Today’s errand is to pick up all the things that I bought yesterday at the UW Surplus Sale.
Thanks Swanda for the use of the car.
And reassembled (the printer that is):
And the rolley cart thing:
Still no idea of what I’m going to do with these things. That’s for another day to decide.
Today’s big excitement is dinner at Swanda’s with Wonderfool. But, of course, before dinner there was some rearranging to do first to take some of the “hospital” look out of the apartment and turn it back into social mode.
Steaks under the broiler was my cooking contribution, deviled eggs and cole slaw was Swanda’s contribution, and Wonderfool did the moving that I couldn’t having stressed myself earlier getting the printer out of Swanda’s van.
Got home around eight and my Global Freeloaders arrived about nine. Two 19-year-olds from Lansing, Michigan that flew to Fairbanks and are hitchhiking back to Michigan via San Francisco. Ambitious to say the least – especially the AlCan highway.
Today I actually made it to the dentist with so much time to spare that I started exploring Redmond – stopped at Safeway to see what non-perishables were on the shelves (sewing machine needles and iron-on patch material), then found a Trader Joe’s so I thought I’d see if they were carrying liquor yet (yes) and then to the AAA for Victoria, BC brochures for Swanda and I’s early August overnight. Looks like we are driving one way with Swanda, then I’ll either fly home ($150, and earns 250 Alaska miles) or take the clipper ($89 but I could use my 50% off coupon but better to save that for a round-trip), or via Alaska Airlines for $200 (earns 500 miles).
The plan was for Swanda to come to dinner and delivery some cheap California booze. Well, the later happened, the former stalled by a lack of hunger on Swanda’s part – probably from driving all day.
The delivery:
One down, four to go (though one is for Jimmy). Apparently he dropped $770 at the liquor store in Hilt, CA, just over the Oregon border.
So it was just me for dinner. Didn’t cook the steaks and broccoli that I’d planned, instead went with a moose steak salad (a.k.a. leftovers):
Down to getting the finishing touches put together, like tie-downs and the flipping lock bolts to hold the stakes into the bed:
Picked up a tarp at Home Depot today to cover the top. Now I need to find my grommet set or its back to Home Depot for an ugly blue tarp.
Traffic was hell for the boys coming to dinner. Try an hour and a half for what should have been a half hour run. On the positive side (for me), Damon bought my old living room server for $100, minus the $10 I owed Swanda. One more thing out of my life. The new one is super quite – such a nice change, and I’m guessing it uses much less energy as well.
A lovely meal al fresco (you know him) with cocktails and the new, followed by steaks on the grill with a lovely green salad and some cole slaw for Swanda and I. Damon doesn’t “do” cabbage.
I’d post a pic of the boys, but Swanda’s Fabulous Blog is under construction waiting for pictures to appear (for me to swipe). Check back as Swanda has promised to post pics Friday night or Saturday.
Another intense day of work… which is good since I need to get it done before I leave for Cabo San Lucas with Gnarlene on Sunday. Getting closer — hopefully will be able to upload the site tomorrow mid-day assuming my back and fingers don’t give out.
Dinner tonight at Shanghai Garden on 6th with cocktails before. The food is good, too good. We (Swanda) always orders way to much of this good food, and then I eat too much of this good food and come home and lay down feeling like a beached whale (and probably looking like one as well).
Not the best pictures, but the advantage of going with Swanda is that because he makes and impression on them (size and tipping), service is great, moves to the front of the line if their is a wait for tables, or maybe it’s because he orders a ton of food. Tonight we had two new dishes — moo shu shrimp (normally it’s the moo shu pork we go for) which they come and fold at the table, and some eggplant dish that was OK, but I’m not a big eggplant kinda guy. Add salt/pepper squid, some noodle dish (hand cut green barley noodles), a beef dish and you have me waddling home knowing I’m going to have to sleep mostly propped up to keep the pressure off my stomach. If there ever was a time for bulimia…
Maybe I’ll pick up some nice bug in Mexico to take care of the problem.
If it’s Saturday it must be time for the Swanda Birthday Party, Part Two. Venue tonight is Bizzaro, an Italian restaurant in Wallingford.
Yeah, it’s a little dark, but it was a good crowd. I had the honor of holding down one end of the table, seated next to Lars and Anita who I invited to dinner next Saturday before I leave for Santa Fe.
It was a great dinner… I had the pasta and pulled elk (yes, elk). Chris passed out custom gift bags to everyone which included a custom bottle by Wonderful, some poetry, some wine… leave it to Swanda to hand out gifts at his own birthday. A lovely turn of events.
Since the dinner reservation was at 5pm, we headed back to the apartment for post-dinner cocktails.
Sort of make the rest of the day look boring… a champagne tasting at EVS, an art sale at Suzannes, finishing the Holiday cards and getting them in the mail.
OK — that sounds kinda bad. How about this. Plumbing, and then Swanda.
Update on the hot tub project:
OK — it doesn’t look like much, but I actually managed to get the drain/air system put together (and not leaking with one trip to home depot.
Well, two trips, but that was once I’d figured out how to do the tub jets since AguaQuip didn’t have any generic “eyeball” jets. My solution? I needed something with a fairly wide flange and backside nut so I could get it tight enough to the tub so it wouldn’t leak. Kitchen Hose Guides… once the Plumbers Goo is dry I’ll attach the Garbage Disposal hose adapter to the brass 3/4″FIP to Garden Hose Male Adapter and we’ll have water flow.
Another thing I realized working on this project — that I could initially fill the tub from the hot water heater drain…. preheated water — should knock a day off the warm up time for the tub, and the water heater is less than 20′ from the tub. Yahoo.
It will still take me a couple of more days on the project as I’m checking everything as I put it together for leaks etc. just in case this idea doesn’t fly… I’d had to have buy the insulation and boards to wrap the base in… and not have it work.
Dinner tonight with Swanda at his place. I brought the pork loin, bread and wine, he supplied the asparagus, salad, whiskey and my paycheck.
It was an alarm morning… need to be at Swanda’s place at 10am, or a little after 9 if I want to catch Air Force One taking off to the North right in front of Swanda’s picture window.
As it turns out… the President didn’t take off at 9:30, but he did snarl traffic getting to the apartment so that my 20 minute trip was closer to 35.
By 10am it was time to leave, president or no president. It turned out to be no president, but here he is waving goodbye. Thank you King 5 for the picture.
Off to Whistler-Creekside go we.
Stops in Mt. Vernon for gas and thrift shopping (was looking for wine glasses, found 45’s including a Jackie Gleason one), then Cloverdale for lunch (Boston Pizza – same place Rich and I stopped on one other trip, but need to find a new place in Cloverdale), last minute groceries and wine in Squamish.
By 5pm we were settled in with cocktails and admiring the view:
Steaks on the grill, asparagus in Alfredo, tomato, cheese, sweet onion salad. Damn fine – followed by a wonderful sunset:
It’s so hard to get sunset photos, but that one isn’t bad.
Before I get to dinner, finished up getting the MailChimp email list set up for the Winter Gathering – it’s a free service works get if you don’t have to send out tons of emails but still have a lot of members on your list. Got the call designed, send out, and only 23 bounces (2.9% according to the site). Now comes the fun part of going through the database and updating it, and sending snail-mail postcards to the bouncy people.
As for dinner, here is the before:
That would be a “Moose Loaf” according to Swanda. Half moose (thanks Alan in Juneau), half lamb, wrapped in bacon.
And the whole meal:
With a load of pencil-thin asparagus and a big salad. No carbs here except for the wine.
Good dinner, good to see Swanda, still didn’t get to bed early.
Sunday at the shop wasn’t too bad, not as good as the last three Sundays, but respectable for a Sunday.
A big shout to Swanda – today’s “whale” who called in two orders (first was six assorted Sauvignon Blancs under $15, second was for two Proseccos, also under $15) over the course of the afternoon. It’s nice to have some people’s credit cards on file in the safe for these “emergency” white wine orders.
After work it was off to dinner with Bliss – grilled chicken, asparagus, salad, wine – after a martini, of course. I’d ask him to read scholarship applications but he’s an International Baccalaureate teacher a local high school – just what he needs: MORE papers to grade.
Left around 7:30pm so he could get back to grading those papers – a task that fills most evenings and weekends. After seeing his workload I have extreme sympathy for every high school English teacher.
Next stop the apartment – two weeks til Swanda moves. I see boxes awaiting filling, but with only 600sq/ft it won’t take long. He shared some interesting news which I’m not going to share – let’s just say, things are looking up.
Home by 9:30, in bed by midnight, for tomorrow I work at 10.
Corrections, corrections, corrections. I feel like a scene from Fiddler on the Roof.
So, yesterdays post, here are the corrections:
Even the top 10 list headline was screwed up:
So, the 10 Rules To Be A Good Housewife:
That should be:
So, the 10 Rules To Be A Good HouseGUEST: – really, we aren’t in the 50’s anymore
And the biggie (other than the other typo I found and will fix):
If your borrow their car, wash it, return it full of cash, even it was empty. You just saved $30-50
Let me tell you, if you fill their car up with cash, even pennies, you will be out more than $30-50. That should have been GAS!
Thanks Onyx for catching those problems… before Swanda caught them.
But all this is just a segway into how I spent my day: working, travelling to the city to work, coming home and buying the last of the ingredients for dinner. But let’s start with lunch after a visit to to San Francisco branch…
Great little Japanese place not far from the E&A San Francisco office that does a nice bento box lunch. I got the deluxe and then added a little dry sake — and when I was rung up she offered me a free Sapporo Beer. OK. I was thinking the small glass like the sake — no, it was a full 10-12 oz pour of Draft Sapporo. How do they do that — ship kegs over? Anyway — here is the place: Kamakura Sushi and Sake House.
Then it was back across the bay (easy commute even with the Bay Bridge closed) and a trip to the Berkeley Bowl for the last remnants of tonight’s dinner of Tandori Pork, mixed greens and a lovely rice concoction which I didn’t burn, but could have used another five minutes.
Actually got to bed at a decent time — which is good because I fly out in the morning.
Time to get back into the swing of things and get some bread baking done. Jeff was over in the late morning to drop off some high-gluten bread flour for me to try – and a loaf of his plain baguette that he made using a pan he borrowed from me. A nice discussion about bread (he uses the Julia Child method – I use a machine) and the difference between artisan (his) and high-tech (mine). These are the two loaves I baked today – with the bad of flour in the background – there is talk of splitting a 50# bag.
While the bread was in process (45 minutes in the machine, 45 minutes in the proofing [warming] oven) I got the scissor lift positioned on the slab – I only had to use the barrel jack half a dozen times to get boards under the wheels. Considering the three dozen times to get it around the side of the house, this was a welcome relief.
I should have taken the picture without the boards – looks much cleaner.
Swung by Home Depot to look at decking materials and to start thinking about the budget. Looks like (5) 2x6x8 at $4 each, (6) pre-notched deck rails at $19 each (ouch), (4) 2x4x8 side rails at $3 each… for a total of $150 before any of the electrics and bamboo siding. I might swing by Bamboo Hardwoods next week to see if I could do the whole project in bamboo for that tiki-like look. Shit, and I need to build the stairs up to the platform… it never ends – oh and that didn’t include the decking. Damn.
Dinner tonight with Swanda and orange-balsamic glazed chicken breasts, a salad, and a loaf of my bread. Oh, and a little wine, too.
Then home to figure out what to pack for tomorrow’s dinner in Portland.
Sounds like a repeat of yesterday, just new people at dinner. Today I finished the stairs, now just have to decide if I want a railing …
Items remaining … built in bench seating with will be more stable. More work to be done.
Dinner tonight with the boyz – Swanda and Dancing Bear. A starter of sushi, then the main is a soup (chicken vegetable) and salad with a couple of loaves of home-made bread. Sour cream for those (like me) you like it in their soup.
I was up a little after 8, and into the studio by 9 after a piece of toast. Today’s goals — talismans for the Faerie Gatherings.
The original plan for the first talisman was to be a swirled globe wrapped in a cross-hatch pattern of orange and black threads. It was an ambitious plan and one that we abandoned after the second (and successful) attempt to put the orange bands on. No black band. It just too crazy trying to balance the rods, the heating, the everything. At least it came off the pipe easily in the end.
Talisman number two was just the “standard” twisted globe, chunk of glass, steam, chunk of glass, and another blown section with two sealed compartments and a glass tail. The top bowl has a hole at the top which will be cleaned up with a Dremel, filled with beans and sealed (cork? Clear silicon?).
Talisman number three was the same as number two, but no swirl on the upper globe, and a color wrap of orange near the top of the stem and a wrap of black around the bottle of the stem. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day I’ll have pictures to show off.
Left the studio a little before noon with five more glasses packed in the car: two single martini glasses, two double martini glasses and a beer mug.
Needless to say, these aren’t the final publicity shots!
The plan for dinner had been me cooking over at Swanda’s place, but with the weather being warm enough, dinner al fresco! Not exactly sunny, but overcast and warm. Apple cinnamon marinated pork roast, roasted asparagus and a big salad, and a last minute guest of Wonderful (who I bought my house from years ago).
A wonderful dinner and what a welcome home from two days of blowing.
Last random thought: coming back from Canada with Rich last week, I saw my old motorhome (Bob) headed in the opposite direction pulling a car. WOW. Though I can’t be completely sure, there aren’t that many Bluebird Wanderlodges from that era with that paint job left still on the road. It was good to see it, but I’m so glad it’s somebody else’s problem now.
More and more logo work for the wine shop — this time we are working with a mock-up of the store front that I had to Photoshop out a tree and a bus sign to get a feel for how it will actually work.
The cell phone shot:
With the tree and sign removed (and a Photoshop paint job on the sign area over the door):
And one of the proposed sign layouts:
Eventually there will also be a “blade” sign hanging from sort of pinkish area.
It was so tempting to say “Swine With Swanda”, but alas, it was an Atkins type of dinner. Nice big steaks and a fat-assed salad.
Running around loading the car with miscellaneous stuff needed at the shop and my Jim. I even cut down a couple of shelves for him.
Sundays we are open 12-5, but today, we had a $20 (plus tax) Champagne Tasting of the upper end stuff.
For the tasting notes, check here: http://madronawinemerchants.com/blog/2011/11/29/grower-champagnes-2/
The plan was to open four bottles and compare, but that changed to warming up with a French, not Champagne, but bubbles, then the four, and just for good measure, taking a vote of everyone’s favorite and opening a second bottle. The winner was the least expensive of the Champagnes:
Josè Michel & Fils Brut Tradition — $40
Moussy, Cotes des Blancs 60% Pinot Meunier, 40% Chardonnay The Brut is composed of reserve wines that are 5 or 6 years old. The wine has great toast on the nose, along with ripe but crisp lemon and some orange zest followed by a full bodied mouth feel and a long finish.
We had 18 people for the tasting if you included Jim, the rep from Triage, and myself. I think we have decided that having about 20 people in the shop at once is about our maximum.
After closing up, it was off to Swanda’s place with these two 187ml bottles of Prosecco. I’m thinking stocking stuffers.
Pork chops with a Moroccan spice rub and the rest of the coleslaw from last night before putting in 45-minutes or so of Executive Assistant duties.
On one of the runs to the recycling room, found a bunch of stuff in the recycle bins that either shouldn’t have been there OR was too good to leave there:
Full ream of 22# copy paper
Scuba dive/weight belt, with two of the five pound weights
Clip on lamp
Toolbox
Not that I’m usually a dumpster diver, but if I can’t find a diver that needs the belt, I’ll repurpose it into something for me. Just another odd Uncle Markie kind of day.
Visited Swanda this afternoon. Because of what they think was a minor cold last week, I everyone needs to wear masks.
Don’t I look great with the surgical mask on? It doesn’t help my feeling comfortable in hospitals.
Delivered his mail. He was in better spirits than last Tuesday when I talked to him on the phone.
Grabbed a late afternoon Pulled Pork at Pecos Pit. Probably not good for my diet, but damn tasty. With that snack it pushed my dinner (veal scaloppini) back to 8pm.
Elkerton and I didn’t get the scanning done until after 1pm when it was time to break for the taco truck. Torta for him, three fish tacos for me.
For some reason (like looking for a pcmcia card) I decided to sort, organize, and bag all there various computer cables and small bits of hardware and move them to the garage. I got so wrapped up in the project that when I looked at my watch, it was 5 o’clock and I was late for Swanda’s and in danger of not being able to pick up my package at the office.
Got the apartment in time for the package, with Fluffernutter arriving shortly after to lower the bed by two inches per nurses’ orders – which amount to just flipping the concrete blocks that hold the supports on their sides. We did discover that the box spring was cracked in a couple of places, so that was spun so it faces the window side of the bed.
And as for that dinner:
Cole slaw
Asparagus with Alfredo sauce
Two pork loins (of which we ate a little over half of one, LOTS of leftovers)
No wine since that’s not back on his diet yet, and it has carbs. Funny that vodka doesn’t.
Home by nine to spend more time playing with my new Windows 8 machine – it really would benefit from a touch screen. And it’s a radical change from the current system.
Another day of stinking up the house. Only three cases left to go… before another five cases show up next week.
Here is the progress so far:
Swanda showed up a little after 5 for our standard news followed by dinner:
Salad
Steamed asparagus
Steak
All while the still was a running. And apparently running too long. Final proof was only 50 so means it will be used as mixer for diluting stronger runs.
Spent most of the day trying to get the damn Excitation (my new job). Got it to work once, and then after a reboot, nada. At least I got the procedures manual printed and the calendar to consistently load into a browser.
Spent a couple of hours hanging out with Swanda having cocktails after I picked up my packages.
One of the things that arrived was a second shoe rack:
Lamb chops with spinach for my iron-rich dinner. Unfortunately the wine from the Sunday pasting had passed its prime. Luckily the moonshine hadn’t.
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