E is for...

Expedition

Last week was Daughter's spring break. Rather than spend the week lazing about the house, or jetting off to a warm and exotic location we decided to take a trip north and visit Mom & Dad. This particular expedition requires a drive of 375 miles pretty much due north from Chicago. This journey is all about getting to the destination, as there's not a lot to look at on the road. There's Wisconsin:

Which consists of farmland, farmland, farmland, Milwaukee, farmland, farmland, farmland, Green Bay, farmland, farmland, farmland, Marinette.

Then there's the U.P.:

Which can be described as Menominee, woods, woods, woods, Escanaba, woods, woods, woods, Parent's house. Normally I bring a book on CD to listen to in the car, but I didn't get a chance to go to the library before we left, so I could either search for a decent radio station (which in the rural areas we drive through is difficult) or let Daughter listen to her portable DVD player without the headphones. I spent a week humming songs from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

No visit to my hometown is complete without visiting two local establishments. The first is a fast food restaurant that I worked at for 3 1/2 years.

They make THE best french fries that I have ever had. They do not, as some have asked, serve kangaroo meat. I don't know where the name came from, but I do know that there is a loosely related chain in the Rockford, Illinois area. My personal favorite meal is the steak and cheese-no onions-extra cheese, medium fries, medium drink. Daughter likes the kids meals because instead of a toy, kids get a free soft serve ice cream cone.

The second must-have food on a Marquette trip is a sub from Togo's.

All of the displaced yoopers that I know feel like they have to have a Togo while they're home. Opinions on what to have vary, but the majority of people go for the #16, unless they're in the mood for something hot, in which case the Torpedo is the way to go.

It only just dawned on me while taking the above photos that I apparently like foods best if the sign for the establishment has a picture of a goofy looking person holding the food in their left hand. I didn't take a picture of Big Boy, but I have to stop there as well, because my high school friend is a manager there, not necessarily because I have to have the food. But there again, goofy guy holding food up in left hand.

Mom told me that there was a new (to me) knitting shop in town, so one day Daughter and I went in to check out Knitter's Niche. Shockingly, I was not able to get out without spending a little money.

Some Tofutsies to make a pair of socks for Daughter.

Some Happy Feet for me.

And a skein of cormo wool from a UP farm, milled at a UP mill. After all, it would be bad form to visit the place, then not stimulate the local economy, right?

D is for ...

Delayed

At Christmas the gift I got from Husband was an envelope with a picture of my present in it. It hadn't actually come in yet, and was delayed until recently. I finally received it the other day and can now enjoy it.


It's a Kindle, which is an electronic book reader. It uses a wireless internet connection to download books from the Amazon store, or I can download books to my computer and then put them on the Kindle with a USB cable. It's a nifty little gadget, and Daughter is very taken with it. She is now doing her required 20 minutes of daily reading on it, and she usually ends up spending more like 45 minutes. The trick is going to be making sure that she doesn't figure out how to download things or we'll end up owing Amazon $5,000 in no time flat.

Also on the delayed pile are these socks.

These were made using the Yarn Harlot's basic sock recipe and one of my Sock Gang skeins. I received the wool 3-6 months ago, but I was delayed in making them up.

And last but not least, these socks are also delayed. I got the wool (Fleece Artist Nova Socks) from the Fibreholic when she came to visit last summer.

This is what the skein looked like:

This is what the ball looked like:

And this is what the socks look like:

Only they're actually darker. The sun (which has also been delayed) is finally shining in Chicagoland and now that it's warm enough to go outside to take pictures the sun is washing all of the color out. I now have a quandry. These are supposed to be for the woman who leads one of my study groups but I really like them a lot. Would it be wrong to hope that her feet are hideously misshapen so I have an excuse to not give them to her?

Golden Oldies

When I was a kid my parents gave me a subscription to National Geographic World magazine. I remember looking forward to receiving my issue each month, and hoping that it would be one of the ones with a poster in it. At one point my room was nearly wallpapered in posters that had come out of the magazine. Being the pack rat that I am, I didn't throw them away, but carefully stored them up in neat piles on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. When I got old enough to move away I packed them all up in a cardboard box and they have traveled with me to every place that I have moved to since then. Husband has often bemoaned my tendency to accumulate things, he's more of a throw-it-away-the-instant-you're-done-with-it kind of guy. Today I proved that there are actually good reasons to hang on to important things like the box of magazines that you read when you were 11 years old.

Behold the cover of the March 1980 copy of World magazine.

I remember trying valiantly to get my hair to feather like that, but it was just not in the cards for me.

Inside were articles on raising service dogs,


animals that camouflaged themselves by changing color,


the article on horse vaulting,


and, finally, an article on a boy who's family made soft pretzels. His name was Michael Tshudy, and the story was about the pretzel bakery his parents operated in Pennsylvania. It was the first pretzel bakery in the United States, and still is in operation today. It's called the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. One of the features of the article was a recipe for making soft pretzels at home.


You can probably tell from the state of this page as opposed to the others, that this recipe got a lot of use. I used to make these quite frequently as a youth. The were best when they were fresh out of the oven, although they were still really good the next day if you sliced them in half and put them in the toaster. I even made these in high school. Once each year our German class would be allowed to use the home-ec room to make any german recipe that we wanted. Some people make german chocolate cake, some made torte, and my group always made pretzels. As I recall, the were always well received.

After high school this magazine got boxed up with all the others, and didn't see the light of day again for a very long time. Just recently, however, Daughter and I went to a hockey game. During the game she ate 2 huge pretzels and asked for more. I told her that I had a recipe for them at home, and promised her that we could make some. Four short months later, I finally lived up to my promise and today she and I baked her first batch of pretzels.

That's Daughter, holding a 29 year old magazine with a recipe for some of the best pretzels you'll ever make. I suggest you all dig out your copy and give it a go, they're just as good as I remember.

C is for...

Captive

And after looking at the following picture, every Mom on the planet knows why.



For the Dads or non-Moms among you, let me point out the telltale signs.

1. Daughter is lying on the couch (or sofa, or davenport, pick your favorite,) with a pillow, watching TV in the living room. Under normal circumstances this is not allowed to occur. Especially if you know that she is watching Camp Rock on the Disney channel when House is on.
2. There's a TV tray next to the couch. One of the house rules is that food and drink are not allowed in any room with carpeting. Since there's obviously carpeting in the photo, something has suspended the house rules.
3. The contents of the TV tray: soda crackers, lemon-lime soda, bowl of chicken noodle soup, a large, empty, plastic bowl, and a thermometer. In the living room.
4. Child in t-shirt and shorts, but with a very large, fuzzy, warm blanket in easy reach.

Daughter has a stomach bug, which means that no matter how well planned I though my day was, the whole thing has to be junked because I am now tethered to the small sick individual laying on the couch. Or sofa. Or davenport. You choose.

Stereotype?

There are some people who feel that Microsoft is a wonderful, forward thinking company that makes wonderful products that advance the human race. There are other people who think that Microsoft is a corporate monster that just swallows up independent thinking companies and programmers, or their ideas, and creates a half-baked, bug riddled version of their software. I don't wish to enter into the fray on one side or the other, but I can present some basic data and let you decide for yourself where the truth lies in this particular situation.

My current laptop, which is 3 or 4 years old, we can't remember which, has begun to have some problems. The battery is capable of holding a charge long enough for me to unplug the computer, walk to the next room and plug it back in, but not much longer than that. Occasionally when it has been in hibernation mode it refuses to wake back up. There are days that Firefox will allow me two clicks, and two clicks only. We decided last weekend that it was time for a new computer.

We spent a few hours last weekend in Circuit City looking to see what they have available, what with them going out of business and all. Husband spent several hours on the internet looking at various models and finally chose a winner. The order was placed, and today I found a box from Dell sitting on my doorstep.

I excitedly opened the box, unfurled the cord and plugged in my new baby. It slooooooowly booted up, and I got my first look at Windows Vista. I clicked around a little here and there to get the hang of it, then decided I would see if I could watch DVDs. I got out one of my Psych DVDs and put it in. Nothing happened. Hmm. Perhaps it just doesn't have a DVD playing program installed yet. No problem. Next I pugged in my external hard drive to see if I could play one of my MP3 files. Now that's a little strange, the light on the hard drive turns on, but the computer can't seem to see it. Maybe I just need to reboot. Turn it off, turn it on, and hey, presto, there's the external hard drive.

At this point I had to wait for Husband to get home from work so that he could get the internet connection working. He played around with the router for a while and brought me a 50-character key to type in. Once that was done I was able to see the internet. Before I could excitedly go check out the traffic on my blog Husband informed me that I should run Microsoft Update before doing anything else. OK, click on that, and wait while 21 updates are downloaded. After 10 minutes, that's finished and it's time to reboot.

In case that's too blurry to read, it says, "Your computer was unable to start. Startup repair is checking your system for problems..."

Husband is currently in the basement talking to Service Guy trying to see if there is something that can be done, short of reinstalling the BRAND SPANKING NEW computer.

Microsoft. Make of it what you will.

Darn It

There IS a reason why a knitter needs to be continually making socks: they eventually wear out. According to Ravelry I made these in September of 2007. I probably wore them at least once every week between December of '07 and April of '08, then again once a week from November of last year till now. They got thrown in the washing machine and dryer just like all my other clothes, so they may have worn out a little faster than those of someone who hand-washes their socks, but I think it has more to do with just wearing out than rough handling. Daughter told me that we should sew some of her fabric scraps on to cover up the hole (she's teaching herself to sew and has a lot of fabric scraps donated my a sewing neighbor) but I think I'm just going to use the Yarn Harlot's darning method: Say, "Darn it!" while throwing them in the garbage can.

Things I didn't Want to See

Last night while the wind was whistling past the eaves I started a new pair of socks. Well, I tried to start a new pair of socks. I pulled the loose end out of the middle of the ball and saw this:

So instead of starting a new pair of socks I spent 45 minutes untangling a large mess of yarn. This is Trekking, which I picked up at Stitches Midwest because the Yarn Harlot seems to love it, but so far I'm underwhelmed.

Thing number 2 is this:

At first glance there's nothing wrong here. There are some nice socks made out of the Socks that Rock yarn, so some money went to a good cause. The problem here lies in whose feet are in the socks. They are not my feet. They are Daughter's feet. The socks are a little bit too big, but only just a little bit. It will not be long before my clothes begin disappearing into her room, I fear. hopefully my clothes will be way too geeky for her to want to wear, but who knows.

And lastly there's this:

That would be the new ejector pit pump that was installed this morning. While I was doing the last load of laundry yesterday (why did it have to be the last load, why not the first?) I noticed that the water was backing up onto the laundry room floor. Being experienced in these things, I put my hand on the pipe and could feel that the old pump was just running and running, but not accomplishing anything. As much as I can sympathize with that particular feeling, it needed to be replaced. Last night husband went to Home Depot and purchased a new pump (this one has a lifetime warranty) and this morning it was installed to the tune of $500, just for the labor and a couple of pieces of pvc pipe.

Hopefully this will be the end of things I didn't want to see for a while.