MBG, it was 3.22am and it was 'im indoors when he rolled over and snored in my ear. It wouldn’t have been so bad but Ophie was sleeping on the side of the bed and she’d gradually been stretching out during the night which pushed me more towards the middle, and right into the path of the asthmatic rhino who seems to have replaced 'im.
Welcome to the MMP Achren and a belated Happy Birthday! MMM… chocolate cake and shrimp etoufee. Your mom loves you! 
Yes indeed. 
Glad to hear you’re feeling better. Where does “the sick” come from? I actually trying seaching using that (with quotes) and found that it will find all instances, but only highlight the first word - for a second I thought I’d found all threads with a “the” but logic quickly asserted itself when I saw there were only 30 pages of results.
1 - Thanks for the welcome.
2 - I actually tried
What’s shrimp etoufee?
I’ll try anything with shellfish in it, but I like to know the rest of the ingredients too. Dangit, now I’m hungry, and I just had lunch one hour ago!
Food of the Cajun gods… A spicy stew made with shrimp, but even better made with crawfish (‘mudbugs’; tiny freshwater cousins to lobster).
It went very well. We had a lot of fun - I drove one of the utilities with two other EMTs and we had a blast. At one house, about 25 kids ran out screaming for Santa. They were having a Cookie Decorating party and gave us several plates of freshly-decorated cookies. We scarfed our plate down in no time.
We collected about $500 in donations!
The potluck afterwards was fun, too.
Shrimp Etouffee
I’ve no idea about that recipe - Mom has a friend who bought this marvelous mix stuff in Louisiana for her and that’s what she used - but I think it’s close enough to give you the idea.
And just because, the Wikipedia entry.
Shrimp Etouffee Recipe
I’ve no idea about that recipe - Mom has a friend who bought this marvelous mix stuff in Louisiana for her and that’s what she used - but I think it’s close enough to give you the idea.
And just because, the Wikipedia entry.
I’ve not tried it with crawfish (though I’ve been to a crawfish broil and let me tell you, when I get my house with land, that’ll be the first tradition to be set up). We also call 'em crawdads. I’ve not heard mudbugs.
Og, now I want some shrimp and crawfish etouffee. Hmmm… maybe that’ll be the special dinner ACBG and I have when we get back from seein’ family and “welcome” each other back home. I think I can even get fresh crawfish. MMMMMMM…
Mudbug is what the Cajuns I know call them; pretty specific to the bayou near Baton Rouge…
Crawdads is the term I grew up with in Indiana; also known as bass bait.
Make sure you’re better first. You don’t want to give him the sick…
Never fear… I shall own the sick. I am determined. Other than feelin’ fuzzy headed I’m doin’ a lot better today. YAY!
Welcome, Achren!
Everyone be afraid- QD is getting a guest membership. Don’t tell her I told you all sorts of bad stuff about her, okay?
Faerie, I like FunkerVogt, too. They had Feindflug sweatshirts at the store I got the VNV shirt at, and I thought about getting one for Driving Husband, and then I thought, “It costs $75. No.”
gt, getting to read all sorts of interesting stuff is one of the major perks of working in a bookshop. Scanning the catalogues for interesting new things is a lot of fun, and results in me having a lot less money.
Today is pretty much my only free day until Christmas, so it’s going to be stupidly busy. I may pause in the middle of it to make a sponge cake with meringue and filled with lemon curd. It’s a Nigella recipe, and the pic looks so pretty that I want to make one. Beside that I’m doing two weeks grocery shopping, meal planning, laundry, and trying to tidy because I won’t be home much.
You mean, we can’t bombard her with “get new underwear” or “marry the boy, already”?
Of course we can, it’ll be so much fun watching her trying to work out how we know so much…
LiLi - that’s an awful lot for a sweat. I did like the long-sleeve shirts on FunkerMerch but I’m guessing shipping it from there to here would make it too expensive for the FaerieBank to consider. Bah!
Everybody else has naffed off to the Academic Services bunfight 'cept me, so I’m home alone in the office. Just think of the chaos I could cause!
How are the sickies today? Just get better, 'kay?
Wow. The Sick is everywhere. I can sympathize and commiserate. The Sick and I, we have battled many times, and it is never pretty. I always kick its ass, even if it takes a month or so – once it took three months. That was an epic battle, let me tell you. But so far it’s been much better since I’ve altered my diet to include things that are much better for me and cut out some of the things that aren’t. I also medicate my butt off when I’m sick. NyQuil shooters with a Buckley’s chaser, cold pills, Tylenol, Vicks Vap-O-Rub, mentholated gum, a forest’s worth of the softest tissues I can find, whatever does the trick. I try and suck it up with the best of them but inside I’m a big damn baby.
To those who are sick, I’ll leave an open bottle of Vicks by the open CD-ROM door. I’d smear it on a vaporizer, and leave it running, but this has been known to have less than desirable effects on electronic equipment.
Spats - You already have a name for yourself! It just can’t be repeated on prime-time. ::d&r::
Nava - Things sure are different in Europe. The only kind of “road tax” we (in Canada) pay that isn’t a toll road fee is generally integrated into our income tax along with just about everything else. Of course I suppose that means our income tax is pretty hefty, so I guess it balances out.
Hank - Well, at least you’re having a good time! I wouldn’t mind going to New York for a week or so. But then I love big cities; I’ve lived in them most of my life.
Achren - Welcome! Pass summa that cake over to FCM, I’m sure she’d be glad to accept in lieu of the more traditional chocolate tithe. And happy belated birthday!
Jahdra - I’ve rarely had any kind of drug-fueled dreams, at least not ones I remembered. However I did once have a Chicken-Pox-fueled dream many years ago where I dreamed I was a Xanth novel that I was reading at the time. This in itself isn’t the strangest thing in the world, but I woke up from the dream numerous times and yet every time I fell back to sleep I continued the dream from where I left off. That’s the only time that ever happened to me. Must have been the calamine lotion getting to my brain…
MBG - Know those nights all too well; we have four cats, and one of them can be quite vocal, usually about an hour before my alarm is set to go off.
Tuesday. I gots the whoooooole office to myself. My supervisor was off yesterday and today, and yesterday I had one of the outside sales guys helping me in the other part of the office. But not today. Today it’s me. I’ll probably have some help on the phones, but right now I don’t so it’s hideously busy. Blah!
I woke up at six ten to the sound of Bailey puking outside the bedroom door. That was piles of fun. (Hee!)
rosie, sorry I took so long to answer… the commute takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic and border guards. Most of it is on a road that’s apparently “principal” but would be considered barely third-rate in my part of Spain, since it doesn’t have a shoulder.
I’m supposed to commute until April and spend April doing a “knowledge turnover” to the people who will support the project I’m working on. Everybody is assuming that unless the sky falls over I’m going to be my own inheritor, though. There’s a couple guys who are supposed to be replaced any day now - one of them has been with the company 5 years, the other one 6. But in this case I’d work from the central office, which is about 300m from my apartment and 200 of them are through buildings.
Mindfield, that way of working the toll/tax is not just “in Europe”. It’s in Switzerland. Those things are different in every country. viamichelin.com (the best online source for European maps) considers the tax a “toll”.
In Spain, car plates belong to the car and never get changed; cars need to get a checkup by a special garage at certain points: mine got its first last year and isn’t due again until 2008; I have a sticker on the windshield indicating the next “due date”. Road tax, OTOH, is paid to towns… and you pay more or less depending on how many vehicles you own and their make. If I stay in Switzerland for more than a year, I have to pass the Swiss checkup - and change the plates, which are the way the Swiss mark the “due date”. Mind you, in that case I intend to keep my old ones, because I can reuse them when I get to Spain.