Remembering

I am reposting most of a previous year's post today, because it is still true and I can't say it better yet.

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The day started with an announcement on the radio about a small plane crashing into a World Trade Center Building.  I mentioned it in passing to my supervisor.  The next few reports made it seem worse.

Then I felt a THUMP under my feet at 9:37.  I didn't know that the Pentagon had been struck.  But I realized after that, that I had felt the strike. I happened to look at my watch.  Seared in memory.

My govt office had some Emergency Management functions, so there was a special TV in a conference room.  Most of us ended up in there.  I was out on the roof at the time the first Tower went down, so I didn't see it in real time.

I saw the 2nd Tower go down though.  Most thought it a replay of the 1st Tower, but I saw the difference and called attention to it.  We all stared in horror.

There are evil vicious cruel acts occurring all over the world on a daily basis.  Victims have their lives shattered every day.  No one is free of them.  I will not make guesses on "worst".

There are reasons given for all destructive killing acts.  Most of them are pathetically weak.  But some are more unsensible and evil than others.

I have a background in history.  Phenomenally and nearly innumerable horrible acts abound through the ages.  Pol Pot, Nazis, Colonialism, Inquisitions, Witch-Burnings, European Christian Crusades, Islamist invasions, Mongol and Hun attacks, Viking slaughters, and back on through the lost times of history.  No age is free of vicious and pointless deaths.

But I will remember 9-11 all my life with a line I read in the book 'Dune'.  "Never forgive, never forget".

But I should.  When I read about some cultural group angry about something that happened 500 years ago, I have to wonder about the "never forgetting" part.  There was the December 7th attack, but we think of Japan as an ally now.  As Germany is a democracy now, as is Italy.  Forgiveness is possible.

There may be a day when I will forgive the Islamists for the 9-11 attack.

But today is not that day.  

A Food Interlude

I've been talking about losses, finances, and projects too much lately.  There is also food...

The medical charts I see say I should weigh 153 pounds.  I weighed 162 this morning, but its hard to get rid of those last pounds.  I don't worry about that TOO much.  The insurance charts say people about my weight over the medical charts live longer.  Living longer seems good.

But let's talk food here.  And not lots of it, but GOOD food!  And I don't mean really fancy food either.  I mean just good basic food.  I like fresh food I prepare myself.  I don't mean that I grow and grind the wheat for the bread for my sandwiches or anything like that.  But I do grow some food myself and shop mostly through the produce department of the local Safeway and bake some great bread (with my bread machine and lots of herbs and spices).  I buy my meat at a local butcher and liquor shop (it's an interesting place).

My garden wasn't much this year, as I am tearing it up to rebuild it.  But I did manage to grow bicolor corn, russian fingerling potatoes, and leeks in containers, and cukes and italian flat beans around cages in the old asparagus bed.

So here's what happened yesterday...

I cooked 3 chicken thighs (bone in for additional flavor) in the oven, and the thighs were coated in my home-mixed "shake and bake" .  I like thighs because they have more flavor and you can't really overcook them (anything from 175 to 190 is "just fine").  I had a small ear of corn-on-the-cob from my garden.  I won't get many, but they sure are sweet straight from the cornstalk.  I picked a dozen flat italian beans and simmered them 4 minutes dropping in the ear of corn after 1 minute.  I made a salad of a home-grown heirloom Aunt Gertie's Gold tomato, a home-grown 4" (and therefore seedless) cucumber, and a slice of a vidalia onion (purchased) and minced, with home-made italian dressing.  And I had a dessert of cut-up fresh peach, strawberry, green grapes, cantelope, a navel orange, and a plum.  With 2 glasses of old vine zinfandel...

And with a dark chocolate and a white chocolate Lindor truffle and a Dove caramel...

While watching my local Washington Nationals baseball team beat our closest rivals again, (sorry to all you Atlanta Braves fans) on TV and Marley AND Iza on my lap and feet... Wearing fleece-lined leather slippers...

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get better than that.

Unclutterring

With the insulation contractor requiring me to move stuff away from all the basement walls, I had to realize how badly clutterred the entire basement had become.  It happens so gradually!

So another project is to get rid of stuff I haven't used in 10 years. 

First, that used dining table set I bought from Salvation Army when I retired,  planning to refinish it.  I'm never going to that!  I'm giving it back to them.  And as long as I was planning THAT. I decided to find everything else I could part with.  Stacking chairs I bought 20 years ago when I thought I would be throwing deck parties, wine bottle holders and kitchen stuff I never used, etc.  I'm sure there is more if I look around.

But mostly, that table and those chairs take up a lot of space in the basement and I have enough stuff down there that belongs there as it is.

There is stuff in the boxes that were in the attic that I had to haul down.  Most were Christmas decorations, and I haven't decorated a Christmas tree in 10 years.  I don't need them.  Most of those  can go.  I think I will keep the most unusual or the ornaments and little LED outside lights, I might use them again.

Some stuff from the attic I WILL keep.  I discovered several boxes of HO train stuff from my teen years that I thought were long gone.  I think I will set them up on the living room floor to see what I have.

But unclutterring is the rule of the day.

Getting Back To Normal

Sometimes, when too many things aren't working, you have to pull back and simplify for a while.  And you never know how long it's going to take.

Too many things on the To Do List can get overwhelming. So, you clear the board, make a new list , drop a few things off that can be delayed and start at one thing at a time.  The things that are driving you crazy aren't always the biggest problems.  In fact, sometimes the best thing to do when you get overwhelmed is start at the smallest.

Solving SOMETHING is always good...

So I tackled the messy TV/VHS/DVD problem that was (in the long term of life) a minor problem but one that was becoming obsessive.

PROBLEM:  Couldn't tape old VHS tapes to DVDs.  CAUSE:  Too much equipment and too many connections.  SOLUTION:  Isolate equipment, simplify...

After trying (unsuccessfully) to do things halfway, I disconnected everything.  Set up the old VHS player and the old DVD recorder on top of the stereo cabinet.  Purpose, to make those work with the HDTV separate from all the other equipment (cable box, new DVD/BluRay player, etc).

First thing was to see if any DVD I copied from VHS tape would play.  Most wouldn't.  But one DID, so I knew it could work.  Given that, it was just a matter of figuring out cabling and what had worked once.  Which was maddening because the connections interfere with each other.

It took various attempts over 2 days, and even more simplification.  I FINALLY figured out to get a connection straight from the DVD recorder/player to the HDTV.  I tried all sorts of simple connections, like the 3 red/yellow/white cables.  And the VHS player has only one "audio out".  Well, I had this cable with one plug at one end and 2 plugs at the other, and that sure seemed to match the one VHS audio out and the 2 DVD audio in.  Nope...

I tried everything...  Some tapes even recorded for a few minutes and stopped. But there was still that one VHS Tape-to-DVD that worked...  And the HDTV offers sources of TV, HDMI1, HDMI2, HDMI3, HDNI4, AV, Component, RVU, and Screen Mirroring.  Half the things I tried just went blank on copying or showing on the HDTV, and almost half the others went blank on the copying WHILE showing up on the TV.  So I had to keep thinking.

But only "almost half the connections didn't work, not all"...  I didn't find the one that worked easily, and it's almost embarrassing.  I found an HDMI connection on the back of the DVD player/Recorder.  I stuck it from there to the HDMI3 plug on the HDTV and I got a connection working from the DVD player to the TV not involving the cable box! 

I reasoned from there that if the DVD would play a pre-recorded DVD to the TV, and if I could play a VHS tape through that to the TV, the DVD player/recorder HAD to record a VHS tape onto the DVD player recorder if I could see it on the HDTV!

It did.

I've been recording old VHS tapes that I couldn't find new DVDs to purchase (the viewing quality would be much better).  But there are some VHS tapes I have that simply aren't available for DVD purchase.  I'm copying those first.

And even better, I can copy some old VHS tapes, VHS player to isolated DVD reorder WHILE watching regular HDTV by choosing the source function on the remote.  By which I mean, if the DVD recorder is copying an VHS tape directly, the HDTV doesn't CARE because there is no direct connection between the regular cable source (HDMI1) and the DVD connection (HDMI3).

And as I truly have THAT figured out successfully, I can get on to the other damnable problem about evaluating the insulation work proposal, building the garden enclosure, etc.

Sometimes there are just too many problems to solve, and I get too frustrated solving none of them. Now I think I'm down to the others that are more easily solvable and can move forward.

Sorry I got all weirded out there for a couple weeks.  I had a few too many things to solve at the same time.  You live alone and sometimes that means you don't have experience at juggling several problems at once.  And no one to help you see the obvious things you are overlooking.

And I solved the home insulation work order Saturday.  I had the planner come visit and we went through it line by line.  She had to admit that several lines of costs and proposed work were contradictory.  They didn't need to both blow in insulation into basement wall panels from above the panelling AND drill 3" holes in the panel to do the same. And they now understand that there WILL BE plywood flooring on the joists along the center length of the attic for storage.

She brought up the SMECO website (and I confirmed it on my own desktop).  The contractor IS a partner in the rebate program, and the work IS included as part of SMECO's energy-saving program, and they have a high rating on Angieslist.

Seriously, I was concerned because they cold-called me originally with promises of partnership with SMECO and rebate programs.  Essentially, that's no different from someone knocking on your fdoor promising to resurface your driveway cheap.

OK...

They only wanted a 10% down payment (reassuring because a scammer would have gone for 25-50% I think). 

The work was completed Thursday, to my general satisfaction but I will need to see several billing cyclings of bills to see if all this makes any difference.  Hoping for good news on the bill 3 months from now.

The final contractor visit was Saturday.  A person came to conduct a final "negative air pressure test".  They seal the open front door and use a large exhaust fan to measure how much the air pressure inside drops in the air-conditioned part of the house.  They guarantee a 20% reduction (minimum to get a $2,000 rebate from my electric company), and try for 25-30%.

The guy did the initial test and was disturbed that it hadn't reached 20%.  So he searched the basement and found a place where the garage was open to the basement and sealed that (no charge).  He redid the test and was still baffled at failing the 20% guarantee.

Then he laughed his ass off.  He was using the wrong initial test measurement before any work was done!  He was transposing the digits, going from (flawed) memory.  And I had the original data and double-checked his claim AND did the reduction calculation myself.

The insulation and sealing work had achieved a 41% reduction in air leakage!  That doesn't mean my electric bill will go down 41%, there is other electrical usage in the house.  But it does mean that this improvement will pay for itself in 3-4 years and I plan to stay here longer than that!

Wine Cork Removers

I like wine with dinner.  Always have.  Not gret wine; I can't drink anything that costs more than dinner.  But this is about opening wine bottles...

Years ago, I started with a standard lever corkscrew.  It worked, sort of.

Than I got interested in cork-pulling gadgets.  I have a shelf full of them. 

For 10 years, the best one I had was a twist-top device that really worked.  But the foil cutter drove me crazy!  It often had to use a dedicated serrated Ginzu Knife, LOL!

So when I came across a Houdini cork-puller, I gave it a shot.  Its tricky, but I got the method right lately.  The foil cutter is SUPERB!  It never fails after just one turn.  But as a cork-puller and cork remover (from the device), it takes some technique.

Which is to say honestly "it works", but it takes some practice.  I'm searching for an analogy here...

One is using a bait-casting reel.  It takes a bit of practice to throw the bait, get some distance AND not have it unwind in your hand after the bait reaches the water.  Another analogy is flipping pancakes.  Or folding omelets.  Just saying there is some technique involved.

The Houdini cork remover does the cork-removal just fine.  You use the foil cutter, remove the foil, set the Houdini on the cork, and turn the lever.  The corkscrew goes right into the cork beautifully!  With some practice, you turn the lever the opposite direction and the cork comes right out.  Only took 10 bottles to get that right.

Then you have to get the cork off the Houdini.  That drove me nuts for weeks.  And the instructions say to NEVER remove the cork from the device manually.  That part still baffles me.  Why does the device CARE how I remove the cork from it?  Does it feel insulted?  Does it report improper cork removal to the manufacturer? 

Well, no.  But I'm getting better at it.  Its some trick of gripping the removed cork in the winged clamps.  I can get it off easily 8 of 10 times now.  Yes, I kept track... I do things like that.

The more I use it, the better I get.

So, if you see one of those devices, they DO work.  You just have to keep practicing on a few bottles.

Whil I will keep using it (if only to get proficient and parties), the real way to go is the outstanding Houdini foil cutter, and the  previous screw-down cork-puller.  But that would mean all I bought was a GREAT foil cutter. 

Frustration

I have become too stupid to do routine things on my computer.  I'm not saying that easily or as a joke.  I have fallen behind the learning curve, and I can't see a way to catch up trying to figure it out on my own..

Yesterday, I wanted to download a youtube video.  I hadn't tried to do it before, but I expected it wouldn't be very difficult.

I couldn't do it.  I don't mean I looked at the process and thought it might be hard and decided not to.  I spent 5 FUCKING HOURS trying to do it and I couldn't!  I did research, I found instructions.   I spent an hour finding the places I should go to to download a video.  I finally found I should "just" open my "activity monitor" (I have a Mac).   Then go to "resources or whatever you need"
 and adjust the code.

Good lord, I learned to program in Basic, Fortran, and Cobol, and I've been using computers since 1980.  And I haven't the slightest idea what "they" are talking about.  I feel like I'm a forager from a 3rd world country be exposed to a DVD recorder for the first time.

And speaking of THAT, apparently, I can't even copy a VHS tape to a DVD either.  I THOUGHT I could, but the DVD copies played fine once and then not afterwards.  I feel like electronics are causing me to lose my mind, and quite frankly, at 64, I'm too young to be losing my mind. 

I can surrender to the VHS tape-copying fiasco and just buy DVDs of them.  Not to say this wrong, but buying a dozen of those is a nominal expense for me.  It's the inability to do these things that is driving me nuts!

I can't stand not being able to DO mildly complicated things!  It's a sign of old age encroaching on my life, and I am fighting that tooth, claw and neuron.  It's not in me to just give up.

I'm going to separate all my TV and stereo equipment and reconnect it from scratch (and eliminate that rat's nest of loose wires.  I'm going to take the DVD recorder and VHS tape player and set them up apart from all other equipment. to try to get clean replayable DVD copies that play repeatedly.  I'm going to return to Windows computers for the simplicity. 

And I'm going to investigate Adult Education computer classes available locally.  I may have gotten "computer-stupid", but I'm not going down easily! 

And, yes, I'm pissed.  At myself...

Mark

Those Late-Planted Flowers

I mentioned that I planted some impatiens and coleus under the deck in the framed bed I recently constructed.  I was unsure if they would grow.  They've been sitting in those little 2"x2"x2" plastic 6-packs since I planted the seeds in February.  Seedlings can become permanently stunted when kept in small spaces. 

But it was either toss them out or plant them.  And since I built the bed for transplanting hostas to next Spring, there was no harm in trying the cel-pack seedlings.

I'm pleased to say that they have already shown some growth.  Four of the impatiens have already opened flowers, and the coleus leaves are growing larger and I see new leaf buds along the stems.  So maybe they will do their planty business and grow enough until the first frost (about late October here).  They may look pretty good by the end of the season, which should encourage me to start seeds of them again next February and plant them out sooner than August, LOL!

It probably sounds odd, but I feel an obligation to the plants I start from seeds.  Like, I started them, so I owe them their full season of existence.  I don't mean I think I am their plantish diety (though one could argue I have somewhat deitish control over them), but I feel vaguely guilty when I start plants and then never plant them.  And there are always some.  I usually start more plants from seed that I actually set in the ground. 

There is always less space for them than I thought, most die while outside in flats and it doesn't seem worth planting the 3 of 6 survivors, I forget to water them inside once too often, I get too busy to plant them when I should, etc.  Always something...

I DID It!

I actually did it.  I wired the old VCR player into the DVD-Recorder AND got it to show on the TV!

I know it may not sound like much, but it took 2 days and I wasted (maybe) a recordable DVD figuring out how.  And it only took 3 trips to Best Buy (for cables) and a few hours studying the DVD-Recorder manual.

And to be honest, I wasn't sure it was recording right (and it wasn't at first).

See, I tried the DVD recording function and the "clock" stayed on 00:14 with a blinking red light.  That didn't seem good!  So after 15 minutes, I decided to waste the Recordable DVD to check and see if it was recording.  It was, but it was in 3 segments.  Well, those were when I kept hitting the "record" button.  But after 2 days of trying different cable hookups and a few hours of finding the right replay setting (not HDMI1, not HDMI2, not TV...  Component1).

But I found the pattern for my particular equipment!  I'm recording Heavy Metal right now.  I have about 3 dozen worthwhile tapes to record.  Well, yeah, I could buy them on DVD from Amazon, but that's not the point.

I figured something out that was a challenge.

I've read (an seen in science shows on TV) that the best way to not grow mentally old is to take on mental challenges and learn new things.  Well, I sure got a month's worth of new learning the past 2 days, LOL!

Now all I have to do is straighten out all the cables!

I have lots of VHS tapes to record to DVD.  So it means I'm not going to be watching my live TV for a few days, LOL!  Bewt I play a LOT of Scrabbles and Risk for a few days...

A Little Gardening Interlude

While Marley's Birthday Party was going on Saturday, and to watch over the cats playing in the fenced back yard, I took advantage of the time to pull weeds from a section of the flowerbed where the old perennials had about died out (Veronica and Dianthus, both of which have always just limped along here).

I pulled the tops of all the weeds carefully, looking for existing good plants,

 but there weren't any.  Then I used a spade to shove along about an inch below ground, cutting the roots.  Then I dug 6 inches deep and turned the soil over to get at the deeper roots.

That left clumps of hard (but good) soil with some weed roots.  So I crushed all the clumps by hand (great hand exercise) and pulled out all the roots I could find.

I had some leftover sun-loving plants from seeds in small 6-cel flats.  They weren't in good condition, but they weren't dead either, so I planted them in the cleared spot.  Eight Butterfly Weeds (Asclepias, perennial), and if they survive, that will be fine because I planted them near other perennials (Torch Lily and Autumn Joy Sedum).  Next to those, I planted 6 surviving Basil.  Then I found that there were 10 Black Eye Susan Vine barely growing, so I stuck them in the ground too.  Well, why not.  Give them a chance, you know?

The Butterfly Weed look mostly dead, but even the worst had some small leaf buds and the roots were healthy.

All these Basil have to do is produce some leaves before they die at the first frost (late October, usually).

The Black-Eyed Susan vines will want something to climb, but there is time to see if they grow much.

 At least it isn't 6'x4' of grassy weeds.

Baseball

I've never been one to sit and watch sports on TV.  When I was younger and more active, I would always rather play than watch, and now that my joints creak a bit, I generally neither play nor watch.  The local professional teams have always had a habit of folding when the going got tough, which is frustrating to watch.

But the Washington Nationals baseball team has been doing really well this year and they have a tendency to WIN those tough close games at the end, so I've gotten a bit more into a watching habit.  It also helps that they play most of their games at night just as I'm sitting down to dinner (when I'm going to watch "some" TV anyway).

They've won 7 games in a row, something like the last 6 of 7 games have been won by 1 run late in the game, and the last 3 games were "walk-offs" (which I think means that, as the home team, they score the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning and don't even have to complete the inning).  So they just "walk off" the field in the middle of the last inning.

And their fielding is a delight to watch.  They make plays I never even heard of a decade ago.  Say there are runners on 1st and 2nd base.  The batter hits a ball to the 1st baseman.  Traditionally, the 1st baseman would just run to 1st base with the ball and force 1 out there while the runners advanced.  But no, the 1st baseman throws to 3rd, who throws back to first and its a double play!  I even saw a double play from a ball that went into the outfield!

I'm amazed!  And a fan who is becoming more knowledgeable with each game I watch.

Attic Work

I'm been negotiating with an insulation company for several weeks.  It's not that I'm trying to drag things out or trying to get them down a dollar at a time, but each quote they send has either some errors or descriptions of work that need some further explanation.

Well, for example, I have part of the center of the attic covered with plywood flooring.  The complany is focussed on the insulation gains, so they proposed to remove the flooring.  They just want to fill the entire attic 2' deep in blown-in insulation.  And they wanted $100s of dollars just to remove the plywood.  So I replied that I would remove the plywood myself and that if I decided to replace it after they were gone, that was none of their concern. 

There were also some questions about access to the basement framed paneling.  The cavities between the cinderblock wall foundation and the paneling covering the 2"x4" framing need blown-in insulation.  They wanted to do that for about $1,900 "along the entire perimeter of the basement".  The paneling is only along 1/3 of the basement.  That sort of thing...

And part of their cost was moving the many many boxes I've saved.  The boxes are just in the way of their work (and I understand that).  There was about $500 involved in that work. 

Well, I've saved boxes all my life.  It's practical.  As I used to move from apartment to apartment when I was younger, it was really useful to save the packing boxes for all the various stereo and minor appliances.  What better packing for stereo equipment is there than the original boxes and styrofoam shapes?  And good sturdy boxes are always useful for packing "stuff"!  I mean, I always expected to move "someday".

But I've decided that I'm not going to move anytime soon, and when that day does come, I can afford to just buy matching moving boxes.  So I didn't need the ones I had (except for a few recent product boxes I'll keep).  So I started tossing attic boxes down the stairway. 

 It was enlightening!  I had a box for the Commodore 128 I brought with me here 28 years ago.  I cracked up seeing it.  That computer is SO long-gone!  Seriously, for those of you who have never heard of it, it was 128K memory.  But you COULD actually do things on it.  I wrote letters, learned spreadsheets, and played some rather interesting games on it.  The best part was that the programs for the Commodore games were so simple, you could buy codebreaker programs to copy them for friends (and if you learned Fortran and Basic, you could even improve them.  But I digress...

So I had all these boxes down the stairs (and more remaining in the attic.  I spent an hour pulling the styrofoam and bubble wrap out of the boxes.  The cardboard boxes are recyclable, the styrofoam (generically, polystyrene) is not.  So my game for the day was to fit the small boxes into the middle-sized boxes, and those into the larger boxes.  Then fitting them into the Highlander SUV.  Packing is a fun game.

I needed 2 trips to the recycling center Friday to get rid of most of the boxes, and one trip bringing all the styrofoam to the associated landfill.  And I really tried to find a place to recycle the styrofoam.  The nearest place was 100 miles away.  Apparently, styrofoam is dirt-cheap to make, buly to transport, and to energy-expensive to bother to melt down for reuse locally unless you live next to a styrofoam-producer.  Sad but true.

Unfortunately, I had to make the styrofoam disposal trip twice.  The landfill closes at 5PM.  I left on a 15 minute drive there at 4 PM Friday.  But there was an accident right at the intersection leading to the landfill.  I sat in traffic for 45 minutes and only got to the landfill 5 minutes too late.

I made a second trip Saturday and got rid of all of it. (and some odd old items, and a few boxes full of styrofoam "peanuts").


But it was worth it.  Only 6 boxes left in the attic (all old Christmas decorations I insist on saving).  I'll just bring them downstairs temporarily for the insulation work.

At least it was some productive work!