Tag Archives: fresh fruit

2015/05/17 (N) A Tale of Two Sittings.

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Our day had two parts.  Part 1 was at home and Part 2 was in Ann Arbor.  The first part started with our normal morning routine:  coffee, breakfast, and iPads.  I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and then checked/replied to e-mails, which I had not done for a couple of days.  We then got busy on tasks and chores.

Linda’s focus for the first part of the day was cleaning and straightening up the house in advance of Jack coming on Wednesday to clean all of the carpets.  Jack Hoskins runs Duraclean as a one-man business and has done our carpets and upholstery for a while.  My focus was the bus and my first task was to carry all of the “stuff” that came out from under the bed into the house.  All of that stuff then went various places downstairs, but not on the carpets.  By the time we finished the morning chores it was almost 1 PM so we had a few pretzels with hummus for lunch.

I only worked in the bus for a few of hours but I got some things done.  First I broke all of the carpet tack strips into pieces small enough to fit in a trash can.  Linda then helped me get the Shop-Vac into the bus and I vacuumed up most of the loose debris.  I had not yet removed the carpet from the right wall of the entry stairs so I did that next.  To remove it I had to take a light fixture loose and remove a piece of upholstered trim from around the bottom door hinge.  The two door hinges have thick rubber covers and after I removed the carpet I pulled back the rubber cover of the lower hinge and measured the width of the opening from the left edge of the door frame to the hinge.  It looks like we have 27″ to work with if needed.  I put the trim back on and re-installed the light fixture.  I then spent the rest of my time pulling carpet pad staples and carpet strip nails out of the plywood subfloor.  Removing the staples was tedious but it was part of what had to be done.

I quit working around 3:30 PM and took a shower and then relaxed for a bit while Linda was busy in the kitchen making a mushroom and power greens risotto.  She often uses barley in her risottos but this time she used Arborio rice which is the type normally used to make risotto.  I really like her barley risotto, but the rice version was outstanding.  After our early dinner I set an alarm on my iPad and we both took short naps.  We up at 5:30 PM and I gathered up my laptop computer, digital camera, and iPad while Linda closed up the house and got her iPad.  At 5:45 PM we were off to Ann Arbor to entertain (and supervise) grand-daughter Madeline while her parents went to a friend’s house for dinner.  We stopped at Whole Foods for some Almond Dream non-dairy ice cream.

Madeline was very excited to see us and showed us her house and back yard.  We went for a short stroll with her in her tricycle and then again in her car.  She had a Little Tykes kitchen playset on the back porch, just outside the real house kitchen, and she made “coffee and tea” for us to enjoy on the veranda.  Brendan has been working on the back yard and slowly but surely getting it into shape.  Yards are a lot of work.

Madeline was a little teary when Brendan and Shawna left but she settled down quickly as Linda got her engaged with some of her puzzles.  I sat on the floor with her and helped build the giant animal puzzles.  (The puzzles are large and have large pieces, they are not puzzles of giant animals, although giraffes are rather large.)  We learned that lions are nice but we do not pet “dinos” (alligators).

Linda prepared a bedtime snack for Madeline of grapes, strawberries, pineapple, and crackers and we had a few grapes too.  By 8 PM Madeline was tired and Linda got her ready for bed, which is a whole routine unto itself.  While they did that I got out my computer and set it up.  I checked my e-mail and then copied the photos I had taken since May 1st from my camera to my laptop.  I had photos of the work on the bus from four separate days so I selected a few photos from each day and post-processed them.  I then copied my draft blog posts for May 10 through 17 from my e-mail to separate Word documents and edited all of them.

I was spell checking my blog post drafts when Brendan and Shawna got home around 10:20 PM.  I shut down my computer and we visited while I packed up.  By 10:45 PM we were ready to be on our way.  We drove down in Linda’s car so she drove us home.  It rained several times between 8:30 and 10 PM but riding home we had clear skies in some directions (we could see stars) and lightning in other directions.  The roads were mostly wet and we drove in and out of a few showers.  We were hoping the rain would hold off as we have had a wet week and Keith is supposed to cut our grass tomorrow.

 

2014/08/10 (N) Kathi Comes To Visit

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Kathi Slater is a long-time friend, the mother of three girls who went through middle and high school at the same time as our children.  Her oldest daughter, Emily (who is now an MD) was one of our son’s best friends in high school.  Kathi ended up working at Metropolitan Bakery with Linda and is still there.  We have been trying to find a mutually agreeable time for her to come see our new house and today was finally the day.

Kathi arrived around 10:30 AM.  As with all first time guests we gave her a tour of the house and then, being another gorgeous summer day, we walked the property.  After the tours we settled in at the table on the deck under the shade of the umbrella and had a nice long chat.  Linda made her wonderful chickpea salad and served it sandwich style for lunch with sourdough pretzel nibblers, fresh grapes, and sweet cherries.  She left to return home around 2 PM.

I worked at my desk on website usernames and passwords until 5:30 PM.  For dinner Linda made sautéed green beans and a dish with whole grain macaroni, cannellini beans, kale, other ingredients, and spices.  Both dishes had a hint of garlic and red pepper flakes; just enough to elevate the dish but not so much as to dominate or overwhelm the primary flavors.

We finished eating a little after 6 PM and I had to leave for the 6:30 PM meeting of our ham radio club.  The meeting was well attended with several of our newest club members there.  After a short business meeting we had a brief introduction by Mike (W8XH) to ham radio projects that can be done with the Arduino (and similar) micro-controllers.  Mike and Steve (N8AR) then led a discussion on the subject of antennas; specifically simple ones that can be built fairly easily.

I got home rafter 9 PM and had a piece of watermelon.  We stayed up a little later than usual and decided to turn in without watching an episode any of the TV programs we are currently following.

 

2014/07/04 (F) Independence Day

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Pictures from today are in a separate gallery post with today’s date.

In spite of a ridiculous series of very brief power failures late last night, Madeline’s first overnight stay at our house was a complete success.  She was busy and cheerful all day yesterday, took a nice nap, went for a walk around our yard, and enjoyed a hearty and substantial dinner.  After all that she was ready for her evening bottle and then went to bed without a fuss at 7:45 PM.

She slept for almost 12 hours, which meant we could get up before her at our usual time and get ready for her awakening.  It took her a few minutes to fully wake up, during which time she was a little groggy but not fussy.  By the time Linda got her dressed she was ready for breakfast.  Linda made oatmeal with raisins and cranberries and all three of us had some.  Madeline also had fresh strawberries and blueberries.  Blueberries are one of her current favorite foods, along with peas.

We played with toys, read books, and played (with) the organ until 9:30 AM and then got ready to go on a field trip.  At 9:45 AM we left for the Howell Conference and Nature Center (HCNC).  The HCNC is the largest wildlife rehabilitation and permanent care center in the State of Michigan, and is located about eight miles south and slightly west of the heart of downtown Howell.

We were there for just over two hours and spent most of that time looking at a lot of animals including the following:  Coyotes; a Sandhill Crane; Whitetail Deer; owls (Screech, Saw-whet, Barn, Barred, Snowy, and Great Horned); a Wild Turkey; Bobcats; a Porcupine; Opossums; Turkey Vultures; an American Kestrel; hawks (Broad-winged and Harrier); a Peregrine Falcon; and American Bald Eagles.  Although HCNC rehabilitates wildlife for release back into the wild whenever possible, all of the animals we saw today were permanent residents due to injuries and/or habituation to humans that have made it impossible for them to survive without human care and protection.

After we were done with the Nature Walk and Raptor Center we explored Alexandria’s Playscape for 20 minutes, by which time we needed to start for home in order to have time for some lunch and still get Madeline down for her nap on schedule.  Linda rode home in the back seat to keep Madeline engaged so she wouldn’t fall asleep and this proved to be a very successful strategy.  We all had lunch and Linda got Madeline ready for her nap without a fuss.  Once Madeline was asleep Linda also laid down to rest for a bit while I started a load of laundry, booted up all of my computers, and installed updates.

Madeline had a good, long nap and was ready to tackle the last third of the day when she finally woke up.  We played with her new set of Lego Duplo blocks for a long time.  She enjoys taking them apart but this afternoon she figured out how to assemble the square ones.  She has a very good attention span for an 18 month old, but her attention naturally shifts in response to a stimulating environment.  She is always busy, and often in motion, but takes a break occasionally to enjoy one of her books.  She is also very independent and usually knows what she wants at any given moment.  She is, however, also open to suggestions and interacts very well with us.  She verbalizes quite a bit and is developing vocabulary.  We know this because she has a few words that we are able to understand and she uses them correctly and consistently.  She has a lot of other sounds that are clearly an attempt to communicate using speech, but she can’t quite form the words well enough yet for us to really understand what she is trying to say.  Sometimes, however, we can figure it out from the context of what is going on and what she is looking and/or pointing at.  We also discovered that she knows the names of colors as she consistently picked out the correct color Lego block when we asked for it by color.

For dinner Linda made a dish with baked beans, rice, carrots, onions, and celery.  I doubt that she will make it again as none of us seemed to like it that much.  My opinion was that it simply contained too much cinnamon.  After dinner we went for a walk around our property and saw a deer in the neighbor’s yard across the street.  When we got back to the front of the house we let Madeline explore the inside of the bus for a few minutes.  By 7 PM she was ready for a clean diaper, pajamas, and her evening bottle.  She fussed for about 10 seconds and then let grandma carry her to her bedroom where she looked at the paintings before yielding to her porta-crib for the second night in a row.

We have been hearing fireworks occasionally for the last few days, but starting around 8 PM things got cranked up and between 9 and 11 PM I thought we had inadvertently attended a major fireworks display.  I have written before about how much we like living in the country, but I have also written that the country is not always a quiet place; it just has a different kind of noise.  Usually that noise is the sound of nature, and we love it.  But occasionally it is an all too human sound, such as a gun being fired, or a dog barking.  But tonight we had fireworks, and a lot of them.  At our previous house the police would have showed up, and maybe the fire department too, if someone tried to fire the size and quantity of explosives we heard tonight.  Not out here in the country; big bonfires (burn piles) and big fireworks are apparently perfectly OK.  So is shooting a gun whenever you feel like it.

The house is not overly insulated, but Madeline was sleeping in the middle bedroom with the door and windows closed and the windows covered to keep out light while she naps during the day, so the fireworks did not wake her.  I felt bad for the cats, who spent most of the day in the basement or hiding in our bedroom to avoid contact with Madeline.  She gets very excited when she sees them and runs after them because she wants to pet them, which just reinforces their desire to be somewhere else.  When they finally came upstairs after she went to bed they had to endure several hours of explosions, which they were not used to and did not like.  The celebrations were mostly concluded by 11 PM and finally settled down completely by midnight.

 

2014/06/22 (N) Outside Inside

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We split our time today between outside work and inside work.  The temperature was 60 degrees F when we got up so after a light breakfast of homemade granola with fresh fruit and some coffee we resumed our tree trimming work from yesterday.  While Linda gathered up branches from yesterday’s trimming, I worked on our Norway Crimson King Maple.   This is a magnificent tree, one of the nicest on our property, but it is close to our rear deck at one end and has grown out over the deck such that low branches are at or below eye level and block access to part of the deck as well as the stairs that lead down into the northeast yard.

In the same general area as the maple tree are several large White Pine trees.  The lower limbs had grown out and down to reach sunlight, placing their extremities at or below eye level.  We want to be able to walk under these trees without getting poked in the eye and we want Keith, who cuts our grass, to be able to drive his zero-turn riding mower under these trees without getting poked or knocked out of the seat.

While I was trimming the maple and pines for clearance I also removed as many dead branches and limbs as I could reach with the pole saw.  I had noticed yesterday that our pear tree and our apple tree also had quite a bit of deadwood so I turned the pole saw on them next.  Linda continued to gather the smaller branches and pile them in manageable size bundles around the outside of the fire pit.  She also dragged the larger limbs over near the fire pit.  Once I was done pruning I used our bow saw to remove the smaller branches from these larger limbs and then cut the limbs into 3-to-4 foot lengths.

Linda was going to shovel the ash from yesterday’s fire into a plastic bag but discovered that it was still quite hot.  We stirred up the ash cone, made a big pile of small branches on top of it, and then stacked the larger pieces of wood on top of that, teepee style.  It took a while but the amount of smoke steadily increased until we finally had a small flame.  It did not take long from that point for it to develop into a good size fire.  We also recalled that ash from a burn pile is good to add to the soil for some flowering plants and decided we would use it rather than dispose of it in the trash.

We needed to work at our desks today and did not want to exhaust ourselves doing outdoor work so we quit at 1 PM and put our tools away.  We had lunch at 2 PM and then spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening doing various tasks at our desks.  Part of that time I investigated a web-based RV trip planning tool called RV Trip Wizard.  Making recommendations relative to this program is one of the things the FMCA education committee has been asked to do.  The website had a demo available, as well as a tutorial and a user’s guide, so I was able to get a good feel for what it does and its ease of use.  The Geeks On Tour also had a review available which filled in some details and highlighted a few deficiencies.

Overall I found the website well conceived and nicely implemented, having most of the features needed to plan an RV trip without a lot of unnecessary clutter.  Features included routing with: turn-by-turn directions, mileage, overnight stops (17,000 in the database and growing), points of interest, and estimated expenses.  Trips can be exported as Excel spreadsheets and as files that can be imported into a GPS.  The trip preferences section allows you to specify key parameters about our RV, travel “style”, and estimated costs.  Missing from the parameters, however, was weight and propane.  It also allows you to indicate a prioritized order for RV parks and campgrounds when looking for places to stay overnight.  When planning a trip it will alert you if your rig is incompatible with part of your route, but does not automatically route you around it.  That would be unacceptable in a GPS, but is probably OK in this case as you can drag the route around on the map or add waypoints to change it.  Finally, you can save an unlimited number of trips indefinitely, recall one, do a “save as,” and then modify it if you want to repeat a previous trip with modifications.  RV Trip Wizard is a web-based subscription service and you must have an Internet connection to use it.  You cannot save your trips to your local device, and if you do not renew your subscription all of your saved trips are gone forever.

We had fresh fruit at 7 PM (bananas, blueberries, and strawberries) and a glass of wine, after which I worked for a couple of more hours before turning in to watch season 3 episode 2 of Doc Martin.