WOO HOO!  I get to take the rest of the year off!

@avclub-d019eb089e65903455cc52308f00b997:disqus Apparently the canner is so heavy and gets so hot that it can crack the cooktop.  Or something like that.  I wasn't sure I believed it, but the first run with my canner succeeded at discoloring my new gas cooktop, so I shudder to think of what it would have done to the…

Holy smokes.  Buffalo-style cheese ball is SO going to happen at Casa n Dick.

I aim low every year and just resolve to know more at the end of the year than I did at the beginning.  So far I haven't learned anything in 2013, so it's still up in the air whether I'll succeed.  (I've started plans for an ongoing photography project for the year, but I'm not sure that counts as a resolution.)

Solitary and lonely existence is just what the doctor ordered!  I work for a large corporation, but in an isolated office on an abandoned hallway, so while I technically do leave the house every day, I might as well be living in a cave.  It's awesome.  And very healthy.  Well, maybe not emotionally healthy, but at…

Oooh, sounds like a tasty garden in your future!  Have you tried raised beds?  That could help with the drainage issues…

Is anyone else around here starting to think about growing food in 2013?  This is my favorite time of the gardening year, when the seed catalogs are coming in the mail, and everything's still imaginary.  Right now my garden's got plenty of room for everything I want to grow, and it's all going to work out perfectly,…

@avclub-a452630477eb936fd36fc9a9542d4598:disqus St. Paddy's day should be a good one for me, seeing as I'm all red-headed and Irish and shit, but having St. Paddy's Day fun would require leaving the house, which is just way too much effort for me.  Especially in March.  Maybe if they moved it to May?

@avclub-1e2184e9a38acddfb65b66905ad70f9a:disqus Oh man, that sucks.  I had a glass top electric stove but didn't realize you couldn't use a pressure canner on it until after I'd purchased one.  We'd been kicking around the idea of converting to propane for a few years, though, and this was the impetus to finally make…

I used a pressure canner for the first time over the holiday break.  SCARY!  But my kitchen and the canner and I all lived to tell the tale, and now I have eight quarts of homemade chicken stock that's shelf-stable.  My hands haven't stopped shaking from the terror of it all, but there's no arguing with the end result.

No, March is way, way, way worse than February.  Because March has no days off (I get Presidents Day off in my job), and goes on forever, and with each passing slushy, cold, brutal day Spring just seems further and further away.  March has nothing to recommend it.  My mother made a series of dopey little cross-stitch…

I don't know what's come over me in the last few years, but I actually enjoy taking down the Christmas decorations.  January 1 is the only day of the year where my house feels roomy, airy, and clean.  Of course, January 2 I go back to work and wonder why I was enthused for the New Year in the first place.

I watched Premium Rush with my two sisters, one of whom is cool, the other who is not.  The cool sister exclaimed during one climactic bike sequence, "Oh my god, it's the BMX Bandit!"  The not-cool sister asked in all seriousness, over the closing credits, "So, was Joseph Gordon-Levitt a BMXer before he became an…

That guy was fantastic.  And I agree with @wolfmansRazor:disqus about the five states of Texas.  Those were some far bigger laughs than I was expecting.

Oh man, "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three".  That's one of those movies that I will watch if I stumble on it on TCM no matter what I was planning to do.  The griminess, the NYC-ness, the Walter Matthau-ness, the incredible soundtrack…  What a wonderful, fantastic movie.

The Afghan Whigs reunion was by far my pop culture highlight of 2012.  I can still conjure up a bit of that post-concert elation just thinking about the show I saw in September.

The Afghan Whigs reunion was by far my pop culture highlight of 2012.  I can still conjure up a bit of that post-concert elation just thinking about the show I saw in September.

That would be so awesome.  I'm looking forward to the solo album from Lanegan that rumor has coming out in February.  Also, those rumblings of a new Gutter Twins album… that would be too good to be true.

That would be so awesome.  I'm looking forward to the solo album from Lanegan that rumor has coming out in February.  Also, those rumblings of a new Gutter Twins album… that would be too good to be true.

Oh god, that episode was terrible.  Just wretched.  And really not a good example of what the show really was.  It was a standalone, bottom-of-the-barrel episode.  But perhaps indicative that the show had run its course.