Peach pie and heating quotes

Here's the peach pie I made yesterday and along side it, the cinnamon roll ups I made from the leftover dough. This is always what my grandmother made with the leftover pie  dough - just roll it out thin, spread a thin layer of flour on it, a nice generous amount of sugar, then sprinkled with cinnamon.  Mix it on the rolled out dough with your fingers to combine, and spread it evenly. Then add lots of small pieces of butter. Roll it up the thickness you see and cut in little sections and bake till done. They're great with a cup of tea or coffee - crunchy, buttery, and cinnamon sweetness all rolled up in one little bite sized piece of heaven.

Another busy day with workmen in and out, starting at 7:30 am. The dog and cat pee saturated carpet was removed from the hall and the floor painted with a special paint to kill the odors and seal before the tile goes down. For a few hours the smell of that special paint was horrible, even with the door open. For a while there I was thinking the pee smell might have been better!

Then the handyman arrived to re-hang a repaired shade, and shortly after that the rep from the heating/cooling company came and after checking out the space and explaining the benefits of the heating/cooling system he was suggesting for the studio/garage, I asked what that would cost. I'm sure he wasn't happy with my lack of enthusiasm for his $3,500 quote! So I took a deep breath and asked if he could come up with a more reasonable alternative; and maybe let's just think about heat and forget the air conditioning. He promised to email me more information and quotes tomorrow. I need heat in there in the winter, but I'll just deal with the summer heat by adjusting my work hours and maybe get a good exhaust fan set in front of an open door. At some point the pool man came because he had to fix something he forgot to do yesterday. We are so ready to have all this work done so we can enjoy a normal day at our own pace.

By the time they all left, Jim announced that he was really hungry, so I pushed dinner time up and got to work in the kitchen. So there goes another day with no studio time. These days, once dinner is done, I'm done for the day other than computer and paper work.

I'm looking forward to the Olympic events starting at 8pm; and I will be watching from bed!

Playing is hard work

This is an area across from our sons house on the Rogue River, called Horse Shoe Falls, which is also the name of our sons ranch. This is a big salmon hole which we fished the other day. It was at the end of our fishing trip and we had other things to do later in the day otherwise we would have spent a lot more time at this spot!

Our son took me on another day fishing trip on the Rogue Friday and then Friday night he got us all great seating at the Britt Festival for the Steve Martin and band concert (which was great!). Saturday we were wiped from all the casting and fresh air on the river and all the wine and other goodies at our picnic at the concert! So we just took the day off and watched the Olympics and got bills paid and caught up with other paper work and email.

The grand kids have been coming over to use the pool and of course they want us to watch all their tricks. Our 8 year old grand daughter was watching the Olympic swimming events and announced loudly "I can do that", and proceeded to hit the pool and swim at record pace, doing the Australian crawl! We just sat there stunned at how fast she swam. She also demonstrated the breast stroke and the butterfly stroke. Amazing! Her mother is now thinking about looking at getting her into a swim program. Sounds like a very good idea to me! She's a natural. I'm starting to think she may have done this in a past life!

Needless to say I have not have any time for the studio at all over the weekend and may not for another couple of days. Dealing with making appointments and having meetings with tile/carpet people and finding that the hall carpeting can't be salvaged from the cat pee (don't ask!), heating/cooling people about getting my studio/garage done, gardener (who currently had a big, open hole in the front yard where a water line broke), pool man (who still can't figure out why some of the controls aren't working),  shopping, gardening and cooking and playing have used up all my time and energy. Moving into a new house sure brings on a whole new host of minor and some not so minor problems that need to be dealt with, apart from all the unpacking and re-decorating.

This morning I spent a lot of time in the garden. All the tomato plants and roses needed trimming and pruning and everything got a good hand watering.

The grand kids will be coming over to swim in a bit and after lunch I want to make a peach pie with the beautiful home grown peaches our lovely daughter in law brought me yesterday. Their home orchard is really producing well this year.

My own little container garden is now giving me a lot of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and my first beefsteak tomato yesterday. That will be  lunch for Jim and me today - tomato sandwich on whole wheat with a lot of mayonnaise, salt and fresh ground pepper.

I must get into the studio tomorrow or the next day and continue with the unpacking.Thursday I have more materials being delivered by an old acquaintance from our old glaze group, who I sold and gave a lot of things to when we moved east 12 years ago. I'm buying back the old, blue Cornwall stone, Spodumene, tin, zinc and a bunch of other materials that she hasn't used and she's giving me some of the free materials I gave her at that time. Good thing I bought all those new 2 gallon buckets a few days ago. Those new shelves will be filled to capacity by the end of the week.

Egads what a mess!

Jim tried to partly open the garage door to cool the garage/studio and it seems that one of the workers had moved the raw materials table and the free standing shelves on top which contained all my bags, jars and containers of oxides, stains and liquids, like Iron chloride.

When the door rose, it hit the shelf and made the most awful grinding noise, which we later found, was the steel rim on the top of the raw materials table getting bent! That jarred the free standing shelves sitting on top of the unit, tilted them and these and other jars and bottles went flying, many breaking and opening splattering stains, oxides, under glazes and chlorides all over everything nearby.What a mess!

I picked some of them up already but left the biggest mess to deal with once I finish Jim's breakfast and my watering chores.  These liquids, some of which, like the chlorides are not fun to deal with, so I'll be wearing rubber gloves to prevent absorption into my skin, and running back and forth to the sink to wash off all these jars. Some of those oxides splattered all over small, paper bags of raw materials so I am going to have to get out in the next day or two for more buckets and carefully try to get those materials out of the bags without contaminating them with the oxides, etc. covering the bags . I'll say it again "What a mess!"

Once that's done, if it's not too hot, I'll deal with other studio chores which I didn't get around to yesterday, whose time was taken up with a pottery club meeting in Jacksonville, rushing home and right back out to our sons place for dinner. 

The meeting went very well and after the business of the day was complete, one of the members, Peppi Melick gave a wonderful demo using  several layers of brushed on various colors of thick slip made from the porcelain clay body, on a thick (about 3/4"), round porcelain slab. The first layer was applied, and dried slightly with a hair dryer. Subsequent layers of other colors of the thick slip were brushed over various textures using found materials like small crocheted doilies, pieces of fabric, backing from needlepoint, etc. Each textured piece was first lightly spritzed with water, laid down on the clay and impressed using a small roller, followed by the use of the hair dryer to dry the slip enough for easy removal of the textured piece. Then a different colored slip  was applied, dried lightly, then another piece of textured material was laid on top, rolled. When all the layers of slip (I think she did about 4 altogether), she lifted the slab and slapped it down repeatedly, stretching it  until it was the size and thickness she needed to drape over her rimmed, bisqued bowl. She gently fit the slab to the bowl shape taking extra care to compress the area around the rim very well to avoid drying cracks.

The last step of stretching the clay created more complex patterns than those initially created with the simple found pieces of fabric she used to create the patterns. The fired samples she brought of the Tom Coleman Cone 6 porcelain were really lovely.

Party night

Tonight is party night so I'm going to pace myself with light chores today (no heavy digging in this Rogue valley's gravel and heavy clay soil). It took me an hour the other day to plant two small vines. The first 7 inches was gravel, then I hit the clay, which was holding a lot of water. I'm beginning to think that this container garden of mine was the best choice. At first I bemoaned the fact that I had almost zero planting space in the back yard. After digging in that soil, I've done a 360 degree turn around on that issue!

Not much to report on the studio front. The only thing remotely associated with that work has been to do some sketching and transferring some slip and glaze recipes into a notebook yesterday.

In the morning I arranged some flowers in one of my pitchers (a housewarming present for some friends); and got them delivered. Our sons house is next door to theirs, so we had a nice visit with the family watching him unpack all the fossils that they had dug in their family's South Dakota vacation trip. They had some very impressive finds - one of which was so rare it is going to a museum. Then we took a tour of our friends house. They were flying in in a couple of hours and the workers and decorators were madly rushing to have it all ready when they arrived.

From there we headed home with a stop to pick up a few groceries and then home to make a large batch of pineapple and black bean salsa for our son and daughter in laws big, yearly party. There are over 130 people coming this year, so my bowl of salsa is just going to be a drop in the bucket.

I'm taking my fishing pole, and my new beach chair and plan to sit by the river and enjoy the cool breezes while I cast a few.

Walking, feeding and cleaning up after animals, garden chores and making dinner (veggie yaki soba noodles), a meditation video and sleep filled out the rest of the day yesterday.

This morning I made potato salad for tomorrows dinner. Time now for some breakfast, then some garden chores followed by a studio time till the heat makes me seek the refuge of the air conditioned house. Hopefully next week I'll be able to get into the studio every morning, while it's cool and get everything finished.

Date night

Yesterday was a day of completion. The electrician and his assistant came at 6pm, worked till 9pm and got the rest of the studio and house electrical done. He still has some outside work to do, and some light installations when the dining room wall sconces arrive the end of August; but the studio electrical and plumbing work is finally done other than getting heat and possible cooling installed. Now I just have to find the time and energy to find places for everything.

The plumber was here early yesterday and got my small gas kiln hooked up with the 4 foot flex hose. He also  straightened out some of the wheels and legs that the movers had trashed.

 My third magnetic tool bar arrived yesterday, so I might try to get that up today if I can. Wall space is almost non existent at this point, so I'm going to have to find some convenient place to squeeze it in.

Now that we're done with breakfast (buckwheat pancakes this morning), I have to get out and do a bit of planting. There's a chance of thunder showers in a couple of hours, so I want to beat the rain if if decides to come this way. Then I have to call a heating company about studio heat and air before I head out for some flowers to a fill a pitcher I'm giving some friends as a house warming present.

Tonight is a date night, so I'm not going to tire myself too much today. I don't want to fall asleep during the dinner or the show at the Cabaret theater! It should be a fun night with a 60's music show "Life Could Be a Dream". They serve dinner before the show and dessert at intermission.  You can opt out of dinner or just have the dessert at intermission, which is what we usually did when we lived here before; but it's the height of the tourist season now, so parking would be problem if we opt for dinner elsewhere and this arthritic hip and knees cannot take long walks uphill right now.

Mojito and pizza

It was another Mojito night. These are great with pizza!

Yesterday I picked up part of my pottery order. It's been 3 weeks and they still haven't gotten an order into the larger supplier in Portland, so I'm still waiting for a pug of low fire clay and a few other items so I can start testing those earthenware slips and glazes. They did have all the small bottles of lug underglazes which they must have ordered through Laguna rather than Georgies. Good thing I'm still unpacking and not in a major rush for these things.

I've only gotten a bit of studio unpacking time in the past two days. At this point I'm switching back and forth from the studio to my office; but I did manage to empty a couple of boxes. Sorting through lots of small pottery and jewelry tools and finding places for everything has been a big challenge because of space limitations, so we've been putting up a lot of shelves and racks of one sort or another to hold much of this stuff.

We have shopping and other chores to do now that they've they delivered  the replacement love seat (the first one had a problem so they brought the floor model today). Unfortunately, that one has a defective seat cushion, so they have to bring back a replacement tomorrow. I think we're once again victims of mercury retrograde! LOL 

Rain is in the forecast for today and tomorrow but I still had to hand water all the potted things. The tomato plants, and eggplants in those white plastic grower bags are huge, and they need at least one very deep watering each day which takes me about a half a hour every morning. This fall or next spring I'm going to have someone build me a deep, long, permanent raised bed for those veggies, and everything is going to be on a drip system.

Well, that's the studio and garden and kitchen report for the day.  Time to head out for some lunch and a big grocery and other shopping trip.




 

Tools hung, tempura and sake night

 Since I lost a lot of wall space in the move, I came up with this idea of making a backing for my jewelry bench that would hold a magnetic tool bar. The other tool bar was installed next to the studio sink and I realize that I need just one more of these for my lapidary area. Slowly, but surely, it's coming together.

It's been another busy day starting with watering my planter garden, breakfast, trip to our son and daughter in laws house to harvest their veggies and visit a bit, then some grocery and other shopping before heading home. 

We were in Ashland yesterday and I  just couldn't resists buying a huge, expensive, Brandywine tomato and some fresh mozzarella. For lunch I made a mixed green salad with a simple vinaigrette and put tomato slices, topped with mozzarella slices,  drizzled with olive oil and and fresh basil. Jim loved it and remarked how pretty it was. I should have taken a picture! Then it was time to get all my veggies cleaned, peeled and cut and ready for tonight's miso soup, vegetable tempura and rice dinner. The sake will definitely be chilled tonight!

George the handyman showed when I was midway into this blog, so I was back in the studio for quite a while. I got my little wall area put together and George hung it for me. He also got my new extruder up and got the two of the magnetic tool holders up. After dinner I need to order another one of those as well as a bunch of 2 cup and 1 qt heavy plastic jars to replace those contaminated with a ferric chloride spill. :-(

The movers had turned one of the boxes with oxides, chlorides, etc. upside down and the ferric chloride saturated the box, got on the studio floor and made a huge mess on all the containers of oxides, bags of stain, etc.etc.. So I put on some heavy rubber gloves, mixed up some soapy water and started wiping down all the containers. I also had a little bit of time to get some small buckets labeled and filled with some raw materials.

My rice is cooking, the oil is heating and the sake is cooling. I'm really going to enjoy a do nothing relaxing, after dinner time watching some tennis and getting to bed early for a good nights sleep to recharge this old battery for another busy day tomorrow.

 

HOT HOT HOT

Yesterday I got a lot of my throwing and trim tools unpacked and hung up, and the rest of the day was spent on grocery shopping, garden chores and cooking. I'll try to continue this project right after lunch if it's not too hot in there.

We're in a major heat wave (expecting mid to high 90's all week), so studio time has been mainly limited to early morning with the garage doors partly open, which really helps.We're also leaving them open a tad at night which makes the garage nice and cool in the morning.

The electrician came at 7 o'clock last night, but only had a few minutes to spare, so we had him hang the dining room chandelier; but he promised to come next Wednesday with a helper and finish everything else.

After  morning hand watering and re-arranging  a lot of  the planters , I ordered some food items on line. No stores here sell Open Pit Barbecue sauce, which is my favorite for some recipes.  I was able to get it on Amazon.com, as well as ordering some of my Thai ingredients to replace those I gave away when we moved.

The plumber won't be able to get here until next week to hook up the small gas kiln, and the handyman can't come till Wednesday or Thursday to hang the extruder and finish the rest of the jobs. Now  I need to look up some heating/cooling companies to see if we can tap into the house system to cool and heat the garage.

I got all the dinner prep done for our Pasta Puttanesca dinner, before breakfast, so  dinner will only take me about 10-15 minutes. Our local, monthly, glaze club meeting is tonight and I'd really love to go if I'm not too wiped.

Day after fishing

                                   

                                 
I'm recuperating this morning from my 8 hour fishing trip. It was a glorious day, with 3 boats of 6 family members and a friend, on the Rogue river for a fish off. The only one who had keepers were our grand son Brandon who's in the boat photo with his Aunt Carleen.

We had walkie talkies between the boats  and had a grand time telling tall fish tales about our catches. :-) Everyone caught fish but you can't keep the wild salmon, or steel head - only the ones that have been introduced from the hatcheries; and only if they are in the right size range. They clip a fin behind the dorsal fin as means of identification for the hatchery fish.

The scenery down the river is so beautiful. The goslings that we saw in May look like adults now. This group hung around us while we fished this salmon hole. I think they sensed that we had also stopped for lunch here, so I shared a piece of my sandwich bread with them. They were not shy at all, so other river goers may do the same. 

Since my body was weary (8 hours of casting is fun, but tiring), it's been great to have some Wimbledon finals tennis to watch this morning. A big thumbs up to Serena Williams for winning her 5th Wimbledon singles title! Maybe she and Serena will take the women's doubles as well.

This morning I got the dining room chandelier and the new bench grinder unpacked . That grinder is very heavy so it may be a challenge getting it into the studio. If I can edge it on to a cart it will be doable.

I was hoping to get some planting done this morning, but these shoulders need another day or rest before I put a shovel in my hands for any length of time. So hand watering and dead heading the flowers was it for today. Since Bonnie kitty is now an indoor cat and sulking, I bought her a harness and have taken her out a bit yesterday and today. I would say we are going for walks, but it's more like 2 steps, drag kitty, who then rolls over on her back and gives me a look of "I dare you"! Progress is slow, but she has actually taken a few normal steps on her own here and there. Only time will tell if this experiment is going to work. At least on the harness and leash, she's satisfied to sit on my lap outdoors.

We've noticed that many neighbors open their garage doors about ten inches from the bottom. We thought it may be to cool things off, so we tried it last night and this morning and it works! I actually got about a half hour in the studio this morning. Usually it's even too hot on a morning like this, but I did get to hang up some tools and put others away, so I'll continue that job after the tennis. After all, Wimbledton only comes once a year!

A day of wine and roses

Our daughter in law brought me a dozen, beautiful yellow roses yesterday. They're very sweet in this Robin Hopper pitcher.

The Brent manual extruder arrived yesterday. I ordered the largest manual unit so I could use my large dies, and that is one heavy piece of equipment! Jim can't lift anything, so it was up to me to get the box in the house and unpack it. There's no way I can hang this thing myself so I will have to wait for the handyman to grace us with his presence.

Two of the grand kids came over to in the afternoon to swim. Fortunately I opened the new pool toys I bought for them early, because they required a pump which I didn't have, so good old fashioned human air did the job. I was exhausted after blowing up two big toys, but the kids had a ball with them. There are two more left and I will be buying a pump to do those!

Other than cooking and baby sitting, the only other thing I had time for yesterday,was getting my last planter planted and doing some garden watering and cleanup. After dinner and a glass of wine I was ready to relax.

Today is a family fish off on the Rogue river. Our son has booked 3 boats and guides and some of us will be cruising down the river to fish for salmon, steel head and trout. Lunch is provided, so we can just sit back and fish and enjoy the day on this beautiful river. The winner of the fish off gets gloating rights! :-)

Hoping for a salmon later today

I want one of these! This is the tour guide and our grandson Brandon with his first salmon catch. He had to throw it back because it was a wild one. The good regulations from the past several years have really brought back the wild salmon.

Yesterday was a  big grocery shopping morning, and another cooking day - my first experience with a new table stop Weber using the indirect cooking technique. The clone recipe for chicken El Pollo Loco was great, but I had to brown it under the broiler because the charcoal heated up faster than the 1/2 hr that the Weber instructions said. It was definitely worth the trouble of putting together the new barbecue and everything else that went into it. Next time will go better and quicker! In fact, I've already decided to do barbecue shrimp next time, using an Emeril Lagasse recipe which I found on the Internet this morning.

Between those activities and regular household and garden chores, there was no time to get into the studio to put more things away.

Our dining room chandelier, according to Lighting Direct is on it's way from Illinois. All I can say is "let there be light!", and soon!

Handyman hasn't been around for a couple of days. Hopefully he'll show soon to finish the few little projects in the studio and finish putting together my outdoor potting table. So much of my organizing  is being held up for these last few jobs.

We're leaving here in a bit for another Lowe's hardware run for paint samples and a bunch of other things. When we get back I should get some studio organizing time before we head to our sons for wood fired pizza. I might even leave early to get in some fishing. The salmon are running now and I have a brand new Weber Smoky Mt. smoker that I'm eager to test on either smoked trout, salmon or steel head. 

My clay and underglazes should be here in another week or so and I'm hoping that the studio will at least be ready enough to throw some test tiles and batch some earthenware slips, glazes and under glazes.

Post margaritas morning

As you can see, there was a lot of time spent in the kitchen yesterday. The rest of my time was dealing with tracking merchandise we haven't yet received, like the chandelier ordered in April, that was supposed to be here late May! Then the pool man showed up to go over the system, and what's working and what's not. At this point, I wish it were a koi pond and not a pool!

One of my readers requested the recipe for the Nutty fruity sourdough, so here it is:

Nutty-Fruity Sourdough  (makes great breakfast toast)
   
    If you don't do sourdough, just use a* poolish instead*.
   
    To make the poolish, just mix *4 ounces of KAF all purpose* flour(or GM
    Better for Bread, or other similar flour), *4 ounces of cool water*, and
    *1/16 tsp of instant yeast*. Let it sit at room temp for 8 to 12 hours or
    so(16 hrs max). Use this for the 8 ounces of sourdough starter in the recipe.
   
    If your dried fruits are really dry, you may need to add  extra water to the dough.
   
    1 cup (about 8 ounces) fed sourdough starter
    1 cup water
    3/4 cup pumpernickel flour (can sub Hodgson all rye flour if you can’t find pumpernickel)
    2 1/2 cups (10 3/4 ounces) King Arthur All-Purpose Flour
    1 1/2 teaspoons salt
    1 teaspoon instant yeast
    1 1/2 cups Fruitcake Blend or the dried fruits of your choice ( I used golden raisins)
    1 cup chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, or almonds)
   
    Mix all of the ingredients (except the fruit and nuts) by hand, mixer, or bread machine till you've created a smooth, elastic dough. Because the consistency of sourdough starters vary, you may need to add a bit of extra flour or water; the dough should be medium-soft but not sticky. Add the dried fruit and nuts, kneading until they're evenly incorporated. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
   
    Turn the dough onto a lightly greased or floured surface, and form it into a fat log. Place the log into an Italian stoneware baker that's been greased on the bottom, or onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover the loaf, and let it rise for 1 hour, or until it springs back very slowly when lightly pressed.
   
If you're baking in a covered stoneware baker, place the bread into a cold oven, set the oven to 400̊F, and bake for 40 minutes. Check the bread, and bake for a bit longer, if necessary; the internal temperature should be about 190̊F when measured on an instant-read thermometer. If you're baking on a sheet pan, preheat the oven to 375̊F, and bake for 28 to 32 minutes, until the bread is brown. Remove the bread from the oven, and cool it on a rack. Yield: 1 loaf.

NOTE: I use the stoneware baker as shown in the photo. It works great for this and other breads. I use a sourdough starter which, along with the pumpernickel flour gives the bread a nice flavor. Instead of mixed fruits, I use either cranraisins or raisin. It's good either way.

Not sure how today is going to unfold other than grocery shopping which I didn't get to do yesterday because of the late visit of the pool man which was too close to our dinner time.

Right now I'm hoping this second cup of tea help me recuperate from Jim topping off my margarita glass - bad husband! :-)

The new, modified tool racks aka the command center

 It was too hot even after dinner to get on with the project of nailing up my throwing and trimming tools on this new, modified, command center (which is what Jim called my old tool unit). Because of the lack of space on that wall I had to make this design flat; but I think it should work just fine.

I need to  call the heating/cooling people and see if they can hook up the house system to the garage. If they can't then I'll have to add a separate heating and cooling unit in there. The only ventilation I can get in there is a single door to the side yard, and maybe open one of the garage doors part way. Hopefully the situation might improve a bit once we get the attic part of the garage/studio insulated.

This morning I've been busy with garden chores, email and bread making. My nutty fruity sour dough is on it's second rise and once it's baked, I need to get out and do some grocery shopping.

Since tonight's dinner is easy - nachos and margaritas, I may find some time to hang some throwing and trim tools (trying this time with some cross ventilation!)

Good night for linguini and pesto

Pesto in a sweet Brita Jepson porcelain bowl.

My little container garden is working pretty well so far. The basil is lush, so it was time to harvest some and make pesto for tonight's linguini dinner. 

The one small mint plant I put in a low wide pot about a month ago, has now filled up the pot! Mojitos can't be far away!

We've been enjoying a fairly lazy Sunday starting with a drive to our sons house to see our daughter in law and grand kids who've just come up for the summer. Wish I could have stayed and fished, but the electrician had kindly agreed to come over and fix the problem  (no power  in the back yard). It was an easy fix and while here, he also installed a couple of flood lights in the Kwan yin container corner. I can't wait to see it lit up tonight.

While I did my hand watering and dead headed all these containers flowers, Jim moved a bunch of stuff out of the garage and into our new tool shed, which will help a lot with de-cluttering the very tight garage/studio space. I thought I would get some planting in when we got back from the river, but it was way too hot out to stay out there any longer, so planting will have to wait till tomorrow morning.

Lobster one night pierogis the next

We had a great lobster/53rd anniversary dinner at our son's last night. The good host that he is, he cracked all those lobsters for everyone. We also had some lovely crab cakes and stuffed baked potatoes. To say I was a bit over served with fabulous wines is an understatement; but I'm plodding along pretty well, considering!

After breakfast this morning, I started making pierogis. The potatoes were boiling, the onions  sauteed and the dough was made and resting and so was I when I started this blog message; but George, the handyman arrived soon after I started, and I had to go over the days activities with him.

The first job of the day was to set everything up to spray insulation into the studio/garage attic space; but after hooking up and plugging in the equipment he found the unit that Lowe's loaned him was a dud, and on top of that, plugging it in caused an electrical problem and now all our outdoor lights, plugs, fountain, etc are not working; and we couldn't find the root of the problem, so hopefully the electrician will get back to us soon.

After George re-packed all the hoses, and paraphernalia for the insulation project, he put up the shelves behind my wheel, put together the  Rubbermaid tool shed and started on my outdoor potting bench.  When he was part way through, the rain came so he called it quits, but I still had to a lot more pierogis to make.

Making pierogis  took me over 6 hours but I made enough to deliver some to our son and his family for a couple of dinners and had plenty more for our freezer and tonight's dinner.

After cleanup and dinner I checked all the outlets in the studio and all is working there. I checked all the GFI's outside and none had any power. I'll let the electricians solve that problem. I shifted focus and sorted through some studio things and put others away; but that was a short, wishful, burst of energy fed only by willpower or stubbornness.

My battery needs recharging, so it's time to recline and look for something to watch on Netflix before sweet sleep.