Everyday life in Florida

Let go of that UFO!

2012-01-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just have to let go of those unfinished projects. You know, like if you cut the outfit out on July 4, 2007, and you've lost 30 pounds since then, this project cannot end well.

As much as I love the fabric, and the style, this can't work, so throwing it in the trash, pattern and all, is the only solution.

Goodbye, little dream outfit!

This. This is why I love digital photography.

2012-01-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

This isn't a great snapshot, but we love our family. I'm finally getting around to scanning and color correcting all the photos from my Dad's house, and I saved the album from the 70s for last. Woah, I should have gotten those puppies out of that album sooner.

Most of them are faded and quite a few have visible foxing and acid damage from the album. I am not a skilled photo restorer, nor do I think a lot of these are worth it, being Instamatic type shots, but they are a good reminder of our past. Look at this album. If this is what your old albums look like, GET YOUR PICTURES OUT! Yes I am yelling. The acid in the paper is eating away at your memories.

Oh, back up your digital pictures too, while you are at it!

I really need to go outside more.

2012-01-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

Notice anything funny in this picture? (Ignore my helpful camera settings, please.) Well, I was taking photos at various settings for an online class I'm participating in, and whoa, did I get a surprise.

~~You~~ I don't see these things until I really look at the picture.

There is a fern growing out of the framework of my patio. A fern! Yes, I need to really notice stuff like that sooner and get out the old pressure washer. Florida, gotta love it.

Camera shy people, you are warned.

2012-01-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

One of the things I get to do at work is take pictures. I should take more pictures but some of my staff are camera shy. The same people are in lots of pictures because they don't duck away.

I have resorted to subterfuge. In the photo above, I tried to get this guy's photo and he put his hands in front of his face repeatedly. I lowered the camera (still pointed his way) and said that my camera has a bad case of shutter lag. While I was saying "lag" I snapped the picture. That's why his hands are where they are. And why one eye is drooping.

If you want a flattering picture, you need to cooperate. If you want no picture, I'll have to go all sneaky on you. There, everyone is warned.

Such a thoughtful neighbor!

2012-01-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

My library is in such a charming neighborhood. The house directly to the south of us put out a bench so you can rest under a shady tree and read your book. How thoughtful!

Alas, on bulk pickup day it was trashed. But it made a great picture and Facebook status.

Bob's Barricades are ubiquitous in Florida!

2012-01-03T06:30:00.000-08:00

Bob must have the state contract on barricades or something. Almost everything except some of the cones are labeled "Bob's Barricades".

My family had a lively discussion about Bob over the recent holiday. Seems they are all over the eastern US, but out west barricades belong to someone else. Who knew?

This stack of barricades has been in my quiet neighborhood for weeks, decorating a tree trunk near the entrance. I asked several people if they knew why they were there, and no one seemed to know. When I looked up old Bob on the Internet I discovered that these are leased. Somebody is paying for these longer than they need to.

Oh yeah, they are going to reconstruct some of the driveway aprons. I knew that. Yes, I did.

Nina's Home!

2012-01-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

For a visit, that is. She arrived about an hour and a half before the new furniture for her room did. Whew!

Her room (the guest room) is so small I only put in a bed, nightstand, and chest. It still requires closing the closet door to get to the head of the bed.

While she's home she has to complete her classes from the last semester. She's been here 2 weeks and I don't think she's done any schoolwork yet.

Anyone want to bet that she'll wait until the last 3 days? Anyone?

My old Yashica FR

2012-01-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I seriously miss my old Yashica SLR. Sure, it took film, and taking lots of pictures was frustrating and expensive, but the pictures sometimes came out great!

So I never got super good with it, but all in all it took better pictures than any of my previous point and shoot cameras.

It had just a few simple buttons. Shutter speed, ISO, and the shutter button itsself were on the top. Focus (manual), and f-stop were rings on the lens. Inside the viewfinder was a simple light meter with a red or green dot indicating over or under exposure, or just right. If it wasn't right I could play with the aperture or speed until it registered ok. The slowest the shutter would go was 1/30th of a second.

I didn't have any other lenses, but I did have a flash attachment that went on the "hot shoe" on top. There was a dial on the back of it that recommended f-stops based on distance to subject, film speed, and shutter speed.

Now, I haven't used that camera since the early 2000s, I abandoned it without looking back, so why can I remember this so well? Who the heck knows, I sure don't.

I ordered a DSLR and it arrived last week and it has a sharp learning curve. More on my new baby (camera) later.

In the meantime, here's a picture I took with the old Yashica:

Is it a legacy or just more junk?

2011-12-22T04:40:00.000-08:00

What will happen to all my digital photos when I die? Who will care?

When Daddy died we had a mountain of paper photos to go through, and quite a lot of them got dumped. The kinds of photos that got dumped were pictures of places and people that none of us knew, or pictures of my stepmother’s brother-in-law’s family whom we didn’t know either. They had no kids, so there wasn’t someone who would show up later looking for them.

There was a whole album of photos from my Dad’s retirement party (in the early 1980s) that were badly composed point and shoot shots of people being silly with the hired belly dancer. My dad’s former coworkers, none of which we knew.

Saddest of all were the photos of my step brother, the family black sheep. He died of complications of alcoholism at 53, and had no kids. Some of us took one or two of him, but the bulk of them, especially baby pictures, went unclaimed. Ouch.

Now, this is not to say that we didn’t swoop in and enjoy most of the photos of our own childhoods and early adulthoods. I took most of them home to digitize and 5 years later I’m still working on it.
I’m also going to scan and organize all the photos I took prior to going digital. Sometimes I wonder if I’m nuts. Will anyone want them or will they get dumped?

Nina does seem to enjoy the scrapbook pages, even though she didn’t like the idea of making them when I was doing them. I guess it’s time to get back on that project soon, right?

And another craving hits me hard

2011-12-07T04:14:00.001-08:00

I'm the proud (?) new owner of an Express Redi Set Go grill, and it makes the most awesome personal pizza. This picture is from foodline.com, since I ate mine so fast it was gone before I could photograph it.

The bottom crust was crunchy, the top was bubbling and delicious, and well, what more can I say? For a gal on a diet, personal pizza is perfect. And this one is just the right size, too!

Now I'll have to eat pizza almost every day for the next 11 days, since that is the size of the big ball of dough I made up. That will fix me. And, good thing it's fast and easy, too.

A seasonal craving!

2011-12-04T10:35:00.001-08:00

In the last few days I have had cravings for all things peppermint. Of course this is the season where it shows up all over the place, so that's convenient. This coffee, by the way, is yummy, and I'm not usually a big fan of flavored coffees.

The peppermint mocha coffee creamer is going to send my diet out the door if I don't watch out. That stuff is amazing, and addictive.

There's a price to be paid for living on the water.

2011-10-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

That price is wildlife that you never want to see. Like rats.

Two years ago when Roehm Air Conditioning put in my new unit, they did not seal up the area around the tube that goes in the house. Apparently rats have been using it as their way in to my attic where they have been nesting in the insulation. (El vomito.)

One thing I don't understand is how I could have heard the scratching in the night and so easily brushed it aside as static noise from my clock radio. The clock radio wasn't even on "radio" at the times I heard the noise. This has been going on for over a year and I have been in denial. I live alone, therefore noises in the night must be explained away harmlessly. It wasn't until I heard scratching coming from the ceiling on the other side of the bedroom that I realized I had a problem.

Another thing I don't understand is how my bug man could go in my attic to treat for ants and never mention to me about the rat droppings. The rat control guy said they were obvious.

So now, the rat control guy will be back every other day to empty and refill traps until they are all caught. Then I'll need to find a cleanup company to remove the poop and wrecked insulation.

I don't' think I'll ever complain about lizards in the garage again. The good news is the lake is really full again!

My kale dilemma.

2011-10-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, three big pieces of kale left. Should I use them in a green smoothie or make (for the first time) some kale chips?

I like having difficult choices like this!

Nuts About Florida is all over the map.

2011-10-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm trying to work different fruits and vegetables into my diet. Apricots! I never eat them, so why not?

I got these home and put some in my next green smoothie. Yes it was delicious, thank you very much. Buy why do they have to come from Turkey? Don't we make apricots in this country?

You see, I try to remember to select fruits and veggies from not so far away. Except bananas. I read the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and agree with the theory that we shouldn't eat stuff that has to be shipped in from far away, using up energy resources. But if eating greens from Florida means kalalu you can forget about it.

Kalalu in my cart. or don't ask a whimpy blender to do the job.

2011-09-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

I got the idea into my head to start doing green smoothies. Green smoothies, for the uninitiated, are blender drinks with greens disguised by fruits, blended in (usually) a really strong blender.

I have an Oster blender that is good for the spinach/banana/melon variety of green smoothie, but once I tried to get out of my comfort zone I had some problems. At the vegetable stand, the greens looked tired and hot, except for these pretty greens marked kalalu. No, I'd never heard of them either, but I did need to do something besides spinach everyday. I knew I wasn't ready for kale or collards. The Romaine lettuce produced 3/4 of the container of fiberous foam. Yeah, like that was pleasant to drink. Thank you Osterizer.

But I found out that kalalu, or callaloo, or calalu; is the Jamaican equivalent of spinach. Maybe, but it was so darn tough that I had flecks of the stuff settling to the bottom of my glass almost immediately. And it tasted like St. Augustine grass smells when mowed.

So I ordered the Vitamix. That was a week ago and I haven't even been notified that it's shipped.

I had a lot of kalalu, so I cooked the rest like spinach: put wet greens on top of sauted onions and garlic and steam until soft. They were still tough. Like collards.

Me and spinach, we are still real good buddies. He's a softie, what can I say?

Busted kitchen timer. Or not.

2011-08-21T11:55:00.001-07:00

I drop my kitchen timer (or it falls off the freezer) at least 3 times a week. When it hits the tile, the back, battery and timer all fly across the floor in 3 different directions. Still, the dang thing is working. I wish it would stay on the freezer better or just frickin break already.

How many times can this thing fall on its head and still be ok?

My newest toy, meet the pressure cooker!

2011-08-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

I love my new pressure cooker. It's great for beans and pulled pork, but I think I've taken it a step further with hard cooked eggs.

There is no savings in cooking time, but dang those pressure cooked eggs practically peel themselves! There's your time savings!

Trapped in the dentist's chair

2011-08-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, another chapter of the "Blame it on the computer" book.

I had to go in for x-rays and a once-over by the dentist, which there wasn't time for in the previous cleaning visit. My appointment was for 9 AM and I didn't get out of there until 11:15, all due to the new digital x-ray system and "the computer".

If I didn't have to be at work today at noon I could have had the doc start my new crown work. I'm glad I declined, since his waiting room was really full when I left. Schedules are screwed up everywhere.

Trippin' down memory lane - 1978?

2011-07-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

I got one of those portable scanners and I said to myself - wow this is going to go so much faster than the flatbed I used to use! Just press a button and slide over the photo! Do 3 or 4 in the time it used to take to scan one!

Hold your horses, Bucko. The scanning does go faster. But each and every photo must be cropped and color corrected and renamed and sorted into logical folders. Where's that speed now, huh?

More about my insanely ambitious scanning projects later.

Anyway, here is a photo of Paula H and me on Halloween in 1977 or 78. Damned if I can remember which one. I'm in my old-fashioned librarian costume. SSSSHHHH!

How does all that stuff get there?

2011-07-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

I couldn't put one more thing in my freezer. So when I cleaned it out there was bread from 2009 and a ham bone from 2008. Really, how does such stuff get overlooked so long?

Am I going to have to get one of those whiteboards to keep track? Yuck.

Repurchasing music

2011-07-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

I know I had that album somewhere. Where is it? Did I leave it behind when I divorced? Not likely, unless it was a cassette. Ugh oh. Man I hate remembering cassettes as CDs.

The thing is, some of that music sounds so recent to me, could it have been over 5 years since I've heard it? Apparently the answer is yes.

Take in this example: Donald Fagan's The Nightfly. I was walking around the house singing Walk Between the Raindrops, and went to look for it to play. No, it wasn't in iTunes. Odd. No, it wasn't hiding in the Windows Media Player either. No, after a search of the CD shelves (a project all in itsself) came up empty, I resigned myself to purchasing it again. That's what I get for purchasing a cassette in the days of either CD or cassette. Whatever money I saved then I spent today. I could be wrong but I may have had this as an album, too. I know I had Aja in at least 3 formats.

I had forgotten how much I liked this album.

Good news/bad news: Donald Fagen has other albums I haven't heard yet. I may have to purchase them too.

Wow look at all the water!

2011-07-04T06:38:00.001-07:00

Frisky geese!

2011-07-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

All the rain we've been having has gotten the geese a little frisky.

Rain, sweet rain!

2011-07-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is the "after" picture. Nice, isn't it?

We are finally getting some rain, thank you God!

This is the "before" lake level. Except for the green floaty stuff skuzzing up the surface, I really like the "after" better. But I won't look that closely at the surface, ok?

Sorry Charlie, you are a liar and I'm breaking up with you!

2011-06-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

I've had a long-term relationship with Charlie the Tuna. It started in junior high school when my friend Jean and I ate a can with crackers at her house every day. It's a wonder her mom didn't put a stop to it.

Anyway, in college I sent some Starkist labels and a small amount of money off in the mail and got my first Charlie the Tuna wristwatch. Oh how I loved that watch! It was way cooler than those Mickey Mouse watches my dormmates had. The next year my sister gave me some towels with Charlie on them, because I liked the watch so much. Yay!!

The watch bit the dust and as a young adult in my 20's I found and bought another one.

But I have a big bone to pick with you, Starkist, and watches and other cool stuff won't fix this.

I bought a 12 oz. can of chunk light tuna in water, and it seemed, sloshy, even before I opened the can. So I read the label. It said each serving was 2 oz drained, and there are about 5 servings per can. There is no way there is 10 oz of drained tuna in there, and when I drained it and weighed it, there was 6.75. That's quite a big difference from the "about 10" the label is claiming. Unless you really eat your tuna dripping wet.

Sorry Charlie, after all these years I'm breaking up with you. I am going to see that cute mermaid, her chunks have actual identifiable chunks!

OMG, I can read on the treadmill!

2011-06-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

I walk on a treadmill at the gym, 3 or 4 times a week, for about an hour each time. Back in March and April there was usually something on TV (among the 5 channels available on the machine) that was suitably distracting. Now with summer programming we are at boredom central on the old 'mill. I do not want another reason to skip a workout.

I have seen women reading magazines on the ellipticals and on the treadmills, so I thought what the heck, give it a try.

I started with a large print book, which was great, except it was a tiny bit too thick to fit the lipped tray, at least at the beginning of the book. I held it open with a lightweight rubber band, which I had to fiddle with at each page turn. Once I got nearer to the middle of the book, I could just slide the pages under the lip of the tray. Yay for books!

But the coolest thing is the Kindle on the treadmill. Except the fact that I felt the need to go wash my hands after the weight machines and before the 'mill, it was ideal. It didn't shift around and the page turns didn't always require two hands.

Next I will experiment with the Sony 300 reader, since it is smaller. The page turns require a little more focus since the "target" is a spot on the right side of a ring, but all in the name of reducing exercise boredom, right?

What a way to kill a Sunday

2011-06-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

So, instead of working on the actual pants pattern I'd downloaded from the Internet and traced, I spent several hours doing a new croquis. I didn't remember how long it had been since I did my last one, or what I weighed at the time.

Here's the overall plan:

Take pictures of myself in dark, tight fitting clothes, front and side, and reduce the photos to outlines. Then, in theory, I can draw the outlines of sewing patterns on top of "me" and see how I really look in them. That is often enough to cure me of wanting that pattern altogether.

Oh, and since I couldn't find my old croquis, I hooked up my old computer and spent a great deal of time copying selected directories to the external hard drive, then comparing directories to the new computer. Mission accomplished, day/time killed without actually working on my pants pattern. More measurements were taken.

The last croquis was 13 months ago and 13 pounds heavier. I am smoother in this one, but it may be due to the choice of dark and tight this time around. Is it obsessive that I am considering buying a leotard and tights specifically for future croquis?

This croquis came out much better since I used Nina's old room for a background (less cluttered, better background angle to the wall, and better contrast), and fully extended my little tripod. Also I was standing more straight to the camera. Not perfectly straight, but better.

My conclusion after studying the two croquis side by side? I used to describe my body as a tube atop a beach ball, but that comparison only works from the front view. The side view shows a belly that denies the tube and extends the beach ball idea. With tiny bumps for boobs. Really now, was that necessary?

Sigh. Time to start doing some of those "core" exercises I have been avoiding at the gym. Damn I hate getting on the floor at the gym. I'm not too keen on doing it on the floor at home either. The treadmill is so much more sanitary.

No, I'm not going to post MY croquis here. The sample above is a professional model croquis. Mine would be TMI.

It's grilling time again!

2011-06-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's not like it's never grilling time here in south Florida, but when the popular media starts getting into it, so do I. I'm shallow that way.

So the above bunch of food is good for about 4 meals for me. Well, 4 meals of meat and 2 of veggies, but it's a start!

The above ribeye steak was brushed with a mustard/olive oil/red wine vinegar marinade and the veggies were brushed with Italian dressing. Pretty simple and OH SO Good. The most exciting part was when the wire grill brush fell apart in action. Yowza! The second most exciting part was not realizing I'd run out of fuel and wondering why it wasn't cooking faster. I really should be more observant. Ya think?

Walking around the neighborhood

2011-05-31T08:38:00.000-07:00

So, walking around my neighborhood, I counted, well I tried to count the squirrels but there are so many of them! And they are loud and fuss at me when I walk under "their" trees. It was a good year for acorns last fall and now the critters are big and numerous. I suspect some of the neighbors are feeding them.
My next door neighbor puts out veggies for the bunnies, but I've never seen the squirrels stealing from that supply like they go after seeds in the bird feeders.

One thing that really surprised me was the big mango tree overhanging the fence on Gateway Blvd. I must not have ever walked there when there was fruit on the tree. It sticks way out, making that fruit available for anyone who can pick it. Too bad I don't care for mangos, with as many as grow around here. Here's a picture of the tree, which is near Gateway and Lawrence, if anyone wants to come a-pickin!

I can't tell you if they are ripe or not, though.

Bland chips, but chips nonetheless.

2011-05-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

They are toasted tortilla wedges with a hint of cheese. Just a hint now, because "we" are watching how much cheese and other delicious stuff "we" eat. I love chips, I could make a whole meal out of them and dips/spreads most nights. Love love love the crunch.

But chips and crackers come with a high calorie price. I'm trying to come up with a suitable substitute that doesn't have me pretending crisp vegetables are really chips. Come on people, veggies are good but they are not crackers.

These chips are bland. Really bland, but they are crunchy so I'll make them again. Plus I still have a lot of tortillas left.

Wildlife in the 'hood.

2011-05-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

It's a good year for wildlife in my neighborhood. And domestic animals gone wild, too.

We have a bunch of these bunnies out chomping on the grass, at dawn and dusk. And lately they have been joined by domestic rabbits that have either been released or escaped. Last week in a small rainstorm I saw one of each near each other looking all cute and everything.

I'll save my comments on the squirrels for later, but rest assured, they are out there in full force too. Can the foxes be far behind?

*I am not able to get a photo of the bunnies, so I'll give credit to the poster at Wikipedia who shared the one above: I_Am_Ninjor.

I just love my new carpet cleaner!

2011-04-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

It's a Bissell lightweight that I got at the big box discount store. You know, the one with the funny looking customers. Except for me of course.

I did my daughter's former bedroom with it and boy did the room need it. First of all, I gotta say, that detergent for carpet cleaners is expensive! But the good news is it only took a couple of tablespoons for the whole little tank, and that tank did the whole little bedroom.

It didn't take out the dents however. And no matter how much I clean it, there is that tramped down area around the edge of the former bed. The photo makes it look even worse!

Now let me tell you the sad tale of the little Hoover that didn't suck. I bought a rug cleaner at the other big box discount store, you know, the one that is much more pleasant to shop in. I had that cleaner in my garage in the box for a couple of months before I opened it up and assembled it. Then I discovered it wasn't sucking up the dirty water. In fact on the tiles it just blew it around. It too was very inexpensive, but I hadn't saved the reciept, so now I can't return it to the store.

I'm offering it up on the local Freecycle to see if anyone wants to try to fix it or if anyone can convince a store to take it back. Good luck to them.

In the meantime I may have to go in there and do the walls with a magic eraser. All the walls up to 3 feet off the floor are covered with marks and stuff. My gawd those two "kids" were hard on the house.

If this is all I have to be bugged about...

2011-04-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Don't you just hate it when that woven strip in the towel shrinks up the 2nd time it's washed? It makes it harder to fold them, and it just looks bad. The towels in this group all did this except the one that was being used that day. This happened 5 years ago and I'm still pissed about it. Damn dryer in my rental apartment, anyway.

If this is the biggest complaint I can come up with then I'll take it.

Our annual drought.

2011-03-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

The lake behind my house is freakishly dry. We are not supposed to have a beach on it AT ALL. Although it is fun to see the birds on it sometimes. The same birds are not so visible when they have to be on the grass.

They don't talk about our usual drought on the news these days because the DCF screw-ups, the economy, and the tsunami in Japan with the atomic disaster are out-shadowing our little water issue.

Dress shopping, an exercise not enjoyable yet.

2011-03-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

Bealle's only had one dress in my size appropriate for an afternoon wedding. ONE. So I moved on to the mall.

Penney's was remodeling and the women's department was not well labeled. They had rack after rack of dresses. OMGZ they were so cute! So many in my colors, too! Wait, where are my size? I wandered around for 15 minutes before finding the one rack with 5 different dresses in my size range. Only 3 of them were in my colors, so off to the dressing room with them. Yeah, I know I need to lose the socks, but my last shopping trip in dress shoes ended with a blister, so I wasn't going there!

There were only 3 fitting rooms, so I got to wait in line for a booth. Once in I decided I kind of liked all three dresses, but one was somewhat better fitting than the others and wasn't so revealing of underwear etc. so it was the winner. DING DING DING!

The encouraging or discouraging thing is that I am only one size away from being able to shop from the hundreds of dresses instead of the five. Not that i wear that many dresses, but the ones in my closet have been there since I was married, that's how old they are. Sometimes you gotta update your stock, ya know?

I didn't get the memo.

2011-03-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

But then, sometimes I am not that sensitive. Sheeesh.

I had a health scare a couple of weeks ago and after it was all over I went out and joined a gym. Yay me, finally doing something about this out-of-shape body instead of eating cookies.

I have been to the gym about 10 times total so far, and I have only once seen people wearing colors. That was on Friday night. Seriously, there's black, navy, gray, white and khaki. There were probably 60 people in there on Friday evening around 6:30, and 7 or 8 women and about that many men had on colored tops. No one had on colored bottoms at all.

I had purchased workout clothes in navy and coral, so when I wore the coral I REALLY stuck out. By the way, my gym is really big like the one above. But that girl in pink in the picture I snagged from the 'net must be on her Friday night date, ugh I mean workout.

Notice how I'm carefully not mentioning my workouts? Let's just say getting out of chairs has been a challenge for me since Wednesday. So I must really need it.

Just when you thought it was exciting enough...

2011-02-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

After writing the piece about my embroidery machine and coordinating software I started exploring on the "box's" website and discovered there is an upgrade, and the upgrade supports sub-directories. Yay!

I downloaded the upgrade and attempted to install it according to directions. Well, sometimes no good deed goes unpunished, and in this case it did not upgrade according to the printed instructions. Not to be discouraged, I uninstalled it and did it again. And again.

You know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Just call me certifiable by this point. Now it doesn't connect at all. I am officially stuck with the 6 designs I put on there Saturday until I can get this straightened out.

Somehow I suspect this won't come free.

Machine embroidery, starting over, again

2011-02-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten how much I had learned before and it had to be relearned. I got my embroidery machine in 2002 and had a great time with it, but didn't use it from 2005 to 2009. My friend Sam wanted a special embroidery job on his new lab coat, and I was glad to help. But Murphy assisted in the design of this one. He wanted the snake on a stick portion of the paramedics' symbol, but all the designs I found had the star of life with it. He picked a good one and I was able to edit out the star, then put his lettering around the stick. As it turned out, he liked the star but the lettering wasn't what he envisioned. We worked up a sample piece with brief lettering and I decided we needed to use my computer to adjust the lettering, rather than rely on the built-in letters on the machine. You can never tell on the machine how the kerning is going to work without actually stitching it out first.

I only had one font on my software, so I went to the website that sells them, thinking it would be a simple operation to add a couple of fonts. HA! Not so fast sister. The version of software I had was the 2004 version and I needed to upgrade before anything else could happen. So I did, and $235 and an hour of fussing with the installation later we were designing the lettering. Sam did most of the adjusting because he knew exactly what he wanted. How fast he picked up how to run Embird was amazing.

The embroidery machine uses a memory card that is similar in size to a Compact Flash card, but wider and flatter. The card can only hold 6 designs at a time, even though each one averages about 50 kb each. That's KB, not MG. Wow. That's how designs get from my computer to my machine.

The card reader/writer has a usb connection but I can't just use Windows to copy the files over because Windows does not recognize this device as a drive. So it requires proprietary software to do the actual transfer. But, the software does not recognize sub-directories (how primitive is that?) so designs have to go in a top level of c: or in the top level of a jump drive before I can even put them on the machine's card.

This is one of the main parts I forget each and every time. Oh, and the card reader with the card in it has to be plugged into the computer BEFORE the computer is booted up, or it chokes on a com connection connection which it doesn't even have. So after 9 YEARS I got smart and wrote these things on top of the Amazing Box. That's it's name, really!

We worked over 6 hours on this, and it looks great! But friends and family, know this, I will NEVER do this for money. It's so slow for me I could never make a profit! Plus, as everyone might guess, once you have to do it, it's no longer fun. This was fun, thanks for a great afternoon, Sam!

Teaching myself to fidget

2011-02-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

So, in addition to doing some actual, real exercise, I'm trying to teach myself to fidget. I've heard fidgeters burn a tiny bit more calories and raise their metabolism (a tiny bit). I don't know what the science of this is, but I like TV and reading, so I am trying to add leg wiggling and toe tapping to my habits.

So, if you are sitting next to me and I'm jiggling your chair, know that I meant to. Tell me to stop, otherwise I won't.

I really miss tuna fish. The one of my youth, that is.

2011-02-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I picked up this book, Four Fish, by Paul Greenberg. I don't eat much fish so it was just an idle curiosity about fish, fishing and the fish "industry". Plus, I had heard all these cautions about farmed fish.

But, as I was reading along, I had a sudden ah-ha moment. The reason I don't like to eat tuna in a can anymore is that light chunk tuna is no longer "chunk". The cans are smaller, and what passes for chunk these days is what was labeled as "flake" back when. Professional homemakers used to say that flake tuna was alright for tuna salad since you were going to break it up when you stirred in the mayonnaise anyway. But my mom and grandmother, in fact none of the women I knew would ever buy flake tuna. It was always chunk light for us! I am talking the 1970s and prior. Maybe into the 80s, but honestly I don't remember when tuna became either flake tuna or solid white. Solid white is flavorless, IMO, and with a texture of fish that's overcooked. I eat it but I b*tch about it.

The problem is of course, people. We have fished for tuna so much that the actual fish are harder to find, and they are smaller, too. So the cans are smaller and the cans have a higher portion of liquid to tuna. I remember squeezing out the oil with the lid and having more than half a can of meat left. No more.

I really miss tuna, but I do understand that with as many people who also love it, we have got to let the tuna reproduce and grow some or we won't have any.

House painting

2011-02-12T08:43:00.001-08:00

All the houses in my neighborhood are getting painted. They are getting painted with exactly the same colors they have been, since the beginning, 1996. Apparently some of the residents were ok with a color change but the most vocal were not ok with it.

I wish I had seen the samples; I would have blogged about them, with photos. But, the samples were on #1, which I don't usually drive by. Oh well, drama opportunity missed. I like the old colors or I wouldn't have been so charmed by this place, but when the next painting time comes around I will be on the lookout for the new opportunities.

Since it's raining today, the painters are not in the neighborhood. They come in a crowd with suprisingly few vehicles. There must be some kind of drop off, but my vision of the street through the kitchen window is quite limited and I haven't seen it. This picture was taken Thursday morning, on the building across the street from me. As near as I can tell they work on 3 buildings at a time.

I must say, if you had asked me I wouldn't have said my house needs painting yet, but the ones that have been done really do look better and brighter. This must come from years of reduced expectations in the paint department of my brain. But, new paint is good, even with the old colors.

Uh oh, looks like it's time for me to pressure wash the driveway again.

Worst food product EVER

2011-02-11T10:36:00.001-08:00

In my attempt to eat healthier snacks, I picked up some packages of freeze-dried fruits at Target. The strawberries were tart and kind of tasty, but these freeze-dried bananas tasted like they had been dipped in gasoline. What the what?

I keep a small but potent list of "do not buy again EVER" products and this is going to the top of my list. Yuck, double yuck.

New spices, same old chicken? We'll see.

2011-02-06T14:47:00.001-08:00

Wanda gave me these 3 new rubs and I think it may help to cure chicken boredom. If I make 3 different kinds of chicken tenderloin strips on the same pan, then the leftovers for all week long won't seem so repetitive, right?

I am tired of chicken but maybe this will work? A girl can dream, right?

Valentines are so yesterday...

2011-01-28T15:06:00.000-08:00

OK, here it is January 28th, and already the valentine decorations are on clearance to make way for the shamrocks. This is way to fast for those of us who plan at the last minute. Even those of us who prefer green to red and pink.

Avoiding the dry cleaner

2011-01-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

I've managed to avoid the dry cleaner for over 4 years. Mostly I wear casual clothes, and I have started to hand wash some things that were previously marked dry cleaning recommended.

But, I have a confession to make. My jacket, pictured above, has not been cleaned in over 6 years because I needed to mend the lining in the sleeve first. We wear jackets infrequently in Florida, and I would remember the lining each time I would put this on, but promptly forget until the next time. And the tear in the lining wasn't getting any better by itself.

I believe I have mentioned in the past how much I don't look forward to mending by hand. Never mind I have enough hand sewing needles to last 4 more lifetimes, I just don't like to do it. But I did it anyway, and finally took the thing in for a cleaning. Ten bucks, why am I not surprised? Anyway, it's good to get that one little nagging job off my list.

What's next?

Knitting progress

2011-01-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

Well, it's up to 31" and I don't think I've dropped any stitches, at least none I couldn't pick back up more or less. While it is getting more comfortable, I'm still not ready to start up with patterns or anything else that requires counting as I go. Baby steps.

Lucky for me, my neck is often cold.

Knitting again

2011-01-02T10:17:00.001-08:00

I just couldn't resist that big ole' ball of yarn in just my shades of green. I'm a pretty bad knitter, but a scarf in all the same stitch can't be too bad, can it?

The question is, can I finish it before it gets too hot to hold it in my lap. That was the end of the similar scarf I started in 2008. Seriously.

Maybe it's the same everywhere, maybe not.

2010-12-30T17:19:00.000-08:00

We are down to a total of 9 forks at work, and only 2 of them work right. Why did all the forks disappear? In previous years we couldn't keep spoons. Why?

By the way, those zigzag forks are cute but even more worthless than sporks.

How could you, Pepperidge Farm?

2010-11-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

I bought a big bag of this stuff because it's my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I go to my sister's house for the holiday, but I make my own stuffing at home too. Ok, my secret's out. When eating the big feast at my sister's house, my "rules" are suspended. But at home, well, I wish I had never looked at the ingredients. There it is, before the 2% or less note, high fructose corn syrup.

Ok, how hard is it to make stale bread cubes? With bread that isn't contaminated? Not so difficult, but this is the stuffing mix of decades of tradition. I wish I had never looked. Now these bags are going to the food drive at work and I'll be buying loaves of bread in the store bakery to harden up.

Yesterday I read the most complex stuffing recipe yet. It involved 3 skillets, 3 baking sheets, and if you don't have a big cast iron skillet, another casserole dish. If it didn't look so good I wouldn't even consider it. But the mushrooms are already bought, know what I mean?

Sunday and the weather's chilly.

2010-11-07T10:18:00.001-08:00

It was so nice that I had to make some pumpkin muffins. Yes, they were as tasty as I had remembered them from, oh, about 3 years ago. That picture, above, is an experiment with my new phone's camera. I still had to Photoshop it a little bit, though.

The trouble with seeing so many great baking recipes online is that I don't repeat that often. That means I have a plethora of specialty pans, tools and small appliances. I have started keeping some of them in the garage. One of the many perks of being divorced is that my garage is available for overflow kitchen stuff.

We thought ants were a problem.

2010-10-22T08:24:00.001-07:00

My coworker stresses about ants in the library, but little did she know it was about to take a turn for the worse. Much worse.

This building is maintained by the City of Boynton Beach, and like most cities, it has cut its expenses even closer to the bone. Our landscaping mulch is responsible for the infestation of worms, which march up the outsides of the building by the dozens each day. But whatever they are spraying on the plants is causing them to come out of the mulch by the hundreds to escape the poison. If they'd stay outside no one would notice, but they have found a way inside. We had been finding them inside the building, dead and alive on the floor, upstairs and down.

The latest antic of the crawlers was the one that dropped out of the air vent onto the clerk's desk, right next to her keyboard. Talk about drama! We don't want to be complainers, really, but can't something be done about the worms? Except no lizards please, because staff doesn't like them either. (I can relate.)

My poor car.

2010-08-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

I wiped down all the plastic and leather inside with Armor All and it looks fantastic, for an 8 year old car, that is.

So why is it a poor car? It has been 4 years since it was cleaned up like this and my sister was the one who did it. And she did it because she didn't want to make the 12 hour drive in it in the condition it was in.

I guess I take after my dad when it comes to interior car maintenance. Well, not quite that bad, because my back seat is only full of reusable grocery bags, old raincoats and umbrellas, a special back brace for long trips, paper towels, notepads, and the two screens for the windshield that have angry eyes printed on them. Daddy's back and front seat was full of all kinds of stuff, quite a lot of which was trash, pure and simple. It was like doing an archeological dig looking through that stuff.

Now, if it would just cool down a bit I can go back and clean the glass.

Just how long has that tomato been on the counter?

2010-07-24T08:42:00.001-07:00

Two factions of my personality are at odds: the part of me that knows fresh vegetables and fruits are the secret to health and well-being, and the part of me that automatically reaches for the stuff that's easier to prepare. This time the lazy side won, obviously.

You know the tomato is really overripe if the sprouted seed pops out of the side. The thing is, they usually ooze a little bit to announce their condition. I can only imagine what the inside of this bad boy looks like. I'm imagining because I really don't want to look. Really. Not. Going. To. Look. Inside it.

This also points up that in spite of renewed vows that I will actually eat the produce I buy, some of it will look me in the face daily and go bad. And I don't even buy that much of it anymore because of the waste factor. I have got to come up with a better system.

Is it bad to want new screens in hurricane season?

2010-07-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

My patio is in pretty bad shape with rusty screws, ripped screens and assorted dirt and mildew threats. The last straw was the screen door latch that broke off a couple of days ago.

I had a guy come out and estimate how much to fix everything and it seems reasonable enough to me, but even he said wait until hurricane season is over. If I do that I'll have to do something about that door latch ASAP because the door is slapping open shut open shut open shut.

But I'll be very happy to have my patio pretty again. Then I'll have to buy a new table/chair set. Go team!

2010-06-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading:

Dragonfly in Amber on my Kindle
Derik's Bane on my iPod Touch (as a printed ebook)
Faeries Gone Wild as a paperback dead tree book on my breaks at work
Supreme Courtship audio CD book in my car
Another audio book on my iPod Touch (too embarrassed to mention the title)

Adult ADD anyone? That's 5 different books I'm reading now. If anyone had any doubts about my being scatter-brained they can just put them to rest right now.

It's not just all the stories to juggle, they're all in different formats, too. Technology, helping us to be even more scatter-brained. Gotta love it!

America's Funniest Home Videos missed this one.

2010-06-02T04:09:00.000-07:00

This freaking BIG lizard ran up my shirt! Ok, he was provoked. He was on my grill and I poked him with my tongs to make him jump off. He jumped right on my shorts and ran up the inside of my shirt.

If anyone had been there it would have been a candidate for America's Funniest Home Videos. None of my neighbors heard it but I don't know how they could have missed it.

This is a Cuban Brown Anole, about 9 inches long and about 1.5 " across his big body.

YUCK YUCK YUCK

He sits on the screens during the day but I suspect he lives in the grill at night and I don't want him there! I don't want to kill it, and I don't even mind if he lives on my porch, but not all up in my grill, ya know? (That sounds so ghetto.) Or running up my clothes. Just, no.

I went to Home Depot, and would you believe they actually have lizard repellent spray? It's called Iguana Rid. Only in South Florida.

I have to go practice throwing stuff at the grill. I'm not poking critters with tongs again. Ever.

Selling the car from hell's little brother

2010-05-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Nina abandoned the car-from-hell's little brother in my neighborhood last February. At the beginning of April I found out it had been there for 2 months. They moved to New York and gave the title to her dad to sell, but he can't get into the neighborhood to show it. (Thanks to it being gated and all.)

It was running when they left but it doesn't start now. Thanks to their bad care of it, it is in poor condition and won't get half of the book value. I'll be lucky if my HOA doesn't just tow it away, now that the license tag has been removed.

Know anyone who wants a junker? I'll throw in a box of homemade cookies, but you have to call my ex-husband if you want the title.

Tell us what's in YOUR flatware drawer!

2010-05-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

I have the stainless steel flatware from my aunt and uncle that's vaguely Scandinavian in design. It is so cool looking, but the tines on the fork are so shallow that I drop a lot of food. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Then, there's the picnic set my sister gave me on my 50th birthday. It's kind of cheap looking but it has sentimental value to me. And the flowers are so cheerful! One of the forks is missing, go figure.

Then, there is the hammered set that came from Publix back in the 90's as some kind of promotion. It's a good, heavy, quality stainless. Too bad I don't care for the way it looks. But it's only one place setting, right?

And then there's the teaspoon that was a sample from Oneida back when we could fill out a tiny coupon in the back of Glamour magazine and for the shipping cost of $.25 they would send you the spoon! I'm pretty sure I did this in the early 1970's, in my first round of single days.

And then, there are the stray pieces that came in from who knows where. I think they may have followed me home from a potluck, or have been brought to my former house when we had bunches of people over. Group "eat-togethers" sometimes caused a little chaos. Is that my son-in-law's pet spoon that he left behind? I can't remember when most of the strays showed up.

My point is, as a grownup it's ok if I have matching flatware, so why can't I decide what I want and just get it?

I lied on my census form, again.

2010-04-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

So, my daughter and her husband have moved 2 times since they left my house, a mere seven weeks ago. They were asked to leave all 3 places. My house, a shared apartment and an illegal boarding house.

So, I asked my daughter if they had filled out a census at any of their new homes. Nope, its the last thing on their minds right now. On April 1 they are officially homeless, all their possessions in a truck and driving to NY to live with his parents next.

So, I lied. I put both of them on my census form.

Thirty years ago, on April 1, 1980, I got married at the courthouse in the morning and we went home and my hubs replaced the kitchen sink while I filled out the census form. It was the long form, too. So when it came to the question about indoor plumbing, I lied and said we had it. But right at that moment there was no water running to the house and we didn't.

In both these cases, I didn't mind lying for the better good of the statistics.

My daughter lost her job the day after they were told to leave the boardinghouse. My son-in-law hates Florida and this seemed like an omen that they should go back to his little town in upstate NY.

But the census office, here in Florida, keeps calling my house, to offer her a job.

20 or more packages of hand sewing needles

2010-03-19T13:30:00.001-07:00

So, I'm in my sewing room, yay! And I am looking for a particular hook and eye style I know I have in that big box of notions.

I wasn't there to organize, only find what I wanted, but I kept running into these packages of hand sewing needles. So I started to pull them out so they could be put in a plastic bag. Containerized, if you will. I found over 20 packages of hand sewing needles. What?!?

Some of them are so old I remember using them in high school. I graduated 40 years ago, BTW. They've got some rust on them now so I'll dump them after I finish writing this. But they aren't the oldest needles there, oh no. There are needles in there that I inherited from Mimi, and one package I either got from Nanny or my original mother.

I have no idea why there are so many packages of needles. I spent most of the 90's trying to avoid hand sewing, LOL. And I sewed a lot in the 90's.

I found duplicates of many sewing notions that have me scratching my head. For example, I must have 5 seam gauges. OK, but why do I have 4 different rotary cutters? Several seam rippers, and enough Perfect Waist for at least 15 waistbands. Lot's of thread and elastic, but that didn't surprise me.

The biggest surprise was the Windows startup disk from my (former) laptop at work. Who put that there and why didn't I notice it until now? Did I mention it was a big box?

My laundry room drives me nuts, part 2

2010-03-15T06:26:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I'm obsessing about laundry, or rather, my laundry equipment.

My dryer was taking 2 hours and 3 restarts to do a load of towels. A regular load, not an overcrowded one. Other items were taking as long as well.

The general opinion on the message boards was that I needed to have my dryer vents cleaned. I did and it did improve the performance of the dryer. So what's my problem/whine now?

I really want one of those energy efficient, water saving washing machines. My current washer works fine even if it doesn't spin out stuff as dry as my last 3 washers (I've moved some, ok?) but I have washer envy for my sister's new equipment. The washer doesn't have an agitator, you just dump in the stuff and it doesn't do the strangle and stretch dance around the center pole.

So, my old equipment (14 year old dryer and 11 year old washer) works well enough that I don't have to get new ones based on need. Why don't I just buy the new ones while I can? Next month will be cash for appliance clunkers here in Florida. Perfect timing, right? Well you can't always get what you want.

I don't have enough room in this laundry closet for the Maytags like my sister's. I am pretty sure I can't fit them in if they are over 26 inches deep. In the 3 appliance stores I visited, I only saw one model of washing machine that was even remotely like the one I really want. It has a mini agitator which only sticks up about 4 or 5 inches. So close and yet so far.

When the guy was here cleaning the dryer vent I saw what was going on behind the dryer and washer and realized that the washer is on the right because the water hoses are too short to move it to the left. All I need are new hoses. The dryer vent hose, on the other hand is pretty long, but has been kind of mushed up between the dryer and the wall. Not to mention how many twists and turns it takes.

Public Service announcement: If you haven't cleaned your dryer vents in over a year, please do so now. Mine vents to the roof, and there was a big wad of lint near the roof that was starting to turn black. It could have been a fire.

Some of my neighbors have never had their vents cleaned. These houses were built in 1996 and '97. Ugh oh. Most of my neighbors are older, since this is a 55+ community. Oh, and my roofmate doesn't even have a dryer vent in his roof where the machines would be. I don't see any vents on his house except for the toilets. Could he be venting into the attic? Yikes! I confess, I've never looked in my attic so I don't know if they are sealed between the two houses.

If I ignore my desire for new laundry equipment will it go away?

When muffins try to overachieve...

2010-03-13T07:20:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when you put in baking powder and realize it should have been baking soda, so you put that in too. They rise up too soon and then cave in, spreading all over the top surface of the muffin tin.

There is a joke in there but I can't tell it.

Anyway I did this with the carrot muffins not just once, but twice. In two weeks. You would think I'd remember my failure and learn from it, right? No, I had to dig out the muffins with a spoon and serve the delicious crumbs in a bowl. Twice in two weeks. They were tasty as all good carrot muffins should be, but more like a dessert than a breakfast food or snack.

Good thing I love dessert for breakfast. Now, where's that cream cheese frosting?

I'm sewing again! Yay!

2010-03-07T14:51:00.001-08:00

So, after vacuuming and scrubbing the den I moved my sewing stuff back in there and I am loving it. Friday I sat down and sewed for 20 minutes before I stood up and said, "That chair has got to go".

I was actually using a metal folding chair and it hurt. So Friday night I went to 3 different Office Depots to find an armless task chair. Woo hoo, I am nearly finished with the pants I cut out in November 2008. Really, all I need to do is the hem and waist closure. Really.

Now, this is something I hate to see. I am sewing along and I look up to see I am almost out of thread. NO! NO! A thousand times NO! If I have to stop and make a trip to Jo-Anns for thread I won't get out of there in less than an hour and I am likely to purchase a new project, and when I get home I won't be sewing anymore today. I am easily distracted, I am.

Seriously, I need to finish these pants so I can then sew the skirt and shirt-jacket I cut out on July 4, 2007. After that I can pick a different UFO*. I have enough to keep me busy until Christmas 2013 or so.

*[Unfinished object]

Believe it, I ate the whole thing.

2010-03-05T12:32:00.001-08:00

I ate an entire bunch of swiss chard all by myself. I mean, I intended to keep some for another meal, but somehow all of it got eaten. I still haven't figured out how to balance out meals. All veggies or none? I have got to work on that.

Just waffles, I'm not waffling on this!

2010-02-22T05:18:00.001-08:00

I'm celebrating the kids moving out by making a big batch of whole wheat waffles. I love having them in the freezer on a weekday morning so I can quickly eat a yummy breakfast. Waffles and cream cheese, anyone?

How can I help you?

2010-02-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

Move out, that is?

The kids are 75% moved out now. Their furniture is gone, so is the cat, but lots of stuff they can't take now or even decide about now is still piled up around, unattractively. Yes, that IS three old computer monitors on my dining room table.

I won't punish you, gentle reader, with the picture of the den and it's 10 pounds of cat hair. Or their bathroom with the cat box still there. I am enjoying sleeping with my bedroom door open again. I'm taking back control of the thermostat. And, the refrigerator too.

The "kids" are making their own way in the world now, and at (almost) 26, this is a good thing.

Soon, I'll be back to where I was 2 years ago, planning a garage do-over!

Fresh blood. Well, not that fresh.

2010-01-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

Somebody bled on my freshly cleaned driveway. The nerve!

I did so much pressure cleaning on Monday that I blew out my hose reel. Today I went out to run some errands. When I got home there was a stain in the driveway that did not look like it dropped off of a car. Yes, it really does look like someone was bleeding in my driveway, which is disturbing on several levels.

No one was working on the landscaping today, and I'm the only one who drove on that side of the driveway today. Did I hit an animal on my way out to Home Depot? Or did one come along, bleed on the driveway and then mosey on? I'll never know.

The irony of it all is that I went to the HD to buy a new hose & reel. Guess I'll be using it very soon. And bleach.

Home Alone!

2010-01-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

And I'm loving it. The "kids" left Saturday night and here it is Monday and they aren't back yet. I've had the whole place to my blessed self for almost 2 days! My kitchen! My washing machine! My driveway! Mine!

You know sometimes it doesn't take much to entertain me.

I hate feeling greedy in the season of giving.

2009-12-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

Ho ho ho, tis the season to want to buy stuff. For me.

Who am I kidding, it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, sometimes I get a bee in my bonnet about buying something, and I have to have it, like, now.

Just this year I needed, asap, a tortilla press, popsicle molds, retro kitchen embroidery designs, an external hard drive, new cake pans, a paper shredder, a vegetable juicer, a George Foreman grill, the entire Sookie Stackhouse series of novels, a new DVD recorder, the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, a 5 quart covered plastic container that will fit in my refrigerator door (for the artisan bread, of course), a Swiffer Wetjet, a cordless vacuum stick, a red ceramic pie plate, and most recently a new flagpole and house flags.

Most of these things I could easily live without, except I obsessed about them a little and either drove to several stores to find them, or spent a LOT of time in the Internet to find just the right one at the right price.

Don’t let me watch infomercials, as I am kind of susceptible to them. Some of those products are good and some I’d rather not remember (steam shark floor cleaner and its brother the Shark cordless sweeper).

I do not like feeling greedy in the season of giving. But I’m spending a lot of time dreaming about my new Kindle. (No I didn’t buy it. Yet.)

I have 64 Christmas CDs

2009-12-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

It's like a weird sickness, I know, but I just love Christmas music. And not the same old stuff every year, I am on the lookout for the unusual but good, every year. But I am trying to limit myself to 2 new ones each year because, well, this is getting out of hand.

These come in all genres, some of them even defy a single genre. Jazz? I've got traditional jazz and smooth jazz too. Country? Yeah, some modern country and several western swing style discs too. There's classical and pseudo classical (What if Mozart Wrote I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause?). There is one reggae, two tejano and three rockabilly discs.

Twenty years after the original It's Christmas Man!, Brave Combo has a new, live, Christmas album. That's one of my 2 for this year. I wonder what other one will grab me.

Oh, and it's really hard to take a good photo of CDs on the dining table indoors. And it's raining so I couldn't take them out back.

I'm having an odd craving for gingerbread cookies...

I didn't remember I'd seen it before.

2009-12-05T07:38:00.000-08:00

The kitchen sink that is.

The backstory is that my sister selected a light fixture for her guest bathroom that is the same as the one in our brother's/sister-in-law's guest bathroom. She didn't make the connection, she just knew when she saw it in the store that it was THE ONE.

I did the exact same thing with his kitchen sink. When I picked mine out I drove 30 miles away to Ft. Lauderdale to the European sink outlet store and spent hours looking at all the sinks before finding just the right one: stainless steel, 2 bowls, the left one being bigger and deeper, and the right one being smaller and easier to reach the bottom of. I've picked out kitchen sinks before but this is the first time I've gone with the one I love rather than the one that fits and is cheap. And I love it.

So, I don't remember seeing it in my brother's kitchen, but I know I must have, because it had been newly remodeled the Christmas of 2006 when I was there, and I bought my sink in June of 2008. I didn't make the connection until I looked under their sink recently and saw the brand name in the inside of the bowl. Blanco. Nice sink.

Now if we could explain why my sister-in-law and I have the same silverware pattern...

I liked it so much I bought it twice

2009-11-17T05:11:00.000-08:00

My new juicer I bought on eBay, that is. I had one before, in my previous life that I left behind. Both times I hung around eBay and put my bid in the last few seconds and got good deals on this well-rated juicer.

Even though they are identical, this one isn't as efficient. The stuff that comes out isn't as dry for this one. I'm not sure what I expected for 19.99 plus shipping, so I won't complain. I do like the juice, and I know it's good for me. If I stick with it maybe I'll get a better one next year.

On a crazier note, apparently the toaster oven caught on fire twice yesterday. No matter how they explain it, the fact remains that these things never happen to me, only them. The toaster oven is in the trash and I won't be replacing it until they are gone. Kind of like the ironing board.

Anybody want to buy two 25 year old roommates, cheap? Any takers for free? Anyone?

[Crickets]

Meet the car from hell, and his little brother.

2009-11-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

It's the car from hell, and it's not really the car's fault. Not really. It's just a fact of life when your owner has no money you will break down more often. I think it must be some kind of Murphy's law or something.

We won't discuss how "they" bought 2 pieces of junk cars instead of one decent one. After all, a gift of money is a gift and "they" decided that this was a better value for them. BUT, and here's the big but, this only is a good value if the original principals still apply. If you have to move in with Mom due to financial restraints, you agree to her fine print. The fine print says in this neighborhood you can't do car repairs in the driveway. The big print (me) says no you can't have my garage for your repairs either.

I've had 3 letters from the homeowner's management company about my violations of the repair rule. I could be fined up to $1000. My son-in-law wants to argue with them. Excuse me, but who do you think you are, a homeowner or something?

So, where do you tow the car so you can do your own repairs? Around these parts you need to know someone with a garage (business) that will let you use their facilities, or you need to be on good terms with someone who lives in a neigborhood where this is allowed.

In the case of my daughter and her hubby, they actually have one place like that, but that spot has been occupied for almost a year by the second car from hell.This car has been in her Dad's back yard for almost a year now while they tried to scrape up enough money to replace the engine. It's almost done, now they have to figure out how to pay for the registration and insurance which they let go when it got broken. (Which had been paid for by yours truly, but who's bitter?)

Her Dad, by the way, wants that space in his yard back for his new boat.

Preoccupied with clean cement?

2009-11-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

When waxing philosophically about the differences between south Florida where I live now and central Florida where I grew up, the priorities on the front of the house strike me immediately. Some things are the same everywhere, like attractive landscaping, maintaining the actual house (paint, etc.), and individual decorative touches like house flags, special mailboxes, or seasonal wreaths.

In my neighborhood, the homeowner's association pays a part-time maintenance guy who uses a lot of his non-emergency time cleaning the sidewalks. Really. There is this big machine that looks like a commercial floor cleaner that hooks up to a water source and scrubs concrete clean. Since most of the sidewalks are under oak trees, they do get dirty and stained, but where I grew up this wasn't an issue. Sidewalks got darker, so what? In my last trips to Deland and Leesburg, driveways and sidewalks were naturally darkened everywhere I looked.

But in my community, and others around here I've heard, concrete must be painted (only terracotta here) or cleaned. So here I am out pressure cleaning my driveway. This is a big deal for me since I have to plan around the absence of cars, if you know what I mean. Until I lived here I never paid too much attention to little stains, but when you clean up the dirt the rust spots and mystery stains stand out. IMO, it's just one more thing to obsess about. I think I'll go make a cake instead.

Worse for you than most cookies

2009-09-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

I almost called this post "Heart Attack on a Plate". I succumbed and made the chocolate chip bacon cookies I read about last week. Yes, bacon in cookies. Before you gag, try eating a little bacon and chocolate together. It is surprisingly tasty.

They are very good cookies, but IMO it is a waste of perfectly wonderful bacon, since the cookie and chocolate part overwhelm the bacon part.

Do you suppose I ate too much of the bacon before I put it in the cookies?? Hmmm.

I got the recipe on craftster.org.

Yes, I made a pan of plain ones for Nina, who doesn't eat bacon. Smart girl.

Nina and the big chocolate cake.

2009-09-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

The dad of Nina's friend let them use his truck to haul around an engine. Don't ask. Anyway, to thank him for the use of his truck, she made him his favorite cake, German Chocolate, from scratch.

This is a first for her, her previous cakes have been from mixes. This is a big production cake, let me tell you. The first step was a trip out to Jo-Anns in Wellington to get another cake pan. (I only had 2 matching pans.) The Boynton store is kind of disappointing, so we went right to the good one.

After we got home, we discovered that not all nine inch round pans are really nine inches across. The new pans did not match the old pans, so she had to do it in two layers after all. Nothing like an extra trip out to Wellington, heh? I think Nina just got herself a new set of cake pans. My old ones are just fine for me.

The cake turned out well, very well indeed. The delivery of it was delayed because Nina doesn't have her own car and is at the mercy of others.

Did I mention an engine that was being carted around? Oh, I said not to ask, didn't I.

Who do they think they are kidding?

2009-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

No Publix, it's not premium if it has high fructose corn syrup in it. No matter how nice the packaging.

My Laundry room - How awkward.

2009-08-28T18:34:00.001-07:00

I love having my washer and dryer in the house. Back in my old house they were in the garage, and I'd get my clothes all sweaty just getting them out of the dryer. They are in the kitchen now, where I can hear them and remember about them. And it's way more comfortable. But it is kind of awkward, working around the bi-fold doors.There you have it. The bi-fold doors just barely let the dryer door open. And the kitchen door to the garage is right there too. Don't even think about opening it if the bi-folds are open. Wait, you can't tell from the garage. Bang! Oops. You can't get in, anyway!

The other bi-fold doesn't give me much room to work at the front of the washer, either. Why do I keep the doors? Well they keep the area tidy looking and they muffle the sound. But you can bet my next washer will have a lid hinged in the back. I'm not sure what to do about that dryer. And no, I can't just let them trade positions, they are where they need to be. It's just awkward, that's all.

I cannot believe it. I believe it.

2009-08-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

I thought if I went out of my way to request the kitchen be clean by 8:45 so I could make my bake-sale goodies, that my daughter at least would realize that meant not to wait until 8:55 to start cooking.

No, she's in there making ramon and I'm cooling my heels until she's done. And she'll leave the pot in the sink too, because that's how she rolls.

They are leaving in January.

Bake sale biscotti

2009-08-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm always uncertain how to package home-made goodies for a bake sale. Do I arrange them on a plate and cover with plastic wrap? (Bake sale ladies or teens can figure out how you can get them home or eat them on the spot.)

This time, I've made biscotti for the bake sale on Tuesday, since I am working 10 hours on Monday. What timing, right? Biscotti still tastes great 2 or 5 days later. So I decided to put portions of cookies in baggies with labels for two reasons. One, it saves the volunteer from having to package them, and because if I put these loose in a plastic box they get kind of broken up.

I wanted to put all the ingredients on the labels, but they wouldn't fit. These are whole grain cinnamon nut biscotti from the King Arthur's Flour blog. I love that site.

The irony, a bake sale to benefit the American Heart Association. I'll have mine with whipped cream, please.

It's always something...

2009-08-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

I had to have my old air conditioner replaced last week. It was over 12 years old, so it was time. In every other house I've been in where the AC has been replaced, the new unit was smaller than the old. My new one covers the whole concrete pad, and goes up to the top of where the ficus was trimmed. Of course, the ficus height is determined by anonymous guys from Top Cut. I doubt my electric bill will go down as predicted, since my housemates turn the thermostat down whenever they feel like it. Yeah it's comfortable at 76, but not necessary, IMO.

This morning I'm just waiting around for the permit inspectors from the city. It could happen, really.

More tea towels!

2009-08-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, even more! These 2 are actually hand embroidered. They are bigger and more dramatic because of it, but I can tell there won't be dozens of these by November.

Awash in napkins and tea towels

2009-07-28T05:12:00.001-07:00

So, after 5 years of ignoring it, I pulled out my embroidery machine and have been embellishing napkins and dish towels all over the place. Well, actually just in my bedroom.

I'm making these for the woman's group church bazaar in November, and the whole deal reminds me so much of Mimi (Mom for most of my adult life), that it makes me smile. I remember the general chaos in her house and studio when she was in production mode. I've spent over $80 in towels, napkins, embroidery designs and threads, and have no assurances that my church group will get that much back from it. I have enjoyed using my toy (embroidery machine) again, and have collected some awesome vintage dancing veggie designs for it.

It amuses me too that I've come full circle in 40 years I am back to sewing in my bedroom to avoid the cats. In high school my sister's cats were all over the house except my room, so that's where I sewed. Now the cat I avoid belongs to my son-in-law. My bedroom is a cat-free oasis. Sigh. In my own house, too. I've even started to hand embroider again, too, just like in 8th grade home-ec class. That's another sample of coming full circle. Please though, no teenage angst again. I can't take it.

So, how many of these do you replace in 2 years?

2009-06-20T07:18:00.001-07:00

I mean the toilet seat, of course. My daughter and her hubbs are working on #3 in less than 8 months. Really.

I replaced toilet seats and shower heads when I moved in 2 years ago. They've needed 2 replacement toilet seats and one replacement shower head so far.

We won't even talk about the busted ceiling fan light, which I will have repaired when they move out. Counting the months, I am.

Rainbow over Lake Sausalito

2009-06-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Last night the sky was quite dark to the east, and the sun was out. That means rainbow time! It was double on both ends, but my camera couldn't get the whole thing in.

Did I mention I love my view?

Tiffany's family baby shower

2009-05-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

On May 30th, 2009, Shannon & company held a baby shower for Tiffany, my beautiful niece who also happens to work at the library with me.

It was a beautiful, breezy day at the Intercoastal Park, and the rain was soft and never blew into the pavilion, so all was well & wonderful.

I got to see family members that I hadn't seen since before my divorce, and I loved catching up with them. Nina was pleased to introduce Tristan to this group of family, once he got there. Heck, even Sam W. came, what a crowd! There were almost 40 people there, if you count the babies.

Tiffany and her immediate family members all had custom printed t-shirts with their relationships to the soon-to-be baby airbrushed in. Miyana is beloved already, lucky baby!

You can see all the photos I took here.

The last picture is an example of why I love Photoshop. It's a before and after. Silly Uncle Frank, I told you Kayla didn't need finger horns.

Rite-13 weekend

2009-05-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Michelle had her rite-13 ceremony on May 17, 2009. I can't believe she's 13 in less than 2 weeks!

The rest of the pictures can be viewed here.

Happy Mother's Day, Mimi

2009-05-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Mimi passed on almost 9 years ago, but I still am reminded of her many times, every day. I miss you, Mimi. Jim Dandy is her epic work of art, winning prizes and being featured in an actual published book. Here's Jim Dandy in Daddy's house, just like Mimi left it. Now, here's Jim Dandy in my house. Funny, Mimi always joked about the orange walls in her house. Mine are terra cotta, another version of orange.

Jim Dandy won a blue ribbon at the 1989 Florida State Fair. It was designed and hooked by Mimi over several years. She was a true artist, even hand dying the wool to get the exact colors she needed. This work of art makes me think of her every day. Way to go!

This post reminds me I need to scan some paper photos of various family members. My most recent scanned photo of Mimi is from 1986. I'll never get my "dream" scrapbook picture composed without better scans.

Really, a Rubbermaid pitcher?

2009-04-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

I have GOT to get a vase.

These are Nina's flowers Tristan got her for their anniversary. She asked where the vase was, and was somewhat disappointed when I reminded her she was remembering the one I left behind. Oh well, another thing to put on the wish list.

Chocolate mint, mmmm my favorite!

2009-03-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

Making cookies is a creative outlet for me, and this is the second time I've made these chocolate/peppermint sandwich cookies. I got the recipe over at the King Arthur Flour's Bakers Blog. Man, that site gets me going!

Anyway, they call these "faux-reos". They are in a different league from Oreos, but I still need to perfect this recipe a little. The cookies are bigger than I expected, even though I used the recommended cookie scoop and made sure that it was not rounded over the top or anything .

The recipe specifically calls for no leavening, but some folks over at the blog are using an old-fashioned leavening that uses ammonia somehow. I guess the good news/bad news about that is that the cookies have a more tender texture with the baker's ammonium, but the dough is not appealing to eat. Plus it smells funny when you bake. We don't need no stinkin' cookies smells around here.

The filling is made from finely crushed peppermints, powdered sugar and shortning. Not the healthiest, but honestly, real Oreos use high fructose corn syrup. Gimme a break, ok?

The resident "kids" love them. Me too.

Now, on to my back yard. Look what was hiding in the Mexican Bluebell! I am tickled whenever an amaryllis pops its pretty head up unexpectedly. It didn't bloom last year, but maybe it got beheaded by the guys trimming the other plants. Anyway, I just love it. Hello, flower! Now I need to go see if the one on the side of the house will bloom this year. Last year it popped out on Nina and Tristan's wedding day. Has it been a whole year already? Yes.

It's Raining!

2009-03-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

At last,
my rain has come along,
my driest days are over,
and life is like a song...

Ok, I'll stop singing. It's not raining hard enough to make much difference yet, but boy do we need it. I had forgotten how it sounds on the skylight in the kitchen. Yes, rain some more, please!

Edited to add: That lasted less than 5 minutes. It's not satisfactory at all. No.

I love El Bodegon

2009-03-01T06:18:00.000-08:00

Really, I do. For the uninitiated, El Bodegon is a local chain of latino (latina?) grocery stores. A few weeks ago I got it into my head I was going to make fresh tortillas. Corn tortillas, that is. Thanks, Alton Brown, like I needed another thing I just had to try. So I bought a bag of masaca harina and made up a little paste. I tried to roll it out thinly but that stuff just wouldn't cooperate.

Being the gizmo kind of girl I am, I decided to get a tortilla press. Well you would think such a beast would be easy to come by in these parts, but it wasn't in any of my usual housewares spots. They are quite heavy and I didn't want to pay shipping, so I thought it would be better to drive all over WPB to find one. Just as a last minute desparate try I went into El Bodegon. It had been years since I had wandered its fascinating asiles, and it didn't disappoint me. There were 2 different tortilla presses to chose from. And they were cheaper than the ones on eBay, to boot.

As a bonus I found small cans of chipotles in adobo sauce. Publix has them in cans too big to use in one recipe. Alrighty then.

But mostly I love El Bodegon for its entertainment value. I'm sure I must have spent an hour in there looking at all the exotic stuff. The produce is wonderful and I bet the meat would have been good too, if I could have gotten close to it. It was busy in there and the peeps were 2 and 3 deep at the back of the store where I think the butcher section is. There are 2 different places to sit and eat, I didn't notice what the difference was, except the one on the west side seemed a lot busier.

Foodies, try it sometime, you'll see!

The tortillas were awesome, by the way. Problem is, I am the only one in this house who ate them, so I've got to make a little space in the freezer next time I have a tortilla making session.

Waaah! Mommy, they are making me work!

2009-02-27T04:47:00.000-08:00

Did I mention how disgusted I am with entitled people? How many grown women do you know who call their mommy when their boss requests them to do something they don't think they should have to do?

GROW UP. Get the heck off that phone to mommy and fight your own battles, baby.

Weed watching

2009-02-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

For about a decade I waged a personal war against a particular weed in my yard that threatened to choke out my ficus hedge. Virginia Creeper. So when I started seeing vines on the landscaping at work I started to document them.

Certain weeds grew so big that folks who didn't know any better thought they were part of the official landscaping. Like this palmetto behind the shrub here. Yes, I know some landscapers use it on purpose, but this one was strictly a volunteer. It got bigger and bigger and then it started to get a vine.

Can you see the size of the stump of that thing in this picture? To say that palmetto got out of control is putting it mildly.

I guess the point of all this is that nobody really took the time to tell the landscapers to notice the details. When they did actually work on these hedges they either gave the palmetto a crew cut, or just trimmed around it like it was part of the plan. We won't even comment on the vine because they obviously thought it was a losing battle too. Sometimes the only way to get rid of some weeds is to slash and burn.

My old Virginia Creeper? Well who knows, my solution was to move away from it. LOL.

Still moving the library, still not ready.

2009-02-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

We're moving the collection (books, DVDs etc.) into the remodeled portion, but the building is still not ready. Everywhere you look there is stuff still in cardboard, stuff not assembled yet, and we are tripping over workmen and they are having to work around us and each other.

To me, nothing says "not ready" better than this picture of the construction supervisor in "his" office. That's going to be the professional collection room eventually. But does he look like he's ready to leave?

Nah, I don't think so.

Oh, and they tore up the road and put it back together again yesterday. Pul-eeeze.

Entertaining myself with chocolate

2009-02-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

So, what else to do 2 days after the holiday of chocolate? Make cookies with pink and red candies, of course!

The practical part of me knows that Valentine's Day is mostly about business. Hallmark has nothing on the business Hershey's does. Even those of us without a SO buy and eat candy even if we don't buy cards. And buying it the day after at 50% off doesn't hurt either.

So, aren't the candies pretty in the measuring cup? And they are just as pretty ready to be mixed into the dough.

The mixer broke them up a little, but these candies have a tender shell on them to begin with. Now I have to go back and comment on my recipe that I need not bake them nearly as long as the recipe says. I prefer my cookies extra brown and crisp, but not everyone agrees with me. If anyone asks I'll tell them I meant to make them this way. If I had wanted the color of the candy to show up more I would have stuck them in the tops instead of mixing them in.

As overdone as they are, they will be eaten quite happily in my house, and perhaps at work. Did I mention that I love to bake? I will do a birthday cake later today or tomorrow night for DD. Maybe not chocolate though.

Happy February, everyone!

It looks like another drought, but who cares...

2009-02-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

Well, here is Lake Sausalito Place. Do man-made lakes in planned unit developments have names? Anyway, you can see how far down the water is. We're not supposed to have a beach. Last year, 2008 we had above average rainfall, but it barely made up for the shortcomings of '06 and '07. Now in '09 we are having another very dry year. So it's usually wet or dry so what's different this time?

Well, you are not hearing about this very much on local news. Nope, local news is "bad economy" and "aren't you panicked yet?" it seems 24/7. Sprinkled in with traffic wrecks and other crimes.

Yes, I get it, scare the peeps and sell more advertising. I think it must work pretty well. But look at my lake! This was big news in '07 and it should be big news now. IMO. It's time to scare people about our water supply in addition to our job supply.

We're SO not ready but we're doing it anyway.

2009-02-12T14:14:00.001-08:00

It's Thursday today, and we are going to close the library to move into the remodeled area next Tuesday. Everywhere you look, that building is not ready. Really, does this look like they can do it in 2 working days? (They don't take off Presidents Day like the staff does.

This ought to be fun. Stay tuned.

Out my office window

2009-02-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

I have a single-person study room for my current office and I just love it. No, there isn't even room for a filing cabinet in here, but I have a window! In my previous office behind the circ desk the only thing to look at was the security monitor. MMMM sometimes it was interesting.

Here's my view. Why yes, they are indeed tearing up the road. Can't get much more interesting than this, right?

My new office after we move next week has 2 windows. They both look at the side of the rest of the library. I hope they can get the landscaping in soon, because the building is butt ugly now. No you don't want a picture of that!

Call me Melonhead

2009-02-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, I am not sure why I started calling myself Melonhead on Internet boards, but keeping the same username across several boards has become a little easier to track. In some cases the name had aready been taken, so some other version of "melon" was used instead. Except here and I don't know why I didn't keep the theme here, but there you go.

I wonder sometimes if folks have alternate personalities for different types of boards they are on. For example one username/avitar for all their fan boards, another for all the craft boards, and perhaps a third and fourth for other hobbies, interests or concerns.

On some boards it looks like user names are mostly related to the subject of the board, like variations on the word "pea" for the twopeasinabucket boards, or variations on that rock star's names on his various fan boards.

At some point does it get way too much to keep up with? What is the average number of boards a person is registered on and of those how many are just places you just lurk in anyway? Just thinking out loud, I guess.

Later this week I'll talk about biscotti Saturday. Or tortilla Sunday. Yes, I made a mess.