SodaHead - Karl's Blog

Bad news

2008-06-03T11:52:57Z

Karl

+2 raves

My mother has just been diagnosed with cancer. I don't think I'm coping well with this.

WTF?

2008-04-24T00:28:09Z

Karl

+1 raves

I don't believe it. I answered a poll, left a comment,. Someone replied, I replied back. Then the poll creator jumped in and said "I don't appreciate ppl talkin on my poll". WTF??? Isn't answering and commenting on polls the WHOLE FREAKIN' POINT of Sodahead? Someone is clearly on the wrong website. And I'm starting to think it might be me.

Quitting Caffeine

2008-04-08T16:05:25Z

Karl

0 raves

For the past couple of weeks I've been having a lot of troubl;e getting to sleep. I normally go to bed about 1am but I'm lying awake until 3 or 4am, and then sleeping through til about 10. Six hours is enough sleep but the change of schedule is annoying. I tried getting up 3 hours earlier and going to bed earlier. All that did was give me 3 extra hours staring at the ceiling and 3 hours sleep instead of 6. Now I drink a lot of coffee. Two pints a day, on average, of strong black coffee, and I've done this for years. I'm probably so far past addicted I'm incurable. I decided that the sensible thing to try was to cut out the caffeine and make myself sleepy. So I bought some nice organic, fair-trade decaf and I've been drinking that instead. I've not had a drop of caffeinated coffee since Saturday lunchtime. You'd think that it would be hard, that there would be cravings, headaches, tiredness.... Nope. Nothing. No noticeable effect whatsoever. And I still can't frelling get to sleep before 3am.

Karl's Chicken Soup

2008-03-22T16:36:30Z

Karl

+1 raves

Well, I'm sick, and J. reccomended chicken soup. I've always been sceptical about chicken soup. Questions that come to mind are, why chicken and not other things? Why soup, and not the same ingredients on your plate with gravy, or a salad, and potatoes? What about a vegetarian option? But I've done a little reading up and apparently it's true. The onions and garlic contain natural pennicillins, this I already knew, but the chicken itself, apparently there's some enzyme that comes out of the bones when you make the stock. The enzyme isn't there if you don't use the bones. And soup rather than dinner, because everyone knows that you gotta keep your fluid intake high when you're sick. So this chicken soup recipe was sort of made-up on the fly, but here it is. It's a proper wholesome English-style soup. 1 pre-cooked roast chicken 2.5 litres water (about 5 pints) 2 cups/250g chopped carrots 2c/250g chopped onions 2c/250g chopped swede 3 cloves garlic (but you know, I think maybe I ought to have used double that) 1.5c/250g "soup mix" (from a packet - a mixture of dried lentils, split peas and pearl barley) Fresh herbs, salt and pepper to season. A massive saucepan or stockpot that holds a minimum of 8 pints/4 litres. Strip the chicken carcass. Reserve the best meat for later, put the less-good meat in the pot with all the bones. All the skin was discarded - it makes the soup too greasy for my taste, and anyway, Xena was looking at me with those big brown "feed-me" eyes. Add the water and a generous pinch of rock salt. Simmered for 45 minutes then strained. All the bones were discarded. The meat... again with the big brown feed-me eyes. The reserved stock was returned to the stockpot. In another pan or wok, fry off the onions, garlic and vegetables in a little olive oil. When softened, add it all to the stock along with all the other ingredients including the reserved chicken. For herbs I used thyme today, mainly because I think thyme goes best with chicken. I would have used sage as well, if there'd been any fresh in the store. Add salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste. Put the lid on the pot, bring to the boil then turn the heat as low as it'll go and just leave it to simmer for about an hour. Note: The barley/lentil mix is optional. If you leave it out you'll want to reduce the quantity of water by about a pint, and increase the veg by about a cup. Spend the next ten minutes trying to scrub the garlic and onion smell off my hands. I'm also foregoing coffee today in favour of green tea with lemon, ginger and honey. I had a cup of that last night and felt it working almost right away. With any luck I'll be able to fight off this thing without resorting to pharmaceuticals.

hmmm

2008-03-14T18:05:37Z

Karl

+2 raves

Maybe I'm being over-cautious or something but. Someone friended me today on SH and I looked at her profile and she's 15 and as far as I could tell there wasn't anything in her profile that she and I have in common. I wondered why she'd friended me, but normally I don't mind and I was about to add her as I would with pretty much anyone else. Then I changed my mind. Because you know if I had a 15 year old daughter I sure would not want her to have 35-year-old men as friends online (or offline). Now I've never been on Myspace or Facebook or any places like that and I don't know what the normal ettiquette is in situations like that but it makes me nervous. So I don't think I will be friending back anyone whose profile says they're underage.

more anti-gay offensive rubbish

2008-03-12T21:38:05Z

Karl

+2 raves

Here's yet another example of stupid offensive anty-gay polls. http://www.sodahead.com/poll/59302/ Now instead of going to hell we should just all be killed. Ahah never mind it's been pulled already. Reckon the poster saw how many down-raves he was getting and decided that it was making him look stupid.

Stray?

2008-03-09T20:35:10Z

Karl

0 raves

Oh no! I was wondering why my friend Stray hasn't been on SH for a while. I just noticed she changed her username to "NoOne" and now her profile is deleted. :( Wherever you are hun, I hope everything's okay.

Anti-homosexual bigotry

2008-03-09T18:14:36Z

Karl

+6 raves

Why is there so much of it here? Is it typical of the USA or are gay-haters drawn to this place along with the Republicans and Disney Channel fans? Sometimes I feel like I'm a lone voice of reason, the only one with the courage to speak out against the bigotry. Well, okay maybe not the only one. But certainly in a minority much smaller than I seem to be in the world outside of SodaHead. Sometimes I despair at the sheer ignorance of people.

so it's valentines day

2008-02-14T14:46:45Z

Karl

0 raves

and the only cute boy I'm likely to get a kiss from today is seven years old.

my real blog

2008-02-11T10:12:12Z

Karl

0 raves

is at http://pferdekarl.wordpress.com/