Caturday!

Grrrsday

I Should Have Planned This Just A Tad Better

I had a 6pm meeting tonight with a potential grant partner that got me home at 8pm.  I am the lead planner for a conference that starts at 8am tomorrow.  I have a $15k award proposal due by close of business Friday and I'm the closing speaker at said conference.  Friday night I am on the departmental trivia team for a Y fundraiser (conference ends at 5pm, fundraiser starts at 6).  Sunday I'm staffing the first aid booth at a fun run for four hours.

As a kindness to my co-workers, I decided that I needed to take a half day off on Monday so of course someone scheduled a meeting for that day at 9am and another one at 2pm.  No wuckin' furries, says I, I'll take a half day off next Friday and get a jump start on the weekend.

Just checked my calendar.  Yup -- meetings on Friday at 8:30, 10:30 and 2:30.  It's a good thing there's nothing scheduled, either personal or professional, this Saturday, because I will be suffering from anal glaucoma.

(anal glaucoma = I don't see my ass getting out of bed).

Can I Pick 'Em, Or What?

Sean*, the new Americorps guy (Fernanda having gone on to bigger and better things), came to us by way of four years at U-M and two tours in Afghanistan.  We are driving the rest of the staff crazy with our milspeak and I let some slip during a conference call Friday that included some members of the local National Guard unit.  Nothing profane, merely obscure.

This morning I got a teasing email from their training chief that included a popular emoticon.  I sent it to Sean* (note:  he got out as a buck sergeant).

Me:  Sgt 1st Class Williams* has called me out on my terminology.

He:   I really have a hard time comprehending the fact that a staff NCO is using smiley faces.

Vintage Advertising - Kantleek Hot-water Bottles

From Good Housekeeping, October 1919.  Very useful, if you live with a man who refuses to turn on the furnace.

"A Foretaste of Winter"

Cosy fire a-burning bright, ----

Cosy tables robed in white, ----

Dainty dishes smoking hot, ----

Home! and cold and snow forgot!

"Say, but it's cold today!" called Bob at the door.  "Frost tonight all right!  I was glad I took my overcoat this morning.  Have you had a fire all day?"

"Yes, indeed," said Bettina, "And I've spent most of the afternoon cleaning my furs with cornmeal, and fixing those new comforters for the sleeping porch, and putting away some of the summer clothing."

"I believe we will need those new comforters tonight.  How are you fixing them?"

"I was basting a white cheese-cloth edge, about twelve inches wide, along the width that goes at the head of the bed, you know.  It's so easy to rip off and wash, and I like to have all my comforters fixed that way.  I was cleaning my old furs, too, to cut them up.  I'm planning to have a fur edge on my suit this winter.  I don't believe you'll know the furs, the suit, or Bettina when you see the combination we will make together!  Fur is the thing this year, you know."

"Couldn't you spare me a little to transform my overcoat?  I'd like to look different, too!"

"Silly!  Come along to the kitchen!  There's beefsteak tonight (won't it taste good?) and I want you to cook it, while I'm getting the other things on the table.  I didn't expect you quite so soon."

That night for dinner they had:

Beefsteak       Creamed Potatoes

Devilled Tomatoes

Rolls               Butter

Plum Sauce

Bettina's Drop Cookies

Bettina's Recipes

(All measurements are level)

Creamed Potatoes  (Two portions)

1 c. diced cooked potatoes

1 T green pepper, chopped fine

1 T. butter

1 T. flour

1/2 c. milk

1/4 t. salt

Melt the butter, add the flour and salt, mix well, and add the milk slowly.  Cook until creamy, and add the potatoes and the chopped green pepper.  Serve very hot.

Devilled Tomatoes (Two portions)

2 tomatoes

2 T. flour

1 T. lard

1/8 t. salt

1 T. butter

1 T. sugar

1/2 t. mustard

1/8 t. salt

A pinch of paprika

1 hard-cooked egg

1/2 t. flour

2 T. vinegar

1 T. water

Peel the tomatoes, cut in half and sprinkle with flour.  Place the lard in the frying-pan, and when hot, add the tomatoes.  Brown nicely on both sides, and sprinkle with salt.  When brown, place on a hot platter and pour over them the following sauce:  Sauce -- place the butter in a pan, add the sugar, mustard, salt and paprika, the egg cut fine, and the flour.  Mix well, add the vinegar and water.  Heat, allow to boil one minute, and then pour over the tomatoes.  (If the sauce seems too thick when it has boiled one minute, add a little more water).

Drop Cookies (Twenty-four cookies)

1/3 c. butter

1 c. sugar

1 egg

1/2 c. sour milk

1/2 t. soda

1/4 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

1/4 c. chopped raisins

2 1/2 c. flour

1/2 t.  baking powder

Cream the butter, add the sugar, then the whole egg.  Mix well. Add the sour milk and the vanilla.  Mix the baking powder, soda and flour well, add the raisins and add to the first mixture.  Beat well.  Drop from a spoon onto a buttered and floured pan, leaving three inches between the cookies.  Bake fifteen minutes in a moderate oven.

Thrifty Bettina!  She's not only found a way to recycle last year's furs and keep from having to wash heavy comforters in cold weather, she's also using up the last of the leftover spuds and some milk that has gone off. 

That sauce ought to perk up limp. tasteless late fall tomatoes, too (although if she were really thrifty she'd make a scallop using stale bread-crumbs and the canned tomatoes she put up in August).

From A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband; the Romance of Cookery and Housekeeping, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles leCron, 1917.

This Is Sparta!

Me:  It's the second of November.  Can we turn the furnace on?

He:  Why?

(Image courtesy of the US Army Signal Corps Regimental History site).

Sans espoir de retour

Since Her Majesty went away, Reserve Cat (I suppose I should promote him to Primary Cat now, but I can’t) has become very demonstrative.  He wasn’t much of a lap sitter or a cuddler after he outgrew kittenhood, but if I’m in the recliner he’s on my knees or my chest every night now.  And when I sit in the computer chair, he’s curled up beside me.

He stands next to the bed in the morning and talks to me as I get up, follows me to the shower to watch (no skeeving – he’s a cat).  If I’m upstairs and he’s downstairs, he comes looking for me.  If I’m downstairs and he’s upstairs, samey-samey.

I don’t know if this is a recent development because he’s lonely, or if this affection has always been waiting to manifest itself and the Drama Queen and I just never gave him a chance. 

He got in bed with me this morning after the alarm went off and snuggled up under my arm.

Catur -- um. Day.

A Day Late

I was pooped when I got home from the NAACP event yesterday and didn't get the usual Caturday post up.  So, better late than never...

Quote of the Day

Oh, all the comrades that e'er I had
They're sorry for my going away.
And all the sweethearts that e'er I had
Would wish me one more day to stay.
But since it fell unto my lot
That I should go and you should not;
I will gently rise and softly call --
Good night and peace be with you all.  Trad. Irish.

I Will Never Complain About My Job Again

Chinese security forces administer rectal probes to 10,000 pigeons.

Because Everybody Needs A Little Squee (Especially Me)

Take Me Now, Lord

Email from sweet, lovely boss:  Can you speak at an NAACP event this weekend about Ebola?

Me:  I can think of things I'd rather do.

Turns out that this "event" is the 2014 State Convention. There are a number of reasons why I don't want to do this, and the least of them is that it's only four days away.

Dromedary Macaroons

DROMEDARY COCOANUT MACAROONS

1 1/4 cups Dromedary Cocoanut

1 egg-white

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup condensed milk

"Mix cocoanut, condensed milk and vanilla thoroughly.  Beat egg white until stiff, combine mixtures, shake into cakes.  Bake in moderate oven 15 minutes."  Good Housekeeping, October 1919.

Caturday!

There is no money in my program's budget for overtime, but guess who spent six hours at work today.

As the Emergency Manager for the university said, unless we're over-reacting the public thinks we're not doing anything.

Social Media Is Vastly Over-rated

Some jack-fool idiot posted a rumor today that there was an active Ebola case in our jurisdiction.  I can't believe I made it through the entire morning without ripping someone's head off.

Her Majesty

Last Wednesday night, she decided that she had to go out and she has not returned.  At this time we do not expect to ever see her again.  There are two fox dens in our end of town, and lots of hungry owls.

The Online Bookshelf - A Woman At Bay

Or, A Fiend In Skirts.  Just the sort of book you would hide from your mother.

So This Is Why The County Is Always In The Red

I am in a training session with, among other people, six members of a local fire department.  Two of them are discussing a piece of equipment.

Fire Dude #1:  Is (make of radio) firefighter-proof?

Fire Dude #2:  If you can use it as a wheel chock, it's firefighter-proof.


The instructor is a quiet gentleman from Utah who really should have known better.

Instructor:  So what is the single most dangerous item in your house?

Fire Dude #2:   My wife.


The training ends with a tabletop exercise simulating a flood in a resort town.

Instructor:  You still have over 50 people stranded at the (imaginary) hotel.  What is your recommended course of action?

Fire Dude #3:  They're tourists.  Let 'em drown.


The best part of the training?  After lunch, all of the fire dudes showed up wearing hot pink t-shirts with the breast cancer ribbon printed on them.  Tight hot pink t-shirts.