Post #4 · 5:16am Jan 31st, 2018
Finally! We have new chapters!
First off, I want to apologize for not being more involved in this event, i.e. responding to comments, etc. other than posting the actual chapters themselves. As you may recall from Blog #2, Sunday the 28th was my birthday, and a busy day it was. I ended up posting the chapters with my phone in the middle of a family gathering, which I really didn't want to do. (My older brother's birthday is two days after mine -- today, actually -- so we usually do both in one gathering, so everyone is usually there.) I wanted to wait until I was home to publish them incase I got a bad comment or a dislike; anything that would distract me from my family, essentially. (It was OK, as it turned out; you guys are awesome!) With the way the night was going, however, I wasn't going to be home until after 9pm and I didn't want to make you guys wait that long, so I hit publish and just put my phone away until I got home.
Anyway, yeah. I was actually pretty busy on my birthday, but it was stuff that I enjoyed.
First off, my daughter stayed at the out-law's the previous night, which was nice. Don't get me wrong, she's a great kid and I love her, but sometimes being able to sleep in and waking up to quiet house is a very welcome thing.
My wife gave me a few things: one was another Mega Man shirt exactly like the one I got for Christmas except it's black; a set of Bluetooth headphones, because anytime I'm writing I have music on. Music fuels my brain, and pretty much every word of MLP EG Forever was written with something blasting in my ear -- aside from maybe the first couple chapters, I think.
The third thing was a nifty little Nintendo replica system, with original controllers and 600 games built-in. Not bad, but it became obvious very quickly that it was not an "official" Nintendo product, since most of the games are really obscure and play kind of glitchily...glitchiously...glit-
They have glitches. Also, the instruction manual is kind of an enigma; when I open the front page marked: "USER MANUAI," I find a sub-heading (among others) that says Attention for Using , under which I find point number 1:
1.Never allow children play it alone for it comes to the power using
I shit you not, that's exactly how it's written. This manual is FULL of gems like this.
Oh well. Offshore product. Language barrier. Good times.
It works well enough in all honesty, and even though most of the games are unknown to me, there are some good classics on it, so kudos to my wife for a nice birthday offering. The gods (me) are pleased.
So then, what did I do on my birthday? Why, I went out to the cold shop and changed the oil in my truck, just like a real-life version of Golden Arrow, minus the immortality and the big dick. I had the intention of re-torquing the cylinder head studs and setting the valve clearance as well, but it was pretty cold in there and I didn't have quite enough ambition, plus time was running out; the family gathering was at my mother's house an hour away, and we still had to get ready and go pick up my daughter before we could go.
Now for a trigger warning: I am going to ramble about random shit. For a long time.
OK, so...it has been something of a tradition to make ice cream for the January birthday get together for me, my brother and my Grandpa (back when he was still alive). Anyway, we hadn't done it for a long time, and the machine had ended up at my house about ten years ago. My mom texted me at random last week to see if I wanted to make ice cream at the birthday event on the weekend, so I told her 'sure, but I had to see if the machine was even complete and that I would get back to her.'
Let's go back a few years. What happened was: one day my Grandma randomly offered me the ice cream maker to keep at my place; it's always stayed at her place -- it was hers, after all -- and I really don't know why she gave it to me, but she did, and it's pretty much just sat on the shelf ever since. She died in 2009, and it was two or three years before that that she gave me the machine, which hadn't been used for a few years before that...so we're looking at a good fifteen years since it's seen any action.
So I went to look in the basement for it, and I found it tucked back in the corner, covered in dust.
This is all of it's components:
Now, for some perspective, my mother -- who is 64 -- remembers my Grandma buying this machine used when she was a teenager. We really don't know its exact age, but we estimate it to be about 70-80 years old.
Anyway, when it's assembled for use, it looks like this:
The crank was pretty rusty and it screeched like crazy, so I had to oil it up a little, plus the wooden pail was dried and shrivelled, so the bands were all loose and it leaked like crazy. Easy fix: just soak it in water over night. By morning, the wood had swelled and it was tight as can be.
Sunday morning, while getting ready for the get-together, I noticed the crank handle was gone (as seen in the picture above) and since it usually takes like an hour of constant cranking to make the ice cream, I figured we were gonna need a proper handle so we wouldn't lose our minds and end up murdering one another. This was after I'd finished the oil change on my truck and had already came inside, so I ended up going back out to the shop to figure out a solution for the missing handle.
So I had the crank handle in the vice, and I found a long bolt and a metal sleeve (which was actually just a heavy-duty crimp connector for a battery cable) to make a handle out of. (they're sitting on top of the vice in the above picture) I figured I would put the bolt through the sleeve, and find a way to fasten it to the crank.
(By the way, I realize my work bench is a fucking disaster. I wish I could say it was 'organized chaos' like Rarity, but that's really just a dirty lie. Believe it or not, there's like seven turbochargers buried on that bench somewhere, along with three starters, a VW diesel manifold set and a bunch of other tools and shit that need sorting out.)
So...after a little tap action to cut some threads:
I screwed the bolt in and put a nut on the back to jam it so it wouldn't back out while in use.
And voila! A nice little spinner handle. It's not pretty, but it worked perfectly!
So after filling a tote with snow -- because it had been unseasonably warm for the past two weeks, and because there was NO snow at my mother's -- we headed out of town.
(By the way, the next day [yesterday] we got like half a foot of snow...so thanks winter, for being a douche yet again.)
My mother had the ice cream batter already done. Whole milk, sugar, eggs and corn starch; cook on low while stirring constantly to create a nice custard, then add whipping cream and vanilla, and BAM! Vanilla ice cream batter.
You pour that into the metal can with the beater inside, put the machine together like in the second picture, pack snow and salt around the can, and start cranking.
And you keep cranking...and cranking...and cranking...
The reason for adding the salt to the snow is that it actually lowers the freeze point, which makes it much colder, which in turn freezes the ice cream faster. Since water (snow) freezes at 0°C, any loss of heat below that is latent, meaning it doesn't get any colder, it just changes state; so adding the salt allows it to come down to about -10ish(?) before it freezes. I'm not sure of the exact number, but it gets damn cold, let me tell ya. Get some on your hands for too long and it friggin' burns.
That's my hand with the black sleeve at the bottom of both pictures; the wooden pail is rotted where that end of the crank hooks on, so I had to hold it in place the whole time. It took about an hour, as expected, but this is actually the nice thing about it: different people will come and take turns cranking (which keeps the ice cream from freezing solid like ice) and it becomes a conversation hub; like gathering around the water cooler. Everyone cranks for a bit and has a chat, and it's actually a good time...one of those 'it's the journey, not the destination' kind of things.
You just have to watch how fast you crank; back when we did this with my Grandma, she always used to say: "Don't go too fast or you'll end up with butter!" I have no idea if that's true, but it's one rule that everyone still obeys.
Anyway, on to the good stuff. Once it gets hard to turn (the gear teeth will start to jump), it's almost ready. 
O-o-o-o-o-oh...look at that...
Pull the beater out and scrape it off, then you have this:
Then you put the lid on and pack snow over it. At this point, you go have supper while it sits in the snow. By the way, it was a potluck dinner, so everyone brought something for supper, but apparently there was absolutely no communication between anyone because NOBODY brought a vegetable. Literally, the spread was: two different meat lasagnas, Swedish meatballs and ribs. Seriously.
It was fucking awesome.
Anyway...after that, it was time to enjoy the fruits of our labour. (At the time I took this pic, the new chapters were just published.)
This shit is SO good. You don't even need to put anything on it. Just eat it as is. My wife -- who hasn't had much experience with this stuff -- mentioned that we should have gotten fixins for it, and I was like: "WHAT? We're not gonna cheapen this amazing shit with store-bought Nestle junk!"
Nah, I didn't really yell at her, but you get what I'm saying.
The only drawback to this ice cream is that it has to be eaten right away, because:
1. It melts really fast
2. If you put any leftover ice cream in the freezer, it freezes hard as a rock (AKA useless)
3. It's delicious...but never allow children eat it alone for it comes to the power using
Another difference between this stuff and the chemical/additive laden store-bought ice cream is that it's COLD. Like, it makes your tongue numb to the point where you can't even taste it, but at the same time it doesn't give you an 'ice cream headache,' which is kind of weird, but whatever.
Anyway, that was my birthday. It was lot of fun -- despite having frozen feet from standing outside, cranking the machine -- and I thought it'd be fun to share with you, the good folks at Fimfiction.
I've always had an affinity for doing oldschool things like this, kind of like the old farm machinery that I mentioned back in Post #1. I like old fashioned shit. Maybe that's why I subconsciously made Golden Arrow so old? Who knows.
