Pickles N. Jams: Daily Morsel

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:20:24 GMT

Catching Up Coming back from a visit to Germany where I grew up and lived until I was 27, to me feels like a time of transition, and a good point to re-assess, think things over, and find ways to make adjustments. One of my resolutions is to take myself more seriously professionally, and in that vein, I did my best to finish an assignment as soon as I had started up my computer. And then there is summer. With the heat and the humidity came the bounty, and I am finally back to Pickles & Jams. However, after the jamming and jellying and by the time I have cleaned up my kitchen I am too exhausted to blog. I will try to keep up in bits and pieces, and not always in chronological order. I am learning and documenting my failures and successes is part of the process. So far I have made mulberry jelly and jam (I am not sure if it set enough, I may have to reprocess), cherry vanilla jam last night which came out great, pesto from the basil on my roof (this will be an ongoing project all summer long). Tonight I want to make some apple jelly from some "real" apples I picked up at the farmer's market. I need to look around for crabapples. I have a feeling there must be some apple trees on the campus of a nearby college. I am off to deal with some paperwork on my desk. Hopefully I will be back later, writing about mulberries or cherries.

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 03:10:45 GMT

Back We came back Tuesday night. The trip was good. We had quality time with friends and family. I will report more later. Culinary highlight: elderberry blossom "champagne." I never made anything like that before. It turned out great! Yesterday I went to the grocery store and on the way home I discovered a mulberry tree - with ripe berries that I could actually reach! I went back today and picked some, and later today clambered around in various parks with dog-owners. It turns out dog-owners know their parks! Now the juice is draining from the berries and hopefully tomorrow I will make jelly. I have no experience whatsoever with mulberries, but foraging for them is a lot of fun. My "garden" is growing wild. I have lots of tomatoes ripening, basil, eggplants etc. I have to spend some time with tidying up and growth control. I have to go to sleep now. I am exhausted. Jet-lag and mulberries.

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 01:41:24 GMT

Long Time, No See This blog will be on hiatus again (well, when is it not?); this time for three weeks as we will visit my family in Germany. I will not even attempt to sum up the goings-on of the past week. Instead I will post a few pictures from my "gardens," before they burst into bloom and hopefully fruit. Hey, if we had a webcam, we could watch things grow from afar. One thing I would like to say though is, that my fast was the best thing I did for myself since I had my children. I feel rejuvenated, both physically and mentally. I am back to eating normal now, although more thoughfully and in smaller portions. I will definitely go back and fast again. I had some major detoxification happening on day six and I am not sure I got rid of all the nasty stuff since I broke the fast on day seven. I hope to talk more about it when I get back. The windowboxes have filled in nicely. In my backyard the lilies are just about ready to start blooming. And here is my little rooftop farm:

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 02:30:57 GMT

I am on day 5 of my fast which is the goal I set myself. But since things have been going so well I decided I would add on two more days. But then I have to stop because I need to give myself enough time to SLOWLY ease back into a regular diet. I somehow can't believe it. I am not hungry, have no headaches and lots of energy. I had a bad headache two days before I started when I ate only raw stuff, and a slight headache the next day. I had a wonderful day yesterday. In the morning my had a kids' event in Midtown and it turned out much more fun than I anticipated. I was supposed to take my 6-year-old to a birthday party in Park Slope and since we had some time to kill I thought I get her some lunch and we go to Bryant Park. We discovered that the NY Public Library has a "Reading room" in the Park. How cool is that? It is just an area with a couple of tables and chairs and a few carts with book, magazines, newspapers and children's books. Perfect. I think we will go there a lot in the summer. The birthday party was drop-off. I had one and a half hour to wander about by myself in Park Slope. I had so much fun. Lots of fun little shops, stoop sales and thrift shops. I didn't actually buy anything, except for a loaf of bread for my family. There were some interesting food shops too but I did not investigate those. And I did not look at any kids' stuff at all, although there was lots of that at the stoop sales. I had such a great day yesterday. I think I had the hunger endorphins kick in. Of course the tasty vegetable juice I treated myself to helped as well. And walking around outside in great weather. Today is ok, not great. Weather has been hot and muggy with storm in the evening. And another storm right now. Lots of rain coming down. Good thing I watered everything today. (Sorry no time to edit.)

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 01:13:48 GMT

My fast is going great. I feel very well. I am on day 2 now. I have no lack of energy, if anything more energy. And I don't feel so cloudy in my head. It's amazing. Fasting is quite popular in Europe, but not in the US. It figures because it is turning away from consumption for a while. And you don't need to buy anything. Next week my little one will go to her center for two days since my husband has to be at school anyway. I will be able to get my work done, although just barely. And I will finish the culinary post eventually. I will start eating again, don't worry.

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 14:17:57 GMT

Finally a day at my desk, yeah! For a change from the usual ranting, I have a little culinary post in the works. It should be ready soon, depending on how my time management goes. Speaking of culinary (or rather the absence thereof), I have decided to go on a fast. There were just too many little aches and pains, nothing "serious" but I felt my system needed a good cleaning. I had done a fast, a long long time ago, when I was in my 20s, and it was great. I did it for 12 days. This time I am only aiming at 5. This is my first day, I did two days of easing into it, eating only fresh vegetables and fruit. So far I feel great. It will be interesting since I still have to deal with food preparation. However, I can see the benefits already: today at breakfast, since I wasn't eating anything, I could use the time to read the paper!

Sun, 22 May 2005 03:05:17 GMT

One Week's Round-Up I am in between visits from in-laws. Visit was good, I think. It is good for grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren, especially in view of health problems. I focused the last week on my garden(s) (what am I talking about??? I have a postage stamp and three window boxes ...). In the back, I put the Japanese Maple in. It looks gorgeous. I still need to thin out the canopy a bit. I put in Sweet Autumn Clematis to keep the other Clematis company. They can mingle and we will have some nice bloom in the fall. General cleaning-up, put in some Impatients to brighten things up a bit. And I moved the Bleeding heart that had gotten so enormous it was crowding everything else.
I took the pansies and primrose out of the window boxes and planted them under the blueberry bushes. You never know, we might still get some mileage out of them. For me geraniums are the quintessential window box flower but since they don't get enough sun here, they actually never look really good. So this year I did something drastically different (and ironically, this was the first year I managed to overwinter my Geraniums). I assembled some houseplants that can't stop multiplying and added some colorful coleus. (I will post a picture once they have filled in a bit). Basically, there is Sweet Potatoe Vine and Wandering Jew trailing down the front, two different types of coleus and a polka-dot plant in the middle, along with a white Impatients (some flowers, I figured), and in the back there is a spider plant and a fern. It looks pretty good with unusual contrast of foilage.
I put my tomatoes and peppers on the roof and a few herbs and other things. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, I worked for five hours climbing up and down that ladder with my backpack loaded up with plants and compost. I thought my back would break. The potting soil I had used last year had not drained very well so I really needed to refresh the pots with lots of Perlite and compost. And speaking of compost, I had to move that around too, because my bins were full. Again. I wish I had room for a third bin. So much for was my gardening craziness. I also repotted most of the houseplants and put the geraniums in pots on the steps. I will post pictures eventually. The bizarre thing is that while I dig around in the little dirt I have, all around me neighbors are putting in paving and building walls and covering up that last bit of dirt as if it were the evil enemy. Oh well. I still have to do the tree-pit in the front. That's the toughest habitat. Dogs, people, cars, salt in the winter. Whenever I have an extra plant that looks tough I put it in there. Last fall I put in a hosta and it came up this spring. Then someone actually dug it up and took off with it. I hope it found a good home. Culinary Stuff I delegated most of the cooking this week to my spouse. Being cooked for is nice. I could get used to it. We went out once to Little Giant again. I had wild asparagus for the first time. It was amazing. Pencil-thin with relatively large tips. Very green and fresh tasting. Apparently some guy from Vermont drives around and sells it to people in the know. I don't think he will be coming by my house, though. The other noteworthy thing I had there was a Mojito with rum they had spiced themselves. I managed to coax the ingredients out of the waitress. Speaking of drinks we were at a BBQ today and I had excellent home-made beer. It was seriously good beer. Almost makes we want to start brewing. But my neighbor said he had been tinkering around for four years and pouring a lot down the drain. Hmm, maybe I can trade some canned goods? Or some spiced rum?

Fri, 13 May 2005 02:20:08 GMT

I have not had much computer-time lately and miss blogging. My 4-year-old is home while my husband is still in the midst of exams. And we have two sets of grandparents arriving in two subsequent weeks. That calls for a lot of much-needed housecleaning. I don't know why we always let things go so bad around here. Well, I know why, I just don't know what we could do not to let it happen. I have been keeping up my early-morning writing routine, except for today when I woke up all achy and decided to sleep a little longer. I was cranky all day long, still achy and I missed my early time for myself and the peace and quiet I get from it and carry through the day. If getting up just weren't so hard! Speaking of which, I will go to bed early tonight so I can be at my desk tomorrow bright and early. I hope to have more time for this blog soon. Not sure what the next two weeks will bring and how much baby-sitting I will get out of the grandparents. There will be a lot of cooking. My father-in-law and his wife are traditional meat-eaters, and while I am well-versed in that kind of cooking I don't find it very interesting. My mother-in-law and her husband are a bit more adventurous although there is a lot of stuff they don't eat. With all these visitors we have decided we will spring for a MoMA membership. That way everyone can go and we won't have to listen to constant complaints about how expensive admission is. As a host you are held responsible for everything, including the weather!

Thu, 05 May 2005 19:32:01 GMT

Someone is reading through my entire blog, page-by-page. I can see it on the referer page. It gives me the heebeejeebees. I feel like I have just handed in an assignment and it is being graded before my eyes. Except I never got beyond the rough draft. And I will never find out about my grade. I am an ambivalent blogger. Blogging is a good exercise for me. I consider it a semi-public activity, really more semi than public. I never made an effort to attract a lot of readers. You don't need to read it all. Really. I am ok with that.

Thu, 05 May 2005 17:14:17 GMT

I am challenging myself. I have resolved to get up at 5 AM every day. That way, I can be at my desk by 5:30 and work until 7:30 when my crew gets up. This is not easy for me at all. I am not a morning person, not at all. It is very hard for me to get up. But somehow that makes it easier: Because it is hard to get up for me regardless of when I get up, whether it is at 5 or at 10. This will be hard but I know I can do it. I did it today and it was hard. It will be hard every day. But I see no other way to get anything done. For myself. I have fallen into a nice rhythm lately. Three to four days a week, I do my work-for-hire from 9 AM to 2 or 3 or 4 PM (depending on what my daughter is doing for afterschool). Then I go pick her up. I walk. It is a brisk 25 minute walk, along the park, my daily exercise. When we come back, I do chores around the house. If we come back late I get started on dinner right away. Between 4 and 5 my husband and my little one come back. She goes to child care at the College where he teaches. Next Monday is her last day. It suddenly hit me a couple of days ago that summer is upon me. And summer means even less time for me, for my work and for myself. My husband said, when he is at home, of course, we will divide the time and I will have time to work. Judging from past summers I am cautiously optimistic. We will see how it will go. I don't want to do my work-for-hire in the evening unless I have a pressing deadline. By the time kids are tucked in, kitchen is cleaned up and lunch-boxes are made, it is usually around 9 PM. Then I may look at the paper and go to my desk, but I usually don't get much done. I may pay bills, write some e-mails, do this or that, do a little research. Generally, I feel I should be working but I don't get much accomplished. If I get up at 5 AM I can have two hours of good work time and a guilt-free evening. Go upstairs at 10, read, lights off by 11. I can do this. I have had similar routines before, when compelled by circumstances or when I set myself a goal I needed to accomplish. I can do this. It was still dark this AM. I watched it get light. I got a lot done. I was very focussed and wrote 2 pages. It would be excellent if I could write two pages every day.

Wed, 04 May 2005 17:35:29 GMT

Go Away! Yesterday I saw a squirrel scampering along the fence with a large piece of perfectly golden toast in his claws. I managed to sneak a picture before it sat down out of range and proceeded to munch on it. I don't like squirrels. They dig up my flower pots. There weren't any on this block until last year. I think the toast-eater is actually second generation.

Wed, 04 May 2005 01:53:01 GMT

For ten years, when we lived downtown, I would run into the family practically every day. They were outside a lot. The mom was the super for several buildings on the block, including ours. That's how we first got to know them. They knew everyone in the neighborhood, all the ins and outs. They were always ready to help. They always had time for a chat. They helped old people, they took in animals, they finagled apartments for people. They helped us a lot. They had five children. When we first moved in, the three younger kids were riding their tricycles on the sidewalk. We watched them grow up. We invited them to our wedding. We admired their first grandchild. We moved away. Whenever we came down to the "old neighborhood" we walked the block and often ran into a member of their family. We don't go down there so much anymore. The neighborhood is so hip now and we have settled into family life. We haven't seen our old neighbors in a while, a few years maybe. I just learnt that their youngest son, now 16, was fatally stabbed. I read it in the paper and it took me a while to put two and two together because he had a different family name. But his sister's somewhat unusual first name was mentioned. I checked Newsday and Daily News online and unfortunately, there is no doubt. I also learned that the three younger children were adopted. The family adopted them after their mother died in a car accident. This is a family full of love, a hard-working and good family. The boy was a good kid. My heart aches when I think of their pain. This is the second time in a couple of years that someone we know personally has died through an act of violence. This city can be so hard.

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 19:43:22 GMT

Another grown-up day. I had an adrenaline rush because something weird started happening in the file I was working on. I was working on my PC which I only use to run the software my client requires. I feel like blind mouse when I am not on my MAC. Anyway, I restarted the thing, and the quirk was gone. Big relief. It called for breaking a taboo and a midday piece of chocolate. Because I work with a lot of rather arcane (mostly historical information) I use Wikipedia a hundred times a day. A lot of times I find what I am looking for, sometimes I don't, sometimes I find part of what I am looking for. Sometimes the articles look like they could use a helping hand. Today I came across a "stub" that pleaded for adding to it. Since I had the info right there I opened the editing window but then I realized Wiki is a whole new universe with its own language and life-forms and I have no idea how to tinker under the hood. Since I take so much from it, I feel I should give something back and I would enjoy it too since I deal in arcane information anyway. But I would need to spend a couple of hours familiarizing myself with the language and the geography of the place. And yet, I still have not mastered this Radio Userland thing (my categories are still dangling). While it is a bit frustrating, the encouraging aspect is that there seems to be a place where I can deposit all the tidbits I have been accumulating. Maybe not right now, and maybe just one pebble at a time, but there is a place where I can be helpful.

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:32:33 GMT

Today is my grown-up day. I only have to go pick up my daughter at 4 PM. That's almost a full work-day, I have not had one of those in a long time. We had an overnight-guest though who stayed until noon: my neighbor's daughter whose little brother was born this morning. She seemed pretty nonplussed actually. I have been absorbed in my work and the weather has been bland. I don't feel I have much to report. Yesterday I made a very successful "Spinach" pie. Did you know that a traditional Greek Greens Pie calls for seven different types of greens? There has to be just the right balance of sweet, bitter, sour and aromatic. I came close. I had seven different kinds: spinach, dandelion, collards, wild arugula, and wild broccoli rabe, with plenty of dill and some fennel greens. The "wild" greens are not really gathered from the wild, unfortunately, but they are overall smaller and have a more complex flavor. They have started to show up at the Green Market. I will get more this weekend. So healthy and yummy. The only downside is that it takes forever to wash these heaps of greens.

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:04:28 GMT

More From the Urban Habitat This stand of tulips comes back every year in all its glory among the ever- evolving junk. The yard immediately behind it used to be extremely well-groomed six years ago when we got here. Now it is a forest of saplings. The house that goes with the yard in the very back (where you see the broom) has just been beautifully restored and I am sure the yard will soon be very pretty as well. The chives are my windowbox. You can't see the yard right next to mine because the yards are terraced and the terrain drops down a retaining wall. It is totally bare anyway. Pesticides! It is incomprehensible to me how some people just don't appreciate at all having a backyard in Manhattan.

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 02:59:32 GMT

It has been very warm today. Hot. In the 80s. Suddenly the city was baking. One of these weird days. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 60s. Everything just pushed out today. Tulips, magnolias, trees. They opened their blooms and immediately dropped their petals. The magnolia leaves from a neighboring yard have started to come down in our garden, and when it rains they will all come down. The long-awaited magnolia bloom is always so short-lived. I noticed a fragrance in the backyard and I wasn't sure what it was. We don't get a lot of sun and don't have an abundance of things blooming there. Finally I figured out it was the Eglanteria rose. I knew it was supposed to have fragrant leaves, but in years past-we have had it for 3 years-you really had to rub the leaves to detect any hint of fragrance. Not this year! It has a distinct green apple fragrance and i can even detect it in the house. I wonder if it will get weaker over the summer. It is a good thing it has at least some fragrance now, because I don't think we will get much bloom from it. Although it is one of the few roses supposed to do ok with less sun, we had maybe twelve little blooms last year. Oh well, we kind of knew we were taken a chance.

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 03:11:18 GMT

I have been working on my categories--obviously with mixed success. Well, I am surprised I got that far, but I need to do a lot more fine-tuning. I can't understand why the first three don't show up. And it seems I need to tinker with the template (which one?) as well. Enough for now. I have a headache.

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 04:06:33 GMT

I don't feel I have a lot to say. Not much going on. I am still dragging around the throat/ear thing and a bit worn out. I have been around town with the kids a fair amount and puttering around in the yard. I made some calls about the roof project and some people will come and look at it next week. Cooking is mainly the tried-and-true home-comfort stuff: soups, mac+cheese, broccoli-tofu stir-fry, pasta, rice and beans etc. Unfortunately, there won't be much canning going on for a while. I looked in my log and last year there was a hiatus from March to June (strawberries) as well. I have a cordial that will be ready next week though! And if the rumors about inexpensive organic apples at the bodega around the corner are true I may make some more apple chutney. I need to look under the radio-hood again and put my categories up in the side-bar. Wish me luck. I'll tackle it tomorrow. Yes, I will.

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:47:37 GMT

Sorting Things Out I find myself surprised by my interest in the Pope's departure. The spiritual, theological and political aspects of it have captured me much less than the rituals surrounding it, the way things are done, and the significance attached to procedure and protocol. I take delight in the antiquated vocabulary that has been dusted off and finds its way into the media. Strange, to see these words pop up on my computer screen. No matter how lofty and spiritual, there are a lot of mundane-seeming details associated with the pope's passing. Bags need to be packed, belongings sorted through, rooms cleaned out in a matter of days and sealed for the successor and his entourage. House-keeping, so to speak, and little is left to chance or delegated to the arbitrary decisions of a cleaning-crew.

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 01:47:51 GMT

Finally Spring Today it was finally spring. Real Spring. T-Shirt weather. I put the tomatoes and peppers outside, just for the afternoon, they are back in now. I don't know if these tomatoes will make it. They came up as volunteers in pots I had taken inside last fall and I over-wintered them. One of them is quite large and has many blooms. They also have downy mildew and probably not a very long lifespan. I put them in larger pots a couple of weeks ago and more volunteers have come up. My compost is obviously full of seeds.
The peppers did not do well at all last year, in part because the potting soil (Pro-Mix) I had used did not drain well. At the end of the summer I cut them back and repotted them. Three survived. They are small but seem healthy. One is blooming like crazy.
I should probably just toss everything out but I like to coddle things along. The tiny backyard is basically cleaned up. Except for the strawberry runners that are everywhere. I have to do something about those. It was so much fun being out there. I could literally watch things grow. We also had our first dinner in the backyard. Pasta with Pesto (by popular request), salad and ice-cream for dessert. But the best thing was that today finally my right ear stopped feeling as if a huge wad of cotton had been stuffed in it. It was about time, it has been driving me nuts for almost two weeks. Now my throat hurts badly but I would rather endure pain than what felt like aliens that had nested in my ear. It turns out that the Pope's heart is not going to Poland after all. The concept was probably too medieval.

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:02:36 GMT

Spiraling Upwards My neighbor finally helped me find a way out of a conundrum that plagued me for several years. Ever since we moved into this house I had the intention of installing a roof garden, but I could not figure out how to access the roof comfortably and safely. Currently the access is through a very small hatch, to which leads a fire ladder, straight against the wall, with no angle at all. Nevertheless, last summer I managed to get up there, by means of a mountaineering backpack, about a dozen of 5-gallon buckets, tomato plants and soil and miscellaneous other stuff. This was done out of sheer impatience and clearly not intended as a permanent arrangement. I kept looking at the space in the hallway, the ladder and the hatch, and I just could not figure out how to make it work. I have been through everything. There is not enough room for a spiral staircase, not enough room to install stairs or even a ladder at a decent angle. I was at my wits' end and had asked several people to look at it with me. We tossed about putting in another flight of stairs and going through a sky-light, building a bulkhead on the roof and other utopian stuff. I knew there had to be a solution but I just couldn't find it. The other day my neighbor called and asked if I could help him with a computer-related problem. This neighbor is a Fine Artist who is painstakingly renovating his 19th century townhouse, pretty much doing everything by himself except for plumbing and electrical work. I went over there and I helped him. I was totally awestruck by the rooms he had finished. Then I asked him if he wouldn't mind to look at my roof access problem at some point "Because I just can't wrap my mind around it and I am sure someone is going to look it and think of something that just hadn't occurred to me." He said, how about right now. Fine. We looked at the space for a while and measured and tossed around various things and he poked his head into the hole in the crawl-space and told me about how the joist were "sistered up" and why you couldn't enlarge the opening this way or that way. Then we looked into various untidy closets and contemplated stairs going right through the untidiness, but in the end, we decided that wasn't feasible either. Finally my neighbor said it might be easier to cut a new opening someplace and we to wandered through the rooms gazing around and my neighbor peeked out the windows. The back room is narrower than the rest of the house, and there is sort of a light-well between our building and the adjoining building. A window in the middle room looks out into the light-well (which is not fully-enclosed but open to one side). Here is what my ingenious neighbor came up with: We could use that window as door (it is low and tall) and then put a spiral staircase in the light-well going up to the roof. That would put the staircase outside and solve many problems. I knew it! There was a way and I could not see it. Now I feel I can finally go ahead with this project. Next week I will start making phone calls and asks for quotes. I am nervous of course. I am not very comfortable "hiring" people. I hate to have anybody do work for me. But I can't install an outside staircase by myself. I still have not totally resolved what exactly is going to happen on the roof. I have my ideas, but I need to have the access worked out first. I want to get it done, but I am in no rush. I need to have a very clear idea of what I want before I can do anything.

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:47:29 GMT

I am recovering from my cold. I don't like being sick and I don't like to spend a lot of time and energy talking about it but this cold really had me down for a couple of days. I definitely would have called in sick if I had anywhere to call in to. I still have the symptoms but I have more energy today. I realize that I have gotten out of the habit of eating fruit. I love fresh fruit and used to eat plenty when we had it in abundance from the CSA, but now that I have to buy it, I tend to save it for the rest of the family. How pathetic is that? I went shopping today and stocked up, in a big way, lots of yummy juicy things. Although I have to say, I got precious little of the two delicious papayas I was looking forward to. They disappeared while I was cutting them up. The weather has finally caught up with the calendar. Today was still cold, but somehow, you just knew, it was a cold spring day instead of a winter day. Tomorrow temperatures are supposed to climb into the sixties. It appears I will be joining the ranks of working parents again, although on a very part-time basis. I will be working on the same project, but for the client directly instead of the agency. They are still working out the practical details, but I hope to get back to it soon. I should be able to get most of my work done while the children are in school with chores and stuff on weekends. I have done that kind of thing for the past six years and know the ups and downs. I am glad my interlude as a full-time parent is coming to an end. It is great that I got certain long-overdue chores accomplished, and I can see, how the house would be a lot cleaner and nicer if I devoted more time to it. But I was definitely not the happiest person this winter. I appreciate and enjoy certain aspects of homemaking, but I definitely need something else to keep me challenged and stimulated. I feel very fortunate that I am able to work from home, with a lot of freedom and little work-related stress. I expect to be blogging more, actually, since I will have more focused time at the computer.

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 02:29:32 GMT

I have been under the weather hence not much going on here. All the little nasties that were bothering my throat for the past week decided to join forces and attack my right ear. Ouwwiieee. I hope to get this over with soon. I enjoy reading Mark Twain. I think I will go back to the Classics for a while. Now I have to go and do the Easter Egg thing. Kids holding on to it although we are not reinforcing it. I remember crying when my mom told me there wasn't an easter bunny. I had known all along, but I didn't like being told. And it wasn't about the candies either.

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 03:41:30 GMT

Just a tiny post tonight. Everyone has been sickly around here, including me. Not really sick, just sort of not 100%. So I took it easy tonight, read and watched "Inspector Morse on TV." I have watched maybe 3 mysteries in the last 6 years, I used to watch them all the time BC. I also made Banana Bread tonight, with Birdie's Macademia Nuts. This is the most extraordinary Banana Bread, and there is no chance it can be reproduced because I threw all sorts of things in that were in arm's reach. More about that tomorrow.

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:39:40 GMT

No posting yesterday as I was working on the meme thing. It was an easy uneventfula day, spent catching up on chores both domestic and professional (bookkeeping, e-mail etc.) Today promises to be our first spring day. The sun is shining, birds are twittering. I will spend the morning inside, mostly at my desk, and the afternoon puttering around outside. I should have another post ready in a little while.