ahedderick - Tumblr blog

[ahedderick]

Screenshot from a realty website for the town nearest me. The housing crisis is very real, but there are also houses sitting unsold in rural areas because more people move away from this county than move in. If I had searched the whole county instead of just the town, I'm guessing the median value would be a bit lower. "Median" btw, is a good measure for this sort of thing, if you ranked the listings from lowest to highest, median is the value right in the middle.

[ahedderick]

[ahedderick]

The best name for a pet groundhog is Dostoevsky.

[ahedderick]

Joe, we miss you already

Yesterday was the last day for Joe's Viaduct Café in town. It had been open for 70+ years. I HATE when that type of small business closes down. They had a total of 9 tables. The dining area was smaller than my living room. Parking was no problem, because they had more spaces in the lot than they did tables. They were right alongside the railroad tracks. Two sets of tracks, now that I think about it. The food was plain but good.

[ahedderick]

Home Farm

Ok, the wellhouse issue . . and a disturbing intermittent electrical glitch. Those are. Things to deal with.

But a new house issue that my Son is dealing with in living there is a territorial cardinal who want to claim the little tree in front of the bay window. Which means the Other Cardinal he can see in the window Has to Go.

Cue Son getting waked up every morning by a furious bird bonking into the window. Fight you! FIGHT YOU!!

Bless all the folks who post really nice photos of just about everything to the internet for free use. I was able to print off a life-size screech owl this morning. That, posted right up against the inside of the window, might make the Red Dipshit back off.

"Bring it on, feather boy!"

[ahedderick]

Babey!

Sashimi variety cucumber, Johnny's Select Seeds

[ahedderick]

M'aidez!

[ahedderick]

Boy, I am not in a great place mentally this evening. However, there are flowers blooming (ridiculously early) and birds singing.

I hope we all have a good and gentle May.

[ahedderick]

Brushes are cleaned, I'm going to go cry a bit.

I was a fool! To try this! Will try more tomorrow.

College Campus

Ok, folks, I'm knuckling down to work on a painting.

I started with this last week, and put most of the sky in. Today I need to refine that and start building. Roofs, at least. Some grass? Help.

[ahedderick]

Oof.

The unrefined sky, starting point today,

V-e-r-y slow progress. But it is progress! Jeez that building has a complicated roof.

College Campus

Ok, folks, I'm knuckling down to work on a painting.

I started with this last week, and put most of the sky in. Today I need to refine that and start building. Roofs, at least. Some grass? Help.

[ahedderick]

College Campus

Ok, folks, I'm knuckling down to work on a painting.

I started with this last week, and put most of the sky in. Today I need to refine that and start building. Roofs, at least. Some grass? Help.

[ahedderick]

Learn something everyday

Welp, I spent the last 50 years thinking that "stock cars" were fancy hot-rods because any time I ever heard someone SAY stock car it was in the context of hotrodding, car shows, etc. Then, last night my son mentioned something about his own, slightly modified car "when it was stock" and I saw a post on here about the roots of Nascar/hotrodding as 'modifying stock cars' and. It turns out. That 'stock cars' are the normal ones. Which, perhaps, everyone knew but me.

Just a funny thing to realize after thinking of the term wrong for decades and not being a very car-oriented person to begin with.

but wait:

So, the term seems to be used somewhat flexibly, and usually in the context of a car that has been souped up. So I wasn't totally wrong, just didn't know the origin.

[ahedderick]

Spring garden

This weekend my husband and I were looking at the garden, a little disappointed with how small the (usually fast-growing) plants are. Then we had two rather nice, warm days, Sunday and Monday. BOOM, when I went out this morning the little guys seemed like they had doubled in size in just that time! I need to do some weeding. If carrots get overtaken by weeds earl-on, it seems like they really get stunted by it.

But I should also paint. hmmm.

[ahedderick]

Duolingo's Hungarian module has peaked; there can never be a finer sentence than this.

Reblog if nagyon fáradt vagy!

[ahedderick]

WELL IT TOOK A WHILE and the guy I was dealing with was just so gosh-darned weird about it, but . . I was able to retrieve the missing paintings today. Do not know why he felt like being such a butt about it. I haven't seen them in years, at this point, so it's neat to look at them again. I really can't believe none of them ever sold.

Drat

Oh, drat. In late fall of 2019 I was invited to show artwork (for sale) in one of the buildings at a large, lovely retreat center nearby in Pennsylvania. I had known the guy who runs the center for a couple years; he told me that they would handle any sales and send me a check, much like a gallery. In return they got decoration for their extremely plain building, which sounded pretty reasonable. So I accepted, hung the artwork, aaaand then 2020 punched us all in the gut.

The retreat didn't open their doors again for quite a while, and by that point I was ass-deep in alligators with end-of-life care for my father. The guy who had made the original invitation retired, and it took me a while for that issue to come to the top of my "issues to deal with" pile.

Last spring I sent an email to the general address of the organization, just checking in, and got a rather terse response back that they still had the artwork; I could pick it up if I wanted it or it could stay there. Since summer is their busy season, I figured it wouldn't hurt to let it stay there a little while longer. However, at this point in 2024, I thought it would probably be better to go ahead and take the display down.

My husband and I had time to run over there this afternoon, and I called ahead to be sure the building would be open and the Guy in Charge was expecting me. All was fine, until we actually got there and found only four paintings. I knew there had originally been 8 - 10, but I didn't know which ones or exactly how many were missing. Instead of tracking down The Guy (it is a very big area) I came home and looked up my records of what I took down there.

Now I have to write a polite email to Guy and let him know that someone sometime must have moved four paintings (I could see they'd changed some things around in the room and they would have to have moved them to get that big new cabinet in there). Where? Are they now? Sir? and I will send images of the missing ones to jog his memory.

Argh.

[ahedderick]

Cake

This is one of those 'take a box cake mix and make it something else' recipes. Damn, is it good.

1 can crushed pineapple

1 can cherry pie filling

1 pkg yellow cake mix

1 stick butter

chopped pecans (or any other nuts!)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Get a 9x13inch baking pan. Spray it with baking spray, then:

Dump in the pineapple & juice. get it spread evenly.

Dump in the cherry pie filling

Dump in the dry cake mix

sprinkle with chopped nuts

thinly slice the butter and dot it as evenly as possible over everything

In the oven for 40 - 45 minutes. You can't effectively test it for done-ness like a cake, because it is rather gloopy even when it's done. Let cool at least a bit before cutting. This is hard because it smells so good. Enjoy!

(Can you make it chocolate cake mix? You can do whatever you want forever! Let me know how it turns out.)

[ahedderick]

you’re outside, the moon has just fully eclipsed the sun, and you hear me yell in anguish. you look over and watch, horrified, as the sleeves on my “sun’s out, guns out” shirt start to rematerialize