I have been on the hunt for a brown bread mix that will taste as good as the bread I had while I was pigging out on it in Ireland. I think I practically lived off of it. Odlums, you have my heart. Anyway, I’ve found that US whole wheat flour isn’t as ‘coarse’ as the stuff you get in Ireland, which makes the texture, and even the taste, of bread that I make over here just not quite right. So I’ve been ordering random bread mixes and comparing, and this weekend I tried this:

Garvey's Organic Traditional Irish Brown Bread Mix

I got it off Amazon, and I was hopeful. I splashed in some buttermilk, got my Kerrygold butter ready to slather and crossed my toes.

It was alright. Comparable? Not really. Tasty? I guess. I have 5 more boxes of it so I’m going to pretend to enjoy it, at least! I might have to break down and just buy some Odlums from this store. If only shipping costs weren’t so ATROCIOUS.

And, on a non-related-keeping-my-resolution front:

So I’ve been on the hunt for a not-gross-looking wordpress template for the return of mkerwin.com. Fun fact: they don’t exist. In fact, I’d like to declare 90% of free wordpress templates to be utterly hideous. So, I took one that had a layout I kinda liked (so I wouldn’t have to write one), stripped it down to bare bones, edited all the graphics, changed some coding, changed all the colors and VOILA! Ironically enough, I’ve never learned anything besides basic HTML, never bought a book, read a tutorial, took a class, nothing. Everything I have ever learned has been from taking the source code from pages I like and dissecting it, or uploading something and changing different coding, refreshing, and seeing what changed. Thanks to doing so much of that in the past, I had very little trouble changing up this page. I only had to ask my wonderful brother two questions, one of which I answered for myself before he could! That’s progress.

On the life front, I’m trying to get into the lab at a local college so I can develop some B&W film and use their enlargers to print out some prints. Of course it costs $25/day ($125/quarter) so that’s a conundrum. Go in early, develop film, hang to dry and come back 4 hours later? I’ve also been on the hunt to find a few people to go in with me because hanging out in a dark room by yourself for hours on end can get a bit tedious. Hopefully the two lovely ladies I met will want to go! :)

As far as the past news of Mass. electing a Republican senator, the healthcare bill, etc, well. I’ll wait to see how everything turns out before I make comment. And to keep up with my resolution to post more of my photos:

I created this little gem the other day for a friend. For Christmas. Punctuality isn’t my strong point. I thiiiiiiiink I may be attempting a quilt at some point in the VERY near future. More on that as it happens. It’ll be my first major sewing thing, and my very first quilt, so I’ll be sure to rant about how obnoxious it is.

So I’m back after a long break where the website was gone, then back, then transferred, then lost in the abyss and then recovered.

What have I been doing? Living, laughing, sewing, tripping, traveling, breathing, sleeping, eating. You know, the usual. I have tons of things I want to blog about (hello, new light rail system proposal!?), rant about (YOU from the parking lot yesterday, yes YOU), congratulate about (YAY JULIE on the incoming little rugrat), and get giddy about (Spring is coming!!), so stay tuned. I’m also going to try to incorporate more photos into my posts.

For the time being, have a photo to bide you over.

New kitty tree!

I’m afraid of the Dentist.

And spiders. But y’know, the Dentist is way up there. There. I said it. I think there are very few people who are happy to go to the Dentist, but I definitely am not thrilled by it in the slightest. I’m talking fear in the pit of my stomach when I think about it. Driving past the office when I have an appointment, willing myself to go in. That kind of fear.

I have a dentist appointment in an hour and a half. *shudder*

In other news, as I was sitting at a red light, a woman pulled up in the lane to my left to wait at the light with me. I say ‘wait’ with hesitancy. She was on a cell phone AND smoking, which I deem to be quite the feat if you don’t have three arms. The rotation of this specific set of lights doesn’t alter, and has a long pause where all sides have a red light. I highly appreciate this pause, because for some reason people in my county don’t think that a red light means stop. They seem to think that if it’s red as they’re coming up to it and it just turned red, then it’s not really red, it’s Crimson, and everybody knows crimson means stick the accelerator to the floor and try to beat the oncoming traffic. Duh. Even I knew this.

I’ll never understand the impatience rampant in our society. Yes, I’m very impatient by nature, and darn it I hate when things don’t go as fast as I want them to. But there are definitely lines. I ask myself “Could this kill me?” and if the answer resembles yes I just don’t do it. Seems sane.

Smoking chatty-Cathy next to me didn’t seem to agree. She took off during a red light. I followed 10 seconds later when the light turned green. My mind was filled with possibilities of why she was rushing. Hospital? Other way. Emergency? MAYBE! She drove into Taco Bell.

I may or may not know this because I followed her to the Taco Bell drive through. It was purely for Veronica Mars reasons, and there I was, stuck in the drive through. I had no choice but to order a chalupa and a large pepsi. Damn you, smoking chatty-Cathy. Damn you.

I had a bit of a panic yesterday. It involved this handsome young chap:

Yes, I know he looks all cute and innocent. He even lets his enemy sit on his head in peaceful understanding! He is, however, quite the intelligent and tricky cat. Every morning I get up after the alarm goes off twice (I’m lazy, don’t judge me). The cats used to be all ‘ohmygodyou’reupplaywithmei’msoexcitedwhere’smyfood?!” but they’ve settled down as they’ve gotten older. Thank god. I can’t tell you how many grey hairs they caused me as kittens.

Anyway, since they don’t pounce on me when I wake up nowadays, I don’t usually see them in the morning. I refill their bowls and sometimes they come out to make sure I gave them the Pür water and not tap; snobs. When I go to leave, I open the door, turn and do a quick scan of the apartment and then go on my merry way.

Yesterday, whilst doing my scan my gaze landed on the patio door. This patio door is a glass slider with a secondary screen slider behind it. It leads out onto my second floor balcony. I sleep with the glass part of the slider wide open because I like cross ventilation and I have 2 windows in my apartment. However, on this particular morning, the glass and the screen sliders were open. I definitely let out a high pitched “AHHHHHHHH” and sprinted over there to check on it, dropping my belongings in the process.

A frantic search of the patio showed no signs of a cat. I stood at the railing and willed myself to look down hoping I wouldn’t see an indoor cat lying on the ground dead. I didn’t. PHEW. I followed this with a 10 minute frantic search of my house looking for the highnesses. Upon finding them curled up under some laundry they looked at me, pissed, for waking them up. ‘Scuse me.

Charles, the aforementioned trickster, later showed me how he did it. Sometimes I leave the screen bit unlocked from when I go out to water my plants. He sticks his claws in it and slides it open.

This cat will be the death of me.

I bought the Sims 3. Between that and WoW… *vanishes*

In the sitcom that is my life.

At age 23 I threw out the retainer I’ve had since age 16. This wouldn’t be a problem except since I got my wisdom teeth out last fall I’ve had to wear it because they kinda have been all shifty-like. Maybe the $200 fee to get a new one will smack some sense into me.

I didn’t lose it at 16. No. I lost it at age 23. /sigh

I’ve always been very indecisive. I always ask for ‘advice’ from people I respect, and when I say I want advice, what I really mean is I want to be told what to do! That’s not saying I’m a pushover, but when it comes to really important, and rather hard, decisions, I sometimes find myself at a loss. Usually I know what I want, but I’m always worried how others will view that decision. I am weak!

I stumbled upon a really interesting looking job last week. Interesting to the point where I bookmarked it and have been loading it every day just to stare at it. Interesting. The problem is this job is in California. Irvine, CA to be exact. If anybody from California is reading this, don’t hit me. It’s not CA, exactly, that’s the problem.

I like Washington. I like it to the extent that I like the weather and the scenery, albeit it gets a bit too cold for my liking in the winters. I haven’t had much luck finding people I like, and I’ll admit to being a tad bit lonely. The few people I have found live over an hour away. And when I say few people, I really mean few.

I think it stems to the fact that I come from the south. Sure, Florida isn’t West Virginia or Tennessee, but it’s still in the south and there’s a very southern mentality there. I don’t even know how to describe it. It has lots of people that escaped from the northeast mixed with people originally from the south. It has its own, unique culture and it’s all I’ve ever really known. It’s very conservative. I’m not quite as conservative as the title “Conservative” requires, but I have my tendencies. It’s very different from Washington. And maybe that’s why I’m moderately unhappy in WA. I just don’t fit here. I’m like a square puzzle piece in a triangular world, or some other shitty metaphor.

Irvine, CA has great weather. Perfect weather if you ask me. It reminds me of where I’m from in FL with its developments and perfect-cut grass and upper middle class population. I was actually confused by WA for the longest time with how it just has houses thrown down on streets. Where are the developments and guard houses?! *grin* That being said, Irvine CA is very expensive. I don’t think I’d get by paying the $535 I pay for a 1 bedroom in WA. Or even double that. Would I ever be able to own a home? California is having mad money issues at the moment. Would I move there and then have a 14% sales tax or some other ridiculous thrown on me to pay for that? Would the people be any better?

The other bright side is I’d be much closer to LA. In LA there’s acting. But am I cut throat enough to even want that world?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.