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A View From the Field |
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February, 2002 February 28 Well, since it's the last day of the month, I will do a journal, although I don't much feel like it.
Steve David's funeral was this morning, followed by a nice lunch with some nice people, and I ended up going back to Diane's house. She has been through a lot, and she still has some emotional issues to settle about her parents, and I felt she needed some special support. So does Bernie, but her brother came in with his grandchildren, and I felt they needed that time together. I will see Bernie, but Diane is bound and determined to get back to work tomorrow, so it will be harder to see her.
She bought a house on Lake St. Clair eight years ago, and she has practically rebuilt it. Not only did she do a great job with the layout - and the side facing the lake is all windows - she has exquisite taste in furnishings and she is an immaculate housekeeper. She faces east, lucky girl.
So it was a sad day, mostly, and I feel sort of blah after it.
Of course I got chewed out when I got home, because i was away most of the day and my furry friends did not like that. They were so glad to see me that they had a real romp while I was changing my clothes - and no growling for a change.
I did want to post something the camera caught, though. Wednesday morning is the first time since I installed the livecam that the sky has been even partly cloudy when the moon was nearly full, so finally I have pictures that give some idea of what I see when I lie in bed before dawn. The pictures aren't good, because the camera doesn't focus, and the moon gives a double image because it reflects in the thermopane window. I think it reflects off the inner pane back to the outer pane then into the camera, which offsets it a little.
In two of the pictures, you can see the wonderful, wide moon path reflected in the harbor. In the third shot, it was a little cloudier, so there was no reflection, and you can barely see the clouds starting to turn gray. I should have kept the 7:15 picture, too, because the sun had just risen over the trees, and I love to see that, too. Of course, by the time I get there, all this will be taking place at 4am, and I am just not likely to rush out with the Nikon to get better shots.
I'm hoping that a better camera (or at least one with better focus) will give better pictures of some of these things, and I plan to try to keep the camera recording so that it brackets sunrise and sunset - which means that in June it will essentially be on all the time.
It was also remarkable that at the end of February, there is pretty much no ice at all on the harbor! I wonder when was the last time that happened? It was clear Wednesday at sunset, too, but it clouded up and began to snow overnight, and it looked to me like there was another 6" or more on the deck. The camera didn't wake up this morning, so the first good picture was around noon (thankfully, Jonathan checked it, because I was otherwise engaged), and it was snowing like mad and there was a little ice. By sunset, the wind had pushed most of the ice onto our beach, and the harbor was open again. Amazing. In the pictures Shirley and Phoebe took last April, it was frozen solid. Crazy weather, for sure!
So I have done my duty, and I will get this published. Tomorrow is March, and that means in about 10 weeks, I'll be watching the moon set in person...
February 26 It's nice to have my system all back to normal. I did lose some emails I got over the weekend - nothing critical - but I was able to reconstruct the site by downloading from the server. It was some time ago that I realized that besides being the place that makes my site available on the web, PastyNet is also a very secure backup site. If, by horrible accident, I lost everything on my hard drive, either here or in Copper Harbor, PastyNet has it, and I know it's backed up every night. Now, I wonder if I could sneak the thread book out there...
I woke up about 3am this morning and discovered that I had diarrhea again. Nothing wrong with my stomach, thank heaven, but stuff coming out the bottom. So I started popping Imodium, and as of dinner time, it looks like it's back under control. I must talk to Dr. Lehman about this trend I see. I never used to have that much trouble with my innards.
So I slept rather late (rather later than DC wanted) and I was working on my embroidery when Linda from Albert D. Thomas called to tell me that our old friend Steve David had passed away. He and his wife, Bernie, were good friends of my mother and dad, and they were extremely helpful to me when my mother passed away. Steve started having little strokes in 1997, and he has just been hanging on by a thread for over a year. I didn't know until Linda told me that they had finally moved him to a nursing home about a month ago. It just got too much for Bernie and the home nurses, I would imagine. Such a shame. He was one of the nicest, sweetest men I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and he an d Bernie had been married for over 50 years. To have him go in such a difficult fashion hardly seems fair.
I still say I want to be run over by a truck.
That is after my friend Randi (who owns The World In Stitches in Massachusetts) had to make a rush trip to Minnesota because her father is nearing his end. I don't remember what kind of cancer he started with, but it has spread to his spine and he doesn't have much longer. Fortunately, she found he was handling the whole thing very well, and she sounded much better than she did before she left.
So I will spend part of the next two days helping Bernie and her daughters say good bye to Steve. Not what I would like to do, but I owe them that.
Bernie's daughter Diane wrote me in her Christmas card that she had had a mastectomy, and Linda says she is in chemo now, and feels...like we all do. I hope I see her tomorrow. Having been there and done that, maybe I can give her a little support. She didn't lose her hair, which is a plus, but that's about it. She is a nurse, and I have to believe that the stress she has been under over her parents has to have contributed to her cancer. I certainly believe it did to my breast cancer, which I got about a year after my dad died. Besides, she was taking estrogen. I thank God for Dr. Tulloch, who not only sounded the alarm when my mammogram didn't look right, but would never ever have given me estrogen, no matter how bad I felt, since we both knew that breast cancer runs in both sides of my family. After several years of waffling, they now seem to have affirmed that taking estrogen for menopause does in fact increase the risk of breast cancer. We knew that in 1984, if not before. Ladies, get your mammograms! Gentlemen, insist that your ladies get their mammograms! They do work!
I had intended to spend a quiet day in the sewing room, but I had to make a quick trip to the florist first.
When I went to bed last night, it was raining, and I didn't notice what it was doing when I woke up at 3am, but when I got out of bed, around 9, it was snowing nicely, and there was probably an inch on the ground. It was over freezing, so the pavement cleared up pretty fast, but it was raw and nasty out. It was cloudy and spitting snow most of the day, but when I went upstairs to get my dinner a little while ago, the moon was shining through the clouds. That is just an aberration, if the forecasts are on track. It is likely to snow more or less for the next several days, and get colder. It is snowing off and on and in the 20s in Copper Harbor, and the snow on the deck is up over the lower deck railing - mostly from last night, although from the pictures, it did snow off and on all day. So winter isn't over yet, and we may finally have some really wintry weather.
I worry about Bernie's brother, who is coming in from California, and our friend Bob Glaesner, who is coming from Florida, and has a real problem with cold. His wife Marian, my mother's life-long friend (and Bernie's, too) is too frail to make the trip, which I was very sorry to hear. After all our mild weather, of course it would get wintry just as these elderly people feel they have to come to be with Bernie.
On the brighter side, I can almost see the surface of the cutting table, so at some point this week, I may be able to do a little cutting. When I get set to sew, I usually cut several things and package them up, so that I can just sit at the sewing machine and don't have to stop and cut some more. Polartec fleece is so easy to sew in, I imagine I will have a new top or two and maybe a robe very shortly. It's the cutting (and checking and altering the patterns) that takes most of the time.
So I think I will get this published and try again to get to bed early tonight. Besides the funeral home, there is bible class and choir tomorrow, and choir will be late, so I need to try to get my energy levels up.
February 24 Well, I guess I have the Netscape thing figured out. I fixed the journal last night, but I just now think I've figured out what I have to do to get the pictures to display right, but it's going to take a lot of work, and I'm just not sure I want to do it. After using Netscape, I have a hard time understanding why anybody would prefer it. So if you want to see the pictures that don't display in Netscape, get Internet Explorer. So there. Poo!
The change would involve creating a table for any picture page that has other verbiage on it, like a title or a comment. It never occurred to me to do the gallery page that way: it might have been a lot easier, but since I still think I may rework the gallery completely, I don't think I want to bother with the table thing. At least I have an explanation for the problem. Now, if I could only figure out what I did that screwed up the journal to begin with...
It was another over-50º, sunny day here today, and it looked and felt sort of like spring. It was otherwise in Copper Harbor. It started snowing around 1pm, and it was still at it when it got dark. I love seeing those little caps on the deck posts. I guess something like that, either snow or rain, is coming in our direction, and it's going to get a lot colder. It is, after all, only February, and sometimes we in Southeastern Michigan have our worst winter weather in March.
I worked in the sewing room again, but I didn't make much progress again. Maybe tomorrow. I am tired of dark colored polartec pullovers, but in order to get some light colored ones, I'm going to have to make my own. So I will continue trying to shovel out the sewing room. It appears I will also have to oil the sewing machine, if the sounds I was hearing today are any indication. There's always something I have to do before I can do what I want to do.
I forgot to mention that I finally filled the bird feeder last week. It really needs to be taken off its post, because there are twigs in the bottom, but I don't think I'm strong enough to do that, so I just filled it up. I was sitting in the bedroom later, and first came the chickadees, then the blue jays, and Mr. Cardinal stopped by to see what was going on, then the sparrows and house finches got at it. So far, I've only seen a couple of pigeons, and no crows. I don't know if the crows would try to eat the seed, actually. I only know we have a huge flock around here - more than around Rainbow's End - and birds are always hungry.
I'm not quite sure what's going on with the cardinals, but watched two females apparently fighting over a male (gently - cardinals are civilized birds) last week, and one day a while ago, there were three males and two females in the lilac. That's the most I've ever seen at one time.
There is also a little black squirrel who I think lives in the spruce at the side of the back porch, and who uses the branches of the pear tree as his (her?) deck. One day, I watched him take a bath and a nap while laid out on the end of one of the bigger branches in the sun, and yesterday, he was cleaning himself again more in the center of the tree. Squirrels can be a nuisance, but they can also be cute.
Before the bird feeder was full, frequently when I went outside, some blue jay would shout at me, and every so often, one of the black squirrels would come up to the slider and peer in. The cardinals have been coming by all winter to see if there was anything to eat. It surprises me that those little brains can remember where they were fed last year.
Well, I guess that catches up all the observations for the week, and so I will close this off and try (for sure) to get to bed earlier tonight. Last night, I didn't make it.
February 23 One of my correspondents pointed out, most helpfully, I might add, that this month's journal was displaying very weirdly in Netscape, so I finally bit the bullet and downloaded it (and a lot of other stuff I really don't want, by the way!). The journal isn't the only thing that's weird. Some pictures only display about 15%, and in a lot of them, the printing is underneath the picture. The gallery doesn't look nice at all. So I fiddled around a little bit, and got rid of the funny little squares on this page that I didn't know what they were (cut out the text, then just hit delete and away it goes!). I think I had somehow gotten some kind of a text box in the page, and whatever it was, Netscape didn't know what to do about it. I hope this fixes it, but I figured that since I was fiddling with the site, and this page particularly, I should probably do an entry. Not much to report.
I did want to mention that the sun has been rising and setting perceptibly earlier and later, respectively, for a couple of weeks lately. Anybody who has looked at the live cam around 5:30 to 6:30 the past few days, which have been beautifully clear, has no doubt noticed that the sun is in camera range - and it is totally overloading the CCD, leaving a large white streak down the left side. I hope it doesn't do the camera in. Charlie and I have a place for that camera!
The sun is still rising much later in Copper Harbor than it is here, though. I woke up (briefly) around 6am this morning, and the sky was beginning to get light, but it's still pitch dark there. Some of this has to do with Copper Harbor being so much further west in the same time zone, of course, and part of it is that the sun is just beginning its climb up to spring and summer. Right now, we have about 9 minutes more of daylight, but pretty soon Copper Harbor will overtake us. By the time I get there (closer all the time!!), there will be much more daylight in Copper Harbor and the sun will be over around the lighthouse and shining on my pillow as it sets.
We all had a few beautiful clear days this week, but while it was still lovely and sunny here today, the snow clouds had come back in to the Harbor. It looks like they might finally begin to catch up a little on their season's snowfall. Right now there has only been about 150" for the season -a lot for the more southerly climes, but about half what they got last year. Strange, strange weather. It's been so warm around here that I've been going out in a polartec pullover - no coat at all. I never got used to hot weather, of course, so 50º seems like a normal, comfortable temperature to me.
Speaking of polartec, I got into the sewing room this afternoon, with the idea of clearing away some of the boxes so I can do some sewing, but unfortunately I got sidetracked and I think I left it in a worse mess than it was when I started. There are two polartec pullovers I want to make, and two robes, and I guess I'd best get started before I don't need them anymore! Maybe tomorrow.
Well, I tweaked a little bit, so I will get this published and see what I did. I should have done the Netscape thing last year when Arthur started telling me what he saw, and I was just too lazy. So then I can go to bed early(er) and be semi-bright for church tomorrow.
February 17 Nothing much is going on here, but it was such a gorgeous day at Copper Harbor that I was prompted to do something I've thought about several times. I put together a page with the last eight pictures from the camera. Oh, how I wish I had been there today! It was so beautiful, and the camera just doesn't do it justice, but it's certainly better than nothing! It wasn't warm - middle twenties - but it would have been a great day to be out and about... or sitting in the ugly chair just watching.
I sat in the virtual chair (which isn't nearly so comfortable as the real ugly chair!) working on the eighth sock and petting various cats and updating the picture every fifteen minutes. The eighth sock is the seventh colorway, because the first colorway was a pair. When I get the next one done, I'll post pictures. These are really wild socks, but they'll be fun to wear.
I am beginning to get antsy to get there, and it's still almost three months away. Not only do I miss the ugly chair and the office, I miss the big bed (two cats and a big me in a double bed just doesn't do it, after sleeping in the queen-size bed), the nice closet, and the wonderful stall shower. I mean, this is just existing - that's living! Besides, the house is an incredible mess, and it's beginning to get to me. Not enough to do anything yet, but close.
I was also missing the kitchen this week. I got a yen for a roasted chicken the way I do it - stuffed with celery, onions and garlic - and it was really good, but I would love to do one in the convection oven. That is one of the things it's supposed to be really good at. And of course, I eat out so much up there that I don't cook a lot. In fact, I don't remember seeing a roasting chicken in EconoFoods, but that may just be because I wasn't looking.
If I'm talking about food again, it's probably because it's 8pm and I haven't eaten, not because I'm not hungry, but because I can't decide what I want to eat. I had half a container of bean soup last night, with the end of the chicken in a sandwich, and I was - ahem! - rather gassy over night. I love the soup, but not what it's doing to me, and half a container isn't enough without something else, and...it gets compllicated.
I will have to discuss it with Dr. Lehman, but I think all the chemo has done something long-term (hopefully, not permanent) to my intestinal tract. It's one of those little side-effects that nobody says anything about that drives the poor patient patient crazy.
I had my Mediport flushed Tuesday, and the lung and heart tests seem to have come out all right. The people who read the MUGA went back to 1998 to compare (who knows why?) and my heart function was slightly less, but not bad, I think. She couldn't find any later tests, so I will have to run that by Lehman, too. I want to know if there has been any change since the one last April. I doubt it, but I want to be sure. My lungs are fine - but I knew that, and as my diaphragm gets back into shape, I'm beginning to be able to sing the long phrases again.
The only other thing of note is that I visited Carey Friday, and she had been to the Nashville needlework market and had a lot (many too many) of the things I had asked her to get for me. Too bad all my hobbies are expensive...
Carey was also talking about reprinting our little thread inventory book. She still has about 100, but she is thinking maybe by July it will be time to do it over... I haven't even been keeping up my own copy completely (Publisher has a bug that makes it really awkward to do tables), so I was not happy to hear that. The only thought I had (which I kept to myself) is that maybe I can find somebody in Keweenaw to print it less expensively than we did it the last time. The timing is bad, though. I hope to be doing other things in June and July...like gardening and walking! We shall see.
So that's the quiet week. May can't come fast enough for me!
February 10 Well, it's been a few days, so I will make an entry, even though I don't have much to report. The weather has continued weird. This morning when I got up, it was pouring rain, but it had stopped by the time I went to church, and the temperature was over 40º. During the afternoon, it got sunny, then around 4pm, there were a couple of rumbles of thunder and somebody turned a bucket upside down for about five minutes. When I went upstairs from the computer to put my pizza in the oven and turned on the floodlight, it was snowing. I forgot to look at the thermometer, but I have to think it's gotten colder.
The pictures of the day showed that Copper Harbor is just about completely free of ice - nearly unheard of at this time of year! What strange weather.
My activities for the week have been very little and not much. I finished a lime-green sock, and started a turquoise one that I just turned the heel on today. I started reading one of my big stories, and I just didn't feel like knitting while I did it until today. I located and took upstairs the blue polar fleece I want to make into a robe, but before I can do any serious sewing, I have to get a bunch of boxes out of the sewing room.
The dampness made me feel really creaky, the reading has kept me up late, and frankly, I don't feel like doing much.
Besides being creaky, I had a sinus attack in church this morning. This is a thing that usually only happens right after I lay down in bed - I start coughing and dripping and it takes five minutes or more to get settled down. I think the weather has something to do with that too - the Michigan Drip gets much worse. I still think I'm allergic to this town, and probably to my house, too, because I don't have that kind of problem in Copper Harbor. There is so much pollution and so much dust and the leftovers of mildew in this house that I keep having allergy attacks.
Well, Tuesday, I get my Mediport flushed, and I will see if I can find out what the results of the tests were. Since I didn't hear from anybody, I can't believe there was anything wrong.
Wednesday is Ash Wednesday (so early this year!), which means from now until Easter, Wednesdays will be late. The choir practices after church during Lent and Advent, and there is a lot of music in our folders we haven't even sight-read yet. Poor Bruce. He hardly had time to recover from Christmas and he has to plan Easter! We are down to three men besides him, which is a mixed blessing, since the one missing is the monotone, but it's a real pity. He could do so much if he had an adequate choir! The men sounded good this morning - the three left only need to do a little work and they're fine. If only he had three times as many... As for the sopranos, we've temporarily lost a couple of them, too, but all that means is that the rest of us get to sing louder. This is the only choir I've ever sung with where the director ever had to ask the sopranos to sing louder...it's also the only choir I've ever sung with where there were more altos than sopranos. It's nice not to be hushed up all the time.
So that's all that's going on. Not much.
February 5 It's been a quiet day, which I spent in the basement, because I was running out of underwear again, and I don't have much to report.
I did say I would post a picture of the funky socks when I finished them, and so here they are. Not exactly my favorite colors, but I like them. I've started another one, which is red, white, navy blue, pale lime green and hot pink. I don't have enough done to see how the stripes will work yet, but the first couple of inches I like. Now that I have one pair made, I think I will do one of each colorway until I get bored or start to work on something else. Randi sent me another kind of yarn, very fine, that works on #1 needles, and I want to see how those look, too, but I already have a pair on #1 needles, so I need to finish that sock before I can go on to something else. The rule is, only one project on one needle size at a time.
I know the heels look funny in the picture, and I may have to modify how I do them - they're rather pointy - but I like them much better than a traditional heel. The way the traditional heel is made, it is very thick (so it will last, I guess), and I have a hard time getting them into shoes. With my reinforcing yarn, the heels on the new socks won't wear out any faster than store-bought socks, and since they're thinner, they will go into shoes better. I am wearing the red ones today (all out of wool socks, too), but I didn't wear shoes.
One more picture to share. After the snows of the weekend, it was sunny yesterday, and sunset last night was rather nice. The light at water level is the marina, but there was clearly a snowmobile or two up on Brockway's Nose again. I certainly hope the snowmobile traffic picks up, what with the new snow and the weather forecasts that predict some more every day.
The only other thing I have to report is that Walter Hassig (my neighbor to the north in Copper Harbor) called today to say that his wife Elaine had passed away. Poor Walter! Elaine was a real fighter, and she certainly had practically everything imaginable wrong with her, but she finally contracted an infection in a heart valve, and that was too much for her. She had been in the hospital for three weeks, fighting it. She died in her sleep, and she is in a much better place now, but I wonder what Walter will do. He spent so many years taking care of her, and he isn't in good shape himself. So sad.
My new pasty order arrived today, so I had to have one, and now I am on the second to last load of wash (clothes, that is - I need to wash the quilts sometime). So I will wrap this up and get it published, and try not to stay up until midnight knitting socks tonight!
February 2 Well, maybe I can hold my liquor a little better tonight. I don't know what brought that on, but right after I got the page published, I crashed. Barely washed my face and brushed my teeth. Not even a nice hot pasty (my last) could sop up enough to keep me together. Weird, how one's body reacts sometimes.
Today was a nice sunny day here, so I spent some time sitting in the sewing room, mostly knitting. That chair isn't comfortable either. There are two comfortable places for me to sit in this house: the bathroom, and in my bed with the bed rest pillow, although the light isn't very good. The chair here at the computer isn't bad, but the back keeps trying to fall off, and besides, it's cold in the basement, and when it's sunny out, I just don't want to be here much.
It finally snowed in Copper Harbor - about eight inches in four hours last night, according to my spies. I called because first, the last picture of the day was at 4:15, and when I downloaded the day's pictures, around 1:30 there was a very good picture of a back (human, that is) right in front of the window, and after that the deck was cleared off. It was sunny around then, and before Tom shoveled the deck, not only did the railing have a nice high cap on it, I couldn't see under the bottom rail any more. I certainly hope it keeps snowing: Shirley said last night that lots of people, both snowmobilers and skiers, have been canceling their reservations. Well, it's been bad, but it's not that bad. John Dee says there are very acceptable snow conditions if you know where to go, and the groomers are finally out on the regular trails every day. Of course, there's no ice on the Harbor, but that has more to do with the warm temperatures than the lack of snow.
Now in that shot above, it looks like the Harbor is frozen, so now I'm confused. I sure wouldn't try to walk on it!
I really feel for my friends when it's like this. They need the winter business. As Shirley says, it supports her habit - she is in the habit of eating. At least Mariner North seems to be doing all right, but then, at this time of year, it's the only place in town to eat. And I wish I was there to eat: during the off-season the chefs get to experiment more, and Shirley was telling me about something they had last weekend that I want some of!
How I wish I could just take off for Copper Harbor! But if it's an 11 hour drive in good conditions, how long might it take in snow? And then I'd have to ask Tom to flush the plumbing, and...oh, it's just too much bother. I have an appointment on February 12. I'll just have to hope Jonathan gets the camera running tomorrow and get my Harbor fix via the internet.
Which reminds me, the car is overdue for its oil change. This next week looks pretty clear. I'll have to see if I can take it to the garage.
Writing these things down sometimes brands them into my memory...which is interesting, considering that while I was sick, writing things down got them out of my memory! I guess it depends upon what things you're talking about.
As for here, The Sanctuary is finally at the point where all that is left to do are the hems, and I didn't feel like doing that today, so I worked successively on about five things (besides the sock) and wasn't happy with any of it. On the subject of my mind, it frequently happens that after I have spend a very long time on one or two projects (e.g., birds and The Sanctuary), it takes me quite some time to pick another project. Right now I just want to piddle around with some UFO's (UnFinished Objects) and small, easily finished things before I decided what to attack next. I've been narrowly focused (needlework wise) for over a year now, and it's time to kick back and relax. This is the time when I start going through all the things I have kitted up and all my graphs until the spirit moves me.
So this has been another nice quiet day, and having stuffed myself with frozen pizza, I will now repair to the shower and bed, and get ready to sing tomorrow.
February 1 One should not start manipulating one's website when one has the hiccups from one's double Jack Daniels (ahem!)
The changes to the website I mentioned yesterday haven't taken place yet for several reasons.
I knitted until I turned the heel, about 11:30 last night, and I didn't sleep very well because all night long, unpredictably, the accumulation of show and ice on the fifty foot spruces that line the west side of my house would fall off onto the roof with a crash and slide down - somewhere. I suspect a lot of the residue ended up in my gutters (blessed Copper Harbor - no gutters!!), but there was a lot on the flat roof of the enclosed porch, which is behind my bedroom. Ssssshhh...Crash!...ssshhh.....Aaarrggh!
Tonight should be quieter.
I finished the sock, but I realized that the other one will be entirely different, because the ball starts at a different point in the sequence of colors, so I will wait until I finish it to take a picture of both of them.
Randi accused me of being compulsive, and I guess so, but this yarn has gotten me in its spell...she just doesn't know me that well. Given the right combination of stuff to work on, I can go really wacko. Every time I look at that brown and orange, I realize that I am. But the first sock is really great. I surely would never wear a sweater in those colors, but the idea of pulling up the leg of my jeans and exhibiting brown, orange, green, magenta and pale blue just appeals to me. I wish I could find a pair of Birkenstock-type sandals that fit my feet so I could show off my socks! Classic Birkenstocks don't fit me, because my toes are too squared off and I hit the edges of the footbed and after a while I get very sore toes.
Computing when I'm slightly drunk is interesting. I now have four small squares on this screen that I have no idea how they got there and I have no idea how to get rid of them. My last pasty (six more to arrive next week) is now on my plate, and that will absorb some of the excess alcohol. The alcohol is in excess because when I opened the package that contained my new yarn swift (I will try to take a picture), it expanded and tipped over the first Jack Daniels, and besides, I had only had a few crackers and cheese since breakfast. Being a single person living alone can be interesting.
By the way, pasty.com's pasties are fabulous. I managed not to get any while I was in Copper Harbor, but I'm planning on stocking the freezer with them for this summer. Between them and Econo-Foods' really tender steaks, and eating out four times a week, I may never have to cook from the middle of May to the middle of November....and me with the fabulous state-of-the-art kitchen! Being a single person living alone can be interesting.
On the subject of the state-of-the-art kitchen, one of the things that drove me wild last year was that the minimum I could turn the flame down to on the cooktop was so high that I could not cook rice or many other things, so I now have a message in to GE saying how the ***** do I get these things adjusted right? My early vintage cooktop here (late '70s to early '80's) will let me turn the flame down to where it's barely visible - or goes out - and I was shocked that the new one has an absolute minimum, and it's not minimum.` Probably has some stupid OSHA requirement behind it, but it irks me. I'm hoping it's something I can adjust myself, but if I have to pay my plumber to do it, I will, just so I can cook. And the plumber, being male and a plumber. not a cook, would have not a clue how to adjust the burners.
Anyway, back to the excuses. The other excuse is that I've been thinking about Shirley a lot lately, so while I was watching the snow squall over Copper Harbor this afternoon, I called her, and we had a nice long conversation. There are reasons why I like being here in the winter, but I certainly miss my Copper Harbor friends, and she is the best.
On that subject, Phoebe finally rolled back into town, and it sounds like she is firmly hooked on her motor home.
Oh, well... I'm firmly hooked on my stationary home, too. I've sometimes thought that being able to take my house with me would be a great way to see some of the country I've never seen, but then reality sets in, and I yearn to be in Copper Harbor, with my wonderful office, my wonderful stall shower, and my big queen-sized bed...and my view that is unsurpassed anywhere. Oh, yes, and my state-of-the-art kitchen that I may never really use...
Oh, how I love that place!!!
Well, this has turned into a rather long, rather rambling entry, so I will try to get it published, then do a little more knitting before I keel over.
Last updated 08/04/11 08:45 PM |