Relationship improvements

A couple months ago, The Babe said that she wanted me to change a behavior: whenever she'd say "Do you wanna do X," I'd invariably reply "I don't know." This made her feel devalued and unimportant and we didn't end up doing a lot. She said that she wanted me to instead say "Yes" or "No" but not leave her hanging. Well, that was a clear request and a good one and I understood why she'd feel that way and she was RIGHT; she deserved better... so I have started giving her clear answers, which have almost always been "Yes" as it happens. As a result, we've been doing a TON of things together and having a really good time! I feel invigorated. She does too. We're much more together doing this. I'm sorry I didn't learn this much, much sooner. She also made a request that we talk without technology on for 15 minutes a day at least, which has been very good for similar reasons.

Relationship improvements

Hurrah, hurrah!

The Babe has been away all week in DC on business but she's back! I just picked her up from the airport. The house is spick and also span, many laundry are done, I've polished the granite in the kitchen, changed catboxes, swept, made the bed, and generally straightened up. While I truthfully expect no compliments for this--it's only fair that I do all of this and keep things clean--I think she will find very little to be perturbed about, which will be nice for her after a very long day of cross-country flight.

Hurrah, hurrah!

Nine years ago today

Nine years ago today, I proposed to The Babe ("noon-thirty on June 30" is her mnemonic). I'm mighty glad she said "Yes."

Nine years ago today

Chinese food and architecture

Back in 2002, we went to the reception for Brian and Fong Chinn's wedding. It was an amazing reception, with food that I never expect to have again. I wished I was able to eat two or three times as much as I was able to. Stunning stuff! Shark fin, bird's nest soup, prawn things... damn, it was good! Many of these dishes were in a fine, thin, velvety stock. The Babe observed at the time that all Chinese dishes are based on mucus. An interesting hypothesis and hard to refute given our incredible menu.

Okay, fast forward: National Geographic reports that the Chinese used sticky rice for building, specifically, for mortar. Apparently, mixing lime and sticky rice result in a mortar that has much smaller calcium carbonate crystals, making it much tougher and more water-resistant. There's no reason this technique can't be used again, so restorations can be done using this to make a nice, tight mortar. And it's a good way to make use of basic resources to achieve superior results. 

Those Chinese are very sneaky!  :)

Chinese food and architecture

A day of gardening

I announced to The Babe this morning that I had a PLAN. (She made a disparaging comment; she's a hard woman.) This plan involved going to Jerry's and picking up bedding plants for the barrels and pots in the backyard, grout cleaner and sealers to deal with a grouting problem in the shower, and concrete to erect three trellis we've been waiting for warm weather to put up.  

This was an acceptable plan, so off we truddled. (Yeah, it's a word; deal with it!) We ended up buying about $200 of bedding plants, flowers and vegies both. Lots more flowers because there is always room for more flowers and vegies for the barrels. Last year's attempt to put the barrels in the back had not been successful because we didn't put drainage holes in them and they turned into aquaculture tubs. We bought a spade bit a few weeks ago and drilled holes in the barrels (which drained prodigiously) and they've been okay since then. So this time for sure (in my best Bullwinkle voice.) I got a lot of tomatoes, including Sweet 100s, the first cherry tomato I grew in 1979, the very first year Patricia and I started gardening, Seattle's best, an heirloom tomato popular in the Puget Sound, and Better Boy VFN. There's also a Sweet Pea clustering cherry tomato that I'm not familiar with, but wotthehell?  I also got two sweet red peppers--Red Knight--and two serrano peppers, a lot of sweet basil, and yellow and patty pan squashes. All of this is My Kinda Garden Produce.  

The Babe and I hadn't communicated about how many barrels were going to be used for what, so she ended up buying a lot of very nice flowers--brachysome, some yummy begonias with coleus-like leaves, nemesia, trailing lobelia, white geraniums, and half a dozen other flowers--that she'd thought were going into the same barrels and pots.  

We managed to get most of the flowers and all the vegies into the barrels and pots that we've got, but I need to buy several more 2-gallon plastic pots tomorrow for some of the oddments.  Things are well-fertilized with a Miracle-Gro slow-release fertilizer, so I think we should be okay.  36" apart?  Pfui! They'll live with 6" or so. The Babe also planted large numbers of flowers out front to fill in spaces that didn't have quite enough flowers. 

I'm feeling a bit creaky, but all the plants are looking good this evening and showing no signs of transplant shock. I'll go downstairs and soak several packets of nasturtium, sunflower, and marigold seeds for planting in starter packs tomorrow.  And I may make a drink.  A drink would be good. 

(BTW, I'm finally making use of post labels. In my copious free time, I hope to slowly work through past posts here and there and add labels to them for easier searching and cross-referencing. If naught else, just remembering to add them to new posts will be a step forward.)

A day of gardening

The Babe's off to DC

She's doing training again in DC. I'll be driving her to the airport later this morning.

The Babe's off to DC

Cookies and Anaheim

The Babe spent all Sunday baking four different kinds of cookies--fruitcake shortbread cookies, triple ginger molasses cookies (with fresh ginger, candied ginger, and powdered ginger), lemon ginger cookies, and pepper cookies--and a batch of chocolate pecan fudge.

We gave a lot of this away to the neighbors in gift plates, that being our intention from the start, and the Babe took a big tray in to her office for the judges and staff, but there is a disturbingly large tupperware container with leftovers. I think I've already had a full meal's equivalent of carbs this afternoon from nibbling on these things, which is not good for a diabetic who's hoping to do well on his blood sugar test next week.

Unfortunately, the Babe flew off to Anaheim to teach at a judges' conference this morning and she'll be gone until Friday, so it's me and my shabby excuse for willpower. Oy.

Cookies and Anaheim

Bernie and the Babe

Bernie has taken to sleeping on the couch in my office when he's not being helpful. The Babe stopped in the office and was petting him while we talked.

Bernie does make such a good conversation piece....

Bernie and the Babe

Quote du jour

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

--Napoleon Bonaparte

The Babe is off to visit with family and friends for the weekend. I'll be working. (It'll be fine; I'll have the cats for company.)

Quote du jour

News from the Babe

The Babe is having fun right now, drinking, dining, and shopping with a bunch of the other hearing office chief administrative law judge types in the Carolinas. She sent me the following picture from one of her recent forays into the stores around there.

She found a gadget for holding bananas in the kitchen while they ripen, she said on the phone.

"I've seen those," I said. "They're a little wooden thingie on a stand with a hook to hold a bunch of bananas."

"Not exactly," she said. She sent me the following cell phone picture.

News from the Babe

The Babe's gone for a bit

The Babe is off on the Carolina coast staring at the sunrise over the ocean with a bunch of the other reigning royalty in their respective offices, decompressing and generally having a good time. I am pleased, though I'll miss her for the next few days.

The Babe's gone for a bit

Finished the last Harry Potter book

It was really an all-in-one-gulp sorta thing. The Babe had, very intelligently, ordered her copy months ago on advance purchase. It showed up today at 10am. She wasn't going to share. I went out and bought my own copy with a Barnes & Noble gift card I'd been saving for something like this that I'd gotten this past Christmas from one of my sisters-in-law. We spent much of the day reading, with only a break for going out to see the latest Harry Potter movie, almost as much for the fact that there was air-conditioning in the theater and ours needs to be poked by a service person on Monday as the movie itself.

We brought our copies of the book along, though, and read them until the lights dimmed. We weren't alone in this: the woman sitting next to us had her copy and was doing the same thing.

We got home, we read. And we read. I went and clambered into a hot bath tub about three hours ago. The water got cold and I added more. I wasn't going to move until I finished it.

I did. It was very satisfying. (The Babe's finishing hers up as we speak; I'd gotten ahead of her when she took a nap this afternoon.) Don't worry; I'm not going to say anything. It'd be like saying "Rosebud was his sled" to someone before they saw the movie, only much, much worse. (There's a classic Peanuts cartoon about that with Lucy and Linus, as a matter of fact.)

But I really do need to add this cartoon from UserFriendly:

Finished the last Harry Potter book

Weekend :)

I made a bunch of banana-carrot bread that was really more of a cake recipe. Good stuff! I took a loaf over to neighbors a block away who are finally back in town (we've tried to stop by several times in the last few months, but they've been out of the country on business and pleasure a bunch; catching up with them has been impossible 'till now). I gave another loaf--with a cream cheese icing--to Brian & Inger next door.

I also tried out a new recipe for bagels. They're not done yet, as the recipe requires you to let the bagels rest overnight in the fridge before they're boiled and baked, so they're currently out in the fridge in the garage and I'll do 'em up tonight. Should be pretty nice, though; they look very good.

The Babe was in Tacoma for the weekend at the wedding shower for one of her nieces. I'll see her this evening.

Weekend :)

Wotta day!

I thought I'd be spending the day starting the process of reformatting a couple computers and adding a pair of 500Gb hard drives, but no, it didn't work out that way. But it has been a very nice day.

I slept in a little, got up, cleaned the kitchen, and made banana bread--I've been wanting to make banana bread for the neighbors and now that I'm done with a lot of little things, it was a perfect day for it. I met someone online in an unusual venue who turned out to be from the Snake River chapter of the STC who's pretty nice. Well, networking does happen in the oddest places.

The Babe and Susan went to see Susan's friends Jeff & Mariah, who're getting married in July and are having the Babe do the service. They did some planning about the ceremony and program. Meanwhile, I did a bunch of cleaning here in the office, so that there is now more floor visible than paper, and most of the remaining tax stuff is ready to be boxed up (yay!).

The Babe came back around 2:00 and asked if I wanted to go get more bedding plants. Yes, I did, and I was interested in using up a coupon for Decker's Nursery out in Junction City (they'd sent us two coupons, one for 3 six-packs of bedding plants and t'other for 20% off of everything we bought).

We drove through some rather pretty rural sections of Lane County and got there. Nice place!! We loaded up a cart in fairly short order with about 250 bedding plants. Sure, sure, it sounds like a lot, but it isn't really. In this case, it means one plant every six inches about 4-1/2 rows deep for maybe 15-18'. We could have gotten a whole lot more plants.

We drove home and the Babe started prepping the ground while I worked on the garage, something that I'd been thinking of. We plugged away for hours, with occasional breaks to talk to the neighbors across the street (Harry & Julia, a gastroenterologist and an ER physician, who're going to have a baby around September 9 we discovered) and on both sides of us (Inger & Brian, lovely people to have for neighbors, with four kids, and Tim & Angela, with two daughters, on the other side).

At the end of the day, we have:

• 250 new plants in the front of the house (marigolds, Mexican marigolds, petunias, impatiens, and something else that's escaping me at the moment)
• pictures of some of this (I finally recharged the digicam's batteries and I'll upload those soon so you can see how pretty it all is)
• a huge empty space where there'd hitherto been boxes in the garage
• a pile of stuff in the back of my car to go to St. Vinnie's for the tax write-off
• things to go upstairs to my office

I made potstickers for the two of us. It hurts to move with all this toting and lifting, so I'm now going to go downstairs, slither into a bathtub, then as bonelessly as possible slither into bed. We sing tomorrow and then vote on accepting the new minister at the Unitarian church, who we like.

Wotta day!

Honeymoon Gin ad infinitum

The Babe and I play a lot of gin rummy together. It gives us an opportunity to say really rude things to each other in a structured environment. ("Gin!" "Screw you!") Gin rummy is an effective and inexpensive form of marital therapy.

There's an interesting variant called "Honeymoon Gin." (I have no idea where the name comes from.) The play is the same as regular gin but the scoring is different. So what I'm going to do is tell you how to play Gin Rummy first, then tell you how to do Honeymoon Gin, then how to play Honeymoon Gin forever.

Gin Rummy

Object of the Game
The object of the game is to arrange the 10 cards in your hand into runs or sets. A run consists of three or more cards in the same suit in consecutive order, such as 5D, 6D, 7D or 10C, JC, QC, KC. Aces are always low (A, 2, 3). You cannot "wheel" your cards in a run (Q, K, A, 2). A set is three or four cards of the same rank, such as 9H, 9D, 9C, 9S.

You can’t use the same card in a run and a set simultaneously (7H, 8H, 9H, 9D, 9C).

Play
Deal 10 cards to both players. The top card of the remaining cards is turned face up to start the discard pile. The remaining cards are placed face down next to the discard pile to be the stock.

The player who didn’t deal the cards looks at the face up card. If s/he doesn’t want it, the option to pick up the first card goes to the dealer. If the dealer doesn’t want the card either, the other player then draws from the top of the stock. S/he then discards a card, ending the turn.

Play continues with each player in turn drawing a card from the top of the discard pile or the top of the stock and then discarding a card.

Finishing and Scoring a Hand
The hand ends when a player gins or knocks. To gin, a player must have all 10 cards in grouped into runs and/or sets. The player draws a card as usual, then discards a single card face down and says "Gin." (The other player is allowed to respond to this declaration as seems appropriate.) The hand is then scored. The player who didn’t gin counts up the points in their hand as follows:

• Face cards count 10 points each.
• Numeric cards have their face value.
• Aces are 1 point each.

A bonus of 25 points is then added to the total of the cards, this score is recorded, and the next hand is dealt.

A player can knock if they don’t have all the cards in their hand grouped in runs or sets and the total of the unmatched cards in their hand is less than or equal to the value of the first card turned up for the discard pile. For example, if the first card was a 7 and you have 2, 2, 3 unmatched in your hand, you can knock. Similarly, a 10 or face card turned up means that you can knock with up to 10 points in your hand. (If the first card was an ace, you must complete the hand by ginning; knocking is not allowed.) As with a gin, the player draws a card as usual, then discards a single card face down and says "Knock with…" followed by the number of points they’re knocking with. For example, if a player knocks with a hand of 6H, 6C, 6D, 6S, 10D, JD, QD, KD, AH, 7C, they’d declare "Knock with 8."

Scoring a knocked hand is slightly different from scoring a ginned hand. The player who didn’t knock only has to score cards in their hand that aren’t already grouped in runs or sets and that they can’t lay off against cards in the knocked hand. To lay off cards, the player who didn’t knock adds cards in their own hand to runs or sets in the knocked hand. For example, if a player is counting up their points against the hand described above and they had a hand of 2H, 3H, 4H, 7H, 7S, 7C, 8C, 8D, 9D, JS, the 2H, 3H, 4H and 7H, 7S, 7C wouldn’t be scored because they’re already groups in sets. 8D and 9D can be laid off against the other player’s 10D, JD, QD, KD run, leaving only the 8C and JS for 18 points. The number of points in the player’s knock is then subtracted from the points in the hand, leaving 10 points for their score for knocking.

If a player knocks and the other player has a lower number of points, they underknock. For example, if a player knocks with a hand of 6H, 6C, 6D, 6S, 10D, JD, QD, KD, AH, 7C, and the other player has a hand of AD, 3D, 2H, 3H, 4H, 7H, 7S, 7C, 8D, 9D, their final score would be 4, 4 points less than the knocked hand. The knocked player receives no points and the other player receives 25 points less the number of points in their hand (in this example, the other player would receive 21 points). A reasonable amount of gloating is allowed at this juncture.

Tips:

• You can knock or gin on any turn, including the first if you’re lucky enough to have really good cards. (Do not expect to escape unscathed if you knock on the first card.)
  
• You are never forced to knock. You may want to have cards that would allow you to knock with one or two points and then wait to see if you can gin or catch your opponent by underknocking.

If you reach the end of the stock with neither player able to gin or knock (a situation caused when both players are waiting for a card the other has in their hand), the hand is discarded with no points and the same player deals again.

Deal alternates between players.

Winning the Game
The game continues with hands until one player's cumulative score reaches 500 points or more.

Honeymooon Gin

Right then, you've got the hang of Gin; now we're on to Honeymoon Gin. The play is the same, but you change the scoring a bit. At the end of the first hand, you post the score. At the end of the second hand, you post the score to the first game's score (like always), then start a new game with that score. At the end of the third hand, you post the score for the hand to the first and second games, and then start a third game. Thereafter, you play three separate games, with the scores posting across each game score until there's a winner in all three games.

For example, suppose I win the first hand for 57 points. The first game would be 57 points for me. You win the second hand, for 83 points. We'd post 83 points to the first and second games, so the scores are now 83-57 in the first game and 83-0 in the second game. I win the third hand for 74 points, so that's added to the first game for me (74 + 57 = 131) and posted to the second and third games, so the scores are now 83-131, 83-74, and 0-74.

Honeymooon Gin ad infinitum

So, the Babe and I were playing Honeymoon Gin at one point early in our relationship and she said "Why do we have to stop at three games?" "Gosh, I dunno," I said. "Well, what if we just kept starting a new game with each hand?" "Sure, we can try that."

This evolved into a never-ending gin game, which then evolved into a gin game that starts on New Year's and ends a year later. We keep a deck of cards and a book of the games (usually in the back of her car) and frequently play gin while waiting in restaurants and so on.

So far, I've won 3 years and she's won 1. We're a little more than a third of the way through 2007 and I'm a few games ahead (128-79 or so), but there's still a lot more of 2007 left.

Honeymoon Gin ad infinitum

Losing weight lately

I've been losing weight lately. Not a lot, really, but I'm down to 215, which is 7-8 pounds off of what I've weighed for quite a while. This is an improvement and is largely due to my being good all of the week before last about hitting the treadmill. (Last week I had this cold and have been a slug, damnit, but there's this week coming up.)

My pants are very loose and I've been wearing suspenders a lot lately. It's not bad, feeling a bit thinner.

The Babe is recovering from her abdominoplasty. She's down at her goal weight from the gastric bypass surgery in November 2004 and is looking fabulous.

Losing weight lately

Great banjo joke from Reader's Digest

The Babe read this today in Reader's Digest of all places.

The best noise I ever heard a banjo make was when an accordion landed on top of it in a trash can.

Great banjo joke from Reader's Digest

Wait, DON'T impeach him!

The Babe pointed out that impeachment at this stage of the game is a really bad idea... and unfortunately, I think she's right. If we impeach the bastard now, it'll take a couple years and be nothing but a huge red herring. There are things that we've got to get done now--getting taxation back to where it should be, restoring the Clean Air & Water provisions, stopping the war, and setting up a national health care system--and none of this will happen if we're busy impeaching some pipsqueak.

So let's not and say we did. History will record just how stupid a man he really is and the only truly appropriate justice would involve something medieval.

Wait, DON'T impeach him!

We didn't buy that rug after all

We ran a zillion errands for the new house yesterday. First, we picked up some paint chips: we've still got painting to do after all that. Not only do we have to repaint the rather electric blue in the music room and the guest bathroom, Susan the Wonder Child wants her bedroom painted a deep red (that's the actual name for it, "Deep Red" from Benjamin Moore). We're painting the upstairs bathroom a light, frosty sage green, and our bedroom we're going to try a deep garnet color with the bathoom a lighter shade from the same palette. If we don't like this, we'll go for something different in a year or so.

After getting the paint chips for the painter, we had planned to go order the rug and pick up a bunch of generic white laminate cabinets for the garage to put all the garage-y stuff in. I'd noticed that Macy's was having a big one-day sale (which was lasting two days; go figure) on rugs yesterday, so we went there. We ended up buying a lot of Karastan rugs there (just a bit more than we'd thought about ), a shopping process that took about 2 hours. The salesman probably would've been driven crazy except for the fact that there were five guys on the floor for the department and we were the only customers there. Everyone was watching the Oregon Ducks game.

This morning, we're off to Home Despot to pick up the cabinets we didn't get to yesterday. Somewhere along the line, I should probably go shopping as well, as we're completely out of eggs and other breakfast-like things.

We didn't buy that rug after all

Early Monday am

I had a lot of things to do for work this morning, so I got up around 5:00. There was some leftover coffee that was drinkable (I have much lower standards than the Babe for drinkability and leftover coffee that was good to begin with will do for an eye-opener), but I'm going to want more caffeine shortly, definitely.

I've got a ton of albums to listen to this morning--a new Weird Al, a bunch of Leon Redbone, some Steve Goodman--and a pile of really satisfying work. It looks like it's going to be a good day.

Early Monday am