Sunday, September 26, 2010

September Sunday Sayonara

We're now on the countdown to the end of September. October's coming up to bat Friday so this is the last week of a great month. Susun was once fond of saying, "Who put the OH! in October?" Actually, October is easily one of our favorite months of every year and we're eagerly looking forward to it.

The Goatherder had his first employment test yesterday. He says be poured between one and two thousand glasses of wine at the Sedona Winefest. Can you imagine? OUCH!

Speaking of wine, Carrie sent an email during the night. She and husband Jerry are safely settled into a rental home the south of France. As she describe it, "St. Chinian is located in a gorgeous valley here in the Languedoc wine region." Tough duty, eh? C & J are Big Time wine connoisseurs. They must be in Wine Heaven right now.

Bryan (AKA: BTB) is back in Salt Lake after a mini-epic river trip on the Salmon River all the way down to the below its confluence with the Snake. We're still slated to go visit Bryan next weekend at his place in MOAN Country near Geneva.

Speaking of river runners, probably half of this blog's LBR roster are somehow connected to river running. A lot of the blog's casual visitors are also connected to river running. So, this snippet will make at least some of them turn slightly green. Yesterday, I jammed down to the Dee-Eye t-store to find and buy a thin Tupperware cake pan to use to catch oil below the Zuki oil filter. While I was there, I thought, "Gee, Johnny, you might as well check the back room, there might be something interesting there for you." Yeah, I sure got that right. I scored a 1945 ammo can the likes of which I've never seen before. It's a real beauty in near pristine condition, too. River Runners have a strange symbiotic relationship with ammo cans of all types, flavors and designs. I've never met a river runner who didn't salivate over ammo cans of any description. This one is a 12 x 15 rectangle that stands 14 inches high and weighs in at a stout 15 pounds empty! It's built like the proverbial brick (___)house. At left, our Yard Guard Gnomes check out the new acquisition.  They seem pleased.

Susun pulled off a minor miracle yesterday. No, it wasn't enough of a miracle to get her nominated for sainthood but it was a miracle nonetheless. She somehow made the old dead water heater and water softener disappear from the basement. The softener has been lurking unattached down there since April 2008. The water heater has been taking up valuable space since it was replaced in January. Each of them weighed a ton since they each were totally full of calcium-based sediments. They were so heavy, I could barely move them on the flat basement floor with an industrial dolly rated. Poof, now you see them, now you don't! Since those behemoths have been sitting there, I've toyed with the idea of paying upwards of $50 each to get them hauled out and properly disposed. There's NO WAY me, myself or I would ever dream of attempting to get them up that narrow stairways with two 90-degree turns involved. HA!

So, somehow, Susun got a duo of guys from Habitat for Humanity to drive over a large truck, go downstairs with a professional appliance dolly and grunt both of them upstairs and off to the landfill! I didn't have to do a thing except stay out of the way. Now, THAT's a miracle, folks, pure & Simple. Thanks, Susun, you really shined yesterday!

Yesterday went totally according to plan. The only thing we couldn't squeeze in was a trip out to that distant alpaca farm. Otherwise, it was a great day. About the photos below this post:  Those giant tomatoes were a mere 75 cents each yesterday.  Why grow 'em when you can buy 'em so cheap?  Two guys in a tux were giving carriage rides for three bucks a pop at the other Farmers Market out by the mall.  And then there's a set of shots from the power company's open house.  Free food and free bucket rides, what's not to like?

While we were over at the WINCO Spa, we noticed the pasilla chiles looked real good and were selling for $1.38 a pound. Also, oddly, there weren't 15 Mexicans crowding around the pepper bins. So, I nonchalantly was able to pick out six really perfect matched pasillas. I took them home and fired up the weed burned blow torch out in the alley and blackened all of them in a few minutes, along with some yellow hot peppers and 3 stray jalapenos. After they steamed for awhile and were shed of their skins, I mixed up left over chicken breast, chopped red onions and some cheddar cheese. Then I used an egg, cornmeal, flour mixture to batter them and BAKED them instead of frying them in gobs of oil. I used all the leftover ingredients to make a tamale pie (using corn tortillas, of course, not masa) in the cornbread skillet. I also threw some black olives into that mix. Both of the dishes turned out perfectly in El Turco and we ate every single speck of the food.
YUM!

Well, this is how it goes when we're home being domestics and not roaming hither and yon being Happy Campers. Mundane? Yes. Fun? Definitely!

Cheers, jp

PS---Oops, I almost forgot the "Score of The Day." Are you ready? For one dollar, I got not one but TWO 1966 vinyls of The Monkees first album!!! (Cue deafening and wild cheering.) This is the album that has the famous "Last Train to Clarksville" on it. An enduring urban legend postulates that the original title was "Last Train to Clarkdale." It's an urban legend I choose to believe. Hopefully, Goatherder will be able to use his hotrod USB turntable to convert that tune into an MP3 for me, huh, Goatherder?
PS #2--Google has changed around their entire method of embedding photos in blogs.  It happened either yesterday or the day before.  The prior method worked perfectly.  The new method is terrible!  Hence, these photos look like someone threw them up at the wall.  Sorry 'bout that, I will keep trying until I master the new set up.  Google simply isn't staisfied with stuff that works well, they have to keep messing with it until it's ridiculously difficult!








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