mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deck the halls... with rediculous amounts of decorations! I'm one baked out little dude today. Not baked out as in, "Whoa. I just sniffed an entire can of gold spray paint, and I tell ya... I am baked!" Not that. Getting the gold paint off of your mouth and nose is a bitch, and I have since sworn off gold paint huffing. Instead, I -- being the studly manly-man that I am -- refrained from going to to party and hook up with chicks but stayed home and baked bread all afternoon. And, frankly, at this moment, if I never see a single slice of bread again, it would be too soon. How much bread did I cook, you ask? I cooked Now, I wasn't planning on eating all of this bread myself. There is a lady I work with for three out of the four days I work at the television station. She is very nice, her husband is very nice, and I have come to like both of them very much. About three or four weeks ago, she surprised everyone (including the husband) by saying she was pregnant with her fourth child. This one was a surprise because she had to have fertility treatments for months to conceive the other three kids. This one was pure miracle. I got to thinking that I would like to give them a meaningful Christmas present. And my mental processes got going: She's pregnant. Pregnant... baby in the womb. Baby in the womb.... loaf in the oven. Eight hours of baking later, I, too, had had four loaves in the oven. I made her a loaf of white bread, a mustard wheat rye, and a cinnamon loaf. The fourth loaf -- a whole wheat -- was for me. I plan on making sandwiches for my twelve-hour road trip on Tuesday. For the husband, I had a six-pack of Killian's Red slipped in the bread basket. I figure he'll need it. ... And that cooking was just on Saturday night. I also did a good bit of cooking on Friday night. For more gifts, too. I ordered some fresh vanilla beans from some import store in Washington D.C. since finding vanilla pods is harder than finding a girl who wants to date me. "I like you as a freeeeeeeeeeeend!" Vanilla is damned expensive, mind you. Six beans -- probably four to five inches long each -- cost nearly twenty bucks. But to be fair, a vanilla bean stretches VERY far. For this gift, I had ten pounds of sugar that I dumped into my food processor. I then chucked in three beans, and I let it process for a good long time. Voila. Vanilla sugar. This stuff rawks every thread of socks in my house. The smell is just incredible, and the flavor will knock you on your proverbial butt. After filtering out all of the larger bits of vanilla that didn't get all chopped up, I decided I would try something with them. So, I put a kettle on the stove, got some water going. It was time to replenish my supply of sweet iced tea. But with a twist. I added the vanilla to a tea ball and let the vanilla steep with the tea bags. And oh my god. My big vat of sweet iced tea will usually last me four or five days. But I have downed the whole thing in two and a half days. It is that good. Now, I'm thinking vanilla-flavored sangria. Anybody up for flavored wine? I can't write too terribly much today because I am going to a friend's house to tour his mother's Christmas decorations. I know what you are thinking. A tree or two. A few candles here and there. Lights around the house. Maybe a tacky wall hanging splattered around the house. But, you know what? You'd be wrong. Very, very wrong. You were thinking one or two trees? Try FIFTY artificial trees around the house all decked out. She has ornaments made out of different foods -- and not just cookies. Try ornaments made out of apple sauce! And she has a special contract with three power plants (one being a hydroelectic plant) so she can filter in more than her fair share of electricity. Well, that last part is a lie. But the rest is all rediculously true. She's been featured in Missouri magazines and newspapers. And she even has her own website. Now, since you know I really don't like Christmas, you would assume that this would be a personal hell for me. But, on the contrary, I love people who are so passionate about things like this. Everyone needs a hobby to get so interested in. Nay. Everyone needs a hobby that you can see from the space station. So, yeah... I am leaving Tuesday. Heading down to Picayune. This all translates into the fact that you will probably not get an entry on Tuesday at all. And there's a chance that you may not get on one Wednesday, albeit a small one. And if the drive down goes especially bad, you may not get one for a long, long time. This is when I mom would say, "Paaauuuull! That's a horrible thing to say!" She calls me Paul. But it's true, if you really sit and think about it. It's not saying I hope it goes poorly. I'm just saying I don't get so tired this time that I start hallucinating again. I would find the entry where I talked about driving back last time and I hallucinated a meteor falling in front of my car and a lighted windmill springing to life, but I need to go take a shower before leaving for my friend's house. Yessir. I plan on getting plenty of sleep this time. And laying off the gold spray paint. 3:32 p.m. - Sun., Dec. 15, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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