[sactown] State Capitol Building

State Capital

So, I’ve promised a friend I would start taking pictures of Sactown to show her. It gets me out of the office at lunch — most of these will be walking distance from work — and it lets me see a bit more of the city I live in. I’ll start the series with this shot, from last Friday, of the State Capitol building here in Sacramento.

I joke Sacramento is a company town. People look at me strange until I point out that the company is the State of California, and when the state hurts, everybody hurts. And it’s been really bad times for the State of California for years. We papered over a lot of it with the housing bubble, but eventually those things come back to haunt you.

That said, I love our state capitol building, and I especially love it this time of year with the Christmas tree in front.

beauty in destruction

Smashed taillight

My kid sis was in a car wreck on Saturday. She’s got a sore neck and received a concussion in the accident, but she’ll be fine. This is the taillight of her car — it got crunched but it looks fixable. We don’t know much beyond that, but I admit that I love this shot of the aftermath of the accident. It’s strangely beautiful despite being of a smashed taillight.

Oil and water do so mix…

…at least, when it comes to odd but pretty pictures.

Oil and water

It rained at la casa de katster last night, and as I was getting into my car this morning, I spotted this interesting puddle on the driveway where my dad usually parks. (Yeah, his truck has a minor oil leak.) Of course I had to take a picture as the surface tension and colors caught my attention.

(I suppose turning this into a photoblog would assure people I’m alive…)

This is my pocket knife

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Went to run a few items to the post office. Now, the post office in Sacramento is in the federal building, mere feet from the security guards manning the metal detector.

They wouldn’t let me take the knife in. I guess I could use it to go postal on the postal employees, but why?  Hell, my keys (which I am allowed to take in the federal building) would probably do more damage.

So I had to put it outside.  Also, their metal detector is sensitive enough to detect glasses.  Meh.

Security theatre sucks, as does paranoia.

On my way…

Stopped in Cordelia Junction to fuel both myself and my car. This place has always been my marker that I’m entering the Bay Area, so I guess I’m actually going.

Corflu, here I come.

The future is now

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So I got a new hard drive for Christmas.  It astounds me that something smaller than a standard paperback novel holds 1 terabyte of data.  Even more astounding, it cost less than half of the six gigabyte drive I bought in 1998.

The future is now, and it’s truly awesome.

The latest entries in the WTF serving size competition

So I’ve been trying to be more interested in nutrition labels to get a better idea of what calorie counts and other stuff are in my food. This has now become a game, in which I attempt to find the most egregious and/or crazy entries on the nutritional label.

Today brings us two entries in the WTF serving size competition:

1) Apparently, a serving size of Tic Tacs is one Tic Tac, with the extremely precise value of 1.9 calories per serving. (Sorry the picture’s kinda blurry, was trying to take it fast.)

Tic tac nutrition

2) I’d like you to try and eat just one-third of a muffin at once. (The whole muffin is 600 calories. OMG.)
Muffin nutrition

Too much good stuff

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I found this in the grocery store last night.

Me: I’m afraid to look at how many calories that has.

Jill: (flipping package over): Servings per package: 12. Calories: 200. Calories from fat: 90.

Me: Yeesh! That’s one-sixth of one cup per serving.

So I guess if you really like Reese’s, this might be worth it. Just keep in mind, one cup is more than half your RDA.

Ode to a Banana

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See the humble banana.
Bright yellow, with a bit of green at the tip.
As a kid, I would put the sticker on my forehead
And wear it there all day.

I am an adult now;
I must put up my childish ways.
My sticker will go with the peel.

But a banana
Handy fruit in a carrying case
Is good for a mid-morning snack.

A power of two birthday

Today, I turned:

100000 (in binary)
200 (in base 4)
40 (in octal)
But only 20 in hexadecimal.

Or, in regular numbers normal people use, today I turned 32.

I’ll have more to say when I’m not typing the post on the phone.

WTF?

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I don’t care if you’re Consumer Reports.  Emoticons are not a good idea in the title of your magazine.

chicky noodle

On cold rainy days like today, I make soup or stew. My favorite to make is chicken noodle, mostly because it’s dead simple. It goes like this — cut carrots, celery, and chicken into bite sized pieces. Add a bit of thyme, some garlic powder, and a bit of lemon pepper. Cover in chicken broth, boil approximately an hour to an hour and a half (until chicken is tender), dump egg noodles in, cook until egg noodles are soft.

Yummy, filling, and good. It’s one of my favorites.

Rocking the shades…

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So it was the shindig for my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary tonight.  Before we all went over to the restaurant, we hung out in the hotel. My uncle found the shades in the pocket in the back of Mom’s wheelchair and soon enough, my cousin Steph was rocking them.  In the pic is Jill, Steph, and Steph’s boyfriend Mike.

Happy anniversary, Nanny and Papa!