I ran across our wedding invitations and the mass booklet.
Tossback Tuesday – Wedding stuff
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Category Archives: betsy
Camp Cornell in full swing
Cavorting with the Calicorns
Pool’s closed and Mom’s new PC
I posted this over on Google+ but figured some people might not see it there:
Cat's Cute / Closed Pool Is Not
Mom’s lappy is having power issues again. I think it is the plug http://laparkan.com/buy-sildenafil/ since I just replaced the jack but decided to upgrade her anyway. Here is her new all-in-one HP PC.
Momma's got a brand new facebook access device
Sandy eggo
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:
ilink to pics
Here is some fun at the pool from Wednesday afternoon.
Salmon, Cole Slaw, Tomato/Mozzarella/Ravioli
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!
Yum.
Will Wonders Never Cease
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.
Lemons, Lumbar hernias, and LCD TVs
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.
The (un)finished project
Don’t judge a book, etc.
Betsy and I decided to take a little Sunday drive to see the ocean. We headed for Nahant and toured that quaint little peninsula. The intermittent rain stopped long enough for us to get out for about 10 minutes at a marina and enjoy the breeze and the sea air and a very foggy view of the Boston Skyline.
Then we decided we probably needed to get some fried clams. So I fired up Google maps to look for a seafood restaurant on the water between Nahant and home. The closest to the water was Kelly’s Roast Beef but it does not have any indoor seating and it was pouring when we got there. So the next closest was the Belle Isle Lobster and Seafood Restaurant. As we headed towards it Betsy made a mental note that if it looked sketchy she wasn’t going to go in.
We pulled up and the sign said today’s special was the clam dinner. The interweb reviews were all positive about the food. The only complaint was there is no seating so we gave it a shot. The clams were delicious, the onion rings were spectacular and the cole slaw was pretty good too. There were 8 stools along an L shaped shelf by the windows. So we had a great dinner, met some nice people that sat next to us, all with a water view.
I do plan to keep my day job but…
Maybe some day Matt will post a paragraph about me like the one Dexter did for him for Father’s day; not the Strong Bad thing or the game winning but the fixing technical stuff thing.
BetsTop (Betsy’s HP laptop) had intermittent problems recognizing the power plug. Several months ago I took it all apart and resoldered the jack and that fixed the problem for about a week. So when it died again, I ordered a new jack. Then life took over and the laptop has been sitting on my desk right next to the new jack and the 8-10 screws I had left over from the last repair attempt. Inspired by Dex and Matt, I finally got around to replacing the jack.
Link to pics
I had the new jack in yesterday morning but we had a few graduation parties to go to so I left it all disassembled. Betsy had to stay over at the inn last night so around 10 I decided to put it back together.
It powered right up but I had no keyboard. I knew I had not seating the signal strip in the zero insertion force thingee so I had to remove the keyboard, reseat it (only took 2 tries) and I had keyboard. Then the radio button would not work. So I had to take the keyboard cover apart. I had a wire that snuck under the plastic and was sitting over the radio on button. So I pushed it back into the channel and voila! it is working again. We’ll see how long this lasts but at least I know I got the new jack in successfully.