Netfoot

Woken this morning by my "Breakfast Meds" alarm. I normally wake 1 to 1½ hours before this, without an alarm. Checked for messages, E-mail, etc, that might have come in during the night. Watched two YT videos and an episode of Eureka. Lay down and closed my eyes and the next thing I knew it was 5:30 PM and I was 2½ hours late taking "Lunch Meds". Why did I wake late this morning, and 1½ hours later take an 8-hour nap? And wake tired? And before you say "diabetes", look at my blood sugar for the last 3 months: The occasional high but mostly in the green zone. Testing again tomorrow morning. Mo has positively refused to eat the chow I bought last week so I have to throw away 5 Kg. of grub. I bought a 2 Kg. bag of a type he is known to like. Gave him a bowl for dinner and he happily ate it up. Despite my 8-hour nap today, I am tired. Mo is around here somewhere. He was curled up on the foot of the bed a short while ago but he looked out the window and departed. He will be back soon, I'm sure. I would watch a movie but I doubt I would get through it. So I am going to line up some YT videos and douse the lights. I'll fall asleep soon but so what?

The leg/episode title should have been "Immersed in Opulence". Not because anyone said it but because it's true. Sorry to see Pops go. I was hoping he would last long enough to go Bungee Jumping in a subsequent episode. But elimination awaits those who come last, no matter how nice they appear to be. I like cakes and pastries as much as the next guy. But you will not convince me that gold leaf makes anything taste better. The E-Type surfboards (prolly not made by Jaguar) always amaze me. It takes a much bigger wing to keep my 5 lb. model aeroplane in the sky. But AI informs me that with all else being equal, the mere change in fluid density from air to water increases wing lift by nearly 814 times! I still can't name a team that I actually like.

Beef! That's beef, allright! And that is Mo, hoovering it up! I used to buy an occasional pack of stew beef for Dotty and for Bud. Not often; every 5-6 months or so. Financial hardship has made it impossible to do this for Mo. But I am $400 behind on the rent so does $8.95 make a huge difference? No. He ate it all and polished the bowl. He was a little strange about it. After each piece he came and looked at me. I had to point him back at the bowl before he would take the next piece. And when he had finished that, he would come to me again. It's like he didn't want to believe this was his dinner. Later, on Garden Patrol, he was acting as if he was expecting punishment. I think he just couldn't believe this was for him and expected to be punished for eating it. It didn't stop him coming for some of my cheese sarnies, tho! Like I said, too ordinary to post a photo. Oh hell, why not? So, I have a puppy sleeping on the floor beside the bed, with a very satisfied look on his face. And I'm glad. I may get some extra work to do apart from the chairs. My guy came today and paid $500 for the two towel racks. I showed him some of what I was dealing with (with the chairs) and he said he was willing to accept some very low quality work. Angle brackets, for example. And for the crack, he suggested two dowels. I can get oak dowels. They are more expensive but stronger. But the oak will not colour match with the mahogany and I have no way to stain it to match. Anyway, he said he had an additional job for me (maybe more than one) and that it was the type of job I like! I dunno what that means. Maybe it's sofa-feet. They are relatively easy but the sanding is unpleasant. Watched a couple movies over the last couple of days: Argo starring Ben Affleck (principally) along with Bryan Cranston John Goodman and a 78 year old Alan Arkin, along with several other well known faces. Affleck is tasked with the extraction of six embassy staff who avoided capture when the US embassy was overrun in Tehran in 1979 Iran. Zero Dark Thirty is about the effort to locate and eliminate "UBL", the mastermind behind 9/11. Jessica Chastain (who I like well enough but don't think of as a great actress) plays the role of a driven analyst who does not rest until Usama has been located and action taken. While criticized for the fictionalized nature of some scenes the film is generally considered to be a good portrayal of events. Chastain did a very creditable job, I think. Point Of No Return is a La Femme Nikita clone starring Bridget Fonda as the condemned girl saved from the gallows with the offer of a job as assassin for a shadowy group. Gabriel Byrne oversees her training and is her handler once she becomes operational. Fonda has a pretty face, but has little else of value to offer to the film. I'd recommend LFN instead but this will help you pass the afternoon if you are lying down fighting off cramps. Mo is now curling up on the foot of the bed. I am going to go cuddle with him for awhile, but he looks sleepy. I took my shower earlier and it is minutes to eleven. I will sign off now. Here's hoping tomorrow I feel better than today. And by that I don't want to imply that I felt sick. Just that today was a stumbly, wobbly day with twitchy hands, feet and face. And I am hoping to avoid that tomorrow. Above: the marks left by my boy's toenails on my arm. Below: the boy himself.

I am continuing to work on the chairs. Here is the one mortise that has been occupying me. You can see that it is in bad shape. The right hand side has broken away and I've already had to perform two glue-jobs to try and repair it. Let's just hope no more bits break off. I also cleaned out quite a bit of dried glue from inside. The light coloured, crumbly stuff at the top was all in the joint. It is all dried glue. It came out easily. The previous repair was mostly glue! If I had just glued the joint back together (when the repairs were finished) the strength of the repaired joint would be no greater than this crumbly glue. Which is about as strong as a good biscotti. I think epoxy is my only chance here. 90-minute epoxy, of course - the longer the setup time of epoxy, the stronger it is. That 5-minute crap is about as strong as well masticated chewing gum. But the real problem is here: Do you see the small "hairline" crack running across the front of the joint? That is an accident waiting to happen. It hasn't broken yet but this leg is fixing to break right in that spot. And there is virtually nothing I can do to prevent it. I could soak some CA into the crack. That will strengthen the leg a bit but not enough to confidently say the joint will not fail if a fat-ass like me sits on the chair. And that crack goes a loooong way, too. This is a look at it from the side! It's 3" long!

Woke up. Lay without moving. Extremely tired. Opened my eyes. Found my shorts. Found my shoes (and a very oily shop-rag). Puppy steals all sorts of things. But this morning was a new one. Yes, a curly-bulb. Godnoze where he got it. His little tummy is prolly full of bits of glass. No sign of cuts in his mouth where any fragments went in. I have him all the bread & biscuit in the house. Not much. Maybe it will help protect his butt when the glass come out again. Great start to the day.

I thought this was a weak episode. The sister/daughter was clearly the Big Bad from the get-go. She murdered her brother and shopped her father so as to put herself in the leading role in the family organization. Her taking the meeting with the rival gang isn't even something that she can be charged with. She played Isobel like a harmonica. And got clean away with it all. I would be surprised if she didn't return in a later episode. The setup for the future was just too perfect. But with this show, who knows. It was nice to see Tom Cavanagh. He clearly thought that Isobel getting to the point where she could retire meant that she would retire. But he took it well when it became apparent that wasn't going to happen any time soon. He played the part of a music scout in a very short-lived series called Love Monkey about 20 years ago. I liked the show, but apparently I was the only person who did. Didn't think much of Scola's new wispy-haired partner. But I will admit she was much better than the others they tried before her. And Tiffany wouldn't be hard to beat.

The oil I use is the cheapest in the shop. Blended soyabean & sunflower oil. $9.99 for 2 liters. Oil transfers heat into the food to bring about the cooking of that food. If there is any water in the food it flashes to steam and escapes in the form of tiny bubbles. That's why when you throw in your potatoes (or whatever) it effervesces. If the foodstuffs are bubbling, the escaping steam which causes the bubbles prevents the oil from soaking into the food. If the bubbling stops, the food becomes significantly more oily. This is the principle of fried food I have always taken to be fact. Possibly. The spuds are 8 lb. for $7.99 and no particular type of potato specified. But they always look the same. I can by a named type such as Yukon Gold or Russet or Idaho potatoes for $10-$13 for a 5 lb. bag, but I'm not gonna do that. I do reuse oil. But the oil gets used up and I have to keep adding more. The batch of chips I photographed is probably 33% new oil mixed with older oil. But the older oil was probably a mix of oils that were used once, twice, and (maybe, a small amount) thrice. So I don't know if it's fair to say the oil is overused. It is a blend of new oil and used oils with the newer oils predominant and older fractions smaller. I should be able to use oil 3-4 times. I recover the clean oil and discard the dregs with any particulate matter. Ok, next time I will wash and soak my chips for 30 minutes and dry them with a new kitchen towel before frying. Will report back on how it goes. Not sure when that will happen.

OK, I will carefully dry the next batch of chips and we will see what happens!

No. But they weren't dripping with water or anything.

No idea. The cheapest and (probably) least healthy. I will read the label next time I'm in the kitchen. Which, since Mo and I are in bed and I've finished my bedtime mug of tea, probably won't be until tomorrow. I had a look at the chair leg I'd glued back together. The joint, anyway. The joinery on these chairs is mostly made up of crumbly wood and dried glue. I believe it would be best to remove the dried glue and get down to bare wood before trying to glue the parts of the chair back together. But there might not be much bare wood left after I remove the old glue! Oh, and I found one joint with metal pins in it. It would be interesting to know how many times this chair has started falling apart and been put back together in the past. Otherwise, not done much. Mo still not easy to feed. I have gave him chips for lunch. (Despite the foamy oil, the chips came out fine. The trouble was figuring out when they were done when I couldn't see them in the pan.) He didn't eat the chips so I put his bowl on the table and ate a chip as he watched. Then I picked up another chip and as I ate that he insisted I give him his chips back. Truth is, I could have eaten all his chips as well as all of mine. No matter how many I cook I always feel like I wish I'd cooked more. He ate his dinner (Rice. What else?) without any trouble. Funny thing about the foam. As soon as I take the chips out, the foam vanishes. The foam is coming from the potatoes and not the oil? Got a bunch of movies to watch. Nothing special. All I need is to not fall asleep for long enough that I can watch one of them. And to decide which one to watch first/next. The money for the towel racks that went yesterday didn't show up today as promised. I know it will happen, but it is a little annoying when you spend the day deliberately not leaving home because you are waiting on someone who never shows. Alas, it is the Bajan way. Just ask the Telco technician who was on his way on Saturday at 10:33 but didn't arrive until the following morning, while Mo and I did without food because we couldn't go buy a gas cylinder. 3½ days with no internet and when I get back online the level of bullshit is exactly the same as before. I should take a page out of @Spunkygal's book and just go sit outside in the sun. Anyway......

Social media break == Good idea! But it's nice to hear from you.

Why is this happening? I'm cooking chips for lunch. For some reason the oi is foaming up to the point where I can't see the chips. I don't know how I will know if they are cooked enough or not. All I did was cut the chips and put them into the hot oil. It's a 50:50 mix of used oil from last time and new oil. Anyone got any ideas?

I think they would be cool... but I've never made a Tambour door before so it would be a bit of an experiment. It would be fun to try, though... The old, mahogany, dining room chairs are in a real mess. When I take a joint apart the whole joint falls apart. It looks like the area around the joints fell into pieces a while back and when I take the joint apart the old glue turns to crumbly crap and all the pieces of wood fall out onto the table. I am now trying to jigsaw those pieces back together with glue on one joint, to get a complete piece that can be glued to the next piece to help put the chair back together. But some of the fallen-out pieces are now the size of grains of sand. It's a real mess. There are at least three joints that have to be rebuilt before they can be put back together and that is just on chair #1! Apparently these chairs have been around for many years and have been taken apart and glued back together several times as the joints loosen and the chairs start to wobble. But each time the wood of the joint deteriorates a little more. And I can't say for sure but there are some places where it looks like the original mahogany has been replaced with either wood filler or something that when it is taken apart it just disintegrates. I wish I had not agreed to do this job. Some jobs are not good. These are obviously someone's prize dining room chairs. They have been deteriorating for maybe 20 or 30 years but have been resurrected every 2-3 years by taking them apart and putting them bak together with fresh glue. But each time you take them apart the joints get worse. The mortises get wider as little bits fall out and the tenons get narrower as little bits fall off. Soon, the tenon is no longer snug in the mortise so you have to start gluing in little slivers of wood to fill up the gap when you put the chair back together again. Next time, your little sliver falls out and brings a few more chips of wood with it, so you need to do more work to get the bits to go back together again. Eventually the job just can't be successfully done. You might glue it together again but the first time someone sits on it the joints start to separate and the chair falls apart under that someone. Then the guy who tried to fix it (me) gets the blame for doing a bad job and ruining the family heirloom chairs.

Lying in bed. Had my shower a couple hours ago and dinner, Garden Patrol and a mug of tea since then. I bought a bag of chow for Mo and he hates it. He basically refuses to eat it, even if I "sweeten" it with condensed milk or (alternatively) corned beef gravy. Anyhow, we had a nice rice for lunch and I had lentil, potato, onion& bully beef soup while I tried Mo with chow with soup as a sweetener. My soup was fine but Mo only ate about ⅓ of the chow. I'm sorry he is hungry but until I get something else for him to eat he will have to suffer a bit. The last two towel racks left today. I should get $275 each or $550 for the pair, but he said he would be back tomorrow to pay me for them and the 29" circle I cut & sanded for him a week or so ago. I'm not much concerned about the circle. It was only about $14.75 in wood and 15 minutes of work. But I hope he doesn't come tomorrow and short-change me in the agreed price of the racks! I won't argue because he only ordered 10 and these two would make a dozen so he didn't have to take them at all! He also brought two old mahogany dining room chairs that need work. They are ancient and the joints are coming apart here and there. I will try to get them apart without breaking them, then put them together again with fresh glue. No idea what I will get for that either. Not even sure if I will be able to do anything about them. I have not had time to examine them closely so they may be beyond my art. I also dug out an old deck-chair I had put away in the back of a cupboard. I have always been told it was designed/invented and built by my grandfather when he was a young man. He was born in 1889 and this chair is over 100 years old. The interesting thing is that it is a rocking deck-chair. I don't know about how original the design is. A rocking deck-chair is not something I recall seeing elsewhere. I should Google and see if they exist. About 20 years ago I tried to reproduce it because I'm not actually going to use the original. It is fine and would work perfectly but I don't want to place it in any danger. My 20 year old copy is really bad. But 20 years ago I was a pretty bad wood worker. I always bought heavy monkey wrenches because they make better hammers than light ones. And I preferred screwdrivers with strong handles because the handles would be less likely to split when I chisel with them. So I am looking at the rickety mess I made way back then and trying to decide how to improve it or whether it would be better to junk it and start from scratch. I would like to build one I could keep in my van. Use it at the cliff, etc, when needed. Don't know who would want one and in any case I am not in a position to build the actual "canvas" part. I'd have to get someone to build that for me. It is very simple, but... So it's not like I plan to build these for sale. But I'm would like to build one for myself. Also, bookshelves. Will have to design a bookshelf that I can put up on French cleats. Something modular so they stack, allowing the shelves to be expanded as needed by the addition of extra modules. Also, what do you feel about sliding glass panels/doors on bookshelves? I think sliding doors a PITA. I have them on the kitchen cupboards and I long to take them out and throw them away! But they aren't mine and the landlord might object. So I am inclined to say no to sliding glass doors on the bookshelves but sometimes you want to protect the books (or whatever) you put in the shelves. I considered a Tambour style door as well. It might roll away completely when you aren't using it and return from nowhere when you do. What do you guys think? Anyway, it's late. I have had a mug a while ago but I might have another before bed. Mo is curled up at the foot of the bed but I am not tired so I will watch a movie or another Eureka episode and a mug of tea really wouldn't hurt. Might even have crackers & cheese with it. Which would wake Mo up instantly, for sure. Ok, going to put water on to boil. Will leave you with a couple amusing snapshots.

Yes, so on Friday my internet & landline went down. I reported it and was told a technician would visit within 24-48 hours. I got a call at 10:33 on Saturday and was told not to leave home because the technician was on his way. My gas cylinder chose that very moment to run out. I couldn't go get a replacement because the technician was "on his way". At 7:00 PM I went and got a new cylinder of gas and Mo and I had lunch around 7:30 PM. The technician showed up around 9:40 on Sunday morning. He said he didn't need to come in because he knew he could not fix the issue. He explained his job was between the pole and the house. Anything else was out of bounds for him. According to him, he had a list of dozens of people on the neighborhood who all reported the same issue. The problem was a line torn down off the poles by a back-hoe on Friday afternoon. He said he would report the problem to the Telco but they would not take his word for it. They would send out another guy to check this report. They would then call for a team of riggers to come out, climb the poles and string a replacement cable. That (he said) would not happen before Monday morning. And so it turned out. It is amazing how dependent you become on connectivity. Because in the mean time my desktop computer died. It was bad and it took me two hours to resurrect it. It would have been a bit easier if I had access to the reference materials available on the net! But it eventually came up again and I watched about 16 episodes of Eureka and took about nine naps during the course of the weekend. The computer is very unwell. There is definitely an issue with at least one hard drive. It's running again but for how long? Dunno. I would need a 4Tb drive as an absolute minimum and the company across the road doesn't give prices online. What's worse, they only list Western Digital drives and I absolutely can't stand them. Meanwhile, after 14 mugs, the coffee had run out. The instructions on the jar were to put one teaspoon in a mug and pour on 3.78 oz. of boiling water. I have been putting 1 heaping teaspoon and pouring on 16 oz. of boiling water. Heaping, not Mt. Everest. Anyway, that jar of coffee cost me as much as 79½ teabags. So prolly not again soon.