delayed gratification

Did I ever tell you that I picked a color palate for my house? My house is white with black accents, and this past spring I really pondered: what colors for the flowers in the hanging baskets? I picked purple and white. Turns out that my hanging baskets were primarily green, so that didn't matter much. There are a few annuals in white that got planted near the walkway that were extra leftovers from the baskets, but they turned out the best (go figure).

I was at Farm and Fleet (probably one of my shopping trips to buy canning supplies) and the bulb display caught my eye. I admit, I have a weakness for plants in general, and planting something now and having it come up early in the spring (when desperation for green stuff is at it's highest) without any intervention from me? That is beyond alluring.

In true Lucia style I bought too much, but all in purple. A container of Anemone, a container of Grape Hyacinth, a container of Crocus and then three containers of mixed Purple Tulips. Digging a hole that varies from 4-8in deep that can contain all of these bulbs with a distance of 2-4in between them seems totally doable in the store.
But, then when I try to dig a hole with the shovel, all of a sudden this idea sucks. A lot.
But, I got them all in. Some in a possibly too shady spot in the backyard… some crammed in too close together... some not at the right depth...

I would post a picture, but honestly, it just looks like turned earth right now. Boring!

So, here are pictures of what I am expecting in the spring:

canning Green Beans

To can green beans you must have a pressure cooker/canner.

1) get young, fresh beans - no lumpy beans inside the beans
2) break the beans
3) sterilize jars
4) pile beans into the jars
5) boil water
6) pour boiling water over beans in jars, covering beans and leaving one inch head room
7) admire the intense beautiful green color of the beans
8) put on the tops and screw on the ring finger tight
9) boil 3 inches of water in the pressure cooker/canner
10) plunk the cans into the pressure cooker (they can touch)
11) screw on the lid
12) wait for steam to come out of the little tube at the top
13) put the weight pressure regulator on
14) wait until the pressure is 11lbs
15) turn heat down to keep pressure at 11lbs
16) cook for 20 minutes at 11lbs of pressure
17) take pressure cooker/canner off of the heat, but leave lid and pressure regulator on
18) let it cool and pressure to release
19) remove jars and let cool
20) test seal by pushing on the top, refrigerate/eat any that didn't seal (or you can try again, but who wants to do all of this for just one jar)

uh, where did I go?

I don't know. I have been around. just lazy? uninspired?
yes, uninspired, I realize that it might not look to y'all like I am working on these posts, it may seem like random mental run ons, but no, I try and I require inspiration.

anyhow. no big post today. just tantalizing you, I should have more posts soon. I am going up to the Apostle Islands this weekend, so hopefully, lots of time to be inspired and then write up blog posts in advance. That will see us through these long lonely times. sort of like my canning will see me through long lonely times without fresh green beans - yes, that is right, in my spare time throughout the week I bought (didn't pick though), snapped and canned up 6 Q of green beans.
I am so good.

I nearly forgot - my accomplishments for today!

I wrote that last post and it went a bit sideways with the applebutter. I just remembered what I meant to say - I am very proud, I finally took my car in to get new tires and an oil change. This was VERY overdue and I am once again feeling all responsible and accomplished.
This accomplishment was eased by using the place across the street from work and the fact that they were open when I drove by this morning at 7am.
yeaaaa me.

an accomplishment a day

I have a goal - one accomplishment a day. Perhaps this is very low, but you know what? set your standards/goals low and leap over them easily! that is my motto.

anyhow, this week I am in Madison! not in Dayton! yeaaa. I have used this opportunity to overbook myself with activities. Particularly, I am very anxious about tomorrow as I have at least 15 hours worth of things to do, and I doubt I will want to do them all straight through.

So, what did I accomplish this week?
Sunday - took nap, worked, watched football, got to bed early.
Monday - I prepped for this big awards show I put on at work. Then I slept.
Tuesday - I put on the awards show. I bought spring bulbs and quarterround at Menards, planted some of the bulbs, cleaned my kitchen and got to bed early.
(notice how getting to bed early seems like I consider it an accomplishment. I do)
Wednesday - installed quarterround in bedroom (it is now ready for the bed to be delivered - in a sad turn of events, the delivery was delayed to Sunday, Monday or Tuesday), and removed from my home some of the roving bands of dog hair dust bunnies.
Thursday - spent all afternoon working on my application certification to move to my new team. I sort of locked my self into having it done by 9-24, soooo I need to get it done... - then I went to a big party where our group of friends presented our 4 year bags (a presentation about the person and a bunch of stuff for the person). The accomplishment here was that I brought smoothie makings (which were a big hit) and I did my presentation on David.
Friday - tonight I am hosting a craft night at Jen's house. going to try to keep it brief. I also need to get some apples, cram them into my crockpot and try to make apple butter so we can can on Sunday...

side note on applebutter making-
1) this takes a very long time to cook. I didn't really plan for this.
2) I explored some other options like pie filling, but then you have to do some sort of ascorbic acid thing to keep them from turning colors. If I am at the store and ascorbic acid is there I will get it, but I am not hunting this stuff down.
3) you need a food mill. This is a thing I had never even heard of. Some sort of mushing/grinding device. I am on the fence about getting one. Wintergypsy has one (of course she has one, she has one of everything! )and so perhaps we will just borrow hers.

How excited am I?

Football is back!!!! I love it! I got to watch the season opener between the Colts and the Saints, I got to see parts of the Bears game, and listened to the Packers on the radio.

Football is my favorite sport to watch.
My thoughts on other sports to watch:

• Hockey/Soccer - not so much, the scoring happens so infrequently that the minute I get distracted it happens and I missed it.
• Tennis - I enjoy, but it makes me jealous and I want to be out there playing instead of watching. Basketball - I just think that the season is too long. and, I find that you really only have to watch the last half.
• NASCAR - this may be a surprise to you, but I really enjoy NASCAR. I can watch the entire race (often several hours), and I know what is going on. My favorite driver is Jeff Gordon (I understand the people don't like him and that a much more popular choice would be little E, and I would rather if you did not leave me any hate comments. thank you.)
• Gymnastics/Ice Skating - who doesn't enjoy watching these? But, I think that you have to be in Olympics mode to really enjoy them. There is something weird about finding a gymnastics competition on ESPN on a random Sunday, you feel a bit creepy.
• Golf/Bowling - I don't really get into these on TV.

While we are on this sports thing, I have to admit there are two things that I just don't get. One is fantasy football (and then by extension all of the new fantasy sports). The second is that arcade style game that is in bars Golden Tee. I have no idea what the draw is to that game. I have tried both, and neither took.

Visiting the Home 40

I spent Labor Day weekend at my dad's new house. New is a relative term though, the house itself is over a hundred years old. It is the house my grandfather Clyde built and my father grew up in. It sits on 40 acres in Clay County, Illinois (picture above to give you an image of where Clay County is in Illinois). The house didn't have running water until my father just remodeled it. Originally Clyde farmed over 180 acres with teams of horses and hired men (who lived in an outbuilding that you can't see, aptly named the bunkhouse). I remember visiting my grandmother, Lola, when I was a child and we had to go outside and use the outhouse. She lived there on her own until she was 90 years old.

Anyhow, my father has decided to retire to the "Home 40". The names: The 40 acres that the house sits on - it is called the Home 40. The other 48 acres are bordered by the Little Wabash river and sometimes floods, it is called The Bottoms. The Home 40 has a crick and a fresh water spring and about four oil/natural gas wells and is about 50% wooded. 50% of the Bottoms has been leased to the government for one of those non-use/re-foresting plans, the rest is a mix of weedy field and wooded riparian area.

This is a picture of my dad's new house and his dog (formerly my mother's, and sister of my mother's Saint) Maizy. The sign says Walnut Hills and has my dad's name on it.

This picture is Clay county and points out the major sites. My dad was giving me directions to the house and he said, well, you just take the blacktop road straight south from Mattoon. I asked for more details on the vague "blacktop" - he said, well go left at such and such road and you are on the blacktop road.
Turns out, the name of the road, is actually Blacktop road. :)
My dad and brother once stopped in Sailor Springs (population 200 or so) and my dad made him drink out of the "World Famous Sailor Spring" - my brother reports it was gross.
You will notice much mention of Flora. Not only is it the county populace center, it has the only Wal-Mart (it is small, but it is a supercenter, as my Dad's girlfriend, Rita, tells me), a Minwax factory, and somewhere there is a cemetery with my last name.

Last Chance for Canning Glory!

It seems to all be coming together - the last chance for canning fantastick! (that is right folks, 61 lbs of tomatoes and 6 jars of pickles weren't enough for me)

1) Jen wanted to can something.
2) Jen is trapped in her own home, a perfect time to put up preserves.
3) Jen has a huge kitchen, knives, pots, cutting board, and sink.
4) I have a pressure canner, a water bath pot the size of New Zealand, a newly supplemented supply of jars from my father, and a stick with a magnet on the end.
5) It is apple picking season!!!! If you saw the strawberry post on WI roaming you know that love ourselves some good Pick your Own!
6) I want to make Apple Butter. I love it. and I want to see if I can make it with Splenda.


To be involved - - anyone who is interested in any of this should email me. If you don't actually know me or live in the area, then I am sorry, you probably can't participate. But, stay tuned for how this all turns out.

apple picking/buying - I come back to Madison on Sunday, probably around 1pm or so. I would like to go do the apple picking then, if anyone wants to go with me you are welcome. Otherwise you can go obtain your own apples. Jen, I will be happy to pick for you too.

Some hours:
Eplegaarden Orchard: in Fitchburg
Sept. 1 – Oct. 31 Mon. – Sat. 9 AM – 5 PM
Sunday 11 AM – 5 PM
www.carandale.com: in Oregon
SAT & SUN HOURS WILL BE 10AM-5PM (WE WILL ONLY BE OPEN ON FRI, SAT & SUN)

These sites found on this very cool website:
http://www.pickyourown.org/wigo.htm

To Process -
1) of course we are going to do this at Jen's house. Jen, do you have a suggestion for a good day? What about Sunday 9-16? I have to go out with my customers (read drive their drunk butts around) on Monday and Tuesday nights so those won't work for me.
2) We need an apple peeling thingy. Jen, I just feel like this is a machine you should own. (if you make your own cheese, no reason not to be an apple pie queen too) -Here is the best type. If you wanted to buy one, that would be cool. If not then let me know and I will obtain one.
3)Recipes/What you are going to do with your apples -get yourself a plan - searching the internet yields a surprising number of canning recipes. You will need to know if your plan involves pressure canning or water bath canning and how long they need to be in. For pressure canning, also what pressure they need to be at.
---note, I sort of figured that I would go to Jen's and we would take the apples all the way from dirty little apples to canned apple butter. This will take many hours. If you want to process your apples into the sauce that goes into the jars ahead of time, just let me know and you can come over for just the canning portion.
4) Jars and Lids - I have an over abundance of Quart jars right now, so if you are going to put up big jars then you can use mine, however, I probably don't have enough pint and jelly jars for all. So, if you are going to can apple butter, then we need to get you some pint and jelly jars.
5) I have to get my pressure canner back from Rick. He borrowed it without telling me, but then it turns out he didn't use it. - you may remember that when we went to the pick your own veggies farm he spent 20 minutes jostling with an elderly Hmong woman to pick like 10 lbs of tiny hot peppers. Well, he had to do something with them, so the brief story I got was that he used my jars and froze them... I don't know and I am not going to think about it any more.

anyhow - email me if you want to participate, and Jen, we need a date for your house.

School Vouchers

A more intense topic today - school vouchers.
I was listening to my Cato daily podcasts this morning and one of my backlog from August was one on Race and School Choice. This brought up several things in my mind:
1) Race and Income level - correlated? - the speaker was saying that you could study race where you didn't actually have the race info by looking at income level or at geographic area. This brought up something from when I was in grad school. I took a class on epidemiology, and the instructor (an idiot in my opinion, by the way) said that the National Health Survey where we get 90% of our health knowledge of the country at large did not collect income level. It did collect race. How will we know the effects of income on health without that information? She said that they do it based on race. What? so all blacks and hispanics are poor and all whites are at least middle class? Despite suspecting that this is an inaccurate way of doing this, I was also insulted. I actually said this in class and asked her: Wouldn't you feel insulted if you were black or hispanic? She didn't really have a comeback.
2) School choice -I am against this. but I am actually for distributing the property tax over a larger area - for instance the entire state and then each school getting a designated amount for each student. Having grown up in a suburb of Chicago I have seen the disparity between schools in different districts first hand.
3) The harm in school choice - If Illinois had school vouchers when I was in high school I suspect my mother would have used them as our high school was not good at all (of the 300 seniors entering senior year, only 190 graduated). We only had 1 AP class. My ACT score of 31 (not that high people) was the highest the school had seen since they changed the scoring system. But, if she and all the other AP Calculus parents did use it they would have left the public high school in a worse spot. The school would have lost the need to offer those more challenging classes which, while primarily populated with the same 20 kids, did offer an opportunity to other kids to take advanced classes in a subject they were good at. Also, the teachers didn't stick around long anyhow at our school, but imagine that they didn't even have an honors class to teach each day. I figure we would have lost more good teachers earlier.
4) Also, where would I have gone? You have to pick a private school, right? You can't choose to go to the Winnetka high school up in the well to do suburb. The private options were all 30 minutes away and Catholic. There wasn't a secular option. So, I would have needed a ride every day to and from.
5) I don't know what the percent is, but it seems that a very high percentage of the private school options are religion based. Could that be the source of the pressure for vouchers? They try to say it is the lack of quality in our schools, but sending kids somewhere else isn't the way to increase that quality, it will just eventually leave the public schools crappier.
6) the anger over out of district kids. Tven as crappy as my high school was, it was still better than the Chicago public schools on the southside. Therefore, there were many kids who "stayed with" relatives in our district so they could attend our school. This puts a burden on the school because they aren't collecting more property taxes for these students. My school had a staff member who actively investigated kids and booted out the out of district ones. My uncle who works as a teacher in a nearby high school gets very worked up about keeping the out of district kids out of his school. It has never occured to him to work to make the schools where those kids live better so they don't want/need to leave.

In conclusion - let's spend our money in a wider community model, accepting that the quality of the schools everywhere affects our community as well.

solar - the case to install solar panels

http://www.eventsgalore.net/solar/pv.html
I suggest you check this website out!
1) this guy really put together a compelling and passionate case for the solar panels!
2) I want solar panels!
3) really, I do. I want them bad.

I am being squished!

I am in a bad mood today, so this is just a picture post. I should have known that it wouldn't be a good day when my two morning cans of Diet Mountain Dew did not perk me up. This is me on the Upper Dells boat tour in the Wisconsin Dells. At no point in this picture was I in danger.