I *almost* got the wash into one load again today. Just one pair of canvas trousers in the second load.
I used the last of the packets of hot-and-sour soup that I bought at Marsh's clear-the-shelves tonight. Since it's well past rhubarb season, I put in half a stalk of celery, chopped as fine as I could. To my disappointment, the can of chunk chicken was all breast meat. I also julienned a little carrot and half a potato, put in just before the egg so they wouldn't get limp. The celery went in first, since I like it limp.
We both liked it very much, and there wasn't much left even though the packet is supposed to serve three without the "for a heartier soup" additions.
We shared a "crusty" roll from Martin's, and that was very good too. And I didn't even warm it, but got it out of the freezer a few hours ahead of time.
The levels in three of the boxes of crackers I bought on Saturday have been dropping alarmingly. The navy-bean chips are very good with black-bean-and-corn salsa.
We had chef salad yesterday. I didn't put any egg on mine.
There are no birds on the lake. I don't see an eagle.
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In the morning, I cleared all the clutter off the ironing board.
In the afternoon, I cluttered it up again.
But I found one of the missing yardsticks.
This week's poll on Ink-Free News is "Do you think the song "Baby It's Cold Outside" contains inappropriate lyrics?"
I think that in addition to "yes", "no", and "undecided", they should have a "Boy are you hard up for poll topics!" radio button.
I had my annual physical this morning. So far, so good, but the blood tests aren't in yet.
A load of dish towels and cleaning rags is soaking overnight; tomorrow is supposed to be windy but dry.
I could see from the window that the pillowcases were frozen, from the way they flapped in the wind. The whites were still a bit damp when I took them in at noon. I dried the second load on racks indoors.
I plan to spend tomorrow making bean soup and a batch of cherry-cherry dried-apple spice cake. Both require preparation the night before, but when I groggily contemplated the intellectual requirements of making butter-fruit syrup for the cakes, I decided that I could boil the fruit in the morning and bake in the evening.
And I need to run a load of wash that I forgot. There is a stain on my red silk blouse, and it bleeds like crazy, so it has to be washed alone. But I'm going to throw in the gray socks I'm wearing; I won't mind if they come out pink.
Not to mention that my prescriptions are ready at Owen's.
Shame Warsaw Health Foods didn't have any corn flour. I suspect that I bought what I recently finished at Spring Creek.
So we'll have millet bread with our bean soup. I think there are a couple of teaspoons of corn flour left; if so, I'll throw that in.
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Our internet connection is down. I may get to bed on time tonight.
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I did, but got up again at one, and managed to score zero at Hexavirus.
I wonder whether WS-FTP works now.
I still can't FTP or download mail.
And Comcast wants my cell-phone number before they'll let me look at my mail on the Web. Comcast is so flaky that I don't trust them to use my number responsibly — I've already gotten a spam call on my cell. I gave them the landline, which is already almost unusably infested, but they sent a text to it.
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So I bit the bullet and gave them my cell number — they said it was already associated with another account and froze up.
The last time I mentioned it, Dave said that it's paranoid to believe that Comcast is trying to get out of the e-mail business.
Shame I can't make G-mail work.
At least FTP is working now.
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My blood work is in. Everything is hunky-dory except that I need to double my intake of Vitamin D.
Comcast now deigns to give me Web access to my mail, but still refuses to allow me to download it. This means that I'm not likely to see your messages for a while, because Web access is a LOT more complicated than just opening Thunderbird and clicking "download my mail". I have to log in separately for each of the three accounts, just for openers.
On a more cheerful note, Dave was showing me some of the exercises his therapist prescribed, and found that one that had been impossible is now easy.
My exercises are helping too, but I've plateaued. And I'm not getting enough outdoor exercise because I don't want to spent more time dressing than I spend outside.
The days will start getting longer Real Soon Now.
I wanted to bake cake this morning, but first I needed to clear the counter.
That required me to wash a couple of weeks of dishes. I'll bake in the afternoon.
Two weeks of dishes aren't as big a chore as they would be for people young enough to use re-usable dishes at every meal. By dint of putting away a few things that had stopped dripping, I got it all into one drainer. The cat-food cannister is airing over a pilot light, but I think I could have balanced it on top.
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Now there are cake tins and mixing bowls all over the counter.
As a change from millet bread to have with our warmed-over bean soup, I made a skillet of oat bread. Pretty good, but I've *got* to get some corn flour. There was a small piece of corn-millet bread left, but neither of us ate it. I had oat bread with peanut butter and giardiniera for my bedtime snack.
And the same for lunch today, but a bigger piece of oat bread.
This afternoon, I made potato salad to take to the Christmas dinner after church tomorrow. I'm putting it in my egg carrier, minus the egg rack, so I can keep it over ice. Not sure how I'll carry it. By the handle on top, I guess. I miss being able to bungee it to the rack on my "pedal-powered wheelchair", which I have hung up for the winter. [I carried it in a shoulder bag.]
I rather wish I'd made more salad; it came out very good. I don't like Miracle Whip in potato salad, and I didn't want to have mayonnaise left over, so I used ranch dressing — and we *like* it.
Either that or the home-made mayonnaise. I put mustard powder and the yolks of two boiled eggs into a little garlic vinegar, and then beat in about the same amount of olive oil. I think I could have beaten in a lot more oil and made it thick.
Now there's another cat-food cannister airing over a pilot light. The next time we feed the cat, we are going to have to open the new bag.
There wasn't the faintest trace of garlic in the salad when we tasted it warm. Dave agrees, and he not only has a more-sensitive nose than I do, he doesn't like garlic.
When I put it back in my bag after the dinner, the garlic was overwhelming. No wonder I brought most of it home. Not much left now; I *like* garlic.
And it was even stronger on Monday. I think it's fading now, or I've grown accustomed to it.
I posted a query on Baen_Baen_Appetite yesterday. No answers. I'll have to re-post on rec.food.preserving.
I rode my bike downtown today to drop a lamp at the re-use room and run a few other errands. It's almost bedtime now and I haven't yet said "awk skrikle I forgot". I returned _Brothers in Arms_ and a graphic biography I'd brought home for Dave, and picked up a graphic history. I selected it for being hard cover, since I meant to carry it around for a while protected only by a grocery bag. I've pretty much picked over the library's selection of graphic non-fiction; I'll have to talk Dave into going on his own account, since I'm sure there are still some books he'd like, but I don't know which ones, and some of the fiction looks passable.
I'm planning to make potato salad again for Christmas dinner; Dave requested that I put in *no* garlic.
I'm still reading my e-mail on the Web site, which means that messages I save for later get shoved into a sub-folder and forgotten. Dave set up a copy of Thunderbird on a computer that Comcast approves of, but he didn't know that I prefer POP, and IMAP is the default because most people want to have their mail fiddled with without asking permission, so I'm going to have to turn off zillions of features that I don't know exist before I can start using it.
Meanwhile, I have to visit the Web site fairly often, so that there will be nothing in the inboxes for IMAP to fiddle with when I fiddle with Thunderbird.
I forgot to put nuts in the bottom of the figgy puddings, and they came out of the pans just fine. I'd been dithering over whether to use almonds or pecans anyway; neither harmonizes with figgy pudding.
Today, I'm baking cranberry cake. No spices, just flour, soda, baking powder, one egg, one cup sugar, one stick butter, and two cups of cranberries which have been boiled in one cup of water. The syrup looks very good — bright pink and buttery. I plan to put in the dry ingredients and bake it between nap time and time to fry a ham steak for supper — no nuts to chop, so it shouldn't take very long to get the cakes into the oven. I think I'll skip the mold-release nuts for these cakes too.
Made potato salad today. I forgot that I was using Yukon Gold potatoes when I put the turmeric in — this is one *yellow* potato salad!
And it doesn't even contain all that much mustard. I'm not sure how much I put in — I just emptied the almost-empty box. Hope I remember to buy more.
Dave is starting to feel his radiation treatments, but he doesn't want to let me drive tomorrow.
Dave's ear, like my back referrals, was a cascade. He goes to a skin doctor at regular intervals to get keratosises frozen and skin cancers cut off. The skin doctor looked at his latest bump and said he wanted a plastic surgeon to take it off. So Dave went to Dr. Ashton, who does both skin cancer and cosmetic surgery. Dr Ashton looked at it and said that he couldn't get it off without making a mess out of his ear, and sent him to a radiologist. The radiologist said radiation was the way to go. So now he has appointments to spend five minutes with a linear accelerator on twenty-two working days.
I went with him last Friday, so that we could have lunch at Oak 'n Alley afterward. I got only a row and a half of darning done in the waiting room.
I had to turn the light up bright to figure out how to turn off my scanner. People who have to work on Christmas Eve are entitled to get any fun out of it that they can, but I've heard the UFO pulled by reindeer story about fifteen times too many.
The potato salad tastes funny. I think it's because I used sherry vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar, and extra-virgin olive oil instead of plain olive oil. A little more ascorbic acid would have improved it.
I hope it's better when fully chilled. [It was.]
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Playing Hexavirus after bedtime, I scored nine: a new record. No justice for bad babies!
We don't exchange presents, but Dave gave me a nifty gift this evening: He found the problem with Thunderbird and I've got access to e-mail again!
Dave says that he felt pretty good all day, despite driving a couple of hundred miles. Perhaps that's because he didn't get his ear fried today. I didn't notice any of my spine problems either, and the steroids will be completely out of my system in January, so they can't be doing much now.
I spent most of the evening on Usenet, and found this quote:
"You'd be surprised how many things can be explained with "typo + bad eye sight." — James Nicoll in rec.arts.sf.written
It's not going to catch on like his "English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. . .", and has no potential to create a new expression such as "Nicoll's cosh".
I wonder why "cosh", never "blackjack" or any other slang word for a club. "Nicoll's nightstick" alliterates.
I began the morning by finding the missing hairpins and my favorite knife. Can the teaspoon measure be far behind?
It wasn't. The teaspoon was on the counter beside the oil bottles, in a spot I'd checked dozens of times.
I just DuckDucked "pedal-powered wheelchair". The last time I did this, they were a wonderful new addition to a physiotherapist's equipment. Now they are being advertised to consumers, but are still expensive. Aside from one that was priced in yen, the only one that would admit how much it cost was two and a half thousand dollars.
But I didn't look very hard. (It didn't help that countless vendors say "pedal" when they mean "foot rest".)
And, of course, Ali Baba has one for twenty-nine dollars.
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It looks as though I'm going to get this into the mail before midnight. Happy New Year, y'all.