...roller coaster weather, Twitter, and bread.

The funnestestest part of April in Ohio is the weather.  We had some brutal cold to end March, followed by temperatures in the 80's (for my foreign readers, you're used to converting us provincial bastards who use Fahrenheit, so ho to it), followed by frost warnings and sub-freezing temperatures, and then back into the 80's, then cold again.  It's marked by the need to have a winter coat, a jacket, and shorts, because you'll need all three at some point in the day some days.

I do have the windows open and the heat off right now, but as it is only in the 50's, I'm going to probably close that up.

But it does have its advantages.  For example, it looks like I'll be mowing grass tomorrow, which is better than having to wait until May.  Last year hella-sucked for grass growth, especially since the front portion of the yard is still recovering from road reconstruction, which killed off the grass.  And the village has resown the grass twice, and I've thrown myself some seed in there too.  But it's half weed/half bare for the most part.

But there are signs that the grass is greener now.  I threw some seed on a bare spot up near the steps, and it is sprouting beautifully.  And I'm really trying to see if I've got some green thumb going on.  I planted some new flowers, and plants to fill out the front, got some caging around my rose bush so it doesn't flop around like my cock at the thought of my future sex life, and threw some fruit and vegetables in to boot.  Have some strawberries, bell peppers, and green onions in my back flower bed (which is better than having weeds), and am working up a hanging basket of strawberries, and a basket of tomatoes.  So I'll have to let you all know if that works.

And the fastest way to do that?  Twitter!  Yes, I have submitted myself to the 140-character limit that microblogging requires.  Actually, it's a real challenge for someone as verbose as me.  Considering that some of my compound curses alone evade the character limit, and that I abhor the use of excessive abbreviations in almost all cases (except instant messaging, where it's really an organic conversation, although I just abbreviate for the common crap (brb, bbiab, gfyysmfpos, etc.)).  Really, unless you really have a limit to your characters, do you really need to shorten every word by a letter or two?  It makes you sound like a retard.

That's one thing that I've been working on with my kids is the proper use of the English language.  Of course the fact that I often use the F-word twice to describe a newborn puppy does tend to make it more of a challenge.  And imagine what happens when I hear a politician laying out the bullshit.

Which is why I like to do the simple things.  Like making bread.  The only problem with the breadmaking was that it was labor-damned-intensive.  My stand mixer fried a few years ago, and that meant hand kneading the shit.  10 minutes, let it rise, beat it down some more, rise it again, shape it and bake it.  2 1/2 hours later, excellent bread.  But it's work.

So the answer would be a bread machine.  I finally got around to getting one as I perused some garage sales on Thursday.  I had originally planned to be doing a garage sale this year, but I got behind on everything (and am still behind now), so I planned to do the community sales on Saturday, and slept in (no kids weekend).  So my garage sale experience was a few on the way home from a shuffle-the-autism-boy meeting at school, and a walk around the block to check out the neighbors on Thursday.  So i finally got the machine set up, loaded, and walked away.  However, the kneading paddle didn't move.

Shit.  $10 wasted.  Of course, being the industrious son of a bitch that I am, I got around to tearing into the machine today (while fielding tech calls).  The biggest challenge was, of course, unscrewing the thing.  I had to undo some of the screw removal damage before I could check anything.  What I found only seconds later was that it was one of those stupid fucking kill switches, the kind that they put on because people are stupid enough to not close the lid.  It was literally a 30-second fix once I go in there.  That machine is making delicious bread right now, in fact.  As long as I didn't short on the flour.

Which reminds me of how easy my longest call was to actually fix after I got past all the bullshit in between.  40 minutes.  And due to limitations on what we can tech, it took 35 minutes to figure out that the computer WAS connected.  And the problem was solved by unchecking ONE BOX.

I think solving most problems in life involves digging through a lot of shit to fix the simplest thing in the world.....