It's a gross and warm Tuesday here in the blanket fort. I woke up around 8AM to 68℉ (~20℃) weather - partly sunny with a soft, steady breeze. I'm very tired, but I also feel like I'm getting really good notes for Spook Patrol, so I feel like that's an even trade lol.
Speaking of Spook Patrol, I think that they came into existence around the same time as the sudden burst of ghost hunting shows of the mid-to-late 00s? Let me try out a timeline here:
Spencer and his childhood friends explore the Scarlet Rose manor in the 1990s - Spencer is a Sophomore in HS. I'm going to say 1993!
If Joe dies early in the school year of his Senior Year, then that's Fall of 1995, I think? Which means...
Spencer goes to college in 1996, which means that's when Everett disappears
Spencer is in a PhD program, but he's going to lose roughly a year of schooling, so that's 1996+4(Bachelor's)+2(Master's)+3(PhD)? Maybe 2005? I'll Call it 2006, actually.
If Spencer graduated in 2006, that would mean that, with a year of searching for work with his PhD in Research Studies before settling with the Spook Patrol, we're at 2007.
Unfortunately, there's the mess in Romania to consider, which I'll put in 2009.
Spencer ends up spending more time in the hospital but begins his solo work in 2010.
Spencer stays on the Isle of Storms in 2012.
I think I'm pretty satisfied with that timeline, actually.
But you're not just here to learn how I'm putting together the timeline of a project you've had very little connection to so far.
You'd probably like to know how the blog will be going for the next seven days!
Tomorrow I'll post another Big Post of Sumo
Thursday I'll share my progress on the Spoopy Project and also the cute artwork I sketched out last night from a joke about my usual mood while traveling
Friday will involve one of the movies I've seen recently (though I'm not sure which one yet lol)
Saturday will be another merge game, but this time without any weirdness in the permissions
Sunday... is up in the air. I don't know yet what I'm cooking (if anything) this week!
Next Monday, I hope to have much more done with the scarf. If all goes well, we've only got finishing work after that!
I'll be back next Tuesday to blather and blab for a bit!
So that's the upcoming schedule for me! I'm pretty excited for the various projects I've been working on, too, so this was a very good morning for me :)
Good afternoon people! I am having a very weird morning because today I'm doing research about... uh... ghost hunting. Now, if you know me irl, you know that, while I'm a very strong skeptic about anything approaching the supernatural. I'm an atheist. I'm not a believer in the undead.
But I'm also irrationally terrified of anything supernatural. It freaks me out because I see so many parallels between the basic commonalities of hauntings and all of the various symptoms of mental illness. Also, I'm 100% prone to jump-scares. Some day, I should do a livestream of myself watching something stupid and spooky so you can all laugh at me lol...
So why am I watching stupid ghost hunting shows?
Research. I'm doing research on how these shows are run, how everything goes together, what things are common among all of the different shows, what "equipment" they use, what kind of experts they call in. I know I could just ask people who love these shows, but I need to experience it for myself or it's not going to feel real when I write about it and draw it.
I'm doing research for Spook Patrol, and it's a blast. A spooky, spooky blast. No me gusta por todos. LOL.
So that's what I was watching while I worked on my crochet this morning. Time for some spookies while I work on my pumpkin set, which is decidedly... not spooky at all.
I mean, look how pretty!
Okay, so here's what I did: I made a long rectangle that was a little taller than it technically needs to be, but that just means things are gonna fit nice and comfortably. It's the same Fika pattern I've been using on the fingerless gloves and such, and I've sewn the sides together. I've also started making chains along all of the different bumps, which I did by alternating a single crochet followed by three chains. I did that for two different rows, then I alternated (sc, ch2) around once, followed by (sc, ch) around.
And then I changed to brown yarn up near the top, like a stem!
The brown I had as single crochet all the way across (which was 18 sc total), then I reduced down until it was shut. That means that after my 18sc around, I reduced as (sc2tog, sc) around, then (sc2tog). Thankfully, it reduced easily and smoothly, which was fun! The cuff happened naturally, too!
I had no plans for the rolled cuff on this hat, but I'd made it so long that it just... happened. I was very happy with that :)
By the way, at this point, I was about halfway done with an uncut version of the Ghost Adventures 2-hour video of the so-called Demon House in Gary, Indiana. It made me wonder how unscary these things would be without the spooky music and sound effects. I'd love to see versions of these shows without any of the creepy sound design. They'd probably be even more boring lol.
But you're not here to read me laughing at ghostly shows on the internet.
You want to know what I did with my crochet today!
Well, I did more than just a hat!
Since this set is supposed to be in three parts and I've done two, it's time to work on part #3!
The scarf!
I'm going to use up what remains of this skein of orange yarn and if there's not enough, I've got another skein to keep up with it.
So yeah, Spooktober has already begun for me, so I'll let you go and get back to crochet, art, writing, and really, really stupid tv :P
Look how cool they are! And it's going to be just finishing work soon!
Using leftover bbq boneless pork ribs to make pork floss
or a reasonable facsimile thereof...
I have been an Asian Grocer's maybe... three times? And those were all on the same day. I saw pork floss then, though I didn't manage to try it, so I actually have no idea how successful this experiment was, regarding flavor and texture comparisons, but as far as how much I liked it? Well... I may have eaten half a quart of it without thinking, so I'd say it went well.
But what is pork floss?
Simply put, it's very, very battered pork. It's pork that's so beat-up that the meat fibers have totally separated into their own crispy/fluffy protein strands, which, combined with sugar and soy sauce, become incredibly addictive. The mechanics of making pork floss (or any kind of meat floss, really, I'm sure) are very simple: Cook your meat, season it with sugar and soy sauce, pound it, then fry it, then pound it, then fry it, then pound it, then... you get the idea. It's not a very difficult recipe, just a long and tedious one. Then again, if you're really annoyed the day you make it, it's a great way to focus your aggression.
First, you start with some meat.
I used leftover boneless pork spareribs that had been cooked in the oven with bbq sauce. Since the ribs were... fairly dry, to be honest, they were my best bet. After all, I wasn't making "leftover potatoes floss" or "leftover Caesar Salad floss", so my options were, at best, limited.
I took my ribs and pounded them with a mallet slightly. I didn't discover until near the end, however, that my best bet would've been to simply leave the meat in its Pyrex dish and beat it with a very heavy glass (be careful not to chip anything!!!). If you don't have a heavy glass or a meat mallet, your next best bet is to find the heaviest cylindrical object (make sure you can hold it for several hours at a time comfortably) in your kitchen and cover the end in plastic wrap, foil, waxed paper, or parchment (held on with probably rubber bands). Basically, you don't want anything that might not be 100% food safe to come in contact with your food.
Once you've slightly deformed your meat (don't go too crazy, you'll get back to it, I promise), it's time to add your marinade. Splash some soy sauce (as much or little as you want) over the meat, then sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar over it. I would add more soy sauce and sugar as I went, just to help the pounding process out. You can just add a buttload at the start, but you might get more caramelization than you'd like.
Remember to cover your meat while you go make a cup of coffee or walk the dog.
Let it sit for a while.
With the marinade on and some time killed, it's time to prep your frying pan. I'd suggest using cast iron if you've got it, because the weight helps it retain heat longer. If you're constantly ferrying meat from pan to pounder and back, the constant heat change can damage the pan (and the constant on/off cycle can mess with your stove!).
I used a little peanut oil to help lubricate the pan, but if you've got a fatty enough cut of meat,
you can probably skip this step. If it's even necessary. I've seen conflicting views on it...
Heat your meat in the pan for a while - this was a step I just... eyeballed. I didn't know how warm to get things, but I made sure there was a little color on at least one side of the meat before I took it out and pounded it some more.
It flattened considerably while I was working!
Then it's back to the pan. And back to the pounder. Over. And Over. And Over.
3rd pounding.
5th or 6th pounding
By the time I hit pounding number 7, I realized that a cup would work better, and that leaving the floss in the Pyrex dish was way more convenient. That's what first tries are all about, folks - learning how not to do things and what ways are better. So I beat that poor floss even more severely. Then I had to leave it in the fridge for a day, but I'd strongly suggest eating it the day you make it! Leaving it in the fridge can make it a bit tacky from the fridge moisture. Ew.
Also, it probably needed another 5 minutes in the pan to really get all the moisture out, but I ran out of time.
But what's this? A bonus recipe?!
Of course! I couldn't just leave you with roughly a quart of beaten pork ribs and no idea how to use them!
We'd also just received our Umai Crate for September, so we were super eager to try some noodz!
I transferred my floss out of the dish and into a zippered bag, which made things much easier to transport. It also made it very easy to fluff the floss, which is a necessary step after settling has occurred.
My re-fluffed floss!
For our noodz, I took two eggs and beat them.
See? Beaten eggs!
The eggs were added to the noodles as I cooked them, and then the eggy noodles were transferred to a bowl and added the seasoning packets.
As you can see, it was an Akakara Ramen, which was creamy and spicy and delicious!
Once everything was mixed together, I mounded up the pork floss on one side of the bowl for aesthetics (and also so that we could add as much or little to our noodz as desired).
They looked fantastic. They tasted better.
This was, without a doubt, the warmest reception I could have hoped for. Not only was I over the moon with how this turned out, but everyone else who tried it was thrilled, too! The meal was awash with yummy sounds, so I was pretty darn proud of myself. I also kept snacking on the floss, since I couldn't fit the whole bag in the bowl...
Ah, what the heck.
Have another glamour shot of the floss!
While the floss was not crispy in the way I've heard it described, it was light, fluffy, and chewy. Since I didn't finish pounding it or frying all the moisture out, it still had a few larger clumps of meat, but for the most part, it looked like frizzy meat wool, but it tasted amazing. Sweet, faintly barbecued, faintly soy-saucey, and intensely meaty, this was a superb ramen topping, so I think that's what's happening to all of the leftover pork in my fridge from now on - it's being sacrificed to the meat floss gods.
If you've got several hours to kill and some slightly dry pork leftovers in your fridge, definitely give this a try! Heck, even if you've just got leftover pork from, say leftover Chinese food, you could probably get a little floss out of it!
Now, if you've followed this far, you probably don't need it, but if you've scrolled around to see if there's any reason to not read, here it is:
I love the concept of Merge games. It's basically Marie-Kondoing a game board and there's something wonderful about that feeling of gratification when you've consolidated dozens of similar items down to a few disparate things spread much further apart. You feel like you're cleaning, but you don't get as overwhelmed as if you were cleaning, say, a hoarder's house...
Anyway, that's all a long-winded way of me letting you know that I've been playing Mergical, a mobile game by Betta Games.
And yes, weird dolls are an important part of this game.
Mergical is a lot like Merge Dragons in a lot of ways. You merge groups of 3 together, you're unlocking parts of an island covered in clouds, you're healing land, you're collecting currencies and magic power, etc, etc. Instead of collecting and merging dragons, however, you collect and merge... people. Not sure how to feel about that. Especially since you merge dolls to get people.
Are they golems?
Am I summoning actual people who are desperate to escape?
Am I a monster?
Whatever's going on, you want to match things in groups of three, and you want to do it a lot.
I mean, this is only a couple of unlocks into the game. If it was zoomed out, it could feel overwhelming.
So far, I've only unlocked two or three sections of island, but it's enough to give me a feel, I think, for how this game plays.
Here's the good:
The graphics are adorable - everything looks good and cute!
The clouds are precious little hearts!
Items progress in a way that seems to make a lot of sense (fruit tree seeds > fruit tree saplings > fruit trees > apple trees > pear trees)
Your helpers respond when you drag and drop them or when you double tap an item for them to collect
The challenge levels (which are located in the bottom left corner) are quite reasonable (so far)
The "quests" (located on the left hand side) are fairly straightforward and not impossible without spending real money
The game is very generous with its rewards, granting you gifts for time spent in-game, specific in-game tasks, and more.
But there are some problems:
Items don't like to be told where to go - sometimes I'll tap on something to move it and it won't go where I say, other times I'll brush by something to move the screen and an item will move where I don't want it.
It's very limited gameplay so far
It's easy to get overwhelmed with so many items in one place
It takes a very, very long time for seeds to sprout on their own.
For some reason, this game wants permission to make calls from my phone. That's a big no-no, Betta Games. Fix that. It's not okay or cool. It shouldn't ever have a reason to ask that.
If they can ditch the incredibly nosy permissions they ask for, I would unreservedly suggest this as a game for your younger kids (even with some cash shop items available - just don't give your phone access to your finances and they can't charge these things to you).
So we got together last week with the promise of "games and karate" attached to Movie Night at Film and Editing Friendo's place. Mom of FEF had prepared a bingo game with Swedish Fish as markers, and we were to watch this movie, one of her favorite's (in the same way that Arizona Werewolf is a favorite of mine), very closely to see who would win.
It was a blast!
Now, don't get me wrong, this is not what most might consider a "good" movie - it's not particularly beautifully lit or shot, the actors aren't at the peak of their careers, and the story is, frankly, silly - but it's a fun movie.
This is one of the more accurate posters I found for this movie.
Set off the coast of Maine (!), The Shuttered Room is the story of a beautiful woman who has been given her parents' old home (a defunct mill) and whose big-shot magazine editor husband insists on it being a vacation home, despite her misgivings. They arrive on the island and are, predictably, completely warned off from the house. Luckily, the husband is a New York guy, so common sense is a foreign concept for him.
"Oh wife, I don't know why you're so resistant to coming back to a place where you were so traumatized as a child that your entire childhood has been erased and you have no recollection of even your own parents. You're being unreasonable."
And since this is a small island supposedly off the coast of Maine, the locals are scumbags. Especially one guy who was promised the mill by his "ANT ARGATHAR" (Aunt Agatha). He's 100% awful.
Hello, I'll be your stalker for the duration of this movie.
This denim dude is the worst. That being said, there is nothing that can beat how... stupid the reveal is at the end. Seriously. It's something you'll both see coming a mile away and also never expect.
This is where the ending takes place.
All told, this is a really silly and fun movie that's somewhere between slasher and haunted house. There's a lady with a drugged up golden eagle, crazy island hillbillies, justifiably angry women, and a fetishization of stockings. There's also a hilariously huge 1960s vehicle that somehow made it across the bay on a tiny ferry, a comically huge dollhouse, and more cobwebs than a Spirit of Halloween.
As for the "karate", there was a hilarious fight scene of Pushy-Ineffectual Husband vs Denim Doofus and it was awesome.
Well worth the sugar high from a quarter pound of Swedish Fish lol.
Well, I've done some more work on the marker project today!
It's coming right along!
Besides the fact that I had a lot of "help" today, I think this morning went really well. I got up at a good time, I had my coffee, and I needed to wear a sweatshirt around the house because it's only 50℉ (10℃) outside, and I love it!
Kitty, how am I supposed to read my coordinates if you're on the laptop?
Also unhelpful, but cute. Love you too.
So today's been pretty nice! I'm going to throw on some jazz when I get back from doing some errands today and work on the hat, maybe write tomorrow's blog (about... hmm... I'm gonna have to choose among three very different films...), and play some vidya games!
Hope today's been kind to you, and if it hasn't I hope you have the energy to
Since I don't have the stamina to run down all 12 days of sumo up to this point, I've compiled the rest of week 1 for you below. Feel free to skip to names if you're interested, and I hope this is informative for you!
