...unless the power failed again while I was out shopping. I don't even know that much. I just got up, got dressed, and went grocery shopping.
I was out of just about everything again. Toothpaste, razors, napkins, the plates I feed the cats on, cat food, ham, cheese, bread--but if I hadn't bought $6 worth of stuff for donation to the food pantry, I would have stayed under $100. And I forgot to take the dog food back, so I'll have to do that later. Maybe next week or something.
I bought the ingredients for making my own laundry soap. Cost: $8.53 before tax, and that's only because you can't buy just a cup each of washing soda and borax. Graumagus figures a box of each is good for 4 batches or so. The bar of laundry soap was $1.05, and so the cost for a batch of DIY laundry soap comes to perhaps $3...and you use a tablespoon per load. There are a bit more than 15 tablespoons in a cup; so if you figure you'll get 30-40 loads out of $3 worth of detergent, you realize you're doing pretty well!
I was going to buy a grater specifically to use for this, but then I realized that I'm grating soap. What do you do when you want to get soap off of something? Rinse it with water.
Also, one thing I was wondering about was what the resulting detergent would smell like; well, the Fels-Naptha bar has a pretty nice scent to it. So that's answered.
Once I have a load of clothes to wash (I did laundry last night, without thinking about this) I'll report on how the stuff works. First I've got to grate some soap, though; and I'll probably do that while watching anime. Why not?
* * *
As much as we can trust weather forecasts, they're saying this winter's going to suck. Cold, nasty, nasty, cold, and cold and nasty. Looks like Og made the right move.
* * *
"Obama can win without Ohio."
I quote Jeeves: "If you say so, sir."
But the real reason I'm linking this is to snark about something: "[Obama] has North Carolina! He has Virginia! Oh, and he has Colorado, his Ace in the hole!"
Are you sure you don't mean Wyoming? Remember his visited Denver, Wyoming last week....
* * *
Next year ought to be "entertaining" in Chicago. Both a G8 and a NATO summit in the same city at the same time--oh yeah, that should be fun.
Hopefully I'll have my FOID card back, and maybe a decent carbine, by then. Just in case the stupidity overflows the boundaries of the city and gets out this-a-way.
* * *
Dinner should have been leftovers, but instead I screwed up six gyoza (pot stickers, bought from the oriental grocery last Tue) and made a "garlic chicken" skillet meal I got for $4 at the store.
"Screwed up": I think it's time for me to get a new frying pan, one that actually has a non-stick coating. Mom took care of this pan but the coating no longer functions as non-stick; it's now a "sometimes non-stick, usually sticky" pan. I coated this thing with oil before heating it up; I added more oil when I put the gyoza in...and they still stuck, and tore. They came out edible, anyway.
At the store I took a gamble on teriyaki sauce being the correct dipping sauce for them; and that turned out to be mostly right. Add a bit of mirin and some ginger, and it'd be perfect, but I was too hungry to give a rat's ass about the finer points.
I thawed about a dozen shrimp and added them to the garlic chicken mix, so it's actually chicken and shrimp. There was originally perhaps 8 oz of meat in the mix; well, what do you expect for $4? And I've got to use up that shrimp, anyway; it's been in the freezer since January and it's getting freezer burned.
* * *
Steve Jobs has died. Well, the survival rate for pancreatic cancer is not what you'd call stellar, and it comes to us all sooner or later anyway.
I don't know how much credit to give the man for the techno-toys we now have access to. Jobs did a lot of "grab this technology and market the shit out of it!" stuff. The Macintosh, for example; under his leadership Apple basically stole the entire idea for the graphic user interface from Xerox. The iPod is just an MP3 player with a slick front end; Apple Computer didn't invent any of the technology used--all Apple did was to design a user interface and set up a service where people could buy songs a la carte for Apple's player, and no other player. (At least at first.)
Apple Computer has long been more about style than anything else, anyway.
It's too bad Jobs had to die in his 50s; it's a shame when any productive member of society has his life cut short. But when you get down to it Jobs was an industrialist, a capitalist, and a marketing guy; he did a good job of promoting new technologies but he didn't actually invent anything subsequent to the Apple I and ][. Calling him "this generation's Thomas Edison" is hyperbolic at best.
That's about the best I can say about that.
* * *
I guess it's time for me to start watching anime and grating soap.