2021, 2025, Baboon Blog Redux, Fantasy, Mysteries, Technology, Uncategorized

Steve Slew a Dragon

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Thanksgiving will always be a day during which I stop at least once to think about Steve, who we lost in 2021.  Steve was the first baboon that I met in person; I’ve read all his books; I remember his horror when he realized he had fed me something with chicken stock.  I still miss him on the trail.  Here is another of his posts, one of my favorites from April of 2021.

A friend and I used to discuss troublesome issues in our lives. We called them our “dragons.” Dragons are problems can only be dispatched with exceptional effort and resolve.

Few problems qualify as dragons, which is good. Most of us handle routine problems with routine efficiency.  Alas, some problems are a lot nastier or complicated than others.  Some of us have anxieties that prevent us from addressing certain issues forthrightly. Sometimes problems become entangled with side issues. Throw some procrastination into the mix, and what could have been a baby problem might grow up and begin belching enough fire to qualify as a dragon.

Examples? You don’t gain street cred as a dragon killer for beating a head cold, but beating cancer will earn you respect with anyone. Overcoming any addiction would surely count. The friend referenced in my opening paragraph slew a dangerous dragon when she escaped a marriage that was destroying her soul. From what I’ve read, the nastiest dragon Barack Obama faced down in his two terms as president might have been nicotine.

My most recent dragon should have been no big deal. Last September my computer emitted an electronic scream, seized and died. I had expected that. Computers typically remain healthy and functional for five to ten years. My fifteen-year-old computer was clearly living on borrowed time. I had prepared by backing my data files, although I could not back my applications.

I bought a replacement computer loaded with Microsoft’s Office, a choice forced on me because that is the only way I could get Word, the word processing app I’ve used for thirty-four years. Office costs $70. That is probably reasonable, although it irked me to pay for a suite of ten programs just to get the one program I use. But Microsoft enjoys something like a total monopoly on basic Windows business software.

Microsoft inserts a feature in the Office software that causes it to shut down unless users can prove that they have paid for it. To validate my purchase, I peeled back a piece of tape that covered the confirmation code. The tape ripped the cardboard beneath it, destroying the middle six numbers of a code of about twenty numbers. As it was designed to do, my software soon froze rock solid. I could not create new documents nor could I edit the many files already on my hard drive. Every time I turned on my computer, a niggling message from Microsoft reminded me I had not validated the purchase. As if I could forget!

Worse, there was no way I could contact Microsoft. The company recently eliminated its customer service office. Microsoft now directs customers with problems to some internet data banks that supposedly answer all questions. Of course, the data banks say nothing about what to do when the company’s own security tape destroys a validation number. I learned there are many businesses claiming they can help customers struggling with Microsoft apps. Those businesses didn’t want to talk to me until I shared my contact information or subscribed to their services. Then I’d learn again that my particular problem could not be resolved by anyone outside Microsoft. And nobody inside Microsoft would speak to me.

Over a span of seven months I spent many wretched hours dialing numbers and writing email pleas for help. The shop that sold the computer to me clucked sympathetically but told me to take my complaints to Microsoft. Members of a group called “the Microsoft community” kept telling me it would be easy to fix this issue, but none of them could provide a phone number that worked. While I could have purchased the software again for another $70, the rank injustice of that was more than I could bear.

I finally learned about a set of business applications called LibreOffice, the top-rated free alternative to Office. It is open source software, free to everyone. But people who put their faith in free software often get burned, for “free” often just means that the true price is hidden. I worried that this software would not allow me to edit all the documents I’ve created over thirty-four years of writing with Word. And—silly, silly me—I kept hoping I could find one friendly person in Microsoft who would thaw my frozen software. So I dithered for weeks.

Last week I took a deep breath and downloaded LibreOffice. It loaded like a dream. LibreOffice’s word processor, “Writer,” is friendly and intuitive. Ironically, I like it quite a bit better than Word. With it I can edit all my old Word documents, and I used the new software to write this post.

That particular dragon is dead, kaput and forever out of my life. Other dragons await my attention, malodorous tendrils of smoke curling up out their nostrils. I did not triumph over Microsoft, as that smug firm never even knew it had a conflict with me. Still, I celebrate the way this all ended. When we slay a dragon, the most significant accomplishment might be that we, however briefly, have triumphed over our personal limitations.

Any dragons in your past that you wouldn’t mind mentioning?

2025, animals, books, Uncategorized, Words

Murder at Gull’s Nest

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As you all know, a lot of things strike my interest where books are concerned – recommendations from friends, stories online and titles.  Give me a good title and I’m all in.  At least to start with.

I see a lot of books on Facebook these days.  And as if they are tempting me personally, there are a lot of catchy titles.  Here are a few that I have on hold at the library right now that I chose simply from their titles:  The Dead Husband Cookbook, Inside of a Dog, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests, And Then We Hit a Rock.  Based on my luck with these kinds of picks, most of these probably won’t get finished.  And Then There Were Scones only made it about three chapters.  Awful.

So I approached Murder at Gull’s Nest by Jess Kidd with a bit of trepidation.  I think if the library started a section of Cozy Mysteries, it would probably be shelved there and to be fair, it did tick off all the cozy “boxes”, but not in a way that is run-of-the-mill way.  The characters are real, the story is compelling and importantly I wasn’t able to figure out the murdered until almost 75% of the way through the book.

And even more importantly, the language was fabulous; I do love a good turn of phrase:

  • “Outside, the sky is brightening, which is of no concern to the room, daylight being dissuaded by heavy velvet drapes and the somber yews that crowd about the window.”
  • “Nora steps into a cheap café and orders a pot of tea. When it arrives it is what she hoped for:  decent and strong with a skin a mouse could skate on.”
  • “Humans can’t tolerate emptiness for long… if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone!”
  • “Jesus, who would want to read about a failed old nun, with her stipend, and second-hand shoes.”

So I’m recommending this book to everybody and have requested a couple more Jess Kidd titles

Have you read something recently just because it had a good title?  How did that turn out?

2025, Food, Kids, Seasons

Bye Bye Apples, Bye Bye

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On apple picking day, as we put our peck and a half on the scale at the paying shed, it just didn’t look like enough apples.  It’s the amount we’ve gotten for the last couple of years; we looked at each other and had the same thought – we need more.  Since I was already hobbling around with the big brace on my knee, we bought a pre-picked bag and added it to the scale.  Three quarters were Connell Red (my favorites) and the last quarter were Honeycrisp (YA’s favorite).  I do like the Honeycrisp and I wish it were my favorite since it’s a home-grown Minnesota apple.  But the Connell Red was introduced in Wisconsin and is said to be the “offspring” of the Fireside which IS a Minnesota apple.  Close enough for me.

Apple crisp is a staple for us during the fall.  My recipe is based one I found in the Apple Cookbook that I bought decades ago from the Afton Apple Orchard.  We add cinnamon to the apples and we use two times the topping that the recipe calls for.  In fact, I usually make several batches of the topping all at once and put the extra in the fridge.  That way making an apple crisp is really just a matter of cutting up the apples.

Our other favorite is an Apple Manchego Salad.  I had this at the Loring Café years ago and chef was gracious enough to give me the recipe.  (I’ve since found the exact same recipe online so I don’t think I’m as special as the chef made me feel at the time!)  It’s pretty simple.  3-4 apples (depending on size) cut into matchsticks.  Then 4-5 ounces of manchego cheese, also cut into matchsticks.  I use the mandoline for this, making it quite a fast salad but you can certainly chop by hand if you need.  About ¼ cup of chives, chopped fairly finely.   A splash of lemon juice (no more than a teaspoon), about three tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Done.  I made this salad at least three times this fall and despite it saying “8 servings”, YA and I have made it disappear in less than 24 hours each time. Then there are the hand pies, which I think I promised I wouldn’t talk about too much.  Made them twice this year.

Yesterday I decided it was time to use up the last 7 apples that have been stored on the back porch.  Since I had some crisp topping left, I made an apple crisp and then with the very last two apples, I made a teeny French apple cake, using my 6” springform pan (which I never get to use enough).   This is the first time I’ve tried the cake recipes – we’ll see if YA likes it – she gets back later today from her latest trip.

Of course, crisp apples with peanut butter slathered on them are the premiere snack at this time of year!

Any fall favorites that you’ll miss until next year?

2025, books, Fantasy, Mysteries

What She Said…

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At a funeral in September, the father of my deceased friend came over to talk to the rest of us from her book club.  He was proud of how intelligent she had been and how much she had loved reading.  He surprised us by asking us each if we had a favorite book and what character would we like to be in that book.  At the time I answered A Christmas Carol, which I read every December and that I would like to be Mrs. Cratchit.  She was considered a good person but wasn’t a doormat.  This is my favorite quote from her “I wish I had him here.  I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”

But I’ve had a couple of months and I have a couple more.  I always admired Helen Burns, the little friend of Jane Eyre who dies from mistreatment at the “school”.  “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”  Good words for our current times.

While The Martian is one of my favorite books of all time, I wouldn’t want to be Mark (the main character).  A little too distressing for me.  I want to be Melissa Lewis, the captain of the mission, who turns around when they’re almost back to Earth when they find out that Mark is still alive.  “All right team, stay in sight of each other.  Let’s make NASA proud today..”   Even though I’m sure she got court-martialed when they all got back home, even after saving Mark. 

I’m not sure which character in Wrinkle in Time I would want to be but my favorite quote is early on in the book when Meg’s mother says “But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”  My hero Neil deGrasse Tyson has said something very similar.

Do you have a character you’d like to be?  Or a good quote from a book you like?

2025, crops, education, Family, Farming Update, Kids, Nature, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

Concrete Herring! or What Color is Your Herring?

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This weeks farming update from Ben

My schedule has been a little crazy lately. Next week will be better.  🙂

I hear there are places in the country where the weather on the evening news doesn’t take ten minutes. I don’t need the full ten minutes, I just want to know the 12-48 hour forecast, and the 7 or 10 day forecast, Which I know is just a guideline. Especially this time of year, when the forecast has some pretty drastic changes coming.

No, the corn still isn’t out and I don’t want to talk about it. The grain elevators are closed on the weekends now, because 99.8% of the harvest is complete. So I don’t expect anything this weekend unless they finish everything at their place and they just come in and fill up the trucks on Sunday. 

I wrote a long story about the thermostat in my shop and I threw all that away and tried to make this a shorter story. A red herring was involved and suffice it to say human error played a part. Because of course it did.  

I use a wifi thermostat so I can monitor it from the house. It worked last year. This year, it worked while I’m out there, but it didn’t work when I came to the house. 

One day it died completely so I bought a new one.  Installing that and I blew a fuse up in the heater itself. Another trip to town for an ‘E’ fuse. An E fuse? Never heard of an E fuse. Oh, it’s a ‘3’ not an ‘E’. Thank goodness I figured that out on my own and didn’t say that to the guy at the auto parts store. Then of course there was a new app and all of that rigamarole. And that night in the house and it wouldn’t connect again. 

The day we poured the concrete, including the slab outside the front door, I used a side door, and a different light switch. Turns out, the outlet I have the heater plugged in to is tied into the 3 way switch for the lights. And I hooked that up myself, this wasn’t the electricians fault. Other than they didn’t know I wanted an outlet for the heater, which is why I did it myself. But how come it worked last year?? Because the heater was plugged into a wall outlet and because the electricians weren’t here until March, and I didn’t get the heater outlet installed until April.  So now, when I come into the shop and turn the lights on, the thermostat works. When I leave and turn off the lights, the thermostat turns off. Well, don’t I feel like a dunce. How could I tell the thermostat was off once I left the shop?? I thought the problem was the wifi. Nope, that was the red herring. The problem was the thermostat wasn’t even ON.

I have it plugged into a regular outlet again and I can tell you, by the app, it’s 46 degree’s out there at 56% humidity. 

We did get the concrete done on Tuesday. Yay! Check that off the list! A big job, and I had the easy job in the tractor hauling the cement from the truck outside, to the pad inside. 

(Two reasons; the truck wouldn’t fit inside the shed, and I didn’t want him backing onto the existing concrete slab). When they poured the inside slab a couple years ago, they used a little “buggy” to haul the concrete. This was the same thing, only different.) The truck driver was great! Randy. 65 yrs old, been driving a concrete truck for 38 years. We joked before he got there, would he know we were amateurs? I told him right up front, feel to offer advice. He just picked up the bull float and got right in there helping. 

Took about 2 hours to get it all dumped and leveled. I was a little bit short of product and left a bit of a gap on one end of the walkway pad. I expect to finish that with 10 bags of concrete mix I picked up.  

About 6:00 PM I was able to start smoothing off the concrete with the hand trowels. (I Learned the difference between magnesium floats and steel floats. You use magnesium when you’re first leveling, and steel to do the final finish.) 

It was about 8PM when I was trying to finish the big slab and smooth around the drain. The concrete was getting too firm by that point and it was a little too late to be working it. All in all, it’s not bad for the first time for a bunch of newbies. It will look better when it gets some dirt on it to cover the imperfections.

I spread out tarps and covered the outside ones with straw. 

A few days later I pulled off the tarp and moved the dumpster over there. This right here was the original point of all this. 

I wonder how much snow will blow in here?
My brother using the bull float on the first piece.
Working on the big slab inside the shed.

Our son helped, my brother helped, Padawan’s girlfriend helped, (Padawan was at work) and Kelly helped. They all admitted this was harder work than they imagined.  And we all learned a lot. Next summer’s plan is to do another slab inside. My brother isn’t sure he’ll help again next summer. Son says he will find more younger helpers.

I’m just glad it’s done. I had a beer that night. I’ve been waiting to finish the concrete to have that beer. 

We thought for sure we’d have a dog footprints in it somewhere. Or Luna was gonna drop a ball into it. We locked them in the shop at one point.

Inside slab done. Won’t drive on it for a week yet, and will get it backfilled shortly.
You haven’t seen the chickens lately. Here’s the chickens eating some left overs.

I have a new appreciation for the people doing concrete work and making it look easy.

HAVE YOU STOPPED MISLEADING PEOPLE?

2025, Business, Kids, Mysteries, sports

Chop Chop

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There has been a karate school a few blocks from my house all the time I have lived here (think going on 3+ decades).  I’ve really never paid attention to it at all.

Well, I got invited there to watch Marie (little girl who used to next door to me) take part in her karate class.  If I had any assumptions before going, they were almost all wrong.

The karate school is woman-owned (not Japanese karate master-owned) with primarily women instructors (not Japanese karate masters).   I saw a bit of three classes – the one before Marie’s, then Marie’s and then the very beginning of the class after.  It was approximately 2/3 girls (not a bunch of Asian little boys).   I actually only saw one Asian kid the whole night.  So much for all my assumptions.  To be fair, all I knew about karate before this was what I learned from watching James Bond movies.

Marie’s class is about 40 minutes long and the very first class was half instruction about when and when NOT to use their karate skills.  Marie is the smallest in her class but pretty feisty.  Another little girl had the karate yell down pat and one of the little boys could hardly wait for the instructor to give the go-ahead for the next move.  They were all very cute.

I did a little searching on the internet and the history/etymology of karate is WAY too extensive for me to even try to parse it.  You’ll thank me for that!

Have you ever learned any karate / judo / taekwondo / sumo??

2025, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized, Words

Cooking With Gas

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One major adjustment to living in our new house is relearning how to cook with a gas stove. My parents had a gas stove until I was about 18 when we moved to a new house and they had a glass topped stove installed.

My mother instilled in me a fear of gas stoves. In her mind they were just bombs waiting to explode. I know there are lots of safety features in these stoves now, but I still am anxious. With a glass stove top, spilling liquids or having drips from lids that are slightly askew is no big deal. On one of my first forays into using the new stove last week I spilled a very small amount of water near a burner and it wouldn’t ignite, just clicked with no flame until a few minutes had passed and the water evaporated. We are being much more careful as we cook so we don’t spill on the stove top.

It is hard for Husband to hear the igniting clicks if he doesn’t have his hearing aids in, so I find myself surreptitiously monitoring his stove use. I hope I can relax as we get more experience with this stove. It cooks things really well and we seem to have more control as we cook and bake. The phrase “Now you’re cooking with gas!” was a marketing slogan to encourage people to switch from wood or coal burning stoves to gas stoves in the 1930’s. It then became a general idiom to indicate the someone was doing really well. I hope we can “cook with gas” as we learn to cook with gas.

What are your experiences with gas stoves? Any favorite idioms or sayings?

2025, books, Fantasy, Movies

Way Back Monsters

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If you were at the Blevins Book Club on Sunday, then you knew this was coming. 

I found an annotated copy of Frankenstein which among a ton of other information, included a list of all the Frankenstein (and quasi-Frankenstein) movies.  You all know I can’t keep away from something like that.

Of the first three Frankenstein films, only the first one from 1910 has survived.  It’s a short and is interesting because the “creation” is not made by putting body pieces together but by pouring a bunch of chemicals into a big vat and then heating it up.  For 1910, it’s actually some very interesting visual effects.  (It’s about 13 minutes long so it’s easy to satisfy your curiosity on YouTube, but too long to post here.)

The monster is an interesting blend of clown, yeti, caveman and monster from the black lagoon and doesn’t actually kill anyone before he seems to repent his very nature and “disappears” into the big mirror in Victor’s study.  But the pantywaist nature of Victor was spot-on.  See the monster and fling yourself out of the room and fall prostrate on the bed.  Monster comes into the room – fall prostrate on the floor.  Next time you see the monster, fall back prostrate in your chair.  The film maker clearly got that part of the book right.

Anyway, the next two films, Without a Soul (1915) and Il Mostro di Frankenstein (1921) have been lost and not much is known about them. The plot of Without a Soul included a dream sequence in which the doctor lives the Frankenstein story fairly closely, but then he wakes up.  The only thing really known about Il Mostro is that many consider it the first Italian horror film.

That’s it up until Universal came up with their massive laboratory, lightning technology and green, neck-bolted creature in 1931.  Which they promptly copyrighted, even going so far as to sue someone planning some kind of Without a Soul re-make.  

There are supposedly some references/appearances of the monster in two films by Sidney Lanfield in 1936 but I’m not willing to watch One in a Million or Sing, Baby, Sing again. 

Have you seen any Frankenstein movies?  Any favorites?

2025, Business, Family, Mysteries, Uncategorized

A Penny for Your Thoughts?

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I’ve heard folks rail about pennies for years but really didn’t pay much attention to them.  It surprised me in reading the news of the last pennies being minted this week, that it actually costs 4 cents to make a penny.  It’s shocking to me that we’ve been minting these coins for awhile at a 300% markup.  Why didn’t we quit this silliness earlier?

When I was growing up, my dad kept a jar on the dresser and every night all the coins in his pocket went in.  My mother used to fish out any quarters, dimes and nickels that she found but she left the pennies until the jar was full, then she took them to the bank.  Occasionally a few pennies would be meted out to me and my sister, but not too often. 

I discovered last January when I visited, that my mother is still putting coins into a jar in her chiffarobe.  Apparently she doesn’t do this on a regular basis, just when she thinks her wallet is getting too heavy.  Quarters go in a separate jar for the washer and dryer in her condo building.  I also discovered that banks are no longer very interested in helping the public deal with their coins.  And those coin machines you occasionally see at grocery stores?  A pretty hefty fee and the grocery store near my mom’s would only give you store credit.  A little calling around and I did find a bank about 15 minutes away that had a sorting machine, but you had to deal with it yourself.  Not too awful but you could only put in one kind of coin at a time so it was laborious.  Luckily it was a branch of my mom’s bank, so I could just deposit the money into her account.

No coin jars at my house and if there had been, that experience with my mom’s coins would have cured me.  The news is that people are worried that every business will eventually start rounding up the price of your purchases.  Personally I can see that happening with cash purchases, but with so many purchases being credit card/cyber transactions, I’m not too worried.  

Was there a coin jar in your house growing up?  What about now?

2025, books, Fantasy, Food, Gatherings, Mysteries

When the Moon Hits Your Eye..

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If  you don’t like this post – it’s Jacque’s fault!

As those of you in Blevins know, I sometimes like to bring something for the potluck that aligns somehow with one of the books we’ve read or is a favorite of the author.  Walter Mosley got espresso chocolate brownies.  Louise Penny got miniature croissants with chocolate sauce on the side.  For the book Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos I was very pleased with my cupcakes adorned with shards of “glass” – made by melting Jolly Rancher candies and then breaking it up into sharp-looking pieces.

This month I was in the mood to do something fun but wasn’t sure what to make.  I didn’t think I’d get an answer in time from John Scalzi about his favorite food and I figured the only way I would find out about Mary Shelley’s favorite would be if she communicated from beyond the grave.  Not my cup of tea.

I decided that moon pies would be fun, except that all the commercially available moon pies have gelatin in them- that’s why I haven’t had a moon pie since I was a kid.  So I headed to the internet and found a relatively straightforward recipe using marshmallow cream.  Marshmallow cream is easy to make but purchasing a jar of marshmallow cream from the grocery store is even easier.  I made the graham biscuit dough, rolled it out, cut it with a crimped cutter and baked.  That turned out to be the easy part.  Marshmallow cream is incredibly futzy to work with.  First I tried to pipe it from a pastry bag, but getting the cream into the bag was just about impossible and having a star piping tip was worthless as the cream settled into a star-less blob anyway.  I abandoned the bag and just used a spatula but at this point had cream all over.  I had to put the sandwiches in the freezer for a bit and then I started the chocolate.  I was really having trouble just dipping the whole cookie so I switched to icing the top and the sides with a spatula instead.  I had chocolate EVERYWHERE (think both hands, handle to the double boiler, the counter, spoon, the spatula, the floor….).  I had to use my teeth to pull up my sleeves at one point.  There’s something to be said about having stuff made in factories with enrobing machines:

But in the end, it was very satisfying to make them and they turned out to taste great… quite rich so if I ever try this again, I’ll make them smaller.  Of course, we’ll have to read another book about the moon!

Tell me about a favorite book and what food you would bring to represent it to a potluck!