Wham!

     My car got T-boned on the way to work.  A person driving a similar SUV came off a highway off0ramps, ran a red light and plowed into the driver's side of my car.  Her airbags deployed; mine didn't but the driver's-side door is dented and sprung.  It moves under its own power but it's not street-legal (can't open the door!) and it's probably totalled.

     The car that hit me was a rental.  Enterprise.  My past dealings with them have not left me with a good impression of the company.

Once More Into The Breach!

     Or perhaps I should write "breeches."  It's back to physical therapy again today.  For that activity, I have taken to wearing soft, comfortable no-they're-not-yoga-pants that flare out from the knees down so they almost look like a long, divided skirt.  They could hardly be less like the heavy Carhartt "Double-Fronts" I routinely wear for work and play, denim canvas with an extra layer of material down the font side of both legs, hence the name.  I feel like "mutton dressed as lamb" in the lightweight britches but it's actually practical wear for the task.

     Still, there's a niggling sense that anything one can do so lightly attired probably doesn't really need doing.  Some intersection of a lifetime spent doing (not usually strenuous) physical work and Mom's solid German-farmer background has me believing that any light or pretty clothing is entirely impractical and no sensible person would be caught wearing such stuff, at least during the work week.

Fulminating

     There are a lot of things in the news I ought to have a strong opinion about.  But I don't.  I'm burned out on being outraged, irked or even worried.

Hi?

     It's Monday.  Ugh.

No, A Thousand Times No!

     What kind of a lunatic puts pickled jalapeno peppers on a Ruben sandwich?  No!  They don't go there.

     Also, applying separate layers of mayonnaise, ketchup and that hot-dog relish that is a shade of  bright, deep green not found in nature does not constitute Thousand Island dressing; despite the ingredients, it's not even close.

     Jalapenos aside, it's a good sandwich, pan-toasted rye with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, thick-sliced corned beef and the aforementioned condiments.  But it's not really a Ruben.

     The pickled jalapenos have wreaked havoc on my digestion.

Chores, Chores

     Trash picked up -- after being gathered and taken out last night while I was falling asleep in motion.  Breakfast cooked and eaten, bed made and turned back into a couch, litterboxes changed, and a big pile of bills waiting to be gone through.  This is my one day off of the weekend, a short day at that (bedtime will be around 5 p.m.); there's plenty done and plenty left to do.

Another Busy Morning

     Doctor yesterday, physical therapy today.  The orthopedic specialist wants me to continue with therapy for another six weeks.  It's been helping so far.

A Fifth

     My time is severely limited.  At 8:30, the orthopedic specialist will be checking to see what progress I have made and their office is on the far north side, so I'll have to scoot.

     I hope you had a glorious Fourth, and I hope you took a little time from cookouts and fireworks to consider the Declaration of Independence, what it meant at the time, and the men who wrote it.  They took an enormous chance; they brought something new in the way of government into the world and we have benefited enormously from their effort.  Bear it in mind -- and remember how different they were to one another, from widely-scattered regions and cultures.  Despite that, they found common ground for agreement, a set of broad principles and noble ideas that the sought to live up to.  If they did that, can we ask any less of ourselves?

Look Out Below!

     When I got home from work Monday, I found this:

      A big branch, one I had noticed was dead and was planning to call our tree guy to remove, had fallen off and landed partially on the garage roof.  Plenty tired, I rolled it off and figured I could clean off whatever else was up there on the 4th.

     When I was leaving for work Tuesday, I looked back at the garage before closing the overhead door -- and there was a nice, bright patch of sunlight just to one side of the person-door!  Yes, a stubby limb of the branch (or is it the other way around?) had punched through the roof, shingles, roofing felt, surprisingly-thin OSB and all.

     It took ninety minutes (and a call to my boss) before I had a tarp over the hole.  It's got to cross the roof peak, or it's useless to keep the rain out.  That took a lot of tarp, six concrete half-blocks (up a ladder.  With a bad knee.  There's a trick to it), a long piece of rope and improvised ground anchors. 

     Afterward, I was soaked to the skin; while doing the work, I was perspiring so heavily I had to get Tam to bring out a roll of paper toweling: there was so much sweat in my left eye that I couldn't keep it open long enough to navigate and the right one was almost as bad.  That convinced me to put my hat on before continuing.  It took a good half-hour to get cleaned up and dried off; nothing I'd been wearing was dry enough for work.

     Work went well enough but once home, I fell asleep on the couch after a microwaved dinner.  Barely got awake enough to unfold the futon and put on my nightgown and enjoyed seven blissful hours of slumber before Huck realized it was 0600 and he was going to starve to death unless he was fed immediately.

Leftover Steak, Leftover Salad: Steak Salad!

     Down in South America and around the Pacific, they make ceviche, which would be sushi if it wasn't for the citrus juice or other acid, which as-good-as* cooks the fish, and if it had fewer ingredients.  By the time the dish had worked its way as far north as Mexico, some clever cook had looked at carne apache, and dreamed up a beef version of ceviche.

     One of the Broad Ripple brewpubs has had a "ceviche salad" on the menu for years.  It's good, but it uses cooked beef, which is more suited to pub fare.  (I don't know if they cook it ahead of time or keep it sliced in thin strips and ready to go on the grill; either way would be quick and safe).  I like it, and have kept the notion filed away for trying at home.

     Monday night, I had leftover rare steak and leftover salad with plenty of fixings; on Sunday, I taken Tamara to the grocery hungry and ended up cooking three steaks for the two of us that evening. Steak number three was left over.  Grilled steak keeps well for a short time; I ziplock-bagged it, squeezed out the air and put it in the freezer.

     So there I was, thawing steak in the microwave (ours has a "thaw" function that works pretty well).  I fried a strip of bacon while the steak was thawing.  Once thawed, I sliced the still-cold steak into strips about 1/8" by 1/4" by an inch, browned it quickly in the bacon fat and set it on paper towel on a plate under a saucepan lid to drain.

     The salad was a "spring greens" blend, to which I added celery, carrots, sliced green onion, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and black olives.  I snipped up the greens with scissors -- I love greens, but there's no need to munch through a whole leaf at a time! --added the cut-up veggies, dressed (a good Italian), added the steak and mixed like a madwoman.

     It was marvelous!  The steak still had plenty of the grilled flavor and aroma, and all the freezing, thawing and recooking had only made it more tender.  It's a dice roll whenever you do something like that, but it worked out nicely this time.
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* In terms of flavor, that is.  Wikipedia goes on about the risks, which are the same as the risks for sushi.

It's A Flame War

     Modern voting patterns, that is.  "Vote for crazy, vote for the person who most makes the other side the most angry.  Just don't vote for more of the same old same old."  It explains a lot.

The Grapevine & the Fox: A Parable

     ...A slightly fractured parable.

     One day a beautiful bunch of grapes hanging from a Grapevine on a tree limb high over a trail saw a Fox approach.  The grapes were ready to burst with juice and the Grapevine longed for them to be eaten.  The Fox stopped and gazed up at the grapes, tongue lolling.

     The Fox was far below, and the Grapevine did its slow, vegetative best to uncoil and drop lower.  The Fox jumped but came far short.  The grapes swayed in the breeze, slowly lowering; the Fox tried a running leap, the grapes kept dropping, but they never came close enough.  The Fox tried and tried, and finally stalked off, head high, tail in the air.

     The Grapevine looked after the Fox in disgust.

     "What an idiot I have been, wearing myself out to try to get a toothless old fox to eat my lovely ripe grapes and scatter the seeds.  Foxes don't even like grapes."

     And it coiled itself back up, slowly and scornfully.

     There are many who pretend to despise that which is beyond their reach.