Found a new use for the ribbon on my hat on the way back from church. The wind tried to blow my hat off, and instead of adjusting the hat so that the wind would push it down, I just let the wind pull on the ribbon — it was channelling a cool breeze down the back of my neck.
My socks have gotten into such a state that I decided I had to get some high-price cheap-quality "Smartwool" socks from the cutesy shoe store on the square, so on Saturday, after I'd seen the Farmers' Market, I went to the east side of the square.
Not only was the shoe store gone, I had no idea where it had been. My best guess is the One-Ten Meatery. That, surely, will also not be long for this world. Sign said "closed"; hours sign said they should be open — bad omen.
Dave was annoyed today that he had to drive all the way to Fort Wayne — a ninety-mile round trip — just to get his stitches taken out. He was even more annoyed when the doctor took out only four of them and told him to come back next week.
But he did get to have supper at Wings. He brought two pieces of wing home; I think I'll have them for lunch tomorrow.
When I planned a Walmart by way of Tractor Supply trip for tomorrow, I was thinking of checking out the office chairs for future reference, but after my last go-round with the bolt in my present chair, I might up and bungee the chair to the bike.
I said "last" and not "latest"; it ended with me putting the bolt into a drawer.
My new shirt is all done but the bottom hem and sewing the ends of the elastic in the neck.
I finally finished my new jersey today. I definitely don't have the figure for a skin-tight yellow shirt.
Google Maps says that I rode 10.4 miles yesterday.
But I walked about point four of it.
After some confusion (there is *now* a county map in the door of the truck), Dave took me to the Trailhouse, where I bought a new tube and casing.
I wonder how 8 Square Road came by its name? (Duck-Duck-Go doesn't say, but there is another one in Maine.)
I plan to try again tomorrow: the Marina is open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
But what do I substitute for the stop at Tractor Supply? We haven't opened the bag of peanuts I bought yesterday.
When I came home, the mallows in the swamp near Hire Park on Arthur Street were a riot of colors. I plan to come back from tomorrow's Tour d'Warsaw by way of Parks-Schram even though I suspect that the marsh mallows I once saw there are extinct.
(Wikipedia says that the marsh mallow is shorter than this plant, and has small white flowers rather than hollyhock-like flowers.)
The clerk at the Chapman Lake marina was cleaning up to get ready to open when I passed at 11:32. Perhaps I should have waited; I made a wrong turn and ended up going to Walmart by way of Oswego.
I bought a beef sandwich at the mini-mart in Oswego. It could have used some horsey sauce and a pickle. I added a packet of "light mayo" and a packet of soy sauce, which cleaned me out of packets. Had I eaten inside, there might have been some condiments on the table. The picnic table in front appears to be intended for the benefit of smokers, judging by the used ashtray.
I found the disposable office chair I'd come to look at, and the package is small enough to bungee to my bike, but it would have made it top-heavy and hard to steer. I'll come back in a car — preferably before my current chair falls apart. Also before they stop selling "back to school" supplies.
I did ride Parks-Schram. I saw some flowers that might be mallows, but they were too far away to be sure, and all were the same lavenderish pink, the least showy of the Hire Park mallows.
I bought a pint of mixed cherry tomatoes at the Center Street market. We've already eaten several.
Google says yesterday's ride was 24.3 miles.
In a few minutes, Dave and I are going to the Japanese place to celebrate our fifty-first.
??? I went into the kitchen for something — forgot what when I got there, of course — and saw a commercial for an "energy drink" that contains "only four calories!".
I presume that they mean kilocalories, but that still isn't enough energy to notice.
Washday. I dried the clothes in the garage.
We had enough rain to drive me into the garage when I tried to do a bit of needlework while sitting at the picnic table, but not enough to do any good.
Dave's Ohio Buckeye tree has leaf blight. It's too late for fungicide to help, but there's a chance it will go dormant for the winter and come back next spring, in which case spraying it early and often should save it.
I'm thinking about riding to Goodwill tomorrow, to drop off a few things.
Last week, when I spilled something on my Fibernet T-shirt and couldn't find anything but a thin white underwear shirt, I wondered how I'd managed to get all my T-shirts dirty at once. But today the only T-shirt in the laundry is the Fibernet shirt. Where have I put all the others?
At that point, the dime dropped. To make more space in the clothes closet, I moved them into the half of the sewing-room closet that I can't use for sewing much because it's divided into two shirt-height sections.
On the topic of losing things, when I was dressing to go to Yamoto's Steak House Saturday night, I tried to take my pocket knife off the keyring I keep it on when cycling and it wasn't there. I grabbed the back-up knife out of my grungy pants because I was in a hurry.
Later, I figured that I'd forgotten to take it out of my dress pocket last Sunday, but that dress was sweaty when I got home from church, so I emptied the pockets and threw it into the wash.
An hour or two later: I took everything out of the drawer that I sometimes empty my pockets into. I found two folding knives too big to carry in my pocket, an astounding number of combs, a picture of our wedding, and lots of trash, but I didn't find my pocket knife.
Took a look at the shelf that splits the sewing-room closet — the board is just lying on its supports, and the extra rod is held by two screws at each end. There may be a closet cleaning in my immediate future.
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I've got an unwanted shirt, a plate, and some magazines packed on the bike, ready to ride to Goodwill by way of the emergency room and come back by way of the Visitor's Center tomorrow.
Google Maps says it's only ten miles, but I've made tea anyway. I might make a side trip.
I'd like to have lunch at the Wong place — I'm planning to carry two ice packs for leftovers — but I'll be at Wong's much too early, and it will be only a few minutes later that I pass Panda Express. I've packed two protein bars and a chocolate bar.
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I mixed up some winter-onion, horseradish, and mustard sauce in one of Glad's Mini-Round containers. Just in case I miss a turn and end up in Oswego.
I also put a little orange juice into a tea bottle and put the bottle into the freezer. There's another tea bottle with a little frozen tea in it; I may use that instead of my Sheriff Goshert bottle to carry my tea.
I did use the tea bottle, and throwing it into a trash bin made it much easier to pack the groceries I bought at Owen's; I'd have had the reusable bottle dangling in a bag somewhere.
I was about to resume sewing — I could finish that pair of briefs I began on Tuesday — when Dave, while debugging his Web site, discovered that there were no pictures in the document "old pictures" on my Web site. We traced that to a backslash were a slash belonged on the link to it — which made me realize that a lot of the links on my Links page were to Comcast pages that I no longer maintain. And two of the links to Dave's pages were to the "debeeson" domain we had with a flakey provider years ago.
Be more accurate to call him "vaporware"; he started out meaning well, but didn't have what it took to follow through.
So it's nap time, and I haven't even put the foot control back on the floor. (I picked it up so Roomba could clean during breakfast.)
I had lunch at Panda Express after touring Meijer yesterday: two spring rolls and four cream-cheese rangoons. I sorely wanted to go back for some meat, but resisted the temptation and was much better off.
The magazines I dropped off at the emergency room weren't much, but before I arrived, they had no magazines at all.
This evening, we went to Kathy's place to celebrate Dave's father's hundred and tenth birthday with ice cream and comic books. We all agreed that we shouldn't wait a hundred and ten years to do it again.
I dropped off an Alfred Hitchcock magazine Saturday, after returning a library book on the way home from the farmer's markets.
Yesterday I got my teeth cleaned. Had to ride my bike because Dr. Hollar is so pleased to have put in a bike rack, which meant getting up early to get there by ten thirty. I woke up early enough to have breakfast first, which I hadn't expected, and was ready nearly an hour before my planned roll-off. So I grabbed a book and a hat I've been meaning to darn and went. I'd allowed an hour for the ride, but it took twenty-five minutes portal to portal, which I must remember for next time. (And then add ten minutes in case of train delay.)
I got there an hour before my appointment, but I hadn't settled into my seat — or even opened my little bag of stuff — when the hygienist was ready for me. Then she checked the computer, because she knew my appointment was for later.
Dr. Hollar said it was good that Smith Street, which takes me most of the way to his office, has bike lanes. I didn't say anything. I should have some pre-thought explanations for this, as I do for people who say I should ride in the oncoming lane.
Stopped at Marsh for carrots on the way back, saw a special on loose sausage, remembered that the loaf-free meatloaf I made a few days ago was deficient in fat, and bought it. Later I also remembered that I'd used our last apple in the first loaf.
I put two patties of extra-lean beef on the sausage to thaw overnight anyway, and this morning I paused the washing machine to dash to Owen's and back to buy a bag of apples and some canned cat food.
Al is now well fixed for cat food, because the Fancy Feast I buy most often was twenty for eleven dollars, and I also bought one or two cans each of three inferior brands.
Checked the clearance shelf in the produce department, and bought Red Delicious for the first time in decades. Only three apples in the bag, and I thought that the lack of flavor wouldn't matter when I planned to put it into a highly-seasoned dish. The peel of the apple I used was bland and dry, but the heels of the quarters that I grated weren't bad at all.
The meatloaf is good, and has exactly the right amount of fat, but I should have pre-cooked the celery. This would also have allowed me to melt the beef jelly, which was rather hard to mix in.
The recipe: point six eight pounds of sausage, half a pound of ground beef, one tub of Knorr jellied beef stock, one grated carrot, one grated apple, three chopped mini peppers, a few stems of chopped kow choi buds (plus two stemless flowers from a plant I'd overlooked), two chopped ribs of celery, two chopped small onions — less than half of a slicing onion. Bake in glass loaf pan at three-fifty for one hour.
I pulled the last of the visible thistles this morning. I didn't get much root on any of them, but at least they won't be going to seed. One was already starting to bloom. Pity I couldn't let it; thistle blossoms are pretty.
Still plenty of ground ivy/creeping charlie in the lily of the valley bed, and I couldn't get any of the trees because I'd forgotten to take my back-up knife out of my second-best pants.
When I came back in, I put one of the too-big-to-carry knives into the pocket of my grungy pants; it's probably better than a small one for cutting down trees, and a knife and some paper handkerchiefs are all I ever carry when I'm not leaving the property, so it can have a whole pocket to itself.
Well, I also had a book of matches this morning, but I put them back into the cupboard as soon as I'd lit the fire.
I ironed one shirt before I got poohed out and quit. There are three dresses and another shirt to go.
But it's nap time.
Went to the farmers' market at the fairgrounds and bought plum tomatoes (and a package of frozen pork liver), went to the Center Street Market and bought cherry tomatoes and small local plums, went to the Pierceton Tomato Festival and bought a slicing tomato.
I was planning to have a second breakfast at the scotch egg stand on Center Street, but it was at the tomato festival. Didn't get one there, either, because I'd had ham and beans by the time I noticed it. Anyway, they didn't have fried meatballs. Perhaps they don't sell well; the time I ate one, meatballs were all they had left.
It was after lunch time by the time I got to the festival, so I went straight for the ham and beans before I looked around. Next year I'll have fried green tomatoes instead, and have room for other goodies. The ham and beans weren't as good as waiting years to get to the stand before it had sold out had led me to expect.
The church that had had the great apple dumpling was back, but had pie and crisp instead of dumplings. I'd had ham and beans and a bruschetta, so I didn't have any pie, just a small cone of lemon ice cream.
Pierceton appeared to be having a convention of parked NIPSCO cherry pickers; I never found anyone to ask what that was all about.
Indiana Restaurant Supply is back, two doors east of where it was before. On the way to Aldi, I stopped at Aunt Millie's Bread Outlet, then took a look at the Restaurant Supply place. It's open only during working hours, but the antique mall in their old building was open — for a few more minutes. I'd antiqued out in Pierceton, so I didn't mind taking only one quick lap.
I sat in front of Aldi's for a while, eating the rest of a sweet and salty granola bar I'd bought in the gas station west of Aunt Millie, and a snack bag of plums I'd packed after dropping off my Farmers' Markets purchases. Should have got a bag of salty chips at Aunt Millie's instead of a granola bar at Marathon.
Came close to drinking all the orange juice I'd taken. "Agave nectar" was good in my tea; pity that was the last of it. Honey or maple syrup next time. After packing my stuff at Aldi, I threw out the tea bottle, after pouring the water I'd filled it with in Pierceton into a bike bottle I'd just emptied. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have to buy some more bottled drinks! Pur Aqua bottles hold only half a liter; the tea bottles hold . . . um, only 547 ml; not all that much more. It's 18.5 ounces; I wonder in what measuring system that volume is neat? It just fills my purple bike bottle.
I also threw away the newspapers I'd been using as a lid on my cooler to make more room for groceries.
Go home, go directly to home, do not pass table, do not eat another chunk of hot dog.
But all the way home I was thinking about that piece of salty meat even as I regretted my second pass around the salads.
Winona Lake Free Methodist Church has gotten the hang of holding picnics on the lawn.
Somebody came up with four dining flies to shade the tables, so I didn't need to put my hat on. Which is lucky because it was the wide-brimmed straw hat.
It's so windy that I used my entire bag of pins hanging out one sheet and four pillowcases. Weather Underground says that it's almost as windy as it's going to get, but it won't start dropping off until five o'clock, so I think I'll dry the second load on racks in the garage, except for the pillowcases and maybe some small white things. And bring in the stuff now out before I lie down, so it won't whip to pieces.
Well, I have to bring them in before I hang anything else out! I think I'll go to Ace tomorrow and buy another package of clothespins.
I don't lose pins and they hardly ever break — why do I have to buy more every year or two?
Dave said, "Well, there are three at the bottom of the freezer."
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Got my back-up black oxfords down off the shelf, because my current black oxfords are coming unsewn. Decided to give them a coat of polish before putting them to hard use, so the boots I set on the washing machine last spring finally got waxed, polished, and put away for the summer.
(The snow boots were waxed, the dancing boots, polished.)
While I was up there, I noticed how untidy the shelf was, so there went the morning. I discovered that I have a back-up pair of sunday sandals. Also found a couple of boxes that I should empty and re-fill the next time I wonder where my long-lost black persian wool and triple-zero knitting needles are.
Threatened Dave with a can of soup and he took me to the Great Wall. We hadn't been there in ages.
We brought home less food than usual.
I did some mending and thought about the overjersey I want to make before the weather turns cold. I started a windbreaker last year and finished it just in time to put it away for the summer.
Eye doctor yesterday; no changes; come back in a year.
I dithered over whether to buy more cherry tomatoes at the Farmers' Market today, when we'd eaten only half the last box. Yes, because we'll eat them faster now that I've made a fuss — but when I arrived, he had sold out. I did get plum tomatoes and two slicing tomatoes at the fairgrounds market. And three small ears of corn; we shared one with our hot dogs in sloppy joe sauce tonight; I though it overripe, Dave thought it mushy.
Stopped at Ace on the way back and bought three dozen clamp-type clothespins and a "key caddy" tether to keep my scissors from wandering around when I'm teaching embroidery. Pity I forgot to go to the Kidzone meeting last Wednesday to see whether there was need of an embroidery teacher. I'm glad nobody was expecting me to attend.
I also stopped at Owen's for a bottle of worcestershire sauce. Half gallons of milk were cheaper than gallons, but my panniers were full and we have enough milk to last until Monday.
Had the other two ears of corn with bratwurst on slimwich buns for supper tonight. They were definitely overripe.
Bratwurst isn't at all fond of changing shape, but it became patties of a sort. Good with a slice of one of the tomatoes I bought at the fairgrounds market yesterday.
When I bought the worcestershire sauce, I also picked up a bottle of Clean Shower. Dave also bought one, and the old bottle was full. We are stocked for a while.
There was a bottle of Mold and Mildew Cleaner next to the Clean Shower, so I grabbed that too. Got it home, read the label: it's nothing but plain old bleach. But it's in a bleach-proof spray bottle.
