I've been enjoying some recipes from other websites, and thought I'd share the soup I made today. Use whatever sort of meat you'd like for the ham. Sure to be OK.

Hearty Veggie Lentil Soup

In a big soup pot, saute:

vegetable oil

two onions, diced

4-5 cloves garlic, mashed

1.5" thick slice of ham diced (I used turkey ham)

When onions start to turn golden, add:

2-3 quarts of water

1 one pound bag of lentils

5 carrots, diced (about 1/4"")

5 stalks celery (ditto)

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper to taste

fines herbes

dried parsley

Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer until the lentils are cooked. Add:

one 28 oz can of pureed tomatoes

one small can beef stock if desired

more water if needed

4-5 large leaves of kale, large stems removed. Stack the leaves and slice into 1/4" ribbons,

Simmer until the kale is cooked. Leave uncovered to reduce stock slightly. Just before serving, add a good bit of grated fresh parmasan cheese to each bowl and ladle soup into the bowl.

Written at: 8:42:40 PM

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I spammed my friends and associates to get the word out about the iOpener/iCan idea last night. This morning I received an astute comment from a friend who notes that she would prefer it not synch with iCook, but rather a software interface named "iOrderOut."

This makes it clear that in future, ALL iDevices should have phones built into them.

This one would be handset-less of course and all you'd have to do, after iOpener tells you that all your pantry and frig hold are flour, olives and some generic soda, is say clearly "CALL - Pizza." It would fax an order to your fav joint and moments later - dinner arrives. What's not to like about that? I think the upgrade would be to make it pre-programmable - Wednesday Chinese, Thursday Indian, Friday Pizza, Saturday, for a change, reservations out.

Thanks Gwen!

Written at: 3:48:39 PM

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The end of a weird, long week in Apple Store Land First off the entire world it seems, or at least the cultist apple-related world, has gone rumor crazy.Speculation abounds as to what will be announced and debuted at MacWorld Expo on Monday. People have come into the store all week asking questions as though we would give them an answer. uh huh. We are awaiting word along with the rest of the world. Let me put that another way so I'm clear.... we.don't.know.

We'll be showing the keynote, mystery-revealing speech by Steve via Satellite on the big screen. I'll be curious as to how many people appear to watch. Cheaper than going to San Francisco.

Just so you heard it here first, I'm promoting my addition to the Apple Digital Hub. Prepare to be amazed!

Meet the....
iOpener.
**

Let's see what else. Well, a couple too many really touchy-invading-of-personal-space types. Some weird scenarios played out. One request for a receipt that would appear to be from Canada (uh, hello - no STORES in Canada, eh?). Sent an email to someone from their own hotmail account reminding them to log out when checking mail from a public site and hoping they had a nice visit to the Apple store. Counted out $3300 in hundreds for a sale.

Picked up the mail today. Mega junkmail and stuff, bills, and the white flower farm catalogue with a beautiful rose bush on the cover. Oh yeah, tax forms.

**No NDA was harmed in the presentation of this MacRumor!

OK, so I didn't have my lawyers do a search first. There seem to be a few instances of iOpener in use already - especially this which is especially geeky. Hey, whatever, my guys will call your guys, we'll all do lunch. There's always my original concept-name - iCanopener or iCan for short.

Written at: 12:58:17 AM

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Finally, I wanted to make note of this cool iPod shareware program that lets you import contact info from Entourage.

Written at: 12:06:30 AM

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From a "featured blogger" winterspeak.com - an interesting article about managing your email. I particularly enjoyed the last ideas:

- Too much email is a pointer to over-extension in other parts of life. Unsubscribe to newsletters you never read, get off useless lists, and involve yourself with fewer projects.

Good email habits and non-intrusive technology that lets people manipulate their digital information directly makes it pretty easy to handle about 500 emails a day, more than enough for most.

Written at: 12:03:40 AM

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If you haven't been lately to the Virtual Union Square, a collection of art and responses to 9-11, there are some new works shown. For example this photo.

Written at: 11:56:26 PM

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Do the holidays seem a long way back? Shades of Future Shock, where the older you get, the less percentage of your life each day, week or year represents, hence the sensation that time is rushing by as you get older. To a month-old baby the month is 100% of its life. To me, a month is a very small percentage of the total.

On a less philosophical note, worked the "late" shift today and did closing. All I could think was that I needed to be home working on that rush project. But no. What can you do? I've been doing more driving with no radio on, thinking about the past year and what it was like to basically quilt full time, working on the grant quilts, and looking for a paying job. Now I have the paying job and little time and energy to do what is important to me. Life is full of complexities. If I didn't work, no money to quilt, no place to do quilting etc. If I don't quilt - no happiness, no joy of creation. So the balancing act and the tension that walking that tightwire requires.

Written at: 11:38:00 PM

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Phew. Lost a few things somewhere along the lines but am back to normal now. Interestingly enough, found out today that RoadRunner apparently doesn't "play nice" with forwarded domain names. Which means that if you use RoadRunner as an ISP and type in www.quiltr.com, you get a message that this page can't be found. But if you type in the whole URL: https://mbgoodman.tripod.com/grant01/diary/ it shows up fine. I'll be doing a little poking around to find out why this is. Fun times on the 'net.

Written at: 10:48:11 PM

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I'm back to trying to add comments. Let's see how this goes!

Oops, lost the fruitcake link but got it back. All seems well now. Comment away folks!

Written at: 12:10:06 AM

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These were my thoughts about 2002 - call them resolutions if you need to:

What do I hope to do?
-- First off, find some way to hunt for a new job that isn't so demanding hours-wise.
-- Continue the path of quilting I started in 2001.
-- Act in an honorable way.
-- Spend time and have fun with kin and friends.
-- Help others.
-- Help others learn about what they really can do and be.
-- Act kindly even to people who hang up on me

Written at: 2:37:32 PM

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And my last post of the year 2001, a view of my ice luminaria on this oh so cold last night of the year.



Peace to all who enter here, on this last night of the old year.

Written at: 11:54:30 PM

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First, a flashback to Christmas:


Who are these green guys and why were they easily the most exciting present of the holiday season?

Written at: 11:47:36 PM

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And now for something completely different. Over dinner we had a brief conversation about the purposes of baby talk - you know what I mean. Hand a totally polished and professional person or a grandmother a wee baby and suddenly, what comes out of the grown up's mouth is baby talk! I did a google search and found that, as we suspected, this is rather universal!

babytalk

Helping Children Grow

Washington.edu

CNN

Written at: 9:22:54 PM

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It's that time of year again - So what will YOUR New Year's Resolution be? I'm mulling this over myself.

Written at: 11:32:01 AM

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I often tell people, "if you don't get an email response from me within a day, DO try again." Here's someone else who's a believer in quick response and good use of email. I have to admit it's hard to understand why tech companies do so much fed ex'ing.

Written at: 2:28:21 AM

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Bill 1985-2005

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Maggie 1985-2003

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