Subject: December Banner From: Joy Beeson Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:54:03 -0500 To: Alice Lecklitner , Mary Love , hoosiers31@hotmail.com, The Rundell's , David Lecklitner , Musser1@chartermi.net, alanlove3@hotmail.com, sara leck , ChrisVBrown@Charter.net, busymomsewing@chartermi.net, armusser@charter.net, andyleck@hotmail.com, debeeson@comcast.net, joybeeson@comcast.net, Don Lecklitner , j_gagneur@yahoo.com CC: joebeeson@earthlink.net, Timlindafrancis@wmconnect.com, Steve & Martha , Jean Beeson , kathygales@gmail.com, Sherry X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000 Message-ID: <4779C76B.2010108@comcast.net> User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.14 (Windows/20071210) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 1 December 2007 Sliced the bread this morning: it's as lovely inside as out. A perfectly-uniform crumb! I hope I can repeat what I did. I ate one heel, put one slice and the other heel into a sandwich bag, and froze the rest in the loaf pan, which, I figure, will prevent the slices from sticking together. Sad news with Dave's new toy: he's finally found instructions for saving a route -- but only a track that you have driven, not a route that you have calculated. So far. I may yet get a print-out of that wandering route to send to Alice! 2 December 2007 The slices didn't stick to each other -- but they stuck to the pan just fine. One came out, and levering the others into the space broke them loose. Went back to shave my chin, carefully painted beige eye shadow over my biggest age spot, and trotted off to church with my face still fuzzy. At least my beard is white now. Made half a batch of oatmeal crispies, with corn oil instead of butter. I'll think of it a day sooner next time, and firm them up in the freezer -- I can't make drop cookies fast enough to keep ahead of the oven; would have been a royal pain if I'd made nine sheets instead of five. It's still raining a little, but I think I can walk to the church for the decorating party. Hope Dave doesn't freak out when he comes home to find me gone and the car still here. 3 December 2007 It was raining just a tad too hard, and I went by Buick. I think I'd have stayed at the party longer if I hadn't had to drive afterward. There was a vast surplus of sweet stuff, so I re-labeled the cookies and put them with the goodies being collected for a Kiddie College party today. Right after doing all the wash, I spill hot-dog sauce on my everyday pants. Chickened out of shopping tonight, but I absolutely must buy milk tomorrow. 4 December 2007 Didn't check the UPS site until now: my package is out for delivery. The arrival scan at Bourbon is only a minute before the out-for-delivery scan; they must have been unloading directly into the delivery truck. I suspect that the delivery truck didn't leave at 4:04 am. 7 December 2007 Did the pizza-and-a-loaf bit again; worked quite well. Used much less cheese on the pizza, and liked it just as well. But the loaf wasn't as well-formed as before -- there was a pronounced seam across the bottom; on the other hand, it doesn't seem to have affected the slices. And this is enough bread to last us until I want pizza again. When do I get to make red-wheat bread? I froze the slices in the pan again, but this time I put them into a plastic bag first. 12 December 2007 And that worked much better. I'm reading old posts in the hope of finding one more sentence for the Christmas letter: it's in large type on a quarter page, but still looks a tad skimpy. I've got to February, where I couldn't find osnaburg for the Valentine Date Night embroidery class. A few days ago, I found quite a lot of osnaburg under my checked wool when I took it down to see whether it would look better in the parlor than the old brown blanket I've got on the new sofa to keep Al from clawing it. But this doesn't seem like the sort of incident that would add punch to a Christmas letter. I was due for blood tests and Dave had to get allergy shots yesterday, so he dropped me off at Snider's office and went on to the allergist. Dave said he'd be at least twenty minutes, there was only one person ahead of me, and she was half through, so after I got my knitting back in order, I walked across the street intending to resume knitting at the allergist's. But just as I located the pickup, out came Dave, almost exactly as far from the truck as I was. So we went home. Got a pair of socks darned at yesterday's Handwork Circle. Does not represent a gain, as it was one that I found a hole in the last time I washed socks. Musikgarten was canceled for slick streets, and I left as soon as I'd finished my sock -- only about fifteen minutes early, but soon enough to catch the beginning of Eureka, which Dave had from NetFlix. Only the beginning. By the time I'd finished the evening paper, it still hadn't made any sense, so I switched to reading Usenet. Dave watched the second episode this morning, but says that he's going to cancel his request for the others. At the fellowship-committee meeting, we learned that the kindergarten party had also had a vast surplus of sweets, so I brought home a bag that contained many of my oatmeal crispies and put them in the freezer. I added a few brownies, and found some peanut-butter cookies in it later. 13 December 2007 I planted a new pot of wheaties for Al yesterday -- away past time; his old pot is nearly dead, and I caught the poor little guy nibbling on hay. Next problem is to keep him from mistaking it for a litter box until it sprouts! I've set it on the counter instead of in front of the patio window, and spraying it several times a day to keep the seed damp should make it less attractive. I printed the envelopes for our Christmas cards yesterday. Got some exercise doing it, because I recognized that trying to do it efficiently would lead to nothing but trouble, so I started one printing, then went off and cleaned the parlor or ran the sewing machine until the printer finished and reset. Despite putting it on a quarter page in large type, I had trouble filling up the Christmas letter this year. And it's *really* time I got around to mailing the 2006 Banner! I have a new box of four-part paper. ------------------------------------------- A succinct explanation of usenet etiquette, snitched shamelessly from r.a.sf.c.: In message , mjveno writes > Hi Jacey [et al], > > This is very true... Whoa, Marnie, slow down. It's lovely to have a new poster on the group who wants to talk about writing, but you keep replying to posts without quoting the relevant passage you're replying to (either that or you quote 2,000 words and add a 'me too' which goes against most usenet conventions). It would make life a lot easier for us if you could snip out all the irrelevant stuff, but leave a big enough quote from the post you're responding to so that we know what you're talking about. You can indicate where you've cut something by Then you can intersperse your comments against the test [text] you are commenting on. So it reads like a conversation... which is exactly what it is. As you're posting via google groups it may not be immediately obvious that r.a.sf.c is a usenet group and not a google group and we have different conventions here. Because this is a high traffic group it saves time for everybody if we all follow the conventions. I hope you don't mind me saying something now, rather than waiting until the regulars are at screaming pitch. Have a virtual chocolate. Jacey -- Jacey Bedford jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com posting via usenet and not googlegroups, ourdebate or any other forum that reprints usenet posts as though they were the forum's own ------------------------------------------- There are "sad news" subject lines all over Usenet: Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's. Since I was looking forward to many more Discworld novels, I'm taking this as a personal injury. Or, at least, property damage. 16 December 2007 Al's wheaties are up, but not tall enough to set on the floor yet. Christmas dinner at the church went well, but the Christmas program this morning was canceled. I went to church anyway because I'd left some ham and chicken in the fridge. I set a one-yard sample of my new fabric to soak Thursday night (or maybe it was Wednesday) and washed it the next day, together with everything that could go into the same load with white, which may mess up my system tomorrow. It lacked a tad under an eighth of an inch of being a full yard when I put it in -- I must have stretched it a little when cutting it off -- and lacked a tad more than an eighth of an inch when I took it out of the washer, but it was a good inch shorter than a yard when I took it out of the dryer. So it's a good thing that I decided to dry it. I'm going to run it through with the whites again tomorrow, just to be sure. And take it out almost dry. It looked ironed out of the washer, and when I checked it halfway through the drying, but was distinctly rumpled when fully dry. Had I known what *good* linen it was, I'd have gotten enough to make some garments as well as sheets. It's all sold now, of course. 21 December 2007 The linen was entirely dry when I took it out of the dryer the second time, and rumpled again, but it didn't shrink any more. It's lighter than the rest of the bolt; more like white than cream, even though this was the cold whites, which have nothing in but All "free clear" detergent. Later, I set the dish towels etc. to filling for a hot soak. Because I wanted to leave the lid closed to keep the steam in, I set the washing time for max to be sure I'd catch it before it wrang. I did, but not until it had agitated rather longer than was necessary. Never mind, it's all cleaning rags, stained tablecloths, and other things I don't mind wearing out. Then I noticed the empty bucket and wondered where were the hand-knit socks I'd spun out just before putting the hot whites in. I had to get them out; they *might* have survived the hot water and excess agitation, but were sure to dissolve in the bleach I meant to add after the soak. I found one of them by poking around with a wooden spoon, but had to take everything out, hand-wringing as I went, to find the other. When the socks were rinsed and dried, I found that they hadn't shrunk or felted. Alas, when I hand-washed them again today, I found that unduly-severe washing hadn't even got the excess dye out of the black toes. But, perhaps, the wash water was a lighter shade of blue. Today was a follow-up visit to the dermatologist who took the cancer off my nose. He says it's healed nicely, and there's no reason I need to see him again. This trip was a bit of a surprise. My library books were due tomorrow, and Dave's book was due today, so I planned to ride my bike to the 10:30 appointment and come back by way of the library and the health-food store. Late yesterday, we learned that the appointment is in Fort Wayne! Why the follow-up wasn't scheduled for his day in Warsaw, I've no idea, but it was too late to do anything about it, so this morning Dave drove me to the appointment and we had lunch at the Northside Grill in Columbia City on the way back. I had a taco salad, though I should have settled for a bowl of chili. Dave had a cup of chowder and a hamburger. Good food, and they turned on the electric train. Three boxcars painted up for Purdue, IU, & Notre Dame, and a blue caboose for the Colts. Which led me to wonder whether there are any cabooses still rolling on the real railroads. I'm pretty sure that I heard of somebody buying one for a private car. But it's been so long since cabooses went out of style that it's probably worn out by now. We renewed our books on the library's web site. I wasn't done with "The Whimsical Christian" anyway. Al's wheaties have been on the floor for a while. Some of the sprouts are four inches tall, some are still thinking about it. Dave says that yesterday Al got all excited and kept running into Dave's room and back to Dave. So he followed him in, and found a deer looking in through the window. It ambled off when it saw Dave looking at him, so he didn't get a picture. I wonder whether Al thought his pack leader could bring down a little venison? We also stopped at Krider's Meats, since we were already in Columbia City. They had ham hocks, so we are going to have bean soup tomorrow. I also bought a package of hocks for the freezer, and some frozen chorizos; Dave bought a package of bacon. 23 December 2007 Now that days are getting longer, I hope I'll feel a little more ambitious. Busy day tomorrow baking fruitcake, and I might devil some eggs. Linda's party was postponed to Saturday because Matthew is sick and she thinks it might be contagious. Poor little guy -- babies can't understand why Mommy can't make it better. I made a shepherd's pie out of the left-over stir fry I made out of the left-over chicken. There was some left over! Then we went for an abbreviated point seven. We turned down Cherry to avoid the wind off the lake, then after I complained that instead of changing from my cotton long johns to the capilene long johns, I should have worn both, we cut across on Oakwood instead of going around the loop. And we cut across the lawn both ways. On the way out, it was because I was afraid of stepping on ice patches under the snow; on the way back, we were in a hurry. 24 December 2007 If I'm not calm, cool, and collected when I re-comb my hair from pointing down for a pigtail to pointing up for a gibson, I have to do it several times. While laying out my red-silk blouse and a long skirt to wear to the Christmas service, I reflected that rushing off in a pigtail because I'd overslept wouldn't do. So I combed it tight and slick Saturday night, so that it would be little disturbed by being slept in, and quick to put up Sunday morning. It came out looking very like Mama Katzenjammer's hairdo. But I *really* overslept, and had only fifteen minutes to dress, take my pills, and grab a little food. I always put the horn comb I bought from James Townsend & Sons in my pocket and re-comb my hair after taking off my coat and hat, so I hurried off without touching my hair at all -- a 'do that can stand up to Hanz und Fritz isn't at all disturbed by a night in bed. In the ladies' room, I pulled my comb out of my pocket and the pin out of my hair -- oops! A Mama Katzenjammer is firmly secured with only one pin, but a Gibson requires *four*! Fawchunately, I remembered that I carry four hairpins in my coin purse for just such an emergency. Lovely weather for this evening's walk, a sharp contrast to yesterday's cold wind. The first fruitcake out of the oven broke, and we had to eat it. Awwww . . . Looks like there will be four fruitcakes left over. 26 December 2007 I wish we'd gone for our walk yesterday, because there was a tree down in the Wildman's drive today, and there hasn't been any wind today. I don't *think* there was any last night, either. But we don't know whether it was there yesterday. Washed two loads of clothes and changed the bed, and that was pretty much the whole day. I made some cornbread to have with left-over bean soup for supper. 28 December 2007 I meant to make a special trip to Aldi to buy raspberry concentrate for my strawberry salad, but after watching the snow fall for a while, I made it with peach. Doesn't look all that bad out now. 31 December 2007 It looks as though most, but not all, of the snow is going to be north of us. Since we are headed south, this is good! We've already organized the Tacoma. The Buick can stay here under its mound of snow. We went to a concert at the Francis's the day before yesterday. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)