#365Gratitude Day 47:Ah Bagels, anyone?

This morning, while updating my blog and doing just a wee bit of random surfing, I stumbled across an amazing piece of ABDL art.  

This one:

Sick and Clingy, by Ah Bagels

In it, a guy with longish red hair, a wet diaper and a shark plushie lays in his sick bed, in his room filled with shark related things, as he's being lovingly tended to by a caregiver with a bottle.

AMAZING.

It's by an artist who goes by the name "Ah Bagels".  I found it at his tumblr.  I had a look through his tumblr, and his stuff is brilliant.  I think I'd like to commission some art from him, based on my writing.

#365Gratitude Day 46:The groove

Yesterday did not seem like it was going to be a high productivity day.

First, there was the absolutely wretched night of sleep I had had the night before.

Second, there was leaving the house late, due to dealing with cat litter maintenance nonsense, and having to stop for gas on my way.

Kinda like that

Third, there was the long lunch I took to meet up with a relative I hadn't seen in about 15 years.

But, as the day wore on, I found my groove.

Something I had been researching and tinkering with for days just sort of clicked.

Also like this

I was going to stay late anyhow, but I found my second wind, and stayed much later and got most of the feature I was working on, well, working.

I went from feeling tired to feeling determined.  At one point, I said, "well, this is a good stopping point, I can come back to the rest tomorrow."

Then I said to myself, "right... fuck that keep going."

When I got home, I was plenty tired.  But I felt good.

#365Gratitude Day 45:A quiet moment of cat love

My girlcat Yin is all over me lately.  She is constantly laying on my lap, bumping her head into me for petting, and has taken to laying on my chest in bed, too.

#365Gratitude Day 44:Stack Overflow

No, not that kind

One of the big truisms of working in technology is: You can't know everything by heart.
Another is: Someone, somewhere, has already faced this problem, and solved it.

Hence, one of the most useful sites on the internet for us techie types: Stack Overflow.

I love it.

On Monday, I was looking into populating a modal dialog box with dynamic content, gleaned from a service, called by Ajax.  I wanted to see some other ways it had been done, so I hit the site.

In short order, I had some great guidance, including some dissenting opinions about the best ways to do it.

I saw three different ways, rejected two, settled on one.  

So useful.

#365Gratitude Day 43:I've got cooking in hand

One thing I spent a significant amount of time doing today was cooking.  I got up early this morning to cook the savory filling for my chicken pot hand-pies.  It took me about 40 minutes to do, after which I got the mixture into the refrigerator to cool all day long.

That's because the recipe calls for the insides to be chilled when you roll them inside the pastry filling, before baking.

I don't make my own dough, I use puff pastry sheets.  And I slightly modify the recipe making my own little tweaks here and there.  (For example, I brush my pies with an egg wash before they go in the oven, but only on one side.  I also slightly change the spices and their proportions in my mixture.)

 Here's where I got the original recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/food-and-friends/handheld-chicken-pot-pies/

And here's what mine came out looking like tonight:

I love that I know how to cook, and that I can take recipes and make them my own.