The cabinets are not where the store thought they would be. They are still on a truck headed west. They are anticipated to be here Friday, but will not reach our place until Monday or Tuesday next.
There is plus and minus to this: the plus is Jane can finish the painting without hindrance and at a slower place. Understand, I have offered to wield a roller, but she states that, given my hand isn’t the steadiest, she wants to do the edging; and that after that, the roller part is her dessert, which she doesn’t want to give up. So I remain the Agent of Destruction: if something wants ripping out, down, or up, or if a board wants to be cut—it’s mine. But the drawing of cut-lines, the measuring, the painting, the figuring, is all the resident Agent of Art and Construction.
So that’s the plus. Jane is getting really tired and I can’t pry the paint away from her—my pony, she calls it, as in, “Keep shoveling! There must be a pony somewhere under all this poo…” And we get to rest a little.
On the other hand, the minus is—we’re going to be lucky to have countertops by Christmas. We ARE slotted in, because we bought them on sale, early, and we are in queue for installation. But certainly not for Thanksgiving.
I am not even sure we will have everything working for Thanksgiving, except the fridge and freezer, which have to stay plugged in: not sure of a sink (again) or the dishwasher.
So…I am promising Jane her ‘chicken with mandarin oranges and cinnamon’ for Christmas, not Thanksgiving, and I have made a reservation at Clinkerdagger’s, the restaurant that overhangs Spokane Falls. Snagged one of the last reservations for Thanksgiving noon, which will give Jane her turkey with trimmings (I’m, I finally discovered, allergic to turkey, but not chicken)—and me something else nice. With traditional desserts. And no dishes to wash. We’ve never holiday’ed-out like this, but it seems like Jane, after all her work, deserves something better than I’ll be able to put together in Chaos Central.
This isn’t a boo-hoo. With the wonderful kitchen that’s taking shape, there is no boo-hoo. Except about the schedule. We’ll at least be able to put away most of the stuff from the living room floor before Thanksgiving (it looks like a bad case of hoarding, and some stacks are as high as my head)—and we will be fine! But we are giving ourselves a little bit of R&R.
I’ve had salmon for Thanksgiving (IMO, it’s something to be thankful for having at all). (I love salmon – but it’s hard to find in stores, except as pieces that are too big for one person.)
Salmon run in Washington rivers, so it is very abundant in our grocery stores. My favorite prep is pan-fry with McCormick Chicken and Fish Spice liberally atop same.
Since my father was just released from the hospital on Tuesday, and is in a different rehab center than before he got the pneumonia, he’ll probably be there on Thanksgiving Day. It won’t be the first time I’ve had PB&J for Thanksgiving dinner, unless I go out somewhere, and that’s not in my plans. They’ll have a decent dinner for the residents. I hope he’s off pureed food and thickened liquids by then. He wants solid food, but until he can swallow and they’re sure he’s not getting any food into his lungs, they’re being cautious.
Very glad he’s doing better!
I found a two-pack of frozen fillets with sauce, bake-in-bag, so that’s my dinner.
Hi – I am curious – how are the cats behaving with all this renovation going on?
Jonathan up in NH where we actually had some snow this week.
Fortunately we have the yard fixed so they can go out into the garden. This is the safety valve. But the fact that The Litterbox has moved hither and yon in the painting has caused—ahem—at least two demonstrations of displeasure. The whole house looks like a disaster area: we only have paths through the living room: the rest is sacks and boxes. Things accumulate in bedrooms and office, because we have to find them…it’s been a mess.
The turkey allergy must be really annoying around holiday time, since it’s a seasonal staple (and cheap as dirt, to boot). DH just discovered a pork allergy, which results in headaches the day after consuming ham (o noes!) or roast pork. Oddly, bacon and sausages do not provoke the response.
I am having a “Christmas Story” flashback to dinner at the Chinese restaurant, after the neighbor’s dogs made off with the turkey. Hmmm, there’s a thought — how do you and Jane feel about roast duck? Maybe a l’orange?
Oh, I could never eat a duck. We had too many pet ones when we lived on the lake. No ducks, no geese. Just chickens. Not that I’m that fond of chicken.
Pigs, now, pigs were the Enemy when I was a kid. There was an old sow put gran in a tree for hours, upon a time, and I ripped a shirt getting through a fence avoiding the same sow, cantankerous beast! And I quite enjoy bacon.
L’orange, Peking Duck, I’ll eat duck! Yum.
I’m glad you are treating yourselves to a nice Thanksgiving and some R&R. Good that Jane can finish the painting without hurrying and hopefully have some time to rest as well.
Off topic: can you send this link on to Jane’s sister Bri from the game? I don’t think I can paste a link from outside in the chat for her.
It’s the first example I found on a USA site while looking for “warm feet mat”:
https://www.amazon.com/MatsMatsMats-com-Under-Desk-Foot-Warmer/dp/B00HHFMC98#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1510782475960
We were talking about how cold one’s feet get in winter when sitting at a desk that is against a window wall, and I told her about these heated floormats that you can plug into the mains electricity. They use about as much electricity as an incandescent lightbulb (size of the mat determines the Watts, from 20-100), and the mat heats up to about 40 degrees centigrade (about as much as a hot shower or bath).
I’ve got a large one (60×80 cms, 24×40 inch) under my desk, that only switches on when I switch on my computer; and a small one (30×40) on top of the desk that is always on since I cut my cat’s hair short when she got fleas – it’s been her absolute favorite place to sleep ever since.
For my feet to get the benefit I need to kick off my rubber-soled slippers, but then it keeps them nice and warm without getting too hot. If my feet are really cold to start I’ll drop a shawl over them to keep the heat in while they warm up; once warm it’s not necessary and I need to take the shawl off or my feet get too warm. You’re not supposed to put anything heavy on it permanently, like a chair leg, or it might overheat at that spot.
I’m very happy I found those mats, as my feet always got quite cold sitting at my desk in winter, and last winter I had no problems at all with that.
DH & I had thought we were going to go out to eat for Thanksgiving this year since my nephew moved out to Oregon this summer and we were rather looking forward to that, but the nephew decided to fly back here for the holidays so we’ll be cooking again this year. DH is burned out on turkey and wants to cook chicken breasts hasselback style so we’ll still get our dressing but not have a turkey carcass left over that no one really wants to eat. The nephew has celiacs, so over the years I’ve developed some gluten-free workarounds for dinner that we all seem to like. My mom always made cornbread dressing, so that makes the dressing easy to de-gluten.
I’m hoping that after Jane recovers from all the work of kitchen remodeling she’ll find the time to post a few pictures. It sounds like it’s going to look really nice.
It’s just me and mom now and I haven’t heard we’ve been invited anywhere, so we likely will eat out. Nevertheless, I will be laying in some good Prater’s cornbread dressing and some turkey and cranberry sauce because an integral part of Thanksgiving for me is being able to eat turkey and dressing leftovers for a week. Prater’s makes the best cornbread dressing, bested only by my mom’s. However, at 93, she doesn’t do much cooking any more, especially since there’s only the two of us to eat it.
As for Jane and her painting, she’s got the bit in her teeth. Best to just let her run.
Going to try that link again. It’s that first illustration I wanted to share.
https://theowlunderground.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/nothing-is-ever-simple/
https://theowlunderground.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/nothing-is-ever-simple/
When we updated our kitchen about 5 years ago, we replaced Formica with Silestone, the quartz composite material. There were two trips involved; one for measuring (with lasers) and another for installation. The sink and faucets were installed during the 2nd process, and the plumber followed the same day for the drain hook up and dishwasher installation. You will want the sink and faucets close to hand when the counters arrive.
If I may make a suggestion, you KNOW the sink will have an overflow at some point, which will ruin the cabinet flooring under it. There are metal trays available to fit on that cabinet floor, or you can get one manufactured at a sheet metal business. Worth every single penny to get that, because the metal will hold the water off the particle board/wood surface.
It’s 67 degrees here on the Gulf Coast. I personally prefer stuffed and baked fish for Thanksgiving (memories of my life in Destin), but will probably serve turkey and ham and possibly a roast. MIL and I have cooked for 50 people before, but we’ve scaled back to about 20 this year.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Well, my Firefox browser just updated itself to Firefox Quantum, and NewsFox doesn’t work with Quantum. Two choices: Roll back to the 56.02 version of Firefox and live in the past with security vulnerabilities, or find a new feed reader. I’ve been trying out RSSOwl and Feedbro, but naturally neither works as well as NewsFox.
Feedbro is an inbrowser plugin that works in Firefox (at least for now), and in order to comment on a blog in Feedbro, you have to go to the actual web page, because Feedbro only displays content. To go to the webpage, it opens a new browser tab.
RSSOwl is a stand alone, but it also only displays content, and if you want to comment you also have to go to the actual webpage, which opens in RSSOwl.
There are several blogs I can no longer comment on because RSSOwl doesn’t give me the option of using my Google ID, and there is one blog I can no longer comment on because Feedbro can’t open the site in a new tab with the URL because it’s not available to the casual passerby and RSSOwl won’t allow me to use my Google ID to sign in to comment.
As for reading webcomics, neither feed reader will display the actual webpage to begin with and all you get is a thumbnail and you have to click through to the webpage on every %$#@$$%$#!@!# one in order to be able to read the &*(&^%#&*%&% comic, which on Feedbro means you’ll have humpty eleven tabs open if you don’t close each and every *(&^%$$#%$^$#@!#$ one when you’re done reading the page.
OH, RANT, RANT, RANT, . . . .
Thanks for the report. I’ve complained before to Mozilla about Firefox’s damn-the-users and -addon-makers quarterly(?) release schedule. One can set FF to update only with permission, and it’s not getting that permission for a while.
If it’s easy, I’d roll back to 56.02 until the addon publishers catch up.
If you have anti-virus, it probably has a plugin that’s protecting you as well or better than Firefox itself.
The hardest part about reverting to 56.0.2 is finding it on
their site – it exists, but they hide it. (Their links go to directory lists. Because of course we all know everything about their stuff.)
Uninstall 57, then run the 56.0.2 exe you downloaded (I’d send it, but it’s 37MB).
There’s a download site that has 56.0.2
I got 57 uninstalled and the old one installed – it’s still messed up in some ways, but my Tumblr buttons are working again.
Mozilla Firefox announced it was going on a 6-week update cycle.
(By compiling it from source locally I get to have it use the system libraries already here–rather than receiving it as a huge monolith that duplicates them, wasting space on disk and in RAM when running. It’s enough of a behemoth as it is without that! The biggest problem for me is their changing the dependencies with that cycle. When it requires a newer version of some dependency, I stick with what I have, currently 48.)
I’m using the Pale Moon browser. It’s similar to the old Firefox from a couple of years ago, before they messed it up by introducing the Australis interface and trying to imitate Chrome.
It was forked from Firefox a few years earlier, and has been developed independently ever since. It’s frequently updated (without messing things up) and secure. The developers strike me as being down to earth, common-sense types. Pale Moon is fast, solid and works really well – and most Firefox add-ons will work with it, including old ones that no longer work with Firefox itself.
I prefer it to Firefox because I don’t like the way Firefox has been evolving, and I wanted to keep my old add-ons. I’m really happy and comfortable with Pale Moon.
I used Pale Moon for a time a few years back until I had problems with the way it interfaced with my local library. So I’m on Firefox again and don’t have all that many plug-ins & extensions installed, so the Quantum update hasn’t bitten me in the butt yet. A few weeks ago I was signed in to an on-line webinar using Firefox that insisted I click on a box periodically to show that I was in fact sitting in front of the screen, and I was unable to click in Firefox. The tech support people told me to use Chrome instead and that worked. So far, Firefox does seem a little peppier since the update yesterday. I usually have 20 – 30 tabs open, so I demand a lot from my browser.
Bookmarked.
Thanks for the heads up! I feel the same about Firefox as it is now, though I’ve used it since v0.7 prerelease. I can’t keep up with their development cycle–I compile from scratch, and use local system libraries.
I’m using (the unofficial Mac version of) Palemoon as well, though I have Firefox and Safari and Opera in the background, just in case…
This version broke a lot of stuff that had been working before. I hope they’re getting inundated with complaints about what it’s done.
I don’t know anybody who’s liking the Firefox revision ‘better’. It’s not bothered me much except for the extra keystroke to get to bookmarks, which I use multiple times a day. THAT’s a pita, but a small one. Sheesh, why must computer use be a weekly moving target? I know, I know, bad guys. May they be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels.
CJ, Paradox Interactive has a 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate–coined, I think, by Master of Orion II, aka MoO2) called Stellaris. Stellaris has a couple of differences from common 4X games. Usually, a 4X galaxy or world is populated by some interesting objects; Stellaris’ objects come with stories. At this point, due to Paradox’s policy of adding to the base game in addition to creating DLC (Down Load Content, ie, more game you pay more for), the stories are quite varied. They have a whole set of stories just for end of game crises.
A major difference is that Stellaris has (for now) three or four different FTL modes. Different civilizations start with different FTLs, though you can disallow ones you don’t like. One is Trek-like warp drive where you can go anywhere, slowly. Second is Alliance-Union/Compact-Space jump lines, called starlanes by Stellaris; very fast along the lanes. Third is a jump station that a ship can jump to or from within a range; it’s fast, but you need a station. Fourth, requiring a lot of research, is (I think) a jump drive with no station needed, like a Babylon 5 jump drive, which is fast but risky. All these different techs make defense something of a dog’s breakfast, so there’s no real option to making a Stack Of Doom and running around trying to catch the fleet of whomever you’re a war with.
This will change with the next release. Starlanes will be the only FTL, with the exception of some wormholes–long distance starlanes, essentially–and Babylon 5-like jump gates that you can find and repair. I think the fourth method will still be around, but some of this is still tentative.
It also emphasizes stations more than previous releases. (Stations in 4X space games tend to be rather unimportant compared to ships.)
This new release, sometime in 2018 I presume, will be 1.9, and as every other Stellaris release, it has a code name. CHERRYH.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-diary-91-starbases.1052064/
This is the dev diary for the FTL changes:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-92-ftl-rework-and-galactic-terrain.1052958/
It is really a very nice honor.
I hope that Ms. Cherryh does not behave like Pyanfar – if you want a dock destroyed, just invide the Pride.
Lol!
I gave up on RSSOwl and Feedbro (Can you say “clunky and cumbersome,” boys and girls?”) and rolled back to Firepox version 56.02, which plays nice with NewsFox. Firepox Squantum is a trainwreck, and so I expressed in my several opinions left on various Firepox websites.
In better news, I’ve had Erik Satie’s delightful little waltz “Je Te Veux” as an earworm all day, which is one of the nicest earworms I’ve had in a long time. Versions available on YouTube for those who might want to give it a listen. He wrote other stuff besides the Gymnopedies.
I have a couple of CDs of Satie’s stuff, including the Gymnopedies, which I like.
My current earworm is several pieces from The Piano Guys; the current one I have is the mashup between Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and the ending march from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The backdrops they find for the YouTube videos are great — in this case, the city of Petra in Jordan (also where the end sequence from the movie took place).
Have you seen and heard their Ode to Joy to the World?
I love that, with the handbells and tubular bell at the start.