Life of Wry

You may not know this, but when I selected the name for my blog, back in 2008, it was based on that sitcom from the 50s called “The Life of Riley.”  Says Wikipedia,

The Life of Riley is an American radio situation comedy series of the 1940s that was adapted into a 1949 feature film, a 1950s television series, and a 1958 comic book.

I have no real idea why I did this … exactly. I had this image in my mind of a guy in a hammock, which somehow I’d associated with the show. When I started my blog, I was just about retired and thought I’d spend a lot of time in a hammock. As in, “ah… this is the life.” (The life of Riley.)

I played with the name a bit because, apparently, I was also feeling wry. However that might have spoken to me at that time.  I even chose a graphic of a person in a hammock as my blog’s logo.. which I never used.

I know..  huh? 

And now I have this blog name that just sort of ..  is what it is. But… what it has always meant to me is a guy in a hammock (I am that guy).

Which… brings me to hammocks. 

Jim finished our hammock stand today! He’s been working on it for months. It has been a serious effort involving numerous steps and processes, and bucket loads of patience and precision. Layers and layers of plywood, carefully cut and shaped, glued together, sanded, finished.. and many steps in between that I am unable to describe. The result is a sturdy, massive, beefy structure that weighs hundreds of pounds and is held together with massive, heavy bolts. It’s a work of art. Truly. I am so very impressed.

The story begins in December, when Jim gave me a hammock for Christmas. Here is my favorite before picture. This is Peter and me, Christmas morning, giving the hammock a try on a hard wood floor.

Months of construction ensued.

The entire project started with a set of plans, of course:

First real step was to draw carefully measured arcs onto 5/8″ plywood and then cut out the shapes… lots of them. Each member will comprise 5 or 6 such arc layers.

Which then had to be glued together. Many clamps were used in the glueing and setting process!

Then came sanding. So. Much. Sanding.

And look how beautiful they look!!

I love this detail. This is where the wheels will be mounted. So cleverly designed.

Each piece got three coats of polyurethane.

As I mentioned, there are steps I’ve left out, like the hole drilling, parts ordering, member numbering and other such logistical details necessary to make it all come together.

And, I just have to say, each of these processes was an era in itself. Taking, as I mentioned above, such patience.

Jim says if he’d known how much work was involved, he might not have undertaken the project. But I disagree. He lives for this stuff.

And…. here is today…

First we have an assembly of finished parts. You can see all the layers of plywood that got glued together (not a trivial process). All these are numbered so Jim knows how to put the pieces together. Each weighs a ton.

Here they start to come together, and you can see the size of the bolt that will be threaded through the sections..

Here is how they look when together and cinched up (there might be a better woodworking term for this)..

Here is the… O-ring (?) that the hammock will hang from:

And here’s the finished product with hammock attached! Note: it may be rolled to wherever you want it to be. It rolls beautifully and smoothly!

Happy me:

Satisfied (and relieved) Jim:

A more relaxed version of Jim…

And me.. where I plan to spend a lot of my summer…

HOW ABOUT THAT!!

The life of wry to be sure. Thank you, Jim. You amaze me.

Had to consult my wee Pandemic Journal to see what day we are on … I am truly losing count.

I did not set one foot outside the door today. Not a one.  That might be a first. You know.. I track a lot of things, but I’d really have to dig through my records to figure out whether this was the first non-outside day. But I think it was.

~~

I think it’s quite possible that as we are confined, as we are left with so few outdoor activities, as we have slowed down so profoundly and are left with so much time to reflect… so are we especially appreciative of the beauty around us. And thus all these flower pictures!

My unoriginal theory.

Took a slow stroll through the Old North neighborhood yesterday and saw a few things I really liked…

That is an iPhone 6 shot. Of course.

I am in love with these:

And wow… is it a .. daisy?

Mr. Green wooden fence again.. such a lovely complement to the pink house.

~~

What’d I do with all my indoor time today? Spent most of it figuring out how to set up and manage a campaign Facebook site. (Did I mention I’m working on Kelly’s campaign for a seat on the Los Rios Community College District Board of Trustees, area 4?) This included finally overcoming some Google Drive and Google Doc obstacles (not entirely) and opening an account on Hootsuite to organize social media postings over a variety of social media platforms.

Am I fancy or what?

I am weird.. I know that. I am scared shitless of anything tech, and then all king-of-the-mountain when I master just a tiny bit of it. It’s like I’m wailing inside don’t make me do this ...  and then, when I actually sit down and do it, it’s like, what’s the big?  It’s all about browbeating myself to the table, forcing myself to face that plate of peas… then realizing it’s not that bad once I take the first step (though I still hate peas so maybe this isn’t the best analogy).

Well, all these mixed metaphors aside, I love anything tech that I’ve actually overcome and mastered. I will never, ever, EVER forget the time I fixed a toaster. It’s still Top. Of. The. List of major tech accomplishments in my whole LIFE.

Wish I’d figure out why my first reaction to something foreign is to fear it. Inevitably it’s never as bad as I expect. Never.

~~

One other thing I’m reflecting on. We’re now watching The Crown. It’s very good so far. Tonight we watched episode 3 of season 1: a thick, smoky fog has descended upon London in late December 1952. The city is brought to a standstill, people are staying indoors, wearing masks when out, coughing their guts out, and dying by the thousands in hospitals overwhelmed with sick people and a lack of medical supplies & equipment. Churchill is in denial saying things like these things come and go, one day it will just vanish. The opposition wants him out because he is bungling the handling of a major public health crisis. Well.. that’s a convenient excuse; they actually think he’s too old and and unfit leader. He’s not the one to lead a modern, postwar England.

Isn’t that funny? It was a startling parallel.

In their case, it was a three-day crisis (12,000 people died). The sun did come out; Churchill, so far, comes through unscathed. We’ll see what happens next.

I snapped a pic of Jim modeling his new wrench.

It’s his specially dedicated lathe wrench — designed for a particular bolt, I imagine, and will live right there beside said bolt. And he made the wrench himself from some scrap 1/4″ slab o’ metal. I actually didn’t know a person could do such a thing.

I think I’m also noticing that Jim fashioned a drawer beneath the lathe.  The wood (oak) comes from our kitchen cabinets (three remodels ago). You should see his workshop… it’s one customized son of a gun. (He thinks I don’t notice this.) (I do.) (Sometimes, when he’s out, I just walk around in there marveling at all the little touches.)

It’s meme time again. Maybe I should do it every Friday. The memes, as usual, have been good this week.

The person who posted this one is a teacher trying to manage distance learning…

And not specific to the coronavirus, but they still apply….

I know…

It’s about time for something else, but 1) my days are pretty much walk, flowers, eat, repeat and 2) the news I do consume (which is a lot) is so damn depressing, all I’d do is complain and the future me does not want to read it.

Yes, I want to get some of it down because it’s an historic time — both in each of our lives and in the biggest possible worldly way — and it deserves to be observed, experienced, processed…  I will. I do. It’s exhausting.

So… today, more scenes from the creek.. with a bonus at the end.

I’m a huge fan of this grass that is so dense and lush, but today the yellow flowers really made it pop..

Snoozing ducks, who are so unfazed by us walkers..

And here come the flowers…

One of the last remaining poppies.. in a sea of yellow..

These were just stunning…

Oh my god, these are so pretty.. and with that bridge in the background.. gosh..

My camera (phone) chooses its own focal point… I just go with whatever it decides.. I like this..

And here’s the bonus.. thanks, Vicki!!

Me working hard to get a shot.

(And now I know my hair’s grey! I honestly did not know that… )

Quiet day. Got dozy in our window seat with warm air wafting through open windows. Yes I did.

It went over 80 degrees today.

And a nice late afternoon walk in the Old North…

More adventures in baking. Sorry.

Decided to try those flourless cocoa cookies again, because, as my note on the recipe suggested, this may be the best cookie I’ve ever made (and eaten). I LOVED these cookies.. but I had messed up the recipe because I didn’t have unsweetened cocoa and instead used hot chocolate mix (which has powdered milk in it).

So, I wanted to try the recipe again, this time with the proper ingredients. But ran into a problem right out of the gate. I cracked three eggs into the bowl and got FIVE yolks. What are the chances… TWO sets of twins in three eggs.

Dilemma: does this constitute three eggs? Or five eggs? The recipe called for three eggs.. what to do, what to do. I used them all, concluding that volume-wise, they came from three eggs.

The batter was S T I C K Y !

It was a chore forming into cookies.. but managed..

And.. they look okay, not like the last time I baked them, but okay..

There was one other potential issue…

They were to be baked for 10-13 minutes. I removed at 10, thinking they fit the description of “done.” When fully cooled, I tried one. Not done. So… I reheated the oven and put them back in (that never works!). Three extra minutes didn’t seem adequate, so continued for ANOTHER two minutes. Hail Mary’ing the whole way.

But….  they worked!

Crispish on the outside, chewy, deep (dark chocolaty), rich. One at a time is about all a person can handle. Even better.

New thing for our little family and such a sign of the times — tech-wise, society-wise and global pandemic-wise.

Our check in last night (wish it was a regular event, it isn’t, but we do manage about once a week) started as a phone call, which morphed into a Facetime call so Peter could show us something, then I decided to ramp up to Zoom.. mostly because Jim hadn’t sat in on a Zoom call yet and, well, why not? I’ve participated in countless Zoom calls at this point (though, of course, I am counting them), but had never set one up myself… so as Peter was describing a lab experiment, I was setting up the call on another channel, so to speak, then, this happened!

There is some kind of fluid in that contraption that, as the video progresses, will begin to form waves (he’s taking a wave engineering course of some sort). It was so very, very cool to be able to not only talk, but have Peter show us stuff. It kind of amazed me, too, that we went right into the substance of the experiment within seconds of arriving to the Zoom platform.. like, well, yeah, of course. Didn’t miss a beat.

But soon we moved on to a story that Jim shared. It’s the one where the man walks into Sutter Hospital last week, says he’s there to pick up the covid-19 sample, the staff hands it right over and thinks nothing of this odd little exchange…until they see him riding away on a bike. (TRUE STORY!) (The poor fellow has mental illness issues, but the staff sure doesn’t.)

That was pretty funny. And when Jim thinks something is funny, and begins laughing, we ALL laugh because it’s just so hilarious to see Jim laugh that hard..

I love my family.

And now we Zoom.

Jim took the first baking shift this morning…

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast:

He used the bread maker to mix, knead and raise the dough, then put the dough in a muffin pan and baked the rolls in the oven. Worked pretty well.

We each ate four. FOUR. As great as they were, this may explain my day-long stomach ache. They were great going down and that sugar glaze was insane.

I took the second shift…

Tried that no-knead dutch oven bread everybody’s been talking about and it worked pretty well!

Heavy as all get out. Jim’s theory is that were a person to knead-rise-punch-down-repeat, the bread might come out lighter and airier. Also, maybe half whole wheat and half white flour? I’m eager experiment and try adding ingredients, like olives or cheese… we’ll see.

Nice to have fresh hot bread, in any case.

I have to conclude that spring is a good time to walk the North Davis ditch. Second weekend in a row I’ve met Janet up there… and I’m liking it a lot.

I did nothing to this picture; it’s that green.

About to cross over the top of the ditch on that bridge out of North Davis Farms…

This is the Whitcomb pond (right?) north of the  bridge.. nice to have your own private pond…

Looking north..

So… it’d been 11 days since our last shopping trip.. and this time it was my turn. Damn.. it’s tedious shopping for so many days. It took at least an hour in the store, then getting all of it from the car into the house, then another near-hour to get everything scanned (that’s Jim’s deal) and put away (my deal). Good lord.

We’re definitely getting ourselves a lot more organized on this meal planning, shopping and cooking thing. I’d picked a bunch of recipes to try (thanks New York Times cooking section, which I pay for) and shopped accordingly. It’s rather time consuming, but seems a good front end thing to do to make a couple of weeks of cooking a lot easier.

I tried a new pasta tonight…

Caramelized six thinly sliced shallots and 4 thinly sliced garlic cloves in olive oil:

Added anchovies and tomato paste (and more kosher salt and pepper).. another recipe where anchovies are added and which melt into the dish, leaving just an intense flavor that you can’t quite put your finger on, but is significant (we’re not sure we like it):

Then added al dente pasta, a cup of hot pasta water which will completely cook off, leaving a thick, rich paste that coats the pasta. Then you toss fresh parsley and some finely chopped garlic upon this earthy pasta and voila, dinner!

Jim’s comment: edible.

He may give up on my cooking pretty soon, but for now I’m still having a good time. I have to admit this one was more enjoyable to make than to consume. Still…

Then I started a new batch of bread! Feeling a lot like a Suzie Homemaker. Will report on that adventure tomorrow.