Meanhow, back at the ranchwhile

I've been in MA for several days now, but unfortunately, I have not yet emptied my car. I know that my friends will not be surprised at this, since this is a going joke among them - that it takes me so long to clean out my car. But, this time, I just don't feel that great. My throat is sore - has been for several days. I don't know if it's a cold or allergies. Nothing has increased in terms of regular cold-like systems, and I'm not tired like I usually am with a cold. Just sinus, swollen nasal passage, and a sore throat with all that comes with that.

But, I have made some more jam... raspberry chambord, razzleberry, raspberry peach. I also made some chocolate raspberry sunday spread, some salsa, some tomato sauce, and some pizza sauce.

At some time this week, I need to go to Amherst to look at the books for the courses I will be auditing - and to be sure I want to audit all of them. I also need to contact a prof teaching one of the classes. So, that's something I should do today - then take the drive sometime soon.

Two down; None left

The second party has come and gone. The cake, though leaning, stood through the actual singing, and the guy representing Philippe also stayed on the wood skewer represented the wire. So, that was good. My nephew really liked getting Man on Wire, which he's already watched. He also watched The Man who Walked between the Towers. He has looked at the book Man on Wire. He also got some more lego bricks and a bungee jumper as well as a new book about Andy Warhol, so he's good for this birthday. It's a happy day for him.

Tomorrow is a long day for me. I think I'll be getting up with the boys, so that I can say goodbye before my nephew goes off to his second day of second grade. Day 1 apparently went pretty well. I then go to MA. I hope the drive is uneventful.

Because I'm insane (and apparently have OCD), I bought a box of tomatoes today, so I'm going to need to make my salsa tomorrow - or early Saturday. I also want to make some roasted red pepper spread this weekend. Then, sometime next week, I need to find a place to pick raspberries to do my final (sort of) fruit spreads for the time being (there are still two apple things I want to try, but I think I can do those in October).

Hopefully all goes well with the breads No-L is making. And hopefully she keeps up the good work!

sabbatical, canning, and baking

I've noticed a interesting trend in both 1L's fun summer activities and mine. She has started canning like there's no tomorrow, experimenting with canning soups, sauces, and other kinds of jams. I seem to have started to feel the need to bake.

I've always kind of liked baking, although been too lazy to do it. Maybe now when my options are get cracking on work or bake, baking has started to seem especially appealing. But, in the past several weeks, I've made:
-banana bread (which, sadly turned into soup - either through a bad recipe or through failed experimentation with the convection setting on the oven)
-banana bread (different recipe, and regular oven setting)
-chocolate chip walnut cookies
-chocolate chip cashew cookies
-lemon squares
-white bread
-French bread

The bread is turning out to be fun to make, and actually conducive to work, since lots of what it needs to do it doesn't need me standing over it hovering to do. (I think bread may rise best when it's unwatched - much like water boiling best when no one's there to see it.) And, since I believe 1L is coming to Boston with cans of jams and soups and sauces, and planning on making more, it seems like bread baking isn't a bad thing for me to do. After all, what goes better with jam than bread?

I wonder if we can include these in our "what I did on my sabbatical" reports?

Is it already Tuesday?

Ok. I might have bitten off more than I can chew. But, I will continue on and try to get everything done in the next few days. I guess I'll start packing up my car today. I need to see what's lying around that belongs to me as well. There's a lot of stuff in this house that is mine, and it all needs to go with me to MA. Meanwhile, I need to can some tomato sauce and possibly some peaches if I'm going to use up the stuff that I have. Rather than canning the blueberries, I think I'll just freeze them. That will save a lot of time. It will mean I won't have any to take with me, but I can prepare them in bags so that there is the right amount for pies in the future.

Tomatoes everywhere

Today, I bought a peck of tomatoes from a local Amish person, and I've put half of them to good use, making tomato sauce. I can't decide whether I should make more sauce or just some salsa with the remaining tomatoes. I assume I should weigh them first to see how much I have. I bought a food mill the other day, which really came in handy with this recipe.

As soon as the water starts boiling for the canning to take place, I'll be making the meatloaf that I'm going to freeze for my mother, in the event that she will need chemo. I'm trying to get some things in the freezer or canned for her to make life easier. Unfortunately, the pressure canner that Sedwick bought me for my birthday is in MA, and so most of what I make will have to be frozen. That limits how much I can contribute, since my parents have two refrigerators, but only the freezers that go with those. Nonetheless, I made pesto and put that in the freezer the other day. I also made a pecan pesto as a sauce for on fish and chicken, and that is also in the freezer. I am planning on finding a couple more sauces that they can just throw over chicken, fish, and pork. I will make veggie-beef soup tomorrow. I think I'll be making something (not sure what yet) wednesday, and I've planned with my sister to make up a major load of meatballs on Thursday.

In the meantime, I need to make a video of my nephews to send to their grandmother in Poland, set up my nephew's computer, do some more scrapbooking with my niece, pack my car, have two dentist appointments, plan a birthday party, pick blueberries with a friend, etc. It's getting slightly overwhelming. I'm looking forward to getting settled in MA in a week.

One Down, One to Go

Well, birthday party #1 is now over! Yesterday, I went out searching for all of the various things I would need for birthday party #1 and #2, made the train cake (I have a train cake pan), decorated it with icing and candies (I can't imagine the kind of patience cake makers/decorators must have to have), put it on a Thomas the Train track covered with cling wrap, made the cupcakes with my nephew's name on them, etc. Took a while, but he was so proud to have the cake all for him and the cupcakes with his name on them (he's four, and this was his big day). Next week, it's trying to make a Philippe Petit cake (two cake towers with someone walking between them on some sort of rope). We'll have to see how all of this works out.

Unfortunately, I have given my camera to my brother and his wife to take on vacation with them. They came back with NO battery, which means I couldn't get digital pictures. I did get some video with my flip camera, but when I tried to get the video from my camera to my computer I had some problems, so I need to do it on a different computer. Hopefully, though, I'll be able to post some pictures, or at least a video, of the cake sometime in the future.

Today, I'm finally back to working on the revised manuscript. Well, I will be once the kids leave for the afternoon. I should be able to make a good amount of progress on it today, I hope. Then, tomorrow more on the paper and possibly preparing some various herb vinegars for canning (that is for sealing and longer term storage) so that I can use them with pastas and veggies and salads in the future. I might go out and buy some tomatoes for tomato sauce, but I'm not sure I'm up to do any of that this weekend. I bought peaches yeterday to make pie filling, but unfortantely, do not have any clear jel, so I ordered some on line and now must wait for that to arrive before getting much done. I'd like to do some blueberry pie filling too. If I can split both with my mom, she'll be able to make pies relatively easily for desserts while I'm gone - I can always help her prepare things when I get back.

One idea I have, and of course I have great plans now but I have no idea how they will work in time, is to make soups and chilis for canning during the fall, and then when I come home at Thanksgiving, I can give 1/2 of the stuff to my parents so that they can use them for dinners. This is especially important if my mother does, in fact, have a recurrence of cancer or a new cancer. Having to take care of four children at night for dinner (even if there are two more adults here) is tiring for her now. I can't imagine what it would be like if she were ill. So, perhaps getting helping as much as I can would be a good idea. Sauces are another thing I could can, and maybe I could cook up a storm within the next week and freeze a bunch of things for her to use later. Actually, I can ask her if that would help her out. I'll have to do some searching on the best way to freeze things.

And another one's gone...

Well, the title of the blog might be a bit dramatic, but I'm very sad that one of my friends is leaving our workplace for greener (at least I hope) pastures. It also makes me concerned that others are secretly looking to leave. I like having a group of friends who will come to our odd parties. I need to have ENOUGH friends who will come; otherwise, the parties might not be so weird.

Got a filling today. Happily, it was no big deal. I have one more to go. Ordered all of the gifts for the kid's birthdays from both me and my brother, as well as one from my sister. That takes me through the end of October for getting gifts for kids. It will not be until December that I'll have to do any more figuring out what the hell to get people.

What else is going on? Not much of anything, really. I have to work on the revisions (this is like the worse thing ever). I have to write up a research proposal for PSU and LIU's IRBs. I have to pack. I have to throw two birthday parties and make a twin towers cake with Philippe Petit walking across it (yeah, I know, odd). I have to clean. I'm going to (don't have to) make some salsa jam, some pizza sauce, and some salsa.

Today, I think the salsa jam and maybe the pizza sauce. Also, cleaning my room and doing some packing. I will probably build the house for my nephew's birthday (he's getting a wooden house with furniture). I might go out and buy him some farm animals as well. And, I need to do the analyses necessary for the revisions. That's a lot of goals for one day, but I think I can do it. We'll have to see. There will be fewer kids around today and we are having dinner out, so that will help.

I am also cleaning up one of my computers for my nephew to use. So, busy day, but no busier than many others; it's just that today I'm not playing with kids. Tomorrow is a trip to State College to go to the farmer's market and look for books for a birthday present, look at a party store, and see if I can find some reasonable software for a child. Additionally, I have to work on the paper. I'm not sure what is happening over the weekend, but next week school starts for my nephew and niece. What a short summer!

A Week in the Life...

Today is Friday. I've been in PA for just five days now, and happily I have about two more weeks before having to go anywhere. But, the revisions to the manuscript are incredibly slow and frustrating, and I don't seem to have spss on my computer, so things are complicated. That's the problem with having two places to live; you just don't know what you might need when you leave one place to go to another, and when you need something that is at the other place, it's too difficult to get. Especially when it's a computer with spss. Not to complain, but you'd think the university would help out by providing the software necessary to doing the research that you need to do in order to do your job. But, I just needed to throw that in there.

Since coming home, I've worked a little on the manuscript, picked blueberries, made my blueberry jam, and gone to get some peaches for my peach jam. I found a little Amish stand not that far away, and they seem to have good peaches and a bunch of plum tomatoes, which I'll probably go back for sometime next week. I could probably be driving my parents absolutely bonkers, but for some reason, canning appeals to me this year, and I really would like to try some new things. I should be receiving a book today on canning, and if it doesn't have the recipes I need, I'll be ordering a new book.

Today, I have to do something with those peaches. There are a lot of them, so first, I think I need to go find some candied ginger to add to the jam. Then, cooking up peaches is what I'm going to be doing as the morning progresses.

Yesterday, I had dinner with four graduate school friends. Good company, good food, good wine. And, believe it or not, football. What is football doing on this early? It's insane.

I have to figure out what I want to do with the boys this weekend. I'm babysitting them for three days, and I am pretty sure we need something to do. I found a recipe for pb&j muffins that would be one thing we can do. But, that's not going to take that long, so I'm going to have to figure out some other things to do. If you have any ideas, let me know.

fixing toilets and setting off alarms

This morning, I woke up (ok, it was late late morning, but still morning), and went into the bathroom, and saw the top of the toilet resting against the side of a toilet. This is never a good sign. The toilet was also running. Sedwick had headed off to work, and Kara was still asleep, but, I smartly deduced that part of the problem was the chain under the rubber thingy. After fixing that, something still didn't seem right. I looked further, and saw that the handle part of the toilet flush thing wasn't actually connected anymore to the chain part. Toilet knowledgeable person that I am, I knew that was not good.

So, I im'd Sedwick, and found out that he'd taken the lid off, but then had to get to work. So, after a trip to UPS to mail 1L a power cord and forgotten pair of glasses, I headed to Home Depot.

After wandering around for a while (past smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, which made me wonder if the batteries had ever been replaced in Sedwick's, after they made that "we have no more power" noise last year, and picking up a spiffy talking combo smoke alarm/carbon monoxide alarm), I stumbled upon the toilet section, found the handles, and immediately faced a dilemma. I could get one that would fit a Kohler, a Standard (I think the brand, rather than a standard toilet), or some specific model number. Of course, I had no idea what kind of toilet I needed a handle for. So, I went with the Standard one (on the off chance that it also meant a standard toilet and not just a Standard toilet).

Wrench in hand, I got off the old handle, and got on the new one -- but the chain was too long, and, try as I might, I couldn't get it to flush. I then stumbled on the idea of connecting the chain higher up. That did the trick, and the toilet is now flushing, with its cover on.

Then, I set off to tackle the smoke alarm. I actually found two carbon monoxide alarms, still in their packages, in the basement. I opened one, put the batteries in, and promptly scared off Henry and Poledra as I tested it. While they calmed down, I opened the package of the combo smoke/carbon monoxide alarm I'd gotten. Just as I got the batteries into that, they had settled down enough to return to the living room... only to have the tester for *that* alarm go off. They seem to have recovered, and I think we now have a working toilet and two working alarms.

Between that and the hospital sending off to home a patient, it's been a very good day :)

jammin', jammin', Jammin' till the jam is through (or all day long)

Well, the train ride to PA was unsuccessful, although I suppose you could argue that it was successful if by successful you mean that it arrived. It did arrive. It just arrived two hours late, making me miss not one, not two, but three trains to Lansdale on SEPTA. So, where I was supposed to arrive in Lansdale by 3:00 so that we could go pick blackberries, I didn’t get there until 5:00, making it impossible to do the picking. While I was sad, I was also exhausted from the very long day (8:20-5:00 on trains), and the idea of picking blackberries did not appeal anyway.

Friday night, then, was spent relaxing and hanging out with an old college friend where I was spending the weekend. Her two children, C and K, were friendlier than I would have expected a 5- and 3-year old to be, given that it has been at least a year since I was last here. I would not have expected them to remember me well or to be comfortable around me. Apparently, however, I have the “let’s climb all over her” persona, because I was immediately mistaken for a jungle gym.

Saturday, we had to rise earlier than the rosters (well, ok, 8:00am) to be sure we had time for the berry picking. C went with us to pick, and he did very well. By the time we had spent nigh but an hour at the farm, we had 12 pounds of blackberries. This is many more than we would have expected. We bought some peaches, and the dregs of the blueberries, which they (unfortunately) were no longer doing PYO because of the scarcity of their crops (on a side note, as a result, I’m a little concerned about the possibility of picking blueberries at home – which I’ve been counting on for my blueberry jam).

After the berry picking outing, we all piled into the van and went of to the Goshenhoppen Folk Festival, which was a celebration of all things Pennsylvania Dutch; the primary purpose of the festival seemed to be to demonstrate the early days in PA, including sawing wood, wood art, corn husk doll making (and other doll making), needlework, blacksmithing, etc. The kids seemed to enjoy it a lot.

After, we went shopping for jam supplies (i.e., sugar, pectin, jars). After dinner, we made two batches of blackberry jam, all of which successfully sealed .

Sunday morning brought rain. I was happy we had picked the berries the day before, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have blackberry jam this year (and it’s been a very long time since I had blackberry jam). In addition to rain, it brought A LOT of jam making. Two batches of black and blue (blackberry/blueberry) and two batches of blackberry-peach jam later, and I am jammed out for the weekend.

After being crawled upon for two hours while watching Handy Manny (don’t ask) to keep the kids out of the hair of their parents for a while, I am once again tired. They are still running around with pretty much the same amount of energy they had when they woke up (not surprising, I know, for kids, but tiring, I also know, for me). I am looking forward to bed time (unfortunately, they chose to forego their baths tonight in order to have them tomorrow morning with their grandmother). So, it looks like there is still at least another half hour until bedtime. But, given that I am currently not being climbed on and used as “their bed,” they are not bothering me at all right now. Pretty sure, however, that as soon as their parents see the mess they are making right now, the kids will be unhappy. But, hey, what can I do about that?

Tonight I hope to type some recipes from my friend’s cookie cookbook, specifically those that call for jam (at this point, recipes that use jam are probably going to be very very useful over the next year). I’ll be searching for cookie and cake recipes.

Annoyingly enough, I cannot figure out how to get my computer on their wireless network here. I wanted to try to communicate with my friend who is, unfortunately, spending way too much time in a hospital room, but without being online, I can obviously not use Skype. I think I’ll be able to post this note later today, but of that I’m not even sure, as I’ve been typing it into my own computer and unless I can find a thumb drive to borrow, I will be unable to get it to my friend’s computer. This living without wireless access is more difficult than I would have expected. I’m not used to this.

Tomorrow, I’ll be getting a train from Lansdale to Philly and then from Philly to my parents home in central PA (well, not quite to their home, but close by). What I have learned from this experience is that it is HELL to take a train from Boston to my parent’s house. Thus, in the winter, when I will travel again without my car because I don’t feel it necessary to drive the car that far when it could be snowing anywhere from here to there, I will be flying. In comparison to 10 hours on the train with only 20 minutes leeway between the two trains, the two flights are but 5-6 hours of total travel time, including the layover in Philly. At their cheapest (that I can see today), there is about $100 difference between the two (with the flight being more expensive), but in addition to the 10 hours of travel time on the train, I’d also have to be in the car for a total of 2 hours (maybe longer) rather than the about 40 minutes I need to be in the car on the other trip. Granted, I have to arrive at the airport early, and I would like have to also have a cab take me to the airport, but all in all, it’s just so much easier this way. Plus, after being 2 hours late on the last train the 20 minute leeway between trains is way too worrisome.

I need to look for a gel mat for in front of the counter when cooking. There are some other things that I may want to look for as well after this weekend; one of those things is this really digital cool cooking thermometer that my friends here have. That’s probably it for the time being, but they both are very interesting as possibilities.

I know that this is a very long update, but hopefully it provides at least some humor, and some level of interest, to my friend – whom I’ve been thinking about a lot – who has spent way to much time in the hospital this past week. I hope the trip home comes soon.

As 1L so astutely pointed out...

we apparently reached our peak of bloggingness out west. However, I still stand by it being a good way to keep in touch. And anyone who hasn't yet created one should (hint, hint).

I'm still enjoying being in one place for more than a week. I thought I was all geared up to do some work yesterday, but then I got distracted with the saga of air purifiers - and it was quite a saga. With the 1:1 people:pets ratio here (well, more like 3:4 until 1L gets back), we started looking for air purifiers. Apparently there are things to figure out like what room size it should be for, how much it filters, how many air recycles per hour there are, filter cost, and so on. In any case, I think we finally settled on a Blueair (so if any of you have heard awful things about it, or if you got a hold of your dad and he checked it in Consumer Reports, 1L, I'm not sure I want to know, cause I got quite a headache yesterday!). It should get here next week. Cat dander, your days are numbered (well, hopefully).

Home again home again jiggity jig

Well, I'm off to Philadelphia today and then back to my parents on Monday. Then, three weeks with the kids... and at least one (perhaps two) kid birthdays, and then I'll be back here. Then, I have to get busy busy busy. SHould have been busy busy busy before this, but I've been lazy lazy lazy.

Not so Good at this

Well, I guess we aren't so good at the whole writing of blogs thing, although it worked very well the last time we were on a vacation. This time, though, I guess it was just too much after long days of walking around Montreal and Quebec.

I LOVED Quebec - liked Montreal too but I really really liked Quebec, although walking up and down all of the hills was tiring after a while.

What did we do? Primarily, we walked. We did see the botanical gardens in Montreal (they were beautiful, and I could have easily spent more time there). We got smoked meat at Schwartz's and bagels at a really nice bagel place. We went to two brew pubs. We walked around old town. No-l and her mother walked up 99 stairs to see a bunch of crutches and a heart in a church (some of the rest of us stayed in the church's gardens during that time due to arthritis in the knees). We took a ferry to an Island across from Montreal where the world's fair had taken place. And... we walked. In Quebec, we saw some of the monuments, particularly those to Montcalm and Wolfe. We went into a very beautiful church (Notre-Dame if I'm not mistaken) because it was pouring out. We went to the Plains of Abraham. We had crepes and gelato. And we walked. We found a beautiful wood sculpture store which I will regret not buying anything at until I get back to Quebec OR until the sculptor emails me back. We walked around old town, both the upper and lower parts. We went on a Ghost Walk (fun) and we went to the market. I took the Funicular, because I wanted to have taken one in more than one city.

We wasted half a day because our dear friend Sedwick didn't have the right town for his drop zone, so we had to drive 2.5 hours out of our way to drop him off. And drop him off we did, since we didn't pick him up until the next day!

And, we went to Montmorency Falls and the Ile d'Orleans.

Need more time to see more of the province of Quebec. It appears that there is a CRW event (read: some silly type of skydiving thing) over Labor Day, so we may drive up there, leave Sedwick off for the jumping, and go back to Quebec, go to Ottawa, and perhaps go to Montreal again (especially for those yummy bagels).

And because I have much work to do today, I'm only going to paste the slideshow here, rather than playing around with making a movie or something. Lots of pictures of flowers here - little of most other things...