I guess my takeaway message for today is to learn from my mistakes. I'd say that the Mister had a similar sort of day. In the end everything seems to be working out fine, but we had some frustrations along the way.
My day started with the discovery that when I activated our fantasy football league, it opened up the 2013 lineup, not the 2014 crew. Five teams just didn't exist, and two came back that didn't play last year. I spent an hour or more clicking every link available to the league manager, and never figured out why it did that. I think I have a workaround, but it is still going to take more focus than I had previously expected to give it to get everyone online who is supposed to be there. It took me three tries to screw up the courage to delete the one team that couldn't stay. It has been about eleven months since my dear friend died, and today I had to make it real by deleting her team, the Ex-Men. I didn't want that to be my reality. If I could go back and change it all, I would. The world isn't as right as it should be without her in it.
The rest of my day was spent prepping and sanding and painting the desk we bought at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store Warehouse. It was a well-used piece of the correct vintage for this house, and I bought it with the understanding that I would paint it to use as a sewing table. In my mind, I was going to paint it gloss white and the drawer pulls would be hammered copper. Once I got started, I discovered that the grain in the walnut veneer was too deep to be covered just by white spray paint, so we got some rattle cans of gray primer and applied two coats of that. When I went back with another coat of white, the grain was still there, looking worse than ever. I realized then that white was the wrong choice, and I made a quick trip to buy gloss black paint, the kind you brush on. The last coat of white hadn't fully dried, and it blended with the black as I started to apply it, and I was starting to think I had erred again. The second coat went a little better, but the sun was down before I could fully finish it. Tomorrow I'll put another couple coats of black on, and if I'm lucky, it will be ready to set in place in the dressing room by the time I want to start sewing the cosplay outfit I am supposed to be working on tomorrow. (And without trying, I appear to have put rainbows on the purple walls I keep likening to my 13-year-old-me fantasy. I put a crystal globe in the windowsill, and moved one inadvertent step closer to the set of Labyrinth.)
The man focused on electrical work, home and away. He was asked by an acquaintance to install a GFCI plug at the condo she just bought, and he discovered through trial and error that one must choose a GFCI plug that equals the (wattage, amps, some sort of electrical term I don't remember) of the fuse it is designed to protect. He learned that by tripping the circuit breaker about four times as he tested his work. Then, at home, he was installing new plugs and the rest of the can lights in the basement, occasionally tripping breakers in exciting little bursts of sparks and noise. It's a good thing I've seen this happen before. The first time it happened, years ago, I ran out of the darkened room in a panic. This time I waited for him to finish what he was doing, and as I smelled the ozone, I asked, "But you're okay, right?" I didn't even get out of my chair. I'm learning.
By late evening, I finally mustered the courage to attempt a new hack for chicken cordon bleu, and for the first time all day, my "mistake" was more "happy accident." I slowly simmered chicken (that had been browned in butter) in chicken broth, heavy cream, and fresh herbs (marjoram, sage, and rosemary). When the chicken was done, I used a small scoop of tapioca starch dissolved in more chicken stock to thicken it, and I added chopped ham and grated Swiss cheese. Unconventional, to be sure, but it was lovely, and the sauce paired well with the oven-roasted golden zucchini too. It was nice to get something right the first time for once.
No comments:
Post a Comment