Nothing Happens At Ten

First Tomato is Ripe!

Posted on August 5, 2017 by kimerer_brian

We have our first ripe tomato of the season!

Yum

but thanks to the bunny….. it looks like that.

We are starting to sympathize with this guy,

Wascally Wabbit

I think that we might cut the bunny spit off of the tomato and eat it anyway.

Yuk.

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Got Another One

Posted on July 4, 2017 by kimerer_brian

We caught another one in the trap, but this bunny turned out to be a ‘possum.

'Possum fer sure

Off we go to the woods again.

Hikin'

These suckers are fast. This guy is just a blur.

Blur

‘Possum is such a cool word. Like in the song…..

'Possum in a 'Simmon Tree
Raccoon on the groun'
Raccoon says, "You son-of-a-gun.
Shake some 'simmons down".

What makes it cool is the ‘postrophy. That tune has ‘postrophe’s all through it.

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Bench

Posted on June 23, 2017 by kimerer_brian

This blog has been quiet recently because I have been busy building a bench to put in the mud room to have something to sit on while we change our shoes.

Since we first moved into the house, we have had a makeshift “bench”, of sorts.

That is not a bench

Those are our patio chairs.

Now that I have retired, I have finally found time to build a proper bench. Here it is.

That's a bench

Of course, since I am a bit crazy, I dovetailed the whole thing together.

Dovetails

I think I am warming up to this retirement thing.

Hmmmm.. I am feeling a need to spend more time in our patio chairs now…. out on the patio.

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Back From Maine

Posted on June 18, 2017 by kimerer_brian

We just got back from another vacation in Maine. It was a good trip, with the usual strange glitches…. for example the surprise side trip to Rio.

Here is the story behind the Rio trip.

One night, I woke up in the dark and wondered what time it was. So I picked up my watch and tried to turn on the back light to see the time. I pushed every button I could think of to turn on that light. No matter what I did, I could not get the light to come on, so I put it back on the night stand and went back to sleep.

When I woke up early the next morning, the watch thought we were in Rio.

Rio?

The time was wrong too.

I had to use my new Smart Phone to download the instructions for the watch in order to put us back in Maine.

And then, there was the mouse in the car. Who ever gets a mouse in their car?

On Saturday morning we noticed on the way out to walk the breakwater that “somebody” had shredded the tissues we left in the car and made a nest out of them. We assumed that it was a mouse. The innkeepers loaned us their shop vac to clean up the mess, and we scoured the inside of the car for an hour looking for that mouse. We did not find it. We had the cleanest car in 7 states, and no signs of a mouse. So we figured that it had run away.

Just to be safe, the innkeepers loaned us a mouse trap to put in the car. Take a gander at this thing.

It has teeth.

Yikes! That has teeth! Is it just me, or does that trap bear a spooky resemblance to the cartoon trap I drew in my previous post?

Anyway, that trap means business. And, in fact, the next morning we found the miscreant mouse expired in the jaws of the trap. I will spare you the trauma of seeing the photo of the hapless creature with its paws in the air, but the trap solved the mouse problem.

As I said, other than some strange side trips, the Maine trip was good. Here’s a photo of the view from the Inn.

The View

Not bad.

Posted in Cheap Philosophy, Miscellaneous | Comments Off

Trap!

Posted on May 30, 2017 by kimerer_brian

Remember the cute little bunny in my previous post? You know, the one who was rumored to have been eating the flowers?

This guy.

Bugs

Well, somebody said the word “Trap“, and this image immediately popped into my head.

Havadeath

But then, in the end, this is what showed up.

Havahart

That is a Havahart® trap. All this trap does is close the door on the critter. It doesn’t eat him.

After a few days of the tricky bunny making off with the goodies and leaving the trap open, we finally snagged him.

Gotcha!

So, off we went… up the road ,around the corner, across Main Street, half way to New Hampshire (well OK halfway to the next town)….. to the conservation area.

Takin' a walk

And we let the little guy go. He took off like a bunny.

Run, Rabbit

See him?

Gone

Looks like there is a lot of grass to eat out there.

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More Bread

Posted on May 26, 2017 by kimerer_brian

I made another loaf of bread. This is a recipe that makes an open crumb artisan bread. Check this out.

The Loaf

I made that! Here is what it looks like on the inside.

Holes

Here’s a closeup so you can see the awesome holes.

Holes Again

It was yummy too.

OK. OK. Yawn! I’m posting pictures of my dinner online. Boring.

So how about a cute bunny?

Bugs

That guy is living in our back yard and eating our exotic flowers. Not our favorite bunny. Wascally Wabbit!

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Really Old Car

Posted on May 21, 2017 by kimerer_brian

I went out to the garage to put the new charger for the new phones in the car. I decided to try the charger in the accessory port to see if it would work.

Oops

Hunh? Wazzat?

Wazzat?

Yikes.

It’s like new too. Never used.

I guess I’ll leave it in there since there isn’t any other cover on the port.

Now, that’s an old car.

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Bread

Posted on May 17, 2017 by kimerer_brian

Today, I made a loaf of bread.

The Bread

I have been studying better techniques for making artisan bread at home. I am all into autolyse and gluten and oven spring…..

Of course, I picked the very best day of the year to turn on the oven and bake something for a couple of hours, as our thermometers confirm.

Tempa

Somebody stop me.

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Smalt

Posted on May 9, 2017 by kimerer_brian

“Smalt”. That is a really cool word. It is the name of a paint color that I just found.

Smalt

The original Smalt is made from ground up Cobalt Glass. This paint is called “Smalt Hue”, which means that it is the same color as Smalt, but the actual pigment is not really Cobalt Glass.

Smalt is the color that I was looking for to use in my new painting palette. I have been devising a new palette using muted colors, and I was having trouble finding a blue that would fit. Red was easy, moving from Cadmium Red to Burnt Sienna. Yellow was easy too, going from Lemon Yellow to Yellow Ochre. But blue is blue is blue. Blue is in-your-face.

Then I was out at the Golden Paint* web site, and I found Smalt. It seems to be close to what I was looking for, and is slightly less in-your-face blue than Ultramarine, Prussian, or even regular Cobalt Blue. We shall see how it behaves on the canvas.

*I use Golden paints, but I am not selling them. I paid full retail $$$ for that tube of paint. But they do have a very interesting web site where you can interactively mix their paints and see what they look like.

http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer

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