I got dressed, put ice and emergency food into the bike's cooler, ate a hasty breakfast — oh, boy, half-past nine! I'll get to the markets before they've sold everything.
Then I stepped out onto the patio to comb my hair and there were speckles on the concrete that were rapidly getting closer together.
It's rumbling from the east instead of the west now, but I doubt that the patch of clear weather will get here soon enough. But I can still go to Lowery's and Zales.
8:24 PM 7/2/2023
World's cheapest "bike" trail: Friday's paper says that the Chinworth Trail is going to be extended west along Old 30 from the Chinworth Bridge to 350 W.
Chinworth Bridge *is* 350 W.
Thought it might be a typo for 520 W, but Google Maps says that there is no point to extending it past the Crazy Egg, and little point in extending it past a driveway half a mile from the bridge.
The Crazy Egg is seven tenths of a mile from the bridge, and one mile from 520 W.
According to Google Maps.
I did go to Lowery's and Zales, and got needles, thread, and D3. But no AREDS 2, as they had only one bottle and I wanted two. Also went to Carniceria and bought peanuts in the shell and a bottle of yogurt drink.
The rain held off just long enough for the fireworks show, but everybody was in a hurry to go home.
I'm wearing the new old pants that were on my to-do pile. No, I didn't make a pocket, I realized that I don't need a knife pocket until I replace the knife that I mislaid.
I'm afraid to wash my old old pants — I don't think they would still be pants when they came out of the washer.
Only side seams and finishing left to do on my new jersey. I'm getting so tired of the old one that I wore one that's even older the last two times I went out. I hope to celebrate by going to Walmart the long way.
I've only ever used canned chili as a sauce for hot dogs, but tonight I didn't feel like cooking and Dave didn't feel like eating, so I opened a can of Brookdale chili without beans and served it with chopped onion, shredded cheese, and toast.
That stuff is delicious! Dave ate all of his bowl, and some apple slices too. I'm going to get two cans the next time I venture across 30 to Aldi.
Not cooking: I got a late start this morning and it was three o'clock before I got down for my nap. I slept for two hours and had about ten minutes to put supper on the table.
Not eating: Dave's infusion was yesterday, and it left him wiped. He did clear the living room and start Roomba, but couldn't pick Roomba up and clean it when it was done. Luckily, there is a Cubs game on the television.
I stayed up late Friday night so I could wear my new jersey Saturday morning — when I discovered that I'd forgotten to bring the wash in and had to rinse-and-spin it and dry it in the dryer. Also hadn't seen to the scraping fender stay, and so forth.
I did get to the fairgrounds market before noon, where I bought a daikon, and took a quick lap around the ice-rink market on the way back.
I very nearly couldn't get Beeson Banner 1977 – 1986 off the shelf — I wonder how I got it up? I'm pretty sure it was already up there when we bought the "three-step work platform" stepladder I used to get it down. Thank goodness we have a hand truck, which I used to get the box into the parlor.
I left the step ladder and the hand truck in the closet; I'll finish cleaning the shelf later.
Later: once I got 1987 - 1995 into my hands with my feet on the floor, I realized that it would be easier to carry it to the coffee table than to put it down on the hand truck.
Now that I've got the stuff on the shelves all scrambled — the Banners were on the bottom — I want to look into every box before I put stuff back. Some of them are half empty and could be consolidated, and I've already found a bag of socks I'd forgotten about.
I've also found lots and lots of yarn. I might take up knitting again.
I had good reason to forget about those socks. Most of them are silk, and silk is no better than cotton for making socks. I may put them into the silk-scraps box.
I took a Sprawlmart tour today. Cut off the last couple of stops because I was tired and it was after two. Also both panniers were full.
One of the first items that I bought was a twelve-pack of Pepsi, and that made me top heavy for the rest of the tour.
Next to last was a half-dozen ears of corn from Sweet Corn Charlie. We each had a whole ear of corn and a small slice of a three-inch Subway sub for supper.
I'd had a six-inch sub for lunch, and ate only half. Subway isn't very big on cold sandwiches; there was only one selection that wasn't marked "toasted" and the clerk offered to toast it — with *mayo* on it?
There was about an inch of sub left, which I stuffed into the devilled-ham can. Perhaps I'll have it for bedtime snack.
On the way out I saw a small riding lawn mower zipping around on the concrete behind Carson's rear entrance, which Gabe's doesn't use. What's to mow there, and why is the driver wearing a backpack?
Turned out to be a leaf blower.
I used our indoor leaf blower this afternoon, to clear out onion skins I'd spilled in the garage while putting the bike away. There are three boxes under the bike which I use, in cooler weather, as a root cellar.
2:13 PM 7/12/2023
Oops, after putting the ladder away, I found a blanket and a pair of winter boots that I wanted to put on the closet shelf
It looks much neater in the closet now.
This morning a search for an item that was supposed to be on a top shelf (it was on a shoulder-level shelf) turned into a search for the library stool. After using the small step stool to find the item, I remembered using the library stool to (gasp!) get a book off a top shelf. It was hidden behind the stuff I took off cousin Blanche's chair and piled on the coffee table, so I didn't see it when I looked into the parlor.
When Kathy offered to take anything else I wanted to get rid of, I was thinking "There's something, I know there is something".
I didn't think of the chair she was sitting on.
The chair lost its story before it came to me, except that it was part of a dining set that was split up as it passed down the generations. It came to Mom's cousin Blanche Lane (I think her last name was Lane), who was the librarian at Berea College in Kentucky. I think it came to Mom before it came to me. I don't remember actually acquiring it.
Yesterday, Dave said that going out to eat didn't wear him out as much as he expected, and he should resume going places. This morning, he said that he thinks it did him some good.
But I'm not going to ask him to drop me off in Syracuse tomorrow.
My leg of the Tour des Lakes is forty miles, and my longest trip this year was ten, so I'm not going to ask anyone else to do it either. I may stop at Checkpoint 3 on my way to the farmers markets.
The hundred-K loop goes past our house; when I registered, I meant to log out at Checkpoint 2 and drop out when I got home.
Since anybody who overtakes me doesn't want to ride that slow, and I can't overtake anybody, I ride the route alone, so I could print out the map and do it sometime in August just as well.
I just looked at the map and realized for the first time that several miles after our house are a route I regularly use, except that I don't go up Canal Street the wrong way.
I must download a fresh map. The route no longer passes our house; it follows the Heritage Trail to Union Street, takes Park Avenue to the Trailhouse where Checkpoint Three is set up in the parking lot, then returns to Chestnut Street by way of Columbia Street.
I was puzzled to meet many riders while following the route arrows to Checkpoint Three. Upon return, I realized that they went the wrong way on Union so that riders wouldn't be confused by arrows pointing back the way they came. (Union follows the south bank of Cherry Creek/Wyland Ditch, Columbia the north bank.)
I didn't go to the farmers markets because it was threatening to rain any minute, but I did dash out between showers and cruise around downtown Winona Lake.
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I was eager to get a queen-size bed because I couldn't quite reach the middle of the king-size bed when I tucked in the sheet.
I'm leaving a much higher percentage of the head of the bed untucked than before. Not only is the mattress way too heavy to lift, I can't reach down that far.
Ah, well, I also can't see the mess.
I weigh two pounds more than I did before we went to the Boathouse.
10:30 AM 7/17/2023 — The Times-Union E-Edition is displaying today's paper already!
I went to Goodwill today, but didn't buy any new garden clothes because it was so difficult to find cotton among what seemed like thousands of garments.
I went to Meijer after that, and found (Ta dah!) digestive biscuits, which I've been wanting for a long time. I also bought chocolate-topped digestive biscuits and HobNobs (chocolate-coated rolled-oat cookies), which is not going to help with the two extra pounds. (But I think it's already down to one extra pound.)
I didn't find anything on my list except groceries. And two boxes of food-storage bags. I got confused and bought the more-expensive double-zipper quart bags when I would have preferred single zippers.
Thence to Sweet Corn Charley, where I bought pirate corn ($6 for half a dozen; you work out the pun), blueberries, and a Vidalia onion.
Our supper was half an ear of corn each, and cookies. I'm planning corn chowder for tomorrow.
I just realized that I meant to buy a head of lettuce. But I don't think Charley had any.
On the way out of town, I stopped at the church to drop off a case of ten-ounce bottles of water that I'd bought by mistake for eight-ounce bottles. I had to walk most of Chestnut Street because of the weight. I forgot my key, but the College Street door was unlocked. While I was there, I changed the ice trays, which I had forgotten to do on Sunday.
I didn't think to ask why the church needs bottled water.
We have decided to spend a thousand or two sprucing up the driveway. If the job is done right, it will last the rest of our lives.
Dave and I measured the driveway today. I walked slowly while reeling in the hundred-foot tape and didn't stagger. Perhaps we *can* go walking together.
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So far — 4:46 p.m. — this has been a pretty poor excuse for a thunderstorm, but I did hear a distant peal of thunder when I sat down to write this. Most of the weather is going north, but one storm is supposed to hit us square.
11:00 PM 7/23/2023
No sooner do I commit myself to making a pink jersey than the Time-union informs me that pink is the height of fashion.
9:53 PM 7/26/2023
I thought four zipper bags of ice was a lot for today's ride, but when I came back, I'd drunk two and two halves of them. The remainder kept a gallon of milk and a Chicken Caesar Wrap cold for the last mile and a half of the ride.
I never touched the water bottle on the seat tube, save to taste it once to see how warm it was, but ran more than three changes of beverage through the one on the downtube. I filled it with tea at Family Express, and the check-out refused to charge me for it because the day was so hot. After eating my pizza, I bought a bottle of orange juice to put in the tea. Also jazzed up vinegar water I'd brought from home, and drank some of the juice straight. There's only an ounce left.
The orange juice came in a glass bottle with a metal cap that screwed off, but didn't honestly screw back on. I kept it upright for a while, then poured it into the bottle I'd brought the vinegar water in.
Writing that inspired me to pour a couple of ounces of pickle vinegar into the orange juice and put it into the freezer for my next ride. I'll freeze some of the water I put in too.
I was mentally tired and decided to give Walmart short shrift, but was in there two hours anyhow. It's *that* hard to get from here to there in a big-box store.
Perhaps it would have taken the usual one hour if I'd shopped more enthusiastically.
In 2020, I added "four Rubbermaid ice-cube trays" to my shopping list. Today, I bought them. When I put them on the list, I thought that when I came out of seclusion, I'd pick them up the first time I went to a big-box store. Stores are *still* out of the simplest and most-common things in a completely unpredictable manner.
As I was climbing the hill on 150 W from US 30 to CR 300 N (it appears, for no obvious reason, to be called "Silveus Crossing"), a rainstorm started with a dramatic pair of long vertical lightning bolts, with the crack of thunder almost simultaneous with the light. The lightning persuaded me to head for Walmart by the shortest route, but there were no more strikes.
The shower ended just as I got to Walmart, so I went into an air-conditioned store soaking wet and came back out into the muggy heat perfectly dry.
At Kroger, I could have parked under an awning, but didn't think of it, and when I came out, it was raining again. Ended before I got home.
11:10 PM 7/26/2023
It's raining now, and has been for a while. Heard some distant thunder.
I learned today that my phone has voicemail, and that the mysterious texts saying "20 NEW VMAIL 0 URG 0 FAX *86" are notifications that there is something in the voicemail box.
What I haven't learned is how to open the mailbox. Selecting the text doesn't get me anywhere.
Afternoon:
It's obvious, seeing the text instead of remembering it, and knowing already what it means, that "VMAIL" means "voice mail". But seeing it as mysterious spam, my only association was the meaningless "VCARDS" there was a fad for attaching to e-mails a few years back. I never did find out what those were for, and it must be that the people who had been attaching them didn't know either, because they stopped coming.
I called up the PDF "manual", and it said to press and hold "1" and follow the prompts. The prompt said to enter a password I have no way of obtaining.
Ah, well, if I can't find a way to get off the road before the phone stops ringing, I can call back, and if the phone is on its charger in the closet, everybody with legitimate access to that number also has the landline number.
For a while, we thought that the "landline" went out over the Internet cable, and were miffed, but it's the other way around: the services went out together because the internet goes out over the phone cable.
Funny, it doesn't feel like dial-up.
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We got an estimate on replacing the roof today. Ouch! But it will cost a lot more to leave it leaking.
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I washed two sheets. I shouldn't have thrown in the towels and cleaning rags, because we have plenty and I chickened out of hanging small stuff on the line. But the weather cleared up and it was sunny when I brought the sheets in.
We are out of bleach. I must stop at Kroger on the way back from the farmers markets tomorrow.
I was too tired to make a side trip to Kroger. My afternoon nap plays hob with my plans for exercise.
While opening this file, I deleted "wind watch" from my list of things to do in August and September. I gave it to Kathy; now *she* has to wind it every month.
Dr. Hickman prescribed dark-green vegetables. I didn't think I could eat a huge bunch of kale, so I bought three beets with the tops on. I threw away a lot of the leaf blades while cleaning the beets. I don't think that I can count the red stems of green vegetables as prescribed medicine. The green parts aren't all that green, but there's enough leaves for a mess.
It's hard to think of dark green vegetables other than leaves; I won't eat more than two or three green beans, and that only at a Chinese buffet. Okra is a seasoning, as is green pepper.
The internet is down, so I can't read the newspaper, Usenet, or on-line comic strips. At least it didn't bring down the local net this time (Dave corrected that last time), so I can make backups.
I'm catching up on file-straightening.
So I finally got the trays to the church, opened the packages with the aid of scissors borrowed from the children's room because the pair that belong in the kitchen are missing (I put the children's scissors back exactly where I found them!), marked "WLCC" on each tray, ran the water out hot while rinsing the rag I was wiping the gaskets and door handles with, washed the trays and rinsed them thoroughly, filled two — and couldn't get the second one into the freezer compartment. They are wider than the old trays, which just barely go.
I brought the other two trays home to compare with our trays, thinking that I could swap, but our trays are Rubbermaid too, the exact same model.
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Oops. I hand-pulled a vine of poison ivy out of the garlic-chive bed, thinking that it was virginia creeper.
I immediately washed my hands in the kitchen, then went to the bedroom and washed again with real soap, so I can hope that I got away with it.
A primer on picking garlic chives: run your fingers down the stem of a flower bud to the very base, then bend the stem over your forefinger. The stem will snap off at the base. If it doesn't, the bud is a little bit too mature. Bend at intervals while sliding your fingers up the stem until you get to a place where the stem is tender enough to eat.
I've seen pictures of flowers in full bloom with full-length stems being prepared for cooking, but I eat all of mine raw. I suspect that the mature stem would be a bit stringy even when cooked.
Though the flowers are pretty, it's important not to let any of them set seed, because garlic chive is a noxious weed.
Hey, that's a pome:
It's very important
Don't let 'em seed
'Cause garlic chive
Is a noxious weed.
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I thought one chicken breast was rather stingy for a pot of chowder, but when cut up it was almost too much.
It's a pre-fab recipe:
Fry salt, pepper, mini-sweet peppers, onion, and frozen peas in butter. I should have fried the peas for a while before putting in the peppers and onion, but I did it the other way around because I almost forgot the peas.
Dump in one can Essential Everyday mushroom soup, stir around until it's hot enough to thin a bit, add one can milk little by little, bring to a good boil that can't be stirred down, turn off fire, stir in chicken, serve.
There was a good bit left over.
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The internet is still down. Dave is almost upset enough to go back to Comcast. I'm beginning to wonder whether I'll be able to mail the Banner tomorrow.
The problem is said to be in the router, but the landline is also down. A real landline would not go through a router.
I wonder whether the phone will come back on line in time for the medical calls we will be getting tomorrow?
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I've given up tucking the head of the bed entirely. The weight of over half a yard of sheet is enough to hold it in place.
The net has been down since Saturday, but a BrightSpeed tech is supposed to come by today, so I might be able to send this issue.
I forgot to pick tomatoes on the way home from church, but I'd looked at them on the way up, and there were none that wouldn't keep a day. Then I couldn't work a trip up the hill into my schedule on Monday. Partly because I wanted to go to the teller machine too.
So today I intend to add a third stop at the little library, to dump some story magazines.
When looking at the tomatoes, I thought about getting down to look up at the vines and suddenly realized that I was wearing a floor-length white dress.
I should have worn dirty-work pants under my skirt, but I didn't *have* any dirty-work pants. Yesterday I finished repairing a frayed pocket on my old jeans, and plan to wear those while picking tomatoes today.
Which reminds me that I should hunt for cotton pants when I drop off stuff at Our Father's House on . . . I can't check the ten-day forecast to see what day is suitable.
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When I came home from the Little Library, ATM, church, and Kathy's place, there was a BrightSpeed truck blocking our driveway, so I may send this today.
Dave said that the repairman said that the folks across the street probably backed into the pole while they were moving in.
In addition to the tomatoes and peppers, Kathy has a basil plant and a fine crop of purslane. I've always dismissed purslane as not worth picking, but this stuff has flavor, so I brought some home. It *is* dark green!
Dave interrupted to say "it's working!"
But I shouldn't use the Net for a few more minutes. It's naptime and I'm going to bed.
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Our connection is working fine, but now it's bedtime. Tomorrow for sure!
I've planned a trip to Our Father's House and the recycle Center the day after tomorrow. I think I'll wash my underwear tomorrow.
It was a lovely day to dry wash on the line.
The boy came to mow the lawn, and it looks good. I dragged the trailer into the park so he wouldn't mow around it.
Boy's City Drive was closed for a while to install a new gas line. I presume it was for the new house.
Dave spent most of the day in the garage, which we started cleaning yesterday. I spent a while sorting stuff I plan to take to Our Father's House and packing it on the bike, which assisted in making the garage look neater, but we have decided to go to Martin's tomorrow instead. I must remember to print out my shopping list tonight.
I put flower heads from Kathy's basil into a water bottle, filled it with ice cubes, and put it into the freezer for Friday's expedition. I think that the next time I pick tomatoes, I'll cut off all the basil flowers and freeze them. In addition to making them keep until wanted, freezing will break up the cells and release the flavor into my drinking water.
The tomatoes aren't quite in full swing yet. It's a pity Kathy has to go to Florida just as they start producing.
For lunch today, I fried beet leaves with basil purslane, and garlic-chive scapes. I expected the chives to be obtrusive, but I think I could have put in enough to be a major ingredient without making the greens garlicky. (They are *very* strong when eaten raw.) I tossed the greens in bacon grease just long enough to get them greasy, then turned off the fire and emptied a nearly-empty jar of pickle vinegar on them. I wish I had more leaves and spiced vinegar!
I made a caraway-seed rye roll into croutons.
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