April 21, 2015
I just saw the first batch of ducklings of the year. That's the unmistakeable sign.
I tossed out some bread in hopes they'd come over so I could get a picture, but Mama duck decided to go play at the other end of the yard.
Last year was a bad year for birds. Spring was really cold, so the insect bloom was delayed and never got very large. With food scarce, the bird population suffered. This spring started early and the insect bloom is already starting, and I expect it's going to be a great year for birds.
I dice up bread and put it on my deck for the song birds, and there's a bluejay that's been visiting me quite often, who I assume is taking bread back to feed hungry chicks. The bread is vanishing rapidly.
It's a bit earlier than usual for songbird chicks, but that's a good sign.
Must be Global Warmingâ„¢.
UPDATE:
Eat your heart out, Kansas!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
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April 18, 2015
BAD: Just now I wanted to buy something from Office Depot to be delivered here. (I've done this five or six times before.) My bank thinks my billing address is my brother's place. The zipcode there used to be 97006, but recently the post office rototilled the zipcode assignments (because population in this area has risen a lot) and apparently now it's 97003.
Well, my bank doesn't know that. It still thinks it's 97006.
So I entered my billing address for my credit card on Office Depot's web site, and it overrode the zip code I entered (97006) changing it to 97003. And when it submitted the charge to my bank, it didn't match so my bank bounced it.
So I went back into the form and manually changed it to 97006 -- and they overrode it again, to 97003, and the charge bounced again. I'm not willing to mess with it any more; there's a risk the bank will lock my account. So Office Depot loses a sale today.
And the hell of it is that Office Depot is wrong. I just checked and his zipcode still is 97006. The change won't happen for a few months yet.
GOOD: I have a Sharp Microwave oven with a rotating platform inside. I noticed recently that it rotates exactly once every ten seconds. That means when I put a Pyrex measuring cup full of cold water in it and run it 2:30 to make a cup of coffee, when it's done the handle of the measuring cup is exactly where it was when I put it inside, so it's convenient to remove it.
Some nameless, faceless, engineer at Sharp really thought that through.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
07:45 PM
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March 31, 2015
Let's be careful out there!
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08:57 PM
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February 27, 2015
That's my back yard this afternoon. The bugs have started to come out, and I've been seeing songbirds, and the yard guys have come to mow the lawn twice so far this year, and I think we're going to get an early spring.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
07:52 PM
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February 02, 2015
Alouette makes my favorite Garlic-and-Herb cream cheese. They used to make cream cheese flavored with black pepper, which was wonderful, but they don't any more. A couple of days ago it occurred to me that I could make it for myself, so today I tried it.
It's easy to underestimate the amount of cheese and overestimate the amount of pepper, I found. I ended up adding pepper several times, ultimately about six times this much.
After giving it a thorough mixing, put it in a plastic container and refrigerate for several hours. The flavor components that make fresh-ground black pepper taste so good are mostly oil-soluble, so it takes a while for them to leech out into the cheese. Over the course of several hours I mixed it up about three times, and the last time I added a bunch more pepper because it just didn't taste like enough.
Serve on Ritz Crackers (the bachelor chef's best friend). And how did it taste? Excellent. The pepper flavor was distinct but didn't overpower the cheese flavor, and it left a nice mild burn in my mouth without making me scream in pain. This was ridiculously easy and the result was very tasty.
If I can do it, you can do it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
10:12 PM
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December 18, 2014
US Weather Bureau is predicting 2-5 inches of rain for here Saturday night. That should be fun. (Also 5-8 inches in the Coast range.)
Where that won't be fun is if the Willamette goes out of its banks. It won't affect us here, but the creek ought to get pretty lively!
UPDATE: I wonder if this will be as bad as the Chrismas Flood? Probably not, but it may come close.
UPDATE: I was only 10 when the Christmas Flood happened, but it's got special meaning to me. It was the second part of a 1-2 punch to hit the Northwest, coming just about a year after what we call the Columbus Day Storm.
About 1961, my parents bought a lot in SW Portland, moved a trailer house onto it, and began building their dream house. Now when a lot of people say "We're building a house" they mean they hired a construction company. That's not what we did. My dad actually designed the place and drew all the blueprints, and worked on it evenings and weekends and vacations. My grandfather, who was a carpenter, came up to help as much as he could, and friends of my dad would sometimes come over and help. My brother, who was 12-13 years old at the time, did a lot of work and me, 8-9, I did as much as I could. We had the foundation poured and the basement covered by the main floor, and managed to put up all the outer walls and got the roof over it, and covered the whole roof with plywood. But there weren't yet any internal partitions by October, 1962.
And then we got the storm of the century, and it blew the house down. I was in the bathroom when it happened so I didn't see it go. But shortly thereafter my folks began to worry that the trailer might roll over in the wind, and so we walked to our neighbor's house and asked them to put us up for the night.
We spent a week living at my uncle's house in NE Portland because his electricity didn't go out. It took us several months to tear everything apart and restack all the lumber, and then to put the walls and roof back up again.
We were a lot further along by a year later when the second punch of the 1-2 whammy happened. It was bad for the state, but it didn't actually affect us at all. (Our lot was on the edge of the Tryon Creek Valley, so the water just ran off and we never saw anything.
But I remember in 1964 people beginning to wonder if we'd get slammed again. (We didn't.) By then we were living in the house and had sold the trailer.
UPDATE: Oh, boy; they've updated the forecast:
LATEST FORECASTS FOR FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY AFTERNOON BRING 8 TO 12 INCHES OF RAIN TO THE CASCADES AND FOOTHILLS...7 TO 11 INCHES FOR THE COAST RANGE...5 TO 7 INCHES ALONG THE IMMEDIATE COAST...AND 3 TO 4 INCHES ALONG THE I-5 CORRIDOR.
That last is me.
And if those estimates are even close to accurate, every river in the western third of this state is going to flood.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
12:34 PM
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November 23, 2014
We just had a thunderstorm, and the creek has gone from a trickle to a flood.
The part the beavers built, on the far right, is standing up to the challenge. The part left over from the now-failed culvert on the near left isn't doing so well; I'm expecting a failure there. It's just soil, with only grass roots for structure, and I expect it eventually to wash away.
The water flow in this creek varies enormously with the weather. Not as much so as some of the dry washes in Arizona, which can be bone-dry for years and then suddenly fill completely with water in just a few minutes, but still rather amazing.
Our creek isn't alive, of course, but watching it is like watching a living being.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
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November 11, 2014
So I just opened my deck door because I wanted to take a clean picture of the creek:
And it's forty-brrr degrees out. And one of my neighbors has a charcoal grill going and is grilling some meat. I could definitely smell it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
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October 28, 2014
My Oregon ID card was due to expire on my birthday (Thursday) so today my brother took me to DMV to get it renewed. (Acquisition of the wheelchair and slippers was part of the preparation for this mission.)
Actually, he took me there twice. The first time we found out that the rules had changed and I had to produce another piece of ID, so we had to return to my apartment to get my birth certificate.
It wasn't very crowded, and the woman who was managing the line recognized us as having been there earlier, and moved me to the front of the line -- which was nice of her. And it all went briskly. From start to finish, an hour and a quarter. (That's timed from when I left my apartment the first time to when I returned to it, so it includes two round trips in his car.) The actual time in DMV was less than 15 minutes.
Who says all government bureaucracies are terrible?
UPDATE: But when they took my photo they asked me to take off my glasses. So it doesn't look like me, because I always wear glasses. I can't see without them.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
09:40 AM
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October 27, 2014
My brother came over today and took me on a shopping mission. It's the first time I've been out of this apartment since last Spring. My problem was that my feet have swelled up, and my shoes didn't fit any more, so I was stuck here.
We went to Beaverton Pharmacy, and I bought a wheel chair:
We also went to a shoe store and I bought a pair of slippers which were big enough to fit my feet.
Coincidentally, it's my birthday this week, and this is a really good gift. To me it represents freedom. I can now get out of this place, at least once in a while, and go further than the corner of the parking lot (which is about as far as I can walk anymore). I can go to restaurants. I can go to the transit mall and catch the train to my doctor's office. I can make it across Canyon to the Fred Meyer pharmacy for my prescriptions.
He also let me get a treat:
At my request we went through the drive-through lane at McDonalds. I've been dreaming about the taste of a Big Mac for a long time, and just now I got to taste it again, for real. It was just as good as I remembered. (It's the first time in about three years that I've had one.)
So today has been a good day.
UPDATE: No advice, please.
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