All posts by reneeinnd

home, Nature, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Unidentified Object

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Husband cleaned the garage and workbench yesterday and found this:

We don’t know what it is.  It must have belonged to my father, since neither if us remember buying it.  We inherited my father’s collection of tools and gadgets acquired over his very long life.  He loved picking up this and that,  just in case he might need them. We have several hundred drill bits, for example, not to mention many socket wrench sets.

I suppose it could be a tripod of some sort, but dad sold his camera decades ago.  I think it looks so funny. I half expect it to come to life and run across the garage. I am not even sure which end of it goes up.

Any idea what this unidentified object is? When have you found something in your house you couldn’t remember buying or couldn’t identify? What does your tool and gadget collection look like?

books, Family, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized

Read!

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My daughter has been quite concerned about me because I have not been reading very much for the past several years.  She thinks  I have been depressed since my parents died. She is probably correct.

Daughter insisted that I buy at least one book on our trip to Washington. We stopped at a lovely independent bookstore in Kirkland, WA, where I purchased a murder mystery set in southwest France. Daughter chose David Sedaris’ most recent book of essays, along with four other books that I am sure she has finished by now. She insisted I take the Sedaris book home with me to read. It was very funny and poignant. He is one of her favorite authors.  (Her Grade 5 teacher was rather concerned why we allowed her to read such material after she took one of his books to school to have for free reading time.)  I like the murder mystery.  Husband is reading VS Pritchett.

It is a long weekend and I feel like reading this weekend. I wonder what the Baboons are reading now.  What will be next on your “To Read” list?

Fitness, Uncategorized, work

Enforced Activity

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Here are the facts:

I work in a six story, former men’s dormitory on the campus of a small North Dakota college.  The building was constructed in 1965. For some reason, there were a large number of men enrolling in college then.

There are two stairwells on the east and west sides of the building, and one elevator on the south side of the building.  It is an Otis elevator.

My office is on the fourth floor. My play therapy room is on the fifth floor. Our agency occupies the basement and the first five floors of the building. There is an educational training cooperative on the sixth floor.

The Otis corporation decided recently that the elevator, the 1965 original, must be completely replaced. This includes the elevator car and all the workings that pull the elevator up and down.  Doing this will take eight weeks. The educational cooperative has moved to other digs until November 1. My agency has no choice but to stay where we are and walk the stairs.

I am out of shape.  I always take the elevator. We must accompany all our clients from the first floor to our offices.

Well, we have no elevator now, and I am doing stairs like crazy. I am exhausted. We have made arrangements that the halt and the lame will receive services on first floor.  Everyone else must trudge up the stairs to where they need to go. I anticipate that my blood sugar and cholesterol  will decrease through the elevator revamp.

How do you keep in shape?

Food, gardening, Nature, Science, Travel, Uncategorized

Verisimilitude

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The 9 course meal we ate on Saturday night  was completely sourced from a 100 mile radius of the restaurant.  Given its location just east of Seattle, it was no surprise that salmon,  geoduck, mussels, and oysters were on the menu. We also ate local lamb and pork. All the veggies like turnips, carrots, greens, cabbage, potatoes, beets, and cucumber came from the restaurant farm, as did all the herbs and flowers used in the dishes.  (Day lilies, Marigolds, and Bachelor Buttons are surprisingly tasty.)  There were lovely local mushrooms. All the wines had been commissioned from local vintners by the restaurant owners last year for the meal.  Cooking fat was either butter, grape seed oil, or hazelnut oil. They grow quinoa locally, and we had that, too.

The restaurant owners went to the extreme, though, to make sure that everything we ate was from within 100 miles.  That meant that they churned their own butter from milk from local cows, and planted a couple of acres of rye and wheat to mill their own flour for the bread. They collected clean local sea water to make their own salt. We had no pepper, but there were so many farm herbs in the food that we didn’t miss it at all. Lemon verbena provided all the citrus we needed. The biggest dilemma was what to use for locally sourced leavening for the hazelnut cakes we had for dessert.

They started out last year collecting mule deer antlers from within a 100 mile radius of the farm  and grinding them to a powder. Horn is apparently a good leavening agent and made some pretty good cakes. It takes a lot of laborious, time consuming grinding, though, and they found an even better leavening agent  in wood ash from the fire place. Who knew?

Plan a meal completely sourced from a 100 mile radius of your house. What would you serve?

 

Food, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Please Flip Your Wig

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Last Saturday we met a delightful young woman who was visiting the West Coast for the first time. She was a barrister from London, England, someone who argues cases in British courts, either for the prosecution or the defense.

We were  dining at a lovely restaurant and herb farm in Woodinville, WA. The arrangements were such that we were seated with total strangers and were expected to converse with each other for the duration of our 4 hour, 9 course meal. We had a very congenial bunch at our table, and the conversation turned particularly lively when I asked the barrister if she wore a wig to court. “Oh, yes indeed!” she replied, and went on to describe the process of finding just the right wig for her work.

There are apparently several places in London where one can purchase court dress and wigs, all ancient and venerable establishments. The wigs are made from horse hair. She said the first question she was asked was whether she wanted a wig made from the mane or the tail. I gather the mane hair would be finer and more expensive. I don’t know which she chose. Next, they  measured the circumference of her head, and then took her into a rather dark cellar full of cardboard boxes where they found the boxes with wigs in her size.

The next procedure sounds quite similar to purchasing a magic wand in the Harry Potter books.  Clothed in her court robes, complete with her white collar and tie, she tried on one wig at a time. I don’t know how concerned she was with the particular look or style.  It seemed that the distinguishing characteristic of the right wig was that it had to be one that did not slip or fall off when she bowed as low as she could bow. She said she got quite dizzy bowing repeatedly. She assured us that there were sparks and lightning flashes when she found just the right wig. She said hers was a short advocate’s wig with a  slight widows peak.

What are  the distinguishing characteristics of your work clothes?  What costumes would you like to wear to work?

 

Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

In Vino Veritas

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We are travelling home today from our vacation to Washington State.  We ended our trip in Kirkland, in  Washington wine country. Wine is big business here.

We sampled quite a few wines we can’t get at home, and delighted in the descriptions of wine in the restaurants we ate at. This was our favorite:

Fanti Brunello di Montalcio: A big powerful red with dense tannins and black cherry flavors. Balanced in a muscular way, this remains tight and brooding despite the long, fresh, finish.

We had fun crafting personal descriptors for each other. Husband came up with this for me:

RENEE: Sweet, German dessert wine. Full bodied and robust.  Good for long cellaring.

Daughter, perhaps more accurate, came up with this for me:

Mom: Effervescent and fruity with an occasional sharp finish. Needs to chill.

What kind of wine are you? How would you be described on a restaurant menu?

Family, Food, Kids, The Future, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Working Vacation

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Since we left on vacation on Wednesday, I have replied to about 30 emails from the regulatory board of which I am the chairperson. Husband has had phone calls and emails  from tribal court and from the addiction treatment center on the reservation where he works. Daughter is somewhat annoyed with us. I can’t blame her.  Really, vacation should be more like this:

I do not plan to work after I retire.  I need to keep telling myself this so that I don’t work after I retire. I need to spend retirement having  photo ops with enormous, two-legged garlic bulbs.

If you are retired, is retirement what you imagined? If you are not retired, what do you imagine retirement will be like?

Art, Family, gardening, Uncategorized

Comfort Zone

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We are in Tacoma and I will soon be forced out of my comfort zone at an art and wine sipping event.  We are going to a wine bar stocked with an art instructor who will teach us how to paint dahlias on canvas with acrylic paints.

I cannot draw, sketch, or paint. It has been that way since I was a child. I don’t think it has anything to do with lack of training. I just don’t possess the capacity. Perhaps after a glass or two of wine I won’t care how my painting of dahlias turns out.  Husband and daughter are both good at art and are excited about doing this. I will enjoy being with them, but it makes me anxious to think about the actual painting part of it.

I think it is  good to try new things like this, but I wish I could plunge joyfully into them instead of creep hesitantly toward them.

How do you feel about trying new things? Are you a creeper or a plunger? How have such experiences turned out? 

Family, gardening, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Last Minute Rush

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We  leave for Tacoma in the morning. Tonight we learned a credit card was compromised and had to be cancelled.  The tomatoes conspired to have a mass ripening, so I am putting up tomato puree. Why does this all happen when we have so many other things to do?

What preparations do you make when you travel?  What glitches have you experienced while travelling or preparing to travel?  

 

Food, gardening, home, Seasons, Uncategorized

Chili Madness

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Last weekend a local grocery store had a special on Hatch Chilies. Those are New Mexico chilies that are traditionally fire roasted in Hatch, New Mexico in large, round, rotating, propane-fueled roasters.

The store brought in 1500 lbs of New Mexico chilies. They are an Anaheim variety, long and green, of varying heat levels.  There was a roaster set up outside the store.  Roasting was scheduled from 4 pm to 7 pm on Friday,  and 11-2 on Saturday.  Husband and I were serendipitously at the store at 3:30 on Friday, and we bought about 10 lbs of mild/medium chilies to have roasted.  The skins get charred in the roaster but the pepper flesh isn’t.  After they cooled and steamed in plastic bags we took the skins off and froze them in baggies. They will make nice additions to lots of dishes this winter.

The response to the promotion was amazing. Perhaps events like this are common in the Cities, but this was the first of its kind here, and people went crazy for the chilies. As we were having ours roasted, a woman from Watford City, a community about 80 miles northwest of us,  came with 200 lbs of chilies to roast. She said the grocery store’s sister city in Watford was rationing how much she could get, but she could purchase as much here as she wanted.  She figured 200 lbs would be enough for her and her friends. She said she used to live in New Mexico and couldn’t believe that she could have roasted Hatch chilies here. We talked to several former New Mexicans while we stood in line, and all said the same thing. They said that nothing reminded them of autumn than the smell of roasting chilies.  They were so grateful to get these peppers.

By 7:00 pm, the store had sold 1400 lbs of the chilies, leaving a paltry 100 lbs for the next day.  The store plans to get another shipment of Hatch chilies in for next weekend.

What smells are evocative for you?  What gives you a sense of home?