Labor Day Preparation

Tomorrow, as some people know, is labor day in the US. The history of this day is a little odd. Politics being what they are, Labor Day and the international May day celebrations both sprung from the killing of US workers by police and military in Chicago. Wikipedia has covers the details here, for those who want to peer into our history for a moment.

Saturday Sue and I went out to see my mother. She is somewhat depressed by the death of my aunt (91 yrs old), so she needed a visit. Mom is still getting around and seems determined to stay mobile. She is staying up on politics and becoming more certain that "they" are lying to her. I am glad to see that at 87 she can still recognize propaganda. It gives me hope for us all.

Well, I got distracted, I just spent an hour looking at how to videos for planting vegtables. I think I need to learn, or remember, a lot of old information. The web is an amazing tool. I am glad to be in this tech world. Just plain fun.

Tomorrow (monday) we head out and buy a new stove, the old one's spirit is gone. *sigh* it is always something. We should be able to hit a good labor day sale or two. We are looking for a small stove, there are just two of us. I'm looking forward to doing some baking in a reliable oven.

A lot happening here

There are a huge number of small things going on here.

I am having to learn to bake bread in a toaster oven. Our oven gave up the ghost and we are using a toaster oven and two burner hot plate set up. With just the two of us it is working surprisingly well. The problem is bread bakes differently in the toaster oven. The heat reflecting off the low top burns the top of the bread. Aluminum foil conquers that. The heat is more intense and I am down to baking at 340 degrees. And developing a single loaf recipe is interesting. Getting a good rise from the bread is a problem so far. With our energy use reduction the house is cold. We have a ceramic wall heater in the bedroom so I am putting the bread there to rise. All in all, I think I just about have things working again.

Oh, and I have some work to do. I have started the process of changing our DNS host for artbysvc and dragonstorm sites. Hopefully it will go smoothly. It will be a cost reduction of $300.00 a year.

Back To work

I actually took most of the weekend off, what a strange concept. I enjoyed the time with Sue, but she worked more than I did. It is tough to slow her down, but I think I need to to keep her from burning out.


I am forcing myself to do some writing every day now. It is in short fragments scattered through the DS pages. I need to get back the skills that got me published some years ago. At the same time I can transfer more of the "feel" of Sue's world to the DS players. It may help all of us.


I sometimes loose track of entertaining web pages and I stumbled back across one of interest. It has some funny and biting animated cartoons. You can check it out here.


I am back to baking bread, but so far the result has been less than stellar. I sometimes wonder how I loose skills. I wish I knew if they returned faster the second and third times, but I've never tracked it well, so I will have to guess.


That is it for today. I'll keep putting up short updates on the twitter feed to the right as I work. Now I need to get back to the Winged Cat story fragment....

That was a Mistake

Saturday when I picked up Sue our dinner was behind schedule. We decided to stop and pick up coney island hot dogs and fries to eat. We both really enjoy those dogs, or at least we did.

The coneyies set off an acidic stomach reaction in me that lasted through Sunday night. I found myself having to nibble on bread, cerial etc. to keep the pain under control. Unfortunatley I discovered that peanut butter increased the problem. Normally it does not cause problems. Since I have a mild allergy to nuts I must suspect that I should be very careful about eating Peanut butter, *sigh*, I really need to make an actual "foods I can eat" list and a foods I must avoid list. Conies and Peanut butter should be on the outs.

The saturday Flint Handmade Etsy show was satisfactory. The snow slowed things, but it still was worth the time.

I am getting some work done even now, so I'll be getting back to it now.

Pizza Crust

My first attempt at a whole wheat pizza crust turned out OK. I made too much dough for the pan size and the breading kinda overwhelmed the toppings. I like a thinner crust pizza.

I think if I cut the size of the crust mix in almost half it should work good. I want to be able to get this down so I can make Sue a good pizza when she gets back.

I ate almost half the pizza. Trouble and Mocha seemed to think it was good. They got to split the other half and they kept coming back for more..... 

In fact, I think I'll go make one now. Bye for now....

Well, Sue is away....

Sue is snugged down in San Jose California. She is prepping and enjoying a bit of time down there. Me, I'm both enjoying my time alone and missing her at the same time.

I have a lot to catch up on, but I think I'll start with working on making a good home-made pizza crust.  I have gotten reasonably good at bread, so it is time to move onward.

The pets, Mocha, Trouble and Mac are looking at me like I'm a criminal for having sent Sue away. They don't seem to completely understand. It looks to them like the Alpha has punished Sue. I'm afraid I have a different idea of ways to do that. ummm, well, thats a different subject.

For now I'd better get to work.