Friday was Mark’s 64th birthday. I made a pie on Thursday night, so that we could come home after the first Madison symphony of the season on Friday and have pie and ice cream. We went out for dinner on Saturday, and I made his request for brunch on Sunday, but I don’t think I did any better at getting Mark thoughtful gifts for his birthday than I did at Christmas – in other words, I kinda sucked at it.
Mark’s birthday pie for “When I’m 64”
I ran some errands – bought a new smoke detector, to replace the one that was meeping at me and Megan the night I was packing for TIFF, and Mark was able to install it pretty easily. I spent the rest of the afternoon processing tomatoes and roasting peppers. I have 2 quarts of Marcella butter tomato sauce, and 2 quarts of spicy pizza sauce with tomatoes and roasted red peppers, and a trio of yogurt tubs of diced tomatoes.
Butternut & acorn – the kuri and the borlotti beans went into this mole from Heidi, on Tuesday. I only baked it for one hour, not the two hours called for.
Sunday I made Mark’s mom’s sour cream waffles, at his request, for brunch. I was going to finish up my TIFF blog posts before breakfast, but instead spent the time taking apart the beater attachment for the Miele. I’m trying out a new cleaner who will use my supplies and equipment, instead of the service I’ve been using that cleans everything with weird sprays and brings their own vacuum cleaners. I watched this funny video to help me take it apart – he got confused at the same places I did. I ran a bunch of car errands, like Target to stock up on cleaning supplies for the new cleaner. I was determined to use up P&G coupons and came back with like 3 Tides and 3 Downeys. I was going to make myself a Caesar salad for dinner – with the Farmers Market romaine – and I made the croutons – but instead I ate leftover pie, and toaster s’mores, and tried to watch TV, and see the super blood moon lunar eclipse. I went downtown to make sure I’d left a tip at the tapas place the night before, and had a good view of the start of the eclipse from the roof of the parking ramp, and then saw a little more of it through our 2nd floor windows. I tried to get NASA’s live stream, but had to sign up for a U-Stream account – which I finally got working on my phone in time to see the reddish moon when I got into bed around 11:00. I was waiting until it was time to pick up Megan at the bus, and I kept falling asleep in front of TV. It could’ve been from the too much to drink the night before, or it could’ve been because what I put on – Scarlett Johansson in Lucy – was truly terrible.
Detail of Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse and Lightning Storm
Image Credit & Copyright: Jose Antonio Hervás – see original at APOD
It rained hard on Monday night, and the new stock of cleaning supplies made the rickety metal shelves in the basement top heavy, so they tried to fall down on me Tuesday morning, at 6:13 AM, when I was getting towels to sop up the rain water flood. After sopping up the basement I went to help serve a food pantry breakfast at the community center, to campus to be on a panel discussion about academic staff issues, then back to the community center for a meeting about the upcoming pie sale. It’s been a long day. I think it’s time for a cup of tea and collapse in front of TV.
