The Great Light Bulb Quest

It would appear that I am not the only person who has suffered a burned out tail light bulb recently. There must be a small flock of vehicles which recently had their lights replaced. I know this because I have been unable to find any bulb #5008. I have looked in three establishments for said bulb. In the two shops which carried the correct bulb, both stores were sold out. They had 5-8 of every other kind of bulb except the one I wanted. I'll have another go at the last auto parts store on the way home and see if they have one. I really dislike driving at night with only one tail light, especially on an unlit road.

CSI fails again....
Today's quote (from Catherine when she was looking at insect larvae in a victim's wound): "Those are instar larvae." Technically true. Any larvae is an instar. Instar simply means stage. You never talk about "instar larvae" without specifying which stage (e.g. first, second, third, etc.). Furthermore, Catherine used the viewing of "instar larvae" to then estimate the time since death. That estimate would require knowing which instar she was looking at (and presumably she would have said which instar that was).

Who are you?
Today's amusement at work: Found a person in the surveillance database with three different names. Same DOB, same first name, same address. Different variations of the last name (e.g. Smith, Smythe and Smithe). One of the names has an open investigation, so I let the investigator know that there's a potential name issue and that she'll need to have the files merged when she finds out which is the correct name. Cool, no problem, she says. I go to lunch. When I come back she tells me that *none* of the names we had was right. The hospital had a different name, which was also wrong. She finally ended up calling the person's house to inquire as to the spelling of the last name. You guessed it. She got a FIFTH spelling. We also found out the person was deceased, so at least they won't be collecting additional names. The database guy speculated that the hospital got the wrong name because the patient coded while trying to specify spelling to an admission clerk that wasn't getting it right. :o)

Still have to finish up the mailing labels. I did, however, spiff up the newsletter yesterday with the help of a newsletter template from Microsoft. It looks a whole lot better than just plain text. The template even shifts the text to subsequent pages automatically and has one page formatted so you can fold and mail the newsletters. w00t! If I get the labels typed up tomorrow we can mail the silly thing by the end of the week.

New Shiny
As you know, I get bored easily. This is part of the reason why I don't usually finish a long-term project. I lose interest and/or find something else which is interesting. I have recently been switching up my knitting and spinning projects. I spent the weekend spinning and did no knitting. I am finding myself more interested in getting back to the knitting and working on not only the Kiri shawl, but also two different pair of socks. I don't know how long it'll take to finish the Kiri, but I think I'll try to finish it by Christmas.

I wonder if I can use this little habit of mine (the distraction of the New Shiny) to actually accomplish more long-term projects. For example, by dividing projects into sub-projects, then switching between sub-projects so that I always have something "new" to switch to. I've managed to keep switching between projects at work so that nothing gets too drawn out or too boring. I bet I can do that with knitting and spinning projects too. It's sort of a variation on Judy Sumner's method where each day of the week had a different project assigned to it, though it may come to that in the end. I'm not sure I want that much organization in my knitting.

Cooking adventures....
I just figured out that I have almost ten pounds of cornmeal. Good thing I like cornbread. I made a nice pan of buttermilk cornbread last night. It's my favorite thing to go with soup. Biscuits are OK, but not nearly as tasty as cornbread. I've never made tamales (or tamale pie), but I'll definitely be trying to make some in the near future. I also have a recipe for cornmeal cookies, though I'm not sure if that uses fine or coarse cornmeal.

I made a new recipe for dinner this evening. It's called Mediterranean Lentils and Rice, from The Vegetarian Express Lane cookbook by Sara Fritschner. I was wanting to use up some lentils I've had for far too long. I only had diced tomatoes packed in juice, not puree, so I added a can of tomato sauce to thicken up the lentils. I also put in a splash of lemon juice to brighten the flavors a bit. I think lentils can start to taste pretty muddy, but the addition of a bit of acid cuts that unpleasant (to me) flavor. Now I've got lunch for the next week. Yum!

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