The hot tub is up and running as of Thursday evening.
Christmas morning, Elif finally got a chance to try the hot tub. At some point right before or soon after she got it, the locking ring on the filter split, spraying water all over the area under the hot tub. GFI worked and tripped the breaker.
Luckily Justin was around and had most of the water vacuumed up by the time I got back from 10:30 Mass.
I couldn’t find the exact locking ring online so I had to wait until Tuesday morning. I called an online spa parts place out in OK and talked to the support person. I mistakenly thought the filter parts diagram they had was showing a model very close to mine so I ordered it.
It showed up on Thursday and, sure enough, it did not fit. In a last resort moment, I drove down to Feeley’s and as soon as Mark saw the broken ring, he said, “That’s a Rainbow. I think I have one left in the back.” And he did, and it fit and it was $15.
Mission accomplished.
Here are some pictures Justin took after the failure.
The line between the idea and the successful implementation of a culinary thought is pretty thin. WHDH’s The Dish segment last week had a cheddar fondue served in a pumpkin that looked delicious. I tried it Sunday.
First I used too much garlic (4 cloves instead of 2); not sure why. It smelled really good carmelizing in the butter. Then I didn’t have any Oktoberfest beer in the house so I improvised with some seasonings and water. Last, my hands got tired shredding the pound of premium white cheddar so I bailed after about 2/3 and threw in some already shredded 4 cheese blend.
It was definitely too garlicky but it was edible. And I just couldn’t get over using the pumpkin simply as a bowl. Maybe it was the garlic but it didn’t seem to pick up any hint of pumpkin.
I guess it is good to have one of these that goes on the list NOT to make again.
Mom’s lappy is having power issues again. I think it is the plug since I just replaced the jack but decided to upgrade her anyway. Here is her new all-in-one HP PC.
We decided to spare Matt and Mariel the burden of hosting parents/in-laws/boss and so we found a apartment rental about a mile from their house.
It is not half bad:
No this isn’t Allora where Alisa posts so many mouth watering gastronomical adventures but this was quite the mid-week treat.
Fresh Salmon steak coated with a mixture of Thai lemon grass (dried), coarse black pepper, and some Weber Sweet ‘N Tangy BBQ seasoning that we have had in the closet forever.
Put it on the grill on some tin foil sprayed with PAM grilling stuff.
Sunday I had made some cole slaw. Small head of cabbage, peppers, onions, broccoli, carrots, pea pods, cauliflower florets, and Marie’s Classic Cole Slaw dressing enhanced with powered mustard and ground black pepper.
Then Betsy whipped up her classic Tomato and Mozzarella but Dosie’s way: with cheese ravioli, fresh basic from the deck and a little olive oil.
And Voila!
I took the slider out to the porch (the one over by the McDonald’s side) because it kept coming off the rollers. Doing it myself turned out to be a big mistake as I had to walk it out from the frame little by little. Unfortunately the bottom was covered in grease and little metal fragments from gliding on the rail. I could not get the stains out with any of the half dozen rug cleaning products I tried. So Betsy decided it was time to get the downstairs, bedroom and porch rugs cleaned. We had to take everything off the porch so Betsy’s usual extremely neat kitchen ended up looking like this for almost a week.
The wonder was that Betsy did not get too torqued up by the chaos in the kitchen. The rug dried pretty quickly so we were able to return things to normal by Wednesday.
Meanwhile the porch was very echo-y.
The second wonder of note was that Art and I replaced the steering column on the Ariens. We had been getting increasing play in the steering over the past few years. We had taking the cowling off and looked at it in the fall but couldn’t see anything broken or missing. It was getting really bad so we took it all apart and somehow the solid metal steering column had gotten worn down so it no longer fit snugly in the bracket it goes into.
I will have to take a clearer shot of the old one so you can see the damage. It looks like it has been machined. It can see how something that spins at fairly high speed can get this kind of damage but not a steering column.
Any way we were able to install the new one in about 2 hours. We were packing everything up when we noticed that the speed control was not connected to the cable down to the engine. So we had to disassemble that assembly, cut back the sheath, bend a new hook into the wire and then put it all back together. Amazingly enough, we were successful and we have the Ariens back in service.
Matt and Mariel gave us a taste of Southern California last year: a little Limon dwarf Meyer Lemon Tree. Very Pretty. After a tough winter in our bedroom (much too dry), the summer weather has coaxed some tiny lemons out.
Little Meyer Lemons
Betsy finally had her lumber hernia fixed this Wednesday. She has been putting it off for several years now. They are pretty rare (only 300 have been recorded, ever). Lumbar hernia is not to be confused with a herniated lumbar disc. See here for typical medical discussion of them.
The surgery went well and she should be all set now. Thursday evening we had a town wide power outage. When I tried watching the news later that night in our bedroom, I discovered that the FIOS Set Top Box in our bedroom did not survive the outage.
The next morning, as I was waiting for a Tech to either resuscitate it, or send a new one, I realized that Betsy would be spending at least a few days recuperating in the bedroom so rather than waste everyone’s time working on the dead low def STB, I had them upgrade it to an HD one. Then I ran out to BJs and picked up a 27″ Samsung full HD (1080p) at a great price. Then I had to figure out what to do with the STB (I relocated the one from the kitchen for now), and the Bose we use as the sound system. I picked up a set of plastic shelving, cut the legs down to the right height and installed it that way:
Plastic shelf for new TV
As you can see, the plastic shelf was really not meant to hold the 18lb TV. It sagged in the middle until it was resting on the Bose.
On Saturday I tried Target, Sears, Best-Buy and WalMart but none of them had anything that would work. So I went down to the workshop and cobbled on together from an oak tread I had gotten several years ago to replace the (still) cracked step on the stairs up from the front door, and some redwood left over from the never used skirt for the hot tub.
Voila. It came out pretty nice. A little minwax and it should look pretty close to the armoire.
