Yesterday Dave remarked "everything is happening at once". The boy from Beaver Dam came to clean our gutters and roof, and brought a spotter. While they were still working, Brent started moving the dirt piled on the beach into the holes left by the stump grinding. Then when they had gone, Verne Gross called to say he'd make our attic fan usable today. But this morning, Verne called again to say it was too wet to work.
I'm washing clothes anyway, because I'm out of socks and some other underwear. I plan to dry it on racks in the garage. Except for Dave's socks, which he likes dried in the dryer with a "softener" sheet.
In previous years, I've run all over town collecting chips. This year I went to Aldi and took one of each flavor that I wouldn't mind having left over — two of the plain potato chips Dave prefers, and three of the sweet-potato chips I prefer.
Yesterday morning I set out to buy chips and bread. I went to Big R, where I bought three plants on clearance — but they rang up at full price and I didn't notice until I was punching the tape into Quicken. The *only* reason I bought that pepper was that it was fifty cents, grrr.
Then I went to Aldi and got the chips first, because they are nearest the door, which made putting other things in the basket a problem. I put a can of tomato juice on the lower platform, and it rolled off when I made a quick stop. Then I turned it ninety degrees so that it would lie between two wires of the rack, and it stayed put.
I carefully saved out two bags to use when I stocked up on bread at Aunt Millies — and then drove right past the outlet store and came home.
I briefly considered making a special trip, but we aren't quite out of bread yet — it can wait until after the fireworks.
Today is washday. I planned to buy soda in the evening, but upon taking inventory, I found that we are already stocked up on all flavors. Still need yogurt, sour cream, cheese, vegetable cocktail, King Oscar Kippers, devilled ham, and mayo. Also sun seeds, but I can't get those at Kroger.
Then again, maybe I'll go shopping in the morning.
I bet the store is jammed.
I plan to stop at the Trailhouse on the way. For two days I've been looking glumly at the flat front tire on my bike; this evening the light dawned: We're *rich*! I don't have to fix my own flats.
So I put the spare front wheel on my bike and put my front wheel in the car. In the process, I discovered that it wasn't the tube that failed, it was the casing.
At least it failed in the garage.
Which reminds me that I never got around to putting the number of a taxi company into my cell phone.
I had to pump up the spare. I never believed that schraeders being harder to pump up was one of the reasons I prefer presta — but my land, it *did* make a difference.
I assembled one pair of my new jeans today, all but the waistband. I think I could get them finished in time to wear them to the parties.
Drafted the waistband patterns today, and tore off a strip of interfacing. It's depressing how much longer the new patterns are than the old patterns.
What's more embarrassing than finding a food stain on the front of your shirt? Realizing that you haven't eaten anything of that color today.
I dropped a wheel off at the Trailhouse today. I've been eying a flat front tire for a couple of days; yesterday I realized: hey, we're rich! I can *pay* somebody to fix that. So I put the spare on and put the wheel in the car to be dropped off at the Trailhouse on my way to buy groceries and party food — though I forgot and had to stop on the way back instead; I came down Park Avenue chanting "Trailhouse, Trailhouse" so I wouldn't drive right past again!
It turned out I'd have needed to go to the Trailhouse even if I'd felt up to changing the tube myself: when I took the wheel off and inspected it, I saw that it was the *casing* that had failed. Good thing it didn't fail during one of the long rides I've taken recently. Must have been leaking a little all along; I pumped it up before going to the Farmer's Market last Saturday, and I'd been thinking the tire was a tad soft for days.
The spare wheel hadn't been used in months, so I had to pump it up too — and it was a *lot* harder to pump up than the wheel I'd pumped on Saturday, right from the beginning when there wasn't any pressure to work against. It's true that shrader valves are harder to pump than presta valves!
She said that they'd have to send to the other store for a 27" x 1 1/4" casing, but might have the wheel tomorrow.
And I forgot to go get it yesterday. Probably won't have time today. I'll stop in on my way to the Farmer's Market tomorrow.
Mission creep: Yesterday I went to the rock pile for three clean rocks to put on the napkins and paper plates to keep them from blowing away. I selected four — which is just as well, because one of them turned out to have some paint splashes that wouldn't come off. As I was on my way to the hose to rinse them off, I noticed that there wasn't much dirt stuck to them and decided to wash them in the sink, where I could use soap. Once inside I noticed the glass saucepan I'd used to make the iced tea, and put them in that, covered them with a strong bleach solution, and soaked them several hours. Then I put the rough one back in and soaked it overnight. Those are four *clean* rocks!
While I was digging tulip bulbs yesterday, something I didn't see stung the base of my thumb. Judging by the way I reacted, it might have been a yellowjacket. I think the swelling has gone down some this morning. I tried to keep my arm on a pile of pillows last night.
It definitely has gone down — it doesn't feel better when I raise my hand over my head.
I kept a fire going most of the day yesterday, and plan to re-start it when we come back from the picnic. I took some greasy rags and papers out intending to get it ready for the match, but the ashes are still warm, so I piled the kindling to one side.
The garden isn't honestly dry enough to Culta-Eze, but the weed situation had gotten desperate. Most of what I plowed up was immediately re-planted, but if it doesn't rain, the broken soil will dry up and I can cultivate properly tomorrow.
I plowed up a new potato by mistake, then later took a spading fork to the potato plant that had died, and found a few small potatoes, just enough to make a diabetic side dish. I plan to cook them for supper tomorrow night. Perhaps by rolling them around in my single-egg skillet.
Loads of fun at the picnic, but we got tired and came back early. It felt so good to come back into the house that I think we were fried rather than tired, though. Overeating didn't help any.
Dave spent a long time sitting in his easy chair with the air filter blowing directly on him — and a big furry cat in his lap. Al twitched his back fur when I aimed the fan at Dave, but didn't get up.
Filled the cooler: ?? why didn't I put Diet Pepsi in the fridge? Oh well, I'm filling the cooler a couple of hours early, I can put Pepsi in the fridge now.
But we don't *have* any Diet Pepsi. I told Dave that I couldn't believe that I hadn't bought any, and he said he likes GT cola better, so I'll just strike Pepsi off my shopping list permanently.
I hope I didn't go overboard replacing the cans I took out; there are always a lot of cans left in the cooler that have to go back into the fridge. This year I put in only three cans of each flavor —before putting in more Mountain Dew and GT Cola to make up for the missing Pepsi— but I bought a lot of different flavors.
I meant to put in a lot of plain, but when I got out what I thought was half a carton of plain, it was lemon. So there are only two, maybe three cans of plain seltzer.
I got a surprise when I said "time to dust off the Wheelie Cool" — it really was dusty; looked like more than a year's worth of dirt. We've been using the smaller cooler instead. Luckily, Dave had the pressure washer hooked up. (He got his socks wet.)
I don't think there is any more to be done before the guests start to arrive. Just heard Wildman's dinner bell ringing: 5:47. I guess they have their picnic at supper time.
Got a wild hare and covered the picnic table with newsprint paper —Dave said "but I pressure washed it yesterday!— a few minutes later I looked out and the paper was all rumpled despite being weighted at each end, and there were drops of water on it. So I smoothed it out, weighted it some more, and resolved to throw the paper on the fire just before carrying the food out.
The parade is forming up. I don't feel like going out into the heat to watch.
Finally got to use my candle warmer that I've had for years and years. There was barely enough cheese dip left to put in the fridge, so I'd better write down the recipe.
One cup of milk; I scanted the measure a little, and thought that I should have scanted it more, as the dip came out runny, but it thickened a tad as the temperature dropped.
Shaken up with a coffee measure (one ounce, two tablespoons) of whole-grain white-wheat flour, a quarter teaspoon of salt, and an eighth of a teaspoon of Aldi's chili powder, which has a detectable amount of cinnamon in it.
Brought to a boil in my smallest cast-iron saucepan, which I had greased with at least a tablespoon of butter.
Then dumped in chunks of extra-sharp cheddar cheese. I should have cut the chunks smaller; took a while to stir them in. I used about half of what remained of a one-pound block after making macaroni and cheese that called for eight ounces, but it looked like more than four ounces. [I later realized that I'd made half a recipe of the macaroni and cheese.]
Then stuck in a spoon and lit the candle in the warmer. All that partying, and there were only two serving spoons and a stirring spatula to wash. Well, I had to clean the saucepan after putting the little bit of cheese sauce away.
But the garlic-chive dip went languishing. Next year, I'll make only one quart of yogurt into dip.
I've been yearning for a chance to make cheese gravy again, and yesterday I noticed spots of mold on the edges of some deli-sliced cheese, so this morning I had welsh rabbit for breakfast. Surprisingly little cheese had to be cut out and thrown away.
Münster isn't half as good as cheddar in this recipe! But when I stirred the left-overs into the remaining cheddar dip, and added a few drops of Frank's Sauce, it improved considerably. I may have welsh rabbit again for lunch.
I picked our first harvest of ground cherries yesterday, and got a handful. Two had fallen to the ground, but were protected by their husks. We have eaten all but three.
I have to move caution flags as I hang the clothes. I think I'll just shove them along the line when they get in the way, so that the next time we have people in the yard after dark, we can push them back to the middle.
Only two loads, one white, one everything else. The only all-black garment is a pair of socks. I was much worried at finding only one pair, when I remembered that I'd been wearing the other pair when I got caught in the rain: it was still on the drying rack.
My white linen do-rag didn't come clean, and there are pink stains on my best white bra. I must run a bleach load soon — and remember to put those two in.
The pink stains usually improve considerably when dried in the open air. And stop appearing for a while after I wash a load in hot water and bleach.
Rain threatened, so I brought in the almost-dry whites and put them on a rack in the garage, and put the darks on another rack — now all is done except for ironing my V-ribbon poncho shirt.
And putting clean cases on all the pillows I stripped just before putting the white load in.
This is the first visual migraine I've had in ages. Looked it up in Wikipedia & it says that the proper name for it is "scintillating scotoma" so as not to confuse it with retinal migraine.
Re-cased the pillows; still haven't ironed the poncho shirt. Now I need to iron my villa-olive shirt too.
Walked to the Trailhouse and had the boy change the tube in my tire. I don't think that he knows as much about it as I do, but he has bigger hands.
Made the Tom Yum soup for supper. Not bad; I think I'll buy another package of mushrooms and make the rest of the carton of "soup base" into another batch.
I dug up the two volunteer tiger lilies in the lily-of-the-valley bed, and Dave gave them to Denise. Hope she wants more when it's time to thin the main bed of lilies.
Pulled a few weeds while I was messing around out there. The Wandering Jew is wandering at a remarkable speed.
Dave saw a doctor and a dentist both today. I'm feeling a little nervous because there is nothing written on my calendar for the whole of July — have I forgotten something?
Well, the fair is this week. It was reasonably cool while the sun was still up today; perhaps I'll go tomorrow or the next day. But there is no place to sit down and rest a while at the fair. And one has to carry a bottle of water everywhere.
I'm planning to go to the fair after my nap, and leave Dave to scrounge his own supper. There's left-over macaroni and cheese with ham, left-over Tom Yum soup, and frozen dinners. I'm betting that he has a snack at the Cerulean Garden.
I Culta-Ezed the garden, which is very weedy after this long rain. Noted that one of the four multipliers was missing, dug it up, didn't find a bulb. I did find a pale sprout that looked as though it might be an onion trying for a second chance. so I re-planted it with the leaves exposed. The other onions don't look too healthy; I don't think I enriched the soil enough.
Also saw that the volunteer potato had died back, dug it, and got one small potato. The last potato planted, when I bought a single seed potato at Big R, is the only one that is flourishing. I must put the five-tine cultivator on the Culta-Eze and plow up all the row, because I think that there was more than one survivor of the first planting. but I can no longer tell where they were.
The volunteer matches the red potatoes that I planted, so I suspect that the critter that kept digging them up re-buried one.
Lost the bet: he went to Noa Noa for a hamburger.
Had a veggie gyro at the fair. Sandwiches that have forks in them ought not to be sold from booths that have no tables or chairs. But when I went off in search of the senior-citizen tent —there's an Extremely Loud Concert tent in the spot where it used to be— I came across a picnic table set up for mothers from the campground to watch children in the sandbox, and used that.
Later on I bought a cup of soft-serve ice cream that the Lions inexplicably advertise as a "small shake".
If I hadn't forgotten to put my cell phone in my pocket, I'd have stayed to watch the fireman show. It began at eight, and it was eight twenty when I got home, so it must have been about to start when I walked past that booth on my way to the bike.
I'm pretty sure that there's a water fountain inside the fence (there's a campground there, after all) but this year I didn't find it. I wasn't looking too hard, since I was already on my way back to the bike when my bottle ran out.
In previous years I suffered badly from there being no place to sit and rest —even though I stole a 4-Her's chair a couple of times— but this year I walked past the new memorial garden without trying out any of the benches, and wasn't tired at all when I'd taken six laps to see all the aisles and was ready to go home.
Perhaps it was because I walked slowly and deliberately; perhaps because it wasn't particularly hot. In fact, when I got home it was warmer inside than out, and I took the newspaper out to the picnic table.
Dave found some baby things on the lawn Saturday. Sunday I told Martha that I'd bring them to her place today, so that she could take them to the mother. I put the burp cloth on the pile of hot whites in the hope that the mold would come out. When I unfolded the receiving blanket before throwing it onto the pile of colored stuff I saw that it was moldy too, so I put it in the bleach load — it feels like polyester, but better to ruin the blanket than to get live mold spores on a baby. The mold on the innermost fold looked pretty bad, and might come out as a hole.
Which reminds me of a post I read recently, I've forgotten on which forum, in which a fellow said that the only answer to a foot-fungus infection is to throw out all your socks and buy new ones whenever you suspect that they may have been contaminated. Apparently, he had never heard of hot water.
When I opened the machine just now to add vinegar to the first rinse, the burp cloth floated to the top and appeared to have come clean. And the receiving blanket is still green and brown.
Once I had a dishtowel with green stripes that turned brown in the first wash and disappeared entirely in the second.
On Saturday, I bought ten dollars worth of fruit and vegetables at the fairgrounds market, and a half dozen ears of corn downtown. I forgot to serve corn with the Tom Yum soup that night, but had corncakes for breakfast Sunday morning — we woke up an hour early— and steamed corn with marinated steak and our entire potato harvest that night. This morning the last two ears went into more corncakes.
I had an interesting moment while slicing the second ear with a knife covered with corn pulp from scraping the first: slicing corn with the back of the knife works well enough that I was starting the second cut before I figured out what was going on. Perhaps some time I'll try scraping corn off without slicing it first.
I don't remember what I did with Friday.
A while back two thoughts collided: all but one of my raggedy old short-sleeved T-shirts have been consigned to the rag bin, and I never did like the jersey with the tuck around the chest. So I've been wearing an old jersey for dirty work — and I keep trying to put things into smock pockets that aren't there, even though I have five other pockets, plus a pencil pocket.
When this one is in the wash and I'm wearing the other raggedy old shirt, will I try to put things in my back pockets?
Dave says that he intends to postpone his trip to New York until September.
When the tree that had been holding up the clothesline was removed, we tied the line to a birch about twice as far from the sycamore as the ash had been, and significantly closer to the cottonwood. I still tend to think of the east-west line as short and high and the north-south line as long and low, though it's the other way around now. As I was pinning the hot whites to the east-west line this morning, I started thinking "I'm about to run out of space", looked around, and I was a few feet from the scar left by removing the ash tree.
Dave took a good look at the remaining ashes, and this morning he called Beaver Dam again. They will be out Friday to make an estimate, and will take them down some time in August. If we wait too long, we'll have to call Clay and that would cost more. Beaver Dam does it all with ropes, and it isn't safe to climb dead trees.
Now I've got hot whites on the east-west line, warm whites on the north-south line, and blacks in the washer. Should have put my best bra in the bleach load — and egad, I forgot to wash my do-rag, which is hanging on the bike. One of my reasons for running a bleach load was to get that in.
I ended up with the blacks in the sunshine and the whites in the shade. I am not sufficiently annoyed to take everything down and hang it up again. Particularly when it's 91F out there. The weather bureau is advising everyone without AC to spend the middle of the day at the mall.
Opened one of my emergency cans for supper. We had speef sandwiches with swiss cheese and fresh tomato.
What a weird dream: I was furiously angry, and the people responsible for my state kept coming up with reasons other than "we have behaved abominably", most of them insulting.
And I woke up thoroughly awake. At 4:30.
When the day cooled off yesterday, I walked downtown, and left a lid marked "return to WL church" in the fellowship cabinet, and left the receiving blanket and the potholderish textile hanging on Martha's doorknob.
Surprisingly, I slept only half an hour late.
The old typing chair isn't satisfactory. I'm not happy at buying another at the store where I bought the one that wore out before the upholstery got dirty, but it's either that or go to Fort Wayne, and I haven't even a faint clue as to where the shopping in Fort Wayne is.
I was all over the Capital District, and even knew where things were in Schenectady and Saratoga Springs. I wonder why this is my thirteenth year here and I haven't ventured beyond Warsaw?
Perhaps because that first step is such a large one. For a large part of our time in Voorheesville, even buying groceries meant going to Guilderland or Delmar.
I rarely wear shorts because my knees ache when there's a draft on them, but this evening I decided that I'd rather hurt than put on jeans. I've got to get around to making thin linen pedal pushers.
We have a full-length mirror at the end of the hall. In shorts, my legs look like Popeye's arms.
I think I should ride a quarter century every week this summer, so I went to Chinworth Bridge by way of Goose Lake today. Also went around three sides of half a square getting from Chinworth to the Fox Farm roundabout. Google Maps says I rode 23.2 miles — in 1 hour 55 minutes. Since I left at ten and got back at half-past three, I don't think I was quite that fast.
I ate a light lunch so I could stop at Penguin Point; smelled fried chicken as I was coming out of the roundabout — oops!
I should have turned right instead of left. Oh, well, in heat like this it wouldn't have been safe to bring left-over chicken home. Then I got to the shaved-ice stand in Avilla's parking lot with a good excuse to buy shaved ice for the first time — half an hour before they opened.
No change at Avilla.
Before taking the three sides of a rectangle, I rode from Chinworth to CCAC, where I had lunch, then rode back to 350W on Old 30. I had intended to re-fill my bottles at CCAC, but they were having some sort of paid-admission event that cut me off from the only drinking fountain. Fortunately, I'd anticipated some such situation and put the last two bottles of PurAqua into my panniers. (We also have one bottle of AquaFina and an un-opened case of some other bottled water.)
I brought one bottle of PurAqua home unopened because I got to Owen's West before I'd quite finished the first bottle. Since by then the PurAqua was weak tea, I filled my other bottle but didn't top off the one I was using. Never touched the bottle filled at Owens West, save for sipping to see which bottle was colder. I finished the tea when I got to the library and re-filled that bottle there, then topped it off at the emergency room. I calculate six bottles total. Two I started with, one bottle of tea, one re-filled with PurAqua, one re-filled at the library, one re-fill at the hospital.
Freezing a bottle of tea was such a great success that I re-filled it and put it back in the freezer as soon as I got home. When I'd drunk all the melted tea, I emptied my water bottle into the tea bottle, shook it up with the ice, poured it back into the bike bottle, and repeated at intervals until the remaining ice came out with the diluted tea.
Finally got around to putting Fast Cab into my cell phone's phone book. Alphabetical order puts the taxi on the last row of the first screen, and Dave's cell phone first, which is convenient. When Dave saw me doing that, he programmed Fast Cab into his cell phone too.
When I undressed into the washer after Wednesday's ride, my gloves bled all over my do rag and jersey. I soaked them overnight in detergent, then bleached them in the morning. The stains came out, but now my do-rag is so clean and white and my jersey is so bright and yellow that I hate to think of putting them on and sweating on them tomorrow morning.
And I got all the stains out of my Sunday bra.
The Farmer's market won't be much fun. I have summer squash and snow peas left from last Saturday, I bought corn when I passed a farm stand on Wednesday's ride, and Dave's tomatoes have started to bear. They have more flavor than the Yoder's tomatoes. Even the green parts are good.
More fun than I thought: the banana peppers and hungarian wax peppers are in, and I bought a half-pound head of cabbage. Nothing interesting downtown. I stopped at Owens East on the way back and bought eggs and a ribeye steak.
Refilled my levothyroxine stick yesterday — or tried to; there were only three pills left in the bottle.
Having to refill every thirty days gets old, particularly since I can't refill levothyroxine early, so there's only a few days after I *can* refill before I *have* to refill. I hope I remember to ask Dr. Darr to change that the next time I see him. But the same law that says I can't refill early might say I can't have more than thirty days at a time. (All drug warriors should be staked out on ant hills with a bottle of painkiller juuuust out of reach.)
So I went straight to the Easy-Fill Web site. Much to my surprise, Dave got a phone call that the prescription was ready only a few minutes later. But it was too late to get to the store before the pharmacy closed. I plan to be busy Monday, and I reflected that pharmacies are *supposed* to be open when everything else is closed (even though it's been the other way around for decades now), so going there today wouldn't be breaking the Sabbath. So I packed a lunch, ate it in the church kitchen after the service, and walked to Owen's from there. I was past due for a long walk, but thought that adding a three-mile walk to my usual Sunday one-mile walk would be a bit much.
I probably could have walked four miles, but I didn't like the almost-total lack of shade on the "Green"way one little bit. On the way out I followed Chestnut to Martha's house, then went down the deprecated right-of-way to Sunday lane and followed that walkway to the hotel. It was shady the whole way, and the wildflowers planted on the hillside were in full bloom. But I had to follow the Greenway between the Hotel and the trailhead, and on the way back, I absent-mindedly stayed on it. Almost went past Ninth Street, forgetting that Kathy had invited me to drop in on my way back. We had a nice visit, and she gave me a pint of water and a bag of blueberries.
This evening, the Wabash River Cycling Club mailing list included a message trying to get a group together to go to a Century Weekend-like ride in Howe on August 2, 3, and 4. So I Google Mapsed Howe, and found that it's a lot closer to here than to Lafayette. But still nearly sixty miles away, which is too far to go and ride and drive home on the same day, and I'm not quite interested enough to get a motel and stay for all three days as the Wabash boys plan to do.
Found the Web site of the event, and one can stay in the dorm rather cheaply. But I still don't want to go.
Dave brought the air compressor in and blew out all the keyboards. They really needed it — I think some of that fur dates back to Fred.
Washday, as usual for Monday. Will have to dry everything inside. The National Weather Service says that Wednesday will be a good day for my ride to Sidney. I'm not terribly excited about going. Perhaps I'll ask Dave to dump me off in Columbia City instead.
Did. It was a fiasco. First, after all that careful planning, and checking carefully to make sure I had country shoes to change into for the trip back, when we took the bike out of the car and put it together, I couldn't find my helmet. (It was at home on the desk.)
Then after traversing the full length of the shopping center, I crossed 30, gained a little south, and headed west toward downtown. I overshot and went clear to the fairgrounds. Thinking that I'd passed by it on the south (I'd actually gone by on the north), I rode back to the first east-west road (I'd gone clear to 30 before finding a sign that told me what I was beside was the fairgrounds), went north when I had a chance until I could see traffic on 30, overshot again. Went to Walgreens to pull off the street and sort through my snippets of map (I how I wish it were still possible to *buy* maps instead of printing out snippets from the Web!) for one that showed the intersection of Line Road and 30. Lo and behold, one of them had this very Walgreen's marked on it. The courthouse wasn't marked on any of them, but the dime dropped and I set out looking for the place where North Line changed to South Line. I turned off on less-trafficked streets though, and I thought I was east of the square, so I was probably at Jackson (well, the sign said *east* Jackson when I turned!) and Walnut when I happened to look back and see the top of a downtown-type building.
So I finally got to have my tenderloin, after stepping into the bookshop, which is now all games except for one rack of Marvel-type comix. I took "chips" instead of fries, planning to leave them, but it turned out that the Northside Grille makes its own chips, and I ate every last crumb, and more than half my tenderloin, leaving only a very small piece of meat to bring home in my cooler. (Plus a pickle spear.) But I didn't feel overstuffed until after getting into the car.
Then I took a lap around the square and headed west on Van Buren, intending to follow it all the way to 30 as Google Maps had suggested. But I happened to notice the intersection with Old Trail, which is a very hard intersection to spot, said "with no rear-view mirror, I'd better take the less-travelled road," and swerved onto it. When I'd gone too far to go back, I said "You idiotic dummy! It's on back roads that you *need* a mirror — on US 30, you *know* what's behind you!"
Then a few miles after I remembered to stop and change into my hill-climbing shoes, I made a lousy shift and got the chain so wedged in that I had to stop, lay the bike down, and untangle it. (I can usually recover an overshift by shifting the chain back onto the inner chainwheel.) After that, the chain skipped about every six revolutions of the pedals, particularly when I was pushing hard. I stopped several times to try to figure out what was wrong, and narrowed it down to a stiff link, but I couldn't find out which link to try to work the joint back and forth. A while after telling a nice policeman I was just fine (He'd stopped during one of my chain-inspection stops) I realized that no, I *couldn't* get home that way. So the next time I found a marked intersection (it turned out that I'd gone straight in a spot where Old Trail turned right) I stopped and called Dave. Told him that I was in no hurry, but I suspect that he cut what he was doing short. (The whole point of this trip was to get exercise, so walking for a while wouldn't hurt anything, and if it wasn't up-hill, I could ride.)
When I came to an un-marked intersection at what appeared to be the east side of Larwill I called Dave to tell him that I was no longer on Old Trail, and he was just entering the town from the other side. So we wandered about describing the scenery to each other, me looking at a white church and him looking at a brick one, until I saw the white gazebo he'd mentioned, called it out, and a few seconds later saw a little red car coming back to it. (There are an incredible number of little red cars in Larwill.)
The cooler I'd made by lining one pannier with folded newspapers worked very well, Hardly any of my ice had melted, and I put it back into the freezer. But next time I'll freeze bottles of water instead.
Sewed waistbands on one of my new pairs of black jeans this morning. Finishing the job has gotten urgent, but I'm still fiddle-faddling around. I revised the index pages to my web sites before threading the machine.
I left my bike at the Trailhouse yesterday. He said they'd have to take it downtown to install a new chain. No estimate as to when I'll get it back.
I emptied the bag of dry food into the cat-food coffee can yesterday, so this morning I went to Big R. I stopped at Staples on the way and bought the only secretary's chair they had — all the rest were executive chairs. Must be a lot of people who have trouble standing up!
I just noticed that I can't lean back in this one. Just as well; working back and forth is probably a major part of what made the old one fall apart so soon. Now I have to remember to tighten all the bolts after it's been in service for a month.
By asking what color I wanted —I'd thought they were all black, like the sample— the clerk may have saved me consternation. One of the chairs in that pile was pink!
After Big R, I went to Aldi and Aunt Millie. We had been completely out of sliced bread.
Dave unboxed the chair and helped me put it together; we like to never figured out how to snap the castors in. Everything in the instructions was followed by a French translation. I strongly suspect that the French was the original version and the English was the translation, but only the first line — "Behold, the finished product!"— caught my attention. (That illustration was first so that you could see what you were aiming at.)
Went ego-scanning with DuckDuckGo after reading my funnies tonight, and found a file snitched from Rough Sewing on a porn site. ??? So I clicked on the link: It's the chapter on making women's underwear.
Some folks must be really hard up for porn.
Supper tonight was steamed corn, pasta salad, and devilled eggs. Dave picked the corn in one of Claire Johnson's fields. (Claire was present.)
That probably isn't how to spell "Claire" — I've never seen his name, only heard it.
Went for a snack, realized that I'd forgotten the El Milargro and sweet-potato chips when I picked up the eggs and took some pasta salad. But there were Big Dipper tortilla chips. I think, though, that we are down to one bag of chips: plain potato.
Wish I could buy Avilla's "fried potatoes"; they were almost as good as the North Side Grill's chips, and were probably better when still warm. But I saw those only once, so I couldn't buy more even if Avilla hadn't been burned out.
Still haven't gotten around to frisking Winona Avenue for surviving Mexican groceries. Nor have I tried the frozen yogurt in Lakeview Shopping Center, but that's mainly because they are too close to home to buy sweets during a bike ride, and too far to walk to. Particularly since the provision for pedestrians on Winona Avenue ends at McKinley Street.
The wash divided neatly into black and white today, except for one bra and two pairs of briefs. I put the underwear in with the blacks.
My white bras and a pillowcase came out of the washer with orangish-pink stains — and I've disinfected the bleach dispenser recently! For a dreadful moment I thought there were also pink stains on my white embroidered-rayon shirt, but I was looking at my fingers through the wet fabric.
I looked up the name of my new chair on Wikipedia. "Islie" means something in Hunterian, and if you add an apostrophe, also in Hindustani. And there's a person named Susan Islie.
In the afternoon, I took a walk to the Trailhouse and came back riding a bike. I was prepared to pay, but not to ride. I rolled my pants up. put my left sandal on the wrong side of the pedal, and tried not to be disconcerted when I checked a rear-view mirror that wasn't there.
New chain seems to work fine. It's certainly a lot prettier than the old one. (That won't last long.)
After supper, I rode to Owen's for a gallon of milk. My newspaper cooler was still lining my left pannier, so I put milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, and smoked sausage in it. The newspaper not only keeps milk cool, it keeps it from rattling around.
Yesterday was a medical day. It didn't go as pleasantly as we hoped: the vet was so backed up that I had to drop Dave off at Dr. Ashton's before taking Al home.
Al is fine, but Dr. Ashton discovered that the lesion on Dave's nose is deeper than he thought, so he's going to have to take it off in the hospital under anesthesia. And Dave is not to drive himself home afterward.
In the evening, I harvested the final clump of multipliers. It has four bulbs on it, but one is so small that it may not make it through the winter. I also dug up most of the garlic. The garlic that I pinched spathes off of had been left until too mature, and many of the heads fell to pieces.
A few weeks ago one of the farmers-market vendors was selling "garlic spathes" and that was the part that I pinch off, together with a piece of the stem, which was still tender enough to eat at that stage. According to Wikipedia, if the word "spathe" applies only to the bract that wraps the bulbils.
DuckDuckGo refused adamantly to search on "garlic spathe" — it seems to me that putting a phrase in quotes used to mean something to a search engine, but nowadays they'll even take a single word apart and search for the components, just to be sure the bits you are looking for are buried in millions of false hits.
But it did accidentally show me a page that claims that the right name for this part of the plant is "scape".
So I searched on "garlic scape" and got zillions of recipes, so I guess "scape" is the right name.
Oops, I was supposed to mail this three days ago.
Stepped outside to shake some hair off the walk-off mat, and was surprised that there wasn't a tree right there to beat it against. I guess I don't shake that mat very often.
Harvested the onions today; it should be a while before I resume buying onions. Some of the bulbs aren't much bigger than what I planted — I've got to work more compost into the soil.
I searched the Web for "wandering jew" and couldn't find any that matched the weed in my flower bed. Finally discovered that it's a close relative of wandering jew named "blue dayflower".