Icy Green Eyes, My Funny Valentine and Software Hell
My backyard is like an ice rink. A clear sheet of ice stretches from my back door all the way to the line of trees which extend along the back of our property; covering every inch of frozen grass, my garden plots, and the small reflecting pool we put in over the summer. I suppose I shouldn’t complain tho… we could be in upstate New York or the Midwest where those people are actually buried under several feet of snow, but this recent storm that hit the northeast where I am was more of a gigantic mess than the pretty snow that I enjoy. My son has been home from school for two days on account of snow days, which is a mixed blessing. I enjoy his company, but I don’t get much work done because I spend most of the day cooking for him and waiting on him hand and foot. Good lord, this kid had better appreciate this when he gets older!
Yesterday being Valentine’s Day, that day for lovers and those in love, was pretty quiet for me. Yes, I got flowers and candy, which is really all I want, but we did something last night that was kind of special and a little unusual; we made ice cream. I know, why would you make ice cream in the middle of winter? Well, we bought an ice cream maker last summer with the intention of making home-made ice cream but what we didn’t realize was that it requires rock salt to work and you just try finding rock salt in the middle of August! So we put it away and figured we’d stock up on rock salt in the winter and we’d use it next summer, but yesterday the urge struck to dig it out of the closet and try it out.
We made the most delicious home-made strawberry ice cream with big chocolate chunks all throughout our creamy delicacy! There’s such a luscious, sensual texture to fresh strawberries with chocolate too! It was surprisingly very easy to make and it was absolutely delicious! Those simple, often very private but romantic things between two people are what make long relationships and marriages special I think. It doesn’t have to be glitzy or sophisticated, it just had to make us happy and feel connected to one another. I hope everyone else had as wonderful and special a day as I did.
So where’s the sex? Mmmm, yes, that’s over here in érotique. I’ve put some more content in there, but still nothing absolutely new yet. I’ve just been so busy; not meaning too busy to actually have sex, but too busy to write about it! I also have had some major software issues to deal with and fix too. My copy of Office went south because of a bad plugin so I spent a good portion of the day yesterday tracking down the problem, debugging, uninstalling, reinstalling, ugh… major headache, but I need the Office suite for work, so it had to get done.
As I mentioned in my post here, there’s been a recent rash of hacking incidents lately, and the beautiful Butterfly Temptress was one of the targets. She’s back up and running now with a gorgeous new design, so please stop over and wish her well as she rebuilds her home.
This next item probably belongs in the Issues section or maybe even sexologie but this article in today’s Washington Post had such an ick factor that I wanted to put it here.
It seems as if the Montgomery Country School District farmed out their sex education classes for young, impressionable teens to an abstinence only religious outfit called the Rockville Pregnancy Center. Now that’s a name that should have raised eyebrows right from the start, but according to Marc Fisher’s column, this organization encouraged students to share a piece of gum amongst themselves to illustrate the dangers of unsafe sexual practices. Now anyone who had read me for any length of time knows that I strongly encourage safe sex. It’s your body, and if you want to share it with multiple people, that’s your business, but please use condoms. This group of religious nitwits however thought it sensible to have the teens pass around some icky gum to make their point, and also according to Fisher’s column, they passed out pieces of chocolate candy and then told the kids that some of them received ex-lax instead. Yum. These bozos sure know how to ruin a party now don’t they?
The basic premise of the WaPo piece is that sex education for teens should be better left to professionals, not Christian fundies with an agenda. Sex is indeed hard enough to talk about with our children, we don’t need outsiders with a warped view of reality getting in the way of that; and again I’ll throw in a plug for my sweetheart StripGoddess; you can check out her other site, Caitlain’s Corner, here for real information about sex and sexuality.
A lot of things going on in my personal life haven’t reached these pages, and they likely won’t either, but I’ll simply say that things have been quite hectic for me and my focus has been elsewhere. Which is probably why I still haven’t been able to get to the post office and mail the box sitting on the floor in the corner of my office back to Norman Shapiro, but I’ll make sure I get that done soon. If you’d like to read my review of Norman’s work, you can find that on the reviews page here. I’ve also got a ton of email to answer as well, and I apologize for the delays, I’ll try and get to that this afternoon.
What else? Things continue to grow here, my bamboo plant is doing wonderful, and so am I. Thanks much. Enjoy your Thursday and try and stay warm!
1Angela
wrote on 15 February 2007 at 17:37
Your son is blessed to have such a wonderful mother.
Oh, ice cream sounds good. Hey all I have to do is put milk outside and shake it every few minutes.
Take a deep breathe, watch the ice melt and you will get everthing done.
HugsKissSmile
~Angela
2Angela
wrote on 15 February 2007 at 17:40
Oh suggestion about the ice cream. If you like to splurge on girl scout thin mint cookies. Try it with the strawberries. Yum Yum
;)
3Richard
wrote on 15 February 2007 at 17:54
Do you crank the ice cream or is it electric? Back along, in fact way back, one of my sisters would sit on the top, while the rest of us took turns cranking, until you couldn’t turn anymore, Than it was on to licking the dasher…..Happy belated V day Nina to you and yours.
love
richard
ps, I almost had to spend the night in the car in the terrible freezing sleet. almost!!
4nina
wrote on 15 February 2007 at 19:40
Angela,
lol! Oh you’re too sweet, thank you! Well he’s my baby! He’s a good boy tho, he loves his mama.
Making ice cream was such an off the wall idea but, let me try and figure out the best way to explain this; it just kind of fits us. We’re a bit off the wall to begin with and always have been, so making ice cream in February just made sense to us! Ooo! Mint Chocolate Chip and Strawberry sounds fantastic! Yum is right! We’ll have to try that next time we do this.
I know things will calm down, it’s just been a very busy month so far.
Thank you sweetheart,
xoxo,
nina
5nina
wrote on 15 February 2007 at 19:42
Richard,
Oh good lord no! It’s electric! I can imagine tho making ice cream by hand. I’ve seen some of those old hand crank machines, but this one is powered, and the ice cream was delicious! We felt like kids again and it was so sweet, and I got roses too and a very expensive box of chocolates! Yum!
Oh be careful driving! You don’t want to get stuck out in that kind of weather Richard!
Thanks sweetie,
xoxo,
nina
6kj
wrote on 16 February 2007 at 1:18
A wonderful mom indeed, but he’s likely to forget all about your waiting on him hand & foot.
Yea, RPC…. ’nuff said. I agree with WaPo. Needs to be left up to people with common sense & “real” info/advice, not an agenda.
7The Butterfly Temptress
wrote on 16 February 2007 at 9:50
Thank you, Nina. It’s so good to be back, to be home again. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Love,
The Butterfly Temptress
8nina
wrote on 16 February 2007 at 16:01
kj,
Thank you! That’s very sweet, but you’re probably right! He will forget.
Thanks!
xoxo,
nina
9nina
wrote on 16 February 2007 at 16:01
Beautiful Butterfly,
It was my pleasure sweetheart. Welcome home.
xoxo,
nina
10silence up2nogood
wrote on 16 February 2007 at 20:25
Wow that brings back memories. I can remember having contests to see who could keep their hands in the brine water longer. (it gets really cold with the salt added.)
11nina
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 7:13
Silence,
Is that why you use rocksalt?? lol!! To make it colder? Good grief! My husband and I were looking at each other with blank stares on our faces wondering why in hell we needed rocksalt to make ice cream! lol! :) Thanks for answering that question for us! And to think that I got A’s in physics! lol!
xoxo,
nina
12Terry
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 7:47
Just a quick note, I think you can find rock salt year round in the canning supplies section of a store, be it supermarket or whatever. My grandmother used to can a lot of food, and I think that’s where I remember seeing the bags of salt.
Homemade Ice Cream. Thanks for taking me back…
love,
Terry
13nina
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 14:38
Terry,
Ooo! Thanks! I didn’t know that! I’ll have to look now!
And you’re very welcome. It was a wonderful thing to do on Valentine’s Day.
xoxo,
nina
14kj
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 16:36
Oh yea, I used to make ice cream by the gallons. Yep gotta have the rock salt, well table salt will work too. Those ice cream makers where you put the “bucket” in the freezer work well too, but there’s no stirring thingy to lick off like in the REAL machines. Yea huge ice cream fan. Maybe you can email us some samples.
15nina
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 17:26
kj,
:biggrin: I love ice cream! Our machine has a container that we put in the freezer but we weren’t crazy about it the next day. It was best fresh. We’re going to have to experiment with recipies until we get it right, but now I want to make ice cream all the time! Oh I wish I could send out samples! Maybe someday.
xoxo,
nina
16kj
wrote on 17 February 2007 at 23:51
Well, your ic maybe getting freezer burn. Maybe try packing it small containers. I have tons of recipes. Actually my old -salt required- machine, the bucket eventually got real rusty. And I stopped making it.
Hmmm, maybe LG could pose with her machine? Yea yeah. Naked. ha.
17nina
wrote on 18 February 2007 at 1:01
kj,
:blush: Oh I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to pose naked next to my ice cream maker! Tho I’d be willing to bet my nipples might make another surprise parade salute! :silly:
Mmmm, I’ll have to try putting it in smaller containers next time and see if that makes a difference. We’re going to try ‘peach’ next and we’ve got a recipie for frozen yogurt too. I want to try something with berries next time.
Thanks sweetie,
xoxo,
nina
18kj
wrote on 18 February 2007 at 8:52
Oh the perky nipple parade salute. Now there’s an idea that I hadn’t thought of. As for a berry kinda ice cream, Strawberry was an easy one to make.
19nina
wrote on 18 February 2007 at 10:35
kj,
:silly: Um, yeah. Straw-berries! lol!
What I meant was we found a recipie for some blueberry and raspberry frozen yogurt and I’m wondering if we could make sorbet as well. The Strawberry w/Chocolate was heavenly! We might try a plain strawberry again.
Mmmm, yes, sort of like another Whole Foods episode! lol!
Thanks sweetie,
xoxo,
nina
20pile0nades
wrote on 19 February 2007 at 1:28
Home made ice cream sounds delicious! I’ve never seen one of those machines before. Actually, there’s an ice cream shop not far from my house that I think uses one of those machines. I had a strawberry cone a few years ago and it was soooooo good. I’ll have to check them out sometime.
Love,
Gary
21nina
wrote on 19 February 2007 at 14:11
Gary,
Thanks sweetie,
xoxo,
nina