Early Spring Snow, Meth house for sale

The white stuff is a skiff of snow deposited last evening. It has also hailed and thundered. My little computer weather thingy says sunshine Sun/Mon/Tue. That's nice but it does encourage the grass to grow in great leaps and bounds.

On another neighborhood note. The "Grapes of Wrath" house is for sale. The owners um, managed to lose to the county, my friends at work tell me that the grandmother of the family died and the descendents are more interested in meth and everyone has seen what meth does to people, it ages you and melts your faces. So Tim saw a realtor over there and the house is for sale for 40K. No one would want the house it needs to be torn down or burned or something. One of the neighbors across the street has said he would love to have the lot for a garage. Good idea! Too steep for parking I'm thinking.

I am also playing a Big Fish Game called "Return to Mysterious Island". Premise is a solo sailor (a girl) has washed up on the beach. Have spent the first day, catching crabs and turtle eggs, and making fire.

Have a nice week where ever you are.

WTF

Sacre Bleu! Mal De Mer! Fait accompli! Ques Ce Cais The Big Idea!? (and that my friends is the extent of my probably grossly misspelled French, the rest is in my best fake French written accent)

Zee price 'as drop a leetle. (moue of distaste) Same sensation as ride zee rollair coastair eh mes amis? (Shrug zee shouldairs) I 'ave zee ennui (flounces off to bed)

DESERTED AVENUE NOT

There are 7000 people in this picture. Lemme know what you think. Jacked from Mighty Illusions web site.

Kindle and local wildlife

This is my Kindle. It came in the mail yesterday from Amazon.com. It is an electronic book reader. I have experimented with e-books downloading to my PC and then reading them while in bed...NOT such a good idea. Still had to use the mouse or the touchpad and it was very touchy. Hard to get cozy in bed y'know.

There are electronic book readers out there but a bit limited in what they can do,you still need a computer to download the book.

Amazon announced the Kindle earlier this year, I read some reviews, reviewed the product and though spendy I was intrigued enough to get on the sold out waiting list. Mine came with my account already loaded and I followed the directions, plug in, power up, turnon wireless and order a book for 3 dollars I ordered a book and it was delivered to my Kindle within minutes. It reads as well as a paper book, no reflection of your ugly mug distracting from the "printed" page. Over all I am very satisfied, I feel a little strange being the first one on the block to own this product but I did wait several weeks for the furor to die down. The only draw back I can see is that I highly recommend keeping the wireless turned OFF while reading, and the long "next page" bar is too easily hit and you might miss a page but there is a "back" button just in case. I'm liking it so far.



A picture of one our big old fat squirrels. The maintenance guys put up feeders so they wouldn't chew up the pine trees. Uh huh, I think they just like to feed the squirrels. One of these days I will get a picture of the deer bedding down between the trees on hill side between the hospital and the clinic.

potato salad with secret ingredient

Today was a good day to fiddle around in the kitchen and make a batch of potato salad as follows:

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 pounds of smallish red potatoes (I counted 10 of them in my mixing bowl.
6 eggs
1/2 chopped sweet onion
1 can black olives, slice in two to check for pits
1 tsp celery seed
2 tbsp chopped garlic
1/2 to 1 cup Anacardiacea. Big hint,this is the secret ingredient.
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes or to taste.
Salt and pepper to taste.
1 cup mayo
1/3 cup yellow mustard
1/3 cup whole grain mustard with horseradish

METHODOLOGY:

Lightly scrub red potatoes and bring to rolling boil in 4 quarts of salted water for 20 minutes.

At the end of 20 minutes drop in the six eggs and allow pot to cool for 20 minutes. Eggs will be cooked perfectly from the residual heat of the water.

Drain and allow to continuing cooling in colander.

You can let them stand over night in the fridge however, wait two hours
and partially peel and chop the potatoes. Peel and chop the eggs.
Mix in other ingredients, seal in favorite 25 year old Tupperware bowl and let season in fridge. If impatient, have some but it will be better the next day.

Food and gas

We went out to Fraziers this morning for a hearty breakfast of Chicken fried steak, country potatoes, scrambled eggs and sour dough toast...and a side of sausage gravy. I took half of my breakfast home. Husband still rates the men's facilities at 9.5 and total cost including 15% tip was 25 bucks. Still cheaper than Pepe's in Barrow.



Fraziers is a nice downtown cafe and bakery. They make very fine breads and donuts and a VERY nice carrot cake. They also have a very large room for meetings. They also have a daily trivia question. The one this morning was "what popular soft drink has erroneously been said to contain prunes?" Correct answer gets a free coffee and pastry on next visit. I have actually won a couple of times but I never remember to get the freebie the next time.



And just to make is official, gas is still $3.49 per gallon. That could change at any moment.

rhodies and roads

The above picture is that of an azalea bush I think, quite pretty just outside the business office window. The rhodies have not bloomed yet but when they do I shall post pictures. I saw a big old gray squirrel munching happily on sun flower seeds in very bright sunshine and didn't get a picture of that critter.



This is a picture of the road that continues east up 5th street, it goes to the top of the hill where there are more houses, or so I have been told. If you will look VERY carefully there is a discrete little sign on one of the trees that says "No Trespassing" I didn't know it was a private road. I am such a creature of habit, I may have to just drive up that road one of these days, it's only one car wide hope I don't meet a logging truck.

Oh yes the prices have bloomed at Exxon station as well,Gas is now officially $3.49 cents per gallon.

What is it called after a trilogy?

Fellow blogger Gale took "Dies The Fire" ON vaca...and Now I am all fired up to purchase :The Sunrise Lands A Novel of the Change". I read a short blurb and I like it, however a reviewer also stated that this book ends in a cliffhanger. In that case I shall wait until the FIFTH AND SIXTH books are written and available so I can read them altogether because the suspense will irritate me beyond measure. Hurry Hurry Hurry!!!

more Nesum Dorma

A few posts back I talked about Pavarotti singing Nesun Dorma.

You might wish to see how Aretha Franklin sings it on U-tube. Click on the link and choose the one with her younger pictures. The one from the White house one has terrible sound. I decided to go looking for this because I was listening to an interview on NPR with a Grammy producer who had Pavarotti call him up and say his voice was not well and he could not perform that evening. The producer called Aretha Franklin and she had sung it previously and was game. So here ya go, The Queen of Soul sending off Italian soul music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd3DHG16Axg

I gassed up the car today painful though it was

As you can see the local gas concern is keeping up with 105 dollar a barrel oil well before it rolls down the gasoline highway so to speak. I do wish my car had a solar panel attachment on the roof and wouldn't that work about 50% of the time here in the wet and wonderful southern Oregon coastal region.

Also today fooled around the the lentil loaf recipe. I cooked a whole bag of lentils in a quart of chicken stock. I didn't feel like cooking any brown rice so I just went with the holy trinity plus one of chopped onion, chopped carrot,chopped celery and chopped yellow Bell pepper. Dump in can of whole tomato, chopped up a bit, toasted a cup of almonds, tossed in two eggs, two tbs olive oil, salt, pepper, lots of Thyme and poured into TWO well oiled casserole dishes, one to freeze for later ... and only because I still had some, a healthy handful of flax seeds, and bread crumbs and wheat germ... Oh and topped them both with a bunch of shredded Parm. Smells terrific. so veddy veddy healthy. Not strictly vegan but tasty.

GAS PRICES

Yesterday I drove by the EXXON station and gas is $3.34 per gallon. Well looks like we are well on our way to 4 bucks a gallon. Still a bargain compared to Dillingham where gas is $4.62 per gallon but probably not for long I'm thinking.

Another dream scape

Last night I dreamt of Tom Hanks. No idea why of course. He was part of a black choir with a section of fiddle players. He played the fiddle. Apparently there was some sort of deep cover operation going on because he was close to being betrayed by a higher officer who kept calling him "Skips" within hearing of other people and this was a giveaway that he was not who he was portraying. At one point I saw the higher officer peddling shoeware with special soles out a window to some military types. Looked like dog robbing to me but whadda I know? I would look this up on the dream site but I don't think I could narrow down the symbols; celebrity? Black choir? betrayal? shoes? nicknames? Oh well, as I have often said, I am easily amused. Today is Saturday must do wash. Later.