Pressing news

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The last few days I worked on building a cider press up in the workshop, mostly from things we already had laying around. I tested it today, and it seems to work. At least, it pressed a bag of sawdust – until I finish the grinder, we don’t have any mushed up apples to try. Sawdust and apples are both cellulose anyways, right?

I also dismantled our old sewing table and attached some laminate counter top to it, which will become the apple grinder. Probably not until the weekend at the earliest, though.



New stove

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Our LP kit arrived yesterday, so this morning I converted the new $32 stove and installed it. There were some brief problems finding a 7mm nut driver (what the hell, do we live in Canada or something?), but I managed to find something that would work.

Next we’ll contact Anya’s school to see about getting our old stove over there to replace theirs. Hopefully there are some strong men who will be happy to haul it up the stairs to the kitchen.


One man in a tub

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As nice as it is to toss everything into the bread machine every few days for a loaf of bread, it just can’t compare to something baked in the oven. Especially now that I’ve gotten the hang of making the mixer do all the hard kneading work…

This is from a recipe in the LA Times, which so far is the only successful rye bread recipe I’ve made. Without caraway seeds this time, though, so Cabol might actually eat some.


How times have changed

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Today I went down to the laundry room and discovered a CFL bulb had leaped to its death off the shelf while I was hammering floors down, and there was broken glass EVERYWHERE (mostly from the globe around the bulb, though). Out of curiosity, I wondered what the government had to say about cleaning up CFL bulbs, since they contain mercury (a possible 4mg!).

Don’t use a vacuum or a broom on hard surfaces, try and manage with cardboard and duct tape. Put everything in a sealed bag or canning jar. Clothes came in contact with some glass? Discard. Take the waste to a recycle area. Wipe down your vacuum. Ventilate the area. For FOUR MILLIGRAMS.

Then I remember at the family reunion, the talk amongst the folks of the baby boomer generation talking about playing with mercury. As in rolling it around on their hands and such. Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?



Lil Loaf’s Younger Brother

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This week we finally got to pick up poor departed Lil Loaf’s new brother, a VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI:

When we first decided to get the car, we couldn’t find any bare bones ones (Anya really liked the giant sunroof, but unfortunately for her she doesn’t have any money). So we ordered a blue one with the extra back airbags. Time went by. After a few weeks I called the dealer, and it was still backordered, and after it went into production it would be another 6 weeks. Since I was getting quite sick of driving the truck, we asked him to see if he could find a base one in any color but black.

A dark gray one was found, coming in within a week. We went down to First Team Auto, and signed all the paperwork. Gave them a check. Dealt with a really annoying woman who tried to sell us undercoating junk (whom we complained about later, and the president told us we weren’t the first to complain that week). Also got a little frustrated with the hard selling of an extended warranty. The next week rolled around, when it should be in…and we get a call from our salesman telling us that it had been sold out from under us. Surprise!

We were a little annoyed. After all, we had given them money and signed all the paperwork with the VIN on it. We wrote an angry email. The president of First Team called me back, it turns out the dealership in Richmond did not log something properly, so a salesman saw the car and didn’t know it was sold. But to make things better, they loaned us another TDI wagon until another one showed up on the 15th of December. They even delivered it to our house in the boonies.

This past Saturday they called and it got here early, so Tuesday we drove out and swapped it for the new one. Hooray!

Now we just need to think of a new license plate. Cabol doesn’t like DAS LOAF.