I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. Like many, I started my work career at age 15-1/2, which was something of a labor-law rule back in the 80s. Is it still? Anyhoo, ever since that first job bagging groceries (with the title of “courtesy clerk”), I’ve moved around through a lot of workplaces. Retail? Restaurant? Outdoors? Office? Hospitality? Been theres, done those. From customer service to bank teller to webmaster.

But of all of my jobs, there have been favorites. Heck, there are some that I’d go back and do right now, if I could. Not that I don’t love my current job, but some of these remind me of a lot of fun times.

7. Intern, KJR Radio

Back in the 70s of my youth, KJR was the biggest, bestest radio station in Seattle, playing all of the hot hits. So when the time came for me to do a college internship for my broadcasting degree, I jumped at the chance to work at KJR. It also helped that, at the time, the station was trying out a new “greatest hits of the 80s” format. Yes, it was unpaid work, but I got a priceless look into how radio worked in the real world (None of the vacuum tube-driven machines, like we had at school!) and it eventually led to my first post-college full-time job at KJR’s sister station KUBE. Plus, even as an intern, I got to do occasional voice-over work. (One of my voiced ads was even nominated for a “Soundie” award.)

6. Bass Ale Ambassador

This was a hilarious part-time job I did in my mid-20s. A group of us went around to local bars, speaking in fake English accents, talking about the deliciousness of Bass Ale and giving away free Bass Ale merchandise. The thing is, in most states, the ambassadors were able to give out free samples of Bass. But Washington state had (and probably still has) draconian liquor laws where nobody was ever allowed to give away free drinks. So our program was much changed from the other programs nationwide, and the Washington program was shut down pretty fast. But it was good while it lasted, and our leader always bought us a Bass after our giveaways were done.

5. Children’s Theater Usher

I worked day shifts at the Seattle Children’s Theater, ushering for the school shows. The job was basically meeting up with busloads of kids, making sure they got to their seats, keeping an eye on rowdiness during the shows, and knowing where the huge barrel of kitty litter was kept in case a kid puked. Nobody else ever wanted to sit in the auditorium during the show, and I LOVED drawing that particular straw, so I ended up seeing Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse at least 30 times, and The King of Ireland’s Son maybe a few times less. What a delight to watch kids enjoying the theater.

4. College Cafeteria Pizza Chef

I worked many a job in my dorm’s cafeteria — cashier, grill cook, sandwich maker … but no job was more pleasant than the late-night pizza chef gig. It was a prized job, because it paid a little more due to the late hours. Fortunately, I had prior experience from cooking at a pizza place in high school, so I got the choice gig. From 8pm until Midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, two of us had the entire cafeteria kitchen to ourselves. We turned The Police up loud on the stereo and made pizzas for our hungry peers. Since I wasn’t exactly a dating machine at that time (my idea of fun was playing Pinochle in the dorm lounge with a group of like-minded geeks), I didn’t mind working on my Friday and Saturday nights. Easy, fun, and all the pizza I could eat. No wonder I gained more than the freshman 15.

3. Summer Camp Arts & Crafts Counselor

Every summer while I was in college, I worked at a city-run day camp. The first year, I was a regular counselor, in charge of a group of 10 like-aged kids every week. But the three years after that, I moved up in the world. My title was a huge combo platter: “Arts & Crafts Counselor / Assistant Camp Director”. For the assistant part, it meant I got to do fun things like shop for snacks at Costco and arrange use of the 15-passenger van, but the director herself got to deal with irate parents and permission slips and such. Perfect. As for the arts & crafts part, every group of kids came through my craft room once a week, where we worked on a one-hour project. I loved researching and putting together activities — we did everything from tie-dyed shirts to paper bag puppets to homemade ice cream using coffee cans, ice, and rock salt. And when I didn’t have any official duties, my job was to go find groups of campers and join in whatever fun they were doing.

I’d totally do that job again, but I’d be the odd duck now. At the time, the bulk of us were all college kids, but we’d usually have one or two counselors who were older — substitute teachers, for the most part. A couple of them wanted to party with us, but it was always awkward. I don’t want to be that creepy older person. But what a great job that was. I had a fantastic tan, got more exercise than any time before or since, and got to work under an assumed name: those kids still only remember me as “Charlie Tuna”.

2. Casino Party Dealer

I went to casino dealer school in my early 30s. It seemed awesome, and turns out, it was. I worked in a real casino, but I also worked for another company that did casino events and parties. I prefered the fake-money parties; they were much less stressful than having someone dump hundreds of dollars at me. Screw up with fake money, and nobody cares. I dealt all of the stand-up games: Blackjack, Spanish 21, Three-Card Poker, Four-Card Poker, Red Dog, Caribbean Stud, and others I’ve probably forgotten. I also learned Roulette from the party company, although I never chose to deal it — too much math for me. I also dealt all of the popular poker games: Texas Hold’Em, Omaha Hold’Em, and all of the various Stud games. The pay was awesome, I always had a great time, I got to wear a name tag with a fake name along with my suave tie and cummerbund, and a surprising number of people tipped us real cash for dealing a fun fake-money game. If only the big casinos weren’t an hour away, I’d love to deal again part-time (fake or real money).

1. Comedic Actor/Improviser

I’m lumping two workplaces into this category: Jet City Improv, where I worked for ten years (the longest I’ve spent with any company), and Walt Disney World (One more year until that 5-year Pluto pin!). Actually, if you tack on the group I was with for a couple of years before Jet City, it means I’ve been improvising for about seventeen years. That’s crazy! Jet City was where I honed my short-form chops, but I also had the creative freedom to develop and direct a show, as well as work on side projects like Twisted Flicks, a show I still miss like crazy. And thanks to those skills, I got to work at WDW’s Comedy Warehouse for the last 18 months of its life. That place was an amazing high-pressure improv machine — I did more shows in that year and a half than I did in the 14 years before. And the great job is continuing now, in my role as a game show host (part scripted, part interactive/improvised). When we took those “what will your career be” tests in middle school, actor was always the first item on the list. (Writer came up frequently in second place.) How cool is that? I’m doing for a living the thing I’ve been inclined to do since before I was a teen. And I love it!

First off, there’s the idea. I try not to say the following words to Scott often: “You should do a strip about how to ______!” Believe me, he hears that all the time from everyone. But our conversations sometimes lead to an idea popping out. If he doesn’t already make a note of it on his own (and most of the time he does), I might say something like, “Huh, there might be something in that.” For this strip, we were indeed coming up with drinking game rules at the grocery store, and I thought not only that there was potential, but that I could help Scott with his workload by doing a guest strip.

The idea percolated for a while, until one day when I was trying to take a nap. Which wasn’t working, because of the cat giving himself a bath while pressed against my leg, and the other cat giving herself a bath while pressed against my head. But while I was lying there, I came up with my four punchlines.

I got up, wrote them down, and figured out rough narration for those four panels. Scott doesn’t always write the same way — sometimes he comes up with the “how to” concept first, sometimes he comes up with a couple of punchlines and figures out what kind of “how to” framework they’ll fit in. And some rare times, an almost-complete strip will pop out from his head like some kind of comedic Athena.

I worried about a strip about drinking games, and considered some sort of “please drink responsibly” fine print at the bottom. Finally, I decided to start the narration in the very first panel with “alcoholic or not,” and I went with coffee cups and soft drinks for two of the art panels. Hopefully that will satisfy everyone but the most sticklerific out there.

With the writing done, it was time for the art. The software involved is Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. I’m sure you could use other drawing programs, but these are the ones that are (a) in my house, and (b) I know how to use. As for the hardware, we both swear by Wacom tablets:

I use the small Wacom Bamboo tablet. Scott has another model. I’ve used a tablet instead of a mouse for 10 years or so, and love it. I used to have a larger off-brand tablet, but when that one conked out, I got a smaller but higher quality model. Diet Coke is also an essential piece of hardware. Or would that be wetware? Anyhoo.

Photography comes next. In my first guest strip I called Scott’s drawing process “photocartooning.” Its more technical term is “rotoscoping,” and it mainly consists of drawing over the top of a photograph. Shots are taken in the appropriate poses and costumes (Yes, costumes — what would Scott be without a black t-shirt and chinos? Or Mullet Boss without his suit jacket and unbuttoned shirt?) and put on the computer.

Tracing over the pictures isn’t as easy as you’d think. I think the hardest part, and the part that Scott really rocks at, is figuring out what parts to trace, and what to leave behind. You can’t trace every single line on someone’s face, for example — it’d look like a line-filled, wrinkly mess. Likewise, you don’t want to capture every wrinkle of clothing, and you don’t want to define every single tooth. It just looks creepy. Plus, these drawings are going to shrink down to a tiny size, so you’d lose a lot of the fine details anyway. Pick the bold stuff and ignore the rest.

Here’s a sample of one of my tracings, and you can see some of the subtle changes and things left out. I made sure to remove my double-chin, which makes an appearance every single time I make a hammy face. What can I say, I’m blessed with chins. I also didn’t draw any of the lines around my chin or mouth; those details would be lost upon shrinkage. I did have fun with my hair, however. (I’m also fascinated by how the curve of my face follows the curve of my guitar on the wall. Also, please enjoy our messy desk and bookshelves. And I moved my wedding ring to the proper finger, since it’s too big and I’m too lazy to have it resized.)

The tracing is done in Photoshop, saved as a JPG file, and then placed in Illustrator. Why, you may ask? Well, the Photoshop paintbrush is easier to draw with (Illustrator’s pen and brush can both be a little weird) but Illustrator is needed to turn the drawing into a vector format. A process called Live Trace is run on the JPG, and Illustrator finds all of the lines and turns them into points on curves. That way, you can resize the art as small or large as you want, and as long as the software knows how the points and curves relate to each other, it’ll always look the same. Illustrator’s fill-in paint bucket is really nice, as well.

Here’s our image, first in the Photoshop drawing, then in the colored Illustrator vector drawing. You can see some subtle differences in the smoothness of the lines. The Live Trace process is very forgiving for shaky hands and small errors — for the most part, it smooths them out in a stylish way.

Once all the drawings are traced and colored, it’s time to assemble the strip. I had to draw eight figures and some furniture all from scratch for my strip, which made my poor hand tired. Scott has a huge stockpile of drawings of his characters, and almost always has a drawing he can use again for most common poses (thus the title of book 2: Made with 90% Recycled Art). I did not, however, build my own framework. I used Scott’s, because I wasn’t about to measure everything and start from scratch when he had a perfectly usable template ready for the borrowing.

Although the template appears simple, it’s a 15-layer Illustrator document. Each panel’s art gets its own layer, as well as layers for the outer frame, the shaded background, narration, dialog, word balloons, and more.

The first part of assembly is a mad festival of copying, pasting, resizing, typing, and nudging things around until they fit right. A little scootch here and there really makes a difference.

Here you can see my strip before I’ve clipped the unused parts of the artwork away, and before I’ve put balloons around the words. It took a lot of nudging and wiggling to get everything to fit. I worry that I might be even wordier than Scott, which is saying something. You can see that I didn’t draw Scott’s feet, because I didn’t think I’d use them. I actually wish I’d been more complete with a couple of the drawings, because I had to really finesse them to get them to fit right. Like Scott’s shopping cart (and he is, indeed, the one who pushes the cart), which is as high as it can go without showing that the side comes to an abrupt end.

The superfluous art is hidden away with a clipping mask, and word balloons are placed around the text. For voices coming from out-of-frame, I wanted a different look than just the rounded rectangles. Scott’s template had a soft, rounded thought-balloon brush, but nothing as jagged as I wanted. So I had to make a pattern, then make a brush out of it. You can see my original jagged line on the side, and how it repeats its way around the dialog. The directional tail of the balloon is made with a > shape, made with the pen tool and lined up with the jagged balloon edges. The curved tails from the regular dialog are also made with the pen, then the pen shape and the rounded rectangle balloon are merged into one shape. (I also had to learn how to adjust the corners of my rounded rectangles. I learned a ton about Illustrator in general.)

A few more nudges and adjustments, and the strip was ready to send to Scott. I sent it to him as an Illustrator file, and he rendered it as a 600×600 GIF for the Basic Instructions site. For his strips, there are a couple of additonal steps — there’s a larger vector-based copy that gets sent to newspapers, so it’ll print clearly at any size. He also has to keep everything scheduled tightly, due to newspapers and the Cracked.com site running strips certain lengths of time before they show up on the BI site.

So there it is, how a Basic Instructions gets made!

Boy, I guess scheduling the TiVo won’t be as hard as I thought it would be. What with Lost done, and must-sees like American Idol not showing up until mid-season, there aren’t really any bottlenecks. I only have two brand-new shows on my list, and I don’t necessarily expect them to stay on the list for long. Here’s what we’ll be watching this fall:

Monday
8:00 House (FOX)
10:00 Castle (ABC)

I guess I could record Dancing with the Stars in its two-hour block from 8-10, but there isn’t a single celebrity who interests me this season. I know NBC is desperate for us sci-fi fans to check out The Event, but it doesn’t look interesting either. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll check out the Hawaii Five-0 reboot in the 10pm hour.

Tuesday
8:00 No Ordinary Family (ABC)
8:00 Glee (FOX)
8:00 The Biggest Loser (NBC) (via Hulu the following week)

Here’s the one spot of the week where three shows are on at the same time. But if No Ordinary Family turns out to be a steamer, the problem is solved. Last year, because of Lost, we watched The Biggest Loser via Hulu. They have a one-week delay on the episodes, but nobody spoiled me, and the season rolled on just fine. Not to mention our antenna isn’t that reliable with NBC, so we’d be using Hulu most of the time anyway. In other news, I’m still not sure why I watch Glee. I’ve figured out that I don’t like Matthew Morrison at all, but … I guess the music is usually interesting.

Wednesday
8:00 Survivor (CBS)
8:00 America’s Next Top Model (CW)

Wednesday appears to have become reality night. Survivor moved there from Thursday, which is actually a huge help. There’s also Hell’s Kitchen on at 9, but I removed the season pass halfway through this last season. It’s just a horrible show full of horrible people. Though some might say that about ALL reality TV.

Thursday
8:30 Shit My Dad Says (CBS)
9:00 Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
9:00 Fringe (FOX)

We’ve dropped both CSI and The Office from the Thursday at 9 spot — CSI got boring once William L. Petersen left, and The Office is an NBC show: crappy antenna reception, and available on the Hulu. We’ll try out the new Shatcom, which I prefer to keep profane, but I have a sneaking feeling I’ll find it uncomfortably unfunny, like I find most sitcoms.

Friday
9:00 The Good Guys (FOX)

Wow, Friday. That’s it? Okay then.

Saturday
(rest)

There’s not a single thing. Then again, the schedule has college football listed for ABC, “local” for CW, lots of Cops on FOX, and NBC just reads “repeats” for the whole night. I guess that will be Netflix streaming night. Bring on The IT Crowd!

Sunday
8:00 The Amazing Race (CBS)
9:00 Undercover Boss (CBS)

This is, clearly, feel-good reality night (as opposed to Wednesday, which I’m renaming backstabby reality night). The best reality show on TV (and the only one I’d want to be on), The Amazing Race will always be at the top of our season pass list. And Undercover Boss was charming last season. Hopefully they’ll adjust the formula a little bit, to make it just a splash less treacly.

So that’s what we’ll be watching this season. I keep thinking of trying out Bones, but they have so many seasons under their belt, it’d be hard to start now. Maybe we’ll check it out on DVD. I also keep hearing about Mad Men, but it doesn’t interest me. Not to mention all of the shows on HBO and Showtime, two channels we don’t get. But I think this will be more than enough.

What better way to launch a new category — my personal top 7 lists — than with the songs from my favorite band, Duran Duran. They’re still as fantastic to me now as they were 28 years ago. I have to make some tough choices, since their discography includes 14 albums, as well as numerous B-sides, demos, and other rare songs that didn’t make it onto an LP. My MP3 collection, which is incomplete (but has some remixes, demos, and live versions) contains 137 songs. Tough choosies!

7. “Someone Else Not Me” – Pop Trash, 2000

This is probably a song you’ve never heard of, from an album you’ve likewise never heard of. Unless you’re a big ol’ Durannie. But it hits me right in my mellow sweet spot — Duran Duran made great party music, to be sure, but they also really knew their way around a ballad.

6. “Serious” – Liberty, 1990

Again, you ask: what? From what? That’s right, another track from a little-listened record. Not only is it the best cut from Liberty, it’s really the only great song on that album. The rest are fair to good, but this album suffered from musical musicians and the boys figuring out what they were doing. The band liked the song enough to play it on MTV Unplugged in 1993, so there’s that. A great ballad with a great sound.

5. “Rio” – Rio, 1982

Wait, what? “Rio” isn’t the number one song? Not for me, it’s not. Although it’s an excellent piece of work, with an upbeat tempo, full of fun, and a bassline I’ve always loved. It is, however, hindered by that long super-quiet lead-in, which always makes me think my CD player is suddenly on the fritz. But the big problem is, Rio is an amazing album full of outstanding songs. Which means for me, personally, the song “Rio” isn’t even the number two song on that record.

4. “Lonely in Your Nightmare” – Rio, 1982

Because this song is my number-two from Rio. The third track on the album, sandwiched between radio giants “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf”, has always been one of my favorites. And it’s made even more awesome by a game we play at the House of Meyer, where we try to fit whatever we’re saying into the cadence, “if blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, let me in.” So just remember: if it’s time to fold the laundry, let me in. (Now please excuse me for a moment, because it actually is time to fold the laundry.)

3. “What Happens Tomorrow” – Astronaut, 2004

I just about exploded when I first heard that the original five were getting back together for this album. I fretted greatly that it wouldn’t be good, but my frets were unfounded. The album as a whole is quite good, with a few songs that stray into great territory. They managed to capture a lot of the fun positivity that made their early stuff successful, but they also tweaked things enough to be current. “What Happens Tomorrow” is a perfect combination of hopefulness and smooth ballad.

2. “Save a Prayer” – Rio, 1982

Okay, so you may have realized by now that I like ballads. Probably 80% of my music collection in general consists of slower songs. And this is one of the best damned ballads ever made. What girl who heard this song didn’t want to be the one whose one-night-stand Simon LeBon called “paradise”?

1. “Girls on Film” – Duran Duran, 1981

I have three versions of this song in my collection. One from the original album, one from 1984′s live Arena album, and the “night version” from the 12″ single. The song is peppy, and fun, and vibrant. The full Godley & Creme video was shockingly full of boobs, while the concert video from Arena had leather-and-lace girls playing roller derby. Which was awesome. But it’s the song’s personal staying power that puts it in the number one spot: whenever I make a new mix CD for the car, a version of this song is always on it. In fact, my current car mix has both the Arena version (I put the whole album on this one, except for I omitted “Wild Boys”) and the night version on it. Just hearing it makes me want to dance around. Or skate fast in a circle. (But not in leather and lace.)

I don’t ever want to get into a car accident with a vehicle that reads “prepare to meet god” anywhere on it. It seems more like a threat than a recommendation, you know? At any rate, this guy’s bumper stickers had a charming homemade look about them. I wonder how I can print up slogans on strips of vinyl?

We found this display at the local Publix supermarket — a huge bin full of little 8-ounce bottles of colorful pop. It was the name “Chubby” that caught my eye, since the ingredients list pretty much started with high-fructose corn syrup and made its way through two other sugars. At least this is semi-truth in advertising! If you want chubby kids, give them this soda (pop)!

At the mall, this huge window display in the Victoria’s Secret smellystore caught my eye. Yes, our mall has three VS properties — the regular Victoria’s Secret, full of underthings; the VS Pink, full of collegiate underthings; and this third place, which is all perfumes and lotions and I will never go in there because it smells too much. Anyway, this woman’s face seems somehow wrong. Maybe it’s the shadows, or maybe this is a Photoshop disaster. Her puffly lips, her mangled nose, her GINORMOUS collarbones. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong.

And lastly, from the home front: bouncy balls. Our littlest cat is really taken by these foam balls, and will carry them around in her mouth. Then she meows at you so you’ll throw it for her, but because she has a foam ball in her mouth, it sounds hilarious. They certainly don’t stand up to much abuse, though — our carpet is covered with little shreds of red and purple, and those balls look like incomplete Death Stars. I just gave her the green one yesterday. Naturally, Target stopped carrying these toys two weeks after I bought them. Because that’s what the stores here do.

But this means that I’m way, way behind on reporting what I’ve read. So here’s a huge glut of books I’ve read recently. I’ll leave them linkless, as I have faith that you can find them on Amazon or your other favorite book source if any sound interesting.

Nanny Return by Emma McLaughlin and Nikola Kraus – This follow-up of The Nanny Diaries (which I own, and have read several times) takes place 12 years later. Nan is married, pondering children of her own, weaving her way through a work-world that, again, seems a little too over-the-top to believe. She also gets tangled back up with her former charge, Grayer X (who has turned into a grade-A douche) and the rest of the X family. Just like in the first novel, nobody around Nanny is a likeable character, but for some reason I didn’t mind it in the first. I did mind it in this one, and found it to be a tolerable read, but I won’t ever need to read it again. 5 out of 10.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby – What a shocker — a Nick Hornby book about an awkward relationship and something related to the music industry. In this one, a washed-up American singer/songwriter and the girlfriend of said s/s’s biggest fans strike up a sort of pen-pal email exchange. The characters were more uninteresting than unlikeable, and the ending left me wondering, What the heck? I don’t mind an ambiguous ending, but this one was ambiguous for no real reason. But I guess since I didn’t really care all that much for the characters, it was easy to walk away without caring too much what does, or doesn’t, happen to them. 5 out of 10.

Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor – How could I not pick this one up when I saw it on the shelf? Although Andy Taylor has always been, for me, the least important (and least swoonworthy) member of Duran Duran. Turns out, according to this autobiography, he was the driving force behind much of the writing, made most of the important decisions, regularly told the other lads when they were making huge mistakes, and just plain ended up having too much integrity to stick around when things got sour. Shocking, that the guy who paints himself as the most important member of the band is also the guy who is the only one who’s quit the band twice. There was some good history in the book, but it was all surrounded by a splash of douche. 5 out of 10.

Talking to Girls about Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield – Gang, this is NOT a book about Duran Duran. It’s one of those my-quirky-youth memoirs, tied together through the strange use of the music of the ’80s. Every chapter is titled with a different ’80s song, and Sheffield’s anecdotes from his teen years link loosely (or, sometimes, very loosely) with that song. Bottom line, he lived the life of a teenager in his teenage years, listening to music that a teenager of those teenage years would listen to. Oh, those crazy teens and the teen things they do! I quit one-third of the way through and tossed it on the go-back stack. 2 out of 10 (unfinished).

The Last Colony by John Scalzi – Third in the Old Man’s War series, this book picks up where the first two left off. With the lead Old Man, and one of the main characters from The Ghost Brigades. Scalzi’s universe continues to be a fun one to read, and this novel (like The Ghost Brigades) is more of a mystery than a space-war book. Characters, pace, and story were all great. I haven’t put the final book in the series on hold yet, partially because of the stack in front of me, and partially because I want to savor this universe. 8 out of 10.

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card – Third in the Ender series, and the worst so far of that series. The second book, Speaker for the Dead, left us in a cliffhanger that showed exactly what to expect for this third book. Sadly, the book is probably half again as long as it needs to be; too much of it is full of people wondering, people pondering, and people discussing what they’re wondering and pondering. And sometimes arguing about how what they’re wondering is in opposition to what someone else is pondering. Card covers the same questions several times, until finally at the end everything gets figured out surprisingly fast. I don’t think I can handle another book like this one, so I’ve gone ahead and read the Wikipedia synopsis of book four, Children of the Mind. Now I don’t need to read it. 6 out of 10.

Breathless by Dean Koontz – I picked this one up off the new-release shelf. I’ve liked quite a few of Koontz’s books in the past, but it seems like he’s really cranking them out these days, and the quality is going somewhat downhill. This book flashes between several unrelated characters, who (shockingly) all come together in the end. But a couple of those characters weren’t really all that interesting, and I only read their chapters because I was waiting to see how they related to the characters who were vaguely interesting. An uneventful first-contact-with-aliens story, but nothing to rush to the bookstore for. 6 out of 10.

The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker – I’ve seen this book recommended many, many times, so I figured I’d give it a read. It’s actually quite good, showing how we’ve been taught that to be “polite”, we will frequently ignore our own instincts. And it’s true — the few people in my life who have triggered my spidey-sense, even though other people seem to like them and the look and seem normal, have turned out to be major creepazoids. Fortunately, I didn’t feel shy about telling the boob-grabber to back the hell off, and I didn’t have a problem personally blackballing the guy who told a work colleague that on an out-of-town trip he was “finally going to get some of [me].” This book is a good read for both genders, and will probably be a real eye-opener for both. 8 out of 10.

The New Space Opera 2 (Collection) – This is a volume of short stories from a variety of authors. I likes me the sci-fi, and I likes me the space opera, so this was a really good read. both John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow had entries in this volume, which was what made me check it out in the first place. Now I’ll have to get volume 1 as well. Out of 19 stories, I only sped past three, which is a really good ratio for me. The 16 I completed ranged from good to fantastic, with a couple that I wished were fleshed out into full novels. 7 out of 10.

WHEW! There we go, 9 more books down. Now I can toss the Post-It on which I was building a list, and start a whole new Post-It for the rest of this stack. Read on, easy readers!

The starter was ready, more than doubling in size after a feeding. I had two days off in a row. It was time to bake!

I began by moving the starter into a larger bowl and feeding it with a full cup of flour, as well as about a half-cup of water. The mere act of making a bigger sour sludge changes its name from “starter” to “sponge”.

“Proofing the sponge” is letting your big gooey mess grow to double its size, as you can see here. Then you use some of the sponge for your bread dough, and put the rest back in your jar. Feed it again, and once more it’s just considered “starter”. Weird that it’s name changes like that, but there you go. Bakers are crazy.

Time to make the dough! I used a simple recipe, and mixed it in my big ol’ stand mixer with the bread hook:

2 cups sponge
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
1/2 cup water
2 cups flour

As with pretty much every other recipe on earth, mix the sponge with everything but the flour. Then add the flour slowly, a half-cup at a time or so, mixing every time. You don’t want to dust the house with explosive flour. Depending on your local humdity, altitude, and whatever other mysterous factors affect baking, you may need to add a little more flour or a little more water. Eventually, the dough will become one cohesive ball, not sticking to the sides of the mixer bowl. Let it thump around in there a little while longer, and you won’t have to knead by hand.

Clean out the sponge bowl, add a little olive oil, and toss in your dough orb. Make sure to roll the dough around in the oil, so that it’s all shiny and slick. This will keep the dough from drying out and getting a “skin” on the surface. Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel (again, the dampness helps keep the dough from drying out) and let it grow.

The picture just above is after 6 hours of rising — I mixed the dough at 5pm, and visited it right before heading off to bed at 11pm. I punched the dough back down, re-rolled it in the oil, re-dampened my tea towel, and went to bed.

9 hours later, the dough was ginormous again. I punched it, pulled it out of the bowl, threw some flour on my hands, and kneaded the stuff until it was a small ball again. Then I cut it into sixths, rolled them into balls, and put them on my silicon baking sheet.

I covered them directly with, you guessed it, a damp tea towel. Then we played some video games and went to Costco. Four hours after making the balls, they’d grown considerably again. I took off the towel and let them sit for another hour uncovered. As opposed to previous stints of damp-toweling and oil-slathering, this time I wanted them to grow skins, because that makes the crust even crustier.

So then, at 1pm the second day, I baked. at 350° for 30 minutes. (A full-size loaf would probably take 45 minutes or so.) And the result is some perfectly sour, dense and chewy, crusty-crusted sourdough bread!

So yes, it takes a lot of time. But really, most of that time passes without you having to do anything. I don’t think I put any more actual prep time into this bread than I would into, say, a batch of cookies or brownies. The prep time is just spread out a bit more. And you COULD bake after that first rise, if you felt the urge, although the more time you let this stuff do its thing, the more sour the resulting bread. This was 20 hours from making the dough to baking, and I think the level of sour is just right.

Came home today to find this ginormous mushroom next to the parking lot. Did a double-take, saw the tiny lizard on top of it. He scampered off just as my phone made its picture-clicky sound.

Meanwhile, the sourdough starter from the freezer is ready to use. It grew to more than double its original size (marked with a line) in two hours. Sadly, the pantry stuff isn’t quite there yet. (Although another day or two might get it there.)

I think I’m going to mix a little of the pantry stuff into the freezer batch and go down to just one container. Because the freezer stuff is peppy as heck, but the pantry stuff has more age to it, which means a more sour flavor. Since baking sourdough is an all-day project, I’ll just feed this stuff until Wednesday or Thursday, when I can get back into the swing of things with a practice loaf.

2 slices diced bacon
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
pinch of chopped fresh garlic

1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp basil
1/8 tsp dill
2 bay leaves
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp xanthan gum

2 cups heavy cream
4 oz (1/2 bottle) clam juice

8 oz. diced potatoes (steamed or canned)
1 can (6.5 oz) chopped clams

Starting from the top: dice two strips of bacon, then cook until brown and it gives off yummy bacon fat. Add the butter, onions, celery, garlic, and all of the dry spices. Cook until tender.

Add the xanthan gum (the original recipe calls for 1/3 cup flour at this stage) for thickening. Stir until smooth. Add the cream, clam juice, and any liquid in the can of chopped clams. Bring to a simmer, but not a boil (boiling is bad for cream).

Add the clams and potatoes, bring back to a simmer. Ready, set, eat!

Now, here are my quirks: first off, I used canned potatoes. I just don’t have the patience to cook them for this. I got whole potatoes and chopped them up, but you may also be able to find sliced or chopped potatoes in a can. Also, this could be a totally low-carb dish if you omit the potatoes entirely. Since I’m on maintenance, a little of the ol’ deadly nightshade is fine for me.

Next, I used my stick blender, but just a little bit. I still wanted lots of big chunks, but I also wanted some smaller chunks to help make a thicker texture. I think I got it just right; I probably stick-blended for 30 seconds total, popping in and out in order to get some big chunks under the blade. OH, and — take out the bay leaves before stick blending. Those aren’t good eatin’.

Lastly, I left out the original recipe’s listing of half-and-half (It would have been a quarter-cup, what’s the point?) and chopped fresh parsley. (Garnish, who needs it.) I also completely overlooked the a pinch of cayenne pepper, which probably would have jazzed this up a little bit. I’ll definitely add it next time, and I included it in the list above. I used more thyme than the original recipe called for, because thyme is my A-number-1 go-to favorite spice. You can adjust the seasonings accordingly to your liking.

It’s not surprising that I left something off; the original recipe card has the ingredients in a baffling order, instead of the more sensible order-you-cook-them-in. So I’ve put them in an order I like up above, spaced apart according to the various steps. Now I can put the card away and use a computer instead. Ah, the future. The future of chowder!

These are two of my favorite old holiday recipes, but they’re good any time. I think for the butter cookies, the original recipe was called “bunny butter cookies”, which I always figured meant they were for Easter. But in my house, we made these for birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, Flag Day, and every other holiday that merited cookies.

Mind you, neither of these recipes is low-carb, or sugar-free.

Bunny Butter Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 cup flour

Blend the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, and baking powder. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time, blending well each time. Then cover the whole mess with plastic wrap and toss it in the fridge for at least 2 hours to chill. I left this batch in the fridge overnight, and it came through just dandy.

Roll out half the dough, using plenty of flour to keep things from sticking. You can collect the scraps and re-roll, but bear in mind that they’ll be springier and may not hold their shape as well. The more rolling, the more the glutens go crazy.

Bake on silicon sheets, parchment paper, or non-stick baking sheets — whatever you have that’s nonsticky. 425° for 5-7 minutes. Makes 3 to 4 dozen cookies, depending on what size cutters you like.

Gingerbread Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups flour

Toss everything but the flour in a bowl, and mix well. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing after each. Then, as with the other cookies, stash the dough in the fridge for a couple of hours. Again, this stuff sat overnight and was great the next morning.

As with the others, roll out, use cutters (or slice into squares with a knife, if you want to build little houses), bake on a non-stick surface (same as the others). For these, it’s 350° for 6-8 minutes. It’s a bigger batch than the other, so you may get 4-5 dozen cookies depending on size.

Buttercream Frosting

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
1 box (16 oz) powdered sugar
1/3 cup cream
1 tsp vanilla

This is a modified version from the old C&H powdered sugar box. I used cream, because I don’t have milk in the house. And I used more than the 1/4 cup liquid, because I wanted a thinner, more pipe-able frosting.

I’m a haphazard icer. I mostly go for the easy squiggles, but on some I tried to make them look guitar-ish. Looking at the cookies, though, it strikes me that they’re more ukulele-ish in shape. But the neck of the guitar needs to be fatter and shorter, so the cookies don’t break as much. Tiny gingerbread ukes! NOM!