April 12, 2008
I finally got a picture of those wild turkeys:
This is all the closer I could get to them. The INSTANT my hand TOUCHED the doorknob, the turkeys all flew down into the woods. They look kind of like peahens, don’t they?
I’ve also been mushrooming. Morels are the only ones I know by sight, so they’re the only ones I gather. This has been a good year for them.
I usually just braise them in butter but, if I don’t get many, I flour them and fry them in oil. It’s all good!
March 26, 2008
It’s been a strange spring–snow in the sunshine, rain and sleet mixed, thunder during a snowstorm. On Easter, we had blizzard conditions mixed with bright sunshine. Something for everyone, I guess.
I’m a little sad, since I lost a couple of friends I’d been out of touch with for a while. It made me think of other friends I’ve lost contact with. You would think that losing someone you hadn’t seen for a while wouldn’t matter much, but it’s like all the missed years hit you all at once–all the moments and laughs and trials you didn’t get to share.
Ah, well, nothing to be done about some of it, but it makes me treasure all the more the friends I DO keep up with.
The vernal equinox has passed and the days are getting longer. Can fresh asparagus and wild mushrooms be far behind?
March 20, 2008
I looked out the front window and there was a flock of about a dozen wild turkeys pecking around in the front yard. In case you’ve never seen wild turkeys, they look about as much like domestic turkeys as Johnny Depp looks like John Candy. Wild turkeys look like Amish peacocks. They must have heard me squeal because they took off into the trees. Wild turkeys are very wily and skittish and they take off like bats out of hell. Never mind the occasional glimpse of Bambi–it’s seeing these guys every so often that makes living here a Wild Kingdom treat. I would post a picture, but the rascals flew away before I could snap them.
March 10, 2008
Long time, no post. That’s because after I successfully installed and configured Linux Mandriva 2008 for myself and my husband, and after I took the case to the house of a friend with high speed internet so I could download all the updates and bug fixes, I… I… well, I was uninstalling programs we don’t use and I… I nuked a bunch of the files that make the OS run. I even nuked something that makes it possible to reinstall important programs. So there was nothing to do but to reinstall and take the case over to the friend’s again and download the updates and fixes…again. What a maroon.
And did I learn anything? Probably not. My next busy-bee project is to figure out how to include a Windows drive in the configuration. I may be making another trip to my friend’s yet. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
In other “news”, we’re snowed in AGAIN. No freezing rain this time, but over 12 inches of snow. The roads are in good shape, even our back country roads, but our driveway is 1000 feet of snow-packed gravel. Church was canceled, so here I am writing on my blog while the laundry dries. Ah, life is a constant whirl of incident and excitement.
February 26, 2008
I just read somebody else’s blog
http://kathleenhills.wordpress.com/
so I had to be all monkey-see/monkey-do and post to my own.
I’m all full of myself because I bought the 2008 Linux Power-Pack and installed it myself. Well, sort of myself–I had a couple of other more experienced Linux users to call on for help. But MOSTLY I did it myself. Honest. So now I feel like a steely-eyed missile man, deserving of the Pocket Protector of Honor.
We’re finally thawing out from under our latest onslaught of freezing rain. My mother’s biggest holly bush bit the dust, snapped at the trunk under the weight of the ice on its leaves. It’s already sprouting out from the stump, though, so she may have her bush back by next winter. A tree went over, leaning at a 45 degree angle across the driveway, so that was exciting, but my husband cut it down. There goes my last cheap thrill.
February 19, 2008
No, I don’t have my printer working right. I’m celebrating my book video. I made it all my own little self. It’s lame, I know–no sound, no film footage, no special effects, but I did it.
Sword and Sorceress book trailer
My story is on page 192. <grin>
February 13, 2008
I’ve been wrestling with installing a printer, and the printer has won. I’m running Linux Mandriva 2006 and my old printer died, so I bought a new all-in-one. I researched it first, and learned that it’s compatible and well-supported by hp and the Linux community. Downloaded the driver. Downloaded the dependency packages, all of which took about eight hours over my dial-up connection. And the installation failed.
So now I’ve bought Linux Mandriva 2008 and hope that the driver for my printer is in there. Please don’t tell me that nobody should run Linux unless they know what they’re doing–please don’t. If I only did things I know how to do, I never would do anything. At least this program comes with a manual. I only hope it doesn’t start out assuming I know things I don’t know. Linux for Dummies, that’s what I need.
Meanwhile, I installed a driver for some other printer, and my printer prints and copies, but it won’t scan. Two out of three is better than nothing, I suppose.
I also made a meatless loaf for supper and it was very good, except that I seem to have gotten a bit of walnut shell into it along with the walnuts, so it’s rather like eating real meatloaf complete with chips of bone. Ugh.
I’m not vegetarian, by the way, just prefer slabs to mince and bones I can see and remove before they make it into my mouth.
February 5, 2008
“What are these columns you keep talking about?” I hear no one cry. So I’ll tell you. I write a food history column every weekday for Worldwide Recipes, the Best Darned Recipezine in the Whole Darned Universe. I’m usually scrambling to keep up, because I’m usually getting sidetracked and wanting to play around in the information I find instead of just knocking out a couple hundred words and moving along. That’s the trouble with doing something you love to do–you want to spend a lot of time doing it.
January 31, 2008
One of the best foods ever invented is chicken and dumplings. We had some last night. Cooked down some chicken bones and gave the scraps to the happy happy dog, then mixed up about a cup of all-purpose flour, an egg and some milk, rolled it out, cut it into squares and put the squares into the boiling broth. Personally, I prefer fluffy dumplings, but I like the little noodle-like ones, too, like the ones I made last night. My husband’s family calls them “slicks”. They’re good with dried sage crumpled up in the dough, too, but I cooked fresh sage, onions and garlic into the broth. We had some left-overs but, when I got home from visiting my mother, our #3 daughter had stopped by and eaten all the slicks and most of the broth. Ah, well–I’ll just add some more chicken, some veggies and some thickened boullion and made a chicken pot pie. Happiness reigns!
No, I haven’t even started my Chronicles for next week….
January 29, 2008
I spent a couple of days with my writer-daughter and we both got a little work done. I don’t know what broke through her block, but she sat down saying she didn’t know what to do with a particular scene and got up with the scene finished.
I’m working on a comic mystery–I had finished about fifty pages, but it wasn’t feeling right. I decided to try changing it from third person to first person, and that’s bringing it to life for me. As I go through and change it, I’m opening up the scenes as well. It was going too fast, before, had no shape. I think it’s better now….
Tomorrow, I need to get started on my columns for next week. I think I know what I’m going to do them on; at least, two or three of the five. I love getting started early in the week. I enjoy poking around and following my curiosity. When I get started later in the week, I have to just shove something out–always something I’m interested in, but not so much exploring.
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