Category House and Home

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Michael Leave a comment

What would you do if someone told you that you had to lose two-thirds of all that you have? I told myself that and it’s hard!

Eventually I’m going to be moving. I can’t navigate the different levels of my house nor maintain the building and surrounding yard. Even with the help of family and neighbors, the time to downsize has come. If you haven’t yet, someday you will consider living somewhere smaller and of less maintenance.  I recall an apartment I had that consisted of one smallish room about 15 by 20 feet, a galley kitchen so small you had to stand to the side when you opened the refrigerator door, and a bathroom so small you had to sit to the side when you…when, you…umm, you know. Anyway, that would be a good size for me now.

Instead I now live in about 1900 sq. ft. of house, ten rooms each fully furnished, and every closet and storage area filled to capacity. The plan is to move into a four room, 700 sq. ft. apartment, give or take. And boy is there a lot of giving going on!

Everybody knows the “rules” of keeping a handle on one’s stuff. If you haven’t worn it yet this year, donate it! If you haven’t cooked with it in the past six months, get rid of it! If you haven’t read that paper since your last tax filing, shred it! (Copies of tax returns notwithstanding.)  Those rules work well under most circumstances. But these aren’t most.

What do you do with the roasting pan that you use only one time a year at Thanksgiving but you have plenty of storage space so you let it hang out for the other 364 days? What should become of that big puffy coat that you wear only when it goes below zero and that only happens once every 3 years? What happens to the clock shaped like a football your father gave you for Christmas when you were ten?

More than one person has told me that stuff is stuff. You’ll haven’t had twenty people over for Thanksgiving dinner for 15 years and if you want to roast a turkey it will be a small one and either get a disposable pan or deal with what you have. It has been below zero once in the past 12 years and you didn’t go out that day anyway. And it took you 3 weeks to find that clock in the back of the garage.

Yep, stuff is stuff and there’s still going to be plenty left. So when it comes time to downsize your life, close your eyes, pick two of every three things to shed, and move on. I’m getting rid of the roaster and coat.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

It’s a Sign I Tell You, a Sign

Michael Leave a comment

It must be hard to make a good sign. Professional sign makers all across the country, all across the world, have botched up otherwise perfectly good signs with some single silly mistake.  A misspelled word, poor placement, an incorrect font size, a bad color. If the pros are subject to these kinds of guffaws, think what the poor amateur must go through. You don’t even have to think actually. Just read the signs!

Summer is here in all its glory. And what do we do in summer? We party! There are family reunions, high school graduation parties, block parties, church festivals, and nationality days. Summer is also the time for garage sales and yard sales. Every one of these events is marked with a hunk of poster board stapled to a utility pole and with a colorful helium-filled balloon attached to a corner.

Signs are great ideas. Before the days of GPS how else did we get from Point A to Stop 2. And then, since most people knew their relatives, local parks, classmates, and neighbors, signs didn’t have to say that much. A boldly printed “Penny’s Party” with a good size arrow pointing the way mounted at a critical intersection was enough to do the trick.

Today they are still good ideas, even in the presence of GPS. Unfortunately, they aren’t so well executed anymore. Instead of a poster board and a Sharpee, one is more apt to come across a sign printed on a home computer. That means small paper that somebody thought would look good with a cute graphic which took up half of the available space so that little writing can be printed and/or seen and then printed on an ink jet printer whose print bleeds off the page after the first morning’s dew. I saw one sign whose “owner” thought it a good idea to highlight all of the words on the sign. After it rained, the only thing on the sign was a series of yellow lines.

Occasionally someone will make a good sign. So good is it that the person who put it up leaves it up. There is a sign at the bottom of the hill I live on that says “Garage Sale, Saturday, 9-1.” It’s been there for 6 weeks.

There is one sign in the area that I particularly like. It’s big enough to see form the road and the font is big enough to read from the road. It’s in eye-catching colors of a white font on a dark blue background. There is an arrow printed right on the sign, not an extra tacked above or below it waiting to fall off on its own accord. It’s such a good sign I’d like to follow it and congratulate the sign maker. Except I don’t know who or what to look for. You see, the only word on that large, well thought out, very visible sign is “Event.”

But then, if you’re one of those who have been invited (whom have been invited?) (umm…If you’re one of the invitees), do you really need much more information than that? Naw, probably not.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

The Best Best-Seller That I Never Read

Michael Leave a comment

The other day I was looking up the best selling books of all time – because I have that kind of time – and found some interesting stuff.  I think it started because I received a mailer from the city’s summer stock theater that the Man of La Mancha would be opening soon.  That sparked something in my head about Don Quixote being the best selling book ever.

Upon researching it, I found out that Don Quixote indeed is considered to be the best best-seller of ever. This classic was first published in the 1600s, the early 1600s, when there was no Internet to track sales so some of this might be conjecture on the part of whoever (whomever?) came up with the list. The estimate is that over 500 million (that’s half a billion!) copies have been sold. Since it occupies the Number One spot on several such lists, it must be a fairly reliable estimate.

There are some classics that take residence in the Top Ten of book selling lists. Titles everyone knows like A Tale of Two Cities, Lord of the Rings, and The Little Prince. And there are a couple that everyone knows but wouldn’t think they would be among the best selling of the best-sellers.  Agatha Christie is often mentioned as the world’s best selling author. She sold over two billion copies of her books but then she wrote 85 of them. One cracked the Top Ten and that was And Then There Were None selling about 100 million. An author just missing the top ten of authors coming in at number 11 and having published only 11 volumes is J. K. Rowling.  All seven of her Harry Potter installments meet in most lists’ top 25 best-selling books and they are still selling.  But the first of the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, hits most lists’ Top Five at 107 million copies sold.

It was fascinating to read about all of these most successful books and the authors who wrote them.  I spent hours reading the stories behind the stories. I had to pick a floor so I stopped when I saw books that sold less than 50 million copies. Excluding religious, text, and reference books there are thirty-five books that have sold at least that many.  There is no pattern, no magic formula. They are adventures, mysteries, romance, children’s, and fantasy. The only thing these books have in common is that they all hit a common chord in the world’s readers, some literally for centuries.

The other thing they have in common is I haven’t read many of them. Ok, of the 35 best-selling books of all time I haven’t read 33 of them.  And I thought I was a big reader.  I better go pick out another pair of reading glasses. I might be busy this summer.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Close Enough, Part 2

Michael Leave a comment

Normally I don’t mind doing anything in the kitchen. I’ll slice, I’ll dice, I’ll juice and zest and shred and grate. I’ll fry or steam, I even make ice cream. But I hate slicing tomatoes. I don’t think it’s the slicing so much as the cleaning up after. I love tomatoes but they can make a mess with their juice and seeds on my cutting board. So a while ago I started using an apple slicer to make perfect tomato pieces for any salad.  Want that tomato diced? Swap out the regular slicing blade for a French fry blade and the battle is half won. That might not be what Mr. Buchi had in mind when he patented his apple slicer in 1923, but I figure it’s close enough.

That’s not the first time I’ve bastardized the intent of a perfectly good kitchen gadget.  I have a smallish kitchen and can fit only so many gizmos so they better be willing to be flexible. Like the hard-boiled egg slicer that also slices mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and strawberries. That’s especially good for me since you found out recently that I am hard-boiled egg challenged yet still have said implement. Then there is the large stir-fry pan which doubles as a wok, triples as a popcorn popper, and quadruples as a braiser. So far the only thing I have come up with for the small stir-fry pan to do other than frying is small batch popcorn popping. But I’m working on it!

There is a frying pan that wins the versatility award.  It’s a 14 inch job that is perfect for combining pastas and sauces, making frittata large enough for the neighborhood, doing paella small enough for the family, and searing the largest roasts.  Its only problem is that it has no lid. Sometimes you need a lid.  Fortunately a pizza pan works just fine to cover this monster.

Closely related to kitchen gadgets, bar accessories can also have split personalities.  Wine stoppers make great cruet toppers (or vice-a-versa depending on which you have and which you need).  And speed pourers also do a dandy job of controlling the flow of your oils and vinegars.

Gadgets are cool. I rarely walk into any department or discount store without checking the gadget wall. A kitchen equipment store is downright dangerous for me to be in. But no matter where I am perusing the latest food prep thingamajigs, it better be able to do more than what the package says if it wants to go home with me.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Eggsactly My Point

Michael 1 Comment

I have cookbooks. Boy do I have cookbooks! I have gadgets too but that’s a post for another time. Now we’re talking  cookbooks. I have books that are classics like Betty Crocker, books by famous chefs like Mario Batali, books by famous non-chefs like Fannie Flagg, books based on TV shows like Good Eats and on movies like Casablanca (with some really cool recipes). I have books with nothing in them but meat, others with nothing but veggies, and others that are all pasta, all the time. I have fundraiser cookbooks, overpriced cookbooks, and some with more post-it notes marking more pages than Bushes have beans. You’d think somewhere in there I could find a decent recipe for hard boiled eggs.

I admit it. I can’t hard boil an egg. I can soft boil an egg. I can fry an egg, I can turn an egg over without the use of a spatula, I can poach an egg, I can even make egg salad as long as somebody else does the boiling for me. And it’s not as though I’m a dolt around a stove top. I can make a carbonara with my eyes closed. Risotto? Child’s play. But a hard boiled egg? Not so much.

I think the problem is in all those cookbooks. I have run across at least a dozen (no pun intended) recipes and quick tips for hard boiled eggs. There are the boiling methods, the simmering methods, the off the heat methods.There’s even one recipe that calls for baking the eggs to get a perfect hard boiled egg. And there is the time element. There are recipes calling for 8 to 30 minutes. One method alone claims perfect hard cooked eggs in 8,10,12,15,and 20 minutes.

I’m just going to stick with my over easy eggs. At least they aren’t hiding behind a shell to thwart your breakfast.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Textiquette

Michael Leave a comment

These aren’t novel observations. In fact, She noted much of this several years ago when cell phone use just exploded. To make a long story short, we need more phone use etiquette, particularly when texting. To make a short story a blog post, read on.

What people weren’t listening to just a little while ago is now hitting morning radio, Internet sites, news fillers, and feature stories. Everybody has their own pet peeve that semms to have finally reached the last straw. Now that it is happening to them, they want somebody to do something.

Some of the annoyances people are tired of include:

People who don’t answer their phones but then text back a “what’s up?”
People who don’t answer their phone but will answer a text.
People who call and if you don’t answer leave a voice mail and then text the same message.
People who call to tell you that they just sent a text.
People who can’t end a text and/or have to get in the last word.
Texts so long they require scrolling.

They don’t seem like much but they are getting lots of ink as we used to say in the old days. But then, in the old days most of this would have been covered under the general heading of good manners.

Odd, nobody mentioned texting at the dinner table.

That’s what I think. Really, How ’bout you?
hbdLB

A Hair Raising Thought

Michael 1 Comment

I was staring into the mirror the other day when a thought hit me. You know that I spent a couple of months in the hospital recently. I had so much blood thinner running through me that for several weeks no one dared approach me with a razor. I had gone in wearing a beard that already could have used a trim and it didn’t take much time for it to qualify as “bushy.” Not a bad look but not for me.

While I was wondering if I would ever get be groomed again I started wondering why hair seems to grow only above the neck.Or in my case, above the neck but below the scalp. Stay with me here.

I have to trim my beard at least once a week to keep the level of neatness that I like. (I don’t always make it but that’s what I strive for.) The parts of my face not covered in hair get shaved daily. The hair on my head, actually the ring of hair around my head seems to always need a haircut starting with the day after I get a haircut. And for some reason the left side of that ring grows faster than the right side. As I said, the parts above the neck are always growing hair.

The rest of the hair follicles across other body parts don’t seem to be as diligent about new growth. I have never, ever shaved my arms yet the amount of hair there has not changed since I was in high school. If I hadn’t cut the hair on my head since then I would be pushing it around in a wheelbarrow. Arms, legs, chest, underarms, and those private areas seem to have some auto-sensor about when to stop growing.

The hair at those places will grow if it has to. I have had areas shaved for medical procedures and everywhere that was done the hair ultimately returned to its pre-procedure length and then stopped. How does it know?

But back to that day that I was staring into the mirror. I definitely needed a beard trim but just wasn’t in the mood. Not a good enough reason to keep the trimmer in its holder. Facial hair just has no clue as to when to stop growing on its own.

That;s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Summer Sunny Preview

Michael Leave a comment

Today in the U.S.A. is Memorial Day and before we go with another word let’s pause to remember all those who gave all they had to give so that we can continue to celebrate holidays like Memorial Day.

Around here, Memorial Day is also the “unofficial start of summer.” If you live close to the Equator you don’t need an unofficial start to summer; you don’t even need an official start for it. It’s summer all year long and apparently that’s ok with you because you’re still there. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere as deep as we are in the northern half of the world you’d maybe love to have a start to summer, even unofficial, right about now. Instead you’re waxing snowboards and servicing snow blowers. Let me say that if your upcoming winter is anything like our past winter you might want to consider chopping some extra firewood also.

So what does the unofficial start of summer mean. Well…it’s like those things that you’ve been waiting for all winter and spring can start happening. Weather permitting. What might they be you ask.

Here’s my list of things everyone should do at least once a summer. (Those reading in the Southern Hemisphere may want to save this list for 6 months or so.)
1. Plant something. Flower, vegetable, herb, tree, shrub. Be a part of the world Even if you live in one room on the 8th floor you can find room on a windowsill for a small pot with a colorful bloom or tasty herb.
2. Drive (or if you prefer, ride in) a convertible. Don’t have one? take a “test drive” at the local (or not so local) car store. You weren’t doing anything else after work.
3. Eat outdoors. The ideal spot would be in a piazza somewhere in Italy with fresh fruit, sharp cheeses, a bottle of chilled, semi-dry white wine, and strolling minstrels. But coffee and a donut on the deck will do. Just get outside and feel the nature that brought you that food.
4. Go to a baseball game. If you don’t like baseball, go with somebody who really understands the game. If you still aren’t going to like it, go for the atmosphere. Do some people watching, have a hot dog, get some sun and fresh air. It doesn’t matter if it’s a MLB game, a minor league offering, or a college or high school game, there is no other sports event like baseball.
5. Go to an outdoor concert. Parts of our city’s symphony orchestra put on free concerts in town on select days during lunch and the full symphony does a couple free evenings at a county park. In fact, the county sponsors several shows of a variety of styles throughout the summer. But if one doesn’t check the web-site one doesn’t know of them. Be the smart one and check your county’s website. Why? Because baseball games aren’t the only outdoor events with people watching and fresh air.
6. Go ahead, put on a pair of shorts. I don’t care if you say you wouldn’t wear shorts in your own back yard, at least wear them in your own back yard. Then you know summer is really here!

An even half-dozen things to do this summer. On me. You can come up with stuff to fill the other days.

That’s what I think. How ’bout you?

Soup’s On

Michael 1 Comment

It started innocently enough with a cup of clam chowder. This was a couple of weeks ago after a doctor appointment stuck right in the middle of the day. By the time that was over I was hungry as a bear and lunch came at one of those big casual restaurants that are handiest when you have no idea what you want but you know that whatever you decide on will be decent. I decided on soup and a sandwich. Clam chowder and corned beef. I know, not one of your classic combinations but it was decent. and it woke up a soup need in me.

I like soup. Not so much that I’ll eat it every day but that’s exactly what I’ve done now for a whole week. You might associate daily soup eating with autumn, a chill in the air, leaves falling outside, fires burning inside. Not with May and unusually high (like in the nineties) daytime temperatures. I blame my daily soup eating partially on being in the hospital during the coldest months of the year where their idea of soup is salted water. And partially on that clam chowder.

Let’s fast forward a week or so. It’s time for another doctor appointment stuck right in the middle of yet another day. Again, lunch was high on my list of things to do. Another casual restaurant, another soup and sandwich. French onion and grilled chicken. (What can I say? I just don’t pick combinations well.)

Since then I’ve had soup and something for lunch or dinner. Every day. For seven days. Soups from spicy hot and sour to hearty black bean to classic chicken noodle. All much better than salted water.

So now as I approach week two I have to decide if I should continue the soup-a-thon or shift to a more season appropriate accompaniment to my meals. After all, I’d hate to be the cause of snow in May.

That’s what I think. How ’bout you?

Pacing Myself

Michael Leave a comment

The other day I was cutting into an eggroll and it reminded me of a story. Yes, I cut into the eggroll.  With a knife. So I could pick up a piece with a fork. What’s wrong with that? Oh sure, I’ve picked up eggrolls and eaten them out of hand. But I most likely will split it down the middle, add some duck sauce and hot mustard to the innards and then consume it slice by tasty slice.  Yum.

I guess there are other things I eat differently from others.  I always slice the corn off the cob rather than gnawing my way along it although just the thought of butter dripping down the front of my face makes me salivate. Unless there is a chocolate milkshake handy I dip french fries in mayonnaise. That’s the most efficient way to double up on fat that I can think of. And when I eat asparagus I have to start with the stalk and save the crown for last.

So what was the story that made the eggroll become a reminder? Once upon a time, She of We and I were dining at a Chinese restaurant. I know I wanted the General Tso but couldn’t decide between chicken and shrimp.  So I took the diplomatic route and ordered the combination of both.  (When it arrived I had to alternate between the two proteins, never doubling up on one or the other. But we’ve already covered my dining proclivities.) She asked how they were and I said I that the chicken could have been better. Later when the fortune cookies arrived and we went through our ritual of determining who got which, I opened mine, unfolded the tiny slip with the tiny print, squinted at it then almost fell out of my chair.  Printed there in red and white was “Next time order the shrimp.”  True story!

Oh. How does any of this relate to the title of today’s post? Obviously if I have to tkae the extra time to carve an eggroll or arrange my asparagus I obviously take some time to eat.  But that’s OK. I’m just pacing myself.  If I pace myself slow enough I could end up eating just one meal a day, all day. Sort of Roman Emperor-ish.

That’s what I think. How ’bout you?