I made blueberry-strawberry pie today in honor of pi day. Tastiest sacraments ever.

I used empanada dough instead of pie dough, and I like it a lot better. It’s easier to work with, too, since you can re-roll it and it won’t get tough. It’s fine-textured, and flakey in a different way than pie dough. I like the way it flakes better too.

A recipe — filling:

1/4 C flour, 1/2 C sugar, 3-4 cups mixed berries, half a lemon’s juice. Stir until it’s a slightly mushy consistency. Kinda like oatmeal, only awesome instead of gross.

Dough (translated from Spanish):

1 cup flour, 1 stick butter (cut in pieces), a quarter teaspoon of salt, blended well. Add a third of a cup of boiling water and mix until it forms a smooth, elastic dough.

Roll like pie dough, but without the fuss and hands-off approach. Just go for it, the dough won’t even stick to much thanks to the butter melted through it. Bake at 350°F until the crust starts to crisp.

I’ve been living under a rock this month. Polis, the nbtsc.org server, crashed, and I’m still spending a lot of time fixing things.

Bailey’s out of town

Work alternates insane and try-not-to-go-insane.

Sorry I’ve not been more present. I’m mostly taking care of me at the moment, but it’s making me a fickle friend.

There’s a girl I’m crushing on. It’s mutual. And low-impact, time-wise. Working well despite my crazy month.

more later.

Polis, the server for nbtsc.org, went down with a two-disk glitch int its storage system. That’s Not Good in general. It took 30 hours to rebuild the filesystem, but most things are intact. Mail should be up later today, web sites shortly following. I hope.

I came home tonight to the biggest surprise I could have.

The house is clean. Utterly tidy. Everything where it belongs. Floors swept, clothes washed, dishes done. All the little things that slipped by the wayside while baileyjordan was not feeling well after his surgery, and while I was sick.

I feel like I just came out of a three-month hibernation, starting some time before the insanity of the winter holidays, and ending now, with a bright sunny day, a surprise of a clean house, and a day at work where I left feeling like I got everything done.

I realize how much I’ve neglected parts of my life. Taking care of little things, staying in touch with friends. Making phone calls, both pleasure and business. Replying to emails. It’s been stressful, and tonight, I feel like that’s gone. I’m hoping I can keep it that way.

fish_kid has lived with us a month today. It’s good, even if our house really is too small.

We’re looking for a larger place to live. I’m not looking forward to moving if (more like when, I suspect) we do, but I no longer fear the cleaning that we’ll have to do on this place. I was dreading it, and I was letting it ruin my outlook on change in life. A very needed change. At the moment, there’s no place in my house I can be alone, and with the winter still in full swing here, my usual hideouts of late-night walks by the river to call friends and talk while I’m out aren’t an option. I am becoming a bit of a flake because of it. I miss the little bits of me that I’ve left on the shelf lately, the parts I only get out when I’m alone and have the night to myself. I will reclaim them.

Hibernation does have its benefits, though. I’ve laughed through a few seasons of House and of Bones with Bailey, while he was laid up, and I’ve written a webserver toolkit that’s shaping up nicely. I’ve learned some intricacies of a programming language I love but have never had time to really learn in depth. I’ve written something useful that doesn’t really exist out there, and fills a niche.

Rules:

• Every time a tax form’s instructions refer you to the instructions for another form to determine eligibility, take a sip.
• Every time a tax is more than 20% more than expected, take a sip.
• if that tax is more than double what you expected, take a chug. If you took a sip then a chug, refill your glass and take another chug.
• Every time you see a convenience for especially small payers of tax that no business or individual could ever hope to use since amounts that small haven’t existed since the depression, check this box [ ] and take a chug.
• Line 5: please enter the number of alcoholic drinks consumed so far: [ ]
• Line 6: If you are not drunk yet, enter the number of drinks required to get you drunk: [ ]
• Line 7: If line 6 is larger than line 5, enter the difference here: [ ]
• Line 8: If line 5 is larger than line 6, please calculate your blood alcohol level and enter it here: [ ]
• If line 8 is smaller than 1%, take a chug

So I picked up my phone last night, and managed to drop it backward over my shoulder into a pan of water.

Don’t do this at home, guys.

Massachusetts Chapter of TAVA breaks ties with local advocacy group. So MATAVA (a Transgender veterans association) is not working with MTPC, because MTPC has taken $25,000 from the Human Rights Campaign, because of HRC’s not supporting an inclusive ENDA?

I have one question: Why?

HRC has always touted trans inclusivity and rarely puts its money where its mouth is. Small donations to organizations have been the norm, mostly paying a lip service. The $25,000 grant is the first time that they have truly made a trans-inclusive action of size.

MATAVA sounds like they’re trying to coerce MTPC into not accepting funds from HRC (to punish HRC?). It seems exactly counterproductive to building the unity in action that works so well, and that MTPC has so far managed with skill.

How is this in any way beneficial to the ends they are working for?

So I’ve found the latest unexpected side-effect of estrogen coursing through my veins in levels my body has never before seen:

I blush.

I blush really easily and more and more obviously.

I’ve never had my emotions show quite so plainly before.

So my ISP, where I colocate my servers, has had a battery backup that has had issues. The kind of one-off issues where you reset it, and uneasily it works for a while, then something either related or not happens, and it crashes again.

Tonight he informs me that it came back with fully proper status this time and it shouldn’t do that again. We’ll see.

Helping a friend install linux … win.

Helping a friend install linux, only to realize halfway through, after their old OS is destroyed, that the only copy is on a bad CD, with no other computer to burn a new copy? Not as fun.

There’s amazing ways to work yourself out of that hole, but … man. It sucks. And boy does it take time.

Last night was my family’s solstice celebration. It’s a tradition we’re slowly growing, replacing the Christmases of a family that has more connection to the seasons than the church with something a bit more connected.

We all got together for a pot luck last night. Pizza with pesto and cranberries, cheesy escarole and mushroom and pasta casserole, home made egg-nog, home made ravioli, a huge platter of fresh vegetables.

We light candles, light for the dark night.

We still have a left-over Christmas gift-giving tradition, though I think that’s half held together by my mother, who works in a thrift shop and gets everything half price.

It’s a quiet holiday, but I really like how my family celebrates.

My sister leaves on Boxing Day for Denver, six months in paramedic school. I’m going to miss her.

My mother dropped by the office today on her way home from lunch to tell me that at the thrift shop (where she works) a black pleated skirt had come in, possibly my size. I’d left a note there a while back saying I was looking for one, but it wasn’t the normal shop manager who called me, but my mother. About a skirt.

It’s a big deal. It’s the first time she’s really acknowledged my preferences in clothing. I think she’s coming around.

PLoS Medicine: What Are the Benefits and Risks of Fitting Patients with Radiofrequency Identification Devices

• Quiche
• Soufflé gone quichey, “Soufliche”
• Corn casserole
• Scalloped potatoes
• Polenta larghata with tomatoes, portobello mushrooms and mozarella on top
• Sweet potato pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Cous-cous with cranberries in it
• Cranberry sauce
• Wine
• English muffins (Home made)
• Curry

I’d forgotten that I’d ever seen the concept of Soft Security spelled out until chris2 reminded me.

NaNoWriMo is 2/3 over today. Good luck, all!