Pink flamingo

Cranberry bread is out of the oven, the train is getting ready to leave the station.

Morning chocolate covered cherry delivery is next up.

Photo taken on no flash while sitting braced in the chair across the room.

Huge tech upgrade

Tech support was here today and by golly, did we ever need her.

First she put together the annual nativity scene.

It is quite a bit more geology themed than in most recent years, lots of my favorite rocks made it into the scene.  Those pesky aliens are out and about again this year, R2D2 on the quartz from the Cuyuna, Einstein on the Rose Beach big round granite bit, and over there on the right, just in front of the BIG rose quartz are four of my really, really favorites sheltering evidence of the tech upgrade.

Lots of people will know that we keep the tree on a Clapper.  Who knew that those things have a shelf life?  Apparently they can wear out. The one we have been using since our original cross over to the Clapper side was starting to be a hassle.  It was at the point where you could hardly move around in the tree area without shutting down the lights.  Everyone loves the clap-clap to turn things back on of course but if you have to do it three or four times each minute it can get a bit tiresome.

Tech support was trying to rally the old one by moving from the two clap setting to the three clap setting.  I mean, why wouldn't that work?  She had gone so far as to crawl under the tree to reach the clapper at the plug in.  The tree is pretty close to the floor, it was a tough crawl of about five feet under an overhang less than 18 inches off the floor.  But she had reached the appliance and had moved the plug to the three clap setting.  She was under the tree clapping, we were standing around in front of the tree clapping but alas, the darn thing still didn't work.  I knew that we had some sort of fall back in the basement still in the tree box.  I knew that at some time or another in the past we had acquired a replacement Clapper.  We never needed it until now so it was still in the tree box.  I asked tech support not to move and went and fetched the upgrade from storage.

Indeed.

Not just Clapper.  Clapper Plus.

With Remote Control.

Artist's note:  Everyone please note the capitalization.

And here it is over in the rocks of the nativity scene, the Clapper Plus with Remote Control remote control.

There is a button for the two clap plug in and a button for the three clap plug in.  You don't even have to clap, you press the button and the tree turns off.

Well!!!!!  Who wouldn't see that as an upgrade?

Further there has been an upgrade to the basic technology that allows you to dial down the sensitivity if the Clapper is responding to room noise at too high a level.

Zowie, this new Clapper Plus is a huge tech upgrade.

And those are pretty much five super fave rocks of all of my rocks.

Top, Rose Quartz from the rock drainage area around the foundation of my sister's house where she had discarded it because, well, ask her.  I took one look and said, WHOA, way, WAY too nice a rock to be sitting around outside.  She said if you like it that much you can have it.

She didn't have to say THAT twice.

Counter-clockwise from there, a rose quartz, quartz and granite outcrop rock from near Carlton, the place where a major quartz outcrop occurs underneath the highway bridge.  This rock is not actually from under the bridge but I did pick it up within about two miles of that spot.  It is a visually striking rock which includes at least three different rock types, a pretty rare beast.

Below that, a chert (aka flint) and mostly white chalk mixture from the beach and representing the surrounding cliffs of Veulettes sur mer, France.  This is the middle of a sequence of rocks representing the changing geology along La Manche, the northern coast of France.  I note for reference purposes that la Côte d'Albâtre est située sur la Manche.

To the right, a very similar rock but from Dieppe, further to the east along the coast.  The background rock there has a much higher iron content and the stone while very similar in rock type is brown from the iron oxide.

And above the last of the grouping, much further along down the coast where the chalk has nearly disappeared and the basic bedrock stone is dominated by cherty granite with only veins of the chalk.

So you go from heavily iron content mixed with chalk, down the coast to the same sort of mixture but without the iron in the hard rock, finally to a place where the chalk while present is no longer the dominant part of the rock.

That last rock I picked up on Omaha Beach.

My favorites of favorite rocks with the Clapper Plus with Remote Control remote control on a day highlighted by a huge tech upgrade.

Cheese pie

I have been satisfied with but not crazy about the crescent roll crust.  This time I bought a frozen pie crust to see if a full scale pie offered advantages over tartelettes.

I didn't have enough cheese, had to use some $4.99 for half a pound not quite up to snuff domestic supermarket camembert to fill the pie shell.  Even so, most of the cheese was French and I remain optimistic.  I also added a bit of orange bell pepper, quite a few more mushrooms and a significant increase in the amount of spinach.

Spinach, by the way is great.  I put about half a bag of that supermarket spinach for salad into a largish bowl, stuffed it into the microwave and two minutes later had some freshly cooked spinach, about enough for a cheese pie.

I used more of the green onions, I wish I had had a little bit more bacon.

Again, as is our intention with this dish, it was baked today for consumption tomorrow.

I like the way it looks but next time I am going to get enough of the good cheese and I am going to try to arrange the layers to get a bit more of the spinach on the top (for presentation purposes).

This one was baked in the aluminum tin that comes with the frozen pie crust dough.  I know we have a tart pan around here somewhere, I believe that next I will try some of that frozen folded dough in a box and the tart pan.

Life evolves.

Survivor of the flood

When the power went out and the back up from the sump pump came above the level of the basement floor we tried to rescue a few things, knowing full well that it would only be a few things.

The bicycles and the big box containing the Christmas tree took up most of the available space on the floor immediately above the flood.

I did this last year as an homage to Christmas bush. This year it is an homage to one of the very few things we had in the basement last year at this time that we still have.

I should have tried to include the Clapper in that one but too late now.

At this point TOPWLH swings into high gear.

Oh, Christmas bush
Oh, Christmas bush
How lovely are thy branches.

So we are now officially ready for TCWUTH to show up and assist TOPWLH with the final decorative touches.

And assist with the delivery of the chocolate covered cherries.

Camembert tartelettes inspired by . . .

The last time I made these they were very good right out of the oven but by consensus much better the second day after the flavors had had a chance to blend.  I made tartelettes today but never intended for even a single second to consume them today, they are for tomorrow.

The young person with the blue tartelette pans did inspire me to make a couple of small changes to my recipe. I added some spinach for color mostly. I also spiced up the egg/cream combo that gets poured over the tarts before they go in the oven. The dish that I am making here is a cheese dish, not an egg dish.  It does have an egg though and when I do eggs I believe that you almost always want way more dill than you think you need. So I added some dill.

It is a small pie, baked to be eaten later.  No doubt there will be some report or another tomorrow about how they came out.

Brrrrrrrrr-icycle content

But even colder tomorrow apparently.  Predicted high for tomorrow has a minus in front of it.  Of course, that is minus F, today's high was about -15C.

It was so cold that I didn't go out at all (except for bread) and so didn't notice the UPS package delivery until on a whim I checked the tracking information in the shipping confirmation e-mail.  It said 3:08pm at the front door.  I looked.  Brrrrrr.  But the package was indeed there.

It is bicycle content and at least a story.

I get my tires on line at a vendor which provides free shipping and a point system which provides me 10 percent of what I paid for these tires discounted off my next order.  I typically get a bit under 2,000 miles on a set of tires.  I ride more miles than that MOST years so I typically need four new tires per season.

On Black Friday I received an e-mail notification of sale from my preferred vendor.  My preferred tires usual MSRP $75 at $48.  I ordered four.

On Cyber Monday I received another e-mail notification of sale.  Same tires, now $37.  I e-mailed them and asked if this was fair and they responded with a $45 credit to my previous purchase.

Four for the price of two, plus 10 percent credit on my next purchase.

Too cold today for any actual bicycling.

Mandela

Another relevant question

Today the relevant question is most likely how is my snow blower fitness.

It is still snowing, ever so lightly.

The answer to the question is that my snow blower fitness is just fine, totally adequate, thank you very much.

It helps that I took the opportunity at that early winter scare back in November to purchase gas for the humongous machine and that I have electric start.  It may not be a Toro but I filled it up with gas and it fired up first time, no problem.  The city crews were here shortly past noon and created that fearsome windrow of plow remains across the end of our driveway which if not dealt with promptly hardens into near concrete.  My Craftsman blower and I were out there shortly thereafter.  Probably there is going to be another round of plowing and another round of snow blowing but for right now we are reasonably well connected with civilization.

In other news, the most technologically advanced member of the NaBloPoMo circle has been transferring her old Xanga blog posts to WordPress.  I am certain that I myself will be totally on that any day now.

In the meantime she came across an oldie but goodie and sent a link to us.  We laughed out loud, perhaps you will too.

Basement season

Just a reminder that this is NOT a Jimmy Fallon fan blog, this is a bicycle blog.  Flurries again today with the promise of end of the week really really cold moved a couple of bicycles out of the garage and into the basement.

Here's what the bicycle corner of the basement looks like this afternoon.

For those keeping score there are still three bicycles out in the garage.

December Q&A

The relevant question seems likely to be how is my shoveling fitness?

The somewhat evasive answer is that I paused halfway through this quite smallish job declaring a photo opportunity.

In my defense there isn't much but what there is is most definitely extremely heavy heart attack snow.

Fancy camera, no flash mode.