It's the pictures that get me.

I've sat down a couple of times in the last week to do a blog entry and each time I've thought, "Nope, I don't have any pictures to go with that." I don't have any pictures tonight either but it would be very easy to slide into oblivion again because I don't have pictures. That probably wouldn't make a great deal of difference to the world but I'd like to develop the blog habit. I've struggled for years with trying to write regularly and writing a blog does count as writing.

I know blogs are more interesting with pictures so, I guess, there are a couple of ways I could go with this. I could take more pictures of everyday stuff and have them in reserve for blog postings or, I could get in gear and take pictures of the things I'm thinking about using for blog postings. I could also allow myself to write blog entries without pictures. I don't want to make a habit of that. It is easier for me to write than to organize myself to get the photos. My head generally can be found on my shoulders and my computer seldom goes walkabout. Now where did I put my camera?

Multiply by three

I was making candy for a fundraiser the other day. I'm not fond of making candy so I looked up the easiest recipes I could find on the net, recipes meant for people to make with their kids. I figured if kids could do it I could. Anything involving a candy thermometer was automatically out. I found three recipes and decided that two of them looked easier than the third one. The first one I tried was really easy, four ingredients and a microwave. Unfortunately, that recipe yielded a kind of chocolate/ peanut-butter soup. Oh well....

The second one I tried required a bit more fuss. Cut marshmallows in half and then freeze them. I guess I'm used to really stale marshmallows because I was sort of surprised when they were all stuck together in a gooey mass in the package. I managed to separate them seriously gooing up my hands in the process. In order to cut them I kept dipping my knife in water, otherwise I just ended up with more goo. I laid out the marshmallow halves in neat little rows on cookie sheets and put them in the freezer. Finding room was a bit of a challenge but with the chest freezer and the beverage fridge downstairs I managed. When they'd been sitting there for a few hours I brought them up and proceeded to the next step. This required a double boiler which I actually have. Next there was a lot of bubbling and snorting from the double boiler and a lot of stirring from me. I didn't think the carmels would ever melt. Did I mention that before I could add the carmels to the top of the double boiler, I had to unwrap three packages of them. Maybe this recipe is a plot to keep kids out of trouble for a while.

When the stuff in the double boiler finally melted together I had to take the marshmallow bits off the cookie sheets, dip them in the bubbling mixture and then roll them in cereal. You guessed it: more goo plus this goo was hot. Richard got involved in this step. I dunked the marshmallows, dropped them into a pan of cereal and then he rolled them and put them on trays to cool. There didn't seem to be a good way to do this without heating the fingers beyond the comfort level. The refrain for this part of the process was, "Ouch, that's hot!" If I put too many marshmallows into the pot at a time they started to melt before I could get them all out. Adjust process.

Eventually we got all the marshmallows coated and cooled. The recipe said that the whole process should take an hour and a half. I don't know where they got that timing. Of course, they didn't count the shopping which I did in the morning but even after I had the ingredients it took me most of the rest of the day to get finished and that was with Richard jumping in and helping.

I don't know why I was surprised that it took longer than the recipe stated; most things do. There was the saw bench that three of us made. That was supposed to be done in a day. I think it took us three. Similarly we built sawhorses which were supposed to take a few hours. Again they took two days rather than a few hours. Is this some kind of plot betwee the cooks and the woodworkers? I live in hope that the times given for a task will actually be reasonable for me but I think the contingency plan from now on will to multiply any times given by three. That way if something does take less time than expected I can be delighted with the found time. If I make candy next year, I'm going for even easier recipes.

Tangled Web

I got sucked into spending the evening on the net again! I never know what I'm going to encounter when I click the mouse. Tonight it was an email with a link to a Youtube video of Free Hugs in Italy. The video was interesting but more interesting to me was the background music: 'Hallelujah' written by Leonard Cohen and sung by k.d. lang. I had to play the video twice just to listen to the song. I have heard her sing it before but something about the song caught me, so I went surfing. I found a couple of videos of k.d. doing it and then a couple of Cohen doing it.

That brought back memories of the first time I heard a Leonard Cohen record. I was in a drawing class at university and one of the guys brought in a Leonard Cohen album. I don't remember the name of the album but it had 'Suzanne' on it and it had a picture of a woman, scantily clad of course, emerging from flames. Those many years ago there was something about the gravelly voice and the lyrics, I didn't quite understand, that demanded my attention. I bought the record.

Back to the present. After listening to Cohen and lang, I left the computer and went to the living room to tune up my guitar. I don't play it much nowadays. Classical guitar and piano are mutually exclusive activities since for guitar you need long nails and for piano you need short ones. I tuned it up and started trying to figure out the chords to 'Hallelujah.' I got most of them. Then I thought of my old guitar, the one I bought when I was about 15. I still have it and it's still in the case that I decorated with decals, all the rage in the '70's. I got it, dusted off the case and opened it up only to discover that the 'A' string was broken. I must have been thinking ahead because there was a new set of strings in the case. Remove old string, install new string and then try to tune it. I did get it tuned and played the chords I'd been fooling with earlier. Somehow the guitar's sound wasn't as resonant as I remembered it.

I wondered if it might be time to get rid of at least one of the guitars I own and get a better one. Back to the computer to look on the net to see if the old Harmony is worth anything. Apparently it isn't. Cheap entry-level guitar. In my search I found that Harmony, the maker of my old folk guitar, also made Stella guitars. A Stella was the first guitar I owned. I think I gave it to a kid down the street when I bought my Harmony.

There was something familiar and comforting in strumming that old guitar. It grew up with me, came with me when I moved out, came with me again when I moved back home to go back to university and it came to school with me sometimes when I started teaching. One time a friend and I did an English lesson in which we played and sang folk songs.

While I was drifting back I had an 'ah ha' moment. I don't have to play classical guitar. I enjoyed it while I did it but I enjoyed playing chords and singing even more. I can go back to that, dust off the chord sheets and strum away for my own amusement. Back to the computer to look up the chords for Hallelujah. Music is so easy now with the net and mp3 files. I found the chords although not in the key I was playing.

I may start looking for a home for at least one of my guitars. I'll keep my good classical and I'm not quite ready to let the old Harmony go just yet. I think when I want a break from learning piano and practicing my singing, I may just haul out the old guitar and fiddle with a few chords. It would be handy to get the callouses back on my fingers again. Playing classical guitar is solitary; playing chords invites others to sing. I'm wondering how I got so far away for so long from what I loved as a kid. I guess that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I now have time to sift and appreciate the experiences I've had and, when I want to, I can pick up where I left off.

There is life after teaching and it's busy

It's kind of embarrassing to see the last time I actually posted anything here; however I can always start again. There have been lots of changes since the last blog post. The shop is finished and is too small. We knew that was going to happen. Just like you can never have too many clamps, you can never have a big enough shop. We have most of the machines we want and I've built a tool tower and a couple of rolling carts. We still haven't decided how to handle the space on the wall by the sink. I need something for sharpening and we can't cover up the cold air intake. At the moment, we're still using the door and sawhorses to give a horizontal surface.

We've been on some very cool holidays: hiking in Italy last October and hiking in Switzerland for a month in July this past summer. All those trips were Road Scholar (the new name for Elderhostel) trips. We spent time with Bart and Brigitte whom we hadn't seen for 15 years since we met them at Mount Robson and they gave us a lift into Jasper when our bike rim split on the long trip across BC. They live directly above a train station which is very cool indeed.

The way the Switzerland trip worked was that we signed up for back-to-back programs and we had 5 days in between. We took the train to see Bart and Brigittewho were wonderfully hospitable and we both enjoyed getting to know 4-year-old Eric. When it was time to hook up with the second program group we took the train to Villars sur Orlon. We had very warm weather and it was good that we were staying above the valleys where it cooled off at night. We only had one day of rain and another day when it spit a little bit. We took over 1,000 pictures. You gotta love digital cameras. I can't include any at the moment because we combined our efforts and all the photos reside on Richard's Mac. The countryside of Switzerland is gorgeous and I'd go back there in a heartbeat.

So far we have no specific plans for next summer. We joked that we would go back and raft down the Nahanni River for our 25 wedding anniversary. I don't think that's high on the list anymore. We rather like the creature comforts of staying in hotels. We'll just have to see what jumps out at us from the Road Scholar catalogues or elsewhere. In the meantime, this winter looks like it will be busy and interesting but more about that later.