Thump!rattlerattlerattlerattle.
You would think that last night's storm would have brought down all the loose hickory nuts.
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After supper, I pulled my "wizard gown" on over my clothes, walked to the church, drank a cup of hot cider, and walked back.
I'd intended to put on my bugs-bunny shoes and let down my hair and muss it up, but I was too tired. I took a couple of wrong turns that made today's ride longer than I was ready for, and when I got home it was time to get up from my nap, so I didn't take one.
I saw a lot of trick-or-treaters.
Kathy's pepper plants were killed by last night's snowstorm, but have a lot of green peppers that could be frozen for chili. It's a pity that I didn't think to take a bag and a knife with me. High tomorrow is 40F, so they might keep until I can get there. If they don't freeze tonight.
If I'd known how good the loin chops I bought at Aldi were, I wouldn't have spread jerk sauce on them before baking.
I guess I'll have to go back to Aldi. But it isn't often that I see meat for two there; most packages are huge. There were only two three-packs of chops. I bought the lighter.
On the way out I learned the hard way that Parker now has two straight-through lanes. By the time I noticed, it was too late to get out of the Parker lane, and I followed Parker all the way to Fort Wayne. Had I been a bit more alert, I could have gone in the Pill Box's back door and come out on Dubois Street, or I could have gotten up onto the sidewalk and walked to the chopped-off residential street. (When Dubois was made one way, people who wanted to go to US 30 started tearing through a residential street that couldn't bear the traffic.)
I bought two dozen-can boxes of "renal support" cat food at Tractor Supply, and was gratified that that left them two more boxes. On my last trip, I cleaned them out, so this time I took an empty box in case I had to special order it.
I had a good reuben and a mediocre cup of tea at Culver's. When I saw hot tea on the menu, I thought it would be dispensed from an urn, but instead you get a coffee-cup of hot water and a teabag. And little cup of Smucker's excellent honey. I thought that beekeepers kept the dark honey for themselves.
I saw snow on some of the lawns along 225 S during my trip, particularly those that had dry leaves on them.
Sunset at 6:40 tonight. It was still light enough to walk when I came back from the church after seven.
Checked into Facebook this morning; it says that at 10:38 on October 31st I clicked on "going" for Trick or Treat on the Porch. I not only don't remember doing it, I'm pretty sure I was making bread at 10:38.
But I did go, after a fashion.
Yesterday I put a knife in my pocket intending to get a plastic grocery bag from the church kitchen and pick Kathy's peppers on my way home. I stopped on the way in and verified that there were peppers worth picking, then the next time I thought about it I was passing the Cerulean on my way home. I considered going back, but I didn't have a bag.
After my nap, I put on my jeans and gym shoes, put a bag in my pocket, and walked up Sunday Lane. I needed the bag — nearly all of the peppers were worth picking, and I found three tomatoes.
When I got home, I put one of the tomatoes on the sideboard to ripen and put the other two in the fridge intending to slice and fry them for breakfast this morning, but instead I had a patty of seasoned mashed potatoes that was passing itself off as stuffed hash browns. Pretty good if you ignore the instructions and fry it in butter.
I diced some of the peppers and froze them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. This morning I poured them into a zipper sandwich bag; there is room in the bag for another sheet of diced pepper.
It's good that peppers will keep for a few days. It's going to take a while to freeze all of them.
Guy Fawkes Day was nearly over before I noticed that it was the fifth of November.
Roomba day in the bedroom. I think Al just said "Keep the noise down!" but when I finish typing, I'm going jerk my socks out from under his head so I can wear shoes while I carry out the cat boxes.
When we got up, the only sign of snow was that everything was wet. By lunch time, the lawn was mostly white, when I got up from my nap there were only speckles of not-white, and now I think we have gotten the predicted four inches. I didn't even go out to dump the garbage, but set the plate in the garage.
I dried the clothes in the house. The king-size sheet is too big for a rack, so I tumble dried it, then ironed the edges to take out the accordion pleats that tumble-drying puts in.
It's not supposed to get above freezing until Thursday, and then the temperature line just kisses the freezing line, so I suppose the snow will stick for a while. The roads should be clear by Friday, but Friday will be warm enough for anything that's left to be slick.
The chili cook-off at the church was yesterday.
On Saturday, I picked up a few things in town, then went to a moving sale on Parent Drive, where I bought a Corningware petit pan. I finally got a sausage at the McElroy Hill Citgo, and a Taco Bell "chalupa" in Kohl Plaza. Taco Bell's chalupa is a taco made from a leavened flour tortilla. It appeared to have been dipped in bread crumbs and fried on one side. It was quite good, but I should have picked up a spoon when I got my napkin — it leaked a good bit of salad. I managed with my pocket knife.
What *do* people do in countries where pocket knives are forbidden?
Then I had to rush straight home on account of sunset being at five o'clock. Google Maps says I went twelve miles, but it routed me through Monoquet because 300 N is marked forbidden. (Google Maps also has not been informed that the driveway across from Kohl Plaza now connects to Sheldon Drive.)
Unlike my previous trip, 300 N was quite open to bikes and pedestrians — I met a pedestrian — but I did have to heave the bike up a pretty high step where 300 N had been excavated away from Tippe Downs Drive. Even though it was Saturday, I saw a roadbuilding machine in the distance, probably near the intersection with Sheldon Drive. I presume they were trying to get things buttoned up before today's snowfall. Last I heard, they are going to tack it together well enough to leave the road open all winter, then close it again and resume work on the new roundabout in the spring.
There are lots of places that need roundabouts; I don't think that 300 N and Sheldon drive is one of them. But I've never been there at rush hour.
The pint of "long ferment kimchi" I bought at Warsaw Health Foods on Saturday is already half gone. "Kim chee" I buy at the grocery is often just canned cabbage with dog repellent in it, but this stuff is *good*.
But it's more like fermented giardiniera than like preserved cabbage. Bok Choy might have a plurality among the ingredients, but it isn't nearly as dominant as the radish and carrots. The habinero and cayenne make themselves known, but the first seasoning that I noticed was ginger.
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The pickles may be half gone, but I just killed the chocolate-covered almonds, and there are only three carob-coated raisins left.
Our suitcases appear to be neatly divided between "too small to put my suit in" and "too huge to get saddled with".
Duh. We are going by car. I can leave the suit on a hanger and lay it on the back seat. Everything else will fit into my Trafalgar bag. Which was already out of the attic because I frequently use it as a purse. But it's good to get the bags sorted out; there are several I don't remember acquiring.
But I do remember having a bag just a little bigger than the largest small bag.
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I took my last flucanazole yesterday. I am now officially on only ten different drugs, and hope to dump another one when I see Darr in December.
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For breakfast this morning I fried a bacon-and-cheese sandwich and sliced some of Kathy's last tomato onto it. The tomato was very small, but pretty good.
The last ripe pepper has been sliced and is in the raw-veggie box. I've got to get around to processing some more of the green ones.
Dave couldn't find his little orange medicine bag, so he took the large Buick bag that has two outside pockets, one for pills and one for socks. I put my spare shirts in his bag, and put the plastic bag of dirty clothes into it for the trip back. We didn't notice that the Buick bag has a document pocket between the outside pockets and the main bag until Dave noticed something he could feel but not get at while emptying the bag. It turned out to be a shoulder strap in the document pocket.
I must remember to get the print Alan gave me out of the document pocket of my Trafalger bag and put it into the glass-front cupboard. By good luck I'd put my "portable desk" (a flat plastic bag containing some blank paper and two sheets of cardboard) into the document pocket, so I had a safe way to carry the print.
(brief pause)
I didn't notice until I was setting it behind the china teacups that the bird is drawn in Egyptian perspective. (If you can use a china teacup, I have both Jesse Bailey's and Evelyn Beeson's.)
We saw lots of seldom-seen relatives. I remember Nancy talking about Luella, but I don't think I had met her before.
(change of subject)
Typical of Wikipedia: When I clicked on "oilseed radish" I was redirected to "Daikon" without comment. And I had no clue as to why the tillage radish is called "oilseed radish" until I clicked on the article on radishes in general, which remarks "Some radishes are grown for their seeds; daikon, for example, may be grown for oil production."
I wondered whether the enormous roots in Donny's green-manure mix were edible. They are daikon bred for their ability to break up hardpan and make room for potatoes, so I imagine that they are like shipping tomatoes: edible, but not very good.
After weeks of fumbling around, the field is now Phil Ramsey's responsibility, irrevocably.
Well, it's irrevocable after his fifth annual payment.
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After seeing the lawyer, I drove to Spring Creek and back and didn't feel even a faint complaint from my rotator cuff.
But I also learned that I *needed* the driving practice. I was fairly unhappy all the way. I suppose the construction on 30 didn't help, and I seemed to be travelling with a semi convention. I had to judge whether the light had changed by watching the behavior of the other vehicles.
Alas, they don't sell corn flour or peanut-butter almond granola any more. I managed to spend $36.22 anyway.
During lunch, Jeanette called to say I had to sign two more papers; Dave drove me this time. I'm not safe to drive between lunch and three o'clock.
It's time to sort the suitcases and nest them more compactly, not to mention making a note of where each one is, so I brought the rest of the luggage down, except for the external-frame backpack. It was in excellent condition when we put it into a canvas bag and put it up there; if any reader knows somebody who thinks he might want to go backpacking, it's up for grabs.
In a wicker attaché case, I found my Girl Scout membership card and a picture that was taken when Mom was still combing my hair. Also two copies of a "calling card" verse I wrote when I attended the writing club at the Voorheesville Library. Fairly large timespan among those three items.
There are three hard-side suitcases. Hardsiders are great for air travel — while you are waiting in line, you can sit on them. We'll give them to anybody who wants one.
And an enormous softsider that Evelyn took on one of their South America trips. This one was made for people who pick up stuff en route: If you undo a zipper, the main compartment gets three inches deeper. And it folds flat for storage.
I never did figure out what was "tactical" about the "tactical backpack" that came with a magazine subscription. I think maybe I used it once when I couldn't find my fanny pack.
In other news, two guys spent a lot of time today taking the wings off the Piper Cub.
Re washday:
The socks in the dryer were the first things to be put away today. But most of what I dried on racks is still on the racks.
I fumbled around with the bags this morning, and learned that we have a bright-orange summit pack that is larger, simpler, and more sensible than the "tactical" pack. But if I ever need a backpack, I'll use my Tough Traveller carry-on bag.
Dave looks out the window and says "It looks funny without wings" once or twice a day. We think that they plan to store the rest of the Cub where it is; a wind strong enough to damage a wingless airplane pointed into the prevailing wind would take down a hanger. And debris won't blow from the lake onto it. If the spring flood comes while there is still ice on the lake, that would be a problem, but rain is predicted a week ahead of time nowadays.
Grump. I thought that Saturday's "Winter Market" would be enough to pry me out of the house for a little exercise, but the latest prediction has moved the dry weather to Sunday. But it's *afternoon* showers on Saturday …
I ate the last of Kathy's last tomato with jalapeño con carne on it yesterday evening. Just a pound of beef, an end of onion, a very large jalapeño, a teaspoon of cumin, a tub of Knorr's jellied stock, and an eight-ounce can of La Preferida "Spanish style" tomato sauce. I had planned to put some green pepper in it, but after I put the jalapeño in there wasn't room. It was very good, and there's enough left for another meal.
It was worth picking out all the seeds. I put the membranes in. ("Membrane" isn't the right word for the spongey stuff inside a pepper, but I've tried in vain to find an anatomy online.)
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I cut up three green peppers and the pieces are on parchment paper on a cookie sheet in the freezer. That leaves five green peppers.
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The Cub was gone when I got up from my nap. No tracks on the beach, so they must have towed it away with a boat. We wildly speculate that they took it to the boat ramp and loaded it onto a pontoon-boat trailer.
My plans to put the gym bags into the Tough Traveller carry-on and put the carry-on into the gray suitcase ran into a slight hitch.
Al greatly prefers the suitcase to Dave's lap.
Today, I put all but one of the bags back into the attic. They don't take up nearly as much space as before, and I kept notes on what went where. Dave didn't remember having seen the one I'm calling "Evelyn's bag", but there was a Trafalgar tag on it with his card in it, so we must have taken it to Australia.
While up there, I found a case that I'd overlooked in the dim light: Claude's Gideon attaché. I tried to put it into the brown hanger case, but there was already an attaché-shaped purse in there and it wouldn't quite go.
Yesterday fed Al at six, forgot to exercise.
I meant to expand that entry when I got back from yesterday's ride, but I don't remember what I meant to say.
I've decided to reserve Fancy Feast ("junk food") for giving Al his Cosequin, and make a can last four days. He didn't want anything at six today, but was good and hungry at nine, and licked the platter clean twice. (I give him only half as a first course, to make sure he gets all the medicine.)
Then I got distracted watching a cartoon on the television — something about two mammoths teaming up with a saber-toothed tiger to escape the flood that created the channeled scablands — and didn't get my exercises done until after half-past nine.
As I was walking out the door at five til ten, I thought "I'm on time! What have I forgotten?".
When I came into sight of the church I remembered my church keys, and when I was putting my hat on the shelf, I remembered my snack sticks. (I ate a doughnut hole before walking back.)
Then after I got home and started distributing stuff from my skirt pockets back into my pants pockets, I remembered my debit card and Real ID.
On Friday, I lunched at Culver's again. I wasn't as impressed with their reuben as I had been the first time; perhaps I was simply overwhelmed that it was, in fact, a reuben. The cold tea — from an urn — was quite good; it was nearly as strong as what I brew myself.
I had a dilemma: if I ate indoors, I would sweat; if I ate outdoors, the wind would chill my reuben in nothing flat. I chose to sweat, but at least I could remove my windbreaker and scarf. I miss the late Grace Jones; I want to buy another zip-front jersey that I can take off when I come inside. I made myself one, but couldn't find any wool flannel and used jacketing, so it will be weeks before it's cold enough to wear it.
I've just learned from a comment on Breaking Cat News that you can replace the beef in mincemeat with green tomatoes. Good news for those of you who get stuck with green tomatoes at the end of the season — one can eat fried green tomatoes only once or twice, and they don't pickle very well, but frozen mincemeat will keep for ages.
I suppose that *very* green tomatoes would make good pickles.
Olive-sized tomatoes do make good pickles. I forgot to steal some.
We're doing the Thursday cleaning on Friday this week. While picking up the sawhorses so I could air the cat-box mats on them, I realized that Wednesday's wind had blown over the sawhorses and my laundry-basket stand, it had blown the leaves off the lawn, it had blown the doormats away, it had put a "large tree" across the Norfolk-Southern track, and it had made the lights flicker often enough that I turned off my computers whenever I wasn't using them, but it hadn't blown anything off the willow.
That severe pruning job was expensive, but it was worth it. We wondered, when we saw the scrawny remains after the weaker trunk had been removed and all the weak limbs had been pruned out of what was left, but it looks like a Japanese print now.
So I went to the window to admire it, and something *did* blow off: it's now nearly leafless. But the leaves aren't on the lawn or weighting down the fence, and if they were still around, removing them wouldn't involve a chain saw.
I ate the last bit of green pepper in ramen-noodle soup for lunch today.
TV dinner tonight. I'd planned to stop at Jimmy-John's for a "Gutbuster" to share, but it was half-past four when I left Zale's, and when it had been twilight all day, I didn't feel like planning on arriving home *exactly* at five. But overcast is good riding weather — no squinting in any direction.
A few days ago, I remembered the halva I used to buy in Albany. Today, when I was in Meijer's foreign-food aisle looking (in vain) for Embassa salsa roja, lo and behold, there was pistachio halva. I really shouldn't tell you guys that it's delicious — it's almost all sugar. We've already eaten a couple of cubic inches, and I want to go back to the kitchen and cut another slice.
I also bought a package of "digestive biscuits", because there has been so much fuss on Usenet about them; I wanted to see whether telling the British that graham crackers are like digestive biscuits was accurate. Well, they would work in recipes that call for graham crackers, but there is no graham flour in them. The flavor is lighter, and there's a hint of shortbread in the texture. Quite tasty, and I plan to have cranberry compote on one of them for my bedtime snack tonight. Or maybe on half a dozen.