Sunday, December 28, 2008

The Quiet Before 2009

After Christmas...what? Currently the scene in the US is everyone has quit buying anything but food and gas to get to work. Christmas sales were a bust according to the newspapers and CNN and the Black Friday of two days ago came and went similarly.
The average American has no where to go but up now, as we live in DOWN. Kelly and I are working on the little house, putting it back to a decent condition in order to rent it again. We were going to move in it but that was nixed by our ever thoughful Audrey who said to us "How will you fit?" She was right of course, it has about 1000 sq, ft maximum and we live almost within the confines here in The Swamphouse of 2500 sq. ft. with furniture to match. What with storage fees for the excess and stuff we won't/can't/shouldn't sell there's no payoff that's positive that she could see and she's right. Thus we are hard at work scraping off layers of paint, patching nail holes and caulking tub and showers and sinks. Next comes painting of the woodwork and the walls to suit her...yes...Audrey wants to live in it! How the heck did this come about?! I dunno but that's the way it looks today. I think she'd really like it too, she'd be surrounded by our friends Jane and Wayne, Bob and Marsha and the denizen's of the Olde Town area such as they are. The date? 1 February, a bit over a month off. Meanwhile...work goes on.
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My bread was a hit wherever it found itself, people really liked the nuttiness and crunch of Lute's Nut and Whole Wheat Bread. I delivered 5 loaves on Christmas Eve and heard nothing but praise afterwards. Amazingly simple this bread for something that tastes so complex. Today I made an Oat Bread for our neighbors across the street and for Jane. The second one is in the bread machine now on dough cycle. It takes a couple of hours to go thruogh 2 rises and the kneading it requires before I can turn it out, shape it and pop it lovingly in a 5X9 tin for baking. It is good bread. I've ordered some high gluten bread flour online and will have that to experiment with someday real-soon-now.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Warning! Cat Post! Kat Mom's and Dads



Dear Reader, one who HAS a cat (you do not ever OWN a cat) has a duty to converse with the divine creature from time to silent time. No Lean came to me this morning at 2:30am tapping me on my shoulder with her claws in the extended position (her favorite) thus waking me up in torment if not outright pain. "Maa" she said, "Maa" in her fine carefully dictated way. This meant, in English, "I have a question".
I looked at her in the lightless room with only the blinking computer lights to see by and said "Mah" back. That meant (in Cattish which is the cat language spoken here locally (like REALLY locally) instead of the more common Meow lingo pre-furred by visiting kats), "Yes?". She looked into my eyes and said "Maa Purrt" which is translated in Cattish to "Why don't you and mom have tails?" I thought about this while fluffing up my pillow and replied "No Lean, You doubt our specie designation?"
To which she replied "Mah"...or "Yes". I continued "Dear One, we larger Kats have you because we love you". She just looked vacantly at me. "Maa" she replied again urging me to explain myself furr-ther. "Ok", said I "Big cats tails are taken off at birth, like foreskins are on the male big cats". "If you creep behind the local hospital there's always a big box of foreskins and big cat tails to look at, always kept separate of course." "Maa" she replied, "Why don't you have whiskers like mine then?" "Becaws No Lean, it is a style thing, we don't need them to go through small places like you do, so we trim ours off, like mom you know. "Maa" she replied again, "Maa Pirt". "Yes, I know", I said shifting myself up on one elbow, "I have a mustache, it's really similar, mom would have one too but she trims hers away as she is more practical than I". "She doesn't go through small places either?" No Lean started softening my shoulder where she sleeps. "No, through doors mostly and they are made big enough by other big cats that our whiskers would have to be 3 feet wide before they would be useful, it's a design problem with big cats." No Lean continued softening the shoulder with the ends of her claws poking thru my nightshirt, "Why did you have your tale cut off then?" I put my hand on her hands to stop her kneading, " My big cats told the doctor to do it, that's all" "Maa" she said, "Why", Why have them cut off?" "Well they were too long actually, and dragged on the ground, we couldn't lift them up and out of the way, so they got muddy and caked with dirt." "Maa" she replied laying her head down on my now softened and slightly bloody shoulder, "I see". "Maa Pirt", "thank you for explaining that to me dad-cat I always wondered."
"Maa", "Is Santa-Claws real dad?" I replied, "Maa Pirt!"..."Go to sleep No Lean, we'll talk more about this tomorrow."

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Cars, Autos and More Pieces of Junk...

The All VW garage (what car of mine has EVER lived in a garage?!) ended abruptly in the spring of 1972. The thoroughly worn out three year old 69 VW Bug with 110K miles on it (yes!) blew a cylinder and found itself in the VW shop in Mill Valley. The shop was adjacent to the Ford dealer.



A bright red brand new Ford Courier talked to me, saying, "just think of the junk you could haul in me and with a cover over the bed I could double as a camper on weekend fishing trips". Yes! So a deal was struck, I paid cash for the truck (flush then, not now) and drove the lil' charmer home to a surprised wife. Weeks followed with my adding a cassette player so I could listen to The Stones and The Beatles on the way to work each morning. I added some truck style mirrors so I could see better when hauling all that junk down the road too. It good decent mileage for then to, 20 -25 mpg and for a truck was reasonably comfortable. Sometime in 1974 we moved to Petaluma and the truck certainly performed yeoman-like duty during the transition; furniture, a pottery wheel, a 1/2 ton of clay and a small sailboat I built came along for the ride. She lived for another three years running me helter skelter around the Bay Area fixing customer's room-filling computers day in and day out. In the summer of 1977 she stayed home while I attended a golf tournament, my dear wife, having a morning appointment of her own, stayed back til later in the day and then she drove the truck to the golf club (tried too) and blew the engine when a water hose broke along the way in the 108 degree California heat! So long to the lil' red truck, cost more to fix than she was worth (even then). I sold her for scrap with 165,000 miles on her 5 1/2 years after I bought her. Verdict: A Car - Good, honest transportation.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Cars, Automobiles and Pieces of Junk cont'd

So I motored the highways and byways throughout northern California all thru my short 4 year Air Force career in the '61 Beetle. Off road adventures as I hunted down the elusive golden trout in streams and lakes far removed from what normal people consider roads. No SUV, nope, they didn't exist, no 4WD truck either for while they were around mostly in the military they were far from common like today. So my lil' rear engines, rear drive bug did the work for me and very successfully too! I found my bride to be in Fresno and she seemed to approve of the lil' green beast as it got us to and from the coast, the mountains and the foothills with aplomb. It became our family car after we were married in late 1966 and I installed a baby seat in it in the summer of 1968 when my son was born. Shortly after we moved from San Jose to Stinson Beach I bought a brand new 1969 dark blue bug with a cream interior, it even had a gas gauge and a radio!

To and from Stinson Beach every day going to work in The City (San Francisco) some 30 miles distant. There were two roads to take, the upper road thru Muir Woods, Mill Valley and out onto 101 and the coast road that wound along the cliffs thru Muir Beach then up past the Land Ranch thru Mill Valley and onto 101 as well. The lower road along the coast had 165 changes in direction in the 12 miles from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, kept a driver busy and careful as well. I only ran into one deer in all those miles driving that road from the spring of 1969 to the spring of 1974 when we moved to Petaluma. Along the way we collected another child, my daughter Aimee and a 1969 VW bus that my wife dressed up for camping with curtains and other decorative details.


It then became the family car and the bug was my work car.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

More Cars, Automobiles and Pieces of Junk

The car that followed these first explorations into the world of automobiles was rather unique at the time. It was a pale green 1961 VW "Bug". Used it costs me 900 dollars, the year was 1964. Why did I pick this one? Well the rebel in me demanded something different and the stories at the time pointed out it's nearly ledgendary reliability which is something that was sorely missing in my last two vehicles. It had low mileage as I recall and a certain charm. My friends on base ridiculed me for this choice but my girlfriends seemed to like it. My parents, well they were not that enthused especially since I had borrowed the money from my mother for the purchase. She expected more. It was less.

I particularly liked the 20-25 mpg fuel mileage it got and the handling which was light and different than the front engine cars I had driven til then. I genuinely LIKED the car, small, easy to park and cheap on gas it allowed me to wander into the Sierra foothills in search of trout spots along the fire trails that line the foothills and mountains near Beale. Im kept a light trout spinning rig and tackle bix in the car so that I was ready to go on friday night after work. I spent many weekends wandering the outback of the mountains and fishing lakes and streams I knew not the name of. Such was life at the time. It had the famous auxilary tank, really just a sump in the main one that allowed a person an extra 20-25 miles after you ran out of gas as it had no actual gas guage. Top speed was about 70 mph and would lug along at 3 or 4 mph thru the muddy fire roads that I found myself in almost every week, seldom getting stuck. The engine being over the driving wheels really made it a wonder in bad weather.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Automobiles, Cars and Piles of Junk Cont'd


The next chapter in my exploits as a car owner happened when my mother died in the spring of 1963. The Red Cross paid my way to her funeral in San Diego and I accompanied my grandmother and Harold back to Selma afterwards. I bought the Mercury from a used car lot in Selma. She was a shiny low mileage used 1956 Mercury 2 Dr. Hardtop in two-toned green, dark below light on top. Quite a nice ride she was and in top notch condition. I was determined to take her back to Keesler with me so I could explore Mississippi and Louisiana more easily on the weekends. They sent me on my way with a couple of ham sandwiches and some blankets to let me sleep in the car on my way to Keesler if I needed too. I drove down the 99 and headed out into the desert towards the old Route 66 that I was going to take east to my destination a couple of thousand miles away. I got as far as half way to Blythe across the icy cold desert when the Merc coughed and quit. I sat by the side of the road for a long while and finally signalled a car who stopped and gave me a ride to the nearest town where I called Harold for advice on the car. He told me to hold tight and he drove the 150 miles to fix it (blocked fuel filter) and take me to the Greyhound station in Selma the next afternoon to renew my trip back to the base. The Merc remained in Selma for a while. When I got my permanent duty assignment at Beale AFB I returned via air to Fresno, Harold picked me up in the newly waxed and cleaned spotless Mercury which I soon drove north to Beale AFB outside of Marysville. I got it licensed for use on the base and used it going back and forth to visit my parents and girl friends in Selma on weekends that I was able to. It got about 15 mpg and was fairly reliable as well, it looked nice and my dates appreciated that it got us to the skating rink and home again without either running out of gas or go due to crappy mechanicals like the old Ford often did. I put many thousands of miles parading that car all over northern California until one day on the way back to the base from Selma it died and Harold came the 60 miles to rescue me again. It was adios to the Merc, sold for parts now in the 8th year of it's existance. I bused my way back to the base on Sunday and bought a new car about a month later. The verdict: Another piece of junk.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Cars, Automobiles, Pieces of Junk

Cars, I've owned many since I was 16 years years old. The kids I knew in the little valley town of Selma, California ogled cars. Ate, slept and ran after cars. Walking the deserted downtown streets at night we'd stop at every newish car and check it out, tires, chrome, radios, upholstery, anything and everything. This was the era of the '55 Ford and Chevy's...very desireable then and more so now some 50 years later. The 56's were even better and our little town had a bunch of them, some with v8's that roared loudy through thier glass-pack mufflers as they sped by us after school. I abhored walking to school amidst the traffic so soon befriended a guy who owned such a car, a (Ford Futura 2 dr sedan) and then after we became fast friends. He'd pick me up the the morning for the 5 minute ride to the school parking lot, carefully pick out the choicest spot next to some giggly girls and there we'd be. I had picked out a Ford 4 dr sedan, as plain as day for my first venture into automobile ownership, it was 52 and as homely a car as I could imagine, but the price was right at $400 in 1960 dollars and thoroughly affordable. I had to convince my parents but they knew it was going to happen. When 15 1/2 yrs of age in the US of A or at least California a kid wants and NEEDS a car to have any status whatsoever. Besides it would mean they wouldn't have to pick me up after work at 2pm at the Selma Motel off highway 99 near Floral Avenue. It was "across the tracks" which meant in a bad neighborhood in those days so me alone out there walking home at night, not on a bet! My grandmother would never allow it. So my step-grandfather Harold came down in his '56 pink and white 2 door Buick Century to pick me up until I bought the Ford late one afternoon after school with my hard earned money. Now I had a car, the year was 1959. I was free, sort of.
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Here's one I found on the net for your viewing pleasure:

I used this car through my graduation at high school in 1961 and through by somewhat abbreviated college experience at the nearby Reedley College about 20 miles NE of Selma. It served me well enough, every other start took a jump or a push but it ran, sort of. Yes it was a V8, a flat head Ford. Verdict: This was a piece of junk.
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In the fall of 1962 I gave up on Reedley and joined one day the United States Air Force. The Ford was left behind to be sold as I certainly had no more use for a car.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Ill No More...

The damned cold, what IS it? Why do we get these awful things and why, oh why do they hang around so long? What a bore, it has taken me completely out of action until today...and this was from last Tuesday, not this very last one, but the one before that. Awful. Anyway we are both better now and resuming our normal activity level, whatever that is. Why in this world of AIDS, Influenza, Polio, Smallpox etc do we still have the Common Cold? Why? Is it because it's the precursor to all the others? Or is it because the companies don't want to focus thier efforts on such a minor and common infection? Who knows, but I find it boring and annoying to say the least.
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I went into the shop today to check out the machines and be sure they were as normal as normal is in this on-line world. They passed muster sort of after I finished examining them with AdAware and CCleaner my two favorite utilities for keeping machines happy and healthy. I grew worried as I was too damned sick last Thursday to do anything useful so stayed away from the shop in deference to giving the damnable cold to anyone therein. So taday I worried a bit of what I would find. I did find some minor ad crap and the AdAware engine found them and cleaned them off as it does.
I highly recomend these two programs to be in your toolbox to keep your machine running as it should in this ever dangerous on-line world. Both are free, or at least have free editions that are evry effective and are easy to use.
Here are the URL's for them.
1. CCleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/
2. AdAware: http://www.lavasoft.com/single/trialpay.php
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The dredge is done, it has pulled back to the main channel and we now have a greater depth under our dock than anytime in the recent past. It wasn't very disturbing except at night when the drone, at times, seemed to be loud enough to wake the dead. The dredging crew helped us move our boats back to the docks after they were finished with out cul-de-sac and all in all did a fabulous job. Hooray for them!
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The depression mounts, there's more bad news daily and while the US Legislature has voted to bail the auto makers Chrysler and General Motors out; the US Senate is busy making deals. We shall see what we see, the companies can always declare bankrupcy chapter this-or-that and that would give them lots of breathing room. Maybe it'd be better that way as having some beaurocrat in the government that I know will be a professional politician rather than an automotive specialist gives me little hope that it'll work.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

A Site For Sore Eyes

Try this site for a bit of non-family style entertainment, a Real Time Side Show!
http://www.adamsblock.com/

What is THIS? Well friends it is LIVE video with sound from a certain neighborhood in SF. To say "seedy side of town" is not to cover how actually terrible a location it is. Avoid at all costs...even in your car! Carjackings, robberies and mayhem of all sorts emanate from this place. It has been this way as long as I have had an affiliation with the wonderful city of San Francisco, California and I don't see any change these days worthy of mention. The denizens of this section of the SF forest are in dire straits and thier various needs can cause great personal calamity to the general public. BEWARE! And be wary at the same time. To view this from afar is a GOOD thing. Up close it is tragic, frightening and otherworldly all at once. I used to venture into this "hood" now and again because of my line of work at the time, it is very near City Hall and there was a large computer center therein. Parking was always a hasstle, especially at night and it forced people off onto certain streets in that all so familiar hunt. I've had bottles, 1/2 filled, empty and full thrown at me, my truck and can hear the echos of the tinkling glass shards as it bounces off the sidewalk. A hell of a place. Whores of all sorts, some with fancy business cards with rates on the other side of the card frequent the stop lights and corners. Pimps ride around with the ever loud Thumpa, thumpa, thump from their over speakered back seats. Bums ly idle on the sidewalks day and night, some with tins out to collect thier hard won alms, others just sleep it off. Broken glass, old newspapers, 1/2 drank beer bottles...a real San Francisco Post Card that you will never see in the shops in Union Square or Pier 39. This is The Underbelly.
See any police cars? Wait...and watch.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

The Dredges Are Coming! The Dredges Are Coming!


Yes they...rather IT is. Soon to a cul-de-sac near you...really near us, our cul-de-sac of water and mud and birds and docks is to be dredged sometime between now and the weekend. The dredge and a mile of pipe behind it is roaring away a watery cul-de-sac away from ours back towards Pierce Island where the dredge tailings are being pumped onto. What a project this is, this time is our third since first being dredged some 12 years ago, seems like yesterday. You see whomever dreamed up these 43 homes on this island-become-peninsula had no plan to keep the water feature created by their fine earthworks from becoming clogged with the inevitable silt from a creek that flows into the bay nearby. That was in 1978 or so, the same year most of these houses were built in the Marina district of Suisun City. Of course, the silt came and by the time we bought this place in 1988, some 20 years ago, the water that makes up it's backyard was ever so much shallower (is that a word? Well you know what I mean) than it started out to be some 10 years before. We enjoyed it then too as the herons, egrets, ducks, geese, sandpipers all came at low tide to fish and gambol at the tide line twice a day. It was quite a sight. High water then was a barely adequate for boats of 3 feet (1 meter) or so. At this same time (1988 fall) our fair city began to contemplate a huge renewal project that would encompass not only many features of the buildings of our little gem of a city but also its watery front step in Suisun Slough.

Because our subdivision (The Marina District) was on private property (the 43 home owners) we had to convince the City of Suisun of the necessity of dredging our backyards when they dredged their waters. Kelly and a neighbor, Jim took on the many interested agencies, the EPA, The Army Corps of Engineers, The State Lands Commission, The Bay Conservation and Development Commission et al. It took them literally YEARS to obtain all the necessary permissions and then there was the ongoing difficulty of keeping Suisun's own government interested in our plight as well. Needless to say Kelly and Jim were a force to reckon with, the timing was set and the first dredging took place in the fall of 1996. There was a second dredging 6 years ago that further cleaned out the cul-de-sacs of the accumulations and now, once agian it is underway and about to do ours. Here's Suisun's Home Page:
http://www.ci.suisun-city.ca.us/About/Profile/CommunityProfile.html

Monday, December 01, 2008

A Long Time Ago In A Land NOT So Far Away...


Ring goes the door bell, brrring....brringggg! I rush to the door pulling on my pants as I go, not a nudist but I typically are minimally clothed when I get up for my morning coffee such I am. Figuring the pusher of the doorbell MUST be the new (third) stove having arrived I openned the door. I looked and stared and the brain reeled! My Gawd! Steve! My olde friend Steve, long a companion via email, he my buddy from days in the distant past. Amazing! "Come in, come in!", I didn't know whether to shit or go blind! (pardon the expresion please) A complete surprise of the best kind! And it was just as though we had seen each other yesterday though it has been at least 28 years since these eyes have laid actual SIGHT on him! We aren't the same age anymore. I last saw him in Seattle in the spring of 1980 when I had my son Mike with me coming back from a CDC school in Minneapolis. I stopped to see how my old buddy Steve was and found him well and busy running a computer maintenance service. We stayed a couple of days and then climbed back on the train to SF. Now here he was at my kitchen table all chatty and in healthy looking happiness. We spoke of our kids and reviewed our present lives against each others, in depth soulful talk about families and kids and work and play. All good. I married him and his first wife Sherry on a cliff high above Stinson Beach long before his first children arrived. Now he has many children scattered like chaff throughout America and grandbabies too, like Kelly and I. Oh how time flies when your having fun! We chatted away for a couple of hours and many cups of strong black coffee from our Jura Espresso maker. Somehow the talk got off onto Energy, it's cost and how cold we keep our houses...and we soon found ourselves on Highway 12 headed towards Rio Vista to see the Wind farm at Colinsville. Amazing these things are, A hundred feet tall to the generator with blades 75 and 100 feet long, three of them, graceful and quiet almost supernatural, certainly otherworldly. We got out of the Prius and stared at the towers and spoke of how beautiful they were in this rolling scenery. Then back into the car and along the winding dirt road to spy a sheep farm filled with ewes and thier little lamb charges.


Wonderful! So very cute and frisky! Steve took photos with his cell phone and we headed back to Suisun.
I gave him a cup or so of sourdough starter and my recipe for Whole Weed Nut Bread (not sour dough) to use in his bread machine. And amid many goodbye and so longs and promises to visit again he was gone. What a wonderful thing friendship is. Thanks Steve, thanks!

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thanksgiving 2008 In The Hills



Thanksgiving was a wonderful experience all around. We got up (thanks to Audrey for the multiple wake up calls) at 6am Thursday morning and showered and dressed for our trip south to the ranch. Audrey showed up about 7:00am and we packed the car, drank a copious quantity of coffee and headed for the hills. The fog was rather thick between Suisun and the 5 freeway some 30 miles east of here which slowed our progress a bit. Once on I5 We headed south in rather light traffic at a quite decent clip and l'viola the fog cleared by 8:30 and we jetted along towards the turnoff to Merced to visit hospital bound Uncle Jack. We arrived exactly at the right hour, 10 am, and spent about an hour chatting among the gathered relatives (Kelly's cousins) and Uncle Jack, now 94, presided over the event. He was charming and friendly as ever and always had a twinkle and a jokester's mood in his speech. He's Kelly's uncle on the Lixwiler side of the family. Afterwards we fell in line driving eastward out of Merced towards the Sierra foothills to J&A's stone house in the hills. The road going up was the MOST potholed, damaged, flooded out disaster of a road I've ever driven on for so long a time. 10 mph was a good rate but I sped to 25 occasionally to test both the shock absorbers and my tooth fillings. The countryside was gorgeous. the grasses green and the cattle shiny black, and the dark green almost black live oak trees dotted the landscape high and low.
It took about an hour to make the 18 mile drive to the entrance to the ranch. The gate was open and we drove through onto a smooth dirt road with about 2 miles to go to get to the house itself. The lake was very low with a huge blue heron fishing from the shallows. The usual gathering at the cars commenced, happy chatter and questions ensued and I realized we hadn't been there in 10 years. We all gathered inside the house and had a substantial lunch of clam chowder in rustic french bread bowls, delicious and very, very filling! Burp! After lunch, not to rest and prepare for the dinner to come some 6 hours later we "took a little walk".
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Out of the ranch house into the meandering cattle trails and access roads of the 6000 acre property we went like a herd of turtles. Up and down the hilly and sometimes muddy track we went ogling at the trees, rocks and magnificent scenery of the ranch. Down the hill to the tuolumne river. Audrey and I broke off from the rest and spent time together photographing the environs, finding much to see and she laughed out loud at my throwing of large rocks down the gully into the water below. Overland to see some miner's stone cabins built in the 1840's when there was gold in these hills to be had for lots of back breaking and sometimes thankless as well as worthless work. We climbed up the hill to the dense oak forest and the grinding rocks used by the Indians, long since gone, for grinding acorns for food.




We crossed another creek and climbed yet another hill to spy a distant lake and watch the hawks circling overhead. We came upon a carcass of a recently dead cow, maybe killed by a broken leg or some other misstep of fortune, now a meal for a family of large buzzards it's bloody rib cage splayed out before us. Back along the fence line of which there are many to divide the property so cattle cannot wander everywhere unchecked, we came finally to the house about 2 hours after we left having walked a distance that felt like 10 miles but was actually about 3. A good hike, my hips complained but we sat in the living room of the stone mansion and drank beers and whiskey and filled the rest of the afternoon with happy family chatter. About 6 we all sat down to a wonderful meal of Turkey, mashed potatoes, Waldorf salad, peas and onions in a mini-pumpkin, a swell white wine, rolls and butter, a lovely green salad. We ate like kings! What a feast! We all spoke of dinners past, other family gatherings and the future of our dear beloved United States amidst this financial disaster.
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7 trillion dollars now in bailout monies...what? 7,000,000,000,000 is the number but what does it mean? That is a subject for another time I'm sure but not now. If I've forgotten some zeros, I apologize, it's easy to do with numbers like these!
10 to the 12th Power
(1 000 000 000 000; 10004; short scale: one trillion; long scale: one billion)
ISO: tera- (T)
BioMed — Bacteria on the human body: the surface of the human body houses roughly 1012 bacteria.[1]
Mathematics: 1.1×1012 - The approximate number of known non-trivial zeros of Riemann zeta function as of August 2005[update].[4]
Mathematics — Known digits of pi: As of 2002, the number of known digits of pi was 1 241 100 000 000.
Marine biology: 3,500,000,000,000 - estimated population of fish in the ocean.
BioMed — Cells in the human body: the human body consists of roughly 1014 cells, of which only 1013 are human.[2][3] The remainder of the cells are bacteria, which mostly reside in the gastrointestinal tract, although the skin is also covered in bacteria.
Computing - MAC-48: 281,474,976,710,656 (248) possible unique physical addresses.
Mathematics: 953,467,954,114,363 is the largest known Motzkin prime.
Computing — magnetic storage: 1TB largest 3.5inch hard disk as of 2007.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

An Apple Pie for Thanksgiving

A good, decent American Holiday with tons of history, a great simple cuisine and excuses to get out on that ol' highway and head for someone else's place to eat. Just what we had in mind. So off tomorrow morning at the break of dawn (anything for a free meal!) to Kelly's cousin's place in the foothills of Central California we go... daughter dearest Audrey in tow. They live on a 6000 acre cattle ranch east of Merced in an large old stone house built about 1850 during the gold rush. We have been there many times but never on this most charming of holidays. We will bring a bit of Wild Turkey whiskey for she and her cowboy husband. They don't own the ranch, just caretake it and have for about 15 years now. In addition to the cattle ranching operation he runs a specialty hunting business thereon serving mostly asian clientele (Japanese, Korean, and others). He has a shooting range for practice sessions, all the guns a person could want or use and enough ammunition to take on a Russian brigade. And...he's a dead on shot just like my wonderful wife. I am shooting challenged but good enough to have shot and killed a wild boar with a 45/70 black powder rifle on his land one year. He hunts deer and boar and the million or so ground squirrels that inhabit his lands and it is great fun to say the very least. We had the good fortune one visit to see him and his son "riding the range" herding severel hundred beef cattle to new grazing land along with his group of Australian Sheppards trained to keep them in with the herd. We sat in our car as they moved past us off to the pasture in the distance. He even chews tobacco! Where's the spitoon?! Nearby if he's in the house, that's for sure. When out among his charges and the chores of the ranch he comes in at noon time to watch on satellite TV his favorite soap opera "All My Children". Yes, a slice of Americana for sure. I'm baking an apple/ginger tart to share tomorrow at the feast. I'll get pictures of the event for your enjoyment.
Now for the Apple Tart Recipe:

APPLE FILLING PREP:
2 qt saucepan
6-7 medium apples of your choice, Granny Smith, Fuji or Braeburn. Peeled, cored and sliced thinly ( 1/8 inch max )
1 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
1" piece of fresh ginger cut into thin slices.
Water to cover the apples, approx 4 cups.

THE CRUST:
2 cubes of butter, 8 oz very cold. Cut into small pieces.
2 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/2 cup very cold water
Makes 2 crusts.
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Chill the flour, butter ahead of time, at least one hour in the refrigerator
In a bowl place the four and 1 1/2 cube of butter pieces (save 1/2 a cube for the filling itself) and cut them into the flour until the mix looks like small pebbles or grains, no more than 5 minutes...work fast.
Add the chilled water a bit at a time until the flour/butter mixture barely holds together on a wooden spoon. Place 1/2 of the dough on a piece of waxed paper about twice as long as the dough mixture is. Fold and seal the waxed paper over the dough and refrigerate for one hour or longer. Do the same with the remaining mass of dough. Makes 2 crusts remember?
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Meanwhile, core, peel and slice the apples and place in a quart pot with 4 cups water and the sliced ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. Put the pot over low heat to simmer. Cook til "al-dente" about 30 minutes. Drain the apples with a colander, save the liquid. Allow the apples to cool.
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough to 1/8th inch and place in a well greased tart pan. Trim the dough to the pan edge, top with 2 sheets of waxed or parchment paper. Fill with beans, rice or ceramic marbles. Place in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or til lightly browned. Remove, allow to cool 10 minutes.
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Fill the pie shell with the apples, diced chilled butter and about 2 oz of the reduced apple liquor from the cooking of the apples. Sprinkle liberally with sugar, Place into 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Enjoy!
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Photos of The Ranch




Saturday, November 22, 2008

Roast Turkey! No...BBQ Beef! What? Outrage!

The #$$#@! Stove Story, well it goes like this...I personally with malice and forethought killed the lovely self-cleaning GE Signature in-wall stove by totally FRYING it's gas igniter device to the point it could not even be replaced! No shit! The self=cleaning feature always worked so well, I didn't do it often but maybe once every two months. I LIKE evenness in stoves so had inserted a large 18" square 1.5" thick ceramic kiln shelve as a heat sink. I did this on the very bottom and it was the maximum size I could fit in the box that was this particular stove. I enjoyed it very much as it was capable of >500 degree temps within a 1/2 hour and at that temp I could do quite good homemade pizzas and breads. The large ceramic surface was the cooking surface and heatsink for the oven little did I know that it had blocked the heat vents from the gas burner underneith. I used it often and did the self-cleaning feature about every other month to cleanup my messes. Last March I made a terrific mess in the stove with a lassagna thaT OVERFLOWED IT'S DISH and thus did a cleaning cycle afterwards, the one that fried the ignitor and left the stove unable to light at all. Damn. I called in a repair guy when I couldn't free the ignitor from it's receptacle. He worked for 2 solid hours trying to extracate the bloody ignitor thing to no avail. I paid him his 70 dollar fee and gave up on it. So we went to France knowing we would replace it when we got back. In the first week of October we orderred a new replacement oven, one very similar to the now dead GE only made by Maytag. It was to come from Michigan. It arrived about three weeks after it was orderred and upon Kelly's inspection the rear corner was bashed in, not just a little, it was totally uninstallable. So we refused the thing after calling the company and reporting the damage and the trucker left with it. Goodbye stove, goodbye pizzas. The company reassured us that a new one was being orderred and we would see it in about three more weeks...in time for Thanksgiving. Sure I thought and thus planned the meal I told you about BBQ'd beef instead of turkey. Time went on, two then three weeks and then another big rig arrived. This time was different, the driver saw the box from the hydralic lift gate and said himself..."You gunna refuse this one too I imagine", sure enough, the entire front end, glass doors and all were smashed and hanging inthe crate. Shit. (French word Merde...mare-duh). So I signed the slip of paper he presented and wrote as I did a few weeks before "Refused" across it. This time I called the company and asked them to personally inspect the bloody thing there before it got here...and double crate it and I would happily pay for such, the reassured me that the WOULD do these things THIS time and here we are. I will BBQ the beef tomorrow and hope the damned thing arrives sometime before Christmas in one piece. We shall see.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Computer Chatter



I dunno if anyone cares but my whole working life was a curious mix of the computer industry, IBM (yes), a small company in Long Island, NY called Potter Instrument Company and my last one Control Data Corporation. I worked in an IBM plant in San Jose, CA right out of the USAF and during this time wound up getting trained as a field engineer working in San Francisco and environs. Not just a job believe me, thoroughly entertaining and at times impossible. The City (As SF is known locally and elsewhere) was a bustling place full of people, cars, buses, noise, dirt and panhandlers. I was a young man with a starter family who lived in Stinson Beach about 25 miles away along the northern coast. I loved it there. We moved there shortly after my son Michael was born, from Campbell near San Jose in the fall of 1968. It was a small (660 sq. ft!) ex-tent house from early in the 20th century. Built on a platform flat on the sand. It became a house at some time in the past with 4 tiny rooms and thin walls coverred with lath and plaster. The outside was lap siding which we painted grey with white trim, our elephant look. It remained cool and wet most every day and suited both my mood and need for refuge from the chaos of the Streets of San Francisco sans Karl Malden from the TV show of the same name.
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The computers that challenged my patience and intellect at that time were room-fillers to be sure, huge 7 foot tall black boxes that roared with the sound of fans and gears. Complex beyond belief and prone to both errors and outright failure at any time. One spent a goodly portion of each working day in study of the modes of failure and in acts called Preventative Maintenance aka PM designed to stem the flow of Incident Reports aka IRs to the main office. My friend SC worked at the same location that I did in downtown SF, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company aka PT&T and we grew to be best friends and co-workers. Days were spent cleaning filters, vacuuming the frames and checking voltages of the 360/50 and 360/65 processors and thier related periferals. Huge racks of reference books in dark blue matching covers lined the edges of the equally huge main room. It was always cold therein, these things needed airconditioning just to stay powered up as they had extensive heat sensors to detect overtemperature conditions in each section of the machine.
Humans came in second in this multi-million dollar computer facility thus we froze except when we roasted.
More to come...

Life in The Center of France...NOT!

I'm missing my friends in France, the comaraderie, laughs, concerns and, of course the random gossip. We said "two weeks" when we left, smiling and waving at A&R at the train station as we pulled out like a scene from an old movie. Then once back in warm, golden California (it's the weeds that are baked golden folks!) France faded into a lovely memory of warm afternoons with friends over a local wine, our ex-pat studded dinner parties and drives to the weekend brocantes (junk sales). Even now though if I open my Picassa application and see the France label my tale wags. Open an image and stare at it like a kid at a candy store window. Oh the flowers, the green hills, the forests, the old men and their loaves of warm bread, the old women brooming off their front steps. I'm here but part of me is there. I now spend some minutes every day looking up fares from San Francisco to good ol' CDG hoping for the oh-so-rare bargain fare. No luck yet. A return date is hard to pin down now too as we have decided that we will move into the Little House at 907 Suisun Street when the current tenant vacates which will be who-knows-when-though-we-are-trying. That last mouthful is because the lovely tenant failed to pay any rent this month (was due on the 1st and now it's the 20th) and we gave her a 3 day notice last week to pay rent or quit...that's what it's called here to no particular avail.
Actually we enlisted the services of a lawyer to do the job for us at a cost of about 1 months rent, so now we are poorer by 2 months rent. They presented her with a Unlawful Detainer summons tocourt on Tuesday which gives her 5 days to answer to the court in person before they hail the Sherrif (not of Nottingham but of Solano)
to evict her and her wares from our new living place. Complicated isn't it? It's really terrible, I don't know what has gone wrong with her life but something obviously but she never answerred our phone calls or pleaded anything to us in mercy of her situation so we did what we have done. I don't like it, she's been in the place and taken good care of it inside with new paint and repairs as she went along these last six years. I balked at first at the action but now...it's done and I'm getting excited to move in and fix up the ancient old place! We LOVE projects! It will be one that's for sure. Unlawful Detainer...hmmmmmm.
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Oh...cool new site feature: http://kukuklok.com/ an online alarm clock for all you that keep your machine on 24/7. Simple to use, set the wake up time, choose which alarm you want...cock, clock, electronic or metal guitar and as long as the bloody machine doesn't belly up or the electricity fails you will have an ontime alarming experience. Lute says 4 Stars for this simple but very cool and useful net app!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Bread Making Madness


I grew very tired of 4 dollar whole wheat bread at the supermarket. It was preposterous. So we checked out bread machines on the good ol' iNet and learned quite enough to make a sound purchasing decision. We struck out to search the local used goods thrift stores for a suitable one in good shape. The first we went to had none, not a one...the next had one but it looked like it's best baking days were twenty years ago so on we went and at the lovely Thrift Center on West Texas Street in Fairfield we found one that looked as though it had never been used! No manual but we figured correctly that the manual would be available on-line from the manufacturers site. Kelly then found a dynamite whole wheat recipe and away we went to make delicious, homemade whole wheat breads for far less than the 4 dollar price the market wanted. Cost per loaf, about $1.35. Cheap these days.
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Then I gre curious about the making of sourdough breads. Why? Well here in The Bay Area sourdough bread is endemic, found everywhere in all kinds of forms, bagettes, rolls, pizza dough, bagels (really!). Thus I have undertaken the creation of my own starter ( 1 cup of bread flour, one cup of water ) and at this very minute have the beginnings of tonights hamberger buns becoming dough in the bread machine. So far it looks good, nice round all togther wonderful shape. Next to allow it to rise in the machine, drop it out, shape it into rolls and bake. We shall see. Sourdough, according to experts, takes much patience, more than ordinary bread making as the yeast is slow to burp thus making the bread slow to rise. I'm going to let it rise in the bread machine itself as it maintains a warmth that is beneficial to the rise time. Home after a quick trip to the store and a round about town to check out foreclosure-looking sales posted on houses...not many about at this time. The dough just sat there while we were gone, I saw no doubling or maybe even 10%...but it is pretty and I hand cut the dough into quarters and formed them to make hamburger buns, we shall see. May be hockey pucks when they are baked.
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Sometime later...
We have hockey pucks! Rise? What rise? Except one that had trapped air in it and blew up to a small round object that looked deceptively like a loaf of bread sort-of.
Alas upon sawing it open the hole was discoverred and the texture was that of so much flour and water cooked to a consistency of hard rubber. So much for sourdough bread making for the Unthanksgiving lunch upcoming this Sunday. Back to whole wheat for now.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Money, Money, Money

The recession in our house is in full swing, we have a balky renter, can't or won't pay. That sets us back about 1200 bucks a month in income, not good. We won't starve, but it's far from ideal. Kelly called a lawyer and before long he had taken the case, it's more complicated than normal rentals as it's really a sub-lease of the original renter who never actually stayed in the house. Odd but true. Nontheless we will have them out shortly with any luck. Our plan is to move into that house this winter and in turn rent this one so we can eventually sell that one down the road a bit. It has to do with taxation in our country, you need to actually LIVE in a place for 2 years before you can sell it without staggering financial penalty.
I've begun baking bread(s), bought a nice bread machine and acquired a basic whole wheat recipe with which to practice. The first few loaves were basic doorstops, bricks, lumps...not good. But the instruction manual had ways to repair the loaves the next time, add a bit of this if it looked this way and take away a bit of that if it looks another way. I spent the better of last week trying this and that and over a course of about 10 loaves came up with honest, delicious whole wheat bread.
I will post the recipe for those interested.
Here goes!
Whole Wheat Nut Bread
for Bread Machines:
5 oz (5/8 cup) 7 grain cereal mix
10 oz plus 1 Tablespoon hot water
Combine these for one hour.
14 oz (1 3/4 cup) Bread Flour (high glutin)
4 oz (1/2 Cup) Whole Wheat Flour
2 1/2 Tablespoons Honey
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 Tablespoon salt
3 oz (3/8 cup) crushed nut meats.

There you go. Combine the water with the cereals for about 1 hr until the temperature falls to below 110 degrees F. Add all ingredients except the yeast, add it last (on top of the rest). Turn on your machine and go play. The results are well worth your efforts. Delicious with a fine crumb.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

The Times They Are A Changin'

For sure I got my dream ticket into office! Hallelujah! A fresh breath of air after 8 years of fear and dread. The largess of the American people came through all the rhetoric, nasty lies and fabrications to see into the future and realize a BIG change was needed at the top. Congress is a Demo majority as is the Senate, noit the perfect storm of 60 that we wanted but that will likely change again in two more years when some other senators come up for reelection. The Rebublican Party is in deep reflection now trying to sort out their direction and associations and that will take a while. John McCain will go back to the Senate to heal and fight the good fight for what he believes in while dear Sarah Palin will return to Alaska to serve out her last two years as Govenor OR work her way into running a campaign for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by the convicted criminal Stevens as the Demos will want to vote him out of his seat and many Republicans will do likewise...too big a smear on themselves if he's allowed to remain in the senate after his conviction. Then Sarah will use her experience as a VP runner to win the Senate seat from the Democrat and go on to a 4 year career in the senate as a junior senator. 2012 comes around and who knows what she'll do...but I BET the Republican Party won't want anything to do with her. Too embarrassing for words. Yes Sarah, Africa is a C-O-N-T-I-N-E-N-T, NOT a country. Boy. Like I said earlier, Hallelujah!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

A New America Begins Today

Just the sense of Hope that I see on the faces of the persons heading into the city hall building to vote...hope filled to overflowing today the 4th of November, 2008.
We will elect a bright, shiny new 44th President of these United States. It will be a landslide for Obama, at least that's my prediction. We may get greater than 65% of the registered voters to the polls, maybe even break the record of 66% just because the interest has grown so very much over this two year election cycle, that and the promise of a new administration with a different agenda. I too am hopeful, hopefull for diplomacy betweeen the world's nations and our own. That a long, tedious and un-needed way in Iraq will soon be over and we can REALLY support our troops by bringing them home in one piece. Hopeful that we can begin to take care of our citizens like other modern countries do, with a national healthcare system that actually works FOR the people instead of the pharmacutical companies and HMO's.
That indeed we can make companies who send our labor overseas pay for that previlege.
People who are rich should pay more taxes, not less...they made it largely on the backs of the poor and dwindling middle class. That hope will reach to our schools, bring modernization and improvemnts to the actual pedagogy instead of the endless testing regimin of No Student Left Behind. Hope that our elderly will be cared for, that our infant mortality rate can be improved. All of these things that have apparently been shelved over the last decade. I wish us all the hope I saw in the eyes of those voters this morning, and if you didn't vote, shame on you.
Best of Luck Mr. Obama, best of luck!

Monday, November 03, 2008

Election Day 2008!

Tomorrow is The Day! We can throw the Republikan jerks out and get on with putting our Beloved United States back together again. The bastards are getting what they deserved all along...the entire last 8 years have been filled with dishonesty from the White House, lies and fabrications galore to set into place the Bush/Cheney Manifesto of hate and fear. Enough Brave Americans, tomorrow we take our country back! Go Obama and Biden!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Two Weeks

Not exactly...but I'm (We're) getting homesick for Lignieres. 5 weeks IN (as we call being Here instead of There) and we are nicely, completely bored to death. Yes.
Why? We'll there is the damned old isolation we feel when we are ensconsed herein. In California we are left alone to do our own thing...oh soooo Californian. Yes we have friends and yes they are telephoning and going to lunch with Kelly (I miss out) and we have seen our one set of grandchildren but the other remains ellusive (as they are) and other friends haven't even contacted us though they KNOW we are here.
So that's the story. There's lots to do here, this coming Sunday we are headed for the hills, Lake Tahoe to be exact and will be taking Audrey with us AFTER we visit the huge farmer's marche in Sacramento and go to the Crocker Musee as well. Busy, see...but still bored as this is all familiar and we have, after all, lived here 90% of our lives. France is still new, different and exciting in so many ways, besides there's the language problem. Great fun! Always seeing new (olde) stuff and visiting with new friends with so many stories to share! See...different. We told eveyone we'd see them in 2 weeks, well it's 5 and our hearts if not our bodies are indeed in France.

The election here in 10+ days is a high point though the outcome is not very much in doubt. Senator B. Obama will become the 44th President of the United States if my count is correct. What a miserable job that will be this time around. Some of what he will have to do will NOT be popular, that I know...but what a breath of fresh political air it will be. A whole bright, shiny new administration to screw things up, wonderful! Aren't I realistic? Enough FEAR, let's move past FEAR and the Bush Doctrine to something else. Good idea.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Gotta Write Something!

Just gotta! All it takes is a degree of motivation...you know, sign on,put in that damned password and start in...but it is SOOOOO hard sometimes. I dry up. Not that this place isn't as interesting as France (it isn't), it just is so very different in so may ways. The people...lots of differences there, just as friendly but they are all moing faster and seem to have less time for you. Many, many different nationalities and races, far more than our nearly all white French experience in remote Lignieres. The political season has caused people to stump for thier candidate of choice even at the grocery checkout stand. I. of course, am an Obama fan...he will be GREAT! McCain is a real patriot, that I will hand him. Alas, there are no new ideas from the "maverick McCain and Palin" duo. They sound like Bushies and I think we've had quite enough of that political disaster thank you! Let Obama scre it up for a while. I wouldn't want that shitty job that's for sure. Economy in the toilet, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, national debt at an all time high, foreclosures, a general bad attitude about us the world over and our hegemony among the world nations is in a not so sudden decline. But there IS some good personal news for me, my medical checkup at Kaiser was a winner! Good test results from every orfice! Whoopee! AND...I have managed to write to my long lost grandchild K who is 17 and was taken from me before I could get to know her by yet another divorce. Shit! Anyway, she wrote back and I have done likewise and now I have 5 GC's! Sooo cool!
So why don't I seem to fret over the financial condition of my bloody country? Well poopsie...I can't do one damned thing about it except suffer the inevitable crash of crashes can I? Do I own stock? Oh yes and between Kelly and I we have LOST 14,000 USD from our IRA's (Individual Retirement Accounts) to date...more to come probably.
If we bail out we will lose that money without a doubt. If we stay then the dividends will roll over quarterly and we will be buying more of the now cheapened shares. You know the drill. So we will tighten the belt, eat, drink and be merry with our friends and observe the disaster as it unwinds before us. Patience is called for at times like these.
The there is my good friend Woodslug, he emailed me after weeks of silence saying he needs a new motherboard for his computer. I have asked why he thinks this is so but haven't recieved a reply YET. Gads. Life goes on.
Bye for now,
H

Friday, October 10, 2008

Consorts with Blue Jays

Yes she does! They come to the small kitchen patio sseking food which is always there aplenty then they peck vigorously on the slifing glass door glass...knock, knock...knock...knock! Fur-Rr_Ee Queen-of-Kats looks over at her new friends from the water bowl and slowly walks to the open screen door. The jays, two each, stare but do not move from their perch near the door on the edge of a long planter. Fur-Rr_Ee slowly creeps through the door onto the tile of the patio and stops. She looks towards the birds and they sit there looking back, no motion from either party.
Then with a loud Squawk! The birds leap to the small tile table and stare down at Furry on the ground below them. A challenge! Come get us! Let's play! Squawk! And they fly to the garden a few feet away amidst the dry and dead grasses and branches broken off from the line tree. Furry creeps low to the edge of the patio and stops, the birds squawk again! Furry weinds up her rump like Kats do...and off sher goes paws flying in the air to grab one of the ellusive jays. Without success she stops to reset herself back on the patio above the "ring" where all the action happens. Then the birds fly down again and Furry once again winds up her rump and away she goes! Amazing! This has gone on now for the last week or so, the birds are seen here about this time of year but rarely does one see interaction like this between species. Hopefully I'll get to capture some of these shenanigans before the birds head further south.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Neutrality , Diplomacy, what? How?

Obama for President! Did you watch the deer-in-the-headlights performance last night? Or maybe it was a moose! Anyway, ol' Palin doll looked pretty good until she started talking then it soon fell apart...logic that is. McCain sure knows how to pick them. But the deal wasn't lost last night, it was lost when the stock market took the 778 point dive a week ago. That was it. Killer. So now Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden get to figure out just where to start in the train wreck of a country. Money counts so I guess it has to be some patchwork to breathe life back into the ol' wheezer. The House past the Senates pork-laden bill last night as well so now that part is in place, I wonder what it will do for ol' Joe Six-Pack?! Not much I suspect as most of the bailout will get into the hands of those Wonders of Wall Street that created this mess in the first place with the help of the current administration. We need REGULATION of the money markets in this country ( what ever happened to the SEC?), we need an end to the damnable war in Iraq (Get onto Afghanistan please!), we need a National Health Care system run by Kiaser Permanente (Burocracy already in place) and improvements to the passenger rail system throughout the US. So there! What comes next I cannot imagine but it should be interesting.
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Adventure at Larry's. Larry's is a smallish roughly constructed outbuilding that houses a veritable cornucopia of fresh vegetables during this time of year. It is about 5 miles out of Suisun in Green Valley. It is a wonderful place, dirt and cement fl;oors, wheel barrows for carts and piles and piles of every vegetable known to man and a few that I don't know WHAT they are! A fantastic place and a great social experiment too...the place is filled with caucasians, indians, mexicans, chinese, japanese...the works, thai's, vietnamese, I mean the whole bloody WORLD comes to Larry's to buy vegies both fresh and cheap! We bought the usual plus a small crate of beautiful strawberries so I can make a strawberry sorbet for tomorrows dinner extravaganza AND a BOX of tomatoes, 20 lbs worth. I'm making basic tomatoe sauce so I have local tomatos in my sauces during the winter to come. The basic sauce before salt, pepper and spices so it can be made into various taste profiles upon thawing. Many pints will be made today.
Recipe:
Lute's Basic Tomatoe Sauce
2 large red or white onions, 1/4" diced
4 stalks celery, sliced lenthwise into 4 then diced
1 carrot cut lenthwise into 4 and diced 1/4"
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 lbs roma or other ripe tomatoes, diced 1/2"
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Saute the onions for 5 minutes in a large pot with the olive oil. Medium heat please, do NOT brown the onions, just wilt them.
Add the celery and carrot and allow to cook 10 minutes.
Add the diced tomatoes and lower the heat, cook for 1 hour.
Allow to cool and decant into freezer containers (1 pint size is good for 2 people)
and freeze. You now have a good basic sauce to use for spaghetti with meat balls, enchilladas, lasagna etc. Saves time too for those weedday quick meals.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

A Hot Saturday Afternoon

93 American degrees here, it is HOT, HOT, HOT. Not humid but warm enough that you appreciate being indoors out of the sun. Audrey came down yesterday afternoon to watch the McCain / Obama debate with us, frankly I thought it was interesting but nothing was going to change my mind anyway. McCain seemed relaxed and easy going, unflustered and answered the questions well. Obama seemed more organized and completely at ease with himself. Not big differences from all I heard. We sat out in the sunroom til dark and chatted away.
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This morning Audrey and I tore into the pool filter/pump system, actually turned it on and got the water to flow a bit. Then we openned up the route to the rooftop solar heating device and l'Viola! A waterfall! A 1.5" plastic pipe had pulled loose and thus delivered a rather substancial quantity of H2O into the roof gutter which promptly backed up as it was blocked by a sequence of bird nests and overflowed simulating a 8 foot replica of Niagra Falls. Nice. So up we went, saw the break and realized that the black PVC had SHRUNK from the sun exposure and pulled completely out of the rubber fitting that joined it to the solar array. Off to ACE Hardware to get the needed pipe, glue and misc for the fix. Back, we climbed up tools in hand and proceeded to cut in a section of new pipe and glued it into place with solid couplers. Now wait two hours for testing. Kelly and Audrey took off for the grocery store to acquire the needed items for tonights experimental food meal.
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I tested the new pipe before they returned to find another break at the low pressure return, sunlight had crystallized the plastic joint at a turn and it had sheared off...another waterfall Niagra-like ensued. I went back on the roof and retrieved the failed pipe/joint and all and brought it down to measure for replacement. Audrey and Kelly returned I helped them unload the car them Audrey and I, once again, took off for ACE Harware to get 2" pipe, 90 degree joints and a 1.5 - 2" adapter. Back once again we assembled the replacement after cutting it to length
and away we went, all good. Now we await the cure of the glue and testing about 4:30.
We shall see whatelse needs fixing, won't we?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

What Communist Country Is This?!

Socialism for the rich is what the Wall Street Bailout of some 700 BILLION (with a B) dollars is in effect. Let the good ol' boys who wanted all that they got in the way of Bush Administration loosening of regulations and here we are...and they want what? The US Taxpayer to hand them, no-strings-attached, 700 BILLION (with that B I mentioned previously) dollars so they can have their cake and eat US too! Our bloody congress had better hold the line on the salaries and perks and justr plain corporate GIVE-AWAYS that this Krew of theives is used to getting else the American public will throw out the whole lot and start over. I'm an Obama guy and so is my dear spouse, we can't wait to vote on election day to just change the guard if nothing else. I'm so sorry the American public has allowed this multi-travesty of wars based on lies, WMD's that didn't exist, the taking away of vast freedoms and safeguards via the ill-named "Patriot Act", and lastly this damnable Wall Street mess, the floundering housing market included and now this inane bailout package they in the White House and distances not far removed are trying to jam down our throats. Our children's children will still be paying for this. Go Obama Go! And I wish you and your advisors all the luck and good wishes a President and his cabinet can have. It's going to be tough going every minute of the way.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Home in the US of A!!!

Our friends Annette and Roger took us to the train to see us off Tuesday afternoon from Issodun about 30 minutes drive north of Lignieres. Amidst tears, hugs and waves we boarded the SNCF 2nd Class coach with our 4 bags and 2 cats, Kelly's backpack, a bag of sandwiches and junk food, a bottle of Alsasian Reisling and 6 cheap French beers. We arrived about 5:30 pm in Sacramento after many long and arduous hours aboard the 2 UAL flights. The first was out of good ol' Chuck De Gaule's airport NE of Paris after a nights stay in the ETAP at Paris 2 in Roissy. Our room 305 had a great airshow of the landings at CDG 08R runway. One after another from the time we entered our room until about 10pm, every 2 or 3 minutes another aircraft would passover directly into our view towards the distant CDG. It was spectacular. Here's a photo.
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Then night fell and we soon collapsed in a heap on the bed, the cats having found themselves under the blanket and hiding on the upper bunk (it's an ETAP). Off to sleep to fly away tomorrow.
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In the morning I woke up before dawn to a glowing red sky and new airplanes just arriving flying into the rising sun. Spectacular!
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The balance of the time was a rush, breakfast downstairs, pack the cats, shower, dress and off to CDG we went. Onto the shuttle to everywhere but where we wanted to go...Terminal One. The driver said "No Problem" when I asked him when we would arrive at terminal one as I became worried about the 2 hr International wait time they demand these days. He dropped us off some distance from the number 2 terminal amid dense traffic and told us "downstairs". So down we went. lugging our bags and the cats before and behind us. Then to a tram that fairly flew underground, overground et al. to the basement of Terminal One. It took us 1.5 hrs to transit from the ETAP to the terminal of our desires. Not bad.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Mardi à 11:10 AM au loin nous allons!

Yes Tuesday is the Big Day but tomorrow is the Little Day...before. Tomorrow we leave for Paris via the choo choo from Issodun north of us to Paris Austerlitz (a large train station). From there we taxi to the ETAP Hotel for the night. I'll make us a picnic lunch for dinner and a couple of bottles of wine to consume. We'll watch TV and sleep the night away to rise in the morning and get to CDG Terminal 1 to our United Flight at 11:10am. Then the long, boring flight across the pond to Chicago's O'Hare Airport to change planes for the trip to Sacramento. We'll eat lunch at O'Hare as the food at O'Hare rivals most other airports in the US at least except for the ones at San Francisco. SF is the winner in the food dept at an airport. Even better than New York. But Chicago is quite good with wonderful pizzas, good local beers, great Hoagies and a range of Chicago-style barbeque that can't be beat.
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Our friends Sue and Dave came by to say so long to us, they are wonderful friends to have great fun to talk to and share our lives with. We will miss them dearly. We talked about our kids and the trip back to the states along with the dreamy 2 week stay we spoke of, HA! No chance of that!
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The house is being closed down, shutters closed, windows latched and the stiff little wires I installed as a final solution to the flying window opening trick are installed and wired firmly shut. The attic windows are closed and latched, the plastic sheeting we bought last week has been laid on the floor and my tools, some furniture and misc have been covered with drop cloths to keep the dust down.
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Tonight I will not be cooking, we're going out to eat at La Piz in St. Amand Montrond, my favorite pizza place. I'll order a nicoise salad and a Neopolitiana pizza. This is NOT Kelly's idea of a fun place to eat, she'd rather go somewhere else but this is close and the food is fine.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

5 Days To Go...back in 2 weeks!

I wish...alas, we will NOT be back in two weeks, too many people to see, too many Mexican meals to consume, too many rare steaks to make a meal of. When then, you might ask, do we come back? October, nice month, being Autumn and all, but too soon I figure, no sponsership from spouse Kelly either I imagine. In November, there's Thanksgiving, always a wonderful All-American holiday, friends, relatives, kids, grandchildren and a turkey to prepare for who knows who? December, a REAL candidate believe me, I can not stand Christmas as it exists in our neck of the woods...it seems such a Christian Holiday (really you say, really?) and has become for a long, long time so very commecialized, so in-your-face ANTI-Christian that though I am NOT a Christian it feels disengenous to a high degree. I would rather ignore the entire holiday, it-doesn't-exist like than suffer through the day and the weeks before and after (the sales you know!). So onto January...well...a candidate for sure BUT it is damned awful COLD HERE then, like Winter personified. This giant house will be freezing day and night. Currently we have no way to heat it. That's right, nothing. The heater (chauffage) is an oil burner and we have NOT filled the 2000 liter tank as the cost to do that is beyond prohibitive...it's outrageous! 2000L X .80 (price per liter) X 1.39 (current exhange rate, going the right way but not there yet!) = 2224 US Dollars! Huh? Not me poopsie, no way. How many months is winter here you might ask. Well it was a nice warm 81 degree day here today but who knows about tomorrow. It was getting cooler and cooler in the last 2 weeks...60's during the daytime and 50's at night. Soon it WILL be colder, the horse chestnut trees leaves are browning to golden and that, according to our French friends is one of the first signs of the coming winter, so early this year it appears. By the end of October perhaps will be the first freezing night. Brrrrrrr. So heat will be needed Late October thru...April?
Yes and maybe part of May. Six and a half months, will the chauffage have to be operartional that whole time? Maybe...if it's cold enough. We though have adopted a radical system both here and in California where the winter is mostly mild. We only heat the room we are in. That's right, floorboard heaters or more clothes or both and the central heating remains at a cool but supportive 60 degrees all the time. That was all about January as a return date. Hmmmm doesn't sound too likely does it? February we understand last year had both extremes, snow to a depth of 2 feet and a warm period that lasted a week...what is warm after 2 feet of snow? I dunno. So onto March, we came this year on March 20th...and the house was a freezer.
We weren't warm until late April and I'm not really sure that we were then. Terrible actually, we ran from the TV/Computer/Master Closet facility to the bathroom and back. We heated the place here and there with oil filled electric heaters, it worked but we didn't move about much and little was done to the house in a constructive way during that frozen time. So much for March. So April, the song "April in Paris" comes to mind but I have never been in Paris in April and it's 200 miles NORTH of here...wanna Parka Poopsie before you go? I do. Late April maybe is the Right Time for us, maybe a bit colder than we like but will get us back in time to enjoy the joys of Ligniere's horse races and Donkey Faire as well as the change into spring with all the Poppies and wild flowers blooming. Look for us then...though we might have come sometime a bit sooner...like in two weeks?!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Day The Earth Stood Still

What shit. Today was the turn-on at CERN, the Large Haydron Collider machine on the border between Switzerland and France close to Geneva. 12:30 was supposed to be the End Of The Earth as the LHC would form a tiny black hole and the earth would go POOF!
Well 12:30 came and went and here I am writing my blog, it appears that nothing happened. Oh well, I thought the end of the earth would be at least a moments full of adrenaline but no. Shit.
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We found ourselves once again being taken for a ride, this time art Carefour in Chateauroux. We went there expecting to find a couple of rollaway beds we could use for Kelly's sewing room and Dix as an extra bed. No such item was located and we searched every single square foot except the meat department. The AD paper circular that we get weekly had one shown for a rather agreable 40 Euro price including a mattress. Oh well, so much for those rags, some stores get them, others do not or they put them out on some other day during the sale, who knows. In any case we bought a few other things and tried to buy a bed frame, a nice iron one, black in color for 39 dollars including the rail kit. When we got to the checkout counter suddenly the item was rung up as being 83 Euros TWICE, once for the headboard part and another 83 Euros for the rails! What?! No way! The checkout person scouled at us, THOSE DAMNED BRITS, CAN'T THEY READ?! No theose damned Brits can't read at all...the Americans would be better. 8-)!!!
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Then home but not really, stopped by the Tourist office where our savior MC was tasked with trying to get France Telecom to explain our bill AGAIN. She grows tired of this I know, and so do we but there is definetly something very wrong when they use the prelevment to take out 4 separate payments for our bloody telephone line and the internet DSL connection every month! We cancelled DIX over a month ago and yet there it is! France Telecom is a bust, a disaster. It's the most complained about consumer service in France they say and we know why. The $$%$##@ billing is impossible to figure out either on-line or off the paper bill. When we come back we will try to switch to something else though I KNOW it won't be easy or fast. Nor is France Telecom!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Americans! Americans!

Well we met 'em! Ensconced in a hamlet south of us. Karl and Madge, she from Wisconsin sort of and he from Germany sort of. A remarkable couple they are and were. Took an olde pile of rocks and mad a fine German modern villa of it. Beautiful interior and exterior, fine work to be found throughout the place. Great fun talking with them and stayed so long they had to make dinner around and through us. Such is our social life here. Great wines too! A bright and fruity Quincy (our absolute favorite!), a fine Reuilly, crisp Sancere and a nice smooth Cote du Rhone. 4 bottles and 6 people, moderate consumption to all. Her spaghetti was wonderful. Very generous they were, funny and happily displaced expats like we of the 6 month variety. We chatted for hours of our personal histories and the American Situation. Once again we KNOW that Americans are a breed apart, our rebellious nature, our short history and hegemony in world affairs all blends into a unique people. Glad to have met them and knowing we will become fast friends in the coming years, we bid them Boun Nuit at 12:30 AM! Yea gads!
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I made Jambalaya last night, I always enjoy the preparation and the final product equally. Made too much like I always do...it's a proportion thing, I want to use a certain amount of sausage and the recipe, being in my thick skull, just calls out for everything else...and then comes the rice. One cup seems inadequate doesn't it? So another 1/2 cup then stock, not 6 cups but 8 and so on. At the end it was good as it ever is, which is pretty good. Here's the real recipe and remember it will feed more than you might think, this is stick to the ribs food if ever there was some.

Lute's Jambalaya:

4 Shallots diced very fine - 1/8th in or less.
4 Slices smoked bacon chopped to 1" pieces.
4 smoked sausages precooked cut into 1/2" slices
2 chicken breasts cut into 1" cubes
1 bell pepper cut into 1" pieces
2 stalks celery cut into 1/4" slices
1 cup basmati rice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon chopped oregano
6 cups chicken stock
1 16 oz can chopped tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon chili powder or flakes.

In a large skillet (w/lid) saute over medium heat the bacon to release it's fat, limp but not crisp.
Saute the shallots first til transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the chopped celery, continue to saute for another 5 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook an additional 5 minutes.
Add the smoked sausage and cubed chicken, cook for another 10 minutes to brown, turning often.
Add the basmati rice and stir thoroughly into the mix.
Add the canned tomatoes and stir.
Now add the 6 cups of stock.
Add the salt, pepper, chopped oregano and chili powder/flakes.
Cover with the lid and cook over LOW heat for 1 hour. The rice will absorb much of the liquid during this time. Remove the lid and cook until the rice is done through.
(It probably IS already) Season with salt to taste. Add red pepper for more heat, be careful on tender mouths.

Best with a cold beer.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Opening Doors


I had great plans today, finish the door hanging after yesterdays triumph of the male over the mass of the RH door. The guys did it, Dave and Raj and the brilliant idea of using the car jack to first raise the door off the dolly. Then align it with the pins, then lower the door with the jack onto the pins. Worked the first time. My cuttings could have been better but given the totality of wood rot and rust it turned out quite well we think. Today I wanted to finish the hanging by getting the doors aligned and properly closed which they are NOT. Then hang the middle door on the RH door. Plans. All plans. Then Kelly said she wanted to go to Mountlucon, the junk shop, the Grand Fraise grocery store and the Carefour supermarche to get things we want to take home, spices, sealed package goods and chocolate for our friends. So I canceled the door work and we were off. First to the hamlet where the NEW Americans we were introduced too live south of Chateaumilliant, a local wine appellation. Yes, we have NEW Americans...actually SHE is an American from Milwaukie, Wisconsin and he is a German national. We (Kelly) has talked with her and they got along famously (hour long phone call), we are to meet them Sunday at 6pm, wine in hand (A nice Quincy (can-see)).
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Off to Mountlucon at 10:30, by the time we went to find the New American's abode and didn't, got to the Troc Du L;ile junk store they were closed for lunch til 2pm. Onward to the Carefour to buy whatever gifts for ourselves and our California friends we could imagine and find. The chocolate aisle was well visited and numerous samples taken. The spice area was perused and I selected 7 beautiful containers (about 2 oz each}. Kelly chose a nice Bayules desert wine to bring home while I checked out the Scotch area in the Booze aisle. Great fun with many choices to be had. I like the smokey Lagavulin the best, some find it over powering but my...is it ever smooth and delicious. Expensive at 38 Euros a litre bottle but...worth every bloody cent.
Off to Grand Fraise, aisle after aisle of wonderful vegetables, some we have never seen much less used. Fruits the same way. One of the attractions at Grand Fraise is the meat counter where the elusive PORK RIBS reside now and then, why not all the time remains a mystery. We bought 2 HUGE globe artichokes, some green onions (rare other than at Grand Fraise, more spices and that was it. Fini. We left knowing it was the last time this year we'd be buying anything at Grande Fraise in Mountlucon.

Monday, September 01, 2008

One September! Whoopee!

Well off we will soon go to return to California, it's been a wonderful Sproing and Summer. We have worked our butts off on the olde Ruin. Many walls covered in cloth and fixups here and there. I exposed some of the olde rock and tile entrances at the front of the house and sealed then in preparation for the winter. Kelly painted til she ran out of paint, she sewed new curtains and all of that cloth on the walls...incredible work! I have worked on the barn doors for the last week and a half and Wednesday we have a dinner work party that will hang that rh door in trade for dinner and enough booze to finish the job. Rhe barn doors are white to match all the rest of the exterior doors and seem to be taking the paint well and the necessary coat count appears to be three or four if I feel up to it. Anyway they will be far better off than what we started with about a month ago.
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The doorbell rang yesterday and it was a friend of the pharmacist who said she had been in the Monday marche last week and ran into ANOTHER American couple! Wow! So very RARE in this neck of the French woods. She gave me a piece of paper with their names and phone number and the email address as well. Kelly took up the challenge of contacting them as they needed a witness to get their absentee ballot approved.
We are glad to help but now they have become difficult to contact. Kelly wrote an email then tried calling them last night and again today to no avail. Darn it. We would love to speak to another bunch of Americans but who knows, for all we know they have taken off to parts unknown or back to The States. We will keep trying.
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We rsan into D and S yesterday at a brocante somewhat southeast of us. After the usual laughing, bantering they invited us for drinks after we were through with the brocante action. We bought NOTHING. That is the way of it for us these days. So we followed them to their lovely French country cottage in the village of St. Hillaire en Lignieres about 5 minutes from out house. We spent the afternoon with then, they served us a delicous lunch and wine to overflowing. We watched the sports channel with the MotoGP races and a the Tour du Espania afterwards. They are great company and we truely enjoy them a lot! Smart and funny both! I worked a bit on their PC to no great conclusion. Downloaded Ad-Aware and CCleaner to help them with spurious ads and junk clogging up the works. Good software, both programs.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

A Jeudi, last one in Aout

Today, up at 3am (not on purpose, let's get real!)to watch the DNC nominate Joe Biden as Veep. So be it, he gave a nice speech underlining support for our troops at war in the wrong place and the necessity of getting back to Afghanistan to wipe out Al Queda and the Taliban once and for all. Makes for good rhetoric but we'll see won't we? Other speakers came and went and I kept feeling like, Well...where is he? Where's Obama? His wife was all over CNN's coverage but he was no where to be seen. Then there he was with Joe Biden's family and supporters on stage, all smiles and posture, made me proud to be an American at this moment in history, imagine...a black man running for President on a major political party! Hooray for all of us! Barack the Anti-Christ? Naw, just a new Senator with a following of hopefuls after the abismal performance of this White House. Our economy is a wreck, the war that was "Mission Accomplished" is still in the daily headlines and Osama Bin Laden has not been found, captured or killed so many years after Mr. Bush said we would get him. Ah, I'm sick of it, the Republicans are unhealthy for our country, war mad and incompetent at keeping their own Republican ideals. All of this EXCEPT they have handed the !@#@##! Oil Companies BILLIONS of dollars in profit without a cent of it going to ther average American. We need a Windfall Profits Tax NOW! As well as Low Cost and Available Health Care for All Americans, an education system that delivers the goods not just test results and support for our troops abroad that includes comprehensive medical support for the rest of thier lives if necessary. Enough.

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The barn door rebuild continues. Today I hung new tongue and groove "bits" to fill out the top portion of the left hand door. I had my new glue to assist, it's a Gorilla Glue Ureathane clone that does the self-same fuzzy expansion that Gorilla Glue does and oh is it ever strong and sticky. Perfect for this application as it needs to be weather-PROOF as well as very strong. The new wood I've used is a good grade of T&G but it is French Pine (Pin) and much lighter in weight than the oak and chestnut that was used in the original doors. I dipped it in a fungicide and insecticide as a precaution against both dry rot and the little beetles that eat hole in everything wood hereabouts. The prject is progressing towards completion at a steady pace, not fast but sure...I WILL get this done before we depart for California.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Tuesday in the Valle Noir

Pretty day, warm, puffy clouds, fighter jets from Avord Air Base east of us some 25 miles flying low-level over us every hour on the hour, always chased by another a minute later. Ce Normale. The flowers and bushes think it's spring again, new buds and opening flowers are springing up throughout the courtyard. Our feral cat group has nearly disappeared over the last two weeks, Long Tale is g-o-n-e, who knows where. The three cats that made thier appearance one day and were chased away by Long Tale are similarly disposed. What happened? I dunno but it makes for a much quieter courtyard and greater ease for Fur_Rr_Ee and the occasional No-Lean.
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I went to work on the right hand barn door this morning, triming off the parts unnecessary to the new demensions while trying to do that to the rottenest boards only. I sneezed and wheezed my way through the job for a couple of hours, sawdust and mold filled the air. Then I cut the 1 Euro olde hand wrought hinge in two with my hack saw, changing blades twice. Hard work that took an hour and half to complete. Back and forth I went, then sprayed some WD40 to keep the blade from binding, back and forth, thousands of strokes, boring but necessary. The old iron might have been cheap and rusted but it was tough and resisted my efforts very well. I'll need help in hanging this one as it is at least 50% heavier than the left hand door. R and Dave I'll ask...they'll help as they always do, I can count on them anytime. Maybe pay them with a dinner as is our custom.
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We made the cat's appointment too, on the 8th, to update thier rabies shots and get the pet passport signed and dated. I need to call United and get the reservations for them confirmed as you cannot do it online as far as I can tell from the website. Kelly got out the cat's carriers and placed them on the floor of the landing upstairs. The cats came, sniffed and now accept that they will be flying again soon.
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We decided we cannot make the trip to Paris this time on the same day that we fly back to the States. Just not enough time for the train to leave Chateauneuf Sur Cher and arrive in Paris and get a taxi to CDG by 9am...sorry, no way. International flights take so long to be processed, deal with the baggage and the security nonsense no matter where you are or where you are going, a giant pain in the arse. Damn the terrorists! I wonder if they think we admire them for all this crap we must go through...they're worse than bureaucrats! CDG is as ever a retched airport, buildings separated by distances so far that you must bus or taxi between them. Awful. I WISH that our transport arrival and departure could be made from Orly in the south of Paris, it would save us so much time in transit. Alas...
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Tomorrow I'll tackle the door project again, hopefully get close to hanging them. We'll see.