Texas Spring Weather

We just moved and already our area has been declared a disaster area.  How is that fair?  Of course this is at a time when hundreds of thousands lost power due to the storms across several areas.

Today it's raining but not like it was a few days ago.  Driving to work there are several areas that have downed fences and walls.  Some areas where people had lost control of their vehicle and left tire tracks in the dirt on the sides of roads.  Overall a real mess.  We were under a flood warning and so I stayed off of the roads until it cleared.  

That morning was trash day and we had such winds that trash was everywhere in the neighborhood.  One neighbor's tree was blown over.  We all have newly planted trees as of a few months ago and so blowing over really isn't a surprise.  Our tree doesn't have enough limbs on it to have caught the wind well enough to blow over.  And we were worried it wasn't filling in very fast...

A friend texted a meme about Texas weather trying to kill you and how people who move here are often surprised about this.  We do get heat, tornadoes, floods, and ice so I guess that isn't too far off.  All of these have had a toll.  But those few days when the weather is nice....

Fortunately the lakes like the rain and so that's a plus.  It also washed down our roads from all of the construction grit.  Sometimes there's a bright side but not always.

Sean and Addi Getting Along

Sometimes these two actually get along.  Of course it's only when they're done playing and not getting in eachother's way.  They really have settled in though.  They're perfectly ok with finding us while we're busy doing something on any electronic device and curling up on top of us and either demanding to be petted or just falling asleep.

Looking at this picture I almost see a racoon but not quite.  The sun is hitting them just right to put a shine on them and make them look a little different than they normally do (except for the napping part.)

These guys have all of the signals that they trust us though.  Some of what you hear can be misleading on this matter.  One guy online was saying that you should never rub their belly.  Again this seems to be a trust issue.  As long as they aren't in play mode both of these guys are just fine with it.  In play mode however they may take your hand to be a toy and attack it.  They don't hiss or actually try to hurt and after a second they go from attack to groom but their mood plays a big role in how they react to things.

We also make sure to play with them a bit and give the rare treat (maybe once a week or so) to keep them engaged.  Their feeding times are automatic and they know there will always be more food coming.  Often they don't eat all of their food right away, leaving some for later.

They still like their cat grass.  We don't leave it inside though so they don't overdo it.  Not sure they can but we like to monitor how much grass they eat or play with.  Sometimes they'd rather pull it up and bat it around.  They are super different though to the point I wouldn't have thought they had grown up together but I guess that's probably true with most siblings.

Oatmeal Cookies

We got a ton of oatmeal recently from a family that was also given a ton of oatmeal from another family.  Not sure how many people have had these packages of oatmeal.  But when life gives you oats you make cookies.

We of course went with what is most familiar and made the cookie recipe off of the Quaker Oats package, with some modifications of course.

This is one of the most adaptable cookies you can make.  Need to go gluten free?  This is the cookie to use.  Of course we always use Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour since it really is the best for all your gluten free recipes.

Ok so we didn't exactly follow the recipe.  First off we only heated the oven to 350°F.  We also use a Pampered Chef baking stone instead of your usual cookie sheet.  The stone bakes the cookies evenly.  Also a bit more vanilla.  An extra splash doesn't hurt anything.  Also we add 1/4 to 1/3 cup more flour per batch.  This helps them hold together better.  One of our friends really doesn't like raisins in oatmeal cookies so we keep with our favorite add in, chocolate chips (also a gluten free item).  We use a medium scoop instead of a tablespoon for forming the balls which helps keep the size consistent.  Due to the lower temperature we also bake them for 14 minutes.

When we told our friend what we did with the oatmeal she gave us she said we could freeze some of it in balls to bake later but oatmeal cookies actually freeze very well as a baked cookie.  We made three batches and froze 2, 1-gallon bags in the deep freeze for later.  It made well over 100 cookies.  The cookies in the picture are not all of them.  There is a whole other cooling rack plus the ones we already ate.

Backyard Design

Was trying to figure out what to do with the backyard so I asked for a simple layout with a tree in it.  As you can tell there is no tree in this yard and most of it is shrubs instead of vegetables.

I have to admit the layout looks nice but it doesn't even come close to what I asked it to do.

First off I gave it dimensions and where to put things in a layout design.  This is not oriented correctly and there are things all over the place that have no reason for being there.

The furniture, where did that come from?  And there's so much of it.   I think if I did put furniture in the backyard it would probably not be this much or it would be consistent on whether or not it was on grass or a deck.

And there are so many things for shade here but I don't really see any shade on the ground.  It's like there is the idea that it would be nice but the light must be coming from the air and so the trellis, umbrella, and pergola don't really do anything to keep you safe.  It's the kind of place where you would know that something was off if you were there but might not figure out what.

There also doesn't seem to be any access to the table and chairs on the grass.  You'd have to step over the plants.  I'm also pretty sure that on the right corner that that's actually a huge tissue box.  And at the top it looks like a secret garage door that is partially open. 

This could possibly be a cool writing prompt to see why some of these things are placed where they are.  What exactly is in that strange short garage anyway?

Boletus Mushroom

This is one of a few boletus mushrooms I found in a yard the other day.  I didn't pick them though since they looked so pretty and they weren't in my yard.

Since I didn't pick them, I also didn't test them to see if they were of an edible variety.  The initial look though is promising.  Wild harvesting mushrooms is not a thing around here either so there's only a slim chance that these would ever be picked.

I find that mushrooms are much more likely to be left alone and admired for the look of them in an area.  We've had a lot of rain recently and so there are more mushrooms than usual popping up.

Backyard Cooking

This is one of the better frames from the video I was able to capture. It looks bigger here than its usual flame height but this also give a better view of what it looks like.

We picked this up at Kohl's while standing in line to buy towels for the guest bathroom.  It's the perfect size to roast marshmallows.  The marshmallows we cooked were very small though but that's just because that was what we had on hand at the time.  We plan to cook bigger stuff in the near future but I'm sure it's up to it.  It runs off of rubbing alcohol from 70-90 percent.  You know I'm going to put some 99 in there though and see how well it can burn.

I did a temperature test not too long ago where I tested different strengths of alcohol to see what the temperature difference would be.  They're not too different but they do go up.

This burner also has a wick though which helps the alcohol have more surface area to create the fumes needed to burn.  It's the gas not the liquid that actually does the burning.  Once it mixes in the air with oxygen it can combust.

Since I mentioned it I figure I should just go ahead and post the test results here from the burn test.

Performed a quick test since I really wanted to know the answer to this question as well.
Burned about 2 Tablespoons of different percentages of isopropyl alcohol in a copper censer and used a K2 pyrometer model DP-902F to measure the temperature.

The results:

70% alcohol observed a maximum temperature of 1210°F

91% alcohol observed a maximum temperature of 1300°F

99% alcohol observed a maximum temperature of 1430°F

Facing North

You may have heard about cat's insane ability to find their way back home from even a long way away.  It's true that cats have a remarkable ability to navigate the world but so far there hasn't been enough evidence that they have any sort of internal compass.  It's more likely that they use their other highly tuned senses to make their way through the world.

Our cats however don't have to worry about navigating the world, they're inside cats and merely have to navigate the house.  It's so much simpler.  We just moved and this is our first home with them but their third home that they've had to get used to.  They're adjusting nicely though and seem to already think they own the place.

That all said I can't figure out why they decided at this point to both sit in a doorway facing north.  They are usually running around or lying in a box, or on their cat tree on one of the many many levels, (I'll get into that at another time but I don't understand why there are so many cat trees that should really be called a cat bush or even just a cat chair....) or gnawing on each other as they still fight for who's the dominate cat.   But here they are spaced apart just sitting there.  I can't explain it.

Does anyone else have a cat (or other pet) that seems to face north or any other direction.  They rarely face north but they also rarely are just sitting there so there's that.