I never met a mushroom I didn't like

As I was looking around online for Christmas gift ideas, I came across this site: uncommongoods.com.


They have a variety of unusual gifts, home items, clothing, and other random stuff. One of the cool things I came across was a mushroom growing kit. They claim that in just 10 days you can harvest your first batch of up to 1.5 pounds of oyster mushrooms and the kit can yield up to 4 harvests. All you have to do is mist it with water. I am intrigued. I've never met a mushroom I didn't like. Seriously, I could eat them in one form or another (sauteed, fried, baked, raw) at every meal. But, I think that I want someone else to play the guinea pig for this first, so I will probably send one to a friend for Christmas and see how it goes. The user reviews are all really good, so I am thinking it probably works. With shipping, if you actually get 4 harvests, it is about the same price you would pay for them in the grocery store. Anyway, if you are looking for something different, and maybe a little odd, to give someone, definitely check this site out.

Bambi's mom isn't dead...yet

Before anyone starts thinking I am a horrible person, let me explain my stance on hunting. I do not support "trophy hunting." Killing an animal just so you can mount it's head on the wall is not ok. Hunting exotic and endangered animals for their fur is not ok. But, hunting deer or other game animals with the intention of using the animal for food is totally acceptable. It is much more humane than most of the cattle and chicken farming that supplies grocery stores and that we walk in a buy with no thought as to how inhumanely the animals are treated. Deer meat is natural, no hormones or antibiotics, it is also healthy because it is so lean. That being said, we hunt (or at least my fiance does). His family has land in Mason, Texas which is one of the most highly populated deer counties in Texas. They have deer feeders set up in the fields and even have game cameras that take still photos all day of the deer at the feeders. They are very conscious of the population in the area, how many does and bucks there are, how many new fawn there are, etc. They are already concerned about the implications that this year's drought will have and decided to limit the number of deer that the family could shoot. It's quite refreshing to see that kind of concern considering that most people could really care less. All of the guys hunt, but they rarely actually shot anything. And most of them do not eat deer so they are unfortunately just hunting for horns. But, we take the meat for ourselves so it all works out. Our goal last week was to bring home three deer to stock the freezer, but it didn't happen. Brian missed once and then hit one on the last day, but wounded it and it got away. Wounding a deer is very upsetting to everyone, they do not want to see any animal suffer, so the whole group went out to try to track the deer down, no luck. If we can somehow find time to make it back down there before the hunting season ends (Dec. 30th) we will. But it looks like our freezer might stay empty until next fall. On another note, our "vacation" sucked. I was really sick for 2 days, our nice dinner out with no kids resulted in the owner of the restaurant (a woman) practically assaulting Brian (don't ask!) and I had no internet, even on my iPhone, for a week!!!! We did bring home BBQ from the best place in the world though and now I am going to go eat some! 

Vacation (sort of!)

So, after a long week and another possibly failed experiment, Brian and I are heading to Mason tomorrow. The little man is staying with Grandma and Paw Paw and we are spending a week in the middle of nowhere. The drive is about 6 hours, but that is with a stop in Llano for the best barbeque in the world!!! We always stop at Cooper's for brisket and sausage and end up eating it everyday. We will also head to Fredericksburg at some point to stop at Opa's for dried sausage (yes, we eat a lot of sausage of all kinds). But the real "meat" of this trip will be deer hunting. The plan is for Brian to shot 3 deer on this trip, which we will quarter and bring home to fill the freezer with. This will, unfortunetly, take up a lot of my no-child relaxing time because I will have to help Brian cut up and package all of the meat. But, I guess that is a small price to pay for a year's worth of really good, natural meat. Hopefully I will find some time to lay around and read magazines, maybe take some naps, and enjoy sleeping in. An all day rain event would be ideal, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Also, I will have to drive to town on Thursday so I will have internet to do a little Christmas shopping. Then I have to cook a bunch of stuff for Thanksgiving dinner. Hey, I am starting to think that my to-do list for this trip is getting too big.....

The little boy is 2!!!

So, this weekend we had our son's birthday party at his Grandma and Paw Paw's down at Lake Texoma. His birthday is actually tomorrow (he'll be 2). The party ended up being thrown together last minute, not by my choice, and I didn't get to do everything I would have liked. Brian and I hadn't even bought him a present yet!! But, all of his little cousins came and had a great time. Derek blew out his candle all by himself, tore up a chocolate cupcake, and got some cute toys. It was a very long weekend though and a long drive home Sunday night. I managed to get sick again Monday morning (this is the third stomach bug in 5 weeks...has to be the long term antibiotics). Now, after only being home for basically 1 day, we get to turn around tomorrow and head back to the lake so I can run an experiment, then drive to Mason, Texas for a few days, and then back for Thanksgiving. I am worn out!

Phys Sci computer lab

I have always used the Arts and Sciences computer lab in the library. I don't know why, I just have. Every time I go in there I end up sitting for 5 minutes waiting for those crappy computers to load. It's really frustrating when I am in a big hurry. Sometimes they never load and I have to move to the next computer and try again. Well, last week I discovered the computer lab in the Physical Sciences building (we moved our lab there last week). Today, I walked in, logged on in about 2 seconds, and these are nice computers. I am really annoyed that it took me until now to find this little slice of Heaven. I am pretty stoked about it. I hope that the huge asteroid doesn't wipe it out later today. That would suck to have to go back to the slow computers. Although, I guess I wouldn't be around to use them anyway.....

Eaaarthquaaaaake!!!!!!!

If you are reading this blog, then you too survived the great earthquake of 2011. It was a day that few of us will forget.


Saturday, November 5th began as a calm, breezy day. It was a great day for college football, cookouts, and just having fun. Unfortunately, I was sick in bed with a stomach virus and my mom drove down from Tulsa to help take care of the kids. I managed to weather the sickness and watch the games, but after that I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open any longer and I tried to go to sleep. That is when disaster struck. I heard the faint sound of a large truck, or so I thought, which then turned into the sound of a jet airplane barreling down on my house. Suddenly, my bed began to violently shake and I leapt from my bed to the floor, but the shaking did not stop. I ran into the living room at the same time my older son did the same. We both woke my mom up who had no idea what was going on. I was watching the chandelier in the kitchen swaying back and forth when suddenly the shaking stopped. It was over and we were survivors. As I saw the news reports flooding in and the pictures of cracked sidewalks and turned over lawn furniture, I realized how lucky we were. That was one of those days that I will look back on for the rest of my life and be thankful to have made it through.


Bahahahahaha, on a more serious note, that earthquake did scare the crap out of me! Fortunately, at that point I was done "being sick". That could have been messy.....

My wierd dream staring Dr. Hoefnagles

I have always been one of those people who have very vivid dreams, often ones that I can control to some extent, and I usually remember them the next morning. Lately I have been having a lot of sleeping problems (doctors think I may have sleep apnea) and even more recently I have started having major insomnia, despite the fact that I am exhausted beyond belief. This is probably being caused by the antibiotics that I am on long term and it is really becoming miserable. For these reasons, I have not been dreaming as much lately. But last night I apparently slept really well and had dreams all night. One of them had Dr. Hoefnagles in it.

Basically, in my dream, I was taking some sort of weird intro chemistry/lab techniques course with my fiance and Dr. Hoefnagles was the professor. Everyone in the class was given a big tub full of various pieces and we had to sort through and find the pieces needed to put together a filtering apparatus. My tub was missing a piece needed to put it together and when I told the professor she started yelling at me and saying that it was in there and I needed to find it because I was running out of time. Eventually I was able to prove that the piece was missing and I had to "MacGyuver" a piece to replace it using a drinking straw! I know, this is a wierd dream. Anyway, I finally got my apparatus together and was told that I had some extra time to finish the filtering since I had lost time due to the missing piece. Then I had to do some filtering using different sized filter papers and I guess that is where the dream ended.

So, I am definetly not a dream interpreter, but here are my thoughts. First, I really doubt that Dr. Hoefnagles would yell at a student the way she did at me in this dream. However, my advisor would, so maybe my dream got confused on who should be in it. Second, one of the big problems in finishing my experiment has been filtering issues, so I guess that is why I dreamt about it. I am sure the big tub of pieces means something, but I have no idea what. Also, in the dream, my fiance had no issues with his apparatus and was "perfect" as usual. He acts like that in real life to and I was pretty pissed at him about some things yesterday so I guess my resentment came out in my dream. That's about it. I really wish I could go back to my more action packed dreams where I am part of the squad on Law and Order: SVU so I can chase people and shoot them. I think some of my stress gets released in these dreams and I could really use that right now....