On Tuesday, one of my coworkers posted on Facebook that her husband’s old, beat up pickup had been stolen from in front of their house. He works in the oil field and leaves for work every morning at 4:00 am. He is always picked up by someone driving a company truck, and a whole group of workers drives up together.
I didn’t see any updates after the initial post. My coworker’s husband has had a rough 6 months, getting jumped at the bowling alley and beat up in October by a couple of guys from Colorado. The pickup is real old and doesn’t have a tailgate. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would steal it.
Yesterday, I was at work and saw my colleague and she told me that for some reason, on Tuesday her husband decided to drive himself to work in his pickup but didn’t tell her. She gets up well after he leaves for work, and the first thing she assumed was that the truck had been stolen. He is out of phone service in the oil field, so she couldn’t contact him. It wasn’t until he got home that she realized she had jumped to conclusions. The police thought the whole incident was pretty amusing, and suggested that her husband communicate better with her. I suggested that perhaps she shouldn’t jump to conclusions. She agreed, but said the one time she didn’t call the police about something like this, it would turn out to be the real thing.
When have you jumped to conclusions? Ever had a vehicle stolen?
I went to the post office to buy stamps. This happened awhile ago, so I was looking for stamps for Christmas cards.
I looked at the bulletin board that had the available stamps displayed. There was a design I liked, with a deer, a rabbit, a fox, and an owl in winter settings. Appropriate for Christmas or Solstice, or whatever.
While I was waiting in line, my thought was that I would ask for the stamps with the woodland creatures. It’s a design theme that’s been trending in recent years.
As my turn was approaching, the postal worker behind the desk turned and called out to the back room, “Hey, Judy – can you bring me some more of the critters?”
I felt inordinately delighted by this. When it was my turn, I asked, “Could I get a book of critters, please?” and it made me happy for reasons I can’t quite put words to.
My post office receipt had a QR code that took me to a survey, and I gave my postal worker top scores.
Would you recommend this blog post to friends and family?
If you’ve appreciated this blog post, please consider filling out this survey for Linda!
I looked up at the television yesterday to see a bit of a cooking show in which famous folks (mostly chefs) weigh in on their favorites. This particular dish was some kind of dumpling and there was a close up shot of somebody’s hand using chopsticks to pick up the dumpling. I know enough about this kind of stuff to know that the chances that it was the hand of the particular chef were nil. Most likely a hand model. Yes, there are such things although I’m wondering if there is a subgenre of the hand modeling subgenre for chopsticks use.
When I was in college, my freshman year roommate was from Japan – Yoshiko. We had a pretty good year. She bought a wonderful stereo half way through and she also taught me to use chopsticks and food that you eat with chopsticks. There was no Chinese/Korean/Thai/Japanese food in my house growing up. In fact, the first time I had any Chinse food in my life was that year in college.
These days, we have a ton of chopsticks at our house. For many years, every time I found chopsticks on sale or that were interesting, I’d pick them up. At last count, there are about 70. And the sad thing is that I’m the only one who uses them. When YA was little, I bought a set of cheater chopsticks but she wasn’t very interested and as she got older, she absolutely refused. Occasionally if I serve Chinese, a guest may attempt them but usually they eventually fall back onto forks and spoons.
I’m not sure why I like chopsticks so much – I use them sometimes even if it’s a food you wouldn’t associate with them.
Do you own chopsticks? Do you have a favorite dish to go with them?
Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different food plans. Whenever I hear of someone talking about how good they feel on some particular diet, I get curious. I’ve even tried raw a couple of times; the second time I lasted the longest – four days. Tried the zone for a bit. The Mediterranean is pretty close to our regular habit, although as vegetarians, we pass on the occasional fish/meat.
The keto diet was the one that I toyed with for quite some time before giving it a shot. I have two good friends who swear by it. I loaded up on a few keto carb substitutes and I made it three weeks. But I didn’t feel better. In fact if you factor in how much I was thinking about carbs, dreaming about carbs, crying about carbs, I was much worse.
So it probably won’t surprise anybody that every now and then I let my delight in carbs get the better of me. Every month or so YA asks if Great Harvest is making Derby Cookies; they are her favorites. She is also very fond of the various cheese breads that Great Harvest makes. When she looked at the March newsletter, she was happy that the Derby cookies were on the docket as well as the gouda garlic bread. Since she was traveling and I was in party prep, I made the bakery run on Saturday (that’s when they do the gouda bread). I thought that ordering ahead would help, but it didn’t. In addition to YA’s bread and cookies, I left the bakery with a White Cinnamon Chip loaf and an Apple Caramel loaf (mostly apple, not much caramel – a perfect ration for me).
This is a lot of bread, even for me. YA will take care of the gouda and probably most of the cookies. Guess I’ll just have to suffer through my two loaves. Sigh.
Anything that occasionally just makes you lose control?
Most people probably don’t feel this way, but all the prep going into a big party is actually a gift to myself. The confluence of making lists, organizing, cooking and then being with the people of my life makes a big party a perfect experience for me. I’m pretty sure that if there was such a thing as a glow-meter, I’d be off the scales during my gatherings.
I often get asked what guests should bring to one of my parties. If you’ve done this, you’ve gotten my standard answers. “Bring yourself.” “Bring your appetite.” Occasionally I will tell someone if they have a particular beverage that they can’t live without, they might bring that.
It’s a testament to how our society has changed that everyone goes under the assumption that every party is potluck and you have to pony up. A friend who has never been able to come to my Pi Day festivities (but has always stopped by the next day for tea and leftovers) showed up with a strawberry rhubarb pie. She was a little worried and left it sitting on the dining room buffet but it was just fine and I put it out. But it is a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle when you bring pie to my Pi Day. LOL.
Folks brought flowers (all of which are doing nicely and safe from the cat) and, of course, wine. My people do seem to be wine people. Lots of empties into the recycling after the party was over!
And for those who aren’t local or couldn’t make it, here is a list of this year’s pies: Blueberry, Dutch Apple, Peaches & Cream, Macadamia Coconut Caramel, Crack, Chocolate Chip/PB Whoopies, Banofi, Pear Croustade, Key Lime and Butterfinger Cream. Oh, and let’s not forget the Strawberry Rhubarb!
Do you have a go-to dish that you take to potlucks?
I feel like I’ve been really busy the past week. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing, I just feel like I’ve been running from one thing to the next.
However I know spring is coming, I heard a kill deer! And the Sandhill Cranes! And I got out the pot with the chives in it. There’s still some ice on the north side of the house and I saw a small snowbank in a patch of grass, but we’re getting there. As I write this on Friday, they’re predicting thunderstorms for Friday evening. ” They” say, the first frost will be six months after the first thunderstorm. Which gets us into mid-September which, while not ideal, wouldn’t be unheard of either. There was a large halo around the moon Wednesday night. Google says spiritually, some traditions see a lunar halo as a positive omen, indicating a time of good fortune, spiritual alignment, and harmony. Good, let’s run with that one.
I spent Thursday at a meeting on nitrogen management in Southeast Minnesota. A continuing education course of sorts. Focus on the southeast Minnesota region is relevant because of the karst geography and sink holes and how rapidly ground water can enter drinking water. Please know, farmers care a great deal about their farms and the water we are drinking, and our soils as well. Putting on more fertilizer or chemicals than a crop can use is a waste of money. There were a lot of charts, and graphs, and a lot of data presented. If you notice from this picture, commercial fertilizer started being available shortly after World War II and greatly accelerated in the 1960s.
Soybeans came into play in the 1940s.
It’s interesting to think how much of our farm practices are not really that old.
One of the comments made was that we could do a lot better with our fertilizer practices if we could more accurately predict the weather. A lot of fertilizer and nitrogen is applied in the spring as pre-planting or at planting. And yet the following picture shows the plants greatest need for Nitrogen is tasseling through ear development.
While the greatest amount of precipitation and the greatest chance to lose nitrogen happens in the spring.
So why do we apply it in the spring?
Well, that’s kinda just how it works. Corn does need some starter fertilizer to get going from seed. And we do soil testing to know how much nitrogen is already in the soil, and it’s just easiest to do it before anything is planted. I have done some ‘side-dressing’, which is injecting anhydrous nitrogen between the rows when the plant is 18-24” tall, but there’s also more damage to the standing corn when turning at the ends, or not driving straight. And some guys, with the right equipment, can apply liquid nitrogen when the plant is 6’ tall just before it tassels, but that takes tall sprayers, and again, there is crop loss. In my small fields, I’d damage so much turning around on the ends that it would defeat any gains.
I’m greatly simplifying a lot of this, it’s too much to get into here, but it was all really very interesting.
And much of the data presented yesterday really didn’t show much difference between spring applications and later applications. We just have to know that we are going to have less available for the crop. It was also noted, we see so many new products claiming to save money and time. But if the cost of the new ideas ultimately don’t create much of an improved crop yield, ($$$), then they fall out of favor.
The bathroom! Here is a before photo-
And finally, minus the shower glass yet, the after photo-
It looks really nice. It IS really nice. Kelly has already enjoyed the bathtub several times. I really like the rich color of the cabinets in the laundry room.
The heated floor is nice.
It was hard finding room for towel bars and grab bars, and we probably gave up some storage that we hope we don’t come to regret. But it sure is an improvement.
We had a bidet in the old bathroom, one of those simple ones from Costco that you simply add to the toilet seat. This time around, we ordered an actual bidet seat. It’s quite the deal. Or at least so I’m told. I haven’t used it yet. I haven’t used that function yet. When you approach the toilet, the lid opens on its own and a nightlight comes on. For us gentlemen, there’s even a light inside, I guess so we can tell what we’re aiming at. Our contractor said he’d seen a lot of toilets, but he didn’t think he’d seen one that fancy before. Lest you think otherwise, it is not gold plated.
Later this summer we’ll start on the downstairs pink bathroom remodel. I do not expect a bidet in that one.
WHAT WOULD YOU ADD TO YOUR BATHROOM?WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN AT NIGHT LATELY?
I was much alarmed recently to see that some strange State legislator from Iowa was proposing to annex all the bottom southern counties in Minnesota, including my beloved Rock County, and make them part of Iowa. I haven’t seen much in the MN press about this, so I am hoping that it is being viewed as a political stunt and nothing to take seriously.
I lived within 15 miles of Iowa my whole life and lived in south central Iowa for a year, and I sure wouldn’t want to become an Iowan. Too conservative for my tastes. I also lived for a year in southern Indiana, and my, was that strange after living in Manitoba for six years. North Dakota is conservative, too, but I have managed to tolerate it for 37 years. People here are quirky enough to make life fun and interesting despite the influence of big oil and conservation politics.
We still plan to move to Minnesota in the next year, but if the Iowa annexation actually happens, it sure won’t be to Luverne!
What states or countries have you lived in? Where would you consider or not consider living?
With YA out of town, I’m in my “eat what’s here and don’t shop” mode. I actually enjoy this part of YA traveling. (Not as crazy about being in charge of Guinevere’s early morning and late night trips outside, but I’ll live.)
This week there have been quite a few leftovers in the fridge – more than usual. Since I also worry about food going bad, I decided that I would have dinner for breakfast. I’ve done breakfast for dinner many times in my life but except for a handful of cold pizza starts to a day, I’ve never actually heated up what I think of as dinner food and had it as the first meal in the morning.
I heated up some rice with carrots and parsnips and had it alongside some brie and applesauce. It was very nice and now I’m thinking I should switch things up more often. The only hitch was the feeling that I needed dessert afterwards!
Do you have any foods that you wouldn’t normally eat for breakfast?
I’ve probably seen the first 10 minutes of the movie Laura 100 times. It’s one of my go-to bedtime movies. I can actually recite the first five minutes of the movie by heart. For fun, I had it on during the afternoon over the weekend and I just happened to look at the screen as Clifton Web and Dana Andrews had this discussion:
DA: Three years ago in your October 17 column you started out to write a book review but then at the bottom of the column you switched over to the Harrington murder case
CW: Are the processes of the creative mind now under the jurisdiction of the police?
DA: You said Harrington was rubbed out with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, the way Laura Hunt was murdered, the night before last.
CW: Did I?
DA: Yeah. But he was really killed with a sash weight.
CW: How ordinary. My version was obviously superior.
A sash weight? Despite how many times I’ve seen this scene, I would never in a gzillion years been able to tell you Harrington got clobbered by a sash weight
I’m not sure which is more amazing, that the line could get by me SO many times or that I actually know what a sash weight is. I live in a house that still has sash weights. I’ve even taken out a window with sash weights and then put it back!
My guess is that knowing about sash weights will become a fairly specialized bit of knowledge as the years go by.
Tell me about something that you know that seems a little rarer than it used to!
When I find something I really like at a restaurant, it’s really really hard for me to choose something else the next time. Even if it looks good. Black Coffee & Waffle in St. Paul has several waffle options that look wonderful to me. As I’m driving over there I’m thinking to myself that I should try something new (besides the almond butter, fresh fruit & granola waffle) and then I never do. Same with the olive pimento veggie burger at The Tipsy Steer. In what I consider a personal victory, on Sunday I actually got the crumb cake at Black Walnut Bakery. I’ve looked at it several times but always end up ordering the bear claw, which Black Walnut makes with puff pastry, pastry cream and raspberry jam. The crumb cake also had raspberry and was wonderful, but if I’m honest, I also bought a bear claw (just in case) and had it yesterday!
Quirk #2
Most of my adult life, I’ve done without a dishwasher. Either I just didn’t have one or for many many years in my current house, it just didn’t work. Now that we have a nice dishwasher that YA insisted on when we had the kitchen remodeled, I end up putting the clean dishes away about 80% of the time. It’s not a horrible job – only takes about 5 minutes, but I’m finding that afterwards, I resist putting any dirty dishes in for a bit. As if it needs to sit empty for a day or so before I start loading it up again. Like it needs to rest and recharge? Maybe it needs a spa day?
Trail Baboon 