Flahrs

If you have the laptop open -- so that you can read this page on making baguettes -- while messing with flour, I suppose it could be considered an occupational hazard to open the laptop the next morning and find flour more or less liberally sprinkled on the keyboard, palm rest, and such. There's a lot of that going on, lately -- flahr sprinkling -- the cherry trees are dumping leaves like crazy, and you can easily see car-shaped outlines in the street, pink (and sometimes white) petals all over the place. Beats the heck out of finding that birds have decorated the car, certainly. We don't get too much of that here, as the only flowering bushes we have are in the front yard, where they can dump their adornments onto the edge of the grass, right up against the rocks, where the mower can't get to them (and I'm too lazy to use the edger). 'Dump their adornments' -- sounds like I'm talking about a stripper. I've never actually seen a stripper, and the only pole dancer I've seen was on an HBO show that was available while I was in a hotel once, years ago. Was this an amazing show? Put it this way: it was at least ten years ago, and I remember the pole dancer. And the lap dance she gave this guy... and then the guy's date. Great googly moogly. They'd be using the paddles on me, if that experience ever came my way. But, hey, if someone really wanted to give it a shot....

By the way, speaking of baguettes, the very first, and simplest step, looks good -- I opened the container and the aroma of yeast bubbled out. So, sometime this morning, I need to mix it with the full load of flour et al and have at the rising process. I read yesterday that you ought not to let the dough rise fully, as that leaves nothing for the 'oven bounce'. My thought is: so? but as my breads tend to be on the anemic side, I'll likely keep that in mind.

I noticed a family with three girls in church this morning -- looked to be about four, seven, and nine. I usually refer to that arrangement as 'oh, don't have cable TV, huh?'. Don't often see families with lots of boys, though. I guess that means there will be a dateable-guy drought coming up, and my daughter will decide to just hold off for ten years, pick up someone from the first round of divorces. You think? Course, I ought to check on the closest nunneries -- or the most remote ones -- just in case her logic goes the other way, and she decides she needs to offer extra inducements to get a guy. Hey, I hear a lesbian relationship is pretty stable. Can you get STDs from that, I wonder? And other things that I never thought I'd wonder about.

Wife's still asleep -- she was up at two for work, and tottered into bed around seven. As she'd hoped the project would take about three hours, I'm guessing that it was moderately successful, moderately problem-ridden. I'll give her another half hour or so and then start breakfast -- french toast, bacon, coffee, orange juice. We're doing a little bit of paring back on expenses -- when the Ghiradelli coffee runs out, we'll go with Starbucks solely for a while (which I realize is still upscale, just not as upscale). Similarly, when the Mazillo spaghetti sauce runs out, we'll use the generic marinara from the store. Actually, I'd like to try making marinara again. The stuff I made the other day was okay, but it wasn't nearly thick enough. I'm thinking higher simmer level, longer simmer, or both. Might be fun. I've always enjoyed the image of that guy from The Godfather, standing in front of the huge vat, making spaghetti sauce. You remember -- the one who said ' Leave the gun. Take the cannoli'. Ah, the classics.