Belated Happy Turkey-Day!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a minute out of what I'm assuming is a busy Black Friday to share some pictures of our Thanksgiving meal! (pictures of food on the internet, what? Is that a thing?)

Let me give you a brief over-view of the menu:

• Two different kinds of salad
• Salmon patties 
• Two different kinds of wine (1 homemade)
• Split-pea soup
• Homemade bread
• Turkey (of course)
• Gravy
• Stuffing
• Sweet potato casserole
• Cranberry sauce
• Roasted white potatoes
• Honey cupcakes
• Ginger-apple cake
• Chocolate bumpy cake
• Pumpkin pie

A feast I tell you! We did it all kind-of pot-luck style, where everyone brought something. And by everything, I mean the woman. It's not a sexist thing, but the men in our family just don't cook for whatever reason, although my Father-in-Law did bring us homemade wine!

And now for some pictures:

Yours truly, putting the finishing touches on my bird.

And it was a beautiful bird, if I do say so myself.

My family and I usually head out to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, so this was actually only the second time I've ever had to put the Thanksgiving meal together. I think the turkey came out pretty damned good! I was really proud of myself and what I was able to accomplish. Would I do it again? In a heart-beat. It was fun, and the turkey was actually easy (and tasty!).

And these are just the leftovers!

Okay, so I know that Thanksgiving isn't just about food, so I want to take a minute to talk about all of the things that I'm thankful for this year.

• I'm thankful for my job.
• I work in am amazing library, where they treat the staff like family. My coworkers are fun and amazing people, and my boss is one of the sweetest people I know.
• I'm thankful for my family.
• My parents and In-Laws both live about 15 minutes away from us (okay, 20 with traffic), and I love that we're close enough to pop over whenever we want and spend time with our families.
• I'm thankful for my education.
• I'm working on my Master's in Library and Information Science, and I'm just about done with my second semester. That's 1/3 of the way!
• I'm thankful for my health.
• While I'm not always the healthiest person (I could eat less and exercise more), I don't have any big health issues, and that's a blessing.
• I'm thankful for a great place to live.
• Our apartment might not be much (though we're slowly improving it), but it's ours, and I love it.

So that's it for right now. How did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving? And if you don't celebrate, did you do anything fun/cool on Thursday? What are you thankful for this year? 
Stay tuned for another post in the next few days, I'm going to be talking about the end of NaNoWriMo, and my plans for next year (yes, I plan ahead. no, I don't always stick to those plans), and of course, what I learned from NaNo this year and what I love about the event!
Also, look for a new Librarian's Corner next month (on-time, I hope), and some year-end recaps!

Happy Friday, and enjoy your leftovers, I know I will!

Librarian's Corner: Preacher

Preacher

by: Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon 

We're doing things a little bit differently on this month's Librarian's Corner. Normally, I like to spend a while telling you about a book that I recently read and enjoyed. This month though, I'm going to be talking about an entire series!
Now for those of you who don't know, I work in a library (gasp, really?), and my library has an amazing collection of graphic novels. One of those (or really, 9 of them, this is a series, remember) is Preacher. Now, don't go jumping to conclusion, this isn't a religious comic. Well, I guess it is, but it's not that kind of religious comic.

Preacher is about the Reverend Jessie Custer, who's starting to become disillusioned with his position (and his flock) when something... supernatural happens. Before he knows it Jessie, his girlfriend Tulip and their friend Cassidy (who just happens to be a vampire) are on a mission to find God (who's missing) and hold him accountable for the state in which He's left humanity. So yeah, I guess it is about religion, but I told you, not in that way. Along the way they run into a whole cast of characters who want to stop Jessie. From the Saint of Killers (who's mission is to collect the souls of anyone who dies a violent death) to an organization called The Grail (bent on bringing about Armageddon, for the good of humanity, of course), and even an unfortunate young man who goes by the moniker Arseface. 
 
I picked up Preacher: Gone to Texas last November without a single clue what it was about, because I had heard that one of the main characters was a vampire. I'm a total sucker for vampires and will read just about anything that has 'em. I ran to the library to see if we had a copy, and was thrilled to discover that we actually had the whole series! I grabbed Gone to Texas, and started reading. It took me a year to work my way through the series. Partially because I knew that there were only 9 books (technically "trade paperbacks" collecting issues 1-66 of the comic books), and I wanted to space them out nicely.

I love the series, and once I got into the last few books, I couldn't help myself. I was picking up one every few days and powering through them. I just had to know what was going to happen to these characters I had grown to love (and hate, I hated some of the by the end). Who would I recommend this story to? Anyone who has questions about God. No, seriously, this isn't a series for those who might be offended by some slight (haha!) blaspheming. And before I go any further into my recommendations, I should mention that this series is for mature readers only. Seriously, I don't like to tell kids not to read things, but this really isn't for the littles, grown-ups only please.

So, to summarize: Preacher is about a gun-toating hard drinking, Texas preacher named Jessie Custer, who is on a mission to find God. He teams up with his tough-as-nails girlfriend Tulip and an alcoholic fun-loving, Irish vampire names Cassidy and they travel across the country (and to France, that one time) to find God and hold Him accountable for abandoning humanity. Sh*ts about to get real here folks. So if you like sharp-shooting Texas cowboys, and hard-drinking Irish vampires, and chicks who are not about to take cr*p from anyone, then Preacher might be the series for you. Plus, there are lots of pretty pictures!


That about wraps things up for this month's Librarian's Corner. Sorry for the 2-day delay. I meant to have this post up by the 22nd, at the latest, but... I've mentioned that I work in a library, and sadly, one of my co-workers passed away yesterday. She was an integral part of our tech-services department, and will be dearly missed. 
Anyway, thanks for being patient and sticking with me. I promise that December's Librarian's Corner will be more prompt! Speaking of, I'm always looking for suggestions, so if you have anything you'd like me to read and talk about, let me know! You can leave a message here in the comments! And, if you've read/want to talk about Preacher, leave a comment! We'll have a discussion, it'll be fun, I promise! So that's it for now folks. See you in December!

Stay tuned! 

NaNoWriMo 2014

In case you have been living under a rock (or another similarly rock-like object), today is November 1st! Yay! So what? you say. November 1st, big deal. you add sarcastically. Yes big deal, for November 1st marks the beginning of

NaNoWriMo

What's that? You don't know what NaNoWriMo is? Oh you poor soul, let me educate you. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November tens of thousands (possibly millions) of people around the world (yes, I know I said National, but stick with me here, okay?) gather together to write a novel in one month. For the sake of the event a novel is defined as 50,000 words of a new and original story. And no, it doesn't actually have to be a novel! You can write five 10,000 word short stories that all focus on a similar theme, or a 50,000 word memoir about your life in the Philippines or you can just go ahead and be a NaNo Rebel!

You might think that it's impossible to write 50,000 words in just 30 days, but it is possible. I've done it! Tens of thousands of others have done it too! You can do it! All you have to do is commit to writing 1,667 words a day. And really, that's not a lot. It's only about 2-3 pages, depending on your writing software and your font size. A few pages, I bet you have a few pages of a novel sitting around in your head, just waiting to be put down on screen, or paper!

So how do you do it? The first step is to sign up! Head on over to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up for an account today. It's 100% free, and I promise you won't regret it. Then you can go ahead and start writing! Today is Day 1, and there's plenty of time left to write. Grab a snack (and some caffeine, trust me on this one, you're going to want to caffeinate), and get to writing. Open up Word, or your notebook and start putting words down. And don't worry, it doesn't have to be any good. We're writing novels in 30 days folks, but no one said anything about writing good novels. Trust me, just get it all down, and you can spent December, January and February editing. Oh, that's another thing, your Inner Editor is going to want to pipe up and make changes. Before you start writing, grab some rope and tie him up, okay? You're on your own for this one!

I don't want to bore you with a lot of text, and besides, you've got some writing to do, so I'm going to let you get to it. Go sign up for an account, and add me as a friend if you'd like! Writing is easier with buddies! (I'm CarynSKA on the site too) There are all kinds of local writing events that you can track down and participate in, and if there's nothing close to you, there are WordSprints and virtual write-ins on twitter (follow @NaNoWriMo, @NaNoWordSprints and check out the hash-tag #amwriting for more goodness).

So that's it! Go write! Have fun and give in to 30 days of literary abandon! I'm going to add a word-count widget to the site for the rest of November, so you guys can check in on my progress, and hassle me if I fall too far behind. After all, what are friends for?

Happy Writing and remember: 1,667 words per day, and you'll hit 50K on November 30th!

Librarian's Corner: The Snarkout Boys and The Avocado of Death

The Snarkout Boys 

and the Avocado of Death

by: Daniel Pinkwater

First of all, I have to say that this is the strangest book that I've read in a very long time. But then again, its a Daniel Pinkwater book, what do you expect? Oh, you're not familiar with Daniel Pinkwater? Let me introduce you. Pinkwater writes absolutely ridiculous books (mostly for children) about such every day occurrences as talking lizards (Lizard Music), giant chickens (The Hoboken Chicken Emergency) and a moose who works as a waiter (the Blue Moose series). Sounds interesting, right? It is, and The Snarkout Boys are sort-of the culmination of all of this weirdness in one delicious book.

 

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death is about well, exactly what you think its about. Walter Galt and Vincent Bongo have refined the fine art of "snarking out", or sneaking out of the house after your parents are asleep. While out one night at the all-night movie theater that the boys frequent, they run into a young lady named Rat, who brings them home to meet her crazy family. Thus begins the strangest adventure that young Walt and Vincent have ever endured, and certainly the strangest one; involving mad scientists, all-night restaurants, stump-speeches and of course, avocados. 

My love-affair with Mr. Pinkwater started while my husband and I were on our honeymoon last summer. He was appalled to discover that I had never heard of the masterpiece that is Lizard Music. He promptly downloaded it to his talking books player, and we spent a lovely weekend sitting out on the deck of the country house we were staying at, listening to Lizard Music and laughing our butts off. After that, it was on to The Hoboken Chicken Emergency and The Last Guru. I've been reading Pinkwater avidly for over a year now, and I've yet to come across a book that I didn't love.

The Snarkout Boys is just everything that I love about Daniel Pinkwater's books. It's ridiculous, and it's fun, it's silly and it makes you laugh. Yes, it's a kid's book, but it's also for adults! Don't let anyone out there tell you that as a so-called "grown-up" you are not allowed to read and enjoy literature aimed at kids. Although there is something beautiful about its childlike silliness. There's a sense of whimsy that you don't get very often in traditional "adult" books, and Pinkwater is the master of whimsy. Seriously, he wrote a book about a giant chicken, remember?

This is a short book, so I'm going to keep this short. I loved The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, and if you have a healthy appreciation of the weird, you will too. Where you can you get your paws on a copy? At your local library of course! But wait! There's more! You can actually listen to this amazing novel for free, narrated by the author himself! Head on over to www.pinkwater.com and check out all of his free audiobooks!

So that's it for this month. Are you going to run out and read/listen to The Snarkout Boys? Yes, yes you are! It's well worth the price. You know, free. Enjoy! And come back next month for another installment of Librarian's Corner. I'm hoping to do something a little special next month, so please check back for it! In the mean time, tell me what you're reading these days, I'm always looking for some new recommendations (as if my reading list isn't long enough...)! TL;DR? More next month, tell me what you're reading, and have fun!

 See you next month!

Adventures in Grape-Squishing

Hey, remember last time, when I mentioned that we'd been grape-squishing? Well, now I'm going to tell you guys all about it.

It all started a few Fridays ago, when my in-laws went to a pick-your-own-vineyard and came home with 165 lbs. of grapes. Yes, 1-6-5. That's... a lot of grapes. So what were we to do with all of those grapes? Make wine, of course.
My in-laws have been making wine longer than I've been a part of the family (which, admittedly isn't that long, but still, it's traditional at this point). Every fall they acquire grapes, squish the juice out, and let it ferment into something alcoholic and delicious.

For the last several years, this squishing has taken place in their basement. The set-up was... precarious at best. There was a car-jack involved, and a cross-beam named Roderick that butted up against the ceiling... and yeah, it wasn't good.
So last year, my husband and I built them a wine-press. A real wine-press. Based off of the design of a commercial wine-press that a friend of theirs had purchased for lots of $$.

okay... so we're still using a car-jack.

The basic design is simple. There's a wooden frame that supports a car-jack, that holds the actual press. Inside the big green bucket is another (Home Depot) bucket with lots of holes drilled into it. Grapes go in the inside bucket, pressure is applied and juice comes out the bottom. The big green bucket has a spigot installed in the side so that the juice can be moved to yet another bucket. You can't make wine without a lot of buckets, apparently.

Okay, so once you've got your press all set up, you add grapes. 165 lbs. of them if you've got!

All the classiest vintners use kitchen pots.

Then, like I said, it's time to squeeze. We made a set of inter-locking pegs that would fit between the car-jack and the grapes so that we could continue to add pressure even as the grapes got squished down. Once your pegs are in place, you squeeze.

Here you can see our peg system in action.

I wanted to cut dovetails on the pegs but... meh, you can't always get what you want. What comes next? Well, uh, more squeezing. And then? Even more squeezing. If you've got a lot of grapes (and we do), you're going to have to do a lot of squeezing. We did about 2 batches of white grapes, and another 2-3 batches of red grapes. If you've got a spigot installed into the side of your big green bucket (which I highly recommend), your grape-juice can pour right out into its permanent home. In our case, some fancy food-grade buckets which will house the grape-juice while it ferments.

Happy little grape-juice

All there is left to do is ferment your grape-juice and make it into delicious delicious wine. But that, boys and girls, is another show.

What do you do with the left-over grape mash? It composts really really well, so go ahead and dump it into your compost heap... if that is, you don't mind a massive fruit-fly infestation. If you're not a fan of fruit flies, then you're probably going to want to throw the mash out. Sorry.
And speaking of flying pests, if you're squishing grapes outside over the summer (or even in the early fall), be prepared to entertain some of these guys:

Yes, that's a yellow-jacket, and yes, there were a lot of them.

I think that about wraps things up for today. We had a lot of fun grape-squishing, and in about a year (give or take a few months) we'll have some wine! Hey, I never said this was a quick process. Alright, stay tuned next time for our October installment of Librarian's Corner. What am I going to be reading/reviewing this month? Who knows! I sure don't! So come back on the 21st and find out!

Happy Squishing!

Follow Up - What to Do About That Boring Bathroom?

Remember way back when, when I was complaining about our boring apartment? Well, more than half a year later, we're finally making some progress.

Now, we've being adding little things around the apartment to spruce things up. Like our night-stands, which added some much needed space in our bedroom. We finished our kitchen table, and can now eat breakfast like grown-ups (instead of sitting on the couch to do so). And we've been putting various art-works up around the apartment. But today, we took a big step toward de-borifying our apartment. We hung a shelf in the bathroom!

Okay, now I know that doesn't sound like much, but it made a big difference and really pulled the space together. Let's take a look at some before and after pictures, shall we?

Here's the Before picture. We've got a toilet, a trash-can, and uh, that's about it. Boring right? I mean, it's not like a bathroom needs a lot of stuff in it to be functional, but it's not exactly pretty like this. What to do? Decorate! And here's what I did:

I hate that stupid sliding door that you can see in the right of the picture. It really doesn't slide well, and we just always keep it shut. So I added some posters that I found in an old anatomy book.

Somehow, these seemed appropriate for the bathroom

These have been up for several months, and have added a lot of fun to the bathroom. We get a lot of compliments on them from guests.

A month ago, there was a lot of flooding in South-East Michigan. The sewer system in the Metro-Detroit area got overwhelmed one day when we had a lot of rain, and many many basements flooded. Why am I telling you this? Because my in-law's had a flood in their basement and ended up having to throw out a book-case that had water damaged (and mold growing on it). Why am I telling you this? Because the shelves inside the book-case were perfectly fine, and we snagged two of them!

A little warped, but they work fine

We decided to hang the shelves in the bathroom, so we went out and bought a bunch of really pretty shelf-brackets to hang them with.

We went to 2 different hardware stores to find brackets this pretty!

And then we went ahead and got to hanging our shelf! We have two of these shelves, and we were originally planning on hanging both of them in the bathroom, one on top of the other. But after we hung the first shelf, we just liked the way it looked, and decided to just go with the one.
Once it was hung, the only thing left to do was to decorate, so we did.

I've got a carefully curated collection of books, my crocheted uterus and a Rubik's Cube. Of course.We finished everything off with a gorgeous framed picture that we got last year as a wedding present.

I need to get a copy of Mary Roach's Gulp to finish out my bathroom collection.

So there you have it. We finally fixed up our boring bathroom, and you know what? It's not so boring any more. Here's the official After picture, check it out:

Scroll back to the top to compare the Before picture

So what do you think? Do you like our choice of decor? I know it's not everyone's style, but we like it. I feel like we're slowly making our apartment into a home. Our kitchen is almost done, and we're working on the bedroom. Next up is the den (still the worst area in the house), and the living room/TV area. Sigh. There's always so much more to do. Back to Pinterest!




That's it for today. Stay tuned for next time when we'll... Well, I don't actually know. But I'm sure it'll be something interesting. Like when we went grape-squishing. That was interesting wasn't it? Oh wait, I didn't write about that yet! Stay tuned next time for when we go grape-squishing!