I finished hauling sand to the railroad tie. Took only two loads. Then I pulled some weeds — I'm not accustomed to needing to pull weeds out of winter onions! They usually take care of that themselves.
I need to push the cultivator around before I plant the garlic. The fall-planted multipliers appear to be doing fine. I still have a few leeks to harvest.
This morning I pushed the cultivator around, pulled some weeds, and planted the garlic. I think garden work is done for the winter, except for harvesting the remaining leeks.
When pulling weeds, I didn't pay much attention to those in the leeks; they will get dug up when I dig the leeks.
When planting the garlic, I found a little clump that looks like leeks coming up from seed. I also found the base of a leek that appeared to have been cultivated off, a small bulb that looked like the offsets of the tiger lilies, which I presumed to have been left by one of the leeks that had gone to seed, and an onion set. I planted these in gaps in the row of winter onions.
I threw the tops of the gone-to-seed leeks on the compost heap; ditto some left-over garlic cloves. My best garlic came out of the compost heap this year.
Ah, not quite done with garden work: I should re-arrange the compost heap.
Church work day today. Church was deserted except for several women cleaning the kitchen. (Later Pastor Rick came in and said "I didn't know we had counters.") <foghorn>that was a joke, son, a joke, I say</foghorn>
Didn't seem to be anything I could help with in progress, so I grabbed a rag and began to wipe the fridges. It being Work Day, I wiped as much of the exterior as I could reach — and come quitting time I was still cleaning fridges — and I skipped the inside of the Kiddie Kollege fridge, I couldn't remove two of the shelves in the other fridge and settled for a quick wipe, and didn't do the door handles.
The kitchen needs a step-stool that is one step higher.
I heard a weed whacker outside during the vertical loop I made when I first arrived, but didn't look around to see what the men had been up to when I left. I can be surprised when I go to church tomorrow!
I'm packing the lime jam I made yesterday into containers. The skins are very tough, and the jam solidified when chilled, so I'm simmering it for an hour with another cup of water first. I may boil in another cup of sugar just before packing — but I just tasted the syrup and it tastes like honey-and-lemon; I may deem that sweet enough. [I did add another cup of sugar. It was a mistake.]
I'm not sure eight half-cup containers will be enough.
They weren't, but two snack boxes and a container that I bought smoked salt in took the overflow.
I'm extremely unhappy with Glad's new mini-round food-container lids. They have more corners to wash than the old ones, and the corners are deeper and sharper. A stack of the new lids takes up at least twice as much space in the cupboard. When I want to use one, I have to pry it off the stack. (This is somehow supposed to be a "feature".) But what really gets me is that once I've filled the containers, I can't stack them. There's a flat place on the lid, well above the plane of the lid, so it's possible to set one container on another, but it's an unstable pile, not a stack.
And the flat spot being raised that way means that there is a *lot* more air in the container with the food than with the old lids.
Whatever the designers were smoking, I *don't* want some.
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Transition weather: I'm still wearing sandals to church, but this morning I wore them with wool stockings.
I wore my full black cotton-print pleated skirt with the matching loose overshirt this morning, then put on a black silk scarf and my black velour hat for the walk. Looked in the full-length mirror before stepping off and saw someone fresh off the boat in 1920.
When I was eating breakfast in my black under-dress, Dave had said I would fit right in with the Amish. So after I checked the mirror, I told him "I fit right in with *somebody*."
I don't think I've seen *any* Amish in solid black dresses, let alone tight-fitting short-sleeved dresses short enough to show the pink-trimmed ruffles on my drawers.
How about that! I yielded to the temptation to click on a Facebook link — and the article it connected to contained information!
Did a Sprawlmart tour today, backward so that I could pick up bread first. Took a lap around the antique mall, but skipped Indiana Restaurant Supply.
Then I went past Aldi to go through Big R and eat some french fries before picking up frozen food. Big R didn't have any corncob bedding, but there were some empty bays in the part of the store where it should have been.
At Aldi, I had a time getting everything into the panniers without squishing my bread. I tied it on top, using my recently-acquired technique of running both handles of a plastic bag under or through something, pulling on them until the package is stable, then tying the handles together around something else.
Today's the day Comcast yanks its web sites. When I click on links, they are still there, but Dave says that uploading no longer works.
Pity that I didn't think until today that it would have been safe to fiddle around with the PWP page on Comcast's site as soon I stopped maintaining my Comcast pages — any that got spoiled could have been replaced with the "we are moving" notice. But the PWP page was taken down some time ago.
Pessimists on the Comcast newsgroup are saying that they see signs that Comcast is treating e-mail the way it treated Usenet and Web sites.
And, well, the name of each Web site was the corresponding e-mail address . . .
Yesterday I made pizza out of whole-grain white-wheat flour. I don't have a lot of that left, the mill closes for the winter at the end of October, and I have an appointment for a check-up on the twenty-ninth. I'm going to have to make a Bonneyville Park run Real Soon now.
I'd been hearing that you are supposed to put the cheese on the pizza first, to keep the crust from getting soggy. I've never had trouble with soggy crust, but I wanted to try it. Pretty good even though I forgot to put salt in the dough. I crumble-fried a hamburger patty, let it cool, mixed in some canned spaghetti sauce, and spread it over the cheese. Then I garnished with onion rings and mini-pepper rings.
I think cheese on the bottom would be better with a sharper cheese and a spanisher tomato sauce.
I kneaded a handful of dried currants and a dash of cinnamon sugar into the other half of the dough and baked it as a loaf. Came out pretty well, but I missed the salt.
Supper tonight was left-over sloppy joe.
I spent the morning fiddling around making muslin project bags for the embroidery lessons I'm probably not going to hold in the ramp room. Al spent the day asleep on the card tables where I've spread out the work I should have been doing.
Rode to Owen's in the afternoon because we were out of milk. The half-gallons and the gallons were each $1.99. I bet they didn't sell a lot of halves today.
I also bought a half-dozen Marie Calendar dinners because they were a dollar off — $1.49 instead of $2.45. That piled up my insulated pannier; it took a while to fit the rest of the groceries into the other one. I put the salad in a plastic bag and tied it to the bungee cords.
But I came back with a blank shopping list! Hush about that other list of things I don't honestly expect to be able to buy.
Nate and Lindsey posted that the baby has made it to six pounds and nine ounces.
I was looking through the freezer for some three-pepper and onion to fry with the sausages I'm having for lunch — we haven't any, so I put peas into the skillet — and what should I find but a bag containing all the Christmas cakes for the entire Beeson side of the family.
I wonder whether KidZone would like to serve fruitcake to the children.
The bridge is down, now, but there's still no "of course" about coming back the way I came — the bridge builders have put a girder across the creek for their own convenience. On the other hand, I wouldn't like to walk across it when *not* burdened with a bike, even though it's wider than the one I bounced across frequently when they were working on our bridge. And it would be extremely difficult to get down where it is and then climb back up again.
I came back through the same residential street as before, but didn't stop at Lowery's because I hadn't measured the length of the ribbon I need to buy.
There was one last batch of tomatoes at the Center-Street farmers' market. We sliced one of them for hamburgers yesterday, and it was very good. I had to cut some cracks out of it, but got good slices for the burgers. There's enough left for BLTs.
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Which we had for supper tonight, and it was good.
I was sure we had some medium suitcases that I could pack a shirt and a pair of pants in. All I could find were huge suitcases meant for staying a month, and overnight cases.
Hmmph. We're going by car. I can take a shirt and pants on hangers.
We plan to leave about one tomorrow, and get home about five the next day.
Lois said that she and Joe are going south this week. I don't remember the details, but suspect that they'll be gone when we get back.
Department of "it was right in front of your nose": I woke up from my nap hearing someone on the scanner report a crash at Parker and Main. ?? Main Street ends at Lindberg Drive. So I got up and checked the map: Main takes up again at McKinley — it's the alley behind Penguin Point that I've used a million times.
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I didn't even try to take notes while away from my computer, and most of you were at Jim's memorial, so I won't describe the trip.
Poor Al.
The vet prescribed a low-calorie food for him, and when we change his food, he gorges on the new stuff until the novelty wears off. Changing the food would defeat the purpose of changing to a low-calorie food, so each day I give him a quarter cup of the new food and a quarter cup of the old food side-by-side in a bowl. Monday afternoon, I left one ration in the kitchen, one in the hallway, and (just in case) a half-ration of the boring food in the bedroom.
So he picked the new food out of both bowls first, and was left with nothing to eat but the boring food all day Tuesday and the first half of today.
Nothing going on today, except putting paperback books back on the shelves Dave cleaned a few days ago. They were in disarray, so I sorted them into alphabetical piles as I blew the dust off with our air compressor. I have three piles of H, largely owing to Heinlein and Hambly. Hardly any N, but Norton is a separate collection, which I keep in the sewing room on the shelf under Edgar Rice Burroughs. I've got A and B sorted onto the first shelf, and C piled on that shelf and the next, where I can reach it without coming down the ladder.
It's a crying shame the mass-market paperback is extinct; it was so nice when the majority of new books were a standard, easy-to-shelve, size.
I wonder whether I could find a copy of Nourse's _Intern_, which was published as by "Dr. X". I do have a Yarbro and a Zelazny.
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I've got no E. That is astonishing. If I recall correctly, the candy shop closed its used-book basement, so I don't know where I'd buy a George Elliot.
I've moved Hambley and Hamilton off the card table.
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I've also got no I or J. Kipling and Kurtz are going up.
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No U, and I think that van Vogt is my only V.
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Much to my surprise, all of them went back on the shelves, *and* the only books you can't read the titles of are the stack of Watt-Evans between Wagner and van Vogt. Should be a Wyndham in there, but there is space to slide another book in when I find it.
Though I needed a ladder to put them up, a KickStep suffices to get them down.
I am more pleased with our little stepladder every time I use it. Wide steps, a fold-down paint shelf so I don't have to carry things up and down, and, above all, a handle that sticks up well above the top step.
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Dave found a box of books I'd forgotten about on his lawnmower.
The last week or so Al has become accustomed to spending his days on the card table in the parlor with his head on a wool-covered pile of needlework. The other card table is now available, the sewing room is swept, and "cut out winter jersey" has climbed back to the top of my to-do list.
Perhaps I should first make sure the path to his padded shelf in the living room is clear.
The shortening of the days is decelerating. Yesterday Weather Underground said the next day would be two minutes and forty seconds shorter; today it says two minutes and thirty-nine.
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I've often noted that at certain resolutions, a map of Winona Lake is the head of an eagle — sometimes with the beak pointing east, and sometimes with the beak pointing west. Today, while looking up the exact name of Anchorage Road, I noticed that Pike Lake looks like a horse's head.
Or, if I tip my head a bit, Africa.
I wonder whether the circular peninsula that forms the horse's mouth is a swamp; satellite view doesn't show any trees on the round part, and the only sign of human activity is a suspiciously-straight edge to a patch of trees on the mainland near it.
Ah, panning south a bit, I catch a glimpse of the Beyer Farm Trail. I might be able to see a bit of the peninsula from the part of the asphalt near the boardwalk.
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When I went to Columbia City, I bought a three-dollar sundress that didn't fit because I adored the lace-trimmed skirt, and it would be easy to unpick the waist seam, shorten the skirt from the top to make it wider through the hips, and put in elastic. And the bodice, though abbreviated, would supply enough fabric to make hidden pockets.
But I don't own a blouse that would look good with a pale-blue skirt, I can't imagine a blouse that would look good with that pale-blue skirt on anybody over seventeen, and I'm about two years behind on my sewing.
So today I made a special trip to Goodwill to get rid of that dress — and very nearly forgot to take it with me, because it was hanging in the hallway instead of on the shelf with the rest of the Goodwill stuff.
While at Goodwill, I looked at all the dresses. They have a lot more than the dress shops do! Today nearly all were either party dresses or obviously too small, but I found a gray jumper to try on. The style was good, but the darts were an inch or two too high, and the hips fit so tight that I not only couldn't get all the way into it, for a while there I thought I was going to have to ask for help getting out. But after a bit, I thought of pulling the dress up as far as I could and pushing the zipper slide down as far as I could, then when I pulled the dress down as far as I could, I was able to reach the slide from below.
Then I went to Panda Express for lunch. Now that I know that they'll sell a Kid's Meal to an adult, it's one of my favorite places to eat. Just one of their dishes is enough, but if I take a side, I long for meat, and if I take a main dish, I long for rice. The Kid's Meal is half a serving of each. Plus a cookie, which I take home.
While finding a place in a pannier for the cookie, I set my bag of bags on the other pannier and the wind blew it away. I usually tie the handles of the bag together, but for some reason I hadn't, and after I'd chased it a few yards, one of the bags fell out. Being lighter than the whole bag, it was much faster — and the main bag gained speed each time it dropped a bag. One of the loose bags was last seen racing up somebody's driveway. I did catch up to the main bag somewhere on the other side of the gas station and short of the road leading out of Meijer Plaza, and I retrieved several of the individual bags — a bush fielded one of them. But all the neighbors are going to complain about the &%#@! trashing litterers.
Today, tomorrow will be two minutes and thirty-eight seconds shorter.
It was misting rain when I went out to comb my hair, so I called up Weather Underground. The graph shows a small blob of non-zero chance of rain precisely during the time I want to be out. On the one hand, it's only twelve percent; on the other hand, it's 40.8°F and not predicted to get much warmer.
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Didn't get wet, did see the peninsula through a gap in the trees that fringe the trail. Well, I *thought* I did; upon checking Google Maps, I see that I was looking in the wrong place: I was looking across the entire nose, instead of just the chin.
I followed Springhill Drive to the end of Jenny Lane to see what I could see. Google Maps says that that made the Tour d'Warsaw nearly ten miles. I probably made up the extra by following Springhill to its other end (and not bothering to tell Google) to see whether one could get to Mariner Drive from there. (No.)
The store fronts where Avila used to be have been rented. One is a mattress shop, the other appears to be an office for the "Everything Outdoors" lot next door. It hasn't got the sign up yet, but the brochures I saw through the window are suggestive.
I brought the rosemary plant in for the winter tonight, rather late. The folks at Open Air Nursery were busy moving stuff into the greenhouses while I was there this morning.
My summer riding gloves are spinning in the washer, about to be put away for the winter.
When I was getting ready to go to Goodwill last Friday, I couldn't find my little plastic memo book. I took another, confident that the good one would turn up as soon as I wasn't desperate to find it.
Now it's Tuesday and I still can't remember where I put it. I've probably already forgotten what my cryptic notes are supposed to remind me of.
Today was a warm summer day, which I spent indoors shortening my red-flowered skirt one inch. After I picked up my pills at Owen's Market in the afternoon, I rode around for half an hour before picking up a five-piece chicken dinner at Penguin Point.
After supper, Dave and I took a walk on the part of the Heritage Trail that runs along the creek. Work on the bridge to the new section of Multi-User-Path is in progress. The row of supports — I presume the pipes with bent sheet metal on top are bridge supports — curves a lot, and runs over a good deal of dry land before reaching the other abutment-mold, so I suspect that it is going to be a boardwalk.
Tomorrow will be two minutes and thirty-six seconds shorter.
I always thought that "keep your shirt on" was a rude way to tell someone to be patient because complaining won't make things go faster, as in the old joke that a gas station sign said "after ten p.m., honk for service, then keep your shirt on until I get my pants on". (You know it's old because of the presumption that the customer can't pump his own gas.)
According to the first few sites a search turned up, it's a classy way to say "calm down and don't start a fight" — from the habit of removing expensive and heavily-starched shirts before engaging in fisticuffs.
Well, as long as I've got the browser open: tomorrow will be two minutes and thirty-five seconds shorter.
Same for today. Is the deceleration decelerating?
Two minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Still not awake. I looked at the previous entry, wondered what I did on Thursday, thought I should look it up in the Banner. I think I sewed Thursday, so http://wlweather.net/PAGESEW/2015SEW2.HTM might tell me.
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The rain never amounted to enough to mess up my glasses, but it was enough to take the fun out of the Tour d'Warsaw, so I drove to Big R to buy cat litter instead.
I stopped at Owen's on the way out because we were out of yogurt. And I stopped at Aldi on the way home because we were running low on sliced cheese. I took advantage of not caring about the volume of what I purchased by buying a ludicrous number of bags of chips — I wonder whether Dave has noticed yet? He did see the sugared sweet-potato chips and the puffed peapods that I left on the table. The sweet potatoes were supposed to taste of cinnamon and didn't, so I sprinkled them liberally with cinnamon fructose. The puffed pea pods taste of nothing at all; I sprinkled them with popcorn salt.
Noting that it was one o'clock, I ate some sweet-potato chips (sans cinnamon sugar) in Aldi's parking lot and was extra careful driving home.
There's a landwall a-building in the north end of Sunday lane. I got the impression that someone is doing it himself, but knows how to build a retaining wall.
I didn't notice any way for people in the upstairs apartment to exit on the walkway side. It seems odd, since walking would have been the principal way to come and go when the house was built. The downstairs apartment has several doors on the walkway side, but appears to have no direct access to the street.
At the moment, neither apartment has direct access to Sunday Lane, because the steps will be unusable until the retaining-wall project is finished.
Today was supposed to be chilly, but I didn't wear a shawl, and on the way home, I took my scarf off and put it in my pocket.
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Friday was a lovely day and we aren't going to get many more of them.
The question had come up in conversation as to whether the people in the trailer park on Pioneer Lane could walk to Sprawlmart; each can be seen from the other, but can one walk between?
In trying to answer the question with Google Maps Satellite View, I noticed a dirt road running from behind Staples toward the trailer park. To get out of the house, I planned to check out that road, go on to Big R to see whether they had corncob litter in stock, stop at Aldi for a package of cheese, then go to Tractor Supply to see what sort of bedding they have.
I put thick socks into my pannier in case I found some shoes I wanted to try on, and put my cleated shoes into the other pannier in case I decided to come back from Tractor Supply the long way.
I didn't make it to Aldi.
Things went as planned through Sprawl One and Sprawl Two. I hit both shoe stores, but didn't see any shoes I'd consider at half the price, so the socks stayed in the pannier.
I saw a pair of all-polyester leggings in Carson's, but didn't want to try them on bad enough to strip out of pinned-at-the-ankle sweat pants and stretch-to-fit footless tights. It's a mistake to shop for cycling clothes while wearing cycling clothes.
I had a little trouble finding the dirt road; it isn't behind Staples, but at the end of InterSprawl Two, and Access Road is marked as a street on the map; on the earth, it's part of a parking lot. But I found it, followed it to the end, and found two huge piles of grass clippings with a trailer of the sort used to haul lawn mowers between them. There was a ridge continuing the road into the trees, and the ridge had a suspiciously-regular gully in it, as if it might be a washed-out wheel track. But if it has ever been a road, it most definitely isn't a road now.
On my way back to Access Drive, I noticed a beaten path leading to the gap between Staples and the next group of stores.
I often brag that I can take my road bike anywhere the boys can take their mountain bikes, "but I don't guarantee that I'll do it in one trip". So I took the beaten track, only to discover that it crosses a ravine. No sweat, I got off and walked down the steep slope.
Someone had covered the bottom of the ravine with rip-rap, and it has not yet settled in. The rocks, moreover, were exactly the wrong size to provide footing: too big to walk on, too small to step from one to the next even if one can find one that isn't rocking and rolling. The bike, which still wanted to roll down the steep slope behind me, was little use as a cane.
But I managed to prissy-foot across the riprap and climb up to the driveway that runs behind Sprawl Three. I decided to go to Big R by way of this driveway because it had been years since I looked for foot paths. I saw lots of critter paths — one of which ran through the fence around the place where Big R stores bags of stuff — but none that had been used by anything even half as big as a human. Checking the map later showed that I should have been looking behind Sprawl Two.
When I got to Big R, the driveway suddenly ended. So I got off and walked along the narrow flat space, looking down the steep slope on my right for critter paths, until I emerged on a patch of lawn behind the cage where Big R stores weather-resistant merchandise. The gates to the cage stood ajar, open enough that I could have squeezed inside, but the padlock on the chain suggested rather strongly that Big R would rather I didn't, not to mention that I had no guarantee that the gates on the other side were unlocked.
So I walked around the cage to the front of — duh, to the place where the chain-link fence around the garden center is firmly attached to the cage. It was quite a long way back by now, so I decided to walk along the edge of the parking lot to Frontage Road.
It would appear that the latest person to do this was me, back in 2001. At one point I had to move a pile of prunings to continue, and I came out covered in the seeds of plants that I'd just as soon not spread around.
In Big R, I discovered that they not only had corncob bedding in stock, some of the bags were of a finer grind that is more suitable for cat litter — hence the trip on Saturday to get some before the good stuff is taken. On that trip, I bought three bags of litter, a bag of rice, "appetizer tongs" for taking hash browns out of the toaster oven (they have proven excellent for getting pickled sausage out of the jar too), a bottle of vegetable juice, and a jar of citric acid.
Finding bedding at Big R took away some of the motivation for going to Tractor Supply even though it's only a mile farther and Wooster is a quiet road after it crosses 250 E. Instead of lunching at MacDonald's, I turned back toward Taco Bell, planning to have a taco salad and go home.
There was a pause on the way out of the parking lot.
At the time, I thought it was my fault, but in retrospect, the driver of the pick-up should have waited for the intersection to clear before turning left even though he was turning into a driveway. On the other hand, I wasn't as alert as I should have been, presumably because it was one o'clock and I hadn't had lunch yet.
There was this utterly surreal moment when I knew that there was nothing I could do to avoid a collision, a moment when I realized that he would strike my back wheel and miss me, then I struck the curb and smashed onto the asphalt.
I always assumed that in a striking-the-curb fall, one would fall in the direction that one is already moving, and since to strike the curb one has to be moving toward it, one would fall onto the sidewalk (or, in this case, the landscaping). Something seems to be wrong with this analysis.
On the other hand, the truck driver pointed at the curved corner of the curb as the place I struck, and I fell a full bike-length beyond that. Pity I can't Google for a report from someone who has analyzed the mechanics of a curb-caused crash, but any research into bike crashes runs into pitchfork-waving helmet warriors, so even if there is something out there, it's sure to be tainted.
I presume there was some braking and swerving I didn't see, because there was no contact between me or my bike and the truck. Three people were scared out of a year's growth: Me, the driver, and a witness. I haven't noticed any damage to the bike.
At the scene, I noticed a bruise on my left knee, and a slight soreness on the left side of my head from striking the asphalt. (The head pain passed off before I got home.) Everything seemed to be functioning, so after we all calmed down, I remounted and continued on my way. After five or ten minutes, I noticed that a muscle in my neck had overworked trying to slow my head. This got stiff during the night and I've got a rice bag on it now.
When I undressed, I found a small bruise on my right arm and a small patch of road rash on my knee a little more than an inch from the previously-noted bruise.
I thought I'd found a really-ugly bruise on my right arm while washing before church this morning — ugly as in I thought it was dirt and tried to wash it off — but just now I got a hand mirror and finally got a good look: it's a first-degree burn I got in the kitchen a week or two ago, starting to peel.
When I got to Taco Bell, I realized that I was almost home, so I kept going. I stopped at the Trail House and bought a water bottle; I'm not sure I like the "improvements" to water bottles, but it does fit the cage.
Yesterday I had just finished cooking some brown rice to keep on hand for snacks when Dave called my attention to the bottle of Shur Fine vegetable juice I'd bought at Big R by complaining that it isn't as good as V-8. This inspired me to try a second batch of rice steamed in vegetable cocktail.
When making a hash of some of it for lunch, I noted that when cold, it looks remarkably like raw hamburger.
I cooked a cup of rice in two and a half cups of juice, and was obliged to add another half cup during cooking. If I had it to do again, I'd cook it in four cups of juice and boil down any surplus.
I fried some celery, onions, and pepper for lunch. Folding vegetable-cocktail rice into it was rather like making meatloaf.
There's not enough red rice left for another meal. Might have it for a bedtime snack.
Dave finally has his hearing aids. When he ordered them, she said she'd call when they came in. He waited patiently until the loaners started to beep, then called. The assistant investigated, and discovered that the aids had come in and been mis-filed.
So he made an appointment, and this morning he collected them. They came with a cigar box to hold spare batteries etc. The box has an invisible magnetic catch; I'd like to know how they hid the magnets.
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I found the reading glasses that belong in my little bag of stuff while I was looking for my pencil sharpener.
In my little bag of stuff.
I've already looked in all my pockets for the magnifiers that belong in my jersey pocket, but it might could be I should do it again.
Still no clue as to what I'm supposed to do at Trunk or Treat, aside from show up by five o'clock. I've painted my face beige, but plan to leave the green stripes to the last minute. I'm taking beige paint and green eye shadow for touch-ups; that stuff doesn't stick.
Stand around, mostly, wash some dishes, a couple of times I lifted the chip bowls down where a child could reach them. This didn't work well because children that short don't know how to work tongs. I took a few laps through the building, and concluded that holding the festival in the Sunday-school rooms was nicer than holding it in the parking lot.
I had no idea how tired I was until I got home and stiffened up. But that passed off before bedtime, and I didn't have a sore leg to show to Dr. Darr today. (It's starting to ache now, of course.)
I came home from my annual checkup with two band-aids, one blister, an appointment for next year, an appointment in progress for a bone-density test. and instructions to ask my pharmacist for shingles vaccine.
It's *supposed* to be a blister. The bump on my nose feels the same as before the nitrogen treatment. I don't think I took a really-close look at it before the treatment, so can't say whether it is shinier. But I don't recall being able to see it when I was putting my make-up on yesterday, and I can see it easily now.
Upon reflection, it feels smoother now. It used to give the impression that I should scratch it off with my fingernail.
Ta Dah! I decided it was time to switch to my wool jersey, felt something weighting it when I turned it right side out: The missing glasses!
I should check the other pocket for my missing knife. Joke, son: I always clipped it onto my key ring when it was in a jersey pocket. (Particularly *that* jersey pocket: it leaks.) Of late, I've taken to putting my knife into my jeans pocket bike keys and all, now that I have a bigger knife for my slopping-around pants. Its curved blade is easier to cut weeds with. That shape is no use for cutting food, but I don't need to cut food with a pocket knife when I'm at home.
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I intended to take a look at the boardwalk under construction off North Union Street after seeing the doctor yesterday, but the wind was ferocious — almost past unpleasant into dangerous — so I didn't even consider it.
But the prediction was for today to be one of our few remaining pleasant days. I thought it would be a nice long ride to go out the Heritage Trail to look at this end of the construction, come back on Pierceton Road to look at the other end (which is rather boring, but I made a U turn to look at it from the closer side of the road anyway), then go out Pierceton Road to Pierceton, come back by way of Van Ness Road and Wooster Road, stop at Tractor Supply, and return through Sprawlmart.
Come time to go, I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for seeing Pierceton; once on the road, I also snipped Tractor Supply off my route. but when I was almost to 250 E, I remembered that I can buy peanuts in the shell at Tractor Supply, so I went straight at the intersection.
The hills on the other side of 250 E made me regret that I'd decided that since I wasn't going to Pierceton, I could do the whole trip in walking shoes and leave more room for purchases. But riding was quite easy on the way back.
Little of interest in Tractor Supply, except for a clerk who was freaked out that I'd ridden such an enormous distance, and was very relieved to learn that I meant to go back by Wooster Road. (US 30 would be safer, were it not for all the sharp debris in the bicycle lane.)
I bought bread at Aunt Millie's, but didn't think of Indiana Restaurant Supply until I was lined up to turn left onto 30 on my way to Aldi.
Aldi didn't have either of the two items I'd come for, but I managed to stuff my pannier anyway. Indeed, I had to throw away some of the newspapers in the cooler. I looked through them first, because I once *almost* threw away an irreplaceable map when I changed the newspapers.
I didn't look very hard for the frozen item, because I wanted to fool around some more before going back. I went into K-mart, and had a belated lunch at Taco Bell. (I'd eaten a food bar at Tractor Supply.)
I was dithering: Tomorrow is the last day for the Farmers' Markets, and also the last day that I can buy flour at Bonneyville Mill. The dime dropped: I have to go through Warsaw to get to SR 15; I can see the markets on my way to Bonneyville Mill.
Assuming that I can find a place to park near the downtown market. (The fairgrounds market has its own parking lot.) Might be best to park at the library and walk downtown.
There's angle parking on Lake Street right next to the downtown market. I bought a turnip at the fairgrounds and a jug of cider downtown; the cider is in the freezer because we haven't finished the previous jug. (I took a pint out first.)
Apparently I just missed some big event at the mill; there were lots of people packing concert equipment into vans — more than one group: I heard someone say "that's not ours" to one of the packers.
There was plenty of flour left. I wonder what they do with what they haven't sold by closing time? (I didn't ask about the flours I didn't want; there may not have been plenty of them.)
Yes, there is a road with almost no intersections running directly from the mill to Middlebury. I see that it's the "no intersections" part that got me lost the last time: miss that first turn and you'll never see the road again.
GPS was less helpful on the way home. I bought some stockings at the quilter's shop in Middlebury, and I toured the hardware store, but my main reason for going to Middlebury was that I don't like to go back the way I came.
Garmin suggested haring off into the county roads, I complied, got thoroughly disoriented — you *can* zoom out to see where you are, but need a place to pull off first. I finally realized that it was moving Heaven and Earth to get me back onto Route 15.
I don't *like* Route 15. I'm not all that crazy about using US 30 to get from 15 to Center Street, either. Or about using Center to get to Argonne. If I'd simply stayed on 13, I could have turned right onto 30 and used the 250 E exit to get to Winona Lake.
A happy discovery in Middlebury: I turned onto a side street to find a parking place, and when I finished at the hardware store, I was standing on a corner, which suggested that instead of going back the way I came, I could go on around the other two sides of the block. And at the next corner, I found Old Hoosier Meats, where I bought a couple of smoked pork chops and a length of stuffed sausage.
Fried a piece of sausage for supper; it turned out that "stuffed" meant stuffed into a casing. (I presume that they also sell loose sausage.) It was a real casing, and posed no impediment to eating the sausage. I'll definitely go there again next year.
The retaining wall above Sunday Lane Walk is complete, if not quite finished. Recall that I remarked that the folks in the house had no direct access to the walkway? Now they have *no* access. But it's a pretty wall.
I wish I had a picture of the way it used to look. One of these years I'm going to make a Street View series of pictures of Winona Lake so that when I notice that something has changed, I can see what it is that's different.
Tomorrow will be two minutes and twenty-four seconds shorter.