The microwave plate snapped in half while Dave was making popcorn the day before yesterday. Though microwave platters (called "turntables", for some reason, which leaves me wondering what they call the gadget that turns the plate) can be had for as little as ten dollars, the one that fits our microwave costs fifty plus shipping.
So yesterday Dave epoxied the old plate, and this morning it is set enough to take the bricks off, but he thinks we ought not to use it until tomorrow.
If this doesn't work, we'll get a new microwave. I told Dave to price replacement platters before he orders one!
I dashed out to buy groceries before it stopped raining. The rain is supposed to change to freezing rain, sleet, and snow.
The Roomba just pushed my door open. I pushed the robot out and latched the door properly.
I still haven't put the cane-bottom chair I inherited from cousin Blanche back into the parlor. When clearing the kitchen for supper, I piled my sewing on it and now I have to get on with the sewing before I can move the chair.
So we don't have to do anything but wash the serving spoons, eh?
It was a nice party. And we froze enough leftovers to put on a very good homeless dinner the week after next.
I had a bit of adventure on the way home: Bill was the last one out of the church, and he hadn't brought his key, so he picked me up when I was about halfway home — I didn't have my key either, but we were a lot closer to my house than his. Then we got back to the church just in time to see the pastor coming out: He'd come back to lock up.
So Bill drove me home again. I missed a quarter of my Sunday walk, but that's just as well: I noticed *before* nap time that I'd overstressed my bad leg again. I took an aspirin before lying down, and it seems to have cleared up.
For those who are thinking "If it hurts, stop doing it!" — an acute injury such as I suffered on the rotting leaves last November can be dealt with by lying down until it goes away. Managing a chronic injury, such as the one I accumulated from two phys-ed instructors, one puddle of oil, and a patch of ice, requires a delicate balance. Too much stress can aggravate the injury permanently, and so can too little. If you never step over your boundaries, those boundaries will contract.
On one of the occasions that Dave had been researching his new toy, he reported that some Roomba owners give them names, and said that he didn't intend to do that.
But I think he has. This morning he opened the drapes, looked out on a bright and windless day, and said "Where shall we let the Rhumba run today?"
Al watched it intently at first, but today, Dave said, Al started to go into the bedroom, found the Roomba running straight at him, and jumped over it.
Dave has been feeling better since we got the Roomba, so he plans to run it every day until it stops getting packed up with cat fur.
The wall of snow is still there. I wish I'd taken note the day it first appeared; this is astonishing longevity for a snowdrift. And it still blows a clear path next to the house, most of the time.
It's snowing again. It would be cool if we could get a seven-inch fall and then take a week off. I really, really need a long bike ride (about one mile in my present condition) and can't even go out for walks. I'm thinking seriously of snow-shoeing across the lake. Alternatively, do I remember how to ski? My ski boots crumbled in storage, but I can wear Dave's if I put on two pairs of socks.
Good day for baking, but I forgot the rule of rye: first make a batter of the rye flour, then mix in the wheat flour. That way you have comparatively non-sticky wheat flour on your hands while kneading.
But I got the pizza dough mixed up entirely with the spoon — and the small rubber spatula cleaned off the spoon without accumulating a dough ball of its own.
Spent the morning darning Dave's mitten, then found another hole in the other mitten.
Still haven't found my mittens. But it's been warm enough for gloves every time I've gone out. There have been times I'd have needed mittens if the roads had been fit to ride on, though. (You need more hand protection on a bike because there's a head wind and you lead with your knuckles. Also, my walking coat is a man's coat, so I can pull my hands entirely inside the sleeves when I'm not using ski poles.)
I did find my mitten liners while looking for yarn to darn Dave's mittens. They are in the to-be-darned bag.
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While fooling around with Google Maps, I discovered that Potawatami Wildlife Park is about twenty miles west of Warsaw. I don't think I can work my way up to forty miles —particularly since it appears that I won't be able to start training before May— but I could have Dave drop me off in Bourbon.
Dave's first chore today was putting the carpet that had been hung to dry on the bathtub curtain rod back into the garage (where it keeps my feet warm while I'm foraging in the freezer), and his next was to put his Stanley sawhorses back together. Much to his surprise, both still work even though one is missing a corner.
His evening yesterday was full of mini-disasters. He ran over his sawhorses with the truck, forgot to put the tube of corncob crumbs down to confine the water dripping off the truck, and then knocked a bucket of water over with his lawn mower. At that point he decided to spend the rest of the evening watching television with Al on his lap.
All I did yesterday was darn a pair of Dave's mittens. I hope to make a hat today.
I need to get out and use my debit card.
We had a mis-communication yesterday. I noticed that the pill bottle I was using for a darning egg in the thumb of a mitten was empty and said "Oh, I've got to pick up my prescriptions." What I meant was "Awk! I forgot that I have prescriptions waiting!" What Dave heard was "Awk! I'm almost out of pills!" and he nagged the snowplow operator. But it appears to have done no harm.
Perhaps he saw me noticing that the bottle was empty; I shook it. But my pill counter runs sixteen days, and I had refilled it just before ordering the pills.
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The Roomba goes beyond cleaning the floor — when you have to move stuff, you notice that it needs dusting, and one tends to put stuff back in a more-appropriate place.
The power cables dragging on the floor at the head of the bed have been bugging me for ten or twelve years. This morning I grabbed a few cable ties and hung the power cords from the brackets supporting the shelf the clocks etc. are on.
It's unusual to use cable ties to tie cables!
Mem: check the bike to see whether the wire panniers need new cable ties.
Both are firm.
Dave celebrated the cable tying by turning the Roomba loose in the bedroom. It didn't take us near as long to pick up stuff as it did the first time — partly because some of it never got put back under the bed.
I don't know what I did yesterday, but it didn't include making a hat. I *think* I glanced at the pattern lying on the ironing board, from a distance. The pieces are on the kitchen table now, as are my cutting mat and cutter. When I pulled the cutter out of the pocket of the bag hanging in the laundry room, the old cutter (now dedicated to cutting paper) came with it and landed neatly blade first, sticking into the linoleum. Them thar "safety guards" aren't worth a nickel, even when rubber-banded into place.
We went to First Friday yesterday evening, and had an excellent supper at Mad Anthony's. I had a reuben and Dave had a tenderloin. Then we took a glance at the festival and rushed back to the nice warm car. I regretted wearing only two pairs of long johns and leaving my second scarf in the car; Dave wasn't even wearing his flannel-lined jeans.
On my may home from church, when I caught sight of Dave mowing the snow in the driveway, I thought "We've got to find that boy something to do." When I told him that later, he said "I just wanted to see whether it would work — and it does!"
It does when the snow is light and fluffy. Doesn't appear that we'll have any other kind for a while.
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Found another bruise while getting ready for my nap, on my shin this time. It appears to be days old, so I've no chance of remembering what I did.
Vegemite grows on you. At twelve dollars for 222g, that's rather a pity. But 222 grams of Vegemite is a *lot* of Vegemite.
Washday — I went shopping yesterday. I went to Big R, Aldi, Aunt Millie's Outlet, and Owens. I got down for my nap well after it was time to get up, and served canned soup for supper. (It was Campbell's Chipotle-Chicken Corn Chowder, and not half bad; the potatoes didn't taste canned.)
When I came into the house, once safely on the linoleum floor I stomped a foot to knock snow off my shoes, and sat down rather suddenly. It seems that I had snow stuck to my soles, too. So I was careful to wipe my feet on subsequent trips. Took quite a few trips, since I had been so many places.
I didn't think I'd damaged my knee much, but I'm limping today, particularly right after getting up from a chair or bed.
After I put the blacks in to soak, Dave called from Dr. Ashton's office to say the Versa wouldn't start, and he was going to call me again after the tow truck got there. So I said I would get dressed so I'd be ready.
Now ordinarily dressing for such an errand in cold weather means putting on shoes, pulling my jeans on over my slopping-around pants, and putting my raw-silk shirt on over my slopping-around shirt. But I had to put moleskins on before putting on shoes, and I hadn't scoured off the moleskin gunk from yesterday's shopping trip, and foot-scouring is a rather lengthy process. Then I collected socks and shoes, sat on the bed, opened the drawer where I keep the moleskins, and remembered that I'd used up the last three little squares on the shopping trip. So I dug out my cutting mat, cutter, and centering ruler, marked a sheet of moleskin (My next-to-the-last sheet, it seems; I'd better start a new shopping list.) (Nope, I have an un-opened package.) and cut it into one-inch squares. Left the tools on the table to put away later and put on my socks. Just as I'd gotten into my jeans and was looking around for the silk shirt (I'd left it in the kitchen after the shopping trip) I heard the door open: Dave had gone out to get the stuff out of the glove box, tried the motor one last time, and it started. The tow company has a branch on their voice-mail tree for exactly that situation. But he'd forgotten his cell phone and was borrowing Dr. Ashton's office phone, so he didn't call me. Not to mention that it doesn't take a lot longer to drive two miles than it takes for me to find the phone. (I went first for a phone in a room that had been blocked off to keep the Roomba out.)
One thing Dave didn't find in the glove box was a pair of red gloves. They had fallen out of my shopping cart somewhere in Big R, and I didn't notice until I wanted to put them back on after checking out. I took another lap around the store, but didn't find them.
Yup, three pieces of moleskin now. For a long time I'd been noticing a burning in my right heel and wondering what horrible disease that was the first symptom of. On First Friday, I noticed that my right shoe was slipping on my heel. Tightening the laces didn't help; I think it's because the soles of the shoes are stiff. Hence the third moleskin. Luckily, a piece the same size as what I put on my corns seems to do the trick.
My corns haven't developed this winter; I think it's because I usually wear hiking boots when I go out.
I ran down three of Dave's batteries today.
I took a picture, and couldn't; it seems the camera's battery needed charging. So Dave swapped batteries, I took the picture, uploaded it to my computer, did some more sewing, took some more pictures, and the back-up battery expired just as I'd found the right angle to shoot from. Tomorrow he'll swap batteries again.
Later on Dave came to the sewing room to watch me winding thread from a ball to a spool with the aid of a hand drill. I said there must be a better way, he suggested that I use his electric drill. Some fuss and feathers — the chuck on the hand drill hadn't been adjusted in years, and it didn't want to resume. That did work better; not any faster, but I could use both hands to steady the thread where before I had *no* hands to steady the thread. But the battery and the ball of thread expired together. So that one is on a charger too.
I've been a little dispirited since Tuesday — after supper, Dave said "Isn't there someplace you are going this evening?"
And I said "No, there is someplace that I'm going at two-thirty this afternoon."
So I never got around to posting the recipe for the yummy pork tenderloin with baked vegetables we had just eaten. I'm baking vegetables on their own to have with left-over pork loin tonight, but I had only one fresh mushroom left, and I doubt that the other veggies will be as good without a tenderloin in the pan with them.
Just popped a loaf of bread in with them. It will take a long time at 350F, but I don't want to bake the vegetables any hotter. They were perfect after forty-five minutes when they shared a large skillet with a pork loin — my biggest skillet is exactly as wide as packaged pork loin is long, but that leaves a huge vacant crescent on each side of the meat, which originally inspired the baked vegetables. I was surprised at how well frozen lima beans bake, so I put a lot more in this time.
Spent today and yesterday making a new hat — and playing with the computer.
The vegetables did need meat juice — the bottom ones were crunchy instead of stewed. Still good. Not near as good as the vegetable hibachi at the Japanese place on Valentine's day. (Dave had Imperial Dinner, and I snitched some beef and chicken, but left him all the shrimp.)
An hour at 350F did the bread quite nicely. I shall have to do that again.
Still working on the hat.
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I put on my fuzzy slippers and walked out to the road after my nap. Park Avenue is clean and Boys City Drive is passable. This would have been a good day for a ride if I'd thought of it in the morning. But the idea of spending fifteen minutes dressing and fifteen minutes undressing for a five-minute ride is still a little inhibiting. Not to mention that after all this time, it might take half an hour to unbury the bicycle. At nap time, I dreamed that I was having a terrible time untangling the multifarious straps and attachments on my saddle bag when I was in a desperate hurry to get on the road before the weather changed.
I don't have a saddle bag. Unless you count the dog's-collar bag I snapped to the saddle rails on a whim, and use to carry a whistle (and, sometimes, an empty pill box).
Housecleaning due to the Roomba has added a lot of magazines to my "take to the emergency room" pile.
We had a chore cascade this morning. As I was setting up to sew the hat brim to the brim lining on the treadle, which we keep in the bedroom, Dave came in to take the shelves over the bed out to the garage for a thorough cleaning. I noticed cobwebs on the wall that had been inaccessible, so I went out to the garage for the wall brush, and on the way back I happened to look up and saw that the air intake in the ceiling of the hallway was desperate for a dusting, and brushing it caused a lot of web-bound dust bunnies to fall onto the hall carpet. When the Roomba is still plaything-new we can't use a dustpan or the upright vacuum to clean a mess like that, and after the hall was clean, Dave decided that he might as well clean the bedroom today instead of tomorrow, and I'd been meaning to let it into the walk-in closet the next time he did that. You'd be *amazed* at how much stuff can accumulate on a closet floor! I found a pair of shoes Dave didn't remember owning, and a pair of those little Chinese slippers that I used to wear all the time.
One of Al's logs still hasn't been put back. He may have a new scratching station in the hallway. No point to having two logs in one room. The log that has been put back, he mostly uses to prop up his chin and front paws while he's looking out through the glass door. He likes to lurk; I suppose this feels a bit like waiting in ambush.
The roads are nice and clear, and I carried only a cane while walking to church.
I have an appointment with the dentist tomorrow. Four inches of snow are predicted for this afternoon and tonight.
Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny, but I'm leaving right after breakfast. At least conditions should improve for the trip back. But Prairie Street probably isn't clear *now*, being shady and low in priority, and I do want to stop by Marsh on the way home.
I forgot to read the Marsh ad before leaving. I checked it before throwing all the Wednesday ads into the recycling bin, and I don't seem to have missed anything. I saw some cute chocolate greenbacks in the Valentine clearance; I wonder whether they will be available again for Christmas?
Roads reasonably clear. No faults found, but they confirmed my suspicion that the rough spot on my incisor is the filling wearing out. Got home exhausted and served frozen pot pie for supper. Marie Calendar's, which is very good. The beef in it was excellent, good flavor and not the least bit stringy. Dave and I always split one pie.
I bought a piece of beef that I plan to bake the same way as the pork loin tomorrow. Well, not quite the same, since I couldn't find any lima beans in Marsh's freezer section, but I did buy a little bag of what I call "diabetic" (wee small) potatoes. I might should zap those a little before rolling them in oil and putting them in the baking skillet. Also, I think we are out of brussels sprouts. Dave won't notice the lack of sprouts because he doesn't eat them.
I had a can of "tomatoes, okra, and corn" for lunch. It had a revolting amount of sugar in it, but it wasn't too bad after I added more tomato juice, some stale bread, a little cajun spice, and some fried onion. I won't be buying any more pre-mix, but I might get some frozen okra and frozen corn to make up my own.
In today's paper, there's an announcement of an air show next August. This reminded me of a tour the Mohawk-Hudson Wheelmen once organized, with overnight camping on the grounds. I suspect that camping at the Warsaw airport is right out, but the airport is a lot closer to Warsaw than the field in New York was to Albany; a day trip would be just fine. But Kosciusko County Velo doesn't appear to be into organizing social rides.
It's a shame KCV doesn't have any sort of on-line communication. I know more about what is happening in the Lafayette club than about what is happening locally — sometimes I read about stuff happening here that I'd never know about if I didn't subscribe to the Wabash River mailing list. I subscribe to the KCV mailing list, but have never gotten any mail from it.
I had brussels sprouts left over. According to the recipe, they should be about half cooked now.
The olive oil I put on the veggies kept vanishing and I'd have to pour on more for the next installment. I suspect the fresh mushrooms. I did zap the potatoes a minute just before putting the skillet into the oven. This was a bit awkward because they'd already been oiled. I prepared the vegetables before nap time and left them on the counter under a tight lid, with frozen brussels sprouts in with them. I did add the fresh snap peas at the last minute.
The package says "stringless", but I pulled a string off each one. I think the pods had been left on the vine a day or two too long.
When I tried to save a back-up copy of my sewing blog after adding a link to a photograph, I got a mysterious error. When I sat down this evening to write this, I noticed drive E lying on the monitor stand. I need one more USB port in this computer.
Dave wandered by about then. He said the spare port on my computer is RS-232, I'm not likely to need it, and there *is* an RS-232/USB adapter. Not only that, he probably has one. But installing the software would be more trouble than swapping the camera and Drive E back and forth.
It's not as though I take photographs every day.
The blog, by the way, is at http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/~roughsewing/2014SEW1.HTM
I've no idea why Comcast doubles the URL like that.
Dave's new monitor arrived today, and has been occupying him ever since. He drove out on the lawnmower to meet the United Parcel driver, because it isn't safe to walk on our driveway, and he didn't want him to fall.
I've joked about "heron catches fish" sometimes being the above-the-fold headline in the Warsaw paper. Today it was "geese eat grass" and it really is a relevant story! Most of our snow is still here, but it's a lot thinner.
I heard on the scanner that Arthur and Fort Wayne Streets were "almost impassable", and the Grace College maintenance guys were running around with sandbags and mops, but there's no sign of flooding that I can see without setting foot on the melting ice on the driveway. Partly, I suspect, because during yesterday's nap, the street department used a front-end loader or some such to move all the banks back from the street, off the storm drains. But the last time I walked, the drainage was melting its own path into the drains.
Dave has to go shopping tomorrow — he needs some more gadgets to hook the computer that the new monitor is on to the net.
I made some progress on the hat. I'm hand-quilting the brim, so it's going to take a while.
Tonight's supper was a superb use of left-overs. I set out the left-over tenderloin, to slice and zap according to taste (Dave zapped, I sliced mine thin and warmed it with gravy.) I warmed up a can of peas, zapped four "diabetic" potatoes, and made mushroom gravy. Four left-over mushrooms, sliced and fried in butter, then I poured on half a pint of milk shaken up with a teaspoon of chicken boullion and a fluid ounce of white-wheat whole grain flour.
There are still enough mushrooms to make a pizza, but I don't think I will — I baked bread today, and the mushrooms won't keep until it's eaten.
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Finished quilting the hat brim in the evening. That leaves little to do, and I'll finish it tomorrow — unless the weather is fit to GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE!!!
We do have a little shopping I could do.
The hat is finished, but I wore my old one to Owen's this morning. The streets are clean, but I'm glad I chickened out of riding and vowed to walk up and down every aisle instead. My left knee gave me a little pain, and knees are the only part you can injure during the normal operation of a bicycle.
Besides, I bought a whole bunch of heavy stuff, including two twelve-packs of LeCroix fizzwater. I bought one because we have a limited selection of flavors and I had a cents-off coupon. I bought the other because it was half price for a torn carton, and it is our favorite flavor. (After plain, of course, but I always buy Kroger fizzwater when I want plain.)
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Did wear my new hat to Hacienda tonight; we both ordered "wet" burritos; "smaller" redskin potato for me and ground beef for Dave. Dave ate more than three-fourths of his, but what he brought home is plenty for a lunch. I ate all of mine.
Dave said the left-over burrito wasn't plenty, and he wished he'd left more. I had celery rice with mushroom gravy and sour cream for lunch.
Streets are still clean, but I wished I hadn't chosen to go down the steps on Ninth Street. By the time I realized what I'd gotten into, it was much safer to go all the way down than to try to cross what lay between me and the street. Clinging to cane and handrail was tedious, but there was no risk of falling.
I had to put the crutch tip back on the cane several times. Past time to buy a new one. I probably still have the other crutch tip somewhere, but even if I knew where, it would be as dried out as the one on the cane. Probably not split down the side, though.
Asked Dave where to buy a cane tip, and he's off to buy one for me.
Dave said that it took a lot of force to get the cane tip on, which suggests that it's not going to fall off easily. I put the other of the pair into the miscellaneous box of the pencil drawer. I'm sure it will get lost before we find a use for it.
I just put the Imperial Royal Tours flyer into the recycling bin. There are some tours I'd like to go on, but none that I like enough to drive to Lafayette first — especially the ones that come right back here!
I set out for the Shipshewana Flea Market on my own once. My plan was to go to Bonneyville Mill, buy socks and lunch in Middlebury, take a nap in the parking lot at the flea market, then tour the flea market. But after buying the socks, I felt more like going straight home than like eating out, so I did.
I paid attention to the pain in my leg on the way back from church, and it feels like the sort of injury that would benefit from exercise with no weight on it, so I ought to get on my bike and test the idea. But walking out to the mailbox to post a letter hardly seemed worth the time spent putting on coat, scarf, gloves, hat, and fuzzy slippers — to ride I'd also need to put on more pants and tie them around the knee and pin them at the ankles, and scour my feet and put on moleskins and socks and lace-up shoes. And I'd have to walk to the road instead of doing the test in the driveway.
Not to mention that the bike is buried.
According to the weather bureau, it's today or wait another week. Unless I back the truck out and exercise in the garage.
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Dave came in to announce that his Linux laptop does ad hoc networks. I was tempted to send Martha an E-mail saying "we *don't* need to borrow your computer."
I looked out in the evening and noticed that I could have walked around the snowdrift to hang the clothes outside — it wasn't nearly as cold today as it's predicted to be tomorrow. But everything fit on one rack, and it's my smaller rack. Putting everything into one load was pushing it a little, but not very much.
I wonder whether I overlooked something?
I think that if you put a lid on baked vegetables, you need to bake them for an hour. I'm catching on to this; I hope I find an opportunity to bake more before I forget. (And I hope I remember to put celery in next time.)
Supper was baked vegetables and assorted left-over meats. To my disappointment, we didn't empty any of the containers, but I poured the chicken gravy into the little dab of mushroom gravy that I made for the pork loin. And I ate the slice of pork loin that had been in the mushroom-gravy container.
But now we have a container of left-over baked vegetables. I can have some of them for lunch tomorrow, on the remainder of the celery rice. Then I can cook another pot of rice — I think I'll put a pinch of achiote in.
I've collected many trips worth of magazines for the emergency room.
When I put the mouse pointer on the time in XP, sometimes I get the date, and sometimes I don't. I wonder what makes the difference? On 98, I see the date every time — unless I'm using a DOS program and can't see the time or use the mouse.
Tomorrow (groan) is the day we finally clean out the freezer.
Just learned that it can't be in the morning because Dave has a couple of appointments.
We have a definite appointment to clean the freezer on Friday morning. Tomorrow Dave has appointments in the morning, and I plan to be napping when he gets back.
Since we had corned beef and cabbage today, tomorrow's supper will be reubens on fresh-baked rye bread.
I mixed the dry ingredients together tonight. The twentieth-century version of making do: I couldn't find any molasses (I vaguely remember using up the bottle of Brer Rabbit, or at least thinking that I soon would) so I set out sorghum to put into the bread.
Today I decided that the dust mop I keep behind the door was unbearably dirty, and ran it through the washer. I put some floor-mopping rags in with it for the first cycle, then added a sheet and enough from the hot-white bin of the laundry sorter to make a load.
I was surprised that I wasn't particularly uncomfortable when I hung the sheet on the line, in ten degrees and a right smart of wind — I hadn't added anything but a gilligan hat and sheepskin slippers to my indoor attire. But the last bit of sheet that I pinned to the line was very stiff. I thought I was using a ridiculous number of pins, but when I woke up from my nap, only one corner was still clinging to the line. So I brought it in and draped it over the bathtub shower rod.
Dave has discovered that the Roomba will clean the dust out of the bathtub. I might start using the tub once in a while. I don't mind wiping it out afterward, but having to vacuum it before I get in makes me think the shower or the sink will do just fine.
I heard a KABS driver warn of thirty-foot visibility during the night.
When we got up it was ten degrees and so much blowing and falling snow that I couldn't see much beyond that the snowdrift was being sculpted by the fierce wind. Before I finished eating breakfast (Dave is preparing his as I type), it was nine degrees, and we can see the other side of the lake. Still blowing fiercely, but the snow is close to the ground.
Dave says there was a gust of twenty-eight during the night, but the hanger is still in the willow. I got a good look at it once, and it's a forked branch with nearly equal parts on each side of the limb it's hanging from; it's going to stay there until we send someone up to get it or it rots.
Left-overs this morning: last night, I dumped some frozen blueberries into left-over buttermilk pancake batter. I didn't think to thaw sausage, so we had pre-cooked links.
And now the maple syrup is back in the freezer.
And now the maple syrup is in the back of the truck, parked outside at 14.7F. The freezer was clean and the rags put away at 11:07, and we'd sat around for a while before starting, after getting up at nine and having a leisurely breakfast. I think we're getting the hang of this. Using my freshly-laundered dust mop to push a rag around the bottom of the freezer saved a lot of strain; I must remember to wash one on purpose before next year's cleaning.
We're going to let it air a bit before turning it back on, then allow it to chill down before putting the stuff back.
There was only a little disorder in what we took out; those plastic dividers help a *lot*. And the map of what goes into which bin that I posted on the dustpan cabinet helps too. Yesterday I printed up a fresh one, updated with where we really keep things. The old one was dirty and covered with corrections.
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And it was all back in by nap time. While putting the flours back into their bins, I thought it was going to take all day, but when that part was done it was practically over. Dave had put the sweets, meat, and bread back in while I was filing the flour and oil, and the vegetables were in three bags: dry legumes, unopened packages, opened packages.
I really ought to take everything out of the three baskets that we lifted out and put straight back in, though. The cakes are in the fruit basket and my map says they belong under "nuts". And heaven only knows what's in the "small packages of meat" basket.
Now I'm longing for a slice of fruitcake.
Dave noticed today that there is no sign of our air conditioner under the snow. I told him it was sure to get its vents free before the weather got hot. He responded that in the meanwhile, we can just open a door!
I don't think I've ever used the backups on Drive E or JOYXP, but I did download one of the backups from the websites once. I doubt that the backups on XP are much good; I have to use Explorer to freshen them, so I don't do it very often. And I noticed, while using the backup copy of Thunderbird to click on an e-mailed link to the Web, that it contains vast quantities of junk that have been deleted from the use copy. (Thunderbird's backups are quite fresh, because I can make them with Mozbackup.)
My last two batches of bread dough have been very sticky and soft. I'm pretty sure I made batches where it was a pain to get all the flour kneaded in after running out of gluten and lecithin, so that isn't it. I've been routinely forgetting the ascorbic acid, since it isn't in the freezer in the box marked "additives" (which now contains only yeast), but I don't think ascorbic acid makes dough stiffer. Besides, I've left it out of stiff doughs too.
Whatever, by greasing my hands, I've been able to form loaves. But the sandwich rolls, which I made by putting two spoonfuls of dough on the cast iron pizza pan and forming them up with the rubber spatula, spread out instead of rising up, and were hard to split. Also too brown on the bottom; next time I'll have to use an aluminum cookie sheet or the pizza pan I use only as a lid for the twelve-quart mixing bowl. Or find a couple of three-inch muffin cups to bake them in.
I found the blackstrap molasses today. It was behind the mustard in the fridge. I put the bottle in the humidifier for a couple of hours to pasteurize it — mainly because I'd done the same to a bottle of crystallized honey earlier in the day, and the cake rack was still in the humidifier pot.