I washed clothes yesterday, and today I ironed a T-shirt that I washed last week.
Much to my surprise, the parsley fully recovered from being frozen solid. I can't say the same of the basil.
The lawn mower came today and mulched the leaves. He charges extra for leaves. And Dave said "As you should." It was a lot of work. He had to blow the leaves off the patio and out of flowerbeds and so forth, and mow each patch of leaves several times.
He'll be back in a couple of weeks to do it again.
I got around to telling Dave about the leak under the sink, and the plumber will be here at eight in the morning. It must have been going on for months before I noticed; I stopped using the dishpan after we got reliable sink stoppers, and you can't see that it's full of water until you try to move it.
Not to mention that the drips were missing the pan entirely. After changing the newspapers, I put the pan under the drip.
Kathy and Sherry dropped in, and we had a good visit. Sherry is going home tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Dave and I are going out together.
To get flu shots.
Yesterday Filezilla mysteriously stopped working. I thought I'd accidentally erased something, since I'd hit a wrong icon and had to close and re-open the program just before the problem started; Dave thinks a cosmic ray flipped a bit. I complained today, and Dave fiddled and faddled for a long time doing things that should have made it work and didn't, and finally did a hard reboot of the whole computer, and that worked.
I should do soft reboots more often; this *is* a Windows machine.
I amuse myself during our trips to Goshen by observing the beaten path that follows the railroad from Milford Junction to New Paris. This is not easy, because the path is edge-on to me.
During our previous trip, I saw suggestions that it was actually two parallel paths, as if beaten by a very small four wheeler. Today, I confirmed it, and it's quite obvious in many places once one knows to look.
This only deepens the mystery of what beat it and why.
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The plumber said we need a new faucet. Yesterday I went to the Menard's web site and selected a very expensive faucet.
But I used the Linux computer, where Firefox is more compatible with grafiXML than the XP version, and have not yet retrieved my g-mail password to be able to send my choice to Dave. Could drag him in here and have him read the draft, I suppose. Or I could upload it to our web site, download it, and then e-mail it. And there's always sneakernet.
I wonder why sprayer faucets insist on coming with a matching soap dispenser? I suppose it's a sort of goof plug to cover the hole where the sprayer isn't, but we plan to use a real goof plug. A soap dispenser that you can't run under the faucet when it gets globby isn't a feature in my opinion. [It turned out that you don't need to put the soap dispenser under the faucet if you can put the faucet over the soap dispenser.]
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Jumped from here to today's paper, and the top headline is "Sycamore Saved!"
I rode past it a week ago, and two things were obvious: the tree can't spare one more square inch of lawn — it has access to less than a quarter as much dirt as it had before the city was built — and, if protecting the children were the only goal, building the sidewalk on the other side of the street would be more than ample. There's almost a sidewalk there already.
But if all isn't done to suit nit-picky rigid rules tossed off by people who never heard of sycamore trees or Warsaw, and have only a vague idea that one of the states is named "Indiana", the Feds will fine us an unpayably-huge sum of money.
Now to read the story and find out what happened.
Make that "read the story and NOT find out what happened." Whatever it was, everyone is very pleased about it.
The chili cook-off was this morning. I chose the thickest chili to bring home to Dave, on account of not spilling, but it wasn't a chili-flavored chili. He did like the cornbread (I brought him one piece off each platter). I never put sugar in cornbread.
I sampled all the chilis, then ate a bowl of Korean chili. The recipe must have come from the cold end of Korea; it was very hot and very greasy.
In the evening Kathy and Dave returned the photographs we had lent them, and several more besides. We had a pleasant time trying to identify them.
My Linux computer is dead. No more Facebook until I get a new one. I have authorized Dave to get a Windows 11. He says he's jealous; I said that instead of me playing with his computer, I'll catch him playing with mine.
Which reminds me that I need to borrow his computer to enter an expense into Quicken.
I just now noticed that the dam is open. They probably opened it on the first of November.
My hand towel is soggy from answering spam calls while washing dishes.
All the robots were using recordings of the same woman. Weren't all the same scam, but I call blocked pretty quickly because I wanted to get back to the dishes, so I can't remember which ones.
I'm half dressed to go to Menard's for a new faucet. I'm pretty sure the one I want is not in stock; I'll ask whether it can be sent to our house instead of the store. I suspect that it will be in a truckload of special orders and restock, though.
It was in stock, and the plumber will be here the day after tomorrow.
He was supposed to come tomorrow morning, but called and asked to postpone. This works out; tomorrow is supposed to be a good day to line-dry a sheet, and I wouldn't want to start a load of wash with a plumber in the house. Dave says that only the valves under the sink will need to be shut off, but you never know what you'll find when you start taking stuff apart.
I had intended to shop for panels to repair my herb beds while I was in Menard's, but it was noon and I felt that I'd used up my initiative, so I came almost straight home — I stopped at Jimmy-John's to buy an Ultimate Porker for our lunch.
I beat Dave home. Getting to his blood draw was a comedy of errors, then when he got to to the right place and it was his turn, the phlebotomist had to wrap him in a hot blanket to get any blood out of him, and the blood had to be drawn very, very slowly. Luckily, he'd been sent to one with thirty years of experience.
He did get home before I'd finished unpacking and taking off my outdoor clothes.
Since the weather was cool and the faucet was strapped down on top of the insulated pannier, I brought the sandwich home in the other basket, and didn't unpack the insulated one because I hadn't put anything in it. Much, much later I remembered the ice, and found the ice bag empty and only one dry square inch on the newspapers I put in the bottom of the plastic liner bag in case of just such an emergency.
I threw out the ice bag.
Dave hadn't quite decided which of two Windows 11 computers to buy for me when he remembered that he had a Linux computer that wasn't doing anything but running the ship's-bell clock, and we spent the morning swapping.
With all the Linux cords unplugged at one end, I got a lot of untangling done.
So now I've been to Facebook. And I don't have to borrow Dave's computer to see Weather Underground.
When he first fired up my discarded computer, he thought there was nothing wrong with it, and I speculated that all it had needed was to have its connectors unplugged and plugged back in — with all those tangled wires, something could get tugged on.
But later on, he discovered what I'd meant when I said it was acting flaky. But it doesn't need to respond to the keyboard or mouse to run the ship's bells, so all is back to normal.
I must remind him that he can buy a Windows 11 anyway.
Weather Underground says the wind was out of the east all day yesterday, and I never noticed. This morning, I did notice that the leaves piled on the patio were predominately oak.
Laundry day. A sheet and cleaning cloths are about to come out of the washer; I'm not looking forward to pinning them out in ten-to-fifteen mph wind, but they should dry fast.
Then a load of lingerie.
Dave is getting an infusion right now (ten a.m. appt.), the plumber is coming tomorrow afternoon, then nothing on the calendar before the artisan's market the Saturday after next. I'm (knock wood) looking forward to a ride to Walmart the day after tomorrow.
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The sheet was back on the bed before lunch.
Hanging dish towels in a high wind wouldn't have been all that difficult, but by the time I got the sheet over the lines, I'd used up all my cuss words, so I put them in the dryer.
It didn't help that one of the lines broke while I was struggling to get the sheet over it. But on closer inspection, the turnbuckle had unscrewed, and the bit that came out was still on the hook, so all I had to do was to screw it back together and hang it back up.
I should inspect the other turnbuckle. Both were getting violently thrashed while the sheet was drying.
About five o'clock, I started noticing that I skipped my nap today. Good day for a ride, and it was the right length. I must ask Google Maps exactly how long it was so I'll know how far to go the next time I want to extend my range. [21 miles, but not exactly]
I even bought a few things. I finally found a box of Malt-O-Meal; we ran out weeks ago. But Walmart didn't have any plain yogurt. I settled for Greek yogurt, since we've been out for some time.
The front page of today's paper says that I should have detoured to pick up some chicken thighs — Penguin Point closed yesterday.
Today I sorted out my to-darn pile and washed the top left shelf in the pantry cupboard.
In the evening, Kathy and Dave dropped into say goodbye — they are going back to Florida.
A few days ago I found a bag of flaked nutritional yeast in the freezer and decided to put it into a mustard jar and put it on the table. The first jar I felt at the back of the container cupboard turned out to be a horseradish bottle with the label still on it. The next day I saw the jar on the table and thought "Oh, no! Somebody left the horseradish out and it has turned brown!"
The level in the jar is dropping rapidly. Yeast improves the flavor of nearly everything.
Dave's new television arrived today, and he enjoyed it very much until he misplaced the remote.
Which has caused me to discover a fundamental and inexplicable flaw in remote design: nowhere on a remote is there even a slight hint as to what the remote control is a control *for*!
Nor is there a place where one can attach a string tag such as we put on power cords and data lines. [Dave stuck one of my butterflies on the old remote after his new one arrived.]
I cleaned out another shelf of the pantry cupboard. As a result, we are having baked beans with bacon and vienna sausage for supper tonight.
I found the missing can of cashews — and put it back into the back of the shelf. The mixed nuts that are already open are primarily cashews.
I spent all of today buying groceries. Seventeen minutes going there, an hour and twenty minutes in the store, fourteen minutes back, but I cleaned Roomba and probably did some other chores before leaving, then passed out at naptime and slept so late that Dave had prepared his own supper when I woke up.
I ate some of the mustard greens I'd bought and all four of the mini-weenies out of the left-over beanies. And two tostadas with greek yogurt.
Finally found whole-milk yogurt. Still no toaster scrambles, but Jimmy Dean has a new product called Toaster Pops. The box is two or three times as big as Toaster Scrambles, and I'm pretty sure it's the same number of pastries. I bought both flavors and a box of Biscuit Roll-Ups.
The only Moose Tracks on offer was Super Deluxe Maximum Fudge. I didn't notice until I got home that there were no peanut-butter cups. To me, peanut-butter cups are the defining feature of Moose Tracks. We are gobbling it anyway. While it was still soft from the trip home, I scooped it up with a ginger snap.
I redeemed a five-dollars-off-fifty-dollars-or-more coupon, and my panniers weren't even full. (But I did pile up the insulated pannier with frozen food.) I exceeded fifty dollars by only fifty-one cents.
Dave found the missing remote. All that time spent searching the lift chair (I did find a pen.) and neither of us thought of looking in the swag of cloth between the footrest and the chair. One has to close it to get out of the chair, and it doesn't look like a foot rest when it is closed.
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The fourth computer we tried turned out to be compatible with the Menards Web site, so now I have a form to mail in to get my rebate on the faucet. I'll deal with it in the morning.
It's in the mailbox, and I've brought in yesterday's mail.
I had a Jimmy Dean Pop Up for breakfast. The box is bigger, the pastries are smaller. They are thicker — I think; I don't have a Scramble to compare — but not in proportion to the loss of area. I thought that thicker meant there would be a higher proportion of filling, but the filling is less prominent than in the Scramble.
It's about time to bundle some of the stuff in and under the paper bin. My new system means that I don't have to do the whole bin in one go; I can bundle the cardboard now and the newspapers if there is time.
But first to the shop to find a hose clamp to secure the loose pannier on my bicycle. I discovered it at Kroger and wrapped a couple of bungees around it so I could get home with my groceries. The loose one, by good luck, is the one that was only half full.
I wonder how I managed to lose a hose clamp?
When repairing it, I noticed that the remaining attacher is a cable tie — obviously inadequate for the job, but I don't know how many years it took the other one to break. That pannier hasn't been disturbed since I bought it. [And an invisible curb caused an "I stopped and part of the bike didn't" incident that tore off the other pannier.]
Which reminded me that I have a cable tie in my emergency kit, but I don't think I would have considered using it when I had a couple of spare bungees. I cow-hitched the bungees around the rods to be held together, then clipped the hooks in places that would keep the bungees stretched. Since bungee on bungee has a very high coefficient of friction, that was quite secure. One would have been sufficient, but it was half of a pair.
Dave's new pajamas arrived yesterday, and he wore them last night — until one or two in the morning, when he got up and changed. I have a feeling that I'll be adding them to the Goodwill Bag.
This morning, I bundled the cardboard that I stacked under weights yesterday, and washed the dishes. It was almost all silverware. Dave Roombaed the parlor and I put the furniture back.
I had fried pu-pu platter for lunch. Three kinds of appetizers in a very small skillet with a tight lid over very low heat, five minutes per side.
And some kale tea. I froze the last serving of kale when the farmers markets closed, and boiled it today. I suspect that I'll be very tired of spinach and mustard greens when the markets open in May.
The parsley is still holding out.
Dave and I walked around the block yesterday afternoon, and passed a house that is for sale. The sign said that it's having an open house on Sunday, but during my nap.
I mapped out a twenty-five mile ride for today. It will be two loops, because I want to go the winter market and the Mexican grocery first, and don't want to carry stuff to Oswego and back.
If that works out, I'll go to Spring Creek next week.
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Dave took his antenna down yesterday.
The internet died while I was reading Usenet last night. Trouble-shooter says it will be ten p.m. tomorrow, which means Monday at best. I'm quite annoyed that I can't do a last-minute check on the weather.
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When I got home from the first loop, Dave had his antenna back up, but it doesn't appear to be working yet.
I have a distinct lack of enthusiasm for riding out and back just to be riding out and back. But the weather won't hold much longer.
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Dave spent much of the day getting his antenna to work, and succeeded just before the internet came back up. He texted me that it was up when I was crossing Husky Trail to Aldi at a quarter past three.
It was nearly five when I left Aldi, and almost half past when I got home. Since the sun was setting, I was glad that I turned back at 450 N instead of going to Oswego.
I drank a can of "wellness" flavor Belle Vie fizzwater for the first time this evening. I thought it was delicious at first, but after a while it started leaving the taste of saccharine in my mouth even though there is no artificial sweetener in it.
I put some PBL vinegar syrup in the last bit that I drank, and it was a considerable improvement.
Which killed the syrup I've been putting into my water bottle with the sprigs of fresh thyme. Other batches don't taste the same.
There was frost on the benches when I first got up, but I put a bag of ice in the insulated pannier anyway. I have learned that if you aren't worried that the water in your bottles will freeze, it's too soon to stop carrying ice.
As it happened, I didn't buy anything that had to be kept cold until I was almost home. And the ice didn't melt much, so I put it back into the freezer without draining it first.
Knowing that I would be out after three p.m., I took my windbreaker along, and I did put it on when leaving Aldi — but primarily because there wasn't room for it in the panniers; they were piled up even though the dime finally dropped and I laid the gallon of milk on its side. A sealed new bottle doesn't have to be kept upright.
I spent $54.77, and very little of it was meat.
I did walk to the open house after lunch on Sunday, but I didn't see any indication that I was allowed to go in, except for the sign that has been there all week, so I didn't.
I climbed four staircases after church.
I spent all of yesterday washing my underwear, and this morning I folded what hadn't finished drying when I went to bed.
I should get on with washing the pantry shelves; the food pantry will pick up the contributions on the first of December.
During the announcements, the pastor suggested buying a little extra when we go grocery shopping, but that is silly. Giving them cash is less trouble, they can buy exactly what's needed when it's needed, they can put several contributions together and get a quantity discount, and the place where they store money is more likely to pay interest than to charge rent.
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One more shelf washed and straightened. The remaining shelf is where I keep the four cans of evaporated milk — I must get around to buying four more so I can put these into the horse trough. I like to change the emergency milk twice a year.
Looked: there are six cans. So I'll take two to church this Sunday.
New faucet: I still have to think about pushing up for cold and down for hot instead of the other way around.
And I picked the longest reach, so when I set a dish in the sink intending to run water into it, I invariably set it in the wrong place.
Dave has to give himself B-12 shots every day for a week, then at decreasing intervals for I don't know how long. I get dizzy and sick watching, but he seems to manage all right.
Supper over and all my receipts entered into Quicken, I begin noticing that I had no nap today.
I think I'll discuss today's exercise tomorrow.
I bought four cans of evaporated milk, and have the six old cans bagged to take to church tomorrow. It's rather heavy; I think I'll ride the flatfoot.
I wonder how my emergency stash came to have six cans of milk when the quota is two?
On the way home from church, I was very glad that I rode the flatfoot. I didn't want to stay out in the snow any longer than I had to.
Also I got my feet wet before I got into the street. It was nice to keep them out of the snow for the rest of the ride.
I guess I should have gotten my thick-soled oversandals out.
It took me 174 minutes to play a game of MaJong. That's close to three hours. I thought it was 4:00 when we left; must have been playing MaJong for a while after four; it was 6:03 when we left the hospital, 6:3? when we got back.
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It isn't half-past nine yet, but wiggling a needle over and under stitches near the hole in a glove is an overwhelming intellectual task, so I'm going to read a bit and go to bed.
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I didn't know those notes were in here. It was about noon when I woke up from my nap, so I went to Zales to buy eye drops and pick up the rest of Dave's B-12, then went to Kroger for a major shopping. Our frozen meals had gotten a bit picked over, and I had a lot of cents-off coupons for frozen meals.
Needless to say, I'm not going to get the Banner out today. I'm not even going to make this entry make sense before I go to bed.
When I was returning to the car after returning my cart to Kroger, I saw something run under a pallet of bags of salt, and thought it was a mouse or a chipmunk, but when a second one ran for cover, I saw that it was a small brown bird. That seemed rather un-birdlike.
But most of the birds I scare are much larger, and I don't think there has ever been a convenient hidey-hole before.
It was supposed to rain today, but it was sunny and not very cold. At least in the afternoon.
We are getting the rain that I expected yesterday.
Abe called. He will mow our leaves next week, when they are dry enough to shatter and the wind won't freeze him. We are debating whether to cut the dead asparagus stalks now, to keep them from harboring disease and allow the leaves on the bed to be chopped, or leave them to hold leaves in place until February.
Linda came with bad news: she had to cancel our knitting lesson because Tim is sick and it might be contagious. I do hope it isn't serious.
We have now swapped text-message numbers.
I'm a bit fuzzy on what happened the night before yesterday, so this is wild guess and reconstruction. I woke up at exactly time to take my levothyroxin, or maybe it was fifteen minutes early and I did my sciatica exercises first. At any rate I did take the pill and do my exercises. I was still wearing my exercise suit about four. I think.
(The carpet is scratchy, so I put on knee-length muslin drawers and a T-shirt.)
I couldn't sleep, so I read newsgroups or something, and about the time I shut down, Dave woke up. I thought I'd wait to get into bed when he did, so I started a game of MaJong.
When I'd been playing a while, Dave realized that we had to go to the emergency room in Goshen. They have an experienced catheter team on call, so it's worth the extra distance.
So I dressed as fast as I could and shoveled random stuff into my go bag, which hadn't been sorted out after my visit to the eye doctor. (I still need to write the eye appointments on my calendar.) I put my wallet into my go-bag instead of transferring stuff to my pockets.
It was late enough that I was hungry, so I grabbed a fruit-and-grain bar to eat in the car. I had another one out of my go-bag in the hospital.
The route looks very different at night, but the Yoder-Culp funeral home (which I use as a landmark) has an illuminated sign, and one can see the emergency room from a greater distance at night, so we made the correct left turn.
The catheter guy thought that he could just flush it, but immediately recognized that the clog would not yield, so they changed it. Dave remarked that this was the first time a male changed his catheter. Then he remembered that a male installed his first one, but I said that it was still the first time a male changed it.
We decided that what was left of the night wasn't worth going back to bed for. He slept in the power chair while watching The Great Courses, and I took my nap early.
We were in bed before half-past ten, and slept until almost six. I got up and took my pill, then we slept two more hours.
Woke up feeling pretty good, but it's time for me take a nap. At 12:05, I haven't had lunch yet.
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Evening: I've been thinking of making a batch of fruitcake. Perhaps I should get some dried fruit when I go to the health-food store for candy tomorrow, and get some apples at Kroger on the way back. I bought mission figs on my latest trip to Aldi, and could make a figgy pudding.
I need to exercise more and eat less.
I don't think riding to a near-by candy store counts.
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I've decided to put a moratorium on extending my range until the days start getting longer. I will try to maintain the range I've got — trips to Meijer and Walmart (but not on the same day) are in order.
I bought chocolate-coated almonds, carob-coated almonds, carob-coated malt balls, pumpkin seeds, and Cadia sesame sticks. Cadia isn't nearly as good as the sesame sticks that are on back order, but they added a pleasant crunch to lettuce dressed with whole-milk yogurt at suppertime.
After buying apples and raisin bran at Kroger, I picked up an Ultimate Porker at Jimmy-John's. Dave asked whether that was for lunch or for supper. Turned out to be both. No cooking today — maybe I'll get the Banner into the mail.
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