Dry Big Creek, Foggy Morning

Big Creek runs alongside my property. When there's water in it, at least. With the drought this summer, it's completely dried up. When Buster and I woke up this morning, it was pretty foggy and I had a notion to take the camera along with me. So here's a photo essay of our walk, and the dried-up creek.

My backyard.

The bridge near my house, looking upstream/north.

Downstream/south.

Field along the road on the other side of the creek.

Looking south from a bridge south of my house. The creek takes a big bend just beyond here and loops back around to town.

Looking north. Can you see it? No, not Buster's nose.

Here's a closer look. A whitetail doe, checking us out. There were at least four more that came out of the trees to the right, and they all ran upstream.

From the walking bridge at the park a few blocks up the street from my house, looking south/upstream.

And looking north, toward the 10th Street bridge.

Squirrel!

And there it is.

The dock in the park between the two bridges.

I believe this is Fourpoint evening primrose, growing along the bank.
(Source: Roadside Wildflowers of the Southern Great Plains, Freeman & Schofield) 

Not sure what this is, but I like the color it turns in the fall.

From the 10th Street bridge, looking south to the walking bridge.

And looking north toward the railroad bridge.

At some point soon, as long as the creek remains dry, I'm going to take Buster on a hike along the creek bed. I did this a few years ago with Nipper, and it took us more than two hours to get from my house to the walking bridge! Still wish I'd taken a camera that time. So maybe when the days are a bit cooler and the vegetation has died back some, we'll do that. And I'll take the camera this time, because there's some cool things along this creek.

Cooking weekend

I've had a rare full weekend off (on a holiday weekend, no less!) and have been spending a lot of time cooking ahead. Not too much, though, because I've overdone it before and worn myself out. I wanted just enough to have plenty of meals for lunches and dinners ready and still get to enjoy my time ("Horrible Bosses" was very funny, and "Win Win" was great. Recommend them both).

So what have I been cooking? I tried some of the mason jar meals I posted about earlier: the sliders, corn dogs and creamy chicken curry with cilantro lime rice. I also made more chili and cornbread muffins (because CORNBREAD is what you serve with chili, dammit), and chicken enchilada soup. And I had already made some sloppy joe mix about a week ago.

Chili & cornbread muffins.

Chicken enchilada soup.

Here's notes on the others:

Corn dogs

I halved the recipe listed because I wanted to see how they turned out, plus by the time I got to this recipe on Sunday, I was down to just 6 mason jars. I ended up with batter to make only five, though (so that means Buster got half a frankfurter — he was happy!) They didn't quite look done at 20 minutes, so I put them in for another three and probably could have done another couple of minutes, really. I also forgot to grease the jar before pouring in the batter, but I just ran a knife sprayed with Pam around the edge as soon as I took them out of the oven, and they didn't stick too bad.

Sliders

These were pretty good right out of the oven. We'll see how they do after being frozen and reheated. I did forget to pat down the meat to get rid of the excess grease, but they turned out pretty good. I also had trouble getting them in jars, even the 16-ounce ones I have. Maybe it's because I used King's Hawaiian rolls for the buns? I bagged them in pairs in sandwich bags instead. Kinda defeats part of the purpose of using the jars, I know, but it's all I had.

Creamy chicken curry with cilantro lime rice

This was pretty good, but I'll have to do some tweaking. I made the rice a bit differently. First of all, I used brown rice, since that's what I had. And I made it more like the rice dishes at Something Edible, adding the cilantro & lime zest to the butter, browning the rice, then adding the water with the lime juice and salt in the water. It does give the rice a lot more flavor, but in this dish, it might have added too much lime flavor. Or maybe I needed more curry to balance out the lime? Haven't had a lot of curry dishes, so I'm not sure how spicy it should be.

So the final tally of my cooking weekend:
Sliders — 5 pairs
Chicken enchilada soup — 10 8 oz jars
Chili — 8 8 oz jars
Corn dogs — 4
Chicken curry & rice — 5
Sloppy joes — 7

So that's a total of 39 meals. Maybe along with the occasional turkey sandwich, and if I make some lasagna again later, I'll have enough variety to keep me from getting too bored and caving to a desire for going out to lunch or raiding the vending machine too often. It'll be interesting to see how my bank account shapes up later.

Fun project

With the all the garage cleaning, you probably think I'm not having much fun on my vacation. Well, if you think the only way to have fun on vacation is to be on a beach or something, then I guess you'd be right.

But I am getting to some things that I've been wanting to do for awhile that will make life a little easier if not enjoyable, and that's fun for me. Yes, I'm kind of a geek.

Anyway, here's one of the things I'm doing.

I've had this metal bistro table for about 10-12 years. It's a little well worn, as you can see.




I scrubbed it clean Tuesday morning and let it dry, then brought it into the garage for a couple coats of primer.

Then came the color. I wanted it to be red with black legs, because I think that's a pretty cool color combination, but it didn't feel like I had enough red spray paint. So I went with yellow for the top.


I was still going to go ahead and do black for the legs, but realized I had a LOT of green spray paint, so went with that.



Maybe I'll get some brown craft paint and make the top look like a sunflower. That'd be kinda cool. I'll need to seal it, too, to help protect the paint, but that's not real important at this point.

I put it on my front porch, so I've got something to set a cool drink on while I sit on the bench on nice evenings.



Anyway, I've got one more big, fun project to do, but I don't know if I'll be able to finish it before I go back to work. I still need to do a couple things inside the house, too (replacing the bathroom faucet, for one). But I think I could at least get a good start to where it will be usuable. More on that later.

Where am I?

I've been playing around with location-based social media sites lately, and I even though I don't go to a lot of different places, I'm having fun with them. Mostly, I'm playing with them to get some ideas of how we might be able to use them at the paper. But I'll keep that to myself for now, heh heh.

Anyway, the addiction started with Foursquare, and then I found Gowalla, then Whrrl. I looked at Brightkite, but haven't tried it, and I'm sure there's more I haven't even heard of.

These sites are designed to used GPS data to determine your location; however, since I have an iPod Touch that can use only WiFi to determine my location, I'm not having as much as I could. Sometimes, WiFi just isn't available where I am, like the grocery store, for example. And even if it is available, it's not always accurate. The other day, I was trying out something on Whrrl and used the WiFi of a local diner/brewpub. Their ISP must be some company in Kansas City, because that's where my iPod thought I was all of a sudden. And it stayed that way for three days — even using a signal from local ISPs — until I logged on to the hotspot at the mall, of all places. So at least I know where to go when that happens.

I've had the most success with Foursquare locating me. Gowalla seems to be more specific about how close you are to a location before letting you check in. Since the wifi isn't always accurate, I have lots of problems checking in on Gowalla. Whrrl is somewhere inbetween.

I like Gowalla's and Whrrl's interfaces best, though. They're just more fun. And here's something you can do with Whrrl that's kind of neat:

More check-ins at Hays Public Library

Powered by Whrrl

Even though I like those two best, I am still kinda proud to be the mayor of nine venues on Foursquare. =)

Friend me on:
Whrrl
Gowalla
Foursquare

Plan for the day

Since I'm carless, I guess I'll stick with the cleaning plan for today. I'll finish up the kitchen/dining area (which turned into kind of an impromptu home improvement project. I now have a nicer workspace for my computer. More on that later). Of course, I woke up this morning to find SOMEONE had tracked muddy pawprints from the back door all the way into the living room. Wonder who that could be, Buster?

I decided not to move my dining table back into the dining area. It's just not that big a space and the table was just becoming a collection site for junk anyway. Having a work space is more important to me, really. So now Buster has plenty of room to get his food and water dishes without having to maneuver around my chair if I'm working on the computer. And I moved my little beverage fridge in there from the utility room, where it will be handier to get to.

So I'l finish up cleaning in here, maybe get the countertops all nice and clean, too, and then start on the utility room. Mainly that's just going to be getting the junk off the top of the dryer to wherever it should go, but I should probably give the dryer a good cleaning too, get all the lint out of it.

Once that's done, I'll get started on the other bedroom, so my brother will have a nice, clean room to stay in while he's here next week. Maybe a little weeding in the yard if it's not too hot, and that should about cover my day.

Good thing I didn't plan anything

I'm finally taking some vacation time from the paper. You know it's been a long time since you've taken vacation when your co-workers' response is "I never thought I'd see the day." Jeez.

Anyway, can't afford to go anywhere, so I just planned to make it a spring-cleaning and fix-up time around the house, and also see if I couldn't get the car in for what I was sure would be a much-needed tune-up. I was right about that.

I'm still working at the mall while on my vacation, and just as I was pulling out of the garage to go to work last night, boom, everything shut down -- engine, electrical, everything. The ignition would crank, but it wouldn't turn over. So mom let me borrow her truck to get to work, and then today a friend came over to take a look at mine. We replaced the spark plugs and the cords, but no luck. And turns out the mechanic I've been to here couldn't do much more. There's another mechanic in town, but we haven't had the best experience with them. So I had to call a tow service and to have it taken to a mechanic in the city that I've worked with before. So I could be carless until after the holiday, if it's something big. (Thanks for the help, Max!)

Other than that, vacation's going OK. I just gave the kitchen floors a good cleaning and am sitting on the porch in the cool night air while they dry. Buster is snoozing on the sidewalk. Hope no one's going for late-night walk. And the bugs are really being drawn to my laptop screen, so it might be about time to go in.

I guess tomorrow, I'll tackle more of the cleaning. I was going to try to shampoo my carpets before the weekend, but I had hoped to spend today vacuuming. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow and see if I can get a shampooer on Sunday, since I work at the mall again Saturday. Otherwise, I guess it'll wait until Tuesday. I'm off from the mall Sunday through Wednesday, so that gives me time. And then my brother will be here for the rest of the week, so even with the car problems, it should be a decent time off.

I did pick up a few books at the library too. Current read is Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" years ago, and can't say I remember much about it. But reading this one is bringing some of it back, and it's interesting to see through Richardson's book how much has changed since Pirsig's trip, and how much hasn't really. I may have to go find a copy of the original, too, for a re-read.

I have nothing to do

Wow. I really don't. I don't need to do laundry, I ran the dishwasher earlier tonight and got the dishes in the sink washed.

OK, I could be organizing some files, or sorting through the piles on my table/work area, or cleaning the bathroom, but if I don't get those done tonight, it's not like it'll be the end of the world.

I actually have (including tonight) three whole nights in row off. So I can kind of take it easy tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some other things done, like make a dish or two for some dinners/lunches I can take to work later on. And maybe Thursday I'll get some housecleaning done.

But for now, it's just nice to sit back and relax.