1 can condensed milk
1/2 lb. butter
1 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 can nestle cream
1 pkg. marie biscuits
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla or rum
cover can of milk in water
boil covered for 2 hrs - do not open until ready to smother cake.
cream butter and sugar
add egg yolks
add vanilla or rum
fold in nestle cream
line a bowl with wax paper
dip biscuits in milk and layer with butter cream mix (appx 4 layers)
refrigerate overnight
invert onto platter and cover with caramel
- Current Music:Matthew Sweet - Come to California
My poly bureaucracy creeps slow. Very slow. This is for my wife and girlfriend’s protection, because I am a dumbass.
See, I have a tendency of assuming that emotional intimacy == compatibility. Yes, it feels wonderfully cozy that we share all of these fears and concerns and relationship patterns, and finding your most sensitive feelings reflected in someone else is a beautiful thing.
The problem is that I’m fucking crazy. So finding someone I really resonate with immediately? It usually means they’re as bad as I am, and that we’re actually going to exacerbate each others’ issues.
I’ve been known to dive head-first into relationships without checking for compatibility first, just sort of assuming that because we have A Connection it’s going to work out. Then, after months of daily fights, me wringing my hands 24/7 about WHY WON’T SHE UNDERSTAND, and an eventual slow death by slices, I’ve learned that I need to spend more time getting to know people before I start getting committed…. if only so my wife isn’t obligated to play psychotherapist for me when things turn sideways.
So there’s a six-month cooldown time in place, where we can make out but not have Teh Sexx0r… and usually that cooldown time stretches to nine months, or even a year, as we just take it slow and not rush getting permissions.
The big question is, why don’t I find this limitation confining?
Part of it is, of course, is that I chose this lifestyle. This isn’t an externally-produced ruleset, created in a process tantamount to blackmail; it’s one I helped shape, because after a series of four disastrous relationships that imploded messily across my poly web, I took an honest look and said, “Okay, that’s a bad pattern, what’s a potential fix?”
But more importantly, sex is the least important bit for me.
Don’t get me wrong; anyone who’s ever made out with me will tell you that I’m passionate as hell. But sex is something that’s common; particularly in the kink communities, it’s not particularly difficult to get. If you’re open about your desires, reasonably personable, and are sapiosexual as I am, you’ll have a lot of options.
What I can’t get elsewhere is you.
Sure, maybe I’ll spend nine months hanging out with you on our once-a-month dates, getting to know each other… but that’s the best part. For me, “getting to know people” is an activity I find desirable in and of itself. Chatting, snuggling, dining out… that’s all stuff I like. And the level of flirtation/innuendo is a beautiful spice for that.
If and when we eventually hook up, that’s gonna be a wondrous new layer to what we share, and not the entirety of it. So I’m perfectly okay waiting for that to happen, since that is far from the whole reason I’m here.
I’m in no rush.
So yeah, it’s a long time. It’s not a process I’d recommend as standard for most poly groups. But that’s the glory of poly relationships: there’s no objective set of rules. What would be insanely restrictive for one set of people is actually a wise and stabilizing force in ours, just as what would be joyous freedom for some couples would actually cause harm if I tried it at this time in my life.
But does it matter if my rules would work for you? Lemme repeat: if it’s working for you and the people you’re dating, then it’s great.
This glacial proceeding helps me to choose better partners, and keeps my wife and girlfriend happier (even as neither of them are bound by this six-month rule), and hopefully the people I’m dating in this slow process are still happy to see me even if I’m not whipping out Little Elvis yet.
It’s an approach. Because there’s no the approach. And there never will be a the approach as long as humans are varied creatures with differing needs.
Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.
This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/303286.hA lot of the reason for leaving is that I've built up this huge back-pressure of Technical Stuff I Wish I Understood Better: Unix and networking fundamentals, weird programming languages, DevOps tools. I need to get more comfortable with them, get them into my fingers. I need to spend enough time on them to figure out which are curiosities and which are passions.
I don't know quite what I'm going to end up doing. I want to keep writing software. I want to keep building useful tools for people. Beyond that, it's still fuzzy. I'm thinking that computer security is a good field to get into. It's complex and difficult, and it's an unending struggle. It also seems to be a good place for a generalist because a lot of it deals with the way that systems interact with each other, and the way that people interact with them. There's a lot of value in both a deep understanding of principles and a wealth of knowledge of specific details. So that seems promising, but I'm not set on it, and there are some other fields I need to check out. Fundamentally, what I'm interested in is useful infrastructure kinda stuff, not entertainment/social media/marketing stuff.
I've got a bunch of travel plans, but that should leave at least three months of focused project/study time. If that goes well - if I actually manage to get stuff done - I may extend it a bit, but past experience is that I get restless and punchy after about three or four months out of work. I need more structure for my life than I've been able to impose on myself so far.
Adventure awaits!
Eleanor offered Gene and Gomez to a local nursery/landscape place. They can't take them; they'd be liable for losses of not only them but their fishy-mill purebred stock if one of them got ick-y or something.
They suggested Craigslist; I'll do that later unless anyone wants. Gene is a 10-ish inch koi, complete with porn-star 'stache. Gomez is a bit smaller and just your basic bigass goldfish. They will eat smaller fish, so be aware. Free delivery east to Rochester or south to the Lackawanna tolls. (Canada's probably oot, since Homeland Security would probably confiscate them as FMD's.)
Comment or message if interested.
ETA: Eleanor just snapped these of the guys in their new, smaller home. They should be big enough for ponds at this point:
- Current Location:US, New York, Williamsville, Erie, Oakgrove Dr, 7
That's the name of a business we pass almost every day-
-and while I've never been in, apparently some of it stuck to my tires yesterday.
I did a small grocery run after yesterday morning's workout, and couldn't decide at first whether to hand over cash or run it on the debit card. Karma decided that one: the tab, for multiple odd-number-priced items, was exactly twenty bucks. Advantage, Jackson. (Andrew, not Samuel L.)
Karma then ran over my dogma- or at least my cat who thinks she's a dogma. I brought the bags in- Eleanor had left for work by this point- and Zoey decided to inspect the contents. By sticking her head through the handle of one of the bags, as one does when one's a cat-dog-whatever. In her travels, she knocked that bag- and herself- onto the floor, causing a ruckus and causing me to commit the ultimate human indignity: I laughed at her. She ran to the cellar, the bag coming off as she flew through the cat flap in the door (creating a nice Wile E. Coyote through a mountain effect), and I retrieved the dragged items in her wake. (Yes, Donna, this is why your birthday card envelope has a black streak across one corner;)
Eventually, she recovered, but Karma was set for a return engagement.
----
The day proceeded. Eleanor came home a bit early; she weeded, I mowed; we made dinner and went to see Star Trek Into Darkness (about which more later). For all its spoilery goodness (and beware- every Wikipedia page about every other previous franchise episode or film now includes those in blatantly obvious places), it requires pretty non-stop intensity to keep up with the story and the backstory and all the things blowing up real good. So when we got home, we were still pretty wired.
As was home- wired in brown yarn, thanks to Zoey's latest installation of macrame on the floor.
She does this fairly often when she's bored- many mornings we awaken to four-room criss-crosses of the stuff. We even filmed one from her early days and Youtubed it:
This one, not as ambitious, but she did do a finer than usual job of entangling the yarn around the feet of chairs and, sad to say, one of the wheels on the base holding up our twenty-plus-gallon fish tank. As soon as we got home, we made the quick and regrettable decision to try cleaning it up before one of us tripped over it. Eleanor tipped, I tried to pull the yarn out from under the fish tank.
Twenty-plus gallons later, it was rechristened as our ex-fish tank.
The whole base tipped over, the contents- said gallons, several pounds of stone, two decorative plants, a freshly-electrocuted heater and the two floppy large fish contents- all spilled onto the hardwood. Instantly, Gene and Gomez began flopping around, and a cascade of the gallons began falling into the cellar.
On the whole, through it all, we "wore well." (That's a term of endearment given to me when my in-laws' hot water heater blew up in their cellar the first time I ever went over to their house for dinner. Maybe we should just stay out of houses with full basements, huh.) Eleanor swabbed the decks, I shop-vacced most of the solid content and eventually the puddles below, and we both cleaned up enough glass shards to make a fully functioning IED. The two of them are now in a smaller tank, and we're seeking a new home for at least one of them, because they were getting too big for even the bigger tank we had-
(Both of them started out as pet-shop purchases to reside in the base of our outdoor fountain to eat the mosquitoes out there. My how they've grown.)
----
Today's another day of mowing, and Orphan Blacking, and finally watching "The Name of the Doctor" and hopefully not too much el....
YELLOW KARMA!
This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1278
Several years ago, I preached the occasional sermon at the Episcopal church down the street. I learned that writing a sermon is hard work. Even a short fifteen-minute homily takes hours to prepare.
The first question is always, "What's the topic?" The Book of Common Prayer includes the original 39 Articles of Religion, first set down in 1549. Article 35 contains approved topics for sermons. They include "Against the Peril of Idolatry," "That the Common Prayers and Sacraments ought to be ministered in a known tongue," and "Against Idleness." The would-be preacher will find these bones pretty dry. No one inveighs against the vain Romish error of ministering the Sacraments "in a tongue not understanded of the people" anymore. Preaching from the present is almost as bad as preaching from the past. It's too easy to find yourself on the wrong side of current events and offend members of the church who might have different political leanings. So what's left? Most preach from the "propers" - the appointed Scripture readings for that particular Sunday.
What can you say that hasn't already been said? The ground has been trodden flat by the boots of almost two thousand years-worth of other preachers, smarter men (and women) than you or me. Chances are pretty good that if you find something new to say about anything, it's probably heretical (and still not new). On the Monday or Tuesday before, I'd read the Bible chapters for Sunday, and pray that God would give me the words to reach and teach His people, and I'd read commentaries and glosses, and I'd read other people's sermons and lectures, and I'd pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sometime on Saturday it would take form, and I'd deliver it at the 4:30 Mass. I'd then polish it up a little further for the big Mass on Sunday morning. And then it's done, filed away, never to be repeated.
Some of the sermons I thought were the worst were the best received. People came up to me after Mass to thank me for something that particularly touched them. I thanked them, but the credit belonged to the Holy Spirit. I was just thankful that I didn't have to do this every week.
Other preachers used other methods. My own priest subscribed to a service that sent preaching ideas for the week's readings, for both adult and children's sermons, rather like the book club questions sometimes found in the back of novels. There are subscription services where you can get lots of help, outlines, illustrations, and even some that will provide the whole sermon for you.
Almost 40 ago, I attended services at the local monastery - the same monastery where the current bishop lives. A wonderful grandfatherly priest who I particularly loved gave a beautiful sermon. Afterwards, I went up and asked if I might have a copy. He looked shamefaced and confessed that his mind wasn't as sharp as it once was, and the sermon wasn't actually his own. Asking for a copy of a sermon is meant as high praise, but I felt terrible for embarrassing him.
Pulpit plagiarism is a widespread practice. It's every church's dirty little secret. Sometimes the preacher just doesn't have the talent for it. Some weeks the preacher doesn't have the time. The congregation believes that a sermon is the result of lonely scholarship combined with the spirit of God, carrying a particular message straight from the Almighty to the hearts of the faithful at the very moment when it is most needed. Ministering to the sick and dying is all well and good, raising money is excellent, but ministers and priests are ultimately judged by their sermons.
So what happens when a congregation learns that their preacher isn't wrestling with God and ancient texts, that he's just a sophomore buying his term papers online? What happens when they find out that the inspiration of the Holy Ghost was just a ghost-writer? Doesn't it tell them that their preacher doesn't believe a word of what he's saying? That he has no faith that God will provide? That maybe an inspirational sermon is just a few clever-sounding phrases woven together by a talented copywriter, and that it collapses under closer examination? Doesn't it suggest that anyone who can write advertising copy or science fiction can set himself up as a priest, prophet, or patriarch of a church, and that only suckers believe glib rhetoric is a sign of divine authority?
The sermons today will be all about Pentecost, and how the Spirit of God came as tongues of fire upon the apostles, and they all became great preachers. You can find some of today's sermons at SermonCentral.com.
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!
… Only be sure always to call it, please, "research."
- Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky
P.S. The image of the pontificating priest is a original work by the very talented Denis Loubet, the man who created the art for many of the classic computer games like the Ultima series. You can find the Facebook page of his current project here.
Several years ago, I preached the occasional sermon at the Episcopal church down the street. I learned that writing a sermon is hard work. Even a short fifteen-minute homily takes hours to prepare.
The first question is always, "What's the topic?" The Book of Common Prayer includes the original 39 Articles of Religion, first set down in 1549. Article 35 contains approved topics for sermons. They include "Against the Peril of Idolatry," "That the Common Prayers and Sacraments ought to be ministered in a known tongue," and "Against Idleness." The would-be preacher will find these bones pretty dry. No one inveighs against the vain Romish error of ministering the Sacraments "in a tongue not understanded of the people" anymore. Preaching from the present is almost as bad as preaching from the past. It's too easy to find yourself on the wrong side of current events and offend members of the church who might have different political leanings. So what's left? Most preach from the "propers" - the appointed Scripture readings for that particular Sunday.
What can you say that hasn't already been said? The ground has been trodden flat by the boots of almost two thousand years-worth of other preachers, smarter men (and women) than you or me. Chances are pretty good that if you find something new to say about anything, it's probably heretical (and still not new). On the Monday or Tuesday before, I'd read the Bible chapters for Sunday, and pray that God would give me the words to reach and teach His people, and I'd read commentaries and glosses, and I'd read other people's sermons and lectures, and I'd pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sometime on Saturday it would take form, and I'd deliver it at the 4:30 Mass. I'd then polish it up a little further for the big Mass on Sunday morning. And then it's done, filed away, never to be repeated.
Some of the sermons I thought were the worst were the best received. People came up to me after Mass to thank me for something that particularly touched them. I thanked them, but the credit belonged to the Holy Spirit. I was just thankful that I didn't have to do this every week.
Other preachers used other methods. My own priest subscribed to a service that sent preaching ideas for the week's readings, for both adult and children's sermons, rather like the book club questions sometimes found in the back of novels. There are subscription services where you can get lots of help, outlines, illustrations, and even some that will provide the whole sermon for you.
Almost 40 ago, I attended services at the local monastery - the same monastery where the current bishop lives. A wonderful grandfatherly priest who I particularly loved gave a beautiful sermon. Afterwards, I went up and asked if I might have a copy. He looked shamefaced and confessed that his mind wasn't as sharp as it once was, and the sermon wasn't actually his own. Asking for a copy of a sermon is meant as high praise, but I felt terrible for embarrassing him.
Pulpit plagiarism is a widespread practice. It's every church's dirty little secret. Sometimes the preacher just doesn't have the talent for it. Some weeks the preacher doesn't have the time. The congregation believes that a sermon is the result of lonely scholarship combined with the spirit of God, carrying a particular message straight from the Almighty to the hearts of the faithful at the very moment when it is most needed. Ministering to the sick and dying is all well and good, raising money is excellent, but ministers and priests are ultimately judged by their sermons.
So what happens when a congregation learns that their preacher isn't wrestling with God and ancient texts, that he's just a sophomore buying his term papers online? What happens when they find out that the inspiration of the Holy Ghost was just a ghost-writer? Doesn't it tell them that their preacher doesn't believe a word of what he's saying? That he has no faith that God will provide? That maybe an inspirational sermon is just a few clever-sounding phrases woven together by a talented copywriter, and that it collapses under closer examination? Doesn't it suggest that anyone who can write advertising copy or science fiction can set himself up as a priest, prophet, or patriarch of a church, and that only suckers believe glib rhetoric is a sign of divine authority?
The sermons today will be all about Pentecost, and how the Spirit of God came as tongues of fire upon the apostles, and they all became great preachers. You can find some of today's sermons at SermonCentral.com.
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!
… Only be sure always to call it, please, "research."
- Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky
P.S. The image of the pontificating priest is a original work by the very talented Denis Loubet, the man who created the art for many of the classic computer games like the Ultima series. You can find the Facebook page of his current project here.
Check this out:
"Born in Aberdeen,[1] and grew up in Lickleyhead Castle, the family's 15th century ancestral seat.[2] Her father is the Aberdeenshire Chieftain of Clan Leslie, Sebastian Arbuthnot-Leslie, and her mother is Candida ("Candy") Leslie (née Candida Mary Sibyl Weld). Leslie is the third of five children.[2] Her parents own the 12th century Warthill Castle in Rayne, Aberdeenshire, as well.[3][4][5] Her great-great grandfather was Guillermo de Landa y Escandón, Mayor of Mexico City.[6]"
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