The weirdest thing for me about prolonged sub zero weather is ice.
These ice pellets fell shortly before the temps dipped below freezing, about two days ago. It's not gone above freezing since. My brain had trouble comprehending that I've can get to a point that it won't melt. The first time I saw that in Pennsylvania, after nearly a week of sub zero temps, my brain broke.
Since the beginning of 2022, I've made a big effort to digitize all my archive of...everything (and re-digitizing some of my older stuff).
I've been concentrating on optical media since I started, and after almost two years, I've hit my first milestone: all my audio CDs are re-encoded. I will likely have all my CD-ROMs also ripped shortly.
The Blu-Rays and DVDs not so much. Oh my goodness, the DVD stack is HUGE.
I made iced tea that tastes EXACTLY my grandmother's iced tea.
I never really knew how she made it, but all I did this time was boil a teapot full of water with TEN teabags, pour the tea into a large one gallon pitcher which I then filled with water...but left the tea bags in to steep while it cooled.
Sucralose and lemon, and it tastes JUST like hers. I guess she left the tea to seep a REALLY long time.
This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Skillet Lasagna.
Not quite a lasagna, more of a Hamburger, Spaghetti Sauce casserole. The chicken breast slices don't really do anything lasagna like to this but does bring the carb count way down.
It's tasty though. I'd do it again, but without the expectation of it being lasagna like.
# Skillet Lasagna
Quick & Easy Ketogenic Cooking
1.0 pound ground beef
2.0 tsp sea salt
24.0 oz marinara sauce
4.0 slices roast chicken breast (deli slices)
1.0 cup mozzarella (shredded) (divided into portions)
1.0 tsp oregano
1 - In a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, brown the beef over medium-high heat, seasoning it with the salt, until cooked through, about 5 minutes, breaking up the meat with a spatula as it cooks.
2 - Add the marinara sauce and stir well to combine.
3 - Remove the sautéed beef to a bowl.
4 - Layer the sliced chicken breast on the bottom of the skillet.
5 - Top the chicken with a half of the shredded cheese.
6 - Scoop the beef on top of the deli meat to create an even layer.
7 - Top with the remaining half of cheese and sprinkle with the oregano.
8 - Cover and heat on low until the cheese is melted.
5 servings at ~400 calories per serving
Calories 430
Total Fat 23g
Total Carbohydrate 19g
Protein 25g
Yields 4 servings normally
As part of my big backup, I decided to gather up all the hard drives sitting in my closet, sort them by how old they are, and then reshuffle all my backups so the oldest backups use the oldest drives. The old backups are good to have, but if I'm gonna lose one to a hardware issue, best it be an old drive.
I'm kinda glad I did it, because it turns out the drive that originally held my 2017-2019 backups went bad AFTER I pulled stuff off it. Originally, I encrypted that drive with BitLocker, and apparently removing BitLocker on the drive trashed the way the drive is set up. Any write access hung Windows, and Linux just wouldn't even find the drive. I couldn't fix the issue with a low-level format, so that drive is toast.
Secondly, I have a whole extra hard drive I didn't know about, which is 6TB of blank space. That's at least 4 years of future backups there, so I should be good until 2029 for new drives. :)
Also, I think it's hilarious that my 2006-2008 backups all fit on 250GB while 2018-2020 filled a 4TB drive.
Artist for Closetspace and A Wish for Wings
Creative Text Writer for MTG: Universes Beyond
Writer for Sea of Legends
One enchilada short of a Mexican Platter