No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on March 17, 2018

St. Gertrude is the patron saint of cats and her feast day is March 17th. She is also the patron saint of gardeners, travelers, widows, recently deceased people, the sick, the poor, the mentally ill, and travelers in search of lodging.

St. Patrick’s Day is also being celebrated. There is the parade in New York City along with other celebrations across the nation. Interesting that I have seen less alcohol advertising this year than I have in a while. For my family is it the named saint’s feast day for my youngest brother.

We plan to visit our local Irish Pub for some food they only have on St. Patrick’s day and stay away from New York City. I find it interesting that the LIRR is alcohol free for 36 hours. Also there have been warnings in the local news of sobriety check-points all over Long Island.

My other tradition is to listen to the Muppets sing Danny Boy which I have done.

I am grateful for all the cats in my life.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on March 15, 2018

Today is the anniversary of probably the best practical joke I ever participated in. The History Senior Seminar group ‘stabbed’ our teacher Dr. Burns in front of his freshman history course after about a three-week set up for the deed. I will always treasure the look on his face when we came storming into the room with bed sheet togas, paper plate comedy and tragedy masks and daggers made out of paper plates. We did get a sound talking to at the next senior seminar and a grudging well done.

Today I will pull out my copy of Julius Caesar’s The Civil War in honor of the holiday.

The Ides of March was also the day the Romans settled their debts, which may be why it was chosen for Caesar’s assasination.

I have a lot of things to do and about a week to do them so off to the lists I go.

Today Caroline is on a field trip with her Art Class to Museums in New York. I love that she has these opportunities. This means that she will have one day in school this week and then have to get all her homework to do over the weekend. She also has robotics this weekend getting ready for the big tourney next weekend.

Apparently we have another storm for next week. Currently looking at a snow or rain combination. Our first spring storm that is not a Nor’easter.

It is going to be a sad thing if Carrie-Ann Moss is not up for a supporting Emmy for Jessica Jones. She put in a performance of a lifetime this season.

I am grateful for pleasant memories of college.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on March 13, 2018

The third Nor’easter is slamming into right now. With it we have the potential for a lot of snow with blizzard conditions all through the day.

Like the other two storms, there has been a variable in the form of a low pressure system that keeps floating back and forth. If it goes one way, then we get it in the teeth. If it goes the other, the system either doesn’t drop much on us or it is in the form of cold rain rather than heavy snow.

Caroline is home today. They cancelled school at 5 AM this morning because the weather models were all pointing to difficulties getting children home safely in the afternoon. They were right.

When I got up, the roads were wet but passable. Since then the bigger flakes have been falling and now the roads are slippery and snow covered. Also this is suppose to keep going until dinner time so we are looking at a couple more inches before this is all done.

The first storm we were in the ‘safe zone’ and it was mostly cold rain. Nassau county and the north shore didn’t fair as well.

The second storm was annoying but it did not bring things to a halt. Caroline had a two hour delay which allowed for the sanding and salting of the roads which were slush covered with a mix of ice, water, and snow. Again the north shore faired worse than the south shore.

This one is that heavy snow that is a real PITA to shovel and there seems to be a lot of it on the way to add to what is on the ground. I am watching the level of snow rise rapidly on my front porch.

Tomorrow we dig out from what the storm has left us.

This is the last winter storm of this season since Wednesday is the first day of Spring. Doesn’t mean we won’t get more snow but it won’t be Winter anymore.

I am grateful to sensible school closing calls.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on March 11, 2018

Today would have been Douglas Adams’ 66th Birthday.

He would have probably tweeted something out that would have had us all laughing or being pleased that we were ‘in’ on the joke.

My first encounter with his works was not the radio play but the book of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that a friend brought back from England. Shortly there after I heard the radio play on tape and then on the local NPR station. We made copies of the episodes on tape and passed them around.

We would listen to it on our way down to our beach week in Florida.

Phrases became part of our family conversations.

“42”

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

And many more. We could quote large chunks of it and did around my house.

The TV show was very different then the radio play was very different from the book. It was fun in it’s own way.

We read and listen to the sequels and anything else Mr. Adams wrote.

He was taken from us way too young.

So Happy Birthday Douglas.

Hope you get the towel we sent. It’s in the glove compartment of the Tesla that was launched from Earth.

I am grateful for the works of Douglas Adams.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Kathleen David on March 10, 2018

So the past couple of days have had me in crises mode.

Our refrigerator that was over 30 years old finally gave up the ghost due to the power flickers due to the second Nor’easter that came crashing through Long Island. Side note: looks like we have a third one for the beginning of this next week. I am hoping that it gives us a miss. From what they can figure out the starter burned out but the compressor kept trying to go until it ceased to work so no cold air only warm air blowing through both compartments.

This was on top of me having pulled a set of muscles in my back from shoveling 2 inches of icy slush, which is much heavier than 2 inches of snow. The end of the driveway was a disaster due to the plows shoving large ice balls into the driveway. I broke a path for Caroline so she could get to the bus stop safely then later went back and extracted the car and shoveled the sidewalk.

At this point I can’t really put my arms over my head and we had a dead fridge. I ran out and got some bags of ice to put in the compartments to try to preserve what I could.

Peter and I went to PC Richards to buy a new refrigerator like the grown-ups we are. There were a lot of choices. Now you can tie your fridge into your smart phone and it tells you all kinds of useful information and you can check to see if you need milk or have it tell you that you need milk. There were massive steel fridges you could put a couple of bodies in and still have room for orange juice. I am use to those that have the ice and water dispensers in the door but some of the others were not fridges but robots masquerading as refrigerators.

I said to the gentleman helping us that I really didn’t need to become best friends with my fridge. I just needed it for the basic keep food from spoiling function.

So we bought a very basic refrigerator with the freezer on top and the fridge bellow. I had measured the previous appliance and knew how much extra room I had in the area. I was very careful to make sure that it would fit in the given space. Not as easy as you would think.

We got a promise of delivery the next day which made me very happy.

I used the outside to my advantage and pulled out a couple of coolers we own. Using the ice I had bought, I saved as much as I could from both the fridge and the freezer. We also have a cooler that works as a mini-fridge so I used that as well for the fruit and veg.

The rest was dumped. There was no saving it.

It is amazing what one accumulates over the years in one’s fridge. We have a fondant Hulk that was given to Peter when he went to a taping of Cake Boss. There were bottles of things that were used occasionally to make various dishes so there was half or less in each bottle. I had four kinds of mustard and I am the only one who eats mustard in the family. There was a bottle of horseradish from last year’s Passover Sedar.

Today they delivered the new fridge and took away the old one. Food has been put back into it but I am going to be hyper aware of anything that even starts to smell spoiled.

My back is still a work in progress but it seems to be getting better.

I am grateful for appliances that just do their job and not try to be my buddy.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags: