you know that little black cloud . . .

the one that has been following me around and breaking things in the house . . . like the dishwasher.  for which we are still waiting on parts.  and the toilet, that i fixed, by the way, and the sink that refused to give forth with the clear refreshing liquid it was designed to emit. and the refrigerator that sends me ice burgs rather than cubes.  yeah, that cloud. 

it's back.  k2 went out the garage to head to work and even before she popped back upstairs with the news, i knew something was terribly not so very good.  my bedroom is right over the garage.  grind.  lurch.  groan.  they were all sounds coming through the floor boards.  when i took a look, one of the gear chains was hanging.  when i manually lifted the door so k1 and her car could escape, it spewed cogs and gears like so many snowflakes from heaven. black greasy snowflakes.  ok, so not so much like snowflakes. 

so i called the garage door peeps and told them my garage door opening mechanism had committed suicide.  he chuckled.  really.  he did.  but being the nice guy he is, and having put up with me before, he's got us on the schedule for tomorrow. 

again with the first world problem, jeanne.  people have real issues.  shut up. 

ok.  i was just saying.

incoming . . .

so in continuing our quest for a larger culinary experience . . .  aren't we sounding all pretentious . . .  we are back to one or two new recipes a week.  tonight's experiments were polar opposites on all four quadrants.

one is relatively wholesome and the other decadent to the nth degree.

one is an enormous do-again while the other, a decided flop.  (we have a much better very similar recipe that can be served over grilled bread or angel hair pasta.)

one is thrown together in a singular giant step.  the other requires a slower building process.

one has a bite.  the other melts in your mouth.

on the slurp scale of one to five, here we go.  main dish category.  although we love pasta and basil, and tomatoes and mozzarella, this was a one slurp.  sorry but it was boring except for the mozzarella pearls i may or may not have been tossing in my mouth like so many peanuts. 

nope, not inventive enough to do again.  sorry.

dessert category, are we ready?  carmelitas.  are you familiar with these goodies?  no photo usually means they were gone before the shutter could snap.  not exactly true in this instance but exactly how much gooey-ness can two people consume in short order plus we had to save some for k2 who has a night class after work on tuesdays.  slurp scale?  off the freakin' sugar induced coma charts!!!!!!

and that my little foodies, is that.

lipsmacking good ol' hot out of the oven . . .

picked up a cast iron cornbread mold when i went junking a couple of weeks back.  this is after its first bath in easy off:

 

almost all of the gunk scrubbed off but just to make sure it was squeaky clean, i coated it again and it is sitting in a plastic baggie for another 24 hours.  then it hops into a vinegar bath before being seasoned.  fall and cornbread, what can i say?

happy. happy . . .

There is a site called GSO . . . short for Gallery Stand Outs . . . and they scour all the various digital sites for their daily favorites.

hold your seats there cowgirls and check out the second one down!!!!

yes, i'm a tad excited.  saddle up those ponies and head on down the road.

hummmmm . . .

wht f ( ) wk p n mrnng nd rlzd  ( ) hd spnt m lflng qt f vwls?

spent part of the morning moving the remainder of the wood pile from the wood brace in anticipation of a truck load of oak coming in on friday.  the newer wood will go on the bottom and the older seasoned wood will go on top and yes, i am hoping the predictions for a colder than normal winter are correct.  the fireplace has been cleaned, inspected, patched and the flue has been modified to work more efficiently.

i have visions of cozily sitting in front of a roaring fire with warm tootsies, my laptop and a mug of swisse mocha.  yes, i am delusional but for those five or six days, i am in heaven!!!!

warm kitty, sleepy kitty . . .

pippin has wedged her body between my bent knees and the back of my laptop.  it's warm there apparently.  she is such a florida cat.  a little cooler weather and she goes into wimp mode.

this was my favorite town.  what a gorgeous place.

i would be happy to head back.  anytime. 

musk be a mosque . . .

more playing . . . this time on a more traditional basis.  the truth be told, while i enjoyed turkey, i was happy to get the heck out of dodge.  they made me feel creepy:

my kinda' guy . . .

decided to lug my body to the beach to watch the airshow this afternoon.  it was hotter than i imagined but i found some shelter along side a lifeguard tower and spent an hour chatting with a veteran of the korean war.  he explained all the loops and navigational strategies required thereof.  then it turns out he used and sold photographic equipment for 47 years.  talk about an interesting soul.

i really haven't had a chance to run through the pictures but this was an immediate favorite:

p.s. don't miss an opportunity to chat with someone outside your box.  you may be pleasantly surprised.

happy, happy . . .

and yes, i stole those images from the internet.  hopefully hers will be sitting in our driveway on monday.

speaking of creatures . . .

it's a no-go on the passion berry pearl.  sigh.  she had it all nicknamed 'the purple people eater'.  now they are re-scouring the countryside for the black.  oops, sorry, that's 'crystal black pearl'.  i'm thinking 'the creature from the black lagoon'. . .  we should get a call tomorrow or monday.  hooray. and in the meantime, they have given her a loaner.

on another note, sue sent me this absolutely perfect jpeg:

especially since i had her out on the pool deck today.  my nose was in my laptop so i wasn't paying her too much attention.  the next thing a know, a brown flash shoots across the deck and slams into the screen.  pip attacked my errant squirrel who uses the cage to get onto the roof.  i'm not sure who was more surprised, pip or the squirrel.  but the squirrel retreated only a few feet and proceeded to cuss pip out.  pip tried a second body slam but the chatterer was too quick.  it was a face off.  the two stared at each other for the next 45 minutes.

a death in the family . . .

so it seems that i forgot to mention that while we in jax, the cr-v started acting a little crazy.  it's an '01 so it is a tad temperamental.  that's 12 years old.  in doggie years that's 84.  in car years, it's no longer listed on edmunds.com.  ancient.  older than the hills. dead as dirt.  we had to back into a parking space in the student parking garage because i was thinking about access for a tow truck.  we were 88 miles from home.  but it held out . . . burping, sputtering, hissing, rattling and such.

on the way home, i told kidlet, 'if i yell bail, dive out of the car. fast.' i looked over and it was rocking and rolling so badly, i could see her body moving in time with the engine.  oh please, this is not good on the interstate while covered in picante.

we made it home and into the garage where kidlet showered it with praise, but the next day, i followed her to the mechanic.  two hours later, the phone rang.  the news was not good.  our mechanic believes in fixing until there is nothing left to fix but even he admitted it was time to put the old girl down.  she was running on only three cylinders.  her heart was congested.  her kidneys were failing.  we left her there and sadly headed home to form a plan. 

after explaining kidlet's attachment to small suv's, he suggested a toyota rav4, but kidlet had already hit the net and was thumbing through the hondas.  'ask paul what he thinks of the FIT', she begged.  he happily sanctioned her choice.

next stop, the honda dealership with the name of a good-guy salesperson, if there are any, tightly tucked in our pocket. a) he was recommended by our trusty mechanic.  b) he's a retired cop.  c) we were in dire straights.  gah.  what to do.

she fell in love with passion berry pearl.  yup, that's a color.  the catch is, there are only three in the state and two of those are on hold.  that leaves one in lakeland and it was out for a test drive.  we are waiting to see if it has found a home.  if not, her second pick is black.  they found it in black and can get it here tomorrow.

waiting for a phone call.  in the meantime, she is driving a 2012 loaner. zip. zip. see how fast she went to publix for me tonight.  zoom zoom.  no. wait.  that's me and my miata.

tomorrow will tell.

oh, p.s.  . . . and yes there is always a p.s.  we left to go to lunch while they were sharpening their pencils with their rat-like front teeth and rubbing their paws in expectancy of a sale, drooling with anticipation.  i needed some cash.  so we pulled into the familiar bank across from our japanese restaurant.  i inserted my card.  the screen popped up but looked strangely unfamiliar.  about the time it told me they would charge me $3 for the transaction my brain kicked into gear.  it has been well over a year since i left that bank for another.  holy dimes and nickles, batman!!!

fingers crossed . . .

we spent the day in jax trying to get all of kidlet's hard work to mean something wooly . . . you know, sheepskin.  O.M.G.  i just looked up sheepskin in urban dictionary.  no. no. just no.  i'm talking about a diploma. the thing you hang on your wall after four long years of drudgery.  that thing.

as you remember,  kidlet went down the rabbit hole in the fall of 2012 after we lost the 9TS.  alice wasn't down there, nor was the white rabbit . . . it turned out to be a hell hole with initials flying everywhere:  ADD, BPD, BP2, AS and MDD.  it's enough to drive anyone mad.  but kidlet held on.  tight. tighter. tightest.  she had a lot of help but by july of 2013, she was doing much better.  much.

the problem is, she didn't graduate.  actually, it wasn't an issue.  just breathe, i said, 7952 times.  one step at a time, i said 10,723 times. and she did.  forward she marched, until one day it was suggested that she see where she stood academically.

today we talked to her old adviser.  she still needs advanced calc1 and advanced calc2 plus computer programming and capstone for a degree in mathematics.  ugh. groan.  mumble. but a kind soul also mentioned we talk to the interdisciplinary  studies adviser. that's their version of a liberal arts degree and guess what????  all she needs are two english courses.  one in children's lit and one in business composition and they are both offered on-line which is the perfect scenario for kidlet. if all goes well with her reapplication to the school, she'll take the two courses starting in january and graduate in the spring of '15.

we should hear within a few weeks if she has been re-accepted.

does it get any better?!?!?!?!

oh, p.s. we stopped at filet of chick for lunch and i was having difficulty getting my packet of spicy sauce to release its goodness, suddenly the baggie torn and a jet stream landed all the way down my shirt from the collar to the hem, onto my slacks and across the booth.  kidlet ducked.  she's fast that way. needless to say, we took care of our last appointment via phone as i was rather aromatic and feeling picante.

bleach and bats . . . make my day . . .

it's a drop dead, absolutely perfectly glorious nothing could be better day.  the humidity finally dropped.  the sky is blue with just a few puffs of white magic perched here and there.  it was a shame to miss any of it going grocery shopping but k1 and k2 like to eat.  occasionally.

so i spent the majority of the day stuffed into my size 6 work shorts that have long since refused to zip up, probably because i have blossomed a couple of sizes since their inception.  but they are my dedicated paint, clean and bleach shorts.  to complete my outfit, i threw on a sleeveless stretched out t with the hem dripping out at the bottom and a crummy pair of flops. yep, that's how i roll.

a couple of hours later, 3/4's of the pool deck had been bleached and sunned upon and is sparkling back at me.  the table and chairs have been dipped and scrubbed and are hanging out in the back forty to dry.  the floats have all been scoured and are working on their tans.  but alas, i ran out of oomph.  the three loungers and their cushions along with two big sections of deck will have to wait until tomorrow.  i must be getting old.  sigh.

but on a better note, look what i found by Timothy Zulewski over at cricketbox.com:

isn't it the best!!!  go check out tim's other goodies. my warped sense of humor loves halloween!

one step forward and two back . . .

it's a conspiracy.  decided since the house is empty that i would catch up on things that need to be done. 

went to change the air filters and discovered i didn't have an 18x18 back up.  ran to the helpful hardware man and bought a couple more and a few 20x24's.  came home and what is staring me in the face from the hall closet?  an 18x18.

ran a load of dark wash and decided i didn't have enough for a load of whites.  they will have to wait.  so i folded and put away the darks.  then grabbed a bath and managed to dump the green bathmat into the tub of draining water. now i have two partial loads. isn't this where i started?

cleaned the litter but midstream, pip decided it needs a little more liquid.  alright cat, can't you wait even a minute?

i have a raging eye infection.  need to see the doc.  but vacuuming the popcorn ceiling around the air ducts was not my best idea.  now the eyeballs are really scratchy.

hopefully tomorrow will behave itself.  we're looking at 75º and sunshine.  first day out of the 80's and only a week past the 90's.  we've had so much rain lately, the pool deck is a deep moldy green.  with any luck at all, it will be white again by the end of the day.  fingers crossed nothing goes wrong.

lee and i were walking on the beach last week and she caught a parting shot as we headed our separate ways.  you know i had to play with the photo:

thanks, lee.