When Knitting Was a Manly Art

This time I’ll blame work… We’ve lost two employees in the past 1 1/2 months. The one making the biggest impact (on me) was one of the kitchen closers who also closed out the cash register and made night deposits. We’re currently down to three people that have the right training and one is going back to college at the end of September and the other one has a year old baby and can’t close much anymore. Sigh.. 41 *scheduled* hours next week. And I seldom work less than scheduled hours…

Visited my Dad on Thursday and had the best visit since before Mom died. While he still spends a lot of time thinking about Mom and being lonely, he isn’t as depressed as he was, he’s eating better and sleeping better. I even managed to get a smile out of him during lunch.

Eileen and the boyfriend are off for the week in eastern Oregon leaving me with the house and the animals. Believe me, the cats are not happy about getting fed at 11pm when their usual mealtime is closer to 5pm. Actually enjoying the quiet and having the house to myself. They’ll be back on either Thursday or Friday of the coming week.

Anybody play around with Google Books? Since I’ve gotten the laptop and semi-regularly drag it into Portland for a little fix of Broadband, I’ve discover all kinds of interesting old books available for download. Books on Knitting, books on brewing beer and baking bread. Some big files but it’s fun to see what’s available.

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Last night we had a little weather incident. Lots of lightning, a couple of near strikes, loss of power. Computer came back up this morning, but when I got home this evening, I found that drive one of my two drive desktop system was making very nasty noises. Very nasty noises. It’s dead and the system won’t boot. But…. With a Linux rescue disk, I’ve confirmed that the second drive is good and that’s where most of my data is and as far as I can tell, all is well with that drive. Unfortunately, I can’t easily get at the drive. I’ll need to replace the primary drive and figure out a way to get to boot and access the second drive. Meantime, I’ll be using my laptop.

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I love to cook.. I’ve spent the whole day in the pizza kitchen cooking for other people and since I got off early tonight, I decided to cook a quick and easy dinner.

German Shepherd’s Pie… Sauerkraut, Kielbasa and mashed potatoes.
I’ve got a big pyrex casserole dish and in it I place 4lbs of a good bagged sauerkraut, drained in a colander. Mix in a nice sized bunch of green onions, sliced thin. About 3 tablespoons of brown sugar on top of the sauerkraut. I usually slice the kielbasa thick and brown the sausage than place it on top of the kraut. Then mashed potatoes spread over the top — I usually cheat and use potatoes flakes — and then Parmesan spread over top. Oven preheated to 350F and pop it in for about 55 minutes, until top is light brown and kraut is bubbling. Yum…

Eggs — Thanks to Mark Bittman and Alton Brown I can now cook the Perfect™ fried egg. The secret is low heat. On my stove, I set the burner at *about* three (range of 1-10). Heat pan for about 5 minutes and add a small amount of salted butter (salted butter provides all the salt I need for eggs). If it sizzles, it’s hot enough. If the butter starts to brown, you’ve got too much heat. I crack the eggs into little pyrex dishes we got for other purposes. This allows me to dump both eggs into the pan at the same time and no worries about broken yolks. Preset your timer to 3 minutes. Once eggs are in the pan I like a little fresh cracked pepper and place a lid on the fry pan and start timer. Don’t peek… If you’ve hit the sweet spot, you will have two perfectly fried eggs. Tender, whites done and just enough loose yolk to dip your toast into. If you didn’t hit the sweet spot, the yolks will probably be completely set, but the eggs are still pretty good and you can make adjustments the next time.

Food related — sort of… This could be the start of a hectic couple of weeks. We’ve got a young cook who is most certainly going to be fired before the start of next week. He’s one of three kitchen closers (myself and the owner’s son are the other two) and already his imminent loss has me working an 8am-6:30pm shift on Sunday. Sigh… Just when I think things are settling down…

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(sipping a nice locally brewed beer, connected to a blazingly fast broadband connection, enjoying a quiet Thursday afternoon)

Everyone needs a bit of Feel Good now and then. These are probably old news to a lot of folks, but they made me feel good and I thought I’d share.

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2006 and was told in August 2007 to expect a remaining three to six months of good health. Randy delivered his “Last Lecture,” titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” at CMU on September 18, 2007. This may seem to be leading up to something just the opposite of Feel Good, but the lecture had such a positive impact on so many people (including myself) that it deserves a much broader notice. The lecture led to a book (which I have on order) and much more attention to Randy and his disease. On July 25, 2008, Randy Pausch died from pancreatic cancer at his family’s home in Chesapeake, Virginia, having moved there so that his wife and children would be near family after his death.

The Last Lecture

A bit more goofy are these videos I ran across. Matt Harding travels the world. Matt dances funny. Kids love Matt dancing funny. Just watch. It makes you feel good.

Where the Hell is Matt - 2005
Where the Hell is Matt - 2006
Where the Hell is Matt - 2008

Warning
I’m *way* behind with blog software. I’m running 2.1.x and the latest is 2.6.x. I’m going to upgrade in the next week and *hopefully* I’ll cover all possible failures, but if you come visiting and things don’t look right, take a deep breath and come back in a day or two…

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I’ve only written two posts since Mom died and I really need to start becoming more evolved in the real world and I’ve begun to get out and start doing things again.

The past two weekends have always been the highlight of the summer for me over the past 8-10 years. These are the weekends of the Great Oregon Steam-Up. First as a participant/exhibitor with Eileen’s small tractor collection and for the past three years as a volunteer in the steam powered sawmill. (That’s me in the yellow t-shirt).

Work is still taking up a huge chunk of my time, but I think that’s going to change. I’ll be 62 in March of 2009 and I can start drawing social security at that point. While it certainly won’t be enough to live on and I’ll have to continue to work some, I’ve decided that I’m going ask that my hours be cut back and I want Friday-Sunday off. That will bring me down to about 30 hours/week, but combined with what I expect from Social Security, my income will nearly double and maybe I can start enjoying my retirement.

Family. Dad took Mom’s death very hard. They would have been married 62 years in July and her death hit him emotionally and physically. He’s been moved from an independent living facility to assisted living and then back to independent living. He’s been in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and congestive heart failure. His eyesight is failing and he’s lonely. But with all that he’s actually doing better than any of us expected. With his return to independent living, he’s among his friends again, he’s at a point where he can accept the condolences of those friends and he’s the happiest I’ve seen him since the first of May.

Knitting. Not much. And don’t expect a lot of knitting content for a while. I’m not motivated enough yet. I do have a little toe-up sock that I’ve been adding stitches to over the past two months, but it’s only gained an inch of so. The little sweater is still around, but the baby it was intended for has pretty much outgrown it. Maybe a teddy bear sweater when it’s finally done.

Live in general. Much better and much happier the last month or so. Getting out regularly into Portland to my favorite brew pub, Lucky Labrador Beer Hall. I’ve got a new laptop computer with all the whizzies you’d expect, including WiFi and after years of ssllooww dialup, it’s so much fun to connect to a fast wifi connection and be able to sip beer and browse the web.

Continuing content. I’ve made a commitment to myself to post *something* at least twice a week. Probably not a lot of interest to regular readers, but still it’s something

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It’s been nearly a month since my Mother’s death and it’s time for me to quit feeling sorry for myself and try to start connecting with the real world. Eileen says I’ve been too withdrawn and if she notices, it’s time for me to make some changes.

First, I really want to thank everyone who left comments. Sometimes I wonder if *anyone* is really reading this blog and especially since there hasn’t been much in the way of posts recently.

I’ve started to knit a bit again. Nothing special. Just the beginnings of a toe up sock the Queen Kahuna way. I don’t intend on any pictures until I’ve made some real progress.

A bit of cooking, including a spaghetti sauce that came mostly out of my head and was a big hit in the household.

3 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, medium dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 28oz can whole tomatoes (try to find Muir Glen Organic)
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes (once again try to find Muir Glen)
8 oz sliced mushrooms
3 tablespoons dried Basil
1 teaspoon dried Thyme
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon fish sauce (honestly.. try it..)
Kalamata olives — pitted and sliced — a goodly amount you probably can’t over do the olive

Heat oil over medium high heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook until the onions are translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (another minute).

Add diced tomatoes and whole tomatoes, crushing the whole tomatoes and all the juices. Add sliced mushrooms, herbs, fish sauce and sugar and simmer for about 30-40 minutes until thickened. Add olives and heat through for about 5-10 minutes.

While all this is cooking, boil 4 quarts of water. When the water begins to boil, add 1 tablespoon of salt and then 1 pound of spaghetti/linguine (I really like Ronzoni) until done to your satisfaction (10-12 minutes). Save about 1 cup of pasta cooking water and drain the remaining.

Combine sauce and pasta and use extra pasta water to thin the sauce down if needed.

Sprinkle on a good Parmesan and enjoy…

Afterthought You’ll notice that there is no added salt or pepper. Between the salt in the canned tomatoes, the added salt from the fish sauce and the salted water for the pasta, *I* didn’t find a need to add anything. You might want to add either to taste.

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My Mother died at about 9:30 this morning.

She had a stroke Tuesday afternoon and after an early positive diagnosis, she went downhill very fast on Wednesday. I spent about 5 hours by her bedside on Wednesday and was on my way back to Salem this morning to visit her again when I received the call.

I was very close to my Mother and luckily I was able to spend a couple hours with her this past Thursday. Just the two us talking. I’m going to miss her. When things were bad, I could always count on her to make me feel better.

The past couple months have been tough, and this just adds to it. I feel lost right now. I’m not taking the blog down, but I don’t expect I’ll be posting again for some time.

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see more crazy cat pics

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moar funny pictures

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It’s been a while since my last posting, but work and a slowly reviving nursery have left me with little time for much else.

Mentally, things are going pretty nice, but the restaurant has gotten crazy in the last two months. While I’m still cruising close to the 40 hour/week mark, I feel like I’m *always* working. I have a 10 hour shift every Monday, an 8 1/2 hour shift on Friday (which means closing on the busiest night of the week — sometimes that 8 1/2 hours expands to more like 9 1/2). And on top of that, Sunday is one of our only three closed days (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter) and to keep my hours up, I worked a 6 straight days this week with 5 closes. Ah, but I did get a pay raise (making *nearly* $11/hour).

Nursery is starting to come alive and Eileen’s first plant sale is less than three weeks away and that means when I’m not cooking, I’m planting and cleaning up plants.

Still knitting a tiny bit, just so I can say I’m doing it. Nothing of interest to report.

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and I spent it working. I’m closing the restaurant tonight, but I’ve got the whole weekend off and I intend to sleep in late tomorrow and then see if I can find a good way to celebrate.

Don’t Mess With The Old Guy

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day. He’d been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, have you ever danced?” The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No, I never did dance. I just never wanted to.” A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna’ dance now,” and started shooting at the old man’s feet. The old prospector was hopping around and everybody was laughing.

When the gunslinger fired his last bullet, he holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon. The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned around looking down both barrels of the shotgun. The old man asked, “Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?” The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, “No. But I’ve always wanted to.”

The lessons from this story are:
1. Don’t waste ammunition.
2. Don’t mess with old guys.

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