Thanksgiving week update, with high-velocity jars

 Life continues to be rich and thankful here in Enoughsville.  This week we're thankful for  family . . . 

Thankful for family

. . . for people who love us . . . 

Thankful for new girlfriends:
Nelson tells me he and Ti are officially a "thing"!

. . . and for people who give us new ways of looking at the world.

Thankful for friendships from around the world
and for learning new things about that world.

Earlier this month, I'd pulled out my Master Thanksgiving Recipe (the one that starts:  "Tuesday:  clean the gross moldy stuff out of the refrigerator; borrow instant pots", and takes me through the hour-by-hour Thanksgiving preparation, and then past the dinner into how to make shepherd's pie from the leftovers).   It's been a few years since I got to use this master recipe, and so I was delighted to spend the week engaged in those old familiar smells.  

We had some of our family -- Inkling, Kinderling and David and their three kiddoes, and a few students.  As is part of our particular family tradition, we pulled out the globe to show where we grew up; this year we had guests from Bangladesh, Taiwan (by way of the Netherlands), and Vietnam.  We got to have a cool discussion about so many aspects of modern life.  Fun fact: after Pelosi's first day in Taiwan, wearing a pink pantsuit, lots of the locals dressed in pink in solidarity and emulation.  

It's cool to learn new stuff.  I've decided that I want to teach Prewash (the dog) how to bow.  I discovered a complication at our first training session: as soon as I get the treats out, she sits.  And since it's hard for a dog (or even a person, I guess) to bow from sitting, I realized that first I need to teach her to stand on command, so that's what she's learning now -- to sit and stand and sit and stand, upon command.

Last week, Inkling and I went to my college's dance concert, which was so beautiful and energetic, that I decided I need to learn a new dance myself. I've set a goal of learning "Thriller" by next Halloween. Right now, here's the part of "Thriller" I'm trying to get down. I am not sure how I like that the instructor says this first segment is "the most simple the steps are going to be, so I'm confident you're going to pick it up right away", and yet I have trouble learning it.

Nonetheless, I envision total success, and apparently my granddaughter agrees, as you can see from the lovely sketch below.  Spotlights and everything!

Me and my Nana was on a stage and we were dancing.

Me and my nana were jumping and jumping
and jumping we had fun.

Other things I learned this week had to do with the esoterica of canning.   Such as: the reason that we're supposed to let pressure canners release slowly (very slowly) is that if the steam escapes from the pot too fast for the jars, then the pressure inside the jars is so much larger than the surrounding air, that their lids pop off rather dramatically, spewing hot liquid all over.  This is delightful to dogs, but not particularly comfortable to the person removing exploding-lid jars from the canner.  

Also learned:  if a jar is covered in greasy hot oil, make sure to use the jar grippers around the neck of the jar, not the lid of the jar, because if the lid comes off, the jar falls on the floor and shatters with hot liquid and glass all over.   Sigh.  This was a more educational canning experience than I've had in a long time, but at least I did learn, and I have 18 (intact) jars of turkey stock to show for it.  Not to mention, a few more notes for my Master Thanksgiving Recipe.   

Perhaps coincidentally, I've been reading a totally lovely book called The Rise by Sarah Lewis.  It's about how we learn mastery through failure (that's an oversimplification -- it's such a beautiful, captivating book);  I'm not hiking to the South Pole or creating new art forms, but I do feel like it's good to remember that my crashes at canning are an important scenic overlook along the road to canning craftlyness.

I also learned how to make buttonholes with my new sewing machine, and it's so cool to watch the machine do this, that I might add buttonholes to everything.  Not to canning jars, but to other things.

And with all that learning under the old belt, I guess that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Thankful for this day.

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Tell it like it is, Cchild!

Keeping it together with zippers

I recently got to save two different expensive items of clothing with some easy zipper fixes.  Whoop! Zippers are amazing inventions; we see them every day, and yet most of us don't pay much attention to how they work, so I thought I'd draw some pictures to illustrate my own understanding (and how I use those pictures to make quick-n-easy zipper fixes).   

We often talk about the "teeth" of zippers, but it's more like one side of a zipper is a stack of spoons, that lie on top of each other, but but with a bit of extra space in between the bowls.

My very fancy drawing of a bunch of nested spoons.
Also, much like one side of a zipper.

When the two sides of the zipper come together, the spoons on one side and the spoons on the other side interlock tightly, so they can't (usually) come apart in the middle; the normal way to separate them is by lifting them off the top (or dropping them off the bottom).

The left and right side of zipper teeth.
Again, note the amazing art work.

As long as the bottom and top are held together and the spoons (teeth) are in good shape, the whole zipper hangs together as it ought to.  The bottom part is sometimes held together with a special slot and post (like on a jacket that you can unzip all the way), or it's sewn together (like on your jeans, or on the V-neck bike jersey that my husband asked if I could fix).   The top is almost always held together with the zipper pull, which is another ingenious contraption.  It's basically a ham sandwich, with the ham turned vertical instead of horizontal.  The two pieces of bread are what keep the zipper teeth/spoons flat as they come together, and the ham is the part that guides the spoons together or apart, depending on which way it's sliding.

A zipper pull: two nearly flat pieces of metal
(like two pieces of sandwich bread)
held together by a vertical bar.
I guess I forgot to draw the pull tab on top.

For both of the pieces of clothing I was repairing, the zippers and the pull were still in good shape; it's just that the left and right sides had come apart and the zipper pull was a third piece.   

For my husband's bike jersey, the easiest way to get these back together was to use my seam ripper to snip a few of stitches holding together the bottom of the "V", slip the zipper pull up along the two newly-free sides of the zipper, and then quickly stitch the bottom of the V back together.  It took . . . maybe 2 minutes?  Less?  Pretty quick.

A sketch of the back side of the jersey,
showing the stitches I snipped and then resewed.
(Jealous of my fabulous art skills, yet?)

Bike jerseys are very, very expensive (at least by my standards), and zipping them up snugly is crucial for comfortable bike riding, so I just want to say that this zipper fix made me very frugally happy, as it forestalled a pricey purchase.

The boots whose zipper I repaired are gifts from a friend/acquaintance; she discovered that I have the same size feet as her and that I don't mind -- in fact, I love -- getting other people's castoffs.  They're super comfy, and very "me" colors . . . but the zipper pull popped off the top.  (There are supposed to be little metal bulbs at the top that keep the zipper pull from going too far, but they disappeared somehow).  

For the boots, I couldn't get at the bottom of the zipper to reattach the pull that way, so instead I manually stacked the teeth from the bottom myself:  left, right, left, right, left right . . . it was kind of like building a house made of playing cards; if I got distracted from doing it, the left and right sides would just peel apart and take me back to the beginning.  So putting these together turned out to be a neat exercise in focus and attention.  

Once I realized that, it took about a half a minute of careful concentration, and then I had the zipper together from bottom to top, at which point dropping the zipper pull into place was simple.    

My teddy bears approve of the discrete white button
at the top of the boot zipper.

To keep the zipper pull from coming off the top again, I sewed a small white button at the very top of one side.  (No one but you, me, and my two teddy bears will ever see that button, I'm guessing, but at least three of us thinks this repair looks fine).  And now my awesome boots are back in action.

In commemoration of this amazing set of repairs, I wrote this little poem.  (Also, because I haven't written  a poem in a while, and feel like such an activity is long overdue).  For posterity:

It helps to remember, with big Thought Balloons,

To zip things together, the teeth are like spoons.

They pile up tightly, above and beneath,

Those spoons of the zipper which some call the teeth.

If it rips, 

try some snips,

Then re-clip 

'til it grips;

sew the strips, 

So it zips.

Prime cheese dogs (three update topics)

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  Today we get to celebrate that Nelson is in his prime!  [ --> math nerd joke <--]  Happy Birthday, Nelson!

Little C-child is not yet in her prime, but she is nonetheless already starting along a good math trajectory.  If you give her a logic puzzle, she doesn't panic; she just closes her eyes and asks for a minute to think.

"One moment, please . . . "

And if you give her an addition or subtraction problem, she can count things out on her fingers.

One, two, um . . . 

Not about math or birthdays, but in the middle of this week, Gosling started a conversation about . . . well, about a sign she'd seen.  

"With dad having done some recent travel in France..."

And the family launched in with gusto:

Me:  I'm sure that pun hadn't oc-curd to him. No whey!

Kinderling:  How cheesey. ;)

Gosling: O lol you guys! You can do cheddar than that?

OfSnough:  E-dam good pun!

Inkling:  You feta believe it!

OfSnough:  A Gouda time

Inkling:  dad, are you traveling with someone? Or are you Provolone?

OfSnough:Do I Hav-arti with me?

Sizzling: Okay, this topic stinks

Inkling:  Don't be Bleu .. I'm sure we'll change topics eventually

  

"Okay, family: time to cut that out."

Right, ho.  So let's return to family news.  

Achild and Bchild came over for an evening that let their parents celebrate a wonderful anniversary.  It was clear that these kiddos need to come over more often, because Bchild spent the first part of the evening bossily distraught by Prewash.  The dog would look in her general direction, and she'd command "STOP IT".   

By the end of the evening, however, she'd come over to being super comfortable and happily attached to her furry companion.  

Pretending to lick the pan with Prewash
(and then laughing hilariously)

Snagging doggie rides.  
(They both moved so fast it was hard to get a good pic).

As for me, I did NOT give or grade calculus midterms this week, so that opened up vast swaths of space and time, comparatively.  I got to visit my dad and his wife, watch grandkids, go to a dance concert with Inkling, think about mathematics, and "Get Sturdy" (dance) with my students.  Here's a 15-second video: my favorite part is how the other student (the one filming) loses it at the end.

Life is good.  

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our advencheese.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Enough update, with shopping and dog-colored stairs

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  This particular week has been full of grading midterms (boring news! but glad they're done, and my students didn't crash and burn like on the first midterm, so I'm content).  So I'll add that the other thing this week has been full of is shopping and stores, a very unusual theme for me. 

Nelson got two new sweatshirts that he was happy to show us.  (The other one is similar, but red and black, he tells us). 

I asked: 
"Do you have any with the words frontwards?
 ?sdrawtnorf sdrow eht htiw yna evah uoy oD"

OfSnough, off in France, sent back something like a gazillion photos of stores he'd seen.  Here's a picture of one of my favorites.

I would like to go in this store
and just stand still and breathe.

How lovely to be in a different part of the world
surrounded by so many ways to see the world. 
I'm enthralled.

I'm guessing other stores captivated him even more.  Perhaps this was one of his particular happy places.  

A motorcycle thing. 
With other motorcycle-appropriate accessory things.

Did I actually go in a store this week?  Actually, yes, I did.  I bought a gallon of paint for our front stairs.  Photos of the stairs will come eventually; for now, I'll just say that the stairs match the dog, a kind of happy coincidence, because she loves hanging out on the front porch.

My guy sent a photo of three Parisian dogs that look a lot like Prewash.  Are they stunt doubles?  (Rather, stunt triples?)

Three dogs on the sidewalk, 
where my dog is not supposed to go without me.

Why would Prewash need stunt doubles (or triples), you ask?  Well that's another story that happened this week:  Let me cut to the end of the story and say . . . she's fine.  Really, she's great.  Having said that, I'll go back to the beginning.

Prewash loves hanging out on our front porch and is amazingly good at staying put up there, not running away.  But lately, she's decided every once in a while to sneak down the stairs to the sidewalk instead of heading back into the house with me when I go inside. That's what she tried last Saturday.   I followed her down the stairs to reprimand her, and she ran away from me: she darted between two parked cars and then into the road where she got body-slammed by a car coming down the road.

The car whacked her but good, and she went flying and rolling across the road.  I was sure I was watching my dog die . . . but she got up, looked at me, and ran with her tail between her legs right back up on the porch, apologizing for disobeying me and promising never to go astray ever again.  The driver of the car stopped and got out, and I went to give the driver a big hug and to reassure her and to apologize for letting my dog out -- we two humans were both really shook up, but it was clear that Prewash was physically okay (albeit also a bit spooked, understandably).  

Prewash has since had a full week of vigorous and happy activity, with no obvious side effects aside from a small bruise on one leg that has since cleared up.  So, I'm extra grateful for her health and happiness this week.   She and my calculus students have survived ordeals this week, and are thriving despite them.

And now my husband is back home cooking me dinner, and I'm getting ready to go put one more coat of dog-colored paint on the front stairs.  Life is good.  That's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy (and fortunately, healthy) in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Rubbish Rescue: Hallway mirrors

As many row houses in my little city do, our upper floor has a very long and rather dark hallway. It's illuminated (if you could call it that) by a single overhead light toward one end and by whatever natural light might happen to escape through the several doors that lead into the hallway. Eventually, I'd like to add more light fixtures, but in the meanwhile I've been enhancing what little light there is by adding mirrors here and there.

The red-framed mirror
on the right side of this image 
was left at the curb by a neighbor.  

Even with the one overhead light turned on,
the hallway is pretty dark.

In the photos above, you can easily see the big red-framed mirror which we've had for a while now, but you can barely see my latest mirror additions: two rectangular mirrors next to the door at the far end of the hallway.  They don't look like much, but they've made a big difference in the cheeriness and visibility of the hallway already.  

Getting closer:
two mirrors in a small space.

These two mirrors had originally been part of a three-mirror ensemble, probably part of a cabinet, hinged together so that these two could swing out from the larger middle mirror.   The middle mirror was missing from its frame -- probably broken.  I disassembled the set, saving the hinges for future awesome projects, and focused on the two good mirrors, which happened to be a lovely size for that very small strip of wall.

They fit so nicely in this space!

The frames were black, which is NOT a "me" color. Nopers.  I thought about repainting them a solid color, but couldn't decide on which one.  Eventually, I decided to go decorative, using the black as a background with a couple of other, lighter paint colors to add texture and pattern.

The top mirror frame is vine-like;
the bottom one is twisted strands.

One of the advantages of hanging homemade artwork in a very dark corner of the house is that no-one can see the mistakes.  Heh.  And since hardly any guests ever make it this far into the home, the main advantage is that *I* can't see my mistakes.   (Lovely!).

However, I can see my way down the hallway better than before, and that's a bit of extra happiness around here.

Update with tree climbing, babies, french castles, and cows

What an amazingly rich and full week it has been here in Enoughsville! It almost feels like three weeks, there has been so much happening. Here's a very short version: tree climbing, Halloween, trips to France, babies born, and math meetings.

Last Sunday, I was wandering across my campus, heading to see a screening of the opera Die Fledermaus, when I ambled past a bunch of people wearing helmets and staring up into brightly colored ropes in the trees.

It turns out, they were climbing the trees (which actually means climbing the ropes that were secured on high branches of the trees).  They invited me to join them, and even though I'm not particularly comfy with heights, I jumped -- or rather, climbed -- at their offer.

Hard to see me up there, so the second version is me circled.

The tree that I climbed happens to be a record holder: it is the tallest linden tree in the state of Enoughsville.

These were all pictures taken by other climbers; I'm wearing a green jacket, so it's hard to see me climbing up that blue rope. We got up high enough that we could look down at the roofs of various other buildings, and I got to hang – literally – with some of my former calculus students.  It was so much fun!

And then I went to the opera screening.  

Not enough chairs, so I'm sitting all the way down on the ground.

Next up:  Halloween.

The weather was lovely, and I -- like many other peeps in my family -- dressed to impress. 

I continued my father's tradition of handing out pencils, which kids seemed to be oddly excited about.  I also offered the trick-or-treaters a chance to give a treat to Prewash, and almost everyone gladly offered her one of the cheerios I gave them, so my dog was delighted by the evening, too.  (One of the kids ate the Cheerio herself, so I was glad I wasn't giving them regular dog treats!)

I had a few specially dressed people make special trips to my porch, as homage:

Hugging the cow pillow . . .

. . . and checking out the cows on the shelves.

Even adults can appreciate the cow-vibe.

Shortly after Halloween, my guy left for France, Achild came to visit me, and Kinderling went into labor.  I loved hanging with my oldest granddaughter.  In this candid photo below, Prewash's tail is going crazy with happiness; my glasses are on my head, and I'm wearing my awesome colorful tights.  (Not sure where the hats with feathers came from; they're probably a fond memory from the Pirate Dinner.)

I will walk with my Nana and Prewash.
I love my Nana and my Prewash.

And then . . . behold!  C-child!

The day after she was born, my husband -- who had gone to France the day before -- walked into my office.  He had pulled the old "forgot my passport" routine, just so he could hold the baby even before I did.  cheater.  

He held the baby, made adorable faces, . . 

. . . got his passport, and went back to the airport bound for France.  

Looks like he made it this time:  Visite * Chateau

And that was all in the first few days of the week!  The rest of my week was largely full of teaching classes and doing research.  Both because of hanging with my granddaughter, and because of going to math talks, I'm in the car much more than usual: four different days this week.  The fact that I got to spend all day Saturday (today) at math meetings is just a delightful way to round out a week that has been full of lovely adventures.  I admit to sneaking outside from some of the talks, because the weather is aMAZeballs.

Zoom chatting outdoors with Nelson.

A great day to spin outside with friends in the park,
says Inkling.

And that's the news-upon-news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

How quickly the oak tree changes its leaves

Last week 

This week

Nature is making its own slo-mo technicolored movie for me.  I love it,