Recipe for Spaghetti Squash

I got this from cooks.com.

1 spaghetti squash
2 tbsp. butter
Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut squash in half lengthwise. Remove seeds. Spread butter over each half. Place flesh side down on cookie sheet. Bake 1 hour. Using spoon, loosen flesh into spaghetti-like strands. Serve with pepper and butter.


I served this with spaghetti sauce over it after pulling the squash onto a plate.

We first tried eating it without the spaghetti sauce, but it was pretty tasteless with just the butter and pepper. After adding the sauce, it tasted just the pasta. The texture is similar to angel hair. This is a dish I would make again in a heartbeat, though it was too much food for the two of us. Next time I'm going to only cook half of it and try wrapping the other half for cooking the next day or two days later. I imagine cooking it all and then reheating wouldn't be very good.

Toilet Paper

Lately I've read a few articles discussing how old growth forests are being felled for Americans' obsession with soft toilet paper. In the past, I hadn't thought about where my toilet paper comes from, but I am usually conscious to reuse my paper, ever increasing my pile of scratch paper before finally calling a piece completely used (think loose leaf paper).

The first time I read about the old growth forests being used for super-soft toilet paper, I pushed the thought out of my mind. Soft toilet paper makes my day a little brighter...

But I keep reading about these old growth forests being felled. Canada is one of the places this is happening, which I think is a little too close to home. I'm not saying that chopping down the rain forest is a good thing, but it's easier to push the reality behind (yes I do mean behind) my own actions when the trees are so far away.

Social and environmental responsibility aren't always easy. I have to rethink my shopping habits.

Screenplays

When I attended Killer Nashville (www.killernashville.com) last weekend, I learned many things. One of the shockers to me was the length of screen plays. I attended a panel on tricks novelists can learn from screen plays. Screen plays are much shorter than novels. I heard over and over again that they average around 100 pages, but many times less. No wonder so many times the book is better than the movie! I hadn't realized how much less room there was in a screen play to get plot across.

A typical novel runs around 100,000 words, or around 400 typed Microsoft Word pages when double spaced and size 12 font.

Grapefruit

Eating lots of grapefruit can make certain medications not work properly or may actually interact with medicine.

This is a good reason for me to never go onto the grapefruit diet.

Egg Beaters

I tried Egg Beaters recently. They aren't half bad. As far as scrambled eggs go, I couldn't tell a difference between them and real eggs. When preparing the scrambled eggs, I used olive oil, and other times I used vegetable oil. In both cases, the scrambled eggs were pretty good.

Then I tried the store brand. I couldn't tell a difference between the store brand and the Egg Beaters brand except that they're colored a slightly different shade of yellow. Both were yummy. Bye bye bad fats and cholesterol!

I've not tried baking with Egg Beaters yet. If any of you have used them in recipes, please comment on your success or lack thereof. I'm not sure I want to invest my time and other ingredients until I know about a few easy baking recipes in which the Egg Beaters worked well.

Pennsylvania Dutch

According to the Book Crossing Over: One Woman's Exodus from Amish Life by Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant, there is no word in Pennsylvania Dutch for love. I'm referencing page 28 of that book. Crossing over is Ruth Irene Garrett's true story about leaving the Old Order Amish Community in Kalona, Iowa. She says (and I'm paraphrasing) that when the "English" concept of love is referred to by the Amish that they use the German word for it, "liebe."

Twinkies, Paint, and Toothpaste

When I was at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky last week, the tour guide was talking about the various minerals on the walls of the cave. There is a mineral there that is in Twinkies, Paint, and Toothpaste, though I can't remember for the life of me which mineral it is. The tour guide said that they asked the Twinkie people why it's in there and that the Twinkie people said it's what gives the cream filling the fluffiness.

I'll never think about Twinkies the same way again, though I do love them :)

Audio Books

The Nashville Public Library has downloadable audio books! They use two different services, Overdrive and Netlibrary. So far I've only used Netlibrary. This service doesn't allow the listener to burn CDS but does allow for downloading to a computer, MP3, etc. At first I wondered how they could restrict the burning of CDs, but then I realized that the book is one giant file. It doesn't fit onto a CD. The reader has to agree to delete the file after the 3 week checkout period. Overdrive does allow CDs to be burned but the file stops working after the checkout period.

I'm already halfway through my second book. I recently bought a treadmill with built-in speakers, so I've been taking my computer downstairs and just running a chord between my laptop and the treadmill so that the book plays directly off the nice speakers. I like the added motivation to exercise.

I love libraries :)

Website Design

After several unsuccessful attempts to design jenbluekissed.com using a few different software products, free trial downloads, and basically ripping some of my hair from my head, I was about ready to throw in the towel a few weeks ago. Do I really need a website?

My frustration wasn't with html code or anything as advanced as that. No, I don't understand html code and probably never will. I couldn't get my pages to link up to each other using graphic based software.

Thank the stars I found www.wix.com. I'm almost finished with my website design. After a few hours I had accomplished more using Wix than I had in several months using Web Easy. My website should be up soon, I'm already thinking of ways I can make it even better. Now that I know I won't need a daily dose of banging my head against the wall to line up my pictures or insert text, I'm a whole lot happier. :)

The Squirrels Are Smart Critters

The squirrels have managed to knock down the bird feeder again. After they chewed through the rope holding the bird feeder in place, my husband replaced the rope with some metal twine. We thought we were all set, but the squirrels pulled the twine out of the clamp.

Keep in mind that I couldn't undo the clamp without asking my hubby to grab the pliers. The squirrels, on the other hand, managed to do so within one day.

The poor birds! They get to gorge on seed for a few days while it is spilled all over the deck, but then it takes a few days to get the feeder fixed and back into service.

Statue of Liberty

On the Today Show this morning, they released information that the crown of the statue will be reopened to the public starting in July in 2009. They're going to do a lottery type system to determine who can go up there because for space limitations not everyone who enters the statue proper can go to the crown.

I visited New York back in 1998 and was in the Statue of Liberty and also inside the crown. At the time I was quite impressed, but surprised at how long it took to get all the way up there and how narrow the stairway is. I don't think I've been on a scarier staircase since.

Something else the Today show mentioned and showed pictures of was that the torch was replaced in the 1980s when the country celebrated the Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday. I had no idea that it wasn't the original torch. I also didn't know that when France shipped the statue to the US, that they had manufactured the entire thing whole and shipped it. I assumed before seeing the segment on the Today Show that it had to be at least partway assembled or partway manufactured in the US.

COBRA Subsidy

There are a few rules to the COBRA subsidy for the 65% payment of which I was formerly unaware. All these things pass into law and look great on paper, but when the rules finally come trickling down, there's always a catch. A few random things are included here.

There are income limitations that can make people ineligible for the subsidy. These limitations are based on adjusted gross income and vary depending on if a person is filing as single or married. If a person mistakenly doesn't read the paperwork closely enough and signs that they're eligible when they're not, the IRS will recoup the subsidy at tax time.

The money isn't coming directly from the government. Initially, the employer has to pay the subsidy amount and then the IRS reimburses the employer. Eligibility for the subsidy was 3-1-09, but in the case of my husband and I, we still haven't been reimbursed for our subsidy amount (we paid the full COBRA cost and now have insurance through my employer). This administrative hitch is the reason why.

You have to be involuntarily terminated by the employer to qualify for the subsidy. If you left voluntarily, tough cookies. (You'll still probably qualify for COBRA, just at the regular rate).

You can't be eligible to be covered under any other employer based coverage to be eligible for the subsidy. So, if you're spouse is still employed, but his/her insurance is crappy and covers nothing unless you pay a gigantic deductible, touch cookies. You don't qualify for the subsidy (technically--I have no way of knowing how the COBRA administrator or government would ever check up on this, but it is part of the official rules).

Timba and Salsa

Timba and Salsa are not the same thing. I never knew that; I always thought they were basically identical styles of music.

Sinful Dessert: Peanut Butter Special K Bars

Ingrediants:

1 C white Karo syrup
1 C sugar
1 C peanut butter
6 C Special K cereal

Frosting:

1 C peanut butter
3 Hershey's candy bars

Bring syrup and sugar to a boil over the stove, but don't boil. Add peanut butter and stir until mixed well. Pour mixture over cereal and mix until coated. Spread Cereal and mixture into a well greased 9 X 11 inch cake pan. Allow to cool.

For frosting: melt chocolate and peanut butter in a small saucepan over stove. Spread like frosting over cooled bars.

Pro Hockey

I recently went to my first pro hockey game. When I watched the Nashville Predators win against the Los Angeles Kings, the game went into overtime because the score was tied. After the first goal of overtime was played, the Predators won. They didn't finish playing out the time. I had also forgotten that hockey is played in three periods rather than quarters or halves.

There was a lot less fighting between the players than I anticipated. I'd been to a few minor league games before in which the fighting was uninterrupted for a long time by the refs. This game was tamer, but a ton of fun to watch.

Cough Drops

Old cough drops get chewy after awhile. I found out the hard way with my recent cold. Nasty stuff! The texture was also very rough, causing my tongue to become sore.

Squirrels and Birds

The squirrels outside my house are not only capable of getting to my bird feeders, in the attempt to do so, they have chewed through the perches on one side of the feeder. No wonder the birds fight over the available perches!

The squirrels have chewed completely through the rope on my other feeder, causing it to crash to the ground and spill all the seed. I enjoy watching them as much as the birds, but feel like grumbling that I need to buy another feeder now!

Kindle

I have read a few reviews of the new Kindle. I don't own one, but would love to have one. I didn't know that the new version will read books aloud. It makes me wonder what the voice sounds like and if the inflection is flat like most computerized voices are.

Viruses and Backing Up Files

My laptop was recently infected by a virus. I'm supposed to get it back today from the Geek Squad. In my mind, I thought that I backed up my files on a regular basis, but after being without my computer all week I've learned that I don't do it nearly enough.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they were able to recover all of my files...

Stimulus

I read online (either cnn.com or msnbc.com, but I'm not sure which) that the stimulus bill is going to help with COBRA costs. For those people who lose/lost their jobs between September 2008 and December 2009, the federal government intends to help people by picking up around 60 or 65% of the costs of COBRA.

When I read the information, it was before today (Mr. President's day to sign the bill) so I would check the info more carefully to make sure that it made the final cut. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, because with the economy doing what it's doing, I don't want to have to foot the whole cost of COBRA alone...

Murder

Per Ann Rule's book, A Rage To Kill, there are mass murderers, serial killers, and a third category of murder who kills a lot of people that I had not previously known about. Pages 183-238 follows the story of Chris Wilder, a spree killer.

A Rage to Kill is all about true to live murders. The chapter on Chris Wilder has affected me more than the others. I found myself more afraid of the idea of a spree killer than a mass murder or a serial killer. For lack of quoting a large section of her book to define a spree killer, I'll paraphrase. A spree killer is someone who is seemingly normal but who morphs into a killing machine, killing gobs of people in a very short amount of time. The spree killer only stops because he is stopped by being caught. Unlike a serial killer, there aren't long breaks between killing. After reading the section on Chris Wilder, I understood that a spree killer is probably the human most equivalent to a predator. There is no longer the fear of being accepted into normal society once the killing begins, nor is there necessarily the careful calculation that a lot of serial killers go through when plotting a murder. In the case of Chris Wilder, he made more and more mistakes becoming bolder and bolder over time. He killed a lot of women in just a number of weeks.

I intend to write a review of this book after I finish it on RedKissedReviews.blogspot.com. I'm not sure when that will be, but hopefully soon!

Kidneys

Due to a family member having some medical problems, my mother told me that according to a doctor, the kidneys need to function at a minimum of 15% capacity for a person to live. Anything below that and dialysis is needed.

I wouldn't have thought the percentage would have been that low. After hearing this, I went online and also read on a random website that for certain conditions that it is possible to be on dialysis but to get better and get off of dialysis. It makes sense, but everyone I had ever known who had been on dialysis (that I knew about) was on it for the rest of his/her life. It's good to know that a person can recover from certain conditions to acceptable kidney function. I didn't do gobs of research on it, but I want to believe that this is true :)

SWAT

Per the book Police Procedure & Investigation: A Guide for Writers by Lee Loftland, I've learned a few interesting tidbits of information. Of special interest are a few things I should have known but probably couldn't have pinned down if asked before reading this book.

• SWAT stands for Special Weapons And Tactics. (page 63)
• DUI/DWI (Driving Under the Influence) and (Driving While Intoxicated) charges vary by state. I thought the two acronyms meant the same thing and were basically interchangeable. (page 56)

There are gobs of interesting facts in this book. These two things only stood out to me because I thought I knew what they were exactly but I had an erroneous understanding prior to reading the book.

Shoe Lady

There are a lot of nursery rhymes that I remember from my childhood, though as I was trying to think of the old lady who lived in the shoe, I couldn't remember the last two lines. Per http://nurseryrhymes.allinfoabout.com/there-was-an-old-woman I now know the whole thing.

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

I think I liked this character/lady better before I knew she was mean. I thought she was just being wise with her money by living in a shoe before stumbling across this website!

Epublishing

I purchased my first ebook recently from www.ravenousromance.com because one of my short stories was included in the anthology, Power Plays. Previously I had purchased audio books online, but hadn't ever known if I wanted to part with my hard earned buck to purchase something that wasn't physical.

In the past, I always thought I would miss the feeling of turning pages and holding a book up.

The PDF format of the ebook I bought is refreshing for a lot of reasons. I spend a ton of time in front of my laptop on the Internet, and in Microsoft Word. The little, black arrows on the bottom of the PDF make it much, much easier to keep track of pages without having to arrow key or scroll up and down. Every time I wanted to read a particular story again, I could just type in the page number on the bottom.

Also, I'm currently reading the trade paperback American version of Ken Follett's World Without End. So far, it's a good book, but it's heavy to hold up to my face for any length of time. So, I'm either bent over it as I read, or giving my arms a workout as I hold it. World Without End was a gift from my brother for Christmas, so I'm not complaining.

But, if I had to purchase another book in the 1000 work range, I would consider an ebook for this reason.

The other aspect of this last ebook I read that really got me excited was the ease with which I could take notes. What I purchased was fiction, so every time I came across a metaphor or neat descriptive passage, I opened my Excel file and began compiling and categorizing what other writers had written. I was easily able to write, "ABC writer wrote XYZ in DEF story on page LMNOP," in my various columns and rows within excel. Had I been reading a print book, I would have grabbed a sticky note, and then the information would have been eaten by purse, lost forever to the world.

The moral of my story is that I'm a child of the technology age. I'm sure I'll never stop buying paper books, they're convenient in places like the doctor's office or the mechanic's waiting room. But, I will buy more ebooks in the future.

Inauguration

That it is tradition that the president elect and the current president have coffee together before the inauguration occurs was news to me. Nor did I know until today that Obama neither drinks coffee nor alcohol. I didn't pay enough attention during the previous elections in my lifetime (or was in school or at work when they happened) to know that it is a recent tradition that the wife of the president elect holds the bible as the swearing in takes place and that for this one that Lincoln's bible would be used.

Being unemployed does have a few advantages. I was able to watch the whole thing and was choked up the whole time. It is certainly a day that I will remember!

Dragons

I'm a pretty new reader to the fantasy/sci-fi genre. I'm reading a book which I hope to review once I finish reading it on redkissedreviews.blogspot.com by Janine Cross titled Touched by Venom. It had never occurred to me that dragons could have venom. The concept is fascinating.

Top Ten Reasons I Have To Buy Books

With economy in shambles, I've been reflecting on my own spending habits. I tend to buy books like most women tend to buy shoes. It's rare that I enter a bookstore without buying something or at least writing down ISBN numbers to compare with prices of those same titles online or used. For a long time, I bought nonfiction and indulged in fiction from the public library.

Then I remembered that I don't read much of anything in three weeks or less, thus incurring library fines.

Lately, I've been purchasing hordes of fiction and devouring it at a steady pace. After some introspection I've decided that I have ten reasons for my book buying compulsion.

• Breaking the spine of a new paperback is akin to putting a knife into a brand new container of butter. I like messing with pretty design. Unlike almost anything I pick up off the shelf to purchase, there's nothing to throw away (packaging), but I get to make my mark on the product.
• I write just as much as I read. Supporting my fellow writers is a little like how I imagine the high of sniffing glue to be. I'm stuck on it by accident.
• I'm getting a kick out of contacting published writers to tell them I'm reviewing their books for free. They pretty much all respond, which gives me warm fuzzies.
• I like to imagine where Bluekissed and Redkissed would place my imaged books on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. Will my books be at eye level?
  
• I keep forgetting how heavy books are when I have to move. Each time I move, I swear that I will stop buying books in such a frenzied manner (and I usually start giving them away). Then, I forget the pain of lugging them up several flights of stairs.
• I've stopped having migraines for the most part. When I was having them, reading wasn't nearly as fun since it was next to impossible.
• I have a new reading chair in my office :)
• Signed author copies tickle me pink
• I like the look of words on a page. I keep reminding myself that it wasn't all that long ago that the average person couldn't read. Hip Hip Hooray for the printing press!
• Reading keeps me from playing an obscene amount of computer solitaire. As it is, I play only enough to make my eyes burn with pictures of cards when I close my eyelids.
  

Blogging

I recently decided to play around with blogger to experiment with the layout of a new blog that I wanted to create. The layout template of Blogger was beginning to seem dull to me, so I found a different template elsewhere on the web to use. So, what have learned today is how to change to a different layout other than the generic ones that Blogger gave as choices. (I didn't create the html code, just found it on the web. I wish I knew html). Specifically, I wanted to know how to make three columns on a blog rather than just two.

Check out my new Blog! The title is RedKissed Reviews. I review books that I've read. It IS safe for work also. There's no adult content on it.

http://www.redkissedreviews.blogspot.com

Tennessee and Iowa Unemployment Insurance

As far as what the unemployment people tell me in both states from what the paperwork from both states says, Iowa pays 361 per week maximum benefit and Tennessee pays a maximum benefit of 275 per week.

Now, if I could just get my phone calls returned so that I can file properly...

I'm glad I don't work for the unemployment agencies. This period of time would have those people really stressed out from overcapacity of claimants.

IHOP Chocolate Chip Pancakes

I ordered an omelet with chocolate chip pancakes today from IHOP. After snarfing halfway through the omelet, I realized that there was no way I would be able to consume the pancakes without suffering a sever belly ache. (I always order them to be delivered later as dessert with a scoop of ice cream on the top, so they hadn't arrived at my table yet when I made this discovery). So, I cancelled the ice cream and then took the pancakes home. I reheated them in the microwave around four hours later and then added the vanilla ice cream on my own.

Chocolate chip pancakes reheat just as yummy as when they are served fresh. :)

Olive Oil

I was eating at Atlanta Bread today and saw a sign that informed me that olive oil is the only oil that can be pressed from a fruit and consumed as it is.

Killer Nashville

The 2009 Killer Nashville conference is due to be August 14-16, 2009 in the Nashville area. It is a conference that I LOVED last year and hope to attend this year as well. The whole thing focuses on writing and the mystery/thriller genre. Last year I heard speakers on several topics including: arson, explosives, (I wanted to see the one on explosives but it was at the same time as a different topic I wanted to hear), writing effective sex scenes, as well as hearing Dr. Bill Bass, who was the keynote speaker.