back from grocery shopping

green beans and corn, cans two for one....also got lima beans and baked beans....and biscuits and cornbread....and rye bread ....and sweet potatoes....all things to go with ham.....I'm going to wait until after Easter, and see if they have leftover Easter lilies marked down.....today looks like I might do the second walk in shorts and sandals.....was 36.5 around dawn, still chilly until the sun gets up a little....watched Dersu Azala last night, one of the films Kurosawa did in his later years....good movie....

sunny on the front porch

so I sat out there quite a while catching some rays, as they used to say....people out walking dogs or whatever.....and I heard a good number of trains going by....I take that as a leading economic indicator....the more trains, maybe the better things are getting.....right now I've turned on the radio, and I'm going to take a nap on the sofa ......or just listen to the music if I don't fall asleep...

Actual Spring-type day developing

front door open, well, with the glass door closed....the "storm door" that substitutes for a screen door.....this lets a lot of sunshine into the entry hall, which is the core of the heating and cooling in this place.....it's where the thermostat is, and the HVAC intake.....went for my second walk earlier than usual, because it was such a nice morning out.....

my oh my

that turned out just awesome.....after polishing off my plate of potatoes and ham with turnip greens, I found myself leaning over the stove -top picking at the crunchy parts of the scalloped casserole around the edge of the Corning Ware....damn, wicked stuff......

grilled ham and swiss on wheat

for lunch. Later I guess I'll go ahead and make a relatively small batch of scalloped potatoes and ham alfredo, with greens.....I've got some greens, but not much else in the vegetable side department right now....rained a lot last night, with lightning flashing in the distance where the extreme weather storm track was, to the north and east through Greenville and Greer....warm fog on the morning walk, broken clouds on the after lunch walk....warm enough now to crack a couple of windows open.....

tornado watch

thunder, lighting, wind and rain for about ten minutes, and then it was gone.....but the weather service says the unsettled conditions will continue on into the evening....watching basketball....had a ham and swiss omelette.....

french toast and sausage links

for Sunday breakfast. The ham did fine in the crock-pot....the bone just fell out of it....lots of ham now for sandwiches or whatever....I saved some of the juices in an old pickle jar, to make ham gravy for my grits some time.....gray day here, going to rain in the afternoon and evening according to predictions.....it's Palm Sunday? At the swap meet, there were people who wove little crucifix things out of palm leaves and sold them this time of year....they did a good business...

sweet

after some struggle with the dirty old open machine heads, I got a new set of bronze Martin acoustic strings to tune up fine....and now it is sweet for sure....and since the bridge falls off when you take the strings off, it is a floating bridge and not a glued on bridge, so that means it is a post 1970 "parlor" and not a pre 1970 "3/4" and so it's a 6128 and not a 929 for sure. Cleaned it all up with guitar cleaner while I had the strings off, so it looks and smells nice now....

further Stella research

online reveals that the guitar is most probably a model H6128....the "faux natural spruce" parlor model.....the Harmony site says these are birch all solid wood guitars made 1972-75. Reviews on an old guitar site reach the general consensus that these things are heavy, loud, great bottle-neck and blues guitars, and "keepers".....that neck marker inlay is an "H" , for Harmony made....

beautiful morning

chilly still at dawn, but now the sun is shining bright on the house, so it should warm up pretty quick.....I put the ham in the crock-pot and filled it up with ginger-ale....we'll see if that works....I'm not having much luck watching the basketball play-offs.....I make it for a while, but then some particularly annoying commercial will come on for the 12th time in the last 20 minutes and I'll just get disgusted and turn it off. Maybe this afternoon I'll do what I did last weekend, and watch the game with a CD playing instead of the TV sound.....

googling stella briefly

it looks like it's a H929 3/4 model, which was in production from 1945 to 1970. The 1953 catalog price was $23.50.....the last year 1970 price was $37.95.....

on my walk

there was a yard sale....the lady said her daughter had just gotten into USC.....the USC that's just down the road from here an hour or so....and they were having a Spring cleaning and money for college yard sale. I bought a pair of Levis my size for 4 bucks, and then saw a Stella guitar on the porch....an old made in USA with a bone nut and trapeze tailpiece....so I went over to the bank and got $30 for the guitar. It tuned right up....I'll put some bronze strings on it sometime....

friday on my mind

high 50's, fair, some breeze.....last night's supper was heated up ribs and kraut. I might try to make a rib meat sandwich for lunch. The bbq sandwich at Fat Ivor's was made with leftover rib meat from the previous day. Any ribs you got on a given day were smoked that day. Birds are singing, the lawn is blooming....aye but there's the rub....a "lawn" should not be blooming, so sometime or other I'll have to start thinking about running the mower over the weeds, to foster the illusion of lawn-ness.....sometime this weekend I guess I'll cook that ham.....

back from the big city

made it through the traffic somehow....I'm sure glad there's nothing like that around this neck of the woods....used the Hwy 14 detour to get on the interstate at Owings, and found the church easily enough once I negotiated the interchanges and surface traffic to Old Spartanburg Road.....lots of relatives were at the visitation.....of course Wayne and the other Brocktons, and Rusty, Lucy, and Aunt Doris came together....and Charlotte and Beth were there....Rusty says "hello" to Nick, and will say the same to Jack from us when he sees him....I stayed a little over an hour, and heard some tales and met some younger folk I don't think I'd met before....but I didn't stay for the service and drive to the cemetery and all that....it was starting to rain a little bit when I headed back to Clinton, hope it doesn't pour down on the burying.....

rennovation

that house I walk by that they put the new roof on....yesterday they put a new water heater out back, in a sheet-metal box with a little stove pipe out the top....don't remember seeing it done exactly like that before....and today they were there putting in new double-glazed windows, and sticking that white vinyl trim over the old weather-beaten window frames. I wonder what they are going to do with the shake or shingle, what ever it's called....maybe like a clear Bear sealant or something....and there's another cottage right across from the park playground where somebody is busy doing a lot of work, fixing it up. I hope they paint it, 'cause it's sort of a puke pink right now. Over somewhere on Musgrove somebody is building an apartment complex, in anticipation of the students of the new pharmacy school wanting some nice modern housing.....and in the paper it said that they had it three-quarters leased already, before it's even built? I guess old mill housing isn't good enough for some folk.....

70 degrees, clear, wind 1 mph SSW

in other words, a nice afternoon....good for sitting on the porch and eating peanuts, etc....this morning I washed the car and went to the grocery store, and the gas station. Spent more money than usual at the store, but got a lot of stuff that will last a while.....got a 7 libre smoked butt portion ham for 7 bucks....got some asparagus, and new york strip steak.....ginger ale to cook the ham that same way again, same as the Christmas ham, that worked.....I think there is still a piece of paper in the Jeep with the directions to Brushy Creek Baptist Church, from when I when there for Uncle Bill....so I'll just use that for Aunt Edith.....

movies

Kurosawa this month, for his 100th birthday....and Ginger Rodgers Wednesdays....last night there was a Bogart film.....he would smoke his cigarettes down 'til they burned his fingers in those old flicks, hence "don't bogart that...."

pleasant walking

around 11:30.....and, reading the ads that came in the mail, I can buy my Easter ham at BiLo when I do my regular Wednesday shopping....at 99 cents a pound....and I'll get an additional 10 cents a gallon off at Shell....so I can gas up to drive to Greenville at about $2.20 per.....I envision scalloped potatoes with ham, etc....

33.9 at sunrise, windchill

but no clouds, so it should warm up into the 60's by the afternoon. I put the other half-rack of ribs in the crock pot with sauerkraut and apple wedges. I one week, my new phone has used up one of those little battery thingeys on the display....one out of four. I power it off when I go to bed....and I've used about two hours of talk time? So it certainly has better battery life than my old phone. I found out from Verizon support that in order to get any photos out of the phone I have to leave my legacy plan and go to the current core prepay plan. So I'll just take pictures with my camera, like I've been doing anyway. The visitation for Aunt Edith is Thursday afternoon, before the services which start at 3. So I think I'll go up early and visit, but leave before 3, because I don't want to be in traffic at 4 or later....I have become afraid of traffic, and don't want to deal with it at all. This morning I'm going over and get a loaf of bread and some cash from the check-out robot.....and sometime I should take the Jeep to the coin wash.....

not very spring-like

rather cold and damp, really. Lots of rain overnight, and 40% chance today. Got just a little drizzle on my library trip.

a little rain I guess

the oxidized tin roof on the shed I can see from here looks damp anyway.....but it has been warmer, haven't had to turn on the heat.....yesterday I just had scrambled eggs and toast for supper....wasn't hungry enough to really mess with cooking much....stayed up late watching Lawrence of Arabia.....one of those epics.....Sunday breakfast was coffee, OJ, hash browns, sausage, and egg over easy with Tabasco. A little catsup on the hash browns. From what they say, it might start raining harder later in the afternoon......I might watch the Gonzaga game, I don't know for sure.....

looking good

for the first of Spring.....it arrives at 1:32 pm ET, I think that's what it said in the paper.....I already did some Spring cleaning in the morning though, gave the bathroom and the kitchen a scrub-down, mopped the floor, etc....and went for a drive and went for a walk....some things blooming now.....Clemson and Wofford both went out in the first round.....but Wofford looked pretty good, for the smallest school in the dance.....the ribs came out excellent, melt in your mouth.....

end of winter?

the Great Winter of '10.....in the 70's here this afternoon, and again Saturday is the forecast....so maybe I can start some Spring cleaning.....and then rain predicted for Sunday-Monday. Clemson and Wofford, a little college in Spartanburg, are both on TV at 2:30 this afternoon, in the NCAA first round. So maybe around half-time in those games I'll put the baby back ribs in the oven, with a potato to bake. Just half the rack of ribs, the other half is going in the crock pot some other day with sauerkraut, apples, potatoes.....Today will be oven BBQ ribs, not slow-roasted, but done in a high oven, around 450, about half an hour a side, in the larger iron skillet. So I've already walked my hour or so for today, and can read for a while or something......

looks like

it must have rained some overnight.....I actually slept all the way through the night I think. It was about 9:30 when I turned out the light, and as far as I can remember, it was 6:00 the next time I looked at the clock. So 8.5 hrs sleep? Usually I'll wake up like at 2 in the AM, look at the clock, roll over, and go back to sleep. Or wake up more than once....but I think I slept all the way through the night for once. Or, I just don't remember waking up and looking at the clock. Old people don't need a lot of sleep anyway, they say. I fixed my Irish supper in an iron skillet....figure that one out. And I'm going to try iron skillet ribs.....cloudy this morning, should warm all the up to 66?

from the Clinton Chronicle

the school lunch menu for next week...well, in 1966...Wednesday, March 23-Milk, Chicken pie, strawberries in jell-o, green lima beans, hot biscuit and butter. Thursday, March 24-Milk, hot dogs with chili, tomato salad, potato sticks, butter, and apple pie. Friday, March 25-Milk, fish sticks with tartar sauce, creamed potatoes, field peas, crispy corn bread, and cake with chocolate icing. The paper comes out on Wednesday, so I guess Monday and Tuesday were in the week before. Always fish sticks on Friday, I remember that. Clouded in here today, chance of rain in the afternoon. Already did my grocery shopping....corned beef, cabbage, potato tonight of course....and they had baby back ribs for a good price, so I got some of those....and etc...spent about $30 for the coming week, which is about usual....I found out that my new phone fits easily into the watch-pocket of my blue-jeans....it shows the time in big numerals without opening the flip, so it's a modern day watch I guess.....

was not that easy

I had to drive to the Verizon store in Laurens to get the phone to work. The store in Clinton closed a while ago I guess. But we did eventually get the new phone switched to my old plan.....but it's going to be a battle to figure out how to use all the bells and whistles on the crazy thing.....they don't actually give you a manual, you have to try to navigate the LG website to get instructions on the functions.....and I might have to get software from somewhere to get the pix into iPhoto....oh well, new toy oooweeeooo......

new cell phone?

I question this, because I haven't actually got it to work yet, it is still taking it's initial charge, which takes some hours I guess. Anyway, $24.48 tax included I got an LG Accolade 5600 which should work with my existing Verizon account. At least that is what Verizon indicated to me in an e-mail. I had asked how to upgrade to a phone with long talk-time, and there is 6.5 hrs talk-time on this phone, they claim. So I went and picked one up at Wal*Mart.....and after it charges I should be able to punch in a number they gave me in the e-mail, and thus accomplish an equipment upgrade. I'll believe it when I see it; nothing ever turns out that easy, does it? It does have a camera, and the charging cable is also a data cable, so you can charge from a USB port, or use the USB port to send pictures from the phone to the computer. Games, GPS, Mobile Web, etc... are possible, but there will be an extra charge. It does text, but I don't. But; another nice morning here....warmer than yesterday I think.....

filled out my census form

might walk it to the P.O. in a bit, maybe after lunch. Fine morning in Carolina....sunny, not freezing.....birds singing....I got out in the backyard and picked up a lot of sticks and twigs or whatever that had fallen during the Winter storms, and trimmed some branches so it will be easier to mow the weeds in a few weeks, 'cause that season looks to be getting here as usual....for Sunday supper I had a sort of chicken alfredo with mushrooms and baby limas, which are a favorite bean.....

looked at the clock

rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour....I'm not going to change my routine for some silly law. Well, I'll work into the time shift slowly, probably. Sunday breakfast....toast with butter and blackberry jam, two sausage links, and the egg was going to be over easy but the yolk broke. Oh well. I put a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce on it anyway. Cold west wind on the newspaper walk, 36F....back to the ski jacket and stocking cap for today anyway....looks like I could vacuum some around here.....

temporal limbo

I've already set my three clocks ahead, but it's not official until 2AM? So I don't know what time it really is....but it's time for bed, or close enough. Didn't turn the TV on tonight, just read and played the radio part of the time....had leftover cornbread chili bake for my supper....never did really rain again this afternoon, just one brief splatter against the window that I saw....

very nice morning

the sun is out, and it's been mild and not very windy....took my two walks already, and went to the store for bread and wine.....drove out through the woods some, to get some rpm's on the Jeep, it was sort of lugging at low speed....need to get more Marvel Mystery Oil.....clouds are starting to come and go....another front is still predicted for this afternoon....they are having an Irish Festival somewhere this weekend.....forget where exactly....

that squall line from Georgia

seems to be going through right now.....I fixed catfish, fried grits, and kidney beans for supper.....for lunch I made a half sandwich in the toaster oven....beef, cheese, onion.....I just heard some thunder, coming done pretty good now.....don't see anything on tonight I would want to watch in particular.....maybe I'll find something on one of the strange channels, or maybe I'll just read .......more thunder.....

2 walks this morning

since more rain is coming this way through Georgia right now.....low overcast and warmish this AM.....I watched one of those bizarre convoluted made-in-Spain pasta westerns last night....where the good guy and the bad guy could have shot each other easily any number of times, but they don't so they can put in more snarling dialog before the final six-gun showdown.....seemed like half the movie was hard eyes just under hat brims, and hands twitching near holsters.....anyway....the night before I had watched "Modesty Blaise", which was obviously from the acid era....it made a lot of sense too.......

evening, stopped raining

but another front is due tomorrow.....I did cook the chili spoonbread dish, and it made for good hot and filling rainy day comfort food.....at least half of it left for some other day....

noon thursday

raining pretty hard, one bird is still singing....guess it doesn't care about getting wet....or maybe it isn't getting wet, where-ever it is. For lunch I used one slice of rye, one slice of beef, one slice of onion, and two narrow slices of swiss cheese to make a skillet melt sandwich....with the little bit of potato salad, and the glass of wine. Walked in the morning OK, don't know about later today, lots of weather still coming on the radar.....only mail today was an ad for life insurance....I get one of those almost every day.....but they never seem to insure that you will live, only that you will die....well, such is life....

Fog,maybe more rain later

possible thunderstorms in the afternoon? The catfish was tasty, and there's enough left for two more dinners looks like....but I think I might try something this evening that I haven't done in a while, which is chili with cornbread cooked on top, in the oven.....it has a name but I don't remember it.....Hormel chili was two for one when I went shopping, so I got one can Chunky, and one can Hot.....

rain,cooler than yesterday for sure

but didn't have to run the heater for the last couple of nights....so maybe the natural gas bill will start to moderate.....wasn't raining yet when I went grocery shopping....got some catfish, and some chicken breast cut into strips..... tenders is maybe how it is labeled.....and I picked up eggs, orange juice, peanuts, corn bread, etc....I'll do some catfish for supper, with hash-browns and kidney beans.....lunch was a half sandwich of deli sliced roast beef, swiss cheese, mustard and mayo on swirl rye toast, with a small dollop of potato salad, and the glass of wine....breakfast was oatmeal with raisins.....I bought some blackberry preserves, since the apple jelly is about gone....

scotch eggs

I think I'll just stick to scotch whiskey....scotch eggs are hard-boiled, peeled, and then wrapped in a bread-crumb and ground sausage batter and deep-fried. Damn. Who thought of that in the first place? No wonder some of the Scots got chased out of Scotland to Ireland, and then chased out of Ireland to the piney woods of the Piedmont.....don't even think about haggis.....

from

Jacob's Ladder by Donald McCaig....(Christmas dinner, 1860) "With prodigious ceremony, Pompey ferried a roast of beef from the sideboard, and conversation resumed while his master carved.

As swiftly as Pompey removed a dish from the sideboard to the table, other servants replaced it. A roast goose nestled between a brace of ducks, the smoked ham had hung in Gatewood's meathouse since the year of Cox's snow; there was a venison tenderloin baked in red wine and juniper berries, scotch eggs, a lamb fricasse, dilled cucumbers, and apple-and-carrot casserole, baked squash, pumpkin soup, diced turnips in butter, winter spinach, and cress gathered just that morning from Strait Creek spring. There was light bread and cornbread and biscuits. There were pies: apple, mince, pumpkin, buttermilk, pecan. And there were more cakes than pies! "

68.8, clear

finally able to open a couple windows and let some air through the house....got back from my second walk, so I could take off my boots and put on my moccasins, and kick back.....the forecast is for it to start raining tonight and keep raining through Friday night.....so I might miss some walking days, which I don't like, because the less I walk the more my back knots up and bothers me.....I made a quick trip into the grocery store, because I didn't have much for a lunch....got some deli roast beef and some southern style potato salad.....will do a more comprehensive shopping tomorrow.....

much nicer today

middle 60's around 1 in the afternoon, good walking weather for sure....also did a load of laundry, and took a shower....fixed an omelette again for Sunday supper....becoming a habit, I guess....didn't even turn on the TV yesterday, I've got plenty to read, and the radio....

they were saying

it would get to upper 60's....well, to got to 62 or so, but much overcast and chilly really....

comfortably numb

Looking through the Laurens County Advertiser throw out that shows up on my lawn Sunday mornings, I find the release of the Top 10 List of Most Popular Boat Names by Boat Owners Association of the United States.....number 10 is Comfortably Numb. What does this say about society as a whole? I don't know.....if I ever had a boat, I think I'd call it "Nevermind".....27F around dawn, might get up to 63 in the afternoon. Deli Swirl french toast for breakfast.....leftover stew and biscuit last night.....watched old Westerns, and went to bed. I will not watch the Oscars, I haven't been in a movie theatre in years anyway......don't know anything about that kind of stuff...

sourdough rye

The fruit stand I drove by all the time at the bottom of the grade in Escondido carried the Dudley breads, and so sometimes they would have sourdough rye, which was my favorite. Yesterday in Wal*Mart I picked up a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Rye Pumpernickel Swirl....I toasted a piece at breakfast and put my poached egg on it. Pretty tasty. Googleing pumpernickel, I find that it is a dark rye from Germany, made with a sourdough starter. In fact, the Wikipedia article says most rye bread uses a sourdough starter. You live and you learn. My favorite legend about rye bread is that if rye flour develops mold and you go ahead and make bread out of it anyway, you end up with everybody tripping out, like on LSD. The mold creates a drug that is psychoactive. So in a bad Winter in Salem all they had to eat was moldy rye, and the whole town got freaky and started burning witches. You live and you learn? Or do you take your rye bread history with a grain of salt.....

sunnier

but still with a wind most of the day....I did go over to WalMart, and found a few things I was looking for....I got some mixed nuts that were cheap, but they are way salty...oh well....and I got some rye swirled with pumpernickel for bread....had oatmeal for breakfast, and grilled swiss on rye with fried pickle slices and Fritos for lunch.....strawberries for a snack in the morning, and some of the salty nuts in the afternoon....since I had stew last night, tonight I will do something else, and have fish and hash brown patty with pink kidney beans. Frozen hash brown patties are real easy to deal with, and cheap. They put in a small row of shops at one end of the WalMart parking lot...they are called "The Shoppes at Wal*Mart" .... classy name....I did not go over and look at them....I think there's a phone store, and a shoe store, and a couple of other places that I didn't really see what they were from where I had parked.....

the HVAC downdraft

is in the entrance hall, so cooking aromas end up by my front door, even though the kitchen is at the back of the house, in the traditional manner....so right now if you came in the house, you would smell simmering beef stew, mixed with skillet sausage and pickle. Fried pickle in your sandwich is another strange southern thing, but I like it.....you can also get it breaded and deep-fried as bar food....so they say, I haven't been in a bar in ages....29F on the morning walk, but the sun is out now so it will be warmer than that on the afternoon walk, maybe up to 50 or so.....I've been reading scary near-future sci fi books from the library....I'm glad I won't live to see it when the coastal cities are all flooded out, and gene-altered blights rage through the ecosystem .....and there is no more gasoline, etc....damn it, maybe I will....or the kids and grandkids.....anyway, need to go to Wal*Mart tomorrow I guess, get some things.....

used the windshield scraper

and then went to the store....they had strawberries on sale, so I got some of those....and I got the fixings for a crock-pot beef stew, and a few other things.....was 30F on the newspaper walk, but no ice on the sidewalk, just some snow on the lawns still.....

snow on the ground

now, and they say there will be more in the morning....IFC had on "Bright Young Things" tonight...that's a good movie, in my opinion....I'm about ready to go on to bed shortly....the roads should be melted before noon, so I can do my weekly grocery shopping OK.....

almost noon

and the snow is coming down pretty good....

on the radar

it looks like it's snowing north of Atlanta, and north of Greenville a little bit, but so far here it's just cloudy and windy.....actually about 10 degrees warmer on the morning walk than yesterday....on the GoClinton site, it says that the city council voted to start a farmer's market on Saturday mornings beginning this May.....$10 for a space on the big lawn behind the city building, where they have the Easter egg hunt....that's just a couple of blocks from my house....but that would be the same time as the one in Laurens, and it's not very well attended even, so what's the point? Wait and see if it really happens.....

Sun's come out

it was cloudy on the morning walk, 28F, no wind.....went to the library, the grocery store for orange juice, the gas station, and the ABC....which are all close together is what is loosely called the south Broad retail area.....so I'm all set if it starts snowing Tuesday....I can just stay inside and watch....