It's Friday?

I was working on a birthday cake, and I'll tell you, that mother fodder (damn auto-correct) kept me up all night. So I'm off to catch up on a little REM.

But first, I'll raise my cup of hot cocoa to you. Happy day!

Sol

Clinking chai and hot cocoa (with my now tepid mocha)! Although, it'd be more of a thud with a cardboard cup. Doncha just love getting it to go on the way to work?

mother fodder, what language my dear.

Yes, a do whatever the heck we please weekend, and we started, last weekend, trying to decide how best to effect doing... nothing to the limit. He and I are surely excited for people who are doing nothing!

TGIF! And I raise my coffee mug to you all.

What a great week - my kid was accepted into a mentoring/scholarship program - she's only in 7th grade, but they follow them throughout middle/high school and if they successfully complete the program, they receive a 4-year full-ride scholarship to any public university/college in Florida.

I feel like a 10-ton burden has been lifted off of me!

Cooking? Yeah, I've had 3 marketing directors at local Dr.'s offices contact me about baking goodies for them to give to other offices this week. Looks like they may give and receive the same stuff!

So the big plan this weekend is to defrost the chest freezer and clean it out and get ready to do some heavy baking on my 5-day mini-vaycay the week of Thanksgiving.

I've been nursing a cold and a generally draggy, tired, slumpy feeling all week. Appears it will carry over into the weekend. Saturday morning I'm going to push myself out the door for a morning bike ride, unless I feel crummy in which case I might ride on Sunday. Then I need to go find a used 30" door at the local recycle building materials place, and spend the weekend making big pots of therapeutic soup while building dear daughter's darkroom in the basement. Might do two pots of soup and one demi-glace project.

A clink to everyone with my cup of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, just roasted two days ago. I keep trying different kinds and eventually had to make a list of what I liked and didn't like because I forgot, LOL.

Today I'm cleaning the bathroom and mopping the kitchen, yippee. I'm trying to keep the place spotless all the time since it's on the market and someone might want to look at it. Not that anyone has yet. (sigh)

Tomorrow I'm taking The Princess and a friend shopping for her birthday, Amanda is going along to check out the H&M at the mall in Grand Rapids. It's the first one in West Michigan and just opened on Halloween so I'm assuming it will be a madhouse.

Elery and Bud are going out to breakfast and then, with the help of Dave, working on the barn door and hopefully jacking up a beam in the bottom of the barn to replace a support. Something about old barns and shifting. Ah well...

Sunday? Who the heck knows? Elery is making some noises about smoking some venison sausage.

I do have some soup bones in the freezer I need to use up, maybe a pot of soup here, or just toss them all in the Nesco and can broth.

Annie

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is my all time favorite. Do you like it? Bold but smooth. Not a bite to it.

Tomorrow is Meredith birthday....27 years old ! How did that happen? Many of you will recall her in high school and university!

She is coming up this weekend along with her very best friend (since Grade 6) and their two guys.

Saturday Clive is going to help Meredith's BF put his boat to bed, ya think it's time! The girls want to make Christmas cookies, so that will be fun.

Herself has requested Lasagna for dinner, so that's what we'll have along with Woodie's Caesar Salad and Woodies, Gilroy Garlic bread.....Tiramisu for dessert. Some day remind me to tell you my homemade Ladyfinger saga!

Sunday she wants me to "help" her make a big batch of spaghetti sauce for her freezer..

Not quite clinking time...but getting close!

TGIF!

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe sounds great - I loved Ethiopian coffee when I used to drink coffee, but now I will toast with my cup of English Breakfast Tea. Like John, I am still a bit sick, but I do not have a cold - just a slight fever and aching all over, especially my sinuses. I was hoping to be able to clean out the garage this week-end, but I don't think I will have the energy for that unless Kevin wants to do most of the work, and he might not be up for it. Other plans included going to see Maartje to get some frozen fish and also appliance shopping. I might be up for a bit of shopping. I want to see what the freezers look like in person before I make any decisions.

I wish I felt up to doing more housework - I need to get my bedroom/office area more organized. I have my desk in my bedroom (which supposedly is a major no-no), but I have it in front of a 6 foot wide window overlooking the back yard. The fountain is right in the middle of my view, but I keep the drapes partially closed if I am using my computer, as the back yard is very sunny and the window faces SW.

Lars

Pat, I just came back because I realized that I didn't congratulation your daughter. Good for her, I hope she completes that program and gets her college scholarship, that's a very big (and expensive) deal.

John and Lars, I hope you feel better soon.

Lars, definitely look at freezers before you buy them, I'm not good at "visualizing" things. I need to open doors, reach into the backs or bottoms of appliances. Elery's upright has door shelves which are too narrow to really store anything at all, so that's pretty much wasted space. I realize it was meant for ice cream cartons, frozen toppings, boxes of vegetables but I don't use any of those things so it doesn't work as well for me. I'm kind of thinking maybe I should put the quarts of apple cider in the door space, a quart jar is just about all that fits there and I could use the indoor freezer room for other things.

Sharon, happy birthday to Meredith, enjoy the cookie baking and spaghetti sauce making.

Robin, I have been enjoying the Ethiopian coffee very much. My favorite so far has been the Costa Rican and Columbian, but I've also like the Rwandan, the Hawaiian (not Kona, but I don't remember what it was), and the Indian Mysore. I didn't care for the Mexican, the Brazilian and the Guatamalan, they all tasted like dirt. Um, I mean earthy, LOL.

Diane, stop working so hard, sheesh. Boy, retirement isn't as boring as we'd imagined, is it?

Annie

TGIF all. I get the whole weekend off and it's snowing. Which means I can hide out at home and put off dealing with ucky roads and the new crop of neighbors who think they can live on a mountain and drive old boat sedans with bald tires.

It's a 'do nothing' weekend here too. Thinking the closets need to be cleaned out. And, lol, Annie....I will be canning broth, too. I found a bunch of containers of chicken broth in the freezer. And beef soup bones, but winter is young...I'll get to them.

Congrats, Pat! I'll bet you are proud. The Kid made it through school with no student loans and a very small "loan" from us, so I get your relief.

Chase, I do remember... Liana is just a year older. I'm not sure how it happened either, lol.

Lots of the crud going around here. Get well Lars and John, and stay well everyone else.

Clinking with a glass of two buck chuck and getting ready to dive into a plateful of Stacked Enchiladas.

Rob, if I told you, I'd be contributing to the delinquency of a dear friend, and I won't have that on my conscience. Truth be told, I'm not really bad, I just spell that way.

Pat, congratulatory hugs are in order for your daughter. How proud you must be.

Happy Birthday Meredith!

The weekend looks promising. The guys and I went out on the town, did a little shopping and had a lot of laughs.

Sol

Pat, I too wanted to add my congratulations! Good job for your daughter, I hope it all comes to fruition! I'm sure your fine example set the mark!
Sharon, I find it hard to believe that Meredith's that old! Then again, I find it hard to believe that my kids are as old as they are too! Congrats to Meredith! How nice that she wants to include you in her weekend plans!!
My weekend is errands, bbq shopping (another thread) and dinners with friends! TGIF and clinking with a glass of water!

I felt worse this weekend, but my friend and I went riding Sunday morning anyway. We met at 7 am at a Starbucks in the Pearl District and headed west and uphill. As we rode more, I felt better - it wasn't a "game on" day, but I didn't feel so under the weather.

Some scientists did an experiment which involved having healthy young people (undergraduates, of course) do treadmill and stationary bike tests, then giving them common colds and repeating the tests in the sick state. It turns out that there was very little difference in the subjects' physical abilities when they were sick versus healthy. They felt sucky but could run or bike almost as well as before.

Anyway, I'm going to finish making my chicken soup today and hopefully that will be curative.

Here is the St Johns' bridge, the prettiest bridge in Portland.

Riding bicycle, nice way to spend a weekend John.

I have a better way. My motorized electric bike is almost done. Everything tested good, just need to package the components a little better. I thought I could finish this weekend.

dcarch

Looking good John! What a beautiful bridge, it appears to be a great day in Portland. Feel better soon!

Chicken rice soup was great, I made a big pot and it was all gone by nightfall.

Made the stock from the chicken carcass, 1 hour in the pressure cooker, done as the meat was roasting. I diced the carrots, celery, and chicken breast into neat little cubes, and it really looked cute. Cooked some arborio rice in chicken stock and held it on the side, to be added to each bowl of soup at service (the rice gets mushy if left in the pot of soup).

dcarch, that bike looks interesting. I have also seen e-bikes where the motor drives the crankset through an additional chainring, which allows the bike's gearing to act as the motor's transmission. Of course, your legs then have to pedal with the motor, so it is a more "active" sort of e-bike.

Supposedly e-bikes are getting popular here in Portland, but I almost never see any on the roads. It makes a lot of sense for heavily loaded bikes - cargo bikes, bikes hauling kids and groceries.

The type I'm most interested in use the motor as an intelligent assist - the bike senses if you are pedaling, and adds motor power to the human power in a constant proportion. The principle is sort of to simulate a very strong rider, rather than an electric moped. There is also a "stealth" system called the Gruber Assist that hides the battery and motor in the bicycle's seat tube, and drives the crank through a bevel gear on the bottom bracket, for an invisible and relatively light installation. But, reports say, the noise of the motor gives it away in actual use.

This post was edited by johnliu on Mon, Nov 18, 13 at 10:38

John, Electric bike is very practical, when you use the bike to go to work, you don't want to get all sweaty. When you go home after work you can bike all you want for exercise.

The difficulty in building mine is to have a 10 speed bike like a normal bike, with or without the motor assisting. The wheel needs to be able to free-wheel going downhill and you can paddle to assist the motor on extremely steep hills. Of course there is an electronic throttle to vary the speed of the motor.

dcarch