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Lingenfelter had family stuff yesterday but did get down to look at the water today and we believe that the problem is fixed. The leak only took about four hours to find and was located fairly near to Mr. Terry's house. It fortuitously bubbled up from the ground (finally!) and thus was more easy to locate this time than it had been any of the previous times we'd gone a-looking. The bubbling up does go a bit towards putting paid to my argument that "You can't see leaks bubbling up most of the time" which is not probably a win in the long run, but whatever. At this point, the pipe is on, the pressure is holding, and the meter towards that side is not running a mile a minute. So far, so good. I have called Mr. Ted and told him that things appear to be working properly, as he had left a message on my machine to the effect (or to the defect -- MSND on my mind, it being March) that he'd like an update on the situation. Anyway. Everyone please think happy thoughts on that front because I'm not in the mood for the water to not-be-fixed at this juncture.

As a side note, Mr. Terry says that the pipe there was only about a foot underground (probably it's closer to two feet or the pipe would have frozen solid long before this) and has no nice gravel bedding or anything, just great huge rocks laying on it. As I was with grandma at the eye doctor's today, I didn't actuallly get to see that part, but judging from the outside of the water line, that seems a fair assessment of what is within. Those big huge lumps *could* be dirt but I don't think they are. We could probably have done a better job burying the water pipe and bedding it in small stone and I believe that Mr. Terry and Lingenfelter did that this time 'round because they called to ask if we had any loose stone and I pointed them to the pile beside the big metal shed. In fairness, if we hadn't put the big lumps of rock back over the pipe, there wouldn't have been anything to bury it with. There is a reason that this isn't farmland, y'know.

The HoHI have upwards of 250 people in their fan club on Ravelry. That's a lot.

Also, finally, I got a package of goodies from Cranky Review Ben in the mail today! YAY! I love getting packages and this one contained lots of good stuff that I haven't gotten to look at yet plus also dead-tree editions of Dexter books 1 and 2. The Dexter books, wow, the prose, my word, the prose is *fun*. It's sort of alliterative, in spots, which you'd almost have to expect from something where the book titles are "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" and "Dexter in the Dark" but it is in no way twee enough to be attributed to Lemony Snicket. (I tried to read about Unfortunate Events. I really did. But, alas, it was not to be.) The Dexters are fun and they're chock-full of Dexter happily slaughtering (deserving) humans in a sensually enjoyable way. I'm surprisingly on board with that even though I do not, in my own personal life, slaughter humans in any way, sensually enjoyable or otherwise.

I've done the first book and I'm debating doing the other tonight vs. checking out the lush profusion of dvd-scriven entertainment goodies that made up the remainder of the care package. I shall not want for .mp3's in Japanese, I assure you of that. Huzzah! The actual challenge, here, will be finding time to listen to all of it to find the things I like. :) This is not a bad thing, though.

(Must sort and organize mp3 files. Soonest. Action item on to-do list, so noted.)

Also, my young friend of cluelessness TJ, who, as a side note is Ashe's year-mate, is bringing his laptop by tomorrow morning (at 6:20 AM, wtf?!) for me to fixor it. "I tried to load a game on it and it won't work and this other game won't load at all because it wants some file or something and the antivirus is messed up and, Jess, please just look at it. I'll owe you one." He's got quite a stack of IOU's on his account already, but I'm going to steal all of his .mp3 files and rifle through his porn and call it even.

I'm maybe supposed to be doing some Boleyn movie with my cousin Heather tomorrow and possibly an Outback outing, not sure about that. I was going to call her but I got distracted by the Dexter books. It's going to pour the fucking rain all day long, so no pony activity tomorrow. I'm hoping Sunday is better -- I'd like to get some practice working on posting (picking the correct diagonal without staring at the pony's shoulders for five strides) before Pony Lady next week. Also, I totally have got to wash the english pad -- it's filthy.

And it's dumb-shit time change thing this weekend. Didn't that used to be in April or something?

Finally, I made chocolate covered coconut spheres this evening. These would be eggs for Easter except they weren't very egg-shaped and I don't much *do* Easter and I suspect it's still a couple of weeks away whether or not I celebrate it. Here are a couple of observations on that front, for the foodie in all of us.

First: Making chocolate-covered coconut spheres is not particularly difficult.

Second: Tempering chocolate does not mean that you have to buy those mostly-wax chip things from the candy-making store. Those taste like shit anyway. You can do just fine with 80% cacao semisweet dark chocolate bars from the baking section of the grocery. Besides the chocolate, you'll need a double boiler and a thermometer but that's about it. The easiest way to temper the chocolate is to put the chocolate in small lumps over very low heat on the double boiler and stir/melt, keeping the chocolate BELOW about 100 degrees until it's about 3/4 melted. REMOVE FROM HEAT, stir vigorously to melt the rest of the chocolate and bring the temperature down to 90 degrees, and you should be ready to go.

Third: Pre-form the coconut spheres to be dipped before you get the chocolate ready to go. At the low temper temperature of 90 degrees in your sixty-five degree house, the chocolate will start to set up on your ass if you go spending all your time fucking around making little balls out of coconut.

Fourth: If you use sweetened-flaked coconut and bind it together with sweetened condensed milk, only a very little bit, your spheres will taste way better than any coconut egg product that you can purchase in a store. Commercial coconut eggs unfortunately reflect the reality that coconut is rather dear while tasteless, bland confectioner's sugar is not. Do not cave to price pressure. More coconut is totally better.

Fifth: I have not found any way to dip the uncovered spheres without getting chocolate all over my fingers. Sux0r? Not so much. (Nom, nom, nom.)

Sixth: The true OCD among us will dip once to secure the coconut shreds and then let the spheres cool and dip once again to provide a smooth, unmarred surface finish. As this was my first go-round in the candy-making world, I was just kind of test-driving the experience.

Seventh: The Joy of Cooking was all about melting a fucking pound of chocolate. Uhm, no. I do not own a candy store. I live alone with two cats and this was a for-fun project for the evening. You don't need a pound of chocolate. That's bullshit. You can melt a 4-oz bar and that will be fine for half a bag of coconut made into spheres. :) It's tips like these that show I really care about you, internet audience.