Tuesday Archive Link Up

Kenya Johnson, whose blog is one of many that show up in my Reader, is one of the co-hosts of  the Tuesday Archive Link Up (TALU).  The idea is to pick an old post from your blog archives to share with a community of other writers doing the same thing

After reading Kenya's Tuesday posts for many weeks, I decided it would be nice to link up. It looked like there were a couple of dozen other bloggers, who were billed as a "mature group who leave meaningful comments".

My first TALU--I Have A Lot Of Friends At Work. I Just Don't Know Their Names. (I can't believe it's been a whole year since I wrote this!)

Now that I'm linked up I get to go off and discover new blogs among my fellow linkees.  Who knows, some of them may become my new favorites!

Five years ago today: New Thing #110-Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Voluminous Vegetables

Hubby Tony and I attended a potluck luncheon today.  After giving my contribution a lot of though, I decided to bring vegetables and dip.

Yesterday I went to the produce market and left with a bag of baby carrots, packages of cherry tomatoes and broccoli, a cucumber, a large red pepper, and a few handfuls of fresh green beans. When I got home I blanched the green beans and broccoli, then seeded the pepper and sliced it into sticks and cut the cucumber on the diagonal.  Everything went into the refrigerator until today.

When I went to arrange the vegetables I realized I didn't have anything large enough to hold the amount I bought.  The best I could do was an aluminum pan. I knew this would be a pretty informal event, though, so I wasn't too concerned. After I set a plastic deli container in the center of the pan to hold ranch dressing I arranged the vegetables around it.

I think it turned out nice, don't you?

Five years ago today: New Thing #108--Fun With Styrofoam

The Coffee Forecast

There's always something new to learn! According to the Farmer's Almanac, your coffee cup can help you predict the weather:

If the bubbles of coffee collect in the center of your cup, you can expect fair weather. If they adhere to the cup, forming a ring, you should expect rain. If they separate without assuming any fixed pattern, changeable weather should be on its way.

I don't think I'd ever noticed bubbles in my coffee cup, but when I read about it I started looking for them.  Sure enough,  there they were!  On  inclement days the bubbles headed for the sides of the cup, but on the nice days they did stay in the middle

So, the coffee barometer worked.  But why?  I found the answer in a video on one of our local channel's Websites.  The bubble's movement is caused by changes in humidity and air pressure.

fox2now.com

Five years ago today: New thing #107--The Sound of Silence

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Pepper the cat likes to sleep on our bed at night (but his brother Jackson prefers to disappear). Within ten minutes of Hubby Tony and I getting in bed Pepper jumps up with us and settles in. His traditional spot is next to Tony's legs, but for the past few weeks he's been changing it up and coming over to see me.

 I love it when Pepper lays on my lap when I'm sitting on the couch.  In bed not so much.  He tries to get as close as possible, often draping his body over my legs.  I already wake up a couple of times each night with hot flashes, and the cat just makes it worse--his body is like a little portable heater!  I don't want him there, and if I'm still awake I'll kick him off.  Eventually he gives up and goes away.

Tony left for a retreat yesterday.  He'll return on Sunday. While he's gone I get to be Pepper's nighttime BFF.

Shortly after I climbed into bed last night Pepper climbed onto my lower legs. He was purring so loudly I could hear it.  I went through the standard kicking off routine, but I knew it was useless.  When Pepper plopped down right next to my lower legs I tried moving them slightly, but he scooted over to close the gap.  I figured that was the best I was going to get, and rearranged the covers so my feet were sticking out.  That cooled me off enough to go to sleep.

I woke up ninety minutes later in a puddle of sweat.  Pepper had moved and was stretched out along my torso.  I know I should have felt honored; according to the experts snuggling is a sign he likes me, but this was too much!  I got up and went to the bathroom; the cat followed me.  When I climbed back into bed the spot where he'd been laying was still annoyingly warm.

Surprisingly, Pepper didn't follow me back to bed and I quickly fell back asleep.  Two hours later I woke up again to find the feline heating pad curled up in the crook of my legs.  I moved my legs so I was lying diagonally across the bed and went back to sleep.

Tony gets up much earlier than I do and feeds the cats. This morning they harassed me until I got out of bed and gave them food at their normal time.  I managed to complete the job without completely waking up, then fell back into bed.  When my alarm went off I wasn't surprised to find out that Pepper was once again snuggled up next to me.

I suspect I'll have the same issues for the next two nights.

Five years ago today: New Thing #106--Being of Service

Unknown Familiar

I was listening to the radio this morning when a song came on I'd never heard before. The singer sounded familiar, though, and the tune reminded me of something else. Several minutes into the song it segued into something I HAD heard--and you may have, too.  The first song was "God is Love"; the second was "Mercy Mercy Me". The singer was Marvin Gaye.

God is Love/Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) Marvin Gaye

Oh don't go and talk about my father
God is my friend
Jesus is my friend
He made this world for us to live in, and gave us everything
And all he asks of us is we give each other love.
Oh ya
Don't go and talk about my father
Cause God is my friend
Jesus is my friend
He loves us whether or not we know it
Just loves us, oh ya
And He'll forgive all our sins
Forgive all our sins
And all He asks of us, is we give each other love.
Oh ya
Love your mother, she bore you
Love your father, he works for you
Love your sister, she's good to you
Love your brother, your brother
Don't go and talk about my father, He's good to us,
God is my friend
Jesus is my friend
For when we call in Him for mercy, Mercy Father
He'll be merciful, my friend
Oh, yes He will
All he asks of us, I know, is we give each other love,
Oh ya 

Woo ah, mercy mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Woo mercy, mercy me, mercy father
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Ah oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
Oh, na na...
My sweet Lord... No
My Lord... My sweet Lord

Five years ago today: New Thing #104--Chapstick Crazy

Shared Responsibility

About a month ago all the St. Louis Bread Company cafes introduced a new concept--the "Meal of Shared Responsibility".  When you order their turkey chili in a sourdough bread bowl there's no set price; you decide how much you want to pay for it.  If you're feeling flush or want to do a good deed you pay more.  If you're hungry and have no money, you can still eat.

This isn't the company's first attempt at no-price menus.  There are several Panera Cares (Bread Company is known as Panera everywhere else) cafes throughout the country, where everything is "pay what you want".  One of them is in a suburb of St. Louis; it's not particularly convenient to me and I've never been there. But there are over 100 Bread Company locations, which makes it easy for everyone who wants to participate.  Tonight I did.

Hubby Tony wasn't going to be home for dinner, so after work I took a walk and ran a couple of errands before I stopped by the Bread Company a couple of miles from my house.  When I placed my order, instead of telling my how much my bill was the associate asked my how much I wanted to pay.  The suggested price is $5.89.  When I checked my wallet I had plenty of money, so I gave her a little more than that.

Just like any of the Panera lunch and dinner items, this meal comes with a side-a piece of baguette, a bag of chips, or an apple.  I chose the apple, and asked for my food to go.  If I'd eaten in the cafe, the kitchen would have poured my chili directly into a small hollowed out loaf of bread. For carryout, they wrapped the bread in paper, put the chili into a container with a lid, and slid everything into a bag. I opened the container, found the spoon in the bag, and took my first bite of chili.

YUM-O!  The chili had chunks of ground turkey and three kinds of beans (garbanzo, kidney, and edamame).  I also saw pieces of tomatoes, carrots, corn, and onions.  I tore pieces of bread off the bowl and dunked them in the savory chili sauce.  The bowl was more bread than I normally consume, so I told myself I was only going to eat part of it, but when I was done there was nothing left but crumbs.  I was full, so I saved the apple for tomorrow.

According to the company, the 850-calorie meal  is very healthy.  It contains 56 percent of the recommended daily value of fiber and 34 percent of recommended daily protein.  If this was the only food someone was going to eat in a day they'd be getting a good portion of their daily nutrition.

Five years ago today: New Thing #102-- No Idolatry

How Heavy Is Your Glass?

I received this in an email from a friend:

A young lady explaining stress management to an audience confidently walked around the room with a raised glass of water.  Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question...'Half empty or half full?'  However, she surprised everyone by inquiring, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 ounces to 20 ounces.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't really matter.  It depends on how long I hold it.  If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.  If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm.  If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.  In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."  She continued, "and that's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.  When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden - holding our stresses longer and better.  So, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night.  Relax, then pick them up later after you've rested.

Life is short. Enjoy it.

Five years ago today: New Thing #101-- Say Cheese!

No Grow

Several weeks ago when I was killing time on Pinterest I learned you could regrow green onions from the stem ends. I pinned the information, thinking it would be an interesting project to try. The opportunity recently presented itself, when my co-op purchase included three bunches of green onions.

The directions for regrowing onions looked easy. You save the roots, along with a couple of inches of the white bulb, and place them in a glass with water. In a couple of days the green stalks should start growing back, and in about a week you'll be able to use them again.

The next night I used the first bunch of green onions. Instead of throwing the bottoms in the stock bag I keep in the freezer I put them in a small glass jar, filled it with water, and set the jar on the counter top   It was hard to keep the onions standing upright, but I figured it would be easier when they sprouted.  The next day it looked like the outer layer of each onion was starting to get a little higher at the top and I got excited.  This project was going to be easy!

However, that initial spurt was it.  A couple of days later I used more onions, added the bottoms to the jar, and waited.  Nothing happened, except I started to smell a stinky-onion odor (even though I changed the water daily).  I checked the jar.  Most of the onion stems were slimy. I threw them in the compost pile.

There were four that survived, but they did NOT thrive. Each sent up one anemic shoot.  A Google search for "green onions in water" had millions of results. I only went through the first few pages, but all of the writers of those posts had success growing their green onions in water. I started to feel like a failure.

Since I wasn't having any luck regrowing the onions in water I decided to take the project in another direction.  I also read you can put green onion ends in dirt and they'll regenerate. Today I got a small pot, filled it with topsoil, and stuck the sickly onion shoots in.  I wonder if I'll have any better luck now?

Five years ago today: New thing #99--It's Meez!

(Almost) Normal

I was working at the mall Customer Service desk today when one of the salespeople ran out from the store across the corridor and yelled at me to call Security; someone was having a heart attack in the back of the store.

I hurried to the phone as quickly as I could and made the call. Somehow they'd already heard about it, and said an officer was on the way. Before the officer could arrive, someone ran past me and got the defibrillator that hangs on the wall a few stores down so they could do CPR.  One minute later the security officer arrived carrying a large first aid bag, followed shortly by one of his co-workers and a supervisor.  A pair of police officers trotted up to the site.  Five minutes later the EMSs showed up pushing a stretcher.  Each of them disappeared into the bowels of the store.

Two sales associates stood outside by the store's door talking to each other with worried looks on their faces.  Other than that, there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary happening.  Shoppers strolled by, oblivious to the drama that was taking place inside the store.   It reminded me of the poem Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden (which refers to Pieter Breughel's painting The Fall of Icarus).  In the poem people go about their business, unaware that a boy was falling out of the sky.

I observed the excitement for several minutes, then the phone rang and someone stopped at the desk with a question. The EMS left with the patient, and then the rest of the responders slowly ambled out, looking like they were ready to resume their normal business.

Pieter Brueghel, The Fall of Icarus

Musee des Beaux Arts (W. H. Auden)

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Five years ago today: New Thing #97--The Color Purple

In Honor Of Tax Day...

Rhymes With Orange

Five years ago today: New Thing #95--"That Guy"