Author: Dackel Princess

And So The Weekend Ends

My new cell phone battery arrived in the mail on Saturday. I put it in the phone, charged it up and yahoo, my phone now works the way it once did. Meaning that I can talk on my cell phone for more than 15 minutes without it going dead.

Even better than the way this new battery works, is the fact that I got it for $9.99, including shipping and it arrived in less than 10 days! My cell phone company (who I do love), wanted $39.99 for this little battery!

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I managed to clean out our front hall closet in one day. This closet contained:
1. Our old record collection. Three large heavy boxes of LP’s!
2. Two fish bait buckets.
3. A tackle box.
4. Three wooden ice fishing line sets.
5. Various fishing poles.
6. A box of Reel to Reel tapes.
7. My collection of cassette tapes.
8. An amplifier from the 1960’s.
9. Half a dozen small throw pillows.

I’m not sure how all that stuff got into that closet. It just sort of happened over time. I decided that I was taking back my closet and so I removed this stuff, and put it down into the basement. I will deal with the basement in another life, but at least my front hall closet is clean and I can actually put coats, and boots into it.

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I tried a new recipe for Bratkartoffeln. Bratkartoffeln is sautéed potatoes with onions and bacon. It came out really well and we enjoyed it with the pork chops I cooked for dinner tonight. The recipe is below for the potato dish.

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Today I pruned my tomato plants back. They are still in the green house and believe it or not, still have tomatoes on them!

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I also helped Hubby to rake leaves, and played a little ball with Greta and Fritz.

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Greta has been eating and sleeping more each day. I’m hoping this is a sign that she is, in fact, pregnant.

Sleepy Greta

When I was in the kitchen cooking I heard a noise and looked down and there she was with her dog dish in her mouth waiting for me to notice her and fill the dish!

Bratkartoffeln – German-Style Sautéed Potatoes

Difficulty: Very easy

Chef’s Note
I used to cook the potatoes before, now I do not. I peel them rinse them well in cold water and then slice them in half and then slice from one end to the other, about an eighth of an inch. I let the potatoes soak in cold water.

Ingredients

4-6 potatoes
4 slices smoked bacon, cooked until crisp and broken up (set aside)
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of oil
Salt and pepper
Parsley (optional)

Preparation

1. peel, slice and set aside potatoes;
2. in large skillet sauté bacon drain bacon on paper towel and set aside, reserve the bacon fat in the pan;
3. Add the oil bring up the temperature again;
4. sauté the potatoes until tender and turning brown;
5. Stir the potatoes frequently;
6. when potatoes are nearly done, add onion and toss to coat;
7. sauté until onions are cooked, crumble up the bacon and then add to potatoes and onions:

Serve immediately.

A Shocking October Night

Friday scared the dickens out of me. Yes, it did, and it wasn’t even Friday the 13th. However, the weather, and the events, proved to me that perhaps any October that has a Friday the 13th in it is a month that should be avoided.

The day started dark and wet. I’d expected rain because the night before our fearless weatherman had forecast this and he is only wrong 75% of the time. So, I figured this was his day to be right.

By the middle of the afternoon the winds had picked up a little, as expected, and I was feeling as if life were going along normally.

Then shortly after 4 PM the rain started coming down in buckets. Even Fritz and Greta didn’t want to go out in that mess. We all hunkered down, dry and warm inside, that is, all but Hubby, who decided he should go out and clear the ditch on the side of our driveway.

I was killing time on the laptop computer when I heard a low, distant rumbling. It was thunder! I quickly went to the office and shut down the computers in there, came back to the family room and shut down the satellite dish. I was just turning to take care of a few more things when….. BOOM!!!!!

I jumped out of my skin! The lightning bolt had apparently hit quite close. I raced down the stairs to the garage so I could drive the car up the hill to get Hubby, but when I opened the door to the garage he was standing there sopping wet! Again I was startled!

We came back upstairs and watched and listened to the storm as it passed over us. What a brutal, violent storm it was. We could hear the wind roaring, and see the lake disappear from view due to the heavy rain.

Eventually the storm passed by. we ate dinner and then settled down to work on our computers. However, neither one of us could get online. I called tech support for our ISP and spoke with them. They could see that the cable modem was working correctly, but they couldn’t see the router! My brand new router!!! Fried! Gone in the prime of it’s young life! I had quickly shut down the computers and forgotten to turn off the router! I still had my old router so I connected that and got the system back up and running.

Hubby called our neighbor and found out that the lightening had hit their house! They’d had balls of fire running across the ceiling and a broken widow from the event! I knew it was close their house is only 100 feet away!

By 8 PM, the wind was really blowing hard. We have an anemometer, so we can read the wind speed here on our end of the lake. The wind was blowing so hard it sounded like a freight train was going through the family room. The peak gust recorded at 63 miles an hour!

It was just about this time that I started to work on Princess, and Hubby went into the office to work on his computer, when the lights went out!

Of course the laptop stayed on and gave me enough light to find a match and light a candle. Hubby got out his camping lamp and when we decided that the lights weren’t coming back on any time soon, we got the generator out and Hubby got it running. This gave us heat, water, and lights in our family room and bedroom. So while all of our area sat in darkness, we were able to watch TV.

In the light of day today, we picked up the apples off the grass where they had been blown off the trees. There are the remains of a wooden dock now resting at the town beach below us, and there are more brightly colored leaves on my patio than there are left on the trees. We also heard that another house in town was hit by lightning, and that three people were injured as a result of this strike.

This morning we removed all the window air conditioners, which means that summer is really over for us here. Tonight Mr. Weatherman announced we will get some snow on Monday!

So much for global warming!

Autumn In New Hampshire

It was just an amazing day for pictures of the lake. When we got up, Hubby noticed the reflections hitting the water. He encouraged me to get dressed and go out to take a few pictures. I jumped into my clothes, and shoes and headed out the door.

Oct 20 005

It was so quiet and cool and calm. Just as I got to the shoreline the sun poked through some clouds and hit the hillside across the lake. A birds flew overhead and I was in awe of the nature around me.

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I looked back up the hill to see our home sitting there. How pretty, I thought, up on the hill overlooking all of this. How lucky we are to have this home, and how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place.

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I was stopped from my tranquil reverie by the barks of Fritz, the wonder dog, who was watching me from out front windows. So, climbing back up the hill to our house, I was once again enveloped in the golden glow of Autumn in New Hampshire, and I smiled.

Thursday 13 #25

movie-projector

Thirteen Classic Movies I Can Watch Over And Over

1. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
2. It’s A Wonderful Life
3. Doctor Zhivago
4. An Affair To Remember
5. The King & I
6. The Sound Of Music
7. Tootsie
8. Fargo
9. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
10. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
11. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone
12. A Hard Day’s Night
13. The Wizard Of Oz

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.


Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

They say that everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon by 6 degrees. Well today I found out that this was true. I was born in 1958 and so was Kevin. Why, we could almost be twins!

Seriously, have you ever had one of those weird encounters where you are talking to someone and they happen to know someone you know, or perhaps they know someone who is once or twice removed from the person you know?

It’s the old saying, “It’s a small world”.

Recently this actually happened to me. I was sitting in a surgical waiting room passing the time back when Hubby had his second knee operation. I was speaking to a stranger about operations and such and I mentioned that I was getting a second opinion on my eye. (This was back in May before my eye surgery.)

The woman asked me all sorts of questions, the kind you don’t mind answering because you are never going to see this person again, when a woman seated on the other side of me said, “You’re going to see Dr. W. in Boston, aren’t you?”

I just about fell out of my chair. How did she know? She then explained that her husband had some very serious eye problems and had gone to this woman and she had restored his vision!

Another time, I was in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. I was standing in a line on a very hot day, feeling tired and faint, when a woman came up to me and said, “You’ve been to Falmouth, Massachusetts, haven’t you?”.

Again, you could have knocked me over with a feather. “Yes,” I replied, “How did you know?”.
“Well,” she began with a big smile, “You have on this pin,” and she gently touched the seagull pin on my lapel, “and that was made by Mr. Pannis!”
She was right. Years ago there was a silversmith in the town I grew up in who made very distinctive jewelry. This man was a true artisan and his work was never duplicated by another.

So have you had this happen to you?

Leaf Peeping, Anyone?

Monday we took some friends from Florida out to show them the Lakes area of New Hampshire. This kind of trip, done at this time of year is called “Leaf Peeping”.

It was a perfect day for it. We had bright blue skies, a warm sun and temperatures in the upper 50’s! We drove the back roads with the bright leaves all around us and just soaked up Autumn in all it’s finest!

leaf peeping

We also stopped off and had a luscious meal at a local restaurant (not Canoe). I had a very unique meal of eggplant stuffed with boursin cheese! Oh my goodness, it was a sheer delight.

We stopped at a real country store and I got some incredible cheddar cheese. It’s aged to perfection and just melts in your mouth!

We arrived back at home and said our good bye’s as they needed to go off to see other friends and family in the area. We were so happy that they stopped in though because it is always wonderful to spend time with old and good friends.

Shopping

It was shopping day for Hubby and me. This means we went down to the big city and actually went to some chain stores to buy some much needed supplies. A new wireless router, (works great and has increased my reception strength) a new mouse for Hubby’s computer, (his old one died yesterday) and a new pair of jeans for me, (my favorite’s, from LL Bean!).

We also did a big grocery shopping, which is always fun until you get home and have to put it all away.

Greta is nearly done with her heat. Thank goodness. I gave her a bath last night and put her in some fresh panties before bed. I think just a few more days and it will be over.

I really do wish it were possible to do an “Early Pregnancy Test” on Greta. The suspense is killing me! However, just think about this: me running around the back yard trying to get Greta to pee on a little stick!

Meanwhile, here is a picture of Greta that I took of her at her nap time.


Oct 14 004