Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! (Or, if you're in the UK or elsewhere, Happy Thursday.)

I think we're as ready as we'll ever be to host today's dinner. The deboned turkey is flat out in the fridge, rubbed with a dry marinade that Dave made, and he'll put it in the oven later. The stock has been reduced and it's also in the fridge, ready to become gravy. The countertop is piled with potatoes, brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes, and Dave ordered canned cranberry sauce, creamed corn and marshmallows from Amazon. We have a ridiculous quantity of butter. Oh, and he got a pecan pie from Whole Foods! One of our guests is bringing two more pies, so we'll have plenty of food.

There will be eight of us -- mostly past and present co-workers of Dave's -- including two kids, who will probably stay in the living room on their iPads all afternoon.

One of Dave's co-workers, Dylan, is bringing his dog, Luna. Olga is staying home from her daily walk in solidarity. They've met each other before and get along in the way Olga gets along with most other dogs -- by ignoring them.

All I have to do is clean the house and set the table, play host, and then do all the dishes afterwards -- which will hopefully be a breeze with our newly replaced dishwasher!

Yesterday we had only a half-day of work (as a private American school, we observe the Thanksgiving holiday) and it was devoted to professional development. I attended a session about working with Google workspace, and also one on intercultural awareness that included a model I'd never seen before called the "Johari Window." It's actually a very interesting idea -- that we all have traits and characteristics that we bring to an organization, some openly acknowledged, some known only to us, some known only to our co-workers, and some known to none of us. I find the latter idea fascinating -- that our behavior is motivated partly by hidden characteristics even we don't know about or understand. We watched a four-minute video (linked above) that explains the concept.

And now, I have to go kill some mealybugs on an orchid.

(Photo: On my walk home Tuesday evening.)

The Old Hometown

Here's the autumnal view from the staff lounge at work. I've shot this scene before from different angles, but this one shows off all the cacti that have taken up residence in the window. I'm not sure where they've all come from. The one on the left has been there as long as I've worked at the school, but the others are more recent interlopers.

Mr. P reminded me that there's even more to the story about the woman who had trouble spelling diarrhea. (See yesterday's post.) I'm using the American spelling, but here in Britain they throw a completely unnecessary O into the middle of the word -- "diarrhoea." So that woman wasn't kidding when she said it was tough to spell! The British also do this with "oesophagus" and "oedema" and some other words. In general, UK spelling loves extra letters.

I was prepared for yesterday to be a busy day in the library -- it was the last day with students before Thanksgiving break and I thought they'd all want books. (Or, more accurately, that their teachers would encourage them to take home a book.) I didn't even take "Barnaby Rudge" with me to work because I figured I'd be too busy to read. But I guess the kids already checked out all their reading because with a few exceptions it was a pretty quiet day. I was bummed. I could have plowed through another 50 pages.

After work I went for a pint with some co-workers, which was a surreal experience because they all brought their little kids. The pub was positively bursting with crayons and coloring books. I stayed for one drink before coming home and watching "The Crown" with Dave.

Needless to say, this is not London! No, this picture was posted to Facebook by an old school friend of mine, and it shows my hometown, Land O' Lakes, Florida. From the cars I'm guessing it was taken in the mid-'70s, so I was probably within a mile of this spot at the very moment this picture was snapped, which is funny to think about.

You can see the sign for Ann's Truck Stop in the background, as well as for Land O' Lakes Plaza, which was our tiny strip mall filled with local businesses including (as I recall) Balthazar's bakery, a butcher, Chuck's Barber Shop, a beauty salon, a pharmacy (sign above), and the post office. I think there was a florist in there too. The strip mall would be to the left of the photographer, who is standing in the parking lot. That's U.S. 41 beyond the signs, where cars are passing on the main highway through town. There were some little motels (Garland Court and the Sunny Motel, as I recall) and tourist cabins on the other side of the road, and behind the photographer was a gas station, a Phillips 66, run by a grizzled old guy named Mr. Wright.

Here's the same corner now. Everything I mentioned above is gone. The whole area is a sterile, sun-blasted, bulldozed wasteland, with only a big Circle K and six lanes of paved highway. It's a shame. As recently as 2015, when my mom sold our house in Land O' Lakes and moved to Jacksonville, the plaza still existed, but it had been much-remodeled and had seen better days. The Phillips had been gone for ages, replaced in the early '80s by a convenience store. The commercial center of Land O' Lakes began shifting to the south, near the intersection of S.R. 54, when we got our first big supermarket (a U-Save, a chain that no longer exists) around the time the photo above was taken. I remember I cried when they bulldozed an orange grove to build that U-Save. It broke my heart to see all the orange trees piled up and awaiting the torch.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, right?

Stocking Up

Remember those boys who locked themselves in the library conference room last week? Well, I took a closer look at that door, and it turns out that it does have a key lock on the outside. So I didn't need to bruise my knuckles by knocking -- I could have just used my key and opened the door. I was so annoyed by the situation that I just didn't look closely. Anyway, now we've started locking the room when it's not being used, so kids can no longer get in there and lounge around. Problem solved!

Yesterday I was getting coffee in the staff lounge in the morning when I heard some co-workers on the cleaning staff debating the spelling and pronunciation of the word "mistletoe." (Our cleaners are mostly Portuguese, I think, and English is a second language for them.) It was funny hearing them dissect that word and try to understand the spelling -- after all, it is a weird word.

"The hardest word to spell, though, is 'diarrhea,'" said one woman.

I never thought about it before, but she's right. That's a weird word too.

I mentioned that Dave has been making homemade chicken stock. This has turned out to be a ridiculously long and involved process. Here's what it looked like on Sunday, when he was cooking down all the ingredients.

On the plus side, Dave is finally using that gigantic stock pot that I hauled home on the tube years ago. We've never had cause to cook with it, but when Dave picked up our deboned turkey from the butcher (that's another story), he decided to use the bones and giblets -- along with a package of chicken wings we bought by accident and some chicken leftovers -- to make stock.

What this involves is basically cooking the heck out of all the ingredients -- like, simmering it all for hours -- and then straining out the solid stuff. (I put the overcooked chicken meat, minus bones, out in the garden for the foxes, and it disappeared overnight.) This left us with three big bowls of broth, which we had to refrigerate until the next night, when Dave returned it to the stove to reduce until it fit into a single big bowl.

And that's where we are now -- with a big bowl of stock in the fridge. I have no idea what he intends to do with it. I admit I am a Philistine when it comes to culinary matters, so all this seems insane to me. "Can't we just buy a bouillon cube?" I asked him. (Questions like that elicit groans from the chef.)

(Top photo: Some fungus on a tree stump, found on my walk with Olga on Sunday.)

Autumn on West Heath

In comments on yesterday's post, some of you expressed astonishment that our freezer isn't frost-free. I'm not sure why that is -- I can only say that we didn't buy it! The fridge and freezer unit is, at this point, the only appliance that was in this apartment when we moved in more than nine years ago. Everything else has been replaced. It has some minor issues but if periodic defrosting is its only real demand, I can live with it.

Maybe Olga and I got a boost of energy from our newly defrosted freezer, because yesterday, we decided to have an adventure. We hadn't been to the West Heath in months -- about seven months, as best I can tell -- and I was missing it. That used to be one of our favorite walks, but these days, I'm hesitant to ask 13- (possibly almost 14-) year-old Olga to walk that far. Sometimes if I turn in that direction, she balks -- her way of telling me she's not up for it.

Yesterday, though, I decided to give it a whirl. Olga was game, the weather was good, and we had all the time in the world. Why not?

As you can see, we got there just fine, and the dog was just as happy as I was.

The autumnal trees had carpeted the forest floor with their rustling leaves. It felt very poignant to have this opportunity to walk around our old stomping grounds once again. I know I've said this before, but I wasn't sure we'd ever get back there, so the day felt like a gift.

We revisited all our favorite landmarks...

...like the Lulu trees, where Olga knows there's always a pool of fresh rainwater in a natural bowl formed by the roots. Can you see the carved "I (heart) Lulu" on the tree?

Then we went to Golder's Hill Park, where I thought I'd sit at the cafe and have a coffee.

Olga, however, had other ideas. In the past, I've always been able to tie her to an outdoor table, duck into the cafe, buy a coffee and then rejoin her. Yesterday, though, she began barking the minute I walked away from her. She didn't like being left even for a few minutes. Out of respect for the other people sitting outside with their much-better-behaved dogs, I gave up. Olga runs my life!

Instead we walked through the Stumpery, one of Olga's favorite destinations. It's always teeming with squirrels. She kept her eyes riveted on them, but she didn't lunge at the fence as she has in the past. (She did make a dash for a squirrel on the Heath, but came nowhere near it. The mind is willing but the body is weak!)

Olga paused to visit Wendy Taylor's sculpture "Gazebo," or as I call it, the pipe joint. (OK, I admit it, I posed her there. Olga couldn't care less about sculpture, unless there's a squirrel climbing around in it.)

Anyway, it felt like a very special day, revisiting our old favorite spots and seeing how well Olga seemingly remembered every log and path. She slept for hours when we came home and I gave her half a paracetamol (as instructed by our vet) at dinner to relieve any aches and pains. She's still asleep next to me as I write this.

Dave, meanwhile, spent the day making chicken stock in our kitchen. I'll save that adventure for another post!

Chill Out

I was surprised I could entice Olga to go on a walk yesterday morning. It was drizzly and gray and normally she balks at such weather. But I'd been cleaning all morning and I needed to get out of the house, so I'm glad she was cooperative!

I got quite a bit done. Aside from the normal vacuuming and whatnot, I launched a fairly major household task -- defrosting the freezer.

Here's what the project looked like at the outset. Do you like my unintentional self-portrait in that shiny pot?

Our freezer consists of plastic drawers that sit on those shelves, which have coolant coils running through them. The shelves tend to accumulate ice, as you can see, and when it builds up too much it's hard to slide the drawers in and out. I've been struggling with them lately so I knew it was time (even though I did this just two years ago, for the first time in seven years -- I'm not sure why it was already needed again, but whatever).

I emptied the freezer and stacked the drawers on the counter, covered with a towel to keep them as cool as possible. (We had ice cream bars in there, and I was a little afraid they might look like Godzilla by the time I was done.) I put towels on the floor and in the base of the freezer, shut off the circuit breaker to stop the cooling, and set pots of warm water on the shelves. And waited.

I'm sure you've all had to do this at some time or other, so none of this will sound very exciting. And it's not. It's a messy job but it's just a matter of time. After a couple of hours of throwing chunks of ice in the sink, wringing out towels and changing out the warm water periodically, everything was ice-free. I turned on the power and voila! A freezer I no longer have to fight.

And the ice cream bars came through fine. I had one last night and it looked perfectly normal.

After the defrosting project, Dave and I met one of his co-workers at this restaurant in St. John's Wood for brunch. (A bellini and eggs Benedict with avocado for me.) It seemed appropriate (though mystifying) that a polar bear is the mascot.

From there we went to see the high school musical, "Anything Goes," which was very good -- in fact, the best production I've seen at our school, I think. The girl who played the lead is particularly talented, and with music by Cole Porter you can't really go wrong. I enjoyed it!

A Busy Day at Work

I had a day like no other yesterday. I pulled nonfiction books for some 7th Grade classes, put up another book display (we have six displays running now, in addition to our regular displays of new books),  helped my boss update an infographics presentation for students, and organized the board games. While doing the latter, I realized one of our Uno card games was missing.

I found it spread out over a bunch of shelves beneath the stairs where the seniors sit between classes, like someone flung the cards at the shelves and left them where they landed. I picked up all the cards, brought them back to the library and organized the two Uno games so that they each had the proper number and assortment of cards. I'm going to keep Uno behind my desk from now on; kids will have to check it out to play it. Otherwise it keeps walking away.

All of that was in addition to the normal checking out books, which is busier now because we're about to go into Thanksgiving break. We have two days of school next week (plus a half day of professional development for teachers and staff) and then we're out until Nov. 27. Some kids left yesterday, particularly if their families are traveling.

Also, I had an interesting occurrence with a group of boys. A high schooler came to me and said he couldn't get his book bag, which was in the library conference room, because the door was locked. Now, the door only locks from the inside. I asked who was in there and he hemmed and hawed, so I went to the door and through the windows could see about 10 boys sitting around the conference table. I knocked so hard I actually bruised my knuckles. I was steamed. I told them they were never to lock that door, and I'm still trying to decide whether I should report them for disciplinary action. After all, weren't they bullying that student by keeping him from his bag?

At least pulling the nonfiction books was interesting. One of them was a book about The Beatles. It occurred to me that John, Paul, George and Ringo must be ancient history for these particular kids, who were born in 2011 or so. The Beatles, to them, are like Al Jolson to my generation. (By the way, did you know Al Jolson was Lithuanian? A bit of trivia I discovered while writing this post!)

When I posted the pic of the five-eyed mug a couple of days ago, some of you asked about the bowl sitting next to it. Well, here it is in its entirety. As of yesterday morning, it was still sitting out on that wall. I didn't take it because it's seen better days, and it's kind of big and heavy and clumsy, but it's unusual. Looks like someone's craft project or maybe a travel souvenir.

Olga says, "Is there food in it?!"

(Top photo: A shadowy doorway on my walk home from work.)

The Other Side

Well, the new dishwasher arrived yesterday as planned -- at about 10 a.m., which means I only wasted a couple of hours sitting around. It could have been worse. (And I didn't really waste the time, as I did get some cleaning and reading done.)

It was great to not have to hand-wash the dishes last night, though I feel like a whiny complainer saying that. I lived without a dishwasher in Manhattan for 10 years and it was never a problem, and I realize many, many people don't have one (including probably many of you reading this blog). But when I lived in New York I ate mostly soup and sandwiches, so I never really cooked much. Dave, on the other hand, is a trained chef and also a whirlwind in the kitchen, and he produces dirty dishes like West Virginia produces coal.

Anyway, while I was waiting for the dishwasher, I went out into the garden to take some pictures of our very red Japanese maple...

...as well as our Amistad sage, which is still blooming. I love that purple against the red and yellow of the autumn leaves. Soon I'll need to bring it in because it will not survive a frost.

As I was taking the photos, someone yelled "Hello! Hello!" I looked around and saw a man atop the roof of the apartment buildings behind us. It was the caretaker, and he asked about the tree-trimming plans. (Remember, he's been after us to trim the wild tangle of trees and bushes at the very back of the property.)

I told him I wanted to come over to his side of the wall and see what it looks like from there. So I met him on the street and he ushered me into the back garden of the apartments.

This is what they see from their side. He's paranoid about the condition of that retaining wall -- though it looked sound enough to me -- and he would ideally like us to take down both of those elder trees, but I'd rather not do that. I have some ideas for what I can tell the tree crew, though, to balance his wishes with our own. I think if I have them trim the shrubbery away from the wall and take out that overhanging ivy, he might be happy. Or happier, at least.

I keep asking myself if I would even be proceeding with this project if it weren't for him. Probably not. From our perspective, that area is overgrown, but not unbearably so, and I keep thinking about all the birds and squirrels and maybe even bats and who knows what else that might live in there. But we are in a city, not the countryside, and I'd like to maintain good relationships with the neighbors. It's a balancing act.

By the way, the five-eyed mug has been a hit with the kids in the library. Several of them have said they like it! Maybe we'll make it a prize in some future library contest.