Inspired by Megan’s latest post, here’s a recipe I found for brain sandwiches:

1 set of calves brains
1 qt. water
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp. melted butter
1 tsp. lemon rind
1/2 c. milk
2 stiffly beaten egg whites
Lard for deep frying

Soak in cold acidulated water (1 quart water and 1 tablespoon vinegar) for about 3 hours. Skin them and soak in lukewarm water to free them from all traces of blood.

Then as they are rather mushy in texture, firm them by again blanching in acidulated water to cover for about 20 minutes. (Do not boil.)

Dry them and pull into small pieces.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt. Beat egg yolks and blend dry ingredients into them. Beat in 1 tablespoon melted butter and 1 teaspoon lemon rind (optional) and 1/2 cup milk. Beat until stiff but not dry, 2 egg whites. Fold them into the batter. Add the brains. Drop into hot fat (lard) and fry until golden on both sides. Drain on paper towel.

Serve on bun with pickle and onion and mustard.

Ok, so I’ve been a total fatass these past few weeks, and my birthday’s to blame. Here’s a brief list of the stuff I’ve had in the past week:

• Key lime pie
• Klondike bars
• Snickers cake
• Cookies (probably about two dozen, although I received three dozen)
• Cheesecake
• Confetti cake
• Pizza

So that’s one week’s worth of damage. To make matters worse, I haven’t even really had anybody over for my birthday, except for family. Yes, I ate most of that on my own. There are times when exercise is an exercise in futility, and I think I just hit one of those times.

We have a gym at work, but I’m always intimidated to go there out of fear of looking like a pansy-ass newbie. I don’t use real weights. I use machines. Apparently, only women use machines (and even then, only girly women). I’m afraid if I go there and use the machines, someone will fix me a pomegranate martini and leave the Lifetime network on the television when they leave.

Don’t get me wrong—I still do some minor strength training at home. Yeah, laugh it up. Ok, I don’t actually do a lot of it. But I’m trying to do more, since I’m eating like a baby whale. I’m actually typing this right now in the hopes of sticking to it. I don’t think muscles will change my gangly demeanor, but it’ll make me feel better about the desserts I’ll be finishing off in the next few days.

Oh, did I mention that on Thursday nights, I go out for half price appetizers at Applebees at about 10:30? If any PlattFormers want to drag my ass into the gym, it will be greatly appreciated, pomegranate martinis or no.

You know you’re a cat person when you think about what Meyers-Briggs types your cats are. That said, I’m a cat person. Here are my predictions:

Franny: INFJ
Zoey: ENFP
Sherlock: ENTJ

As you can see, all of my cats are intuitive. I can talk about this at length in a later post.

I don’t talk about it a whole lot any more, but I’ve struggled with low self esteem for pretty much my entire life. There are some physiological reasons for that, but it doesn’t really change the fact that I never really felt up to speed with what was going on around me. This may come as a surprise to some who know me, particularly many who work with me, because I behave very confidently at times, now. But those who know me well have at least seen glimpses of it—ghosts of years of doubt and second-guessing.

For those who have followed my blog for a long time, through several redesigns, you’ve probably noticed a pretty drastic change in my writing over the past six years or so. My writing used to be all over the place. Here are some quotes from my old blog, circa 2004:

Could it be that I’m… growing up?? Hurry, someone call me childish! Make me throw something! I drew a space ship! I am twenty-three years old and that is not too old to be not very old!!

Sometimes I just care so much that it’s all I can do to feel alive and walk and talk and be extra-nice to everyone. I just wish so badly that world wasn’t what it is. Even something worse would be good, as long as it was openly worse—and therefore had a chance of change. *sigh* I just want to help. All I want to do is help people.

(There were a few other severely depressing blurbs I decided not to post. But trust me when I say that any angst in that second post is just the tip of the iceberg.)

What really interested me was the sheer amount of soul-searching I did back then. Some of it was good, and some of it was bad, but it was all about authenticity and self-actualization. And I was really, really emotional, which seems a bit weird to me now. If you don’t know me or don’t know me well, I’m largely emotionless now (externally, anyway), and I’m more interested in making good use of my intellect than in self-discovery.

(A lot of that comes from not trusting my emotions to be reliable indicators of what’s actually going on. That’s a much larger discussion for another time, but it goes back to my disorder.)

I didn’t really realize any of this until I took a few quizzes on Facebook lately. (Yes, I’m bringing this all back to Facebook. Sorry for the let-down.) On Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator tests, I always came up a strong INFP. (Well, back in 2004, I was probably closer to an ENFP.) A few years back, I was right on the line between INFP and INTP. Now, I’m a pretty solid INTP, and as much as I like feelers, I feel like I’m able to relate more honestly to the thinkers than the feelers.

So I’m evolving, psychologically. I still struggle with self esteem from time to time, but it’s never crushing—I deal with it rationally and calculatingly. (Yes, that’s a word. I just checked.) Do I miss being so emotional? Yes, I do. But I feel like I’m able to do a lot more now, since I’m able to effectively deal with my inhibitions. Some of my favorite people are still INFPs, but I think I’m right where I need to be for now.

I apologize to anyone I’ve been cold to, anyone I’ve been short with, and anyone who hasn’t gotten a warm reaction out of me when they needed one. I really do want to be these things, and I really do see the value in them. But trust me when I say that I’m in a better spot now than I was five years ago.

My dad and his wife just made the trek up to Kansas to help me and Janelle finish out our basement. Improvements include adding two light switches and wiring for two lighting fixtures, putting in an entire ceiling, and adding a wall to block off a portion of the basement for storage.

If you don’t know, hanging drywall on the ceiling is hard! Even with the eight foot sheets, it’s pretty labor-intensive. So we got pretty tired out doing that, and the wall was the last thing we put in. We did some quick measurements, built the wall (if you don’t know, you build the frame for a new wall first and then put it into place), and put it into place, only to discover that my house was built crooked. The wall is seriously slanted. So we had some work to get it into place.

This is the most amazing part, though. Christine (my step-mom) just got a big-ass hammer and started hitting the wall until it went into place. I was so tired that it took me a moment to register, but it soon clicked: You could just hit it until it worked!

This got me thinking about how much easier my life would be if there was a web design equivalent.

PNG transparency not working in Internet Explorer 6? *Whack!*

Three pixels off in Internet Explorer 6? *Whack!* One pixel off. *Whack!* There, I fixed it.

I think, really, I just want a way to hit Internet Explorer 6.

Anyway, the ceiling and wall are in. Janelle and I still have to finish mudding and sanding both and at least paint the ceiling before we can put the lights in. Soon, band practices will be held, and I’ll be able to work out my web design aggressions on my congas. All will be right in the universe.

So I’ve been sick pretty much since Friday. I had an eye infection, an ear infection, and something in my throat. This morning was the first morning I was actually feeling pretty decent (although still not so great). So my alarm goes off, and I turn the light on, ready to start the day. Sherlock jumped up on my bed, heaved quickly three times, and threw up all over my bed. Thankfully, we had just washed our spare set of sheets, so we just switched them out. But the little punk jumped up on the bed, threw up, and then ran away. He jumped up on the bed specifically to throw up. That is evil.

After I got out of the shower, the devil-cat attacked my foot with his vomit-stained teeth. Bear in mind that my arms are covered in scratches from the last four days at home with this cat.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I actually have some scratches from Zoey as well. Zoey likes to explore behind my computer desk. Occasionally, he’ll get the speaker wire wrapped around his leg. When this happens, he’ll briefly try to pull it loose, but then just collapse onto the ground and start wailing. I mean really pathetic crying, too. Not even meows—just a long, sad howl. I went to free him yesterday, and he panicked and dug all of his claws into my right arm. The cat really has no idea how to be mean unless it’s completely by accident, which is actually kind of an endearing quality unless he’s breaking into your room at night.

And all of this is after Franny and Sherlock systematically tag-teamed the consumption of the flowers I bought for Janelle on Friday. They seriously ate half of the flowers!

Well, there you have it. Four days at home has reduced me to blogging about my cats again. I was able to work today, so hopefully that will jolt me back into having something else to write about. Oh, and maybe I can find the motivation to work on my portfolio again. Anyway, good night!

I forgot to post about this. The project that has been consuming me at work for two months is finally done. It’s a site where you can search for Christian colleges. (We have a few other faiths up there, but it’s mostly various denominations of Christianity.) I didn’t design it, but I built the site and managed the content (and wrote some of it).

For those familiar with web development, this was my first foray into developing in an MVC framework (in this case, CodeIgniter). There was definitely a learning curve, but I have to say, I’m going to use that for every large site I build from here on out.

And if you’re wondering, we’re hoping to add a lot more clients to the site. Right now, the selection of schools you can actually request information from is pretty slim (although there’s at least a mention for every major faith-based higher learning institution in the country). We had to have a site before we could sell clients on it, though. So if you know of a faith-based school that should have a more prominent listing here, let me know and I’ll get it routed to the right place.

I had a portfolio and résumé on my old site, but I never created one for this site. I’m coming back around to wanting one online. This site doesn’t count, because (a) it’s in WordPress, so I’m not showing off my coding skills, and (b) I want to show more examples of my work. I also don’t necessarily want my personal blog tied to my professional portfolio. So I started work tonight on a smaller portfolio site. You can preview it here. It’s just an image now, but when it’s built, each of the sections will be a larger box than the initial page.

I welcome any feedback, especially from my designer friends. So far, it’s only an hour of work, so it’s not at all a complete look and feel—more like a rough sketch.

All we have of it is a cell phone shot, so it’s hard to make out. Here it is!

We had a food day at work today as a sending-off for our intern, Pam. In the tradition of ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com, we concocted the most horrible things and actually ate them. Here’s some of what we came up with:

• Cherry Popper: A cherry tomato sandwiched between a scoop chip filled with cheese dip and a scoop chip filled with jalapeño cream cheese dip.
• Cheese Squirt: A “burrito” which consisted of guacamole, cream cheese, cheese dip, and pizza rolls rolled up in slices of cheddar cheese.
• Southwest Tower of Power: A scoop chip filled with jalapeño cream cheese spread, cheese dip, and corn salsa, topped with a pizza roll and a Funyun.
• Seven-Layer Chip: Chip, cream cheese, chip, cheese dip, chip, guacamole, chip. Eaten in one bite.
• Swamp Thing: Guacamole-stuffed turkey ball and cheese dip in-between two scoop chips.

There was also a lot of talk about corndog batter, although we didn’t have any (this time).