My So Called Life

Pickles!

/ Shane / 9 Comments

My grandma makes homemade pickles and they are to die for. I’ve always wanted to try to make the pickles myself so that I could rely on my own supply, instead waiting until she could sneak me a jar or two. I’m not saying she did sneak me jars and I’m not saying she didn’t, but I am saying that if she did sneak me jars and word got out (like on the Internet, for example), then I’d probably be in big trouble with the rest of my family.

So I planted some cucumbers this year on the porch figuring I’d get enough for a jar or two and we could give it a trial run. However, we had an opportunity to raid my grandma’s garden for cucumbers when she was on vacation, and we netted quite a few (and some dill).

our contribution

We had never tried canning before, and we were a little nervous about it. We purchased a nice set in anticipation of doing some more canning this year, especially once the tomatoes start rolling in from the garden. Previously we had just frozen everything and that worked pretty well, but, with the uncertainty of the garden next year, we might need to lay more of a supply by this year.

in progress

So, we managed to can 7 quarts of pickles and even had some spare cukes left over. One of the jars didn’t seal the first time around, but we re-processed it and it sealed the second time. Now it is just a matter of waiting for 6 weeks until these beauts are ready to go!

finished product

Michigan Pirate Festival

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Did you know that there are pirates in Michigan? Aparently there is a group that sails the 5 lakes (as opposed to the 7 seas) known as the Brethren of the Great Lakes.

Well, in late breaking pirate news, there is currently a pirate festival going on (Aug. 3rd – 8th) in Grand Haven, Michigan. So if you live around there and you read this blog, you should probably go check that out.

As a side note, I’d just like to point out that the “pirate lord” of Lake Michigan is known as Count d’Booty. Really? Count d’Booty? I mean, I guess when he picked his pirate name he didn’t necessarily know he would grow up to hold the position of pirate lord, but still.

In other news, last night I ate cheese. Cheese with bacon inside of it!

Vacation Part I – Camping

/ Shane / 7 Comments

Our vacation got off to a bad start.

When we left our house the car had a little trouble starting, but I promptly forgot about it. After all, Sara had been driving the car just that morning and she hadn’t had any trouble. Unfortunately though, it did mean something after all and after stopping at a highway oasis to use the bathroom, the car wouldn’t start again. They didn’t have any jumper cables inside and they told me to call the highway patrol for a jump. While waiting for them to show up, I didn’t have anything to do except try and eventually it started. It actually worked out pretty good. We called a relative to find a repair shop further up the road and we were in an out in less than an hour. They said the battery was “older than dirt” and they were surprised I hadn’t had trouble before this. They even fixed my headlight while they were at it. It was probably more convenient than if it would have happened while at home.

So we got to the campsite a little later than expected, but not too much worse for the wear. It was kind of a weird place. First off, it was completely flat with no trees whatsoever. Standing on our campsite we could see all the other campsites, minus those blocked by all the big honking motor homes (which was like all of them). Second off, the camp store had the largest selection of booze I have ever seen outside of an actual liquor store. I mean, it’s one thing to allow drinking in your camp and quite another to stock it 4 deep on the shelves. Third, the place was packed and yet it was…empty. Other than the two tent campers next to us, the entire campsite was silent after nightfall. From every motor home came the flicker of T.V. I just can’t quite fathom why people would even bother going camping if it’s going to be like that. It also rained a little, but it didn’t really effect much; we had time in the morning to let the sun dry everything out before we left.

On Saturday we went to the actual reunion. It was great, as usual. The food was good (especially Grandma’s rhubarb crisp!), it was fun to visit with family, we ended up with some embroidered towels from the raffle and Evie enjoyed the horse drawn wagon rides (she took a few). The weather was very odd. Every 10 minutes it would switch between sunny and hot and rainy and cold as if someone was flipping a switch. Every time it got sunny I was itching to put up the tent, but Sara wouldn’t let me. Her brilliant plan worked to perfection because by the time we finally put up the tent, we missed the rain entirely.

The next day we took our usual yearly trip to the Waupaca Camping Park. This place is really great; they have a lot of cabins and nice tent sites, they are very clean, they have a nice playground and they have a heated pool. The campsites are laid out nicely with lots of trees, etc. We did some hiking, the highlight of which was seeing an enormous turtle, at least two feet long counting the tail, sunning on a rock. We went to a very strange place named the Animal Haven Zoo. It wasn’t really a zoo so much as a series of connected pens. You never knew what you were going to find, one minute you’d be feeding goats, the next minute you’d be checking out some lions. It was way better than I was expecting and I would definitely recommend it. Buy the animal food too, it is well worth $1. They also had a surprisingly nice gift shop.

One day while running around the campsite, Evie fell down and skinned her knee and smashed her face on the pavement. We felt really bad, especially knowing that she was going to have a mark on her cheek in all of her birthday pictures. She wasn’t too concerned though, she was more upset about having to put on a band-aid than anything. Other than that we did all the regular camping stuff; smores, pudgie pies, hot dogs and brats, and more rain. It actually rained 5 out of 7 days that we camped, but the only day it was really a problem was on Thursday when we were getting ready to leave. We were already getting puddles in our tent and everything was soaked by the time we got it into the car. By the time we were ready to go, I was really ready to be home. Evie had a great time and really was an angel. She even slept well!

All in all a very nice vacation!

Common Printer

/ Shane / 1 Comment

At work there is a printer in the lunch room. It is a really fast printer, and also the only one that’s color, but I’m not sure why people use it to print personal stuff and then forget to pick it up. I don’t understand why people would print some of this stuff out in the first place, but if they were going to print it out, especially in the most public of all rooms, you’d think they would make an effort to pick them up.

I always browse the orphaned print outs while I’m waiting for my lunch to microwave. They’re always just spread out all over the table, face up. I don’t even need to move them to read them. I’m just amazed at the amount of information to be had there. Some things are only interesting in the work sense, like who’s going to which conference and what important visitors are coming soon or who is submitting who for which award. But some are a lot more interesting, like personal emails containing gossip,  cable bills (no questionable movies though, I checked) job postings as if someone is searching for a new job, bank statements, and even people complaining about their bosses.

The other day though, I think I found the one that takes the cake. Someone had left a photocopy of a receipt for lice removal products. I don’t know who, but I will certainly be taking a closer look at all my co-workers.

Blueberries

/ Shane / Leave a comment

After having so much success picking strawberries last month, we decided to give blueberry picking a try. Sara heard the place got pretty busy and it was about an hour and a half away, so she wanted to get started really early (like out the door at 6:30 a.m.), but we all balked a little at that. It turned out okay, but let’s just say that her information was not incorrect.

The place was the Tammen Treeberry Farm and it was ca-ra-zy! By the time we got there around 10:30 or so, the parking lot was already full and they were parking people along the side of the driveway. They had people directing traffic, 3 checkout lanes and tractors and trucks pulling trailers with benches for people to ride out to the fields. There were signs explaining the proper way to pick berries and about 20 high school kids working all over the place. We had to wait in line until about the 5th or 6th trailer until we could get on. When we got out to the field it was a mad house! There were hundreds of people combing through the blueberry bushes and there was a constant babble of people talking. Compare that to the strawberry place where we just sort of walked up and and the one girl working just sort of pointed us in the right direction and turned us loose!

Despite the people attacking the fields like locusts, there were more than enough blueberries for everybody to pick until their hearts’ content. Picking the blueberries was easy, but it takes a *lot* of blueberries to fill up a bucket. Evie was doing a really good job of picking the blueberries and putting them in her bucket, even if they did then come back out of the bucket and into her mouth. I can’t even begin to count how many blueberries she ate. She also did a good job of holding her pee pees while we waited for 20 minutes to get a ride back to the checkout, 10 minutes on the ride and another 5 or 10 in line waiting to pay until I could take her into the men’s room (huge line for the women’s, the only people in the men’s were daddy’s taking their daughters).

All in all, very good and we froze 10 quarts of blueberries, plus more than one that we kept out for eating.

The day was not without it’s black spots however. We were only with the flood of humanity for like 2 hours and I can immediately call to mind several instances of people being despicable. For example, going down the row of blueberries with the guy shouting over and over again, “Please walk to the end of the row before you start picking!” and watching 3 or 4 people just blatantly stopping and picking, not more than 15 feet from him, as if the rules didn’t apply to them. Watching people practically pull berries out of other people’s hands in their haste to get berries, despite the fact that when they finally pushed by me and I went back to where they were standing, there were probably literally 500 berries on the bushes they had been next to. Watching people shove past Evie to cut in line and get on the trailer first after she was a perfect angel and made not a peep about waiting there for 20 minutes, her bladder ready to burst.

People are so entitled and disgusting. Not blueberries though. Blueberries are delicious!