A friend of mine shared this with me…satire makes anything better.

Grand Valley State University is looking for a talented Web developer to join a great team that works on a range of projects.  The GVSU Web Team primarily uses Adobe’s ColdFusion paired with an Oracle database environment to create cutting-edge Web applications.  If you’re looking for a position, or know someone that would be interested, I’d love to hear from you.

here is a quick snapshot of what we’re looking for:

To apply, or to find more information visit: http://bit.ly/9Qsp5R

I was craving soft pretzels for some reason today so I made a batch after getting home from work.  In case you ever get the craving here is our recipe (aside from not looking like your standard pretzel shape they are excellent):

Really Good Soft Pretzels

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon yeast
• 1 table spoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 4 cups water, boiling (for water bath)
• 4 teaspoons baking soda (for water bath)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees
2. Mix butter, yeast, sugar, salt, hot water, and 1 cup of flour until smooth & bubbles form
3. Gradually mix in remaining flour until dough is no longer sticky, add additional flour if necessary.
4. Cover dough and allow to rise until it doubles in size (and hour or 2)
5. Once dough has risen knead for 1-2 minutes, adding a bit of flour to make dough less sticky if need be
6. Divide dough and roll out pieces of dough until strips are 1/2″ in diameter and long enough to form your pretzel shapes
7. Let shaped pretzels sit for 2-3 minutes
8. Drop pretzels into boiling water bath (4 cups of water and 4 teaspoons of baking soda, boiling) and let float for 1 minutes on each side
9. Let pretzels drip dry on a wire rack and then transfer to a greased cookie sheet
10. Cook for 13-15 minutes, or until pretzels reach desired brown-ness.

Once you start cutting the dough and shaping the pretzels it is helpful to have two people to keep the process going.  The pretzels will start to accumulate on greased cookie sheets after the water bath and then you’ll just have to wait for everything to bake.  To speed things up I usually skip the shaping step and just cut into 2 inch chunks which are great for dipping in something like a spicy or honey mustard sauce.  Enjoy!

For sale: One well used old farm house on 4.3 acres with a stocked pond, a dozen or so fruit trees, blueberry bushes, horse pastures, a little barn complete with a couple horse stalls and a big garden ready for planting.  Inside the house there are 5 bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two basements (the Michigan basement consists of fieldstone and logs with the bark still on them supporting the house!)  The second basement is the foundation for the addition that was added when I was in Junior High (I think) that doubled the size of the original house.  The original house is very old and  the neighbor’s house was one of the original school houses in the area.  Down the road is the old Holloway railroad station…

How could you pass this up:

My mom is finally selling the house that me and my siblings grew up in.  She hasn’t lived there in over a year as she has been busy with travel nursing assignments, and the place wasn’t getting the attention an old house needs to stay intact.  I spent the past couple days in Tecumseh trying to get everything organized, meeting with Realtors, carpet installers, and doing all sorts of general remodeling.  I was shocked how much better the house looked after updating all the light fixtures, updating one bathroom and replacing a lot of wall paper with more modern paint colors.  I hope a new family enjoys all the hard work, and I hope it means the house sells a lot faster.

And then there was the barn…  My dad was a collector of everything it seems; after he passed away a couple years ago we went through the barn and cleaned and organized the best we could.  This time around I had to have a dumpster dropped off to finally purge a lot of the stuff that wouldn’t be wanted/needed by anyone else.  The items he accumulated over the years ranged from flat out junk to the nicest antiques, including set after set of wrenches and ratchets, more hand saws than any one person could ever use, box after box of mismatched nuts and bolts, and random pieces of scrap metal that doesn’t seem to have any real purpose.  After cleaning and purging I think I finally have the barn ready for the county’s biggest yard sale/flea market.

If you live in southeast Michigan and are looking for a great place to live let me know and I’ll gladly give you more info!