Peanuts, Get Your Peanuts

things I must remember to do this weekend:

Get my hair cut.
Get the car washed.
Buy a case of water at Sam’s Club.
While I’m at Sam’s, look for good root beer.
And look for peanuts.

You can take your own food (single servings) and water (sealed container of no more than 1 litre) into the ballpark.  Mrs. Ender calculated that we could save over $150 by taking our own peanuts into the park instead of buying them there.

Peanuts cost $4 in the park and you can probably buy several pounds of peanuts for that much money at the grocery store (and maybe more at Sam’s Club), so our savings from peanuts won’t be peanuts.

I think water might cost about $4/bottle, too.  I’m estimating the cost at Sam’s Club of about $0.40.  More peanut money saved.

I don’t know how beer drinkers can afford to go to many ballgames.  That stuff is really expensive.  Maybe they pass on the hotdogs and peanuts or get cheap seats?

We used the first of our season tickets on Tuesday for the Natioal’s exhibition game against Boston.  I like our seats.  Ours are cushioned, unlike most of the other seats.  Although we are in the second tier we are only four rows back from the railing.  That means far fewer people will be up and down and blocking our view.  I do find that I strained the muscles in my lower, left side of my back a bit.  I think that’s from turning slightly to my right for the whole game to watch home plate.  We are just a few feet beyond third base and our seats face directly forward, requiring the look-to-the-right to watch most of the action.  But I’m not going to let a sore back deprive me of loving every minute of every game we go to, unless my team is losing or loses.  But that’s different.

I made my first 5 pound batch of soap last night, and I almost threw out my first batch of ruined soap.

It’s obviously been too long since I read people’s experiences with making pine tar soap because I completely forgot that it tends to set up QUICKLY.  Like immediately after you get the lye in and before you get the stick blender out.

I was quite concerned when I was adding the lye/water because, although I had used my bigger mixing bowl (read, cheap plastic paint bucket from Lowes), I didn’t know how much space 5 pounds of oil, water and lye took up.  The answer is, very nearly too much, but just a tad below overflowing.  So, I’m watching the mixture level get higher and higher and I start adding the lye/water slower and slower and I suddenly realize that my stick blender sounds like it is surounded by heavier and heavier liquid.  Which it was because my mixture was coming to full trace before all the lye was even added.

I pulled out the blender and in the time it took me to put the business end of the blender in the sink and then turn around to pour my mixture into my mold, it had hardened to the consistency of firm sherbert.  It didn’t pour gloop-gloop-gloop like it normally would have, I had to scoop it out like I do with hot process soap.

I was quite concerned with the harder than normal mixture leaving gaps and spaces that would look ugly, so I first used the back of my big mixing spoon to push the mix down and toward the sides of the mold.  That wasn’t working.  The mix was sticking to the spoon, so I used my hands.  Now, I realized that this might not be a good idea because I’ve gotten soap mix in lighter trace on my hands and it begins to burn within a minute or so, but I figured I could press the soap down and rinse my hands before they burned off.  I barely felt any burning sensation, but I do have very dry skin on my fingers as a result.  I hope my dry skin will be rewarded by few/no bubble spaces when I cut the loaf into bars this evening.

I did a cold process/hot assist by putting the loaded mold into the oven and leaving it on 170 degrees for about 45 minutes.  It did go into gel phase and I’m hoping that that also helped to fill in any nooks and crannies.

I checked this morning before leaving for work, and the soap is hardening up like it should and the smell is what I’ve gotten from this recipie before, so I’m confident that I’ll have good soap when I cut it up.

Other than than, I’ve got nothing.

Ender is out.