The Frying Pan

2:39 PM

ran out of butter, made biscuits with coconut oil. Theyre....acceptable

rumtscho

The laminated ones?

Coconut oil has a unique melting profile. Sharp melting point at 35 Celsius, while butter is very amorphous.

3:10 PM

From my experience melting butter and rumtscho's statement I have deduced that amorphous means weird and squishy!

2 hours later…

5:28 PM

@Cindy Good morning!

afternoon*

5:48 PM

Hi @Jefromi! How are you?

Pretty good, you?

Hanging in. Wishing for summer.

You're not in Boston!

So true. I feel for those people! They can't catch a break this year.

Yeah, Google has an office there, been hearing plenty.

One of my coworkers went there too, for a recruiting fair at MIT, right in between storms.

Lucky her!

Show up and immediately get snowed in again.

5:54 PM

Really! A former co-worker of mine lives there. We talk every week or two and he has been miserable.

Yeah, if you're from somewhere that normally gets that much snow, not so awful, but if you're not used to it...

I can only imagine. We don't get snow every year but every now and then. This last couple of storm systems got us, though. The bad thing here is there is that it doesn't take much to shut everything down.

Yeah.

Have you lost power or anything? Or just been stuck?

Just stuck. There were over 100k people without power in VA (12k+ in our area) but we lucked out.

Wow, yeah.

This is basically the joke about the weather here:

6:00 PM

Looks like the VA earthquake! ;)

Yup, I think it might've originally been used for that.

funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/2526007/We

Really! Love it.

And my wife's visiting back home in Montreal for a week, so she gets to enjoy a proper winter for a bit!

Our seasons aren't normal anymore. Remembering from when I was a teenager, they were much more consistent. Not so much now.

Cerberus

Poor you!

The power outages must be awful.

For us, the weather has been exceedingly moderate, the last couple of years.

6:06 PM

We've been very lucky so far. :)

Cerberus

Very mild winters, we've only had maybe two weeks of mild freezing.

Fairly cool summers, too.

Oh, good for you, personally.

We've had some very cold temps this year. But we still manage to fall back onto the roller coaster. This week and the week before we have not gotten up to freezing most days and the high today is supposed to be 32°. But it's supposed to be 70° by next Wednesday.

Drought here, and back in Texas...

We've had so much rain and now snow that water is standing. Wish I could send some that way.

Ew rain+snow

I love rain (especially summer thunderstorms) and snow's great too, but...

6:13 PM

Too much is not good. Makes for trees coming down when Nor'easters come through.

I agree on the summer thunderstorms.

Question on prime rib. I got a small roast from a NY deli and it's boneless. Should I use a rack? I've only ever cooked bone-in.

If only we had a place where you could post nice specific questions like that!

(Sorry, I have no idea.)

I can post it, just thought you may know.

yup yup no worries

For a Texan I have cooked very little meat.

That's something we don't have often but it's one of my hubby's favorites.

Hi @rfusca.

6:30 PM

@Cindy hola

How's your weather? Still icy?

nope

all clear here

Good!

There was only a 50-60% chance of rain here today so it's mostly sunny.

I've lived here nearly 4 years now and I'm still pretty sure it's not a real place.

I need to find a place like that. :)

6:37 PM

Minus the million dollar houses though.

Ouch!

trulia.com/real_estate/Sunnyvale-California/market-trends

That's a little overly zoomed in, but yeah.

You must be rich!

I do not have a house.

I was just joking. But those prices are unbelievable!

Our area is more inflated than it should be because of the transient population but nothing like that.

6:42 PM

Yeah, I know. Apartments are much more affordable, maybe... $1400 and up for one bedrooms?

There were places around $1100-1200 a few years ago but

Still seems high, but I guess inflation doesn't stop.

Yeah, it's just a ridiculously high cost of living area. All these tech companies that are doing so well, paying employees well, and not enough new housing being built.

Until we moved to Suffolk we rented a 4BR brick ranch in Norfolk. Had a detached garage and a really nice sized lot. (We had a great garden.) $600/month.

Yeah, I had a $650/month place way out in the suburbs in Houston (near NASA).

I should note that it was 10 years ago and it was considered a great deal even then!

6:48 PM

And you could buy houses in the $300-400k range I think.

Not a super nice area but certainly not bad. Pretty crazy to move out here and see apartments ~2x as expensive and houses 2.5-3x.

We were going to buy the house when our lease came up the next year. Had already worked it out. Then the owner had surgery and passed away unexpectedly. Her kids couldn't wait to get their hands on the money and gave us a 30 day notice.

Oh, wow.

@Cindy ouch

And we couldn't buy it then because they wanted a cash buyer.

last year, we were paying rent but the landlord wasn't paying the mortgage with our money. gave us 60 days and then they were getting foreclosed on

6:53 PM

what

we were renting a house and the owner wasn't paying the bank

so he got foreclosed on and we got 60 days to get out

I know, sorry, I got it, just... what

ya, it sucked

ultimately it was a good thing though

It seems like once you're to the point of buying a house that you're not living in you should be aware enough to avoid that sort of thing?

caused us to scramble and figure out our finances enough to buy a house

6:56 PM

That bit's pretty cool!

yup!

Sounds like you got a silver lining. But really, what's up with people these days?

definitely

kids these days

also adults these days

See you guys in a bit. I'm gonna go have fun vacuum sealing stuff for the freezer.

7:17 PM

lol