Personal Blog – Page 12

Happy Pesach!

Well this is it. My bf said that he and I would cook Passover dinner for about 40 people so I guess we kind of have to make good on that promise today. I procrastinated as long as I could but yesterday I had to finally go to the supermarket and buy all the stuff for this dinner.You’re not supposed to use leavened anything in anything, either. For real religious people you’re not even supposed to have it in the kitchen!

Leaven [LEHV-uhn]
n.

1. An agent, such as yeast, that causes batter or dough to rise, especially by fermentation.
2. An element, influence, or agent that works subtly to lighten, enliven, or modify a whole.

tr.v., -ened, -en·ing, -ens.

1. To add a rising agent to.
2. To cause to rise, especially by fermentation.
3. To pervade with a lightening, enlivening, or modifying influence.

[Middle English, from Old French levain, from Vulgar Latin *levāmen, from Latin levāre, to raise.]
Leavener [LEHV-uhn-er]
Agents that are used to lighten the texture and increase the volume of baked goods such as breads, cakes and cookies. Baking powder, baking soda and yeast are the most common leaveners used today. When mixed with a liquid they form carbon dioxide gas bubbles, which cause a batter or dough to rise during (and sometimes before) the baking process.

Geez.
A.’s Ma is in town from Israel and thankfully she and her best friend are also cooking up a storm so A. and I don’t have to cook that much. Just 2 roast ducks,16 pounds of grilled chicken breast,10 pounds of mashed potatoes,5 pounds of rice and a cartload of green beans,which I am going to try to liven up with red and green peppers and toasted pecans. Mom and her friend B. will be providing a leg of lamb and a brisket and 2 pots of soup:vegetarian and chicken, both with matzoh balls.
A. was going to make bourekis and I was going to bake 3 pies but Mom vetoed them for the sake of tradition (leavened flour in the pastry).

It’s 9am now, our kitchen is going to be a madhouse in about 45 minutes when A. get’s in there. I know he is going to use every single pot and pan, along with every single bowl and dish… So I’m enjoying this peace and quiet for as long as it lasts, writing this post and listening to the birds chirp on this cool and cloudy Sunday morning.

Doh!

If you switch your WordPress theme don’t forget to add your Google Analytics tracking code. I changed my theme 7 days ago and just now checked to make sure I was receiving data.Sure enough all reports stopped the day I switched the theme, earning me a big

An idea to sell my thrift store finds online

I have always been a great thrift store shopper.
I don’t mind dust, mold and the odd smell of old clothes at all if it means turning up a Glidden bowl for a dollar. (I’ve researched online and this bowl circa maybe 1950 is worth around 36 to 55 dollars.)

I’m very lucky to have so close to me an “open air” thrift store. Open air because they sell directly out of the back of a moving van and on a piece of sidewalk. A chain link fence serves as a makeshift clothing rack.

If one wanted to spend much time musing over the morbid details of how they might have acquired these goods (I think it is when an old dear dies) it might spoil it. Especially the bags of clothes… ignominiously jumbled together in 40 gallon black trash bags. But that is how I found a genuine Pashmina. I thought seriously of the person that owned it and what became of them and it wasn’t with a light heart that I added it to my collection. But it was of obvious quality and I had to nab it.

My love of ceramics began when I was about 11 and tried to learn how to throw pots on a potting wheel. We had a real live potter staying with us and she gave lessons to a bunch of neighborhood kids for free. But there was limited clay and time and only one wheel and the endeavor was too short lived to make me a child prodigy in the art of pottery making.

I began to collect vases in my 20’s all of which eventually got broken; the saddest breakage case was an large, baby blue Abingdon vase. Until my junk guys showed up last year I hadn’t been able to find a decent stick of pottery at a decent price for ages. So my collection stagnated at just a few bowls and odds and ends.

Shows like Antique Roadshow and Cash in the Attic make everyone know the value of what they’ve got and it’s impossible to nab a real find in actual thrift stores which is why I love my neighborhood junk guys. I think they do know what they’ve got but their boss has already overseen the initial haul and what ends up in Brooklyn in the back of a truck has been deemed second rate-not quite worthy of antique dealers.So it’s no skin off their noses to let me have gem after gem for a fraction of what they’re really worth.

Because they haven’t got walls, open air means weather permitting, this past week is the 1st time I’ve seen them in months. It might be a blessing that they hide out all winter otherwise I would have an overflowing collection on every table and counter in my house. One can only indulge in collecting for so long before one has to start thinking about storage.
My idea to sell my finds online solves this problem, if folks want to buy them of course.
But you never know until you try.
JunkShop@mccormicky.yawn coming soon!

I got banned from Youtube

I’d opened an account for my client and every week I would upload more samples of clips with the hopes of teasing potential customers to come to the website and buy the full length versions.
I think we lasted about a month before they banned us.We had 202 subscribers and each clip generated about five links incoming links or outgoing( I never did figure out what the links thing meant).We were in the top 50 subscribed to channels.We had zillions of viewers.It was a good ride.
Google Analytics told me we had about 400 unique site visitors–all from Youtube. It may not sound like much but if you can get 400 people into your online store in the period of 3 weeks and 20 percent of thosse folks buy something well, that’s all good. I’ve got a Zen Cart and PayPal powered shop set up to sell the clips and we also sell memberships to the sites. I should divulge that this is a fetish website devoted to lovers of Tickling. I know– I never heard of it either until I answered this ad on Craigslist to be the webmaster/designer/developer of a non XXX yet Adult website. I needed some steady income and my new boss was going to pay me once a month ongoingly to update his websites and keep em fresh.
He wished I knew more about affiliate programs and reseller blah blah and la de da stuff like that that I’ve never thought did anything but empty your pockets a little and return zilch.
We may not be marketing geniuses but we have what the people want.We’ve got the content.
They can’t take that from you.In the end it’s all about the content.Content is king. I don’t care if you paid 25,000 for your fancy BS Flash website–if you don’t have anything in it that people want who cares? If you just use it to showcase your enourmous ego –so what? What is the point?

Well I WAS concerned that folks wouldn’t know where to look for us after YT booted us–but memberships are steady and people are still buying…That isn’t to say that we haven’t experienced a slight drop in site traffic since the account was closed–oh yeah,why was it closed?
Well there were one or two “nipple slips” in the clips samples I put on YT.
Apparently tickling is a vigorous physical activity and some of the women’s upper body endowments could not stay inside their clothing 100 percent while they were tickling someone.