Dave voted on his way back from getting shots. I rode my flatfoot to the Gordon Rec Center, then went on to Grace College and came back by way of the new branch of the Heritage Trail. This time I did take one of the intriguing sidepaths, and ended up in Fairlane Mobile Home Park. I came back the way I got in, since I don't care to ride on Wooster Road on a flatfoot. Also I didn't know for sure where I was. (I looked it up on Google Maps Satellite View later.)
I thought it would be a change to turn off at the brush dump and come back by Freedom Lane, but the dirt road looked too muddy to suit me.
I bought a "point cut" of corned beef the last time I went to Aldi. This morning, I put it in a pot with a potato, an onion, and a half gallon of corned-beef broth. Somehow there is always more broth than will go back into the container when I put it back into the freezer. I'm planning to salt jambalaya with the broth in the fridge.
To keep the meat from boiling and getting tough, I had to put the pot first on a trivet, then in an iron skillet, and finally on the trivet in the skillet. It came out perfect, and very tender.
One hour before serving time, I added two slices of cabbage — all there was in the house, but we had some left so that was enough. I thought the cabbage might get mushy from cooking for an hour, or it might remain raw from the temperature being so low, but it came out perfect.
We made pigs of ourselves.
The garden should be cultivated before it rains again — not to mention planting the onion sets I bought at Big R — and today would have been perfect to do it in — if the wind hadn't been so cold and ferocious. I couldn't quite stay out long enough to comb my hair.
We got our gutters cleaned today. The wind didn't seem to faze Brandon.
Looked out, saw a pair of geese, wondered whether they would bring their goslings here, went to the kitchen and noticed a pair in the park with something skittering through the grass at their feet, looked back at the pair on the beach and said "either they've got goslings or there's a whole bunch of ducks", saw that mama duck was about twice the size of the goslings — we've seen her before; she's got about a dozen.
Lovely weather to dig in the garden — waitaminute, I combed my hair on the sheltered side of the house, out of deference to the infants. Anyhow, I plan to move a fern first. One is growing a bit out of line, and a few weeks ago I decided to move it to the sparse end of the bed when I could see where all of the ferns are. (The smaller ferns are later to come up.)
We haven't put the rain barrels out yet. I think that I've gotten a bit too fragile to fetch water from the creek, so the transplant will have to settle for water from a hose.
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Wikipedia isn't nearly as useful as it used to be. No matter what I look up, it's an obscure rock band.
From a discussion of XKCD #326 on Explain XKCD:
. . . if an effect can effect affects effectively, how many affects can an effect effectively effect?
Brettpeirce (talk) 14:46, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I wanted to quote that to Dave, but didn't think that I could.
I had no idea that my pronunciation made such a clear distinction between "effect" and "effect".
On introspection, if I don't use both in the same sentence, it doesn't.
If you don't read Explain XKCD, bookmark it at once and put it on your list of sites to read every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
But it would be better to read it on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday to get the entire discussion.
Slept late, and had to eat breakfast while walking to church, and postpone gasket-wiping until after the service. Walking hurt some, but I felt up to going a little farther than necessary on the way home. Passed Steve grilling on the balcony.
Martha saw her first Baltimore Oriole at her feeder this morning, and thought it a wonderful Mother's Day present.
They *are* beautiful birds.
Got to bed late for my nap, too, and opened a can of vegetable-beef soup for supper.
I spent altogether too much time playing 1-2-3 Solitaire today.
Oops! Last night I started Agent copying to the back-up computer and went to bed.
This morning I found a note saying "sharing violation" — I'd left Agent running on XP after I used it to decode a ROT13 on a web site. Also left my browser running, but it's Pale Moon, so it won't have taken over the whole memory and I don't need to reset.
Dave has a big white bandage on his face — yesterday the office scheduled to do his Mohs surgery called to say they'd had a cancellation, and could he get there by one o'clock. He forgot to take his Kindle and had to read the office magazines. They got the cancer in the first go, but it took about an hour to get the lab results.
He's supposed to leave the dressing on until tomorrow. It hurts more than the previous Mohs, and he didn't sleep well.
I'm seriously considering Mohs on my nose. "Watchful waiting" is the wisest course, but it's nerve-racking — I freak out whenever I feel a rough spot while washing my face.
Ye cats. I went back to read the "organ recital" of March, and realized that all of April and a good chunk of May have elapsed since then. It's time this arm showed signs of healing! I've gotten so shut-in that I rode the flatfoot to Owen's last Friday, which is something that I swore I'd never do.
But I didn't go through the stoplight; I rode on the sidewalk to the end, then got off and walked across the street and through the tunnel. I *will* never again go through a stoplight on the flatfoot, unless it is green when I get there and I don't have to actually stop. Much faster to walk across a street than to attempt to start a flatfoot.
(The good news: you can push a flatfoot with your feet until you work up enough speed to balance. The bad news: you *have* to push a flatfoot with your feet until you work up enough speed to balance. Unless the pavement is very good and there isn't the faintest trace of upslope.)
I wonder whether upright bicycles have the same problem, leading to the widespread delusion that you can't ride a bike on a street. But at least with uprights, you can stand on the pedals.
I asked Dave what was the right name of the gadgets I've been calling "sanding sponges": synthetic sponges with abrasive glued to all surfaces.
He searched the Web and learned that they are — "sanding sponges".
Oops. I've got hotdogs in the rice cooker. I meant to serve baked pork chop tonight.
Served the pork chop tonight. It wasn't very good. The spices were overwhelming, and I baked it too long.
I was amused by a discussion of the meaning of the lyrics to a famous song. Someone asked the author what they meant — and he said "They mean that I don't have to work any more."
He went on to say a more-refined version of "A poet should say what he has to say, then shut up and move on."
Roomba day in the sewing room. For a change, I dragged my footlocker into the bedroom, then discovered that there was no handle on the other end to drag it back by. Making a three-point turn with a footlocker isn't easy!
I wonder who is tall enough to carry a thirty-inch footlocker in one hand? My hands are twenty-two inches from the ground — and that doesn't allow clearance to prevent bumping. Or, for that matter, bending sideways to keep your center of gravity over your feet. (Were foot lockers ever issued in pairs?)
Dave has been spring cleaning all week — or perhaps it would be better to say "in a one-thing-leads-to-another cascade" for a week or two.
One of the things didn't lead to another — he noticed fluid coming out from under the poison cabinet in the garage and thought "Oh no the plumbing is leaking!" and I replied "Oh no the pipes are buried in concrete!"
But it turned out that oil had been spilled in front of the cabinet, and it was flowing *toward* the wall as it wicked under the bricks that keep the sheet-steel cabinet off the concrete floor. Took a couple of days and two soaks in Dawn to clean that up. We never did come up with a theory as to what had leaked. There was no oil on the cabinet, so it wasn't one of the bottles in there.
Moving out the cabinet revealed a goof plate — what do you call a switch plate with no holes in it that is used to cover an unused hole in a wall?
So he took off the goof plate and discovered an electric outlet with wire nuts replacing the connector. Now he's wondering whether we have a convenient extra outlet or his father had a good reason not to use those wires. Meanwhile, he put the goof plate back.
Biggest project is cleaning up the flatbed trailer. Right now the boards are on sawhorses in the garage, drying out so that he can put on sealer.
For a while before starting to refurbish it, he considered getting rid of it, and wanted to ask the kids whether one of them wanted it. I started to compose a letter to the mailing list of the April Banner — and couldn't find a copy anywhere, not in "sent", not in Family: Banner, not in Drafts, not in the inbox. I know quite well that I closed April out before starting the May Banner. Perhaps I put the file copy in the wrong folder?
But there *is* a copy at http://wlweather.net/LETTERS/2016BANN/APRBAN16.HTM
One in the morning: I scored ten at Hexavirus! I think that's a record. I got a layout with a lot of long, crooked strings.
Tuesday, yesterday, I went downtown for the first time since the incident. Felt a tiny twinge when getting off the bike after the ride, and didn't like to signal a left turn, but I don't think I aggravated the arm.
Stopped to look at the water bottles at the Trailhouse going and coming. Better than my current bottles, but not enough better to make a difference. I wonder why opening a valve takes so much force? Perhaps I should try putting olive oil on them again; it might work this time.
I bought a wash-out marker at Lowery's, and inquired about Roomba parts. He said the Meile is much better because it has a camera on top to navigate by the ceiling, so that it can proceed methodically instead of random walking.
I looked at fabrics, but didn't like any of them for making pillow cases. The cases I made from the old sheet will hold for a while, even though I bought a pillow at Dollar General on the way home.
I also looked at prints, but not seriously. I have a dress in mind, and want fabric that's cheap enough that I won't mind if the experiment doesn't work, and nice enough that I won't mind wearing it if it does. I strongly suspect that those two classes have a negative intersection.
Hmmm . . . Don't I have ten yards of black broadcloth stashed away? It's cheap fabric, but black covers a multitude of sins.
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Just before naptime, I planted the two pots of pinks (dianthus) that I bought at Sherman & Lin's yesterday. Both plants were pot bound.
I put one at each end of the fern bed. I haven't had good luck with bedding plants in the fern bed, but it's been years since I fed the worm that eats annuals, so I have hope. And maybe pinks will be less tasty than marigolds.
Shuffling for the Roomba today got a small amount of trash cleared from the sewing room. And I found a Flye flyer that I thought I'd lost.
I'm not sure where I put it.
I just made Thunderbird count the reported spams in my junk folder: three hundred and eleven in nearly five months — the neighborhood of two per day. Seems like more — I reported three this morning.
I feel a small sting on the top of my shoulder, when I pay attention to it.
⁂
Spent the morning buying bread, milk, toaster scrambles, and eggs. Now we have three sizes of eggs in the house: large eggs left from the previous dozen, brown pullet eggs I bought at the farmers' market, and the medium eggs I just bought for making devilled eggs.
I spent sixty-three dollars and thirty-six cents. That included a small Woohoo! steak I plan to pan-broil for supper.
I looked for wasabi mayo spread, but though there were several seasoned mayos in the salad-dressing aisle, none were seasoned with horseradish.
A while back I took a bottle of Kroger "wasabi" spread from the clearance shelf, and it turned out to be a marvelous horsey sauce. Not one particle of wasabi in it, of course. Not even a detectable quantity of green food color — but the "wasabi powder" that was one of the horsey-sauce ingredients has blue 1 and yellow 5 listed among its ingredients. I presume that *it* was detectably green. But they didn't use much powdered horseradish; most of the flavor came from prepared horseradish.
So I checked the clearance shelf, knowing full well the "wasabi" had cleared weeks ago. Bought a bottle of "gazpacho". No instructions on how to eat it. I *think* that you are supposed to pour it over stale bread and chill it. Looked good and was only fifty-nine cents. There were several bottles; if "gazpacho" is as good as "wasabi", I'll be sorry I didn't take all of them.
On the other hand, there is canned cucumber in it.
⁂
We had buttered asparagus with our steak for supper. I zapped a potato and forgot to serve it, and neither of us noticed even though there was sour cream on the table.
After supper, the bottom of the skillet was covered with buttery asparagus juice, so I laid a slice of bread in it intending to have it for a bedtime snack, but when I went into the kitchen at ten-thirty intending to warm it up, I found that it had somehow gotten set over a turned-on burner, and the burner hadn't been on the lowest setting, either.
I'm eating a small bowl of granola.
Yesterday, Dave's new lightning detector arrived while a thunderstorm was going on upwind of us.
The storm immediately changed into a quiet shower.
A few years back, I tried to re-create Mom's recipe for spanish rice and failed miserably. The best I could manage was to cook the rice separately and serve it with spanish hamburger. I laid it to commercial tomato juice actually being puree, and gave up.
After the latest Mardi Gras, I experimented with jambalaya and discovered that the problem with my spanish rice was that I had tried to make it in a rice cooker. Spanish rice should be made in a skillet!
Alas, I don't know anybody who should be allowed to eat spanish rice well enough to invite him to dinner, so I'll never have a use for this information.
But jambalaya made with lots of chopped celery and a tiny amount of instant rice makes a good bedtime snack.
Dear Spell Checker: I'll start capitalizing the "spanish" in "spanish rice" the day after I start capitalizing the "hamburg" in "hamburger". Spanish rice and spanish hamburger have nothing whatsoever to do with Spain.
Yesterday we noticed a litter of six adorable skunk kittens under the johnboat. This morning, we can't find them. They were almost old enough to leave the nest, perhaps they departed.
If so, that ends a potential quarrel with the neighbors. Brent wants us to get rid of them, but they are cute, they eat vermin, and they are nocturnal.
⁂
I planted the last of the onion sets this morning. Since I didn't build up the dirt as high as I wanted it, I didn't collapse the sides of the trench onto them, but raked up dirt that had been under the compost heap and carried it on the hoe blade to cover the sets.
Then I sprinkled a little 12-12-12 on them; even though the dirt has been under the compost heap, it's still fill.
I planted the smaller sets cheek-by-jowl with the intention of pulling at least half to eat as scallions.
The weather bureau keeps predicting rain, and we keep not getting it. We deployed one of the rain barrels in case Sunday's prediction means it.
We saw one of the skunk kittens under the pier section where we stored the short downspout hose. He wandered back under the john boat, but we stood back while we pulled out the short hose and pushed the long hose in. Apparently the noise didn't annoy them much.
Weather Underground says Monday will be a good day for a bike ride. I plan to go walker shopping. I'd like to have the specs for the walker I want him to prescribe when I see Dr. Darr in October.
I thought my appointment was in August, but that's the dentist and the eye doctor.
At any rate, having the walker selected should prevent it from being needed.
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After supper, I looked out the sewing-room window and saw a baby skunk eating bugs in the lawn. Or finding *something* to eat while nosing among the grass blades.
So we went out, and they are all over. One ventured as far as the Wildman's fence — I hope they don't go to visit. One went up the downspout hose. Probably found some bugs while in there.
We have been keeping an extra-sharp eye on Al. He doesn't know how to hunt, but mama skunk doesn't know that.
We haven't seen mama, just the babies.
Since skunks are nocturnal, perhaps we'd find her if we lifted up the johnboat — but I'm not going to risk waking up a skunk. I'd definitely spray the phone spammers who keep disturbing my nap if I could.
I sat down on the front porch to read a story in Analog, and a baby skunk wandered under my chair. After a while, I felt something nibbling on my toes.
Seemed less cute about an hour later, when I sat down on the bench of the picnic table to finish the story, and another skunk took an interest in my foot. As I watched him working over my thick wool sock, I gradually became aware that he was looking for a nipple. When I got up to come in, he followed me halfway around the house.
And I did smell skunk as I was riding through the village a few days ago.
I don't think their fur is as sleek and black as it was when we first saw them.
Earlier, four of them had taken an intense interest in the fuzzy carpet sample we use for a doormat.
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We had a good time at Donnie's barbecue. Even the Davids were there, including Trent and Amanda.
When I saw the prediction that Monday would be
clear and sunny, I told Dave that washday would be
on Tuesday this week because Monday was a perfect
day to ride to the Pill Box and decide which
walker I want Dr. Darr to prescribe in
August October. I
overlooked one very obvious complication:
IT MEMORIAL DAY!
Good exercise anyway. I stopped at Owens to dump plastic bags, stopped at KCH to dump two magazines and a book of short stories. The story collection was a very thick trade paperback; I asked the receptionist whether it was permissible to dump books that don't fit into the rack; she said yes and thank you.
Thence to the Pill Box, where I wondered for a bit why the automatic door didn't work. Then I crossed US 30, wandered about in Menards', failed to remember that I wanted to check their picnic supplies for ice dishes, bought a can of "soft loaf" cat food, which I *think* means puree. It's marked as suitable for elderly cats, anyway.
Then to Martin's, where I bought the canned whole tomatoes I hadn't been able to find on my trip to Aldi. I dithered over Kerrygold cultured butter; half a pound cost as much as two pounds of regular butter. After a bit I reflected that I've been wanting to taste cultured-cream butter ever since I learned that it existed, and two pounds of butter is pretty cheap for a new experience.
Tastes just like any other unsalted butter to me, but it's pretty good — particularly when spread very thick.
Also bought a can of Wasabiko powdered horseradish. It's diluted with mustard powder and corn starch, so it would probably take a lot to flavor a batch of eggs.
Wasabiko is obviously formed by adding "ko" to "wasabi" — I wonder what "ko" means? Dave speculated that it was a suffix meaning "fake".
Two of the little guys are dead. It's a pity drug warriors don't want me to buy a little morphine to ease the passing of the others.
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I dug a grave — and now Dave reports that the "dead" skunks walked away, and at least one of the skunks is bigger than it was. (We don't observe *too* closely.)
June the third is this coming Friday and I *still* can't remember why I marked it on my calendar. It's First Friday, but I don't think that's it.
It's a perfect day for drying clothes.