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Today’s high point is a low bar to clear

We’d been out to Lowe’s to pick up paint swatches and items for plumbing repair. It seems there is a slow leak in each of the toilet basins, and so there is the middle-of-the-night sound of water filling the tank. That’s an easy enough fix. In most houses.

At home, I fix one easily enough. Turn off the water, disconnect the feed line, pull up the old flapper and tug the new one into place. The water is hard enough to do serious damage to the rubberized flappers over time, and I suspect these are the originals.

I move on to the other restroom, pulling out the old flapper, putting in the new one and discover … there’s a little leak in the basin. Nothing that a little sealant can’t fix, hopefully. In most houses. The destructive burial ground spirits that live here have been well-documented.

But, between the hardware store and my temp-job as plumber there was a visit to the grocery store, where we did our best to avoid the four plodding teenagers who’d just walked in before us. [#middleage]

We buy our things from the list, noting with displeasure that they’ve moved the raisins and the trail mix, again. They do this every six weeks or so. It is like they get bored with the aisle arrangement and shuffle things around, just to make sure the stockers get their hours. Now, 90 percent of the time that you shop there you can’t help but be besieged by people asking if you need help, if you’re finding everything OK. The day after they reorganize these people are no where around. It is a little game they play.

But we finally find the raisins and the trail mix. Aisle 6, on the left. And we head up front to play our favorite game: Find the Fastest Line. I believe today we avoided cutting anyone off in getting to the right cashier. There was an older woman in front of us with nothing on the conveyer belt. A bagger had helpfully placed all of her things in plastic and back in her cart. The receipt had been given. And this lady would not stop talking.

We had about a third of our cart unloaded before she finally decided to head outside. (Clearly she had no ice cream.) The cashier rolls her eyes as loudly as a teenaged girl can. I snicker.

“Shut up,” she said with a smile. Kids these days, huh?

I said nothing.

This was the scene just before we started the grill this evening:

Sunset

We had steaks and okra and lumpy mashed potatoes. Seems we broke the hand blender. And, no matter what you think, you’re not going to duplicate the speed of those beaters yourself.

We’re working our way through Dexter just now. I watched the first season on CBS a few years ago when they aired it during the writers’ strike. The show moved fairly slowly, and now I see why. The acting is a little stodgy and some of the dialog was written by a 13-year-old boy, but the camera angles and the writing are generally amusing. I don’t remember many specific details of this first season, only that the last episode had some amazing ending.

Unlike this entry.

iPhone / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
25
Jun 11

The point of catching up on purely voluntary exercises

The site’s photo galleries are now up-to-date through May. Previously they’d stopped at February — I’m blaming comps. Now, though, you can see most of the things my camera saw in March, April and May.

This one did not make it in there, but will be on the June page when I build that.

Allie is very streaky when it comes to places she occupies. Each part of the day has an assigned location, most having to do with the sun in the windows and where we leave her alone. And from time to time those locations just. Lately she’s been a monorail cat on the arm of the sofa.

She’s sitting there just now, in fact. I think she likes it because it gives her the high ground (over her entirely fictional competitors) and allows her a commanding view of two rooms and the main hallway. She could pounce down from her mesa and control any situation.

This is the cat startled by anything larger than a moth.

Easy day today. Overslept, and so I missed my opportunity to ride. It was decidedly too warm by mid-morning. I’m going to have to maintain a real schedule in order to get my rides in, it seems.

Cleaned the office a bit, caught up on the site, goofed off with The Yankee and generally had a nice day of it. We were fortunate enough to have shrimp for dinner tonight; there’s nothing wrong in our little corner of the world.

Hope your weekend is a blast!

cycling / errands / Friday / iPhone / photo / Pie Day — Comments Off
24
Jun 11

What’s worse than the post office?

Who’s giving this balloon to their kid?

I suppose one balloon of the moody sun wouldn’t be too bad. A manic three-star system … that would just be bad for more than just gravitational reasons.

This was at the Publix recently, in the produce section. They have little sprinkler systems with piped in thunder when it is time to spray the greenery, probably as a “STAND BACK!” feature, but surely they aren’t expecting these mylar stars to deliver any great photosynthetic processes.

There, there’s your band name and first album title in one sentence.

Just a quick ride today. The Yankee says there are these things called Recovery Rides. The purpose, I’ve just discovered “is to stimulate the metabolism to remove waste products and to loosen stiff muscles, not to train hard.” That page has a sub-barf quotient on it, so you know it is for legitimate athletes.

So I did a quick recovery, about seven miles at an easy pace — easy being relative as I am already not the most brisk, talented sprinter on the road at any given time.

Hit the post office to return something from e-bay. The post office here has always been one of the least fortunate places to visit. I’ve only been to the DMV here once, but I’ll take it over the Auburn post office anytime. Thought I’d timed it well, too, there were no cars in the parking lot. Filled out the envelope, sealed it up and I’m second in line. There are four postal workers at the front and two of them were working.

One of them was. The third one was busy talking cell phones with a guy who’d just shipped things.

There’s a design flaw in the building, too. While you stand in line you’re standing under a skylight. So you bake. And that’s enough to make you want the DMV any day.

Hit the sporting goods store after that, found nothing useful, and then the Sam’s Club. Picked up a forklift-full of toilet paper, an industrial sized box of gum and a box of snacks for bike rides.

Barbecue for dinner, I had the chicken at Moe’s, and the red beans and rice and the Moe’s pie, which is more like a crumbled oreo-fudge combination in a tiny styrofoam bowl rather than a piece of pie. But we tried.

And so the day has ended quietly, just as it began and held that attitude throughout. Too hot to move. Mid-90s? No one and no thing is willing to cause much of a fuss. May the weekend bring us more of the same, without searing temperatures.

adventures / cycling / iPhone / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
21
Jun 11

Operation Lack of Ramb

Rode 29 miles on the bike this morning. It was no longer morning when I got back in, but rather the beginning of a full summer day. I parked, checked the thermometer and it said 88 and going strong.

New route today, heading down the dangerous hill on which we live, out through a rural area where I was passed three separate times by the same FedEx truck, through construction, slicing through a rural light industrial area and then onto the hilly, curve fun of Wire Road.

That was the first road I ever drove on in Auburn. The road I hit a deer on (not the same day) and the route back to campus I preferred as a student. I lived just off it for two years. And now I am struggling up its hills.

Walked my bike into a gas station where the cashier observed it was becoming warm outside. Not sure how she jumped to this conclusion, perhaps it was my generally disheveled condition. Picked up a Gatorade and pressed on for the final five miles. It was a good ride, especially since I’m taking tomorrow off.

Just about caught up on the site after two weeks away. The WEM blog is up to date and the tea blog still makes me question why it exists. (When I was experimenting with the multiuser interface in WordPress last year I needed multiple blogs to do it. Otherwise, I haven’t touched the thing, clearly. The LOMO blog has plenty of catching up to do, which may be next week. This blog is just about back in shape, though. Later this week I’ll get the photo galleries a little more current. Hard to believe it has been four months since I built one of those here.

Edited video today for various things, worked on that non-profit site I’ve been nursing along. It should be done tomorrow.

And then, this evening we enjoyed our anniversary dinner. While yesterday was the big day, Monday seems to be a trendy evening for restaurants to close. So we had barbecue last night and got dressed up a bit tonight.

We visited The Warehouse Bistro which is, apparently, one of those open secrets. Never been there. Had only heard of it a few times, though it has been around for ages. It is set in the middle of an old industrial park that otherwise only vaguely looks used.

The exterior is humble enough to miss altogether, but inside, once you pass the obligatory autographs and well wishes is a nice little casual fine dining place. We were sat in the corner and met a guy a half-step too smart to be working in a restaurant, but he had the patter and did a great job. Everything was wonderful — though we skipped the $7 desserts.

I had the rack of lamb:

Quite tasty.

We came home for cookies, which should be a mandatory part of most any meal.

It was a fine start to year three. (We’re, clearly, still zeroing in on the clever name we’ll give this one. Let ya know.)

Friday / history / iPhone / photo / video — Comments Off
17
Jun 11

The ballad of fried okra

We stood out in the garage and swayed with the wind this afternoon. When we began comparing radar, because that’s romance to us apparently, we found a dark red blob bearing down on us from the west and another coming down from the north.

Web stuff today. Working on a site for someone, which is coming along nicely, thank you for asking, and on my own stuff. I added four pages to the War Eagle Moments blog. Just click the little buttons at the bottom, there, and you can see all the neat Auburn stories from our many recent adventures.

Then the cat said stop.

And so I did, for a while.

Grilled steaks tonight. We had some New York Strips just dying to be eaten, so we obliged them. We’d picked them up from the meat lab some time back for $13. We also had okra, fresh from yesterday’s farmers’ market on campus and right off the farm.

I did not take a picture of the okra, because okra is shy. But the eggplant, now that’s a vegetable that loves the camera:

The eggplant, I’ve just learned, was once thought to be a love potion. In Europe it was once believed to cause insanity.

Okra, for its part, is thought to originate in Ethiopia, and came to the Caribbean and the U.S. in the 1700s, probably brought by slaves from West Africa, and was introduced to Western Europe soon after.

If anyone ever tells you that you don’t know where that food came from, now you can set them straight.

But I digress. There was a lot of pressure on this meal. The Yankee said if she botched the okra again — she’s just learning to make it, and it is a delicate thing — that she was retiring. No one wants this; okra is awesome. The first time she made it was quite good. And then there was too much salt. The next time far too much pepper. And then back to too much salt again.

Tonight the okra was fresh and crisp and just right.

Our veggies will live to be eaten another day.