December | 2003 | mashby

December 12, 2003

A Little Slice Of Heaven

A Slice Of Heaven Holly and I love having friends and family stay with us. It gives us a chance to do some quality visiting, time to catch up on what’s been happening with each other and of course, enjoy some good food. As much as we enjoy it though, it can be a little draining, so we’ve developed a little ritual after everyone has left. It wasn’t planned mind you, it’s just one of those things that happen naturally, but I look forward to it as soon as I hear that someone is coming to visit.

Holly’s Mother and Grandmother were in town since last Sunday. Holly took off 3 days from work so that she could spend time with them and they clearly had a blast. I too enjoyed visiting with them in the evenings when they would come home from a day of shopping and sightseeing. Holly’s Grandmother, Inez, is a real character. She’s so full of life and quick to crack a joke. She’s a real joy in our lives. Holly’s Mom, Judie, is a gem as well. Since we don’t get to see her as often as we’d like, every time we see her Holly and I turn into 10 year olds trying to show our Mom what we’ve recently done. “Mom, look at what I did.” Mom, look at what I can do!” I may be 36 years old, but you wouldn’t know it when I try to show off my latest home project, or recent web site design. We had a blast while they were here and we were sorry to see them go yesterday morning. We all stood in the morning frost, while they pulled out of the driveway and headed back to Baton Rouge.

December 10, 2003

When Recipes Go Wild

Madeleines and Coffee I have fallen in love with the French cookie/cake called a Madeleine. They are small shell shaped cookies, but instead of the hard crunch of a cookie, or biscuit, they are made with light fluffy cake. I understand that you can get them in many flavors, but the only ones I’ve found have a hint of vanilla, or lemon flavor which is barely discernible on your pallet. I came across the DonSueMor Brand one day at Starbucks and they go so well with coffee that I can’t seem to keep from buying them whenever I’m there. At $2.00 for a bag of three, I thought it might be best if I learned how to make them to have around the house. Of course, this wasn’t a conscious thought that lead immediately to action mind you. This was one of those “wouldn’t it be great” thoughts that you tuck away and recall from time-to-time.

It wasn’t until I was watching the DVD of The Transporter that my little nurturing thought was moved into action. I was watching the movie when Lai bakes some Madeleines for our hero Frank Martin. As the two action stars sat there eating them and discussing their next move, I thought, “Man, wouldn’t that be great to enjoy a Madeline with my coffee?” I could just picture myself sitting at the kitchen table, overlooking the pasture that rests behind our home. Dotting the landscape are grazing cattle, some nursing their young, while I type away on my Alphasmart Dana. Every so often, I pause for a sip of coffee and a nibble of this French cake delicacy and look down at Gracie sleeping at my feet. Even now, this idea makes me close my eyes so I can savor the thought in my mind as if it were suckling a rich piece of chocolate, letting it melt and soothe my body.

December 8, 2003

Missed Opportunities At Calloway Gardens

Opportunity I am a coffee snob. I admit it and I’m not ashamed of it. I like good coffee in just about any form – espresso, french press, drip, cappuccino, etc. Coffee is almost like a drug, once you’ve had the good stuff it’s hard to go back. Starbucks is OK, but there’s other brands that I prefer and I’ll drive miles out of my way for it and pay a handsome fee for it as well. This fact was completely lost on Callaway Gardens when I visited there over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Call it catering to snobs, but I found a lot of missed opportunities at Callaway. These opportunities were not just flights of fancy, but opportunities that would generate revenue. There was a lot of wasted space in the main area of the Inn. What used to be the bar, was turned into a general common area that had little rhyme or reason. This area could be easily converted into a coffee bar. Starbucks has brought the idea of fancy coffee into the mainstream. Setting up a coffee shop that also served a pastries and bagels would have been very popular. There was a restaurant of course, but if you wanted something quick and easy, you were out of luck.

December 7, 2003

Sprucing Up The Place

Sprucing Up The Place After Friday’s entry regarding Plugins and how to tweak MT, I couldn’t help but do a little tweaking myself. That coupled with the comments from my review at The Weblog Review, I thought of a few things that I could do to kind of spruce up the place. There’s a saying that you’re never truly done with a website. There are always things you find that you can do to tweak it just a little bit more. Well, this weblog is no exception and here’s a rundown of what I did.

Add A Description
The first thing I needed to address was the issue of describing what my weblog is about. The name “mashby.com” doesn’t really tell you much if you don’t know me already, so I added a description to the upper right corner of the main weblog. I’m a big fan of introduction statements on a web page, so I can’t imagine how I missed this one.

December 5, 2003

Walking With The Turkeys

My allergies were out of control yesterday. I must have sneezed a thousand times and my eyes burned all day. By the end of the day I felt like I was beginning to come down with something. I think it was due to all the post nasal drip, but it was hard to tell at the time. Holly wasn’t feeling all that well either and so we went to bed at a decent hour in the hopes that sleep would make us both feel better.

December 5, 2003

Why I Love The MT Community

Love written in Chinese It’s been a little while since I’ve written about MovableType, but if you check the archives you’ll see that I’ve written a fair amount on the subject. What brings this topic up again is that I was talking to a friend about weblogging software and I was reminded of an example that illustrates why MT is such a great weblogging tool – the community.

Ben and Mena G. Trott have created a fantastic product. It’s so well thought out and documented that I would guess that 95% of what you’d like to do on your weblog could be done with MT ‘right out of the box.’ To help you discover all that can be done with MT, there is excellent documentation. Whenever I’m thinking of adding a new feature, or tweaking an existing one, I always turn to the documentation first. Chances are MT already has what I’m looking to add built in.

December 4, 2003

My Love Affair With Paper

paper_love_affair I’m about as techie as they come. I always seem to have a gadget of some sort on me and more often than not, I’ve got more than one. Since starting this weblog, I’ve been carrying around my Dana wherever I go and use it to jot down thoughts and ideas. Yet with all this technology surrounding me, I find that I still have a love affair with paper.

Journals
I use paper less and less these days, but I still pack a National Brand 43-571 stitch bound notebook that serves as my journal. Since college, I’ve used this style of notebook and I’m now in my 6th one. I love the cloth covered cardboard covers which protect the light green ruled and numbered pages underneath. I found these notebooks at the LSU bookstore and it’s the only place that I’ve found them. I think it’s a lab notebook, but all my Google searches turn up Chemistry class overviews requiring the. Every few years I go by the bookstore when I’m in Baton Rouge and stock up. It’s not that the notebooks have the best paper, or anything of that nature, I just like them.

December 4, 2003

Welcome To Mashby’s Booty Camp

Last night, right as Holly and I were just going to bed, Holly made the comment, ‘Michael, I’m fat. You have to help me get back on track.’ I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric time and time again. In my opinion Holly is not fat. She’s not the lean mean pageant queen I met back in 1988, but she is in no way fat to me. I find her ravishingly gorgeous more now than ever. I’m not just saying that because I think she might read this. One because she doesn’t read my weblog and two because it’s true.

December 3, 2003

Day Two And Three Posted

It’s taken longer than I thought, but I was finally able to post Day Two and Day Three of the Natchez Trace Bicycle Tour today. Some of the highlights include further tales of roughing it on the Trace, progress on my aching ass and almost getting hit by a truck. Ahhh… good times.

December 3, 2003

Holly Auditions For Nashville Star

Holly auditioned for the USA Networks television show Nashville Star this past weekend, only she didn’t do it in person. Instead, she submitted a video tape of her music and her life for the producers to review. If chosen for the show, she will have to live in a house here in Nashville with the other 9 contestants during the competition. The winner receives a recording contract from Sony Music Nashville.

This is the second season for Nashville Star and although we don’t think that she’ll be picked, it was a good excercise and helped generate a lot of ideas and focus on Holly’s music career. It’s not that we don’t think that Holly is talented enough, quite the opposite, it’s just that there are so many people auditioning for these coveted 10 slots that the chances of the producers watching her video and choosing her seem quite slim. But whose to say? I’m sure last year’s winner, Buddy Jewell thought the same thing when he auditioned.

Month / December 2003