I'm still not quite sure why, but American Express just put me in a bit of a pickle.

Recently, tekman and I upgraded to an Executive membership at Costco as we tend to spend enough there annually to make the extra rebate worth it. Since our AmEx also doubles as our Costco membership card, they issued us new cards that are black on the back instead.

tekman's card came pretty quickly. Then a few days later, he got a second one. I called cardmember services that afternoon to see if there was a mistake, but the woman on the phone assured me that I should be receiving my own card the next day.

It's been over a week now, and I still haven't gotten it. I called again today, and this time the representative had me confirm my current mailing address. Turns out that my current address is still at our town home in Redmond from six years ago. Well, that explains that... except that I swear I have gotten at least one new card with an updated expiration date since we moved up to Bothell.

Unfortunately, it's not just as simple as them updating my address and sending me a new card. Since a card was sent to the wrong address and has not yet been activated, for security reasons they have to deactivate all cards with my current number and issue me a new one. They're sending me a temporary card on Tuesday. I'm not sure how long it will take for them to mail me my new card, and if I want to go to Costco in the meantime I'll have to ask them for a temporary membership card as well. Plus, now I have a new number to remember to recognize on receipts, and I have to update any online shopping sites that I have using my current one.

As it happens, I had a trip planned for Costco today. Guess I'm not going by myself. >_>

Guess what I found... :D

Paper craft meets Pokémon My Pokémon Ranch style: Pikachu | Chimchar | Piplup | Turtwig.

These will probably take much, much less time to put together than the Hello Kitty modular origami set I was going to try to modify to make a Pikachu...

I've had this project to do for a while. After we got a second GBA (thanks again, wrexen; we're getting a ton of use out of it!) and both kids became obsessed with pokémon, we discovered that my Pokémon Silver cartridge would no longer save games. While we could get around that by keeping the SP plugged in all of the time, that was a bit more work than Zach wanted to deal with, and Alex just decided to stop playing altogether.

(They had decided independently that my Yellow version was Zach's and the Silver version was Alex's, where by "they" I mean "Zach". I think it's because the Yellow version has a picture of Pikachu on the front and is therefore inherently superior. This was before we discovered the battery issue, so I don't think it was malicious on Zach's part.)

I scoured the internet for what to do and found several guides that explained how to replace the battery. They all involved detaching the original battery, which is soldered to the contact tabs, and then somehow taping the new battery in to ensure it's firmly in place. That all seemed very shady to me, not to mention that I couldn't figure out how to get the special screw off the back in the first place.

Someone on girl_gamers brought up the same issue, and someone in the comments posted a link to this very comprehensive guide. Unlike other guides, every step had pictures, which made me feel a little better. I was finally able to put my round nosed pliers to use, as they were the only thing I could wedge into the tiny area between the screw and its surrounding plastic. I had no luck trying to turn the screw with a screwdriver, as the guide original suggested.

And of course I had to take pictures of the process because it was fun and I need to be able to prove to my kids later that I am an awesome mom. ;-)

Seth MacFarlane just started up his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy yesterday. The first two videos are up: Super Mario Rescues the Princess and A Dog on the $25,000 Pyramid.

It's a lot like Family Guy, so if you like that you should find these (especially the Mario one) pretty darn funny. And if you don't, you only have to waste about three minutes of your time finding out. =)

Very occasionally, I let my fingernails grow beyond the usual millimeter or two. They tend to break or snag beyond that point and just become a nuisance anyway. But every once in a while they make it past that point, and I'll actually bother to file them and make them look nice. Not so far as nail polish or anything crazy.

And sometimes when that happens, I regret that my favored hobbies — namely playing the piano — make it impossible for me to keep them this long.

I almost snapped one of them off last night hurriedly opening a drawer. Something tells me they'll have to go within a few days. =\

My sister is in town, and she mentioned that she'd like to go someplace with a good view of mountain ranges so she can take pictures. (She doesn't have a crazy camera, just a simple digital point-and-shoot.) We're going to St. Edward State Park in a bit, but I'm pretty sure you can only see trees there. Huge and pretty spectacular trees, sure (comparatively speaking, of course), but not much else. I could be wrong about that, as the only part of the park I've "explored" is the playground equipment.

I thought maybe some of my mountain-climbing friends might have suggestions. She made it pretty clear that she doesn't want to climb, although if there happened to be a mountain with a car trail that would allow her to get a higher view, she would probably like that.

I am coming temporarily out of my LJ hibernation with a request for folks local to the Seattle area: does anyone know of a good beer-making supply store in the area? I'd like to make some homemade kaiser rolls, and the recipe I'm going to try needs active diastatic barley malt powder or syrup. The author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice (which is a crazy book and at the same time very awesome) suggests either ordering it online or via catalog, or going to a local beer supply store. We tried looking for barley syrup at Trader Joe's and had no luck, so we thought we'd give this a shot before ordering online, as lots of people around here make beer. (I think.)

edit: tekman turned up Mountain Homebrew & Wine Supply in Kirkland pretty easily thanks to Google. They knew exactly what we wanted and mentioned that bakers come to pick it up pretty frequently. Guess we'll check them out tomorrow.

I signed up for Amazon Associates and Google AdSense accounts for my new recipe blog (nothing really there yet). Let me tell you, both experiences have been a joy.

I wasn't able to sign up for Google AdSense in Firefox. The long version: I went and filled in the registration forms, and then it asked me if I wanted to use my existing Google account to log in to AdSense as well. I selected "yes", entered my credentials, and hit the "Continue" button. After a bit, it sent me back to the registration form, with all of the fields blank. I was confused and thought that maybe I had accidentally hit the "Back" button instead, so I tried again. Same result. (Also, Roboform didn't like their fields for some reason, so I was doing this all manually, too.) Finally gave up and did it in IE, and of course it worked just fine, Roboform included. GG, Google.

Amazon Associates was much easier, and I didn't have to wait for approval to start using it. I played around with Product Links for my Resources page for a while. I sort of liked their Product Previews script, but I didn't want it to pop up for the text links, so I just disabled it in general. The Enhanced Display option (text and image, with an obvious "Buy from Amazon" button included) was a bit intrusive, so I decided to use image links for the books and then text link to DVDs and a few other things.

First thing I noticed was that the images for the image links were broken. After a bit of frustration, I noticed that the HTML they generated for it contained a relative URL for the image instead and figured it was a bug. Apparently you're not supposed to hotlink their images for this type of Product Link, but they're more than happy to serve the images for their Enhanced Product Links for you. I'm an idiot, because there was text on the Build Link page that notified me that I would have to upload the images somewhere else to use them and I completely missed it. I still don't understand why one type of image is okay to hotlink, but not the other. It's not just a size issue. Right now, I'm hotlinking, but I'll probably change that later today.

The second annoying bit was, of course, finding all of the products I wanted to link. The books were easy to find, since I had their ISBNs; even a search by title yielded results. I was also able to find Alton Brown's salt cellar on Amazon too. Finding DVDs for the TV shows I wanted to share proved to be much more difficult. The ATK Season DVDs were there, but only some had thumbnails, so I decided to go with text links there. The Good Eats DVDs were not all available, so eventually I gave in and just linked to AB's Food Network store. Guess I'm missing out on that. Sometimes it's so hard to find what you want on Amazon.

Waste Management seems determined to make me want to recycle and compost less and less.

A while ago they changed policy so that shredded paper had to be put in the yard waste bin instead of recycling. This meant I had to start removing staples, couldn't shred envelopes with windows, and had to shred credit cards and coated paper products (like pictures) separately.

They only recycle #1 and #2 plastics, and I've found that many things I buy don't fall into those categories. They also don't seem to want plastic lids, which confuses me because many of those lids are marked as #1- or #2-type plastic like the rest of the container.

Today, they sent out a brochure with updated lists for what can be put in the recycling and yard waste bins. They changed milk and juice cartons back to recycling, which is nice because I no longer have to worry about cutting out the plastic spouts on orange juice containers; but it also means I have to go back to rinsing them out before I can dispose of them. They've also become more specific about what sorts of paper products they allow and have been very clear that plastic-coated paper isn't allowed, which cancels out a lot of fast food waste. (It's not like we produce much of that anymore, though.) Unfortunately, the Dixie plates we buy from Costco are coated so they don't leak through, which means I can't compost them anymore. The annoying thing is that paper plates are forbidden from recycling, so I guess I'm back to throwing them out in the trash. I'm thinking of calling them to see if I could rinse the plates before recycling them, because it seems silly that I can recycle juice and milk cartons but not lightly-soiled paper plates.

It's not like I go out of my way to help out the environment, but I try to do what I can. It's annoying that they're making it more difficult for me to do so. I'm not switching paper plates just so I can compost them again.

tekman's been bugging me about registering a domain and starting an actual food blog separate from this. After thinking for a while about how I would deal with posting recipes that I wouldn't feel comfortable making widely public, I think he finally had me convinced.

Today I found this website which is absolutely stunning and has me more than a little intimidated. (Her food photography is spectacular!) Sure, she started small as she says so herself, but I think it's pretty impressive. On the plus side, I've got another very interesting food source!

That and I'm no good at coming up with names. "angelfood.com" has already been taken!

So it's (still) snowing in the Seattle area, and there was an earthquake in southern Illinois this morning.

What next?

If April showers bring May flowers, what the hell do April snowstorms do?

Discovered a couple of things today:

1. I actually enjoy yard work this time of the year, before all of the bugs come out. No spiders hanging out in the shrubs, no crane flies bobbing around in the air like giant drunken mosquitoes. It's a bit chilly, but I found that layering my hooded fleece under my large Rose-Hulman sweatshirt works really well, even if I feel a little silly. It's even enough to keep me from snagging my arms with the thorns on the unidentified vine that creeps over our back fence every year. Unfortunately, my jeans are not enough to protect my legs, and I ended up with a half-incher lodged in my thigh at one point. Took me a while to find it, too. Ouch.
   
   Pruning is kind of relaxing, but I still don't really know what the heck I'm doing. We've let most of our bushes grow way too large, so I went a little crazy cutting them back this year. Some of them look patchy because of that, but I'm hoping I can coax them to fill back in the bald spots by the end of the season.


2. I really, really miss singing. =(
   
   I usually bring my iPod Shuffle out with me whenever I work outside. It helps me keep my mind off the fact that I'm, well, outside, which may sound ridiculous but there it is.
   
   In any case, today there was a string of a few a cappella songs in the middle, and it made me remember how much I enjoyed singing harmonies in choir, particularly Madrigals at BHS and then our female barbershop quartet at RHIT. It'd be fun to get involved with something like that again, but my voice is so out of shape it's embarrassing.
   
   At least I still have my piano. <3

And then something I already knew: yard work absolutely destroys my back. And tomorrow my hands will be sore from using the pruning shears. D;

Lucy's a pretty funny cat. She's clumsy (for a cat), but in an endearing way; she'll lose her footing trying to get somewhere and then run away and hide in shame. Just today she tried to rest her forepaws on a globe to get into a position from which she could leap on top of our office bookshelves. Instead, she spent about 30 seconds unintentionally rotating the globe while she fought for balance. She also has the tendency to roll right off of laps.

When she gets in a playful mood, she gets pretty silly. Alex and Zach can run around the house trailing her cat tease on the floor behind them, and she'll chase them for a long time. She also has this little mouse toy that is continually lost because she goes nuts playing with it and ends up throwing it somewhere out of reach; it doesn't have catnip in it, but she loves that thing. I took a video of her having some fun the other night with our new digital camera. She really likes plastic grocery bags. I know I probably shouldn't let her play with them, and normally we don't just leave them out like that, but it was pretty cute watching her play. She went at it for a good 30 minutes or so.

edit: So apparently now I have a Youtube account. The horror!

When the zoom buttons finally fell off of our PowerShot S330, it became clear that we needed a new digital camera. tekman decided to replace it with a PowerShot SD1000, and it was delivered today.

I've seen other people's newer digital cameras before, but it still didn't prepare me for how tiny the SD1000 would be compared to our S330! I took a few pictures for comparison.

I'm really pleased with it so far. Despite a few changes, I was able to find all the functionality I had with my old camera pretty quickly. I'm still getting used to the zoom wheel. The new camera is crazy fast compared to the old one. About the only thing I dislike is the wrist strap, but I'll probably stick with it anyway since the one on the S330 doesn't have an adjustment band.

It'll also be nice having a new camera battery that doesn't need to be recharged every 10 minutes of usage. ^^b

I'm not sure why people seem to think this is a cool design idea. I've started to notice this trend where websites will display screenshots tilted and with a reflective surface beneath them.

Why?

It doesn't look cool. Maybe Apple started it, and everyone just wants to be cool like them. It might be neater if they made the window content appear to be 3-dimensional, so that it gave the illusion of actually looking through the window at the content. Instead, it just further draws attention to the fact that the window is still flat, no matter what angle they try to display it from.

Is this some weird Web 2.0 thing I just haven't heard about?

Also, does anyone happen to know why the heck the Songbird mascot is farting in just about every picture he's in?

Apparently what we know as "cinnamon" isn't actually "true cinnamon". What's labeled as cinnamon is actually cassia, which comes from the bark of Cinnamomum cassia instead of Cinnamomum zeylanicum.

The funny thing is that Americans have grown so accustomed to using cassia that the taste testers didn't feel like Ceylon Cinnamon was cinnamon-y enough.

We don't go out to eat all that often, but now that tekman's working from home we've been able to have lunch out together while the kids are in school. We've found some really great local places:

• Imperial Wok
  This Chinese restaurant is around the corner from the Canyon Park QFC. tekman's eaten there before, and we pick up food for take-out there from time to time. We decided to go here for lunch on Monday. Things of note: their fried pot stickers are amazing. We couldn't decide what kind of meat they used for the filling, but it was very flavorful and of good quality. They also filled them with a generous portion. Not as good as the fried gyōza (which may be deep-fried instead of pan-fried) you can get from the teriyaki restaurant across the street, but definitely the best pot stickers I've ever had. They also make fried wonton wrappers that they top with their sweet-and-sour sauce and serve along with their entrés. Mmmm.


• Villa Nuova
  This is a little Italian restaurant near Mill Creek. Their lunch menu was a bit disappointing, but their full menu looked like it would have a much wider variety of things. Their food was good, about average as far as Italian restaurants go, but they had these amazing rolls that they served with garlic- and red pepper-infused olive oil while we waited for our meal. I would have been happy to just keep eating those for my meal!


• Gratzie Ristorante Italiano
  Another Italian restaurant, just down the street from the Canyon Park QFC. Unlike the previous one, our meals were really, really good. I had a Canadian Bacon panino and salad off of their lunch menu, and tekman had their Penne di Salsiccia. We both thought their meat sauce was very good, despite the fact that they used beef instead of pork sausage. The Italian sausage that was served with his pasta was also very good. My panino was great, although it was very different than the paninis we make since it was made on a wedge of focaccia instead of sliced ciabbata. We'll have to try that out sometime ourselves to see if we like how it turns out better.

I guess this won't really help you out much unless you're in the area, but there you have it.

Not sure this will apply to anyone reading here, but thought I'd pass it along just in case: Possible re-download of Rock Band DLC.