Week in review

The photo, below, hit my funny bone.

I know how Carlos feels. I vividly recall in the mid-1980s being plugged into a short-term (six week) assignment by my bosses at The Little Engineering Company for lack of availability of other, more qualified, people who had been identified in the proposal for doing the work. The first time this happened, I filled in for a PhD materials expert whose Special Access Clearance (SAC) was too slow in coming. As I already had two or three such clearances, my additional SAC was granted within hours of submitting my request. To this day, I don't know how badly I screwed up "my part" of the project or whether that project ever saw the light of day.

Another time I was a "plug-in", the guy who had been identified in the proposal just flat did not wish to spend a few weeks in Seattle. (We were never notified when proposal writers identified us as principal staff in a proposal and we were required to keep detailed resumѐs on file for their use. My own resumѐ ran eight or nine pages in those archives.)

This project was a somewhat better fit; but, the timeline for accomplishment was far short of allowing adequate time for developing a good product. In order to fulfil the job, I loaned my SOCAL apartment to a coworker, and lived in a motel in Seattle for six weeks. I chose to ride the bus while in Seattle rather than using a company or rental car. It was during that stint that I was notified of a pickup truck's having rammed into my house in Albuquerque. Ah...good old days! [BTW: The above photo was stolen from Oddball Observations where it had been posted in 2013 with the comment, "Don't blame me.  This is a food truck in Houston.  The picture was sent to me by a (to be kept anonymous) friend.  Thanks, Frank."]

Hunky Husband took his car into Wichita for its annual servicing. Why is this big news? Because I did not go with him to navigate. Fortunately, there are only three changes of street in the 15-mile drive from our house to Lexus of Wichita, and HH was confident that he could get there and back. (He did!) We celebrate small victories. 😊 It helps that the car dealership is a straight shot north from one of the local golf courses, Hidden Lakes, at which HH used to play.

Early in the week I worked up the green tomatoes that I had picked before our first hard freeze. Green tomato relish is a good substitute for sweet pickle relish when one wishes a piquant touch on hot dogs or Tex-Mex chili. As one can see in the above photo, some of the tomatoes had started to turn color (and I added a bit of orange bell pepper). In all, I worked up about two gallons, only jarring four half pints and one quart. Without lid flats, their still being unavailable in our area, I decided to freeze the relish. Our downstairs freezer is pretty well stuffed with normal frozen foods and the Tex-Mex chili and baked beans that are awaiting pickup by Elder Brother. Refrigeration would be sufficient, with the sugar and vinegar included in the relish; but, the downstairs refrigerator is still packed with ripe tomatoes and sweet banana peppers that I put up in 2020 - at which time we were already lacking lid flats.

As one might guess, much of my time has been spent in keeping the new grass hydrated. The front lawn doesn't take much work. Three or four placements of the sprinkler suffices. In back, it takes more effort. At any rate, today will find me watering all the little trees in the back and between our driveway and Fred's fence. I've been negligent and we have several projected nights in the 20s (Fahrenheit) coming up.

Comments

[Debra She Who Seeks]

Hahahahaha, love that taco truck! Thanks for popping by my blog and doing that survey. I still get some of my news from listening to the radio too! We are lucky to still have quality radio journalism to listen to!

[Joared]

That's funny! When I want a good laugh I visit Oddball Observations 'cause that's the kind of quirky humor that tickles my funny bones.

Sounds like you have well-filled your refrig. and freezer with some good eatin'!

Grass is looking good. I'm barely keeping what I have alive given our water cutbacks thanks to our drought.

[Joared]

Congrats to HH for successfully navigating that trip and return! Definitely continue to celebrate such accomplishments.

[bogie]

I've seen pictures of that food truck before - but it is still funny.

HH did good getting to/from the servicing - yay!

It took me a second to realize that you had already had the sprinkler system winterized, which necessitates your dragging hoses and sprinklers around.

Lid flat shortage, who would have thunk it? You should have said something, I probably could have gotten some around here, or at the very least I have a box in my kitchen that still has 10 ring/flats in them (I may have flats stored away in the cedar chests in the basement). Ah well, you made do.

[Cop Car]

Debra--One of our local NPR stations carries BBC World Wide for six hours each night and for one hour each weekday. Our local PBS TV station, just a few years ago, also started carrying BBC newscasts for an hour during the day and, again, in the evening.

Joared & Bogie--I was quite pleased for HH - who took it all in stride. OTOH: HH asked me at least 8-10 times yesterday morning, what time we were to leave to go have turkey at Dudette's & WichiDude's house.

Bogie--I'm not surprised that you had seen the food truck photo, before. You are always far ahead if me, lol.

Yes, I've been doing the watering "by hand" since 10/28/2021 - which I knew I would need to do when I had the system blown out that early in the year.

I appreciate your thinking, but I don't know how reliable any flats you have stored away would be. The shelf-life of unused flats is "officially" 18 months, but one can use them for 3-5 years per the Healthy Canning website . I've tried to not let flats age beyond 2-3 years; but, as long as they pass visual inspection, I'm not really fussy about how old they might be. What I am fussy about is the size. Nearly all of my jars are wide-mouthed.

[Liz Hinds]

I think I'm much more likely to buy something if the adverts for it are witty.

That is a large green space you have! All that tree felling does look a little dangerous.

[Cop Car]

Hi, Liz--Stan Freburg's ads for Chun King "Chinese" foods showed that many people agreed with you about witty adverts. In the early 1960s, Freeburg ads were (what we, today, would call) trending. I think that I heard his ads on the radio; but, I may be wrong. We bought our first (used) TV in the early 1960s, so we may have seen Freburg's TV ads.

All told, our double lot is about one acre, of which I'm guessing about 1/4 of that area is now covered with woods. Before I started the process of making us safer from wildfires, I'm guessing that the woods covered about 1/3 of the area of the lots - not to mention all of the evergreen trees and bushes that I had planted around the house. The rest of our acre was originally part of a large cow pasture.