Yet another very colorful dream...

I woke up completely bemused this morning from a fairly amusing and colorful dream.

It was one of those "I don't know where we are but it looks familiar dreams".  We, by we, the whole family all the brothers and sisters and some friends were at a Casino.  The Casino was huge,  we all scattered out.   I was stopped by a group asking directions to the Family Room.   Uh, okay, lets take a look.  Finally found them a nice hotel lobby looking place and left them there.   I wondered around some more.  I headed for the registration desk to try hook up with anyone.   No one there, then I looked further along where it turned into cashiers desks and saw the back of Mom's head.  As I approached her she turned about and her arms were full of two great big casino chip boxes.  Wow, she had won big time.  Then we walked to some jackpot machines, by then one of the brothers had caught up with me.  We watched her play a bit and she kept hitting jackpots.  One was for 138,000 dollars.  Time to go.

So I consulted the dream interpretation web site:

To dream that you are in a casino signifies the risk-taker within you. If you are a reserved or passive person, then the dream suggests that you should take a chance. If you are not, then it implies that you need to make a more informed decision instead of relying on fate.

To see your mother in your dream represents the nurturing aspect of your own character. Mothers offer shelter, comfort, life, guidance and protection.

Hmph, how vague.  Should have looked up "cash".

Idle Googling on my day off...

We have books, not quite as many is above, however, the living room has become a quasi-library, there are books in the upstairs hallway, there books in the dining room,and there are several book shelves of my "keeper" books in the bedroom.

 

 

We have cats, not quite as charming as above, Jubilee is elderly and lives in the basement close to the running dryer. The other three would love the following.

 



 

Naturally there should be cat shelving, they could dust the books as they tread daintily amongst the literature.  Not sure how to avoid the tendency to scratch on wood, perhaps some discretely positioned carpeting, eh?

Christmas dinner review:

I had decided to skip baking the all night ham until it fell off the bone this year and decided on steak. Not only steak but Gorgonzola steak.  Purchased two nicely marbled steaks cut off the fat.

Purchased some Gorgonzola cheese and a pint of cream.

Purchased Brussels sprouts, I already had some divine Balsamic vinegar. 

Also cooked some fresh packaged three cheese tortellini and Oseago sauce.  That worked very well.  Husband had seconds.

The steaks were cooked twelve minutes for well done and six minutes for medium.  Well done should have stretched to another five minutes I am afraid. 

The Brussels sprouts baked in the oven a bit too long and were not gorgeous green but more of a steak like appearance but with the Balsamic they were very tasty.

The Gorgonzola sauce was a bit salty, I should have used unsalted butter but it was the right consistency.  Meh.

Dessert chocolate chip cookie and piece of pumpkin pie left over from Thanksgiving.

I am thankful I got the day off,  I had scheduled myself to in because I knew that we had an OB admitted for an induction and visualized doing a birth certificate.  I called med/surg about 8 a.m. was informed that she had not delivered yet.  Ok, I will probably do one tomorrow then. Bye Bye

Called Charles and wished them Merry Christmas, they were having leg-o-lamb.  Yummy!

Merry Christmas everyone! 
 

Plates

Mom went through a period in the late 80's or and she mentioned that she had finally dug out her plates and hung them and asked each of us what we had done with our plates.

Seattle Sister donated the Sound of Music series to a Gay Pride fundraiser and brought in 300 bucks.

My set was oriental, perhaps Japanese.  I will have to Google the name of the series. I think the plates are in the attic and would look good in my alleged used book store (I am leaning towards calling it Bookity Books and I don't care if someone else has a bookstore named that already).

I do not remember the themes and disposition of their plates for the other siblings; Colorado sister? Oregon brother?  Emmett Brother?  Wyoming Brother?  Were some cowboys and construction equipment themes involved?

Anyhow I had face booked Emmett sister that I had always associated her with "The Shiner" as above.  Then I started Googling because senior moments have set in and I could not remember Norman Rockwell's name, so I googled American Illustrators and about four pages in there he was.  I then googled Norman Rockwell's girl with black eye, nuthin'.  I then googled Normal Rockwell names of pictures...Ta Dah!  There is was..The Shiner.

The plate will be parcel posting its way to Monroe street. Hope it gets there in ONE piece.

Dooms Day

Um, I rather prefer my own "long count" on the dooms day calendar which consists of two arguments; one that the universe will keep expanding until it goes entirely dark, or two that the universe will expand until it reaches the point where it will start collapsing.  Either view will not have a large impact on Spaceship Earth.

In addition there are several billion human dooms day calendars counting down as we speak.  Somewhere millions will meet their doom TODAY through unfortunate or entirely natural means including crimes.  The dooms day preppers can relax and still obsess about beefing up their security and
firearms/food/water/livestock/toilet paper preps in case of (Insert your disaster of choice).  Now it is only sensible to be somewhat prepared for power outages and huge weather related occurrences. Do stock up on bottled water, at minimum a three day food supply, alternate heat source (fireplace neatly rolled logs of old bills) and keep the car in repair in case the roads are NOT impassable and you know you can drive to the local pizza parlor and sit basking in  the relative warmth of their ovens.  See?  Not so bad.

Was reading a few blogs about the Mayans, fascinating people who really liked numbers and astronomy.   The NatGeo has a snippet
showing a discovery of additional numbers that calculate some more and imply further dates.   Keep studying people.

I am sure someone will come up with something.

...And the winner of the wreath decorating contest is...

The folks working in the Emergency Room whipped this together and took first prize.  The little daisy looking flowers are actually constructed from various kinds and colors of vial tops and covers for needles.  Very clever.

There was also a wreath hung near admitting that was designed by a hunter.  The wreath is wrapped in Camo and Hunter Orange ribbon that had been fashioned into a nice large ribbon on top.

There was a mighty stag on one side of the wreath and there was a GI Joe type hunter on the other side.

There were fuzzy pipe cleaners in camo colors bent into candy canes and sprinkled liberally ( never use the word liberal in the same sentence as "rifle") were empty brass casings from a largish caliber rifle.

Well made but a little creepy.

Christmas Letter...sort of...

This is a picture of our department's Holiday Wreath that came in FOURTH place.  Well.  Thought we were being clever by making ourselves are part of the ornaments.  Okay, medium to clever idea, execution....meh.

Now on to the rest of the year in summary:

I seem to have blogged approximately 50 or so entries mostly consisting of recipes old and new; Tamale pie, various kinds of dressings, one Turkey.  Ate out at our favorite Italian place a couple of time simply for the New York Steak with Gorgonzola sauce.

I posted lots of pictures of the hospital build.  Grand opening was in April and the move was killer.  Personnel wise our then manager left in February as well as another associate who should never work for a living unless the fellow associates understand her extreme devotion to time off.  Replacements were two ladies from a temp agency and one transcriptionist I tracked down when everyone went on vacation and I was the only pumpkin on the vine obviously doing only priority stuff for an entire endless week. Ultimately one of the temp ladies moved to Bend and we were able to finally offer probational to permanent status to two of hour associates and part time clerical work to our long time guy who schleps stuff from hospital to various clinics.  (My memory is going to Heck in a Hand basket - I find myself using substitute phrases to describe things such as expediter...no that's not the right word..oh well it will come to me.)

We haven't traveled much unless it is routine shopping in Coos Bay mostly due to gas prices.  Gas finally settled into the $3.25 per gallon range a couple of weeks ago.  I did take one mini vacation in that I spent the weekend in Roseburg with a friend and we went shopping at the mall, the cheapie mall and Costo.  That was fun.
We down the freeway to spend a couple hours at the Casino and for once I left TWENTY CENTS to the good. 

My book collection grows.  I am at 3000 books and counting.  Carla drove down to bring me Mom's quilt that Grandma Lattimer pieced for her for her birthday 09-07-26, I had ordered a special acid proof box and and acid free paper to preserve the textiles and it will wait to be owned by a descent who loves quilts.   Carla also brought several boxes of beautiful books that mostly sit on the old school bench that Mom kept her African Violets on for years.

This summer was a financial adventure..sort of.  Husband insisted that we get the mortgage refinanced from 7% to 3. what ever.  I agreed somewhat reluctantly because I felt that if the fiscal cliff resulted in the loss of the deduction for mortgage interest we were pretty much doomed.   So away we went to visit the bank and go through the application process, signed tons of paper work and waited for the assessor to come inspect and make recommendations. And the bank lady calculated we would have a mortgage about 92K at 3. sumpin sumpin.  Depressing.

In the mean time we had contacted a contractor to come fix the sun room and paint the house.  Um, I had withdrawn an amount from savings that very closely matched their quote for work and away we went.  Very nice crew, they demolished the rotten bits, hammered and sawed the replacement bits, painted the rest of the house in what turned out to be a BLINDING WHITE.  I made sandwiches for the crew every day they were there. I must say the Italian meatball subs were wonderful. 

While all of this was going on, we developed a leak in the plumbing.  It was not a fill the basement type leak but it was significant.  So several plumbers came out to assess and we wound up being without water for about a week, we actually stayed in a local no tell motel a couple of nights.  Running water is one of my favorite modern conveniences.    Plumbers replaced the interior major pipes and stacks and told us to flush very carefully and that they would send another crew with heavy equipment to dig up the outside the house connection to the sewer main in the street.  Really??  Yeah.  That took a couple more days with gigantic hole in lawn and street. 

THEN, we got up one morning and the hot water wasn't.  Great neither one of wanted to mess with changing elements on a ten year old water heater so we called the family plumber to come replace the thing.

Also I would get the occasional phone call from the bank wanting to know when were going to finish the repairs called for by the inspector person who had recommended that we do ANOTHER THIRTY THOUSAND dollars worth of work; windows, and so on. I told the nice lady how much we had spent so far and she gulped sympathetically and allowed that the bank could not finance that much the house didn't have that much equity or what ever magic financial calculation determines those kinds of decisions. Bye! Bye!

So I told the nice lady at the bank, thanks but no thanks, we cannot afford to refinance.  Yah! That means that we will either live here forever, sell it as is or will it to my descendants who will STILL have trouble selling a house built in 1929.  Oy.

We maxed out the plastic to pay the various bills for services rendered.  That stung. 

And one last build item...the gutters...a nice outfit came and replaced the current gutters and added gutters to the front porch for under a two hundred dollar bill.

Oh wait I am not quite finished.  My friend came to visit and I had to back out for her to follow me to work because it was dark and she is direction challenged.  I backed out right into my neighbors very large black truck and scraped and dented the back panel. Safeco stepped in to tune of 650 bucks and fixed it.   I am getting dangerous and spendy.

One last comment on Senior Moments.  Husband and I were shopping at Freddy's and he was trying to remember a specific product.

"What is the same of that stuff you told me your sister uses?"

"What stuff?"

"Oh that stuff you take in a capsule that regulates your bowels."

"Oh jeez I don't remember, maybe we should get some of that memory stuff, too."

A nearby shopper then muttered, "That doesn't work".

Giggle.

"Oh you mean probiotics!"

"Yeah, here's a bunch but they don't have it in capsules, like I want."

"Well you can always order on Drugstore.com"

"Yeah, lets go to lunch."


Merry Christmas every body!  I am truly thankful for the good stuff that happened this year.

Fruit cake

Before

After.

This years fruit cake consists of candied cherries green and red, candied pineapple, dried apples, dried cherries, raisins soaked in Balsamic vinegar, walnuts, cashews, eggs, flour, sugar and vanilla.
It turned out pretty nice. There is just enough batter to coat the fruits and nuts.   Time for a nap.

Prepping for the Holidays

While I have a small fascination watching "Prepper" for Armageddon, world financial catastrophe, a series of F-5 tornadoes, world wide pandemic, melting of the Iceland ice caps, nuclear strikes, oil shortages and terrorist attack via the American infrastructure, there really ought to be a show called "Holiday Preppers".  Oh, wait that was Martha Stewart.

Okay, feeling much better about that now.   I purchased eight smallish cans of sweetened condense milk, coaxed off the labels, inserted them in plastic sandwich bags and gently dunked them in a water bath (crock pot) for ten hours.  The sandwich bags are to preclude rusting and making nasty rust marks inside the crock pot.  This makes the most glorious Dulce De Leche, which can be opened, eaten with a spoon, glopped over ice cream, used as icing on a cake, go be creative it is delicious. I shall create some labels and present them as gifts to my associates at work.  Yes, associates is the politically correct term, just like Waltz-Mart.  Meh....

Next project perhaps later today, Fruit Cake. Not your traditional fruit cake but  free wheeling think outside the recipe version.  I have collected a variety of dried fruit, nuts, candied cherries and pineapple as well as some raisins that I have soaking in very ancient Balsamic Vinegar.  I have eschewed brandy this year. 

I will take a picture and post.  Be pleased I am NOT mailing them to ANYone I love and cherish.