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Sunday, Nov. 28, 2004 - 7:43 p.m.

The end is near to a nice, long holiday weekend�

I managed to stay away from the computer pretty much all weekend. Until now, that is.

How?

Well�

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so I was busy most of the day. And that is the only day I did much here at the keyboard (my only typically boring entry posted in the last 4 days was composed then, in other words) .

Friday? Woke up sicker than a dog. Don�t know why for sure. I was up at 5 am with Lease. She had to get up to go to work, but I could have slept in. I took the dogs outside and for the first time in several years I thought I was going to toss my cookies. I fought back that impulse, forced a couple of pieces of dry toast into my belly, and sat down in my Lazy-boy, hoping the nausea would subside.

Lease talked me into going back to bed, and I managed another 4 hours of restless sleep.

Great way to spend a day off. First Lease has to work. Then I wake up feeling like hell.

I felt a little bit better by the time Lease came home for work, so we decided to grab a quick dinner (Panera Bread) and get our weekly shopping done. That way, we had all of Saturday and Sunday to decorate the house (inside and out) for the Holidays.

That, and rest. Which we did manage to do a little, too.

Saturday was inside. Lease did most of the hard work. Codeman and I were mainly there to carry things upstairs and out of the garage, and to set up the plastic trees.

I also managed to make the vilest batch of jam I have ever put inside of half pint jars.

How?

Well, I tried to make a preserve (actually, it was more of a �butter, considering how little sugar and pectin was used) out of persimmon pulp. Rob at work had been promising me a couple of Ziploc� bags full of the stuff for the last month or so. His mom has several of these native trees growing on her land, and she processes a few bags of cleaned pulp every few days all fall.

And I totally ruined all of her hard work.

I looked all over the Internet, trying to find a recipe for persimmon jam/preserves/butter, but I was only able to come up with three different versions (I bet you can find more than 3000 versions for strawberry jam, for example). All called for orange juice and/or lemon juice. All used small amounts of sugar (2 cups for 6 cups of pulp is REAL little).

I settled on the one that sounded the best to me. Had it cooked and in jars in less than an hour.

I had one partial jar after processing. Once it cooled down, I took a table spoon to its contents and gave it a taste.

Putrid.

Grainy.

Way too much orange flavor, too little persimmon.

And it ended up with the consistency of petroleum jelly.

I think the petroleum jelly would taste better, too.

I opened one of the processed jars to see if the extra cooking improved the flavor.

Nope.

What will I do with this crap?

I plan on taking one of the open jars to work tomorrow. I will warn Rob BEFORE having him try it.

If he likes it? He can have the entire batch (�cause I don�t want any of it!)

I expect him to be honest. In that case, I will empty the contents of the remaining jars into my compost pile.

I don�t think they can do much harm in there�


Today?

I hung all of the outside lights. I started with 8 boxes of brand new, day-after-Christmas-last-year-bargain, multi-colored lights.

One of the strings wouldn�t work. Think about that- brand new, never out of their box, and they don�t work?

I want my .50� back!

I ended up using all of my old lights, too. Well, not all of them- I had 4 strings that wouldn�t light up properly. As long as I can buy new strings for .50� on the 26th, I won�t waste my time trying to figure out what the problem is anymore.

Anyway�

I just plugged the lights back in (to see how they looked after dark), and guess what?

One of the new strings (150 lights) is only half lit up. The first 75 bulbs are not burning, as I type this.

I�ll give you one guess where this string is located:

1.Attached to the posts on the ground.
2.Wrapped in one of our shrubs or evergreens.
3.Wrapped around the pillars on the front porch.
4.On the overhang of our house, way the fuck up in the air, where they can�t be reached without dragging back out my rickety old, piece of crap aluminum extension ladder and climbing to the top rung, removing the offending string and taking it back to the ground to see what is the problem.

If you didn�t guess �4�, you don�t know me too well�

I didn�t feel like dragging said ladder out again today. Maybe tomorrow, if the forecasted snow stays away.

I still have a couple of strings of lights in the basement. They used to be on our living room artificial, but I replaced them with some of those new-fangled LED light strings this year. Another after Christmas bargain from last December, these bulbs use 1/70th of the electricity of traditional bulbs, are cool to the touch, and are much brighter than anything I have ever used in my life.

I think the original price on a 35-light strand was $9.99. I bought three strings at 75% off.

If they last longer than the strand now dead on the house, they will be a bargain�


One last thing:

This website cracks me up

The purpose of this page is (I will use their definition):

Q. What is Engrish?

A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design.

The link above is to a photograph of an air conditioner with a brand name that doesn�t really describe what it does. Unless it is a multi-tasking appliance, anyway�

Antique - Futuristic


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