You do cornbread across the pond?
Hushpuppies are little balls of cornbread, many times with onion mixed in, that are deep fried. A staple in the US South…
Dayum! I wanna go to PhD school. Grad school makes you work–apparently working on a thesis means drunken debauchery, nightly.
I’m in the wrong program.
Very busy and important today. Toodles!
Not really, the closest we come to that would be polenta. Thanks for the info though, I don’t have to spend my afternoon worrying that swampy is frying little dogs!
I haven’t read the rest yet, but I wanted to comment before I forgot. When I got home from the gym this morning, KeithT was going crazy trying to find his wallet. We eventually found it… under the sofa. It had to be the roving black hole. How else would it have gotten under there??
I’ll read more now and comment on everything else later.
Good ol’ Canadian weather. Extremely mild (if snowy) one day, juevo-freezing and windy the next. Par for the course I s’pose. But I’m workin’ and caffeinated and it’s Friday, so I’m feeling pretty dang good about that. I’m also going low cal today as part of a trend I hope to continue without falling off the wagon like I did in January. I have soup, a salad, and two peaches and that’s it for the day. Dinner (or supper or whatever you call the evening meal) is undecided, however.
I’m having the salad for breakfast. A nice, low cal Italian dressing with the added zip of some green Tabasco. It’s quite tasty!
Hank - GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING! And might I add, we’d like to see more of your obligary poists.
Taxi - Dimensional closet portals are definitely a concern, but they are not the only one. There are also small wormholes that open up in random parts of the house to carry off important items and deposit them in secluded areas. To the best of my knowledge they have limited range and thus can’t usually transport something outside of the home, but they seem to be exceptionally skilled at finding parts of your abode that no human being has touched in years. Cats are able to sense the presence of these wormholes, and have been known to use them. This is why you are sometimes unable to find your keys, but in the process of looking for them are able to find your cat in the sock drawer.
Who knew astro-physics was so easy to understand? Thanks, Mindfield!
BooFae the only little dogs I have ever threatened to fry up are the dang little weiner dawgs that live behind me. YIP! YIP! YIP! One of ‘em, I swear, squeaks! Annoyin’ damn weinie dawgs!
Anywho, cause I’m all about education and fightin’ ignernce and stuff, here’s you a recipe (a fairly decent one) for hushpuppies.
They’re also a brand of shoe but we don’t make 'em out of cornmeal. 
Morning, all. Kinda sorta. I am now in full-in warding off The Sick mode – had to smear the inside of my nostrils with antibacterial goop this morning. Which I’ll have to do twice a day till my surgery. It’s not like it feels bad, necessarily, but it feels weird. Really, really weird.
I ended up going to bed early with a headache again last night. Stupid meds, I take enough Tylenol already in my regular pain meds that I can’t take extra, and I’m not allowed to take ibuprofen till after surgery, so I couldn’t take anything for it. But hey, it gave me a good excuse to lie in bed and relax!
Papa Tigs was stuck yesterday, and is stuck again today, in some godawful training class about the new personnel system – DOD is abolishing the old civil service system in its entirety and going to an allegedly merit-based system. We’ll see how well it works out. He was bitching and moaning mightily about not only how stupid and boring the class is, but how he’s stuck in some building miles away from the main hospital building where his office is – until he got home and got an email from the hospital’s main infectious disease doctor, alerting people to the fact that someone brought the Norovirus into the hospital and it’s currently running about a 50% if-you’re-exposed-to-it-you-catch-it rate. So needless to say, he’s not going near the main hospital until after I go under the knife Monday! None of us wants to get the Norovirus! It’s a particularly nasty one, can cause dehydration from severe diarrhea. Not fun. Just what they need running around a hospital, right? :dubious:
I’m off to a doctor’s appointment. Again. Story of my life right now, a round of doctor’s appointments. Such fun.
OK, now I’m caught up again.
Sorry about all the drama, kai. I hope it gets straightened out soon and J comes back. And V takes a long walk off a short pier. Into the cold cold Alaskan water. Why don’t people just mind their own business?
Sorry to hear that The Sick has gotten some of you. Keep your germs to yourselves though, please.
It’s supposed to snow here all weekend! Yay! We haven’t had anywhere near enough snow. And since it’s the weekend and I don’t have to go to work (and more importantly, KeithT doesn’t have to drive an hour to work in it), I’m all for it. Maybe we’ll go x-country skiing again this weekend.
Happy Friday, all!!! I’dda coded that all pretty like but I’m feeling lazy this morning.
kai, J may not necessarily be avoiding just you. He may not want to communicate with any friends right now. Breakups will do that to you. Also, remember that you’ve been his friend for a long time. He should know you’d never do anything like that. So just hang in there. No scratching! Hear?
boofae, a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Hush Puppies. I won’t even mention confusing you with the footware by the same name.
Tupug
Er… we’re conducting social experiments? Honestly, our program is an anomaly at UChicago - our school is supposed to be famous for not knowing how to have fun. My friends and I manage, somehow. We take the burden upon our shoulders to prove people wrong about our beloved school. It’s tough, I tell ya.
gt, next 5 pages? I’m still celebrating finishing the first 5 pages! 
And my head is fine, thankyouverymuch.
Tonight is open bar night at the school pub for our department people. Good way to start the weekend. Oh wait, that started yesterday…
Good vibes to the ones suffering from The Sick. And Happy Friday!
…and all this time, I thought pets (cats especially) were living, breathing dimensional portals. Just about every pet I’ve ever had, except for those in the aquaria, has carried off random and arbitrary objects and left them in inexplicable locations of my residense. :smack:
Oh, and good news for me. My chief told me last night that he could not get me transferred out of my live burn class tomorrow, and into the pump operation class because the pump class was full.
Live burn is one where we suit up in all our gear, and go into a smoke filled building to do thing like rescue dummies and put out the fires. It’s a prerequisiste for the classes I really want, which involve actual firefighting tactics and victim/FF rescue.
He wanted me in the pump class because the department graybeards drive the vehicles and run the equipment, and we have a bunch who are about to retire. I’m flattered that he wants to fast-track me into graybeard status, but I have a lot of testosterone to work off first… 
I’m going to try to make a deal with him: he can graybeard me so long as I also get the rescue training at the same time. I’ll do both, and the young bucks all want to play with the ladder truck anyway instead of what I want to do.
Oh, and Mayberry is under a fire watch today. I missed a 20 acre forest fire yesterday because I was still in Virginny coming home from work. 
This is a related activity; cats in particular will attempt to please the wormhole for granting them safe passage by offering them household items. This is also why, in the process of searching for a lost item, you will often find it underneath the cat.
swampy, your recipe sounds good except for one item - I like hunks of onion in mine, not finely chopped micro-bits. I’d dice mine coarsely. Yum for onion hunks!
MamaTigs, we’re already under NSPS, and we had hours and hours and hours of training about it. In fact, our command is one of the guinea pigs for the changeover. Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I’ve seen way too many GS-types kept on because they had a pulse and hadn’t killed anyone on the job. Frankly, every job should be performance-based. If you can’t do it, you shouldn’t continue to get a paycheck just because you’ve been around forever. <off soapbox> Anyway, we completed our first, very abbreviated cycle and personally, I was pleased. I wasn’t due for a step raise till next July, but between the pro-rating and the raise/bonus I earned, I’m already making more than I would have under the old system. I know the young 'uns aren’t happy, tho. Instead of the old way - automatic 9-11-12 and relatively automatic 13, they now have to go before a board and prove they met the necessary criteria before moving on.
So yeah, it’s a pain to go thru the training, and the command really has to be committed to it for it to work well, but I see it as the end to the stereotyped “government employees” and a move towards government professionals.
Anyway, I’m awake and semi-functional. I’ve got some stuff in the washer and I may play with clay later today. I’m still coughing - my throat is soooooooo sore! The sniffles seem to be abating - I’m wondering if the sore throat is from my sinuses draining? I want soup. I’ve got some leftover beef and some broth and bags of frozen veggies - methinks soup will happen shortly. I may make some bread in the machine, too. Medicinal bread, of course. No calories in it or the butter that will be spread upon it. It’s true!
Off to the kitchen I go…
Good morning and happy Friday all!
kai, I’m sorry you’re going through such a rough patch. With “friends” like that, who needs enemies? Yeesh. She definitely sounds like crab bait to me. I hope your friend contacts you soon.
MT, I think I can guess which MTF your hubby is working for as there have been rumblings about it here. As to the NSPS thing, ugh. Fortunately, I don’t have to go under it…yet. However, there’s a group of folks here that are basically supervisors who are stuck going under it in March/April and are currently going through the training. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t have a problem with pay for performance; however, the “new” system is too political. Also, I have serious doubts as to the system being properly funded. We’re always screaming about money problems here. Also, your boss can say give her/him a raise, but the pay pool and the pay pool manager have the final say. Screw the bonus thing, I want a yearly raise. Finally, if you don’t get an actual raise, that screws with your retirement down the line. Ugh…I’m a broken record and very pessimistic about this whole system. Although I have nearly 23 years in, I still have to work for another 13 years before I can retire without penalty. I have to be 56 under FERS, which I un-lovingly call the Federal Employee Rip-Off system.
rosie, I hope the medical treatment works out.
Hugs to those that need them and yays to those have good stuff going on.
Back to the grindstone.
…and on preview I see that FCM chimed in on the NSPS thing. I’m glad it’s working out for you. It’s a whole different climate here, though. I really hope I’m proven wrong, but I don’t think I will be. It’s amazing how petty some people can be here.
Well, that was interesting… see, I got a call about a job that I spent an hour filling out an application on line, printing it off, doin’ up a cover letter and putting in the mail. It was from somebody who knows about the job, who knows somebody who is reviewing applications, who encouraged the callee to call me and clue me in to apply for the job. Just. Weird. Perhaps Providentially so, who knows. I took the dang thing to the post office rather than mail it from my house cause I was going to the store, so decided I might as well just go mail it rather than wait for the mail lady to come today, which she did while I was gone. I got the phone call just after I walked back in the door. Hey, when somebody tells somebody to clue ya in about applying for a job, that’s gotta mean sump’n right?
So, how’s everybody else’s day goin’? All you sickies feelin’ better?
We have no idea how the NSPS thing will work at Papa Tigs’ installation. Except if you want political, oy, do they have political. Especially with the Puzzle Palace (that big five-sided building across the river) and the Fools on the Hill breathing down their necks. Except that he was informed yesterday that the way his job is currently classified, it would top out salary-wise at more than 20K less than he’s currently making. :dubious: So his first task will be to have the job properly reclassified. I’m glad it’s worked out for you, FCM, but we’re definitely thinking more along the lines that Taters described. All we can do is wait and see.
And speaking of NSPS, Papa Tigs got pulled out of the training class to participate in a tiger team to figure out a way to streamline the whole discharge procedure for permanently disabled soldiers, and prepare a report for a four-star. Presumably to be completed yesterday. And then he gets to repeat the class again next week. Lucky him! We have no idea when we’ll see him again. I told him if he needs me to drive in and bring him clean underwear, just let me know – at least he can always find a spare bed and shower, it being a hospital. 
The very best hush puppies in the entire universe can be found at Old McDonald Fish Camp, a restaurant in North Augusta, South Carolina. Their hush puppies are to die for delicious. Most places make them too big, too heavy, and over-fry them, but the folks at Old McDonald make them small and just perfectly fried and just unutterably yummy. I’m making myself hungry just thinking about them!
I’m sorry V is such a jerk, kai. People like that do “use up” the folks around them, don’t they? You can only sabotage people so many times before they decide they just don’t want you around any more. Sounds like she’s about to wear out her Kodiak welcome, such as it is. Crab pots sound like they do come in useful occasionally, however!
Ooh look, it’s Friday! Yay! Haze, if I ever find myself in Chicago, I know how to find the good parties. 
As far as these dimensional portals are concerned, Mindfield is onto my evil scheme. I have a deal with the cats. I provide them with use of the portals as long as they stay adorable.[sub]who’s conning who here, anyway?[/sub]
Kudos to all of you putting up with the government’s bullplop when it comes to payroll. I have to agree with FCM that a performance-based salary is the way to go if you want people to do their jobs well - in theory. In practice, such a system is bound to run into problems. It can be very, very difficult to quantify how well someone is doing their job compared to someone else. The private sector seems to have sorted it out though, for the most part.
My life has returned to its usual boring state. Maybe I’ll play some video games this weekend in addition to the mountains of homework.
I haven’t caught up on the entire MMP - maybe later today. I have to take Mr. Spock to the vet - damn it, we can’t afford a vet visit right now - because he’s coughing rally badly. Poor baby - he’s not eating, either, which is very unusual for my Fat Boy and means he’s really sick.
I “graduated” from the RLS drug study on Wednesday, and have to stay off the drug for a week for the follow-up interview. In addition to the check for $300, I got a tidy little bottle of the pills - 42 of them! Yippee! So next Wednesday I can start back on them and return to sleeping without twitching. The doctor even recommended trying half a pill to see if that will work for me as it does for others, so my free supply will last longer.
They also gave me copies of all my lab work, and I discovered my cholesterol level is high. Very high. Give-my-nurse-husband-a-heart-attack HIGH. I have to change my diet.
Snakes beat the socks of Huntsville last night. We started the game with three players out - one fractured jaw, one injured ankle and one case of the flu. The another player got booted for a game misconduct. We still won the game, which gives me high hopes for the playoffs.
Off to the vet - I’ll go back and catch up later.