Yum! The multiplier onions are full size, but still have edible green tops, and they are so easy to peel that I can use them instead of cutting up big onions — and I can pull every other one and still have worlds to get ripe.
Weather Underground says breezy and clear today, just perfect all day tomorrow. It isn't even all that hot: a high of 78F. At fireworks time, I might even want a shawl.
Breakfast this morning was two tostadas thinly spread with left-over cheese dip. That nearly killed the dip, and one of things I look forward to is eating left-over dip for days on end. I'm tempted to make another batch.
Seems to me that last year I used the larger iron saucepan and put in twice as much milk and flour. Yeah, I should make a trial run to see whether that is a good recipe!
I woke up early and cleaned out the Wheelie Kool before dressing. Instead of adding "buy ice" to Saturday's list of things to do, I put a one-gallon food-storage bag of water into the freezer on Thursday (or thereabouts). The cans were cold, and hardly any of the ice had melted; I'll do that again next year.
On the other hand, I've got a big block of ice to dispose of. I just dump left-over cubes on the lawn; I drained the bag and put it back into the freezer.
I always have worlds of kow choi dip left over, so this year I used only one quart of whole-milk yogurt. I put it into my stainless-steel steamer to drain on Friday night, and harvested and chopped a handfull of kow choi Saturday morning.
When I dumped the drained yogurt into the serving dish, it seemed a little thick, so I carefully poured off enough clear whey to fill a nine-ounce "snack box" and dumped the remainder of the whey, which was white with curd that had gone through the strainer, into the dip. That came out about right. Then I stirred in the chopped greenery and a quarter teaspoon of salt.
The result got a rave review from a baby.
And we've got about half of it left.
I got so sleepy at the Beeson picnic that we had to go home early — later, I realized that I hadn't been drinking enough water.
Halfway through the year, I have about four hundred spams in my junk folder.
There's a Piper Cub parked on our beach. Dave said the owners said that they plan to fly it back to the airport when there is snow on the runway, and put the wheels back on. They took off after putting the floats on by putting it onto a flatbed truck and having the truck speed down the runway. Sounds perilously close to a carrier landing to me!
I also learned that Cubs are designed for two pilots, that when there is only one person aboard he has to sit in the back seat to balance the plane, and that, like Henry Ford, Mr. Piper intended to make something that anyone could buy. Unlike the Model T, the Cub is still in practical use.
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It's eerily quiet out there. Two doors down, a man is strumming a guitar in his back yard, smoke is rising from the remains of Wildman's bonfire, a skein of geese flew past, I can see cars in the park parking lot — but no shrieks of childish glee, no explosions.
When I saw the smoke from the Wildman's yard and didn't see the remaining teeter-totter, I thought it was gone even though a child rode a little bike over it yesterday or the day before — but it had been moved to be more convenient to the sand pile.
The one that was burned was very heavy — hard to move, and potentially dangerous if a child walked under it just as someone jumped off the other end.
I walked down to the beach to look at the Piper Cub. The cowlings look more like nostrils than like eyebrows to me.
And they *are* for directing air over the engine.
The flyers have to wade to get into their plane; Dave offered our surplus pier sections, but they weren't interested. They might want some of the posts.
I set off for a fifteen-mile ride, but absent-mindedly left town on Market Street instead of Winona Avenue, so I went to Kiwanis Park by way of the Chinworth Trail instead of by way of Parks-Schram. I haven't checked yet to see how many miles that lopped off.
I didn't remember that I'd meant to stop at the teller machine until I opened my wallet at Warsaw Health Foods and found only three ones in it. They take debit cards, and before I mounted up again, I remembered that my tire-patch kit contains a twenty-dollar bill for just such an emergency.
Then I forgot to stop on the way home. I'd better make a special trip Real Soon.
When I unpacked my lunch at Kiwanis Park, I discovered that the spout lid on my Rubbermaid quart bottle had popped open and most of my back-up water was in the bottom of the bag. But nothing was damaged, and in addition to two bottles of water I was carrying a bottle of tea and a bottle of lemonade, and I'd topped off at the library drinking fountain — my second water bottle was still full when I got home.
Buffalo Street Emporium no longer sells scrapbooking supplies, which didn't surprise me any. They have some sheets of paper and cover stock, but none in colors I don't already have. I hadn't brought a cardboard envelope to bring paper home in anyway.
I got a packet of needles at Lowery's.
Tuesday evening, a pilot knocked on the front door and said "can Mr. Beeson come out to play?"
Then he took Dave for a sunset flight. They did a touch-and-go on the lake, and Dave got to fly some. I think he's *still* pretty stoked.
He loves the way a seaplane has to break free of the lake one float at a time.
We had fresh corn for supper yesterday, and I'm planning to do it again tonight. I'd better go out and buy butter pretty soon.
I'm hoping to go to the Farmers' Market in Pierceton tomorrow afternoon, and could stop at Aldi on the way back. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but it might be over by the time the market starts.
It was hot and sunny all the way. Google Maps says it was about seventeen miles, and I was pretty beat by the time I got to Aldi. It's amazing what walking around in an air-conditioned store will do for you!
I got close to some corn on Van Ness road, and it didn't look as though it was enjoying the weather, but wasn't curled. Not much.
Yesterday I cruised through the fairgrounds market — had trouble getting out again, because of the traffic setting up for the county fair — then went to Owen's and called it a ride. I met both Martha and Kathy at Owen's.
Last Tuesday, there was a new recycling bin at the end of the driveway. Saw them all over while walking to church today. It's a bigger bin that you have to drag out only every other week, and it has bigger wheels so that it's easier to drag, so I was pretty pleased with it — until we dragged it into the garage and tried to put it where the old one had been.
The paper stuck to it says that they'll haul off the old one if we put it out on July 19th with a note saying that it's trash. I wonder how they will dispose of them? There are a lot, and most are still in pretty good shape. They changed them because a special truck can pick up the new ones and save strain on the trash men. The paper says that people in Warsaw are disgruntled because the special truck can't go down alleys. This isn't a problem in Winona Lake because we don't have alleys — most houses have streets both front and back. (Now I'm going to have to look when I'm walking around to see whether that is true.)
I was disgruntled when Dave told me that I'd have to go back to tying the papers in bundles, then I realized that I can tape two strings inside the paper bin with the ends hanging over, and tie them together when we want to empty the bin. The trash collectors don't care whether or not the papers are neatly aligned inside the bundles.
Whew! <wipes forehead>
I was heedlessly eating a sausage sandwich for lunch when I heard and felt a loud "crunch!" on the plastic side of my mouth. Much frantic investigation later, I concluded that there had been a lump in the lettuce. I'm getting to the curly leaves in the middle that are had to untangle.
Have I mentioned how much I like the Sandwich Skinnys I bought at Aldi after getting to Aunt Millie too late to buy bagels? They aren't cake-sweet like Thinwiches, they are thinner, and the texture of the bread is denser.
It looks like three loads of clothes today, plus a pair of canvas shoes. I put the shoes into my three-gallon mixing bowl and used my nail brush to rub detergent all over them, and will let them soak until the other loads are done. May have to spray them with water now and again, to keep them wet.
I plan to run the nail brush through with the shoes.
The whites are on the line, the whites-and-lights are in the washer, I'll start the blacks and darks after my nap.
There's a pretty good pile of blacks because I'm washing fleece pants to put them away for the summer.
Yesterday, I told Pastor Paul he could baptize a child in our back yard. I forget who he said it was. I told him they'd have to wade way out; he said that knee deep was about right.
I'm not sure how far you have to go to get knee deep — but there might be a place between the sand bar and the shore. I should put shorts on and find out how the lake varies. The channel is deep enough to float a Piper cub, but you can't get from there to the berth; he had to back out and go around the bar to come in along Brent's pier.
If you were thinking "there's no way lettuce could be that crunchy" you were right. A couple of hours later I found something in my mouth that looked like a piece of tooth, and put it into my jewel box in a "pill pouch" size zipper bag.
In the evening, I found out where it had come from, and left a message on Dr. Hollar's machine, and now I have an appointment for 3:30.
Orzo Salad
An unmeasured quantity of Black Japonica Rice, probably less than a cup uncooked. Looks like about a cup in the half-gallon semi-disposable container I'm mixing the salad in.
I soaked the rice four days, boiled it about ten minutes, and gave it a brief rinse in cold water. (I'm making cola-colored switchel out of the drainings.)
Stirred in enough of the oil off pickled artichokes to coat it.
Four multiplier onions, cut into wedges.
One stalk of kow choi/garlic chives and one stalk of chives, chopped.
A small handful of lemon-basil prunings, stems and flowers set aside for beverages, leaves chopped.
The leaves from one stem of thyme.
One terminal bud of "spicy Italian oregano", chopped.
One very small mustard leaf, chopped.
The leaves from one sprig of parsley, chopped.
About an eighth of a teaspoon of "Hot 'N Spicy Pizza Topping".
Another artichoke quarter.
About half of a four-ounce package of crumbled feta cheese.
This brings it nearly to the two-cup line on the container. I think another mustard leaf would be appropriate.
I added mustard pods, two winter-onion bulbils, and some vinegar off the pickled artichokes.
Onions chilled in oil get translucent, just like onions fried in oil.
Whatever it was that pruned the squash(?) vine came back last night, finished it, and started on the other volunteer vine. There's a fruit on the other vine, but I guess I won't find out whether or not it's a muskmelon.
Do muskmelons have squash blossoms? I thought they had cucumber blossoms.
Found a picture on a Purdue web site, but there is no scale, and the difference between cucumber flowers and squash flowers is primarily size. At a wild guess, the muskmelon flower in the picture is bigger than cucumber and smaller than squash.
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It turned out the chip was a piece of the plastic glued to the tooth. Dr. Hollar slapped a patch on it, and we hope that it will hold until September. In the meanwhile, I'm cutting my sandwiches into narrow pieces.
But we had Penguin-Point chicken for supper tonight. I've been avoiding it because I once crunched a taquito with my plastic teeth, and doing that with a chicken bone would be a disaster, but I figured that so soon after a scare, I wouldn't forget. I did leave more cartilage on the bones than usual.
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I'm putting down a saucer of milk for the gremlins tonight.
It was Roomba day in the sewing room, and I thought that while I had the boxes all rousted out of their places, I'd sort my old manuscripts — and I did get a new box of Anjela stories started, and put "Manstealers" in with "The Dying Demon". Also discovered that I'd written a prequel to "In Loco Parentis". I may dig it out and read it later, to see whether it went anywhere.
While sorting through the papers I found my split mittens, that I've been hunting for for two years. I'll be riding later into the winter this fall! I also found the scrap of yellow cotton that I was *sure* I had when I was getting ready for the Day of Sharing. It was part of a bundle of solid cottons to make embroidered numbers for the alphabet book I started, probably for somebody who has graduated from college, gotten married, and had children. Each digit was to be embroidered in black floss onto its resistor-code color. I remember the same difficulty then that I had while looking to buy an eighth of a yard of yellow broadcloth for the embroidery gig: nobody makes pure, clear colors because they are "garish". I got the green fabric by buying a pepper-print bandanna with a green border.
I unfolded the number scraps and clothespinned them to the hanger of twill destined to be pages for the book. And left the 8s folded in half to make a pouch for the needle, floss, paper pattern, and strip of red. Then I moved it from the laundry room to the stash closet, so that room is cleaned up a bit too.
If I start such a project again, I'll write the numbers and letters with a Sharpie!
Except maybe the zeros. No Sharpie shows up on black.
Then later, I walked down the hall, glanced into the bedroom, and noticed my sandals under the edge of the bed. I've been hunting for them desperately ever since Tuesday, when I had to wear sandals that don't protect my toes from the toe clips on my ride to the dentist, and I've lost count of the times I've gotten down on my hands and knees to look under the bed.
Then, while dressing to go to Penguin Point, I looked into the pockets of my other pair of jeans for the fifteenth time, and there were my car keys — missing since Monday.
So the gremlins get a saucer of milk. Maybe they'll bring back my mind.
This morning, I pried up two railroad ties and threw rocks under them to keep them level. It was easier than I expected, perhaps because I got the idea of laying the rocks alongside the tie so that they would fall into the hole when I levered the tie up.
And these two (the south tie and the south-end tie on the west side) were almost level to start with. I think I'll have to find more rocks when I pry up the northwest tie.
Since I did the east-side ties last summer, only one tie remains unlevel. I don't think I'll put the level on the east ties to be sure they haven't sunk. They look level, that's good enough.
Lunch today was the exact sausage sandwich that I broke the bridge on. I cut it in half before eating it.
I plan to have supper at the fair. I hope the fried-calzone guy is there again.
He wasn't, and no surprise because I was his only customer last time.
I managed to break my bridge eating a milkshake. At least, I found the patch in my mouth after the shake and before the pulled pork. I've got an appointment for Tuesday. There were two pieces, but the speck that came out first got lost in my pocket lint. (I wasn't carrying a pill pouch — and if I had been carrying one, it probably would have fallen out along the way, as the paper I meant to write my purchases on did. The pencil didn't fall out, so I wrote them on the back of my ticket. And fastened the ticket to my pocket with a safety pin.)
Now is a fine time to remember that my small bag of stuff includes, on the credit-card side, a pill pouch with a flosser in it.
I almost ran the poncho shirt through the washer without removing the bridge patch from its pocket; I would have if the washer hadn't been in one of its moods and I gave up trying to start it until after taking a shower.
That poncho shirt is so worn that I think I could pull off finger-shaped pieces. And the colors are no longer garish. I should look around Lowery's. There won't be any shirt panels, but there might be something that I could piece into a suitable pattern.
Hmm . . . I recall looking at a really loud print and saying "I wish I had a use for that".
There were benches all over the fairgrounds, so I didn't get desperately tired. I speculated that they've got some old people on the fair board. The folding chairs in the Women's Building have been replaced by wooden armchairs with upholstered backs and seats, and there are more in the Shrine building where the 4-H stuff is. Arms to help you get up are another concession to old folks.
I was puzzled by the chairs, but in retrospect, I should have looked to see whether they can stack. The floral print definitely wasn't designed for county fairs.
I didn't sit long in any one spot; I should take some pocket needlework next time. A woman knitting was in the same chair every time I sat down in the Women's Building.
I refilled my bottle in the Women's Building twice, and got back to the bike with an empty bottle. (I had a spare bottle of ice water in the cooler, and poured half of it and all the ice into the lemon bottle for the trip back.)
Slicing a whole lemon into the bottle was not overkill. I fished out one of the slices to season my pulled pork, and it wasn't too sour to eat by itself. I think that lemon in the water helped with hydration — though vigorous shaking failed to flavor the third bottle.
When I was in the rabbit barn, I bought an "ice pop" and put half of it into my water. The young boy who sold it to me was endearingly clumsy. I should have bought another to see how fast he learned. I was amused that he didn't ask "what flavor", but "what color". As was perfectly right — I'm not sure there *was* any flavor.
Weird — just now, I absent-mindedly clicked on a link to Flicker, and it worked! Perhaps it's a different Web site that insists on using Flash to display static jaypegs.
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I pried up one end of the remaining tie, and managed to pull a clump of weed grass that I'd disturbed with the railroad iron. I should try the spading fork on the rest of it.
While doing that, I noticed that the multipliers are ready to pull, and pulled weeds and onions all along the westernmost row. There are a few clumps of multipliers that will have to be dug.
They are mostly fine, fat bulbs. I laid them out on the weed-free pile of dirt from digging the skunk grave to cure in the sun, all but five that I'd broken the tops off. Since I feel that for longest keeping, the tops need to stay on until completely dry, I brought those in for immediate use — and at lunch time peeled all and ate two.
A while after that I hauled two wheelbarrows of dirt from the compost-heap site to the south end of the garden. While digging around the clump of volunteer garlic, I noticed that it was ready to pull. The ground being sandy there, I got all of them in one yank. I laid those out on the picnic table to bleach; I must remember to brush the dirt off after it dries. Now is a fine time to think of it: I should have hosed them off immediately after pulling.
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Pizza bites, fried in butter over very low heat for ten minutes a side, aren't half bad — especially if you tuck a quarter of a multiplier onion into each one.
It's raining! A nice, gentle, straight-down rain with no pieces coming off the willow tree. If it persists a while, it should do the corn a world of good.
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It didn't persist. The soil is still quite dry on top.
I walked to the Hillside after church. I must do that again next week to find out why there is blue paint in the flower beds.
I heard thunder in the night, and Dave says we got a tenth of an inch. I hope that holds us until Wednesday.
At least I'm promised a clear, if hot, day for riding to the dentist's office tomorrow. I'm trying out some switchel I made from an ad-hoc recipe: the water in which I had boiled some rice, three teaspoons of ginger, one squirt of honey, the juice of two lemons. Makes one quart.
I've got the lemon juice in the freezer in a water bottle that I'll fill with switchel tomorrow. I put the squeezed lemons into the pitcher of switchel, to soak out the flavor of the rind and pulp.
The white wash is on the line — looks threatening, but the rain on the radar is heading south again. I put the dark load on a rack in the garage, which is open to the breeze.
The lake is so flat that the swans leave a wake.
Yesterday, Dave said that he was out front when two bike riders went by and one of them yelled "Hey! There's a plane back there!"
Dr. Hollar's office just called: my three o'clock appointment has been moved up to noon. I'm still planning to leave Dave on his own for supper — but there's no no time for a nap first. Perhaps I'd better drink tea instead of switchel.
We're using physical barriers instead of virtual walls for the Roomba now. Monday morning Dave found it in the parlor: while sweeping the living room, it had broken off its sensor trying to get under a lamp stand that was *almost* high enough. Considerately, it had swept up the sensor and Dave found it when he emptied the bin.
The lamp stand is upside-down in the living room, and four varnished pieces of wood are drying in the garage.
Dave has e-mailed I-Robot to ask how to buy a new sensor.
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He found one on Amazon.
There are, at the moment, two float planes parked off our beach. And a party, apparently the Warsaw Flying Club, going on in Brent's back yard.
After my appointment, I went to Subway on Lake Street and bought a sandwich to eat at the Kiwanis shelter near the Chinworth bridge. Also had some veggies that I'd taken along.
Then I took 350 E to 200 N and came back by Fox Farm. The farm stand at Fox Farm and 200 W is open, but we have corn and they were out of kohlrabi, so all I bought was a small yellow squash.
On the way back through town, I stopped in Pike Lake Park for water. Oddly, the water in the fountain was hot enough to shower in, and the longer I let it run, the hotter it got. So I filled only one bottle, and when I got to Owen's, I emptied it onto the grass. I'd just drunk all my other water, so it was wise to take it — and water above ambient can't be coming directly from an underground pipe, so I think I was equally wise not to drink it.
I refilled only one bottle, since I was nearly home by then. And I got home with well over half of it.
I did buy a lot of stuff at Owen's, including a chuck steak that I plan to crockpot in my rice cooker tomorrow.
And a package of smoked sausages; we had two of them with mustard and relish for supper. And a slice of bread each.
I passed close to two cornfields. One had started to curl, the other hadn't.
The lamp stand is back in service. You can't tell Dave did anything. At least not from across the room.
Today, unfortunately, looks like a wonderful day to play outside, and there's an equally-poor chance of rain tomorrow. Some chance on Friday, then nothing until half a chance on Sunday.
I'd better haul some buckets.
Friday looks like a day to make me very glad that we have air conditioning.
I remembered to put the chuck into the rice cooker, and set it on "warm" after I heard the celery in the bottom sizzle.
The second volunteer vine is still there, and it has some absolutely gorgeous male squash blossoms on it, but I've left them alone. Fried punkin blossom is delicious, but very high on the list of things old people ought not to eat.
I'm pretty sure the fruit on the second volunteer is a muskmelon; if so, it should begin turning yellow soon.
Al takes the Roomba in stride, and is too blasé about getting stepped over, but you *can* get to him. Al was sleeping peacefully in the middle of the living-room floor when I tripped over the physical barrier I carelessly left in place after Roomba did the living room, which caused the two sticks to slap together. He not only jumped to his feet, he hissed at me, and when he settled down again, it was in the parlor under the card table, facing the hallway. He gave me a disgruntled glance as I passed.
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A little before four O'clock, I noticed the neighbor's children on the trampoline, jumping for joy. I think one of them was an adult, but it was hard to see through the rain.
We've already got a quarter of an inch, and it appears to intend to continue — at a gentler rate — for some time.
The old recycling bin is now a rain barrel. And it's full even though water is squirting out of a hole six inches from the top.
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We got six tenths of an inch. Might get more on Friday.
So far it looks like a glorious clear day, and not all that hot.
This morning I pushed the cultivator around a little, and pulled a few onions. There is so much wide-blade grass that it's going to be difficult to find the remaining multipliers. And it will take many trips with the cultivator and a lot of hand pulling before I can plant any short-season veggies, so it's probably just as well that I didn't buy that mustard seed.
When I poured buckets of water on the potatoes, I uncovered potatoes on two of the three plants — looks as though there is going to be a plentiful harvest. Today I finally got around to hoing dirt over them; I don't *think* that they had started turning green.
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Another cascade. I'm planning to try to make tomorrow's trip to the farmers' markets into a quarter century, which means that I'll stay up through nap time, so I asked Dave whether I could snitch a bottle of the iced tea he recently made.
Then I thought that I'd better fill the bottle and put it into the fridge so there'd be one less thing to remember in the morning.
Then I got a better idea, put a little tea into the bottle, and put it into the freezer — tea ice will keep the tea cold without diluting it.
And, um, that bottle of ice water I plan to take? Why not fill the bottle with ice cubes now, and stash it in the freezer too.
And I plan to take two sandwich bags of ice to keep my lunch cold; fill them now and put them next to the bottle of ice, the tea, and the switchel.
Now the ice trays need refilling.
All done, but I spilled a drop of water on the lid of the chest freezer. As long as I'm fetching a rag, why not wipe the gaskets on all the fridges.
And now that that's done and I've written about it, I realize that I need to re-build my cooler. On a previous trip, the newspapers got wet.
I hope that there are enough expired newspapers; when the lamp stand was upside down, we put all the old papers into the recycling bin, and it was picked up on Wednesday.
When I told Joe where I'd been yesterday, he told me that when I ate my lunch at Tippecanoe Park, I was only half a mile from the Creighton Brothers' Crazy Egg restaurant.
I really, really should have worn my straw hat instead of the one that's lined with polyester for the walk to church — and I forgot that I have a pocket-size bottle of water in the fridge ready to go. The walk up wasn't very comfortable, but the walk back wasn't too bad. I don't think I was in the sun as much.
We got half an inch of rain in the night. I hope some of it fell where I was yesterday — when I got well away from Warsaw, it became evident that the previous rain had gone south of 100 N. Every corn field that I looked at was hurting, and at least one was hurting bad.
I think I went twenty-five miles, but I haven't measured it yet.
22.5 miles.
This morning, going into the kitchen to eat breakfast gave me a turn. (I fried frozen potato shreds and an egg in butter: delicious.)
I collect stuff that goes to the compost heap on a used paper plate. Yesterday I put two spent lemon rinds on it, and later tracked in a bright-green leaf and put that on the plate instead going back out to dump it.
In the evening,I moved the plate to the counter, unmolded a tea strainer of stuff I'd boiled to make switchel onto it, and went to bed without putting the garbage back on the stack of used paper plates.
In the morning, at first glance, I saw a beautiful plate of nouvelle cuisine.
Which is on the heap now.
And now that I have an abundant supply of switchel, the temperature has dropped into the eighties.
Things still look dry out there, but I heard thunder in the night and Dave's web site says we got two tenths of an inch of rain.
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The wash is all done and some of it has been brought in and put away. Because of the wind, all of the second load that isn't on hangers is on a rack in the garage. And only small, slow-drying things from the first load are still outside.
Just before lying down, I realized that I'll need a bottle of switchel if I make a Goodwill tour tomorrow, so I poured a little of the first boiling of ginger-and-oats into a bottle, added the juice of half a lemon — left over from making the frozen concentrates — added some second-boiling ginger water, and put it into the freezer. I think I'll add some more ginger water after that has frozen, and this time remember to shake the jar — the oat extract settles out. Tomorrow, a teaspoon of honey and fill the bottle with second-boiling water. I also put the squeezed lemon half back into the container and covered it with second-boiling ginger tea; I'll add that tomorrow too.
On Saturday's tour, at the courthouse market, I parked my bike in the same place as last week, and noticed that the statue on which I parked and forgot my emergency lunch while arranging my cooler depicts a young girl eating a sandwich. I don't think she had my fruit-and-grain bars for dessert.
When I brought the white clothes in yesterday, a few things weren't dry yet. This morning, they were still on the line. I noticed them as we were stepping off for an after-supper walk to the teller machine, but by the time we got back, I'd forgotten.
The surplus pants hanger/scarf rack is finally going to Goodwill today. I also had space in the pannier for two tin boxes and a plastic pitcher I no longer use. The usual dump tour: Owen's to drop off plastic bags (not many this time), the hospital to dump magazines (the number I thought would fit into the rack didn't make much of a dent in the pile), to Goodwill, and lunch at Panda Express. Might look in at Meijer for picnic dishes and house dresses.
My arthritic joint is — not hurting, but serving notice — this morning. I think that walking two days in a row was overdoing it.
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It didn't mind non-weight-bearing exercise one bit.
I forgot about the ginger-soaked lemon peel, and my switchel didn't have enough lemon in it. But it worked, and the switchel concentrate turned out to be a good idea too. I'd been concerned about getting it into a bottle, but after a little had thawed, the ice got soft like a melting popsicle and was easily broken up.
No house gowns at Meijer — everything was polyester — but I found some bicycle tights! It's been more than fifteen years since I bought bike clothes ready made.
They were clearing out their Spaulding athletic pants even though it will be well over a month before there any hope of a day cold enough to be able to tolerate them. I found "leggings" that became tights by dint of buying a size too small, and a "crop" that is wearable in my proper size. It is supposed to be mid-calf, but comes down far enough to meet crew-length socks. The too-small leggings are a bit longer than my legs despite being stretched sideways.
The tights aren't any warmer than my linen knickers, but it will be nice to have clothing that fits tight and doesn't catch on things in the interseason, when I can bear polyester but don't really need insulation, and when it's actually cold, they will be a good bottom layer.
As if that weren't enough, when I stopped at Big R to buy cat food, I found a "face brush". Several months ago I was hunting all over for a complexion brush and couldn't find one. I suspect that it was meant for a face larger than mine, but I rubbed my face with it in the store, and I think it is going to work.
I didn't have exact change for the self-service farm stand at 300 E and 175 N, and was obliged to leave a fifty-cent tip. I didn't know that I was going to pass it. But then, I don't think I went any place where I can get one-dollar bills today; I think I paid for everything else with my new chip-and-pin card. I'd got the hang of it by the time I got to Aldi, but they still swipe. Probably plan to change over; I tried to put my card into the chip slot, only to find that it had been taped over.
I got the giggles at Big R — the reader was so anxiously repeating "don't remove your card".
Little yellow tomatoes are a great snack on a hot day. I think I ate half of them on the way home — washing each one with the plain water I'd picked up at Meijer.
I worked in the garden for a while this morning. I think I'm gaining on the weeds, but I'm not sure. I harvested a row of onions — bought-set onions, which didn't enlarge much; I think I didn't put enough 12-12-12 on them — and that helped by making elbow room to run the cultivator. On the other hand, as long as I'm cultivating where onions were, I have to use the five-tine hoe instead of the slicing hoe, and that tends to loosen the weeds without removing them. So far, the tines have popped up only one missed onion.
I think I'll run the slicing hoe through where I pulled out all the multipliers and ran the five-tine several times, and plant the carrot seed I picked up at some propaganda booth.
The potatoes are still flourishing, and the deer haven't eaten any more squash vines. There's a new vine on the compost heap that has pickle blossoms on it; I presume that it's a muskmelon, since we don't eat cucumbers of any kind.
The mysterious dark-green fruit seems to be developing yellow speckles. There are also marks that might expand into netting.
I rode my flatfoot to the post office to mail a letter. I had to blow dust and spider webs off it first, then pump up the tires. Accustomed to Presta valves, I felt abused pumping up Schrader. Not to mention that the flatfoot's fat tires hold a lot more air, even at less than half the pressure.
Yum! We had BELTs for breakfast: bacon, egg, lettuce, and tomato. Dave toasted his bread, I thawed mine in the microwave.
I ran the Culta-Eze with the slicing hoe after supper yesterday, and gained a lot on the weeds, so I'm devoting today to sewing. First step was clearing off the ironing board, which meant putting away the user's manual for my primary computer that Dave found while cleaning up his stuff, which means that I'm going to have to throw out some obsolete mail-order catalogs, and that job is now on the card table in the parlor.
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With a large number of slick catalogs in it — I had saved several years worth of Patternworks catalogs for reference — the bundle of paper fell apart when I dropped it into the recycling bin. I wanted to fish it out and break it into two bundles, but with the new bin, the only way I could do that would be to tip the bin over and then crawl inside, so I left it slaunchwise and certain to scatter when the bin is dumped. All this junk actually goes to the landfill anyway.
Meanwhile, back at clearing off the ironing board …
I didn't know a Post-It note could fall with a sharp crack! It was a tracking number I'd stuck to XP's monitor, and it fell into a space so narrow that it had to land edge down. But when I dropped it in deliberately, it only rustled.
When TracFone started nagging me to let them give me a new phone, I couldn't see how changing my phone could correct a bug in their server. After a few days, I realized that I'm not using any minutes to speak of, and therefore, not buying minutes. I have 227 service days left, and 4124.5 minutes — I'd have to talk eighteen minutes a day to use them all up, and it's a rare day that I use the phone at all. If they adjust the servers to reject calls from non-browserphones, maybe I'll get on the Web and use all my minutes in a couple of weeks.
But when I caved — they'd degraded my service until I had to give up trying to call them on my TracFone and use the landline, and was unable to communicate that I was going to call back, so I shouted "I'll call you on the landline" fifteen times in the hope that one copy would make it through and hung up.
But when I caved, the representative said that they would send a phone just like the one I have now.
At least I *think* he said that. He spoke fluent English in the sense that I speak fluent Spanish when I want to say "Tengo dolor de la Cabeza", "No niños en la canasta", or "No hablo Español". He had a much larger repertoire, of course, but it wasn't much improvement over speaking to voice mail. Indeed, voice mail is much better at not hearing "D" when I say "J". I won't be surprised if the phone is addressed to Doy Meeson when it arrives. If it arrives; he couldn't hear "one" and kept wanting to send it to 2700 Park or 3700 Park. At least he *could* hear "Park Avenue".
He also said it would come Fed Ex, but Fed Ex never heard of the tracking number he gave me, and I *did* read it back to him. He asked for my e-mail address, but I'll be surprised if what he punched into the system bears any resemblance to what I said.
I'm sure that having at least a hundred other operators in the same room didn't help him any. The modern earphone brags about not muffling ambient noise the way the earmuff style did.
On my way to church — not *in* church, by pure good fortune — I got a text message saying that my phone was on back-order and would arrive in fifteen days. So I *am* in "the system". Whether it will come *here* remains to be seen.
I walked to the Hillside after church. Whatever the blue paint was for, the mulch has been stirred so that most of the blue chips are brown side up. There were a couple of sheltered spots where the lines still showed.
I had lunch at the Crazy Egg Cafe yesterday. I'm not fond of sit-down-and-wait-to-be-noticed when I eat alone, but service is very fast.
It *is* something, as Joe said, but the food is too heavy for a rest stop on a bike tour. So I went to Parks-Schram instead of Walmart. I saw a few marsh mallows in bloom on 100 N, but not one along Parks-Schram. I thought I saw some on the near bank of the Tippy once, but it turned out to be a back-yard bush with flowers of the same color.
I didn't notice any corn that was really hurting. I also didn't notice any well-filled ears, but it's still early.
The Crazy Egg does have a bike-parking spot, a triangular piece of the parking lot that I saw while I walked up the wheelchair ramp to park on their porch. I'll use that if I stop in for a glass of tea some time.
The mysterious fruit on the squash vine is still mysterious, but it's still there. I don't think it used to be so close to the hole I dug where the compost heap used to be.