Armor? Amour? Ang Moh?

So today, I ordered a double cheeseburger, a Louisiana Gumbo and a custom salad. The burger took a while, so by the time I joined Pepper and our roomies at the lunch table, the conversation was already in full swing. Pepper and I were innocent bystanders in the wholesale slaughter of the English language.

Roomies were talking to each other, in their 2nd language — English. Imagine a PRC mainlander and a Myanmese trying to have a technical conversation with an intermediate (and I use this term in it's broadest possible sense) command of the language....
They were babbling away, talking about what I heard as "Ang Moh plucks", "Amour blokes", "Arm More Blogs" when they were actually talking shop about "Armor Blocks". Pepper and I started losing it at that point. Here's why:

Armor — protection designed to shield wearer or object from harm/danger.


Armor block — Shielded Input/Output module for use in space-limited manufacturing environments (the 'armor' shields sensitive components from factory crap?) (no, actually, it can be installed directly onto a machine).

Amour — Love, in French (generally speaking).


"Toots" L'Amour — "The Ass That Goes POW". I kid you not. Google this, if you want, but don't say I didn't warn you about violating corporate Internet policy..



Amour Block — some IEEE communications code mumbo-jumbo.


Arm More Blogs — more Humour! yay!

Ang Moh — Literally (in Hokkien), red hair. Normally used to refer to any American, Briton, or European, regardless of hair color or ethnicity. Slightly derogatory, but can be used affectionately.

Ang Moh Plucks — Caucasian butcher defeathering poultry. Or something. Who Knows?

Do you Smeeeeeeeellllll....

... what my roomie is cooking? Here's some hints:

• Burnt salty water
• Crisco fumes
• Onion-fueled Burmese Nose Snot
• Carbonized mulched Pig-meat with MoanoSodiumGluetamate and assorted organic Nitrates

If you guessed pseudo-Bolognaise sauce for non-noodled-Spaghetti, you guessed wrong!
Roomie is on the phone (again), telling his Girlfriend Down Under that he's steaming chicken. Wrong!
It's leftover Dinner Splatter, lovingly seared by Heating Coil. Mmmm. So appetizing.

As I desperately static-charge my way to the balcony door and set off a St Elmo's Fire-sized blue ball of kinetic energy on the handle, I remember the fresh smells of:


- moist loam, freshly revealed by snowmelt, and a squirrel's determined rooting. See the little guy near the 'trunk'.

- freshly rain-pelted sludge, lining the driveway. It's lightly garnished with cigarette ash, broken butts, with a light sprinkle of tarred driveway meticulously gouged out by snow ploughs. The upright squirrel in the background (near the tree line) is obviously chittering in appreciation.

- recently used squirrel outhouse (behind and to the right of the leftmost tree). Note the grand entrance to the rustic abode of Mr & Mrs Squirrel.

- pristine ornithoid spoor, joyously revealing to interested amateur anthropologists what geese can forage from soggy ground.

- gently spiralling clumps of snow, born of virgin moisture from the heavens, turned crystalline by temperatures decrescendo poco a poco. Snow and gently rolling fog enveloping Gates Mills in a sleepy embrace, silencing the shriek of technology, wrapping a cocoon of tranquility upon all who can hear.

Scenes from Today

OK, so this was last night. But I'll be having part two tonight! Roasted Beef Rump with red potatoes, red onions and very sweet corn!

The last bit of crinkle-cut clouds before rain and sleet clouds descend upon our soon-to-be-flooded Landerhaven facility.

This isn't a squirrel pic, it's a Squizilla pic.


A preview of conditions tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted on black ice accidents.

Images for today...

Debris from my roomie's quickie 6 minute bacon, egg and toast breakfast - very noisy, and I don't mean the pseudo-crisp bacon or toast either.


Ice-cream cone newspaper dispenser?

The one patch of open sky this afternoon in between snow flurries. Did you know that an airplane ran out of runway today at Cleveland Hopkins Airport? Yeah, poor thing was going too fast or something, and the suddenly snow-covered runway didn't help none neither. Thankfully, no casualties. Not if you count the two engines..

[Sigh]. I think the local fire station draw lots to see who gets to respond to the false alarms from Gates Mills.

Unwanted detritus

This? Not by a long shot! Had nice change of breakfast this morning, with flapjacks and eggs and sausage patties. Yummers!

No, this here pic is of the discard:

The wonderful tenants in my apartment complex apparently have no regard for corporate property, nor goodwill. I had to pull this cart out of the way - some carbon-based life form with silly putty for brains apparently believes that this is a self-returning cart. They left it there for the helpful snow plough to come by and bury it in snow, thus effectively blocking off the walkway leading from the carpark to the access area to Eastgate shopping mall. Thanks Lazy Person!

Aaaand here are his cousins, Mr Make-shift habitat-for-squirrels:
and Mr I'm-up-to-my-neck-in-work:
More fun stuff. I saw my first bipedal cow yesterday. It was silently mooing at Mall people:I'm sure it had a voice, though. I can only imagine a Keanu Reeves type voice asking "Do you want cream or half-and-half?"

The Ohio Experience

It took us an hour, crawling on all 4 wheels, a grand total of around 2 miles. Pepper and I went on a teambuilding dinner at But guess what? They were closed, due to weather (not enough employees able to get to work). Gee. The manager on duty was nice enough to give us some coupons for our next visit, and recommended alternative (and open) establishments. So we went drove 100 meters over the snow banks in the parking lot to
They got all the re-directs from closed restaurants in the area, apparently. There, I had semi-nice dinner with excellent dinner companions This aren't my companions, but they did keep my strip steak company for a while. It was the first time I had a infra-red seared steak that was raw on the inside, seared on the outside, and cool all the way around. Strange american steaks... :-)

Walking gut-stuffed from the restaurant, we walked sinus-first into my first-ever Ohio Blizzard!
Here's what it looked like:

Oh yeah right. I was too bundled up to take a pic. When:

• snow is blowing parallel to the ground, and snow clumps are flying clumsily into your ear, rattling chillingly around for a minute before finally settling on your eardrum. Ow?!
  
• snowflakes are abraiding your face, driven by 35 mph winds. Not only that, they're also being driven so hard, they're changing directions every few seconds, blowing themselves into your nostrils, around your specs, into your ears and up your pant legs, right up into the sensitive groin area. BBrrrrRR!
  
• wind-blown snowbanks prevent you from driving your car out of the parking space
• driving snow reduces visibility to 50 meters, and covering cars so that they look like large snow banks lying innocently around all over the place. So's you can't tell if you're still in the lot, or already on the freeway...
  

there's no time to take pictures! Thanks to great and safe driving, pepper and I got back safely. Thanks Ralph and Dave!
This is the first time I've seen this much snow blow up into our sheltered lobby entrance:
Waking up this Valentine's day morning, this is what the howling, whistling, window-rattling winds brought me:
Snow on the inside of my window.. (no, it's not white sponge — you're looking at sieved snowflakes)

Sciurus Vulgaris? Ardilla Sciurus Aureogaster? No, It's Sciurus Niger?

Sciurus Ngier, the Eastern Fox Squirrel? Anyway, it's The hunchback of Landerhaven lane! Click the pic to see how large this not-so-little fella is! He was eating so loudly we could hear him cracking nuts (or something) open this morning.
The Squirrel-un-lovers among you will notice that we have much fresh snow on the ground. Yup. This week is SNOW STORM week. Weather 'cast predicts 3.5 feet of snow. Woof!

We had a slight thaw lately, and then a freezing, then snow, so the local fountain now looks like:
Weird ripple thing going on there.

After lunch, Pepper and I decided to go Squirrel Hunting. Here's a pic of Pepper patiently picking her route to the unsuspecting squirrel...Pepper managed some good shots. Go see her blog for pics!

In the meantime, here's some to tide you over:

Zoomed in:
another:
and lastly, what he might look like in the summer (pic apparently by John White):
or maybe it's this guy:
Ours really was this fat... and out-massing some Singaporean cats too!

I promise, no more squirrel pics, unless someone gets molested by one, or if one poops on me.

..... %#@*&$#%@!

5AM Monday Morning!!!!

To partly quote Pepper: "Farging foraging frigging forging rizzer razzer FRAT!"

Fortunately, part of the day was saved when Pepper and I were out on a naturalist safari, within the Great Squirrel resort that is our company premises.

Weather improved a bit (less cold, more snow), so the squirrels (or the squizels, as DemonicPepper calls them) were coming out again, all puffy and nibbling on nuts and cones.

Pinecones lah, not ice-cream cones.

Aaand, to further save my day...

Rump Roast! with roasted red onions and red potatoes, and just for contrast, brussels sprouts.

My Weekend so far...

Friday Evening: "Aroma Falms"
(otherwise also known as Aurora Farms)
((which actually refers to the Prime Outlet store collection near Aurora))
(((which is a factory outlet thingy)))
((((No, they weren't selling ducks, rejected, defective, or otherwise))))

We were driven there by one of our friendly Marketing Managers, who was also here on training and had a car. But to correctly attribute the impetus behind this trip, I have to point out that it was Pepper's Brand-hungry roomie who 'drove' us all here. She was the one who also insisted that we could only go home after all the shops closed for the day. We got there at 6pm, and we froze there until 9pm. Brrrrrr!

The prime Outlet there, we found, was divided into two sections, the Lake Shops, and the Plaza Shops. The Lake shops surround a frozen lake, inhabited by two great mounds of ice, and some ducks/mallards and geese-like ornithoids.
You can see the two mounds here - created by two stubborn high-sprouting fountains, plus the huddle of frozen boids..


They started honking and quacking when they saw me. I thought I'd disturbed their frosty sleep, until I spotted what looked like gumball machines lining a short section of the lake's fence.
Closer investigation revealed dry bird food, in dispensers. I was struggling to get out suitable coinage when all the birds broke their huddle, and started honk-waddling towards me, wings spread in supplication! Poor frozen birdies! Think I used up $2 in quarters feeding the poor things.... they looked so desperate, and it was too cold for big families to make their way to the outlet. I figure that I was their only meal for that day. Poor things.

After feeding them (and me), I (no, I didn't eat the bird food, I went to Subway, silly!) stumbled over to a nice kitchen/cooking shop where I bought some super-hot cayenne/habanero/jalapeno/chipotle sauce and dry sprinkles... Whooo!


Saturday: Home
Woke up early to go for breakfast at 5th avenue (had yummy lox omelette and bagel), but wandered over to the apartment kitchen first to get some water. Was greeted by an almighty mess. The pic above doesn't do it justice, but it looked terrible. Roomie hadn't cleaned it up since Dinner the night before!!! Thanks man, sheesh!

Had a nice nap in the afternoon, did laundry etc, and then went back to 5th ave for dinner - Corned beef and cabbage:

Quite nice!

Today, Sunday: Asian Market

Had this weird notion to see if I could locate ingredients to make a dinner dish for my supervisor, so I followed Pepper's roomie to the sort of nearby Asian market. Man! That place smells! It wasn't a wet market, but there were all sorts of odours.... meats there looked kinda suspect, so I didn't buy any, but they did have a large collection of preserved/dried asian spices and veggies, and asian seasonings. Even had a few frozen durians...

Came back, and made this, with chunks of a cervelate I bought from a Russian grocer - yummy!

Of Snow Snot and Geysers

Yes, it's still cold. -15 fahrenheit and holding! Earlier this morning, it was -19 with wind chill. Wind has blown away all the clouds, so it's amazingly sunny (and warm-looking, from inside a building).

Here's how cold it is.... Remember some posts back I showed you a geyser/black hole/water fountain? In case you didn't remember, here it is, about a week ago:
Here it was two days ago:
If you're wondering why the photo is so light, you can blame my leaky nose, watering in sympathetic response to the arctic air blowing ever so roughly in my face, up my nose, and into my sinus cavities.

Aaaand, this afternoon:
The ice is slowly creeping in, the fountain now resembles a giant white pimple with free-flowing white pus.


Tonight, Pepper and I are heading to an STC meeting, so hopefully, there'll be some interesting pix of the Pufferbelly and Kent State.

Newsflash: Roomie is rapidly becoming disconcerting. Last night, while chomping noisily on dinner, part two (from a recipe unceremoniously and clumsily ripped off from one of my dinners), he started listening to music on his notebook, using a pair of headphones. Which would have been fine, because I've sorta gotten used to smelling his weird cooking. What made it super-bad was:

• the extremely loud music
• the extremely loud music that I could hear from his headphones, while he had it on
• the extremely goosebump-raising-in-a-bad-way shoulder-rolling-dancing-while-sitting-on-a-chair movement
• the whispered bad yodel-singing he did while listening and gyrating to said music (which, taken out of context, could easily be the soundtrack for a horror movie featuring demonic whispers)
• I was trying to concentrate on watching an episode of CSI: Las Vegas
• He actually asked me what was going on in that episode, in the last 3 minutes.
  

Gee, Thanks.