"Fire and Ice" is the name of February's First Friday. We weren't impressed. There was nothing going on but the art exhibit, half the sculptures weren't sculpted yet, and few of the remainder showed any imagination — many were just the logo of the sponsor carved into a minimally-altered block of ice. I remember a few that were worth looking at: an insurance sign had a car perched on a house, the Penguin-Point sign had a family of penguins, I saw a life-size angel across the street, but don't know who sponsored it, the furniture store had an upholstered chair with a footstool; Dane Miller's centerpiece was an artificial hip bone — but I didn't cross the street for a closer look.
Mad Anthony's sculpture was a block of ice with six cylinders on top; Dave said it represented beer mugs, but they were too tall and thin for that and had no handles. (They had a clever beer mug last year, with a snow "head".)
Our visit to the new restaurant, One Ten Meatery, was interesting, but neither of us saw a reason to go back. They were aiming for rustic elegance — cloth napkins with calico prints, for example — but giving us bottles to drink from was *not* elegant. When I unrolled my cloth napkin, I found two forks and no spoon. I know that spoons are terribly, terribly Twentieth Century now, but surely a spoon could have sneaked in under "rustic".
The menu was teeny-tiny type on brown paper, and didn't include any vegetables except mashed cauliflower and braised carrots. The rest of the side dishes were various forms of potatoes, plus macaroni and cheese with polish sausage in it. All but one of the salads were entree-type salads. We shared that salad and an iNdY Strip Steak. The steak was a generous size for one person, a tad skimpy for two. (But as much meat as we *should* eat.) The salad was huge; it was meant, I think, to serve at least four. But in the absence of any other vegetable, we ate all of it.
I was much annoyed by the ladies' room. There was enough space that they could have put in two stalls without crowding, but in the name of elegance, it was single occupancy. Even *one* stall would have speeded up the throughput, and it would have given us a place other than the hallway to loiter in. I was strongly tempted to use the single-occupancy men's room. But the plumbing-pipe roll holder *is* elegant. (They used the same pipes to make the legs of the tables.)
Even in the afternoon, the window is too bright to use JOYXP's monitor for editing photographs without closing the curtains.
The writing monitor, fortunately, is backdropped by wood panels covered with sewing patterns.
I wore my best jeans to church today. Kept feeling my skirts on my legs, trying to lift them when climbing stairs, etc. Weather turned out to be perfect — latest report says the rain won't start until four — but It's a good thing I wore pants because I ran up and down the stairs half a dozen times while helping to clean up the parlor. I never did figure out where to put the vases the plastic forks had been in, and left them on the counter. Somebody else put away the paper plates.
I came back by way of Evangel Hill, so I didn't inspect the construction on Ninth Street. Someone is almost through building a three-car garage with two apartments upstairs; I kept looking until the garage doors were installed, and didn't see any way to get from either apartment to the garage, not even a trap door such as the one Grandpa used when he locked up his Lake Freeman cottage. (He locked the kitchen from the inside, then climbed up a ladder to get out through the bedroom.)
Strange construction: instead of building a two-story garage, they built a one-story garage with a very steep roof and added three shed dormers: one providing an entrance on the up-hill side, and two with balconies that hang out over the parking lot. That surely cuts up the interior even worse than the shed dormer we had on the New Salem house. But I suppose that the apartments are for summer people who won't care as long as they have a place to sleep and a place to put their suitcases.
Another name for "neo-eclectic" is "pointlessly-complicated roof".
I wish I knew the name of the "three little doghouse dormers" sub-genre of neo-eclectic, so I could look up when it started. It faded out not too long after we moved here, to my great relief.
I *loved* doghouse dormers until every last new house and most of those that were remodeled was required to have exactly three, in a row facing the road.
I also used to like pink, and bought a whole roll of pink linen blend just before every tom dick and harry started rubbing my nose in pink. When I used some to make borders on my linen sheets, it turned out that it pills as bad as polyester, so it's just as well that I couldn't make any clothes from it.
All the wash is on racks, except for Dave's socks, which are in the dryer, and the laundry bin is empty. It's time for my nap. And in undressing, I threw a handkerchief into the bin.
Later I'll throw in the socks I wore yesterday, which I left in the pile I took off when undressing in the dark and forgot about.
Plus a pair that I'd left in my shoes on a previous occasion, but I wore those to the grocery store before throwing them into the wash.
Woke up early today so I could dress for my dental appointment at leisure. Concerned because I hadn't been getting nagging e-mails, I dug the card out of my wallet: yes, it says exactly what it says on the calendar: 2015, February, 17, 10:30.
I'd read the calendar one row off. Then I thought that the extra week would allow me to work up to being able to ride across town — Dr. Hollar put in a bike rack just for me, so it feels rude to come by car — but Weather Underground says that today is the only fit day this whole week, and that it will snow an inch next Tuesday.
Remember when the prediction for tomorrow had only half a chance of being accurate? There are still a lot of jokes circulating that originated back then, and the people propagating them have no clue that they no longer apply. Or, perhaps, they are expecting perfect accuracy a week out. If a storm scheduled for the evening of next Tuesday arrives early Wednesday morning, I consider it spang on.
Somebody's sig is using a quip, I forget who he credited with it, about Aristotle not looking into his wife's mouth. In Aristotle's day, women *did* have fewer teeth. There were no calcium supplements for pregnant women until much later.
I've never seen any evidence, other than this many-fathered quip, that Aristotle ever said that women have fewer teeth than men. Have found some websites quoting what appear to have been fifteenth-hand translations, without any evidence that they weren't originally released on April first, but nothing embedded in a serious discussion of his work. And I've found assertions that some of the surviving treatises are boring because they are mostly accounts of the collection of empirical data.
It's snowing, and Weather Underground says it will continue all through tomorrow, but Sunday should be clear — with temperatures that start below zero and don't rise above four; I'll better locate my long johns.
I made a little progress on my badly-needed windbreaker today. I should talk to the seamstress downtown about new linen pants, but I haven't wandered around downtown since December. Possibly November.
I'm getting curious as to how the construction on Lake Street is going — the new businesses could be open by now!
I got bored with the Tour d'Warsaw last summer, but I miss casually dropping in here and there very much; kept looking for places I want to visit when I can get out again as we drove to Mad Anthony and back.
Today is Fat Tuesday at Mad Anthony. Our waitress really got into the theme, and was wearing glitter-coated fake eyelashes and a glitter wart. I don't think I could wear mascara, let alone all this thick stuff glued to my eyelids; I'd pretty soon have it smeared all over my face. It looked good on her.
Dave was yearning for oysters on the half shell, but didn't want to miss the crawdads. We ended up sharing a salad, he had a half dozen oysters, and I had chicken jambalaya. He got the crawdad garnishing the jambalaya, and ate some of the rice. I put some of the excellent horseradish that came with the oysters on my plate, then mistook it for rice — remember Dad's story about the little-boy guest and the individual serving of cole slaw? That stuff stings inside the nose!
I was concerned when I saw snow while dressing, but Dave had seen the radar and knew it wouldn't last long. Nice clear roads both ways, and we had a lovely time.
I was stiff when I got up after dinner, said I wasn't sure I could walk, then did a Tim Conway impression — he used to do a little-old-man impression in which he moved only with short, rapid shuffles — and much to my surprise, it loosened me up and I could walk normally. I'll have to do that again the next time I get up after sitting too long.
It was so bright and cheerful in here — but I want to use Gimp, and that monitor is silhouetted against the window, so I closed the curtains.
We went out for dinner twice last week. On Thursday or Friday — I think it was Thursday — I dithered around about what to serve for supper until Dave said "We haven't been to the Great Wall for a while".
The next day it was the next-to-the-last can of soup and yesterday we shared the last Marie Calandar dinner. I will have to cook tonight. Can't be spaghetti, when we had french toast for breakfast.
Wednesday was a Fellowship Committee meeting. We meet at six, so I don't have time to get there after eating at five-thirty, so I pack a lunch and go early. This time I didn't have any sandwich fillings that appealed to me, and said to myself "we are meeting in a *kitchen*, with ovens and microwaves!" and went real early and took some mending to do while I was waiting for my pie to bake.
Unbeknownst to me, I was filling the entire church with the aroma of Marie Calandar ham and cheese!
Pastor Paul came down to see what was going on, and told me that we are *finally* getting rid of the food left over from Day of Caring by sending packets home with the Kiddy Kollege students. They had sent macaroni and cheese home the previous meeting, and it had gone over so well that there were bins of other pasta-and-cheese packets ready for the next meeting.
Bill took the cans of green beans for Wednesday's homeless dinner, so I'm taking my own can opener to food prep tomorrow night. The church's can opener is enough of a pain when you want to open only one industrial-size can!
⁂
Dave came up with the notion of hamburger patties and cottage cheese for supper tonight. Add some spinach, relish plate, and a bunch of condiments and it was a very good meal. Thawed blueberries for dessert.
We ate nearly half of a freshly-opened container of cottage cheese.
I sewed the shoulder seams of my new windbreaker today, so now it can be put on a hanger, and looks, at last, like a jacket. Remains only to attach the collar and sleeves, and sew up the side seam. And find a nylon or polyester ribbon to put into the casing. I could use the cotton tape I have on hand until the temperature rises above freezing, I suppose.
Sewed the collar on today. Sure hope this fits when I've finished it!
I've really, really got to look into hiring someone to help with my sewing.
The Creative Machine mailing list is twittering because "Reader's Closet" in the current Threads magazine includes a picture and a description of an elegant evening gown made by one of our members. I've been amused to imagine some of my creations in "Reader's Closet": the bag-like shirts headlined "ugly as a mud fence" on my own Web site, for example.
It helps that Tee's satin gown and my ripstop windbreaker photograph the same shade of bright yellow. http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/~roughsewing/BLOG1XV/SLEEVG6h.JPG
Supper yesterday was half of a beef roast baked with vegetables, the day before was the other half pot roasted in the rice cooker. Tonight, beans and franks.
Yesterday's shopping trip was cancelled because I couldn't find my wallet, which I keep "in this bag, right here!". I looked everywhere possible and a few places that were ridiculous, and emptied the bag twice.
This morning I put my hand into the bag and pulled out the wallet.
Only one sleeve to attach to the windbreaker, but there is finishing to do — three hems, and a *lot* of slick nylon thread-ends to weave in with a crochet hook.
And March begins tomorrow! The weather chart shows a string of dry sunny days starting mid-week.
On the other hand, there is to be a major fall of snow tonight and tomorrow, and then on Tuesday the snow will get rained on.
Now that I'm keeping my hand-sewing supplies in the arms of the futon, it's time to pass Dave's grandmother's sewing stand on to someone in a younger generation. Pictures are posted at http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/2015BANN/SEWSTAND.HTM
