E:\LETTERS\FEBBAN11.TXT 9 February 2011 That's the second time Eternal September has shut down just as I sat down to read Usenet. Very annoying. I passed another General test today, but I'm pretty sure that they won't let you have Wikipedia open in another tab while taking the real one. But I *could* get lucky. Or I could freak out, miss all the Tech questions, and never get to take the General exam. I washed clothes yesterday. Nothing much today; I mended a shirt of Dave's that came out of the washer with a seam starting to come undone, and got the poncho shirt I started last summer near enough finished that I could try it on. It's going to fit perfectly. I didn't care to walk on icy roads in the dark, so I blew off Handwork Circle again. I have changed the poster to say that I won't be there when I don't like the weather. 10 February 2011 Never thought I'd be glad to hear that an acquaintance was in rehab. I just read on rec.bicycles.tech that Jobst Brandt has been moved out of the intensive care unit. Going straight from ICU to rehab seems like a big jump. There has been speculation that being in ICU was the main cause of his mental problems; there's been no mention of head trauma. Nobody knows for sure what put him in the hospital, but it's presumed to be a bicycle crash. [Later on r.b.t. was looking at the exact spot with Google Street View and making wild guesses as to what caused the crash. No news from Jobst himself.] Went to Aldi this morning. Washed some dishes while waiting for Banner Making. We got everything cut out and laid on the guide sheet, and covered it very carefully because there are a *lot* of tiny pieces that look like random scraps. I was worried, while walking to church, about coming home in the dark, but it wasn't bad at all. It was cold enough that the icy spots weren't very slick, I was wearing R.E.I. boots with serious tread on the soles, Chestnut Street is mostly dry -- though not quite so wide as usual -- and traffic was very light. Didn't do much in the way of homework today. And opened a can of soup by way of preparing supper. Yesterday, Dave made sloppy joe with the left-over hamburger and a recipe he downloaded from the Web. 10 February 2011 Began the day by taking practice tests. I missed two on the Technician because I didn't know the material, and one by inattention. Passed the General without too much cheating -- it wasn't cheating to ask Dave what BFO means, because when I see that question again, I'll know it's Beat Frequency Oscillator. I just hope I follow the same line of reasoning and again guess the correct answer! The turkey loaf I made for supper was superb -- I nearly foundered myself. One pint of stale dry homebaked whole- grain bread, everything else I like in dressing except the chicken broth -- I did put in a teaspoon of Knorr bouillon powder -- a can of mushrooms, broth and all, an egg, thymenoregano, a package (one pound, I think) of ground turkey. Wasn't quite thawed, but I could break it up and the bits thawed before I was done. Patted it into a skillet a few hours before baking time, and topped it with a thin layer of instant mashed potato to keep it from drying out in the oven. 12 February 2011 Call me General. I'll be checking the FCC website every day to find out what my call letters are. No point checking today, though, because the VECs have a lot of work to do before they submit the results. At the moment -- 13:43 -- they are probably still administering tests. I still feel stupid, but at least I wasn't hallucinating: *both* books were in the attache' case. In a pocket designed to hold single sheets of paper. ??? Apparently my "portable desk" was between them. It's a good thing that I found the desk when I did; otherwise I would have taken only a few sheets of paper to the first class, if I'd thought to take paper, instead of the ample supply in the desk. I thought I'd taken a ball point and a back-up ball point for filling out the legal forms, but when Jeff asked to borrow my spare, I couldn't find it. Must be time to take everything out of every pocket. I was about to say I'd need the attache' only for (the very rare) Fellowship Committee meetings from now on, but I'm going to take General-Class instruction in March and April. That will tamp down what I learned to pass the test -- and fill in on those questions that I passed by sheer luck. And meanwhile, I'll be taking Extra practice tests with Wikipedia open in another tab. I finally figured out the power questions while lying awake last night: use algebra, and when you want E, solve for I in terms of E. Then set the two values of I equal to each other, and solve the I-free equation for E. Aaand that question was on the test, and I solved it about as quick as "When 240 volts run through 24 ohms, how many amps?" (Which I've known how to do ever since Dr. Kolitschew's class in college. And I've been able to divide 240 by 24 in my head ever since Jesse Robinson's fifth-grade class.) While taking the practice exams on AA9PW's web site, I learned about a 1930's method of learning the code that just might break through the immunization of having learned it at 5wpm. (Whoever wrote a 5wpm requirement into the license regulations should be *shot*.) It's called the Koch method, and consists of learning at full speed, but one character at a time. Each time you get up to 90% accuracy, you add another character. Sounds rather like what we did at the Nautilus place. Before leaving for class, I put some stew beef into the rice cooker set on keep warm, in the broth cooked out of the roast beef I made the same way a few days ago. After my nap I chopped up some celery, opened the box of beef broth and poured in enough to cover, brought it to a boil, and left it to simmer until time to cook. Then I added carrot sticks, thymenoregano, diced potatoes, and, after ten minutes, a quarter of an onion, chopped. Added more beef broth several times as it boiled away, and when I dumped the vegetables into the rice cooker at serving time, the broth was a thin coating on the bottom of the pan. So I put the leftovers away in the sauce pan to deglaze the pan. Not to mention that it's high time the rice cooker pot was washed. I thought it was yummy, though a bit briny. Dave liked it after he added pepper and salt. I threatened to do the same with the left-over raw beef tomorrow, but all that's left is the scrawny heart of the celery. Could dash out to Owen's and buy a bunch, but I don't feel like it. 13 February 2011 After getting home from church, I browned the leftover beef in an iron kettle, dumped a can of crushed tomatoes and a dribble of beef broth on it, and left it on simmer. Also added a frozen chunk of habanero and maybe a tablespoon of chopped celery leaves, the low-flavor ones in the very center of the bunch. Met Jeff at church. He made Tech, but declined to take the General test because he was running out of time. He'll be in the March class too. If I recall correctly, that class is also on a Homeland Security grant, but after that the money will have run out and they are back to asking the students to pay the filing fees and bring their own lunch. Not to mention that they won't be able to rent that luxurious classroom. 14 February 2011 I ate the last of Sara Lee's granola last night. I believe that's the last bit of Christmas goodies. Before naptime yesterday, I dumped the left-over stew into the left-over beef, and added a tablespoon of garlic bulbils. (These were somewhat weakened by being used to make garlic vinegar brine.) Half an hour before serving it, I added a chopped quarter onion and a chopped slice of yellow pepper. I'm pretty sure I put in some other seasoning too. Not too bad. Not much beef in what was left over. Before serving it again, I think I'll put a can of beans, some chili powder, and what's left of the bottle of cumin in it. A lot of snow melted last night, and the lake is gray. The roads were already clear; I'd have loved to see it stay below freezing for a week -- preferably with bright sun to melt the dirty snow, but instead we're getting overcast and warm. ------------------------- Just before bedtime, I clicked on the bookmark for practice exams by mistake for the license search bookmark, so I took the Extra exam and scored 66%. Also took notes on two topics I want to look up. Supper was the leftover soup, warmed up in a Corningware casserole set in an iron skillet to prevent hot spots. Also added some frozen jalapen~os and habeneros. Pretty good chili soup. Washed two loads of wash, dried it on one rack, thanks to dry air and a nap between loads. Don't recall getting anything else done. I did have a couple of sessions with a Koch method morse trainer. Dave installed a new light in the garage, which makes it much brighter in there. He also replaced one of the old ones with a porcelain fixture, but the old box isn't standard, so he has more work to do. He got the idea for improving the garage lighting while I was taking my license exams -- he replaced the aging drop cord in the sewing room with a porcelain fixture. He said he had a terrible time attaching the string -- and then realized that the light was on a wall switch and didn't need a string. Since the string rested against the bulb, we took it off again -- which wasn't nearly as difficult as attaching it had been. 15 February 2011 My first bike ride of spring. I reasoned, correctly, that all of the snow and ice on the roads would melt in yesterday's warm weather. I didn't reason that the banks along the edges would also melt, run across the streets, and freeze into glare ice. I walked in a few places. Also took my usual route through the parking lots at the hospital, forgetting that snow would be piled up at the boundaries, partly melt, then freeze into a very good substitute for a stone wall. I found a low spot behind a dumpster, with deep footprints already molded in to keep my feet from slipping while I wrestled the bike over. Had a long list of groceries -- which I still have, save for bread and milk, because GETTING OUT OF THIS HOUSE was much higher on my list than being able to bring everything back. But I'm going to have to go out in the Buick soon to buy a sack of cat litter. I can bungee a bag on the bike -- but not and get anything else when Big R is my first stop, and it's not reasonable to ride the loop the other way around. And I don't like the way the bike handles when the weight is that high. So I went to the emergency room to drop off magazines, with a stop at Owen's for milk and yogurt, got to Husky Trail amid the above-mentioned adventures -- including a short walk the wrong way on a left-turn lane, but there was another beaten trail over the snowbank between Parker and the gas station, so that was only a few feet. This bank was also quite flat, as it was on a stretch of lawn, rather than on an imaginary line. Thence to Aunt Millies, where I bought them out of whole-grain slimwiches -- all one bag -- and got two bags of mini-sub rolls, two loaves, and a bag of hamburger buns. I'm glad I'm not the Aunt Millie clerk today -- customers were coming in just often enough to break up her other work. Dave and I each had a mini-sub for lunch. I heated mine. I regretted deciding against hauling a bunch of celery around the loop when I came home and talked Dave into bringing wings home for supper. Celery comes with it, but not enough. 18 February 2011 I returned my books yesterday, and picked up celery and a few other things at Marsh on the way back. Saw, somewhere along the way, a La Hacienda billboard so astounding that I concluded that it must be a very expensive slander. Today there was a thread on one of my newsgroups about an identical advertisement for a restaurant chain called Sen~orita. The board said "Like a cult with better Kool-Aid. To die for!" I guess in their defense, one can say that it was a cheap knock-off of Kool-Aid that was poisoned. Humm. That implies that the restaurant serves real Kool-Aid. No wonder the AFCAns think Kraft Foods will get after Sen~orita. When I told Dave about the billboard, he didn't think there was anything unusual about it, and his only reaction was annoyance that I couldn't remember exactly where I'd seen it. Used the celery tonight to make -- something. I crumbled and browned two flavored-with-beef patties, added celery, a tablespoon of chili powder, some chopped "three- pepper and onion blend", and the remains of a batch of chili into which I had incorporated the remains of a batch of stew. Thinned it a little with boxed beef broth. When we sat down, I told Dave that I hoped he wasn't wildly crazy about the soup, because I'd never be able to duplicate it. I didn't buy much at Marsh because I'd stopped at the used-book store and filled up one of my panniers. Mostly early-edition classics from the clearance shelf. Including _Elsie Dinsmore_; I wonder whether the copy that was rattling around the house when I was a child still exists? 19 February 2011 Had big plans to do a major shopping or take a long bike ride today. Stayed home and fiddled with the computer instead. I did iron three shirts -- including my newly- completed white linen poncho shirt, which I won't be able to wear for a couple of months yet. It was more trouble to iron than I anticipated, but I think I can get the hang of ironing thick embroidery. Discovered, while ironing my shabby villa-olive T-shirt, that the ginger-tea stains hadn't washed out. Time to start sorting my stash for cotton jersey. I think I have some more of the villa olive, but I'd like something that doesn't have to be ironed. 20 February 2011 My mouse is dead at the moment. Forethoughtedly, I opened the folder Frequently Used Icons during a moment when the mouse was working. The keyboard has joined the mouse's strike several times; I'm going to have to get a new computer soon. So I learned tonight that you can navigate the license- search page by keyboard, and also that you have to use all- caps when searching on the full name. Takes anything when you put in surname only. This explains why I get two of my old licenses when searching on "beeson", but not when searching on "Beeson, Joy A." So future license searches will take less time. Got an e-mail from a lacemaker in Australia; she wants to set up a sked as soon as I pass my tests. (I'd mentioned learning about grommets in radio class when the Lace Chat mailing list was discussing ways to hide computer cables.) I wonder whether I can upload this without the mouse? WS_FTP is all click-buttons, no keyboard commands that I know of. 23 February 2011 Monday, while I was out on a three-store shopping tour, Dave blew the dust out of my computer, ran scandisk or whatever on Drive C, and started it defragging. Seems to have cured whatever was going on. Discovered sheet ice the hard way while walking out to the car. At first I thought I'd been bruised, but my arm got stiffer and stiffer as the day wore on, so I guess I strained it. I still feel it if I deliberately test my range of motion. Nothing turned blue. The freezing rain changed to snow while I was in Owen's, the last stop, and I got home while the snow was thick enough to cover the ice, but not yet an obstacle in itself. When the roads started getting slick I was worried about not exceeding 25 mph on account of flunking skid school, but everybody else was doing the same, so I didn't make any swirls in the traffic, not even on Route 30. I frittered around Tuesday, and didn't even walk to the church and back. Really need the exercise, too. Well, I can't chicken out tonight. Yesterday's mail included the Imperial Tours brochure for 2011. Two caught my eye: one was a tour of Fort Wayne. Sounds like fun, but drive to Lafayette to be bussed back here? Perhaps if they pass through Warsaw . . . T'other was Shipshewana. I can do that one any time I can persuade Sara Lee to drive Alice up here -- I'm pretty sure the flea market is every Saturday, and we could pass on the antique auction. They'd have to come Friday, then on Saturday I could drive them to Shipshewana after lunch at Bonneyville Mills. Supper at the Essenhaus and back here by Route 13, home on Sunday. I think I'll be done with school before tourist season at Shipshewana. Classes are March 12th and April 9th, 10th, & 16th. I think Shipshewana tourist season starts in May, same as here. ________________ Got my walk, but I think the apple crisp and ice cream that I ate while there canceled it out. No work done on the banner, but I ironed the face down good, and Cora and I straightened the grain on the blank banner. I've pretty much given up on morse code. The program Dave downloaded can't be set to put spaces between words without also putting spaces between characters. Practicing a pause after each character is worse than useless when it comes to breaking the habit of hearing beepbibeep as dadidah and then translating dididah to K. I need to do it fast, but in wind sprints. My Google-fu doesn't extend to finding a program for myself. 24 February 2011 When I went to Big R Monday, in addition to a bag of third-choice cat litter (why is the supply of Uncle Paul's corncobs so sporadic?) I bought a quart of "Amish Wedding" sauerkraut. I know better than to buy products with tourist-trap names! It's nothing but canned cabbage with a teeny dash of vinegar added, and tastes so much like food to which "a pinch of sugar to make the taste come ALIVE" has been added that I keep checking the ingredients list. I suspect that it was unsealed before I bought it; it opened too easily. If so, that could account for the ALIVE taste, but I've eaten half and it hasn't made me sick. Speaking of sugar, the second batch of sloppy joe Dave made is more ALIVE every time I taste it -- I think he's going to get all the left-overs. The taste of sugared tomato is completely unrelated to the taste of tomato. Today was washday. One load of whites and light colors, one load of blacks and dark colors. A load of dishtowels etc. are soaking, to be bleached tomorrow. Also cut out a patch to be sewn to my hemp jeans -- hemp scrap underlined with coarse muslin. Six inches of snow predicted for tonight. Dave has parked the truck in the garage. !! KC9TOX !! and, as an afterthought while reading my funnies, I went to the license-search page. 25 February 2011 This morning I went to the search page again, just for fun --- KC9TOX is some guy in Wisconsin. So I searched on my name again, and if you look very, very closely at the O, it has a flyspeck at the lower right. Searching on KC9TQX turns up me. The font used in the search box does have a visible stroke on the Q, but for the results, the FCC needs a new font. I scored 64% on the Extra exam this morning. Takes a lot longer than tech and general -- not only 50 questions instead of 35, but more stuff to look up even though there are lots of questions where I can see at a glance that looking up is futile. Those answers will probably turn up when I'm reading the theory parts of Dave's old Extra manual. I'm ignoring exam questions, law, and current practice, of course. I wonder how much of this truth-table and logic-gate stuff was on the Extra exam in 1960? Probably not in 1980, either. I was surprised at how late packet was invented. ------------------ Washed the towels, put away the stuff on the drying racks & hung up the towels Otherwise frittered the day away. 26 February 2011 Woke up at a quarter past nine, said "Gaack!" and started getting ready for church. Fawchunately, Dave asked whether I wanted bacon -- he yielded to temptation after buying swiss cheese yesterday -- and then asked where I was going. I'm surprised I didn't sleep even later. I was awake when its software glitch made the projection clock jump from 3:00 to 2:00, still awake when it corrected by jumping from 3:00 to 4:00, and heard Dave's Clock strike three bells. But I was groggy enough by then to think for a while before realizing that it meant 5:30, and I may have been asleep at two bells. This morning, I sewed on the patch I cut out the other day. The un-faded hemp is a stark contrast to the rest of the pants. That, together with the stains that didn't come out the last time I washed, will relegate these jeans to slopping around, but I need more slopping-around clothes. For some reason ;-) work clothes wear out much faster than clothes I save for good. One thing I like about the new freezer is that it has a power-on indicator light in the handle of the door. This is a great help when I close the garage door behind me without turning on the lights. I went to Kroger after supper. I forgot to take the shopping list with me, but got everything on it anyway. And six meat pies, which were on a 5/$10 sale. We are both fond of Marie Calendar's meat pies. Also bought a package of Kroger Value sausage patties, just to see whether we like them. The package says that the Spanish word for "patty" is "hamburgesa". I'm not sure I believe that. 27 February 2011 Two chicken pies for supper tonight. We should have split one. I added a tablespoon of soda to my tooth powder. Last time I mixed it up, I added a pinch of ginger -- and a pinch is twenty times too much. The sprigs of rosemary I put in the powder now and again have no effect whatsoever. Rather odd when my hands smell of rosemary for quite a while after I water the plant even though I don't touch it. 1 March 2011 For some time, I've been fretting that my rag shelf is overflowing. A few days ago the dime dropped and I cut an old shirt into squares and piled them on the microwave to use for cleaning iron skillets. The rags are *much* nicer than paper towels! This morning I wiped down the electric griddle, and ended by stuffing the rag through the grease hole and flossing it -- can't do that with a paper towel. Rags will probably be nicer for starting fires, too. I didn't use up much of my stash of greasy paper last summer -- I'll try to kettle-bake more often next summer. (For one thing, I'm nearly out of *good* stale bread for making meatloaf.) I made pizza yesterday -- that's a start. Wasn't the best pizza I ever made; I'll have to try another one soon. *After* buying tomato sauce; Dave used up all the sauce making sloppy joe, so I put salsa on the pizza. Not enough salsa, it turned out. Need to put it on thicker than sauce. An entire bag of Food Club mozzarella was about right. When I made a panic run to Owen's for omeprazole Saturday night, there were two bags of gluten flour in the Manager's Special bin and I nabbed both of them. So I put a half cup of gluten in the dough even though the bag said that two and a half tablespoons would be plenty. Kneading it was interesting! But that dough didn't stick to anything. Instead of trying to shape it after the first rising, I made it into a flat ball after kneading it, then just slapped that ball onto the griddle and spread it out while it was still relaxed. Then I turned it over so the grease would be on the upper side, which stretched it all out of shape, but it co-operated with being patted back to round. The gluten diluted the flour too much; next time I'll use red wheat instead of white. When I was at Big R on my three-store shopping tour, I remembered to look at the sweat pants. They still had the $10 pants, and still had black -- but only in extra-small and extra-large.