Eleanor's Closet Opened

If you are a Harry Potter fan, you know what I'm talking about when I mention the Knight Bus. It's the bus that rescues witches and wizards who need help. It's a British double-decker bus outfitted with beds and screams along the roads of London driven by Crazy Ernie and a Rastafarian head.

I have been on the Knight Bus and lived to tell about it.

Here in Barbados there are two bus companys. One, the blue bus, is the state run bus system. Air conditioned and driven by sober - literally - drivers.

The other bus company is the yellow bus with blaring Rasta music, people jammed in, and driven by drivers not always sober. Driven fast and crazy. Our first night here we had to get on the bus to get to dinner. It was dark so there were lights whizzing by, music blaring, and the 9 of us were the only white people on the bus. You had to laugh.

So far everyone we have met has been very polite. We went to Bridgetown today and went to St Mary's Church, established in the 1700s. We had elevensies at a smoothie place that was pretty cool.

Tomorrow a rum distillery. More laying on the beach, maybe.

On Veteran's day my brother and I made the trek to Arlington to visit dad. He served for 34 years and for some reason, this year I wanted to visit. It took an extra hour due to an accident around the Georgia Ave exit, but it was worth it.

I then continued my way on up to my mom's. We're hoping she has a bid on my grandparents house and she needed some help. The house is about 99% empty so now it's time to clean up and make it look nice. It's a good house, terrific layout and lots of space. Hopefully the bid is reasonable. Mom may be househunting down here before the end of the year.

With that in mind we started sorting the stuff in mom's basement. Sometimes you just need a bit of organization so I adopted the "Clean Sweep" approach. We have piles of "sell" "keep" and "toss". The "toss" pile is already in the trash bin. We made some real progress and I hope mom feels more organized. She still has quite a bit to go through.

Next week, Fort Knox. The week after - Barbados! I'm so looking forward to that trip.

Is it really only Tuesday? 

23 days until Barbados!

The weekend has been entirely too short.  I've barely touched what I wanted to get accomplished, much less actually get something done.  Laundry is mostly done.  Garage not touched.  Basement about 40% done.  But we still need to do grocery shopping for the week.  Oh well.  I guess most of my weekends are like that.

Mousehole was on Saturday down at BnL's farm. Despite the remnants of Tropical Storm Rick blowing through, it was a rather nice event. Jen and Alan brought down their tent and Vair and Ermine's common tent for us to use as a tavern hall and it really saved the event. Folks could be outside in 'period' and project or watch the fighting.

I had a dayshade set up over the fire pit so that dinner could still happen. While Bob n' Laura's kitchen is very nice and very cool, it's too small to prepare a dinner for 25. The guys looked at me oddly when I told them to put the dayshade OVER the fire pit. But they were happy with the duck. And the pork roast. And the cheese pie.

We planned on about 30 and we had 26. We had 4 folks cancel because of illness. I was extremely please at the turn-out despite the weather. Hardy souls that lot of Gardner's Company!

By strange and unforseen reasons, we are sitting here in the living room instead of driving down to Mousehole right now.  We will be, eventually, driving down to Mousehole, just not at the rate we were hoping for. 

It's a Friday and by the time we hit DC it will most likely be raining.  No one around DC can drive in bad weather, so it will be very slow going. 
But we'll get there, our friends will be there and we're going to have a great time. 

We took both pups to the vet last night, mostly to get Pearl's ear looked at.  The vet was concerned (as we are) about why the two of them fought each other in the first place.  Since we didn't see what triggered the fight, we're guessing based on past issues.  The vet wants us to focus on re-training and de-escalation.   The re-training is completely do-able since Boogie is eager to please - especially for a treat.  Pearl is more difficult because she just wants the treat but she'll get the idea.  We had actually started the re-training as a way to level the playing field.  The vet also recommended taking away all toys for awhile so they can't fight over something one or the other may find valuable. 

The de-escalation part will be more difficult.  We're going to bring in a dog behaviour specialist to help us do it right.  If we don't get this right we may to give up one of them - most likely Pearl.  We don't want that. 

This is very frustrating.  We thought it was a good thing that Pearl getting a bit more playful and a bit more defensive in keeping her toys when Boogie tries to take them away.  Apparently it was escalating some tension and ended up crossing an unseen line.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Yesterday was not as relaxing as I was hoping it would be.  Boogalu and Pearl got into a knock-down drag out dog fight complete with injuries.  It probably lasted all of 1 minute maybe a minute and a half.  But it was a frightening minute.  After the dust settled and we got them separated, Pearl had a bloody ear and Boogie had a bite on his front leg.  At first we decided to just wash the wounds and put on some anitbiotic ointment and see how it goes.   But then Boogie started limping so we took him to the emergency vet. 

It's nothing serious, probably bad bruising, but he now has an antibiotic and a pain pill.  The pain pill is fun.

 

He's a litte loopy, but mostly just really, really relaxed. 

We'll probably take Pearl in to our regular vet and make sure all is okay with her.   Hopefully today will be more relaxing .....

We’ve had no heat in the building where I work all week. The policy is that they don’t turn on the boilers until the daily high temperature is below 65 for 3 work days in a row. That means the boilers would have been fired up today. But it takes time to build up enough heat to send down the steam lines to be effective. 

 

Because the forecast for next week is much warmer weather (yea) there was some question as to whether the boilers were actually going to be started. Apparently the energy policy had to be re-written in order to allow for the heat to start flowing.

 

A piece of paper versus employee efficiency?

 

And what about all those space heaters we’ve plugged in? How efficient or safe is that? My building was built in the 1920’s. The wiring is ancient – even the ‘newer’ wiring.

 

I realize that using boilers/steam heat is not a fast heating system. Turning on steam heat has to be planned for. But really, forecasting for the most part is more accurate than even a decade ago. Can we not look at the forecast? Where I work even has a meteorology section. It’s their job to forecast the weather. 

 

I’m glad we bought a new pellet stove back in March. It’s very comforting on days like today.

 

The event at Colonial Plantation has been postponed.  It is now scheduled for the 14-15 November.  I don't know if the Galloglas group can do that date as they are committed to doing the Irish Festival at Timonium that weekend.  The guys are doing 1961 so I'm definitely not interested in the Irish Fest this year.  Maybe we'll go to Colonial Plantation as visitors and just get a lay of the land. 

This coming weekend we're supposed to do an event at Colonial Plantation in PA.  This weekend its supposed to be cold and wet.  My enthusiasm for this event is waning.  My tolerance for cold and wet events has faded with my accumulation of wisdom and experience.  We'll be doing some cool cooking, but I don't know how successful it's really going to be if a) we can't get a fire started or b) it won't stay lit because of rain.  We'll see.  There's rumour afoot the event may be cancelled.  But I looked at their web site and I don't think they cancel very frequently, realizing of course that they are an outdoor site and weather happens.

I wish I had another brazier.  What we're planning on doing can be easily done on a brazier.  Less bending down over a fire and more likely to stay lit.  I haz charcoal.  So we'll see.

 

So we were eating dinner in the living room.  Boogie decided to stare down Jim's plate.

Boogie was cute yesterday watching the front yard.  He can sit there for hours, or until someone walks into view.



This is what I think is called an apothecary jar.  It probably holds about 1 1/2 cups of stuff.  We usually use it for mustard sauce for the hard boiled eggs.  I would love butter dishes in about the same shape, but smaller holding like 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick).  Doesn't necessarily have to be similarly decorated. 

Freezer space is at a premium.  We were very productive over the weekend preparing some foods ahead of time for Mousehole.  Approximately 60+ ham pasties, 60+ beef/pork pasties, and about 49 spinach pasties, some macaroons and cookies were made on Saturday.  Since it's only early October these things need to be kept in a freezer until the event.  I've shoved a few things (phyllo shells, cheese, and a container of pasties) in my freezer and Carla took the rest and got them in her freezer.  But we have more to do and some of it will need to be frozen.   I think Jim and I will be eating out of the freezer this week to create some space.

Carla and I have identified future pottery needs - butter dishes!  We will see how it goes over Mousehole and see what we need.

The saga of the truck. 

 

( Read more if you wish (picture!) ... )

And it’s pretty.

 

 

We went to Lochmere's Baronial Birthday event in Crownsville.  It's a nice site albiet known for rainy events here lately.  The rain held off yesterday until about mid-afternoon.  So the fighters got to fight for awhile and the rapier fighters got to practice melee tactics. 

I got to play with my brazier.  According to the forecast it was supposed to be mid-60s and damp/wet.  So I thought hot tea, biscuits, and stew would be nice.  Mistress Branwen and I enjoyed the tea and stew, but not too many other people.  The main purpose of doing some brazier cooking was to keep me occupied, which was accomplished.  The by-product was food to share.

I'm going to have to dedicate some tent pegs to the brazier or find a trivit to make the supported area smaller for smaller pots/dishes.  Otherwise, the brazier worked amazingly well.  It did, in fact, scorch the table cloth, so I need to put it on a square of leather next time.  No biggie.  This is the first time I've used it for any extended period.  Lesson learned.  The table cloth wasn't nice fabric or anything so I'm not distraught over the cloth.  

Next weekend, Mousehole food prep. 

We got the menu set for Mousehole last weekend.  It's a little more ambitious this year thanks to some additional help from Freddy.  We're going to have duck!  And other things, don't worry.  We've got the meat eaters and vegetarians fairly well covered I think.  I've discovered that it's definitely more difficult to avoid milk and milk products.  It was just such a standard medium to cook in/with.  Let alone the butter and cheese that's prevalent.  I think we've done okay, but we'll see.

But with such an ambitious menu we have to do some pre-cooking/food prep.  We're having pies, pasties, and we're spit roasting the ducks.  We may need two fire pits to get it all done.  It should be fun!

Earl Blackwell
March 1915 - September 2009

Miss you Gumpy

What a nice weekend this is. A long weekend with Monday off. Saturday Carla and I ran up to visit Greg and Diane at Schifferstadt and got a tour of the house. Built in 1756/8 by German immigrants the house is in surprising good shape. Hopefully the owners will be smart enough to allow it to become a real museum. It really needs some conservation work, but the foundation lacks the funds to execute a conservation plan.

 

It would be a great site for Yule!

 

Then Sunday was Carla’s birthday and we had a few friends over (and Carla, of course) and Jim did his southern woman imitation by grilling entirely too much food. The beagles and Ladybug had fun running up and down the fence with the pit bulls. Exhausted hounds all around. It was a really nice evening of chatting about embroidery, clothing, and upcoming events. Happiness is having a large dining table surrounded by friends (and wine).

 

 

This is also happiness. I’ve been waffling about buying a new laundry set for several months now. The price on new front load machines are extraordinary IMO but the silence from the washer doing a load of sheets as I sit here is making it all worth while. The clincher was the financing by Lowes (12 months same as cash) so I can make it happen now instead of in 12 months. Yea. 

 

You’ll note there are no pedestals. At $200 a piece I think that’s ridiculous. But, I have a plan. I plan to rip out the ‘closet’ they are in now, stack the units, and put in pantry cabinets in the reclaimed space. So I didn’t want to purchase pedestals I would eventually not need.

 

Soon Jim will be off to the range and I will get some down time to plan some sewing. Maybe even sew something.

 

 

At Coronation yesterday.  It turned out to be a lovely day for Vlad and Klissa's coronation and Stierbach's BB.  Jim and I were wondering if we should bring a dayshade to keep the rain out, but really, we needed to keep the sun off.  Fortunately for us Marcellus (sp?) was very kind and let us crash under his dayshade for the day.

It's been an age since I've been to an SCA event other than Pennsic.  I was a little uncertain what to do to occupy myself since I don't fight.  I brought handsewing and some embroidery and some cook books.  I thought I would wonder over to the kitchen and see if they needed help but everytime I was in the Feast Hall, no one seemed to be around in the kitchen area.  So I hung around and chatted with folks under Marcellus' day shade.  Met a few new people that way, which is never a bad thing.

I did get to chat with Eadric for a few moments.  I was able to clarify my baking stone issues from Pennsic.  I definitely need to get the stone hotter and see how that goes.  I think it would be very cool and sit and chat with Eadric about cooking/baking etc.

So many things to do, so little time.