Smells Like Progress

Gainesville

Whoa, more great garden pictures-- thanks, Sandy! You have no idea how happy it makes me to see them. Good luck with all the growing crops, and of course, with the new roof. I chuckled to think of you eavesdropping on the Mexican roofers-- too bad they were tipped off!

And how wonderful to sell your car just like that, Mom. All it took was having it driven a certain distance outside town, and bingo! You suddenly have a whole lot more space, and a rather large piece of clutter is gone. And you even got some cash for it! When I last unloaded a car (my Fiesta), I had to pay to have it hauled away and scrapped. I'd say you did better.

I do have the 101 Q&D Book, though I rarely think to look there. Tonight I sliced up a piece of pork tenderloin that had been in the freezer long enough and made Leanne's Pork Diane-- very easy, and very good. It was too late and too hot to think about Baga Fries, and I had a fennel bulb left over from when I shaved a very small bit of it for the radish-fennel salad last weekend. I looked at a few recipes on the net for braising it , and adapted one, adding Sandy's technique with carrots-- boiling off the liquid at the last-- it included some white wine. Swirled in more butter at the end. No time either for the scheduled Four Bean Salad, so I just took some the greenies from last night and put some parmesan ranch dressing over some of them. Quite a feast, as it turned out.

The kitchen is clean. Bill's big whites are folded and put away. There are no new bills needing payment. And best of all-- tomorrow is Thursday!

I awoke this morning hearing Bill speaking rather strongly over the phone to the people responsible for the elevator. Apparently it did some good. Our brand new state of the art elevator already needed an "upgrade". The elevators were again servicable, people continued to move, book moves are being pushed up, and (knock knock) there was no news of fresh disasters as of late this evening. This smells like progress. We keep our fingers crossed.

We heard today that our Big Black Box is stuck in Sony parts limbo, and they are now offering to replace the whole unit. We say yes. After a month without the vid system, there are things we miss-- like being able to watch and hear a DVD on a decent sized screen, while being able to walk around... and being able to have sports in the kitchen while I cook. A DVD arrived in the mail this week from Norman-- a BBC movie on Beethoven's Eroica -- I'm dying to see it, but doing so on the laptop is too daunting. I wonder if this paragraph makes any sense at all. Probably not. I'll check in the morning.

Meanwhile, time to surrender to the arms of Morpheus.