thanksgiving photos

As always we had a full house and lots of food.



I patched this picture together to get everyone in.

 



The finished deep fried turkey




Burk lowers the Creole butter injected turkey into the hot oil.


 In addition to Burk's turkey Dorothy baked one that had soaked in brine over night, plus we had ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, hot rolls, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and green beans wrapped in bacon, broccoli rice casserole, plus fruit salads, a peanut butter cake and pies (pecan, custard, pumpkin, and strawberry rhubarb.

The counter I made held lots of food, but.......




.....we had an extra table and some dishes were left on the stove top.

After spending the day cooking and looking after the needs of our family Dorothy and Kelly left at 7:00 pm to get an early start on black friday shopping. Dorothy came back home at 8:30am Friday morning with a car full of stuff the purchase of which, she assured me, saved us lots of money.

autumn evenings

Autumn evenings provide the most spectacular light shows.

pipe dreams

One huge pipe + five kids = a long afternoon of play

quote of the day

Beware the fury of a patient man

--John Dryden 

school lunch



I ate lunch with Hunter at his school. Here he is at the head of the chow line.



After school we picked up all the kids and went to the ice cream shop

stool specimen

Here it is

another project

Dorothy's been thinking about Thanksgiving and how we're going to serve all the people that will share our table.  She's been wanting a built in counter top with cabinets below in the dining room I built three years ago. (Has it been that long?)  So, I made something that we can make do with until we can have that built.

We'll have a couple of crock pots on this counter plus several other dishes and the line will form at that far end and proceed into the kitchen. I think we'll have enough room. I still have to do some sanding and painting.  I'll take another photo when it's loaded with food.

quote of the day

Too many parents raise their kids to go to school, earn good grades, and get a good job. This not a formula for living rich. The rich teach their kids to be owners. The middle class teach their kids to be employees.


--David Bach

quote of the day

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.



--Graham Greene

almost done

Here are the pieces glued and screwed.



I added these hinges along the bottom edge of the step that meets with the stool.




Then I attached the hinges to the corresponding part on the stool.




Here's a wider view.




This is what it looks like when it's not in use.




Need something on the top shelf? Simply flip the step down and step up.

Now I'll sand and paint and apply non-skid tape to the top of the steps and it will be done.

project progress report

Here's how far I got today. By tommorrow the glue will have dried and I can continue to sand, put a few more parts together and it should be paint ready in a couple of days.

quote of the day

The foolish man seeks happiness at a distance. The wise grows it under his feet.


--Robert Oppenheimer

project

The other day Dorothy mentioned that she would like to have a step stool. She is vertically challenged and it is hard for her to get to the top of the cabinets. I've been meaning to make one for her for a long time.  I have some  scraps of 3/4" plywood that should have been added to the burn pile but I salvaged them and started  the project.

The last couple of days I've been measuring and cutting and sanding.  Here's the project so far. I'll post a new photo of my progess every day or so.

quote of the day

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.


--Joseph Campbell

what i'm reading now

Not long ago I read a magazine article about Pat Conroy, one of my favorite authors. Accompanying the article was a list of books that had influenced him the most.  Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll was on the list. I bought the book because I'm always curious as to how literature affects people. It was a good story. The narrator had issues regarding his relationship with his father and I think Mr. Conroy did too, and it shows in his fiction (The Great Santini).  In this story an English teacher takes a leave of absence to travel to Galen, MO to do research for a biography he plans to write about his favorite children's author, whose books  had helped him get through childhood. Strange things begin to happen in this tale that blends Alfred Hitchcock's suspense with Rod Serling's otherworldliness.

quote of the day

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.


--Graham Greene

hard freeze

The sun is just coming up over the hills and lighting the tops of the trees. The pasture is white with frost. Twenty three degrees. We're moving fast into winter.

quote of the day

A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.

--Chinese proverb

what i'm reading now

This is a gem I found at a yard sale. Blackberry Winter is the autobiography of Margaret Mead. Published in 1972 it is an account of her life up to the second World War. She reveals her family life, upbringing, and influences that shaped the direction of her career. I found the narrative about her studies in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali very interesting, but toward the end she shares her thoughts about being a grandparent and I found that intriguing.  Here are a couple of paragraphs that I thought were especially cogent:

"In the presence of grandparent and grandchild, past and future merge in the present.  Looking at a loved child, one cannot say, 'We must sacrifice this generation for the next.  Many must die now so that later others may live.'  This is the argument that generations of old men, cut off from children, have used in sending young men out to die in war. Nor can one say, 'I want this child to live well no matter how we despoil the earth for later generations.' For seeing a child as one's grandchild, one can visualize that same child as a grandparent, and with the eyes of another generation one can see other children, just as light-footed and vivid, as eager to learn and know and embrace the world, who must be taken into account--now."

and this:

[The human unit of time can be defined as] "the space between a grandfather's memory of his own childhood and a grandson's knowledge of those memories as he heard about them. We speak a great deal about a human scale; we need also a human unit in which to think about time."