Homemaking

by

A Shattering Morning

This morning, a careless swipe of the elbow sent my French press to the floor where it shattered into a million pieces. I’ve never taken any special care with it. When traveling in the RV, it just goes into the sink and rolls around in there.

One of the most common misconceptions about RV living is that it doesn’t allow for anything fragile. Well, I use fine china, ceramic, porcelain, and glass in my RV kitchen and I have never had anything break as a direct result of living and traveling in an RV. I don’t do anything special in storage either. My dishes get stacked in the cupboards just the way they did in my fixed home. I just don’t see a need to put padding between the pieces. The only concession I make for my mobile lifestyle is that I use shelf liner to keep the items from sliding around.

So, my French press was gone this morning and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. I let coffee brew in one cup, poured it carefully into another to leave as many grinds as possible behind, rinsed out the cup with the grinds, and then repeated the procedure thrice. It worked and the coffee was delicious, but that was tedious! Needless to say, a new French press was in order!

I had gotten my French press at the Winners in Thunder Bay back in the fall of ’08. Since then, I have casually looked at the selection of French presses available, thinking that I might want to upgrade to a bigger model since mine only makes a single mug of coffee. I’ve discovered that the small size is actually pretty rare. So when I went to Walmart this evening and saw that they had only the larger style (4 to 6 cups, which is actually two or maybe three mugs) and it was competitively priced at $20 I decided it wasn’t worth my effort to shop around. The bigger one isn’t going to be as easy to sneak into an overnight bag, but it’ll be nice to only have to heat water once on the weekend when I usually have two cups of coffee.

The loss of my little French press is irksome in that I had its use down to a science, knowing exactly how much coffee and water to add and how long to steep. I’m hoping that my proportions will stay the same and that the size of the vessel won’t matter for those days when I just want one cup.

I can’t wait to get back to my RV and its cushioned vinyl flooring!

by

Downtime

I have no transcription this weekend and I have decided to take a couple of days off. I might do a bit of Squidooing tomorrow, but today is all about fun. I spent some time in bed this morning with my iPad, checking email, watching Youtube videos, and organizing ebooks. I can’t wait for my case to arrive so that I can hold the iPad more comfortably.

The ebook organization project is going to take some time, but I am absolutely in love with the iBooks app, much to my surprise. I thought it would be a propriety Apple app, but nope. I can put any EPUB books on it. I’ve been reading ebooks on my iPod Touch since I got it, but iBooks makes ebooks look and feel like real books. My only quibble with it is that the in-book search function is terribly slow.

Here is a snapshot of part of my Sci-Fi/Fantasy collection:

Isn’t that lovely to browse through?

Now, let’s see… What am I in the mood for?

This is a page from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Noticed that I have a bookmark noting a page I go to often, that I highlighted my favourite passage from the book, and that there is a little sticky in the margin indicating that I have a note there.

Imagine if I had had this technology when I was downsizing my library! I got rid of so many annotated books that I just couldn’t make space for. I could have gotten e-copies of a lot of those and painstakingly transcribed my annotations into e-format.

I’ve been wanting to go digital for quite some time now and I think that the iPad will allow me to do that. My goal for 2012 is to not bring any more hard media, like DVDs and books, into the rig. I’ve done a complete conversion to digital for music, so I don’t think my goal is unrealistic.

Well, it’s about seven out there, perfect weather for spending time in the rig, so I’m going to assuage my homesickness for a bit and go get an early start on my spring cleaning. Yes, I consider this a fun project! 🙂

by

Another "No Update" Update

I just survived another rent collection day. I can’t believe I only have three left! Even though I will have ultimately spent a year in Lethbridge, it really doesn’t feel that way since I’ve changed location and circumstances.

I’m having fun working on the route I’ll take in the fall, trying to cram in as many states I haven’t been to as possible. I’d like to be able to hit about half of them going east and then the other half when I come back west. And then I’ll just have to schedule a trip to Hawaii. 😉

For those who are curious, these are the States I still haven’t set foot in:

1) Alabama
2) Arkansas
3) Hawaii
4) Idaho
5) Iowa
6) Kansas
7) Kentucky
8) Louisiana
9) Mississippi
10) Missouri
11) Nebraska
12) New Mexico
13) Ohio
14) Oklahoma
15) South Dakota
16) Tennessee
17) Texas
18) Utah
19) Wyoming

I think it’d be easy to figure out a round trip circuit that would include all of these States except Hawaii as they are all clustered together. I’ve basically done the entire east and west coasts, New England, and the states around the Great Lakes, plus Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. That leaves me most of the midwest (including Wyoming), the southwest (including Utah), and the south.

“I can’t wait to get back on the road again”

The weather here is still surprisingly decent. We had a nasty snow storm on Wednesday, but it’s since warmed up (all I needed today was my fleece sweater). That said, this is my least favourite weather: it warms up during the day so everything melts… and then it gets frigid at night and everything freezes. Can we say slick?

Miranda is doing well. I haven’t measured the temperature inside her with just the one heater, but we haven’t really hit frigid yet except for a couple of nights. I’ve lived in her in this kind of weather with just the one heater and been comfortable, so I’m not worried about anything at this point. I do keep hoping for free daylight hours in warmish weather to get some work done in her. I’d like to take advantage of the rig being cat-free to do a really thorough deep clean and de-furring before the spring.

That is all at my end. I’ve had a very long day and have no transcription so collapsing into a muddle of exhaustion sounds good to me right now.

by

Starting to Feel Like a Routine

This was my fifth weekend in a row of powering away at a transcription project. It was also another weekend of breaking the tedium on Saturday by going to dinner at Jody and Gary’s. I decided after taking just a single bit of The Most Amazing Club Sandwich I Have Ever Eaten that they are going to have to follow me around so Gary can cook for me every night. 🙂 His shrimp minestrone was also delicious, and the leftovers much appreciated for lunch today!

(Are there any single RVing guys out there who cook? I’m available! 😀 )

I like that I’ve had the discipline every weekend to get the work done by Sunday dinner, so I have time to make a nice meal or go out for one, and then spend the evening unwinding to give me a semblance of a break before starting all over on Monday.

Tonight, I’m making something I haven’t had since Dawson (!!!), pasta with vegetarian ground. The sauce is ready but the water stubbornly refuses to boil. I can’t believe how long I put up with an electric stove in my housebound life! I have timed things and discovered that I can boil water and cook the pasta on my propane stove in the time it takes to just boil the water on the electric stove!

So, not much to report, again, but I’ve learned that if I don’t post regularly I get an ‘are you alive?’ email from my mother. 😀

by

I Have to Admit I Kind of Miss This Weather…

By early afternoon, I was halfway through the work I had to do today and my chores were just about caught up. The sky was that crystal blue shade that screams “It’s bloody cold out here!” But it was so sunny that Outside called me, whispering my name enticingly. I decided I’d earned a long lunch break, so I bundled up and headed out into that bracing air.

Aaaaaaaaah. There is nothing like a dry cold with the snow crunching underfoot and a blinding sun overhead. I set off at a fast gait, planning to hit Value Village, a dollar store, and Subway where I would grab lunch.

My cheeks must have been rosy red when I got to my first destination! I then rediscovered the joy (not) of shopping after going for a long walk in cold weather; let’s just say you start peeling off the layers one by one! I found what I came for (a neutral-coloured wool blend cardigan) and what I’ve been looking for for ages (a light green pashmina shawl), both at bargain prices. Woohoo! The dollar store had a good brand of shoe polish on sale for $1 each and I’ve been needing some brown polish, so that was my next stop. I paid $5 for the same brand of polish in black at Walmart in the U.S. a few months ago! Then came a yummy Subway lunch. I just love their sandwiches.

I got in around 2:15, spun a load of laundry and hung it, got the last load (including my new purchases) soaking, and sat back down at the computer. I alternated transcribing, finishing laundry, and preparing dinner, and finally finished my day around 7:30, a small price to pay for getting some fresh air and exercise this afternoon!

This cold weather isn’t going to last. We’ve already started to climb back up, will hit plus three tomorrow, and are racing towards a high of plus ten midweek.

I’m curious about the week ahead. I’m either going to have very little work because of the U.S. Thanksgiving or I’m going to be swamped because I’m the only Canadian on the team…