Fruit Trees survive the summer drought

Cute little thing isn't it?

Looks like the trees survived the complete lack of rain this year, so now we're in the true home stretch to see if they can survive the winter. Hopefully this winter will be nice a moist - instead of a cold and dry disaster.

The pecan tree is perhaps the most interesting one this year. Totally refused to leaf out this year or do anything - but remarkably it's still alive. Don't know if it knew there would be no water this year, or whether it's just high maintenance - but hopefully it will do something come Spring.

Obie Expands Diet

Obie has now expanded his diet to include cashmere sweaters - most notably my favorite cashmere sweater. You can't really see the gaping holes in this picture, but believe me they're there.

I was originally plannig on putting the sweater on Obie, but he thought I was tormenting him and ran away - so you'll just have to use your imagination. I was going to toss the sweater, but instead I'm thinking of something to do with the fabric, since it is softer than a baby's butt.

I suppose it shows that all things are transitory

Winter Harvest

Meager I know.

Turns out potatoes don't really grow well if you forget to water them in the middle of August and they turn into brown sagebrush. Actually it wasn't that bad, but almost. Realize now that the future garden needs to have a built-in watering system to keep things going - and my lack of sunlight doesn't help matters much.

On the carrot front, I also learned that those little root crops don't like containers. Even though this variety is a nice baby carrot variety - I need to have nice sunny loamy soil - which just doesn't cut it on the bedroom balcony.

Genealogy: Family Bible

In the contuining genealogy quest, I have the Getz family Bible back from Tom and Sherry. There's not a ton of information in the Bible, but it does have the births of my Great Great grandmother and grandfather on my maternal side.

I updated the birthdates of all my great aunts and uncles, and now I'm tracking down my great great grandmother's birth certificate, which is turning out to be a little tricky. Apparently New York has birth records starting the year AFTER she was born - so we might need to rely on census records. We'll see.

Crepe Night

With Joe Moeddel back in town for Fall break, we decided to invite everyone over for crepe night. Not an easy task with 9 people, but it was fun.

The crepe pan is working very well, and it only took a couple of tries before the crepes were working the way they were supposed to. I think I'll just keep a little bit of the batter in the fridge for last minute crepes - shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, I know this is an after picture of the dinner (all the wine glasses).

Starting Strawberries

Realizing that I cannot afford to keep myself in strawberries throughout the year on Farmer's Market prices - I decided to make a little investment a la M. Emanuel and start a strawberry patch.

I purchase three different varieties, but only one has arrived so far. This is Honoeye (Fragaria x ananassa), which is supposedly good for freezing - should come up around June.

Daffodils are in

Even though we had a crappy growing season this year, at least it's time to do some plantings.

I really should have written down what kind of bulbs these are that I got from Mom, but mostly their daffodils I believe.

Cider: Step 1 Primary Fermentation

Fall is here, which means it's time to start making cider - hard cider that is. Really can't have crepes from your winter leftovers without the hooch, so I thought I would try making it myself.

Some of you may already know that I've been known to make wine (which has aged well over the past two years), so making cider ain't too much of a stretch. As you will see, it's basically substituting grape juice with apple cider.

Not sure if I'm going to put little bubbles in the stuff or not - but stay tuned.

But for the first step, called primary fermentation, all you have to do it put the cider (about 6 gallons) in a container with yeast (not bread yeast, but the yeast used to ferment champagne grapes). Stick it on a hotpad to get a nice warm temperature, and wait a couple of days (I think I did 14). A little measuring tool will tell you the alcohol level and let you know when the majority of the fermentation is done.

I know, I know - it looks nasty - but you'll be impressed.

Custom Shirts Arrive

Ah, it was Christmas a little bit early this year, as my custom shirts arrived from Hong Kong.

The NY Times had an article about a year ago about custom shirts - and they highlighted mytailor.com. Basically you take 20 measurements of yourself, enter them on the website, and then 6 weeks later a custom shirt arrives. Yes, it's expensive (about $80 smacks a pop) - but well worth the insurance of not flying away in a freak wind storm to Canada from all the excess material that would spontaneously create a wind glider. (Have you ever noticed that a "large" shirt is worn by 90% of the male population, and there is enough extra material in the waist to make a small pillowcase?).

Anyway, as you can see - I went with the stripe theme. That's kind of the other thing too - there are about 400 different fabrics to choose from - so not only do you get a cool monogram, but you get a spanky style.

And yes, if you're concerned about taking the measurements yourself - a tailor runs through town about every three months, so you can just visit him to do your measurements. The only problem is that he'll then try to sell you on getting a tailored sportcoat - and they have cashmere - yikes.

Mona Returns

Alas it is a bitter sweet day, as Mona, otherwise known as my Nespresso French Coffee Maker, returns to my desk. I thought I had a post on this, but I must have gotten behind.

When we were back in Indy for testing in March 2006, I bought Mona in order to get me through what we Americans call coffee. The French and Italians think (correctly) that our coffee tastes like the liquid that comes out of the coffee machine when you forget to put coffee grounds in. No wonder we need to buy a Venti at Starbucks - we need that much liquid just to get some taste.

Anyway, back to the Mona move. Mona is back because her original home was Mike Raftery's desk, who has recently left Lilly - I'll make another post on that - but the important thing right now is that Mona is safe and sound.

Hello Kinsale

Finally arrived in Kinsale after a couple of days in England to recover from jetlag. I was in Kinsale back in release 8 (2004?), so I remember it. Not much to the town actually - big harbor and lots of shops along it. The place has grown, but it's still a really cool place to see.

We'd better like it, since we're going to live there for six months.

King Arthur's Round Table

Yep, that's the real thing - well, kind of. While visiting Linda for a couple of days before heading off to Kinsale, we stopped in Winchester, and visited the home of Kind Arthur's Round Table. OK, so it was built in the 13th century, so couldn't actually be related to the inspiration to King Arthur - but it was still pretty cool - and pretty old.

Off to Kinsale

Off to Kinsale (Ireland) and Basingstoke (England) for a week. I have a requirements session for the warehouse project, and then I have some followup work in Basingstoke. Will post details later.

Friday Dinner

Had a dinner party Friday night - Rebecca Stevens, Debbi Bennett, Jeff and Judy Berty, and Tim and Cheryl all came.

Nothing too crazy for dinner - simple appetizers, an amuse bouche of fish sandwiched between sweet potato crisps and an artichoke cheese spread, a squash soup, a morel mushroom cream sauce with puff pastry, an Argentinian beef dish (flank steak stuffed with a spinach dressing), cheese and salad (duh), another french chocolate cake dessert called 'coulant au chocolat', and then coffee.

Eskimos may have 300 different words for snow, but the french have 300 ways to say 'chocolate cake' - this coulant is perhaps one of the better ones for a dinner party, since it stays in the frig until the bitter end and only takes 10 minutes to cook in the oven (think chocolate souffle).

Still need to work on doing all the cooking beforehand to make time to actually sit at the table.

Team Building at Brougher

Back to Basics with Power Tools

Soapbox of the month post . . .

Had an interesting conversation with Tim Whittaker this past Saturday. He was watching a program, where they were taking various ingredients, and then asking the audience what it made. What were the ingredients?

Water, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oil, polysorbate 60, sodium caseinate, sorbitan monostearate, xanthan and guar gums.

Before you guess, here are some hints...hydrogentated coconut and palm kernel give the product a 'creamy' taste, polysorbate 60 (a chemical precursor to anti-freeze) and sodium casainate keep the oil and water mixed, sorbitan monosteatate is a synthetic wax sometimes used in hemorrhoid cream that prevents the magical product from liquifying in the refrigerator, xanthan and guar gums are used as thickeners and to prevent ice crystals from forming in the product.

Know what it is yet? If you guessed 'Cool Whip', you win. Yes, I know there wasn't any diary product on the list - that's because Cool Whip is a NON-dairy creamer.

Considering some whipping cream and a little sugar in a mixer for 3 minutes makes a product that is far superior in taste (do I have to explain that one), cost (1/2 the price of the whipped 'air'), and health (high fructose corn syrup has been proven the fastest way to become obese) - I had to ask myself what other things do we do that would make my great grandmothers go "What are you thinking?"

So looking back over my past posts on making butter, soap, and canning, I realize I need a new category called 'Basics', where I explore various experiments in 19th century ways of doing things with the help of a KitchenAid mixer or other power tools.

New Baby on the Way

This is Violet, and yep, she's that adorable.

Scott and Kathleen Schuetz of Ya-Ya fame (and the previous owners of our current house) have survived the People's Republic of China's adoption quagmire (remember their bureaucracy is about 20 times older than ours, so stop complaining about the IRS). They are weeks away from adopting this beautiful, soon to be painfully spoiled, girl from China.

They leave for China at the end of October, I believe, so let's have a collective crossing of the fingers to make sure everything goes smoothly. To get the whole story, Kathleen had started a blog some time ago. Even though I've almost spoiled the ending, start at the beginning.

Goodbye Cubicle with a view

Yep, this is the view out of my window at work. And it's gone.

Now that I'm moving on the this new role in Kinsale, they are kicking me out of the ManOps area - hence I lose my cubicle. I think they're going to put me in the basement somewhere - like yesterday's trash ;)

Pickling Cucumbers

I know this looks a little disturbing, but I pickled some cucumbers. It just turns out that I didn't have enough regular vinegar, and too much balsamic vinegar - so the cucumbers are a bit brownish. We'll see how they turn out.

Soap Making

Sorry for the horrible picture, I'll try to find another one - but you get the idea.

After a suggestion from Tom Blake at work, I went ahead and made a couple of bars of homemade soap. Instructions can be found here, but the basic idea is take some fat (olive oil and Crisco), add some lye mixed with water(careful with that step), and then beat the heck out of it until it starts to thicken. Pour in molds and wait for it to do its thing.

I did go ahead and 'superfat' the soap with jojoba oil. Basically, once the soap thickens you can add a little special fat at the end to give the soap some other characteristics. In this case, the soap is really good to wash your face now.

And with most of these things, you can add and experiment until your heart's content - and there are tons of recipes on the internet for special types of soap (e.g. oatmeal, shaving, laundry, etc.)

Paperweights

New trick in glass making - if you're tired at the end of a 3 hour studio time, and you don't have the energy to make another vase - make a paperweight. It takes a lot less time, and it still lets you practice with a heavy glass piece.

Although it's really tempting to go out and buy some color to make the paperweight more interesting - it's kind of fun just to play with the clear glass. I think I've mentionned this before, but the advice is not to start with color until you've mastered just forming clear glass - one to two years. So even though, it's relatively easy to work with color on a paperweight, I know it would only be a couple of weeks before I would start coloring vases - and then all bets are off.

And yes, the bubbles are intentional.

New Wine Glasses

Pictures do not do them justice . . . the wine glass is practically a foot tall.

Kahn's Wine Store sent out an email on Saturday morning saying that their Riedel stemware was 50% off due to a need to make room for a new shipment. Basically I hoped into the car less than 30 minutes later, only to find a woman already buying out the store of the stock.

Fortunately, I had another guy help me who actually knew where all the glasses were, and I was able to get the Pinot Noir glasses (12, since I break them easily). Who knows - over time I might build the whole collection, but probably not - only some of the styles are cool.