Beeson Banner for April 2022

 

Saturday, 2 April 2022

This morning, I got down the cultivator, put the five-tine hoe on it, and went out to the garden.  The soil was too wet to work, so I just went around the edges, where I wouldn't have to step on the freshly-turned mud and spoil the tilth.

When I noticed that it had been dry all day, I decided to try again after supper, but it started raining again.

It appears to intend to rain until May.  I should have put on a heavy coat and cultivated on one of the days when it was too cold and windy to work outside.

But the wet soil did make it easy to pull two winter onions for supper without disturbing the rest of the clump.

Yesterday, desperate for ideas, I served pupu platter for supper.  I thawed the last two shrimp and avocado rolls for Dave.  I would adore sushi if I could get it made with spinach or romain instead of fishy seaweed.  (I'm not all that fond of shrimp, either.)

I also put two Crunchy Southwest Chicken taquitos, four cream cheese "stuffed jalapeños", and two cheddar cheese "stuffed jalapeños" on a tray in the toaster oven, and baked them half an hour at 160°.

When we had eaten, there were two cream-cheese jalapeños still in the oven.  I reflected that anything that hadn't been sterilized by the radiant heat had been pasteurized by the hundred and sixty degree air, and left them there for my bedtime snack.

They are much better cold!  The cream cheese doesn't squish out when I bite in, and my teeth shear right through the piece of jalapeño, which tastes like a vegetable, rather than like a piece of paper that I pulled out to eat separately.

 

Sunday, 3 April 2022

I took the cultivator out to the garden after supper, and found it dry enough to walk on.  By dint of walking beside the cultivator, on ground not yet plowed, I cultivated all over.

I should be able to plant the multipliers on the next dry day.

I hope I noted what I planted where in last year's garden diary.  Winter onions are the only plants I can confidently identify.  One plant with a bulb peeking above the ground is definitely a giant garlic; others "did I plant garlic cloves, or giant-garlic bulbils?".

We had Zatarain's dirty rice for supper.  Good, but if I find it again, I'm going to fry a slice of bacon in the pot before I put in the rice.  It was dry and needed sauce something awful, but all our sauces are hot.  Dave thought, when he bought "Big Daddy's" salsa that he was getting sweet and spicy; he has yet to learn that in adverspeak, "spicy" means "hot", and not just hot, but *capsaicin* hot; mustard, ginger, cole plants, and black pepper need not apply.

 

Monday, 4 April 3033

11:40 AM 4/4/2022

Well, well.  I opened 21GARDEN.HTM and the first thing I saw was the entry I made when I planted the garlic and giant garlic.

There is rain as far as Weather Underground can see, so I decided I'd have to dry the sheets in the dryer.  One sheet fills up the laundry bin, so having two in there was messing up my other laundry.

Only one would fit into the washer, so I filled out the load with my slopping-around pants, some washrags, and two spare masks.  Even though I'd set it for "deep water", Whirlpool thought that half a tub of water was worlds aplenty.  The tub has developed a water-dish ring at the half-full line.

I forgot to re-arrange the straps on the masks, so I had to untie some wet knots. 

 

Tuesday, 5 April 2022

8:17 PM 4/5/2022

Raked the debris off the old compost heap onto the new one, and sprinkled some dirt on the multiplier onions.

I have a copy of Notepad++ on my computer now, but haven't had any time to play with it.

 

Saturday 9 April 2022

7:41 PM 4/9/2022

Today I got a late start on purpose — when I had the bike checked and fresh water in the bottles and was ready to put on my outer layers, it was wet and cold out there, so I fiddled around for an hour or so until the sun came out.  Got stung in the face with pellet snow, and decided to put my windbreaker on under the awning when I got to Carniceria San José, but the snow was over when I came out of the store, and the rest of the day was pretty nice.

I'd gone for a can of dulce de leche, after watching Alton Brown make some yesterday, but I also got a bottle of Malta Goya and a chocolate-coated "marzipan", which is compressed powdered sugar, perhaps stuck together with peanut butter, but not firmly.

After I entered all the cat food on the Kroger receipt into Quicken, regretting all the while that I hadn't sorted it onto the conveyor belt, I said "Hey!  Where's the Fancy Feast?"  Nor was there any Fancy Feast among the cans on the counter where I'd left the cat food while emptying my panniers.

It was difficult to pick out the cans I wanted because the flavors had been scattered to make the shelves look fuller, so I'd stacked my choices on an empty shelf at eye level to make it easy to check that I hadn't already taken a can of that flavor.  It would appear that when I was done, I forgot to put the stack into the cart.

***

Dave's new electric tea kettle arrived today.  He's already had two pots of tea.  He found and washed the little one-mug teapot after ordering the kettle.

The kettle is supposed to be good for hard-boiling eggs because it turns itself off as soon as a good rolling boil is established, and I'd intended to boil half a dozen just to try out the kettle, the idea of peppered eggs, and the cake decorator I found in the bag of cookie cutters

After Dave watched Alton Brown filling devilled eggs with a pastry bag, I said that I used to have a cookie press, and I thought that it had some cake-decorating tips.  "If it's still around, it will be in the cookie cutter bag."

I vaguely recall giving the cookie press away.  It was plain aluminum, and had plates with different-shaped holes to squeeze cookie dough through — feet helped you hold it level and an exact distance from the cookie sheet.  One plate baffled me — a slot straight on one side and zig-zag on the other, it made a rather boring cookie.  I eventually realized that unlike the others, it was meant to lay down a ribbon of dough.  A plate could have a cake-decorating tip deep-drawn into it, but I don't recall whether it came with such tips.

The cake decorator I found is anodized copper color.  I remember having it, but not when and why I acquired it.  I've *never* decorated cakes.

Then we got invited to an Easter party.  When I'm boiling eighteen eggs, I think I'll cook them in my five-quart kettle as I always do.

 

Saturday, 16 April 2022

Well, I can no longer say "I'm eighty and the easiest way to scrub my feet is still to stand on one leg and put the other foot into the sink."

I'll have to say "I'm in my eighties and . . . "

(We do have a stool in the shower, and I use it to scrub my feet when I wash my hair.)

We went to the Texas Roadhouse for lunch yesterday.  They don't open until three, so we didn't have any supper — save for snacks of left-overs.  I shared mine with Al, and overdid it.  Not too much later, I had to scrape bits of unchewed steak off the bedroom carpet.

Dave got a better steak than I did — he ordered strip steak, I ordered sirloin.

The mushrooms and onions on my steak were great on my steak fries.

I toasted one of the left-over sweet rolls and ate it with butter and plum jam for lunch today.  Dave ate his hamburger on the other one for supper tonight.

This evening I sorted the jars of pickles.  We have loads of pickled garlic, but only one more jar of PBL pickles after the one I opened.  It was dated 2019, so I told Dave not to plant cucumbers.  I'll buy a quart of cucumbers at the farmers' market and make one batch.  (I like PBL pickles half and half with onions.)

I seem to have forgotten how to devil eggs.  Fortunately, I took notes every time I made a batch.  I set the pie plate with the left-over filling on the table next to a jar of mini crackers and it disappeared before supper time.

 

Sunday, 17 April 2022

8:08 PM 4/17/2022

I've lost weight, and when I dressed this morning, my good pants dragged with the waist on its tightest setting.

Tonight, they don't drag. 

Andy and Jaimie throw quite a party.

When we got home, after I emptied the Wheelie-Cool, I dragged it into the garage so that I could blow it out with the air compressor.  Al saw his chance to eat grass:  "The big door is open!  With that great big thing on her hands, she can't catch me!  Umm.  How do I get around the great big thing?"

 

Tuesday, 19 April 2022

Monday morning we woke to half an inch of snow on the ground and more coming down, but it was all gone by noon.

I should have checked the weather again before making tea yesterday evening.  I spent ten or fifteen minutes putting on three pairs of socks — I didn't expect it to be *that* cold, but I bought my sandals wearing three pairs of socks, and they won't fit without them — then I stepped outside to comb my hair, got hit in the face with pellets of snow propelled by a very high wind, and told Dave that this ride wasn't going to happen.

Until Thursday, when the wind is predicted to be a third of what today was predicted to be.

So I stayed home and salvaged two more folders off the hard drive of the computer that died.  Well, Dave salvaged them soon after the crash and put them on a USB stick.  I *think* that that is all the files that I use copied to XP, but I'm hanging onto that stick!

I complained that I wasn't copying files because it was such a pain to squeeze the USB stick in between two vital cables.  I could get a stick out by pulling on the string attaching the tag, but it's almost impossible to put one in.  He promptly produced a socket splitter that not only puts the sockets out where I can get at them, but gives me two extra ports.  Turned out that it's only one extra, because XP labels them D, E, and F, and D is strictly for disk drives.  But the difference between one drive and two is HUGE, and the difference between two and three is almost trivial.

I wonder how many of you are old enough to remember the big scare campaign to get people to stop using outlet splitters, using pictures of power cords arranged to look like tentacles?

Neither Dave nor I can remember what octopuses were called before that.  I tried Froogle, but none of the sales names are suitable for "hand me the octopus" use.

A few weeks ago we had to deal with wanting to plug wall warts into a power strip, and an octopus that really did look like an octopus was the answer.  Dave picked up one that had six outlets and said "This one is a hexapus."  This led me to calling a short extension cord that simply moves the outlet to where you can reach it a "monopus".

For several weeks I've been keeping the stepladder in the sewing room because I've gotten a bit too wobbly to feel safe plugging the iron into the ceiling while standing on the step stool.  A few days ago, I realized that if the outlet were only a few inches lower, I'd feel safe standing on the step stool — it's stretching for something that's *almost* out of reach that throws me off balance.

So I asked Dave whether there was such a thing as a monopus designed for heavy current.  He whipped out one of those he'd had out when solving the power strip problem, and said it was designed for more current than the wire leading to the outlet.

The monopus has been lying on the ironing board ever since:  I haven't had occasion to iron, and the ladder had become a set of shelves for important things I didn't want to forget about.

So I got up, cleared off the ladder, plugged in the monopus, and put the ladder away.  I think I'm going to want a monopus about twice as long.

 

Thursday, 21 April 2022

The Thursday ride was also rained out, but it should be fit to play outdoors next Thursday.

I walked to the post office for a book of forevers yesterday, and it was nearly noon when I passed Sweet Dreams on the way home, so I bought a "jumbo chef salad" and brought it home for lunch.  We both commented that there wasn't enough lettuce for all that ham, so for supper I shredded some lettuce into the leftovers, got out the remaining devilled egg, and made half a slice of sourdough bread into croutons.  Dave added the olives that were most of what remained of the pasta salad to his share.

And there was still enough left for my bedtime snack.  When Sweet Dreams says "jumbo", they *mean* "jumbo".

 

Thursday, 21 April 2022

9:59 PM 4/21/2022

Department of sometimes things don't work out the way they are supposed to:

For a long time, I've been putting stuff on the stove when I want to set it down for a minute without getting ants all over it.  This morning, I found the stove swarming with ants:  they had finally found a way to get on it.

Then I noticed that one of the ant traps on the counter had been pushed over to make a bridge.

10:04 PM 4/21/2022

 

Friday, 22 April 2022

8:49 AM 4/22/2022

The ants are not swarming on the stove this morning.  But I bet that they would be if I left some food on it.  I left three bowls of dry cat food in three plates of water.

I found my missing ring of tools and keys while putting tomorrow's pills into my overnight bag.

We are using "pill pouches" for pills!  I bought them for carrying a flosser in my pocket and corralling small needlework tools.

 

Tuesday, 26 April 2022

8:25 AM 4/26/2022

I was sure I made a couple of entries after the one above.  I've got to find time to fiddle with the new computer, or at least plug it in.

I called this file up to say that this morning I put my pedal pushers on standing up, without leaning on anything.  How's that for eighty-one?

11:06 AM 4/26/2022

Changing to jeans was a bit more awkward, but I did manage it.

11:41 PM 4/26/2022

I'd planned to devil another half-dozen eggs just for fun, but there's an egg shortage on.  I was buying eggs in Aldi when another customer found out about it.

Eggs are still cheap compared to other meat.

We could hinder the spread of bird flu by eating goose eggs, but there's that pesky international treaty.  Somebody said that canada-goose eggs taste terrible anyway.

 

30 April 2022

I have had my portrait taken:

I finally got around to scanning the postcard I found:

http://wlweather.net/LETTERS/2022BANN/PBLfront_20220427_0001.jpg

http://wlweather.net/LETTERS/2022BANN/PBLback_20220427_0001.jpg

The scans are too huge to put into a document, and they are entirely raw, just as they came from the scanner, so you will have to rotate them with your picture editor.  I use GIMP for that purpose; I've read that professional artists abhor GIMP, but if all you want to do is crop and scale and rotate photographs, it's really easy and intuitive.  Also free.

 

1 May 2022

I saw the pansies again today.  Last Sunday, I noticed Star of Bethlehem in the grass around the new construction on Ninth Street, and when I got to the bottom of the hill I was struck by the display of white violets in the treelawn (weird word, but I haven't seen a better one).

On closer inspection, the flowers looked more like tiny pansies.  My first thought was that they were johnny-jump-ups, but I think that johnny-jump-ups are purple, and I know that they are definitely pansies, while these flowers were somewhat undecided between pansy and violet.

I noticed the white violets again today, but didn't think to check whether the star of bethlehem was still in bloom when I was at the top.

⁂

It's May, and the rains show no sign of planning to save anything for July and August.