Today started out pretty relaxing, Lorien fell asleep on the couch because she wasn't sleeping well last night, and I woke up early and continued reading my book (Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas). She finally got up and left, and I started refreshing my own sourdough starter I started last year (not the one I normally use). I'm bringing it up to full activity to test its flavor; it has one chance to be tasty or I throw it out in favor of another one I have lined up (still, aside from my normal go-to Giza starter).
So after I refreshed the starter, I made bread. Eight pounds of bread dough. I soon realized that my 8 quart container isn't big enough for that much bread to rise in, as it began a Napoleonesque expansion war. I had to tap it down several times before it blew the lid off my container. Even after I put it in the refrigerator. Eventually I decided to just bake a one-pound loaf.
Just as that came out of the oven, Lorien came home and asked me to start on another Strawberry Cream Cake like I made a couple of weeks ago. I just took that cake out of the pan and it is in the final cooling stages.
So I did a lot of baking today, and it was all from scratch. I even organized some of my dry goods into sealed containers. I moved both my cake flour and masa harina out of their rolled-up open bags into sealed containers. Also, it's time to get rid of my bread machine. I haven't used it in a very long time…
We had a blast today, and I don't know when I'll be back to having a regular Internet connection so I'll fill you in on tomorrow's plans.
In the morning, we're going to go on a whale-watching cruise out of Depoe Bay. Then we're going to meander up the coast and check out some tidepools, then hit the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Oh yeah. Because we're all about the cheddar. Then we'll be on our way back to Portland.
I took some fantastic pictures of the animals this morning at the Safari Park. I don't have a good way to sort and edit them until I get home though, so you'll just have to wait.
I think we walked at least four miles on beaches today, too. My feet are killing me. Fortunately, we brought our Wellies and didn't get any sand in our shoes. They also let us go in to the water a ways, which is why we like them.
Waking up and hearing the ocean is a wonderful thing. I'm sitting in our suite in a Best Western in Bandon Oregon (Inn at Face Rock). We left Eugene (okay, technically Creswell but I don't expect you to know where that is) yesterday at about 5pm. We drove the back roads to Florence and decided to turn south instead of north this time.I'm glad we did. Our first idea was to stop in Coos Bay, but it wasn't much of a destination, so we kept going. We ended up stopping here in Bandon. It's not much of a town, at least what I saw of it last night, but it's nice. I've been having spotty cell service all along the coast (no surprise there), but the Best Western has free Wifi (w00t!).
When we checked in we found out that the receptionist was from Idaho and when we mentioned today is our anniversary she upgraded us from the normal room to the honeymoon suite! And sweet it is. Not only does it have a fantastic view of the ocean, it also has a fireplace and a jacuzzi tub big enough for at least three people. The bathroom (the one with the shower, there are two bathrooms in this suite!) is tiled with Italian stone, it's gorgeous stuff.
We had dinner at Bandon Bill's Seafood Grill, and (as usual) I had the fish and chips. They were above my par for fish and chips, though not the best I've ever had—that honor still resides with England, and more specifically a chip shop in Bath. We sat and at and watched the sun set over the beach. Then we walked down to the beach, but it was windy and cold. The tide was coming in so we took that as a cue.
The bed is firm, as I like it, but has a pillow top that feels extra soft. I don't think I so much as rolled over all night. Now I'm kicking back and listening to the ocean, plus a few cars that pass by. It is lightly raining now, but I won't let that spoil my wonderful morning. After breakfast, we'll leave the "westernmost Best Western in the continental US" and head over to the West Coast Game Safari Park for a Walking Safari. We had no idea there was such a thing on the Oregon coast! It's also a "Petting Park" and they have the cutest leopard cubs on their front page, go see it!
Afterwards, the plan is to head back north until we want to stop again. This is the life. Once we hit Tillamook we'll turn towards Portland but I don't know if that'll be today.
This week Lorien and I are going on a mini-vacation. We're leaving home and driving to Portland, which is perhaps our most common "vacation" spot. But we won't stop there! We'll visit my grandparents near Eugene, and drive up the coast to try to have the most relaxing time possible. Sushi will be consumed, and places will be visited. Our plans include the Tillamook Cheese Factory and Bob's Red Mill. I think we might even get roped in to babysitting. Woot! Oops, I think I got a little too excited for that last bit.
Continuing the series, here's our World 1-2 speed run. I think we could do this one faster, but haven't yet been able to beat it on camera. We finish with 448 left on the clock (52 seconds).
After running through the New Super Mario Bros
This is the first level, World 1-1, completed in 45 seconds (455 left on the clock).
My mom gave me a nice bread recipe book for Christmas. I love baking bread, I love the smell of bread, and I love eating the bread. I'm trying the cheddar recipe tonight, it's pretty simple and quick. I'll let you know how it goes later.
I recently got another starter from my uncle (I accidentally killed the last one—with insecticide believe it or not, but I digress…). I fed it, and took a bit out for a loaf of bread, but it came out really dense, and didn't rise much over the 12 or so hours I left it alone.
So I decided to experiment a little. I took out a cup or so and fed it some flour, water, and about a half teaspoon of sugar. Nothing happened for about the first day, but then it started picking up pretty good. Last night I put it in a bigger bowl and fed it some more. This morning it was still bubbling away happily. It is a bit slow, but has great flavor. I think I'll be ready to make up a batch later tonight.
Today I'm trying out two new bread recipes today. One is specifically for making bread bowls, and the other is a dark chocolate bread. My new sourdough starter isn't very sour yet, it's only a week old. First loaf made with it didn't taste sour at all. Maybe I'll make another loaf tonight and see how it goes.
I received my copy of Richard Bartle's card game Spymaster in the mail today. I ordered just as I was returning from PAX 2009.
I must say I'm most impressed with the look-and-feel of the design. The cards, pictures, fonts, etc were all well-chosen and carry a cold-war style that contributes great atmosphere to the game. It also came with several blank cards. Good when your spies get assassinated, I guess. By a small child with a teething problem (as opposed to in-game when they face an assassin).
Well we survived PAX 2009 in Seattle. It was pretty crazy, and there were tons of sweaty, nerdy gamers all over the place.
We met several famous people there, including Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek TNG fame), Steve Jackson, Jonathan Coulton, and Jhonen Vasquez.
We played several new board games, some that aren't even available yet. My favorite was Nanuk which we'll be ordering as soon as possible. The Stars are Right was also really fun, although a little bit harder to get started with. I don't mean this in a bad way, though. It's just such a different type of game than I've played before. Well-worth learning and playing.
We also got two Waiting For Santa packs for Munchkin. They still aren't available for purchase through normal venues, but they had a very limited quantity available at PAX. I was too late to get any of the Fairy Dust packs.
We also met the folks from Flying Frog Productions, creators of Last Night On Earth. We met the actors that play Sally and Jake and got autographed photos from them. We also picked up the expansion for LNOE and preordered three new expansions coming out later this year.
I have two batches (three loaves) of sourdough to bake tonight. They're rising for the second time right now. I made them up yesterday, my starter (a Giza culture) is a slow riser. They look good, though. I like my normal recipe, but I'd like to try to find an even better recipe—this is the first experiment. I'm going to start baking in another hour or two. If I remember, I'll take some pictures!
We've been playing more Liar's Dice tonight. About 3 more hours today. Calling it quits before it gets out of hand.
Edit: Had to correct a spelling error from my iPhone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The WordPress app wouldn't even tell me it had posted this entry…
Last night my youngest brother Wes came over and we played Liar's Dice (or Pirate's Dice, etc) for at least four hours. It's a fun game! The variation we have uses dice with a skull instead of a single pip that is "wild." It makes the game real interesting.
Well my MUD project is back up and working after a big reorganization of globally-scoped data. Yes, it is evil. No, there isn't much of a way around it. It's not a lot, but it needed to be wrapped up in a single class to simplify referencing to in other objects.
Things are running smooth again, but now I have to go back and take out some place holder room code and move its functionality to the new zone system. I changed a helper class over to be a namespace while I had things taken apart, since it never had any data associated with it, just functions. I'm using boost::filesystem now for file access, and it's so much better now. Seriously, I have no idea how I got this far without Boost.
In any case, I'm happy with the progress made in the last week or so. I'm also attending the online GDCU course offered by Ian Schreiber (it's about game design in general), and it's been real interesting so far.