Saturday, September 01, 2007

I have no clever title.

A few weeks ago I decided to revive the blogging only to find out that I now needed a gmail account and afer much circling around with google password assistant, can now get into this again, honestly how does one end up with so many ridiculous accounts on the web? I should nix some of my emails and consolidate but general laziness prevents me. Let me say gentle readers...and not so gentle readers, that I miss you all and in quiet moments at home wish for your visits but the idea of actually scheduling a visit in advance that works for both or several parties gets to be as daunting as consolidating emails and instead I quietly water the trees, take care of the cats, hang out with Andrew and work on my various hobbies, most occupying, photography.

I hope you like the most recent round. I spent like 100 bucks at Cord Camera this week because they were having dirt cheap 8X10s and 5X7s so I tried to catch up with prints of my pictures. I still have some wonderful fledgling robin pictures from this spring to put up so bear with me.

Another recent interest is my continued obsession with our bread machine and now our food saver. I have been making soft onion sandwich rolls, cinammon rolls, and even biscuits (which I don't use the bread machine for but am lumping together anyway.

It's now gotten to the point where Thursday night, while we had the daily show and colbert report on, that I bustled about the kitchen making the dry mixes to several receipes and then food saving them (www.foodsaver.com) shut in ball jars. Seriously. I try to do one new recipe a week. If andrew and i both like it, or if I like it, the recipe goes in the book or not, gets trashed.

I've also been using my foodsaver on sweet corn. Even though raccoons came by to "test" our ears on two different evenings, we managed to evade the raiders and supplemented by Mom and Dad's excess of corn have a couple dozen neat servings food saved away in the freezer.

I know what you are thinking. And I have an answer for you. NO BABIES!!!

Except of course, for our cat babies, Tweeker and Molly who get along very well. Molly still refuses to be picked up but takes to cuddling at night and most of it. One of her favorite activities is to jump on the edge of our oak dining room chairs, the one closest to the kitchen counter specifically, and after a few seconds of balanceing and stretching out one leg then another, she leaps onto the kitchen counter, trotting as far as she can before we catch her. It's hopeless. Rest assured friends that if you eat anything I make the counter has been disenfected and I bake on wax/parchment paper to be sure.

Andrew has nearly finished laying his own hardwood floor in his room. It took him a couple days to get into a groove I think, but using an air compressed power nail gun helped and it's now a bad job at all. He didn't have quite enough boards stained but can stain them now that they are laid. The next project, I will participate more in, we are getting some cabinets for our laundray room wtih counters etc. To stain and place. We will probably go tommorrow and pick them up as Lowe's is having there buy so much no interest deals.

Lately I have been obsessed with Doris Day. Seriously. You may remember one of my earliest blog postsrecommending the book the Thing About Jane Spring. Well I've recommended it to folks at the library so much that I thought I should meet Doris myself. I've watched Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. I am watching Send Me No Flowers but don't like it as much.

Other books I have listened to and loved:

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
AustenLand by Shannon Hale
Con Ed by...oh I forget and am, too lazy too look it up.

I haven't had a satisfying print read in a while. I read Connie Willis' Passage but found the ending deeply unsatisfying. I read Stray by Rachel Vincent, but it was just okay. I've been spending most of my evening reading learning about North American mammals, trying to become quite the naturalist I suppose and white tails are my preoccupation right now. Dad is letting me go up in treestands with my camera and last night I saw a doe and two fawns, the doe caught my fidgeting though and they did not stay long.

I hope this give you a feeling of being caught up. No more pictures for a while, except for maybe the robins. I have high hopes for some decent deer pics between now and hunting season.

See ya, Jules