Dinner to the Shelter

This week Nana agreed to help me take dinner to the shelter in Redmond. They have recently increased their bed count, so now we take dinner for 20-25 hungry young people, which is bordering on too much. Well, perhaps not too many people, but it requires a lot of planning, and careful choices about menu. And you know who I want on my team when there is a cooking project that requires planning and choices? Nana. This week I decided to go with pulled pork, which is crockpotted in 2 crockpots, baked potatoes and salad. My fatal error was to also deciding to cook an apple crisp.

I picked up Nana at 5, and we got back to my house to start with dinner around 5:30. We figured we'd assemble the crisp, cook it, and then do the potatoes (which I foil wrapped beforehand), so that the potatoes would still be warm at dinner. It's ok to laugh a little at this point- we need to deliver dinner at 8:30, and that stuff is simply not all going to happen in that three hour window. Nana and Matt started slicing apples while I made the top and preheated the oven. The crisp went in the oven around 6:30, and I was already starting to think better of my plan. Instead of turning the oven up (since a crisp can pretty much cook between 350 and 425), I just threw the potatoes in there as well. This will get us to the punchline in about an hour.

Next, we shredded 16 pounds of meat. I was feeling good about this- it was tasty, and for once seemed like plenty of food. At about 7, I nuked up some lasagna and the three of us had a simple dinner. Matt kept bragging to Nana that this was special, I usually forget to feed us on the nights I take dinner to the shelter.

At 7:30, I got up from the table, ready to start thinking about how we would move all this stuff, and wondering why we weren't overwhelmed with the luscious smells out of the oven. Picture this, I have a 15x11x4 foil pan brimming with apple crisp on the bottom rack, surrounded by foil wrapped potatoes on all sides, and above that is a tray of more foil wrapped potatoes, which is also surrounded by potatoes. (Dinner for 25, right?) The edges of the crisp seemed bubbly but the middle was... still crisp. Gulp. I figured, if the potatoes were done, I would just pull them out of the way and the heat would get more even in the oven. Worse news, the potatoes are also crisp. My eyes are getting bulgy now.

There is a moment, usually about 7:30, when we are planning to take dinner to the shelter and I think, "Nevermind. This won't work. Is it too late to cancel?" This was that moment.

Nana breezes in to the kitchen and says, "Hm, why don't you turn up the oven? And can you nuke those potatoes?" and then she goes on to cleaning up from all the dinner and cooking. Yes and Yes!  By this point Matt has looked up a real recipe for making baked potatoes (1hr at 425), and we crank up the heat. He starts pulling potatoes out of their foil jackets in pairs and throwing them in the microwave for a couple minutes at a time, then rewrapping them. Matt is watching the clock like a hawk, but I'm confident that dinner can be served eventually. I start loading up the car. Juice. Buns. BBQ sauce. Butter and sour cream. Lasagna pan full of pork. Salad. The longer the potatoes have been in the oven, the less nuking they need. The crisp is starting to soften and smell lovely. We get the last soft potato in the car and hurtle down to Redmond to serve.

I'm feeling grateful that I can afford to donate dinner, and that I have family to support me in the effort, but still a little bashful that we might be a couple minutes late and a fair bit frazzled. When we arrive, the shelter is dark. For one second, I wonder if I misread the calendar, but no, homeless shelters don't take days off. Turns out, we aren't the only ones feeling flustered tonight, the key has gone missing, and the staff are waiting for someone to let them in.

As we wait patiently, more people start hanging out in this dark parking lot, and I'm feeling really glad that we have a trunk full of tasty food to share. Once the door is open, we breeze in like this is no big deal, unpacking and delivering while the now flustered staff and trying to recover from their shortened prep time as well. By the time we left, it seemed like a huge crowd was waiting outside. Several of the guests thanked us for bringing dinner, and we slinked back to out nice warm homes. The next day I got an email that they had more people than beds that night, but they were able to offer dinner, even seconds, to everyone who was there that night.

Tyler Has No Room for Existential Crises

The weather perked up this weekend, and since Monday was a day that daycare closed, Jess wanted to take advantage of the nice timing to go camping. So we did! We went out to Garner State Park, a few hours west of us, brought food, a tent, and some sleeping bags, and just hung out for a while.

It was nice. I brought my hammock that I got for Christmas and spent several nice naptimes in it. We also did some hiking up the mountain (only sorta in quotes) in the park to see what it had to offer. We came upon a cave that went down about 30 feet or so, and Tyler was initially pretty nervous because he knows one thing and one thing only about caves: they have bears in them. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that this cave had 'Zero Bears', but only after Daddy went down first to make sure it was safe. I'm so brave.

S'mores were had, of course. Tyler mostly liked the chocolate, the marshmallows are very messy, and Tyler doesn't like to be a messy eater. I also did a mostly successful experiment where you fill an Ice cream cone with marshmallows and chocolate and strawberries and then heat it up in the fire. Worked pretty well, but not better than S'mores, which, as it turns out, you can also put strawberries into. Yum.

At one point we found a dead rabbit. Tyler wanted to see it, and I let him look at it for a while, though letting him know that dead things are not safe to be near. He wanted to know why the rabbit was laying there, and I did my best to explain death to an almost-three-year-old. I told him that a car probably hit the rabbit and that sometimes there are hurts that don't get better, and then the rabbit just goes away and doesn't come back. He kept asking questions for a while (mostly about cars and safety...and squashing) and then moved on. Later the rabbit was gone, probably cleaned up by park staff. Tyler decided, with full authority, that this meant the rabbit got better. There is no space in his brain that is shaped like death, it just doesn't fit in there yet. Though he keeps asking about the rabbit, so maybe it's getting formed.

Anyway, I got to cook breakfast sausage and eat s'mores and feel justified in my calorie intake because I then put Tyler in my backpack and hiked to the top of a nearby mountain (with nice views), so it all mostly evened out. Tyler even had a good day this morning, his first day back at school, which, when compared to other 'first days back' we've had to go through, is nearly miraculous. He doesn't wet himself as much either. He's getting so big!

-N

Tiny Little Home Projects

This weekend was a pretty abysmal downpour, and since none of our friends were up for much adventure, we somehow found ourselves making a list of things to get from the hardware store. I should have known that "stuff we got at the hardware store" would quickly convert into "projects that Matt finished." Nothing major, nothing you could get a bid for, or would go to a homeshow about, or would even register at Mom and Dad's house as an update. But it's kinda a big deal at our house.

Here, I present the finished products. (Note, I did help a bit, but some of this stuff really only needs one motivated pair of hands.)

Project 1: Our bathroom sink is crowded.

 We have nice enough bathroom in the master bedroom, the lights and mirrors (both over the sink and on the closet door behind) make it bright in there. But the big mirror behind the sink is just that. Just a mirror, no medicine cabinet.

Fig 1. Bathroom Before picture. Notice the stuff on the counter, and the lame two handled sink.

Sure, there is places for bathroom stuff in the closet behind there, but I don't like digging in the closet everytime I put lotion on my face. Or brush my teeth. Or need an antacid. Or most anything, according to figure 1, since I leave all that stuff out on the counter.

Ever the engineer, Matt suggested we install a medicine cabinet. We went back and forth on what that might require, and finally landed on a  small cabinet that would mount above the outlets (fig 2). It was pretty easy to install, and even easier to fill up.

Project 2: Two handled sinks make temperature control annoying.

We actually have two major needs for our bathroom sink.
1) Typical hand/face/teeth washing behavoir.
2) Leaving a slow drip for the cat to drink from.

Our two handle sink was lame at both. It's a major event to get the temprature right with the two handles. And the handles were wobbly, which made adjusting to a drip a hassle, both for the human adjusting and the feline anxiously waiting a drink.

Fig 2. Sitting beneath a glamorous medicine cabinet, the cat waits impatiently for a drink from the new faucet.

The solution was a new, single handled faucet. In brushed nickel, since that shows fewer smudges. The cat is reasonably impressed.

Project 3: This kitchen outlet is hideous.

We had rationalized that this outlet, and the GIANT security box that sat next to it, were part of the home security system, which necessitated some rewiring (fig 3). However, that has been removed, and let's be honest, what it left is pretty shoddy. I was never going to think much of it, but that's because I don't relish making things tidy (especially if that thing is the kitchen, apparently. I can't change who I am.)

Fig 3. Probably not live wires sticking out of this kitchen outlet. Right?

And let's just discuss that motion detector switch- it should turn on the light (Project 4) in the kitchen. When left on auto, it sometimes turns on the middle of the night to notify us that the cat is on the counter, but otherwise fails to turn on when we are flailing in the dark trying to walk across the kitchen without tripping on the above cat. Instead, Matt installed a new switch, a new outlet, and safely tucked away the remaining electrical mysteries. He also covered the gaping hole that was left by the security system.

Fig 4. A tidy outlet and switch combo with hardly any possibility of electrocution.

Project 4: This kitchen light is so terrible we never use it.

Partly because of the weirdness of the outlet, partly because the other lights in the kitchen are sufficient, and mostly because this canister light just was sucky, we never used it. Matt managed to get it arranged to direct light in relevant places, but it didn't hold that position well, so the canisters would sometimes focus beams of light in the cabinet.

Fig 5. The terrible canister light balanced so that it projects light two directions. Not quite the directions you'd want, but near as it gets. Also note the gaping hole below the counter, resolved in Project 3.

It's also pretty dated looking. It took a little time to find a light arrangement that we thought would improve this space. We ended up with a track-ish light (each bulb can be redirected, but the distance between them is set). These lights highlight the one workspace that isn't adequately illuminated by the other box fluorescent. And it doesn't look dated. And with the new switch, I will probably actually use it.

Fig 6. Vastly superior kitchen light, in a well lit kitchen.

 Matt has once again proven himself to be a handy guy around the house. The faucet install included a new drain plunger, which escalated to replacing other janky looking gaskets to prevent future leaks. When I asked him where he learned about plumbing, he said, "Learned about plumbing? It's not rocket science..." Putting tubes together so they don't leak seems pretty magical to me. You can assume his attitude about electrics is similar.

The bonus of these projects (to him) is that he got a new set of drill bits, and revealed that he needs a new electric drill. (His chuck is maybe bent?) I (or Dad) can get this for his next gift exchange holiday. I'm confident leaving this note here, since he never reads the blog.

Also, we got our first postcard from Japan! Remember back when Dad didn't get to see the Seahwaks win the Superbowl? That's when he sent us a card from Mt Fuji.

Nana Stories

One of the neat things about having Nana nearby is that I get to hear stories from her. Not just the major, life changing stories, like how she met Papa, or what it was like to have kids in Juneau's early days, but normal stories.  I wanted to capture a few of them here for my siblings/ nephew and niece.

Last weekend over dinner I was talking about reading the Monuments Men (about the effort to save art, artifacts and monuments during WWII), and I confessed that I know embarrassingly little about world history. Did you know that Germany tried to invade Russia? Which is why Russia ended up in the war? And that we weren't exactly on the same side? Matt and I bemoaned that Juneau schools never seemed to take history very seriously, so now we are just ignorant adults. Nana said she also didn't get much world history. In high school she was on the annual commitee (yearbook), and she has this very sweet, very dull world history teacher. Should would just come in the class, flash him a smile and say, "I have to work on some things for the annual. Can I do the assignment next week?" and he would let her out of class. Pretty much all year. Seriously. I never pegged Nana for ditching class.

Earlier this week, we were talking about hot water heaters, and Nana reminisced about how when she was growing up, their hot water tank was basically uninsulated, so you could feel on the site how much and how hot the water was. (I assume Nana's Mom had impervious hands as well.) Nana said her mom always seemed to have infinite energy. I have heard he describe the garden that kept the family fed all year, especially when beans, fruits or other things were ready for canning. Because it was a large garden, there were huge spurts of urgency where Grandma Sandlin would have both Nana and Auntie Jeanne in the kitchen, canning for hours. Nana said she could see out the window that it was blue skies and sunny, but she was always caught in the sweltering kitchen heat. And at the end of a major canning effort, her every energetic mother would pat the hot water heater and say, "Come on girls, we still have enough hot water to do a load of laundry." I thought of how ambivalent I can feel about laundry when I'm tired, and then she told me how they DID laundry: manually. They would fill up two tubs, one with soap and a rinse that they would run it through a ringer, and they drop it into the second rinse, with "bluing" and then ring that out, and then hang it all out to dry in the sun. Just hearing that makes me want to flop into a frazzled domestic mess, but she said her mom never wanted her dad to see how much work it was. He liked to see her looking calm and relaxed when he came home from work, so she always made time to clean up from all these things, including scrubbing the floor, brushing her hair and changing her apron so that when her dad got home things were calm and quiet. I asked if she was ever able to achieve that standard with her own kids, and she just laughed.

We had planned to see her and Jerry this week to have dinner and go to the movie Saving Mr. Banks. Due to my poor planning (oh, the movie starts when?) and our general lack of urgency, we missed the movie, but it was nice to have dinner with Nana and Jerry. Just like "old times" before the folks moved here.

Oh, and I feel like bragging. As I mentioned we had a really great time at MOHAI a couple weeks ago, and when I mentioned this to Nana and Jerry, they thought it sounded cool, too. So cool, in fact, that they got one of the buses to take a load of people down there for the day. And they ALSO enjoyed it a lot.

Matt has been busy this week. He gave a talk on Friday, and is gearing up for the mountain bike race series. This means making changes and updates to the bike, that seemed to involved new wheels, and new cables, and many hours in the garage. He really enjoys that.

Winter Wonderland!

For the last couple of years, Matt and I have managed to get in one winter camping trip. We usually go with Matt's bestie, but this year his family is too busy, so we decided we should just go ourselves. We booked a cabin at Wallace Falls State Park, as scant hour from our house, and figured we could have an early Valentine's weekend escape.

Things being as they are, this was exactly the sort of week where if we had not already made a reservation, there was no way we'd be going camping, even for one night, even an hour from home. It was a busy week, Matt has been getting "additional opportunities" (a management joke) at work, and I hadn't been feeling that well. Neither of us had any time for planning, but come Friday night we went to REI to buy ourselves a campstove, and Matt ran to the store for groceries (bagels, goldfish, and frosted animal cookies). The forecast seemed like it might be too cold for sitting around a campfire, so we opted not to pick food that should get cooked over a fire, and went for stuff we could cook on the stove. We rationalised that we could hike the falls on Saturday, and either slow poke our way home on Sunday, or admit defeat and come back whenever we were ready to wimp out.

Our evening activities included cataloging the species in the animal cookies.
Is the lower right a pig?

The hike up Wallace Falls is not that arduous, but I was feeling ... very... slow. The 5 mile, low elevation gain hike took more than 3 hours. We got to stop and look at lots of things. The tiny ice towers that form when water freezers under mud. The "snow" that forms along the river canyon from the splash of the falls. The icecicles that crowned every rock in the river. It was a really beautiful hike.

It was cold. He didn't want to pose for this picture.

Since I knew I was going to be moving slow, and that it was cold, I wore my heavy winter coat, and a layer of thermals under my clothes. I was quite toasty, and pulled off my hat and gloves when we were moving. Matt, however, always has a super high metabolism and forgot what cold is all about. He was wearing highly ventilated plastic pants, and a fleece he has had since high school that uses a technology he calls "wind accelerating." His hat and gloves were firmly in place the whole time, and only in the last mile did he concede to putting the raincoat he had (along with several other other layers) in his backpack.

The trail head to the falls is also where our cabin was. Our last winter camping was in a yurt, which is basically a big tent wearing a warm coat. It has a light bulb near the door, and an outclassed radiator chugging along all night. Last year's yurt slept 5, with a bunk bed and futon, but once we put a couple backpacks in there, the place was full. I had expected some variation of that, but this cabin was posh. It had TWO rooms. The thermostat was set when we arrived, so it was quite toasty. There were curtains on all the windows, and adorable log furniture, including the futon, bunk, end table, dining table and chairs. By this point, we were both happy to sit inside and read, slipping out as far at the porch (yeah, porch) to boil water for tea and warm up our soup. Well after dark, maybe 7?, Matt stepped out to rinse the stove of our soup, and mentioned that there was some "slow rain" falling outside. Sometime after that we realized that "slow rain" falling in the cold was snow!

Snow in Western Washington! Everyone Panic!

Actually, sitting in a toasty cabin with nothing to do but my knitting (and timing Matt to see how many pistachios he could eat in 60 seconds) was the perfect place to be on a snowy evening. The half inch or so that accumulated was still there in the morning. Matt has plenty of snow driving experience, even in his sporty little car, so our only concern was that outside of the state park, the weather may have prompted an Armageddon level of panic and mayhem. It actually seemed quite mellow. Wallace Falls is off highway 2, so most of the outbound traffic was heading up the mountains to ski, and the westboard traffic was light. There was a bakery in Sultan, WA keeping busy in spite of the weather. And we opted to stop at the Reptile Zoo in Monroe on the way home, too. (Did you know that not all lizards have limbs?? If your snake has eyelids, it might not be a snake...) It was a cool museum, that maybe Tyler would enjoy (unless one of his parents has a phobia about snakes, in which case, forget I mentioned it). It was kept nice and warm for the cold blooded critters there.

Two headed turtle at the Reptile Zoo, obviously.

There seemed to be even more snow- like a whole inch!- at our house. It's melting slowly, and I expect the pandemonium will have subsided in time to make it to work tomorrow.

I Should Write More

One of my favorite things to do these days is to go back and read the blogs from when Tyler was born. It's good to have a record of how I felt over those days, all the craziness that happened, and all the memories I wanted to store. And since I'm clearly coming up on another big event that would be nice to record, I figured I would. Might as well get in a few entries on the run-up as well, just to set the stage for the big event.

Tyler is almost 3. He's growing a lot. Every once in a while he will get a CRAZY hunger bug and destroy a whole plate of pancakes and eggs or a pint of milk or something, and then I'm pretty sure he's an inch taller the next week. He talks a lot and has lots to say, loves playing imagining games and has a ton of questions. Reminds me of me, or at least of what parts of me I remember from near that age. Does anyone besides me remember stomping around the house to what may have been Holst's “The Planets” and pretending to be dinosaurs? Well Tyler has been spending a lot of time alternating between pretending to be a baby, a bear, a shark, a monkey...rather a lot of things, come to think of it.

Casey is a kicker. She kicks a LOT. Especially at night, Jess and I will be laying down and reading or almost asleep, and then Jess will take in a sharp breath and I'll know that the little one is awake. She does it during the day, too. Casey hasn't interrupted any meetings yet, but she certainly could if she figured out the timing.

It's been a really cold winder for us down here in Austin. We've had two or three snow days already, which is kinda neat but also kind of a pain. A few of the snow days didn't actually involve any precipitation...just an overactive School System. I went in to work for that one, Jess stayed home.

To catch up on the other things from my last blog post (so many months ago) Tyler is still in his underwear. We have to tell him to use the restroom, especially if he's having fun. He'll wet his underwear a little then get upset and have to do a little 'Cowboy Waddle' over to the bathroom to finish peeing. And then we have to change his underwear. But that's happening less and less now. We even have him in pull-ups for nighttime now, and I don't think he's wet them once. He's pretty good at this.

Which makes me suspicious about the next one...hmm...

Also, I weighed in at 199.6 pounds this morning. I don't think I've weighted this little since...probably college. I'm pretty sure I was 190 through most of high school. Anyway, I'm pretty thrilled. I'm thinking the treadmill desk will turn out to be a really good idea. I burned 500 calories today while playing video games for a couple of hours. Didn't feel like a workout, that's for sure.

Christmas has come and gone, and Thanksgiving, so Tyler has managed to see most everyone so that we can all see how much he has grown. He likes to talk about Baby Casey a lot too. I'm sure he has no idea what life with a little sister is going to be like, but we just like that he has the idea in his head. He always does much better if we warn him before any big transition anyway, and a transition this big is going to require a LOT of warning.

Other than that, not much to report. Still at the same job, working on my mini-painting, excited for ReaperCon, went to Big Bend National Park, Volunteering to teach Kids Math...you know, stuff. I'm an old man now, I don't have time for crazy adventures!

-N

Updates for the Oversees Readership

Since the parents are inaccessible by phone for the next few months, I thought I might get some leverage out of the blog in place of long, rambly emails.

As the parents were leaving on their grand adventure, my in-laws were in town for a few days. They came for the boat show, after a great adventure of their own to Southeast Asia. (Being retired sounds awesome...). [Note to parents: eating brains, raw blood, or "washed" lettuce are all perfectly valid ways to get terribly ill.] We went to MOHAI, a very awesome Seattle-centric history museum. It had boats, and old Seattle history, and wartime history, and modern stuff too. I'm hoping I can take Nana and Jerry some tiem this month. Matt's step-mom made greek food (yay!), and we all got to watch the Superbowl together.

Over the summer, Mom had helped Nana and I make what seemed like an absurd quantity of freezer jam. It's super yummy, but I just don't eat that much jam these days. The freezer jam was a big hit with pancakes, and the freezer Raspberry jam was to DIE for on the Trader Joe's flourless chocolate cake we had with the Greek food. Even though I managed to not cook even slightly all weekend, it made me feel like a domestic hero to have my own jam on hand.

Oh, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl was played over the weekend. I dunno if you were watching, but the SEAHAWKS WON! There had been a lot of excitement, even on our (suburban, working class) campus, with potlucks, and photo-ops and the like. We watched at Jeffery's house, where we had a huge screen, lots of snacks and a pretty mellow watching experience. This was ideal, since by the half, it was hard to pretend we were biting our nails for the outcome anymore- there was plenty of time to catch up. We went back to our suburban home where not much was happening, but I relished seeing the parties downtown, including Seattle's no-jay walk riots. I know not all my family loves sports, but in this day and age of tv-on-demand and personalized everything, it's really awesome to be able to share a story like that with a large community.

While WA has been spared of most of the brutal winter weather that has been visiting on the midwest and east coast (and TX sometimes, too), this week is actually getting pretty nippy. I mention this only because Matt and I have plans to be camping this weekend in a cabin at Wallace Falls. WE were planning to do a little hiking and a little eating by campfire, but we may opt for a lot of drinking cocoa in our sleeping bags if it stays below freezing.

Updates are still coming in on the fundraising blog- 75% there with Mom's help taking dinner to the shelter last week! I'm starting to feel like when I am done with this crazy project I am doing NOTHING for at least another year. Turns out, $30,000 is a big number.