The Rusty Nail

I finally had to get a goddamn kitchen scale.  Fortunately, it was cheap, because how often am I going to use the damn thing?  All my old cookbooks are written in cups and ounces.  Sometimes a recipe involving fruit will mention pounds but not translate it to cups.  None of these new ones I’m finding do that.  What does two pounds worth of figs, diced, translate to?  Four cups?  Three cups?  We’re getting a really good harvest from our fig tree this year, and I get sick of ricotta/fig/honey/walnut galettes after a while, so I wanted to make some jam.

Some of these chefs, professional or otherwise, who stream online are absolutely adamant that weight is the way to go.  My god, even in most baking it’s not essential to measure exactly, whether you weigh your flour or scoop it.  People who remove something like 1/4 tsp. to get to an exact gram weight of flour or sugar drive me nuts.

Close enough is … close enough.  Over-whipping cream enough to make butter is a bigger sin in my book than having too little sugar in your jam or banana bread.  Even if you heat your from scratch hollandaise sauce at too high a heat, and it breaks, it can be saved by whisking in another egg yolk.  If you torch something in the oven or on the grill, that’s on you, not on whatever recipe you might have been following.

As much as I enjoy cooking, some things aggravate me, and the way some recipes are written is rather high on my list.  The ones that list out ingredients, then leave out one or two of them in the instructions, mostly make me chuckle.  The ones that insist I weigh my ingredients are really annoying.

At least this damn scale can measure in pounds, ounces, grams, kilos, etc.  Once I get the conversion to cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons, I’ll just scribble it down on the recipe for future reference.  You can damn well bet that a pound of dried apple rings is going to take up more volume than a pound of chopped figs.

I had to twice “gently nudge” the woman who runs the company I hired to do the awning fabric replacement.  When “four to six weeks” after the guys came by, had measured, I picked out the fabric, and paid the deposit, headed into week seven, I started getting pissed off that there had been no communication/update in the meantime.

I was very polite with my inquiry, and she sent the guys over the very next morning.  Fine, but the feeble excuses she came up with about her lack of communication, with almost immediate scheduling thereafter screams one of the following:  1) she’s lackadaisical about her customers, 2) she keeps lousy records, or 3) she gives higher paying jobs higher priority.  Trust me, those two guys don’t do interior decorating for her, which is another part of her business.  Whatever the case, you’d think she’d want to book the revenue asap.

Thankfully, the guys did a great job, and it only took them a little over an hour.  At least, now I have a place to sit outside in the shade down by the pool.  Finally.

We noticed that our previous house was put on the market two months ago.  The realtor listing and pictures made it look like they remodeled the kitchen, and mud room, and have already moved out.  Anyway, they put it on the market for nearly twice what they paid for it, and had to chop a large amount off the asking price, then it looked like they had a contingent sale, which fell through.  So yesterday, it was put back on the market with another big price chop.

There are so many things wrong with the listing about basic stuff that did not get changed, and contradictory info between one part of the text listing and another, or the pictures.  The foundation is not, and never was “brick and mortar.”  It’s concrete block.  The house still does not have ceiling fans, going by the pictures.  It does not have “forced air heating” from that hot water baseboard that’s still there, although it does have central air conditioning.  My god, how can you fuck up a property listing that badly?

Whenever I saw a listing that contradictory when looking at house listings online, I’d have been out of there within 10 minutes after an open house, or wouldn’t have bothered going in the first place, let alone asking a realtor for a private tour.  Over the decades, I’ve dealt with five realtors to buy and/or sell.  One was really good; the others were idiots.  Unfortunately, when you move from one state to another, there’s little way of researching them, or getting referrals ahead of time.

We do most of our own property maintenance, but some things that need repair or replacement require hiring a contractor.  We’re not even halfway through the year yet, but we’ve already had three such jobs.

• fence repair
• pool opening
• awning fabric replacement

Got three estimates for the fence repair, hired one, and the job was done very efficiently and professionally, but it was like pulling teeth to get the company’s owner to give us advanced notice of scheduling so that at least one of us could be home at the time.

Scheduling the pool opening was crazy.  Forget using their website’s contact form as they want customers to do, since they never reply.  I have to call them, and make sure I get through to the only competent person there in the office.  They still can;t even give me a basic “morning or afternoon” time frame for they day they scheduled.

As for the awning fabric replacement, I made inquiries of three companies for estimates.  One of them has a website that advertises that they do awnings, and features something like 40 photos of awnings they’ve done.  The owner replied to my inquiry to inform me that they don’t do awnings, but referred me to someone else.  That “someone else” got back to me pronto.  So far, a day later, only one other company has even responded.

Trying to get an estimate from these companies is a joke.  One wants my entire property survey before even giving me an estimate for replacing fencing surrounding only three sides of an 1800 sq. ft. area with 150′ of fencing, plus a gate.  Nope.  I’m not looking to fence in my entire property, so it’s nunya biz.

Another contractor will send a guy over to measure the existing fence that I need to have replaced.  My estimate of the length needed is approximate, but not off by much.  This one seems to be more eager to get the job, but who knows.

Querying Angi is not much help.  Anyway, when a job is going to cost me more than a few hundred, I want multiple estimates/quotes/bids for the job.  This is going to cost me at least a couple of grand, if I get lucky.

My eye doctor’s office keeps calling me to make an appointment to have my cataracts checked.  I don’t have cataracts.  I have astigmatism.  If my vision wasn’t crystal clear with contact lenses, I’d know it.

My dentist’s office kept calling me to reschedule appointments during the past five years.  Offhand, I cannot recall an original appointment that didn’t get rescheduled at least once.  Last time, I outright asked “What’s the excuse this time?”  Didn’t get a sufficient answer, so I refused to reschedule the appointment.  So, they sent me a bill for x-rays that were included in what I last paid them for service on the day of.  I’m going to contest it.

What seems to be happening here is that none of these people run their own practices anymore, and are employed by corporate entities.  Those corporate entities often employ third party companies to run their billing for them.  I fire the dentist, and his employer double bills me on my way out for stuff I paid for months ago.

I ordered one of these for shits and giggles. It should be fun to use this summer, out on the patio, for picking off flies, ants, and smaller wasps or spiders.  It arrived today.

Our fireworks aren’t quite this good, but some of our neighbors’ are.

No snow on the ground today.  The last time I recall having a white Christmas was in 1968.  At least we got to build a cute snowman with rocks for eyes and a mouth, sticks for arms, and maybe a couple of holly berries for a nose.

Finally turned the radio off this morning, because all it was playing were the same dozen Christmas songs over and over, but with different singers or musical arrangements.

Now that we’re a couple of old fogies, the only presents we exchange are practical things — a Faraday bag, a new pair of pruning shears, a new pair of jeans in a hard to find waist/inseam size, and, of all things, interior floodlights, because we ran out of them.  With neighbors, the exchange is always some sort of munchies — something for the adults, and if they have kids, something they can have, too.  Our critters are too old to want to play with toys, so they get cat and dog treats, instead.

Looks like the girl next door got a new bicycle with training wheels.  Those kids are so cute, and so polite.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, even if you don’t celebrate it with anything other than “Chinese and a movie.”

Next door are two kids, 6 and 4, their parents, dad’s mom, and his grandpa.  They’re all really nice people.

Today, they brought by some Christmas cookies for us, and our missing package that was delivered to them instead of us.  In return, we gave them a bottle of wine, a pot of good cheese spread with crackers, and, for the kids, some bags of Cheetos and Cracker Jack.

They loved it.  There was something for the kids, and the adults.  “Mom” said she might not want to share the Cheetos.

Next up, the couple who lives diagonally across the highway from us.  Same swap with them for her cookies, but w/o the kiddie snacks.  She makes the best cookies, along with “haystacks.”  There’s a good chance they will pop by tomorrow.  We met them a few years ago at a Christmas party another neighbor who has since moved away invited us to attend.

We have one neighbor who we call “halfwit Kenny,” whose dad must send him outside to play with his leaf blower just to get him out of the house.  Another neighbor spies on us when we’re down in the back acres picking up branches or downing dead trees near his property line.  Those two don’t bother us, but are sort of a joke.