How I Spent My First Furlough Day

The library I work for, in the face of budget cuts from the state, has implemented rolling furlough days, which means that half of the branches in the system are closed one Thursday, and the other half are closed on the next Thursday, for ten weeks through November. That means that everybody who works in the system gets five unpaid Thursdays off. This is not an ideal situation, and it will put a bit of strain on most people's finances, but while the time off is not paid, it is still time off, and I intend to make the most of this situation. The branch I work at had our first furlough day last week, and the week since has been crazy busy. This is Banned Books Week, so preparing for that, dealing with the additional workload after the day off, and dealing with Banned Books Week, training and meetings this week have kept me pretty busy at work and at home. In any case, here now is a partial list of things that I did on my first furlough day:

-Stayed up until four o'clock in the morning the night before, practicing the keyboard.
-Slept until around eleven o'clock, which was later than I'd wanted to get up, but, you know, I'd been up until four AM.
-Did several loads of laundry.
-Removed a stain from a suit jacket.
-Did a great deal of cleaning.
-Made rice milk.
-Started a batch of sauerkraut.
-Made soup.
-Shot video for that week's episode of Miscellanea as well as some for a future episode.
-Watched the pilot episode of Freaks and Geeks, the complete boxed set of which I got for my birthday a few years ago and hadn't gotten around to watching yet. I'm enjoying it.
-Practiced the keyboard.

There were a few things I didn't get around to, like making bread, but sometimes overplanning your day can lead to being pretty productive. I got a lot of things done. Next week I might take more time to relax on my furlough day. I haven't been taking the time to read very many books lately, and I'd like to make some significant progress on my TBR list.

Two Kinds of Pretzel, Two Videos

I was going to make a post about each video I made as I uploaded them, but hey, I haven't made a post on this blog in over a month! I've got some catching up to do. I've made seven episodes at this point, and I'd like to have a record of the production of my projects to refer back to, so I'm going to gradually post about the episodes I've made in the meantime. These posts might only be interesting to me, but I'm going to post them anyway, so there!

This episode was the first, and the only so far, to be split into two parts. I had wanted to show the versatility of baked goods such as soft pretzels by making two different kinds, one savory, the other sweet. YouTube places a ten minute limit on user-uploaded videos. During the editing process, after I'd shot everything but before I'd done the voiceovers, I realized that this episode was going to surpass that limit by several minutes. There wasn't enough excess footage to make up the difference by making cuts, so I decided to make it a two-parter and insert an intermission as a transition from one to the other. Coincidentally, I'd already downloaded several public domain drive-thru theater intermission reels from archive.org, so I cut the beginning and end off of one and used that.



I finished the first part, then exported and uploaded it before I finished the second part.



It's not the most work I've ever done on a video, even in such a short amount of time, but I think it's been the most labor-intensive episode of Miscellanea I've made so far, and I felt justified in taking the next week off from the series, as I'd made the equivalent of two episodes in one weekend. This is the only episode I've put a teaser at the end of so far, but I'd like to do that more often.

Jeez, this post is wordy.

Candied 'Yams' Are Old Hat- Here's a Better Way to Enjoy Sweet Potatoes

This video took me two days to make, rather than the several weeks of the previous episode. Each of the two probably took a similar amount of time in terms of hours, but for this one I already had the microphone and the setup and stuff. I'm still trying to find the best format and settings for uploading to YouTube, but there are many variables to consider. I'll try something different with the next episode. I'd rather not have to spend several hours uploading a video, but for fairly high quality that would be unavoidable. I'm trying to find something in between. I'd like the uploaded videos to have quality somewhat higher than this one and the previous one, and I'd prefer not to spend more than an hour or two uploading.

How to Make Rice Milk in Your Very Own Home

I spent several weeks making this video. I ran into several minor problems in the process. I had some trouble with my microphone and had to order a new one. I had some rather unusual trouble with audio synchronization. I tried two different export formats and settings before I figured out how to optimize it (or at least make it a bit better) for internet streaming.

In any case, I've finished it and uploaded it. This is the first episode of a series of instructional and informative videos I'm making called Miscellanea. This is How to Make Rice Milk.

Save Ohio Libraries

If you care at all about Ohio's economy, the quality of education in Ohio, and the quality of life in Ohio, please contact the Joint Conference Committee immediately and let them know that slashing Ohio's library funding in half would be devastating to the state. Library usage has risen significantly during this recession. People need libraries now more than ever. Libraries offer more services now than at any time in their history. Ohio's library budgets are already stretched tight due to a twenty percent decrease in state funding. An additional thirty percent cut would force many to cut services, make layoffs, and even close. Ohio can ill afford to further cripple the job market, not only by putting so many library employees out of a job, but by taking away resources that so many people use to develop new job skills, create resumes, look for jobs and fill out online applications. Those are just a fraction of the services that libraries provide freely to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Contact info for the Joint Conference Comittee:

House Conferees:
Name Phone Number Email
Vernon Sykes 614-466-3100 district44@ohr.state.oh.us
Jay Goyal 614-466-5802 district73@ohr.state.oh.us
Ron Amstutz 614-466-1474 district03@ohr.state.oh.us

Senate Conferees:
Name Phone Number Email
John Carey 614-466-8156 sd17@senate.state.oh.us
Mark Wagoner 614-466-8060 SD02@senate.state.oh.us
Dale Miller 614-466-5123 sd23@maild.sen.state.oh.us

A Case of Spring Fever, a review

The following film is a harrowing tale of radical indoctrination, monopolization and technological dependence. The film starts with the protagonist fixing the springs on a broken sofa. In a moment of frustration, he carelessly remarks that he never wants to see another spring as long as he lives. He is overheard by a spring imp named Coily, who has the terrifying power to instantly remove all springs from everything everywhere! He does this, and our hero is soon faced with a grim dystopia in which nothing functions; not his sofa, not his watch, not his front door, not even his car. The wretched imp has revealed to him the awful truth of our world: that we are all slaves to the spring, unable to perform even basic functions without its ubiquitous presence.
Our hero soon finds himself in the grips of a powerful dilemma, torn between living in a world without springs, scraping out a meager existence as our springless caveman ancestors did, or giving in to the spring cartel and not only aiding in the proliferation of their monopoly but committing his life to the promotion of their coiled dogma. In a moment of weakness that nobody could slight him for, he chooses the latter.
Coily instantly returns the man to a seemingly joyful world that is simply loaded with springs, but our fallen hero is a changed man. We see him on a golf course with his friends. Instead of enjoying the peaceful simplicity of the game in the idyllic setting, he spends every moment of the outing logorrheically spouting the doctrine of the coil. His friends are at first simply bored by him and annoyed, but it is implied that they will ultimately abandon him, leaving him to a life of alienation and servitude. Now he belongs to the spring.

Great Lakes Blackout Stout

It is immediately apparent that this is no ordinary stout. Pouring out of the bottle not like a beer but like a thin, pure syrup, it forms little head, but what foam does gather on the top is a deep caramel brown. The aroma is intense, and all at once suggests dark black coffee, rich molasses, and the mineral tang that is not as much metallic as it is reminiscent of fertile earth. On the palette it quickly grabs you and asserts itself quite fully. This is a stout for stout drinkers. Those aromas present in the bouquet have their counterparts in the flavor, certainly, but there are many layers within a sip of Blackout Stout. There are bold tones of toasted grain, evoking visions of fields of barley. Coffee and dark chocolate cross the tongue and remain until the finish. The finish itself and the aftertaste are pleasantly bitter. There is always a hint of sweetness dancing around the flavors, or they dancing around it, but one would not call this a sweet beer. The balance is pulled off so well that the bitterness is nearly always present, but not overpowering for those who have a taste for it. At nine percent alcohol by volume, this is a powerful brew. It is not like a snack, something that you knock back a few of in the afternoon. It is a meal, or a dessert, to be savored on occasion, perhaps with a bit of dark chocolate or a cigar. Available seasonally, apparently only in February and March, pick some up if you can find it.

Great Lakes Blackout Stout.