Better?

      Maybe I'm a bit better today.  I was home sick all day, still very dizzy.  One step at a time.

And Then It All Fell Apart

      I felt much better Friday evening, all that night, and much of the day Saturday.

     In the evening, most of my symptoms came back (at least I wasn't drifty and out of it).  An online/telephone doctor's visit led to an in-person appointment late Sunday morning -- what a joy the drive to and from was -- and now I'm on a different antibiotic.

     This experience is not recommended.  Zero stars out of five, would not try again.

Less Muzzy, More Dinner

      Yesterday was not a great day.  I was out of it most of the day, still having chills and overheating.  Never felt entirely awake -- or even entirely present.  I slept most of the afternoon and woke up around 7:30 p.m.

     And suddenly realized I was all there.  Still weak, still didn't have much wind, but I wasn't drifting in a fog. 

     Tam had bought some vegetable kebobs -- four skewers loaded with slices of green and yellow zucchini,* yellow bell peppers, red onion and lovely thick mushroom caps.  She also bought a ribeye steak, having asked the butcher for one "thick enough to make a couple of breakfast steaks."

     You really need a grill to do vegetable skewers properly, so a little creativity was called for.  I got the steak out to warm up and set a nice knob of butter melting in my Always pan† while I salted and peppered the vegetable skewers.  The contents of three of them made a nice layer covering the bottom of the pan.  I added some likely spices (a little garlic powder and parsley flakes), put the lid on and gave it a few pancake-flipping shakes to get everything evenly coated and let it cook over medium heat. 

     Time to split the steak!  You can have the butcher do it, if she's not too busy,‡ but a decent cutting board, a sturdy serrated knife -- you want one with a blade that will not flex -- and a good eye are all it takes.  Find the straightest edge, stand the steak up on it and grasping it with with your off hand, fingers on one side and thumb on the other, judge the center, then start cutting slowly from the top, checking to make sure the cut stays centered and working from end to end.  Don't be in a hurry, your fingertips are about as soft as raw steak!  (Butterflying a steak is much the same process, just pick the most-coherent edge to cut towards and stop short of cutting all the way through.)  The steaks got salt and pepper, and I set Tam's aside to add later.

     The vegetables wanted another big shake; I gave them that and found a small spatula, and after a little while, took the lid off and used it to make room for my steak.  I gave it a minute uncovered over higher heat, then set the heat back down, put the lid on for four minutes, turned the steak over, and gave it four more.  Tam's steak joined then, with the vegetables piled on top of both steaks, and got three minutes a side before I turned the heat to low, put the cover on, and set up TV trays -- we're still watching The Umbrella Academy and I didn't want to miss an episode.

     We had dinner plated and were eating in short order, one rare steak, one medium well and plenty of good vegetables.

     The steak was our local grocer's "Prime Choice" grade, which is actually their pick of the best USDA Choice, and it was as good as any USDA Prime ribeye I have had (Tam agreed).  Maybe it was the butter and vegetable juices, but it was a nice cut of meat.

     This morning, the contents of the remaining skewer, diced and sauteed, made a nice omelette filling along with a Poblano pepper given the same treatment, several strips of bacon, Manchego and Swiss cheese and a couple of Castlevetrano olives.  Possibly a little over the top, but it all fit when folded, sot it must not have been too much.
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* A remarkably versatile vegetable, and good-tasting, too.  Stuffed zucchini flowers turn up in the cuisine of countries that had been part of the Ottoman Empire and they sound delicious -- keep an eye on for them on the menu at your favorite Middle Eastern restaurants, especially in the Spring.

† For those of you who have been keeping track, the Always pan is still living up to its promise.  Easily the best general-purpose pan I have owned.

‡ Maybe it's just Midwestern manners, but if there's a line at the butcher counter, I think it is impolite to ask for special service.  People are under stress enough right now, I'm not going to make it worse.

Chicken Pesto Pasta

      Feeling as poorly as I have been (and still am this morning), grocery shopping has been out of the question.  We used up the last of the fresh meat Sunday, and had dinner delivered Monday and Tuesday.  Wednesday, I made corned beef hash with well-rinsed canned corned beef, a large fresh potato, a little fresh carrot and celery, and some onion powder -- pretty good, but a dish I have described before.

     Last night I wasn't sure what to do.  I wasn't up to any fancy cookery and pickings were slim.  On the other hand, the idea of another delivery dinner wasn't appealing.

     I'd bought a little jar of basil pesto for shelf stock awhile back.  It keeps pretty well and it can be a nice change.  We have pasta on hand as a matter of routine; it keeps splendidly and sure, it's "just carbs," but it's good fuel when you're hungry.  So there was a start.  A protein would be nice to add...  It turns out that chicken and pesto go well together, and there are number of different approaches to the combination.

     Checking the canned meat, we had Spam, corned beef, salmon, tuna and there it was, chicken.*  "Swanson Premium White & Dark Chunk Chicken in Water, 9.75 oz," to be exact, which means a good-sized flat can of fairly flavorful (that "white & dark" combo) chicken.

     For pasta, we had radiatori,† one of the more interesting and sauce-holding shapes, not to mention the most Art Deco.  I cooked it in well-salted water with a dash of "Italian mix" herbs and some of Tam's mixed hot-pepper flakes, and when it was about half-done, I drained the chicken and heated it up over low heat in a small saucepan, adding the pesto once the chicken was warmed through and stirring it well.  Pesto separates when stored, so make sure it's thoroughly mixed.  I left it on very low heat.

     As soon as the pasta was cooked, I drained it (don't rinse pasta, please!  A lot of the flavor goes down the drain!) and added the chicken and pesto.  Stirred that up, and there was dinner: filling, nice-tasting, and made entirely from shelf-storable ingredients.
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* I was keeping canned meat stocked in the pantry long before the pandemic and protests turning violent, but I have expanded the variety and amount.  Most kinds are good for at least a couple of years.  It's good to have.

† Pasta shapes are remarkably varied.

Frustrating

      I managed to get to work yesterday (Wednesday) and got some things done.  Today (Thursday), not so much.

     Worked from home as much as I could, stitching eight hours between naps, dizziness, breaks to catch my breath, and finally trying the "rescue inhaler" my doctor prescribed some time ago, "just in case."  It helped but it wears off.

     Whatever is going on is still going on and it's got me slowed to a standstill. 

     Did manage to put together a light supper from what we had in the pantry.  Maybe I will write it up for tomorrow.

Better, But...

      I guess I had no real idea just how sick I was, or just what a long, slow ramp-up there had been.  Yesterday, I was alternating work and sleep, trying to get something done when I could.  Just about every waking was a slow struggle, but once I surfaced, something or other would be hurting less, or I'd be less dizzy, or just a little more able to formulate a coherent thought without having to go back over it a half-dozen times.

     Went to bed early last night and kept waking up, but each time, I slept longer, finally finishing the night with a glorious nearly three hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Laugh if you like, it was a real luxury to me.

     The only bad part of this is that being sick seems to have ramped up joint pain in general.  Over a month ago, I took two or three nasty falls, catching myself on my knees on hard floors each time.  As everything else ebbs, it's becoming more and more obvious that my knees are are really not happy.  At least it's a familiar problem.  I own canes and crutches if I need them in the short-term, and over the longer term, the orthopedic surgeon who fixed my knee (and then repaired the repair!) is still around; I've gone back to them in the past when my knees have acted up.

     Took another set of the prescribed pills this morning. One of them, the pharmacy told me my insurance wouldn't cover, and named a fairly high price.  I told them I would be happy to pay it -- gee, feel better for the price of three hour's after-taxes pay or not, what to do? -- and then my actual price at the drive-up was less than half.  Nice surprise!

     Being sick, I have not seen much of the GOP convention.  Between-sleep glimpses have bordered on the surreal.  Nevertheless, there don't seem to be any surprises there, and I wasn't expecting any.

Dammit, I'm Sick

      The reality is, I have been sick since at least last Thursday, and tried to ignore it.  I didn't want to be whiny, I had stuff to do, and surely it would pass on its own.  I mean, don't most minor ailments eventually succumb to the tincture of time?  Right?

      Maybe not this one.

      After feeling lousy Thursday, working despite chills and dizziness Friday and feeling worse Saturday (but still getting some housework done), I had a respite Sunday morning.  That's why I started on the shelves. Didn't feel too awful, wanted to get them in the house before the weather got hot and sticky again -- and they were in the way in the garage.

     The shelf work went slowly, with moments of confusion.  Early on, I started to mark the baseboard clearance cuts on the wrong side of the vertical that still needed them!  Caught myself, though not after making dark pencil marks all over it that had to be rubbed out with mineral spirits.  After that, I went more slowly and kept checking, and it all worked out.  Nevertheless, I was pretty well worn out by the end of the day.

      I was up frequently that night.  Monday was worse, nasty chills, dizziness, bloating and pain.  So I made notes about my symptoms, signed up for the "Teledoc" service my employer provides, eventually got through to a physician and, yes, it was just what I suspected.  The doctor called in a couple of prescriptions and I spent most of the day in bed.

      Up about every hour and a half last night; I made coffee and toast, took my pills, called in working-from-home and went back to bed until it was time to actually work.  Now here I am at lunchtime, feeling a little better but not much.

      Maybe next time I won't try to play the Stoic.  We've got better medicine than they had, and correspondingly less reason to grit one's teeth and endure an illness that can be readily treated.

Progress

      Over the weekend, despite not feeling very well, I managed to install the custom shelves in my bedroom.  And even grilled a couple of steaks in celebration!

     Darned near didn't get the shelves in.  Because they are very large -- 95" x 63" x 11" -- I designed them to come apart in five pieces: left side; right side with three 11"-wide shelves attached; the top two shelves, vertical divider and horizontal brace; and  two horizontal braces, one at just about desktop height and the other about 10" above the floor. All held together with rabbets, wood screws and, in one spot, a pair of small 90-degree brackets.

     Taking it apart was easy: I laid it face-down on four pieces of scrap wood to keep the front off the garage floor, removed the wood screws, and tapped it apart, stacking the pieces to one side.  I had to make clearance cuts for the baseboard at the back of the right side (and erred way on the side of caution), but that's easy with a small chairmaker's brace, a 7/8" auger bit and nice Japanese keyhole saws.  A little bit of sanding and some wax, and it was ready to bring indoors and sit awhile to get used to the colder, drier environment.

     Things began to go off the rails come assembly time.  There's (barely) not enough open floor space in my room to reverse the disassembly process.  Nope, the shelves had to be assembled in the hallway, on one side, with a lot of clamps to hold things together while the screws were put in.  I laid the heavy vertical (the one with three additional narrow shelves) on the floor and thought about it.

     The first problem: the screws for the full-width shelves go in from the outside -- which would be the inaccessible side laying on the floor.  Easy enough: a couple of 24-packs of a soft drink cans elevated it nicely to set the screws from underneath with a stubby driver.  I have never been more grateful for Tam's soft-drink habit!  A couple of long pipe clamps and short bar clamps got everything seated, aligned and held it while I drove the screws.

     That got the top two shelves in.  The desk-height brace (and the one nearer the floor) sit in 1/2"-deep rabbets along the back and are held with screws that go through the brace and into the vertical -- plenty strong enough when the shelves are all together, laying face down or standing up, but way too vulnerable sitting sideways and held at only one end, especially when I tried to fasten the other vertical in place on top.

     The answer was a handscrew, one of those big, old-fashioned wooden clamps with a couple of threaded handles. I held the brace in place, cranked the jaws of the handscrew tight just above where it fit into the upright, and used a short bar clamp to hold the brace to the vertical.  Another bar clamp from the front front of the vertical to the back of the brace squeezed it tight into the rabbet.  I tightened down the wood screws and left it clamped in place.

     The (temporarily) "top" vertical was a challenge.  The long pipe clamps were adequate to hold it steady while I lined everything up with short bar clamps and screwed the top shelves and middle brace in place.  That left the lower horizontal to be installed; it slotted right in, got clamped down, and fastened.

     Now I had a fully-assembled shelf sitting on two boxes of soft-drink cans and nearly filling the hallway!  I got the boxes out from under just as Tam showed up.

     "Wow, it really was cleverly designed to come apart and go back together!  You need a hand with that thing?" She looked skeptically towards my room.  "Is there going to be room to stand it up?"

     I told her, "Sure."  I was, in fact, not sure.  Especially if I wanted the TV to still have a screen afterward.

     We got the shelves slid into my room.  They were still on one side and 90 degrees away on two different axii from where I needed them.  Standing them was going to require a complicated 3-D rotation, with deflections to clear my bed, the high shelf above the room and closet doors, and the ceiling fan* in the center of the ceiling.  It was about all both of us could do, but we managed.  Barely. Once the shelves were right way up and near their final location, Tam looked at the narrow gap where I had the old desk moved out for clearance and the limited wall space the shelves were planned to fill.

     "Is this going to go in there okay?"

     "Guess we're gonna find out."

     In fact, it did, with a quarter-inch to spare.  The desk fit right into the space, clearing the shelves and the floor register that I'd worried might be slightly blocked.  Nope!  After dinner, I used a small wedge and a couple of little angle brackets to get the shelves firmly in place, and started loading them up.  No pictures yet; the shelves and the room-organizing they required is still very much a work in progress.

     But by gosh, they're in.  And they fit as planned.  Man, that's a nice feeling.
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* It came with the house.  I don't have much use for ceiling fans, especially on 1920s tube-and-knob wiring, but it's a big job to take one out.

I Saved A Bat This Morning

      The text popped at 7:30 a.m.:  BOBBI THERE IS A BAT IN MY KITCHEN.  CAN YOU COME GET IT?   It was our neighbor to the north, whose neat, Arts & Crafts-furnished bungalow is remarkably bat-magnetic.

     I threw some clothes on, masked up, grabbed a pair of heavy leather gloves and headed over.

     She has a sign over the archway to her breakfast nook, proclaiming "This is a cat-friendly house," with several cats in silhouette around the letters.  Make that  several cat shapes...and a sleepy-looking little brown bat, clingin to the top of the frame.

     Our neighbor has seven cats (and eight litter boxes, which she keeps clean).  Three of them were very interested in the bat and two more were hanging nearby, just in case.  The poor bat must have thought it had found a gateway to bat hell!

     We set up a stepladder and I climbed up.  The bat wasn't happy, and said so, well above my range of hearing.  They're kind of fragile, so you don't want to just go grabbing.  There was an empty cardboard box left that the cats had been playing in; I asked for it and held it up near the bat, hoping to chivvy it in.

     The bat climbed right in without being urged!  I closed the box up quickly, climbed down the ladder and headed for the front door.

     We were thinking we could hang the bat in one of her really tall flowers.  I opened up the box -- and the bat worked its way to the edge, spread its wings, and leapt off!

     He fought for altitude at first, swooping crazily the way bats do, picked up speed and height as he crossed the street, and sped towards the trees behind the houses on the other side.

     That's the most cooperative bat I have encountered yet.  Godspeed, little bat.  Godspeed.

Chimichurri Pork

      Tried a variation on the dependable formula:

     A couple of nice, meaty "country style boneless pork ribs," marinated overnight in chimichurri sauce with a little balsamic vinegar added.

     Then I sauteed some fennel bulb.  It's kind of like super-celery and kind of not, with a delightful aroma; fresh, it's a little like root beer!*  Chopped it up into 3/8" thick slices, and then chopped the long, U-shaped slices into chunks.  Along with it, some baby carrots chopped into about 3/8" sections, and as that cooked, I added a bunch (it's a unit of measure, the standard amount they sell 'em in) of chopped green onions and a peeled gala apple, and then made room for the pork without the marinade, cooking the meat just long enough to brown each side well.  As it was browning, I diced three small sweet peppers and sprinkled them over everything.

     With the pork browned, I poured the marinade over it, added a little diced ginger (maybe a half a teaspoon?  To taste) along with a couple of bay leaves and covered the pan while I sliced up a container of fresh mushrooms, then layered them on top with fresh-ground pepper and a little salt.  Covered it back up and let it be for a half-hour, tuned the pork and cooked it until the meat thermometer said it was done.

     The end result was delicious!  The pork was moist and the sauce was pretty special.  Fairly strong, vaguely akin to Carolina barbecue, with a little sweetness from the ginger and apple, but not too much.  I served it over Spanish rice, which soaked up the flavor and calmed it while enhancing it.

     Variations: you could use hotter peppers, and/or add a chopped potato to the vegetables instead of the rice. Moisture from the mushrooms adds to the sauce, so if you leave them out, you may need more liquid.
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* Raw fennel bulb is great in salads -- cut it fairly thin for that.

Better?

      Hoping I'm better today.  Yesterday was unpleasant. Tam wrapped it up looking at convention coverage, which was, at least, soporific.

     That's actually what I want in politics, especially here in the U. S.: keep it dull.  This was supposed to be a country where it was safe to turn your back on the Federal government and all the politicking associated with it -- and that's not something that's on the menu from either of the two candidates.

     But the politics of this year's Presidential election are so fraught already that anything I can say is about like throwing a full five-gallon gas can into one of the wildfires presently roaring through parts of California: it's not going to change the conflagration other than possibly adding some shrapnel I'd have to endure.  Come November, get out there and vote -- or stay home and vote.  Whatever suits you.   Just participate, and we'll have it out of the way for another four years.

     And hey, here's a thought: make up your mind now that you will be gracious in victory and courteous in defeat.  We run a Presidential contest every four years, just like the Olympics (outside of plague years), and nobody gets to win all the gold medals every time.  We've got a surplus of regular voter-level assholes in this country; about half of them are waving red-elephant banners and about half are waving blue-donkey flags and they are all frothingly angry at one another.  But we elect people to do that for us.  That's what the House and Senate are for, in much the same way that the Presidency is a handy place to heap praise or blame depending on your alignment.  Can we not, just for a little while, leave the bulk of the ire there in Washington, DC where it fits right in?

     Fat chance, I suppose.  Still, I keep hoping we can do better.

Not So Good

      Yesterday, I did not feel well.  In fact, I felt lousy.  Managed to get a little work done, puttering around online, but I never got out the door.

     Doing my best to not repeat that today.

     Tam's still watching the Democrat convention.  I'm starting to feel a little sorry for Elizabeth Warren: try as she might when she delivers a speech, she just doesn't seem to be able to not sound as if she's scolding or at best, chiding the audience.  Conversely, President Obama remains one of the most effective speakers his party has found.  I still don't agree with most of his politics, but he's got a good handle on civics and the get-out-there-and-vote parts of his speech apply no matter what your party or your opinion of the incumbent.  (Mr. Obama's opinion of President Trump is not at all good, and he didn't dance around it -- you expected anything else?  But credit him for frankness.)

     Political speeches tend to make me bilious at the best of times, which yesterday wasn't; I nodded off being hectored by voices down the hall from one or another of the night's speakers and was relieved they didn't pursue me into my dreams.

     Edited To Add: And it turns out I am still sick today. Starting to think I have had a brush with a contaminated onion.