We put food out in our courtyard for the birds because we enjoy watching them. I have large terra cotta saucers on the ground for the bigger birds (doves, blackbirds, grackles) and three window-mounted feeders for the little birds (finches). I don't feed hummingbirds because the neighbors do, although hummers do visit our flowering plants.
The smaller window-mounted feeders are new this season and it's really been fun watching the birds discover them. I have a feeder with nyger seed (thistle) for the finches on the window across the hall from my office, located so I can just look up through the arch and watch them. The other ones are mounted on hall windows where we can watch from our bed.
These feeders are stuck on with suction cups and are fairly small, much to the annoyance of the doves. The doves can't get into the feeders, which frustrates them no end. They sit on top and try to reach down and in to the food, but the feeder is too big for that to work. They try to fly into the feeder, but it's too small. The doves even try to hover outside the feeder, but they can only hover briefly and their wings smack into the feeder if they get too close. They don't even try to get the nyger seeds, maybe because it's so obviously impossible for them.
I don't think doves are very intelligent. These doves could be eating from the big terra cotta saucers on the ground without any problems at all, but there they are, flailing around the little feeders instead. A few of the grackles and blackbirds have made half-hearted attempts to get at the food in the feeders, but they give up quickly. The exercise pen around the saucers baffle the doves, too. They get very frustrated when they're on the outside, walking up and down the fence line trying to get through. The exercise pen is there to keep Gordo the Collie out, not the doves.
In fairness to the doves, they may be stupid, but there are a lot of them, so they're doing something right.
And roadrunners occasionally drop by, either for small birds or peanuts. I feel a little guilty about the former; the buffet isn't supposed to be that extensive. That's how nature works, though.
It's amazing how much pleasure we get from watching the birds. The bird seed isn't particularly expensive (I buy the no-waste feed from Amazon) and we get hours of enjoyment. Birds can be very funny, as when the finches are chasing the doves away. Right now we're seeing a lot of courting and mating behavior. It won't be long before we see parental behavior, bringing the young birds to the food and teaching them to eat.
Showing posts with label Quotidian Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quotidian Life. Show all posts
31 March 2011
18 March 2011
Gordo the Collie Does It Again
The night before last, Gordo the Collie got into the bird seed. This time he opened a 5.75-lb bag of Nyger seed, intended for the finches, and ate about half a pound. Nyger seed is very small, maybe a sixteenth of an inch in diameter and three-sixteenths of an inch in length. The seeds went through him really quickly yesterday, but he sure left a lot to be picked up. He's pretty much back to normal today.
Yes, I know it's really my fault for leaving the bag where he could get to it. He loves to open bags and boxes and I should have known that bag would be very tantalizing to him. The noise the seeds make when the bag moves would get his attention. It was a nice rattly plastic bag, too.
Gordo the Collie is almost three years old and I'm still having to puppy-proof the house. I blame this on the epilepsy and resultant brain damage. It doesn't matter if he's not perfect. I still love him just as much. I just have to quit forgetting my part of the job.
Yes, I know it's really my fault for leaving the bag where he could get to it. He loves to open bags and boxes and I should have known that bag would be very tantalizing to him. The noise the seeds make when the bag moves would get his attention. It was a nice rattly plastic bag, too.
Gordo the Collie is almost three years old and I'm still having to puppy-proof the house. I blame this on the epilepsy and resultant brain damage. It doesn't matter if he's not perfect. I still love him just as much. I just have to quit forgetting my part of the job.
01 March 2011
Lemons, Lemons, Lemons
When the gardeners pruned the lemon tree, I ended up with about eight gallons of lemons. This is a serious number of lemons. Last night I made seven pints of preserved lemons and now I only have about two gallons of lemons left.
It's really easy to make preserved lemons, which are from Morocco and are traditionally used in chicken tangines, or stews. You slice a lemon almost into quarters, leaving the four pieces attached at the stem end. Then you stuff kosher salt into the cuts, about a quarter-inch thick. Drop the lemon into the canning jar and cover it with lemon juice. It took four or five small lemons to make enough juice to cover two salted lemons, using one-pint wide mouth jars.
Then you let the jars sit in a cool place for a month and the preserved lemons are ready to use. You take the lemon out of the salty juice, rinse it off, and chop it fairly finely. Drop the rest of the lemon back into the jar for later. Use this anywhere you need a bright lemon taste. I put it in tuna salad, for example.
It's really easy to make preserved lemons, which are from Morocco and are traditionally used in chicken tangines, or stews. You slice a lemon almost into quarters, leaving the four pieces attached at the stem end. Then you stuff kosher salt into the cuts, about a quarter-inch thick. Drop the lemon into the canning jar and cover it with lemon juice. It took four or five small lemons to make enough juice to cover two salted lemons, using one-pint wide mouth jars.
Then you let the jars sit in a cool place for a month and the preserved lemons are ready to use. You take the lemon out of the salty juice, rinse it off, and chop it fairly finely. Drop the rest of the lemon back into the jar for later. Use this anywhere you need a bright lemon taste. I put it in tuna salad, for example.
22 February 2011
Nature Red in Tooth and Claw
We had a dramatic bit of nature happen in our courtyard yesterday. A roadrunner killed a small bird and carried the body off. All that was left to show this had happened was a few spatters of blood and some feathers. The roadrunner came back three or four more times after that, probably looking for more prey. We think the roadrunner has a nest with chicks nearby.
This is the part of nature that Walt Disney didn't show in the nature shows. The hero character always escaped the predator. When we were on photo safari in Botswana, we saw a pride of lions pull down, kill, and eat a Cape buffalo. Only it wasn't quite in that order. It was more like pull down, eat, and kill. It was horrible to see and hear, but it was an important and regular part of nature. Predators kill, prey gets eaten. It's just that it usually doesn't happen right outside the sliding door.
This is the part of nature that Walt Disney didn't show in the nature shows. The hero character always escaped the predator. When we were on photo safari in Botswana, we saw a pride of lions pull down, kill, and eat a Cape buffalo. Only it wasn't quite in that order. It was more like pull down, eat, and kill. It was horrible to see and hear, but it was an important and regular part of nature. Predators kill, prey gets eaten. It's just that it usually doesn't happen right outside the sliding door.
20 February 2011
Rainy Nights in the Desert
Our weather has been reminding me of that song about Camelot, where the rain may never fall 'til after sundown... The last two days have been just like that. It was cloudy on Thursday, but it didn't start to rain here until about 2200, well after dark. Friday had scattered clouds, mostly white and rainless until late afternoon. Again it didn't rain until well after dark. We got almost an inch of rain on Thursday night and a whole lot less on Friday. Then it was very cold Saturday night.
Gordo the Collie hates the rain. He doesn't like getting his feet wet at all and he's not at all fond of having drops of water fall out of the sky onto him. As a result, all of his expeditions outdoors on both nights were hard on both of us. He'd go out, take a few steps, and stand there for a while, then turn around and come back in, without doing what he'd gone out to do. So he'd come in, lie down, and then get up, go back out, on and on and on, thereby keeping me awake for hours. Fortunately, I think we won't have rain again for a while, so we can both get back to normal.
Gordo the Collie hates the rain. He doesn't like getting his feet wet at all and he's not at all fond of having drops of water fall out of the sky onto him. As a result, all of his expeditions outdoors on both nights were hard on both of us. He'd go out, take a few steps, and stand there for a while, then turn around and come back in, without doing what he'd gone out to do. So he'd come in, lie down, and then get up, go back out, on and on and on, thereby keeping me awake for hours. Fortunately, I think we won't have rain again for a while, so we can both get back to normal.
05 March 2010
Another Ductless Air Conditioner
We liked the ductless air conditioner we installed in the family room in the Lancaster house so well that we installed one in the room my husband uses. We're planning on living here year-around, so being able to keep that room cool is important.
The house itself is fairly well heated and cooled, with two five-ton units. (The casita has its own three-ton system.) However, the system that cools his room also cools the walk-in closet, master bath, and master bedroom, before heading across the house to the furthest room, his. It's just never quite cool enough or warm enough, although we've done all sorts of fiddling around with the vents. So we gave up and put the ductless system in.
In addition, we're putting in a photovoltaic system, to generate electricity. What I hope will happen is that using our own electricity will cut our electric bills dramatically. What I worry will happen is that having our own electricity will sustain us after an earthquake or other problem. The system we're putting is, with batteries, should be enough to keep the house livable, although some areas may not be as comfortable as we'd like after a catastrophe. There's some magic thinking going on here, too, with my hoping that being so well-prepared will actually stave off the quake.
I've spent my entire life in California hearing that the Big One is coming just any day now and am I ready? Yes, I'm ready. Bottled water, extra kibble, medical supplies, flashlights and radios and batteries. All these decades of being ready and nothing. Perhaps the readiness is preventing what I'm ready for.
Or maybe the deep layers of rock will do what they do when they do it and it's pure coincidence that it hasn't happened yet. Somehow, this feels more likely. I can't really believe my regularly renewing my bottle water supplies has any affect on the fault line.
The house itself is fairly well heated and cooled, with two five-ton units. (The casita has its own three-ton system.) However, the system that cools his room also cools the walk-in closet, master bath, and master bedroom, before heading across the house to the furthest room, his. It's just never quite cool enough or warm enough, although we've done all sorts of fiddling around with the vents. So we gave up and put the ductless system in.
In addition, we're putting in a photovoltaic system, to generate electricity. What I hope will happen is that using our own electricity will cut our electric bills dramatically. What I worry will happen is that having our own electricity will sustain us after an earthquake or other problem. The system we're putting is, with batteries, should be enough to keep the house livable, although some areas may not be as comfortable as we'd like after a catastrophe. There's some magic thinking going on here, too, with my hoping that being so well-prepared will actually stave off the quake.
I've spent my entire life in California hearing that the Big One is coming just any day now and am I ready? Yes, I'm ready. Bottled water, extra kibble, medical supplies, flashlights and radios and batteries. All these decades of being ready and nothing. Perhaps the readiness is preventing what I'm ready for.
Or maybe the deep layers of rock will do what they do when they do it and it's pure coincidence that it hasn't happened yet. Somehow, this feels more likely. I can't really believe my regularly renewing my bottle water supplies has any affect on the fault line.
18 February 2010
Weather Guilt
My husband and I were watching the local weather last night and I mentioned that I hadn't really said much about our nice weather (we've had a week of beautiful clear days with highs in the low 80s). I really feel kind of guilty having such nice weather when so much of the country is getting so much snow. I don't think anyone who is snowed in needs to hear about how nice it is here. Our low temperatures have been higher than a lot of the country's high temperatures.
Our string of nice days is coming to an end, though. There's a big storm coming in off the Pacific and the leading edge showed up about noon here. The high was 79°, at about 1300, and the temperature started dropping as the first high, thin layer of cloud moved in. The sky is still blue, but it's kind of milky, not the intense blue we've had. It might actually rain tonight, although probably not much, and will be cloudy and, again, possibly rainy tomorrow. The storm is centered on Northern California and we're just getting the southern edge. It's very likely that the rain won't make it over the mountains; this is a desert because that's what usually happens.
There's a fair amount of snow on the mountains. I look out my kitchen window and see palm trees in front of the snow-capped San Jacinto mountains. I have to go out into the front yard to see San Gorgonio. I was admiring it when I went for the mail.
My spell-checker is not familiar with California place names. The names, taken from the Spanish ecclesiastical calendar and mostly saints' names, all have red underlines. The red underlines really catch the eye. I have to check the names to be sure I've spelled them right and then add them in.
Our string of nice days is coming to an end, though. There's a big storm coming in off the Pacific and the leading edge showed up about noon here. The high was 79°, at about 1300, and the temperature started dropping as the first high, thin layer of cloud moved in. The sky is still blue, but it's kind of milky, not the intense blue we've had. It might actually rain tonight, although probably not much, and will be cloudy and, again, possibly rainy tomorrow. The storm is centered on Northern California and we're just getting the southern edge. It's very likely that the rain won't make it over the mountains; this is a desert because that's what usually happens.
There's a fair amount of snow on the mountains. I look out my kitchen window and see palm trees in front of the snow-capped San Jacinto mountains. I have to go out into the front yard to see San Gorgonio. I was admiring it when I went for the mail.
My spell-checker is not familiar with California place names. The names, taken from the Spanish ecclesiastical calendar and mostly saints' names, all have red underlines. The red underlines really catch the eye. I have to check the names to be sure I've spelled them right and then add them in.
06 January 2010
Back in the Low Desert
We came back down to Palm Desert on the 9th of December. It had really started getting cold in Lancaster, so I was definitely ready to bail out of there. It's mostly been in the mid- to high-70s here and I even wear shorts on the sunny days.
We skipped last winter, so it had been about fifteen months since we'd been here. The house stayed cleaner than I expected, except for the bug bodies in the bathrooms (I don't know how they get into the house and the casita, maybe from the attic through light fixtures or something). I got Merry Maids in on a panic basis on the fourteenth and they went through the whole house. My cousin came in on the sixteenth and her family came in on the weekend and the general tidiness of the house fell apart, with gifts to be wrapped and pieces of crystal and candles and holiday food and gift wrap and ribbon and stuff everywhere.
There were some problems, though. I had a gallon bottle of bleach sitting on the counter in the laundry room spring a leak and trickle out into rather pretty bleach stalactites on the counter and the wooden cabinets, with corresponding stalagmites on the tile floor. The counter is that synthetic marble stuff and the bleach etched a set of concentric rings into it, matching the bottom of the plastic bottle. The bleach also penetrated the finish on the cabinets in a couple of places, damaging the wood. It's been cleaned up and I'm ignoring the damage right now. I think I'll have to replace the entire counter, which is about six feet long, with a sink cutout, as well as one cabinet panel.
The other thing that happened because we were gone for so long was that the pump in the washing machine dried out. As a result, when I washed the first load in it, the plastic pump overheated and I melted itself into junk. This happened the evening of the third day we were back, a Friday, and I was able to schedule a repairman for Tuesday. He took one look at the puddle, centered at the front of the washer, and diagnosed the problem. Apparently, this is a fairly common problem for snowbirds.
I had had to have my Lancaster washer repaired this summer and I took the opportunity both times to ask the repairmen about front-loading washers. They both told me that front-loaders had a very high repair rate and that the repairs were very expensive. This confirms some of the stories I've heard from friends and neighbors with front-loaders. I think I'll stick with top-loaders. I know they use more water, but I have the ultra-large size and, as a result, don't wash that many loads, so I don't really feel that I'm putting the entire balance of nature into decline.
Our family visit was wonderful and the Christmas Eve dinner was absolutely perfect. Well, we forgot to make and serve the green salad, but we had enough food on the table that we didn't notice this until we were cleaning up the kitchen. It was wonderful to see my uncle and his daughter and her husband (their son and his wife, who live in Seattle, couldn't join us because they were insanely busy closing escrow on their first house and scrambling to get out of their apartment; plus, they're expecting a baby this spring).
Our visitors left the day after Christmas, much to Gordo's dismay. He had really enjoyed having six people in the house, particularly the two kids who made over him constantly. His sojourn at this house had started badly when he fell into the waterfall and strained his shoulder. He was put on crate rest for about a week, getting out just as the kids arrived. He really misses them.
I think this is enough of a data dump for now. I'll be back fairly soon to tell the tale of my reading Cryptonomicon, a book by Neal Stephenson, and to show off my latest shawl, a knit-along (KAL) project.
We skipped last winter, so it had been about fifteen months since we'd been here. The house stayed cleaner than I expected, except for the bug bodies in the bathrooms (I don't know how they get into the house and the casita, maybe from the attic through light fixtures or something). I got Merry Maids in on a panic basis on the fourteenth and they went through the whole house. My cousin came in on the sixteenth and her family came in on the weekend and the general tidiness of the house fell apart, with gifts to be wrapped and pieces of crystal and candles and holiday food and gift wrap and ribbon and stuff everywhere.
There were some problems, though. I had a gallon bottle of bleach sitting on the counter in the laundry room spring a leak and trickle out into rather pretty bleach stalactites on the counter and the wooden cabinets, with corresponding stalagmites on the tile floor. The counter is that synthetic marble stuff and the bleach etched a set of concentric rings into it, matching the bottom of the plastic bottle. The bleach also penetrated the finish on the cabinets in a couple of places, damaging the wood. It's been cleaned up and I'm ignoring the damage right now. I think I'll have to replace the entire counter, which is about six feet long, with a sink cutout, as well as one cabinet panel.
The other thing that happened because we were gone for so long was that the pump in the washing machine dried out. As a result, when I washed the first load in it, the plastic pump overheated and I melted itself into junk. This happened the evening of the third day we were back, a Friday, and I was able to schedule a repairman for Tuesday. He took one look at the puddle, centered at the front of the washer, and diagnosed the problem. Apparently, this is a fairly common problem for snowbirds.
I had had to have my Lancaster washer repaired this summer and I took the opportunity both times to ask the repairmen about front-loading washers. They both told me that front-loaders had a very high repair rate and that the repairs were very expensive. This confirms some of the stories I've heard from friends and neighbors with front-loaders. I think I'll stick with top-loaders. I know they use more water, but I have the ultra-large size and, as a result, don't wash that many loads, so I don't really feel that I'm putting the entire balance of nature into decline.
Our family visit was wonderful and the Christmas Eve dinner was absolutely perfect. Well, we forgot to make and serve the green salad, but we had enough food on the table that we didn't notice this until we were cleaning up the kitchen. It was wonderful to see my uncle and his daughter and her husband (their son and his wife, who live in Seattle, couldn't join us because they were insanely busy closing escrow on their first house and scrambling to get out of their apartment; plus, they're expecting a baby this spring).
Our visitors left the day after Christmas, much to Gordo's dismay. He had really enjoyed having six people in the house, particularly the two kids who made over him constantly. His sojourn at this house had started badly when he fell into the waterfall and strained his shoulder. He was put on crate rest for about a week, getting out just as the kids arrived. He really misses them.
I think this is enough of a data dump for now. I'll be back fairly soon to tell the tale of my reading Cryptonomicon, a book by Neal Stephenson, and to show off my latest shawl, a knit-along (KAL) project.
10 August 2009
Good News and Bad (But Improving) News
First the good news. I made another batch of bean and bacon soup (recipe posted here previously), only this time I spread it out over several days. It's been so hot here that I really didn't want to make it in one session. Well, actually, it started after I soaked the beans and then didn't feel like making soup after all. Still, I was glad to find out that I could spread the process over a few days.
I picked over and soaked the beans about five days ago, freezing them after I rinsed them. Then on Saturday I sliced and fried the bacon and drained it, then put it in the fridge. This afternoon I took care of the onion and garlic, then put the peppercorns, bay leaves, onion and garlic, bacon, and beans (nuked briefly so they wouldn't be a great big bean lump) into the pressure cooker, set it, and sat down to see what was new on Facebook I'm Mary Shafer there, if you want to friend me.
It's finished cooking now and I've tasted it. It tastes pretty good, but it needs salt, of course. It's too hot to whiz with the stick blender; I don't like the idea of flinging really hot soup all over me and the kitchen. I'll add salt while I'm doing that, to be sure to get it evenly mixed. I didn't put enough in the first batch, partly because my cousin was coming and I wasn't sure how much salt she'd like.
Speaking of my cousin, we had a wonderful visit. We were so sad to see her leave. Even Gordo missed her and kept going to the guest room to look for her. He'd give me this pitiful look like "How could you let her go away?" and, of course, there was no explaining it to him. She's the one who introduced me to Starbuck's iced chai latte last year. I'm now a regular customer and it's all her fault. I don't drink coffee, so I hadn't known they sold tea. I got her back, though. I introduced her to the Kindle and loaned my Kindle 2 to her. Both she and her husband have been reading with it and they really like it. I suspect they're going to end up buying one (or, maybe, two). We're a reading family, even the people who marry in, and it passes on to the kids, too.
Now for the bad news. Gordo the Wonder Collie had to have extensive exploratory surgery on Friday. He'd managed to swallow a 3" by 3" piece of rigid plastic, as well as a bunch of smaller pieces of the same plastic and some other stuff, and this was really messing up his digestive system. We took him over to the vet after he vomited five times in the night. Collies have deep chests, which made the surgery more difficult. They cut open his stomach and pulled all the junk out of it, which took both hands, and then examined his intestines carefully for smaller pieces.
He had a small fever over the weekend, but that's gone (this is written on Monday). He's still not eating much, but he's always been a picky eater. We now have great hopes that he'll come home tomorrow, since he actually ate a little kibble today. I think he has to demonstrate that his digestive system works from end to end, as it were, the same way that people who have had surgery on their digestive tracts do.
I picked over and soaked the beans about five days ago, freezing them after I rinsed them. Then on Saturday I sliced and fried the bacon and drained it, then put it in the fridge. This afternoon I took care of the onion and garlic, then put the peppercorns, bay leaves, onion and garlic, bacon, and beans (nuked briefly so they wouldn't be a great big bean lump) into the pressure cooker, set it, and sat down to see what was new on Facebook I'm Mary Shafer there, if you want to friend me.
It's finished cooking now and I've tasted it. It tastes pretty good, but it needs salt, of course. It's too hot to whiz with the stick blender; I don't like the idea of flinging really hot soup all over me and the kitchen. I'll add salt while I'm doing that, to be sure to get it evenly mixed. I didn't put enough in the first batch, partly because my cousin was coming and I wasn't sure how much salt she'd like.
Speaking of my cousin, we had a wonderful visit. We were so sad to see her leave. Even Gordo missed her and kept going to the guest room to look for her. He'd give me this pitiful look like "How could you let her go away?" and, of course, there was no explaining it to him. She's the one who introduced me to Starbuck's iced chai latte last year. I'm now a regular customer and it's all her fault. I don't drink coffee, so I hadn't known they sold tea. I got her back, though. I introduced her to the Kindle and loaned my Kindle 2 to her. Both she and her husband have been reading with it and they really like it. I suspect they're going to end up buying one (or, maybe, two). We're a reading family, even the people who marry in, and it passes on to the kids, too.
Now for the bad news. Gordo the Wonder Collie had to have extensive exploratory surgery on Friday. He'd managed to swallow a 3" by 3" piece of rigid plastic, as well as a bunch of smaller pieces of the same plastic and some other stuff, and this was really messing up his digestive system. We took him over to the vet after he vomited five times in the night. Collies have deep chests, which made the surgery more difficult. They cut open his stomach and pulled all the junk out of it, which took both hands, and then examined his intestines carefully for smaller pieces.
He had a small fever over the weekend, but that's gone (this is written on Monday). He's still not eating much, but he's always been a picky eater. We now have great hopes that he'll come home tomorrow, since he actually ate a little kibble today. I think he has to demonstrate that his digestive system works from end to end, as it were, the same way that people who have had surgery on their digestive tracts do.
28 May 2009
Like Cool, Man
Well, it's taken two return trips by the techs and 20 ft of PVC pipe, but the ductless a/c seems to be working. The system startled us by suddenly dripping a lot of water on the floor. The water spread out to be quite a large puddle, although not very deep. Just proves they did a good job when they laid the slab.
It turned out that the way our ceiling is built, they couldn't get a good downhill slope the way they originally tried. So now the drain tube goes the other way, out over the double doors from the patio. It drains into an elbow on a run of PVC that goes across above the window over the sink, around the corner, over the other window, and then drops down to nearly ground level. I'd take a photo but my kitchen counters, which you can see through the windows, are an absolute mess and I'm not going to display that to the whole world. More spring cleaning to do, of course.
As for the other problems, the technician suggested checking the second remote (my policy is to buy a second remote at the time, not wait years until the replacement is no longer available) and all the other problems went away. We're not sure if the first remote was bad or if it was the wrong remote. The remote that came with our system had been robbed out of the box and they'd brought us a substitute. The second remote was dropped off the next day and we didn't even put the batteries in it, just put it into a drawer with the paperwork.
So now the system is working perfectly. We close the doors to the family room and use it during the day and it's cool and comfortable. Meanwhile, the rest of the house stays fairly cool because we've had the windows open all night. Here in the desert, the nights get very cool; a temperature drop of 40°F is common. We use that natural cooling to get the house cool enough so that we can ride it out until it starts cooling off the next evening. With the help of a few fans, that works pretty well.
I had a panic with my Kindle the day before yesterday. It wouldn't wake up, although I did manage to turn it off completely, not just sleep it. I went to the Kindle help site and immediately found the answer. It booted up, very obligingly, and has been working just fine since. I was pretty upset, since I was in the middle of a great book. However, I have a number of regular books that I need to read, so it wouldn't have been a catastrophe if I'd had to send the Kindle for repairs. It would have been inconvenient, because my husband is a light sleeper and clicking the Kindle is much quieter than turning the page of a book. How quickly we adapt!
So all's well here, electronically and mechanically. At least for now.
My husband's little laptop is starting to act a little oddly, so I just bought him a replacement from eBay. These laptops were last manufactured about four years ago and he's not ready to change over to a newer model (he runs a dual boot, Linux and XP). I'm using an even older laptop and am on my third replacement. I'm still running W2K. I have a 1600x1200-pixel 16.1" display and I'm not ready to switch over to the letterbox-shaped displays that the newer laptops have. Fortunately, we still have a couple of replacements in reserve. We'll both have to give up eventually, I'm sure, but we'll probably manage to skip another generation before we do.
Gordo the Wonder Collie is doing well on his new medication schedule. We've reduced the doses and he's a great deal more lively. He got a floppy rhinoceros from Orvis for his birthday. He's very fond of it and takes it to bed with him at night, using it for a pillow. He also got a dog nest and an outdoor dog bed and he's using them both.
I've taken most of the photos I promised in the last posting and will be putting them up soon. I think I've found the right lace pattern for the beautiful silk and I'll be getting back to knitting. Now that it's so cool in the family room, I'm ready to knit again.
It turned out that the way our ceiling is built, they couldn't get a good downhill slope the way they originally tried. So now the drain tube goes the other way, out over the double doors from the patio. It drains into an elbow on a run of PVC that goes across above the window over the sink, around the corner, over the other window, and then drops down to nearly ground level. I'd take a photo but my kitchen counters, which you can see through the windows, are an absolute mess and I'm not going to display that to the whole world. More spring cleaning to do, of course.
As for the other problems, the technician suggested checking the second remote (my policy is to buy a second remote at the time, not wait years until the replacement is no longer available) and all the other problems went away. We're not sure if the first remote was bad or if it was the wrong remote. The remote that came with our system had been robbed out of the box and they'd brought us a substitute. The second remote was dropped off the next day and we didn't even put the batteries in it, just put it into a drawer with the paperwork.
So now the system is working perfectly. We close the doors to the family room and use it during the day and it's cool and comfortable. Meanwhile, the rest of the house stays fairly cool because we've had the windows open all night. Here in the desert, the nights get very cool; a temperature drop of 40°F is common. We use that natural cooling to get the house cool enough so that we can ride it out until it starts cooling off the next evening. With the help of a few fans, that works pretty well.
I had a panic with my Kindle the day before yesterday. It wouldn't wake up, although I did manage to turn it off completely, not just sleep it. I went to the Kindle help site and immediately found the answer. It booted up, very obligingly, and has been working just fine since. I was pretty upset, since I was in the middle of a great book. However, I have a number of regular books that I need to read, so it wouldn't have been a catastrophe if I'd had to send the Kindle for repairs. It would have been inconvenient, because my husband is a light sleeper and clicking the Kindle is much quieter than turning the page of a book. How quickly we adapt!
So all's well here, electronically and mechanically. At least for now.
My husband's little laptop is starting to act a little oddly, so I just bought him a replacement from eBay. These laptops were last manufactured about four years ago and he's not ready to change over to a newer model (he runs a dual boot, Linux and XP). I'm using an even older laptop and am on my third replacement. I'm still running W2K. I have a 1600x1200-pixel 16.1" display and I'm not ready to switch over to the letterbox-shaped displays that the newer laptops have. Fortunately, we still have a couple of replacements in reserve. We'll both have to give up eventually, I'm sure, but we'll probably manage to skip another generation before we do.
Gordo the Wonder Collie is doing well on his new medication schedule. We've reduced the doses and he's a great deal more lively. He got a floppy rhinoceros from Orvis for his birthday. He's very fond of it and takes it to bed with him at night, using it for a pillow. He also got a dog nest and an outdoor dog bed and he's using them both.
I've taken most of the photos I promised in the last posting and will be putting them up soon. I think I've found the right lace pattern for the beautiful silk and I'll be getting back to knitting. Now that it's so cool in the family room, I'm ready to knit again.
16 May 2009
Mac the Knife
We're having some unseasonably hot weather right now. Although it's really not that unseasonable because we haven't hit the local record high temperature yet. It's probably going to be 100°F at the peak, although there's a slight breeze picking up, meaning that we may get the marine layer here early.
Updated to add that we did indeed set a new record for the local high for the day, by 4°, at 99°, so far. It may get another degree or two hotter.
Anyway, we put the ductless a/c unit in on Thursday, but it's not working. There's a problem with getting the remote to work and, of course, it only works with the remote. They're coming over on Monday with a new remote and an electrician to sort everything out.
Meanwhile I'm struggling with a constant problem that has kind of gotten out of hand. I do a lot of shopping on the Internet. It's mostly because of the dog; between his epilepsy and the weather, I don't like to go off and leave him for very long at all. Shopping is no fun if you're in a panic to get back home. So UPS and FedEx and USPS keep delivering cartons of shopping to my house. I've been buying a fair amount of clothing because nothing I had would fit and that really added the boxes. The two most recent deliveries were a new HP all-in-one from Amazon and a pair of utility knives from Overstock.
I needed the utility knives because I've used up all the snap-off blades on my U-Haul box cutters. Cutting up cardboard with a dull knife is dangerous and frustrating. All these cartons that keep showing up have to be cut up and put, along with most of the packing material, into the recycle bin. I'd gotten really behind and I had cardboard boxes everywhere. My housekeeper and I made a good start two weeks ago, clearing out the stuff in the guest room. We only stopped because we ran out of space in the recycle bin. So last week I borrowed my neighbor's recycle bin and filled up both bins, but that still didn't take care of all the boxes.
Yesterday afternoon I cut up another half a bin's worth. And the new utility knives really work well. The grip is very comfortable and it's easy to change blades. Plus they each came with fifty spare blades, which should last close to a lifetime. You should have seen me slashing through the carton they came in, with the razor-sharp blade making it effortless. Just call me Mac the Knife.
As soon as it cools off I'm going to go cut up enough to fill the recycle bin so it will go away on Tuesday. Then I'm going to polish off the rest, get it all out of my entry hall and living room, and never let myself get so far behind again. I don't have any real problem keeping up with the household recycling, mostly from the kitchen, just with the inundation of cartons.
Updated to add that I did get all the big cartons and the packing material into the recycle bin, with a little room left over for the kitchen stuff. The worst part was going out into the heat to transfer it from the large carton I'd put it into as I cut it up to the bin. It's not just hot, but more humid than normal. I just couldn't bear to wait until it got cooler. I've gotten a little compulsive about all this cardboard.
UPS bringeth,
USPS bringeth, and
FedEx bringeth,
But none of them taketh away.
It's Spring and my house needs attention and I'm restless. I've got another two 33-gallon bags to donate to the thrift store and I'm starting to be able to hang clothes in my closet without prying apart what already in there. I'm saving the guest room closet for when my cousin comes, in July. She'll help me be ruthless with the dressier work clothes that went in there when I outgrew them. I of course had hopes of losing weight and wearing them again, but I didn't know it wouldn't be until I'd been retired for six years and no longer had anywhere to wear them.
I will get back to knitting, I promise. I'll take photos of all the new yarn I've gotten (I have to put it away, now that it's out of its cartons) in the next couple of days and put some photos up here (and add all of them in Ravelry). I've even got two FOs to photograph and post. Plus two triangular shawls that just need blocking to be finished and a circular shawl ditto. I'm saving the circular shawl for when my cousin is here, since it's for her. After we get it blocked, we may have to shorten it. She's my height and this is supposed to be a circular shawl to keep her shoulders warm in over-cooled restaurants, not a mid-thigh-length cape. It's knit top-down in a modified fan and feather, so shortening it won't be difficult.
Updated to add that we did indeed set a new record for the local high for the day, by 4°, at 99°, so far. It may get another degree or two hotter.
Anyway, we put the ductless a/c unit in on Thursday, but it's not working. There's a problem with getting the remote to work and, of course, it only works with the remote. They're coming over on Monday with a new remote and an electrician to sort everything out.
Meanwhile I'm struggling with a constant problem that has kind of gotten out of hand. I do a lot of shopping on the Internet. It's mostly because of the dog; between his epilepsy and the weather, I don't like to go off and leave him for very long at all. Shopping is no fun if you're in a panic to get back home. So UPS and FedEx and USPS keep delivering cartons of shopping to my house. I've been buying a fair amount of clothing because nothing I had would fit and that really added the boxes. The two most recent deliveries were a new HP all-in-one from Amazon and a pair of utility knives from Overstock.
I needed the utility knives because I've used up all the snap-off blades on my U-Haul box cutters. Cutting up cardboard with a dull knife is dangerous and frustrating. All these cartons that keep showing up have to be cut up and put, along with most of the packing material, into the recycle bin. I'd gotten really behind and I had cardboard boxes everywhere. My housekeeper and I made a good start two weeks ago, clearing out the stuff in the guest room. We only stopped because we ran out of space in the recycle bin. So last week I borrowed my neighbor's recycle bin and filled up both bins, but that still didn't take care of all the boxes.
Yesterday afternoon I cut up another half a bin's worth. And the new utility knives really work well. The grip is very comfortable and it's easy to change blades. Plus they each came with fifty spare blades, which should last close to a lifetime. You should have seen me slashing through the carton they came in, with the razor-sharp blade making it effortless. Just call me Mac the Knife.
As soon as it cools off I'm going to go cut up enough to fill the recycle bin so it will go away on Tuesday. Then I'm going to polish off the rest, get it all out of my entry hall and living room, and never let myself get so far behind again. I don't have any real problem keeping up with the household recycling, mostly from the kitchen, just with the inundation of cartons.
Updated to add that I did get all the big cartons and the packing material into the recycle bin, with a little room left over for the kitchen stuff. The worst part was going out into the heat to transfer it from the large carton I'd put it into as I cut it up to the bin. It's not just hot, but more humid than normal. I just couldn't bear to wait until it got cooler. I've gotten a little compulsive about all this cardboard.
UPS bringeth,
USPS bringeth, and
FedEx bringeth,
But none of them taketh away.
It's Spring and my house needs attention and I'm restless. I've got another two 33-gallon bags to donate to the thrift store and I'm starting to be able to hang clothes in my closet without prying apart what already in there. I'm saving the guest room closet for when my cousin comes, in July. She'll help me be ruthless with the dressier work clothes that went in there when I outgrew them. I of course had hopes of losing weight and wearing them again, but I didn't know it wouldn't be until I'd been retired for six years and no longer had anywhere to wear them.
I will get back to knitting, I promise. I'll take photos of all the new yarn I've gotten (I have to put it away, now that it's out of its cartons) in the next couple of days and put some photos up here (and add all of them in Ravelry). I've even got two FOs to photograph and post. Plus two triangular shawls that just need blocking to be finished and a circular shawl ditto. I'm saving the circular shawl for when my cousin is here, since it's for her. After we get it blocked, we may have to shorten it. She's my height and this is supposed to be a circular shawl to keep her shoulders warm in over-cooled restaurants, not a mid-thigh-length cape. It's knit top-down in a modified fan and feather, so shortening it won't be difficult.
14 May 2009
Long Day
We had a long day today. Poor Gordo was so worn out he skipped dinner entirely. We had a ductless air conditioner and heater installed in the family room and kitchen. The installation crews got here at 0900 and left at 1950, although they did go for a quick lunch.
Our house is H-shaped, with the family room and kitchen (really all one room) on the south leg of the H, the four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the north leg, and the living and dining rooms on the crossbar. There's a covered entry on the east side and a covered patio on the west side. The way our HVAC system works, combined with the orientation of the house, the trees in the back yard, the position of the sun, the three pilot lights in the built-in double oven, and the 22-cubic foot side-by-side refrigerator, leaves the family room and kitchen warm in the summer and cool in the winter.
The ductless unit is pretty much the same as the units you see in motel rooms, except that there's a separate compressor and the unit hangs from the wall, up by the ceiling, and is operated by a remote control. Its purpose is to augment the whole-house system and, coupled with the back-up electrical generator we installed eight years ago, keep this room cool in a power outage, even in the summer. We should have put it in long ago, if you ask me. What really tipped us over the edge was the way the summer monsoons have been sneaking into the Antelope Valley. We used to have them for maybe a week or two, if we had them at all, but recently we've had them for a month or more. That humidity just kills me.
The unit also has a heat pump, just in case we lose power in the winter. Our whole-house unit runs on 230 but the ductless unit runs on 110, which is what we set the back-up generator up to provide. We could have added 230, but to do it now would require a new cross-over switch and inspections by the city and Edison, which were big hassles when we installed it originally. So we decided to leave it alone.
Gordo had to watch everything, which is why he's so tired. He spent most of the day in a crate, either in the family room or back in our bedroom, and got no naps at all. Normally, he sleeps in until about noon, frolics around the back yard for a while and then sleeps all afternoon. Not today, through. I'm pretty tired, myself, but not nearly as tired as he is.
I got some beautiful silk lace yarn in gorgeous colors. I'll take a photo and get it posted here as soon as I get organized. I think I've fallen in love with it and will never be able to give it away.
Our house is H-shaped, with the family room and kitchen (really all one room) on the south leg of the H, the four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the north leg, and the living and dining rooms on the crossbar. There's a covered entry on the east side and a covered patio on the west side. The way our HVAC system works, combined with the orientation of the house, the trees in the back yard, the position of the sun, the three pilot lights in the built-in double oven, and the 22-cubic foot side-by-side refrigerator, leaves the family room and kitchen warm in the summer and cool in the winter.
The ductless unit is pretty much the same as the units you see in motel rooms, except that there's a separate compressor and the unit hangs from the wall, up by the ceiling, and is operated by a remote control. Its purpose is to augment the whole-house system and, coupled with the back-up electrical generator we installed eight years ago, keep this room cool in a power outage, even in the summer. We should have put it in long ago, if you ask me. What really tipped us over the edge was the way the summer monsoons have been sneaking into the Antelope Valley. We used to have them for maybe a week or two, if we had them at all, but recently we've had them for a month or more. That humidity just kills me.
The unit also has a heat pump, just in case we lose power in the winter. Our whole-house unit runs on 230 but the ductless unit runs on 110, which is what we set the back-up generator up to provide. We could have added 230, but to do it now would require a new cross-over switch and inspections by the city and Edison, which were big hassles when we installed it originally. So we decided to leave it alone.
Gordo had to watch everything, which is why he's so tired. He spent most of the day in a crate, either in the family room or back in our bedroom, and got no naps at all. Normally, he sleeps in until about noon, frolics around the back yard for a while and then sleeps all afternoon. Not today, through. I'm pretty tired, myself, but not nearly as tired as he is.
I got some beautiful silk lace yarn in gorgeous colors. I'll take a photo and get it posted here as soon as I get organized. I think I've fallen in love with it and will never be able to give it away.
10 May 2009
Gordo's Mother's Day Gift to Me
Gordo is saving his allowance to give me the Amazon Kindle DX for Mother's Day, or so we joke. It's a good joke if you ignore that a) Gordo doesn't get an allowance, b) he has no idea what a Kindle is, c) I'm not his mother, and d) dogs really aren't that good at saving.
Wendy Johnson mentioned that Amazon was rumored to be coming out with a new Kindle this summer but that she wasn't going to wait and had bought a Kindle 2. She really likes it and says many of the same things that I did after I got mine.
The idea of an advanced model interested me greatly, so last night I surfed on over to Amazon on my Kindle 2 and discovered that they'd just made the formal announcement. I read the page, decided I really needed the larger screen, and put in a pre-order for the Kindle DX and the leather cover. It will be coming out in the summer, they say, and promise a definite delivery day as soon as they know it. Bigger screen, choice of portrait or landscape mode, more storage (3500 vs 1500 books), better graphics, native PDF display. The screen is 9.4" diagonally, compared to the Kindle 2's 6".
It looks to me as if it has one flaw, though. It doesn't have the page controls on the left side, just on the right side. I like to hold my book in my left hand and, on the Kindle, use my left thumb to change pages. This isn't a huge deal and I'll learn to live with it, but I'm sure I'll miss it sorely at first.
It's kind of funny. A few months ago, I might have looked at the Kindle DX page and thought something vague like "That's nice, I suppose" and now I'm criticizing the control layout based on the images. How I've changed since the end of February.
Update on the pressure cooker. I tried cooking potatoes for five minutes and one potato was just fine but the other one was overdone, although not as badly as the seven-minute batch had been. I had noticed a difference in the texture of the potatoes as I peeled them, so I wasn't totally surprised when they cooked up so differently. I ran over to the store about an hour ago and picked up more potatoes. These look very similar, at least on the outside, so they may cook more uniformly.
The navy bean soup turned out very well. I think it was better after sitting overnight and being reheated. I'm more than halfway through it and really enjoying it. When I bought the beans, the store had them on sale, three one-pound bags for five dollars, so I have more beans to practice with. In addition, it seems to be pretty much impossible to buy a single ham hock. I've got a recipe that uses bacon instead of ham and I picked up some thick-sliced applewood smoked bacon at the service butcher, so I may try that one next. The extra ham hocks will freeze nicely.
I really do like the pressure cooker, although I haven't cooked anything too challenging, just potatoes, beans, and rice. I've cooked a couple of boxed risottos. They're not really cooked like risottos, which requires adding the liquid gradually and stirring constantly for twenty minutes, but they're pretty tasty. They're really quick in the pressure cooker, pretty much requiring just that I react when it chirps.
Wendy Johnson mentioned that Amazon was rumored to be coming out with a new Kindle this summer but that she wasn't going to wait and had bought a Kindle 2. She really likes it and says many of the same things that I did after I got mine.
The idea of an advanced model interested me greatly, so last night I surfed on over to Amazon on my Kindle 2 and discovered that they'd just made the formal announcement. I read the page, decided I really needed the larger screen, and put in a pre-order for the Kindle DX and the leather cover. It will be coming out in the summer, they say, and promise a definite delivery day as soon as they know it. Bigger screen, choice of portrait or landscape mode, more storage (3500 vs 1500 books), better graphics, native PDF display. The screen is 9.4" diagonally, compared to the Kindle 2's 6".
It looks to me as if it has one flaw, though. It doesn't have the page controls on the left side, just on the right side. I like to hold my book in my left hand and, on the Kindle, use my left thumb to change pages. This isn't a huge deal and I'll learn to live with it, but I'm sure I'll miss it sorely at first.
It's kind of funny. A few months ago, I might have looked at the Kindle DX page and thought something vague like "That's nice, I suppose" and now I'm criticizing the control layout based on the images. How I've changed since the end of February.
Update on the pressure cooker. I tried cooking potatoes for five minutes and one potato was just fine but the other one was overdone, although not as badly as the seven-minute batch had been. I had noticed a difference in the texture of the potatoes as I peeled them, so I wasn't totally surprised when they cooked up so differently. I ran over to the store about an hour ago and picked up more potatoes. These look very similar, at least on the outside, so they may cook more uniformly.
The navy bean soup turned out very well. I think it was better after sitting overnight and being reheated. I'm more than halfway through it and really enjoying it. When I bought the beans, the store had them on sale, three one-pound bags for five dollars, so I have more beans to practice with. In addition, it seems to be pretty much impossible to buy a single ham hock. I've got a recipe that uses bacon instead of ham and I picked up some thick-sliced applewood smoked bacon at the service butcher, so I may try that one next. The extra ham hocks will freeze nicely.
I really do like the pressure cooker, although I haven't cooked anything too challenging, just potatoes, beans, and rice. I've cooked a couple of boxed risottos. They're not really cooked like risottos, which requires adding the liquid gradually and stirring constantly for twenty minutes, but they're pretty tasty. They're really quick in the pressure cooker, pretty much requiring just that I react when it chirps.
02 May 2009
Trying Again
I dashed out today and got dog food (we were down to the last dishful and Gordo was looking worried), the mail, and more russet potatoes. I'm bound and determined to get this potato cooking thing to work. I mean, really, how hard can it be to cook a potato correctly? I guess I'm going to find out, aren't I?
I also picked up a pair of ham hocks and a pound of navy beans. Years and years ago, back in the early days of the HL-20, when the engineers at Langley were putting it together with little bits of time here and there, I went back there with two test pilots to fly the Differential Motion Simulator with a high-alpha cockpit display.
The reason I know it was in the early days of the HL-20 was that one of my test pilots was Bill Dana, at that time the last lifting-body (and X-15) pilot still flying research aircraft. Well, we ran into one of my friends at LaRC, one of the guys working on the HL-20 simulation, and I, of course, introduced him to Bill and Ed. His eyes got kind of wide, meeting the legendary Bill Dana. We went back to the DMS and I got a call from my friend about twenty minutes later, asking me if there was any chance that Bill might possibly be interested in flying the HL-20 sim, if only for a few minutes and entirely at his convenience, to give them suggestions. Fortunately for the HL-20, the DMS had just developed a small mechanical problem (a small hydraulic leak, I think) and we were just sitting around wondering what to do until the system came back up. So we all joined my friend and his test pilot at the HL-20 simulation and flew it for hours and a good time was had by all. To this day, my friend still thinks I'm a miracle worker, offhandedly producing a renowned lifting body pilot to fly his simulation.
So what does this have to do with ham hocks and navy beans, you ask? They're inextricably linked in my mind. Every Thursday the Langley cafeteria served navy bean soup and we were there on a Thursday and I had the soup and it was wonderful. It was a cool, damp day and the warm, succulent soup, with the grace note of smoky ham, was absolutely perfect. Warm, tasty, comfort food. So I've been making and eating navy bean soup since then. The canned stuff isn't really good enough, if you ask me, but it's quite easy to make. Pressure cookers are supposed to be wonderful for cooking beans, so I'm going to give it a try, right after I take on the potatoes again.
Then there's a Swedish yellow split pea soup, flavored with marjoram, that I made back when I was in college that I want to try again. I'd subscribed to the Time-Life Foods of the World series when I still lived in the dorm (I like to read about cooking almost as much as I like to cook) and this was one of the recipes that caught my eye. When I moved to an apartment for my senior year, this was one of the first things I cooked. It was better than I thought it would be, too. Obviously this was a while ago, in the late '60s. It was so long ago that cookbooks noted that corn tortillas could be purchased in cans at gourmet stores. This was mind-boggling to me, as I'd lived in the CA Central Valley and in SoCal since 1953 and I thought every store in town sold fresh tortillas, both corn and flour, even the 7-11 stores.
It's late afternoon here, about time for me to go start dinner. I guess I'm hungrier that I thought I was. I only meant to mention that I was ready to try again on the potatoes, but I've digressed to lifting bodies, test pilots, and a lot more about food. Hmmm....
I also picked up a pair of ham hocks and a pound of navy beans. Years and years ago, back in the early days of the HL-20, when the engineers at Langley were putting it together with little bits of time here and there, I went back there with two test pilots to fly the Differential Motion Simulator with a high-alpha cockpit display.
The reason I know it was in the early days of the HL-20 was that one of my test pilots was Bill Dana, at that time the last lifting-body (and X-15) pilot still flying research aircraft. Well, we ran into one of my friends at LaRC, one of the guys working on the HL-20 simulation, and I, of course, introduced him to Bill and Ed. His eyes got kind of wide, meeting the legendary Bill Dana. We went back to the DMS and I got a call from my friend about twenty minutes later, asking me if there was any chance that Bill might possibly be interested in flying the HL-20 sim, if only for a few minutes and entirely at his convenience, to give them suggestions. Fortunately for the HL-20, the DMS had just developed a small mechanical problem (a small hydraulic leak, I think) and we were just sitting around wondering what to do until the system came back up. So we all joined my friend and his test pilot at the HL-20 simulation and flew it for hours and a good time was had by all. To this day, my friend still thinks I'm a miracle worker, offhandedly producing a renowned lifting body pilot to fly his simulation.
So what does this have to do with ham hocks and navy beans, you ask? They're inextricably linked in my mind. Every Thursday the Langley cafeteria served navy bean soup and we were there on a Thursday and I had the soup and it was wonderful. It was a cool, damp day and the warm, succulent soup, with the grace note of smoky ham, was absolutely perfect. Warm, tasty, comfort food. So I've been making and eating navy bean soup since then. The canned stuff isn't really good enough, if you ask me, but it's quite easy to make. Pressure cookers are supposed to be wonderful for cooking beans, so I'm going to give it a try, right after I take on the potatoes again.
Then there's a Swedish yellow split pea soup, flavored with marjoram, that I made back when I was in college that I want to try again. I'd subscribed to the Time-Life Foods of the World series when I still lived in the dorm (I like to read about cooking almost as much as I like to cook) and this was one of the recipes that caught my eye. When I moved to an apartment for my senior year, this was one of the first things I cooked. It was better than I thought it would be, too. Obviously this was a while ago, in the late '60s. It was so long ago that cookbooks noted that corn tortillas could be purchased in cans at gourmet stores. This was mind-boggling to me, as I'd lived in the CA Central Valley and in SoCal since 1953 and I thought every store in town sold fresh tortillas, both corn and flour, even the 7-11 stores.
It's late afternoon here, about time for me to go start dinner. I guess I'm hungrier that I thought I was. I only meant to mention that I was ready to try again on the potatoes, but I've digressed to lifting bodies, test pilots, and a lot more about food. Hmmm....
01 May 2009
It's Gordo's Birthday
Today Gordo the Wonder Puppy is one year old. He has really grown and grown up in this year. There have been days when I thought we should have named him "May Day" but we seem to be past a lot of that.
About a month ago I ran into Gordon Fullerton and we chatted briefly. I told him I'd gotten a new smooth-coated collie puppy and named it after him. I think it kind of took him aback at first but he warmed to the idea.
Speaking of Gordo (the dog), I hadn't realized that a smooth-coated collie would shed as much, or as often, as a rough-coated collie. Nor did I realize that the shorter hair would cling so tenaciously to everything, particularly fabrics. My vacuum just wasn't picking it all up, even though it had worked perfectly for the longer hair from Gordo's rough-coated predecessors. After a lot of shopping around on the internet, I bought a Eureka model designed to pick up animal hair. It looks, and works, a lot like a Dyson, but cost less than half as much (at least, it did on Overstock.com).
I'm still doing a lot of reading on my Kindle (Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives, right now) and haven't been doing much more. I've done a little internet shopping in the last month, mostly very ordinary stuff. The one exception is the two skeins of beautiful cream silk yarn with aurora borealis sequins (Tilly Thomas Disco Lights Natural) that I picked up on eBay for an excellent price. This is an insanely luxurious yarn and I have no idea what I'm going to knit it into. Yarn like this really needs exactly the right pattern and recipient.
I bought a pressure cooker from Overstock.com and have been doing a little fiddling around with that. I'm trying to get back to more cooking "from scratch" instead of nuking something from Stouffer's. The first thing I cooked was potatoes, to slice and fry. I made a tiny mistake and cooked them for about twice as long as I should have. Fortunately I managed to pick out enough big chunks that I could actually slice and fry them, but most of them had disintegrated completely. I had entertained some thoughts of making mashed potatoes, but have decided to just toss them and buy more spuds. You can be sure that I'll cut the cooking time radically this time. I'm a quick learner.
It's finally shorts and tees time here again. I discovered that all of my shorts were at least one size too large. I have bagged them up to go to New to You, the hospital volunteers' thrift store. A lot of my tees were also too big and starting to get a little limp from being washed so many times, so I'm going through those, too. I've gotten new shorts and tees from Land's End, Dillard's, Overstock.com, and Smartbargains.com. It's actually fairly inexpensive to wear shorts and tees. Not that I wear business clothes, but I do notice the prices.
I'm actually back to the size that some of the dressier clothes, currently hanging in the guest room closet, are, but I don't think I'll get much wear out of them. They're too old to be in style but not old enough to be back in style, if you know what I mean. I still have some '70s and '80s clothes in cartons. I can't fit into them yet, but maybe by next year.... I just hope retro stays in style. If I'd had any sense I'd have gotten rid of these long ago. I guess I packed them away at the end of a season and just never went back through the boxes.
Now that I've written this down, I see that I'm actually doing some Spring cleaning. Sorting through clothes, getting on top of the dog hair problem, and so on. I love Spring, even though the season can be very windy here. It's so nice to have open windows and fresh air after having the house closed up all winter. It seems to me that Spring, more than New Year's, is the time to make resolutions and changes. Too hard to be hopeful in the dead of winter, maybe.
About a month ago I ran into Gordon Fullerton and we chatted briefly. I told him I'd gotten a new smooth-coated collie puppy and named it after him. I think it kind of took him aback at first but he warmed to the idea.
Speaking of Gordo (the dog), I hadn't realized that a smooth-coated collie would shed as much, or as often, as a rough-coated collie. Nor did I realize that the shorter hair would cling so tenaciously to everything, particularly fabrics. My vacuum just wasn't picking it all up, even though it had worked perfectly for the longer hair from Gordo's rough-coated predecessors. After a lot of shopping around on the internet, I bought a Eureka model designed to pick up animal hair. It looks, and works, a lot like a Dyson, but cost less than half as much (at least, it did on Overstock.com).
I'm still doing a lot of reading on my Kindle (Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives, right now) and haven't been doing much more. I've done a little internet shopping in the last month, mostly very ordinary stuff. The one exception is the two skeins of beautiful cream silk yarn with aurora borealis sequins (Tilly Thomas Disco Lights Natural) that I picked up on eBay for an excellent price. This is an insanely luxurious yarn and I have no idea what I'm going to knit it into. Yarn like this really needs exactly the right pattern and recipient.
I bought a pressure cooker from Overstock.com and have been doing a little fiddling around with that. I'm trying to get back to more cooking "from scratch" instead of nuking something from Stouffer's. The first thing I cooked was potatoes, to slice and fry. I made a tiny mistake and cooked them for about twice as long as I should have. Fortunately I managed to pick out enough big chunks that I could actually slice and fry them, but most of them had disintegrated completely. I had entertained some thoughts of making mashed potatoes, but have decided to just toss them and buy more spuds. You can be sure that I'll cut the cooking time radically this time. I'm a quick learner.
It's finally shorts and tees time here again. I discovered that all of my shorts were at least one size too large. I have bagged them up to go to New to You, the hospital volunteers' thrift store. A lot of my tees were also too big and starting to get a little limp from being washed so many times, so I'm going through those, too. I've gotten new shorts and tees from Land's End, Dillard's, Overstock.com, and Smartbargains.com. It's actually fairly inexpensive to wear shorts and tees. Not that I wear business clothes, but I do notice the prices.
I'm actually back to the size that some of the dressier clothes, currently hanging in the guest room closet, are, but I don't think I'll get much wear out of them. They're too old to be in style but not old enough to be back in style, if you know what I mean. I still have some '70s and '80s clothes in cartons. I can't fit into them yet, but maybe by next year.... I just hope retro stays in style. If I'd had any sense I'd have gotten rid of these long ago. I guess I packed them away at the end of a season and just never went back through the boxes.
Now that I've written this down, I see that I'm actually doing some Spring cleaning. Sorting through clothes, getting on top of the dog hair problem, and so on. I love Spring, even though the season can be very windy here. It's so nice to have open windows and fresh air after having the house closed up all winter. It seems to me that Spring, more than New Year's, is the time to make resolutions and changes. Too hard to be hopeful in the dead of winter, maybe.
22 April 2009
Sad Anniversaries
It will be my mother's birthday on the 24th, the second since she died. Somehow this anniversary makes me sadder than the anniversary of her death. In reaction to this, I find myself swamped in creativity or, maybe, in shopping to support creativity. I've been buying lace weight yarn like crazy. I bought three partial cones of Jaggerspun Zephyr and another three colors of cashmere-silk blend on eBay, four different colorways from Black Bunny Yarn, and two colorways of kettle-dyed yarn from Knit Picks. Then today I got a skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace for the 2009 Year of Lace Spring offering.
The funny thing is, I don't know why I'm suddenly accumulating lace weight yarn. It's not in honor of my mother. I never knit a lace shawl for my mother and she wouldn't have worn it if I had. She rarely wore sweaters or jackets or coats and a lace shawl just wasn't her style at all. An afghan would have suited her, but I'm just now starting to think about knitting afghans, mostly for the new house.
There's some miscellaneous news. We're having a heat wave here. It's been in the '90s, which is unusual in April. Today we're having a lot of convective activity and there's an actual thunderstorm just north of us that has really dropped the temperature. I doubt if we'll see any precipitation, though.
Gordo went to the vet last week and he weighs 75 lbs now. He'll be one year old on May Day. He's doing very well, although he has trouble sleeping in the warm evenings. We've started leaving the slider in the bedroom open and he's doing better. His crate is right by the door and the cool air washes over him, making him more comfortable. He also seems to be eating a little better. I think he's not wild about the lamb and rice kibble, so I'm going to look for a different brand next time. Maybe I'll pick up a small bag of Canidae. My previous pair of collies liked it very much, so I can hope Gordo will, too, and that it won't make him itch.
Some time ago I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka, that claims to pick up dog hair. It does and I'm really pleased. I hadn't realized how much hair Gordo had shed in the bedroom (or how much we'd tracked in) until I saw it whirling around in the vacuum cup. His hair is pretty much invisible on the silver plush, which helped conceal the quantity. The vacuum can also be used on hard floors, having a switch to turn the beater brushes off, which is really nice. My halls and bathrooms are tiled and regular vacuums just spread stuff around on them, rather than sucking it up. This vacuum came from Overstock.com and was quite reasonably priced. I looked at Dysans but couldn't find one with the hard-floor option and thought they were kind of expensive. I've had Eurekas before and liked them, so that's what I got.
At the same time I also picked up a Bissell carpet cleaner from Overstock.com. It's refurbished and has a minimal complement of accessories, but I'ver never found that I use the accessories. I probably should, now that I actually think about it, since the chair I regularly sit in is a bit grubby and could stand to have the arms cleaned, at the very least. We have the carpet cleaners come in about once a year and do everything, but with a dog it's nice to be able to tackle spots when they appear, without doing the entire house. All of my dogs have been very good about not making organic messes, being well-trained, but I swear that they would sometimes clench an entire pawful of mud to track onto the carpet on rainy days. Add in my propensity to spill Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and spot-cleaning gets important.
The third thing in my order was a pressure cooker. I've never had one, but my mom loved hers. She was a working woman for as long as I can remember and the pressure cooker let her put dinner on the table in no time. I'm more interested in keeping the kitchen cool during the summer. I'm trying to add some balance and variety to my diet and I know I'm more likely to eat food I've prepared. For example, I despise cooked bell peppers, yet a lot of companies sneak them into frozen meals, where they taint the entire dish. This is particularly true of baked pasta dishes and Mexican foods, like enchiladas. I also think the pressure cooker will let me cook smaller quantities. There's really no reason to make two big pans of cheese enchiladas or lasagna just because you're going to all that work anyway. The cooker is also touted as making excellent rice and, with special pans, steamed desserts. I'll let you know how this works out.
The funny thing is, I don't know why I'm suddenly accumulating lace weight yarn. It's not in honor of my mother. I never knit a lace shawl for my mother and she wouldn't have worn it if I had. She rarely wore sweaters or jackets or coats and a lace shawl just wasn't her style at all. An afghan would have suited her, but I'm just now starting to think about knitting afghans, mostly for the new house.
There's some miscellaneous news. We're having a heat wave here. It's been in the '90s, which is unusual in April. Today we're having a lot of convective activity and there's an actual thunderstorm just north of us that has really dropped the temperature. I doubt if we'll see any precipitation, though.
Gordo went to the vet last week and he weighs 75 lbs now. He'll be one year old on May Day. He's doing very well, although he has trouble sleeping in the warm evenings. We've started leaving the slider in the bedroom open and he's doing better. His crate is right by the door and the cool air washes over him, making him more comfortable. He also seems to be eating a little better. I think he's not wild about the lamb and rice kibble, so I'm going to look for a different brand next time. Maybe I'll pick up a small bag of Canidae. My previous pair of collies liked it very much, so I can hope Gordo will, too, and that it won't make him itch.
Some time ago I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka, that claims to pick up dog hair. It does and I'm really pleased. I hadn't realized how much hair Gordo had shed in the bedroom (or how much we'd tracked in) until I saw it whirling around in the vacuum cup. His hair is pretty much invisible on the silver plush, which helped conceal the quantity. The vacuum can also be used on hard floors, having a switch to turn the beater brushes off, which is really nice. My halls and bathrooms are tiled and regular vacuums just spread stuff around on them, rather than sucking it up. This vacuum came from Overstock.com and was quite reasonably priced. I looked at Dysans but couldn't find one with the hard-floor option and thought they were kind of expensive. I've had Eurekas before and liked them, so that's what I got.
At the same time I also picked up a Bissell carpet cleaner from Overstock.com. It's refurbished and has a minimal complement of accessories, but I'ver never found that I use the accessories. I probably should, now that I actually think about it, since the chair I regularly sit in is a bit grubby and could stand to have the arms cleaned, at the very least. We have the carpet cleaners come in about once a year and do everything, but with a dog it's nice to be able to tackle spots when they appear, without doing the entire house. All of my dogs have been very good about not making organic messes, being well-trained, but I swear that they would sometimes clench an entire pawful of mud to track onto the carpet on rainy days. Add in my propensity to spill Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and spot-cleaning gets important.
The third thing in my order was a pressure cooker. I've never had one, but my mom loved hers. She was a working woman for as long as I can remember and the pressure cooker let her put dinner on the table in no time. I'm more interested in keeping the kitchen cool during the summer. I'm trying to add some balance and variety to my diet and I know I'm more likely to eat food I've prepared. For example, I despise cooked bell peppers, yet a lot of companies sneak them into frozen meals, where they taint the entire dish. This is particularly true of baked pasta dishes and Mexican foods, like enchiladas. I also think the pressure cooker will let me cook smaller quantities. There's really no reason to make two big pans of cheese enchiladas or lasagna just because you're going to all that work anyway. The cooker is also touted as making excellent rice and, with special pans, steamed desserts. I'll let you know how this works out.
02 March 2009
An Early Birthday Present
OK, this time I did drop off the surface of the earth for a week. On Tuesday, the 24th, FedEx delivered a Kindle 2 into my hands. This is a wonderful toy, which I have stuffed with over 100 books (mostly from Baen.com). I have done virtually nothing but play with it. My husband, who gave it to me, is patiently waiting for my infatuation to diminish enough that I'll let him read a book from it.
I have always loved the printed word. I was raised in a household of people who read all the time and I started with being read to and, in first grade, switched to reading myself. This was literally true; when I started first grade my father would read the paper to me and about halfway through the school year I started reading it to him. I haven't stopped reading since then.
Along with reading went book buying, but not, unfortunately, book disposal. I have many, many shelves of books at both houses, as well as a lot of cartons of books at both. I cling to my books, which I do re-read, as if book publication were going to stop tomorrow and I'd have to spend the rest of my life with only the books I have on hand. This is silly, of course. I actually did manage to give the Lancaster Friends of the Library two cubic yards (eighteen cubic feet) of books about four years ago and I've trained myself to give them some magazines after I've read them. This is a major behavioral change and I'm fairly proud of myself for making it.
However, it hasn't been enough. That's why I'm so pleased with the Kindle 2. It's small, light, easy to read, and doesn't need any bookshelf space at all. I just copied the eighty or so books I'd downloaded from Baen.com to a single CD (81 MB on a standard 700-MB CD). It's less than a quarter-inch wide, put in a minimum-sized jewel box.
The Kindle 2 is great for regular text books, but it's not designed for books with photos and figures and graphs, like knitting books. The Kindle 2 has sixteen shades of gray, compared to the Kindle 1's four shades, but that's gray, not color. That works just fine for covers, but it would be really inadequate for knitting books. This isn't just my opinion; books like that don't come in Kindle versions. I've actually bought four real books since the Kindle arrived. Two of these were about knitting (one was about color work) and two were about bread and pastry. I sure wish I'd known I was getting a Kindle, though, because I wouldn't have bought the seven-volume boxed set of Sookie Stackhouse paperbacks the week before.
Some of you are probably familiar with how the Kindle works, but that's not going to stop me from explaining it. Included in the cost of the book is use of a 3G network (Sprint, I think). Buy a Kindle version of a book from Amazon and it delivers it over the network pretty much instantaneously. E-books from other sources, like Baen, can be mailed directly to the Kindle, via Amazon or they can be downloaded to a computer and mailed from there. I've chosen the second method so that I can back the e-books up on CD. I think that I've bought eternal download rights from Baen, but I don't know that for sure. I know I've bought eternal download rights from Amazon, because they suggest using those rights to "archive" books when my Kindle gets too full (it holds 1500 average-sized books). I can also plug my Kindle into a USB 2 port on my computer and transfer e-books directly. However, my laptop doesn't have USB 2, so that's not an option at this time. My husband's computer has it, so the possibility is there. It's just that the mailing procedure works really well.
If you mail an e-book that's not of the two Kindle formats (.mobi and .prc) Amazon will convert it. There's a ten-cent charge (billed after thirty e-books, so there's no flood of dime charges), which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've been mailing e-books in those two formats, so I haven't been charged for mailing them, though.
Baen has a very clever scheme going with their e-books. At least, I think it's clever and I know they make money on it. The first one or two books in a series are free. Just download and mail to the Kindle (or read them on your computer; a number of formats are available). Then, once you're absolutely hooked on the series, the subsequent books cost $6 each, which is very reasonable. Remember, there's no shipping to pay. Some older e-books are $5 and bundled e-books are $4, so the e-books are economical.
On Amazon the e-books are no more than $9.95 for new hardbounds. When the book becomes available in paperback (usually $7.99 list price these days), the cost of the e-book drops to be less than the cover price, I think. At least the few I've looked at work that way. I can't claim to have looked at the comparative prices of many books and e-books, so I don't really know what the actual Amazon policy is. I will say, though, that I expect to recoup the cost of the device with the savings on the e-books fairly soon, like less than a year.
I also expect to give a lot of books to the Friends, since I will no longer need them. I've got two sets of some of my favorite series, for example, so that I could re-read them at either house without having to pack them and transport them twice a year. These are all in paperback, because I'm fond of them, but not at hardbound prices. Mostly, though, I only buy one copy and end up packing and transporting several (four or five, at least) cartons each way. Now all I'll have to do is take my Kindle 2 and the back-up CD. That will make changing houses a lot easier and reduce the strain on my back and knees.
I'll still have a box or two of knitting books, though. Knitting books are heavier that regular books, because they're printed on glossy paper. On the other hand, they're usually thinner, even though the pages are larger. The latest David Weber book is about 2" thick but it's an unusual knitting book that's over ½" thick.
I don't want you to think I love my Kindle 2 for purely practical reasons like saving shelf space. There's a lot more to it than that. It's just plain cute and fun. It's so light and the ergonomics are really well thought out. It works well with my habit of holding a book in my left hand, as the "next page" and "previous page" buttons are right under my thumb (they haven't ignored people who hold books in their right hands; there's a "next page" button on the right side, too). The screen isn't back-lit, meaning that I need a little book light to read it in bed, but I find back-lit screens to be tiring after a while.
Let's see, what other functions does it have that might be interesting? It can be used to shop directly from Amazon, and not just for e-books. Actually, it'll go anywhere on the Web, although the small screen size makes reading pages that aren't designed for it a bit difficult. You can subscribe to newspapers and magazines through Amazon. The list of magazines is kind of short, but that probably won't last. Amazon will send sample chapters from their books free. These are usually the first couple of chapters.
The battery charge life is astounding, particularly if the net is turned off (like cell phones, it checks in with the cell tower regularly and that can eat battery life in a fringe area). The charging cord is very clever, as it's both the USB cord and a regular electric cord (the far end is a little transformer that the USB cord plugs into). It charges quickly from the wall (I haven't tried USB charging). There are six font sizes to choose from. It'll read the book aloud, although rather oddly. I don't like being read to, though, so I don't really care if it's a little odd.
I bought a Patagonia padded cover for mine, but I don't like it because the zippers don't move easily and the little straps make a funny bump under my hand. So I've ordered a leather cover that just flips open. The additional warranty I bought promises one complete replacement if the device is totaled by owner/operator error. However, it can be dropped and still survive (some of the drop tests are shown on the Amazon page. I like to read in the bathtub, so this coverage makes me more confident, although I've never dropped a book in the tub in all my years of reading there.
I didn't realize I had so much to write about the Kindle 2 and e-books and regular books. I should have known, though, because reading and, therefore, books are such an important part of my life.
I have always loved the printed word. I was raised in a household of people who read all the time and I started with being read to and, in first grade, switched to reading myself. This was literally true; when I started first grade my father would read the paper to me and about halfway through the school year I started reading it to him. I haven't stopped reading since then.
Along with reading went book buying, but not, unfortunately, book disposal. I have many, many shelves of books at both houses, as well as a lot of cartons of books at both. I cling to my books, which I do re-read, as if book publication were going to stop tomorrow and I'd have to spend the rest of my life with only the books I have on hand. This is silly, of course. I actually did manage to give the Lancaster Friends of the Library two cubic yards (eighteen cubic feet) of books about four years ago and I've trained myself to give them some magazines after I've read them. This is a major behavioral change and I'm fairly proud of myself for making it.
However, it hasn't been enough. That's why I'm so pleased with the Kindle 2. It's small, light, easy to read, and doesn't need any bookshelf space at all. I just copied the eighty or so books I'd downloaded from Baen.com to a single CD (81 MB on a standard 700-MB CD). It's less than a quarter-inch wide, put in a minimum-sized jewel box.
The Kindle 2 is great for regular text books, but it's not designed for books with photos and figures and graphs, like knitting books. The Kindle 2 has sixteen shades of gray, compared to the Kindle 1's four shades, but that's gray, not color. That works just fine for covers, but it would be really inadequate for knitting books. This isn't just my opinion; books like that don't come in Kindle versions. I've actually bought four real books since the Kindle arrived. Two of these were about knitting (one was about color work) and two were about bread and pastry. I sure wish I'd known I was getting a Kindle, though, because I wouldn't have bought the seven-volume boxed set of Sookie Stackhouse paperbacks the week before.
Some of you are probably familiar with how the Kindle works, but that's not going to stop me from explaining it. Included in the cost of the book is use of a 3G network (Sprint, I think). Buy a Kindle version of a book from Amazon and it delivers it over the network pretty much instantaneously. E-books from other sources, like Baen, can be mailed directly to the Kindle, via Amazon or they can be downloaded to a computer and mailed from there. I've chosen the second method so that I can back the e-books up on CD. I think that I've bought eternal download rights from Baen, but I don't know that for sure. I know I've bought eternal download rights from Amazon, because they suggest using those rights to "archive" books when my Kindle gets too full (it holds 1500 average-sized books). I can also plug my Kindle into a USB 2 port on my computer and transfer e-books directly. However, my laptop doesn't have USB 2, so that's not an option at this time. My husband's computer has it, so the possibility is there. It's just that the mailing procedure works really well.
If you mail an e-book that's not of the two Kindle formats (.mobi and .prc) Amazon will convert it. There's a ten-cent charge (billed after thirty e-books, so there's no flood of dime charges), which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've been mailing e-books in those two formats, so I haven't been charged for mailing them, though.
Baen has a very clever scheme going with their e-books. At least, I think it's clever and I know they make money on it. The first one or two books in a series are free. Just download and mail to the Kindle (or read them on your computer; a number of formats are available). Then, once you're absolutely hooked on the series, the subsequent books cost $6 each, which is very reasonable. Remember, there's no shipping to pay. Some older e-books are $5 and bundled e-books are $4, so the e-books are economical.
On Amazon the e-books are no more than $9.95 for new hardbounds. When the book becomes available in paperback (usually $7.99 list price these days), the cost of the e-book drops to be less than the cover price, I think. At least the few I've looked at work that way. I can't claim to have looked at the comparative prices of many books and e-books, so I don't really know what the actual Amazon policy is. I will say, though, that I expect to recoup the cost of the device with the savings on the e-books fairly soon, like less than a year.
I also expect to give a lot of books to the Friends, since I will no longer need them. I've got two sets of some of my favorite series, for example, so that I could re-read them at either house without having to pack them and transport them twice a year. These are all in paperback, because I'm fond of them, but not at hardbound prices. Mostly, though, I only buy one copy and end up packing and transporting several (four or five, at least) cartons each way. Now all I'll have to do is take my Kindle 2 and the back-up CD. That will make changing houses a lot easier and reduce the strain on my back and knees.
I'll still have a box or two of knitting books, though. Knitting books are heavier that regular books, because they're printed on glossy paper. On the other hand, they're usually thinner, even though the pages are larger. The latest David Weber book is about 2" thick but it's an unusual knitting book that's over ½" thick.
I don't want you to think I love my Kindle 2 for purely practical reasons like saving shelf space. There's a lot more to it than that. It's just plain cute and fun. It's so light and the ergonomics are really well thought out. It works well with my habit of holding a book in my left hand, as the "next page" and "previous page" buttons are right under my thumb (they haven't ignored people who hold books in their right hands; there's a "next page" button on the right side, too). The screen isn't back-lit, meaning that I need a little book light to read it in bed, but I find back-lit screens to be tiring after a while.
Let's see, what other functions does it have that might be interesting? It can be used to shop directly from Amazon, and not just for e-books. Actually, it'll go anywhere on the Web, although the small screen size makes reading pages that aren't designed for it a bit difficult. You can subscribe to newspapers and magazines through Amazon. The list of magazines is kind of short, but that probably won't last. Amazon will send sample chapters from their books free. These are usually the first couple of chapters.
The battery charge life is astounding, particularly if the net is turned off (like cell phones, it checks in with the cell tower regularly and that can eat battery life in a fringe area). The charging cord is very clever, as it's both the USB cord and a regular electric cord (the far end is a little transformer that the USB cord plugs into). It charges quickly from the wall (I haven't tried USB charging). There are six font sizes to choose from. It'll read the book aloud, although rather oddly. I don't like being read to, though, so I don't really care if it's a little odd.
I bought a Patagonia padded cover for mine, but I don't like it because the zippers don't move easily and the little straps make a funny bump under my hand. So I've ordered a leather cover that just flips open. The additional warranty I bought promises one complete replacement if the device is totaled by owner/operator error. However, it can be dropped and still survive (some of the drop tests are shown on the Amazon page. I like to read in the bathtub, so this coverage makes me more confident, although I've never dropped a book in the tub in all my years of reading there.
I didn't realize I had so much to write about the Kindle 2 and e-books and regular books. I should have known, though, because reading and, therefore, books are such an important part of my life.
20 February 2009
Itchy
No, not itchy yarn. Itchy hair. I got my hair cut this afternoon and it's driving me crazy. The short little ends (shaping the back and neckline take a lot of snipping) have caught in the ballerina neckline of my shirt and keep digging in.
I'd go change into a different shirt, hoping that all the loose hair has left my head and is now captive in my shirt, but I just did an amazing amount of laundry and the only people things not yet washed are my nightgown and the sheets. I even washed the load of microfiber cloths, which have to be washed separately, and the new red-purple bath mats (which produced two lint filters full of lint and still aren't dry). I feel so virtuous to have done so much laundry, although I still need to run a load for the covers on Gordo's crate pads.
Usually I take a bath and change clothes right away, as soon as I get home, but I got distracted and now it's so late I'm not sure my hair will be dry before I go to bed. I have a lot of hair and it only dries quickly if it's about two inches long at the most. Back when I was in college, I wore it in a pixie cut, with blonde frosting, but now I wear it about four inches at the crown, in what used to be called an artichoke cut (turn an artichoke upside down and ignore the stem to get the idea). No frosting, just gray and silver for "highlights". I stopped coloring my hair on my sixtieth birthday because I'd gotten tired of the constant need to get the roots colored.
I'm going to post this and then go brush my hair over the sink again (for the third time) and put on my nightgown. One load of laundry for the people tomorrow, one for Gordo, and a load of dishes and then everything in the house will be clean and we'll start getting it all dirty again.
No end in sight on laundry and dishes, ever.
Updated about an hour after posting: I brushed Gordo quite thoroughly, much to his dismay. I got a lot of hair off him, both undercoat and guard hairs. Smooth coated collies shed as much as do rough coated collies, only the hair is about a third or a quarter the length and a lot harder to get off the furniture, particularly furniture upholstered in Ultrasuede. Then I went in and brushed my hair again, took off the itchy shirt, and am now comfortable in my nightgown.
I got into the habit of changing the sheets on the bed on Saturday, back when I worked, and I've kept it, here in Lancaster. Down at the Palm Desert house my cleaners, who come on Wednesday, change the sheets for me. But I still feel as if I should be doing something on Saturday. Old habits die hard.
I'd go change into a different shirt, hoping that all the loose hair has left my head and is now captive in my shirt, but I just did an amazing amount of laundry and the only people things not yet washed are my nightgown and the sheets. I even washed the load of microfiber cloths, which have to be washed separately, and the new red-purple bath mats (which produced two lint filters full of lint and still aren't dry). I feel so virtuous to have done so much laundry, although I still need to run a load for the covers on Gordo's crate pads.
Usually I take a bath and change clothes right away, as soon as I get home, but I got distracted and now it's so late I'm not sure my hair will be dry before I go to bed. I have a lot of hair and it only dries quickly if it's about two inches long at the most. Back when I was in college, I wore it in a pixie cut, with blonde frosting, but now I wear it about four inches at the crown, in what used to be called an artichoke cut (turn an artichoke upside down and ignore the stem to get the idea). No frosting, just gray and silver for "highlights". I stopped coloring my hair on my sixtieth birthday because I'd gotten tired of the constant need to get the roots colored.
I'm going to post this and then go brush my hair over the sink again (for the third time) and put on my nightgown. One load of laundry for the people tomorrow, one for Gordo, and a load of dishes and then everything in the house will be clean and we'll start getting it all dirty again.
No end in sight on laundry and dishes, ever.
Updated about an hour after posting: I brushed Gordo quite thoroughly, much to his dismay. I got a lot of hair off him, both undercoat and guard hairs. Smooth coated collies shed as much as do rough coated collies, only the hair is about a third or a quarter the length and a lot harder to get off the furniture, particularly furniture upholstered in Ultrasuede. Then I went in and brushed my hair again, took off the itchy shirt, and am now comfortable in my nightgown.
I got into the habit of changing the sheets on the bed on Saturday, back when I worked, and I've kept it, here in Lancaster. Down at the Palm Desert house my cleaners, who come on Wednesday, change the sheets for me. But I still feel as if I should be doing something on Saturday. Old habits die hard.
18 February 2009
Miscellaneous News
I thought I'd update everyone on what's going on here. Not that it's a lot, but there are a few little things I've written about earlier.
The crown that I thought would be cemented a day or two ago still isn't here. I finally called and asked about it; I'm sorry to say that the mother of the lab guy passed away and everything has been delayed. However, I have a really good temporary on the tooth, so I'm not in too much of a hurry. I would like to be done with all this, but another week or two isn't going to make a big difference in the long run.
Gordo the Wonder Puppy is doing well. He hasn't had a seizure for a month and he seems to be less drugged than he was when he started on the Keppra. This latter is a mixed blessing; he's recently learned to tip the recycling bin over and fish out something interesting to drag into the family room and dismember. On the other hand, he's sleeping through the night, which has greatly improved my sleep.
My Rainbow Argosy Afghan is about 80% done. Well, maybe not so much, since I dropped a stitch about eight rows back and am tinking back to that point, two rows at a time. I can't just drop the stitches near the error and re-knit, because there's a yarnover in every other row and I don't have enough yarn to make it. Very annoying, as there's also a new ball of yarn joined in the the rows that have to come out.
Anyway, here's a photo of it at about 70% done.
And here's a close-up to show you the pattern and how the variegation works out.
This yarn is really soft and puffy. The afghan is going to be nice and warm. I do like Lorna's Laces yarns. I got a skein of Helen's Lace, which is 50/50 merino and silk. It's a big skein, maybe six ounces, 1200 yards (three-quarters of a mile), and beautifully dyed. I also got a shawl pattern for it. Unfortunately, I've got a number of projects that I absolutely must complete before I start another big lace project. It doesn't help that I have four other lace wraps that I really want to knit and another six or eight that I have in mind.
The crown that I thought would be cemented a day or two ago still isn't here. I finally called and asked about it; I'm sorry to say that the mother of the lab guy passed away and everything has been delayed. However, I have a really good temporary on the tooth, so I'm not in too much of a hurry. I would like to be done with all this, but another week or two isn't going to make a big difference in the long run.
Gordo the Wonder Puppy is doing well. He hasn't had a seizure for a month and he seems to be less drugged than he was when he started on the Keppra. This latter is a mixed blessing; he's recently learned to tip the recycling bin over and fish out something interesting to drag into the family room and dismember. On the other hand, he's sleeping through the night, which has greatly improved my sleep.
My Rainbow Argosy Afghan is about 80% done. Well, maybe not so much, since I dropped a stitch about eight rows back and am tinking back to that point, two rows at a time. I can't just drop the stitches near the error and re-knit, because there's a yarnover in every other row and I don't have enough yarn to make it. Very annoying, as there's also a new ball of yarn joined in the the rows that have to come out.
Anyway, here's a photo of it at about 70% done.
And here's a close-up to show you the pattern and how the variegation works out.
This yarn is really soft and puffy. The afghan is going to be nice and warm. I do like Lorna's Laces yarns. I got a skein of Helen's Lace, which is 50/50 merino and silk. It's a big skein, maybe six ounces, 1200 yards (three-quarters of a mile), and beautifully dyed. I also got a shawl pattern for it. Unfortunately, I've got a number of projects that I absolutely must complete before I start another big lace project. It doesn't help that I have four other lace wraps that I really want to knit and another six or eight that I have in mind.
10 February 2009
Something New & Yard Work
I did something I never thought I'd do. I ordered the DVD of the entire first season of a TV show, The Big Bang Theory. I really don't watch much TV, but I like this show. My goddaughter, who was then majoring in physics at Penn State, recommended it to me at about the second show, but we didn't get around to watching it until late last year. Now that we've discovered it, I had to have the first season. It's really a funny show.
Hard-science guys with little or no idea about social interactions; where I have seen that before? Why, could it be at UCLA, where I was an engineering student? Or at NASA Dryden, where I was an engineer for most of my career? Or both?
We're having the trees trimmed today and tomorrow. We have three big forty-year-plus fruitless mulberries and they have to be "laced" every couple of years to reduce the sail loading when the wind blows. We also have a Chinese pistache that's nearly as big and a beautiful liquidamber beside the driveway that needed a little trimming, nothing as drastic as the mulberries.
My pomegranate bush needed to be cut back severely, though, since it sets fruit on newer growth. It's down to about four trunks now, instead of a dozen. I only had about a dozen fruit on it last year, if that many. It may not produce much this year, but I should get a bumper crop the next year. If the school kids leave me enough, I'll juice them and make jelly. Messy, but gratifying. Making this jelly is a family tradition dating back almost fifty years. I cheat and use bottled pomegranate juice from the supermarket when I don't have fresh fruit available. I posted the recipe here earlier.
The junipers on the other side of the driveway had encroached quite fiercely and we cut them back about three feet, maybe more. They really look ugly now, but they'll grow back. We've created some nice humus under there, I noticed. I asked the trimmers to cut the ivy and Virginia creeper in the back yard back to the ground. Both had really gotten out of hand and were taking over. They're going to move my Madame Galen scarlet trumpet creeper around to the back yard so I can see it from the windows (which are almost all on the back of the house). I'm not really razing all the plant life at the house, although it may sound like it. I'm just tidying up stuff that has needed attention for a while. I'd kind of coasted on some of this but I suddenly got tired of the overgrown vines and the narrowed driveway and the clutter.
This is the same team that's going to transplant my big Mediterranean clumping fan palm from here in Lancaster to the front yard of our house in Palm Desert. We left a big space for it when we landscaped down there. It's outgrown the place I have it in here and needs to be moved somewhere. It was a gift from a very dear friend, a guy who went to college with my husband and worked at Dryden for many years. He has since died, so the palm is very dear to me.
Here's the Mediterranean clumping fan palm from the south. To give you an idea of its size, the block front of the raised bed is about 26". You can see some of the Virginia creeper on the left side of the photo, growing into the palm. These three photos were taken in September, which is why the creeper still has its leaves. Right now it's just a bundle of light brown stems and really ugly.
Here's a photo from the southeast, with the trunk of the Chinese pistache on the right side. You can see Virginia creeper on both sides. The stuff really spreads.
And this photo is from the north. The grass-like plant that you can see arching on the right is a volunteer clump of pampas grass. The neighbors on the other side of the wall had pampas grass against their side of the wall and it seeded freely. Pampas grass is nasty to deal with. It's very hard to kill and the leaves are exceeding sharp. It'll cut bare hands readily. This little clump is going away tomorrow, along with all that Virginia creeper you can see.
Gordo the Wonder Puppy has greatly enjoyed having the tree trimmers over. They are very obliging with pats and attention and have flapping pants cuffs to chase. He had to come into the house because I decided he was a bit of a tripping menace, chasing cuffs and boot laces. I think the crew was relieved to see him go. I would have been. It was really funny to see him take in the changes in the back yard after the team knocked off for the day. The ivy is down off the little metal shed in heaps and some of the privets have vanished.
Gordo went to the vet to have his blood levels of his epilepsy meds checked. He's up to 68 pounds, at 9.5 months. He's supposed to weigh about 75 pounds when he's fully grown, but I'm beginning to think he may be a little heavier. He'll still fit on my lap, as long as I have the hassock under my legs to extend my lap enough. He napped briefly on my lap this afternoon, having been worn out by all the excitement and getting up early. He's definitely still a puppy.
Hard-science guys with little or no idea about social interactions; where I have seen that before? Why, could it be at UCLA, where I was an engineering student? Or at NASA Dryden, where I was an engineer for most of my career? Or both?
We're having the trees trimmed today and tomorrow. We have three big forty-year-plus fruitless mulberries and they have to be "laced" every couple of years to reduce the sail loading when the wind blows. We also have a Chinese pistache that's nearly as big and a beautiful liquidamber beside the driveway that needed a little trimming, nothing as drastic as the mulberries.
My pomegranate bush needed to be cut back severely, though, since it sets fruit on newer growth. It's down to about four trunks now, instead of a dozen. I only had about a dozen fruit on it last year, if that many. It may not produce much this year, but I should get a bumper crop the next year. If the school kids leave me enough, I'll juice them and make jelly. Messy, but gratifying. Making this jelly is a family tradition dating back almost fifty years. I cheat and use bottled pomegranate juice from the supermarket when I don't have fresh fruit available. I posted the recipe here earlier.
The junipers on the other side of the driveway had encroached quite fiercely and we cut them back about three feet, maybe more. They really look ugly now, but they'll grow back. We've created some nice humus under there, I noticed. I asked the trimmers to cut the ivy and Virginia creeper in the back yard back to the ground. Both had really gotten out of hand and were taking over. They're going to move my Madame Galen scarlet trumpet creeper around to the back yard so I can see it from the windows (which are almost all on the back of the house). I'm not really razing all the plant life at the house, although it may sound like it. I'm just tidying up stuff that has needed attention for a while. I'd kind of coasted on some of this but I suddenly got tired of the overgrown vines and the narrowed driveway and the clutter.
This is the same team that's going to transplant my big Mediterranean clumping fan palm from here in Lancaster to the front yard of our house in Palm Desert. We left a big space for it when we landscaped down there. It's outgrown the place I have it in here and needs to be moved somewhere. It was a gift from a very dear friend, a guy who went to college with my husband and worked at Dryden for many years. He has since died, so the palm is very dear to me.
Here's the Mediterranean clumping fan palm from the south. To give you an idea of its size, the block front of the raised bed is about 26". You can see some of the Virginia creeper on the left side of the photo, growing into the palm. These three photos were taken in September, which is why the creeper still has its leaves. Right now it's just a bundle of light brown stems and really ugly.
Here's a photo from the southeast, with the trunk of the Chinese pistache on the right side. You can see Virginia creeper on both sides. The stuff really spreads.
And this photo is from the north. The grass-like plant that you can see arching on the right is a volunteer clump of pampas grass. The neighbors on the other side of the wall had pampas grass against their side of the wall and it seeded freely. Pampas grass is nasty to deal with. It's very hard to kill and the leaves are exceeding sharp. It'll cut bare hands readily. This little clump is going away tomorrow, along with all that Virginia creeper you can see.
Gordo the Wonder Puppy has greatly enjoyed having the tree trimmers over. They are very obliging with pats and attention and have flapping pants cuffs to chase. He had to come into the house because I decided he was a bit of a tripping menace, chasing cuffs and boot laces. I think the crew was relieved to see him go. I would have been. It was really funny to see him take in the changes in the back yard after the team knocked off for the day. The ivy is down off the little metal shed in heaps and some of the privets have vanished.
Gordo went to the vet to have his blood levels of his epilepsy meds checked. He's up to 68 pounds, at 9.5 months. He's supposed to weigh about 75 pounds when he's fully grown, but I'm beginning to think he may be a little heavier. He'll still fit on my lap, as long as I have the hassock under my legs to extend my lap enough. He napped briefly on my lap this afternoon, having been worn out by all the excitement and getting up early. He's definitely still a puppy.
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