This time I’ll blame work… We’ve lost two employees in the past 1 1/2 months. The one making the biggest impact (on me) was one of the kitchen closers who also closed out the cash register and made night deposits. We’re currently down to three people that have the right training and one is going back to college at the end of September and the other one has a year old baby and can’t close much anymore. Sigh.. 41 *scheduled* hours next week. And I seldom work less than scheduled hours…
Visited my Dad on Thursday and had the best visit since before Mom died. While he still spends a lot of time thinking about Mom and being lonely, he isn’t as depressed as he was, he’s eating better and sleeping better. I even managed to get a smile out of him during lunch.
Eileen and the boyfriend are off for the week in eastern Oregon leaving me with the house and the animals. Believe me, the cats are not happy about getting fed at 11pm when their usual mealtime is closer to 5pm. Actually enjoying the quiet and having the house to myself. They’ll be back on either Thursday or Friday of the coming week.
Anybody play around with Google Books? Since I’ve gotten the laptop and semi-regularly drag it into Portland for a little fix of Broadband, I’ve discover all kinds of interesting old books available for download. Books on Knitting, books on brewing beer and baking bread. Some big files but it’s fun to see what’s available.
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Last night we had a little weather incident. Lots of lightning, a couple of near strikes, loss of power. Computer came back up this morning, but when I got home this evening, I found that drive one of my two drive desktop system was making very nasty noises. Very nasty noises. It’s dead and the system won’t boot. But…. With a Linux rescue disk, I’ve confirmed that the second drive is good and that’s where most of my data is and as far as I can tell, all is well with that drive. Unfortunately, I can’t easily get at the drive. I’ll need to replace the primary drive and figure out a way to get to boot and access the second drive. Meantime, I’ll be using my laptop.
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I love to cook.. 
I’ve spent the whole day in the pizza kitchen cooking for other people and since I got off early tonight, I decided to cook a quick and easy dinner.
German Shepherd’s Pie… Sauerkraut, Kielbasa and mashed potatoes.
I’ve got a big pyrex casserole dish and in it I place 4lbs of a good bagged sauerkraut, drained in a colander. Mix in a nice sized bunch of green onions, sliced thin. About 3 tablespoons of brown sugar on top of the sauerkraut. I usually slice the kielbasa thick and brown the sausage than place it on top of the kraut. Then mashed potatoes spread over the top — I usually cheat and use potatoes flakes — and then Parmesan spread over top. Oven preheated to 350F and pop it in for about 55 minutes, until top is light brown and kraut is bubbling. Yum…
Eggs — Thanks to Mark Bittman and Alton Brown I can now cook the Perfect™ fried egg. The secret is low heat. On my stove, I set the burner at *about* three (range of 1-10). Heat pan for about 5 minutes and add a small amount of salted butter (salted butter provides all the salt I need for eggs). If it sizzles, it’s hot enough. If the butter starts to brown, you’ve got too much heat. I crack the eggs into little pyrex dishes we got for other purposes. This allows me to dump both eggs into the pan at the same time and no worries about broken yolks. Preset your timer to 3 minutes. Once eggs are in the pan I like a little fresh cracked pepper and place a lid on the fry pan and start timer. Don’t peek… If you’ve hit the sweet spot, you will have two perfectly fried eggs. Tender, whites done and just enough loose yolk to dip your toast into. If you didn’t hit the sweet spot, the yolks will probably be completely set, but the eggs are still pretty good and you can make adjustments the next time.
Food related — sort of… This could be the start of a hectic couple of weeks. We’ve got a young cook who is most certainly going to be fired before the start of next week. He’s one of three kitchen closers (myself and the owner’s son are the other two) and already his imminent loss has me working an 8am-6:30pm shift on Sunday. Sigh… Just when I think things are settling down… 
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(sipping a nice locally brewed beer, connected to a blazingly fast broadband connection, enjoying a quiet Thursday afternoon)
Everyone needs a bit of Feel Good now and then. These are probably old news to a lot of folks, but they made me feel good and I thought I’d share.
Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2006 and was told in August 2007 to expect a remaining three to six months of good health. Randy delivered his “Last Lecture,” titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” at CMU on September 18, 2007. This may seem to be leading up to something just the opposite of Feel Good, but the lecture had such a positive impact on so many people (including myself) that it deserves a much broader notice. The lecture led to a book (which I have on order) and much more attention to Randy and his disease. On July 25, 2008, Randy Pausch died from pancreatic cancer at his family’s home in Chesapeake, Virginia, having moved there so that his wife and children would be near family after his death.
The Last Lecture
A bit more goofy are these videos I ran across. Matt Harding travels the world. Matt dances funny. Kids love Matt dancing funny. Just watch. It makes you feel good.
Where the Hell is Matt – 2005
Where the Hell is Matt – 2006
Where the Hell is Matt – 2008
Warning
I’m *way* behind with blog software. I’m running 2.1.x and the latest is 2.6.x. I’m going to upgrade in the next week and *hopefully* I’ll cover all possible failures, but if you come visiting and things don’t look right, take a deep breath and come back in a day or two…
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I’ve only written two posts since Mom died and I really need to start becoming more evolved in the real world and I’ve begun to get out and start doing things again.
The past two weekends have always been the highlight of the summer for me over the past 8-10 years. These are the weekends of the Great Oregon Steam-Up. First as a participant/exhibitor with Eileen’s small tractor collection and for the past three years as a volunteer in the steam powered sawmill. (That’s me in the yellow t-shirt).
Work is still taking up a huge chunk of my time, but I think that’s going to change. I’ll be 62 in March of 2009 and I can start drawing social security at that point. While it certainly won’t be enough to live on and I’ll have to continue to work some, I’ve decided that I’m going ask that my hours be cut back and I want Friday-Sunday off. That will bring me down to about 30 hours/week, but combined with what I expect from Social Security, my income will nearly double and maybe I can start enjoying my retirement.
Family. Dad took Mom’s death very hard. They would have been married 62 years in July and her death hit him emotionally and physically. He’s been moved from an independent living facility to assisted living and then back to independent living. He’s been in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and congestive heart failure. His eyesight is failing and he’s lonely. But with all that he’s actually doing better than any of us expected. With his return to independent living, he’s among his friends again, he’s at a point where he can accept the condolences of those friends and he’s the happiest I’ve seen him since the first of May.
Knitting. Not much. And don’t expect a lot of knitting content for a while. I’m not motivated enough yet. I do have a little toe-up sock that I’ve been adding stitches to over the past two months, but it’s only gained an inch of so. The little sweater is still around, but the baby it was intended for has pretty much outgrown it. Maybe a teddy bear sweater when it’s finally done.
Live in general. Much better and much happier the last month or so. Getting out regularly into Portland to my favorite brew pub, Lucky Labrador Beer Hall. I’ve got a new laptop computer with all the whizzies you’d expect, including WiFi and after years of ssllooww dialup, it’s so much fun to connect to a fast wifi connection and be able to sip beer and browse the web.
Continuing content. I’ve made a commitment to myself to post *something* at least twice a week. Probably not a lot of interest to regular readers, but still it’s something
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