Published on Monday, February 21st, 2011 by LisaDiane
Joey fixed the drain basket of our kitchen sink a few days ago, as I mentioned in a previous post. A couple of days after that the faucet started leaking a little around its base when we turned the water on. Sunday that small leak turned into a spray, if the faucet was in just the wrong position.
Since I am in North Carolina this week, Joey decided to take the opportunity to fix the faucet. I love my husband! He worked really hard,and got it all fixed and put back together. When he turned the water on, the new seal he had put on the main faucet worked perfectly. However, at that very moment the gasket on the sprayer gave out, and Joey got soaking wet.
Joey took apart everything he had just finished putting together, and will have to go to the hardware store tomorrow for yet another part for our sink. It seems that six years and eight months is how long our sink had in it before needing serious repairs!
Published on Saturday, February 19th, 2011 by Joey
Kay, Daniel, LD, Ela, and I went for a walk through Walnut Creek Metro Park this afternoon. Ela was almost invisible as she led Daniel through the tall grass.
…and I cut it open. Across the axis of the orange. And it looked like this.
A little strange. So I cut open another just to check. Cut across the axis like before. Same kind of orange from the same box at HEB. The second orange looked like all of the other oranges I’ve eaten this week.
Here is a pic of the two oranges next to each other.
Published on Thursday, February 17th, 2011 by LisaDiane
This morning Joey got up early and cleaned the kitchen. He also prepped for making breakfast. We had planned to have scrambled eggs with spinach and sausage yesterday morning, but the universe intervened.
Tuesday night while Joey was doing the dishes, we noticed a puddle of water near the sink. Upon investigation, Joey discovered that the seal between the sink and the drain basket had failed. It was fairly late, so Joey had to wait until the next morning to get the supplies he needed to finish the repair. The fix was pretty inexpensive, thanks to the fact that Joey is extremely handy at home repairs! Also, Joey got to use his Dremmel tool, and, if you know Joey at all, you know how he LOVES that.
That brings us to this morning, and our breakfast. As I mentioned above, Joey prepped everything, but did not add the eggs. I poured the eggs over spinach and sausage, intending to scramble them. But the eggs looked so smooth and nice, and the edge firmed up quite nicely, and I decided to try something that I have never been successful at before: an omelette.
As I have seen Jacques Pépin do on television, I scraped around the edge of the pan and tipped the pan so that all the uncooked egg from the middle ran to the edges. Then I left it alone for way longer than I am normally able to do. Finally, I flipped up one edge, added cheese, and folded it over again! As you can see from the picture, I managed to fold it up into a nice approximation of an omelette. The next step was the most fun – we devoured the whole thing!
Published on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 by LisaDiane
Joey and Lee had vestry responsibilities at church, so Billy, Liam, and I hung out together for the evening. Once Joey and Lee got to our house, we had steak, asparagus, salad, and salt potatoes (see recipe below) for dinner.
If you have never had salt potatoes, don’t let the amount of salt freak you out. The large amount of salt changes the boiling point of the water enough that the texture of the cooked potato is quite different than regular boiled potatoes. The skin gets a nice salty crust, and the inside is creamy and smooth. Although you can serve salt potatoes with a meal as we did, they also make a fantastic snack with drinks and other finger food.
We served up the meal as soon as everything was cooked. When we went back to do the dishes (I use “we” loosely here. Anyone who knows me knows, I was not really involved in doing dishes), we discovered that very large salt crystals had grown in the pot that we cooked the potatoes in. It was actually quite pretty. Who doesn’t love a science experiment with dinner?
Salt Potatoes:
3 pounds small new potatoes or fingerling potatoes
14 ounces of salt
2 quarts of water
Wash the potatoes and leave whole. It is critical not to puncture the skin of the potato.
Bring all of the water to a boil. Add the salt. Stir the salt into the water until it is dissolved.
Maintain heat and let the salt water come to a boil.
Add the potatoes and boil for twenty-five minutes. Remove the potatoes to a cooling rack.
Serve with sour cream.
Published on Sunday, February 13th, 2011 by LisaDiane
Elanor has several toys made of natural rubber from West Paw Designs. She loves them; she fetches them and chews on them. Joey and I are fond of them because, despite the fact that Elanor is quite a strong chewer, it takes her a long time to even put a dent in them. One of her toys is a oddly shaped ball called a ‘huck’. We sometimes play outside, and the huck was left outside at some point. It got quite gross. Sunday after church Joey decided to clean up the huck. He washed it, but it still had some nasty black stuff on it. He decided to boil it, rather than use a harsh chemical, since Elanor would be chewing on the toy once the cleaning was finished.
Joey and I sat down and talked for awhile. Suddenly Joey jumped up and ran out of the room. A very strange smell drifted across the house. The water that the huck was being boiled in had boiled completely away! The huck had melted to the bottom of the pan. The whole house was filled with smoke.
Joey and I went around opening windows and turning on fans. The smoke was very thick and completely obscured the visibility across the living room. Then we took Elanor and went outside until the smoke had cleared some. Joey pulled the huck out of the pan. It was all melted and crazy, as you can see in the photos. I started thinking that we would need to order a new huck for Elanor, but then I remembered that I had ordered an extra huck the last time I placed an order with West Paw Designs. I pulled it out, and Elanor was so excited about her new toy!
The house still smells like melted candle wax, but mostly things have returned to normal.
Published on Saturday, February 12th, 2011 by LisaDiane
Years ago Kathlyne and Ross invited Joey and me to celebrate the Passover Seder with them. I want to say it was the spring of 2000, but I could be wrong.
Celebrating Passover became a tradition. Joey and I would go up to Fort Worth, or Kat and Ross would come down to Austin. We invited others to join us over the years. Sujata, Troy, Christinne, Kay, Lindsay, Don, Misty, Brian, Robert, Laura, Jason, and probably some other folks I am forgetting joined us one year or another.
When Ross and Kat got married in January 2001, I found a beautiful crystal Seder plate. It was awesome. We used it for many years. Then, one sad day, the Seder plate was minding its own business on a shelf in Ross and Kat’s house, and a huge truck came down the street. The vibrations from the truck caused the plate to “walk” to the edge of the shelf, and then it crashed to the ground. This is how I recall the story, but I wasn’t there. Kat will have to correct me if I got anything wrong. We were all very sad, and I have looked and looked for another crystal plate like that one, but I have never seen anything like it!
Naturally we continued celebrating the Passover Seder without the plate. A white and gold china plate that Joey and I got as a wedding gift stood in as the Seder plate. If I am remembering correctly, the first year without the crystal Seder plate was the same year that Misty and Brian joined us for the Seder for the first time. Kat and I shared the story of the Seder plate (after all, Passover is about recounting stories, even if this one is a little off topic), and Misty was very sympathetic.
Fast forward a few years. Ross and Kat now live in Baltimore, and were not able to travel to Austin for Passover. Misty and Brian have continued to participate in our celebration.
Over the last few months, Misty has been talking about how much she would like to have a Seder plate made. She has a friend who is a potter, and Misty commissioned her to make the plate. While I knew of this plan, I was completely floored when Misty handed me a brown paper bag with a beautiful handmade Seder plate in it, and said it was a gift for me! I am very grateful to have my very own Passover Seder plate. I will keep a close watch out for a crystal plate for Kat and Ross, though!
Published on Friday, February 11th, 2011 by LisaDiane
I posted about KatyDog just after her fifteenth birthday. MadPriest posted a comment requesting pictures of the old lady. That was right around the time that Etherlimits was taken off line, so I was not able to post the photos until now.
Many of you already know that KatyDog passed away in the very early morning on 28 November 2010. She lived a wonderful long life. She was fairly active and quite happy right up until the day she died. Joey and I were with her when she passed. She added so much to our lives over the thirteen years she was with us. I cannot imagine our family without her.
I gathered photos of KatyDog and put them in a set on Flickr. Click here to take a look at all her adventures.
Published on Friday, February 11th, 2011 by LisaDiane
My personal computer is a mac. I have had one since 2004. Joey built me an iMac out of five dead iMacs. Because my computer was revived from previous incarnations, I decided to name him Fawkes, after the phoenix from the Harry Potter universe.
The original body was a bubble iMac G3. Joey upgraded his computer, Mindy, to a new body in 2007, and Fawkes got upgraded to the 12-inch, G4 powerbook body. Only a few months later we realized that the USB 1 port was an untenable way to sync my iPhone, so we upgraded Fawkes body to a G4 mac mini, which had a USB 2 port.
Fawkes has remained in that mac mini body since early 2008. Joey and I talked a few times over the years about getting a new body for Fawkes, but it was just never at the top of the list of purchases. About a month ago we realized that we had succeeded in saving the money to purchase a MacBook Pro for Fawkes to inhabit, and nothing else more pressing was on the list!
I got all the data transferred to the new body, and I am having a great time having a laptop. Especially a laptop with WAY more power than I need. All of Fawkes’s previous incarnations were always just on the edge of not being able to run the latest OS and software. I had to wait for a reaction to almost all commands I gave the computer. It is totally awesome to be able to click and have an immediate response! Fawkes is also fast enough, and has enough memory to help Joey and Mindy with Joey’s work.
Now I just need my company to decide that I can use Fawkes for work, and I can get rid of my lame PC! Maybe someday.
Published on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 by LisaDiane
Joey moved Etherlimits to a new host site today. Some of the pictures for the older posts have not migrated yet, but Joey is working on fixing that situation.
He also updated it to the latest version of WordPress. You may not see much difference in the site, but the tools for posting are updated and much slicker than they were. Also, there is a WordPress app for the iPhone, which I could not use while we were on the old version of WordPress, but it should work now. I need to download it and set it up, but hopefully I will be able to post from my iPhone some time soon.
I am very excited about being able to post when I want to again. Stay tuned!
