Andy and I managed to distract him as we passed, which is not easy to do with a dog that has absolutely no interest in retrieving things.  We were both picturing Archie running up to the sea lion and partially re-enacting the beached-whale scene from the Reno911! movie with the rest of the dogs at the beach..  Guh...oh wait let's think about pretty beach things instead of the title of this post.
Well, the tide was in this time so we didn't see any pretty rocks or sand dollars.  But we did see this.

I know it's completely juvenile toilet humor but I just couldn't resist taking it home and photographing it.  Unfortunately, I forgot to move it from the back of the car away from Archie so he gave the, uh, right cone a chewing before I could photograph it.  It was a pristine example of what I like to call an organic dildo-so San Francisco.

The Hunter

Archie likes to sneak up on his dog food.

I'm Spicy!

Behold my new spice rack! It is a lovely celebration of my anal retentiveness. All rows carefully arranged, all the spices alphabetized. Take a good long look....this is my last delusional grasp at having an adult household.  Once Jax is completely mobile it will either be destroyed or moved up a couple feet out of his reach and possibly mine as a result. I'm enjoying these last few months of freedom before everything has to be 4 feet off the ground. As I made all the labels and moved the spices into their rightful place and neat rows, I envisioned a scene, years from now, where I was ONCE AGAIN rearranging these spices BACK into alphabetical order because either Jax (or future child) or Andy (or the two of them in collusion) have moved them around just to screw with my head.  It gets me all riled up just thinking about it.



This setup is from IKEA in one of my many many trips with my domestic partner-in-crime, Jamie.  The red sheet metal piece was originally intended to be a bulletin board with magnets.  The jars are being used as intended.  I did my research before choosing the IKEA jars.  I looked at the ones from Bed Bath and Beyatch but they were a tiny bit more expensive and too small to hold an entire spice jar, meaning you have to throw out half of the expensive spice you just bought or store the jar in a cabinet, COMPLETELY DEFEATING THE PURPOSE!  Or as my twenty-something nerd friends would say..FAIL.    Just the thought of that makes me throw up a little in my mouth. I cannot STAND designs that are not thought through.  That is what design is about.  Identifying and Solving problems in the best possible way, considering not JUST aesthetics but also function.  Is that so hard?

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

A little recipe I worked up for a pot luck brunch at our house to introduce some folks to Jax...

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups AP Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Ginger
1/4 tsp Cloves
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1 1/2 cups Granulated Sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
Wet Ingredients:
2 cups Canned pumpkin (or one small can)
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup vegetable oil (can substitute applesauce)
1/4 cup molasses

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place all dry Ingredients in mixing bowl with whisk attachment and combine.  Remove whisk attachmentand add all wet ingredients.  Switch to paddle attachment and mix together on low until ingredients are combined.
If not using paper liners, spray muffin tin with a cooking spray with Flour.  Using ice cream scoop, fill muffin cups completely to get a nice muffin top (like the one hanging over your jeans).  Bake for 20 minutes at 350.  Makes 18 small size muffins.  I'm guessing it makes a dozen of the large muffins.