We learned something useful today. I came home, sent a text that I was home, started unpacking, got a text that said "I can't text now, I'm driving. Sent from my Rogue."
Say what? Dave arrived at the mailbox while I was reading the text. When he came in, he said that he'd just learned that the Rogue has a button to push to automatically answer a text.
But it would be much clearer if it read "Sent *by* my Rogue."
I learned something useful on my way back from the dentist today. I stopped at the Peking to buy six rangoons, wondered whether I could make it to Central Park before they got cold, looked up to see the courthouse a block away, and remembered that there's a picnic table on the courthouse lawn. (And benches on the sidewalks.)
Got there and saw that the table had been replaced by an entire picnic area inside a wall around the cannon. I almost expected to see a water fountain in the pedestal of the cannon.
But with any luck it will be September before I come back from the dentist again.
I've been slack about giving the backs of my lower incisors an extra scrub.
Today's ride was to Oakwood Cemetary to look at the "preacher's stand" that has been in the news of late. It's a nice little theater, and I see why folks wanted to preserve it. One of its fans said it was a shame it was in a poor location and didn't get used much. It seemed like a good location to me: It's a short walk from the side gate, which is open only to pedestrians and the maintenance crew, it's the first left turn after you come in the front gate, the road to it is smooth enough for wheelchairs and walkers, and it's a dead-end road if you don't have a key to the gate, so people could stand or sit in the road when the lawn is crowded or wet.
But you can't see it if you don't make that left turn into a short dead-end road, so I imagine that most people forget that it is there. I hadn't seen it before.
Since I had just ridden to my dental appointment and wasn't going far, I didn't think I needed to set up and sort out last night, but a jump from "is a wool jacket over a wool jersey enough?" to "I wish I'd worn a thinner jersey with shorter sleeves." called for re-adjustments.
In particular, I planned to buy cream cheese on the way, which meant carrying ice, which would be pointless if I didn't put the insulation back into my left pannier, and the insulation had gotten disarranged while out of use and I had to partly rebuild it. Not to mention that the ice cubes had evaporated enough that it took all of them to fill a sandwich bag.
But I was glad I'd done it when I found a top sirloin steak marked down to $4.94, walked past it, then went back after putting a bottle of A1 sauce in my basket. I put the steak in the insulated panner foam side down, laid the bag of ice on it, packed the other cold stuff around it, squashed a bag of crumpled plastic bags on top, and rode off without a worry -- nor any hurry to unpack it when I got home and wanted to eat my chicken tiki marsala before it got cold.
This wasn't as good as the first cream of chicken soup I bought at Bomy's. The cream had curdled and gave a gritty texture to the sauce. Which doesn't mean I left any sauce on the chicken when I put the left-overs away.
Very little of the ice had melted; I drained it and laid the bag in the freezer for my next trip.
I hope nothing special is going on at the church tomorrow, because I've mislaid my bulletin again.
We're going to get a chair lift! Ever since the ramp to the east door was built, I've occasionally wandered around the church muttering "There just *isn't* any place to put an elevator shaft." I never thought of a chair lift. All we need to do is to raise $12,243.00.
And as you can see from the precise number, I didn't mislay my bulletin.
Yet.
***
Poor Dave! The steak was cooked perfectly, and he can't even taste salt. We thought he had Covid for a while, but it turns out that he is allergic to Arm & Hammer toothpaste. The first episode took weeks to clear up, but he brushed his teeth with the suspect paste only once this time, so we are hoping that it will clear up sooner. After supper, we wondered whether he could taste sour, so I tasted the brine on the pickles in the fridge until I found one that was sour -- no taste. Then I tried him on brown mustard seed that had been marinated in straight vinegar, and he could taste that. But he noticed that it stung before he noticed that it was sour.
Al had no problems with his share of the steak. I wonder whether I can give him his Cosequin on minced steak? He has rejected it the last few nights, even when he ate the same wet food later in the evening.
He ate Cosequin on chopped steak yesterday, but rejected Tasteful tonight.
I've got the bike packed and ready for a trip to PetSmart (except for adding ice, room-temperature water, and tea), and my shopping list and yukky-cat-food list are in the drawer with my wallet, but I'm not sure how to dress.
It's been a while since I looked forward to taking a little exercise. I think I'll circumnavigate Center Lake clockwise, and stop for a rest at the Tippy Downs gazebo.
I knew that I was going to be out after three, but I didn't take my windbreaker.
I got such a late start that I would have had to ride straight home from PetSmart anyway.
I learned that it's much easier to cross Winona on Bronson than on McKinley. And I still avoided riding on Winona, because I kept going until I got to Smith. There's no avoiding Winona from Smith to the entrance, but when eastbound, that section isn't at all bad. There was a truck parked in my lane, but there was also a parking lot that had an entrance on each side of the truck.
I usually lunch at Walmart on this route, but it was already lunch time when I left, so I bought a hot-and-ready at Little Caesar's. It was a bigger and better pizza than I'd been getting at the pretzel stand, it came with a twenty-ounce bottle of beverage, and it cost one cent more.
I wanted soda, but I'm so unfamiliar with sodas that I'd have had to read every label to pick one, and I was eager to get to the picnic area before my pizza got cold, so I selected tea. I still had half a bottle of homebrew tea, so I brought the bottle home.
I washed dish towels and cleaning rags, then hand-washed my tight wool jersey yesterday.
The jersey was a really tight fit in the bucket, and I didn't want to run the slightest chance of agitating the shrinking wool, so I thought that after spinning it out, I'd fill the washing- machine tub with buckets until the jersey floated, then let it soak for an hour and spin it out again.
First I learned that it takes four heavy buckets to get the water deep enough to see it, and a lot more to float a jersey. Finally got water on it, swished the jersey in the water a bit, walked away from the washer, and heard it starting to empty.
The washer isn't off when it's off, and it had detected that the lid had been open ten minutes. There is no way to stop that; pressing "cancel" empties the tub too.
Next time I'll wash the jersey in the dishpan.
I miss being able to turn to the other computer and Froogle "wooly board" to find out whether they still exist. I might even be able to buy one.
A wooly board was a stretcher to dry hand-knit guernseys on, to keep them from shrinking. Sounds like Zimmerman, but it would have been in Mary Thomas's era.
Yesterday Dave went to Dr. Darr, who prescribed a made-to-order gargle.
This morning after breakfast he looked startled and said "Hey! I tasted that!"
It still isn't good, but it's less bad.
There was a bazaar at the Boy's Club today. I like bazaars, and I've been wanting to see the inside of the Boy's Club.
But I didn't want it bad enough to go out into the cold and wind. I spent the day straightening out files that got tangled while I improvised around the dead computer.
I'm still improvising, but in a less haphazard manner.
Undated note found somewhere: "Department of Holy Cow!: I looked up "corningware" to find out how to spell petty-pan, and found one offered for sale at $89.95. I suspect that that is wishful thinking on the part of the seller."
It's "petite pan", by the way -- at least on one dish-selling Web site.
The season advances: yesterday I tried to break off an asparagus stalk that was lying down when Dave mowed the asparagus bed, then resumed pinning my garden knife to the pocket of my slopping-around pants.
(The pants are store-bought, so nothing will stay in the pocket unless pinned. I have the knife on a valet-parking key ring, so I don't have to unpin every time I use it.)
Today I raked leaves out of the garden and put them on the compost heap. I didn't get all of them, but now nothing is being suffocated except for an unwanted patch of grass that I piled leaves on on purpose. And I will be able to find a bit of onion or green garlic when I want some.
I didn't think of cleaning out the herb bed and strawberry bed until I was done for the day. But there is a bit of daylight left . . .
***
Only a bit, but I got most of the leaves out before it got hard to tell what I was cutting.
I severely pruned the rue with the kitchen shears -- there is a notch on the blade for cutting stems, and only one stem gave me any trouble. The parsely, oregano, and thyme look healthy, after cutting off most of the dead stuff. I didn't find the marjoram, but the light was getting a bit dim when I thought to look for it. I also didn't see any sign of the chives. There are garlic chives ready to harvest, once they green up a bit -- and who says I can't use them blanched?
I found red rhubarb leaves on intensely-red stems. I wonder why the stems turn green? I'm sure the rhubarb was red when I bought it.
I spent very little time on the strawberry bed -- it's in the wind tunnel between the house and the shop, so there were very few leaves in it. I suspect that this has something to do with most of the strawberries winter-killing. I decided several weeks ago that I would put annual herbs in most of the bed, and regard the surviving strawberries as ornamentals. The strawberry plant in the little triangle of dirt between the raised bed and the concrete walk thrives, but I haven't been able to get any started on other sides of the bed, not even where the leaves have killed the grass.
I walked briskly to the church today.
On Sunday, I wanted to know how long it took me to walk home, so as I left, I reached for my flip phone -- and it wasn't there. I went back to the ladies room and emptied all my pockets onto the counter -- no dice. I walked around everywhere I'd been, checked where I'd been sitting in the sanctuary, and hung up all the child-size coats in the lost-and-found bin, then gave up and came home.
On Monday, after I prepared for my major shopping trip, I had Dave drive me to the church, intending to walk around listening while he called me on his cell phone. His phone said that my phone wasn't accepting calls.
I inquired of Ashley, and nobody had found it.
So Dave drove me home and I drove to Aldi, followed by a visit to Kroger. I'd planned to buy more frozen dinners at Kroger, but I was tired, the Wheelie-Cool was full, I'd left my Kroger coupons in the car, and I don't have to cross 30 to get to Kroger, so I bought two pieces of bargain cheese and the items that we were out of and went home.
Today Ashley e-mailed me that a phone had been found in the fellowship hall, so I dropped everything and put on walking clothes. Luckily all my pockets were still in walking mode from yesterday's trip, so changing didn't take long.
And it *was* my phone, but when I tried to call Dave to say that I'd found it, I got a message saying that I wasn't connected -- which explains why the phone wouldn't ring for Dave, but leaves the mystery of how I got disconnected. I needed a fifteen-digit number that's printed on a card that came with the phone, so I came home still phoneless. I got a text message asking me to rate the TracPhone robot's service, but I didn't get the text that Dave sent from wings.
When I opened the drawer where I thought I'd put the card, there it was right on top. But I was too tired to deal with it right then, so I'm still disconnected. I hope I remember to deal with it in the morning -- I want to ride to Leesburg the day after tomorrow, and it's uncomfortable to be that far from home with no way to call a taxi.
Not to mention having no idea what time it is.
It's predicted to be windy, but the route is flat and easy.
First harvest from the garden: I cut two winter-onion stems flush with the ground (checking first that each plant had another stem) and served them with supper. Dave bit the lower end off the thicker sprout, and I ate the greens with my taco.
We have concluded that the phone disconnected because my contract ran out. We spent a lot of time this morning trying to buy more time, but both of us got too tired to see straight without making any progress. It looks as though I'll have to have an entirely new contract, which means that I'll have a new phone number.
I didn't feel like rebuilding my insulated panniers tonight, so tomorrow I'm going to lunch at Mad Anthoniy's with Dave instead of riding to Leesburg.
I thought I was mistaken in thinking that I had a green bandana, but eventually I looked into my mending bag and found it wrapped around a pair of silk tights in dire need of darning.
We'll spend the morning trying to re-connect my phone. If I have any thinkum left after that, I'll try out DOSBOX under Linux, or perhaps delete the obsolete copy of LETTERS on JOYXP and replace it with the folder salvaged from JOY98. Then I can update it with the files now in DOSBOX and upload it to the Web.
I replaced the stretched-out elastic in the neck of my cotton jersey this morning. Didn't get much other work done. The old elastic was over twice as long as the elastic I replaced it with; no wonder I had thought it had no elastic at all.
Dave worked on my new Linux computer this morning, and I spent most of my time getting dressed
I harvested some garlic chives to substitute for garlic cloves and parsley in "Loaded Mashed Potato Cakes", which I'd downloaded from Ink-Free News. Immediately after breakfast, I deleted the recipe and over-wrote all the backups of the file I'd saved it in. Flour is definitely *not* an improvement in potato cakes, and I can wing adding bacon and whatnot.
***
We had lunch at Mad Anthony. Dave had corned beef and cabbage, I had irish stew in a bread bowl. Both were very good.
I wore my black T-shirt with a green bandana around my neck. For Mardi Gras, I wore a scoop neck short-sleeved shirt cut from the same brown-and-gold floral print on a black ground as my spectacular shirt-and-skirt dress. I don't think I wear that shirt often; there was a ride map dated March 2020 in a pocket. (I definitely wouldn't take that ride wearing that shirt.)
Been playing with DOSBOX running on Linux. The good news: my special keys aren't over-ridden by Windows special keys. The bad news: the last time I opened it, all my files were read-only.
Dave is still struggling to find out why all the files in DOSPROG are read-only, except one that was uploaded to see whether we could upload. I suggested deleting all of them and uploading fresh copies, but he has gotten determined.
"DOSBOX running on Linux" sounded so easy!
It seems as though whenever I have a lot to say, I can't find time to say it. I flossed a crown off when getting ready for bed Thursday night, and there went the whole of Friday.
Well, the appointment was in the afternoon; in the morning I got my phone back on line. I had been trying all this time to do it with the robot that told me I wasn't connected, and always having to undo the tangle by hanging up; on Friday morning I called the 800 number and got a robot that said what do you want? What is the number of the phone you want to re-connect? What is the number of your credit card? The price is (about a hundred dollars for a year), is that all right? Turn off the phone, turn it on again, and make a call -- if it doesn't connect, call back.
And I don't have to tell everyone that the number they have for me is no good.
Back to the tooth: I felt really stupid for pulling harder instead of backing off and trying again, or cutting the floss in the flosser, but Dr. Carmien said that he had to drill out some decay before he could glue it back in, so it might be just as well.
He thinks it will hold for only a year or so.
I played with my mini sewing machine a little this morning. Oh, man, it is *noisy*. And it's a very annoying noise, as if the machine were way overdue for oiling.
Dave suggested earplugs -- and he's deaf!
But it did put gathering threads into a real project. I would set it up to mend the hem on a dish towel, were it not so hard to plug it in. I finally unplugged the weather radio, the only one of the nine plugs which was both in a wallwart-compatible outlet and certain not to cause a major disaster if pulled.
2:00 PM 3/20/2022
I read on the front page of the weekend Times- Union that I'm going to have a party in the back yard on the second of July.
8:32 PM 3/21/2022
I had a long -- well, longer -- ride planned for today, but I came out of Rural King exhausted and a bit short on time, so I went from there to Kroger, then picked up supper at Jimmy-John's.
1:25 PM 3/22/2022
The season advances: We put the humidifier pot away yesterday.
11:39 PM 3/22/2022
I uploaded February (and what there is of March) to the server today!
I was so pleased that I'd figured it out for myself that I tried to post on Facebook that the Banner was available, but they've changed the interface a few times since I last posted, and clicking on "What's on your mind?" no longer gets you a field to type in. I think that I could have posted some smileys and bright colors.
Not much news. I mended a pocket in a dress that it's now too warm to wear.
I baked a pork roast on Tuesday. I should have draped bacon on it; it's too dry to eat without sauce, and there are only traces of fat in the drippings.
Living in the future: pork that requires extra fat!
Al eats it greedily, if I chop it small and eat the ends that were exposed to the seasoning myself.
I'm planing pulled pork in barbecue sauce for tonight.
Fed the last tablespoon of pork to the cat, scraped the jelly into a petite pan, washed the casserole, and put a really-nice hunk of beef brisket into it. After my experience with the pork, I was inclined to drape bacon over it, but there's a small patch of suet on the top. After an hour, I reduced the heat from 250° to 225°
I didn't visit half the places marked on my map yesterday, but I got all the spots where I meant to buy things -- except for Greens & Spices. The sign on the door said "open", but the door was locked. I remembered from when Greens & Spices was Oak and Alley that the restaurant and the grocery were emergency exits for each other, and thought that they were short of help and wanted you to walk through the restaurant to get in -- same as the bookstore in the back of the Buffalo Street Emporium. But the restaurant also had a sign that said "open" and a door that said "closed".
I should have checked the other businesses on the street.
One reason I didn't hit all my sight-seeing spots was that I passed Lowery's on my way from Carneceria San Jose to Little Caesar, and spent over half an hour looking around.
To my disappointment, the smallest "Hot and Ready" was an eight-slice pizza, one slice of which would have been an ample lunch -- but I ate two. It was about the same price as a single serve, but I had an enormous box bungeed to my bike for the rest of the trip. (On the other hand, I didn't have to cook supper.) It was so cold that I'd put the canned goods I bought at San Jose into my insulated pannier for fear of freezing, but pretty soon one won't want cooked food waving around in the breeze for hours.
I got my shopping list at Kroger, plus the brisket and some left-over green-waxed "Irish" cheddar that had been marked down from eleven dollars a pound to three twenty-nine for .55 pounds.
About an hour after getting home, I realized that I have a cold. I'm breathing through both nostrils now, but my sinuses hurt. About time for a nap. I had a can of ginger beer and a handful of chips in lieu of lunch.
⁂