Lovely day. I stayed home and sewed.
Yesterday I heard funny noises and found that Roomba had escaped from the hall into the bedroom and was trying to eat my sneaker.
I decided to wear sneakers to walk downtown this morning, and discovered that the lace Roomba had been trying to eat had twisted rope-tight down into the eyelets, almost to the toe. It took some backing and forthing to work the twists out.
And when I put them on to walk downtown this afternoon, I found that the pulling had gone past the toe — I had to work a loop to the toe and back up the other side to tie my sneakers neatly.
Owing to shipping delays caused by the holidays, I can't have the bike until Tuesday. Dave got the same story on the truck, and will pick it up Monday.
My sewing project is advanced enough that one can tell that it's supposed to be a wallet.
But yesterday, I picked out more stitches than I put in. How I managed to do all that sewing without once looking at the back of the stitches, I don't know.
Twelfth night! I'm celebrating by washing two loads of clothes.
In church yesterday I remarked that it was ridiculous that I walked to church without a coat on the fifth of January, but I cheated: I was wearing a cotton-interlock slip with short sleeves under a silk-crepe dress with long sleeves and over that, a long full skirt.
And I did wear a wool scarf and a velvet hat.
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While I was washing clothes, Dave took the top off the stove, cleaned under it, and gave it a good scrubbing before he put it back. The stove looks much better now, and the left front burner has stopped pfft-pffting.
He couldn't find anything wrong with the burner; it just started working correctly when he tried it after taking the top off. We figure the vibrations knocked a speck of dirt out of something.
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The paperwork on the truck was done about five. I decided to buy fried chicken on the way home, and pick up some cole slaw and a few groceries at Owen's first. I didn't stop to think that the delay would have me driving home in the dark. It wasn't *too* bad after I got out of Penguin Point's parking lot.
But the cole slaw is nothing but sweetened mayonnaise with flecks of cabbage. Neither of us ate much of it.
Going home by Husky Trail drove the GPS nuts. It kept trying to get me back on Detroit Street. The first turn-back was onto Rainbow Drive, which I use to get to Sunset Drive when I'm riding the bike, so it took me a bit to understand what it was after. It gave up after I crossed Anchorage.
Five o'clock isn't any better for checking out at a grocery than it is for driving, but Penguin Point was almost deserted; I feared for a moment that they weren't open. On the one hand, I got instant service; on the other, they had only two thighs left. So I got two thighs and two breasts, forgetting that a breast is twice as much meat as a thigh.
I just scored nine at Hexavirus. I think that ties the record.
That was shortly after I got back from the Trailhouse. They are expecting my handlebar padding tomorrow, and I can pick up my bike in the afternoon.
I had to walk over to learn that. They tried to call me, but were sent to voicemail before I could push the "talk" button. I tried to return the call, but though I could persuade the phone to say "four missed calls", every button pushed after that was the "go back to the beginning and start over" button. No sweat, I'll look them up in the phone book. There is no "the phone book". We have six books and in each, either they weren't in the book, or the number was for Tarkio Road, which they moved out of ten or fifteen years ago.
Sometimes I think that getting rid of the party line was the last change that was an improvement.
The party line had its points — such as the time a small pile of hay in Uncle Joe's barn caught fire and all the neighbors rushed over to help carry the fire out into the road.
I just put my registration form for this year's Tour des Lakes into the mailbox.
I had my first ride of the year yesterday: five miles to Meijer's. I was in the store two and a quarter hours, and it took me half an hour to pack what I'd bought into my panniers. I didn't record how long it took to unpack it and put it away.
The ride home took forty-six minutes. I made a wrong turn that made the trip six miles even.
I was sure that I bought hoppin' john at Meijer, and I even knew what part of which aisle it was on, and how high off the floor, but where I thought it was is Mexican food, and it wasn't among the beans either. I'd meant to buy several cans.
I did find the soda cans of tea and coffee, and bought one of coffee and three of tea.
One of the greeters made over me something awful. [Deleted] it, I'm *not* "special"! Paraplegics ride bikes, and a twelve-year-old could learn how to ride safely in six weeks if he had a competent teacher.
Of course, a paraplegic requires an expensive custom-built bike designed to allow him to use what he has left. Thirty or forty years ago I read an interview with a paraplegic who said he loved his handcycle because when a cop got after him for riding in the street, he said it was a bike, and when a doorman didn't want to let him in, he said it was a wheelchair. That was part of an article about a orthopedic frame builder. I've forgotten his name, and he must be retired by now.
Today I baked the smaller of the two turkeys we bought during the Christmas sales. I plan to make dressing tomorrow, and bake it on top of left-over meat. Nine pounds is a pretty small turkey, but it's a lot for two old people.
The roaster was full of Christmas-cookie cutters. If anyone wants to hold a cookie party, I think I can get the cutters to you by December. There's at least one heart-shaped cutter in there, so you might want to pick them up in February. There are no antiques, but there's at least one reproduction — and they are all vintage.
A cookie party requires one adult to supervise, two teen-agers to make cookies, and at least three pre-teens to decorate them. Milk is on the table and nobody gets any supper.
We used paper straws with the ends flattened as paint brushes, and toothpicks for details. Flat toothpicks are still available, but you'd need a substitute for the straws.
The paint was powdered sugar, food color, and water. Not too much water, or it will crack. For brown, we used chocolate. I've forgotten how the chocolate was prepared. It needs to dry hard, so I'd melt a Ghiradeli bar in a double boiler if I wanted Santa boots.
There were "chocolate" sprinkles. But I vaguely think that we used chocolate glaze at least once.
I wonder what one would do with the cookies these days? If our mailman found a box of cookies in the box, she'd be afraid to eat them.
I don't think the recipes for rolled cookies were ever in Mom's file box. We made sugar cookies and molasses cookies.
We're still eating turkey every day. Yesterday I thought to make creamed turkey, then saw the can of cream of jalapeño soup that I bought the last time I went to Meijer. I warmed it up in enough butter to cover the bottom of the skillet, with half a can of milk, diced turkey, jelly from the bottom of the roaster, celery and a cipollino that were in the cavity, and a roasted-brown carrot stick. Then I sliced snap pea pods and added a spoonful of frozen corn. Dave said it was the corn that made the soup.
Tonight I got home from Walmart tired and at about time to start cooking, so I spread all the leftovers and salads in the fridge on the counter. I had a chunk of turkey spine with dressing and gravy, with a spoonful of potato salad for dessert.
I made potato salad Saturday night for a carry-in dinner at the church on Sunday. I was in the basement peeling off sweat pants when the preacher explained why the society meeting and dinner was cancelled. I'd be more interest in *how* it was cancelled — only two of us brought stuff for the society-meeting dinner. How did the rest get the message?
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When I sat down to type, someone was being sent to Backwater Road to find out whether someone had fallen through the ice.
Yesterday morning we woke up to ice so thick that a goose was walking on it, and this morning the lake was white, save for a rather large pond kept clear by the creek, but I'm pretty sure that the ice isn't thick enough to fall through yet — to fall through, you have to get more than one step from shore.
But it might be different on Backwater. The ice on the canal is probably thick enough to fall through, but you'd be only knee deep if you did.
At any rate, nobody with brains and without down underwear of his own growth is walking on the ice.
Despite the freezing cold, the patch of open water is bigger this morning, and it's rimmed with geese. I counted eighteen swans, and missed at least two.
We've been out of jalapeños for some time, so yesterday, when I found that Carneceria San José was out of red jalapeños, I bought two green ones.
When I re-arranged the fruit drawer to put them away, I found a red jalapeño. Well, it *used* to be red. It's in the compost.
Before yesterday, I had never noticed that the slots in the drains of the water fountains in Walmart are the Walmart logo. I wonder how many fountains you have to buy at one go to get custom drains?
I always stop for lunch at Freedom Express when I go north on 100 W, because I like the hot-dog shaped snacks. I should say that I like the *idea* of hotdog-shaped snacks: every time either the rollers are empty or everything on them is labeled "not cooked yet". I arrived at 12:50 yesterday — when *do* they sell those snacks? "Sold out" at one o'clock I could see, but "not ready yet"?
I had a single-serve Noble Roman pizza with everything. $4.99 plus $0.35 tax.
After I'd eaten the left-over half slice while packing up at Walmart, I used the empty box as a shim to keep the gallon of milk from rattling around. At the time, I thought Dave would get his hopes all up, but I'd thrown it into the bin before he came into the garage.
My new panniers are definitely wider than the old ones. This is going to take some getting used to.
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I read in the Times-Union that a roundabout is being planned for the intersection of Pierceton and Packerton. So I called up satellite view: the only thing in favor of a roundabout there that I can see is that there is worlds of room to build it. When they build the much-needed roundabout at Winona/Kings/Argonne/Park, they are going to have to demolish something.
When they do build it, it's going to be rough on pedestrians — it can take ages to cross Winona now, when the stoplight makes holes in the traffic. I doubt that they will have the wit to build an island to allow pedestrians to cross one lane at a time; I've never seen a roundabout with that feature.
There were even more geese in our "pond" this morning, and Dave counted twenty swans.
Yesterday he said that he plans to celebrate his eighty-fifth birthday by taking down all his Web cams.
Today, I spent some time on the Web searching "pedestrian roundabouts". I learned that some advice-givers rashly assume that pedestrian islands will be present.
Also found deadpan-serious advice to watch out for bikes, because riding on sidewalks is "safer".
Well, pedestrians need to watch out for bikes — because we carefully conceal the rules of the road from our children.
Again a coating of geese with a few swans on the lake. When we got up, the edge of the open water was far enough away that it was visible only because geese had congregated at it. By lunch the lake was mostly thawed, the geese had thinned out to reveal rather a lot of swans, and a flock of coots was swimming around. A few dozen of the missing geese are on our beach eating grass. I thought there were more on the near bank of the creek, but the binoculars revealed them to be coots.
I've run out of black #50 silk.
I figured that as long as I'm sending an order to Superior, I'd get a package of their titanium-coated needles, but Superior does almost all its business with the patchwork artists who call themselves "quilters", so they don't sell knit-fabric needles. Since woven-fabric needles wreck knits, knit-fabric needles don't do any harm to woven fabrics, save that shoving threads aside instead of piercing them makes the stitches not quite as straight, and I'm very forgetful, I have decided not to buy any more sharp or universal needles.
I've added their "MasterPiece" seam-sewing cotton to my list, one black spool and one gray.
About sixty-four dollars for eight spools of thread blows my vintage 1941 mind, even though two of them are five hundred yards.
Funnybooks were ten cents, and the last one I saw was about thirty times that, so I'm paying two or three 1940's dollars for the thread.
Assuming that I can figure out how to transmit money to Superior Threads. I haven't checked yet whether they will let you print out an order form and mail it with a check.
It snowed all day. I mostly didn't notice. I didn't even go out to carry the garbage to the compost heap.
Yesterday I noted that there would be no precipitation today and put a load of dish towels in to soak overnight in detergent, then soak an hour longer in bleach. They are on the first rinse now.
I looked out the window and couldn't see the other side of the lake, and Dave read the weather and said the humidity was ninety-eight percent. When you can *see* the humidity, it's pretty high!
I think I'll dry the towels and rags in the dryer.
All I see on the lake is geese. I think that that is because they are easier to see than the other birds; I know that at least one is a duck. Dave said he saw some white specks way, way out; I couldn't pick them out from the background. I didn't see anything swimming like coots.
Ordinarily, I use the dryer only to shake the wrinkles out of shirts before drying them on hangers. What I found in the lint trap after drying an entire load of towels completely dry was a bit of a surprise.
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This morning's paper, finally online when I checked in the evening, says that Winona Lake might get a grant to build a roundabout at Pierceton Road and 250 East, perhaps as early as this spring. I'm not nearly as eager for that as for the one at the entrance, but I won't mind living here while they build it. There are at least two reasonable ways to get around that intersection — though one of them passes along the part of Wooster Road that I don't like to ride a bicycle on.
Getting from here to Warsaw without using the intersection of Winona, Park, King's Highway, and Argonne means either going around the south end of the lake or going out to 250 E and coming back. Which accounts for both my eagerness to have the roundabout and my reluctance to see it being built. A postscript to the grant article says that the Argonne etc. roundabout is already scheduled for 2022.
From the DNR e-mail:
Join us for Marsh Madness, Feb. 28-29
The annual Marsh Madness Sandhill Crane Festival starts at 5 p.m. on Feb. 28 with a kickoff banquet. This community-based bird festival celebrates the annual spring migration of sandhill cranes and waterfowl to Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area. The festival will feature a craft fair, live birds of prey, kids activities, and much more. This event is led by the Friends of Goose Pond through a partnership with the Indiana Division of Fish & Wildlife.
End quote.
I spent all of yesterday wandering around in Warsaw, not quite downtown. I used Detroit to get from Winona to Market, but that's as far west as I went.
As I was riding away from Zale's, looking for a street that crosses the railroad track to Winona, I saw Warsaw Health Foods, so I turned there and bought seven bags of candy. Then I went to Carneceria San José and bought vegetables.
My first stop was Walgreen's, where I thought I'd find a wider selection of bandaids than at Zale's, but they had hardly any at all. When I reported that to Dave, he said "But they've got a whole wall" — of bandages and dressings.
At Zale's, at least three times I picked up a package, then put it back when I found a better one. But there were no little-bitty bandaids, not even in assortments.
The whole point of this trip was to buy plastic forks at Dollar General. DG had knives and spoons, but no forks. I think our supply will hold out until I get to Dollar Tree. If not, we can use washable forks.
I did find a box of small trash bags that I think will be suitable for lining my new panniers. I had to overlap lots and lots of grocery bags to make the outer lining, which adds to the insulation, but all that puffy sure complicates placing the newspapers. And it doesn't make a smooth surface for slipping maps and the like between layers.
I went outside and measured the panniers while selecting a bag. They are almost big enough to set a 9 x 13 casserole in. The old ones were sized for paper grocery bags.
I wish I'd been more emphatic about saving the old panniers in case I set up an emergency back-up bike. I would like to measure them.
Helpful hint: If you copy Xfinity's "privacy policy" into Notepad, it becomes possible to read it.
But it's still seventeen pages well padded with adverspeak and circumlocution.
It's a beautiful day for sitting on the futon and watching the snow fall.
I suppose I'd better get the garbage and the cat litter dumped before it starts to accumulate.
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Supper tonight was turkey-salad sandwiches, on some excellent italian bread that Dave bought at Martin's.
I'm planning to stuff and bake a Poblano tomorrow.