Publius & Co.

Meat-Balls

Since it's the night of the balls, and since Dawn, who likes "high sticks" and is probably into balls, is doing a Ball-theme for her Carnival of the Recipes, I present my meatball recipe. It's pretty straight-forward, and works well in meatball subs, spaghetti and meatballs, minestroni soup with meatballs, or meatballs in a chili sauce and grape jelly sauce.

Or you can just feed them to the dog.

Meatballs:
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
Salt and pepper

Mix ingredients and form meatballs. Bake on a broiler pan (to let grease drain off) until cooked.

Merry Christmas to All!

Friday Rat Blogging

Man, I haven't done this in awhile. Meet Bandit:

Bandit is a young boy, about 4 or 5 months old, who was adopted from a friend of ours when he bit their toddler. Yes, he has a history as a biter, and he's even bitten the gf once, but he hasn't bitten me. We're trying to socialize him using a technique called forced socialization; this picture was taken from the second session. He had his fourth session yesterday, and it's getting easier and easier to get him out of the cage. I don't even have to wear the welding gloves anymore.

We have high hopes we can socialize him and turn him into a loving little boy.

Help me win a prize!

Jen is less than 700 hits away from her quarter-of-a-millionth visitor. In celebration of that event, she's giving away a bucket of Iowa State Hawkeye stuff that I want. I like winning stuff, so please click on any of my links to Jen for history, stuff, or just because.

Christmas Party Time!

I worked in a country club, on and off, for about twelve years. The job was a royal PITA, to be honest, but the people I worked with were great. We were so great that when, during a party when one of our co-workers (who later went on to be the manager of the club) decided to cut off a branch from a tree in his backyard, we sat there and watched while he cut away the offending branch while he was sitting on it.

Good times, you bet.

In order to keep member dues down (and we had some cheap-ass members) the club would take outside parties. Weddings, college halloween parties, high-school proms, you name it. We weren't proud--we'd take anybodies money!

And Christmas parties. Lord-a-mighty did we do Christmas parties. When that was my full-time job, fourteen to eighteen hour days were the norm for those of us with the stamina. Three parties a day were not unheard of.

I did everything for these parties over those years--cooked banquets, worked buffets, bussed the tables, waited on the tables, and tended bar (both main and satellite). Paul at Snooze Button Dreams talks about the end of the office Christmas party, and working those parties at the club, we saw it all.

Some girl would inevitably get drunk and start grinding a VP when the music came on. Yep, though I'm not sure all of those guys were VPs. One time it wasn't her husband, though. *That* was a great scene, believe you me.

Some guy would end up taking his shirt off on the dance floor and spin it over his head. Never a shirt. Jackets frequently, but no shirts that I can recall. Paul didn't mention that the guy to start swinging his jacket over his head was always, always white, and it was usually during Celebration or Shout, two songs that are banned from any celebration I should be having (Seriously--I'll put a clause in the contract that if the DJ plays those songs, no matter who asks for them, they forfeit all pay plus they pay me a penalty of $10,000.).

Drunks would start asking the executive officers personal questions. Again, not sure if they were executives, but one guy asked another if it was true he and his wife had been in a three-way with another co-worker (the name of the "other" co-worker, as I recall, was "Chris" which could go either way). The guy said, "No," but the look on his face said, "Yes."

People would go outside and come back stinking of weed and then get approached by someone important. No weed, but you would frequently hear lots of snorting in the bathroom.

And, I admit, I've seen things like this.

Good times. Good times.

For Ted

Bah! Humbug!

I am fucking sick of Christmas music.

UPDATE: Especially Jingle Bell Rock.

White Screen of Death

Yep, it went white. It's an interesting phenomenon, blog burnout.

What has prompted this post is something happening to someone else...namely, Jen. It turns out she's about fifty hits from 250,000 visitors, and she's having a contest where the referrer of her 250,000th hit wins a big prize of some sort. I'm hoping to be that referrer, so to anyone who might stumble on this post sometime today, click on this link and help me win a big prize! Or a small one--I just like winning prizes.