The All-New Bunrab

Cindy came over for supper this evening - I managed to find enough counter space and dishes to cook some chicken, chop it up and put it on a salad, and then serve it at a table that had room for us both to sit at and eat. This is an intermittent thing - I get the table cleared off of stuff, and then as I unpack the next box, the table gets loaded up again with "stuff I need to sort through." And indeed, after dinner, we unpacked a few more boxes, and the table is once again buried, though not as badly. Two loaded boxes of stuff I don't need went off with Cindy for various charities - her UU church supports a homeless shelter and a transition program that puts homeless people into apartments, so they always need contributions of food and of household basics - tableware, basic cooking implements, towels, etc.

One thing that has become increasingly obvious: I have too much tea. Every single bit of it seems interesting, and I hate to "get rid of" tea. But honestly, I have five shelves of my pantry cupboards filled to the brim with tea - there are hundreds of teas there. Most of it is well-stored in airproof, lightproof containers - tins or glass - and has not been exposed to heat, so it should still be drinkable. So, if you would like a fat Tyvek envelope full of various tea, email me your address (and full name; I don't always remember everyone's), and you will get a random sampling of stuff. If there's some kind you honestly know you can't stand, let me know that too, because otherwise the sampling will include a bit of everything - black, green, oolong, puerh, flavored, scented, aged, bags, loose, possibly even partial slightly flattened small boxes of something stuffed in there.

While I'm not as bad as some people I know, I do seem to overbuy on food. It's partly the low-sodium thing - when I order by mail, I order quantities that make it economical, and when I find something in a local market, I grab as much as I can because I'm sure they'll stop carrying it. As a result, I have way more canned goods and dried soups and slow cooker mixes than would normally appear on a single person's shelves. And I still don't eat at home quite as much as I should - although my impending budget crunch will help cure that, I suppose.

Steve and I used to joke about using up a lot of our vacation time and vacation money just 2 hours at a time, by eating out most nights. It was a habit we got into early in our marriage, and it stuck. We didn't eat expensive stuff out - just sandwiches, or cafeteria, or Tex-Mex. After I got sick, we still kept eating out, even though our income was less, because, well, we were still better off than average, and could afford it, and enjoyed it. Finding the lowest-sodium thing to eat at a given restaurant became a game. And when we moved up here, from cafeteria country to diner country, Steve absolutely /loved/ diners, and we would eat quite regularly at one particular diner on the way home from Monday rehearsal every week, another particular diner on the way home from Tuesday rehearsal every week, another particular diner on the way home from Wednesday rehearsal every week... usually splitting an entree, so not as expensive as it sounds, or sometimes getting breakfast for supper, which is also less expensive than regular entrees. Well, when Steve died, it was still quite a habit - particularly since I felt so absolutely awful eating alone, and eating at a diner where the wait people knew me gave the illusion of not being alone for a little bit. And in that manner, I ran up credit card bills of several thousand, because my tiny monthly pension doesn't cover that. Well, when I sold the house, I paid that off - but I can't do it again!! And I can't keep dipping into savings for regular monthly expenses - using principle for living expenses is a horrible idea. That stuff is ALL THE MONEY I HAVE IN THE WORLD and I can't eat it up. So this is the point where I have to really, really stop the eating-out habit. I think I can do it over the next few months, if I promise myself one lunch out a week and one dinner out a week for a period; that's an extravagance but if I try to quit cold turkey, as it were, I will feel so lonely and be sitting at home alone all day so much of the time that I don't think I can stand it. So the other thing I've got to do is find volunteer work that gets me out of the house a day or two a week for a couple hours, isn't too much physical labor, and preferably offers lunch or snacks as part of the deal. I suspect that soup kitchens or homeless shelters are too much physical labor (and probably too little air conditioning - I'm far more heat-intolerant than I used to be) so this is going to take some research and calibrating. There are a couple of places I that are of particular interest to me to volunteer; now to find out if they happen to keep iced tea and snack bars on hand for the volunteers!

First, stuff:
fadethecat, did you already know that the Maker Faire will be Oct. 10-12 at the Travis County Expo Center? Now you know. I suspect you will want to attend.

Then, some books:
I Love Knitting - Amazon.com review here though this was short enough to hardly count as reading.
Judge by Karen Traviss - Amazon.com review here - sixth and final in her Wess'har series. It's OK but not great science fiction; those of you in places outside the US and UK, you won't be unduly deprived of any great literature if the series never makes it to your distant shores.
I think I already mentioned Kluge, right? That was fun.
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell - musings by a public radio commentator on modern American life. Eh. Some were amusing - the essay about what she learned from being in high school marching band, for instance; others, including the title essay, struck me as self-absorbed and shallow.

I have most of the mugs hung up in the kitchen! I have some pictures hung on the walls! I can see more floor space than I could a week ago! I still have a bunch more curtains to make, though, to replace what was here, most of which is definitely not to my taste. I've gotta take some pictures of the living room, now that it looks halfway like it should.

More about travel:
Found a bunch of my receipts and stuff from trip to Europe. The place where we ate the last night in Vienna was Cafe Bierbeisl Einstein, which I found the take-out service card from, which does have its own website: http://www.einstein.at . They have phone-in take-out, though I doubt you can get delivery here. And a souvenir picture of squirrel_magnet from Postojna Caves - once we get the new scanner/copier/printer plugged in, I'll scan it for your viewing pleasure. And postcards from Schonbrunn Castle. And hotel receipts, and my receipt from the internet cafe in Pula, Croatia, and some scribbled notes that I need to match up to their proper photographs.

Stuff: our old copier died - well, it was over 10 years old and a cheap one to begin with, and had done excellent duty for something so small and cheap (I used to pick it up by its little handle and drag it to quilting classes with me, which made me a very popular attendee). We could have waited for a while to buy something new, as the old scanner still works, sort of, and the old printer still works, though slowly, but this was on way-marked-down, instant-rebate, net price $50 for the whole thing. Even if it turns out to be junk that breaks in a year, that's about the price per year we'd be willing to pay for such a unit. So when that gets plugged in, a whole bunch o' old-fashioned printed photos are gonna get scanned!

Well, most of our furniture has been moved to the new place, but the phone and DSL don't get transferred till Wednesday, so for now the computer and its little table are still in the old house, where I don't get much chance to use it, because when we're back at the old house, we're packing all the remaining STUFF - things that were in closets and cabinets and cubbyholes, plus the last couple of bookcases' worth of books.

Speaking of books, haven't finished much lately, but here's one:
How to Spell Chanukah edited by Emily Franklin - 18 writers write about 8 nights of lights. Some funny essays here. One about Chanukah in Israel, where there isn't much competing nonsense about Christmas. "People know about Christmas here. It's called Chag Hamolad, the Holiday of the Birth, obliquely referring to the action, not the man. (They also call New Year's Eve Sylvester, like the Germans do, although Israelis probably don't know it's named for Saint Sylvester, who was pope in the fourth century CE and allegedly cured Constantine from leprosy, after converting him to Christianity." I did not know that. Note to self: look up old book series, Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family, a chronicle of a big Jewish family on the Lower East Side at the turn of the previous century.

We have purchases 4 cheap bookcases 6 feet tall each at Target; once put together, we should be able to unpack a big chunk more of books, especially if we double-deck any paperbacks.

No other real news.

My dad got discharged from the hospital to a rehab center on Tuesday, a day early, because he was doing so well. I couldn't have rearranged my hotel and air plans to get home any sooner than they already were for Wednesday morning, plus the weather Tuesday in Maine was really, really nasty. Travel advisories all over. Bad enough that Wednesday morning as I was listening to the radio in the car on the way back to Manchester NH airport, the announcers were talking about all the power outages and downed trees and stuff. Anyway, I saw my dad off in the ambulance taking him to the rehab center, and warned the driver and the attendant about his atrocious puns. I've also given all sorts of marching orders to my assorted siblings as to what they're going to do to help out - hey, they already knew I was pushy, it shouldn't be a surprise to them. We're arranging for music for Dad to exercise to, a new reclining chair to rest in, etc. Of course, the biggie will be getting them to sell the house in Maine and move down here where they will be less than 100 miles from the nearest hospital, and less than 300 miles from the closest of their kids!

I got home in plenty of time for a nap before tonight's rehearsal. Playing the bari sax really is fun. It's not always exciting - sometimes, let's face it, I'm just a tuba with a reed (well, OK, a one-ba, as the bari sax has a range almost identical to that of the euphonium/baritone horn). We're doing, among other things, "Concord," a piece the Austin Symphonic Band did years ago, but is still tons of fun - it features a version of "Yankee Doodle" in 7/8 time. (Non-musicians, feel free to ignore that sentence.)

Now to catch up on mail, email, newspapers, and then back to unpacking! Since we've invited 9 assorted relatives for Thanksgiving, we have exactly 4 weeks to get at least the living room and dining room looking completely spiffy, in between also playing concerts, etc.