I have realized why we had so many fruitcakes left over — I left some for Sara Lee and Larry, but forgot to leave any for Matt and Wendy and Isabel and Cadence.
Oh, well, they shouldn't be eating sweets anyway.
I think that I'll wait until tomorrow or the next day to open the "bread" that Brent gave us. I popped it into the freezer right away, because we were eating sweets at an excessive rate at the time.
We're sitting around quietly this morning. Dave is playing with his cameras and Web sites, I read my funnies and blogs and created a file for the January Banner.
I discovered, when I tried to look at a picture posted on How to Make Sewing Patterns, that Yahoo no longer allows access to people who don't use Flash. This means that the mailing lists that I "own" are going to be orphans. Perhaps I should borrow Dave's computer and kill them. I don't even know how many I've got; it may just be HTMSP_tangents.
Dave has decided to make a jig to hold his two IP cameras side-by side. His goal: to show this year's fireworks display in 3-D.
I have two striped shirts in the washing machine. I hope I'm not setting the tone for 2012 &mdash on New Year's Day I spilled fruit salad on my shirt. Yesterday I put on another shirt made from the same bolt of fabric and spilled Jin Do Pork on it.
On the other hand, having the opportunity to spill food on my good clothes every day doesn't sound all that bad!
Both pairs of white jeans have been soaped around the hems and are in the pile for the second load. If I go out, I'll have to wear the thin linen jeans or the wool slacks.
Sunday night, we got home just before the snow started here. (We'd come through a couple of flurries on the way.) Monday morning, the snow was almost deep enough to hide the grass, and today the air is full of flakes that are moving sideways faster than down. And it isn't all that windy — breezy, but nothing like yesterday.
Testing the de-htmling procedure: m-dashes change into n-dashes, but emphasis disappears. When I change topics, I can't leave an extra blank line — it's three extra lines or nothing in both versions. The space automatically added by <h> tags vanishes, so I must put an extra paragraph tag at the end of the last paragraph; this doesn't show in hypertext, but gets picked up when the text is copied. Seems to be no good way to stop the date from getting mooshed into the following paragraph, though. At least the conversion does preserve the line break.
I just snapped, and cut a slice off the Wildman's cinnamon zucchini bread.
My "F.U.I" folder is now not-so-frequently used icons. This morning I deleted those icons that were duplicated on my desktop, and moved some icons that I'm temporarily done with into the folder. Neatens things considerably.
The snow is still almost deep enough to hide the grass.
A cold slice of zapped sweet potato makes a pretty good cracker. With a thin slice of left-over broiled pork rib, that is. It isn't as good with leftover steak.
Ah, that sounds much better!
The day before yesterday, my computer started making alarming noises, so this morning Dave took it to O's. O found a dying CPU-cooling fan and replaced it, and now the computer is quieter than it has been for a long time.
On the same trip, he took his new repeater to the UPS store, and they are taking it back whence it came; the documentation was hopelessly inadequate, particularly since it unexpectedly also worked as a router. He intends to buy a repeater that's *just* a repeater, possibly NetGear.
I haven't — until now — twitted him on saying that only a few minutes after trying to talk me into installing the latest version of Thunderbird because I could ignore all the new unwanted features.
One benefit of the disturbance: it made me realize that I can remove Drive E. When the computer was on the floor, I didn't dare remove it because I couldn't see to put it back. The computer has been on the monitor stand . . . ever since I swapped the CRT for a flatscreen, which has been a while.
Finally got back into sewing mode, and may have a new undershirt while it's still cold enough to wear the wool jersey it's meant to protect, but after sewing in one sleeve, I found myself too hungry to think straight, so I persuaded Dave to eat supper half an hour early.
It was chicken thigh gravy, poached all day in a rice cooker set on "keep warm", so we could eat as soon as I warmed up the beets and mashed potatoes.
It was also delicious. I do like gravy made with whole white-wheat flour.
I ate a peanut before breakfast, and noticed that the bag is nearly empty — it didn't come into the house until after three o'clock yesterday.
Which is why I bought three bags.
Yesterday was glorious, so I hopped on my bike and returned my books — unread — by way of the emergency room, where I left off a rather picked-over collection of magazines. Hardly remember crossing the boardwalk — the special has worn off. I did notice that the swamp near Pike Lake has iced over. I suspect that some of the open water in the shallow bay is water on ice, as the waves in the lake don't propagate into it.
A search for more Burroughs turned up nothing but _A Wolf at the Table: a memoir of my father_, which turned out to be some other Burroughs explaining why he grew up to be such a disagreeable person who writes downer books.
I ended up with _The Once and Future King_ all in one massive tome. Thence to Avila's for chips and peanuts.
Note: West Street begins at Fort Wayne, so if leaving town on Main, it's wise to trend north a little. Which I did by mistake, so all was well.
Was the new roundabout before or after Penguin Point? Before, I think, and after Avila. I had to pull into a parking lot and study it a while to see which lane to get into, but it was quite easy. Probably a bigger problem when there's more traffic. A lane coming in from the left surprised me, but I think I'd have noticed it sooner if someone had been using it. And, of course, next time I'll expect it.
Chili-cheese fries at Penguin Point — I used my napkin a *lot* — then a tour of Little Hawk and Dollar General. I saw the cutest little pistol, and thought how I'd never hear the end if I bought it. Besides, I don't have a permit to carry it home, and I'm not interested in learning how to use it. (And I just now realized that if it fires a bullet worth firing, such a small gun would mess up my arthritic old hands.)
Also met a cute little white dog, who was terrified of me and expressed it very loudly. I took my helmet off, and the owner picked her up and introduced me, which helped some. She kept barking, but not as loudly.
I don't think that smelling of Al helped any.
Then I bought a bottle of calcium with D at the dollar store — I don't like it much, but I was nearly out, and didn't realize that a hundred and fifty tablets at one a day is going to last quite a while. While paying for it, I spotted one, count them, one, yellow umbrella in the display near the door, so I grabbed and bought it without further inspection. It's a small umbrella, and made cheap — I had difficulty re-folding it after showing it to Dave — but it's *yellow*.
(For those wondering what the fuss is about: I sometimes walk home from church after dark, and yellow is the only color that shows through rain.)
Then I continued along Old 30 to Hepler, and came back past the Zimmer complex. Stopped at Sherman & Lin, but didn't buy anything. Did get four cans of cat food at the Dollar General on Market. So I had a pocketful of receipts to plug into Quicken that evening, three of them from Dollar General.
I napped like a rock and gave Dave canned clam chowder for supper. I had mine with tortilla chips.
Washed dish towels and pillowcases and a few rags today. Looks beautiful out there, but the clothes are whipping so that I'm not going to be able to leave them out all afternoon. And I came back into the house to put on more clothes twice.
A year or so ago I saw another copy of my scarf hanger at Our Father's House Thrift Shop, and learned that it's a "pants organizer". I wish now that I'd bought it — scarves are piling up on my dresser because it's so much trouble to shoehorn them onto the hanger. And a scarf on the hanger is likely to be covered by other scarves and never be seen again.
To Owen's (Kroger) this morning. This is the first time I remembered to look for corned beef, and it was, of course, *way* too late.
Bought a package of refrigerated dried beef for the freezer, because we liked the dried-beef gravy I made from another package very much. Perhaps I should have bought two; it was in the specials bin and might be discontinued. Only one batch of gravy per $2.49 package, but I've got half of what I made this morning in the fridge to be warmed up for breakfast tomorrow. We don't eat as much gravy as we used to.
I did buy two sample-size packages of Malt-O-Meal Blenders, after finally finding them in the puffed-wheat bin. I'm pretty sure those were just passing through; perhaps I should have bought all four packages. The wording on the bag says that the samples are a promotion for Malt-O-Meal products, but I couldn't find even one other in the cereal aisle, not even the original hot cereal.
Someone on Usenet, I've forgotten who: "Money won't buy you love, but dog biscuits will."
Yet another day that's suitable for outdoor activity. I haven't even been taking our usual walk.
My scheme of leaving soda-bread dough in the crockpot on "keep warm" overnight seems to have worked, but we haven't tasted it yet. Smells good — I put in cinnamon, ginger, raisins, and a pinch of cloves. Otherwise, it's my corn casserole recipe. Not as much butter — just enough to liberally grease the pot.
Finished my new undershirt yesterday. When I was arranging the sleeves to sew the hems, at the last moment I remembered: This is a free-arm machine!
The predictions say it will be a while before I can try how it works under my cycling jersey. Perhaps I could wear it under a silk undershirt next Sunday, if it's cold enough for long underwear.
I haven't been wearing my silk undershirts much, but the matching tights are worn out. I suppose I should order another pair from Dharma before the price of silk goes up again.
There's supposed to be a snowstorm today, so I ran out for corn plasters and white vinegar. Nothing inspiring in the Reduced for Quick Sale bin — I've been using it to randomize menus, since I'm sick of everything I know how to cook — so I bought [yawn] a steak, a potato, and sour cream for tonight. Bought a bag of individually-sealed frozen pork chops for later. I really love having tilapia packaged that way, so I was delighted to see the chops.
I've been eating sour cream on the crock-pot raisin bread.
We've nearly eaten the beef roast I got the last time. We had leftover-beef sandwiches for supper twice in a row. And I had one for lunch today.
I've got a lot of pinfeed paper cluttering up the sewing room. Any of you have a pinfeed printer?
Fiddling with the new computer to match the changes I made on the old desktop after backing up everything onto the new computer. Opened a "folder" for the first time and GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! what's all this mess? I'm accustomed to opening a folder and seeing the contents of the folder.
And at that point in the writing, Dave came back from an hour or so of poking around, and told me that if I want to change the view, I go into the Tools menu. That makes sense once you know about it, so I should be able to remember.
So now my folders show me what's in them. But none of the icons work. I've got to devote some time to reading the DOSBOX manual. First I've got to *find* the manual.
Earlier, he had found out where Progman.exe was hidden, so I was able to retrieve meaningful icons for my shortcuts.
Why are the icons in an .exe file, and is there any way I can filet out icons that might conceivably be useful and put them all in one file? I don't think I'll ask; this sounds like one of those "first you earn a doctorate so you can understand the answer" questions.
The scanner reported a lot of 10-50s in the night, but the storm didn't really develop: there's a shin-high drift where the wind bounced off the house, but most places the snow doesn't even hide the grass.
Little change in the snow cover. I think I saw a flake falling.
Meant to sew today, but at naptime I haven't gotten beyond clearing off the ironing board.
Also cleaned my "letters" file some, moving clutter into sub-folders and deleting a couple of files. Then I created an .OTD document to make a sign for the linen closet, with some hope of finding the file when I want to finish the job.
What took the most time in the clean-up project was opening all the old files so that I could find out what they are and write appropriate labels. Two that I filed under "posters" had to be moved to "business letters".
I'm planning hamburger soup for supper.
Heavens to betsy, I not only dressed and ate a cooked breakfast before time to start walking, I had time to write this entry.
But just barely.
Oops! I'd walked too far to come back when I remembered that I'd intended to wear my insulated boots today. I did remember to take my cane. Didn't seriously need either.
When I looked out the window this morning, I thought the lake had frozen, then saw swans swimming and figured that it was just very, very calm. Then I went out to comb my hair, saw snow on the lake, and realized that the swans were in the streak that the creek keeps open — for some reason, the creek makes a sharp left turn after entering the lake.
Whoosh! Hanging the white wash out in the sun dramatizes how yellow and dingy it has gotten.
Only two loads today. Colored stuff washing now. I'll dry that load on hangers and racks to help the indoor humidity.
I'm writing this with Thunderbird on the other computer. I got a message from Scandisk this morning, but that was all I could perceive during the flash it was displayed, so we started Scandisk running again; after it re-started ten times, Dave remembered that it had to be run in Safe Mode so Windows won't mess it up by writing to the disk at random times. (What it has to write with all programs closed, I can't imagine.) Safe Mode scrambles my icons, but I don't have near as many as I had the last time I went into Safe Mode, and since it's due to a change in screen resolution, some remnants of order persist.
Significant amounts of snow have gone away, but the lake is still frozen. The ice looks thin, but the geese aren't breaking through, and I see a couple of swans sitting out there too.
We finally figured out that the screen saver was running — but screen savers have no need to write!
Anyhoo, it's all back together, icons and all, and Scandisk didn't find any errors.
The lake looks a lot slicker than it did this morning, and doesn't appear to be supporting anything bigger than sea gulls. Just looked again — a lot of geese out there now, and I thought I saw a couple of swans way, way out, but when I stepped outside to take a closer look, it turned out to be the reflection of patches of snow on a roof on the other side.
Rained cats and dogs in the night, but there are still streaks of snow where the deepest drifts were. I heard thunder, and Dave found a lit-up picture among the e-mails his motion-detector camera sent him.
The ice was only in patches, and only at the south end; now (13:00) the wind has come up and the lake is rough all over. I suppose some fragments may have been driven ashore instead of melted.
It's still raining. Mostly misting, but I'm staying in and cleaning up the sewing room.
No longer raining — it's snowing. It's supposed to clear up by morning; Dave has an appointment to service the Versa, and plans to walk to Wings for lunch while it's being worked on. I'm thinking of riding my bike in the morning. I can't remember what I did with my mittens last spring, but 27F isn't all that cold, and I did find a pair of heavy gloves.
I straightened the sewing room up some, triaged four old pairs of jeans into donors and recipients, and made macaroni and cheese garnished with spam slices for supper.
Yesterday evening we went to the Great Wall and made such pigs of ourselves that a light lunch killed all of the left-overs except a spoonful of rice. I *didn't* spill anything on my shirt!
I expected Dave to be shocked and astounded that I had bought a pair of shoes. He said he'd already got the news from Quicken.
I was shocked to find some.
I was getting ready to go to Aldi for salad and beans when I realized that I hadn't Shoe-Gooed the shoes that broke on my last ride, and I had nothing else stiff-soled that would fit into the toe clips. My Brooks running shoes are too long because of the empty space at the toe. So I tried my heavy sandals — too wide. So I got down the similar sandals I'd bought in a smaller size — these went, so I put on three pairs of socks and opened the Velcro wider — as far as possible at the toe.
And I'm off. But the "rugged" soles and Velcro straps stick when I'm trying to put my feet into the clips. I could help with a hand when putting the right foot in, but like to never got the left foot in, and I undid one of the Velcro straps doing it. Then I found that while trying to cram the sandal into it, I'd opened the toe strap so wide that it was ticking on the crank. I'd give a soft pluck with a mittened hand and close the loop a teeny little bit, then the crank would give it a mighty thwack and open it a whole bunch. This was getting dangerous, so I stopped and started over.
So I got to Sprawlmart in reasonable comfort, and decided to go through both discount shoe stores on general principles — I did find a pair of children's shoes that fit once, and both of them have lots of children's shoes.
Lo and behold, the first pair of oxfords I saw in the first store *fit* — so I put my sandals and two pairs of my socks into the box and walked out in the new shoes. (After a while, I did stop and cut off the tags.) They slip at the heels, but I wasn't planning to walk in them. Then when I got home, I found that there are two more lacing holes to snug them up around the heel. I don't know yet whether that works.
The size is 7W. The last time I wore anything smaller than 7 1/2, Mom paid for them.
I stopped at McDonald's for lunch: one small fries and a pump of ketchup. Before that, I stopped at the pet store and bought several cans of expensive brands of food. The cheap brand suits him better, but this will provide a change of pace. Still nobody selling soup or gravy for cats. Diluting canned food doesn't work because it disperses into nasty bits of grit instead of blending, even if I boil it.
The huge box in my pannier was awkward when I was packing my groceries — I refrained from buying all but the essentials, and still ended up hanging a bag off the side. Much to the concern of a motorist who watched me do it.
I wonder why shoe boxes are so much bigger than they used to be? I have some old ones to prove it. And I'm sure those are larger than the classic "it will fit into a shoebox" shoebox. All except the Capezio shoeboxes; I suspect that those are smaller than the classic size.
I made hamburger soup again. Left out the can of corn this time, as Dave is worrying about his sugar. I put in one of the cans of beans I bought at Aldi, and a can of mushrooms. And a can of diced tomatoes — this is canned soup!
Freshening the leftovers by adding macaroni is out of the question, so I'll have to think of another menu for tomorrow. Perhaps I should thaw a pork chop.
Breakfast was egg and newly-bought sausage for Dave, sausage, 3-pepper and onion, and two slices of bread for me.
It's hard to see through the falling snow, but I don't think there's a speck of ice on the lake. Lots of geese and some swans, though.
Cleared up in the afternoon, and I went to Owen's for peanut butter and soda and seltzer. There was a half-price sale on the seltzer, so I got rather a lot.
Still snow on the roads, so (remembering the only thing I learned in skid school) I kept my speed around twenty, even when the pavement was visible. Very few people gained on me. (Heard a lot of 10-50s on the scanner, so I guess not all drivers were as careful as those I saw.)
Found the kim chee, but no cracker cheese in a disposable butter dish. Perhaps I looked in the wrong places.
The lake froze over in the night. Or perhaps sooner; I didn't look at it late in the day.
I'm annoyed that I didn't think to take stuff to the Goodwill when I went to Aldi.
My old shoes will go to the trash; seems a pity when the leather is almost unworn, but these aren't the kind of shoes that one can have re-soled — and they don't fit well enough that I would if they were.
I'm still chirping and twittering over my new shoes. I think this is the first time I've had lace-up shoes that fit since the death of the old guy who used to work at the shoe shop on Maiden Lane in Albany. No, there were the bright-blue Avocet touring shoes that I found in a clearance barrel at a bike shop because they were too soft to use for their intended purpose, and wore for slopping around until they fell apart.
Yesterday, Dave put a new plug on my old iron. The plastic on the old plug had gone brittle from decades of exposure to heat. I haven't noticed this one getting hot — it's a huge yellow plug, apparently intended for heavy-duty power tools. It's also easier to plug and unplug than the old one. (Partly because it has a bigger handle.)
Come sunset, the water kept open by the creek flowing into the lake was crowded with geese. Must be the only open water for miles around. Dave called my attention to two swans walking through the snow on the lake. I only spotted one of them — for once, they are perfectly camouflaged.
My plan for today was to baste the corners of a patch I intend to sew on an old pair of jeans, then settle down to serious sewing. Come nap time and I hadn't got any further than to carry the patch out to the chair with good light.
And nap time was way late, too. I slept past time to start supper, but Dave was engrossed in learning to use the new <video> tag and didn't notice. It was quick and delicious. When I stopped by the Manager's Special bin for inspiration yesterday there was nothing it it but steak, and I'd found two little potatoes from our garden buried in the vegetable bin a few days before. I called the tiny tubers "low calorie potatoes"; Dave reached for the sour cream and said "not for long". Else, just lots of raw veggies, including "grape" tomatoes.
Don't know what I did with the morning. I did reprogram ctl-spacebar to type when I'm in a file with the extension .htm. It will still type a hard space when in other documents, but I presume that I'll forget that again. (I had to look it up in the manual.) Since I no longer have a printer, there's no use for hard spaces.
Which is truly weird — when we got our first computer, we referred to it as an expensive mantel clock because it was worthless until the printer arrived! (I bought the TRS-80 to replace a worn-out typewriter.)
It's supposed to be a clear day tomorrow. It's also supposed to snow six inches in the night, and it's got a good start. I probably won't go for a ride.
It's gloriously sunny out there — made all the brighter by shin-deep snow. Boy's City Drive is white, and there'd be no sign that we have a driveway if the paperboy hadn't left footprints.
Saturday is supposed to be my day to take outdoor exercise, but I think I'll give it a pass.
I'd have been better served by my insulated boots, but I had to try out my new shoes.
Aside from making me walk around even the shallowest snowbanks, they worked quite well.
I tried baking a skinless chicken thigh with vegetables, the way I bake breaded stuffed chicken breasts, and it was good — but I should have baked two thighs. It shrank a lot more than a thigh does when I fry it or poach it.
Two thighs is what's left in the package, so I'll try it again in a few days. And slice the sweet potato thinner.
The blacks are the larger load, even though the other is mixed whites and coloreds. On the other hand, the blacks include a pair of gray pants, two red items, and a navy undershirt.
The rain took off most of the snow, and is predicted to continue off and on until it turns into snow in the evening. Near as I can tell there's still ice on the lake, but it must be mighty thin — it hasn't been frozen long, and it snowed on it as soon as it formed. I wouldn't be surprised to see that the other end of the lake is entirely open.
On the other hand, the rain cleared the roads and tomorrow is supposed to be partly cloudy. On the third hand, the snow tonight will probably mess them up again.
Haven't even been out to look at the roads.
Yesterday morning, a fellow from Freecycle took the laptop I bought for $10 fifteen or twenty years ago off my hands. I fobbed two fileboxes of 3.5" floppies off on him too, even though only three of them had anything to do with the laptop.
I got two requests for it after Yahoo posted the TAKEN notice — both in textspeak (different dialects), so I suspect that they didn't understand what "DOS laptop" meant. I'm pretty sure the fellow who took it did.
I'm just now ready to start working — and I want my lunch. I had a big mess of corned-beef hash for breakfast, too.
The lake thawed — or got the remaining ice blown off it — in the night.
The lake is frozen over again. I think this is the third time. No snow, but there is frost on everything.
I found a bruise on my belly when I woke up. I couldn't imagine how I could get bruised there; Dave pointed out that the backs of our dining chairs are the right height. I think maybe I did carry one with the top resting against me a few days ago.
While I'm doing organ recitals, my left leg has been aching in the night for days. Oddly, pressing on the tendon behind the knee stops it, and sometimes it stays stopped for a while. Tensing the sore spot works too, but that doesn't stick.
The April Analog has another of the stories about people who have been engineered to be unable to discount the future, which somehow makes them superior to people with fully-functional brains. Every time I read one, I think about the British king who guaranteed that Britannia would always rule the waves by planting trees so that in the twentieth century there would be plenty of hundred-year-old oaks for making masts.
My leg didn't hurt last night. Perhaps the whole problem was that I've gotten out of the habit of walking every day.
On the other hand, maybe I was too tired to notice. The crochet class I was helping with had one third the number of teachers needed, and it went on twice too long. Then during the clean-up I learned that we don't get them back until next *month*!
I don't think my particular student will be back. He was just miserable during the second half of the class even though I called a time-out and took him for a vertical loop through the building.
And, arrrgh. My raw-silk shirt was all the coat I needed for the walk up — I carried my yellow coat in my bag and wore it for the walk home — and when I took the silk shirt off, I discovered that my T-shirt was inside-out. Luckily, I was using the coat rack in front of the ladies' room, so I bipped in and flipped it — whereupon I discovered that the Jin Do Pork had *not* washed out. Nothing I could do but pretend not to notice.
And it's my newest long-sleeved shirt, too. I'll try rubbing Ivory soap on the stain.
It just came out of the washer — looks clean, but the stain may show up again when it dries. <checks> It's showing up already. I'll try putting undiluted laundry liquid on it next washday.
I washed today because Dave put on his last clean pair of short socks this morning. I found only three pairs in the wash, puzzled over it because he buys socks by the dozen, went ahead and ran the load.
When it came out of the washer, I cleared last Monday's wash off the rack to make room for the new load. Ayup, three rods of socks.
Oh, well, I did want to work on that stain. And now I have enough clean underwear that I'm not committed to washing on Monday.
The extreme south end of the lake is mostly frozen; the rest of the lake is mostly open.
Grump. When I got up from my nap, all the ice was gone. But the lake is sparkling beautifully in brilliant sunshine. Good time to take a walk, if I had somewhere to go.
The Imperial Royal Tours catalog came in the mail. None of the trips appeal to me — but the Lafayette to Shipshewana Fleamarket tour on June 13th makes me think it would be cool to have a few folks come here the day before and drive to Shipshewana in the morning.
Pity I've got only one spare bed.
I took a quick lap around the point eight. Lake is still frozen at the tip, and there's a wide band of broken ice piled up at the border between the ice and open water.
There was a wide band of ice that probably connected to the remnant at the southern tip when I woke up, but it was gone by three in the afternoon.
I'd been planning to go to the pajama party at Village at Winona, but it ended at ten and I didn't wake up until nine thirty.
Dave is getting serious about his diabetic diet — so in the last two days I baked a loaf of bread and he made two batches of muffins and bought a loaf of pumpernickel.
And for supper tonight I opened a can of "german potato salad" (sliced white potatoes canned in vinegarette)
I didn't think of wearing boots until I stepped off into a dense flurry of snow this morning, and didn't think about carrying my cane (despite looking at it twice while putting on a coat from behind the door it was hanging on the doorknob of) until I stepped on a patch of ice and fell flat on my back.
Luckily, I fell perfectly straight (not to mention the padding provided by my long heavy coat) and didn't injure anything except the very tip of my left little finger. I can still detect the injury, but it doesn't object to typing. I don't know whether I hurt it by tapping it on the pavement or by getting my glove wet with melting snow.
I reflected, on my way up the hill, that I was sure of making it home because none of the snow-plow drivers would be in church that day, but when I came out after the service, all the roads and most of the walkways had melted clear in the bright sun. I got home exactly in time — just as I set foot under the front porch, another dense flurry started.
Once again, we woke to ice that is melting rapidly and probably will be gone by nightfall. Dave said that we were going to wear the lake out.
At least it can't develop potholes.
I stayed up all night reading The Shadow of Albion by Norton & Edghill — went to bed after six, and was up at nine-thirty, which is only half an hour late. Not quite as surprising as it sounds; I normally lie awake until after three. I'm patching an old pair of pants in the intervals of waiting for my funnies to load. (I was; now I'm writing Banner.)
Breakfast was a mug of hot chocolate and one of Dave's apple muffins. He says he had a muffin and a steamed egg.
While grating chocolate for tomorrow's breakfast — real chocolate is better warmed over — I realized that Shadow of Albion is a re-write of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Grump. I can live with emphasis being dropped out, but underlining titles is semantic; it should be preserved. Perhaps I should ask on alt.html
Bad news and good news: On closer inspection, the shirt I dripped Jin Do Pork on isn't the new one, it's one that I recently repaired by cutting the neckband off and sewing it back on, which is why it has the style of neckband I initiated with my last-made T-shirt. I don't mind that this one is relegated to underwear. And I may yet get the stain out.
Hey, we're out of January.
Yesterday was sunny and warm, so I went for a bike ride — I was nearly to the library when I realized I'd forgotten to bring the book I wanted to return, so I doubled back to a place where I could cross over to Winona Avenue and bought a spool of thread instead. Thence to Avila's for peanuts and tortilla chips, through the roundabout to chili cheese fries for lunch. Stopped at Marsh on the way back and bought lemon juice, lime juice, and eggs. And took a lap around Sherman & Lin's, and went in one door and out the other at the pawn shop.
This time there was a semi on the lane that surprised me last time, but the speed limit on the roundabout is 15 mph, so I could quite easily get out of its way.
And I used only two napkins eating my chili cheese fries. Practice, man.
It was canned soup for supper again.
I've been trying to see whether Dave fixed it so I can read PC-write files on the wide monitor, but haven't persuaded DOSbox to open any real files under the protocol that doesn't stretch the lines over the full width and squash them up to fit into half the length. I think something called "mounting" is required, but that so-called manual is very confusing even when I manage to open it.
Took my nap too late and slept until time to slap food on the table. Luckily, I had a big bowl of left-over hamburger-and-cans soup in the fridge, so I poured in a can of beef broth and warmed it up.
Dave had done disk maintenance — defragging and so forth — on my new computer while I was out.