Some randomness is welcome, yes?

A few random thoughts for today - first, I had another epiphany about what to do with the ends of mom's bread. She doesn't like crusts, so she obviously wouldn't really enjoy the butts of the bread. So they have been accumulating. One use I have made of them is croutons - home made croutons - not that I did a great job making them, but they were ok. I also used them for making French Toast which worked out alright too. A third usage is where the epiphany came in. I like crusts. Well, like might be an overstatement. I don't mind them. So, when making a sandwich for myself one day - sometimes when I don't have loads of leftovers to eat, I make myself an Augustus Sandwich (salami, sharp cheddar cheese, mayo, dijon mustard and dill pickles on toast) - I realized that I could eat the butts for my sandwich! Yay! And yum! Butt munching!

Second random thought - we all have to have things to look forward to. Ok, I don't know if we all have to, I know that I like to have things to look forward to. Sometimes I only have teeny, weeny things to look forward to - like my ear working again - or my next breath - that sort of thing. Other times, it is playing a game on the xbox, checking my email (hoping for a message that will rock my world (in a happy way)), eating yummy food. And at still other times, I have larger things on the horizon, like another trip of some kind, or a visit from a friend etc. Right now, I have a new-to-me brew pub to visit. Current plan is for Tuesday with fallback day on Wednesday. They have two for one tastings on Tuesday and Wednesday (yes, I am parsimonious). The other day, at a celebration of 30 years in business for a local company, I had G.C. Starkey's Stout and it was darn tasty. I hadn't heard of them before and they are only 30 minutes away (by car). Woo hoo!

Mom News - I really do fear that the time is coming that I will have to take the next step in her care. Either get someone in here a lot more frequently, or find a home for her to rest her weary head. For those who aren't around her daily, the drastic changes might not be noticeable. Frankly, I am astounded by the sporadically continuous descent into brainlessness. She is beginning to not consistently recognize me. Especially when I am gone for a long time - like when I have an all day show at the Smith. And she is consistently not remembering more and more (if that makes any sense). And she is beginning to lose track of where she is - even when she is in her own home. Sigh. Any thoughts are appreciated.

I bought a grenade

I bought a grenade. And I used it. But no one was killed. Woo hoo! Does anyone else think it is crazy that people are allowed to walk around with weapons of killing, like assault rifles, and yet, walking around with an alcoholic beverage is against the law in most places? Oh, by the way, the grenade I am talking about is half a growler. I had never heard the term before. Anyone? I bought a grenade of oatmeal stout from Climbing Bines - which is correct - Bines are different from Vines - look it up if you don't believe me. I will write about Climbing Bines in my Brewpub blog, even though they aren't a brewpub. They are, at least, a local brewery! Yay local breweries!

So, what has been going on at Chez Schoen-René? A whole lot of nothing. Some busy-ness. Some indolence. Some sitting and staring at my room and thinking - wow, I could use someone to help me do some cleaning. And what should pop into my head? "Everybody ought to have a maid" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Love that show. It was the second show I directed in college. I think I saw it in High School, with Chris Clemenson playing one of the parts. Speaking of college and high school - nice segue, right? (I would really like to have a Segway, by the way...) - it is my 30th college and 35th high school reunion this year and I consciously chose to not do anything about either of them. Yay!

Oh, some of the business (busy-ness) was working at the Smith. We had a band - The Lone Bellow - come in for a show. They were quite good - though not many people came to see them at our venue. I don't get (as in "understand") how some shows sell really well and others don't. Capitalism sucks. Just sayin'!

Mom news: she is getting more befuddled but so far we are still managing. Mary Gerhart came for a visit, but I was at the Smith, so I don't know how it went. Getting information from mom is a hit-or-miss prospect. I hope it was a good visit and didn't confuse her too much. I can't tell any longer if visits are good for her or just upset her. Sigh.

Feels like a lame post. But, better than nothing, right?

A Good Smith Day

So, here it is Saturday, three days since we got back, seems like a lot longer, and I haven't been able to finish a blog post. I hope to do so today, since I really don't have much else going on. 

Yes, I have a day off from the Smith. Yippee! Not that I have been working there an inordinate amount. But I have been working there. Speaking of which, I had a great Smith day yesterday.

What I mean about a good Smith day is that I got a lot of things done and learned a few things as well. I actually was there twice. In the morning, I hung a banner in the front foyer. That entailed a bit of ladder climbing, which entailed a bit of ladder carrying. I also learned about something called "Oops" or as Kelly calls it, "Goo be Gone." It took tape residue off glass really easily! Yay! Now, we just need somebody to go around the Smith and de-tape more glass bits!

I also called the electricians and told them that they had a green light to do some electrical upgrades and clean-ups that we have been interested in doing. Like getting people out of circuit breaker boxes and putting in light switches for safety. And putting in some permanent work lights for working on the stage. Yippee!

My mind is not working as well as I would like. I can't remember if I called the lighting company - ETC - to ask about the blinking dimmers yesterday or earlier. Anyway, they suggested vacuuming them out, which I did yesterday. In the afternoon, actually. Back to the morning. I spent a good amount of time playing with the slide show. I added a couple of slides, which can take a few minutes, or can take a lot longer if I need to build the slide from scratch. And I think that was my morning.

In the afternoon, as I mentioned, I vacuumed the dimmers free from dust. This was a bit of an ordeal. I had to figure out how to turn the power off to the dimmers. I couldn't tell from the labels in the circuit box which ones controlled the dimmer pack. So I turned off the breaker in the electric room. Oops. Not a major oops, but a good solid minor oops. Turning that off turned off the whole stage left side of the theatre, including all of the outlets in the center of the auditorium. Which meant that one of our two internet wifi routers got turned off. The one that Kelly and I use for our email. Oops. And, on coming back into the theatre, I noticed that something looked different. It took me a minute to realize that I was looking at the fire curtain! Oops. 

No time to worry about that - I needed to vacuum the dimmers and do a few other things before our "press event" that evening. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. That was rewarding. Then power on, viola, internet service restored, and fire curtain, hmm, not going up. Why is that? Oh, right, the power is off failsafe thingie. Up another, very tall ladder, and after a good bunch of tugging, got the thingie in the thingie and the other thingie magnetically attached to the last thingie. Problem solved and bye bye fire curtain!

Next up, adding sound to the previews. Which I did. Only to find that it was going to take more than an hour to get it up on the film server. And I just plain ran out of time. Oh well. 

The event went smoothly, with a bunch of running up and down the stairs to the projection booth. Yay for exercise in the line of duty. 

So, all in all a good Smith Day. I learned, I played, I cleaned, and life is good.

Vacationland Maine - Friday May 23

Catching up slowly. And before we inch forward, let me say a few words about mom, for those of you who read my blog for mom news. She is being treated to a lovely time. Lots of stimulation, lots of food, lots of attention. Heck, I bought her 11 books in the Gideon Scotland Yard Detective series the other day. She was complaining that her copies were falling apart, so on the way back from Bangor, I stopped at a great barn of a used bookstore and bought one copy of each of the JJ Marric/Gideon books they had. Yay! Meanwhile, Juliet keeps finding adventures for her to go on. Go her! More power to her in fact. Sadly, each time we try to talk, mom gets upset that we aren't talking to her. Sigh. So, long and the short of it, I think that mom is having a good time. Though she would be just as happy being at home in her bed doing nothing, I think. :)

Friday was another day of rest and relaxation! Huzzuh!! I got up and puttered on my computer for a long time - starting to get things organized, websites visited for the first time, getting all the logging in and set-up re-accomplished. As for my phone, I have only added one or two apps so far - mainly the bridge app! It doesn't look as good as it did on my old phone, but it is playable. Yay! Anyway, I could have done that for hours and hours, but I really, really needed to get out and get me some shoes. Yup, daddy needed a new pair of shoes! Big time.

A year ago, or so, when I was down in NC for some reason of other, I bought a great pair of Birkenstock shoes - dressy but not super dressy. Well, I am not so good with shoes. I wore them for everything all the time. And, recently, they were looking a bit worse for wear. I have been looking for a place that does shoe maintenance around Geneva with no luck. So I headed into Belfast, hoping that Colburn's, the oldest continuously (continually?) operating shoe store in America, would also have shoe services. They did! They made me a deal - if I bought a pair of shoes, they would shine my old ones. How could I turn that offer down? I had been planning on buying a new pair of shoes anyway - I needed something a bit more durable and working-ish. So, I ended up buying two pairs of shoes. Left one of the new pairs and the old pair there, as I didn't want to take the shoes back on my bike.

One of my new pairs of shoes!

Oh, right, I had completely put it out of my mind that I rode from Northport/Kelly's Cove to Belfast Downtown. It really wasn't far, just really hilly. Right out of the driveway, there is a hill. Seems like at least three good sized hills between here and there (and seven smaller hills). But it wasn't too terrible a ride. Only 5 miles or so each way. And the shoulder on Route 1 was, for the most part, six feet wide, which provided lots of room for me and zipping autos to share the road. I must admit that a couple of times it was a smidge frightening, but overall, I felt safe, and exhausted, er happy. There was one point early on when I was tempted to ask Juliet to come get me with my bike rack, but I managed to persevere and did the whole trip without too much trouble. And some fun! Yippee!

I bought this as a reward for riding to Belfast safely!

After the shoe store, next up was purchasing a new thumb drive - I left my thumb drives - picture to follow in another blog post someday - at home. How helpful. Sigh. The man at the shoe store gave me directions to the computer store, but I didn't really understand what he was saying, so I just wandered off in the direction I thought he said was right. I didn't find the computer store - but I did find a bakery, where I had a yummy chocolate croissant and a nice interaction with the sales person. Yay! She told me where the computer store was in a way that I could understand - she pointed at it. :)

Yummy, despite the weird name.

So I wandered to the computer store. Weird little place, but a nice guy (is everyone nice in Belfast?) behind the counter. He sold me a thumb drive for an exorbitant sum. Oh well. We all gots to make the benjamins! (Or something like that). Next stop, more food. 

Someone had mentioned Daily Soup to me. Silly, but I thought one could buy soup there. Apparently, I was wrong. You have to order soup and have it delivered to you. No soup buying where it is made - at the soup kitchen! Well, fine, no soup for me! Next stop, food truck Good n You. I had been thinking of trying more of their food, so had their pork tostada! Yum city! I could easily have eaten four of them! Or more!! But I didn't. I refrained. I was thinking of heading to Front Street for a beer, but decided that a beer would have made my eventual ride home a bit more taxing, and it had been taxing enough already, thank you very much. Still, I wandered that way when a little place caught my eye.

  

Good n You food truck

Oh. My. Yumminess!

I liked the location and the variety of cuisine offered: Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian!

The Thai Place

View from the Thai place!

I wasn't all that hungry, but I wanted to eat something. So I had a bowl of hot and sour soup, Thai style. It was good, though I think I might have liked the coconut soup even more. Maybe another day. It was a smudge chilly on the deck out of the sun, but it was still pleasant hanging out there and eating/drinking some yummy soup!

Thai Hot and something soup.

Then it was time to bike home. The ride back seemed a lot easier than the ride going. Psychological mind games or fact? Who can tell? In any case, before I knew it, I was back at the homestead! Yay! Juliet's plan - she, as I do, always has a plan. In this case, we were to meet after a movie and then go to dinner together. The movie was Life of Pi, which is a fine movie - just not one that I wanted to see, in a library, on a teeny screen, on uncomfortable chairs...so I opted to check out a new to me brewpub! Yay!

The new place is about 15 minutes away in Lincolnville. It took over part of a very old restaurant, The Lobster Pound. I had, over the past few years, tried to get into Lincolnville Center to Andrew's Brewery, but somehow never managed. Now he has opened a brewpub! Yay! I had only had one or two of his beers and though not overwhelmed, I am always willing to give beer a chance. I know, I know, I am very magnanimous! I will write more about my experiences in my beer blog - suffice it to say that I had a pleasant time and might venture back there one day. Not top of my list, but I will gladly give it a second chance.

I got done there and headed back to Belfast to meet up with Juliet and Mom and Paul. Sadly, it didn't happen. Not in a tragically sad for of way, but in an - oops, the movie lasted two hours and the restaurant we were to meet in was closed sort of way. Oh well. Life is that way sometimes. So we all met back at the house, ate a few nibbles and made our way to bed.

Phew! Quite a day. Yay vacation!

Vacationland Maine - Wednesday and Thursday May 21 and 22

How long have I been here? How long will I be here? What state is this? Who am I? Yes, I am getting that jello-like and relaxed. Mellow jello! We drove up on Tuesday. Wednesday day was a decompressing day. I didn't do a lot of anything - except ate and drank a bit. Oh, and saw a movie. Well, a collection of five documentaries from the Camden Film Festival.

That was a nice relaxing day!

Thursday was another relaxing day. My main (tee hee) plan was to buy a new laptop and a new iPhone. (I am using the voice typing feature and it seems to be working pretty well)(How freaking cool is that!) At first I didn't know if I wanted to go to Portland or someplace else to find a Best Buy. So I used trusty online stuff and found out where all the Best Buys were and it turns out the Bangor location was indeed the closest. (OK, back to my laptop and no more voice typing.)(Wait, maybe there is an option...looks like there is - downloading something so that I can use it offline as well as online. Almost a gig download!) So I hopped in the car, programmed my GPS (love my GPS) and toodled off to Bangor's Best Buy.

Bangor isn't so very far from Belfast. The two cities, though, are not connected by major highways. They are connected by less than major highways. A lot of little towns are driven through as well. A 30 mile drive takes an hour. But at least it is scenic! Yay scenic! I tried listening to one of the CDs I recovered from my book bag - oops, they both were all beaten up. Sigh. So it didn't play as well as I would have hoped. I have a plan, though. I am thinking of turning my old 3gs phone into an iPod. I have never had an iPod. I know, I am a loser. Actually, I am just not that "into" music. Don't get me wrong or started. I do enjoy music - I also like silence. Most of the time I prefer silence. And when I am doing something, I don't need sound in the background. Usually sound in the background (rocking the rhyming) is distracting. But there are times when I would like some music. And creating CDs doesn't seem to be the thing to do. Especially since a) I don't have any blank CDs hanging around and b) my new laptop doesn't have a CD player. I would like to make all the music that is on my old computer available to my new computer. I think I need to upgrade my iTunes though to take advantage of iCloud. Hmm. Just going a mile a minute here in my thoughts. And typing them almost as quickly. BTW, I have installed the dictation thing on my laptop, though somehow I think that is cheating. And really, part of the reason I don't do a podcast or a vlog is because I like to ponder and correct and recording  what I say just seems out of control. Typing, now there is something I fool myself into believing I have control over...

Where was I? Oh, right, on the way to Bangor. I got there and was lucky enough to follow a group into the store who also were looking at getting a new laptop. We chose similar things - I chose to go for the larger hard drive, though. Which, on this machine, is a solid state one - quiet and fast - oh so very zippy! Technology is amazing!! Next stop, cell phones.

I was a little worried about changing phones. Change is scary. Fun, and scary. I didn't know what to expect. It actually was easier, but took longer than I had thought it would. Oh well. Still, I was told my options, changed my plan drastically, but now I have unlimited text!, and picked out a nice, white iPhone - for $1. Plus money to turn the thing on. Really? Jeezus!! Anyway, I am happy and it seems to work. Now all I need is a new case for it...

After bonding with the sales guy over this and that, especially Geaghan's, I headed off in search of food. Ok, I didn't really search, since I knew that I wanted to go to Geaghan's. What's not to like - good food, good beer, good atmosphere. True, no pool table, but other than that, it is high on my list of great brew pubs! (Maybe it is in my brewpub blog...) I had a great oatmeal stout - or two - and a yummy tuna melt with sweet potato fries (which were a little cool but life is that way sometimes...).

Back on the road and headed to dinner with my friend Susan. We have known each other for, oh my goodness, I don't know how long. We were friendly as kids - though she is a few years older than I am. Our families were friends. And we have remained friendly this whole time. Yay. She offered to make me dinner and I gladly accepted her offer. Yummy stuff, too! I need to find a good meatloaf recipe. I think mom would enjoy it.

Long day, though, so I then headed home, played a bit (phone, computer, xBox) and then hit the hay! Yay!

I might have some pictures for the next post. From my new iPhone. Huzzuh!!

One step at a time

One step at a time - is there really any other way? And multi-tasking? Really? I don't think anyone can really multitask as we only have one brain - true, there might be other parts not necessarily under our conscious control - but what goes on under the surface is none of our business - until it surfaces of course. So, we, with our uni-brain, can really only do one thing at a time with focus. Driving and putting on make-up? I rarely do it, but it doesn't seem like a good idea. Driving and doing much of anything else - is that really multi-tasking?

Anyway, as I was saying, one step at a time. Most things can only be accomplished through methodical steps forward. Again there are those times when an answer springs into your head - or a task seems to take a lot fewer steps than anticipated, but still, those are just single steps. One of the things I like to say when people find that they don't know where to go or what to do or how to achieve a goal is: baby steps. When in doubt, take little, wobbly steps (sometimes with support if you can find it) in any direction - hopefully in the one you are wanting to go - but really, all motion is forward motion (in a way). At least it is motion.

This all occurred to me as I was working on getting the room at the head of the stairs ready for potential occupancy. We might have a boarder! Mom vacillates between being excited about the prospect and being horrified by the prospect. If it causes her too much stress, we will reevaluate. But for now, it looks like, starting this weekend, we will have a housemate. (I stared this a while ago - she is now safely ensconced in the room - how long she will stay is anyone's guess...she is welcome as long as she wants to stay, but life has a way of moving us around sometimes in ways that we had not anticipated.)

In order to get the room ready, I had to attack the problem one step at a time. First, I emptied out the dresser drawers. Karl, if you are reading this - hahahahahaha (on a couple of levels) - do you want your Heathkit calculator? The dresser mostly had a bunch of random stuff in it - I think one of the drawers was a sort of gift drawer that mom had created. Two and one eighth drawers had stuff in them. I boxed it all. Yay!

Next, I took a few boxes After that, I took some boxes that I had sitting around waiting for Godot on the front porch up into the room to be filled with extra books into the attack - only to make it clear to me just how many books and boxes had migrated into the "orange" room. (The rug is orange.)(This is my childhood room. So I always feel a little nostalgic in there.) The next day, I took more boxes out. Then I piled the remaining boxes near the door for their eventual trip heavenwards. So, all I had left to do was move those boxes and do some neatening and the room would be as ready as it was going to be. Maybe a quick vacuum. We shall see. Mom promised to dust the big table in there - she did actually help (in her way) clean off that table. That was probably the biggest job and I had forgotten that we had done it. (The table did get dusted - I don't know if mom did the actual work, or just supervised Jenny (the aide) doing it.)

I thought I had oodles of time. Turns out, I was wrong. I got a call from my boarder asking if she could move in much sooner than expected! Suddenly, my baby steps needed to be accomplished in rapid succession. Pack boxes, lug boxes, lug boxes, lug boxes. I think, in all, 20 boxes worth of crap made it up into the attic and out of that room. And I mean crap in the most loving, respectful way.

Things that didn't get done - I didn't vacuum the room. Or clean the bathroom we are sharing (except in a very cursorily (cursory sort of way)). But, it gone mostly done. Through baby steps. Yay!

Putting the Porch Together

One of the lovelier attributes of the house in Geneva is the screened in side porch. It is a lovely place to sit at times during the fairer parts of the year, here in Central NY. I like to open the porch as early as makes sense and put it to bed as late as makes sense. I started the opening process today.

The first thing necessary to getting the porch ready for "the season" is to wash off the detritus that accumulated over the fall and winter. There was a surprising thickness of dirt on the floor. As well as pine needles and leaves. First a quick sweep, lifting up the cool gutter doors that someone (Pa?) installed so many years ago. Then to a quick rinse with the hose.

Aha! Sometimes things are really easy, sometimes they are a little less so. That was the case with the hose. First off, the outer faucet doesn't function anymore - which means that the water must be turned on and off in the basement - a little bit of a hike back and forth. First turn on - water flowing, hmm, that isn't right - the hose was closed, there ought to be no running water. To the faucet - oops - the hose became detached. No biggie, I will just, er, well, um, it didn't just become detached, the plastic bit (why was it plastic?) that attached the hose to the faucet broke. Made in China. Not that I am impugning the quality of Chinese goods - heck, a lot of Apple Products are assembled in China - but sometimes they do cut corners - like using plastic where a metal connector would have lasted longer. Sigh. You get what you pay for. So, back to the basement to turn the water off. I hoped to find another hose somewhere. And I did. In the garage/barn. Yay! Simple to attach the hose to the faucet and then disconnect the two old hoses, like, er, um, umph, grrrr. To the tool box! First tool, a simple pair of pliers. Um, no good. Back to the tool box again, for one of my favorite of all tools, the vise grip. Grip onto the hose, hold tight, twist the other hose bit with the pliers. And slowly, and surely they come apart. Yay! Now, to simply attach the two...oh, that's why the hose was in the garage/barn. The attaching end has broken a bit. Even though it was metal. Sigh. Ah, duct tape to the rescue. Tape, tape, tape. To the basement to turn on the water and...wait, the water is running - did I forget to turn off the hose end? Nope, the taping didn't work. Sigh. Back to the basement to turn the water off again. Back to the hose connection. Let's see if I can do a better job of connecting the two hoses with duct tape. Tape, tape, tape and open the hose a bit so that the pressure is lessened on the connection. Back to the basement to turn the water on and it is running, as expected. Though there is quite a leak at the connection, enough pressure is getting through the hoses to accomplish the rinsing. Finally. Yay! Back to the basement to turn the water off one last time. It has occurred to me, subsequently - or maybe during all of the hither and yondering, I could have swapped the places of the hoses, though that would have meant that the spray nozzle wouldn't be able to be attached. Sigh. I will need to buy yet another new hose. Huzzuh. Still, everything is rinsed and the porch is drying out in anticipation of being put together.

Phase two - Porch Assemble! - Everything looked dry, so I went out to start the process of putting the pieces that comprise the porch in their proper places. First off, the plastic tarp that I used to keep wetness and dirt off the soft goods. Up it came, and, oops, more wetness - I guess I sprayed the plastic when I was washing (well rinsing) the floor. Plastic out onto the side yard to dry out - swept the water a little to spread it out so it would dry faster and then off to do other stuff while the floor continued to dry.

Back again - folded the plastic and unrolled the rug. That is the hardest part. In years gone past, we used to put the rug in the basement - unearthing it and bringing it upstairs was a tough job. Two years ago, I got smart and put all of the soft goods on the little sofabed thing and covered it all with the plastic. Viola! A lot less work. Flip the sofa bed on its side and the rug just makes it past. Woohoo! Down goes the sofa bed, furniture and pillows placed and tada! the porch is ready for primetime. With a the sofa bed being covered with the Christmas "snow" which was a nice think white bedspread. Not the traditional covering, but it will suffice until such time as the other cover makes an appearance. Or not.

All in all, about an hours worth of work, I would say - spread out over the afternoon - it would have been more fun with help, but as it was, it was still not onerous. Yay! And maybe, just maybe, mom will go out and sit there now and again. Maybe not. We shall see.