Tempura

So it has been a while since I last made a post. Things have been a little on the stressed and busy side lately. I meant to make a couple of posts but never seemed to come around to it. One thing that I have tried to do was cook. Aside from not blogging I also stopped cooking. I mean, as much as I enjoy fajitas I know that you can only eat so many. One day I decided that I really wanted to have my favorite dish of tempura and cold soba noodles. This is real compfort food for me. But I didn't want to go to my one of my favorite resturants to pick some up. So i decided to make my own. So I got to take a trip over to the Richmond New May Wah super market. It took a while to find everything that I needed but I got it all. The key ingrediant for me was to find the soup base to dip my noodles in. This stuff is like edible magic in a bottle. I also picked up some shrimp and veggies. 

It was re ally nice to finally make something by hand. Nice fresh beggies are allways good. Look at them sitting there just ready to be deep fried. 

The shrimp was the first to go in, It was my fist time so I am pretty sure that I didn't have the oil hot enough. Everything eventually cooked, but it did take a little longer than I think that it should have.  

The thing that I like most about this dish is the colors. You might not be able to tell in this shot is that there is a combination of greens, orange and white. Although most of this is fried it still gives off a nice light appearance. I think that it is a good spring dish... well I think that it is a good anytime dish really.  

Knitting Up-to-date

Alright. In the past couple of months I have been doing a lot of
knitting. i havn't really mentioned it simply because there would be a
lot of posts about the progress of work that never seems to get done.
Well I did finish one project so I guess that it is fine to post now.
Espcially since I have pictures.

First I have to say that I have finally finished my whimple, aka neck warmer . So the
pattern for the Never Wimpy Whimple did not say that it might take you
four months to complete. I can honestly say that I did not work on this
project as studiously has I should have. There were other things that
came up. Like a pair of mittens, a couple of hats, and a sock (no, not
a pair but a sock) and a graduate school application. So when I finally finished it
I could not be happier. I think that it fits just like it is supposed
to. I don't know if I will ever want to do another lace project but I
guess that I can try. Next time I am going to do open work rather than
closed. I am currently shopping around for a nice rectangular shawl. We
will see when that actually pans out into anything of substance. So far
Ravelry's free pattern look up is my friend.

This
is the start of my new sweater. Pretty right? unfortunately I lost this
one (and the whole project bag) when I was in the airport. So I had to
get all new gear this weekend. It is sad but I will hopefully finish it
by this summer and I wont even care at that point.... right?

Whooo
hooo! I finished my Whimple, aka cowl. It took me a couple of months to
finish the damned thing. But I have to say that it is pretty
impressive. You can't tell by the picture but it is all made using thin
lace yarn.

                                      


This is part of my first sock. I did it toe up which seemed to be way more productive than cuff down. I don't care what anyone says but I now and forever will have my a toe up sock knitter.

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Ho hum

Today I don't have much to blog about but I thought that I would give it a try anyway. The weather in the Bay Area has been kind of trippy the past week or so. Its sunny, there aren't any clouds but it is cold. I mean, like upper 50's low 60's. I wouldn't really complain about this if I didn't know that there are some parts of Ohio that are actually warmer than it is here. I was talking to a friend of mine and she said that the high was 78 degrees. Now, the difference in weather prediction in the Bay Area and well anywhere else is that when other people say "The high is ___ degrees" they are refering to the warmest temperature of the day. Whereas in the Bay Area it just means that it's going to be that warm in the middle of the day somewhere... but not very likely in San Francisco. So when my friend said that the high was 78 degrees I nearly fell on my backside. I guess that I shouldn't complain. At lease we don't get snow storms.

I did it all on my own: MAC continued

So my RAM arrived at my house on Friday. That was a whole day earlier than I had expected. Friday was just full of surprises! Such as, did you know that if you dip an Oreo cookie into pancake batter then fry it in a deep fryer the cookie will taste sweeter!?! Yes, yes it will. Anyway, taking apart the Mac was not a problem. I did mistakenly take out the battery. At least I know what to do if the battery poops out (and I am able to actually buy a new one). Then I realized that there was a small rectangular piece of removable metal in the center of the bottom. Eurika! That had to be where something went. So I unscrewed it and low and behold there was a RAM sized hole. Woohoo. So I popped the RAM in and then went to turn on my computer. I pressed the nice little button and nothing happened. I remembered that the battery had died. So I looked for my charger in the "living room" of my apartment. Not there!! The only place it could be was at work... in my locked desk. Damnit. No one wants to go to work on a weekend. Espeically if

I got up around 9:00am to head back to the office. I was all gungho to get everything started when I realized that I didn't have the key to my desk... and the power cord was locked in my desk!! Guuurrr. So I took a bus back home grabbed my key and returned to the office and finally I was ready to load the new version of Lepord (opperating system) on to the Mac. Cut to an hour later and look at what I could see:
YEAH! Now I can look at blogs! Woot Woot. And although I cannot type an knit, now I can watch episodes of The Office and knit. I still don't have internet in my apartment so most if thus will happen in cafe's and libraries.

Anyway, if you are a knitter who reads my blog you may have noticed that I have started on sock2 of my pair. I am pretty sure that the sock color and pattern will be off a bit. Let's just hope that I have enough yarn to finish.

She's a maniac, maaaa-niac on the fu-ton, and she knitting like she's never knit before.

Alright. In the past couple of months I have been doing a lot of knitting. i havn't really mentioned it simply because there would be a lot of posts about the progress of work that never seems to get done. Well I did finish one project so I guess that it is fine to post now. Espcially since I have pictures.

First I have to say that I have finally finished my whimple, aka neck warmer . So the pattern for the Never Wimpy Whimple did not say that it might take you four months to complete. I can honestly say that I did not work on this project as studiously has I should have. There were other things that came up. Like a pair of mittens, a couple of hats, and a sock (no, not a pair but a sock) and a graduate school application. So when I finally finished it I could not be happier. I think that it fits just like it is supposed to. I don't know if I will ever want to do another lace project but I guess that I can try. Next time I am going to do open work rather than closed. I am currently shopping around for a nice rectangular shawl. We will see when that actually pans out into anything of substance. So far Ravelry's free pattern look up is my friend.

This is the start of my new sweater. Pretty right? unfortunatly I lost this one (and the whole project bag) when I was in the airport. So I had to get all new gear this weekend. It is sad but I will hopefully finish it by this summer and I wont even care at that point.... right?

Whooo hooo! I finished my Whimple, aka cowl. It took me a couple of months to finish the damned thing. But I have to say that it is pretty impressive. You can't tell by the picture but it is all made using thin lace yarn.

This is the spot where I will later put a picture of my sock. I thought that I had a pic on my camera but apparently not. So if you actually do read my blog then just wait a day or so.

Mac Experiance

So my PC died about six months ago and I needed something to use. I know that I use a computer all day at work and that my phone (blackberry curve) has internet access but neither is the same as having a nice little laptop in your own home. The problem became a little more evident when I needed to do some heavy typing for a graduate program application. There is nothing worst than trying to go to the public library to try to type up a story in 30 minute increments. So, after hearing me complain for about a month a friend of mine was nice enough to give me her old Mac. Its a nice little G4 12" laptop. That sounds really tiny but I swear that the keyboard was made to fit my hands and its way lighter than my old PC.

All has gone well so far. I was able to finish some needed writing, I could check my e-mail, upload pictures, watch DVD's and I had no problem updating my Netflix queue. But I did notice that there were a couple of random issues. I couldn't look at my blog (and was not able to update it) or anyone else blog and I noticed that something was really up when I couldn't download the new Safari. "huh" I thought to myself. I don't want anyone to think that my friend gave me a crappy computer. It's not crappy at all. Far from it. It just has a little hiccup in the system. I am one of those people who has to figure out how I can make something work the way that I want it to. So, I decided to try and reinstall Leopard... the disk never started. So I bought the new version and tried to install that. It took me all night to figure out that nothing was going to happen. Then I just called Mac costumer service. The woman took my info and then told me the wonderful news! I simply didn't have enough RAM. The rest of the conversation went something like this:
"So... all I need to do is buy more RAM, at least 500MB and I will have enough space to install the new version of Leopard"
"Yes"
"So I should just go to the store and buy-"
"YES"
"And you said that I could do this myself?"
"Yes"
"Can I just buy 1GB of RAM now, since I am on the phone?"
"No, Apple doesn't carry that anymore"
WTF?!?!?! "OK, thank you"
CLICK

OK. I know that she just told me that they don't sell the RAM that I need, but could she have at least told me where I could find it. I mean, come on. I am clearly not that computer savvy. Luckily I was able to go online and chat with a representative. I told them that I needed RAM.and not only did they tell me what kind I needed, which the phone rep also told me, but also where I could find it. WoooHooo!! I really wanted to know where they recomened because I felt the it would be more legitimate than someplace that I could think up. Cut to five minutes letter and I have ordered 1GB of RAM from some company in Florida.

The funny thing about all of this is what if non of these possible solutions takle the problem? How much would that suck? Well at least I will have 1GB of ram (about three times more than what I have now) and the latest version of Leopard. Which should allow me to upload a program to sync my BlackBerry to the Mac. AND I should be able to then view The Office and 30 Rock online. Yeah! Man, it sure is amazing what computers can do for you.

To Be Continued.....

Corresponding Picture & Lots of Promises.

So I think that it was a little unfair for me to talk about knitting projects without showing you. I mean, are you really going to go around an search for all of that? No, I know that I wouldn't. So that basically makes my last entry lame.  Here are pictures corresponding knitting projects two of my successful pictures. I am not going to talk about my whimple nor take pictures until I have finished. If I am lucky then it is going to happen sometime in February:

My first completed sock! Woohoo, it even looks like a sock, kind of.  The reason that it looks a jumbled is because there is a cool ass ribbing pattern. Once I finish the other one I will take a decent picture... you know a finished sock with a foot in it.

This is what my hat looked like at the time that I wrote my last post. I finished it later that day. I think that I will eventually just write about my completed projects




I have to take a break from knitting for a little while. I am having some back problems so I am not really allowed so do work that requires that I look down too much. Which also means that I really should have my laptop a little higher than I do right now. But when I  get better I have high hopes. Did someone say sweater?