Thursday morning random

* Maybe someday I will have something crafty to post about.

* Got home yesterday afternoon, turned on the A/C to try to suck some of the humidity out of the air.

Guess what?

Yup, that's right: something's wrong with it. (Apparently this is my year for "Nothing is allowed to go smoothly.") The only consolations are that it's supposed to get cooler this evening (so I won't have another night of dreaming my chest is in a vise) and, since I'll be home ANYWAY tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to see if the guys can come out and look at it.

It'll be a race: who is least late for their appointment with me? Computer guy or HVAC guy?

(I'm guessing the system is low on refrigerant. It DID cool some and remove some humidity, but the cooling was not as powerful as I remembered from last fall. It's also possible something's borked with the blower system, I don't know)

* Apparently they have shut off all the HVAC in my building on campus. On the upside, that means the heat is finally off, but on the downside, it means the air everywhere is stagnant. And with humidity, that's bad, at least for me: still air plus humidity makes me feel like I can't breathe.

* I did get the brownies made. There are places in town that sell already made brownies, but one of them is the wal-mart, and the other is a catering place that's only open from 9 am to 2 pm. So I ran out, got the mix and a pan (and a few other things; if I can't make time for the natural-foods store this weekend, at least I can rely on the Green Spray now as I replenished my supply of the few things (organic milk, the good kind of lower fat cream cheese) that they don't carry.

I also picked up a couple more bags of Beanitos, which I discovered the wal-mart carries (Well, for now. Wal-mart seems to have a track record of dropping stuff they carry unexpectedly). Beanitos are chips, but they're chips made from beans (and rice). I am guessing they were designed partly for the gluten-free market, because they are gluten free. But they're also quite low in sodium, and they fit nicely into the craving for "slightly salty, crunchy, and savory" that I sometimes get. I figure they're probably better for you than corn chips....and anyway, I NEED something like that, something savory-tasting and that's not mushy cooked  vegetables or leafy salad greens once in a while.

*Another good food item I've discovered: the natural-foods store sells Lundburg Farms (and that name always unfortunately makes me think of Office Space) products, and one thing they have is a combination of rices and quick-cooking beans (lentils and black-eyed peas) called Olde World Pilaf.

It's very good. It has no salt (it's just the beans and rice). It takes almost an hour to fix but nearly all of that time is unattended time - you put the mix on to boil, cover it, turn it down to simmer, and then let it go for 45 minutes. Then you pull it off the heat but leave it covered for 10 more.

It's good as it is, but you can flavor it however you want - I added a little chipotle sauce to it when I ate it.

My only complaint is that the ratio of rice to beans is too great, but I suppose a person could throw in an extra handful of lentils or split peas to remedy that.

* I DID start something new - Tuesday night, when I was all ticked off about the computer thing, I pulled out the Mr. Ed pattern and the wine-colored Red Heart Soft I had on hand, and started a Big Macintosh. Yeah, he won't be "show accurate," as I said (though I may alter the leg pattern a bit to make his legs less spindly, and do fewer decreases in the chest region to make him look a bit more buff). But I don't really care as long as the face (eyes and general expression) is mostly close and the coloring is right. (I'm not going to do the eyes as the pattern directs, which gives kind of bulgy exophthalmic eyes - I'm going to do appliqued felt ones, like on the other Ponies I've made. (Just not with big eyelashes). And I'll do little "freckles" (The little white spots he and Applejack have - I presume they are supposed to be like freckles are on a human).

Making toys is soothing to me, I think it's because it's something I did as a kid (in fact, making toys was one of the first crafts I ever did - knitting clothes and doing embroidery and quilting came later).