Beeson Banner for December, 2015

1 December 2015

I glanced at the weather chart and thought "If my bike is ready tomorrow, I hope it's after the rain changes to snow."  Closer look, and the temperature during the snowfall is well above freezing.  Not exactly an improvement over rain.

Tomorrow will be one minute and forty-five seconds shorter, and the moon will be full on Christmas.

I wonder whether I'll finally get around to putting the prepared elastic into the casing today?  On Saturday, I drew lines on it to show where the ends of the casing should fall.

I sewed tabs of thin fabric to the ends of the elastic, to keep the elastic from tearing open the seams the ends of the casing will be caught in, and made them to be cut to length after sewing the seam.  For the printers among my readers, it's the same principle as printing a bleed a snitch wider than the cuts that will be made.

A few days ago I organized my sock drawer beautifully.

Today I put away the socks I washed yesterday — anywhere I could fit them in.

 

2 December 2015

It was snowing the first time I looked out this morning.  It didn't stick.

While looking for biscuit recipes, I found the copy of _The Nutritional Content of Foods_ that I thought I'd lost when we moved.  I suspect that I've found it before, and forgot because the book is filed in my mind under "irretrievably gone".  I put it in the shallow drawer with the frequently-consulted cookbooks.

I settled on a recipe from Fanny Farmer — much the same in the reprint of the 1896 edition and in the 1941 edition — then looked at the baking-powder can to see whether the old recipes meant what I mean by "baking powder", and there was that same recipe.

So I can put all the books away.

I'm planning to make six cups of the gallon bag of white-wheat flour into biscuit mix.  Then it would be convenient to make one or two servings of biscuits in the toaster oven.

That will use up all of my gluten.  I think I got the current package at Owen's, but I also think that I got it when they cleared it out because they weren't going to sell it any more.

I *think* I remember how to cut bacon grease into flour.  And we do have a pastry blender.  I wonder when I acquired that?  Were tool handles still painted wood in 1963?

And should I make a second batch of soda-biscuit mix?

 

4 December 2015

The biscuits are delicious.

I forgot to put any gluten in, but it appears that biscuits don't need it.  I didn't have quite enough bacon grease and put in a quarter stick of butter.

Did you ever open Facebook without seeing a post that said "I'm hopelessly addicted to coffee"?

Paging through Facebook this evening, I saw a post that said "28 Selfies That Should NOT Have Been Taken".  So why post them on Facebook?

I adore my digital camera because I can view a set of shots immediately, while I can still re-shoot, and delete the bad ones.

I think we should have left for First Friday about five minutes ago.

 

5 December 2015

Picked up my bicycle yesterday, and went for a ride around the block today.  The boy said that they didn't re-pack the bearings, but it seems to roll easier than it did before.

Took a long time to get ready to roll, partly because I had to put on layers, and partly because I forgot to put back all the stuff I'd taken off the bike until I was ready to mount up.

I went to the teller machine, then rode past the new bridge on the Heritage Trail — it looks finished, but isn't open for business.  Then I went out the Trail to Roy Street and came back to the other end of the new branch, which also looks finished but is blocked off.  But I noticed that the trail from Miller Field to Grace is open for business, and followed it.  Had a little confusion trying to get out of Grace when I came in by the back door!

The Hubbub mirror arrived yesterday.  Today Dave took it back.  Doesn't fit my helmet, and it's nearly twice as wide as a mirror ought to be.  But while we were fooling around, Dave remembered that his Chuck Harris mirrors have little clamps instead of a bent-wire attachment like mine, and one of them can be clamped onto the suspension of my Specialized helmet.  So now I can wear my new helmet.  But I'll have to go back to the old one when I put on my balaclava; the new one has a sweatband that can be dialed looser or tighter, but a helmet can't be dialed any wider.  It had to be forced a bit with just two scarves on.

We cleaned our plates at the Mexican place on Center street yesterday, and had steak and potatoes with real sour cream for supper tonight.  I don't think exercise is going to take any weight off me.

 

6 December 2015

About nine, Dave said "When is Donny's retirement party?"  I said "I'll re-read the e-mail."

Today.  At two o'clock.

And we both wanted to go.

 

7 December 2015

The sky was white when I got up, and the horizon was at the line of seagulls on the beach — except that I could dimly see a goose far enough out that it looked only twice as big as the gulls.  Or it could have been a duck closer in.

I can see the other side of the lake now, but it's still hazy enough that I'm glad the laundry is on racks in the parlor.

I solved the password crisis!  After Comcast changed the password on our account, I could no longer download the messages on my two secondary accounts, and one of them actually gets mail, which I had to go to the website to read.  I assumed that these two accounts retained our old password, but it didn't work, and neither did any of the other passwords we have used for Comcast.  And you can't change the password if you don't know the password.

Today, I realized:  if I can read it on the Web, then Pale Moon knows the passwords!  Pale Moon ratted freely, asking only "are you sure?", and now all my accounts work properly.

 

9 December 2015

Would you believe, "grocer's tongs" didn't get one single hit on either Wikipedia or DuckDuckGo?

I rode to Goodwill yesterday, to get rid of my brand-new Hubbub mirror.

The Chuck Harris mirror that Dave found in the back of the bike cupboard worked beautifully.  I stopped several times to fiddle with it, and still need to bend the wire a tad more left and up.  But I bumped something, twanged the mirror, and the setting did not change!

So now I can wear my new hat.  It isn't as round as the old one, which will be a hazard if I ever crash other than by simply falling to one side, but it's a firmer support for the mirror and that makes crashes less likely.

I meant to buy pencils at Meijer and have lunch at Panda Express, but as I was approaching Meijer's door, my stomach said "Panda first!"

Then after lunch, I followed the original plan and was well down CR 200 N before I remembered that I wanted pencils.  I got them at Staples, and since I didn't get home until four-thirty and the sun sets at five, it's just as well that I didn't wander around in Meijer.

Also spent $77.41 at Aldi, then hit Aunt Millie's Bread Outlet and Indiana Restaurant Supply.

After looking out the window for a while, I'd like to advise all of you:  don't get Christmas lights that blink.  Especially the kind that appear to jump back and forth.

 

12 December 2015

I didn't feel like cooking, so I went to Penguin Point and brought back chicken.  I forgot that it would be dark when I came back, and just to complicate things, the windshield started fogging up as soon as I was back in the street and couldn't spare attention for the heat controls.  But there was a well-timed red light.

Been too busy to write.  Yesterday I sewed in the morning and made potato salad in the afternoon; today I helped set up the fellowship hall for tomorrow's Christmas party, dug up some garlic chives Bill said he could use, and laid out my clothes etc. so I can get up and go when the alarm goes off two hours before my usual rising time.

Moved all my stuff into the pockets of my better pair of jeans *before* deciding to go to Penguin Point.  I didn't want to eat in what I'm wearing tomorrow, and didn't want to change clothes while hot chicken was on the table — it turned out that I had to wait for them to fry it, so it was *really* good — so the pocket stuff got shuffled twice.

That leaves Thursday unaccounted for.  And Wednesday's entry doesn't say anything about Wednesday.

 

14 December 2015

Just checked the calendar:  I'd better buy eggs to devil Real Soon Now.

There were at least three batches of devilled eggs at the carry-in.  I don't know whether all were eaten, but one of the egg dishes showed up in the kitchen before people were done eating.  Being in charge of the washing-up at that moment, I sealed it up and put it on the "here's your stuff" counter unwashed.  We did wash some of the carried-in dishes out of momentum, and when someone said that she wanted to go home and we were soaking silverware in her casserole, I sort of felt obliged to wash it.  I hope I didn't dip it in the bleach!

I came home so tired I hurt.  Woke up reasonably fresh this morning, though I'm pleased that I had nothing more challenging than the laundry to do.  Two loads, and with a little cheating, all went on one rack.  Plus a bunch of hangers.

I opened a door to throw some cat-food crumbs onto the patio, and lost all desire to go outside today.  Doesn't look bad at the moment, but it's nap time.

 

17 December 2015

Since I will have medicine to pick up this afternoon, I thought I would take a Sprawlmart tour, stop at Aldi for paper plates and stick sausages, then cross 30 and come back by Parker Street, just for the exercise, and by the time I got to Owen's, my pills would be ready.

Went into the garage, looked at the bicycle, and said "I wanna stay home and sew!"

I'm safe from the fifteen-mile-an-hour wind in here, but the gloomy isn't much better for sewing than for riding.  At least I have lamps!

It's less than a week before the sun turns around and starts coming back.  The daily decrement is down to sixteen seconds.

It's too late to mail Christmas letters, and I haven't even started writing yet.  Stand by for a New Year's letter.

That gets me off trying to find a Christmas picture for the other side.

Owen's interrupted this writing to say that my medications are ready now.  I'm still going to go in the afternoon, and pick up something for supper.  I'm tired of what's in the house.

 

18 December 2015

When we moved in, there was a box in the house with a square foam pillow form and a bag of the cardboards that used to come inside bias tape on top.

After fifteen years, I decided to see what was underneath.

It turned out to be Evelyn's sewing scraps, some quilt squares, some templates for cutting quilt squares, and a 1973 appointment book.  I took out a piece of gathered lace to add to my collection, and put the rest into a suit box.

Anybody who wants can paw through the box to see whether there is something he wants.  Preference given to the grandchildren, of course.

And I'm quite willing to share the cardboards.  I filled two boxes about the size of old-fashioned recipe files.  A snack bag of cards would keep you in hem gauges forever.

I put the 12" x 12" x 2 1/2" pillow form on the pile of things to be taken to Goodwill, if I ever get around to going to Goodwill.

Which by a convoluted chain of thought reminds me that I meant to buy some plain seltzer when I drove the car to Owen's to pick up my pills and buy a steak for supper.  Ah, well, we aren't quite out, and we have plenty of not-plain seltzer.

I guess winter is back.  The mats are frozen, the hose is frozen, and the parsley finally looks frostbitten.

There's a rummage sale at the fairgrounds tomorrow, but I think I'll do a Sprawlmart tour instead.

 

19 December 2015

The freezing cold wasn't as bad as I feared, but I gave Aunt Millie a miss and went back through Sprawlmart instead of riding into the wind on Wooster Road.

I was slightly surprised at how easy it was to pack away all the stuff I bought at Aldi.  It took a while, but everything fit.  It helped that I hadn't bought anything in Sprawlmart except emery boards, which I stashed in my wallet.

That was the third or fourth place I looked for emery boards; when I tracked them down at K-Mart, they were ninety-nine cents, which left me wondering why the dollar store didn't have them.

I stopped by the Trailhouse, since I wasn't worried about my frozen food thawing, but didn't see anything new.

 

21 December 2015

I almost missed the solstice!  Tomorrow will be one second *longer*!

 

22 December 2015

I avoid buying "wheat" bread because it is so sweet, so when Dave came back from Martin's with a loaf of "Sweet Wheat", I thought "oh, err!" — but it isn't any sweeter than breads that don't confess to it.

I'm almost getting used to having slathers of sugar in everything I eat.

I made up the syrup for pepper cake yesterday — spice cake with two teaspoons of black pepper instead of one teaspoon each of cinnamon and cloves.  I couldn't detect the slightest trace of pepper in it, and neither could Dave's more-sensitive nose, so this morning I ground up a tablespoon of pepper and sprinkled that over the top of the syrup.  If that doesn't do the trick, well there's a stick of butter in it, an egg, a cup of dark-brown sugar, a cup of raisins, a cup of dried apples, a cup of currants, and a cup of fresh cranberries.

And I'm planning to add a pint of walnuts with the flour this afternoon.  Feared for a moment that I didn't have walnuts, but finally found them down among the frozen vegetables.

 

23 December 2015

The cake *still* doesn't smell of black pepper, but you can sure-enough taste the *hot*!

I probably won't try this experiment again — if only because grinding that much pepper takes a while, but if I ever have cause to make gingerbread, I'll try adding pepper.

Which reminds me that I never ate gingerbread while growing up in the late forties and early fifties.  By the time the war was over, Mom was fed up well past the gills with gingerbread.

I do have a gingerbread recipe I got from her file box.

While talking about cleaning the cupboards, I said "I should throw a dinner party so I can use Mother's wedding china."

Dave said, "Let me know so I can be in Kokomo."

I don't think that that china will ever again be on my table.  I should get it into the hands of someone who will use it, but none of the grandchildren live that way either.

If you're saying "me!  me!", I have some linen tablecloths too.  And a set of cut-glass individual salt shakers.

I'm not letting Roomba clean under the keyboard stands because I'm using them, but I did scoot my chair back when I saw it coming, and close the door for a while so it could clean behind it.

 

27 December 2015

A bit short on exercise today.  I did remember to climb the stairs to Club 56, but did it only once, and shortly after stepping out into the cold, I decided to take the shortest route home, so as to keep my back to the wind.

Since I slept late, I emptied the ice trays and wiped the gaskets after the service, so I was, as near as I could tell, the last man out of the church.  Felt queer to leave the light in the ladies' room on; it's no longer possible to turn it off, and it will stay on as long as there's motion near it, so one can't check to see whether it has turned itself off.

I was struck by how pretty the ramp room is.  Someone has polished the floor, and I don't remember the red walk-off mat.  The red plush chair has been in the corner for a long time, but seemed brighter than it used to.

Perhaps it's just that it wasn't raining!

I've got a deadline on a job I've been postponing.  The Fellowship Hall is to stand empty all week, so this is a good time to use the big tables to draw bias lines on the red ramie I plan to make into bras.

 

30 December 2015

So I did that this morning.  Bit awkward on fifty-four inch fabric, but having two huge tables to push together, and a laser level to mark long straight lines, made it reasonably easy.  I probably won't cut the bras until after New Year's Day.

Did you know that hymnals can substitute for a laundry iron?  The fabric wouldn't lie flat enough to mark, so I took it up to the parlor.  The ironing board was in its place, but I couldn't find the iron — I even looked in the fridge!

So I put two books on one end of the fabric, pulled the wrinkles out, and laid down two more books to hold it in place.  It worked beautifully.

And I remembered to climb the steps to Club 56 before putting on my coat, but did it only once, so I don't think my quads benefitted much.

 

31 December 2015

A while back, against my better judgement, I bought a pint of "creamy cole slaw".  I expected the sauce to taste like equal parts of mayo and corn syrup, but I also expected "slaw" to be cabbage with dressing on it.  Instead, I got dressing with incidental bits of cabbage — I put more vegetables than that into my tartar sauce!

But at supper tonight, I discovered that it's great veggie dip.