Monthly Archives: July 2005

Hot dog days and meals

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Yesterday was so hot. It got to 90 degrees in the house. I had seen weather info earlier that forecast 89 for a high in Atlanta. I don’t know why it got so hot in the house though, it wasn’t THAT hot outside. I guess it’s partially my ankle injury, I didn’t go around checking fans direction of air pull, windows to open or close, blinds to go up or down, open or close slats, etc.

Usually I try to get things all flipped back and forth depending on sun position, so back of the house is pushing out in morning, but pulling in the evening. Front of the house pulls in morning and pushes in afternoon. Pulls means takes air into house. Push means takes air out of the house.

It’s not a precise method though, sometimes it’s better to close off the front of the house all day instead. I think that might be what went wrong yesterday. It did get cloudy/stormy during the afternoon, but it never rained.

Anyway, it just does get very hot some days, inside is hard to control with the fans we have. It’s not always so bad, just parts of the day. Some days are worse on a whole, but not every day, mostly not even two days in a row, just afternoons.

So yesterday was that hotty one and I didn’t get a clear mind to cook dinner until after 8pm, it was really closer to 9 when I got going. This is something that is not new for me. Last year the very hot days were like that. It’s just that for me my mind turns to mush and I can’t function if it’s that hot, and the evening cools down after dark eventually and my mind comes back online. People don’t like it. But that’s where understanding comes in and helping me is better than fussing at me for it. :)

I came up with a version of somethings I make, that was different enough to be it’s own thing.

I used German Sweet Sausage, which is a natural non-cured product we got at Harry’s (Whole Foods Market) in the cooler where prepackaged things from other companies are kept.

I sliced that into angled rounds, and then each of those into halves.

I used:

several small Yukon Gold potatoes, diced.
1/2 a large Vidalia onion, chopped
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 large Red Bell Pepper cut into 1/4-inch wide, long strips, then cut in half lenth-wise

I stir fried that until the potatoes were nearly done.

Then I added:

1 can diced fire-roasted tomatoes (Muir Glen)
two handfuls of long, thin green beans (fresh)
Soy Sauce, a few dashes
A couple dashes of Tabasco Sauce
Sea Salt to taste
Extra water as needed to make the sauce less thick, to aide cooking.
Added the German Sweet Sausage then too.

When the beans were done, still a bit crispy, the meal was ready, I put freshly grated fresh queso cheese ontop.

It was very good. I didn’t used to do much with veggy stir fry’s a few years ago even, but last year started doing some things and this year just chuck things into the pan when the time calls for such.

I have some other renditions that are more Japanese Stir Fry sorts of meals. I use rice or japanese noodles, chicken, or beef, and sugar snap peas, water chesnuts, more soy sauce, and onions, red bell peppers, etc.

These things I made up. It’s a reinvention of the wheel, yes, I didn’t create them as unique things, I know that they aren’t anything new precisely, just that I did what is natural to me to put them together without a recipe. Any recipe would have things in it I would leave out or change or add different things in, so it is that mine are unique in a way anyhow, but I am not claiming some great new recipes here. :)

I’m just glad to share what I’ve done more of and I am proud of it since I’m such a picky person about veggies. I started this all the other year when I started making a crock pot “pepper steak” recipe. I did it to get good Vit C peppers instead of the green peppers, so I used Red Bell Peppers and liked them as soft as the crock pot made them. I forced myself to make it on the stove and make them less soft last year, and that got me into actually liking the crisp crunch of peppers more and more and leading me into better stir fry additions.

I used to make “fried rice” which was heavy work for me. I didn’t have lots and lots of veggies in it. It is something I don’t make anymore, I just dislike how much rice I have to stir in and it wears my arm out and makes the meal icky for me. Too much of a chore.

So for me this different way of cooking allows me to have an easy way to make something that is so much better, and it can have rice or noodles or no carbs at all. Lots of veggies nicely crisp done.

I don’t use a regular Soy Sauce either. I now use Tamari, which is a wheat free soy sauce. It tastes so much better, IMO. Soy is something I only use if it’s in small quantities, as soy sauce is, and is fermented, brewed or something, as soy sauce is.

Basically this all is just an introduction to a different kind of oriental cooking that I have liked, and I’ll probably get going into researching some other japanese recipes for real one of these days. :)

Now I’m hungry for something crispy japanesey good. Hmph. It’s still morning.

Happy?

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I’m not too happy. I was working on my websites behinds the scenes since Frank is out for the day and I have his laptop to work on fulltime. I had to do stuff to find some passwords that I’d forgotten and drag stuff off of my old laptop harddrive connected via USB external box enclosure we got for it after my laptop died. So I was engrossed and disconnected to physicalness in a way that I hadn’t been in a long while now, not having 100% available computer access, until today.

So it goes on in the story that Asa started causing trouble with a watergun downstairs, and I went down to referee, and decided then to also go out and check the hens. I determined then that no one had given the hens their feed, nor watered them, just that Victoria had given them the leftover Au Gratin Scalloped Potatoes I made last night (from scratch, of course.) They’d been forgotten on the table overnight, not put away, so to the hens the taters went.

It was late morning, maybe after Noon already. I opened the back door and called for Russell to help me, to water them. I went out, the sun was so bright mixed with hazy clouds, everything was super bright, and the next moment I was falling, falling, falling thinking I’d twisted or broken my ankle. Not sure which, but one seemed a surety. The step down is from the house with no step to intercede with the ground grade being quite low right there. We’ve planned all along to put a patio there and never have done anything about it. We had the deck access to the yard up to the point this year when we took those deck French Doors out of the kitchen, so our only access to the backyard from the house has since been the downstairs slab access, which is higher than 1 whole step, maybe more like 2, and I just lazy-daisy went out and fell instantly. My right foot hurt so bad, but me being a high-pain-threshold-type-person, I can’t tell you how it felt compared to anyone elses ankle twisting event. In any case I drug myself in and had Russell help me up and open the door, etc. I felt my ankle first, and couldn’t tell if it was broken or not, so stood on it and held my weight OK. It was the walking on it that sends the splintery pain shooting up. Still does. It aches, aches, gently and deeply, it isn’t puffing up though. It’s not been that long, an hour or half-an-hour more than that. I can feel it sort of hot-to-trott as I sit, and upon standing and moving, then it gets going. Going down steps is alright, up the steps is another thing. I had to go to the bathroom a bit ago, was downstairs and the pain thoughts had me use the basement bathroom, which I never use. :rolleyes:

I had to go upstairs after that though, that’s two flights of stairs that are about 8 steps or so each. The first flight hurt a bit, the second I ended up sitting down and scooting up backwards. I know that if it’s slightly hurt it’ll just get worse by using my foot. I don’t relish it getting worse. I have three younsters that’ll get away with murder possibly if so, they are super-duper-crazy children, of course, being my children. ;)

So after my twisting event UPS showed up with a box for me. It was my BIOS chip that I’d ordered. I limped down to install it, and had to struggle with the old chip a bit and standing on my twisted foot wasn’t so bad, but after awhile it started aching more and all that. So it’s up and down, it hurts more then not as much, but I can say I have never, ever had a twist that was bad, and only once maybe a sort-of-twist, and this is way worse feeling than that one.

In Gatlinburg over the 4th of July I trip upwards on a step that interceded with the sidewalk, I wasn’t looking down and smacked it hard with the top of my left foot, and that left a deep bruise that really hurt, but it didn’t inhibit my walking ability, just made me wince to put on shoes that brushed it. It’s mostly better now, but now I have a painful issue, not emergency, just bad enough to make me really mad it happened and have to deal with it not knowing for sure how bad it is, maybe something is cracked, maybe just lightly twisted, but so well done that my foot is not LOOKING different, to me, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad news.

All I know is that Frank will be home, later more so than earlier, he has a Client dude in town today and tomorrow, and won’t be able to help me though. I had something planned for dinner, but the details of it needed me to do something earlier, and this foot twist thing has me offline from my plans, so now I have to figure out a secondary thing and still finish off the soaking beans that should have been cooked already.

The good thing about this is I have been prompting Russell and Victoria to help me more in the kitchen. I actually have spent the last week or so, when home, having them look for things, bring me things, do parts of things as independently as I can get them to, and they have done well. So now I do find myself in need of their help, and hopefully they’ll do what I need. I don’t need much, just help getting things together and fixing it up, so that I don’t have to stand up and walk around, just stand some, let them do all the moving about. :)

The secondary cause of my unhappiness is my desktop. The BIOS chip that came is installed, but still there is nothing but lights on and fans on, no beeps, no post, no video. Urggh. We’ll get a new battery. Maybe that’s the whole problem? I may be naive, but thought it’d post, just not save BIOS settings, if the battery was dead, so then every time restarting would mean resetting. In any case, it won’t hurt to get a new battery. After that I don’t know. Maybe I’ll return the motherboard. I sure don’t have all the tools I’d need to test it. I can still take it all apart and test it out of the case to see if it runs or not, or does anything different, take off the processor, everthing. Just it’s so bothersome to do with out a good work space, and the system is dependant on a big monitor CRT type, so it’s not easily moved around. Not at all with my foot as it is now either.

Lighter note: I have a LP-Record player now too, so at least I can spin the records I hadn’t heard in so very long. Huey Lewis, for example, SPORTS. One of my old favorite albums. :)

Thunderous Praise

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We had a lovely thunderstorm early this evening. The lighting was crashing down and cloud to cloud, close to our home. It was so soothing. Super intense storms are so soothing to me.

We hadn’t heard thunder as we have this evening in several years, the first Spring in our house was 1997 and we had a Super-April, very exciting. We’ve had a storm here or there with good sounds, but not much at all, not like tonight.

I stood on our little front porch for part of the storm tonight. It was very refreshing, several crashes were “right there” as close as could be without being our house or one of them in our neighborhood visual sight. Crash! Boom! Bang! Boom, boom, boom, rumble-hard, rumble-hard, rumble-hard, rumble-hard, rumble, rumble, rumble, growl, growl, growl, slumber rumble …

It’s fun to see a lightning strike in your mind, not with your eyes, but feel it with all your other senses that are not sight nor sound. It sounds bizarre I guess, but it’s true to life. They are sometimes over the house or behind it and not visible. I see them like that the rare times there is lighting and I am inside the house too. Anyhow, we had several very close ones tonight, multiples of multiples just a bit further away. More further away than that as well. The weather map on local tv had so many lighting strike symbols on the map where our county was visible, you could barely make out our county, it was just a white blobbish thing. It was mentioned on the newscast there too, actually calling out our little town by name. That was quite notable. We are so far outside of the “city” that the news broadcasts from. We had immense lighting though, the most dangerous sort, the stuff that hits the ground. So it’s dangerous, but intensley beautiful from some sort of a distance.

So that lighting that is seen or not seen, is always heard afterthefact. The Earth’s air clapping it’s hands unto God to His Glory. Awesome stuff!

Charleston

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We are in Charleston, SC today, just arrived a bit ago. Frank has some business here just a short time, then we’ll be out and about doing things. I’ve been here twice before, in the area, but didn’t do anything really, so this’ll be my first REALLY good look at Charleston.

We were maybe going to go to Savannah this weekend, but ended up here. S is one of my favorite places now, so hopefully we’ll get to get there sooner than later. Both here and there have minor league baseball, we are going to a game here tomorrow. In S we haven’t seen a team there yet. We saw the Smokies in Kodak TN on July 4th. That was AA ball. This here is A ball, in the carolinas and georgia. Frank and I used to go to minor league games (Rookie League) in S. Fl when we lived there, all the time in our first few years of knowing each other. In fact Frank asked me to marry him, right before leaving for a game, was supposed to ask me there but lost it and asked me right in the driveway of my parents house, before pulling out. ;)

That was over 13 years ago already. Our anniversary is in August, not listed on the sidebar dates to remember. Frank noticed that, but I haven’t loaded it. It just doesn’t seem I have the right language to use to notify the public about it there ;) It’s a duo-oneflesh-event, but I don’t like using a personal “my anniversary” or an “our anniversary” label, it’s more than that. Anyhow, it’s the 22nd of August, origins from 1992. That really has nothing to do with this post, just that I’m talking of minor league ball and that connects to our early years and how we got engaged and such, so it IS connected, yet not, yet is … :lol:

Here are a few pictures from the hotel room: (edited down in size temporarily while away with ‘Windows Paint’, icky quality, sorry, to be reloaded as nicer quality later)

From the Hotel Window

Storm growing over hotel

The children looking out the hotel window

Asa looking at the camera, Victoria looking out, Russell on the side looking out

A clearer view just a bit later

Out the hotel window after the storm cleared out, not much later. From our 5th floor room.

—-

We will be looking around Charleston tonight and tomorrow, that’s Friday night and Saturday. Don’t know for sure what we’ll see, but I hope to see at least one plantation in the area. Audobon sanctuaries are at two of them, from what I read in some brochures. With my new Canon Digital Rebel I could get some great shots I imagine. So we’ll see as to what we decide to do and what that might bring me to opportunity of photographic delight. :)

Desktop Mysterious USB

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My computer, the desktop, started fritzing out again today, after nearly running for 24-hours fine since the heatsink re-seating. Temps were fine though.

I determined after several BSOD incidents that it was my mouse, USB driven thing with a tail. All my mice are USB driven, any around that are for the computer, that is. I have that one I was then using, a Microsoft Optical type. I have a Microsoft USB mouse/keyboard combo hub Wireless version which I had used with my laptop, before it died. We also now have a USB wireless Kensington, which came with Frank’s ebay won Vaio earlier this week.

I determined after awhile that not having anything plugged in, the computer worked alright, for as long as I tried it that way. Plug something into a port that it hadn’t been plugged into before, and Windows recognized it and installed the hardware automatically, it’d work for a bit, then freeze and fritz me out to a series of BSOD’s for awhile. I had also at some point uninstalled one of the USB drivers in the Device Manager. In any case, I was able to use my keyboard if I could get Windows to load alright. But I am a mousey girl, I do best with a mouse (compared with a keyboard-only approach to computing), better though with a laptop touchpad (I miss my old laptop days with a nice touchpad!).

I concluded USB since the problem wasn’t exactly new … it was sort of the same thing happening the other day when I re-seated the heatsink on the processor. I knew that needed to be done, but had no idea what else was up for sure. We know we want to replace the videocard, and will, but I didn’t think the “freezing” thing was the video card exactly. To pinpoint it, what’s the thing that I was doing when ever the freezing occurred? Opening … doing …. ah, yes, clicking with the mouse, different things, something on the Desktop, something in a program, never the same thing always exactly, just different normal mouse functionalities …. then blitz, frozen, or BSOD.

I had another USB module I could install, mb places to plug the cord into as well. So I went ahead a bit ago and installed that piece of hardware. So far, it’s working alright. The USB that went fritzy is onboard USB modules. What went bad, I don’t know, I just know I’m trying to see if the new hardware pieces work alright, and I’ll just avoid the others until I need them, which I haven’t as of yet.

We are having nasty looking storms loom out there awhile, then come overhead and blow over with nary a drop of water coming down from the sky. One of them had lightening and right when one of those flashes went off my computer rebooted instantaneously, it wasn’t a BSOD as all my other errors caused, it was an actual instant re-boot, which must have been a power loss occassion, just a coincidence that it happened right in the middle of my BSOD experiences of this July Summer 2005 day. It’s getting very, very dark again, so I best finish this up and Shut Down.

I am nearly breathless hoping that the system won’t fritz out on on me before I can get a new video card, and maybe a new processor to, just to up the stability. It’s an Athlon XP 2100+ … been awhile since we got it, it’s worked hard. Still running, but you never know when it’ll give up the ghost. I know the motherboard would be happier with a new video card, something to play nice with the Nvidia chipset. ATI is what we have. It’s also an old 7500 model. Well, old, that’s relative to the computer age. I can recall with clarity the day we bought it at Best Buy. I was so excited to be getting a new card, something better than that Rage little 3D card. It was a big day. I can recall when I was Two years old though as well, so it’s no gauge as to when something happened to be able to vividly recall the event. Ah well and good, as it’s just a thing of the past, the card is old. It’s got 64mb of memory, and that’s ‘ok’ but far from powerful for today’s graphical needs.

I really hope the USB problem is able to stay down and not affect the other USB things I’ve got going now. I’ll have to check deeper into it later, when I can afford to not have the computer running, therefore not until we get a second laptop, one to replace my old dead Vaio GRV550. :)