When Did They Start Selling Bacon In Troy Ounces?

Bakin' bacon

For Mother's Day this year I baked bacon for the first time. Well, second time. In either case I took the package of bacon out and started pulling it apart and placing the strips on the baking sheet.

First things first. Stop frying your bacon three or four strips at a time. Put it all on a baking sheet and find something else to do for 20 minutes.^[1]

I don't do the shopping in my house. Many of you already know this. If I'm in a grocery store it's because I was sent there on a mission. I'm either buying ice, beer, wine or some combination of the three. I really haven't paid much attention to packaging since I actually worked in a grocery store which was 14 years ago.

Zombies: Fast & Slow

Zombies!

Fast zombies! Slow zombies!

I've read a few articles that discussed the entertainment value of each and found that people are way too serious about discussing this topic. ^[1]

This seems to have been a topic of conversation pretty much ever since zombie movies started being made.

The first zombie movie as far as I know was White Zombie in 1936 starring none other than the famous Béla Lugosi. This movie portrayed zombies in the most traditional sense. Using a magic potion Lugosi's character, Murder Legendre ^[2], a white Haitian voodoo master, kills people, revives them as zombies, and uses them as slaves in his sugar cane mill. ^[3]

These kind of zombies are just like normal people in that they can walk, talk, and do things as any living person might with the exception that they are enthralled by the voodoo master. Soulless beings, they have no sense of self.

For The Love of Mike

Who?

I've heard this phrase a few times over the course of my life and never knew what it meant.

It's been stuck in my head for a while now and I finally got around to using this "internet thingy" to find out what it means.

I'm kind of a word nut in that I really like knowing what words and phrases mean. I mean, really mean. I know what Thing here means when he said "Oh, fer the love of Mike." He's swearing an oath. But since swearing is bad, you've got to turn the phrase.

Like when people say, "Oh for Pete's sake." They are avoiding saying the word "God". I imagined that was the reason for the Mike substitution. But who the hell is Mike?

Well, I'm gonna tell ya!

I found out that this phrase is actually between 600 and 800 years old. It was a soldier's oath. And since swearing is bad, saying the word "God" in your swear is even worse. It's one of the Big 10 ya know. So rather than risk an eternity in Hell, they started swearing to Mike. As in St. Michael, the patron saint of warriors and the Archangel that sent Satan to the hot seat.

Linguists and etymologists have a term for this. It's called a minced oath. Like when you step on a Lego in the middle of the night and feel like screaming, "Jesus Christ!" you instead bite your tongue and squeak out, "Cheese and rice!" See? You get to turn an eternity of damnation into a delightful side dish.

I learned all this by visiting Bill Casselman's website where he explained this in well written detail. I absolutely love that there are people in this world that study this stuff for my benefit. I'm not sure how long he studied in order to know this, but it only took me three minutes thanks to him.^[1]

GAAAAAHH!! Cockroach!

*shudder*

It all started with toast. Zoey wanted a toasted sandwich for lunch so I popped a couple pieces of bread in the toaster oven. As we were waiting patiently Zoey screamed and pointed.

“GAAAAAAH!! Cockroach!”^[1]

And sitting there on top of the dish towel next to the toaster oven was this big ol’ ugly cockroach.

Big. Ol’. Ugly.

It was staring at us like, “Dude! I was totally dozing off under there and BOOM! on comes the sauna. A little warning next time?”

So I grabbed the frying pan sitting on the stove and went after it like Conan the Barbarian. I wanted to hit it hard, but we had just installed granite counter tops. I was a gentle barbarian. So it skittered across the stove where I really started scaring it. It slipped beneath one of the burners and under the drip pan.

Nature Walk!

This entrance is at the back of the church parking lot.

That's right folks, it's NATURE TIME!

For a  field trip we went with one of our homeschool groups to the Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary. It was an ideal day too. Although we were under trees most the time, the constant cloud cover was nice too. The temperature was nominal if the humidity was not. What to do? It's Houston.

If you want to go there, there are a half dozen entrances from the surrounding neighborhoods. There isn't an actual entrance entrance. You gotta know somebody. I drove around before finally stopping to ask somebody.

Giant African Land Snails... IN HOUSTON!

And not in a "at-the-local-zoo" kind of way. Holy crap snacks folks. Here's the local broadcast from KPRC where they tell you not to touch them, and then show people holding them.



And a link to the story: LINK!

And now I totally want one...

Dinner! Bacon! Beer! Wednesday!

I'm back!

So I decided to make dinner. Well, I always make dinner, but I didn't want to tonight. So it was an active decision to do it anyway. I decided to make hamburgers. We don't have hamburger buns and I'm forbidden to go to the grocery. So they are going to be more sandwich-ish than usual. I saw a thing online some time ago where the dude made a hamburger patty, cut a hole out of the center with a glass, and then fried an egg in it. He claimed it was the best burger ever.

I also ran across a link while twittering where some lady made beer candied bacon. She obviously had some weird desire to be the most popular woman on the internet. Key words here kids are as follows:

Beer.^[1]

Candy.^[2]

Bacon.^[3]

THIS IS A THING PEOPLE.

And then I got the notion that this delicacy could quite possibly make the egg/burger even better. Hell, I got the notion it could make anything better. Eating this bacon could make Cheerios better. It could make the last Ghost Rider movie better. Well... maybe. It might even make me a better person! I dunno... It's in the oven RIGHT NOW.

Ok, while it cooks here's a link to the some lady. She's at Tide & Thyme. Here's a link to the drrrooooool.

Sorry, no links for the egg/burger thing. You'll just hafta live with the pics I make. Just know that I make no claims to credit for this fabulous idea. Unless it completely rocks my world. Then yes, it was all me.

Ok, first things first... I cooked the bacon. PICTURES!