My last grocery delivery on Monday included everything I ordered except eggs, and I was out. So my breakfasts this week have been bleak. There's only so long I can stand eating toast before it's too much.

My ordinary breakfast is scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a muffin. I tried it without the eggs, but that really was strange.

So I put in an order for delivery tomorrow, which is sooner than I ordinarily would, and I hope they have my eggs this time!

(Life is tough, ain't it?)

UPDATE: Yay! They brought me eggs this time!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 10:25 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There are little clips by each of our doors here which the complex uses sometimes to leave information for us. Just now I found one, and it's a pity.

They hired a trapper to come in a kill the beavers again. This time all the mischief was caused by just two of them.

They did this before; last time it was 3. And this will mean the problems will stop, for a year or two, until the next time a pair of beavers find this branch of the creek system.

Reportedly it wasn't just us who were having problems. It was affecting Center Street, so Oregon Department of Transportation was involved. It was affecting the park, so Tualatin Valley Parks and Recreation was involved. And there's another apartment complex on the far side of the park which was having trouble because of it. (The foundation of one of their buildings was flooded.

It is a shame, but it's understandable.

UPDATE: I also just noticed that they wrapped a couple more of our trees with chicken wire.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 01:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I love cheese. It makes up a very large part of my diet. A couple of years ago I got in the habit of shredding it a pound at a time and keeping the shredded cheese in plastic boxes in my refrigerator, ready to use on whatever I want to eat: quesadillas, cheeseburgers, cheese toast, melted onto crackers,  augmenting pizzas, and sometimes on my breakfast eggs.

I don't actually eat a lot of meat, though I do eat some. The majority of my protein comes from cheese and eggs.

I usually keep two kinds of cheese around: sharp cheddar, and jack cheese. The Fred Meyer jack cheese was really good and that's what I was buying. But I ran out, and these days the Fred Meyer store might as well be on the moon as far as being available to me, considering how immobile I am. I cannot walk a mile there and another mile back. Not possible anymore.

So I get all my groceries delivered by Safeway. I tried a chunk of their jack cheese and it wasn't really to my taste. So this time I decided I'd try mozarella from their house brand "Lucerne". I figured it would be similar to jack, being a soft white cheese that isn't aged.

A pound of it comes in a cylinder.

I can't figure out why it's such a strange shape. The cheddar cheese is box-shaped, which stacks neatly, but cylinders are more problematic. Is there something about how it's made that makes it better round? I know that some mozarella comes as balls, which is even less convenient. But I've also seen mozarella which are loafs, like my cheddar.

Some aged cheeses come in great big rounds, cylinders a couple of feet across. That's a side effect of the aging process. But mozarella isn't aged.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 05:12 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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It's been a long time since I tried being creative in the kitchen. My experiments usually end up being travesties. (Who can forget the chocolate quesadilla?)

But this one was pretty good. I think I'll do it again some time.

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Nothing left but bones...

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It went down this afternoon some time, actually. It was still standing this morning. And I'm impressed that it fell right towards the creek; I thought it was going to go off to one side. (Actually, I thought it was going to be tangled up in the other tree.)

UPDATE: There's a branch chipper truck out front, and now I think maybe humans brought that thing down, instead of the beavers doing it. If so it happened during one of my naps, and it wouldn't really take much. That would also explain why it fell the direction it did.

If that's the case, they'll be out there tomorrow with chain saws cutting it up.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 03:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Long time ago I saw a movie on TV called Harry in your pocket which was about a group of pick-pockets. It wasn't bad; it starred James Coburn, for one thing.

I was reminded of that the last few days. Paypal had my credit card info, I think because I used it years ago to buy a $5 membership on Metafilter. That credit card got cancelled a couple of years ago, but of course they didn't know it. Anyway, it's now past the normal expiration date for it, and three times in the last few days Paypal had helpfully send me email informing me of it and urging me to get onto their web site to give them my new credit card.

Which, of course, I'm ignoring. I don't want them to have my credit card info; I've always felt really hinky about them having it, and that's why I didn't update when my new credit card was issued to me two years ago.

It's actually a bit scary how many companies out there have retained my card info: Safeway (which I use about weekly), NewEgg, RACS, DLSite... if any of them ever has a database breach (which has been known to occur) it would be a problem. I certainly don't need to make it worse by giving my card info to people who don't need it. I never use Paypal these days and I never will again.

I wonder how many more times they'll nag me.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:26 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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At the rate they're going, I figure they'll have that tree down before Christmas.

They're an inspiration, I tell you...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's been really cold around here the last week or so, and as a result the relative humidity inside my apartment is really low. I keep zapping my computers by accident, which scares me.

My main computer is acting flakey; the mouse keeps freezing up. If I unplug it and wait a few seconds and plug it back in, it works again. (Except once, my computer was in a hard freeze and I had to power cycle it.)

I think I'm going to put a pan of water on my stove and boil it to get some water vapor into the air. (Note: suggestions not needed.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:51 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 My printer just randomly died last week.  I think blaming it on the weather is fully acceptable.

Posted by: sqa at December 14, 2013 01:59 AM (BHEa5)

2 My house was constructed without a vapor barrier, and the humidity gets QUITE low.  It was down to 29% and I had to dig out my humidifiers and clean them up.  It took a few days to get the place up to 40%, which is enough that I can touch the cats without electrocuting them.

I've gone through a number of different models and types over the years, and if you DID want advice, I could tell you the best kind.

Posted by: Mauser at December 14, 2013 03:11 AM (TJ7ih)

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(Here's a bigger version). You can see the path the beaver has been using to get up to the tree it's attacking.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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