I just saw a line of birds flying, but I saw them through some branches, and my first thought was 'COSMIC STRING!' But then the entire solar system wasn't immediately destroyed.

So in retrospect, this is one time when I'm glad I was wrong.

I've been making calzone (and sometimes just bread, though it's a bit sweet) using this recipe for some time now. Yesterday, I actually used it for pizza, of all things. The best part about pizza (or calzone) is that you can use random toppings/fillings and they'll taste pretty good.

Staples for pizza are baby spinach, mushrooms, and perhaps onions, but there's plenty more to try. Black beans are a bit unusual, but quite good on pizza, it turns out. Today I'm trying adding some ricotta cheese (part with mozarella, part as the only cheese--if you don't hate ricotta cheese, TRY THIS). Green bell peppers, of course, are always an option. Tomato works. (Yes, I know there's already tomato sauce.) Extra garlic on top is a good idea.

Perhaps the best pizza I ever had included artichoke hearts. Sadly, I don't have those.

What should I try next? Sprouts? Corns and peas? Curry powder? Chili powder? Cottage cheese? Potato? (Oooh, potato! Probably a bit flavourless, though.)

Pineapple does not belong on pizza. Nor do carrots. Sweet = bad unless it's a pizzert.

When you see a cat, you can pet it. It might be timid, or possibly even hostile, but the owner won't mind the least bit if you try to pet their cat, or even pick it up (so long as the cat doesn't mind). Cat owners tend to be sane, or at least not insane in the way dog owners sometimes are.

On the other hand, many dog owners apparently object strenuously to people petting their dogs without asking. They'll even claim it's like going up to a strangers' child and hugging him/her.

If this is a seeing eye dog, this makes sense. (Not the child analogy, but the 'no touchy!' rule.) Otherwise, however, these people are insane.

I'm sure there are nutty cat ladies who are the same way about their cats, but I don't think I've ever met one.

You know how if you can't cook then you're too stupid to live?

I was afraid I might be like that earlier today, but turns out I'm not.

I made cinnamon rolls. But there are twenty people living here, so I doubled the recipe. Except:
* I used two packets of yeast, probably making 2 or 4 tbsp instead of six.
* I rolled the thing out in a messy non-rectangle.
* I used Smart Balance instead of butter/margarine.
* I put the Smart Balance directly into the filling, rather than spreading and sprinkling. Then I added extra sugar because it wasn't spreading evenly and needed more filler.
* I used a pan that was not 9"*9" or 9"*18", but something rectangular.
* I put them in the over and forgot to note when I put them in.
* I got out the powered sugar for the topping and then put in table sugar without thinking. Then I added water because I didn't want milk.
* Then I added powdered sugar anyway. And more water.

But they came out great. Everyone loved them. 'Everyone' being about five people who were here. Nearly everyone was away today.

But, see, this merely emphasises my point from August. Even if you don't follow the recipe, things usually turn out fine. Cooking's easy. Don't leave meat raw and what can go wrong?

(You know how on Food Network people comment how baking requires precise measurements? LIES!)

People are often complaining about the 'anti-science' attitude so prevalent in the US, but let's look at some scientific 'facts' and see how they stand up against basic common sense or simple tests:

Spherical Earth

Obviously false. I set out walking in a straight line, for more than an hour, and I didn't return to where I started. Additionally, I have friends who have been to the so-called 'Southern Hemisphere' and they told me people walked on the ground, feet down, just like here.

Wave-particle duality

I don't even need to go into this. It's simply absurd. I mean, come on!

Consistency in the speed of light

Again, WTF?

Heliocentricism

I can bloody well see the Sun going around the Earth.

Atomic theory

You're telling me I just stubbed my toe on a rock that's mostly empty space? Bull. Crap.

Relativity

Things bend. Space is not a thing. It's where things are. And time is time.

Quantum Mechanics

Atomic theory on crack. In Vegas.

Rocks and feathers falling at the same distance in a vacuum

Hello! One's heavier than the other!

It's no wonder science isn't trusted. They don't even try to come up with half-way plausible claims.

(This is what blog posts are supposed to look like. Stupid ramblings about my day.)

This morning, I superglued my fingers together. I was trying to repair my earplugs, but the glue wasn't coming out, so I squeezed really hard, and it all shot out. Apparently the way superglue works is to heat way up and then rapidly cool down and stick. For fingers, this means blisters from the heat followed by a painful pulling apart of the stuck digits.

On the way home, I had to run to the bus for my transfer, 'cause it was about a block ahead of the 27 instead of the usual block behind. Sadly, I somehow dropped my bus pass. I considered going back to look for it, but by the time it occurred to me, I'd already paid the 0.50USD fare, and it was going to expire in a week. (It's 10USD for a month pass.) But! Morgan from ECorps saw me drop it and she got off, found it, and brought it to my house for me. Nice to know I'm not the only person this cheap. :-)

The middle of the day was hours of using mattocks to clear trench along a path at Southwest Key. Tired now.

Upon waking this morning, I glanced at my watch. '07:15am'. Oh, gevalt! I overslept by more than an HOUR!

So I quickly, got dressed, grabbed a bag of banana and a cereal for breakfast and lunch, and ran out to the bus stop, where I brushed my hair and ate a banana as I waited for the bus.

Where's the bus? Glance my watch: 07:15am. I should call them to say I might be late, but there's no payphone and I haven't a Handy.

Glance my watch: 07:20am. Ah, good, it's supposed to be here in three minutes. Some people from work drive by and shout my name. 'Hey, I could use a ride!' But they're gone. Curses!

Glance my watch: 7:25am. Where's the bus? It's late. Pace. The Night Owl bus shows up. Strange that it's running at 7:30am, but it goes where I need to go, so I board. The clock up front is flashing '1:30'. Ha, I wish. No one there from whom I can borrow a Handy to say I'm going to be late. Just two homeless guys.

Glance at my watch: 7:40am. Wait...for the past six years I've had my watch set to UTC (essentially Greenwich Mean Time). 7:40am in England is 1:40am here. It suddenly dawns on me what a colossal idiot I am.

So I get off the bus and walk thirteen blocks home. I'm not going back to bed and oversleeping for real. At least I went to bed early, so I got half a night's sleep.

Good thing I didn't have a Handy. Would've left some interesting messages.

I just finished clean up for dinner at Seneca Falls.

I'd been sceptical about the claim that dinner clean up is a four hour job (two people for two hours), and usually it wouldn't be--yesterday's I think would have been about one hour total. But today they made a mess. I've helped do dinner clean up for groups of 70+ people, and this meal for ~20 impressed me. There just kept being more stuff.

Two pots still have burnt stuff on the bottom. One is mostly clean, and the other Michael suggests leaving for the person who burnt whatever it was.

Huckabee is getting popular. As governor, Huckabee increased spending over 60%. CATO (libertarian think tank) gives him an F. Huckabee wants to double PEFAR (AIDS funding), but in the past, he suggested isolating people with AIDS (though doesn't any more). Huckabee seems to be a Creationist. He says homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural, sinful, and poses a dangerous public health risk.

But he's suddenly a viable candidate to stop Giuliani. And with the current political climate, I'm more concerned about dictators, even ones with happy liberal policies on domestic issues.

Of course, I may change my tune very quickly when he starts sending gays to the gas chambers. (Hey, if he can make absurd holocaust comparisons, why can't I?)

Problem: I have no idea whether Huckabee is also a dictator.

One night after falling asleep, I dreamt about the Death Star from Star Wars. Looked just like it.

What's amazing is that I'm not alone. Dozens, nay, thousands of people have had similar dreams. They lose consciousness and then have vivid perceptions of large, spherical space stations of similar size and design, and often it's called a 'Death Star' by people in the vision.

This is an amazing coincidence, and I think we can take it as proof positive that the Death Star truly exists.

NO, WAIT. That's stupid. The Death Star appears in a very widely-known piece of fiction. It's an established piece of culture. People think about such things, go to sleep, and then dream about them. This doesn't even begin to suggest that any such entity actually exists. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

Now try this one on for size:
'Lots of people in near-death situations, upon losing consciousness, see angels or a bright light telling them it's not their time yet, as can be found in numerous works of popular culture. Therefore, such things really exist.'.

Dreaming about something does not prove it exists, kid!