Mix all dry ingredients. Then milk, eggs, butter, and ½ c. blueberries (mashed). Stir in the rest of the blueberries (whole). Grease & flour muffin pan. Fill to the top with muffin mix. Sprinkle with sugar. Cook at 375° for 25-30 minutes.

For you, Valentine’s Day is just the day you avoid restaurants and candy stores.
If you love someone, you already show it. You don’t need to go all out for a silly holiday to prove your love.

It’s not really a big deal, though, totally something I can live without.  I’m just curious.  

And speaking of my decline in geekiness… after switching hosts and upgrading to more space for Last Remnants, I have done absolutely nothing with the site.  I set up a gallery and uploaded some photos, but that was weeks ago and I’ve done nothing since.  I just haven’t been in the mood, really, which is a bummer because the plan was to use it as a semi-professional gallery and/or photoblog.  Maybe I’ve just put it on the back-burner because I really don’t know what I’m planning to do as far as trying to sell some of my prints is concerned.  

Ideally, I’d just market myself locally — contact local vendors about hanging a few framed prints in their business, possibly make up greeting cards or something — and use the website to show people a wider selection and field custom orders… but, eh, even that’s a little too much work for me right now.  I’ve looked into various sites that allow you to sell your prints over the web, but just haven’t been all that impressed and would rather start out selling locally to get a feel for it.  Maybe I’ll figure it out once I get settled into the new job and can see what kind of time I’ll have to do that on the side. 

Meanwhile (is this TMI?  Oh well), because I’m a chick and my body is designed to hate me, I’ve been PMSy for two weeks now.  So that means two weeks and counting of low self-esteem and heightened perfectionism.  Combined, that just means I’ve spent two weeks setting very high standards for myself and then convincing myself I’ll never live up to them (I nearly cried when the loaf cake I was making didn’t come out looking perfect, even though it tasted great).  This isn’t all that different to how I usually am, but when I’m PMSy, it’s just harder for me to slap some sense into myself and say, “Shut up, you’re awesome.”  Instead, I just mope a lot.  Yay.

I’ve done a little baking lately, and a lot of job hunting, but most days I do a whole lot of nothing, which doesn’t quite warrant a blog update.  I kept meaning to post about the Banana Muffins filled w/ Cream Cheese, but they were a bit of a disaster (looks-wise, that is; they still tasted fantastic).  I’m going to give the recipe another shot  before Christmas, but I’m uploading the pictures I took while I was making them to Flickr.

http://flickr.com/photos/bohopenguin

Also going up on Flickr today are the pictures of the Christmas tree!  All decorated and whatnot.  I still can’t believe Christmas is right around the corner.  Even more, I can’t believe it’s nearly been a year since my jaw surgery.  (Not that I’m complaining, I’d much rather be one year past it than still hung up on the couch with my jaw banded shut.  Although, I have put on five pounds since Halloween, so I wouldn’t mind being banded shut just for a week or two, given how much weight I dropped after the surgery.)  Anyway, Christmas is coming and I’m starting to feel utterly unprepared.  I’ve still got my Christmas cards to write up and send out — haven’t received any yet, which makes me feel like I’ve got plenty of time — and my holiday baking to figure out.  Who’s getting what for gifts, what to bake for Christmas Eve, what to bring to my cousin’s Christmas Day, etc.  

I’m kind of glad I haven’t gotten back into knitting yet this winter, because then I’d probably back myself into a corner trying to make people hats and scarves they’d never wear.  But I should get around to sewing the fleece scarf I promised my friend last winter… at least that can be knocked off in one evening.  

AND I’ve finally started making progress in the job hunt!  I have an interview Wednesday for a job that will train me in the field for which I’d otherwise be going back to school to train.  Granted, if the job doesn’t work out, it won’t be too big a blow because I could start courses in January for the aforementioned training.  So I’m a little panicky, but ultimately not too worried because I feel I still have pretty good options, even if it means working nights and weekends in retail while I do three-and-a-half months in school.

My ultimate goal, really, is to complete my career training and get a steady job, and *then* when I have the time and money, I’d love to either a) take courses in fine art photography or b) take courses at one of the local community colleges and work toward completing my degree.

In the meantime, though, I’m just going to keep baking, watching episodes of Doctor Who and Bones, and shopping for Christmas.  Something weird?  I’d actually love to go to a Christmas party, but none of the people I know seem to be having parties.  Or maybe they are and I’m not invited.

What bugs me is that I was planning on buying a second dock anyway — this time an actual Apple dock — because I always have the Dynex hooked up to the living room TV and wanted a second dock to hook up in the bedroom instead of having to cart the Dynex up and down the stairs on an almost daily basis (because lately, I watch TV shows more on my iPod than on DVD or TV itself, heh).  So I was psyching myself up to buy the necessary dock, cables, adapters, and whatnot, but now… if I were to buy the Apple dock, it might as well just be as a replacement for the dock without a working remote, and I would still be out a second dock.  I think.  I can’t sort it all out in my head.

I’m going to try to contact Dynex to see if I can just order a replacement remote.  It’s not under warranty anymore, as far as I know (I’ll have to dig out the remote, if I still have it), but maybe I can get away with buying one for $20 or something.

In other news, I’m watching Plunkett & Macleane.  I haven’t seen this movie in ages, whee!  Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle.  <3

Blueberry Loaf Cake
From Taste of Home

Serves 16.  Prep time: 15min.  Bake time: 50min.*

INGREDIENTS:

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

½ cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

TOPPING:

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, milk and vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder; add to creamed mixture just until combined. Gently fold in blueberries. 
   Pour into a greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pan. Combine sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over top. Bake at 350° for 50-55 minutes* or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: 1 loaf or 4 mini-loaves

*Now, here’s where I altered things a bit.  My very awesome mother found a Wilton 4-cup Mini Loaf Pan at Saver’s for five bucks, so instead of making one loaf, I made four small ones.  The bake time on the mini-loaves came to 25-30min.  And they’re quite delicious.  :)

Now I just need to figure out what to do with them!  One’s going to my grandmother, of course, and we’ve been joking that my dad could polish off two by himself (he loves blueberries).  As long as I don’t end up eating all four, I’ll be happy.  These are definitely going on the list for Christmas baking, though.  My poor friends and relatives will be getting so many baked goods this year, they won’t know what hit them.

Which means that instead of writing a legitimate blog post for NaBloPoMo today, I’m just going to sit here moping, browsing BurdaStyle for some winter sewing projects, and watching the Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon on TLC.

Damn, those kids are cute/psycho.  Mostly cute (because I don’t have to deal with all eight of them all day, that is).

ETA: Noooo, now BurdaStyle is down.

I can’t quite remember all of it, just that I was with the Doctor, who at this point was the Eleventh Doctor and in my dream he was portrayed by Sean Pertwee.**  We ended up busted for trying to rob a bank together, but we were actually breaking in because of some alien threat my subconscious brain couldn’t be bothered to think up.  And, of all things, when we were sitting in the back of the cop car, the werewolf showed up and, instead of helping us out, got in the car with us.  

I’m a little disappointed that I woke up before the sonic screw driver could make an appearance and aid in our escape, but what can you do.  If Sean Pertwee ends up being the Eleventh Doctor, though, I’ll be retroactively dubbing this dream prophetic.

* Sometimes, when I’m especially sleep-deprived, I’ll fall asleep and wake up within the half-hour, usually in the middle of a dream, which leads to a sort of half-awake/half-asleep hallucination where my dream collides with my reality for about ten seconds. In the past, I’ve had the aforementioned spiders on the ceiling, ghost hands reaching down to strangle me, and a man ducking down by the foot of my bed. 

** I’m pretty sure most of the people reading my blog know Doctor Who, but for anyone who stumbles by and doesn’t get the significance, Sean Pertwee is the son of Jon Pertwee, the third actor to portray the Doctor.

I just need to say how much I hate it when a TV show makes a cultural reference, and I know I know the source material being referenced, but for some reason, my brain just locks me out of it.  It happened tonight with American Dad and now it’s going to drive me nuts for the next few days — until I figure it out or forget all about it.  OR until it shows up on Wikipedia.  

With all this new blog activity, I’ve realized I need to implement a better system of tagging and categorization.  Some other day.

Also, I am fully in love with my new arm warmers.  That is all.