Started the day in the kitchen, where I cooked a egg-and-potato dish to fill the morning hungers. After that, it was football time.

Throughout the day, I assembled a banana cream pie. Around halftime of the early games, I rolled out the dough I’d made a couple days back for the crust (I used a can of cooking spray to do the rolling because I don’t have a rolling pin) and blind baked it. Around the start of the late games, I whipped the meringue (egg whites, cream of tartar, and sugar), threw it in the fridge and got to work on the cream. I sliced a banana and a half to cover the bottom of my now-cooled crust. The cream involved sugar, corn starch, salt, egg yolks, milk, butter, and vanilla. Poured it hot onto the bananas, covered the whole thing with the meringue, then threw the pie in the oven to brown the top (and cook the egg whites). This was around halftime of the late games. By the end of the late games, it was time to eat the cooled pie.

Mmm, pie. After the pie and football, I went back to the new Mario game. The next thing I knew, the moon had set and it was 5 in the morning. Unintentionally long day.

After staying up gratuitously late last night, I got up in the afternoon, and spent most of that time playing video games. The afternoon over, I cleaned up, grabbed my cameras, and headed downtown. Tonight was our annual Holiday Lights Festival photo walk.

A photo walk is a simple enough event: you walk around with the intention of taking pictures. Our Omaha group up on Flickr organizes walks several times during the year (like the Zombie Walk; we didn’t organize the Zombies, but we did organize going there to take pictures of them). If you like taking pictures, you should come join us sometime. We usually take the winter off, so in March or April when everyone’s stir-crazy, we’ll organize something.

We met on the 10th Street bridge over the Gene Leahy Mall (between Douglas and Farnam), home of “the” Omaha skyline shot. From there, we wandered over to ConAgra’s campus, through the Old Market, and back to the Mall. Kind of a short route, but with the north wind, people were getting cold. Also, we were taking our sweet time getting around.

After everyone was done walking around downtown, a few people went over to newly-remodeled Turner Park (near 30th and Dodge) to take pictures of their decorations. Most of the rest of us headed over to a local coffee shop in the Market to warm up, relax, and chat. It was a fun time, as it always is. I’ve said more than once that I enjoy the social aspects of the photo walks more than the actual photography.

Afterward, I just went home and wound down. I didn’t even look at the pictures I’d taken, I was simply ready for bed.

Started the day innocently enough, flipping up a pancake (I need more buttermilk) and catching up on the social networks. Got cleaned up, and headed over to Caffeine Dreams where, in addition to getting hot chocolate on sale, I actually sat down and did some work.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to add to the weather app for a while now is GPS integration. The first step in this was to put a big, obtrusive button onto my forecast page (the one page that actually uses latitude and longitude to get its data) and making it use the GPS to seek coordinates. Microsoft put out some sample code with their SDK that makes using the GPS in code very easy, so it was like 15 minutes of work to get some basic code written. Then I went to test it and realized… I don’t have the cable to plug the phone into the computer.

Not to worry, I just hung out, turned on the football game, chatted with Gabe a bit (his tweets were the reason I was there) and eventually headed out somewhere around the end of the first quarter. When I got home, I turned on the game and set into testing. Turns out I’d done a few really silly things that are probably more rust than anything else, so what should have probably taken another 15 minutes or so to finish out took another hour. Not a bad thing, really. But it works. And I subjected my Twitter followers (all 300 of them) to my jubilant squeals of it working, too.

After that, finished watching the football game, then the day just seemed to stretch out in front of me. I didn’t have anything planned, didn’t really have anything I wanted to do. Eventually, I decided to hang out and play more 1 vs 100 all night long.

Thanksgiving Day. Family gatherings always take a lot out of me. My family is a bit of an experience.

Started the day nice and relaxing, just hanging out. Then I took my cookies and kolaches over to the folks’ house to wait for everyone to show up. We had prime rib, yams, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and gravy for dinner (as well as a variety of appetizers). For me, dessert consisted of more cookies.

After dinner, we watched some football, played some Rock Band, and played some 1 vs 100 (we do love trivia as a family).

Kind of a lazy holiday. That’s what they’re about. Don’t forget about the photo walk on Saturday!

Baking day! I started the day out baking kolaches. Cherry-filled rounds of goodness. My recipe is based on this one, though I changed a few things.

1+1/4 C warm water
2 tsp active dry yeast
1/3 C dry milk
1/4 C dry mashed potato flakes
1/4 C sugar
3 egg yolks

1 tsp salt
3+7/8 C flour

1 small can pie filling

1/4 C (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2 T sugar

Combine the wet ingredients. The original recipe called for adding a stick of softened butter, but I totally glazed over that, and everything worked out well. Once the wet ingredients are well-mixed, add in the flour/salt mix. I do this about a cup at a time. Mix until it’s combined, then add the next. When everything’s done mixing, take small bits of the dough and roll into balls about an inch and a half in diameter. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Set the onto your already-greased cookie sheet (I used cooking spray, anything to keep them from sticking is fine). Cover, and let rise for 1 hour. After they’ve risen, use your thumb to push down the middle and make a sort of “donut” shape (except that you should have dough all the way through the middle). Leave somewhere between a quarter and a half inch of dough around the edge, to contain the filling. Fill the centers with pie filling. Do not overfill. Somewhere between 2/3rs and level is filled enough. Recover and let rise for another half hour. Bake at 375° F for 13-15 minutes, or until the outer crust is slightly brown. When you take them out of the oven, brush on the melted butter/sugar mixture. Allow to cool, at least enough to hand-hold, then serve. Makes about 24 kolaches.

After the kolaches, I made chocolate chip cookies. Just the standard Toll House recipe, except I had no usable brown sugar, so I just used all white sugar (I also used a different brand of chocolate chip, but that doesn’t really matter). They’re similar, but not quite the same. Still good, though.

Productive day in the kitchen!

Thursday is Thanksgiving. That means tomorrow is baking day. Do I need more pie filling?

Spent the morning playing Mario Bros. and eating leftover pizza. After a shower, I spent the afternoon taking pictures for a friend’s project, then processing them.

The evening was spent on 1 vs. 100 on the Xbox. It’s based on the TV show, except with the pace and the interactivity of it all, it’s actually enjoyable. If you have an Xbox 360 and a Gold subscription to Xbox Live (the paid kind), check it out. The extended play is fun (basically just automated trivia), but the live show on Tuesday and Friday night make the whole experience something special. They have a real, live host doing color commentary (to compliment the automated host who handles the questions and results). If you want to play together, just add me as a friend on the Xbox. My gamertag is “Programmerman.”

This was another one of those “not much happened” days. Opened the day with a blueberry pancake, then spent the afternoon playing New Super Mario Brothers Wii. For the evening, I went to pick up some pizza, watched some football and other shows, then turned in. Like I said, not a particularly exciting day.

“But, football…”

Standard Sunday fare. Made breakfast, watched the day flash by in a blur of football.

Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs with cheese, sausage patties, and cubed potatoes fried in olive oil. I took video footage of all the cooking, and I intend to cut it together at some point, but considering my potatoes actually came out undercooked (probably due to insufficient oil, actually, not time), I might scuttle the project.

Dinner was my birthday dinner with the folks. We went out to this Italian place in west Omaha. It was okay, the service took a while to get going but was fine after a couple early gaffes; the food was good but not exceptional. If I lived in that part of town, I might consider going there on occasion, but it’ll probably be rarely if ever I make the 20 minute drive out there (there’s other, similar options much nearer).

Not sure what came over me today. After going to bed at a reasonable hour last night, I slept until about 4 in the afternoon. I was up for a little bit around 11, but in the end, I just rolled over and went back to sleep. I guess I needed more sleep.

Got up, made something to eat, went to pick up some extension cables for Robin, and watched the football game. Not too much of a day, really.

So, last weekend, while I was out of town, this local company Graffiti Tracker held a competition to design and develop an innovative way to interact with the government (you know, using computers), in true start-up “hack something out in a couple days and make a pitch to potential investors” fashion. Marcus, Ryan, and Jason (former co-workers) decided to form a team, showed up, and swept the whole thing. Why is that important?

Well, for one thing, it’s always nice to give positive recognition for positive things. The other reason is that it made me feel more connected to this company. They’d always seemed neat from the things I’d heard around the various circles, but I’d never really met any of them in-person. They advertised via Twitter that they were going to have a “happy hour” at their office today to celebrate various things, including the competition the previous weekend. With a reason to show up (“I know those guys!”), I made this my Friday plan.

The day started with lots of housework: laundry, grocery shopping, more laundry, baking, dishwashing. I’d left some bananas behind when I went to Minneapolis. They were still here when I got back. This gave me two options: banana bread, or throw them out. I opted for the former. I mixed my batter and filled my loaf pan. There was some batter left over at this point, so I folded some chocolate chips into it and put it into some baking cups to make banana-chocolate chip muffins. This all went with me to the “happy hour.”

It was a good time. Well, after spending a while trying to find the place (they have no signage yet). You see, I forgot my phone. In addition, even if I’d had my phone, I didn’t really have anyone I could call to figure it out. Eventually, I found an open wi-fi access point and pulled up (of all things) their Foursquare venue, which had the address with suite number. That solved everything.

I got to meet a lot of neat people, actually meet some of the people I’ve just kind of walked past at earlier events, eat some food, get feedback on the baked goods, and spend a while playing Rock Band. After that, we went over to Blue for dinner to extend the discussion a bit (and add some more people to it). I skipped out on the party when it headed to the cigar bar.

Not a bad day.