Nostalgic for Wild Sauce

Back when I was in college (late 1980's-early 1990's), Taco Bell had these things called "Wild" tacos.
It was the same as a regular taco, except with yummy "wild" sauce on them. Although I didn't consider it particularly hot, it was still tasty, and added a decent kick gentle nudge.

I was so disappointed when they eventually removed it from their menu.

So, years later, I was thrilled when Taco Bell came out with "Fire" sauce. I was hoping it would be that same Wild sauce, in convenient packet form. But alas. The taste and texture are completely different. It's not the same thing at all.

But wait! There may be hope yet.
While surfing around today, I found this site where someone tried duplicating the recipe. (!!!!) I'm definitely going to try it.
When I do, I'll blog about it, either here or on The Jannaverse. :)
.

UPDATE: I tried the recipe today! You can read about the results HERE!
.

Splat!

I am in a really bad mood today, for a variety of reasons.
It's days like this that I sometimes wish I was armed with a couple of paintball guns, like tippmann army, able to shoot anyone who annoyed me.
I probably wouldn't hurt anybody, but would take great satisfaction in knowing that those dry-cleaning bills can be hell.
Unfortunately, today all the people annoying me are online, and I have yet to find a paintball gun that can work through cyberspace.
That's a shame.
'Cause I know exactly who I would aim at first.
.

If you're going to do it, do it right

There are some things you just shouldn't skimp on.
If you're getting open heart surgery, don't try to save a few bucks by going to the guy in the back alley who uses a steak knife and a nail file.
If you're getting your transmission fixed, don't skimp by trying the "new" guy who only charges twenty bucks but uses aluminum foil and rubber bands for parts.
And, if you're getting lap band surgery, don't go to just anyone. Do your homework and make sure you know what you're getting into.
central florida lapband can help you decide whether it's right for you.
And I promise they don't use steak knives.

More than just a place to sit

I can think of a couple sitcoms where a character had his own very special chair that was HIS and no one else's. When I was a kid growing up in the 70's we watched All In The Family. Archie Bunker did NOT want anyone else to sit in his chair. It was his own private territory, and no one else was allowed to inhabit it.
Then, in the 90's, I watched Frasier. Frasier's dad, Martin Crane, also had his very own chair. He wasn't a compete jerk about it like Archie was, but it was clear that the chair was very important to him. Frasier thought it was an eyesore, but he loved his dad enough to allow the chair to be kept in his apartment when Martin moved in with him.
So, if I was in a sitcom, what kind of chair would I want for myself?
It would have to be comfy, of course, and it would have to be unique.
Here's one which might just fit the bill. Listen to the name: it's the Human Touch HT 7450 Zero Gravity Massage Chair. Sounds like it should be on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I love it.
In fact, let's just have my sitcom be a sci-fi story. We'll be zipping through space, and a bunch of angry aliens will be shooting at us because we used up the last of the toilet paper at interstellar rest stop #42009.54. I won't care, though, because I will be enjoying all the massaging action of my special chair.
Archie Bunker, eat your heart out.
.

Cards for your blog

A few months ago, I designed Fab's business cards for him. Actually they were business cards for his blog. He passed them out when he went to PostieCon last month.
You can do the same thing and get business cards to promote your blog. If you don't want to hire a designer, there are online companies that can do it for you.
One example is Ooprint, which can put your blog's keywords in a tag cloud and print that on the card.
They have a deal now where they're offering 100 FREE business cards.
I just checked their site, and they do have some nice card styles available.
I think my favorite is the one with the multicolored shapes settling down at the bottom of the card. Kinda like transparent flower petals.
The one with the palm tree is nice too, except there are no palm trees anywhere remotely close to where I live. :)

Because I love being a science freak

A week or so ago, I was listening to NPR, and they were talking about things you can see in the night sky with a telescope. It made me wish I had a good telescope, so I can indulge in a little astronomy nerd-dom. I'd love to get wrapped up in something like that. I should go to OpticsPlanet.com and shop around for something. Not only would they have my telescope, but they'd have other fun things like night vision goggles and microscopes.
Yes, I realize this may make me a geek.
Please love me anyway.
Tell ya what, I'll get some Ray Ban sunglasses while I'm there. Will that help make me cool?
Just say yes.

When I go to Florida....

I've been telling myself that one of these days I'd like to take a trip to Florida.
After all, as Fab's official stalker, it would be nice if I actually met him in person at least once.
I plan to hide in his yard and make weird growly sounds outside his bedroom window in the middle of the night.
But after all that's done, after he's got the restraining order against me, after the police have let me go when I "Promise" never to do that again (heh), what ELSE is there to do in Florida?
Please don't mention Disney. Please.
Here's something that sounds better: the St. Augustine Artwalk. On the first weekend of every month, they have free self-guided art walks. And there are all kinds of different art. There's photography, paintings, architecture, and music! This sounds like it would be right up my alley. I'm an artsy-fartsy person (with varying degrees of fartsiness, depending on various factors) and this sounds like fun.
Wanna come with me? Maybe we can even be PART of the art exhibition. I'll draw pictures of the outside of Fab's bedroom window, and write songs about sneaking into his house at two in the morning. It'll be great! Come see me in the First Friday Weekend Art Walk!
Can you, um.... can you loan me some money for the plane ticket?
And some bail money for later?

I didn't even know snails COULD point....

My ISP has been lousy lately.
I have dial-up and it's terribly slow sometimes.
Plus, sometimes it disconnects me, sometimes I get a ton of busy signals before I can connect, and sometimes the connection is awful. I'm supposed to have 56K, but I never get anything better than 49,333. Sometimes it's as bad as 26,600. And I swear one time it was around 19,000. That's a snail's pace. In fact, I think snails were PASSING my computer.
They were also laughing and pointing as they went by.
I found this site that analyzes dial up, DSL, satellite and wireless Internet access. It gives me an idea of what other options are available, who's offering what services, and what each provider charges.
I see there's Cable Internet and SATELLITE Internet. I've never even HEARD of Satellite Internet before, which I suppose further proves that I live out in the middle of nowhere and was raised under a rock.
One of these days I hope to be able to have Cable or Satellite or something better than dial-up.
Anything to make the snails stop laughing at me.
.

I remember reading this story, and now it's a movie!

Years ago I read a book of Stephen King stories. The first one was called "The Mist". I remember it was the longest story in the book. It took me awhile to get into it, but once I did, I was hooked. It had me in that usual "Stephen King Stranglehold" that I love so much about his stories.
And now they've made a movie about it!
Yes! The Mist by Stephen King is now a movie.
I just got done watching one of the movie trailers.
Y'know, a few weeks ago I was driving to Hartford to visit Lee, and there was a terrible fog almost all the way there. I ended up having to call Lee and let him know that I would be a little late. At the time, I didn't even think about the parallels to The Mist. If I had, it would have felt significantly more creepy. After every curve in the road I would have been imagining giant insect legs, the size of dinosaurs, whooshing out of the fog bank and swatting me off into oblivion. Lee would have spent the rest of his life wondering what happened to me! Or at least until the fog slowly crept toward his town next...
The movie will be in theaters on November 21. I definitely want to go see it.

Steve? Whaddya say?

My friend Steve moved to New York a few months ago.
New York City, baby.
He's the adventurous sort who doesn't mind moving around to huge places like that. We grew up in the same small town in Michigan, then he moved away to bigger towns in Michigan, then Minnesota, then Los Angeles, CA, and now New York.
I can appreciate that city from a distance. I think in person it would completely overwhelm me if I didn't have someone there with me to help me adjust.
If I get very brave in the future, it might be fun to visit Steve there. I could bring a New York CityPass with me. In fact, I'd bring one for each of us.
Have you heard of those?
It's a booklet you can buy... Each one has the following:
A ticket to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the new Greek and Roman galleries, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Guggenheim Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Plus, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building Observatory and tour of the Manhattan skyline from the water aboard a Circle Line Sightseeing Cruise, along with a map, public transportation information and insider tips on the best time to visit each attraction.
I'm kind of a nerd, so I'd surely love the museums best. Especially art museums. I'd love to immerse myself in a room full of surrealist art. Anything that reminds me of Salvador Dali or Hieronymus Bosch. That's MY kind of art. Bizarre, strange things that make you wonder what led the artist to portray it in that manner. If I was a painter, that would be my niche.
After we emerged from the museum, dripping in culture, Steve and i could go have coffee somewhere.
Actually, I hate coffee, but it seems like I would be required to drink it if I was in New York. Hopefully I won't have to actually get the Starbucks logo tattooed on any body parts.

Worth thinking about

My grandmother has Alzheimer's.
I know I've mentioned it before... I think it was over on Jantics.
We've known for quite a few years now that something was not quite right with her. The signs were all there. She would say the same thing, ask the same questions over and over again, not realizing it's something she'd just said five minutes beforehand. She'd forget which relatives were dead and which weren't. She'd insist that her own son was dead, despite the fact that she talked to him on the phone (and saw him in person) multiple times per day. She became paranoid and thought the hospice nurses were stealing from her. When my step-grandfather passed away, and gramma was on her own, things really became noticeably worse. We eventually had to put her in a care facility. She's still there, to this day.
It's hard to think about.
I keep hoping that there will be a cure.
There's plenty of research going on but of course they need funding. The Alzheimer's Foundation of America has opened an e-store. It's called (aptly enough) the "Alzheimer's Foundation of America eStore." All the proceeds go to benefit the Alzheimer's Foundation of America. It's a nice place to pick up a holiday gift for your loved ones.
I don't know if a cure will be found within Gramma's lifetime, and that's kind of sad. Still, it's important to support this organization so other people might have hope too. In addition to finding a cure, there's also the daunting task of providing care for those who have this disease. Believe me, it's a very challenging thing which requires a lot of patience. I love Gramma a lot, but it's emotionally exhausting to spend time with her because I have to keep re-explaining the same things over and over again. It's hard to care for someone who keeps forgetting the simplest things. I have a lot of respect for the people at her facility.
This will sound sad, but even though she's still alive, I miss her.
I miss the way she used to be, back in the good old days.

Because there's only so much you can do with a matchbox

I want a new digital camera.
The one I have now is about the size of a matchbox and doesn't even have a view-thingy to look through. I think it cost about ten bucks. Ten or twenty. I can't remember. For as cheap as it was, it's done an ok job, but I want something better. I want to look through the digital cameras that are available these days and see if I can find something I like at a fair price. Surely there must be something out there that's just right for me.
Since I love to work with graphics, a camera can be an important tool. For example, my current avatar is one I took with my camera. For no reason, I decided I wanted a picture of me with a banana held up against my face. So I did it! I uploaded the picture into my photo-editing software, cropped it, changed the lighting, made the coloring better, and added a thin black border around the edges.
I really like that picture because it captures my essence. Thoughtful and contemplative, yet fun and fond of being strange for no reason.
My ideal digital cameras would have a screen in back where I could view the picture I just took, so I could immediately decide whether to keep it or delete it. It would take pictures with good resolution, and would be able to take more than 20 such pictures at one session (unlike my current camera).
If any of you out there really love me, and if you're obscenely rich, and you're wondering what to get me for a holiday present....

The ugly truth about my bathtub faucet

I need a new faucet for my bathtub.
The chrome is all stained and scarred and pitted. It will never be shiny and new again. It looks awful, and I'm kind of embarrassed about it.
Don't look. Just trust me on this.
I'd like to find something new for it. I might be able to find something from Hansgrohe that I like. They've got kitchen AND bath faucets. I bet if I browsed through their selection I could find something that makes my bathroom feel like it's actually part of my HOME again.
I mean, c'mon. If I'm going to be embarrassed in my own bathroom, it might as well be for a good reason.
Like, for example, the fact that I am naked.

If only it could tell me when my car is about to break down

There's a new company called GreenRoad which has developed some cool new technology. It measures driving safety! Somehow it's able to detect driving maneuvers that enable it to asses the driver's safety level, then it transmits that data to an Internet site. Drivers can then go to that site and receive feedback on what they can do to improve their driving safety.
It's lowered customers' accident rates by 54%!
The technology seems to be focused on business drivers and insurance companies that insure teenage drivers.
So far GreenRoad sounds like a good idea to me.
I could log on and hear it say "Dear Janna, you really shouldn't have gone 50 in a 35 zone yesterday. And those red octagon things are STOP signs, not 'sort of slow down' signs...."

Why you will never see me at the front of a classroom

When I first started college, I was under the illusion that I wanted to be a teacher. I even took a lot of education classes and became a tutor in one of the local schools. I worked with the junior high school band at Lenawee Christian schools in Adrian, Michigan. I spent time doing instrument sectionals as well as one-on-one tutoring with students who needed help getting the music right.
Another semester, I worked with a music class of elementary students at a different school.
I loved music, and I loved the one-on-one tutoring, but I quickly learned that being in charge of an entire classroom is NOT what I was meant to do with my life. That's hard stuff, folks. Hats off to anyone who can do it right.
I highly recommend tutoring, though, both as an instructor AND a student. If your kid is having trouble grasping a subject, they could almost certainly benefit from an Innovative Tutor program. The same applies if your child is exceptionally gifted and wants to advance beyond the level that's being taught to the rest of the class. Tutoring offers education in a more specialized way than what's possible in a group setting.
To this day, I have promised myself that I will never become a classroom teacher-- but I DO still give french horn lessons, just because it's so much fun.

Are you getting enough musical intercouse?

Here's a place called "Indie MV".
If you're into indie bands, it's a good place to find all sorts of music videos. You just might find your next favorite group!
It's also a social networking site, so they call themselves "IndieMV - Musical Intercourse!"
Is that great or what?
They have tools like video blogging (also known as "vlogging"), web-cam messaging, photo sharing, and access to a variety of music videos and interviews.
Plus, if you're actually IN an indie band, this is a good way to gain exposure and share your videos. Get the word out! Make a good video of yourself and maybe tomorrow there will be people on the other side of the world remarking about how much they like you!

My Wish List

In case anyone out there cares, here's my wish list:
(The links are all from couponchief.com.)

Fountain pen (or fountain pen ink) from any good pen store or office supply place like Staples.

Something yummy from Figi's, like chocolate covered butter toffee, or chocolate covered macadamia nuts. Or a delicious hunk of sharp cheddar cheese. Or swiss. Or pepper jack. Pardon me while I drool.

A decent digital camera, better than the matchbox-sized piece of crap I have now. Best Buy would probably have something. Best Buy would also probably carry a lovely laptop computer that would make me happy until the day I die.

The Ionic Breeze Quadra from Sharper Image.

That's all for now. Heaven forbid I should become greedy. :)
.

If all else fails, just go back to Amazon

There are a lot of ways to buy things on line these days, and one of the is with Online Coupon Codes. At NCnatural, for example, they've got coupons from all kinds of stores I like. There are Amazon coupons and Target coupons. There's even some store I've never heard of before, called "Musician's Friend." I'm going to go check that out. I wonder what kinds of musicians they mean. Let's go see....
Aww. Looks like when they say "musician", they mean someone who plays in a rock band. They've got stuff for electric guitars, amps, & acoustic guitars. Bummer. Here I was hoping they had things for symphony orchestra musicians. I'd love to find a store like that.
Still, if you're into the whole rock band thing, like Meloncutter, this could be worth checking out.
.

And I love it when Pierre reaches down to grab them

I am extremely organized in some ways, and exactly the opposite in other ways. I guess I'm organized when it comes to data and information, but actual physical objects often end up in a no-man's land somewhere between the roof and the floor. My car is a mess. And my home is badly in need of a cute housekeeping butler named Pierre.
One thing I use, to keep things from being a complete mess, is storage bins. I've got them in the kitchen, the computer nook, the bedroom...
Some have paper and office supplies. Some have scented candles. Some have soap and toiletries. Some have clothes I don't wear very often.
They keep my life from spiraling downward further into unmitigated chaos.
I appreciate that.

Just one more thing you can do online these days

There's e-mail and e-everything-else, so of course it stands to reason that there would be e-mortgages too. In an emortgage, the documents are converted into an electronic format called a SMARTdoc. I imagine it would be a lot faster than the old-fashioned way. And if it uses less paper, then it's probably better for the environment.
Well, that and the fact that I LOVE paper, so this way there's more left over for me to enjoy. :)
.