not photoshop!

october 3rd's astronomy picture of the day!

they call it a goat aurora but i think it looks more like a dragon head. :)

guava jam

i've been in a "crafty" mood lately, so when my dad and i picked like 40 pounds of guavas from our other house, i decided to make guava jam!

in trying to find a recipe, i found out that jam and jelly are different. jelly is made from the juice while jam is made up of the flesh of the fruit. and marmalade includes the rind. ::cue music:: the more you know!

i used this jam recipe. tho i was also kind of looking at this jelly recipe also. i mostly followed the recipe but balked at putting in that much sugar. dumb me thought "well, i like sour anyway!" 

it started out okay, but the stuff was just so watery! even after an hour of simmering to help evaporation it looked more like apple sauce than anything. i mean, it tasted good. really good, but it clearly wasn't the right texture.
 
after some research, i found out that sugar isn't just for taste! most jams require pectin to help it gel. guavas naturally have a lot of pectin, so the recipe didn't require any to be added. but sugar also helps set jams (so does the lemon juice, btw). so including only half the amount of required sugar meant that no amount of simmering was ever going to get it to set. doh!

so in hopes of fixing my jam, i went to target and picked up a box of pectin. i followed the recipe and crossed my fingers. the next day (you have to give it 24 hours to set after adding in pectin), i opened up a jar to see... no change at all! :( it still had the exact color and consistency of apple sauce.

i ate it anyway.

next time tho, i follow the recipe. haha!  

wandering beauty

august 24th's astronomy picture of the day!

for what?

this general david petraeus scandal is just... sad. it's yet another in a looooooong line of men cheating on their wives. respected men who have a lot more to lose than the average philandering spouse. which brings up the question, "so why do they do it?" ...which is a question i'm not going to answer. ha! but a lot of people use these few cheaters as a tally mark against men in general. many people think that women in high positions would not cheat on their spouses. and lots think that simply because they believe that women don't care about sex as much as men do. i don't know if that's true. but i do think that the reason more men cheat (assuming that actually more cheat, and not just that more are caught) has a lot more to do with biological factors.

it's harder for women in power. it's harder for them to get there and it's harder for them to stay there. for many women who get promoted to high positions, there's always the question of "who did she sleep with to get that raise?" or "is she really the best candidate or is this an affirmative action thing?" who's going to ask that of a man? especially of a white man? any woman who has risen the ranks has dealt with her share of sexual harassment. so any woman tempted by having an affair would probably think harder about it than a man would.

love quotations

"i'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. i'm out of control and at times, i'm hard to handle. but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." - marilyn monroe

"if you press me to say when i loved him, i can say no more than because he was he, and i was i." - michel de montaigne

"what i want is to be needed. what i need is to be indispensable to somebody. who i need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. somebody addicted to me. a mutual addiction." - chuck palahniuk

"two people can be perfect for each other but if the timing's wrong, it's never going to work out. bad timing is the reason that most normal people end up single. Weirdos and creeps are single 'cause they are weird and creepy, but people like us are single because of bad timing." - love and sex

blue moon

september 1st's astronomy picture of the day!

quotations

lol, every time i say i'm going to start blogging less, i don't!

"all god does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. we must never, ever be boring." - chuck palahniuk

"be yourself; everyone else is already taken." - oscar wild

"you have enemies? good, that means you stood up for something, sometime in your life" - winston churchill

 "courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. the brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all." - ambrose redmoon

 "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -George Orwell

we're all delusional!

a must read. seriously. it's hilarious! Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends"

"...men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt... men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends." i can't tell you how true this rings to me. haHA! rip thinks almost every girl likes him that way. even my friends. friends with whom i have confirmed that they have never liked him at all. he thinks they're lying. it's madness! i almost never think it anymore. maybe i'm too self-absorbed to notice the "signals"? and when the occasional guy does express attraction, i'm always like "what?! where did this come from?"

"Although men were equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else." this one is really interesting. i've had a couple guys tell me that they would "wait for me" or something nutty like that. i've never felt even vaguely inclined to say that to someone. i've never even thought it. he's taken. i'm moving on. duh.

"These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.”" which is why rip pretty much hates every new guy friend i make because he thinks they're all attracted to me. and i am always shocked when they actually are! and also why i've always been right about those couple girl friends of his i was worried about. though apparently i should have been worried about all of them!

"Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships." not sure what to think about this one. probably because i wouldn't list it as a benefit, lol. we are our stereotypes!!

infinity!

september 22nd's astronomy photo of the day!