Next pre-winter chore complete: chimneys are clean! Chimneys are actually easy. Disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the stove pipes on the two wood stoves is much more time consuming.
Friday Night Cocktail: Lemon Carioca. 2 oz Cachaca, 1 oz Triple Sec, 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice. Shake with ice, strain, garnish with a twist of lemon.
Plainfield’s Halloween bonfire was cancelled. Too much snow to build bonfire and ground too wet to plow. Instead, we pulled the fire trucks and ambulance out of the bays at the Public Safety Complex and invited the town inside. Too much snow + Halloween = Snow-m’o-lantern!
24.6 inches of snow so far in Plainfield. When will it stop?
Update: The answer was, it did not stop until it reached 30.8”. By the way, that path is the one I shoveled every hour to get to my snow measuring station out away from the house and woodshed.
Butter Beer. Need I say more?
Alright, I will. After making this humorous concoction, I tried a recipe for butter beer latte that has no beer in it. Since I was out of vanilla extract I made some changes. It was delicious, but everyone drank it up so quickly that I did not get a photo. This recipe works fine if you multiply it by four (I did).
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp Fulton’s Harvest Pumpkin cream liqueur (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1 cup milk
Melt butter and brown sugar on low heat to make caramel. Add liqueur and 3/4 of milk. Stir or whisk and heat gently until milk is hot but not boiling. While heating, steam/froth remaining milk with your espresso maker.
Pour mixture in mug, top with steamed milk and a dash of cinnamon.
The pullets are laying! My six Amberlink pullets are laying lovely little dark brown eggs.
Friday Night’s Cocktail: Sāo Paulinho. 2 oz Cachaça, 1 oz Limoncello, 3/4 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice, 1 tsp simple syrup, soda water. Shake everything but soda with ice and strain into a tall glass. Add a few ounces of club soda and garnish with a lemon slice.
Friday Night’s Cocktail: Cachaça Carioca. 2 oz Parassanunga 51 Cachaça, 1 oz Triple Sec, 3/4 oz fresh squeezed lime juice. Shake well with ice, strain into salted rim Margarita glass.
This morning, I decide to give up on Google+. I used Google Takeout (https://www.google.com/takeout) to backup my data, then I “downgraded” my account (https://plus.google.com/downgrade/) to remove my Google+ information.
I seem to be back where I was before joining Google+.
When downgrading, Google asked me for some feedback as to why I was leaving Google+. Here is what I told them:
I disagree with your insistence on trying to determine what my name is. I know what my name is. I don’t need Google to tell me.
If you ever support Profiles on Google Apps, I might try Google+ again on one or more of the domains that I manage, unless I have moved them elsewhere before then.
If you give up soon on your insistence on trying to oversee what I call myself, I might try Google+ again.
Until then, I’m out of here.
By the way, this whole thing has really soured me on Google as a whole. I had been moving my various business and non-profit domains to Google Apps, under the assumption that “Google is the most stable provider out there.” After having seen the way that many of my friends were treated with access to their Google accounts unceremoniously suspended, I no longer can trust that Google will always be there for me or for my customers.
You have lost my trust. I will be looking at alternatives to Google Apps for my domains.
Larry Page needs to make a public apology, fire Vic, end the insanity, and maybe that will restore some of my faith in Google.
Until then, you have clearly become evil.
Friday’s Cocktail: Caiparinha.
2 1/2 oz Cachaça,
1/2 lime,
2 tsp sugar.
Cut the lime into wedges and muddle with the sugar in a glass. Be sure not to crush the peel or your drink will be bitter. Add the Cachaça, fill with ice, and stir. Sip and enjoy!
If you have not tried Cachaça yet, it is an 80 proof sugar cane-based rum from Brazil, with a flavor between light rum and tequila. Parassanunga 51 is the most popular (and the 4th most popular liquor in the entire world), but there are many artisanl brands, though the can be hard to find. 51 costs only about $18/liter in the US.
