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It’s been awhile.
Been busy with the day to day survival stuff. I did a few construction like thingies around the ole homestead, I abso-friggin-lutely will take pics and post them this weekend.
Grace brought her cat up and is little by little going through her stuff at her parents and transporting the keeper stuff up also. I jokingly told her that if she takes a year to bring all her stuff up it won’t seem like she’s moving in officially.
Sam actually got a job, just in the nick of time. He’s working at Freight Liquidators, unloading trucks, putting displays together, stuff like that. I guess he took me seriously when I said he has to start paying for his own car insurance or that cars coming off the road.
Speaking of which, I actually got my transmission back from my friend. I threw it back in a few weeks ago and so far so good. Put about 1500 miles on it and it hasn’t blown up yet! I guess a little freon leaked out when it was sitting as the A/C doesn’t work anymore, but I don’t need it now, it’s down into the forties at night…
Hmm, I just wanted to interject this link from Dive Into Mark-
Specs as it really really is good to be reminded now and then that I made the right choice getting out of the IT business. I got an email from an old co-worker yesterday telling me about a position I should take. Big money, but a 6 month gig. So what do I do after that? And when I think about all the frustrating meetings with clueless project managers and vendors or clients I’ve sat in on, I start to realize that no amount of money is enough.
In fact, maybe I need to partake of a good dose of my all-time fave usenet group, why of course, I’m talking about alt.sysadmin-recovery. And yes I assume you don’t have a default newreader so it’s the google groups page. Remember deja-news?
OK, now I’m reminiscing too much, time to go, have stuff to do, later.
Aaaaggghhh,
My web host provider switched their servers to another flavor of linux. Fine with me but they broke my hit counter in the process. Actually the counters for every domain on that server.
I ssh’d in and the files in the counter directory are all owned by root. The directory itself is owned by nobody, which is correct, that’s the user the httpd daemon runs as… So I made a trouble ticket and explained to them all their sysadmin has to do is chown/chgrp all the files in there to nobody:nobody and it will be fine.
I hate having to always tell the companies I PAY FOR SERVICE how to fix the problems they are having. What annoys me more is how they never know it’s broken until I point it out.
Does anyone run scripts to grep errors from the log files anymore? Guess not.
Oh well, I’m out of the sysadmin business now so I can bitch, right? riiiiiiight!
K, pizza is here so I’m outta here
I’ll post pictures from the beach in the next couple days…
Yes, I know I said I would post them so here they are. If you remember, last we joined our characters, they were processing quantities of food stuff. To give you an idea of one session, here are 45 pounds of plum tomatoes, blanched and being peeled/sliced. And a short while later, here they are in their final state, S&G’s tomatoe sauce, reducing down on the stove before being jarred and processed.
This is the finished product is the middle box, right hand side, and the box in the rear. The stuff in the front is tomatoe-jalapeno salsa and the other quart jars are whole plum tomatoes. We don’t run the sauce through a food mill, so it has seeds in it. We kinda like it like that, it’s like you just sliced up fresh tomatoes that way, but sauce purists may disagree.
These little jelly jars are Peach Jam, it’s quite good on a piece of toast when you want a snack. I want to try making some rasberry jam as well if they still have any up at the farm. But I have a feeling it may be too late in the season by this weekend. And here are some pickles, pickled veggies, and sliced tomatoes.
So that’s about the extent of our canning so far. We went to Stormville flea market this weekend and just picked up a few boring things. Some new pillows for our bed, a new cutting board, some oral-b heads, and crap like that.
I really like the new pot rack I hung, it frees up cabinet space and helps the kitchen flow better. Here it is but I don’t have enough hooks so my good sauce pans aren’t hanging yet… And yes that’s one of those scrolling/animated signs on the wall, it says “welcome to steve’s kitchen”, if I find the remote I’ll re-program it to say Steve and Graces kitchen. And since cabinet space is so limited I put a little rack unit up next to the fridge in that doorway I closed up that used to go into the computer room. I just keep mixing bowls and stuff on it, but getting the big and seldom used appliances (rice cooker, cuisinart, juicer, stuff like that) off the counter tops was the best thing I’ve done in awhile. And right in the middle of that rack you’ll see my new pot, a 12 quart calphalon stainless stock pot with pasta and steamer inserts. Yeah she’s a beauty, and very reasonable on sale from Amazon. I must say, if you check on Amazon from time to time, they have good sales on Calphalon stuff, plus I get special promo discounts too that help.
OK, so now you see the stuff we’ve been cooking, the stuff we’ve been canning, and the stuff I’ve changed in the kitchen, enough yet?
Me thinks so, I’m tired and gonna go upstairs and fall asleep.
Nope, that’s not the name of some new show on the WB… It’s a giant flea market near here with tons of vendors and loads and loads of stuff!
And I’m fixin’ to wake up Grace and head up there in a few minutes. I’ll take some pics of whatever cool stuff I come home with and keep y’all posted, K?
Oh yeah, I had to work yesterday, bummer, but it went fast. G and me went back to the farm and picked 45 pounds of plum tomatoes afterwards. So today we’re making loads of tomatoe sauce and canning it afterwards. That way we can fresh home-made sauce anytime without all the hassle.
Alright, I have to get moving or we’ll never get outta here. l8r…
I know I’ve been saying I’ll post them for ages, so here goes-
I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about the garden. Well it’s almost done, once the habanero’s are all ripe, it’ll probably be time to turn it all over. Actually I am thinking I may not have enough habs to make hot sauce this year. And the jalapeno plants are really not producing as well as they have in the past. I made some tomatoe-jalapeno salsa and canned it, and I’m thinking I just may pickle the rest of the peppers I get.
I know you’re supposed to pick the zucchini before they get too big, so they taste better. But who can resist letting a couple grow to see how huge they’ll get… Take a look at the size of this sucker! In fact, it’s as big as a two-litre soda bottle at the bottom.
One thing that has me a little worried is I don’t know where our spider went. You see, there was a really big spider living on the front porch. I mean really giant, like imagine the body was as big as a walnut. And now I see the giant web is there but no spider. What if that thing got into the house somehow? If I woke up to that thing in my bed I’d probably go through the ceiling! Anyway, here’s a picture of it, you can’t appreciate how scary looking it is unless you’re right there and can actually see it’s fangs.
And I’ve been canning stuff like a canning fool. Here’s the pickled veggies that started the whole canning obsession. Since then I’ve done salsa, pickles (both dill and kosher style), peach jam,and tomatoes (chopped and whole). In fact the whole dining room table is full of stuff I’ve canned in the last week. If you couldn’t guess, I’m trying to keep myself busy as my honey’s away and if I just hang around doing nothing I’ll really start to miss her badly.
So I keep busy around the house, listen to some tunes, the Stones played here, thank you, and stuff like that.
The good news is Grace should be coming home today. I visit her every night and she seems to be feeling much better.
The bad news is I may have to work Saturday, and it’s a three day weekend and I was really looking forward to doing some fun stuff, as well as getting some stuff done around the house I’ve been putting off. Plus this weekend is Stormville Flea Market!! Which is like heaven to a junk collector like me…
In any case, I’m sure even if I do have to work I’ll get around to having some fun and also take a few new pics to post. K, I’m outta here. Back to work for me.
I am so beat it’s not even funny. It’s starting to catch up to me. I’ve been going non-stop every day and night for a week and a half now.
Every day I come home from work, can some veggies or prep some food stuffs, then I run to get some kind of dinner for us, drive 38 miles to go see my honey, (she should be coming home in a few days), visit and eat and have a few cigs, drive home and fall asleep exhausted. Weekends I work Saturday, go shopping after, come home and tend to the pool, then do the same routine in the evening.
This saturday I picked mass quantities of tomatoes to can. It was 95 degrees, the sun is blazing and I’m sweating my ass off. We picked 50 pounds of them. Today I finished re-arranging the kitchen, added a wire rack for storage and cleaned out a few cabinets. Then I hung a wall-mounted pot rack I found, I’ve been wanting one for ages. I hate that clanging when you’re pulling pots and pans out from under a cabinet! Cleaned off all the countertops too and organized everything. Then we blanched,skinned, sliced and jarred/processed 14 quarts of tomatoes. Then I dropped Danny back home, and went to see Grace.
I really should fold my laundry and put it away, just too tired. Have to go to sleep. I took a bunch of pictures, stuff I canned, a huge spider living on the porch, Danny at Orange County Choppers- standing in front of their bikes and also in front of the shop, and some other stuff; I’ll post them tomorrow, for now it’s sleepy time for me!
later…
Yeah, it was downright freezing when I went downstairs this morning. The weatherbug told me it was 53 outside, and the thermo-meter in the living room said it was 60 !! One thing I really like about this house is how the downstairs stays so cool in the summer. One thing I hate about this house is how the downstairs is FREEZING in the winter. I mean in a real cold snap you can peg the thermostat and it’s in the middle fifties. And the frigid air coming up through the spaces in the hardwood floor is a big bonus.
In any case it’s been good sleeping weather lately. Just so much damn rain. Getting a little old now. The pool is full to overflowing out the skimmer. In fact the weather has been so crappy I’ve neglected it and it’s just a tad green. I’ll shock it today and get it back to crystal clear in a day or so.
The really major thing in my life these days (funny I didn’t open with it, just making sure you’re paying attention), is that Grace is in the hospital. Yup, my honey wasn’t feeling too good so she had to go in for a little bit. I miss her so much. I have a hard time falling asleep at night without her and it gets worse when I awake in the morning and she’s not next to me. Hopefully she gets out sometime this week, they’re adjusting her meds and just keeping an eye on her. I go see her every night and bring her a snack and a diet soda and we sit in the little kitchen or TV room and visit. I just feel kind of empty without her here at home.
Maybe I’m in shock still, but it hasn’t been hard for me to accept the situation. The person I love and want to spend my life with might get sick every couple years and have to go away. It’s hard but it doesn’t change the love we’ve nurtured, and I guess in some ways it makes it stronger.
OK, Sam came back home and Sarah came with im to visit so I’m gonna run out to the store and get a couple things. I’ll keep y’all posted.
Thanks,
Steve
Nothing new under the sun. Sam came back from upstate. I’m a little bummed he didn’t stay until the end. I think he would have felt good about himself if he did. But I guess he really wanted to come back home so he could hang out and get wasted with all his burn out friends.
He really is in for a major f**king wake up call real soon. He has one more year of high school and after that, get a job or get out. Actually I’m not even gonna wait that long, get a job and start contributing towards your car insurance or I’m taking that thing off the road. Once my car is fixed and I stop using his, of course.
And I’m gonna make a list, shit that HAS to be done around the house. Run the vacum once a week, light cleaning, stuff like that. I’m just sick of picking up everyone elses crap and being the only one who can see dirt or clutter. I really hate to sound like a dick, but come on. I’m not friggin’ killing myself to pay all the bills, fix everything that breaks, clean the house, do all the dishes, and then what? Fall asleep exhausted every night and have no time to play on my one day off ? Nope, fuck that.
Enough of that, I just needed to vent. Problem is it’s always the same thing, over and over. Just like a broken record. The only thing that gets his attention is when I blow a gasket and just go off on him. Are all teenagers like that? Or is it just the boys? methinks it affects the male of the species much worse.
In any case, I’ve been reading a really intense online novel in progress. If you’ve ever read “The story of O” then you’ll like this. Hell it makes me want to order some of this stuff… Yes, how could one not admire the practice of shibari, or rather the art of. Oh, the story you ask? Yes, of course, here’s the link- Divestiture: An Erotic Novel-in-Progress.
Actually the author, remittance-girl, is really cool. If you send her an email she actually answers you, and you can IM her on yahoo messenger. Yeah, in case you didn’t know, I always toyed with the idea of writing a novel. Probably end up with something between Maugham and Neal Stephenson, which sounds like a pretty strange mix, huh?
So I don’t know about wherever you are, but here in good ole NY, the weather has sucked last few weeks. It has been hell on the garden, way too cool and wet. The habaneros are doing only OK, and the jalapenos are kind of light this year. So I don’t know how much hot sauce I’ll be able to make this year. I think next year I’m gonna do like a 20 by 10 foot garden of just hot peppers. Make a whole shitload of hot sauce.
OK, I have to get back to work and I need to wake up. Tired as hell this morning. Guess reading Divestiture got me inspired and I went to town last night. So it’s the good kind of tired. Insert stupid looking grin right HERE.
K, outta here
naaa naaa, naa naa naa
I know I’m not the only one that remembers that song… Yeah, I must be bored, eh? OK, so not much going on in my parts. My webcam link is down as I have no internet at home for a couple more days.
So it didn’t rain yesterday, even though we were promised flood alerts and all kinds of neat weather. Basically it was really humid and yucky until the sun made up it’s mind to stay out. I kinda like serious weather, big storms and stuff, makes you realize where us human beans fit into the big, meaning really big, scheme of things.
So we went for a walk around Pelton pond yesterday morning, then went to Cold Springs and checked out the town. Had a couple sclices of pizza, which is a big expenditure for us lately, and then went home. G floated in the pool, I took a nap, then woke up and made some zucchini bread. Yes, again, I don’t know what else to do with them things!
We watched six feet under as she really wanted to see it. I was liking the two chicks that were getting ready to get down, and G was liking it a little too much, so she had to have a little spanking… And that’s about it, nothing exciting going on. Just same old same old.
Sam may end up coming home this weekend. His Mom says he called up late last night really miserable and asked if he could come home. I miss him too so that’s fine with me. Only thing it changes is we can’t walk around naked anymore (bet you wish my webcam was on now, huh?).
OK, so lemme get going, I am after all working. Keep y’all updated much as I can…
OK, from the slightly kinky (yet nonetheless fun) department;
Check this post out about “Love Hotels” in Osaka. I especially like the furniture with a purpose and the directions that depict how it should be used!
OK, I admit it, I have way too much time on my hands, I’ll stop linking from blog to blog and get back to work.
Looks like a nice day, kind of breezy and not as humid as they said it would be. Have to vacum the pool when I get home and maybe take a little float in it for awhile. Alright, back to work for me.
Later
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