E:\LETTERS\OCTBAN11.TXT 3 October 2011 I've got all my desktop icons sorted out and each one is where I will look for it. Almost; probably some tweaking yet to do. It's good that I deleted some and collected others into a folder, but I hope I don't have to defrag again any time soon. (Defrag runs really slow unless you go into safe mode, and safe mode scrambles desktop icons.) Half the hot whites are on the line -- we'd piled up too much to wash all in one go. The light colors are rinsing and the blacks and the red are on the hall floor. I'm thinking of trying to figure out why the hypertext Banner came through scrambled. Perhaps I should just post it and send you guys the URL. Since the Banner is long enough to hang up dial-up connections, that would be better anyway. But this one is still txt, and will be mailed. Naptime: all the clothes are on the line except what I've brought in and put away -- achieved by delaying naptime. Yesterday Dave looked at the Thai Sesame Noodle seven- minute side dish in the cupboard and asked when we were going to eat it. I said "as soon as we have a main dish to go with it", and put a chicken breast in the fridge to thaw so I can slice, Fryin' Magic, and saute' it tonight. Considerably later, I realized that we are having chicken and noodles. I wonder when Dave will remember that he doesn't like sesame seed? 6 October 2011 Wasn't enough in it to spoil it for him. I manfully resisted the urge to use sesame oil instead of corn oil. I just put my white linen do-rag away for the winter. I hope I remember where I put it next spring. 7 October 2011 And there's another reason not to stay inside on a gloriously-warm October day: From the time the sun rises beyond the roofs of the houses across the street until it goes behind the frame of the window, I can't see the monitor. Which isn't a long time -- I left to take my pills and start sausages to thawing, and when I got back the glare was off. In the winter the sun gets far enough north that when there's snow on the ground, there's sometimes an hour or so in the morning when I could sew in here without turning on the overhead light. Chicken and noodles again for supper tonight. This time, terriaki noodles. I've got a half-load of wash hung out. Including my cotton bike jersey, which was stinky when I got back. Should have worn the summer jersey. Yesterday I rode to the roundabout construction site at Lake and Fox Farm -- now you can see how it's going to go, but I couldn't get close to where the action is on the part of the road that's closed completely. It looked finished, and I could see traffic on the other side. As usual, I went by way of the Emergency room -- I had several books of very short essays of just the right degree of interest this time -- and the library, then stopped at Penguin Point for lunch. A "tenderloin", which wasted my grease allowance, but most of the choices were too heavy for a cyclist. It had shredded cabbage on it, which was a novel touch, but could have used slaw dressing and a slice of onion. Then I went to Little Hawk so I wouldn't forget the way I did last time, but they aren't open on Thursday. Toured the Dollar General on general principles, and found a package of pocket pillboxes. Not the little flat ones I wanted -- these are thick enough hold a dose of Dave's pills. I guess that not many of the people who carry pills in their pockets want just one or two. A glance around the nursery on the way back, and I found myself on Columbia street (or was it Union?), so I stopped in at the consignment shop beside the railroad underpass. Found a pair of little loaf pans and bought them, then later realized that we have plenty of that size; It's the medium that I'm short of. Pit stop at Marsh, where I forgot to go back for the cubed pork steak I didn't want to carry around in my hot little hands while I was inspecting the frozen-food department. *No* frozen pork at all. Wasn't any at Aldi, either. I'm beginning to think it's something systematic. 8 October 2011 I'm definitely coming down with a cold -- and I definitely don't like it. At least I know why I've shown so little interest in taking advantage of these last few summer days. 9 October 2011 While rustling around in the freezer for the makings of supper, I realized that I hadn't remembered that I have a cold since before my nap. I still sneeze and snort now and again, and I sound funny, but I think that I'm now recovering from a cold. 11 October 2011 I'm still coughing hard. I took some dextromethorphan. I intend to bake bread in a kettle today. I mixed all the dry ingredients last night, so I need only add a pint of water and knead. 15 October 2011 Still coughing, but not so hard. While getting ready for the farmer's market, I told Dave that the wind would drop when I got away from the lake. It turns out that a long straight street that's lined up with the wind makes a pretty good substitute for a lake -- I used my granny gear most of the way. Then when I got off, my hands ached from the cold. So I got my gloves out for the trip back, but they went into my pocket at Sherman & Lin's (where I had to take them off to pay for my chocolate and vinegar) -- not only was the trip broken into three parts, I was riding *with* the wind. But it's good that I put them on, because it served notice that it's time to change into my winter riding gloves. My summer gloves are really weight-lifting gloves and make no allowances for wearing another pair over them. The other pair are official bike-riding gloves, but are pure polyester and have solid backs; not at all the thing to wear if the weather isn't cold. I bought dried thyme to stock up for the winter, but she didn't have any more of the fresh-ground paprika I dented heavily when making rib rub. Also bought pears and a sweet potato. Found 80% and 71% chocolate and a bottle of white-wine vinegar at Sherman & Lin's. Saw nothing at the consignment shop & the pawn shop. Made spanish rice with instant rice and left-over hamburger soup for my lunch, but forgot to put in the over- ripe slice of tomato. I sprinkled Roma cheese on it. The bread was quite good (and the wood pile was left a lot neater) but Dave was disappointed that I used white- wheat flour. Five cups of white wheat plus half a cup of gluten was an exact replacement for five cups of red-wheat flour. Perhaps I should try half-and-half next time. ----------------------------------------------------------- Found mold on the two slices I left out of the freezer, so I trimmed them and cut up what was left to dry for dressing. I turned the oven to 200F for a few minutes in case I missed some spores. TV dinners for supper. With a relish plate, and Dave's usual salad. I need to wash clothes on Monday. Hope I remember to put the rest of the hot whites in to soak Sunday night. The current prediction is for another day just like today, but it's between two predictions for rain. The roasted ribs were an adventure. I'd bought three meals of pork at Owen's, all from the reduced-for-quick-sale bin, so I was in a hurry to use it up. I marinated, pounded, Fryin'Magicked, and fried one pork chop -- next time I'll pound *first* so I don't get annato all over the kitchen -- poached one in milk gravy, and we worked together on the ribs. I made the rub; Dave looked up the recipe, persuaded the mini-rack of ribs to stay on the spit, basted, and supervised the rotisserie. Then he cleaned up the grill, no easy task even though it's stainless steel. I cut up vegetables and put them and two whole (but very small) potatoes in the dripping pan, then not too long before the roast was done, transferred them to a deep pettit pan, sprinkled the left-over rub over them, added some salty onions left over from making the rub, and steamed them in the microwave. The ribs hadn't dripped any detectable amount of fat on them, but they did get some of the maple- vinegar basting sauce. I think I will buy ribs again some time. Ah yes, the salty onions. We had no onion powder for the rub, so I thought I'd dry some fresh onion and grind it up with the salt. Let us draw a shade over my first attempt -- I'm sure my glass pie plate will wear clean in time -- the second time, I left chopped onion on the cutting board overnight, but it was far from brittle when dumped into the mortar with the salt. Luckily I halved the recipe after measuring the salt, so what went through a tea strainer was sufficient, and I put the salted onion flakes aside for future use. I'd also measured the freshly-ground pepper before deciding that half was plenty, but I left out the cayenne, so that was all right. Dave agreed that cayenne would not have improved it. Recipe: 4 tsp paprika, 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp onion powder, 2 tsp fresh-ground black pepper, 1 tsp cayenne. I coated one side of the ribs, left them in the fridge for an hour or two, turned them over and coated the other side. I didn't get the edges very well, but we didn't notice that. Some rub fell onto the vegetables while we were struggling to persuade the forks of the spit to work like meat baskets. Next time I'll cut some shims out of carrots before we set to work. And reserve a few spare shims for when the carrots get soft. Probably better to tie the meat to the forks with string. There were a lot of pumpkins at the farmer's market today. I bet that very few of them will be cooked. 17 October 2011 I washed the hot whites today so that I could dry them in the sun, but the wind was whipping so that I didn't dare to leave them out there very long -- and when I'd filled up the longer line and started on the one that's parallel to the wind, I couldn't hang them up at all, so the rags are on a rack in the parlor. Together with two triangular bandages that I found when Dave sorted out the first-aid drawer. I was sure that one of those bandages was ecru -- they are both white now. Amazing what an overnight soak and a little bleach can do. 18 October 2011 The fellowship committee held an organization meeting for the WLFMC Christmas Dinner (first Sunday in December) tonight. It's time to quit looking for white or yellow umbrellas when I happen to see umbrellas for sale, and make a special trip. It's also time to quit looking for friends' news on Facebook, even when I'm pretty sure that they must have posted some. I'll check in every fourth or fifth "notifications pending" nag. Whenever I borrow Dave's computer to check Facebook, I wish I could slap the "welcome back" blather -- if they missed me, they'd let me in despite my failure to update my operating system every five minutes. In the morning, I made a milk run to Owen's. It was eggs we were out of, but I bought milk too. And a steak, which was very good with low-calorie potatoes out of our garden. I also bought two pork-loin cube steaks, which I'm marinating in achiote and malt vinegar. I fried catfish Monday, and because the Fryin' Magic had gotten lumpy, I put it back into the freezer container through a sieve, then after the fish was done, I fried the lumps. Mmm, crunchy greasy salty starch! It was all gone by naptime today. 20 October 2011 Got a nag from Facebook saying some of my "friends" had posted statuses. I won't bother checking in -- I checked in a couple of days ago and couldn't find postings by *any* of the people I tried to look up. Used to be the latest post was right there on your wall or in his profile -- if I recall correctly, I couldn't even find a profile for anybody. And I'm not at all sure I found my wall. There was nothing of interest on it, if I did. Dave didn't like vinegar-marinated pork chops at all, and scraped off the breading. So I'm serving plain fried chicken breasts tonight. There are more potatoes in the garden, but I'm not going out into the rain to get them. We still have half the sweet potato that I bought at the Farmer's Market last saturday. 24 October 2011 Rained in the night, cleared up by morning -- what sort of weather is this? Piles of wash today: one load and two half loads -- what have we been up to? I saw David G. in church yesterday; he looked normal, and didn't act as though he were doped up. He is scheduled for surgery today. Seeing how healthy he looked reminded me of walking toward Albany Med's entrance after Dave dropped me off, carrying my own suitcase and thinking "What am I *doing*!" Since he can't chew, I doubt that he'll feel that going under the knife is rash. I hope he's up to running up three flights of stairs just before checking out -- though they don't keep you as long these days; odds are he'll let them put him in a wheelchair. Which is a very elliptical anecdote: I'm referring to the doctor who -- it may have been putting on my cast, but it seems to me that that would have been earlier than just before checkout. Anyhow, he felt the need for exercise and took the stairs instead of the elevator, perforce bringing me with him -- so when they wanted to wheel me out after signing the papers, I said "no way! If I can climb stairs, I can walk to the door." And I did. Which was perilously close to what C.S. Lewis described as "all I want" in the Screwtape Letters: the person who makes an enormous nuisance of himself by demanding very little and not one gram more. I don't think I'd read Screwtape at the time. Joe wasn't wearing his sling. He's still going to therapy. The Farmer's Market has gone mostly to Halloween stuff -- there were some *marvelous* witch hats at $25/each -- but vegetables are still to be had. I bought a large beet, thinking to make more pickled eggs. I steamed the greens for my lunch, over a cup of tomato soup made with vegetable cocktail, gelatin, boullion, and a pinch of the italian seasoning I'd bought from the herb farm. Alas, I don't think she's going to have any more of that marvelous fresh-ground paprika. Dave needed a black cloth to drape over his IP camera, now that it's in the new front window of the barn. I gave him a piece of black cotton flannel, thinking the fuzz would help it absorb light even though it isn't as black as some of my other fabrics. In the process, I discovered that what I'd thought was a yard of cotton velvet is big enough to make a long, full skirt. I didn't discover the small pieces left over from my previous roll of cheap black broadcloth -- the new roll is conspicuously present, but the scraps don't seem to be anywhere. Also found that I have a big piece and a usable piece of black nylon screen that I mail-ordered thinking to make mesh pockets for my summer jerseys, but it's way too stiff. (I wonder what I made, that I cut it into two pieces.) I also have a piece of white nylon mesh that's soft enough to make pockets, but my keys poke out through the holes in the mesh and tear it. So I'm still making my pockets out of self fabric. And there's a piece of black finewale corduroy big enough to make something. Too flimsy to make pants -- I did, and they wore out in nothing flat -- too heavy to make a shirt, and I don't think there's enough for a skirt. The season for walking after supper is drawing to a close -- pity it can't be allowed to peter out instead of the shocking jump when we all start sleeping an hour later because daylight is so scarce that we no longer need to save it. I like suit hangers for clothes that I dry on hangers, and for decades, I've had almost enough. I'd buy a few at a garage sale, or find some in a department store that were cheap but not too cheap, and for a while I'd have enough, then it was back to scrabbling for hangers every washday. I once thought: the hangers I like are cheap, so I can find them at K-Mart! -- but it turned out that K-mart wooden hangers are actually wire hangers made outa wood. Then several months ago Aldi had exactly the right kind: flat so I don't need to match front and back, merely point the hook in the desired direction, narrow so they don't take up a lot of room, but not so narrow as to stretch shoulders out of shape, and smoothly varnished. I bought a package of ten, and gloried in having enough hangers for a few weeks, then began wishing that I'd bought two packages so that I could donate the hangers that aren't exactly right. Today I scrabbled to find enough hangers to dry the shirts I'd washed. Where do they go? For a while it was stuff migrating from dress hangers, but there's hardly anything on dress hangers these days. 26 October 2011 I bought two bags of peanuts-in-the-shell when I went to Avilla's yesterday. I think I should have bought three. Those teeny peanuts are *good*. When I bought the first bag on my previous trip, Dave complained that they weren't salted, but they grew on him. Since I didn't have magazines to drop off, I passed by Warsaw Health Foods on my way to the library, so I also bought a bag of wasabi peas. The chili chickpeas (garbanzo con chile) I got at Avilla's taste remarkably similar. I think maybe I can detect the chili, which I can't say of the wasabi. Good thing I had lunch at Subway after the library stop -- the road was blocked off long before I got to Penguin Point. Must be open on the other side, because I could see cars in the parking lot of the little shopping center I wanted to visit -- unless they got trapped there. :-) I could have waded through weeds growing on dumped dirt to reach a business close to the shopping center, but I didn't want to look at the construction that bad. The selection of sandwiches at Subway was a lot less varied than I remembered it. Not one was offered toasted, which seems odd considering the time of the year. Of course, my "spicy Italian" would have been *much* better if I'd specified pickles instead of asking for those sad little slices of shipped-in tomato. I got to Subway just in time. I had the undivided attention of the whole crew while I was selecting a sandwich -- which may have something to do with my opinion of the menu -- but while I was eating, I saw three guys in blue scrub suits with ID tags cross the street, and when I left, they were still standing in line and there were a lot of people behind them. I think that if I worked where they work, I'd brown-bag it. Though on such a pleasant day, the time spent in line would suffice for a walk to the Chinatown Express, and there are other chain lunch stops in between. I'd expect that the longer the walk, the shorter the wait. ----------------------------------------------------------- The peanuts are gone. 28 October 2011 Lovely day -- cold, but sunny and not windy. But I couldn't think of anywhere I wanted to go, so I decided to concentrate on mending. It's 10:38 and I haven't touched a needle yet -- though I did add a garment to the mending pile while I was getting dressed. Elliot's Boat and Trailer just picked up the pontoon boat. This is *much* easier than pulling it out of the water ourselves! And they will put it in a building, so it won't be so dirty in the spring. While looking at Dave's "all my cameras" page, I realized that the new front window for the IP cam gives me incentive to park the car straight. As the swans were swimming away, I saw that the dirty one was smaller than the others, so he isn't as adolescent as I'd thought. Today's the first time I've seen a cygnet this year. But the number of swans has increased enough to suggest that a lot of them were cygnets not too long ago. I wonder why people gave up eating swans, but kept on raising them. I dropped by Staples on my way to Aldi yesterday, but didn't see any paper stiffer than letterhead, but not so stiff as cover stock. Didn't help that I can't convert from letterhead substance to cover-stock substance. I used to have a pamphlet that explained all paper-buying terms, but heaven only knows where I've put it. Likewise my new debit card. When the cards came in the mail, Dave phoned his in, but I fancied activating mine at the teller machine, so I put it into the candy dish where I keep my shopping list so that I could find it when I was ready to go out. At least that's where I *thought* I put it. I've looked in all the possible places, and some that are utterly ridiculous. Fortunately, the old one doesn't expire until January of the year after next. Also stopped by Big R yesterday, and bought a hundred six-inch paper plates and eight suit hangers. 30 October 2011 To get my sandals wide enough, I buy them way too long, then adjust the straps to move my foot forward so that the wide part of my foot is over the wide part of the sole. This turns the heel into a sort of barb, so that I have to take my sandals off before I take my slacks off. Today I learned that it's also impossible to step out of a skirt while wearing sandals. Fortunately, I realized what was happening soon enough to drop to hands and knees on purpose, so I didn't get hurt. I don't like to walk long distances in my dainty Capezio slippers, because I can't buy any more, so I carry them to church in a shoulder bag. Today I was nearly to the church when I realized that I'd forgotten the bag. I took off my sandals and left my black socks on -- my skirt was long enough that anklets would do, if I didn't lift it *too* much while climbing stairs. But I wouldn't have worn such a long, full skirt if I'd realized that we would kneel for communion. Seemed a mite cooler when I left the church than it had been when I left the house. Sherry was in town, but may be on her way back now. It's way past time for a Walmart run. I think I'll go by car. I wish they'd post a map of the place somewhere. 1 November 2011 Whoops, time to wrap up October and get it in the mail. Monday morning I looked out at the rain and decided that it was a good day to do the wash, but I did drive to Walmart after supper. They not only didn't have yellow umbrellas, they didn't have umbrellas at all, except for pocket umbrellas in the luggage section that come only in black and dirty pink. Might have been umbrellas hidden somewhere, but all the employees that I could find were busy with other customers. I did find a cell phone display -- when I came back in to use the restroom after putting frozen groceries into the car. I grabbed a leaflet, but all it says is "we got cell phones". I don't quite grasp the idea of a "pre-paid" plan that is fifty dollars a month. I thought that you bought the minutes ahead of time so that you didn't have to worry about monthly payments. What prompted the Walmart trip was feeding Al Saturday night. I announced to him that he was having beef puree, then wished that there was such a thing as devilled beef in little cans. So Dave got on the Web and discovered that Underwood does indeed make "roast beef spread". Walmart is the only grocery where I haven't looked at the canned-meat display lately. (Well, I've never looked at Martin's canned meat, but I keep forgetting that they exist.) So they did have it, and it's good. I was startled that one of the ingredients is potatoes. It's a beef-stew spread! But then, "roast beef" on cans invariably means "stewed beef". Walmart also had smoked pork necks, so I have a pot of bean soup on the stove. (Only one more soupworth of great northerns in the freezer.) Wants salt, but you really don't dare salt bean soup until the last minute. When I saw the prediction for sunny today, I thought I'd finally circumnavigate Pike Lake, but when I got up it felt like too much go-go-go, considering I'd been out the evening before, and I don't have any actual reason to make the trip. So I stayed home to sew and didn't do that either. While driving to Walmart, I noticed that Chinatown Express is next door to another Zimmer building, so I guess walking there wouldn't get one out of standing in line! Sometime or another, I ironed the triangular bandages, put them into plastic bags, and put them back into the first-aid drawer.