Small Talk: The Welcome Mat

[Netfoot]

Also pictured:

• One cardboard box, originally containing baked beans
• One tin can, originally containing a "ham".

He's been raiding the trash in the kitchen again...

 

[Netfoot]

The mirror fits into the frame. It doesn't fit very well, but at least it goes in there.

There is a chip on the edge of the frame that must be disguised. No idea where this chip came from, or how it got there.

You can see the horrible job that I did in getting this to go together. Gaps and misalignment are the order of the day.

Here is another example of how bad a job I've done:

Now to find the spline slotting jig and see if I can reinforce these corners without smashing the entire thing to pieces. (It feels quite robust as is, with just the semi-end-grain to semi-end-grain glue joint.)

My back is killing me this morning. Frequent, sharp, stabbing pains from the base of my spine...

Edited December 29, 2024 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Couldn't find the spline slotting jig, so I had to make a new one. Don't worry! The old one will reappear as soon as the new one is built. 😐

Here it is being glued up:

And here it is oriented as for use:

It will be positioned to slide along the fence and run through the saw with the blade set at the correct height. The resulting slot will allow the blade to pass easily in use. 

The wide vee allows each corner of the frame (or box or whatever) to be slid through the blade, producing a blade-wide slot diagonally across the corner. A strip of wood of matching thickness can be glued in. This strengthens the corner joint considerably. Slots can be of various thicknesses and multiple slots can be used. I think one is sufficient for this job.

Mo and I had boiled potato and carrot for lunch, with tuna and onion. I wasn't sure Mo would like it but he yammed it down in a hurry. It did taste pretty good. Dinner? Who knows? We don't have much left but rice.....

There must be shopping! 

Edited December 29, 2024 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Frame clamped in slotting jig, about to be passed over the blade:

Spline slot cut diagonally across corner. Depth adjusted so the slot does not reach the inside of the frame.

Spline glued into slot and light clamping pressure applied.

The spline is just a piece of wood cut thin enough to be a snug fit in the slot and long/wide enough to occupy the entire slot. The grain must run across the corner joint.

The spline can be any shape since the excess is cut off and sanded flush. Triangular splines are common because they use least amount of thin wood strip...

When this dries I will trim and sand the splines flush, then sand the entire frame. After that, I will see if I can fix the horrible thing to the point where it just might be acceptable for use.

In other news: the fan I use to make life bearable while I sit at my desk... has died. It is near five in the afternoon and the sweat is rolling off me so bad I feel and probably look like I just jumped into a pool! 

Who do I know with a pool? Oh, yeah! Heidi. I have not been in that thing since Buddy broke his leg and needed to swim every day as a part of his physiotherapy! (He hated it! I still miss him.)

ETA: Temperature here in this room is 31.3°C or 88.3°F. 

Edited December 29, 2024 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

OK! In bed. Showered earlier this evening due to dust & grime. Came to bed to find Mo curled up on the foot of the bed. Hopped in, gave him a cuddle... and he immediately buggered orf!

Dinner was (predictably) rice. With the last of the yellow split-peas added as well as a tin of tuna and sundry spices. Don't have a lot to choose from. Some garlic powder, a huge amount of paprika, and just about enough cilantro for a single mouthful of something. But the tuna & rice with yellow split-peas tasted good. A few extras would have side it better - who was it said "My kingdom for a head of pak choy!"

Put black-eyes to soak overnight.

Dismantled the living room fan. After disposing of four dessicated mouse corpses, dripped some light oil onto the motor shaft and let it run down into the motor. These are sealed motors. You are not supposed to take them apart because they don't want to go back together again afterwards. They come with sealed bearings that don't require lubricating during the life of the motor. But their idea of what the life of the motor is does not agree with what my idea of the life of the motor should be.

These motors use a design that is cheap to manufacture, but this design results in a motor that is hard-starting. That's why the knobby goes 0-3-2-1 so that if you only want it on 1 you have to switch through 3 if only momentarily, so the motor gets an initial burst of power at "full-beans" to help kick it into motion. Now, I have mine set permanently at 1 and use a remote on/off switch to control it. And it's always worked fine without any starting issues. But with the sealed bearings old enough that they are probably drying out and not as slippery and easy-turning any more, the fan was not working. 

By adding a few drops of oil to the front bearing, I got it going again. The rear bearing is unfortunately not accessible. Anyhow, I'm back in operation once more, but I suspect I will have to drip oil into it again fairly frequently to keep it operating. And sooner or later it will die once and for all.

Watched a movie called Safe Space Trigger Warning with Jessica Alba as some sort of special forces bad-ass (awww!) who goes home when her father is killed in Backwoodaville. Turns out there is a nepotistic family with a crooked senator, a bent cop and a crazy gun runner brother combination that she has to deal with. I've enjoyed other movies with this actress in a leading role, but this one, not so much.

It's chilly some nights at this time of year. The afternoon was a bit of a swelter but there is a certain coolth to be felt in the breeze in the window. I hope Mo will come and snuggle and actually sleep. He was a constant PITA last night, waking me up 3-4 times to open the door and let him out. Not a restful night as a result.

Listening to A Whiter Shade of Pale, debut single of Procol Harum. Sixtyish years ago this track sold a huge number of copies and has, over the years, won many an accolade. The band went on to make ten or a dozen albums but we're never able to repeat their initial smash level of success. 

Mirror frame all glued up now, with splines in place and therefore far less likely to fall apart as a result of a little bump. The splines need to be cut back and sanded flush, then the entire thing can be sanded, cracks and crevices packed with wood filler and then sanded again. There is a nasty chip missing from one edge and I'm thinking I may have to put a round-over or chamfer right around the frame to eliminate it. I don't know how it happened. If I had noticed when it first happened I'd have just glued the chip back into place and after sanding nobody would ever know. 

Mo is back and has taken up residence between me and the wall. No, wait! He has his beak out the window now.... and he's gone again. 

Mannie and Wyoh got married. Or more correctly, Wyoh was invited to opt into the line-marriage of which Mannie is a part, by one of the senior husbands. She accepted and the wedding took place the night before Mannie and the professor embarked on a diplomatic mission to Earth. Luna Authority and the  Federated Nations were manipulated into rejecting all overtures from the loonies and with a state of war declared by the earthers, they fled back to the moon. There have been no overt hostilities as of yet but it won't be long before Earth makes the first move, probably by lobbing fusion-bombs at the moon. The loonies, devoid of warships or weapons of any sort, will have to settle for throwing rocks back.

He is back and curled up by my shoulder. He is cleaning his left rear foot. I will go lock up and fetch a Beggin' Strip. But the very attempt on my part will cause him to rush outside again...

Edited December 30, 2024 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Splines cut down and sanded (roughly) flush. Here is one corner:

There is a fine gap visible on the right of the spline. No problem. A hint of filler...

Here is another corner with a huuuge gap visible:

I told you I'd done a really crap job on this. And there is worse to come:

This misalignment is just awful! And not curable by any means I can think of. Plus, the fit is poor and would require gilling. Normally, this frame would have to be tossed out but this is on the back of the frame and would not be seen under normal circumstances. So perhaps it will be acceptable?

Waiting for the filler to dry, then some more sanding will follow. After that, more rounds of filling & sanding may be needed.

Look at this. It's the bedroom remote. It lives on the bedside table where a muddy-footed puppy likes to stand, while looking out the window.

If that much mud ended up on the remote.....

[Netfoot]

Watched a couple movies today. Well, I finished The Sherlock Holmes movie. Unusual. Watson & Mycroft are concerned about Holme's cocaine addiction. They trick him into visiting Sigmund Freud where he is persuaded to take treatment to break the addiction. Meanwhile a case crops up which Holmes sets out to solve. The show is more swashbuckling than the deductive reasoning we would normally expect from Holmes, but it was enjoyable enough and all the moreso because it is an unfamiliar story. Doyle left us with many Sherlock Holmes cases, most of which we have seen, read or heard about. This was something new.

I can't remember what the other movie was. It will come to me.

I have received $200. Never mind what I did for it! It was not illegal, immoral, dangerous or icky! 😉

Now, with $75-ish of that going to make up the rent for February and allowance made for the Telco on or before the 21st, I am left with $95.17 to spare. And that is good because the cupboard is very bare!

We had rice for lunch & dinner. I put some black-eyes to soak last night and this lunchtime I boiled two cups of rice with only one scoop of peas, and some bully beef. I was concerned that the raw peas were a little on the crunchy side.

Google says after soaking I should have boiled them for 45 minutes to 1 hour before they would be ready to eat. But trying out one raw pea convinced me that if I boiled them for 45 minutes and then cooked them for 20 more minutes in the rice they would completely disintegrate. So I didn't cook them at all. I risked one scoop in the rice as a test. By time the rice was ready, the peas were cooked just fine. So next time I will know it is safe to put more of them in the rice without risking ruining the meal.

So yes, $95.17 in hand. And the gas cylinder running low. Can't be sure I remember when I started using this one. The price of a refill is somewhere in the $42-$43 ballpark. Wish I could remember exactly. Setting aside $44 for gas that leaves me with $51.17 for groceries. You can't buy a lot of groceries with $95.17 and with $51.17 you get to buy even less.

Let us average $10 for a bag of potatoes, $5 for a bag of onions and pasta $2.50 a pack. Condensed milk  $9 for three tins. That's more than half of it gone right there. Corned beef is around $5 a tin, tuna around $2.50 each (but bully stretches much further than tuna). Carrots $3.50 a pound which is only 4-5 carrots. Eggs, $8-10 a dozen. Cheese $10 a brick. Bread $7.50 a loaf of sliced white, same for a dozen salt breads. No, the $50 won't go far at all. 

And I might have to forgo groceries and stove gas if I have to give back the $80 I got for making the mirror frame.

Mo here beside me cleaning his feet again. Actually he is using his foot to clean his ears and then cleaning the foot. Now he is looking out the window. 

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is finished. Of course, the loonies won the war and guaranteed their independence. With no bombs to lob back at Earth, they repurposed the magnetic accelerator normally used to launch grain and other foodstuffs back to Earth. Instead they used it to drop very large rocks into the gravity well where Mike could guide them onto any target with pinpoint accuracy. If a 20 ton rock drops on your head from 400,000 Km up, it will make a big bang when it hits. I'm  talking 300 kiloton levels of bang! And rocks are cheap.

I have selected a new book. It is called Isvik. Written by Hammond Innes. Innes was a prolific writer, publishing perhaps three dozen books starting in 1937 and continuing until his death in the late 90s. His books were usually thrillers but most of his main characters were not the heroic type. This particular novel was one of his later ones, published in 1991. I own the book so obviously I've read it but have no idea what it's about. Perhaps flashes will come back to me as I proceed but even reading the blurb leaves me at a dead loss. Isvik is the name of a rusty old ship bought by one of the characters in the book to "...get at the truth behind some extraordinary notes scribbled by a glaciologist, just before his plane crashed." The blurb also says "Hammond Innes' new novel is a study in the dreadful face of evil that takes us down into the Southern ice to the most macabre and horrific climax he has ever produced." I hope it's good. The price sticker says I paid five bucks for it...

Mo had taken up a position to use me as a windbreaker. It isn't quite as nippy as last night but not by much. I have to go and close the door so he will probably rouse up from that spot and who knows where he will settle next?

Oh, yes. Apollo 13 with a host of well known faces but primarily Tom Hanks. I'm pretty sure nobody needs me to fill them in on the plot. Actually, I don't suppose anyone needs me to fill them in on the plot of any movie, but in some cases I feel it would  be a particular waste of time, seeing as everyone prolly knows it already. (It seems my spell checker considers "prolly" to be a legitimate word. Must have trained it at some stage in the past.) 

Mo now on the tiles but he very often joins me to cuddle in bed, only moments after the lights go out.

Minutes to midnight. Perhaps I will get through one chapter of Isvik before killing the lights.

[Lovecat]

10 hours ago, Netfoot said:

So yes, $95.17 in hand. And the gas cylinder running low. Can't be sure I remember when I started using this one. The price of a refill is somewhere in the $42-$43 ballpark. Wish I could remember exactly.

Scroll up; I'm quite sure it's posted here somewhere.

[Netfoot]

10 hours ago, Lovecat said:

Scroll up; I'm quite sure it's posted here somewhere.

Yeh, I just can't shut up!  :-)

OK, going back over the last year, I have got the dates I changes cylinders. Seems like I never mentioned the one which must have happened around the middle of July but estimating that date, it looks like a minimum of 44 days and a max of 77. The average is 60 days.

My last change was 6th November or 55 days ago. So, on average, I should have another 5 days before it runs out. Of course, it could be less. 

Using a probability estimation program I wrote, it looks the chance the cylinder will last until the weekend is only 54¼% and only 43⅓% chance it lasts through the weekend. 

I think it doesn't make sense hoping it will last until next week. I will need a new cylinder very soon anyway, so I will get one and buy groceries with the $50 bucks remaining. 

ETA: The price of a 25 lb. gas cylinder is $43.52 but they insisted I pay cash. Since I had to pay cash, They could only charge me $43.50 because we have no cents. 

Groceries for $49.14 leaves $3.13 which is good because they will prolly charge me $3 for using the ATM to get the cash to buy the cylinder. 

Edited January 1 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

We lunched on pasta. A knock-off that looks very similar to cavatappi.which happens to be my favourite short pasta. A bag for $1.59 cooked and served with a sauce made from bully beef, onion and a tin of diced tomatoes which I've been hoarding for a while but decided to broach today. The meal went well and half the sauce remained for our dinner, which was black-eyed rice with corned beef and an obliqued carrot. The remainder of the sauce went over the rice.

So I bought an 8 lb. bag of spuds for $7.99 which compared favorably with the 5 lb. sack I bought last for $11.99 but the more expensive spuds were of a declared variety (red potatoes) whereas the cheaper ones were just "potatoes". The onions were under $4 per bag whereas I expected more like $4.75 so I bought two bags. Condensed milk was $2.29 a tin instead of $2.99 but that was because there was no PHD available. And this brand, while considerably cheaper is also of considerable lesser quality. Two pounds of carrots at under $3 each whereas I was expecting something in the order of $3.70 per bag. The shop was full of <gag!> Triple-J corned beef and no Cuisine. So I had to buy a tin of Western. Also got a bag of rice. We just opened one but since we eat little else, I laid in another bag. No pak choy, no pumpkin, no cabbage... Declined cucumbers at $7.50 a Kg. Feel like there was something else but it escapes me. 

Frame is finished. Or as finished as I am going to make it. Oooh! Nearly forgot. Have to add the hangers in the back. Will do that in the morning. Oh, and cut the backer board to size.  Eliminated the chipped out piece by adding a subtle chamfer to the outer edge. It looks good and the chip is completely gone. Can't find those framing points. Also, can't find my staple gun to put the whole thing together with. Found the box it usually lives in, with all the staples of various sizes, but no sign of the gun. Well, I can tack the retaining strips with some pin nails and a small hammer with a nail-set. Got the hammer but can't find the pin nails. Or the nail-sets (I own three). Everything is going to hell in a hand-basket around here!

The gas cylinder has begun it's journey to the kitchen. Unloaded from the van when we returned from Popular. Carried up the stairs on the way back from Garden Patrol. Tomorrow it will be carried across the living room and down the passage to the kitchen. And within a few days will replace the cylinder currently in use.

Listening to Head Room by 10cc from their How Dare You album, my favourite. I think my favourite track from this album would have to be I'm Mandy, Fly Me but there are a load of good tracks on the album. 

My book is about the search for a historic wooden frigate believed to be trapped in the ice, south of Tierra del Fuego and the Magellan Straight. With the support of several Maritime museums and marine historical preservation societies, the search expedition is being readied but there are some nefarious characters hanging around for no obvious reasons. And the originator of the call for a search has just been found murdered. I suspect there may be more involved than the rescue of the rare wooden hull of an Easy-Indiaman.

Hey! I never brewed a mug of tea after Garden Patrol! I suppose I could skip my tea tonight. But why not indulge myself?

I'm getting back out of bed!

Edited January 1 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Had my tea and then I just sat around playing with the computer. Because we had an alarm set for 11:55 so it didn't make sense to go back to bed. 

At the appointed time we were sat outside, and am at exactly at midnight we heard the neighbors screaming "Happy New Year!!!" And in that spirit, we wish you all a Happy New Year from us!

And suddenly we heard the pop and crackle of a fireworks barrage and I looked out over the nearby houses... but despite the near continuous sound of the fireworks going off, there was nothing to be seen! 

Every year we watch the display from our house. It isn't the best but it is better than no fireworks at all. No Mo and I have watched and before Mo's time Buddy and I watched and in earlier days even Dotty and I watched. But for the first time ever, we didn't see so much as a spark. Which is strange, because we could head a continuing rumble of mortars and shells being fired, down over the escarpment, as well as a continuous crackle of smaller munitions. But nothing to be seen. Very disappointing.

Of course, the racket had Mo hopping and one of the reasons I go out with the boys is because they are often distressed by the noise and I prefer to be there to reassure them. Rather than in the house and they alone and agitated. Here is Mo, at the gate and ready to take on anything that might threaten us!

Anyway, after 6-7 minutes the loud reports diminished and came to an end. Mo and I have now retired (again) to listen to Janis singing A Woman Left Lonely and winder wonder what happened to the fireworks this year. 

Funnily enough, as Mo and I were on Garden Patrol last night at around nine o'clock, we were treated to a wonderful display of fireworks from the opposite direction. Seemingly coming up from the parking lot of the mall, but possibly from somewhere beyond that. A series of large and complicated displays continued for over five minutes. I can't imagine why they would have a fireworks display 27 hours before new years, but they did and Mo and I enjoyed it last night.

Watched two movies today. The first was Asphalt City with Tye Sheridan & Sean Penn. The movie was about EMT workers in what looked like NYC. It basically portrayed what a miserable, hopeless and thankless job it is and little else. I have never been a fan of the type of movie that invites you to revel in the misery of the characters, do so while I recognize the movie was well made and portrayed it's subject well, I can't say it was particularly enjoyable!

Now, there is a 2000 movie by Mel Brooks called The Patriot which is about the American revolution and I thought it might be good to watch that film again. Imagine my surprise when I set it to play... and it turned out to be the 1998 film of the same name starring that idiot Steven Seagal! Well it was too late to grab the correct version by then so I watched the wrong one and yes, it was as ridiculously stupid as only a Steven Seagal movie can be. Seagal is a back-water doctor in a town where some sort of anarchist group decides to fix the country by releasing a bio-weapon. The antidote fails to work as promised and the town is quarantined. Tests show that the only immune person is Seagal's 12 year old daughter. The anarchists seek her to drain her blood or something but it's OK because Seagal turns out to be the world's leading immunologist and by the press of a button reveals a huge bio-lab hidden underground in the vicinity..... 🥱

But I now have the correct Patriot movie to watch and may do so tomorrow. In the mean time, I have a puppy here who wants snuggly-cuddles and tummy-tickles. So I will leave you to contemplate your new years resolutions for 2025 (mine is to try to get to 2026) and wish you all good night and (again) a happy New Year!

Edited January 1 by Netfoot

[andidante]

Happy New Year everyone! 

[illdoc]

13 hours ago, Netfoot said:

there is a 2000 movie by Mel Brooks called The Patriot which is about the American revolution

Wrong Mel! It's Mel Gibson, not Mel Brooks.

[Netfoot]

2 hours ago, illdoc said:

Wrong Mel! It's Mel Gibson, not Mel Brooks.

Wow! Did I say Brooks?!?? 

Definitely Mel Gibson. Head must have been in another place. Sorry!

[andidante]

2 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Wow! Did I say Brooks?!?? 

Definitely Mel Gibson. Head must have been in another place. Sorry!

I must say I do love both Mels! Lethal Weapon and sequels are great movies. But on the other side, Spaceballs is a hoot!

[Netfoot]

LOL! Just came to bed pretending to be eating a Beggin' Strip. Mo was furious! Then, by tossing it from one hand to the other, he couldn't find it. Even when I showed him it was in my hand, by time he maneuvered around the bed to get it, it mysteriously wasn't there! I didn't make him suffer long.

Watched the correct Mel's movie today and I'm sure nobody needs a precis. Also watched a low budget sci-fi called Aporia with a number of actors, none of which I knew. The heroine's husband was killed by a drunk driver and she couldn't get over it. His friend and lab partner tells her they were working on a time machine but couldn't get it to work. What it can do is  transmit sub-atomic particles into the past to an exact time and place. If they end up inside a person, that person is immediately killed. This could be used to kill the drunk driver before the husband/friend is killed. They proceed and the husband is saved. Yay! But it doesn't take long before they notice other changes to the universe that their time-tampering has caused. So to correct the timeline another retroactive killing is planned and executed. Then another. And another.....

Quite an interesting little movie and the plot is fairly clever. But if the idea intrigues you, I suggest The Butterfly Effect from 2004, with Ashton Kutcher as an alternative movie with a similar sort of theme.

The mirror is finished and it is horrid but maybe he won't notice? Of course he will, because I'm going to point out all the bad bits. I think this is better than him finding them on his own and thinking I tried to pull the wool over his eyes!

Thought about posing Mo in front of this thing, looking at himself. But gave the idea up in case he wigged out, attacked his reflection and busted the damned thing. (Busting is all it's good for, but it ain't mine to bust so I have to guard it instead.)

Haven't seen a soul or heard a voice all day. 

Cooked the last of the black-eyes in rice with an obliqued carrot and our last tin of tuna and had that for lunch. It was tasty! I called Mo for his and went out of the room for less than five minutes. When I came back, the bowl was empty and Mo had departed. 

There was a little left over but not enough for two. So I diced and boiled some spuds and made up a bully beef & onion gravy with curry. Not enough curry to be hot, but enough to add the flavour to the sauce. So dinner was rice & potatoes with tuna, black-eyes and carrot, topped with a corned beef & onion curry sauce. I ate mine and Mo ate his and (because I cooked a little too much potato) there is a little left over in the fridge. Mo can have that for lunch tomorrow.

Put black beans to soak overnight. I used to have at least 20 packages of dried beans & peas in the fridge but down to only four now. Food generally is running very low. Hope to get some money-making jobs soon. 

As i was dishing out the dinner, the gas visibly began to run out. When I tried to boil water for tea after dinner, the stove did light but with a very weak flame and after less than a minute, it went out. Good thing I got the fresh cylinder yesterday!

Listening to Wasted Time from the Hotel California album by the Eagles. A track that makes you wonder about your life, much as Floyd's Time (DSOTM)  does:

    And then one day you find
    Ten years have got behind you
    No one told you when to run
    You missed the starting gun...

The band was in their thirties when Time was written. Gilmour was what? 27? Looking back ten years to when they were 18. But I am now looking back fifty years to when I was 18...

Makes you wonder about the alternate universe you could be living in if you had made different (not necessarily better) choices earlier in your life. I could have got married when I was 18 and be celebrating my golden anniversary this year. I might have remained in the UK when my studies were complete and who knows what I'd be doing now? Other than freezing my balls off....

Puppy curled up against my shoulder. He had been moving around quite a bit since the little game with the Beggin' Strip. He is a naughty boy entirely too often, but he is good company. I wish I could be a better daddy to him.

My chair is very badly in need of repair now. Assuming that repair is even possible. I'd hate to have to buy a new one because, well, no money. And because this one lasted 30-40 years and the replacement would almost certainly be made of plastic and have to be thrown out in 18 months, tops. 

I should really take it apart and see exactly what's wrong with it and if it can be fixed. But if I take it apart, what do I sit on between then and when it is fixed? I could try and make myself a replacement chair but I don't know how to make the type of chair you sit to a desk with. I was already contemplating an Adirondack chair for reading. Trying to read in bed of an afternoon just leads to napping. I had an Adirondack chair I made out of crapwood and it was good for reading and tea-drinking but the crapwood disintegrated in several key spots and the chair ceased to be useable.

Pushing midnight. Going to save this and QRT.

Edited January 2 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Just watched First Man starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong. Good movie. One brief moment annoyed me. They showed two writers commenting on the space program.

The first was Kurt Vonnegut. I've never read any of his books, as far as I know but I've watched Slaughterhouse Five which is a great movie and I recommend it. I knew it was Kurt Vonnegut because they chose to caption his appearance. 

The second was Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who I recognized instantly and who (apparently) was considered too insignificant a person to mention his name. Given the list of accomplishments of these two men I consider it inexcusable that one would be snubbed in this way. Especially since ACC has produced more novels, novellas, collections, short stories, etc, and received more awards. Of course, some may feel his accomplishments are of lesser value based on godnozewot. But if they do, they are advised not to say so to me!

So in the fridge we had leftover dinner made from leftover lunch so a bit of a mongrel meal. Rice, potato, tuna, corned beef, black-eyed peas, carrot, onion, diced tomato... and probably other stuff that I have forgotten. And it had to make a meal for a puppy. So I added a cup of flour and a splash of water and mixed it up into a sort of very lumpy, very sticky, very soft dough. I fried it up into what, for want of a better name I will call "fritters" and ended up with far more than I expected. They had a pronounced tendency to fall apart so each one was smaller than the ones before. I made six larger ones for the baby and there was enough dough left over to make four smaller ones for me. 

Let me just say that the spatula has been chewed so often that it is virtually useless for getting under anything in a pan. The thin front has been nibbled away and what remains now just pushed things around the pan rather than sliding under it. 

Surprisingly, these things tasted quite good! Although Mo had more and bigger fritters than I, he was finished before I reached the halfway mark. So that went well. I think we will make a big pot of rice tonight. Bully beef, carrots, black beans abd and maybe some onions. Because we have nothing else, save potatoes. The rice should see us until Saturday lunch after which we can try some spuds.

Mirror may be collected this afternoon. Steel plates may also be delivered for drilling.

Edited January 3 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Mirror collected. I told him I'd done a horrible job but he didn't seem to mind. He also brought 13 steel plates for drilling and a $50 to pay for the drilling. I think that price is outrageously high and I said so but he seemed happy and I need groceries.

He also brought eight metal and five wooden rods to use as the supports for towel racks. I will look online for design inspiration and compute how much lumber would be required in addition to the rods.

So once again, I have to figure out how to spend $50. I finished the previous bag of rice (see below) so there is one unopened bag in the fridge. Maybe get another? And some different veggies to go in the rice? Also, more condensed milk and sugar. Got potatoes and onions. More bully beef needed?

Watched an action/thriller movie called Carry-On with Taron Egerton as the young TSA agent working at LAX and Jason Bateman as the bad guy threatening his girlfriend to coerce him into allowing a suspicious piece of hand luggage on to a plane. Quite good!

There is a scene in this movie where there is a car crash. It is filmed in an unusual and very dramatic way, quite unlike any other portrayal of a car crash I've ever seen.

I once saw a plane crash portrayed in a similarly dramatic way. It's a while since I saw it, but if memory serves me, it was a classic "Tiggie" (De Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth) which is a 1-2 seat biplane from the 1930s. I think the movie might have been The English Patient but I'm not sure about it. I'd rewatch that movie but the one thing I remember about it was that it was a steaming pile of shite. So, prolly not.

Mo is cleaning his feet on the bottom of the bed. For a pup who is always cleaning his feet, it's surprising how much crap he tracks into the bed!

Van Halen playing Me Wise Magic from their Best of - Volume 1 album. Former lead vocalist, the flamboyant DLR returned to reform the original lineup and record this track and one other (Can't Get This Stuff No More), specifically for this album. This song is the last they ever recorded together.

Cooked a pot of rice for dinner. There should be enough to feed us through lunchtime Saturday. Bully beef, black beans, carrots and onions. I used the (black) water that resulted from soaking the beans for 30 hours prior to cooking the rice. This have the rice a darker tinge and probably contributed slightly to the taste. You'd think 30 hours of soaking/rehydrating followed by 20 minutes of cooking in the rice would be enough but no. They were a little on the crunchy side. Not enough to spoil the meal but from now on I thinking I'm pre-boiling all rehydrated beans or peas before including them in any other dish. These tasted fine but for my taste  there was just a little too much crunch when biting into them in the rice. 

Mo got his Beggin'' Strip and then curled up against my shoulder. No sooner than I took this photo, he relocated to where he can lie down with his back against my thigh and his head down towards my feet.

Going to park post this and read a little before killing the lights.

Edited January 3 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

We ate from our pot of rice for lunch and dinner. At dinnertime I steamed the rice in a colander over a pot of boiling water and simultaneously made up a weak curry gravy to pour on too. (We have almost no curry powder left over.)

At lunch time I fried the rice in a pan with just a little oil in it. (We have almost no oil left over.) While doing this the oil spit and I felt a sting on my  tummy. A couple hours later I noticed this:

This has caused no discomfort at all (other than the initial sting which I ignored at the time, so inconsequential did it seem). Since I took this several hours ago it has gone, presumably leaked away. I guess the common sense take-away is that if you have a big, fat tummy like me, you should keep it out of the kitchen! But a hungry puppy trumps common sense, I guess.

Watched RoboCop today, but not the original version (which I watched not so long ago). Instead I watched the 2014 version with Joel Kinnaman as Murphy and Gary Oldman as the baddie. An Interesting take. 

Mo is here at my shoulder but looking around actively rather than snoozing. He has had his Beggin' Strip. 

Spent some time playing with my computer. It is a horrible piece of crap but it's what I got. If I remember correctly I built it either just before for just after lockdowns. My previous motherboard went US so I set off to find a new one. The only motherboard I could find used an AMD processor (as opposed to Intel) and with no other choice, I bought it. It has caused me pain every single day since then! I swear I will never buy another AMD processor again. I know many swear by them and want to argue performance but I don't care about that. (AMD/Intel are always one-upping each other but I don't need the latest, cutting-edge performance, especially if it leaves me bleeding!)

Apart from the horrible motherboard, I'd like to update its other systems. Ideally I'd like an M.2 SSD for my boot drive (or two M.2 for boot/root) and enough SATA ports to allow a 3-disk RAID5 rank with room to grow by adding drives as the free space (inevitably) runs out. Optionally, a second, separate machine with the RAID arrays(s) on it functioning as a NAS unit. But then faaast networking would be advantageous. Perhaps 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet? Perhaps with the option to add more interfaces and use NIC Bonding for more speed? As for the display I am thinking four DVI (or maybe HDMI?) ports for quad-headed operation. (I once operated triple headed. Host name as Triphod. Get it? 😃) I'd like two monitors in horizontal or landscape orientation, one right above the other. Then two more, using R&R to orient them vertically or portrait, one on each side of the first two. Audio, nothing special. So long as it sounds natural and has the guts to not be drowned out each time the rain falls on the wriggly tin. 

It's fun designing a new computer from the comfort of your own bed, with an unlimited budget and a warm puppy lying up against your thigh. .

Dave Matthews Band playing Stay (Wasting Time) from his Before These Crowded Streets album. I recently saw something where this guy was disparaging people who liked Dave Matthews. I think he was implying that such people were too...what? Old fashioned? Main stream? Unimaginative? Not edgy enough? Dunno. But frankly I don't care. I listen to music I like the sound of and if it is mostly older stuff it's probably because most of the new stuff is unadulterated crap. 

Oh, I tried to watch another movie today. Alien: Romulus. After less than 11 minutes I had to stop. When the entire cast is (or looks like) they are too young to get a driver's license it's hard to take the film seriously. But I will pick it up again and see if I get into it.

Spent my $50 today at Popular. Or $40 of it, anyway. Bought an additional 1,750 grams of rice, two tins of corned beef (Western), four tins of inferior but cheap condensed milk, five packages of Turkish-made short pasta and a pouch of ketchup. The milk may sound like a luxury as might the ketchup. But when living on a shoestring grocery budget then drinking tea (for me at least) is a good substitute for food. I can eat a smaller portion and make up for it with 16 oz. of hot water infused with some tea leaves and some milk & sugar added. And ketchup helps make flour & water dough fried in a pan more palatable.

We will most likely finish the last of this latest batch of rice tomorrow at lunchtime and split a package of the Turkish pasta for dinner. The stuff only costs $1.59 per package and spaghetti is more like $2.50 so cheap grub.

It is six minutes to two in the morning and the phone battery is at 5% so maybe I'd better grab some shut-eye for a couple hours before the pup wakes me to open the door? Yes, that might be a good idea.

4% already. This battery is really, really useless.

Edited January 4 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Found this in my rice at lunchtime:

It is a little, white stone about the size of a grain of rice. Care to guess how I found it? Very unpleasant experience. Lucky I didn't break something! For a sense of scale, it sits on a utility knife - the circular thing on the left is the pivot upon which the blade opens and closes.

Watched Alien: Romulus again, but found it difficult to engage. I will try it again sometime down the line. 

Lights went out last night (this morning) at about two and Mo started clawing at me at 4:03 to open up. After that it was one thing after another. Mo kept coming back and I couldn't figure out why. The door was already open and if all he wanted was a cuddle he could have just hopped in beside me. Shortly after six the landlord called today he'd misplaced his ID card and as a result he can't cash the rent cheque. Can I take the cheque back and get cash for him instead? So that is a chore for Monday. Thing is, he had never liked my paying him by cheque and had repeatedly said that he wants me to pay him with cash. (The man does not have a bank account and refuses to get one.) I don't want to walk around with that much cash. Between when I draw it out of my account and when I hand it over to him, I am vulnerable. If someone picks my pocket, burgles the house or sticks me up in the street, the money is gone but he will still expect me to pay his rent. And the cheque with his signature on it is proof that he had been paid. I hope this "I've lost my ID card!" Is not yet another ploy to support his desire to be paid in cash because it isn't going to happen.

Mo has just joined me in bed for a little cuddle. We ate the last of the rice for lunch but Mo left a little in his bowl so he will have that as part of his dinner, maybe with a little potato or something. It still looks like spag. for me with some sort of sauce. We will try the short pasta for lunch tomorrow. I have one of those "hsm" thingies in the cupboard so I could cut a few slices off that, cube them up and fry with onions. Add some ketchup and garlic powder and toss in the cavatappi pasta. He has ninjad away. Under the bed? In the passage? Out by the gate who knows. 

Should I take a nap to compensate for insufficient sleep last night? Or remain awake so as to encourage sleep tonight? I think I will have a nap while I decide.

[Notabug]

8 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

Found this in my rice at lunchtime:

It is a little, white stone about the size of a grain of rice. Care to guess how I found it? Very unpleasant experience. Lucky I didn't break something! For a sense of scale, it sits on a utility knife - the circular thing on the left is the pivot upon which the blade opens and closes.

Watched Alien: Romulus again, but found it difficult to engage. I will try it again sometime down the line. 

Lights went out last night (this morning) at about two and Mo started clawing at me at 4:03 to open up. After that it was one thing after another. Mo kept coming back and I couldn't figure out why. The door was already open and if all he wanted was a cuddle he could have just hopped in beside me. Shortly after six the landlord called today he'd misplaced his ID card and as a result he can't cash the rent cheque. Can I take the cheque back and get cash for him instead? So that is a chore for Monday. Thing is, he had never liked my paying him by cheque and had repeatedly said that he wants me to pay him with cash. (The man does not have a bank account and refuses to get one.) I don't want to walk around with that much cash. Between when I draw it out of my account and when I hand it over to him, I am vulnerable. If someone picks my pocket, burgles the house or sticks me up in the street, the money is gone but he will still expect me to pay his rent. And the cheque with his signature on it is proof that he had been paid. I hope this "I've lost my ID card!" Is not yet another ploy to support his desire to be paid in cash because it isn't going to happen.

Mo has just joined me in bed for a little cuddle. We ate the last of the rice for lunch but Mo left a little in his bowl so he will have that as part of his dinner, maybe with a little potato or something. It still looks like spag. for me with some sort of sauce. We will try the short pasta for lunch tomorrow. I have one of those "hsm" thingies in the cupboard so I could cut a few slices off that, cube them up and fry with onions. Add some ketchup and garlic powder and toss in the cavatappi pasta. He has ninjad away. Under the bed? In the passage? Out by the gate who knows. 

Should I take a nap to compensate for insufficient sleep last night? Or remain awake so as to encourage sleep tonight? I think I will have a nap while I decide.

Seems to me the lost ID is the landlord's problem, not yours.  If anyone should be wasting time on Monday, it is him, running around to get a new ID so he can cash the check.  You've already done your part.

[Netfoot]

2 hours ago, Notabug said:

Seems to me the lost ID is the landlord's problem, not yours.  If anyone should be wasting time on Monday, it is him, running around to get a new ID so he can cash the check.  You've already done your part.

I totally agree with you! But I will accommodate him on Monday for the sake of cooperation. However, he can either find the old one or get a new one by the end of the month because I am not getting maneuvered into paying him in cash from now on!

[andidante]

54 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

I totally agree with you! But I will accommodate him on Monday for the sake of cooperation. However, he can either find the old one or get a new one by the end of the month because I am not getting maneuvered into paying him in cash from now on!

Make sure you get a receipt from him as proof that you paid!

[Netfoot]

Showered, in bed. Door locked. Puppy Beggin' Stripped. I don't know why I gave him a treat because when I finished my shower and reached for my towel...

Yes, out by the gate. And this little unrepentant face watching me as I retrieved it. (Poor photo. It's night time. And my boiler pressure was over the recommended level.)

I had spaghetti and Puppy had the remainder of his lunch but with a couple ladles of my spaghetti sauce over it. Corned beef & onion with ketchup & garlic powder. I think tomorrow we will maybe have chips for lunch, if there is sufficient oil to cook them. Maybe dinner too.

Mo is with me now at the foot of the bed, working on his feet as usual. I think I will turn on the music. I wonder what will be the first thing out of the jukebox?

Help Me by Joni Mitchell. And next, Kodachrome by Paul Simon. Sometimes this player juxtaposes unlikely combinations of tracks. But most of the time that's sort of fun.

Mo now propped up against my hip.

Watched the first episode of an eight-part 2024 retelling of The Count Of Monte Cristo and while it is early days, it looks promising.

More tweaking and fiddling on the computer. Need to install a new version of the Chrome browser. Last time I did this I recall I had a miserable time when the new browser failed to function and the old browser was no longer available to search the web for clues as to why. I had the SeaMonkey browser and Konqueror but it was still a PITA. So I am looking at a way of installing multiple versions of Chrome in different directories, with the version number attached. To switch back and forth I will use a symlink to present the browser of choice to the system. 

So instead of having one Chrome installed in /opt/google/chrome I could have two versions installed in (say) /opt/google/chrome-123.0.4567.89 and also /opt/google/chrome-124.0.5678.90 and setting /opt/google/chrome to be a symlink that points to the version I want to use. To switch which version was active, I would just need to issue a single command to recreate the symlink. 

After a good long cuddle Mo now on the floor.

The bank did charge me $3 for using the ATM to get cash to buy that cylinder of gas on (I think) Wednesday. But fortunately the service charge this month was back to $13 whereas I budgeted $16 which is what they charged me last month. So swings & roundabouts....

Three minutes to midnight. Will try to get to sleep before two tonight so I will end here. 

[Netfoot]

Got a fairly good night last night but when I woke, I couldn't find my shorts. They showed up on the floor, right next to where my Crocs were. Or should have been.

[Netfoot]

Chips for lunch. It seems I have not yet 100% mastered chips. Sometimes they are lovely and crisp on the outside, sometimes less so. I don't know if I should cook them at a lower temperature and turn the heat up to finish or cook them at a high temperature and then turn the heat down to finish. 

Still, they tasted good and I made a corned beef & onion gravy with a little ketchup which I poured over Mo's chips. I saved a small amount for my own chips but as I was intending to use ketchup on mine I gave him the lion's share of the gravy. 

Tonight I think will be pasta with "ham", diced and fried.

Finished the latest batch of steel plates. They were drilled, deburred and only need to be handed over now. I don't think he is in any rush to get them but I told him next time he comes bring plates to drill because the jig is still on the drill press but I may want to move it soon, so let's drill some plates before I move it.

Not sure where puppy is. Maybe right under this bed? Maybe out by the gate? No, he is under the bed for sure.

[Netfoot]

This is a sight that might be used to frighten little children! The Monster that lives under the bed!

And I fell out of bed taking this photo and landed right on my head!

Edited January 5 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

My favourite pawed purloiner is curled up here, practically in my lap. But as someone said, you can make your lap disappear by simply standing up. Or lying down. And so he can't be in my lap, can he? Since I'm lying down? He can only be practically in my lap.

Dinner was cavatappi (and I don't know why that word is suddenly unknown to the dictionary). I diced some "ham", fried it with some onion & ketchup and when the pasta was ready, stirred it all together. I had a big bowl and Mo's bowl was so full it was overflowing. I wondered if he would manage it all as his bowl is never that full as a rule and even so he leaves some behind. I shouldn't have worried. He polished it all off in a hurry. I'm surprised he did not release a loud burp when he was done. I nearly did when I was done...

Really, it was great. Simple but great. I guess not being bully beef added a special little je ne sais quoi.

Tomorrow I may try something new, something we've never tried before: Hash browns. It will probably be an unmitigated disaster but I am willing to give it a go. Often heard about them but never tried them. Not to my recollection. 

Listening to Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad from Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf. This is one of those must-have albums. There are a few albums one simply can't live without, after all. I guess the list is different for each of us. I must go through my collection some day and draw up a short list. Just for fun. If anyone does draw up such a list, there is always the risk that the list will expand to contain every album they possess. How long do you estimate your must-have list would be?

I suppose if you were making a selection to take to the South Pole (or Mars) the use of Best-Of or Greatest Hits or even Anthology disks would make things easier. Personally, I don't have a lot of Best-Of type albums. I have some, but not a huge %age of my collection. 

Of course, these days if you were off to the South Pole (or Mars) you wouldn't take any disks at all. One USB stick or Micro-SD card and you would not be able to fill it with music, even if you included every track you'd ever heard in your life, including the ones you didn't like!

Bren Been watching more Count Of Monte Cristo and it is quite well done. The names of the actors are largely French, as given in IMDb and so are the credits for the most part. They mention that the show got a tax credit for being a foreign film made in France.

Otherwise spent the day reading my book. The motley band of explorers are gathered in Punta Arenas (Tierra del Fuego) where they are refitting their ship, the Isvik, for their trip into the Weddel Sea. They seem a pretty disfunctional bunch and one or two of the characters are quite antisocial. Ostensibly, they are searching for an old, wooden hulk believed trapped in the ice and of some historical interest. I suspect that more than one of the explorers has an ulterior motive of some sort. 

Tomorrow - whoops! After midnight, so, today, 6th of January, is an anniversary of some unfortunate significance. One I don't like to dwell on. But this one day a year, it is difficult to put the memory from your mind. 

Do a Google image search for "Wooden Towel Racks" and show me which ones you like best. I prefer simple, uncomplicated designs, but you don't have to go along with me on that.

Ok, Mo just started clawing at my skin and insisting I let him out. I will read until he returns. 

Edited January 6 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Well, the hash browns were a complete disaster! And simultaneously tasted pretty good...

I grated, washed and rinsed the spuds, dried them out a bit, wrung them out to expel as much water as possible, then added a sprinkle of flour and another of salt. I'd have added other spices but I didn't have any. 

Taking a handful of the mix, I formed it between my hands into a sort of cake. Then I put the cake into a pan of hot oil...  Except the cake fell complete apart the moment I opened my hands and the individual shreds of potato fell into the hot oil. I tried to form them back I to a cake in the pan, using Mo's spatula. Failure. So I left them to fry as individual shreds. They stuck to the bottom of the pan like madman's shit to a blanket. I had to use a sharp knife and 5 minutes to scrape & shave the stuck spud from the bottom of the pan and put them in Mo's bowl. Sampling a pinch to be sure they were not actually raw on the inside... They tasted pretty good!

I switched to a larger pan and dumped the remaining potato into it. Leaving it alone it eventually developed a brown colour on the bottom. Flipping it over resulted in the entire thing falling apart into individual shreds again and waited until there was more browning. Put it in Mo's bowl, saved a tablespoon for myself to sample.  Gave Mo his bowl. He turned up his nose and walked away. I sat down and tried my little bit. It tasted pretty good. I turned around, intending to raid Mo's rejected bowl. There he was, licking the last of the potato out of the bowl with a smile on his face. 

So, only one tablespoon for me, then. 😕

Meanwhile, the landlord came to bring me the cheque and said he would be back tomorrow for the cash. I told him to bring a receipt. He said he'd Lost his ID. I reminded him he could use his driver's licence but he said he had lost that too. (He is a taxi driver!)

Today is a bit of a downer for me. It is an anniversary I can't ever forget and it isn't a pleasant one. It is 14 years today that my mum passed away. Her final years were a real stress due to her slide into Alzheimer's but she was a real good mother to her children and I miss her. 

As a young woman:

Married (to my dad):

Her second wedding day (with her maid of honour):

Shortly before her passing:

Edited January 6 by Netfoot

[b4pjoe]

32 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

Well, the hash browns were a complete disaster! And simultaneously tasted pretty good...

I grated, washed and rinsed the spuds, dried them out a bit, wrung them out to expel as much water as possible, then added a sprinkle of flour and another of salt. I'd have added other spices but I didn't have any. 

Taking a handful of the mix, I formed it between my hands into a sort of cake. Then I put the cake into a pan of hot oil...  Except the cake fell complete apart the moment I opened my hands and the individual shreds of potato fell into the hot oil. I tried to form them back I to a cake in the pan, using Mo's spatula. Failure. So I left them to fry as individual shreds. They stuck to the bottom of the pan like madman's shit to a blanket. I had to use a sharp knife and 5 minutes to scrape & shave the stuck spud from the bottom of the pan and put them in Mo's bowl. Sampling a pinch to be sure they were not actually raw on the inside... They tasted pretty good!

I switched to a larger pan and dumped the remaining potato into it. Leaving it alone it eventually developed a brown colour on the bottom. Flipping it over resulted in the entire thing falling apart into individual shreds again and waited until there was more browning. Put it in Mo's bowl, saved a tablespoon for myself to sample.  Gave Mo his bowl. He turned up his nose and walked away. I sat down and tried my little bit. It tasted pretty good. I turned around, intending to raid Mo's rejected bowl. There he was, licking the last of the potato out of the bowl with a smile on his face. 

Scrambled hash browns are fine. They go great with bacon, eggs and toast. Another potato treat for me is left over mashed potatoes formed into a patty and fried. We call them potato cakes.

[Netfoot]

30 minutes ago, b4pjoe said:

Scrambled hash browns are fine. They go great with bacon, eggs and toast. Another potato treat for me is left over mashed potatoes formed into a patty and fried. We call them potato cakes.

The first attempt was not good because I did it wrong by trying to turn it too often. When I dumped the rest into the larger pan and just left it alone, it firmed up OK but when I tried to turn it, it fell apart. I Instead of doing it all in one go, I should have done it in smaller lots so when the bottom firmed up and got crispy, it was small enough to get Mo's spatula under it and turn it. 

I've had the fried mashed potato cakes and they are good. I don't make mash very often, tho.  I have an ancient bag of mashed potato powder/flakes here I could try. But that stuff never tastes very good so I avoid using it.

[andidante]

7 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Meanwhile, the landlord came to bring me the cheque and said he would be back tomorrow for the cash. I told him to bring a receipt. He said he'd Lost his ID. I reminded him he could use his driver's licence but he said he had lost that too. (He is a taxi driver!)

Today is a bit of a downer for me. It is an anniversary I can't ever forget and it isn't a pleasant one. It is 14 years today that my mum passed away. Her final years were a real stress due to her slide into Alzheimer's but she was a real good mother to her children and I miss her. 

As a young woman:

Married (to my dad):

Her second wedding day (with her maid of honour):

Shortly before her passing:

Your mother was beautiful! My father's passing was 25 years ago in December and I miss him a lot still.

I hope your landlord does give you a receipt. His ID/driver's license is his problem. He should rectify that right away.

[Netfoot]

1 hour ago, andidante said:

I hope your landlord does give you a receipt. His ID/driver's license is his problem. He should rectify that right away.

He said he would bring one tomorrow when he returned for the cash.

I intend to let him know that the "I've lost my ID/licence!" tactic won't work next month.

Well, today started like so many other days...

I also tested blood sugar before brewing a mug of tea. 4.2 mmol/L which is the sort of reading I like to see. Waited around until the landlord came to drop off the cheque. By then I was boiling some black beans to soften them a bit. Made crappy hash browns for lunch then waited for the steel plates to be collected. Off to the bank to draw off entirely too much cash to walk around with in your pocket. And back home.

Finished the Monte Cristo episodes (well done) and did very little of a productive nature. Finally cooked pasta very similar to last night. Mo got a large serving (like yesterday) but refused to eat it!  Dunno why. I ate my share and it tasted pretty good.

He is here with me now, doing something with my knees and feet... no, now he has rushed to the window. And he is gone.

Listening to Ventura Highway by America. I'm finding it soothing. A headache has just sprung up. It starts at the base of my neck at the bottom, runs up the back of my neck and over the top of my head, down across my forehead and into my eyeballs. Been experiencing head and neck pains recently but this is the first time it had reached my eyeballs.

Mo is back and after giving my face a dozen wet, slobbery kisses, he has curled up at my shoulder.

My book is nearly finished. But I don't think I will complete it tonight. The explorers/searchers have sailed South and East from Cape Horn into the Weddel Sea. With the missing ship as yet not found and only 66 pages to go, I think the book must be moving towards an abrupt and unexpected conclusion. But I'm tired and with my neck/head hurting I don't feel like reading right now. With my left and right eyes no longer focussing in unison and the graying out from the (presumed) cataracts, reading is getting progressive more difficult every day anyway. (And on the old monitor it's worse because the monitor is also graying out so visibility is approaching zero there.)

I think I will just be going for a last pee and then try to fall off to sleep right away. Lost track of Mo. Let me check... Yes, he is, on the tiles beside the bed.

[Netfoot]

For lunch, Mo had pasta and bully beef and I had rice and bully with black beans. We both cleaned our plates but I took longer than Mo. The beans had been soaked for 30 hours and then boiled for another hour to soften them some more and then boiled for another 20 minutes while the rice cooked and yet they were still just a touch too hard & crunchy for my preference. 

As dinner time Mo had the other half of my rice while I boiled a big scoop of the beans for another 20 minutes with a potato diced small, a very small piece of bully, with the intention to make soup. A tablespoon of corn starch (almost none left) thickened it and it and I used the black water from around the beans for the liquid component. It tasted good but the beans were no softer. In fact I almost think they got harder!

I'm not sure what it is with the dried beans and peas. Sometimes I cook up a pack of (say) split peas and they come out hard and crunchy like gravel, no matter how long I soak them and/or boil them. At a later date I try again and this time they come out soft enough to be good eating after only a (relatively) short soak and sometimes no boiling at all, other than what it gets when I use them to cook something. How is that? I thought today that maybe it is different brands that make the difference. There are at least three companies that produce the packages of dried beans I occasionally buy at the grocery. And I have no brand loyalty to any one in particular. I honestly I just pick up the first package of what ever I'm shopping for that comes to hand. Which brand it turns out to be could depend on which store I'm in, which way up the aisle I'm pushing my cart... If that is my problem, I've got a bunch of testing to perform on the various brands cross-checked for various types of peas & beans... It could take loads of trials to determine if one brand was better than the other. And then, the next time I went shopping, would I remember which was which?

Thin Line Between Love And Hate by Chrissy Hynde of The Pretenders. I'm quite fond of her music. And she is an interesting character, as well 

You know, when I got up this morning after a pretty sound night's sleep, I felt pretty unwell. That continued until around six this evening when Mo came and asked for his dinner. I started to feel better after that, and I'm feeling pretty good now. Also, hungry. Dinner was soup (as previously said) and it wasn't really all that filling. Not packed full of chunky veggies as previous soups have been, when I had things to put in them. But there is nothing I can go and quickly eat. I have potatoes, rice, pasta and flour. I could boil some potatoes but there ain't enough oil for chips. I could cook rice, but what would I put in it? The obligatory bully beef and what? More hard-assed beans? Ditto pasta? Or make up some dough from the flour and fry up some bread? Unfortunately there is nothing I could quickly eat. There is a little cheddar but no bread or Eclipse biscuits. No eggs. There is a very small amount of PB&J but nothing to put them on. I don't want to go out and cook up a full meal so it looks like I will be sleeping hungry and cooking lunch early.

Oh, my guy WhatsApped me a photo of a very simple towel rack that he likes. I like it too. When I was a nipper in Trinidad, we had one just like it in every bedroom. We called them "clothes horses". They came with us from Trinidad when we move and they were in every bedroom in my mum's house right up until she died. Then my sister "organized" the house and they have not been seen since. I'd include the photo for you to look at but I can't figure out how to get it out of WhatsApp and into here! I'm going to divert and see if I can do that. Shouldn't be too hard...

You know, if I could find enough scraps of wood lying around, I'd make one for myself!

There are a couple of items I'd like to make for myself. A good bed, a traditional Bajan larder, a new desk, etc. The Bajan larder is an old design of food-storage cupboard from the days before refrigeration. It has features to protect the food from ants as well as mice, etc. I wonder if I could find a picture of a good one online? My mum had one of them as well and it too vanished when her house was "organized".

I finished my book. Three murders, cannibalism, forced testing of bio-weapons on unwilling prisoners... It got very dramatic in the last couple of chapters. But anyway, I now have a new book to read. 

The new book is The city And The Stars by ACC. I just couldn't place this at all. I thought it must be one of his later efforts, but I just did not have any clue. So I researched it online and to my surprise, it was published in 1956 (the year I was born) and is actually a rewrite of his first novel, written in 1948 and published under the name Against the Fall of Night. There is very little by way of a blurb on the cover, and I don't want to read the plot from some source online because that would spoil the book!

Watched a movie called No Escape in which an unrepentant prisoner is dumped in an island where there are two camps of other prisoners. They are left to survive as best they can because there is no support from the prison authority and no chance of escape. Naturally, he escapes.....

Mo is in and out. I will read a chapter or two of my book and contemplate hunger but eventually I will lock up and go to sleep. I don't feel like showering tonight, so I won't.

[Netfoot]

It rained off and on this morning, starting from early. Mo was back and forth from the window to the yard constantly. From about 5:30 he kept coming in, soaking wet, and jumping on me, rolling back and forth and running down the bed while leaning on me, then running back up leaning the other side on me. He did this about 20 times or more, because every time he got relatively dry, he would spend a minute looking out the window and then run back out into the wet. It wasn't raining all the time but when it wasn't the grass was wet enough that he still returned five minutes later absolutely drenched!

Cooked a big pot of rice with corned beef, carrots, onion and the last remaining few black beans. I added a tablespoon of curry powder which tinged the rice yellow and gave it a faint aroma of curry but only the merest hint of a curry flavour. The rice was OK. Not spectacular but quite edible and Mo and I had a bowlful each. There is more for tonight and tomorrow but I will try to whip up some sort of sauce to put over it to make it more interesting. Not sure what exactly...

We are low on sugar and I just opened the 2nd to last tin of condensed milk. And there are many other things of which we are needy, in the comestibles department. Bank has a useable balance of $13.75 and while I cash a welfare cheque on Friday, the entire amount is earmarked for the telephone bill. The cheque on the 24th will go towards electricity.

I had a pretty good sleep last night and despite the prolonged damp assault I suffered before rising, I got up feeling fresh and good. Right now I only want to go take a nap. But it's after four already, so probably not wise to try that. I might have a mug of tea shortly. Might make up a dough for fry-bread and have some of that as well. But there is very little oil left for frying anything;;v.  

Hoped to get a delivery of wood today to start on the prototype towel rack. He told me they want one to put in the showroom (for which I would be paid) and perhaps 10 more to be built on demand. The ten would be worth $3,500 or thereabouts. The design is fairly straightforward and the only slightly tricky but is the turned out portion at the base of each leg. There are various ways to do this, each with it's own pros & cons. 

Edited Wednesday at 08:30 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

So our dinner was more corned beef rice with onion & carrot and just a few black beans. Slightly yellow from curry powder but no curry flavour to speak of. 

But first I made a dough of two cups all purpose wheat flour and one cup of indian corn flour but it came out a little damp, so I added a little more wheat flour until it was no longer sticky. I tore off four lumps of this (and put the remainder in the fridge for tomorrow) and kneaded them into flat cakes which I fried in a pan. Meanwhile I made a simple sauce by frying up a small onion with some oil, then I added water and ketchup. The sauce went over the rice and the unleavened bread went on the side.

Mo got exactly the same except he got more rice but only one piece of fried bread. And I tore his bread into small chunks and stirred it into the rice before spooning the onion & ketchup gravy over the top. I didn't know how well he would like it but he ate the lot in quick time. I laboured with mine because those bread loaves? cakes? were tasty but as solid as paving stones.

The last paving stone, I sliced it open into two halves and put a little smear of guava jelly on each. They tasted pretty good. Before I could get halfway through the first slice, Mo showed up and insisted he get half of the remaining bread & jelly. 

Watched Dark City today. This is a cult-classic film that can be a little unsettling to watch. It is truly a dark movie, set almost 100% in gloomy night settings. The hero, wakes with amnesia in the dark city (run by "the strangers") to find himself a suspect in the murder of several prostitutes. Fleeing arrest and trying to recover his memory he discovers unusual things about the city. How come it is always night? Why does nobody else notice this? How does the city rearrange itself at midnight? Why do people's memories change from day to day? I'm not sure if it would be beneficial to be thoroughly stoned when watching this movie. Probably.

Listening to Lionel Richie and The Commodores. The song is Easy, a ballad written by Richie in the late 70s, that was one of the best loved of their tracks.

Never did bathe last night and once again I don't feel like it tonight. Mo thinks I should (he is bathing my left arm now) but there is a definite chill in the air and the breeze in the window does not encourage me to get wet. I suppose I will have to, because you can only go stinky for so long, no matter what. But I will lie here for awhile yet, hoping an ironclad reason not to, pops into my head. 

I'd hoped to get the lumber delivered today so I can make a start on the clothes horse. Alas, no. I wish my bandsaw was operational because it would make certain options available for the job. The table saw is a fundamental tool for the woodworker but it doesn't cut curves worth a damn. 

Read a little of my book last night. Not enough to discover where it's going but enough to pique my curiosity. The city was built millions of years ago as a last refuge for humanity when "the invaders" came. It is self-sustaining and self repairing. The last remnants of humanity live within and they have evolved to suit their environment. It's been aeons since anyone even thought of going outside. But now, Alvin dreams of finding out what is beyond the city limits.....

Had a very wobbly moment today. I'd been sitting in a slightly awkward position and got up to go for a pee. I discovered that one of my legs was partially asleep. Combined with the usual MG wobblies, I found myself staggering around like a drunken sailor! Nearly didn't make it in time. Mo thought it was a great game and joined in by making sure that he was always standing between me and my destination.

Had a mug of tea after dinner and feel like I could drink another now! Of course, I don't need it. I'm testing blood sugar tomorrow and with the giant meal of carbs I had for dinner I'm expecting the numbers will be up a bit! Last thing I need is another late night mug of sweet tea on top of the fry-bread & rice. 

Mo is here with me now, all snoozy on the foot of the bed. I really don't want to get wet now, especially since he is not showing any inclination to cuddle up warm. The water in the shower will be as hot as ever I want, what with the solar. It will literally take your skin off if you don't mix in some cold! But as soon as you get out of the shower the air feels like it is fresh out of the refrigerator....

I'm going to read now. Will decide about showering when I go to lock up.

[b4pjoe]

14 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Read a little of my book last night. Not enough to discover where it's going but enough to pique my curiosity. The city was built millions of years ago as a last refuge for humanity when "the invaders" came. It is self-sustaining and self repairing. The last remnants of humanity live within and they have evolved to suit their environment. It's been aeons since anyone even thought of going outside. But now, Alvin dreams of finding out what is beyond the city limits.....

Sounds a bit like the show Silo on Apple TV+.

[Netfoot]

Remember that water-blister on my tummy from a few days ago? This is whY what it looks like now:

I know: Yeeech!

Mo and I had rice for lunch. Right now, he is under my chair, making himself comfortable. 

Edited Friday at 03:25 AM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Just watched an episode of Vera, a British police detective drama set in and around Newcastle on Tyne. It was S14E02 and right at the end, Vera retired from the force! I wasn't expecting the episode to be the last episode!. The lead actress has had a very successful career, receiving many awards and even an OBE for her service to drama. She had been praised for her Tyneside accent and mannerisms as seen on the show, despite her coming from Kent! (My dad was born in Whitley Bay, only a stone's throw from Tynemouth, and upon leaving school, worked in the shipyards on the Tyne - as did his father - until he joined the RN on the outbreak of WW-II.)

I quite liked Vera and I'm sorry to discover that it will not return. 

Also watched a few episodes of season #2 of SAS: Rogue Heroes with Jack O'Connell and a slew if other actors. Funnily, I made a post on another forum today about the Bren .303 LMG (light machine gun) and later, in one of these episodes they were using 2-3 of them and they were shown in close-up!

Still no lumber. The longer it takes to come, the longer before I get any reward for making the towel racks. The larder is quite bare with plenty of food but little to eat. There is a fair amount of rice, but not much choice as to what goes into it. My pension dropped today and this made $26.06 more funds available. I've now got about $35 I can spend. I made an elaborate (if short) list of things I was going to buy, then remembered we have virtually no cooking oil! We need oil to cook, even if it's only a tablespoon to fry up some bully beef & onions to put on our rice! I like to buy 5L at a time but I will have to make do with less.

So tomorrow, we go to the post office to cash a welfare cheque, add the ten bucks from my pocket and make a deposit at the bank. Then it's off to Popular to see what cooking oil we can get most economically and what else we can get food-wise with the balance remaining. We are out of a lot of stuff like garlic and mayo, eggs and fresh vegetables of any kind, and very low on more items like sugar, milk, cheese and stock cubes, etc. 

Speaking of food, Mo and I had rice for lunch but even though there was enough for another meal we set it aside and instead cooked cavatappi for dinner. The pasta was stirred with a sauce made from onion and ketchup with the last of the "ham" diced into it. The ham was not fried (no oil), the sauce contained no garlic powder (we have run out) and did not even have a mini stock cube in it (too few remaining to use that casually). The $1.59 packages of pasta make enough for Mo and I both to have a generously large portion. If we could make a proper sauce with tomatoes, peppers, etc, it would go even further! So we had a nice, filling dinner and there is enough rice left over that tomorrow, when we get back from our excursion, we won't have to do any cooking in order to get some lunch. And if I can find 2L of oil for $10-12, we might even have chips for dinner, because we have potatoes. 

Garden Patrol went smoothly, with only one pair of running shorts to be collected from our by the gate. Mo is now snoozing on the tiles with the door shut. I have not showered for 2 nights now, so I will definitely be showering very shortly. Despite a slightly cool breeze in the window again tonight. 

I'm listening to Love Is by Vanessa Williams along with Brian McKnight. I'm not hugely fond if either of these two singers but I think this particular track is an especially sweet ballad and the two voices complement each other very well.

Mo now curled up at my left shoulder attending to his business. You know, he has developed the cutest, silky gray whisps on his ears and a little ridge on the top of his head! 

Holy moly! It's 1:20 AM! Ok,time for that shower.

[Spunkygal]

The actress in Vera was in a quirky movie called Little Voice in 1998. I recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147004/?ref_=nm_flmg_knf_i_3

 

[Netfoot]

I told myself not to exceed $35 and the final total was $34.99 but I get ahead of myself!

Post office. There were seven people in line ahead of me. Normally there is nobody! I use a small regional post office because it is the closest. There are five windows available.  Only three have the *** terminal and other stuff installed. The one ion the middle and the two on either end. Those are labeled 1, 2  & 3. So, in  practice, although the building makes five windows available tot eh PO, the PO only makes three available to the public. I have never seen more than two of them occupied so I think it is fair to say that they actually only have two windows.

I went in and there was a guy at one window with a stack of paperwork six inches high. So that limits the number of windows to one, for at least the next half an hour and probably more. The seven people used the second cashier, one after the other. I quickly noticed that each time a customer walked away with their business complete, the cashier got up, wandered off, and entered a door at the back, labeled "POSTMASTER". a minute or so later, he would return to his station and call the next person in line.

Normally, the cashiers service their customers quickly and efficiently so there is never a big backlog of people waiting. But seven ahead of me today, and when I finally cashed my cheque and left, there were seven people behind me.

I expect some administrative fart-sniffer has put new procedures in place to increase efficiency!

Popular. Found a brand of cooking oil that was $9.99 for a two liter bottle. That is a very good price, but the oil is "blended vegetable oil" and you can bet that whatever is the least desirable oil on the global market today, this stuff is a blend of two lots of that. But it will cook chips, fry up onion & bully beef sauce.

What else? 1,800 grams of sugar, three tins of condensed milk, a jar of mayo (because I'm an addict) and 50 grams of granulated garlic.

Bank. Popped the cash from the PO and the tenner from my pocket into a pre-filled-out deposit envelope and dropped it into the box. Only took 2 seconds.

The deposit has not been processed yet but I don't see why there should be a problem. When it is, I will be able to pay the phone bill. That will leave me with $1.32 total.

I get another welfare cheque in 14 days (the 24th) which I was planning to put towards electric bill. But I am now wondering if I should avoid paying the phone bill now. It isn't due until the 21st and it would be nice to have that money available in case there was an emergency. I'd prefer the phone bill not be paid and the phone be cut off again, rather than something happen to Mozie while I am without a single cent I can use to help him. 

Really want to get the lumber and see what I can do with the towel rack. You may have noticed that the stuff I bought at Popular today did not include any actual food...

[Netfoot]

Damn, damn, damn!

When you are feeding yourself on the most basic of foodstuffs, you have to spend some of your budget on things to help add flavour to otherwise plain meals. Like granulated garlic, paprika, and so forth. One of the most useful things I use are these:

Tiny little stock cubes. You can use one to spruce up the taste of a gravy, a sauce, or a pot of soup or rice. I get these in boxes of 25 for four bucks or there abouts. I only have these two left and the first thing I was to buy today after cooking oil, was two boxes of these. And I completely forgot.  Finding myself with $8-9 left over when everything was accounted for (I thought), I spent it on a jar of mayo. Now, I have only these two cubes to last for godnoze how long. 

Anyway, Mo had his leftover rice from lunch mixed with four loaves of fry-bread, torn into little pieces. I made a corned beef and onion sauce with ketchup, paprika, garlic and no stock cube. He got two good dollops of it over his fry-bread and rice dinner. He really seemed to enjoy it.

For myself, I cut up some potatoes and made chips. over which I poured the remainder of the sauce and added a dollop of mayo. It tasted good but I should have made more chips because they were moreish.

Listening to Killer Queen from Sheer Heart Attack by Queen. 

Mo is here with me and curled up actually on my left shoulder.

This browser has crashed four times now, and I am fortunate I was able to recover the text of my post.

Watched a movie called One Ranger this evening. The title comes from the saying about Texas Rangers: "One riot, one ranger." Our ranger has a run-in with a British terrorist/bank robber. Later, he is approached by an agent from the British Secret Service and asked to come to London to help apprehend the bad guy, who is planning an attack. The two of them make an interesting pair! The head of the British Secret Service is played by John Malkovich (which seems unlikely, but OK) and the two main stars are played by Thomas Jane and Dominique Tipper! Nice to see them together again for the first time (for me) since The Expanse. I do like them both!

On 1/10/2025 at 1:22 PM, Spunkygal said:

The actress in Vera was in a quirky movie called Little Voice in 1998.

I will see if I can get ahold of it and give it a watch. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Mo has departed. I have showered already but the door is still open. I'm actually quite tired tonight. Probably won't read a whole lot before calling it quits. Mo is back and looking out the window.

Still no sign of the lumber. I have some scraps here and I will try to work out if there is enough to make one clothes horse. I'm doubtful. But we will see.

Mo is gone again. I fell asleep and dropped the phone but fortunately the phone landed on the bed. I think I will save the post and start getting ready to slumber. Mo is back at the window again. It's going to be one of those nights...

Edited Saturday at 07:11 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

I'm in bed. I'm showered, the door is locked and Mo is looking out the window. I gave him a Beggin' Strip. There aren't many left and they were a Christmas present so he won't be seeing any more for a while, when they are gone. He's now curled up against my tummy... No, he has shifted to the foot of the bed.

On 1/10/2025 at 1:22 PM, Spunkygal said:

The actress in Vera was in a quirky movie called Little Voice in 1998. I recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

I watched Little Voice today. It was somewhat sad, really. So many unhappy people and it gets worse for most of them as the movie progressed. By the end only LV herself (Jane Horrocks) and her pigeon-loving beau (Ewan McGregor) have seen any improvement in their lives and precious little of it. Although, arguably LV's situation improved tremendously for getting out from under Mari (Brenda Blethyn) at last. Even Ray Say (Michael Caine) ended up with his career ruined. I have to say that BB's character was a bit of a shock after DCI Vera Stanhope, who I (and everybody else, I think) liked. Horrorshow! But BB did a great job with the part. 

We had potatoes with BOK sauce (Bully, Onion, Ketchup) for our lunch. We had fewer potatoes than I thought but I saved the biggest, about the size of my fist, and diced/boiled the rest. When they were almost done I transferred them into the pan with the BOK to finish while soaking up some of the flavour of the sauce. I dished out a good portion for Mo and there wasn't much left for me. But whereas Mo doesn't understand about a lightly loaded larder and only knows when he is hungry, I can understand that you can't eat what you don't have and settle for a small portion of potatoes & BOK. 

Called and whistled for Mo to come for his lunch but no sign. Taking his bowl I went out and found him sleepin' like a teef on the verandah. Woke him gently and presented him with his meal, then went in to have my own. In less than two minutes he was at my hip, waiting for me to finish so he could clean my plate for me. He is a very sweet boy. And he likes his grub.

Apart from Little Voice I also watched the last episodes of SAS Rogue Heroes and I was surprised to see General Montgomery (Monty) portrayed as a bit of an arsehole. To my father and many (if not most) other Englishmen of that era, he was a hero. The hero of Tobruk and El Alamein. Well, he may have been a great general, but all I have learned about him from reading about WW-II tells me that he was an arsehole of enormous proportion. And quite frankly, Eisenhower should have stood him up against a wall and had him shot for some of the shit he pulled in and beyond Cherbourg, right after D-Day. Absolutely. They should have stood him and Patton up against the same wall and shot them both at the same time. They wouldn't have had to arrange the "accident" for Patton at the end of '45!

Obviously, after a small lunch I was feeling a bit peckish most of the afternoon and had my mind on food. I decided to go and cook a pot of rice early, so when Mo came demanding his dinner I would be able to feed him immediately, rather than making him wait. It turned into a bit of a production. 

I pulled a package of Valrico lentil peas out if the fridge and set them to boil. I drew up a new spreadsheet and created a table with brand names across the top of the columns and a type of pulse down the side. There is now one entry in my new spreadsheet: Valrico/Lentils/20. That's how many minutes I had to boil them before I judged that they were how I wanted them. The spreadsheet is a stupid idea. I'll be dead before I fill in enough data for it to be of any value to me. But so what? If I get some data in the table it may reveal which brands/beans to buy and which to avoid, if I want to be able to cook them in a reasonable time.

With cooked lentils on hand, I put four cups of rice in a pot along with two generous scoops of the lentils, about ¼ tin of corned beef, two carrots chopped into smallish pieces, two small onions pushed through the mandolin, a fair shake of garlic and another of paprika, salt, eight cups of water and no stock cube. Brought it to a boil, turned down to a low simmer and put a lid on the pot. Twenty minutes later all the water had been absorbed, the rice was ready to serve straight from the pot and I turned off the stove. 

Mo came looking for dinner early. Around six. Normally I would have tried to delay him until half past or later but as I was hungry too, I dished up the still-hot rice and we ate. I used a light hand with the pot-spoon to try and economize. 

It tasted really good! Yes, it could have been so much better with some actual meat in it - beef, pork or chicken - and a handful of little pepperoni slices quartered, to sneak into your mouth every few bites and give you a flavour-burst. And some mushrooms, jalapeno and sweet peppers, olives and pak choy, too! Maybe some pumpkin. But without all that stuff, it still tasted real good. They say hunger is the best sauce and I'm sure that played a significant part in my assessment, but hey!

Followed the meal with a mug of tea before an uneventful Garden Patrol. 

Around eight, Mo came asking for his dinner again. So I gave him another scoop of rice (still warm) and took one for myself (still real good).

Now, food has been tasting good again since I stopped the azathioprine and I discussed this with Dr. Kristi when I saw her last. She agreed with me that that was almost certainly the reason. Unfortunately, I had also started using MSG around the same time. She seemed a little dismayed about the MSG (but wouldn't say why) so I told her I would stop using it and see if food continued to taste good. That was almost three weeks ago and food still does taste good. However, I'm not sure if it is as good, so I will go back to using the MSG, just to see if food flavour increases again. I won't stick with it for any length of time, but I'd like to find out if it does have a positive effect or not. As mentioned before, anything you can do to improve the flavour of budget vittles is beneficial. If we get down to only rice without bully or anything else to put into it, it might be good to have a way to make it extra tasty. It's only 69¢ a packet as opposed to $1.49 for garlic powder.

And speaking of rice. I buy 1,750 or 1,800 gram bags and cook it by the cup. A cup of rice is about 200 grams and feeds Mo and I for one meal. A 1,750 gram bag will last us about 9 meals or 4½ days. Cooked four cups today which should get us as far as lunch Monday. And there is one 1,750 gram bag in the fridge with one cup already taken out. So 8 cups or 4 days, which will get us as far as next Friday lunchtime. With two packages of pasta giving us two or at most three more meals, we run out of food by next Sunday. After that we have enough flour for a couple more meals of fry-bread or dumplings. 

I'm going to have to go back to a trick I have not used since I was a student in England. Instead of two meals a day I will have to switch to two days a meal. That will stretch the grub for a few days more and help keep Mo fed for longer. Worst comes to worst, I will have to spend the telephone money on food. 

Listening to Your Love Alone Is Not Enough by Welsh group Manic Street Preachers. Unusually, the vocal line is a duet, with the female voice provided by guest artist Nina Persson, lead singer for a Scandinavian band I am not familiar with. Maybe I should look it up.... The Cardigans. Heard of them but can't say I remember hearing them. I should look into that. Apparently one of their songs was on the soundtrack of Romeo + Juliet. That film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles. I have seen it (a modern day adaptation of the Bard's play but still using Shakespearian English. Unusual. Not great but watch-worthy enough for the curious.)

Jeebus, it's after 1:30 again! Two nights in a row now that I don't get to read my book. Blood sugar testing in the morning so I can't (shouldn't) even get up and have a mug of tea! 

[Netfoot]

Little green lizard on my bedside table, in front of my little speakers.

I came in and he was on the front of the unit but he scooted back a bit when I walked in. He is still right where you see him, despite my taking several pictures of him and even picking up the bedroom remote, fiddling with it and putting it down again. I do not harm lizards or hassle them in any way unless they do something to force it. I had a lizard that lived on my bedroom ceiling and I was fine with that until the third time he lost his footing on the ceiling and landed directly on my sleeping face. The third time was the final feather and I got a broom and chased him out of the house. He is still there by the way, in front of the speakers. 

The bedside table is the first woodworking project I ever attempted. It is at least 25 years old and the plywood has started to deteriorate. It has served me well and still does it's job but one of these days I might build a replacement.

Mo is hiding under the bed. I know this because as I came up the passage I heard him trying to dig a hole in the tiles but he is nowhere to be seen in the room. Ergo, he must be under the bed. Last time I hung over to grab his picture under there, I fell out and landed on my head, so I won't do that again. May just put my hand under and take a pic, aiming by intuition and sense of smell!

We had rice for lunch. What else? Dinner will also be rice but I don't know if there will be enough for lunch tomorrow. Maybe only enough for Mo, in which case I will chipify that last potato to make a small meal for me. 

Late to sleep last night. 30 minutes later Mo insisted on being let out so I put him out and locked the door. At 4:30 he was clamoring under the window to be let back in again. Anyway, I was so tired at my desk I nearly fell out of my chair. It's now twenty to four so I will take a nap for an hour or so and then go for a mug of tea. 

Let me start the music and see what is the first thing out of the shute: Lady Stardust from Bowie's The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. And those speakers suddenly springing to life finally got Lizzie moving!

Intuition & sense of smell:

Edited Sunday at 07:58 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Twenty past midnight. Mo and I are in  bed but I still have to shower and lock up. 

We had rice again for dinner. There is enough for Mo to have lunch tomorrow but not much, if any, for me. Will skip a meal or eat some fry-bread. Dinner can be cavatappi with BOK and Tuesday we can cook another pot of rice. 

Listening to Hummingbird by Seals & Crofts. Mo has suddenly run to the window. 

I started watching Landman with Billy-Bob Thornton in the title role. Not sure how to describe his job formally but he seems to be an area-wide boss-man and fixer-upper for the independent oil company that employs him. I like BBT but frankly, had little hope this show would appeal. I only watched the first episode because a person I trust advised me to watch. Next thing I knew, I was four episodes in. It is much better than I anticipated, with all the supporting actors (for the most part) doing a very creditable job as well. Even Ali Larter (BBT's bitchy ex-wife) does a fairly good job. And I don't hold much water for Ali Larter!

Mo has departed, after polishing his plums for a while. He spent the last couple hours asleep on top of my feet... He's back again, bathing my left arm. And now looking out the window. 

Sent Heidi a message to remind her that she still hasn't collected the plate on which she brought me Christmas lunch/dinner. She replied that she is leaving the island tomorrow and will be gone for a month. I have spent years and have begged her dozens of times to tell me when she goes away. I am not prying into her business but if I fall and break my leg it would be nice to know not to spend the next 4 hours trying to get her on the phone to ask for help! For sure, if I had not sent her a message she would have gone tomorrow and I would have had no clue that I was in my own here.

Mo back outside barking up a storm. 

Will read until Mo comes in again then I will lock up, shower and call it a day.

ETA: Just out of the shower and holy jeebus! It's frigid! My teeth are chattering! Barely made it under the covers before frostbite uh, bit!

Edited Yest. at 12:49 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

My Bandit-Baby has been busy!

1. A Croc
2. My shorts 
3. A hand towel
4. The kitchen ladle (on the grass)
5. The Bandit himself!

And all this between 4:27 when the door opened and 7:30, when I woke and couldn't find those shorts!

I need tea.

Edited Yest. at 12:55 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Bathed, locked up and in bed with a puppy cuddling up against my butt. After midnight again.

We lunched on the last of the rice. Mo usually gets 2½ scoops and I might get 3 as a rule. Today there was only three scoops left. Remember when we cooked this pot, Mo & ate extra that first night? Consequences! I had ½ scoop and Mo got the rest.

Dinner was pasta. Cavatappi and bOK. Notice the little "b"? There was not much corned beef. We are also running low on onions and ketchup. So soon we will be eating bok. We do have more corned beef. One tin. But for tonight I chose to make do with the small amount in the fridge left back from the previous tin. The food actually tasted pretty good, despite no sign of anything in the bowl besides the pasta. But I did put some MSG in it. Good? Yes. Good enough to credit the MSG as making a difference? Not so I could see.

Apart from YT videos, all I watched today was Landman. Good to the very end and I am happy that Demi Moore had said that a second season will begin filming in early '25.

The browser just died while I edited that last paragraph. I wanted to italicize the name of the show, as I generally do. To do this I must select the word by making a long press on it, then select to italicize it. But the word had a red wiggly line under it. Because "Landman" is not a word known to this phone, and is considered a typo. As soon as I tried to long-press the word, the browser just shut down. Out like a light. I've noticed this exact behaviour before on other posts, where I long-pressed a word the phone didn't recognize and thereby immediately killed the browser. 

Listening to Johnny Too Bad. The track is from the soundtrack album to The Harder They Come and is performed by The Slickers. This song has caused me to experience some amusement in the past, when I discover online discussions about the meaning of the "ratchet" in Johnny's waist. The ratchet is a type of very cheap, rough but sturdy folding knife that was in common use in the Caribbean and in Africa. They look like this:

The spring on the back keeps the knife in the open (or closed) position until you lift the ring a few millimeters. The knife gets it's name (ratchet) from the locking mechanism. Here is a rough diagram I found online:

The back of the blade has a series of notches that engage with the back-spring. With the ring lifted the blade can easily be positioned in the open or closed position, or any of several additional positions in between. Opening the knife produced a distinct "click-click-click" sound, like a car's handbrake being pulled up.

These knives were used to commit so many murders in Jamaica that they were eventually outlawed thought the islands. Upon hearing this news my dad rushed out and bought about 20 of them, brand new from a shop, before they vanished off the market. As a result, I had several of them. One in each toolbox and one in my car. In any toolbox, it can be useful to have a sturdy knife that you wouldn't mind too much if it breaks.

If you dismantled one of these knives, you could carefully grind down the ratchet in such a way that the ratchet becomes a smooth ramp, with the final notch unaffected. Once reassembled, the modified knife could be opened with just a flick of the wrist with the blade locking firmly in the open position. You would have to use two hands to close it again (by lifting the ring with the other hand) but opening it was very fast and only required one hand. I modified the one in my car in this way.

I usually shy away from soundtrack albums but this is just a seminal compilation of Jamaican reggae music of the era (mid 60s to early 70s). In the movie, Jimmy Cliff plays the leading part as Ivanhoe Martin, singer and gunslinger in Kingston.

Tomorrow, Mo and I will prolly be back on the rice. There is some flour, that one remaining potato, the last bag of pasta, and about eight cups of rice. When I cook four cups at a time it produces enough for two days. So we will be out of food come the weekend. We might try fry-bread for one meal first and dumplings for the next but the flour won't last much beyond that.

There is one tin of corned beef. In a four-cup pot of rice I usually put ¼ to ⅓ of a tin of bully. With ⅓ a tin the rice tastes better but with ¼ the bully lasts longer. Apart from cooking It into the rice, I will also need bully to make BOK to put over the dumplings and/or fry-bread. Or I could put no bully in the rice and just make BOK for each meal served, be it rice, dumplings, fry-bread or whatever.

Oh yeah. There is a small amount of mashed potato flakes which I bought in 2019. It makes very tasteless mash and we have little in the way of spices (or anything else) to enliven the stuff. But we will probably eat it some time soon. Maybe the mash can be fried as little cakes. Or maybe the flakes can be added to flour when making dumplings.

I'm going to snuff these candles now, and try to get some sleep. A fuzzy boy is sleeping on my knee so I will have to move slowly soze not to disturb his slumber. Because he is so careful not to disturb me when I am the one sleeping.....

[Netfoot]

The quick brown fox uses a word that is not in the phone's dictionary and which it can't guess a suitable autocorrect word for: plessiwok. 

Now, I will long-press to see what happens... The browser dies!

Let's try it again.... It died again!

Ok, third time is the charm, but let's try another word:  rambulally.... Once more, dead as a stone. 

Ok, so now I know what causes the browser to die. Or more correctly, I know one of possibly many things that causes it to die...

Edited 6 hours ago by Netfoot