Tag Archives: tragedy

These delicious sandwiches and fries are from Lardo in downtown Portland.

It would make sense to include a photo of the couch with this story but I don’t have one handy and don’t want to take one right now. It’s one of those couches that has a little motor and button so it extends into a lounger.

I love this couch. It’s comfy. It’s held up well.

But if I’m going to complain, if you drop anything into a couch crevice — like you have the remote on the armrest and it slides into the couch. Or maybe you’re doing a crossword puzzle and you set your clipboard down on the seat while you go make some tea and come back and the pencil has fallen into the crack — those things are lost.

This delicious sandwich is from Taylor Street Market in downtown Portland.

I was fiddling with my wedding ring. (I do this all the time knowing full well what a bad idea it is) and dropped it in the couch crack.

I had to completely extend the lounger and then crawl under the seat with a flashlight and dig deep into dark crevices, squishing my fingers in where they barely fit with dust bunnies and who knows what might be in there.

I did retrieve my ring.

But this process is super inconvenient when you drop the Roku control and you can’t do anything until you can crawl around on your stomach and find it again — all while you just wanted to relax for a half hour before you go to bed.

And every time I remind myself — don’t leave stuff on the couch where it can fall it. But then I forget and do it anyway.

Remember last year when I planted only 2 tomato plants? And the angry raccoon tore up the walls of water where one of the plants lived?

The plant lived on but never recovered. It was supposed to be a prolific yellow cherry tomato plant but it barely grew to a foot and I got about 10 tomatoes off of it.

I saved some seeds and started one on the window sill. See arrow above. I was determined to get my prolific yellow cherry tomatoes.

The rest of those are 2 tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, and 4 Anaheim pepper plants.

Look how healthy and happy it looks, ready for it’s big new life outside.

Then: tragedy.

This was not an angry raccoon. This was operator error. I knew it was kinda tricky getting the walls of water to balance right so I was extra careful.

But not extra careful enough. I looked outside a couple of hours later to see the ruin. Poor little yellow cherry tomato. It is not to be for us.

I have one more tomato on the window sill that I can transfer to this spot.

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.

Actual setlist from video shoot for It’s So Easy.

In the morning when I start my list I always have grand plans for what I’m going to write about here.

Then I spend all day working on my publishing empire. Then I have a half a glass of wine and I sit here and can’t form a coherent thought.

There was a problem with the proof of my short story book. I’m still learning how to do the paperback versions and I miscalculated something. It’s not a tragedy but doesn’t meet my standards. I need to do another version and then resubmit for approval and once approved, buy another proof. If you were planning on gifting paperbacks of my short story collection for Christmas, we will not be ready. I apologize.

Meanwhile I’m doing a couple of promotions for my romance because it’s like shouting into a storm trying to get anyone to notice your book.

Honestly, my advice to people who want to be writers is: do something else.

Onto other news. It’s only taken me about 10 years but I finally pulled off Thanksgiving dinner by myself, with very minimal stress and everything came out great.

My tips are: do the stuffing in the slow cooker. You can do it several hours in advance and let it sit there on the counter without your attention. Do the gravy the day before and scrape the pan drippings day of, once the turkey is cooked.

This year I used this pumpkin pie recipe and I can report, it was completely delicious. I want to do a side-by-side taste test with canned pumpkin and mine just to see if it’s that different. Except I will devastated if you can’t tell or the canned is better.

My only note for next year is that I over-knead the rolls (photo from last year of how I shape them). I usually bake breads that need a heavier hand but these don’t need it. They’re Parker House rolls. This isn’t the exact recipe I used but pretty close.

I processed the last of the pumpkin yesterday and there are at least 3 more pints for the freezer. I ended up with more than I thought. More pies and some pumpkin chili for us in the next few months.

Historically I’ve always left the pumpkin crop on the kitchen counter. I’ve kept them there for months and never had a problem.

This year I got the bright idea of leaving them out in the shop. It’s cooler out there and they won’t be in the way.

Also, I never really looked at them and they caught a terrible case of the MOLD. Why isn’t there a wildly successful horror story about mold? It’s one of my most terrifying things right up there with being eaten alive by a bear or alligator and being chased by aliens on a lonely road in the middle of the night.

I salvaged one and have learned my lesson.

The photos are of a weather beacon downtown. We have a clear view of it from our new office and we learned how to read it from this handy article online. Red is warmer, white is colder and green is staying the same. Blinking means it’s raining. It’s always blinking.

These photos weren’t taken on the same day in case you’re wondering.

Ice on the car’s sunroof. (From Idaho trip)

I wish I had a spreadsheet from my whole life that would show how many books I ended up never buying because the moment I had my wallet in my hand the book was only available in hardcover.

Minor tragedy. We had someone come over and work on these leaking problems we’ve been having. They can’t guarantee it because there’s no way to be sure how the water is getting in. Whatever they did, didn’t work.

Boo! This is at least the fourth attempt, this one being the most extensive. They said if this didn’t work they’d need to start pulling up siding. You know what’s not in the budget right now? Siding.

Bob and I are headed out for a little xmas adventure. Hopefully photos and details tomorrow.