I am now writing this post while hooked into our Starlink internet.
Oh, my goodness, what a difference!
It was not without issues, though.
The first thing I had to do was some shovelling.
I had to use the ice chipper to break up the snow before I could shovel a path to the corner, where the current cables enter the house.
We had talked about pulling one of these out and drilling the hole better, but they are well sealed, plus on the inside of the house, not very accessible. We decided to make the new hole higher.
Using their app, I found a clear spot off the path to the kibble tray under the shrine and dug it out.
Which got immediately claimed.
Before drilling a hole, though, we needed to pick up some more sealant, so a quick run into town and a visit to the hardware store was in order.
That turned out to be… not quite what we needed.
Once we had the inside parts inside, we set the dish itself up, so we could fuss with the cables.
I am going to be much happier when this is on the roof!
Then the issues started. Drilling a hole through the wall.
A log wall.
We have a long set of drill bits that go up to half an inch, which is wide enough for the end of the cable. It’s too bad we couldn’t just use the coax that was already there, but it is what it is.
Except…
Just a few inches from the end of the new cable, there is a wider part. I don’t know the name of it, but it’s wider than half an inch. Still, we did create a half inch hole through the wall, almost 2 feet higher than the other cables. This was a pain, because my drill sucks and the chuck key is stripped. We still needed a larger hole, though, and that meant a trip to the basement, were I remembered a set of spade drill tips we found when cleaning the basement out.
We ended up having to drill a 7/8th inch hole, from both sides, because the spade tips were not long enough to go all the way through.
That is a large hole!!
We still couldn’t get the cable through. So for the next while, we used the long bit to try and smooth out whatever the wide part of the cable was getting caught on, somewhere in the middle. Having to drill the larger hole from both sides caused a “bend” in the hole, and the wider part of the cable, which is inflexible, was too long to get past.
Eventually, it got done, and the cable made it through. My daughter pulled through a few feet of slack, then set up the inside parts. As soon as the dish had power, it set itself.
I foresee a problem! :-D
It’s only temporary.
While still outside, I used the app on my phone to set up our account, then my daughter and I tucked away the extra cable, until we can set things up permenently.
By the time we were finished fighting with it, I completely forgot to take a photo of the hole. It looks so ridiculously big for the cable that’s running through it. We’re going to need to pick up some sort of spray foam to seal it properly. For now, it’s got some fibre fill shoved in, on the inside, to keep the wind out.
After using my phone to set up the Starlink, I went ahead and did a speed test.
Not too bad at all!
Now, download and upload speeds were not something we had much to complain about. Especially my husband. His computer is set up right next to the router, so he can plug a cable right in. He hasn’t been able to use WiFi since his Windows OS updated a while back. This is what he got.
Which is just insane!!! Wow!!!
The girls upstairs got hooked up and immediately noticed a difference, though I don’t think they’ve got speed test software on their machines.
Once I was settled in and hooked up, I went to a few places where I knew I would see a difference, if there was any. Images on Pinterest, for example, which loaded without issue, or Discord, which has always been a huge problem for me. It also connected almost immediately.
I didn’t have speed testing software on my desktop, so I downloaded some and did a test.
Before I show you the test results, however, keep in mind that I am in what’s probably the worst place in the house for WiFi, even with a booster.
Yes. My download speed was 0.16mbps. My upload speed was faster at .23mbps
Out of curiosity, I did another test on my phone, while sitting at my desktop.
Yeah, even my phone’s WiFi sucks in my office corner.
I tested my desktop again, after waiting a few minutes, and it did improve.
Then a few minutes later…
Yes. This is an improvement.
There was, however, a different problem.
Once we got this set up, my husband called our satellite provider and suspended both our internet accounts with them. We will test the Starlink for a couple of weeks before we cancel our old accounts. We won’t need to switch from one account to the other, part way through the month, and we no longer have data limits. It all comes down to how stable and reliable the connection is.
Then, because our old router was still pushing out signal, my husband unhooked the old satellite routers (that will need to be returned when/if we cancel) and turned off our router.
Suddenly, I no longer had a live feed to our garage security camera. The one that lets me keep an eye on the driveway and gate. Because the camera is so far from the house, we have a set up that hooks into our internet system via the electrical wires, and is then plugged into our router, which has something like six ports on it.
The router the Starlink system came with had only one port available.
We talked about it for a bit, then my husband went looking. He found a fix for his computer, and was able to start using his WiFi, and was able to hook our IP camera to the Starlink router. I now have a live feed again!
My husband’s computer, however, has gone down to 158.49 mbps download and 12.65 mbps upload. I just tested my phone. It’s at 52.6 for download and 9.2 for upload right now. My desktop is…
… 4.78 mbps download and 0.71 mbps for upload.
Excuse me while I don’t feel sorry for him. :-D
You know what I think I’m going to do?
I think I’m going to make some popcorn, go online and watch a full length movie or something. At highest resolution.
Well, I just couldn’t resist. After looking over the Heritage Harvest site, then going over my budget, I went ahead and placed another seed order. We may not be able to plant them all, but we’ll at least have a good start on our own seed bank, if we don’t!
I am absolutely determined to grow gourds for crafting purposes. This company is in Fisher Branch, Manitoba, which is in the same zone, or colder, than we are, so we should be able to grow these here, too!
The first two, Apple and Canteen, were gourds I already had on my favorites list (a function the updated website doesn’t seem to have now), and had been out of stock, so I wanted to snag them while I could!
The third gourd, Yakteen, is a new variety for 2022. It is a type that can be eaten when young (which is supposed to be true of all varieties of gourds, but I don’t think they all taste good), or left to mature and be used for crafting, which is what I plan to use it for. It’s also listed as very rare, so saving seeds will be an important part of growing these.
The rest that I ordered are all on their new-for-22 list. It was really hard not to order more from my old favorites list! I already have other varieties of most of those, so I didn’t. The only exception is…
… the Red Noodle bean. I have two other varieties of pole beans, in different colours. None are as long as these get, though – they can reach 16-20 inches in length! There’s only 25 seeds in a packet, and I was already planning to get a third variety of pole bean, so this fits in.
These are Little Finger eggplants. We are not big eggplant eaters, but it’s not because we don’t like them. It’s just that, with X amount in the grocery budget, they tend to get passed over. I don’t know if we’ll be up to growing eggplants this year, but these are supposed to be good container plants, so they would be a nice thing to have tucked somewhere on the south side of the house. In the end, it will probably depend on how much space I have to start things indoors.
These are Purple Beauty peppers. My husband and older daughter are the ones that like peppers, so having a few plants for them would be nice. And if we’re going to grow peppers, why not a variety that isn’t available in stores? :-)
Here we have the Kaho watermelon. They are an early variety that grow to only 2 – 4 pounds. Watermelons were not something I was planning to try, yet, but with an early variety, it might be worth starting a couple of plants indoors, if we can fit them.
Finally, we have the Wonderberry. Something I have never heard of before. These fall into the category of permanent plants, as they are supposed to self-seed prolifically. We will have to plan out where we grow them, but once we do, we should have berries, year after year. That makes them worth trying, in my view! Plus, they are drought tolerant. Bonus points on that one!
So this is my second order from Heritage Harvest Seed. I look forward to seeing how the seeds we get from them do in our zone, compared to ones we have ordered from other seed companies that are not as far north as this one.
Among the packages we got in the mail today was our seed order from Heritage Harvest!
I felt like a kid in a candy store, opening this up, even though I knew exactly what’s in there!
Or not!
I didn’t remember ordering two types of tomato.
I double checked my order, and the shipping notification and no, I did not order two types of tomato!
The extra packet is the Sophie’s Choice tomato, so of course I had to look it up.
The first thing I noticed is that the website has been redone, and it looks fabulous! The next thing I noticed that their new-for-22 items are now up – and then I saw that stuff I was interested in that were out of stock are now in stock!
Dangit. I’m going to have to make another order.
Oh, the tragedy… :-D
As for the mystery tomatoes, I found their listing. They are a determinate, short season variety and described as extremely rare! So I sent them an email mentioning the extra seeds, offering to pay for them, since I’m more than happy to plant a rare variety to help keep them going.
Now I’m going to have to go back there and do some shopping! :-D
When we first signed up for it, we read that it would be sent by mail. After it was ready to be sent and fully paid for, my husband started getting notifications about FedEx delivery. Which was weird for our area, but whatever. It was due for delivery yesterday but, as I had mentioned in my posts, it never arrived.
This morning, my husband got an email telling him it was successfully delivered by FedEx
???
Well, it wasn’t delivered here, so we were really hoping it got dropped off at the general store the post office is in. This has happened before, when a delivery driver couldn’t find our place.
When I got to the post office, I asked about a package from FedEx, while getting the mail. There was a whole bunch of packages in and…
One of them was our Starlink system.
Yeah. It was sent by mail.
*sigh*
I ended up swinging past home to drop off the mail with my husband, who was waiting at the gate with the wagon, because there we no longer room in the car for my mother’s walker!
While I was at my mom’s, my husband checked it out, but we can’t set it up yet. We need to put a wire through the wall, but it’s possible we can use one of the existing holes for the co-ax running to the satellites. I’m pretty sure they’re weather sealed, though. We’ll have to dig our way to that part of the wall, first. We will most likely set it up in the middle of yard temporarily, until we can safely access the roof to install in permanently. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, my visit with my mother went rather well. I brought her the honey she asked me to get for her, and I did bring some pierogi that we made last night for her to try. When she asked what kind of filling they had and I told her, she made some comments about how she’d never used mushrooms before, but didn’t say anything negative, so that was a good start. We had lunch, then I helped her with her errands, then stayed for a bit of a visit after putting away her groceries. There were a few attempts by her to bring up her … hot topics, shall we say, but I managed to distract her from what usually devolves into racist rants. At one point, she started asking me if I wanted to be “healthy”, so I knew that was going to go weird. It turned out to go back to her visit here, to see the finished sign, then used wanting to see how nice the inside of the old outhouse looked as an excuse to get into things. One of those was fighting her walker through the back door of the garage to look for things she could criticize me about. It took a few weeks, but she finally brought up about the cans. We’ve been bagging our aluminum cans to eventually sell to a scrap dealer. We’ve got about 4 years of cans stored in a corner of the garage. Most of them are cat food cans, and sometimes critters tear the bags apart, so everything needs to be rebagged. My mother, of course, only saw the pop cans. Or what she assumed was pop cans. There are V8 cans in there, too. They’re the same cans she complained about, 3 years ago.
We don’t actually use cans all that much.
Anyhow, she has decided that these are all pop cans, and that means we drink nothing but soda, and that’s why I’m fat, and because I’m fat, that must mean I’m unhealthy. Never mind that she’s been fat for as long as I can remember, and aside from things like injuries or hernia surgery, I don’t remember her ever being sick. When I pointed out that most of those cans are cat food, she just gave me a condescending look, because of course I’m lying. Right?
I managed to distract her from that, though, and the conversation continued. At one point, grocery shopping came up, and I decided to take a chance. I told her about the quarter beef that we’ll be getting soon, how many pounds of meat we were getting, and some of the cuts. Now, this was part of a conversation about the cost of groceries, so buying 125 pounds of beef like this is saving money from having to buy in the store. So what did my mother get out of it?
She wants me to be healthy. She doesn’t want me to be sick and die. Because apparently, buying enough grass fed beef to last us for months is going to kill me? Apparently, I’m going to sit there and eat 125 pounds of beef, all at once? Or maybe it’s because she has been convinced that red meat is bad, even though we used to raise our own beef, butcher it and fill our freezers with it, for decades and never got sick? Whatever her reasoning, our buying a quarter beef is somehow supposed to kill me.
I have to admit. That’s a new one.
Still, overall, it was a good visit, and I was glad to see her stocking up on things, taking advantage of me being there with her car and able to carry them for her.
I’m glad to be home, though. These visits are very psychically draining! There’s just no way of knowing if something well suddenly trigger her.
As for the Starlink system, it’s already getting too dark, so we’ll have to work on that tomorrow. :-)
Time enough for a post, before I head off to my mother’s. I’ve decided to leave early enough to hit the post office before it closes, then grab something for lunch with my mother. I’m seriously debating whether or not to bring some of the pierogi we made last night for her. On the one hand, it would mean less cooking for her. On the other, they are not like how she fills her pierogi, and that’s always a bad thing. Plus, with my luck, she’ll get the one pierog with a cat hair in it or something, and I’ll get lectures on what a horrible human being I am for having cats. Or she might actually appreciate it. Ha! Who am I kidding?
I don’t know whether to look forward to visiting her, or to dread it. Hopefully, she’ll be having one of her good days.
This morning, as I was getting ready to head outside for my morning rounds, some movement out my window caught my eye.
I knew the deer were going through our West yard, as the snow is crisscrossed with their tracks, but this was the first time I happened to be there to see them in daylight.
They are so fluffy!!!! I just want to smoosh my hands into their fur. <3
After the last couple of bitter days, we’ve screamed up to -4C/25F, which feels downright tropical! We’re already warmer than forecast. In a few days, we’re even supposed to hit 3C/37F! Which would be the perfect day to install our Starlink system on the roof.
If we get it by then.
FedEx never showed up yesterday.
Maybe when I go to the post office this morning, I’ll find they left it there? Here’s hoping.
The cats are certainly enjoying the warmer temperatures. :-)
When I came out this morning, the heated water bowl was bone dry! It wasn’t knocked over. Just empty. It makes me think that a larger animal is drinking the water. It could be my brother’s dog (I saw him on the security camera again this morning), but there’s even a possibility that the deer have discovered it.
Or it couple be something else.
While heading to the corner cam to switch out the memory card – and back again to change out the frozen batteries – I noticed some indistinct tracks along the path. At first I thought it was from a cat, but after a while, I could tell it was something else. Eventually, I got to a place where the tracks were very clear.
Looks like a raccoon had come for a visit!
Well, time to get some stuff done before I head out. Hopefully, at some point today, we’ll get our Starlink system! While it’ll be great to have the better speeds, that’s not the main reason I’m so eager for it. Our current satellites give us some pretty decent download and upload speeds. It’s mostly the connectivity. The new system should mean a more reliable signal. Plus, we’ll have unlimited data and not have to worry about that anymore, either.
Ah, what a day! As I sit here, I am watching the garage cam’s live feed, as blowing snow covers my daughter’s footprints, from when she closed the gate just a little while go. At least it’s still getting warmer!
FedEx never did show up with our Starlink system.
*sigh*
Hopefully, we’ll get a call or email tomorrow to tell us what happened.
We did, however finish making the pierogi!
Gosh, it’s been so long since I’ve made these, they are the ugliest pierogi, ever! :-D
We also have a huge amount of potato filling left over, even though I made a double recipe of dough. I keep forgetting just how little stuffing fits inside a pierog. We did make extra deliberately, though, and as I write this, the girls are using some of it to make supper.
No, we’re not having pierogi for supper today. Those are cooling off in containers for the fridge. I had thought I’d have enough for the freezer, but it turns out I would have needed to quadruple the dough, and I won’t be doing that. I was in enough pain by the end of it, with just the double batch!
Anyhow, this is how we make our loaded filling.
The potatoes are basically our usual mashed potatoes, except on the dry side. They can be completely plain, too, or maybe seasoned with just salt, but we to include butter, milk and sour cream, and whatever else we have on hand and strikes our fancy. My daughter added a dash of hot sauce to it this time; just a tiny bit, because she knows I have no tolerance for spicy foods.
While she worked on the potatoes, I cut bacon into very small pieces, then cooked them over medium low heat in a frying pan until crispy and the fat was rendered out. The bacon pieces then got removed with a slotted spoon onto paper towel to drain and cool down.
I then added a bunch of mushrooms, cut into little pieces, to the bacon grease and cooked those on medium heat until almost crispy. That can take a while, as they release quite a bit of moisture as they cook. I used white button mushrooms this time, but usually use crimini. Any fresh mushroom would work, I’m sure.
Once done, the mushrooms were removed with a slotted spoon onto paper towel to drain and cool, just like the bacon.
After that, I poured off some of the bacon grease, until there was only about 1 or 2 tablespoons left in the pan. To that, I added about the same amount of butter, then added onions, chopped fine. The onions can be cooked until translucent, but I decided to caramelize them this time. Near the end of their cooking time, I added a bunch of garlic I’d put through a garlic press.
All of that got mixed in with the mashed potatoes, then the entire pot was put into the old kitchen, which is at freezing temperatures these days, to cool down.
The filling didn’t need to be completely cold before I added the cheese, but I did want it cooled enough that it wouldn’t melt the cheese. Here, I’ve got some old cheddar and goat cheese. I’ve made these using Montery Jack, which worked out very well. Any sharp cheese can be used. A mild cheese would just disappear among the other flavours.
The dough was made using a basic recipe I found online. I like a dough that uses sour cream, but we didn’t have enough for a single recipe, never mind a double, so I used one that was just flour, salt and butter melted into boiled water. The fun part is kneading it. Pierogi dough has such a wonderful texture!
When it was time to start making the pierogi, I just made a mess of things! LOL The first ones I made were massive. I was shooting for three inches square, but I was probably closer to four.
Yes, I do squares folded into triangles, instead of cutting rounds. It’s faster that way, and there’s less dough left over that has to be rolled out again.
The next batch I did went the opposite way, and were far too small. Some of the squares were more rectangles and ended up being folded into smaller rectangles instead of triangles. :-D
My daughter started boiling the first couple of batches while I finished up the last ones. At the very end, when there was just enough dough to make three pierogi, I made three balls and rolled them out individually, so we got a few half-circle ones, along with the triangles and rectangles! LOL
After they were cooked and drained, we tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper, then I split them up into take-out containers to finish cooling down.
I suppose I should have tasted one, but I was so focused on getting them ready to put away in the fridge, I didn’t think of it!
Let me remedy that.
Oh, my goodness! They turned out great!
The main reason I chop everything that goes into the potatoes so small is so that each pierog will have a bit of everything in it, and you can really taste each ingredient in there. Of course, with the onions and mushrooms fried in the bacon grease, the bacon flavour runs through it all, but without being too dominant.
The dough is nice and toothsome. I like a good, thick dough. Not too thick, of course, but I remember that even as a kid, eating my mother’s pierogi, my favourite part was the outer edge of dough. I would have liked a sour cream dough better, but the plain dough is still excellent. When we eat these later, they will be pan fried in butter, and that will make them even better!
Who cares if they are all weird sizes and shapes? They taste great!
While today has warmed up, this morning was a bitterly cold -26C/-15F!
The outside cats still had food in the kibble house, but it was warm water that they were really wanting! Yes, heated bowl ensures they have water to drink, but it isn’t as warm as the water I top it up with.
Agnoos popped outside with me, but was more than happy to join Tuxedo Mask in the sun room again when I went back inside!
Since Tuxedo Mask’s other eye as started to get leaky, both of them got drops this morning.
One of the things I made sure to do this morning was to unlock and open the gate for the FedEx driver with our Starlink equipment. With the current conditions, we can be pretty sure our vandal won’t suddenly show up.
As we waited, I got our tree hung up on the dining room door. At this point, it’s only got the star at the top, because it’s the most awkward thing to put on. I have caught several cats under it, stretching as tall as they can to reach the bottom of the tree, which is wrapped like a gift, complete with bow. They can’t reach it and, so far, none have tried to jump at it. We’ll add the lights next, leave it for a day, then the garlands, leave it for a day, and if the cats seem to be behaving and getting used to it being there, finally finish decorating it.
Still no delivery.
In the afternoon, while it was still light out, our prescription refills got delivered.
I decided to make pierogi – something I haven’t done in many years – and my younger daughter has been helping me prepare the filling. I’ve got my own preferred mix, and it’s pretty loaded with stuff. :-D That has filled most of the afternoon and into the evening.
Still no delivery.
Leaving my daughter finished the filling, I started on the dough. It’s at the resting stage now, and I just helped my daughter move the filling to the old kitchen to cool down faster. I’m taking a break to write this, and then I’ll go shred some cheese.
Still no delivery.
In theory, we could still expect them to show up within the next couple of hours, still, but it’s full dark right now, snowing and blowing. I’m keeping an eye on the garage cam live feed but, at this point, I would be very surprised if the delivery actually happens today. So far, my husband has not received any notifications about it. We shall see. I do hate leaving the gate open like that. Especially after dark. :-(
Well, it’s time to get things ready to continue making the pierogi. I started really late for such a big job, but I’ll be heading to my mother’s tomorrow. Since there is no spice cake left to bring over for her to try, I think I’ll bring some pierogi. :-)
At least I thought it was, until I finally sat down and looked at the time. It’s pitch black out, and I was expecting to see something close to 9pm, but nope. It was barely past 6.
I am looking forward to when the days start getting longer again!
Of course, the day started with feeding the critters. Tuxedo Mask and Agnoos’ water bowl was frozen over, and they were very happy to have a warm water top-up! Agnoos, however, wanted to go outside. Tuxedo Mask wasn’t going for the door, so I let Agnoos out for a bit. He immediately ran onto a pile of snow from shoveling paths, hunkered down and stared at me. :-D
He did eventually come back to join the others. :-D
Including Chadicous, trying to trip me, as usual.
After the critters were fed, I made a quick run to the post office; I had to wait long enough to give them a chance to sort through the new mail, but I also wanted to get there before they closed for lunch, because I really didn’t feel like going out again when they reopened at 2! My husband is expecting the paperwork from his insurance company that he has to fill out every year, to let them know that yup, he’s still broken. At least he no longer has to get a doctor to sign off on it anymore, once it was obvious his disability had become permanent. He just has to let them know that yes, he is still under a doctor’s care. Which is getting harder to do, since it’s all phone appointments now, and he hasn’t even been able to get his bloodwork done. A few times we’ve tried, he had to turn around and leave before he ever reached the reception desk, due to pain, because of the long line up caused by restrictions. When he finally was able to get to the desk, he turned out to be missing his health card and, even though they knew who he was, they couldn’t do his bloodwork. Mostly, though, he’s just been in too much pain to make the trip to the lab.
The paperwork from the insurance company wasn’t in, but we did have a few packages. One of them was a couple of small ceramic heaters for the girls to use in their “apartment” upstairs, which gets so incredibly cold in the winter. The heater we got for them a couple of years ago had given up the ghost. This time, instead of one heater they had to move from their bedroom at night, to their studio during the day, they’ll be able to have one for each room.
I got a lovely surprise package in the mail.
It was my prize for scoring so high on my firearms safety exam! A lovely hoodie, with a pouch style pocket in the front, and our instructor’s logos on the front and back.
I had to giggle at the sleeve, though! Too funny!
After I got home from the post office, I did the rest of my morning rounds. Mostly. It was so cold, I didn’t bother trying to switch out the memory card on the sign cam. The LED screen inside doesn’t work when it’s cold like this, so I would have no idea if the micro-disc card was seated properly, or if it wanted me to format it again. I can sometimes get it to work if I warm it up with my hands, but I really didn’t want to stand in the wind for that long. I did the gate cam, which doesn’t freeze up like the newer one, but the card kept erroring out. I think moisture got into it at some point, and the contacts are damaged, because it works again when I take the card out and re-seat it, pressing it in hard. This time, it just did NOT want to read that card! I finally got it working, but by then, my finger tips were dangerously cold. This is not something that can be done with gloves on.
Meanwhile, my younger brother’s dog had come over for a visit. It’s been a while, and I was happy to see him. The cats, however, were not at all happy with the big, shaggy beast that kept wanting to play!
It did give me an opportunity to get a photo of Cabbages, sitting above dog height. Her eye has cleared up nicely though, as you can see, it’s still leaking quite a bit. There is no sign of redness anymore.
I’m seeing the forecast for Sunday is now up to 2C/36F! The cats will really appreciate the warmth. Today is supposed to be the last chilly day, and then it’s supposed to stay above -10C/14F, for a week, and even when the temperatures start dropping again, they’re still expected to be above -20C/-4F. Even the expected lows aren’t going to be much different. The cats will like that. And so will we, when our Starlink system comes in. Apparently, it’s going to be delivered by FedEx tomorrow! It was originally supposed to come by mail. It would be too dangerous to try and access the roof right now, even if it’s just the edge of the much lower sun room roof, so we might have to wait a few days. This is a bad time of year for it to come in! Which is okay; saving a couple hundred dollars a month will be worth it – if it works! Since it’s hard to tell which satellite dish is for the primary account, and which is for the secondary, we decided we will simply suspend both accounts (there’s just a $25/month fee per account that way) while we make sure the Starlink is working. If it does, we’ll close both of our current accounts and return their routers. If it doesn’t, we’ll put back whichever of the dishes we take down (we should be able to use either of the existing supports for the Starlink dish) and reactivate the accounts.
With the running around this morning, it was a while before I could snag a daughter and do Tuxedo Mask’s eye. The sun room is chilly enough that his other eye has started to leak a bit! I’d gone into the sun room ahead of my daughter to snag Tuxedo Mask and found him in his spot under the heat bulb, looking out the window.
Agnoos was outside the window, looking back at him, his front paws on the glass! He saw me and started bobbing his head around, looking into the sun room. So I went and opened the inner door. As soon as he heard it, he came running. When I opened the outer door, he slithered under it and into the sun room before I could open it all the way!
I think Tuxedo Mask was quite happy to see his brother, and they both wanted all kinds of cuddles!
The only problem is their new habit of sitting on the board the heat bulb fixture is attached to and hanging down from. It’s a good thing we can see into there from the bathroom window, because I discovered it knocked off its support. I set it back up and secured it with a small Bungee cord, but in having to keep it well away from the fixture, it would still slide around when they jumped off. When I had the chance, I put pieces of rigid insulation we have from a cat condo we made with cardboard boxes, a couple of winters ago, to make walls around the bottom of the mini-greenhouse frame I’m using the hold the heat bulb. They won’t be able to see out the window from there anymore, but it’ll be warmer. I cut a piece of insulation into two, to put on the shelf that’s supporting the board the heat bulb is on, one on each side of the board, in such a way that they will stabilize the board and also give the cats more space to sit on and look out the window, while acting as a roof to help keep them a little bit warmer under there. Between that and the box nest, they’ll be nice and toasty, even as the temperatures drop.
My husband, meanwhile, cut holes in the sides of the boxes the packages came in, to give to the cats to play in. Which I did not appreciate, since I was in the middle of cleaning at the time. He dropped them in the space I had just opened up in front of where the Christmas tree will be hung! LOL
They were, however, perfect for the sun room.
The brothers were quick to explore one of them! :-D
My big job for the day was to get things ready for decorations. Normally, we would at least have the tree up by now, and have started decorating, but this year, the only thing we’ve got set up in the Advent wreath! I decided to shift some furniture around, after vacuuming the living room carpet. While moving smaller things aside, I got distracted by the cat scratcher. It’s just a post on a base. The post originally was wrapped in carpet, but when that got torn off, my husband got some sisal rope to wrap it in. It has since been re-wrapped a few times, but the cord keeps sliding to the bottom when the cats use it. Today, I decided to save our furniture a bit and fix it, using adhesive all over the post. That took a while, but I think it was worth it. It should no longer slide down! However, the adhesive needs 24 hours to cure, so I had to hide it away until tomorrow.
That distraction meant it was a while before I could finally start vacuuming – only to discover the beater brush on our new vacuum cleaner isn’t working! Everything else was working fine, though. I figure the belt broke, but would have to take it apart to see. I decided to just use it as it was and leave dismantling the base for another time. It meant having to run it back and forth a lot more often. With our 1970’s shag carpet, it wasn’t going to be a good cleaning at all, but I’d at least be able to get some of the cat hair off the top. LOL
Not only did this end up taking a lot longer than normal, but as soon as I started, my rotator cuff in my right shoulder decided to let me know it was injured. Except I haven’t injured it. I have no idea why it was hurting! So on top of having to take extra long to vacuum the carpet with (I’m assuming) a broken belt, but I had to do most of it using only the one arm.
Oh, and move furniture, too. Not much, mind you, but enough to make things even more “fun”.
The most frustrating thing was pausing half way through the vacuuming and using this opportunity to take out a power bar with an extremely long cord my husband got a while back. There are not enough outlets in this house, and the one that’s being used to light the aquarium greenhouse is the only one on that side of the living room, and has only one working plug. So for my husband to have a light on his desk, where he does his leather work, he had to use the only other available outlet, which is on the opposite wall from the aquarium greenhouse. He picked up one of those big power bars that has three rows of plugs, facing different directions, plus USB ports. It had a cord long enough to run behind the piano and the large aquarium greenhouse to the corner of the room, then behind the small aquarium greenhouse, a plant table, the TV and DVD shelf, to the outlet in the opposite corner.
It was very handy, until it stopped working.
Then it started working again.
Then it stopped working for good.
So today, I pulled out the cord, starting at the plug end by the TV, only to get hung up at the corner where the aquarium greenhouses are, fought with it for a while, eventually having to pull the cord through the cabinet the large aquarium sits on, before freeing it from whatever it was caught on in the corner and finally being able to pull it from the other side of the piano.
Which is when I made a discovery.
It was two power bars.
Yeah. I know. You’re not supposed to plug a power bar into a power bar.
The big one that I thought all that cord was attached to did have a longer than usual cord but, somewhere behind the piano, it was plugged into a regular sized power bar with a super long cord.
Once I got them both out, I tested them.
They both worked just fine.
What I think happened is that the cats stepped on the switch on the bar behind the piano, turning it off. So when we tested the outlet and it was working fine, we figured something had gone wrong with the power bar. We were confused when it suddenly started working again, and now I figure a cat must have stepped on the switch again, turning the smaller power bar on again, only to have them turn it off again later. With it working sporadically, we tucked it to one side, figuring maybe a cat had peed on it or something.
Nope. It most likely had just been turned off in a place I didn’t even know existed until I fought with the darn thing for nearly an hour.
So frustrating.
Anyhow.
While working on the living room, furniture got shifted so I could fit the extra chairs from the dining room and store the bins for our Christmas decorations out of the way. Then, when I had the chance, I put large cup hooks in strategic places along the walls the power bar cords had run along before, well above the floor, attached the big power bar to the wall above the work desk, then set up the one with the super long cord, running it from hook to hook behind the piano, aquariums, TV, etc. and plugged it in.
My husband can now have a light at his work desk again.
And you know what?
That thing is juuuust long enough that there is no need to use the big power bar.
Oh, sure, we won’t be able to plug in USB cables to charge phones, but that just means we can set the big power bar up somewhere else, if we want to.
No more power bar plugged into a power bar.
With all that finally done, I was able to prep the space in front of the dining room door, where we will be hanging the Christmas tree, flat against the door and high enough off the floor that the cats won’t get at it. That worked very well, last year!
By the time that was all done, I was completely wiped out. So was my younger daughter, who baked three double batches of bread and buns while I was doing this. My older daughter was working on her quick commissions. A couple of times a year, she opens a limited number of slots for relatively simple commissions, for a quick turnaround time at discounted rates, skipping the usual back and forth for details. She has a lot of repeat customers that wait for these to get digital art as gifts, so the slots fill up fast. Which means she has a whole list of commissions to get done in a very short time. She worked all day, but when she came down to start another pot of tea, she told me she had just realized she’d a mistake on a commission. Instead of being done for the day, she was going to have to go back to work.
Well, at least she’s warm while working, thanks to the heaters that arrived today. In the summer, she had to work at night because it was too hot for electronics during the day, but now it’s so cold up there, they both have had to bundle up in blankets at their desks, and the cold was even affecting her drawing hand.
Tomorrow, we should be able to set up the tree and start decorating for Christmas!
The link should open in a new tab, so you won’t lose your place here. :-) Also, the photo at the link is completely different from what the recipe results in!
Of course, I had to do some modifications, so here, I will talk about what I changed.
In the ingredients:
It called for 1 cup of dark honey. I didn’t have dark honey. In fact, I didn’t even have a cup of liquid honey. What I had was some of my cousin’s creamed honey. I have no doubt using it will change a few things, from the colour to the moisture to the flavour, but I don’t expect them to be a big deal, and considering how my cousin makes his creamed honey, with a hint of maple syrup, I expect tasty results.
The next change was the 8oz, or 2 sticks, of unsalted butter.
I honestly don’t get the “sticks” of butter thing. I mean, yeah, I do see them in the stores, but my goodness, it costs more to buy butter in sticks than in pounds.
One stick equals a quarter pound of butter, or half a cup, so the recipe is calling for a cup of unsalted butter.
I don’t have unsalted butter. Just salted butter.
Usually, when I see a recipe that calls for unsalted butter, and I use salted butter, I would reduce the amount of salt elsewhere in the recipe.
This recipe doesn’t call for salt at all.
I’m not concerned. A touch of salt can wake up sweet things, and for the amount of salt in the batter, with no other salt in the recipe, we’re not going to have a salty cake or anything.
We were pretty much out of ground cloves, so for the 1 tsp in the recipe, about 3/4 of it was from whole cloves I ground in a coffee grinder.
The recipe also called for dark brown sugar. We have just plain brown sugar, or “golden” sugar.
The instructions mentioned beating mixtures at low speed, so it assumed an electric mixer would be used, but I didn’t want to fuss with it and did it by hand.
The instructions said to pour the batter into prepared loaf pans and bake at 350F for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out pretty much clean. All ovens are different, so I set the timer to 50 minutes, then checked it with a steel chopstick. Because of course, I don’t have toothpicks.
It came out with batter stuck to it, so I added 10 minutes, then tested again.
Then I added another 10 minutes and tested again.
Then I added another 5 minutes and tested again!
Finally, the chopstick came out clean!
I don’t know why this took so much longer to bake than the recipe stated. Going from 45-50 minutes to 75 minutes can’t be completely put to differences in ovens. Whatever the reason, if you try this recipe, make sure to do the toothpick test (or chopstick, as the case may be) to ensure it’s done!
Doesn’t that look pretty? And the smell while baking was wonderful.
After letting it cool, I just had to taste test it for this post. :-D
As far as texture goes, it’s more “banana bread” than “cake”. It has a slightly crisp crust outside, with a lightly dense, spongey inside. The combination did make it a bit harder to cut! :-D
While sweet, is it nowhere near as sweet as I expected it to be! Not with so much sugar and honey in it. Using the salted butter was fine; there was no noticeable salty taste. I also don’t really notice a coffee taste, either, even though there was quite a bit of strong coffee in there. All the flavours blended together quite nicely, and no one flavour stands out more than the others. I found spreading a little bit of butter on my slice brought out the flavours, more.
It’s also drier than I would expect either a cake or most quick breads to be, though it is definitely moist.
From what I’ve read in other recipes, they can become moister with time.
I don’t expect these to last long enough for us to find out. :-D
I had to dash outside to do a meter reading, and the boys dutifully and adorably posed for me!
Aren’t they sweet?
Doesn’t Tuxedo Mask’s eye look great? It’s his left eye that was affected.
That, however, is not my news.
I finally got a call back from our vandal’s lawyer. He was quite apologetic for not getting back to me earlier, due to conferences he ended up going to all week. I laughed and told him I was starting to think our vandal had fired him, and he assured me that did not happen. :-D
So it turns out that our vandal somehow did not understand some of the wording of the conditions. I know the lawyer spoke to him about them before, but I guess once things were written down in the form of a court order, it seemed different? I don’t know, but I’m not surprised he wasn’t able to understand them. He has always had such difficulties. Did very well in spite of them, so this is not a knock against him. The judge gave him time for the lawyer to go over it with him, and he’s back in court this Friday. I do not need to be there, but the lawyer said he would be there (I believe he attended by phone, previously). He assured me he would update me with an email after it was done, and was confident our vandal would accept the conditions to a Peace Bond.
I did ask about the psychiatric assessment, for which our vandal is on a waiting list, and the lawyer said that this was a separate matter and still ongoing. Accepting the conditions of a Peace Bond does not change that. That is encouraging. I really hope this puts him on the road to getting the mental health help he needs.
On a more pleasant note, today is St. Nicholas Day, and I decided to make some Polish spice cake today, instead of our usual spice cookies. The recipe was enough for two loaf pans, and is in the oven right now. I will have to set some aside to give to my mother, when I go over later in the week. It’s an interesting recipe that included strong coffee – which my daughter made for me in her French press, because I don’t do coffee – a cup of dark honey AND a cup of packed brown sugar. This is going to be sweeeeeetttt!!!! It also called for a teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. We had just dregs of ground cloves left, because I couldn’t find any in the stores, so I used our little coffee grinder (which is never used to grind coffee) on some whole cloves. Freshly ground cloves are very different from store bought! You can really tell the higher oil content. That should really come out in the flavour, I think. Apparently, it tastes even better after resting for a few days. I’ve never had this kind of cake before, so I’m looking forward to trying it out. :-)
The Re-Farmer 