With two you get stains

Posted on by January 11, 2015

Be seeing you

I placed my coat in the overhead shelf like I always do and the retrieved it when we arrived at Waterloo. Little did I know someone’s drink or art project spilled up there and when I took my coat off at work I saw that my right sleeve had a stark white and slightly chalky stain on it. It looked like a cursive number 2.

It came out easily but I couldn’t help but wonder what other people thought as I walked past. And I admired how it was perfectly at “shoulder patch” height on my arm. Almost as if it had been put there on purpose.

Almost.

I think this is further sign that I am being culled from the pack. 🙂

With two you get stains

Posted on by June 16, 2016

I placed my coat in the overhead shelf like I always do and the retrieved it when we arrived at Waterloo. Little did I know someone’s drink or art project spilled up there and when I took my coat off at work I saw that my right sleeve had a stark white and slightly chalky stain on it. It looked like a cursive number 2.

It came easily but I couldn’t help but wonder what people I walked past thought. And admire how it was perfectly at shoulder patch height on my arm. Almost as if it had been put there on purpose.

Almost.

I think this is further sign that I am being culled from the pack. 🙂

Its Luck!

Posted on by June 16, 2016

Those ladies were back in Trafalgar square today.
You know the ones.
They dress a bit Eastern Block but when they speak it’s always a bit Cockney. I suppose they were going for a Liza Dolittle look.

They were giving out little bits of colored tissue paper held in a carnation shape by a bit of tin foil. Today’s were yellow.
I heard it was a way of choosing a mark. Of culling the herd so to speak.
She said “Flower for ya love?”
I never broke stride and said “No Thank you.” very firmly.
As I proceeded past she added “Its Luck…”

I had to agree. It was entirely Luck. It always is.

Dream Police

Posted on by June 16, 2016

Dream hat trick:

1) I dreamed I was at work and used a soda machine and it gave me a huge handful of change then dropped 5 bottles of soda. I passed them around then realized none of them were the flavor I wanted. I remember saying “Look at me, complaining about free soda!”
When I went to my office I found it was different from I left it, including a large screen on an armature. I referred to it as ‘the pit and the pendulum.’ I was handed a seating chart and when I went to where my new desk was I found it was tiny cubicle that didn’t have room for a phone and a screen. There were no walls either. Very Office Space.

2) I was interviewing someone who had a bizarre species of catfish that lived in the dead carcass of larger fish. When the lady who owned it went out to show the photographer her little girl told me to have a nice nap in the sun.

I almost made it to sleep when they came in with the catfish and it smelled awful! I think it was also a walking catfish because they didn’t have it in a tank or bowl. I remember the mother said “There’s something you should know about the catfish.”

3) I dreamed I was trying to convince some guy I was part Italian. I told him that because I liked the Napoli region and Napoli style pizza I assumed my ancestors were from there.
Then I worried that there wasn’t a Napoli region of Italy.

I said ” To look at me you wouldn’t think I had any Italian in me.” For that I got a hug. Then a huge dog with curly grey fur came in and jumped on the bed.

Oddly I was not bothered by this.

 

Am I a hoarder?

Posted on by January 8, 2015

I’m a victim of a late night today and I find my muzzly-thinking brain has me  watching Hoarders and asking if I am a hoarder? I have stuff I haven’t even touched in a year’s time. Some of it has value, but most is just tied to my past, my memories.  I often wonder if I really need anything more than my clothes and computer. I’m just worried I’d lose any anchor to the past I might still have and that alone is worth paying the storage price for that day when I might go back and open a tub of memories.

 

 

un-Polished response

Posted on by September 26, 2016

Last week as I was walking home a gentlemen coming from the other direction smiled and said “Hello.” as he passed by. I said hello back and when he was a few steps past me he said:  “Bloody Polish!” I thought I must have miss heard him so I paused, looked back and said  “Sorry?” He pointed back down the street towards town and repeated “Bloody Polish!” I looked where he was pointing and didn’t see anything unusual about Salisbury high street. Especially not anything Polish.

Cheese cross in Salisbury City Centre

Cheese cross in Salisbury City Centre

He walked on and I apologised to his back: “Sorry, I’m American. I don’t understand.”

my Cider-in-Fall

Posted on by October 22, 2014

Made a second batch of cider on the 14th of October.

 

I cannot find my notes from my first batch of cider. It looks like I did an update from the train and it failed during upload and I lost everything after the first paragraph.  This makes me sad. It turned out to be pretty decent cider.

This batch has a couple of things different:  Its a kit again,but from Black Rock homebrew in new Zealand. The mix seemed thicker and more aromatic than the John Bull mix I used for the first batch. (I’ll have to try and recreate that entry. )  Plus I’m adding in some apple juice from actual apples I gathered from my Father in Law’s back yard. I used the juicer setting on my blender to get a juicy pulp of about 16 ounces and added that right into the batch.

Its a week or more on and I can barely detect yeast activity. The wife has kindly allowed me to stow it under the stair and so far there’s been little sign of fermentation.  I was just linking the directions from the Black ROck website for you to compare with my previous efforts and saw something I didn’t know about:  The yeast packets came in 3 sachets. I only added one. I will drag the fermentation unit from under the stair and add in the other packets.

http://www.blackrock.co.nz/brew-kits/item/31-apple-cider

I THINK I had to do the same with the first kit.  I’m still a bit bothered by using concentrate but I have to admit its less messy than 8 bottles of apple juice.  I don’t do this to save money but people always ask me how much it cost to make.  So roughly this can of concentrate (with yeast) cost 18£, 4 more for the sugar. Water free and I already had the fermentation unit. That gets you in at slightly less than 1£ per liter.

In another radical change I’m going to use collapsible water bottles to ferment half of this in, I found them at the pound store (ala dollar store) and the one I tested didn’t leak.  I will trust a third of my cider output to it.  Barring any deep freezing it should be ‘bottled’  in early November. drinkable in January. Better in Feb.