Usually we like to have people over to BBQ with us but with my sister out “roughing it” in the wilderness—she is out camping somewhere with coworkers, hopefully avoiding wildfires—and our Del Sol friends, S&J, doing their own thing, we were on our own. No worry though because you definitely don’t need a ton of people to enjoy good food (although it usually spices things up a bit). I picked up some corn on the cob and watermelon at Whole Foods earlier in the day. I also grabbed what have become one of my favorite things: Celebration Field Roast Sausages. As I alluded to earlier, they aren’t super-processed like the Tofurky Brats (which I still enjoy) and they are mostly wheat gluten rather than some weird soy protein isolate shtuff. Colleen has been crazy about Turkey burgers lately so she had that plus a hot dog. The last couple of times I’ve grilled corn, it didn’t seem to cook evenly and the result was some parts being overdone while others were just the opposite. Luckily my grilling touch returned yesterday and everything turned out yummily.

Later in the day I decided to get off my lazy butt and use the leftover cookie dough for my world famous cookie dough ice cream. I got the recipe from the kick-ass blog, A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise, so I wanted to thank the author, Agnes, and wish her a speedy recovery from whatever illness has slowed her. The ice cream turned out pretty stinkin’ good again, but I think the white chocolate chips aren’t quite as good as regular ones for this recipe. Speaking of the white chips, I still have most of the bag left so I think I will take Pink Haired Cyn’s advice and make some white chip macademia cookies with them. Just don’t tell Colleen because she doesn’t like macadamias!

One sad thing from yesterday is that we didn’t get to see any fireworks. I heard them really get going around 9PM but there wasn’t a clear line of sight to them from our apartment. I managed to pull Colleen away from Zelda for a bit to go out to the LJC passive-use park to see them but just as we were gettign there, we heard the big finale get going and then it was over. Lame-o!

Things have been pretty low-key around here otherwise. On Wednesday, the gamecube controller I ordered from Amazon finally showed up. This meant I was finally able to give Colleen one of the gifts I bought for her: Animal Crossing. It’s a bit difficult to describe the game but its somewhat similar to the Sims but with less tedium and a lot more character (at least from what I’ve seen so far). The game unfolds in real time so if you get up earlier, you’ll run into cranky, just awakened people (or those still asleep) while playing late means you’ll find people dozing off. It’s strangely addicting and so far Colleen seems to be enjoying it, so it’s a win for me. Colleen also seemed to like the other gift I got her: Simply Super Paper: Over 50 Projects to Cut, Curl, Twist, and Tease from Paper. Hopefully Colleen will make some of the things in it and then blog about them here (if only I can cajole her into actually writing a post one of these days!).

I suppose that’s enough rambling from me for one night. I’m off to catch up on some sleep.

- Sat

Who would have thought that it would take the purchase of a fancy new HDTV before we finally were ready to give up our cable addiction?

A couple weeks ago, Colleen mentioned that since it was the summer (read: nice outside), we had the Wii, and the SSHL summer reading program, it made sense to cancel the cable. Sometimes I wonder if she has some kind of mind-reading device because I was pondering the same. I quickly agreed and within a couple days, we were down to the local cable package rather than the expanded (but not digital tier) package. I thought there would be a period of adjustment where we really missed it but, from the looks of it so far, we really weren’t addicted at all. Part of ease of transition stems from the Paradox of Choice book that I read a couple weeks back. We had all these extra channels but all the choices we had weren’t really making us happier. We only watched a couple of them (ABC Family, Comedy Central, HGTV, etc) and we watched them so much that everything eventually became a rerun for us. The Daily Show is the only thing I thought I would truly miss but since they have the full episodes online, I haven’t missed a beat.

Are we better people now that we only have basic cable? I don’t think we are foolish enough to think that quite yet. We still waste a lot of time in front of the TV watching the beautiful HD local channels and our favorite shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Bones, and House—I’ve even taken a liking to PBS and it’s HD offering. We have also increased our Wii play time, mostly occupying ourself with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which we recently purchased and have slowly been making our way through. I’ve even picked up a brand new addiction: OpenStreetMap (OSM).

OSM is like the bastard child of Wikipedia and Google Maps. You can freely edit the map, adding roads and trails, and placing points of interest (like gas stations, grocery stores, parks, etc) on it. The beautiful thing is that you can then take those maps and upload them (after a bit of finagling, of course) to your GPS unit. This saves us the pain of having to pay Garmin $200 for some local street maps for Colleen’s Garmin eTrex Legend. You can upload GPS tracks to OSM or (if you are sans GPSr), you can just check out the ariel map and eyeball locations based on your memory of the area. Don’t be shy: map your neighborhood. It’s oddly addicting.

- Sat