Bogieblog

Shaking it Up in Another Way

Yesterday morning I gave my 3 weeks notice at work. There was a lot of stunned disabelief, with my boss asking repeatedly if something had happened to upset me that had made me mad. No, just time for a change. I like the company, the job and the people. I just need to see what else I can do.

Have been talking to a non-manufacturing company for a couple of months, got the pre-pre offer, then the pre-offer, took and passed the various tests (background, drug etc), got the official offer and officially accepted the offer.

As I told my current boss, "I would like to think I can come back if things don't work out for me."

He said he would be happy to have me back any time.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but it is nice to know there is a fallback position available.

Now the work of trying to train someone on how to run several different computer programs, not to mention the processes that are used in my job.

Just trying to shake things up a bit, and succeeding.

Water Shortage

The hot pepper plants, despite growing tall, have barely produced any peppers. A lot of them just started blooming 7-10 days ago. WS suggested placing the portable greenhouse over them to extend the season and maybe actually get peppers out (besides the 3 jalapenos and 4 habenaros I've picked). So, we did that yesterday. Last we had heard, it was supposed to get down to 40 last night.

It hasn't rained mor than an inch in the last month. I have had to water the garden all summer to keep it from drying up. Ironically, after placing the greenhouse over the peppers, the weather pattern changed and it is supposed to rain for the next 3 days. Oh yeah, and the low this morning is somewhere in the 50's. So, I still get to water even though Mother Nature is fianlly providing.

Yep, our luck in motion.

Shake Down

Apparently we had an eathquake at 11:38 Saturday night. It was such a big event that we slept right thru it - even Missy and Prince managed to ignore it.

Guess we are showing our ages.

Roof Over Our Heads

The workers started tearing apart the roof on Monday. Fortunately, they found that the rafters were fine (no mold or warpage), so just the plywood had to be replaced. By Tuesday, all the new plywood and underlayment were in place.

 

Fairly early on Thursday the roof was completed:

 

You can't tell by the picture, but the color is Forest Green. Doesn't much matter, it's not nike anyone can see the roof unless they are in our back yard (or at the neighbor's house during the winter, when no leaves are on the trees) - I just wanted something other than black or gray, so green was what I picked.

Now it is a waiting game for the bank to send someone to inspect it and release money from the escrow account. Then, we should be able to bring someone in to do the siding. We have decided to replace the 4 side windows too (the only windows that we haven't replaced in the last 4 years) so WS will probably do the stripping of the siding. That will save us about what 3 of the windows cost, so we should come in at right around what we budgeted.

Somehow, it seems that this plan is coming together (knock on wood!).

Bogosity

Just minutes ago, I was contacted by someone conducting a political "poll" with questions about someone named Tremblay running for a NH office.

The first question was about affordable health care and her position on making some sort of law in NH that guarantees affordable health care for everyone. Did that make me more much more likely to vote for her, a little more likely to vote for her, or it made no difference / I had no opinion.

I gave a response, not one I was happy with, but the best I could do under the circumstances. Then there was another question, about tax incentives to small businesses for hiring new employees. I was given the same three options for acceptable answers.

I decided I wasn't playing this game and responded. "I can't believe there is no option for a negative response." The gal on the other end said that only the 3 described answers were permissible. To which I responded, "This is a bogus poll since it is designed to elicit only favorable or benign results. there is no way that the candidate can be seen in a bad light in this poll. Since it is a bogus poll, I will not to participate."

I did not wait for a response, I just hung up. Normally, I will take the time to answer pollsters questions, but this time there was no way that I was taking this one. It is pretty bad when the system is set up so the worst result that can come out of the "poll" is that her positions either had no affect on my decision to vote for her - or I didn't know enough about the issue to give a response.

I may go by the moniker of "Bogie", but bogusness is not rewarded by me on election day.

It's Getting Closer

What do you think of when you see this?

For us it means the new roof should be installed soon. We had the dumpster dropped off on Wednesday. Tuesday, a guy came in to install the new facia boards (they need to go on before the roof).

 

Weather permitting, the roofers should start sometime this week.

I'm glad to see this show is getting on the road!

Dehydrating Fun

The new dehydrator came in. I knew it would be bigger than my old one, but didn't realize that it would take up almost the entire top of the stove:

The old dryer could sit between two of the adjacent burners, so this one is much bigger. The one thing that I found odd is that the dial for controlling the thermoset is way in back. Not only do I have to have my reading glasses on, but I have to be standing tippy-toe to lean over and get a look. Not really a horrible thing, especially since my old dryer only had one heat setting, I just would have thought that they would put it toward the front.

9 Shelves! My old dehydrator had 7 shelves, and they had holes in the middle to allow the heat to rise so the footprint wasn't totally useable.
 

Rock Sugar

Have you ever heard of "Slammed" music? I hadn't until our local rock station, WGIR Rock 101, featured some on the morning show. Although probably not to everyone's tastes (expecially purists), I found it quite intriguing that someone would think to combine such music as Don't Stop Believing (by Journey) and Enter Sandman (by Metallica) and create Don't Stop the Sandman (by Rock Sugar). (the link goes to a video)

Fortunately, I am not a purist and really like the results.

Unfortunately, Rock Sugar's store is temporarily unavailable, so I can't get their CD and hear the rest of their slammed music. But I'll be keeping an eye out!

Dehydrating Corn

Last Monday, WS went out to pick the rest of his corn. Some of it had already started drying, so I looked up in my Stocking Up III book, what the best thing to do would be. The book asserts that drying it on the cob, then twisting the cob to release the kernels, then storing in a jar is a good way to preserve corn even for human use. Apparently it can be reconstituted in basically the same manner that is used for dry beans (who knew?), so I thought I would give it a try.

First problem is that my dehydrator trays stack on top of each other, with only about 1/2-3/4 inches of room between them. Not really a problem, just an inconvenience as that meant I could only dry one tray at a time (fortunately the lid is domed, so it would fit over the corn).

I dried one tray full like that, twisted the cobs, retrieved the kernels, and got a couple of jars of corn:

 

hopefully they reconstitute well and taste good when the time comes. If not, I'll put it in the birdfeeder.

Funny

Overheard on the bike trip last Sunday: "I don't need GPS, I have PMS riding on the back."