Seems as though the first entry every month is on washday. Well, that's the day I have scraps of time too broken up to do anything useful with.
Learned today that if you stop the machine, turn to a different cycle, and start it again, it blissfully continues with its original program. Luckily, the cycle I wanted to turn to was "drain and spin" so I didn't mind having it drain first. And when it finished and I pressed "drain and spin", it drained and spun. But when I then turned to "rinse and spin", it drain-and-spinned again. But that only put a fifteen-minute delay into getting the sheet on and off the line before the storms hit; it didn't mess up my plans to get the clothes clean, and didn't do them any harm the way the two extra agitations of last Monday did.
Don't ever buy anything that's computer controlled and doesn't have a keyboard and a monitor.
Just came back into the house from finishing digging a hole for Dave to plant his remaining tomato in my garden. It's not deep enough, but that's as deep as its going to get. If he really does keep bringing the plant into the house at night for two more weeks, I might take another shovelful of dirt out of the hole.
Not long before sunset yesterday, I went out to pick some herbs for my ten-o'clock pancake while I could still see. My herb bread never seems to work; I picked enough leaves to contribute toward my requirement for green vegetables, more than I'd put in a gallon of hamburger soup, and couldn't taste them. Pancake was good with sliced tomato, though.
When I went outside, I realized that it was cool enough to do physical work, and started to dig the hole. Got bored with that pretty soon, but I was in the garden with a shovel and spade, so I dug some of Dave's carrots. Then I had to clean them, which took a long time because the biggest one is about the size of a radish. A Cherry Belle radish.
I wasted most of today playing with maps. I plan to ride to Leesburg tomorrow. Google says it's less than a quarter century even though I'm planning to detour past the hospital and the new Goodwill store, but there will be more zigs and zags than the route Google plotted.
Good news: while sorting old maps, I found the Moore map that I replaced with the one that I lost last November. It's ragged, but it has *much* more detail than the Chamber of Commerce map.
Had to clean out the old-paper shelf this evening, and netted a stack of magazines for the emergency room. I put a handful on the bike to deliver tomorrow.
I re-installed my long narrow reflector today. (It fell off a few days ago.) I was surprised to see that it isn't bolted on, it's buttoned — the washer on the lower bolt slides up between two wires, and I had to tap the upper bolt down a bit after putting the washers on it to get the washer to sit level. After buttoning it on, I tightened both nuts.
Google Maps says my ride was 24.9 miles. I couldn't persuade it to show all the backs and forths in Leesburg, and settled for one loop from Old 15 to SR 15 and back. And, of course, it couldn't show the zig-zags in the parking lots of Sprawlmart, nor the jump over the narrow strip of grass between the parking lot at KCH and the Beyer Farm trail. I let it say I went up Lincoln instead of Harrison.
Except for missing my nap, I felt no stress at all. I did feel a little short of electrolytes on the last leg before Sprawlmart; I must take some fruit juice — perhaps salted fruit juice — next time.
I should have time for at least four more quarter centuries before cold weather sets in, if I can think of some I'm not bored with.
This was a grand tour — I stopped at Owen's to dispose of some damaged plastic bags, Good Will to get rid of a couple of battery lights, and Steak 'n Shake for a Chili Mac Supreme. (Chili Mac with chopped onion and shredded cheese.) Chili Mac is chili served on spaghetti. I wonder whether it was served on macaroni once upon a time? The chili appears to be based on barbecue sauce with chili powder in it. Primarily-cumin chili powder.
I haven't put cumin in my hamburger soup for ages. And probably won't try it now; cumin is overwhelming and I like complex seasonings.
I decided against going into Walmart so as to allow more time in Leesburg; since I got home just in time to unwind before supper — and since I don't want anything from Walmart just now — I'm glad I did.
I originally meant to follow 300 N from Walmart Plaza to the road I took back from Leesburg last summer, but Google Maps had suggested that I ride along 15 for a short distance and cut over to Levi Lee Road on Clearwater Drive. 15 was getting rather narrow and dangerous when I turned off it, so I wouldn't like to ride all the way to Levi Lee, but it had paved shoulders most of the way to Clearwater.
Clearwater is a housing-development road, and twists and turns until I was wondering whether I would come to a place where I had to loop around and go back, but if you turn north or west whenever there's an intersection, you come out on Levi Lee.
The pavement on Old 15 is none of the best, but traffic is so light that one can go around most of the rough places. Just the opposite of SR 15: the traffic is heavy, but for a while the pavement is good enough that you can keep out of its way.
The advertisement I clipped out last summer led me to think that Old Leesburg Mill was a meat market, but the raw-meat case is, at most, a cubic yard, sparsely occupied. There is deli case after deli case. There were tables and chairs all over two porches and a dining room, and I saw one man sitting at one of the tables in the dining room, but I didn't see anything I wanted to eat on the spot. Perhaps being stuffed with Chili Mac altered my perceptions; it was less than an hour after I left Steak 'n Shake. I seem to recall a lot of lunch meat, but no bread or pre-made sandwiches. I didn't read every sign in the place. I bought a small box of macaroni salad (I *had* brought ice!) and a pair of 3.5 reading glasses to replace the pair I sat on a few weeks ago.
I stopped in again on the way out of town, and ate half a cup of soft-serve ice cream while reading my maps at one of the tables on the porch. My plan, and Google's suggestion, had been to go back on Old 15 to Armstrong road and follow Armstrong to 200 E, but when it was time to leave, my Loveless kicked in and I went up on N. Harper Road to 700 N and followed that to 200 E. Hardly any farther, and it was a better road with less traffic.
Crossed back across US 30 at Sprawlmart, bought supper at Big Apple Bagels, and stopped in at Sears, where the adjustable wrenches weren't quite small enough. Dave suggests Warsaw Tools, Lowe's, Walmart, and Menard's. Can I assemble them into a quarter century ride?
I feel groggy this morning. Nearly noon and all I've done is fiddle around with the computer.
Because I was all right yesterday evening, Dave thinks I can skip my nap every day. It would sure be convenient if I could!
First Friday. We went to the Olive Barn — I can never remember the name of the Mexican restaurant on Buffalo, just what it means — and ate altogether too much. I should ask that the take-home box be brought with the meal, and put away what I shouldn't eat.
I say that every time we eat out.
It was starting to sprinkle when we came out of the restaurant, so all of the book displays had vanished, so we went straight back to the library. I was too stuffed to walk around anyway, and Dave's foot started to hurt before we were quite back to the car.
I resumed sewing today: that is, I unfolded my pants-in-progress and checked that I have all the pieces: two fronts, two backs, two pockets, two waistbands. I also took the broadfall-pocket patterns off the wall and marked the location of the watch pockets on them.
I roodled around in the linen-scraps box a little too.
For once I have an excuse for forgetting to read the ad before going to the grocery. It wasn't until I checked my shopping list well into the ride that I realized that I could swing by Marsh and buy caffiene drops.
But I didn't read the Owen's ad either, and I *had* intended to stop there until I bought milk at Marsh.
No change at the construction site, little change at the lawn-furniture display. I saw a potential customer for the first time, checking out the barns. I looked at the "framed-in bathroom" again, and there *is* room for a toilet — just barely.
I had a three-piece dinner at Penguin Point for lunch and brought two of the pieces home for supper. The first two pieces were huge, but the third was only half a wing, so I ate part of my roll.
I picked four seed heads of fennel today. Should be a whole bunch tomorrow. I think I'll try boiling some for tea.
Right now I'm boiling up some pecan-flavored brown rice that I bought at Sherman & Lin's. It was a vacuum-packed bag of rice and a cellophane packet containing a teaspoon of wild rice and something that looked like a pinch of salt — presumably the "natural pecan flavoring".
A very medical week. I went to Dr. Darr for my annual exam yesterday and he set me up with an appointment for a mammogram on Friday, which I realized later is the day Al goes to the vet for his annual, so Dave will have to take him alone.
On the way back I stopped at Owen's for my prescriptions and bit into a free-sample cookie the "frosting" of which turned out to be concrete, so I've got an appointment with the dentist for 2:45 today.
And wash on the line. Which the radar says I'll be rushing out to bring inside real soon now.
Oh, man is it dark and gloomy! I don't feel like sewing, even though I have a good light on the treadle machine.
It's pouring down rain without a breath of wind; the lighter rain we had earlier caught me off-guard when I stepped outside to comb my hair. I was grateful that Claude had put those wide, wide eaves on the house.
Shortly after I wrote yesterday's entry, Dr. Hollar called to say that that tooth had broken one time too many and re-scheduled my appointment for twelve noon so he'd have time to put on a crown. So I brought the stuff on the line in — just barely ahead of the rain — and put it on a rack; I'd already been planning to put the other load on a rack. Just barely got off in time to arrive comfortably early.
Then his clerk called back as soon as she was sure I was home to schedule the installation of the new crown — I gather that they e-mail your impressions to the lab now.
They took a lot of impressions, including an impression of the other jaw. I was not in a position to ask why.
My temporary crown tastes funny. I wonder what it's made of? I think most of it is that it's a slicker texture. And the gum is, of course, irritated.
I was planning to wash my wedding-night nightgown set today, but I didn't hear the timer go off and the washing machine pumped out my water and soap before I could put the chiffon into it. I heard it start to drain, but nothing can stop it once it has started. I'll have to bring the foot tub in and do it entirely by hand. Sometime.
But I'm not at all sure the foot tub isn't rusty.
I wasted a little time making the Leesburg tour into a web page.
(I spent two hours finding a missing quotation mark in that link.)
They did too good a job on the temporary crown — I'm in danger of forgetting to baby it.
Mammogram is 10:15, not 10:30. I'd better set the alarm clock — I try to leave for church at ten, and rarely make it.
I have learned by experience that it's impossible for me to arrive on time, so I have to arrive everywhere fifteen minutes early.
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Clothes laid out, book on the bike, fresh water in the bottles.
I've been grousing that Friday is the only good day for a long ride this week and I've got an appointment. Then I realized that when I'm done with the mammogram, it will be before eleven and I'll be on my bike near the boardwalk.
So I threw my "cooler" into the recycling bin, lined my pannier with fresh newspaper, and filled a Rubbermaid bottle with ice. (I've been keeping another Rubbermaid bottle in the fridge so I can pour chilled water around the ice cubes in the morning.)
And I put enough food bars for breakfast *and* lunch into the cooler. I'm planning to have a sub for lunch, but one must not bet too much on being able to buy food along the way.
When it's cold enough that I wish I'd worn gloves, the plan of freezing tea and drinking it as it thaws doesn't work as well as it does in hot weather! Luckily, I'd just dropped the bottle into the cooler without adding chilled water, filling it with water at ambient speeded up the thawing just enough, and I had a very nice ride.
Until the tea wore off a mile and six tenths before I got home. As I rode from Owen's to here, I wondered whether one can be dinged for driving with ability impaired by a *lack* of drugs in the system.
Woman's Imaging asks patients to come half an hour early to fill out the paperwork, and routinely sends them out before the time appointed for the mammogram. This time they outdid themselves and sent me out before the time I was supposed to arrive!
That was because I woke up early and left as soon as I'd dressed and eaten. If the weather is fit next year, I'll have to do this on purpose.
I didn't think to bring magazines to get rid of, but otherwise things went very well. I went to Walmart by way of the boardwalk and Goodwill and Bell Drive, and ate a "Flatizza" (toasted open-face flatbread sandwich) at Walmart's Subway. It was exactly the right amount of food for someone who meant to get back on the bike soon. Then I went to Lowe's, where a courteous clerk helped me look for adjustable wrenches. One was almost small enough and I'll go back and get it if my remaining three options don't pan out. Perhaps I should have bought one of the keychain tape measures in the bin near the wrenches, they were full-size tape measures, but not impossible, and quite cheap. I'll find one the size of the one that's held together with a rubber band some day, but an extra ten-foot tape measure is never surplus to needs. I could stash it with my two-yard folding rule.
I changed shoes at Lowe's, and was very glad I had when I was climbing the hill south of US 30 on N 150 W. Cleats don't make as big a difference as drop handlebars, but it's definitely enough to feel, and I just barely made it up the hill *with* cleats. That would have been a long walk, and the shoulder isn't safe.
It was a bit awkward getting out of the parking lots wearing cleats, though. Somebody should install a bench at the intersection of Sheldon Street and 300 N.
The flatizza hadn't worn off when I got to Penguin Point, so I bought one breast and one thigh to go. I should have taken them out of the bag; they didn't chill down very fast even though I pressed them against the bottle of ice. It turned out that Dave had had Mad Anthony tenderloin for lunch and he'd eaten only half of it, so my piece is still in the fridge. He seemed to enjoy the breast, but complained about the piece of back attached to it. I complain that one can never buy a fried chicken back! (Please don't prove me wrong before the first of October, when my new tooth will be installed.)
At Penguin Point I noticed a dispenser of flyers for the Walk and Wander exhibit, reflected that today would be a good day to take the tour, pity I didn't bring my map . . . duh! There's a whole stack of them, free for the taking.
So I took a flyer, and checked the statues off in order. Well, I started with #3, because that is where I came to the courthouse after coming into town on Fort Wayne Street, and I gave #1 a miss because I'd seen it a dozen times and liked it less on each pass.
I saw only one statue that I'd missed. I bought a paperback copy of Asaro's _Final Key_ at the miscellaneous shop on Buffalo, and looked at the gimcrack case in the antique store on the other side of Buffalo. Pretty nice tour of downtown. The flatizza wore off at the pavilion in Center Lake Park, so I ate one of my food bars after using the facilities and topping off my water bottle at the drinking fountain inside. The pavilion was unlocked because people were moving stuff in, apparently for an event tomorrow. I didn't ask, since everyone looked busy. [KCV's Facebook page says it was "Family Safety Day".]
Just finished this morning's paper. The "Frame Game" in U.S.A. Today was actually clever, all four puzzles.
Even the inane puzzles must be a strain to come up with week after week after week.
I skipped the construction-and-lawn-furniture leg of today's Tour d'Warsaw — I'd slowed up as I passed yesterday, thinking that there might be signs of life on a working day, and didn't see any.
I bought a half-dozen ears of corn at the fairgrounds market, a half-dozen tamales at the place across the street from the Speedway station, and two bell peppers at the Center Street market.
Then I came back by way of Warsaw Health foods and spent seventeen dollars and seventy cents on candy, just by way of balancing all that healthful stuff.
Had a scare yesterday when my Moore map wasn't there when I wanted to consult it. I reflected that I sometimes put it between the layers of newspaper lining my "cooler" for easy access, so when I got home I went through the recycling bin shaking each of the wrinkled newspapers, and found it lying so neatly on top of the next newspaper that I wonder that I didn't see it when throwing out the papers — I had needed to unfold most of them, so I discarded them one at a time, and the map was in an orange newspaper bag.
Google Maps says yesterday's ride was only 14.2 miles, but I spent over an hour on the Walk and Wander tour and I didn't even try to tell Google about those zig-zags, so I'm going to count it as a quarter century.
I learned by accident that if you drag another icon onto the Gimp icon, the other icon snaps back to its old place and Gimp opens displaying — or attempting to display, if it's not an image file — the file linked to the other icon.
I found a keychain tape measure at the pawn shop yesterday. It's a six-foot measure, but isn't a lot bigger than my three-foot measure — and it's steel. Above all, it's *not* held together with a rubber band.
I was on my way back from the hospital. The radiologist wanted another look at my left breast, so I had to go back — he decided the calcification really was calcification, but wants another look in six months.
When preparing to go to the hospital, I debated whether to take "The Riddle Master of Hed" or "The Final Key"; decided on Riddle Master because it's a library book and I wanted to finish, and I haven't started the Asaro. But a paperback trilogy is way too thick to put into a pocket, and it's as long and wide as a magazine. While dressing, I laid it on a table and forgot to pick it up again.
So today I spent the whole morning going back for it. Picking up the book was easy, but when I stopped for milk on the way back, I discovered that I'd forgotten my wallet. Thank goodness I wanted to check to see whether I have a coupon for radishes, and didn't find it out at the checkout! I used to carry forty dollars in my first-aid kit, but I haven't replaced that part of my lost emergency kit yet, so I put the radishes back on the shelf and went home to get my wallet.
Having taken a great thick book out of my pannier, I also bought some frozen dinners. And I remembered that we'd eaten the can of corned beef, and bought another one.
I just rolled up ten yards of black one-inch twill tape and put it away. That was what I'd gone downtown for when I went home past the pawn shop. I boiled it, and thought I'd never rinse out the black dye when it had cooled in the water. With luck, this will mean that it won't bleed in use.
Let it be officially recorded that the tea wore off at 5:37.
At least that's when I noticed, when I contemplated responding to a question asked of me on Live Journal, and realized that if I wrote now, it would be blither.
That is not going to stop me from writing an entry for the Banner. Stand warned that I plan to use this space to make detailed notes to mine for the ride report I plan to write tomorrow. When your eyes glaze over, skip down to the row of asterisms.
When I passed Burger King on the last leg, I thought "Man, I could really go for a mess of french fries, but I don't want them now, I want them when I get home." Then ten minutes later and halfway from Burger King to our house, I realized that I could have ordered them to go.
If it was ten minutes later, that was more than halfway home, because I left Big Apple Bagels at 3:33 and got home at 3:51. Took eighteen minutes to get everything out of my panniers.
Eager to get rolling, I didn't bother to sort my map snippets — after all, I knew the way and I had my Moore map. I was getting pretty close to Pierceton when I remembered that I intended to ride well beyond the edge of the Kosciusko County map. (I wonder why I've never found a Whitley County map, not even a pitiful letter-size print-out like my Noble County map.)
But I did know the way, though I needed the Moore map to select the best road to cross from Pierceton Road to 350 S. It's 600 E, by the way, the road that ends at St. Francis Cemetery. 500 E is the same distance, but hillier. 400 E branches off when Pierceton and 350 S are slightly farther apart, and 350 E branches off when they are detectably farther apart, one has to jog on Wilcox road over to 400 E to join 350 S, and the placement of the lakes and streams suggests a bit of relief in the terrain. Pity Google Maps doesn't do topography. Top maps are now available only in forms that one loads into one's GPS, and my GPS (should I choose to resurrect it) doesn't do that.
After jogging around Hillcrest Cemetery and crossing Route 13, 350 E becomes Ryerson Road, and Ryerson jogs south on 950 W and becomes Old Trail, which leads straight into Larwill. I headed straight for the gas station on US 30, and was amused to see that two couples on motorcycles had just fueled their machines, and departed as I parked.
This gas station also fuels bicycles. I bought a little square box containing two slices of pizza and ate one of them standing up, since it didn't seem worth my while to back-track to the gazebo. Then I bungeed the box to the top of my cooler and went out the gas station's back door, getting to US 30 by way of Thompson Street, Hammondtree Street, and McClelland Street. I took note of 650 W as I passed it, for the trip back.
650 W gets one back to Larwill by way of 100 N; I note on the map that the sharp curve on 100 N is close to the sharp curve on Main Street, and Main Street is also Route 5 and Old Trail. The "satellite" view shows nothing but trees and a railroad in between; I'd wager that it would be easy to walk from one road to the other. But it also seems to be a safe bet that one would have to go through somebody's yard to do so.
Oops! While mapping the route to see how far I'd gone, I realized that I forgot to explore the greenhouses; I just bought candy, dried cherries, raw peanuts, and a pound of Ohio swiss cheese, ate my other piece of pizza, and put my riding shoes back on. Next trip, I must look at the greenhouses *first*.
It's 31.3 miles, if you go by roads reasonably close to the driveways and parking lots I actually used. I was rather pleased to see that when I pulled a waypoint out of Larwill onto US 30, Google had me turn around *in* Spring Creek Market to go back. And it made the return trip by way of 650 W all by itself.
The pavement on US 30 was about as new as it could get without construction machinery still around. On the way out, I thought that the rumble strip was gone, though I did see faint hints that a tracked vehicle had run along on the shoulder just touching the main roadway. But when I crossed the road to go back and had a different angle to the light, I saw that it was just that the rumble strip was black on black and I couldn't see it. It is still the type with wide landings and narrow grooves, and riding over it is hardly even a nuisance. I wish they had that type closer to town where you can't give it a good four feet of clearance as I did while going from Larwill to Spring Creek and back.
Nonetheless, seeing it made me sad, because it meant that they *didn't* mean to add one more layer to the shoulder and make it level with the lanes. The edge of the travel lane made a wee little curb parallel to my path all the way. I think I could have survived hitting it, and I gave it an even wider berth than the rumble strip (the exact width of the rumble strip wider, to be precise), but when you know what a diversion fall feels like, that sort of thing makes you nervous.
I'm pretty sure most of the gravel on the shoulder is construction debris, probably from grinding out the rumble strip, but I did see a piece of broken glass and a couple of tire shreds. I hope that people have lots of reasons to drive on the shoulder before I go back again, and mash all that gravel into the asphalt.
The trip to Spring Creek left me feeling so good that I decided to add in a Sprawlmart tour on the way back. So I hung a right at Hillcrest graveyard, went into Pierceton, and left it by way of Van Ness Road, which took me to Wooster Road.
I went first to Aunt Millies, where I bought a loaf of bread and a bag of slimwich buns, then to Big R, where I bought a pound of squirrel peanuts, then to Aldi, where I pared my list down a lot because my panniers were getting full. I half-filled one of them with boxes of "protein" bars, because we were nearly out. Then I ate a "cookie dough" bar from my cooler, regretting that I hadn't thought to extract a nicer bar from the boxes that I'd just bought.
Thence to Sprawl Two, where I didn't find anything in the Dollar General, and bought Big Apple out of whole-wheat bagels. There were three left; I had a "Roma Italian" sandwich made out of one, and bought the other two sliced.
And I'm reminding myself that the french fries that I didn't buy at Burger King would have gotten all limp and soggy by now if I still had them. Maybe I'll go fry some rice.
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Judging by the number of eggshells, it's been a while since I carried out the garbage.
Al is on the back of the Lazyboy. He likes having Dave tip the chair onto the sofa so that the Roomba won't get trapped under it when it sweeps the living room at two in the morning.
I was a bit tired and dispirited during the Tour d'Warsaw today. Perhaps I shouldn't have bought a scotch egg so soon after eating a heavy breakfast. I bought apples, eggs, and milk, and got rid of a few magazines. There are more signs at the "Everything Outdoors" showroom; the signs on the barns say "Carolina Carports"
While I was getting ready to go, Dave sold the pontoon boat. Dressing took a bit longer than usual because I hopped onto the flatfoot to run a towel for drying the captain's set out to the dock.
The new owner lives right across the canal from the dock, and Dave says he said he wanted a pontoon because his wife can no longer step down into his other boat.
Wow, I scored nine at Hexavirus in the middle of the night, a new record. I got a very lucky layout of the board, which renews my curiosity as to how the program selects colors for the hexagons, but there are so many sites where one may download the program that I have no hope at all of finding one that discusses it.
That reads like a sentence typed in the middle of the night, even after I cut it into two sentences.
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After yesterday's Tour d' Warsaw, I washed my pocket knife. I dried its innards with the air compressor and it doesn't appear to have taken any harm — indeed, the handle shines more than I remember it — but with that and the missing-knife incident of last month, I think that looking so long and hard to find one that didn't make an obtrusive lump in my pocket is backfiring.
I took legos and a package of child's markers to church, thinking I'd ask Mrs. Nier whether the Kiddy Kollege could use them, but I saw a table marked "free stuff — table not included" before I saw her, and left them there. After church the markers were gone; the legos were still there.
I bought the markers because they were washable, and I thought I could use them in sewing, but the instructions say that the stains will set if you don't get after them immediately and vigorously, so they are no use for marks that you make on purpose.
We had a lovely visit last Sunday, but not the one we intended. The weenie roast was on Saturday! I was appalled at first, but we came around to thinking that it was better that way. There were enough left-overs that Alice served us a nice lunch and we brought some of the anniversary cake home. Sara Lee and Larry came to clean up, three dogs came for exercise, and Darryl dropped in for a while.
And if we'd come on Saturday, we'd have gone home just as the party got going good. They had partied into the middle of the night, and we have to hit the road at five.
I think I was tired Saturday because I was coming down with something; I was a bit upset in the gut this morning. But that appears to have cleared up.
I didn't get to sleep right away when I went back to bed. I think I have come up with a regular coloring in which every tile is surrounded by six tiles of six different colors. Take a strip of side-by-side hexagons made of repeats of the same seven colors in the same order. Line up an identical strip with color seven between color two and color three. That puts the seven of the previous strip between the five and the four of the new strip. Repeat. Now the seven of the middle strip touches six and one in its own strip, two and three in the previous strip, and four and five in the third strip. Easier to visualize if you say "red" instead of "seven".
Such a pattern would require as many moves as there are tiles on the board. If tiles are colored by picking a random number from one to seven, that isn't quite as improbable as all the air molecules in a room just happening to all move into one corner, but I'll bet it doesn't happen very often.
On second thought, one could drill a line through the pattern to expose more than one copy of a given color.
I won't say I was cold when walking to church in my short-sleeved dress, but a long-sleeved dress with a higher neck wouldn't have been uncomfortable.
! I hadn't thought of looking in K-mart for six-inch plates. Couldn't find any at Big R, the dollar stores, or Owen's.
I've also got to go back to Lowery's before they sell that piece of safety-yellow cotton jersey. I passed it up because I make my summer jerseys of woven linen these days, but every trip after that one I've worn my T-shirt style jersey — and it's badly worn in the pocket where I keep my key ring, knife, lipstick, sunscreen, and pills. I need a new *fall* jersey.
Hrrm. Is that a piece of yellow cotton interlock hanging out from under the pile of knits on the top shelf of the sewing-room closet?
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Cotton jersey. Not as nice as Lowery's jersey, but quite acceptable. (Pout. No stash expansion.)
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Last load in the washer, thinking about lunch. I left a square slightly smaller than a slice of bread from my breakfast pancake. Do I have it with sour cream, braunschweiger, or braunschweiger *and* sour cream?
The pancake recipe on the powdered-buttermilk box says to use a quarter teaspoon of soda *and* a half teaspoon of baking powder. Soda fizzes it more than amply; I wonder what the recipe writer was thinking of? Perhaps he expected the pancake batter to be made up the evening before and left in the fridge all night.
I washed the wedding nightshirt on Tuesday. The washer won't fill without agitating, and if you cancel a cycle, it goes bananas, so when the chiffon had soaked long enough, I lifted it out into a bucket, dumped in what laundry had accumulated since the day before, and let it finish the rinse-and-spin cycle. Then I kept the towels etc. in the other bucket while I spun out the chiffon and soaked it again, and so forth through two rinses.
Wednesday I rode to Sidney and back; nice ride, little point. Details at a href="http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/CENT2014/.
Today I was supposed to catch up on sewing and mending, but it's nearly noon and I'm still fiddling around.
Today I learned that if you chill a Rubbermaid water bottle to 0F and give it a smart thwack, it will break.
Since tomato season is over, I'm planning to expand tomorrow's Tour d'Warsaw into a quarter century. Perhaps I'll circumnavigate Pike and Center, stopping at Meijer to buy a new water bottle. Or tour past "The Farm" produce stand, which should still be open but perhaps not on a Saturday because she does the farmer's markets.
Didn't make quite a quarter, but I'd have come pretty close if I'd gone to Chinworth Bridge by Crystal Lake Road and Parks-Schramm instead of by the Chinworth Trail.
I stopped at Walmart, and bought a Crescent crescent wrench at Lowes. Went past Meijer on the other side of US 30. Didn't buy a sandwich at Big Apple Bagels — they close at two on Saturday and it was half-past four when I got there. Which would also have been too late on a weekday.
I may have overdone the caffiene. It's nearly half past two and I'm not sleepy yet.
I attended children's church today. I hope I can do that again sometime.
Not yet twelve and I've been tired since eleven. Waiting for the phone to ring is exhausting. I managed to finish my broadfall pockets, but did most of the work after the appointment was settled. I put the handset on "speaker", but the hold music kept abruptly fading, making me think that the nurse was back. I don't know how much phone-calling went on in the background. I do know that Patty (Dr. Darr's nurse) called KCH, then Kathy from KCH called me and got my list of allergies, then she called Dupont to get a list of open biopsy dates.
And I'll be sending this tonight or tomorrow, leaving y'all in suspense! Appointment is on the sixth of October. But Dr. Burger is almost certain that it's nothing, and initially told me to get another mammogram in six months instead of waiting a year. Then the "almost" got to niggling him, and he talked it over with some other radiologists, and decided to do a needle biopsy.
Which means that Dave has to drive me to Fort Wayne. Also means no aspirin, so I'd better not overdo exercise between now and the sixth!
I forgot Ibuprofen when she asked me about allergies. No doubt they'll ask again — perhaps I'd better go right now and write that on my list of the medications I'm on, which they will ask for. Wouldn't be a bad idea to add allergies to the file that I print out when I run out of lists. (I hand out a surprising lot of them.)
Changed file and printed out a fresh sheet. Now it's honestly time for lunch.
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In the afternoon, I rode to Owen's for milk and prescriptions while Dave took a walk around the Hotel. On the way out the door, I said, "I'm forgetting something, but what?"
It was checking my right pannier. (I had refurbished the left one with fresh newspaper yesterday.) When I started to pack my groceries, I discovered that I didn't have my bag of packing material, and I did have a water bottle that I'd emptied and chucked into the pannier on Saturday.
But the springy leaves of the pineapple were adequate cushioning for the bananas.
Dave got back before I did, by the way. I don't think he'd been feeding Spot very long when I arrived.
The last time I got a good look at Spot, I noticed that his white spot was U-shaped; I'd been sure it was a solid dot. Later Dave said "Have you noticed that Spot's spot is fading?"
Maybe it has something to do with growing winter fur.
I bought a small steak and we had it with the last two of our hill of potatoes for supper.
Oops, I forgot to top off my tires before it got sleepy out. Hope I remember in the morning; I want to ride to the dentist tomorrow afternoon — my new tooth is ready — and my front tire is downright squishy.
Stopped at Owens for celery (and bought just celery) on the way home. Noticed that one of the bags I'd carried my book in was torn, planned to throw it into the bag-recycling bin on my way in — after all, if I need a bag when I come out I can take one from . . . I forgot to bring the bag of packing material again. But one stalk of celery doesn't need packing material. (I went out and put the bag of crumpled bags into a pannier.)
I did not stop at the Bowen Center on the way home, but I thought about it. As I was dressing for my two-o'clock appointment, the phone rang — the dentist's office. "We were expecting you at twelve." And my calendar says "12:00" plain as day. Worse, I can't think of any way I could have made such a mistake.
But they were very nice about it, and shoe-horned me in at two. Too nice; I'd have felt better if they had yelled at me a little. Once I got there things went very well; I didn't even need novocaine — or whatever it is they are using these days. My new tooth still feels funny, and I'm under orders not to bite anything for twenty-four hours. I opened a can of Deutche Kueche pea soup for supper, forgetting that Dave is trying to cut down on carbs. He compromised by not eating much.
I returned _The Riddle Master of Hed_ on the way home. I'd renewed it twice, but it's only fair that I kept it for three reading times — it's three novels. I checked out another book by McKillip: _The Thorn Alphabet_.
Dave enjoyed a day trip to Fort Wayne today; I told him he should do that more often. And suggested that he drop me off at a shopping mall next time.
We'll both be going to Fort Wayne on Monday, but I don't think any shopping malls will be involved.
Dave stopped at Spring Creek on his way back. It's odd to cut up a malt ball with a knife! It split neatly.