Completed list

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Marchbanks

About 7:30 I got outside and sanded down the sags and buildups on M’s desk, then put on a thin touch-up coat of stain over the sanded places. It ought to be ready to bring back in tomorrow morning.

And then . . . I got so excited that I pulled the halogen construction lights out of the shed, and put a first coat of paint on the fourth window screen.  At this rate, I might be ready to start putting on screening and hardware by the end of the coming week.

L called in about nine, to say she’d gone to ground in Roanoke, VA for the night.

And supper tonight was a bowl of crowder peas, courtesy of the CSA basket, and a couple of tortillas spread with a thick layer of Hatch chile pesto.  Which was wonderfully good.

Posted in House | Tagged | 5 Comments

It was the desk

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Marchbanks

M’s desk won the “What’s Next?” sweepstakes, and is sitting outdoors with a fresh coat of stain on it—and I have stain all in my back hair from having to crawl inside the kneehole to stain it, despite the cap I put on against just such an accident.  The desk should be dry enough to sand down the sags just about sunset.

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Corkin’

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Marchbanks

And I did that this morning, climbing up the full extent of my sixteen-foot extension ladder and squirting caulk into nail-hole divots in the Hardie planking, which the first building inspector (the one who did the framing inspection, which I passed) told me had to be done before I could call for final inspection of the roof project.  One of my neighbors came over to hold the ladder, since L wasn’t around—she left yesterday morning for Maryland, on a visit to BunRab, and won’t be back until the thirtieth.

Potential plans for this afternoon include putting a second coat of stain on M’s desk, starting to paint the fourth window screen, or sawing up some more pieces of The Shedding Tree, now that I got the second wood rack assembled.  Or that last one might wait until I get the chainsaw back out of the shop—one never knows, do one?

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Oh jeebusfuck

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Marchbanks

Somebody went and cracked the Land of Færie’s Web site, and installed a Trojan dropper script on the index page–maybe other places too; I haven’t figured out the extent of the damage.  My first look leads me to think it was cracked Thursday evening.  Right now I’m waiting for the Web host’s tech support to call me back, to discuss it and see whether there is any stored order information that crooks could have grabbed, or if they were just trying to drop a keylogger and steal some credit cards that way.  I sure hope the latter; if the former, we’re in in an awful big kettle of hot soup.

Posted in Færie, Work (WORK!!?!??!) | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

There r pikls

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Marchbanks

But while there are pickles, they are not yet edible pickles, since I only canned them last night.  Two quart jars and three pint jars of German dills are now aging in the pantry, and in two weeks, if the recipe in Marquez and Wagner is correct, they’ll be ready to eat.

The part that has me PO’d, however, is that most of the little gherkins that I got in the CSA basket were on the edge of spoiling, and because I couldn’t attend to them right away (L’s mother came to visit, and to pick up Martha for their trip to Yosemite), spoil they did, all moldy and squishy, so I had to throw out nearly half what I got.  This is not how to make Sam happy.

But still, there will be some pickles, and maybe cuke season won’t be over before the next CSA basket gets here.

And for my next trick, I think I may dig out some fish filets and make tilapia Créole aux noisettes à la Commander’s Palace.  Or maybe I’ll just paint window screens instead.

Posted in Food and Cooking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

New CSA basket

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Marchbanks

It arrived today, with

  • Two small eggplants (L says I can make eggplant-y things for her mother, who is coming to visit for a day or two before taking M away on a week’s trip to Yosemite)
  • An assortment of squash: a small butternut, a pattypan, a couple of crooknecks
  • Some considerable pounds of red potatoes
  • A pint basket of cherry tomatoes, which are all mine ’cos L and M don’t like fresh tomatoes
  • A pint and some of fresh figs, most of which will be mine too
  • A couple of beets
  • A couple of big yellow onions
  • Approximately a zillion gherkins, which means I gotta go find the canning jars I didn’t send to Piroshki t’other year, ’cos this means canning must happen
  • Another baggie of fresh basil
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How to use up beets

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Marchbanks

Which I needed to do, ’cos I had them left from the CSA basket and they were going to go bad soon.

The answer was to make red flannel hash, which used up the last of the potatoes and the last of the onions from the basket, too.  Now L can put in a new order on Monday, and I won’t have to feel guilty about throwing food out.

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Another lost to us

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Marchbanks

Last night I got a message at second hand from our friend Kelly that her husband, Steve, had a massive heart attack Monday night, and was in the CCU at Saint Agnes’ Hospital in Baltimore.  Today I spoke with Kelly and learned that Steve’s EEG is nearly flat, and there’s no hope he’ll recover.  She has to make a decision by Friday about when to turn off life support; she’s temporizing, trying to wait for the more nearby parts of her family to get there for support, as well as the one cousin who’s all that’s left of Steve’s family.  This is a shock to everyone, because Kelly has had congestive heart failure for some years, while Steve has never showed any signs of heart disease.  Everyone, including Kelly, expected that this would be the other way round, with Steve deciding when to discontinue life suipport for her someday.

Kelly and Steve are some of our longest-term friends as a couple; we met them soon after we joined Mensa in 1985.  We’ve been cohorts and co-conspirators for years in stitchery, old-house living, and many other things.  We just missed connections this summer when they passed through Austin on a transcontinental motor-home vacation to the West coast.  Now Kelly is beating on herself because we didn’t get to see them, although L and I have both told her that was nothing to repine about, since we all knew we’d be going up to Maryland in a year or so to go to L’s class reunion, and could see them then.

L talked to Kelly tonight, and agreed to come up for several days’ visit in late August.  Kelly has figured out, wisely, that what she’s most likely to need is just plain company, someone to listen while she rattles on, as she puts it.  And at the same time, L can help with some of the inevitable hauling-away of unneeded Stuph that has to happen when anyone dies.

Posted in House, Mensa, Needlework and Crafts | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

If you stand around long enough

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Marchbanks

someone will probably ask you to do something you’ve done before.

Which is what happened to me today, when the baleboosteh texted me from the Land of Færie to ask if I’d be willing to give a talk about something Celtic for Lone Star Mensa’s Regional Gathering.  The gathering’s program chair emailed her and asked would she do an hour’s talk, but she had other fish to fry and knew I’d be un-intimidated by either the subject or the audience.  And she’s right; I’ve certainly stood on my hind legs in front of that group and talked often enough, before now.

For those of my Small but Faithful Readership who may not remember that far back, L and I were members of LSM for twenty years, and between us held almost every elective and appointive office in the group at one time and another.  I went inactive in 1999 because I was tired after spending a year on the executive committee as the whipping boy for the then-chapter president’s wife, when I wouldn’t join in every half-baked idea they thought of with little cries of joy.  I did keep up membership for long enough to make twenty years, but when a ready-cash bind coincided with membership renewal time in 2005, I decided I didn’t need to keep the membership just for bragging rights, and couldn’t think of any other reason to renew since I hadn’t even been to an event in five years.  And I didn’t renew.

But now it seems they need an RG speaker (this is not surprising; RGs always have to scrabble to find enough speakers), and I happened to be standing there at the right time, so I’ll figure out forty minutes or so of remarks, which ought to leave time for fifteen minutes of questions, and still turn them out in time to get to whatever the next thing on the program may be.

 

I still know where the penguin is buried.  Fnord.

Posted in Færie, Mensa | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

I haz a baskit

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Marchbanks

Well, not a basket, really . . . more of a mail tote . . . but it’s nearly full of fresh fruits and veg!

Several weeks back, a survey went around in L’s department to gauge interest in a departmental CSA co-op membership.  Price, $25 per delivery.  I’d been toying with the idea of CSA membership already, so we decided to try it.

So the first shipment arrived today, and we got:

  • A 15-pound watermelon (what we are going to do with that much watermelon I don’t know; L and M can’t possibly eat it all, and I’m not that fond of watermelon anyway)
  • A basket of eight very ripe figs that M, predictably, decided were yucky (I thought they were a little light on flavour, but nice)
  • Two eggplants
  • Six largish gherkin-type cucumbers, of which L’s already eaten one
  • A tiny poblano-looking pepper
  • A tiny green bell pepper
  • A banana pepper
  • Three medium-large beets
  • Three big-ass zucchini
  • Four crookneck yellow squash
  • Four BIG yellow onions
  • Three pounds of red potatoes
  • A small baggie of fresh basil

Now we got two challenges:  eating up the perishables before they spoil, and trying to figure out things to cook with them that my vegetable-indifferent (i.e., they can take them or leave them) family will actually eat.  The eggplants are the biggest challenge, ’cos nobody but me likes them much.  Maybe I can do a melanzana parmigiana, portion it out, and freeze it for lunches.

Posted in Food and Cooking | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments