Blaze

In addition to describing our recent weather, it is also the name of my daughter's not quite one year old male English Setter.  She and her beau are off for an entire week at the beach.  We graciously (stupidly?) offered to be a member of our household. 

We are currently on night 4--and he has just been a wonderful 'young man'. Look at that happy face.  The dirt on his tongues is from a recently fetched ball.  How he loves to play ball. 

My daughter asked me several times if we would allow him to sleep in our bed. The answer was, and still is, a resounding "No!".  Nevertheless, he has been persistent, and over the last two nights he snuck up into the bed.  I  already tossed him out twice.  The third time I tossed him out (after being awakened).  However, it turned out to be Macy, and not him.  Macy (our Am Bull dog mix) sleeps in the bed with us. 

She was nonplussed, and he just jumped on the bed again.  She gets a little hot, so she has not minded the cooler strata of air by the floor.  Plus, last evening I brought Blaze's dog bed up--a large comfy thing that I would find comfortable.  Macy commanded that, and Blaze jumped up and made himself small and put his head on my feet.  It is important for him to be beside a human.

He is a rescue from Fredericksburg Humane Society.  The shelter believe that the owner's turned him in unable to keep up with such a rambunctious dog.  For the first couple of days, I wondered of our own ability to keep up. Luckily, my other three dogs have been wonderful girls, and they are all getting along fine.  Daisey, though, keeps guard of me, and Ella tries to stay out of the way.  Daisey, Macy and Blaze play ball together.  Ella couldn't care less about the ball. She'd rather swim than do anything else.

Blaze is very aware of every little movement inside the house to include our two cats.  He's interested in stalking them, but not doing them any harm.  They are wise cats around dogs, so I'm not worried.  There are plenty of indoor and outdoor places for them to get out of harm's way from him.

I'm glad that he is with us. Here he is waiting for Daisey to move onto the ball. She's the senior setter, and commands their respect.  Macy though could care less about the Setter pecking order.  Both Daisey and Blaze are similar build--that skinny field Setter with irrepressible energy.  Always on the lookout for something to mess with.  In these hot days, they pant so hard, they remind me of just one big organic radiator with a large tongue hanging out the side of their mouth.

At mealtime, he has no interest in his Puppy Chow, but all interest in the Dog Chow.  Our dogs are the opposite.  So after failing to get him to eat when he was partitioned from the others, I've given each dog a mix of food.  It works out well as Blaze will be almost a year old.  So mixing his chows will help him over the next month.  

He goes home on Sunday.  We will surely miss him.

The Sound of Silence

I'm in one of Dante's 7 circles of hell of the internet...Sound.  Some plug-in zapped my ability to play sound in Firefox. Despite my bird-dogging a solution and trying them (perhaps incompetently), I still have no sound.

My internet Explorer works just fine.  Because I'm tired of the frustration of troubleshooting the sound issue (which was previously a video issue...fixed the video issue, but there is no sound with the video), I'm switching back to IE after more than 5 years or so of being exclusive to Firefox.

I just don't have time to be bothered with this technical difficulty.  I've also had some difficulties with other areas (website interface etc), that I never used to have.

A reminder about how easy it is to lose customers.

(P. S.  It seems that there is a Flash problem that is fairly pervasive.  If i fix it so that I have audio, I have no sound (on Firefox) and vice versa.  Same conclusion...I really don't want to go through this much bother to have an online experience.).

Favorite things to do: dig potatoes

Good thing that I'm not on E-harmony....that title wouldn't likely get me a date!

But...there is something wonderful about digging potatoes out of the ground.  There's a plant, a mound of dirt and about 1/2 dozen or so edible jewels under each plant.  Unless you've grown potatoes yourself (or have a neighbor who does and is generous), there is just no describing what a new potato toted 50 yards from the garden to your kitchen tastes like.  The same can be said of corn...as soon as it is harvested, there's the cruel clock of nature tick-tocking away and breaking down the starches.  So picking just before preparation yields an incomparable succulence.  A little butter, salt and pepper are all of the accoutrements needed.

I liken digging potatoes to looking for Easter eggs.  My husband is very picky about how I should dig potatoes (as if it is frickin' rocket science!).  Well, I've dug more potatoes in my youth than he ever has in his adult life...nevertheless, he is still hyper-critical of how I do it.  Oh well.... (However, he knows that he is safe because if I declared my true interests on e-harmony or match.com no  man would linger on my profile!). 

I dug the last few mounds of potatoes.  We've been eating them almost every night, and we've not tired of them. I wished I had some fresh parsley (I didn't plant any!).  New potatoes with some garlic, butter, and a squirt of lemon are wonderful....and  great accompaniment for fresh fish.

I've found that simply piercing all over the potatoes and microwaving them in a FreshVAC container is a quick, easy and delicious way of cooking my new red potatoes.  Why I didn't not discover this before this year, I do not know.  But it steams them just right.  If you boil them, sometimes they cook too much and get water logged (or I just got distracted!).  Cooking them in the Freshvac in the microwave provides the best consistency--and they are ready in minutes for consumption or for dicing and cooking with a bounty of squash.  I like to roast peppers too and add them into the mix along with some onion, salt and pepper and paprika.

If you are looking to try something new in the culinary area, I'd like to encourage you to roast fresh, hot peppers.  Roasting hot peppers takes the bite out of them and really deepens their flavor.  Because hot peppers are so small, you can roast them quite well over a gas flame.  I don't try to roast cayenne's due to their slim profile.  I roast my peppers over the gas flame of my cooktop.  While it is best to have a grill basket, I use my stainless still spaghetti insert (with holes).  I managed to ruin my grill baskets while undertaking a very ill-advised experiment with my ceramic grill which involved smoking a chicken.  However, molten aluminum is quite a beautiful thing...and not something that you will want to see near your skin.  See picture to left.

 I was not harmed, but I had some sainted grill baskets whose metal melt points were exceeded. Good thing I don't have an interest in crystallizing meth at home.  You'd be reading about me in the paper--a news story and an obituary. 




Paint

Our heat wave in the East continues.  At least the three successive nights of violent storms have abated.  With power restored, at least we can keep cool. However I'm aware that in these economic times, there are many who cannot keep cool.

I wanted to do a post about the paint colors that I used on the FD Project.

BM Urban Legend on the door
and Oak Ridge Trim



BM Oak Ridge on Porch and
Urban Legend on the front door
 The exterior of this home is belies its 2552 interior space.  This home has 25 windows, a full walk out basement.  This will be a spacious, comfortable and beautiful home for the new owners.   
I stayed mostly within one card on the Benjamin Moore color chart (from the Classic Deck), beginning with Winter Wheat (232).

For the exterior of the house, I wanted to find a color that would harmonize (rather than provide too striking a contrast) with the existing siding.  My designer and I chose Benjamin Moore Oak Ridge for the porch and for the window trim.  I used a DTM product for the metal trim on the windows and the door.  It covered the previously brown trim beautifully.

The front door also had storm door (that had to be removed due to style and condition).  It had been screwed into the metal wrap,  leaving holes.  Further, the metal wrap was separating from the wood.  I puttied and caulked all of the issues away, leaving an intact substrate. 
BM Cream Fleece (233) in Aura matte on the walls
 and Linen White Trim


The home looked overwhelmingly beige.  I went further down on the color card and painted the front door Urban Legend.
For the bathrooms, which exceeded my expectations, I used Creme Fleece on the walls with Linen White Trim.  It is a soothing and beautiful combination, and it looked terrific with the tile choices.  I chose the Aura Kitchen and Bath paint for the walls.  It is a product that is expensive, but it has many attributes that make it a great choice for bathrooms.   I also chose this for the master bedroom. 

For the upstairs bedrooms, I chose Linen White on Linen White to create a soft white that would blend well with many decors without being 'blinding white'.



Pergo Elegant Expressions Buchanon Maple
BM Winter Wheat (232) walls/trim
Pergo Buchanon Maple Elegant Expressions Laminate
 The downstairs (it doesn't feel like a basement) and the great room upstairs were painted in BM Winter Wheat--another great neutral that is soft, harmonizes well with most colors.  The Pergo Elegant Expressions Laminate in Buchanon Maple was a great choise for the downstairs which has 3 more bedrooms. The bow front window in this walk out basement gives this a downstairs v. basement feel.  This is truly a spacious and comfortable room.  The wainscoting and trim in this house was previously stained dark wood.


New flooring, recessed lighting and paint transformed this room to this. 




Mother Nature

Mother Nature has shown her might yet again.  We were spared the loss of electricity for the first and second wind/rain events, but the third one was definitely the charm.  Our electricity went out last evening after my phone provided a "Tornado Warning, take cover now" alert.  Well, my dinner was on the grill.  I thought I might have just enough minutes to get it cooked...

I was wrong.

The wind started to kick up in that sickening sort of way when the wind swells and blows the leaves backwards.  The light was looking 'sickly'...that yellowish green light that always means that Mother Nature is taking you to the woodshed.

We turned the grill off and started fastening it and other things that could blow away down.  These thunderstorms have had ferocious, straight-line, winds of up to 80 mph.  My sister, who lives in Bedford, endured a period a couple of nights ago where she thought the roof was going to blow off her home.  Her electricity and phone line are out.  I've talked to her after that ordeal, but not today.

The storm brought lots of wind, fierce lightening and some rain.  After a couple of hours, we started the generator hookup.  This was important for the reasons of comfort, but MOST importantly (at least to husbando) to finish washing the NASCAR race.  Apparently the cable had not yet kaputted.

As I've mentioned before, my husbando is an electrician.  However, you have to be an astrophysicist in order to go through the steps necessary to successfully hook the generator up into the panel.  Well, all of 'that' was done, with the final step of getting the generator started in order to hook up the plug (which hooked into one panel, which hooks into another panel).

Flip on switches.  Push "start".  Rumble.  Nothing.  Rinse and repeat several more times.  Starter gives out.  Pull start does not work.  All is lost at least for the evening.  Surely the dawn will bring better luck.

Nope.

While our luck was not much better, we did manage to drain the gas (it had fouled), clean the carburetor and in general learn several intricacies that we had not known before.  While we got a little further each time, and actually managed to get the darn thing running a bit longer than the last time on several successive attempts, we still ended up with a non-running generator. 

Our good friend calls and is a mechanic.  He is generous and comes over.  As a mechanic, he is knowledgeable about the intricacies of carburetors (whether on a car or a generator).  Within about one hour, we are up and running.  Water!  Lights!  Fridge!

No AC...but it is withstandable for the moment.  At least I could get a much needed shower.  We spent all day working and sweating.  We spent all morning working and sweating over the generator.  We smelled like goats.  It was good to wash it away.

We brace for more heat and storms.  We are inconvenienced.  Others are not so lucky.  We are mindful of our blessings.

The Finish Line....

While I've not crossed it yet, I'm darn close!  I have this mop that I took with me to clean up all of the dust off of the hardwood and laminate floors at my FD project.  It is surely nice to have progressed from shovel and scraper, to push broom to dust mop.

One problem with this 'all over' renovation, is that anything that you choose NOT to renovate will stand out like a sore thumb.  At FD project, the sore thumbs are the exterior paint on the back doors (up/down) and the interior door hardware (hinges/knobs).  With my daughter's house, the switching out of the hinges and knobs made ALL the difference in the world. 

Yesterday, I schlepped over to Lowe's and purchased knobs and hinges.  Their Gatehouse brand is inexpensive and looks good. 

Today, I continue to work toward the finish line.   Already it feels good to have entire rooms "cleared" of all punch list items.  Hanging the mirrors in the bathrooms was an accomplishment.  The first mirror was a smaller mirror that I could handle myself.  What I couldn't handle is the measuring tape!  I had figured the place to hang it fine and how to center it fine. It was even level as I had the 4 foot level with me.

Unfortunately, I had difficulty in measuring the distance between the hardware to hang.  (The mirror hangs hard on the head of the screws in the drywall anchor.)  Eighths?  Sixteenths? They do matter.  I was off a smidge...and a smidge was too much.  I managed to fix it.

I do have a tip for hanging 'stuff' when you cannot see the back of the item you are hanging or what you are hanging it to.  On the surface that you are hanging something on, take painter's tape and mark the wall where the top of the hanger is located so that it can be seen on either side of your object that you are hanging.  On your object, take painter's tape and mark on either side of the object where the hardware is to hang. 

For example on the the mirror, I put painter's tape on the sides of the mirror exactly where the hardware was that sat on the screw heads.  ON the wall, I extended the tape from the center of the screws.  Matching up the tapes on the wall and the mirror had me securing the mirror in no time.  Failed attempts mean scratched walls.

I'm off to work now.  Have a productive and safe day.




Malcolm X

My sweet little guy, Malcolm, shown left within days of my obtaining him, is gone.  I suspect he became owl fodder.  Our woods are becoming more and more filled with these soundless, winged predators.  He would have been 2 years old this July.

I came to get Malcolm after my father called me to tell me that there were four little kittens around his house.  They were skittish, so much so that he had to trap them.  He got three of them and shuttled them to the Humane Society. The lone hold out, Malcolm (notice the X on his nose), was trapped the next day after I spent about 45 minutes trying to capture him.  He was very wary and scared.  He wanted me to get him, he was just too scared.  He kept crying and darting underneath things. 

Kittens have a natural tendency to get underneath things, and flee bird shadows--at least that is my observation of their behavior.  Malcolm was so frightened in his cage (it didn't help that my father was dragging the metal cage over concreted).  I put the cage in my car, and drove home. 

He was one of the sweetest cats we have ever had.  He was wary for quite a long time.  He would go outside and hide under the decking of a tool shed.  I would have to get on my hands and knees and peer under there to see his silhouette. 

Within the last 6 months, he settled into the habit that all of our cats have--venturing out into the night to hunt.  Once Malcolm made his first mouse kill (which happened to be an interior hunting junket), it was something that he couldn't get enough of.  Is it possible that 'True Blood' was created by a cat owner?

About one month ago, I noticed some strange marks under his belly.  He also has been presenting some scratches on his face prior to that.  As I looked at the marks, I couldn't quite make out what they were.  They didn't appear to be from a cat to cat fight.  However, since he has disappeared, I am now surmising that these odd marks (somewhat deep, very sharp, though oddly, they did not bother him), were from a failed nabbing by an owl.

The baby owls are now making noises, so I suspect that Malcolm made a tasty meal for them courtesy of one of their parents.  It breaks my heart that the is gone.  He now makes number 3 of lost cats.  The 'live by the fang, die by the fang (or worse)' is alive and well for any nocturnal animal.  Yes, I could have kept him inside--but they stalk the door, and dart out faster than a frog getting a fly.  Having said that, though, I had cats in this home for 27 years.  It has only been within the last 6 years that I've had any loss of felines.

Sniff.

He was a sweet and happy boy.  I hope that his end was quick.  I hope the same for my self whenever it should come.