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Category Archives: doing it wrong
Apple Pie for Amateurs
Gold panning with Grandma and Grandpa, Klamath River, 70s.
At the time I’m writing this I’ve made at least three apple pies in the last 3-4 weeks. No special occasions. All for us.
Bob still saves me the NYT food section even though I haven’t loved an issue in ages. I used to cut out recipe(s) or talk about an article every week. Now I can barely get through it without rolling my eyes back into my head in a way that is dangerous to health.
This week there was an article about apple pie that I should have written had I know that I had knowledge that needed to be in the NYT.
In the author’s experience, the pie is gone too quickly.
Hm… how to remedy? Oh, how about make a bigger pie? Those nine inch pies are for people with tiny bellies. You should be making 10 inch pies. And you can cram more filling in. And thin crust is for timid home bakers, it’s okay to make a thicker crust. She also recommends mixing sweet and tart apples.
None of this is new information. Last time I made a 9 inch pie I did it on purpose because it was for one person who wanted less pie. But I do all these things and our normal pie distribution is after sharing, we usually end up with three pieces each. It is my favorite food.
I use this crust recipe and more or less the Betty Crocker classic pie recipe. I use a mix of Granny Smith and other sweeter apples. I like to slice as thin as I can and add 3/4 c sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 cup flour and I let it sit on the counter a couple of hours. I like a lot of apples and will flatten them with my hands to get them in there. I also sometimes nuke them a minute or two but if you like firmer apples don’t worry about it.
If I remember I’ll make a pie in my extra big giant pie plate and take photos.
Remember When Banking Was Harder?
This is Percy the Desert King fig tree, year one. It’s going to be so sad when he’s just a couple of little sticks with no leaves.
I’ve been complaining about how technology makes me want to pull my hair out but remember the olden days of banking?
I recently received a letter from my bank telling me that my branch was closing and they would be “moving my account” to another branch.
I haven’t been in that branch, on the Washington side of the river, since we opened the account. I do about 99% of my in branch banking in Portland at one of two branches that are an easy walk from my office.
But remember when you had to do business with your branch? And had to move branches when you moved? And doing stuff out of state was giant pain in the hoohaw?
I remember waiting in a long line on Friday afternoons when I got my paycheck from Jack-in-the-Box to get cash for the weekend. I was only allowed to work 19 hours a week while I was in school and I earned $3.10 an hour. After taxes, what was my paycheck? $90 for two weeks’ work? I have some really old check registers somewhere, I could probably figure it out.
Super Spies
These are the last of the last. A few of them were sun ripened. Most of them were underdone and pulled off the plant either before heavy rains or before I finally yanked the plants out of the ground. I’m enjoying them while I can.
A few weeks ago I noticed what looked like drywall dust on the floor under one of the electrical outlets at the office.
Naturally, I assumed we’d been bugged.
I dug around to find a screwdriver so I could look inside. Colleague saw me going about this and asked what I was doing.
When I explained he said, “Move. I know what bugs look like. I’ve seen them on T.V.”
Under our careful examination, it appeared to be a regular electrical outlet. So either the bug or other secret hidden item was well disguised, or there’s nothing weird going on in our office.
Wednesday starts NaBlo which I don’t think is even a thing anymore. Way back in 2006 when all the kids were blogging someone started National Blog Posting Month and then eventually handed it off to another organization that has since rebranded and so I think it’s purely independent study at this point.
Almost every year since I’ve manage to post every day in November and even though I’m perpetually frazzled within an inch of my life *and* can barely post something halfway coherent once a week *and* I’m working on another book that I plan to write 36K words in the same time period, I’m going to give it a shot.
Posted in doing it wrong
Tagged eternal overachiever, getting stuff done
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Secret Carrots
These aren’t really secret carrots. I knew I planted them. I just didn’t realize they were thriving out there in the jungle. I was doing some half-hearted clean-up out there and kept finding carrots. There are a lot more surprises out there. Photos to come.
I had a big tragedy last week: my cooking scale batteries died. The scale doesn’t tell you the batteries are dying until you are ready to start weighing something and they are already dead. The batteries it uses are the round ones that look like coins, the only batteries we don’t keep spares of around the house.
I’m not sure what happened but we have about 80 AA batteries in this house. Someone bought a gigantor-pak but also maybe told someone else we were out of AA batteries and so that person also bought a gigantor-pak. If the world ends tomorrow, we will at least be able to use our AA stuff for awhile.
I don’t know how to bake without my scale anymore. I use Kenji’s easy pie crust recipe (it’s not easy for me {mine never looks anything like that photo} but I am consistently successful with it) and now that I have looked at the link, I see alternate measures. I have the recipe printed out (because I’m olde timey that way) so I only have the weights. However, I still have the original vodka pie crust recipe from Cook’s Illustrated so I used that with no problems. I skipped bread baking last week.
The batteries have been replaced. It’s cold and dark and rainy so I baked my heart out this weekend. We’re having stew and bread for dinner with pie for dessert.
Tomorrow is our last regular soccer match of the season and there is a lot on the line. We have our plastic clothes ready and fingers-crossed we see ass-kicking Timbers and not did-anyone-see-my-ass Timbers.
Insert Joke About Bush Removal Here
I very carefully cropped and uploaded these pictures and then went about my business, completely forgetting that I was going to write something and post them. And then I had to run out the door to the soccer match.
Now I’m home and I’m beat and I need to bathe and get organized for the work week.
We had our annual hedge whacking this past weekend.
I had this weird bush from the front torn out. I’m going to plant something pretty TBD.
This is the landscaper, Vu, digging out the stump. You know who has the best gossip about the neighborhood? Vu. He works for people all up and down our street.
Plus they had to get on a ladder for the hedges so he could see what was going on in the yard next door.
I went to my folks last weekend and enjoyed some fresh mountain air. On Indigenous Peoples’ Day we went to Ashland and saw, Off the Rails which is a play about Indian residential schools in the Old West with a mostly Native cast and written by a Native playwright. It was very good and intense to see in a room full of Natives.
That’s the scoop for now.
Posted in doing it wrong
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Keeping Up with the Neighbors
I call this one: Giant Slug with Favorite Shoes and Socks
I feel like I spend half of one weekend day sitting here dealing with random details. I’ve been here all morning trying to get started on writing but then finding something that I need to take care of while I have a chance.
Here’s the latest on the rental house next door: The house seems abandoned Sunday-Wednesday with no cars parked or activity of any kind. Thursday-Saturday is the opposite with numerous cars parked there and coming and going and only a couple of regulars.
A few weeks ago they had a big loud party on a Friday night that lasted until who knows when? The last time I woke up was 1:30a. I thought about going over there except I would have had to find pants and shoes and glasses and it was easier to stay home and complain about it later. The next week we phoned the leasing agent to let her know that there was a lot of activity over there and we weren’t even sure who lived there.
She was surprised since she rented the house to a single woman who said she traveled a lot on business. Leasing agent supposedly phoned to let them know the neighbors expressed concern and there have been no other major get togethers since. Coincidentally the weather cooled at the same time so it’s not as likely to have a big loud group in the backyard. So, at this point, the noise hasn’t been a problem but there are still a lot of different cars parked overnight.
The Mystery of the Missing Cats
I thought I wrote about when our next door neighbors’ cat disappeared during the summer but I guess not. Noah vanished. They even put out fliers.
At the time, the rental next door was empty and there was someone over there cleaning and had a couple of kids there. I was convinced the cat must have gotten stuck in the house or maybe, since he’s such a sweetie, the kids took him.
Guess who we found in our basement days after this all started?
I felt terrible. When I water, the garage and back doors are open and the cats have gone into our garage before and always run away when I come back in. I actually checked when the cat was lost but the basement door is usually shut and it never occurred to me to take a look downstairs.
In our defense, the cat was hiding. Bob just saw him for a second before it ran away to hide. Of course all this happened at 6am. I told Bob it was too early to call but he texted and the neighbor was at work and woke up his wife, who came over immediately and coaxed him out.
They were convinced that he wasn’t at our house the entire time. He escaped one bad situation and ran in our garage door in a panic an ended up freaked out in the basement.
And this is probably exactly what happened because last night Bob was visiting with a different neighbor whose cat disappeared at the same time. She was worried and walking back and forth on our street and she spotted her cat in the window of the rental. Remember? Empty.
The cat started jumping around when it saw her. She walked around the house until she found the cat door and stuck her hand through and ZOOM! her cat came out.
Poor Noah must have gotten stuck over there as well.
Not so luckily, people live there now. Update to come.
Posted in doing it wrong
Tagged cats, other people's kids
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When Did the Clothes Get So Complicated?
The elastic in my exercise top is about 90% dead so I was in the market for a new one. Why do all the tops have such a goofy strap configuration? And trust me, these aren’t even the goofiest ones.
These are from at least 4 different online stores and each store has zillions of examples. I could post these all afternoon.
I have had two tops with much simplified versions of the goofy straps and I hated them. After you wash them you have to spend 15 minutes unraveling the straps. Or if traffic is messed up and you get to class 2 minutes before it starts and you’re rushing to change clothes — those straps are going to be all tangled together and inside out.
I went to a generic department store thinking: I don’t need to have something cute. Just a plain old exercise top will be fine. I couldn’t even find one of those. It was all cropped things. I’m not going to exercise with my gut hanging out — even in the privacy of my own home. I’m sticking with the old for now until I have time to do more research.
In other news I made a huge miscalculation. I’ve been dealing with bedding. I bought a new comforter since the old one is all flimsy with the feathers bunched in the corners. Since the weather cooled off I decided to swap the sheets out. I dug the flannel duvet out and last spring I bought new fleece sheets on sale. I washed and fluffed and had everything airing out on the couch to put on the bed today.
Except the weather is supposed to get into the 80s this week and I don’t want to crawl into my fleece bed with a flannel-covered down comforter after an 80 degree day. I had to do some creative folding and cramming to get it all put away for another week or two. That new comforter is fluffy.
Pen name’s book is finally available in paperback. You can get it at giant online retailer here. Or from Createspace (Technically, still giant online retailer) here. If you buy books from other sources you should be able to order the paperback version using pen name and title.
That Time I Complained About Computers
Remember when we used to buy software in giant boxes filled with disks? And the books were always huge — like it was a rule you couldn’t print a book about a computer program unless it was 1200 pages.
I was planned to do an update yesterday and complain about some different people who are doing it wrong but I ran out of time and energy and now I have to complain about a brand new aggravation.
Wasn’t I just talking about how I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to pay for something and How was this easier than writing a check? I don’t think I ever got around to typing it out.
In our latest version, I just got my property tax bill and instead of doing my regular thing where I keep putting off paying it and then panicking, thinking I forgot to pay it, I thought I would pay right this minute.
I changed banks and I’m trying to get with modern life and transition away from writing checks. My tax bill said they have a partnership with a web company and I can pay for free. I signed in, put in my property bill info and received an error message that my account/name/something don’t match and I can’t go forward.
Rather than flog myself trying to fix it, I looked at the bill to check my alternatives. I can log into the government tax website and pay either a $1 for an echeck for a percentage of the bill as a debit. I don’t know what the difference is but I thought I could figure it out once I got the process started.
I got an error message that the page isn’t working and try again later.
The whole point is to do it now and not worry about doing it later. So I went and dug out my brand new checks from new bank that I have never used. On the top of the checkbook it says: before you use, verify that the information on the checks is correct. So I log into the website to double check my account number and the routing number.
They are in the process of updating their system so I could not find my routing number. The FAQ explained how to check like you would with the old interface that they don’t have anymore or I could just look at my checks.
Picture me giving the computer a withering look.
In the end I used my taxes to verify the routing number.
Posted in doing it wrong
Tagged everyone is stupid
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There’s Never Enough Time Off
Remember when my sister moved from San Francisco to Utah and I followed behind in her car?
My mini-break has come to an end. It was mostly nice but as it always is with time off, there’s never enough and it goes by too fast. I feel like I barely made a dent in the things I wanted to do.
I finally got to see both Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy #2 — I loved both. I expected to like them and I enjoyed way more than I expected. I saw them at the mall and I did some back to school type shopping. The trailer for the last Planet of the Apes movie was terrifying. Those movies are really good but hard to watch and confuse my loyalties. Geostorm looks ridiculous, like a whole bunch of terrible ideas were put in a blender and then Gerard Butler says: yeah, I’ll do it. There was a crazy pants Halo Top ice cream commercial that did not make me want to buy their product. I can’t find a link I’m willing to put up for that one.
Bob and I bought some plants for the backyard and dug. We did not heed the warning of the lady at the nursery and turns out she was right: the ground is hard as a rock at the end of the summer. We aborted our attempt to make new planting areas and moved some other plants so we could put them in the existed beds.
We lasted for about 45 minutes of cleaning the garage and made a half-hearted pile of trash and gave up. I’m sure we’ll be more in the mood another day. (No we won’t. Cleaning the garage is terrible.)
Another thing we did was gather up some cans of change (meaning coins) and take them to the credit union and trade it in for $$$ and then we went to the new Ilani casino that opened up north of here. It’s very pretty and if you like casinos, you will approve. I don’t hate casinos but once I had taken a lap of the building, I’d had enough.
My body was nice enough to wake me up between 5am and 6am every morning I had off except for the morning it let me sleep until 6:30am. How much you want to bet that does not happen tomorrow?
I’m not quite ready to write words yet but the outline is coming into shape.
Resetting: Book #3
