Cop Car's Beat

Strictly personal

The past week has been quite unsettling. The future, especially the next month, is expected to be little less. Blogging is something that I don't expect to get done.

Last evening, as had been planned for some time, Hunky Husband and I were graced with the presence of Dudette, WichiDude, Wonderful Granddaughter (WGD), and Rachie. The wee ones were at their father's; so, we had an adults-only Pizza Friday. Although there was some conversation concerning NG1 and NG2; mostly, we had a chance to engage in adult conversation. Much as I love the boys, it was wonderful to see adult family!

Much of the early conversation, before Dudette and WichiDude arrived, concerned the health problems of Expert Seamstress (ES), Elder Brother's (EB's) wife. WGD is an LPN and Rachie is in pre-med - not sure whether she will pursue an MD or RN; so, they understood the importance of each comment.

ES was diagnosed, 9 or 10 days ago*, as being severely diabetic - she had awoken to find that her urine was orange, for which she went to a clinic. Not 48 hours later, she returned to the clinic because she was experiencing continuous vomiting - becoming dehydrated. The clinic people took a look at ES's blood workup and immediately sent her to the hospital ER. There, following imaging, ES was given the horrid news that she had "advanced stage" pancreatic cancer - not diabetes. The cancer had grown to a size that blocked the bile duct and there were 7 or 8 smaller tumors in her liver. In addition, ES had blood clots in one leg. That is a lot for one person to absorb. At that time, ES was hospitalized, and she had a stent placed into the bile duct the next day**. ES tolerated the stent installation, well; but, the medical team thought that there might be blockages in other locations.

After spending one week hospitalized, ES was discharged, and went home with the addition of hospice care. I haven't had an update since she got home; but, I plan to call today to see if I can be helpful if I go out there. In the meantime, HH is being deployed to Oklahoma City to work on disaster relief for the tornado victims. (He will be leaving momentarily.)

For the past year, I've been heavily involved in setting up a week-long disaster training institute in Pratt KS in June. The institute is totally funded by donations in support of the victims of the Greensburg KS tornado of May 2007 and includes participation by many government and non-government organizations. HH is to teach two 2-day classes in the institute. That is why he is going down to Oklahoma, now - to be able to return from a three-week tour in time for the institute. IF I go to ES's, and IF they wish me to stay (for however long), I shall do that. However, if it works out that way, I will be back for the institute - planning, perhaps, to return to ES's after the institute is complete. 

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*  Coincidently, the same day that I received notification of the death of EB's and my 66-year-old cousin.

** On which day our cousin was buried.

Catching up on photos

In the past few weeks I've taken photos that have not made it to posting. This is to remedy the situation (not that you could not live without them!)

In Pillows and Rugosas Have Nothing to do With Each Other, daughter Bogie posted a photo of some decorative pillows that I made and sent to her. Here is a photo of our guest bed that shows, not only the blue pillows that were shipped to Bogie, but the red/orange/yellow pillows that were taken to elder daughter Dudette, last Sunday. In case I failed to tell you, Bogie, the covers are removable and washable. In fact, each of the small pillows has a utility pillow case under the decorative one.

P.S. The framed photo above the bed was taken by Fred First of Fragments from Floyd. (See Photographic Meme for more information on the photo.)

Here are a couple of photos of the mallard duck nest that is against our house - after it had served its purpose and been abandoned. In the closeup view, tufts of dark down are visible among the dried leaves.

This morning, I picked two bouquets: asparagus spears and white lilacs. (I consumed a couple of spears while going about my yard work and a few more at lunch.)

My mother would be proud!

Yes, I can!

Yes, I can still make snow angels. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to make one until the snow was warmed enough to clump instead of being cleanly swept aside. Oh, well. This is just outside Hunky Husband's bedroom window.

Don't ask me about the challenge I had getting myself up without spoiling the image. My head was lower than my feet.

The last time I made snow angels was at midnight when the new millenium rolled in.

Valentine

Supplied by the good folks at NASA:

Celestial Valentine

Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian

Echoes of family dinner

Because we thought that everyone would be off of work on the 24th, that was the date set to have all of the local family over for dinner. Wichi Dude & Dudette, Wonderful GrandDaughter & Next Generations 1 & 2, and Rachie (eventually! - she, unexpectly, had her shift change and arrived after the rest of the family had finished dinner.) joined Hunky Husband and me for a family dinner. Birds at our feeders entertained us before dinner. I broke out my new Nikon 1 to snap a photo of a red-breasted nuthatch.

Pre-dinner stuff included 3 kinds of olives, 2 kinds of pepper rings, cauliflorettes, pickled artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, peas, Mandarin orange sections, grapes, 3 kinds of chips (bruschetta pita, garlic pita, tortilla), 3 kinds of dip (ranch, jalapeno fiesta, and RoTel cheese), and stuffed celery. Dinner comprised 2 pork loins (1 wrapped in spicy cornbread, the other in mild Italian sausage), cauliflower/broccoli/asparagus gratin, sweet potato casserole, freshly-baked hard rolls & butter, home canned pickled beets, home canned cranberry/orange relish, chocolate cheese pie, and lemon cheese pie]. Plus wines. We were stuffed by the end of the meal!

Speaking of wines: WD & Dudette brought a few bottles of wine and a couple of boxes of gigantic Junior Mint candies (photo, below). Wonderful! The Hogue Riesling is my current favorite, in which WD joins me.

After dinner, we amused ourselves in the living room. The photo, below, is of WGD using her phone to snap a photo Rachie. (You can tell that the boys are paying rapt attention.)

NG2 played with his great-grandfather (HH) a lot (photo, below).

NG1 came over to me, asking that I take his photo. I took several. During the snapping of each photo (see one of them, below), NG1 looks dour. As soon as the shutter clicked, NG1 would break into a big smile. We'll have to work with him on his timing!

I was barely able to get NG2 to pause for a microsecond while he was running around the room.

I don't recall what Dudette was saying at the time, but I do note that her ring is very sparkly.

Unfortunately, the photo that I took of WD & Dudette with the boys turned out as a blur!

The following two photos are to explain to Buffy what minimalism actually looks like. I made the wreath for my parents back in the 1960s. Most of the costume jewelry were cast-offs from Mom's collection, that she had passed along to our girls (Dudette & Bogie, of course!) for playing.

Dudette & WD gifted us with the three birds, below, each of which is peering through a tiny set of "binoculars". As I recall, they accompanied a membership to the National Audabon Society that year.

Goodies from Bogie

Although, over the years I think that I have become my mother, our younger daughter (Bogie, of Bogieblog) reminds me of my mother in ways that I do not. Either of them would have made a great farmer! Below is a photo of the bounty that arrived at our door step yesterday afternoon. Envy me! (I might even share some of it with Hunky Husband - lol.)

           

The back row comprises six pints of homemade salsa, ranging from mild to medium to hot. HH gets the short end of the stick when it comes to salsa since I eat the Lion's share! the next row forward comprises two pints of homemade applie pie filling. As you can see, they look different. I will definitely be able to tell why the two fillings are different colors when I taste them; but, Bogie will hopefully take pity on me by telling me whether they are made from different varieties of apples and/or whether one contains spices that the other does not.

The two tiny bottles (tiny in comparison to the pint jars - the bottles look to hold somewhere between two and four fluid ounces, to me) contain homemade, flavored vanilla extracts - homemade from vanilla beans. Bogie went all out: she bought special bottles, labeled them nicely (I turned them because Bogie's real name is on the labels), and even applied shrink wrap to the neck/cap area to assure integrity of the product. Below are Bogie's own words (with minor redactions) from an email that she sent to enlighten me. (I had asked!)

Yes, the cherry vanilla and orange vanilla are to be used for flavoring while baking. You can use them in place of regular vanilla, or if orange or cherry flavoring is required. I was making regular vanilla and got to thinking about orange sherbet (I don’t know why, haven’t had any for years), and that led to making orange vanilla – then the cherry vanilla just naturally followed. I have started another flavor to see how that turns out too.

No, I haven’t taken any classes, just got to wondering if I could make vanilla one day last winter. Looked it up, found it was easy enough to do that I probably couldn’t screw it up to badly, ordered the vanilla beans, and started the process In April. This vanilla took 9-10 months to make.

When buying bottles (from specialtybottles.com) they had shrink wrap bands. Just put them on and use a hot blow drier for the shrinkage. The first 5-6 I messed up and had to redo, but it is really easy and cheap once you get the hang of it.

I am hoping for lots of snow. I'm thinking what wonderfully flavorful snow ice cream can be made with the extracts!

 

Presents

Frequently, Hunky Husband and/or I will have no earthly clue what to give the other on a gift-giving occasion. We sometimes wait months/years for the other person to express a wish for something that they want. Sometimes, I'm sure, we have gone beyond the limits of our memories and forgotten the intended gift all together. This year is different. HH wanted a new smart phone (we both already had smart phones but have never subscribed to the data packages to enable email and internet access). Come to think of it, he's been researching smart phones for months - maybe, even, a year or so. He now has a Nokia 822 (or something like that).

I had been toying with the idea of a new camera for some months. I now have a Nikon 1 - and one lens that is longer than the one that came with the camera (30-110mm vs 10-30mm).

Here are two views of my new toy.

 

Yes, I realize that the "extra" lens is a different color from the camera; but, white was all they had on hand and I don't really care about the color.

And, here is the first photo taken with the Nikon 1 - taken with natural lighting.

Easier way to do things

Especially now that I am rapidly approaching the 3/4-century mark, I am accepting that there are easier ways of doing things than the ways I've been using for ages. Something that I've figured out this week has cut a couple of hours off of the time it takes me to make Mushkatzoni cookies. In case anyone is interested in following my (lazy) example, I'll describe what I did.

The instructions given in the posting (link, above) include, "Form [the "dough" *] into logs (I use a small cookie dough scoop and keep my hands damp to minimize the amount of mixture that clings to my hands.  Place on a greased cooking sheet (or use cooking parchment), and flatten, slightly." Note that each cookie is hand-formed, separately. By the time I get through hand-forming 96 cookies (I habitually make double batches because I have no small mixing bowl for my mixer), my back is giving me fits. As I am just getting over a weeks-long battle with sciatica, I don't need more problems with my back. BUT...we must have our cookies!

For the 96 cookies (plus or minus) that I baked, yesterday, I lined a jelly-roll pan with waxed paper, plopped the "dough" onto the paper, smooshed the "dough" out with my hands, put another sheet of waxed paper on top, and rolled the "dough" out to completely fill the bottom of the pan. Next, I up-ended the jelly-roll pan onto the counter, placed the now-upper layer of waxed paper under the now-lower layer (to provide a double layer of waxed paper under the "dough"), and proceeded to cut the "dough" into strips in one direction and cross-cut those strips to provide the desired cookie size (see photo, below).

This (below) is what the cookies look like on the parchment-covered cookie sheet (baking sheet to you real cooks) before baking...

and (below) after.

The cookies look a little different than when hand-formed; but, my back thanks me! A note on cutting: I used the edge of an old single-layered cookie sheet to cut with. (Most of my pans are double-layered with air core.) Very quick cutting since the sheet was a bit longer than the length of the jelly-roll pan (and thus of the "dough").

* "dough" is in quotes because I associate the word with flour and there is no flour in these cookies - well...except for within the bread crumbs!

The Rest of the Story:

Notice of absence

About one week ago, my sciatica returned. I am "fighting" it and expect to triumph within another week, two, or three. For such a short (expected) time, I am not setting up a computer for use while standing; thus, I am not online, these days (I cannot sit!) Sorry for missing all of my blog friends. Later!

Done and done

Computer Desk

A couple of weeks ago, trying to find something that I had seen at a Staples store in Ridgecrest CA while out there, I happened across a computer desk that seemed to fit my requirements: pull-out drawer for mouse and keyboard (check!), small size to fit in the available space (check!), and cheap (eventually...check!). There wasn't a single clerk available to help me, but a man who told me that his usual work was moving merchandise tried his best and, eventually, provided me the information that I wanted (there was no price tag on the display model, and no information concerning the desk!) Since other pieces of furniture displayed 20% off prices, I asked if the computer desk would also be 20% off. Eventually, he ascertained that it would not be. So...I came home...and looked the desk up on the Office Depot website. No, it wasn't available at 20% off there, either - but - 40% off and free shipping! Thus, I ordered the desk (crediting the sale to the store where the stocker had helped me) and it was delivered on the 14th. And it sat in our entry hall. Until about 4:00pm Thursday. While Hunky Husband was out buying a new car, I got the urge and tore into the box. Now my upstairs computer station (the one that I use the more - as long as I don't need a printer) looks like the photos, below (the black-and-white photo is included to clearly show the desk.) Assembly time (including getting everything re-connected and cords somewhat corralled): 1.5 hours

 

It isn't visible in the photo, but my "real" desk (built in when we built the house - a really dumb move on my part) is behind the chair, shown. I can swivel in my chair to turn from computing to using the landline phone, writing, filing stuff, et cetera at my real desk. That is why the computer desk had to be small. I had previously used a backgammon game table for the purpose, inducing shoulder/neck pain when I sat at the computer too long because the keyboard and mouse were too high.

Hunky Husband's Comforter

I mentioned a few days ago that I was getting close to finishing the binding on HH's old comforter, made by my mother in the 1960s-1970s, and replacing the protector. Here is a photo of the finished project, with the top turned down to show the back. Note the difference in coloration of the strip of backing from that of the rest of the backing. The more brightly-hued band had been under Mom's original protector. I put the new protector at the other end of the comforter, to even out wear. The backing was made from feed sack material, as were nearly all of my dresses (girls were not allowed to wear pants to school in those days, except snow pants were allowed to be worn under our skirts when it was cold - until we got into our classrooms) until I started 8th grade which was held in the high school building.