Year starts off well with corned beef and cabbage at Donny's house.
The lake appears to be skimmed over with ice, but some of the geese are swimming.
I thought the ice would be entirely gone after it rained all day, but a lot of the geese on the lake appear to be standing.
I ventured into the rain for a Sprawlmart tour, driving to Big R, Aldi, and Aunt Millie's. Bought a lot of groceries, but nothing for tonight, so we ate the last two TV dinners.
There was a bit of a mob at the frozen-food case, which distracted me so that I didn't realize until I was in the check-out line that I wanted two chimichangas — hardly worth heating up the oven for just one — and I didn't want to go back.
The rain had gotten fluffy when I left the church, so I folded up my umbrella. No problems walking home except that I had to walk around a few puddles, but when I was sitting beside the scanner in the evening, I was very glad that I was sitting beside the scanner. I posted that remark on Facebook, but it somehow went to N3F instead and I didn't feel like re-typing it.
At one point someone said "tell Highway that X is a sheet of ice." "They're clear, I told them after the first crash." I think they were dealing with the third crash on that sheet at the time.
Sat up late, went in to see Roomba working before I went to bed. When it hits the virtual wall, it stops so suddenly that it seems to bounce, and I can almost hear a thump. Virtual Reality is here — for robots.
Living in the Future: In the Door into Summer, the first household robot was a vacuum cleaner. But if I recall correctly, "handy girl" was a self-propelled upright, not something that could scoot under furniture.
I woke up to brilliant sun on a thin coat of snow, but not much of the lake was white. It looked flat despite a brisk wind, but that was mostly owing to the mist rising off the comparatively-warm water obscuring details. At sunset, it looked all open.
I made hamburger sauce for supper. It started out to be hamburger soup, but I decided to leave out the beef broth and the can of beans. I'll add those when it's left over — I put it away in my six-quart stainless pot so I could put it back on the stove; it would have fit into a saucepan, but then there wouldn't have been room to stir it after adding the liquids.
I opened the chipotle cheddar that I bought at Aldi to serve with it, and was pleasantly surprised. The chipotle hummus I bought on the same trip is horrible, but the cheese is *good*.
The sting in the hummus isn't all that much, but that's all the hummus has — no flavor whatsoever. They might as well have put in a squirt of dog repellent. The cheese, on the other hand, has lots of flavor and hardly any sting. One can eat it straight, and I think it will be very good on a cracker.
I'm slightly amused that the people in the house eat off paper, but the cat gets ironstone. His dishes have to be heavy so that they don't skid across the floor when he licks his food. I tried putting cat food in a paper bowl restrained by a ceramic bowl, but it didn't work very well.
Tonight, with only one cat dish left in the cupboard, we washed dishes for the first time this year.
I remembered to bring in and read today's paper for a change. After attempting to read a column headlined "Climate Deniers Thrive Behind Smoke Screen of Doubt", I once again wondered: why is it so difficult for anti-smoking bigots to accept victory? Apparently, the author started out intending to use smoking as a metaphor, but she never got around to saying anything about climate because she had so much hatred for smokers to work out.
Perhaps that is because she hasn't a leg to stand on; there is no such thing as a "climate denier". Well, there must be some in the depths of trolldom; I wouldn't put any sort of foolishness past Starmaker or Dolan the Great, for example. But the people she started out wanting to attack don't deny climate, they deny that her particular brand of dancing around with a rubber chicken is vitally important and worth unlimited effort and expense.
It snowed two or three inches during the night. A lot of the lake is white.
The lake is white
Not a goose in sight
I suspect that they are at the north end, gathered around the drain from the foundry.
⁂
While cleaning the sewing room, I found a portrait of Dad and his brothers and sisters, probably taken the last time all seven of them were together. I took it to the Christmas party intending to pass it on to the next generation, showed it around, stuck it on a top shelf behind another portrait in Alice's living room, and forgot about it. Today I found a packet of pictures of, among others, Grandmother Lackey.
I've been trying all sorts of expedients to insulate my feet from the cold concrete floor when I sit at the computer in the evening. This morning, while picking up so the Roomba could clean the bedroom, I realized that the Chinese cloth slippers I keep by the door are no use now that there is snow on the ground, and put them away for the winter. In the process, I noticed that I put my sheepskin slippers away last spring.
duh.
Picked up the sewing room for the Roomba yesterday. Reduced clutter some, but one stack of papers fell over four times, getting more scrambled each time.
Lost the whole day, which I'd planned to spend cutting out my new windbreaker. While picking up the sewing room, I found a box of manuscripts and started reading a story I wrote in the seventies. It gets embarrassingly dull and repetitive before it peters off, but I got one of my webbed stories out of the world it built. Noticed a lot of changes — in the old manuscript, a character carries a credit key — I predicted the credit card you just stick into a slot! — but in the webbed story, a remotely-read neckband serves all purposes.
Hey, contradiction! In the old story, another character lays his palm on a counter to withdraw money from an ATM. Except this one is manned, and the attendant handed over his tokens. (It was in a retro-artisan mall; most places don't use cash at all.)
I scanned all but one of the pictures I found while cleaning the sewing room, before the scanner overheated. Also created a file to compile an index to them in.
Made some progress in cutting out my new windshirt.
Finished cutting out my new windshirt in the morning.
In the afternoon I went to a Fellowship committee meeting, and in the evening I made a small batch of potato salad.
I was glad that it was a small batch when the potatoes came out of the oven. Baked potatoes do make good salad, but they have to be peeled. While boiling hot. But the skins made a tasty snack.
Because it was a small batch, I put in way too much mayonnaise. Dave will like it very much.
I made it a small batch because there is to be a farewell carry-in next Sunday, so I didn't want a lot left over. Everyone on the committee was relieved that it was deemed that three carry-in dinners in a row are Too Much, so the welcome for the new pastor will be coffee and cake between Sunday School and church. I'll probably have fruit cakes to bring! Still haven't got around to distributing the gift-wrapped cakes. I didn't make any for people who went south; I may make spice cupcakes for them in the spring.
If I don't still have the cakes I made for those who stayed here.
⁂
I regretted not baking an extra potato, so the oven is on again.
Went to Aldi today. I was much annoyed when I tried to buy disposable spoons to match my assorted clear cutlery. They have boxes of just forks, but no spoons! Do none of their customers make soup?
I was also surprised to discover that there are no frozen meals, only entrees that serve four or six. I did buy a bag of meat balls. There was something else that annoyed me by not being there, but I've forgotten what.
Bought a bag of meatballs on impulse, and we are having spaghetti for supper tonight.
Never thought to look over the yogurt to see whether the have begun to sell the real thing. I vaguely recall seeing *something* that wasn't pudding on that shelf on some other expedition.
I bought four bottles of Tandil. I washed the clothes in Orvus yesterday.
While I was pulling out of our driveway, the automatic door locker clicked on. AUGH! Suppose that had happened while I spent ages cleaning the snow off with the motor running, and Dave's key off somewhere in the Toyota!
I presumed that the designers of the program took the real world into account for a change (and Dave says the automatic door locker won't work unless the car is in gear), but I didn't calm down until I remembered that there is a third key on the key rack.
And now I'm un-calmed, because there is no third key. We do, however, have a key to the windmill and a key to the pontoon boat.
The poor little tomcat! I refilled Al's dish in the middle of the night. This morning I found the canister on the floor and the dish in the cupboard.
But when we got up, he didn't follow me into the kitchen meowing.
It Roomba day, and I've got windbreaker in progress all over the sewing room. I've put some of it on the remaining card table in the parlor.
Al escaped when I opened the door to shake a carpet sample, and I stepped outside barefoot to catch him. Even though it's 0.6°F out and it freezing-rained during the night, it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. But then, I didn't linger with my feet pressed against the concrete the way I do in the sewing room. And the wide eaves kept the ice off the concrete I walked on.
There is no sign that there is a lake out there. Except the houses lined up side-by-side along the shore.
First chore today is to clear the bedroom out for the Roomba, including stuff that I hauled out of the sewing room yesterday. I wonder what the net effect of Roomba-clearing is on my project to sort out the sewing room. On the one hand, it gives me motivation to get on with it, on the other, every time I do it some of the sorted stuff gets scrambled.
We washed one hundred and thirty plates today. Bill counted them. Or, rather, he counted a hundred and twenty-five, and then set out five more. We had a cooler and a half of the four coolers of fried chicken left — the homeless will eat well tonight.
We had a missionary speak to us once, and the announcements before her talk included one with respect to our turn to serve the homeless dinner. She began her talk by remarking that she was shocked that such a prosperous town had a homeless shelter. I hoped that she wouldn't hang around long enough to find out that we *didn't* — but that has been taken care of now.
I think we gave Pastor Roland and Elaine a pretty good send-off.
I hemmed the back pockets of my new windbreaker yesterday. I'm not sure what I did on Friday.
I intend to go shopping instead of washing tomorrow. Weather Underground says it will be the last dry day before Thursday.
Currently, I have two flavors of Moser-Roth dark chocolate: "70% Cocoa" and "Chili". While breaking off a bite this morning, I noticed that the sweeter chocolate has the darker wrapper.
I dried dish towels, pillowcases, and rags outside today. Dried the shopping bags on the rack: four on the rack, one put back into the wash to go again next time — I'm pretty sure I have half a dozen of those bags; where is the sixth?
I washed today because I went shopping yesterday.
It turned out to be an eventful trip. I put my boots on the floor of the passenger seat and dropped a coat and scarf on top, in case I needed to walk. Later on I decided that the low neck on the T-shirt I was wearing wouldn't do, went to the mirror to pin on a scarf, and noticed gray dirt all over the lower half of the front of my shirt. I peeled my shirt off and threw it into the laundry bin, with the dirt rolled up inside by pure good fortune, and put on a crew-neck shirt.
Finally dressed, list in pocket, ready to go, I went to the closet for my car keys — wait a minute, I'm *wearing* the pants I keep my car keys in. Searched every pocket in the closet and a lot of places where car keys couldn't possibly be, finally decided it was too late in the day to start a three-stop trip, reached into my back pocket to straighten out a lumpy spectacle-cleaning rag . . .
Then I remembered that the last time I'd taken my car keys off the snap hook on my little bag of stuff, it had been inconvenient to untangle the pants to find the front pocket and I'd dropped the keys into my back pocket so I could get on with packing my purse.
I took a caffeine drop and went anyway. First stop was Lowery's, to buy a lightweight bright yellow separating zipper with brass teeth and nylon or polyester tapes, all-polyester twill tape, nylon thread, and finer-than-#11 stretch needles.
Later, on the Web, I discovered that #10 is as fine as machine needles come. Just went to the Superior Threads website to check that statement, and discovered that there is no way to find out what needles they sell. All you can do is to search for what you think they might have, and "fine machine needles" turns up a bunch of 110/18, 90/14, and packets with numbers I can't read in the fuzzy photographs. And if they have stretch needles, the code isn't "stretch", "ball-point", or "knit".
Yet another triumph of "professional web design".
As I expected, all I found was the zipper — white, medium weight, plastic teeth, tapes unspecified. I had intended to discuss twill tapes, but when I was ready to check out, another customer was already checking out with something that required prolonged consultation, and the clerk interrupted that sale to sell me my single zipper, so I didn't feel like imposing on her time. I'd pretty much already decided to use a folded strip of ripstop anyway.
After leaving Lowery's, I absent-mindedly turned right onto Center instead of left, and was clear to Ace before I realized what I'd done. So I made two rights and came back on Market.
Got to the library, the doors wouldn't open. Waved my book at the sensors, no effect, and those doors don't have "in case of power failure, push", at least not on the outside. There were cars in the parking lot; I checked the sign and it is indeed open on Mondays at this time. No sign saying closed for inventory/staff training/whatever. I went around to the side door. It was unlocked, but had been fitted with a combination lock of the sort put on staff-only doors since I last used it. Stepped inside, the light in the hall hadn't been turned on. There were people around, but nobody manning the check-out desk. I put my book in the return bin and rather nervously went back the way I came.
In the evening, Dave wondered whether he should put the trash out and the dime finally dropped. Really, if they'd put that holiday on the fifteenth of January instead of trivializing it into yet another three-day weekend, it would be *much* easier to remember!
And I'm pretty sure the library put up signs for Christmas and Thanksgiving.
On to Owen's East. I noticed that the same stuff I had seen on my shirt was on one of the grocery bags and left it in the car, then when I got out I dropped another one on the wet pavement and stepped on it. The sun came out and dried the parking lot while I was in the store.
Before going in, I looked at my back bumper. Quite clean, or at least free of dark-gray dirt. What *had* I leaned against?
Spent a hundred dollars at Owen's, somewhat to my sticker shock. Stocking up on frozen dinners adds up. A freezer filled with emergency meals goes a long way toward keeping the old folks in their own home, as does disposable tableware.
I also bought a box of plastic spoons, and was surprised, when I opened it later, to find that instead of matching Kroger's assorted cutlery, it matches Aldi's. But when I tried to leave one in the box of tuna salad, I discovered that the plastic spoons are longer than the steel ones. Or maybe the tuna salad box has rounder corners than the box I put a steel spoon into. (I've given up trying to have more than one food-storage box of a given shape, and put them away with their lids on.)
When I started to take the stuff in the front seat into the house, I discovered the source of the gray goo. Somewhere on my way home from church on Sunday, I had stepped into a puddle of extra-sticky grease. Can't think where, because I was on streets or sidewalks all the time. Apparently my right heel plunged into the mess, then streaked it onto the side of my left boot. I did notice that I was tracking an unusual quantity of leaves into the house, but just put the boots on a carpet sample to thaw and forgot about them.
I put undiluted detergent on my coat and shirt and left it overnight, and the goop washed off. When checking the pockets of the coat, I discovered that a zipper was coming unsewn, so I had to do a little mending between washloads.
I left the soap on the white things for a couple of hours, then filled the washer, left it to soak overnight, and added bleach in the morning. This load left a little wad of grease in the washer and some streaks that had to be wiped off the agitator. After picking up the wad of grease, it took only one application of dish soap to clean my fingers. It took two to get my hands clean of the unsoaked grease I got then into yesterday.
One of the grocery bags in this load had gray streaks all over, which is why I put it back for another trip through the washer. I presume that it got them by contact with the wad of grease, and don't know why it didn't get on anything else.
The boots, by good fortune, had been coated with paste wax recently; the goop that I couldn't wipe off was easily removed by rubbing it with lumps of paste wax. I went through a few skillet wipes doing it! The stack was amply replenished when I took the bleach load off the line, because I've been throwing rags to be cut up into skillet wipes into the lower bin for quite a while.
I didn't try to get the goop out of the tread on the heel, but just set that boot on a newspaper. I'll make a point of stomping through snowdrifts the next time I wear them.
But I'd sure like to know what that gray grease is, and where I got it.
Rain was predicted, so I thought that I'd better wear my jeans to church today. This morning I remembered that I meant to wear jeans, but forgot why, so when the first pass through the closet didn't turn up a suitable shirt, I put on my floor-sweeping black cotton skirt. Then after I'd put up my umbrella, I realized that the blouse I was wearing with the black skirt would have been perfect with black jeans.
But the light mist had changed into snow by the time the service was over, and by leaving the party early, I got home before the snow made anything slick. Today was Pastor Roland's last sermon, so we had coffee and cake in the narthex afterward. He plans to hang around as a church member until they are ready to move to South Carolina. Elaine said that it would be hard to remember that she's no longer responsible.
So next Sunday we'll have Pastor Parker, Pastor Rick, Pastor Henry, Pastor Bonnie, and Pastor Roland all at the same service. You'd think we were still the headquarters church!
We saw people skating on the lake yesterday afternoon, but I don't see anything out there this morning.
Umm . . . it's afternoon already. I'd better get to bed.
Turkey with all the trimmings for supper tonight. No special occasion; Dave saw whole turkeys for forty-nine cents a pound. He was annoyed when I pulled a pound of ice out of the cavity. (I poached the giblets in it.)
I've got boxed dressing nailed: measure the water the box calls for into a saucepan, add some finely-chopped celery, bring to a boil, cover tightly, turn off the fire until it's time to make the dressing, then reheat it.
Melt the butter the box calls for — real butter! — in a cast-iron skillet and sauté some quartered slices of onions in it until translucent. It wasn't until we were eating the dressing that I remembered that we have lots of English walnuts; those would have been good fried in butter, then baked.
Empty the box into the celery water, mix, add a little of the water the giblets were poached in. Dump into skillet, toss until the onions are evenly distributed, bake at 325 F for half an hour.
I think it would have been easier to mix if I hadn't bothered to re-heat the celery water. The dressing will get plenty hot during half an hour in the oven, not to mention that the skillet is already hot.
I made gravy out of a cup of giblet water, two tablespoons of white-wheat flour, and an envelope of "Flavor Enhancer: Turkey" that I had spotted among the Christmas offerings at Aldi. Good gravy, but I needn't have bothered; there was plenty of gravy in the bottom of the roaster.
When I got the roaster out of the garage, there was a lot of stuff in it that I'd forgotten owning, including a cake decorator. Didn't I once have a cookie press? Either I gave it away, or I remember using someone else's. Perhaps Mother's.
It's probably time I passed the cookie cutters on to someone in a younger generation. Either that or hold a cookie party. But I no longer like sugar cookies, I don't know where to borrow two teenagers, and the decorating-age children are rather scattered.
At nine o'clock the computer plays a recording of bird twitters and UFO noises. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but it sounds rather nice. Upon hearing it, Al jumped up and trotted to the sewing room, where he was gratified to find me already on my feet, intending to go to the kitchen and feed him.
I made my second shopping trip in search of a new dress today. I think I remember why I took to making all my own clothing. I've spent two entire days on this project, and accomplished nothing. When I was younger, I could have gotten pretty far into making a dress in two full days.
Maxim's — Maxime's — something like that — had dresses, but they had just cleared out everything with sleeves to make room for spring clothing that doesn't even conceal the bra. And mostly pastel and bright colors. TJ Max had clothing, but no dresses, and Kohl's had a dress here and a dress there, including one or two that might have been passable if they'd had my size, but I couldn't find a clerk, so I left when I got tired of wandering aimlessly.
Most of Kohl's clothing was in the draggly "waterfall" style that's all the rage now. Even if I didn't look ridiculous in trendy clothing, I would like a dress that I could wear more than once before the trend ended.
Previous trip was to Carson's. I found two dresses — or perhaps the same dress in two colors — that would have been good if they had come in larger sizes. I think. Might have been unflattering if I'd been able to see myself in it. Also tried on one or two from the sale rack, where I learned that I'm at least an eighteen. Carson's doesn't have anything bigger than sixteen.
And that runs me out of clothing stores. I think The Posh Frog on the square is a clothing store, but if so, it's a trendy clothing store. But I haven't even started on thrift shops and consignment shops. (The phone book and Yellowbook have been no help in finding them.)
Went to Aldi after the Carson's trip, and bought (among many other things) a bag of apples. Then I went on an apple-baking spree, and Dave ate the last apple tonight. I meant to get more at Walmart today, but it wasn't on my list and I forgot.
Hmm — I baked only four apples. Must have been a small bag. But we'd both been deprived of good apples for a while, and pigged out on them raw.
The first two apples were in a left-overs bake: I put slices of turkey into my second-smallest skillet, then buried them in other left-overs and slices of apple. That killed the dressing. I'd like to make more dressing, but Dave doesn't need the carbs and I don't need the calories.
The other two apples I put into a buttered skillet and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. There are two slices left.
It's a lovely sunny day, not too cold, moderate wind, the streets are dry and clear, and soon after sunset a storm that will leave the roads a mess for at least a week will start. I chose to spend it sewing.
On the other hand, I'm making a desperately-needed windbreaker for the bike. On the third hand, I spent half my morning correcting two very stupid mistakes.
But if I'm going to make stupid mistakes, I suppose that it's better to make them indoors.
A tent went up on the sandbar yesterday evening. When we got up this morning we saw two teen-age boys come out of it, pack it up, and put it away.
Later in the morning two other tents appeared out on the ice in front of the park. but they are gone now, at noon. This leaves me mildly curious.
Hope I wake up in time to get to the church at ten, when we are having a meet-and-greet for the new pastor. He has an apartment in the Doric, so it shouldn't be difficult for him to get there. I must remember to take my key, in case services are cancelled. I need to change the ice trays and wipe the gaskets whether church happens or not.
If I close this out tonight, as I should, I'll be sending out another cliff-hanger!
I was almost to the church when I realized that this would have been the perfect time to deliver cakes to Steve and Martha.
Dave looked up the WRSW website and learned that services were cancelled, so I left my contribution to the party in the freezer, moved the stuff in my pockets into my older pair of jeans, and ate breakfast here.
It was a lovely day for a walk. The streets were mostly clear, but some folks were having to shovel their cars out of their parking spaces.
The snow is sticky, so every twig is beautifully frosted. The clothesline was a fat white cylinder when I woke up, but that has fallen off. Perhaps because we are now getting enough wind to flutter the flags of caution tape tied to the line.
Two people rattled the door while I was filling the ice trays out in the hall where I could hear them. They turned around and went away when I told them the services were cancelled. I wonder what they thought of my appearance — I took my coat and gloves off, but left my scarves pinned on, I was wearing clodhopper boots, and I had an ice tray in one hand.
There's open water at the mouth of the creek, a streak along the sand bar, and a short streak pointing toward the park. Otherwise, there's no sign that there's a lake out there. At the moment, the snow is coming down fast enough that there's no sign that there's *anything* beyond the streak along the sand bar. I can see almost as far as usual down Boy's City Drive.