2 March 2007 I forgot to mention, before mailing yesterday's addition, that Dave found a charge from Littlefork Technology on our credit card, and neither of us has ever heard of them, so I'm without a credit card until the new one gets here again. Good thing I tanked up on cash before going to Aldi's! I was thinking of trying my ATM card in debit-card mode, but now I think I'll keep that number between me and Lake City Bank. I also plan to get a single-use number the next time I buy something on line -- or, if it's fabric.com, I'll get a single-merchant number with a $500 limit. The Mastercard I won't use for anything but groceries, and if it gets compromised again, we'll have a word with Kroger and Marsh. There's a legitimate company with a name that's *almost* "Littlefork Technology". The current fad in credit-card fraud is to make a single, small charge to each number; odds are the card holder will think he bought something and forgot about it, and won't cancel the payment. I wonder whether it's feasible to do the equivalent of a dictionary spam: make small charges to thousands of properly-formed numbers and collect from those that turn out to be in use. The banks must have worked out some way to block that by now. ------------------ We woke up to find that Dave shouldn't have put the funnel back on his rain gauge. (With the funnel,it's a rain gauge, without it, it's a snow gauge.) About an inch of snow so far, judging by the picnic table. Only a film judging by the formerly-bare pavement outside the bedroom door, but that's where the wind swirls around between the house and the drift. I didn't do anything yesterday but work on my new wallet, and didn't finish. Ironically, part of the slow-up is that I'm taking notes in the hope of selling a "quick to make" pattern. After getting all four bill pockets sewn on, I remembered that I meant to make five so that one could be used for coupons and receipts -- and the way they are shingled, I'd have to rip off all four double-stitched pockets in order to add a new one at the bottom. They are also a quarter inch too high, so (sigh) I may up and do it. I've also sewn the piece they are on to the other piece, so that the wallet was ready for the final seam when I went to bed. With a little rumpling, perhaps I can get out of taking that seam out. So now to re-write the pattern . . . -------- Well, I got them all ripped off, and cut the new one. It was already hemmed, as I hemmed the entire strip that I tore off to make pockets, after drawing threads but before cutting the pockets apart. Last time I went to Aldi's, I bought a jar of Southern Grove Dry Roasted Peanuts. I may get more -- they have monosodium glutamate in them, but they don't have the MSG whang that most dry-roasted peanuts do. 5 March 2007 Water-meter reading is strenuous this time of year. Despite using a metal detector, he's *still* digging around out there. So I went to the window to see how he was doing and saw him pulling the lid off it. I've got a load of king-sized sheet in the washer. Looks like just one load of colored clothes this week. 6 March 2007 Got all the wash done in one day, instead of leaving the white-with-bleach for Tuesday as I usually do. Finally cut out my black ripstop wind pants -- perhaps I'll get them assembled before hot weather sets in. Our lane is really slick, and we are running out of untrampled snow to walk through the yard in. Roads and some of the sidewalks are clean and dry. Yesterday or the day before, I tried to sign up for Becoming an Outdoorswoman -- then found out that I can't get one of the single-use numbers until our new Mastercard cards come in the mail. Briefly considered using the Visa, but we want that one kept uncontaminated, so I aborted the sign-in. Baked oat bread yesterday -- soaked the steel-cut oats overnight instead of cooking them; made good bread. 8 March 2007 On Tuesday night, I finally finished sewing hooks and eyes on the wool suit I made for our trip to Australia. I'd planned to go to the ladies room and put the wool pants on when they were done, so that I could repair a couple of broken eyes on the pants I was wearing, but I forgot to put the nylon thread into my sewing bag -- I'd been using B silk for the wool, and it's rather tedious to work with. I have a cop of nylon about the size of D silk, which doesn't take as many buttonhole stitches to make a bar. So I started darning a sock instead. Fiber-y Tuesday -- I cut out my black ripstop wind pants that morning. Made a start on basting them yesterday, but I think I'll wait until I see whether Lowery has fine black nylon before I start sewing. Could use yellow nylon, but my stitching isn't so straight that I want to emphasize it. Prolly end up using the black polyester. I mean to sign up for the Becoming an Outdoorswoman Workshop as soon as our new credit-card number comes through. (Pity they don't have an option to send them a check.) If there are any places left by then. I'd better put the waistband and hem into the pants I left off working on just before last year's workshop -- the other pair is getting a bit shabby. I cut pants out in pairs -- uh, two pairs at a time -- because it makes *much* more economical use of sixty-inch fabric, and hurried up the other pair to have it for the workshop. Used to be that I couldn't find fabric to make jeans from; now I have an embarrassment of it. Partly because it was so scarce that the first two times I came across sturdy cotton twill I bought enough to last a while, so I have enough of the herringbone used for the pants in the previous paragraph to make at least two more pair, and I think there's also enough bull denim to make two more pair. Probably won't ever make the bull denim up, because it's hard to work with, the pants aren't comfortable, and bull denim doesn't wear like the work denim of fond memory. And I really, really want to buy some "russian" to make a replacement for my worn-out linen pants. Since it's a staple fabric at Wm. Booth, Draper, I'm determined to finish my linen dress before I send in the order. Yes, I still know where the pieces are! I rounded them up and put them on the top shelf with the gray-checked wool flannel that will someday be a winter-evening gown. (The cotton flannel winter-evening gown is getting a bit thin.) -------------- I've been using white-wheat flour only for pizza on Sunday, but there is only one two-pound bag left. There's at least enough for next Sunday's pizza in the cannister, though. Not much more than enough to fill a a cannister left in the bag of Spring Creek flour, either. --------------- According to the fabric.com newsletter, the redbuds are blooming in Georgia, but it's still too cold to wear linen. Time for folks in Salem to start watching for signs of spring. We're seeing more grass than we used to, but at least one person thinks the ice on the lake is still safe. I hope today's sun melts the footprints on the driveway; I'm not counting on it! 10 March 2007 Our new credit cards arrived yesterday. Dave promptly got me a "virtual" number to send to Needlework Corner, which had *finally* gotten around to dealing with the order I sent them yea many weeks ago, and had sent an e-mail the day before. Hope they resume progress before the number expires! And we aren't sure whether it's a single-use number or not, so I may not register for BOW if they don't get on with it -- the vendor may be flaky, but this is my last chance to buy Medici yarn, so I don't want to risk feeding them another invalid number. Started to assemble my wind pants & discovered that though I was very careful to add exactly as much to the side seams of the fronts as to the side seams of the backs, I hadn't checked that the original patterns were the same length. Apparently, I've been easing nearly an inch of back onto the front when making cotton pants. I think I'll gather it. 11 March 2007 Evelyn Beeson would have been one hundred years old today. 13 March 2007 Dave adjusted to DST instantly -- so did I, but instead of springing forward one hour, I fell back two. I didn't get to sleep until after five O'clock this morning. Dave's cleaning out the garage today. He found a tube for the leaf blower we threw out by mistake, we decided there was no use for it, I went out to the road, laid it on the humidifier, turned around -- he yelled "bring it back!" So I brought it back, said "you've thought of a use for it after all?", he said "you'll never guess what I found!" The leaf blower had fallen into a trash can, as we'd thought, but it wasn't a trash can we were using. I got the winter collection of used dirt dumped, but haven't dug any fresh dirt yet. Only two or three fillings left of what I dug before the weather turned cold. Now it be nap time. 14 March 2007 Much confusion at the end of said nap. The phone rang at five o'clock. I didn't make it to the phone quickly enough, and all the caller ID said was "out of area". Too sleepy to remember that Dave's cell is "wireless call" -- but I did recall that all calls *to* that number are long distance, which doesn't matter with our new landline plan -- I assumed that it was Dave wanting to tell me to start making his salad, which I do every day at five p.m. So I dialed the top number on our phone list, got voice mail for the Beesons, said I was returning a call, wondered when Dave had put in a customized message. Later on it transpired that no voice mail had been left on Dave's cell phone -- I'd dialed the wrong Dave Beeson. So Jeanie is wondering who called, and I'm wondering who called, but I did make the salad. We're having bean soup tonight. I've already had my blood tests; perhaps I should make corn bread. ("Corn" is forbidden on my diet sheet.) -------- Yeast corn bread; half a cup of whole-wheat flour and half a cup of cornmeal, baked pancake thin on iron. I had read on the "Encyclopizza" web site that ascorbic acid in your dough makes the bread tougher, so I put in a quarter teaspoon. That might have been too much. And now I wish I'd made twice as much, because I'd like some for a midnight snack. We started out for a point eight five this evening, and ended up going to Roy street and back, and coming out through Stone Camp. I picked up a ball-point on the Union- Street section of the Greenway; Dave found a pager as we crossed the field between the bike trails and Stone Camp. He's been trying to find out whose pager it is; I tell him to drop it off at the town hall and let the police deal with it. (The pager company later said they would send him a bubble envelope to return it to them in.) Tonight's NetFlix was a double feature: HMS Pinafore, and Trial by Jury. We like the Australian company much better than D'Oley Carte. TMI (you may want to skip to the next entry): I have to change my corn plasters every other day, and can never remember whether I changed them yesterday or the day before -- so I'm recording here: I changed them today. A milestone: one of the corns came off, and the other probably will next time. (Which leaves two more that were too close to the first two to plaster at the same time.) It left a small pit in my foot, as if someone had poked me with a pencil, and there was a matching point on the bottom of the corn. I googled trying to find out how the body comes to make thorns to poke itself with, but all I learned was that the "conical core" is the defining feature of a corn. 15 March 2007 My Needlework Corner order was shipped today. The daffodils and tulips are poking the tips of their leaves out. I must keep an eye out for crocuses. I got a dab of dirt dug for Al -- not quite enough to re-fill the litter box. Also took a hoe to the garden -- there's a lot of tree roots in it. I'm thinking of taking the final seam out of my wallet and doing it over. I hope I used 2.5mm stitches. (I was switching back and forth between 2mm for zig-zag and and 2.5mm for straight.) Left-over bean soup and fresh yeast cornbread for supper, since I wanted to revise the bread recipe. This time I made the sponge with cornmeal, thinking it would hydrate more and not be quite so gritty if the cornmeal soaked longer than the flour, instead of the other way around. Chickened out of making batter, and put in a quarter cup extra flour (one cup corn meal, one and a quarter whole-wheat flour) to make a very soft dough. Patted it to fit the griddle (after pouring on a spoonful of olive oil to keep my fingers from sticking), put it in a 500-degree oven, turned it off at once and baked half an hour. I think I should have waited a few minutes to turn off the oven. I put a quarter teaspoon of ascorbic acid in, and it came out very tough despite being nearly half cornmeal. I want to try again, boiling the cornmeal and letting it cool before making the sponge (I think they call that anadama bread) but I think I should show some sign of losing weight first. (Googled: to make it anadama, one must also put in molasses.) On the twelfth, I got a letter from Becoming an Outdoorswoman saying I was all signed up and paid for; on the 13th, I sent an e-mail saying "what?", and offered to mail a check. [as of 4 April, I haven't heard back] 17 March 2007 St. Paddy's Day, but there wasn't any corned-beef at Aldi's when I picked up sweet peppers and eggs yesterday. Perhaps it had sold out. I did remember to change my corn plasters yesterday, but the second corn wasn't quite ready to come off. The charge for the Needlework Corner purchase has come through. I expect the yarns in Monday's mail. (Came in Saturday's instead. Beading needles missing; wasn't sure I hadn't dropped them opening the packet, and they were only fifty cents, so I'm forgetting about it.) My books are due at the library today. I don't feel like a bike ride, which is a sure sign that I need one. Perhaps I can look for dry lecithin at Warsaw Health Foods on the way back; Encyclopizza says lecithin will make bread finer and slower to stale, but the liquid lecithin I have is too strong in flavor. -------- The books were due *yesterday*, it turned out. Rode the bike, had fun, dropped off a couple of magazines at the hospital, didn't check out any new books, bought the lecithin. Passed by Kroger on the way back, but didn't realize we were almost out of lettuce, so I had to go out by car after our evening walk. I don't think Encyclopizza said how much lecithin to use. One slice each of cornbread and wheat bread left, but I'm making pizza instead of bread tomorrow, so we may eat some of the bread in the freezer. Ginger Rogers/Fred Astair movie tonight. I missed a lot of good dancing because I couldn't stomach the plot. 18 March 2007 I put a teaspoon of lecithin and an eighth of a teaspoon of ascorbic acid in, and made *superb* pizza crust. Alas, that was the last bit of the white-wheat flour -- and I didn't measure it before piecing it out with white flour, so I can't duplicate the recipe even after Bonneyville Mills opens for the summer. Time to change the corn plasters again -- this gets *old*, man. But rubbing my feet with a pumice stone every other day keeps my heels from cracking. An insert in today's church bulletin announced Embroidery Day the Tuesday after next. I'm going to have to make a new cover for my sleeve board before I take it to Handwork Circle for everyone to see. 19 March 2007 Al used to bat at the door whenever we tried to get 1 April 2007 I got an April-Fool joke from comcast: I found thirteen messages in my inbox when I checked my mail just now, and twelve of them were old messages dating as far back as January. Didn't see anything I should have responded to. Some of it, I think I *did* respond. The remaining message is the Fabric.com newsletter. That one seems to be real, even though they don't usually work on Sundays. (The "date" is 6:15 am, so maybe he was working late on Saturday.) (Thunderbird has a *really* annoying habit of concealing most of the date if it's still the day the message was sent.) 4 April 2007 Past time to send the March Banner -- and *way* past time to get the 2006 Banner into the mailbox. I saw the first crocus the same day I saw the first road-building machine, but failed to make an entry. Spring in full swing now, but we are supposed to have near-freezing temperatures for the next few days. A week or two before I started that abortive March 19th entry, we were leaving on one of our walks and heard a scream when the door was almost closed. Dave opened it at once, and there sat Al about two feet away, holding up his little white paw, astonished expression on his face, and trembling. He wouldn't let us examine the paw, but he put weight on it getting away, so we figured he hadn't broken anything and had best be left alone to calm down. We've seen no signs of injury -- but he comes to see us out and *doesn't* paw at the door while it's closing. But the last time we went for a walk, he dashed up to the door and thought about it. I hope the lesson doesn't wear off; you could cut a little foot right off with a closing door. There's signs of activity on the park portion of the Greenway. Looks like they put down another layer of gravelly clay and rolled it. Still soggy at the corner -- and harder to get around the mud without stepping in it, because they've evened it out. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)