I am tired and cranky and that is all you are gonna get out of me.
Sunday Night Open Thread
Another perfect day today weather wise. We did a lot but it doesn’t feel like we did much. We went to breakfast with her friend Buzz who is basically her Tammy and they have been a bonded pair for close to 30 years, and I had never met him before. Went to First Watch which is typical chain breakfast (don’t get eggs benedict the hollandaise is NOT made in house and wretched or if it is made in house that person needs to be fired but probably publicly shamed first).
Then we went to this massive antique mall called the Brass Armadillo with is a lot like the antique market I go to in Steubenville, where it’s just a space filled up with different and mostly unattended dealer lots and you just grab what you want and take it to the people up front and they sort out who the money goes to. Ironically enough given our thread the other day I discovered a couple caches of Revere Ware and I briefly entertained picking up a couple more pieces and then just taking the stuff she had to goodwill or to anyone who would take it. Still might, they had a bunch so I can think on it.
Pretty much just browsed there for a while, then went home and just sat outside on the patio for a couple hours. That was nice.
Joelle is trying to downsize/rightsize her furniture situation, so we were hitting these places for the right piece and the right price, and at 4 pm we drove to an estate sale where Joelle had arranged to pick up a MCM hutch and credenza, precisely what she needed. We have to go pick that up next Saturday.
Other than that, we had… fajitas again. I could honestly eat them every day, and it was the best kind of dinner- already cooked and already paid for. Now it’s off to the couch. I see that Taylor Swift’s boyfriend won his sportsball game.
*** Update ***
I am such a clown, I forgot that at the second place, the estate sale, I was standing there minding my own business when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red so I went over and looked and there was this beauty of an office chair obscured by sold stuff:
It was not yet sold so I snatched that bad boy up for 50 bucks like I was robbing someone. Damned this is every bit of 50 lbs and all that solid metal base and thick ass pleather. Could not pass that up. Could probably list it on ebay for several hundred and flip it in a week if it wasn’t an item that wasn’t perfect for her tastes.
I’m sitting in it right now. They used to have this in the old computer lab in the 70’s with those steel desks that weighed 50000 lbs and I always though they were the ibm model m of chairs. It says that it is a Sturgis or at least there was a patent for sturgis pedestal chairs on it but other than that I have no idea what it is. I’d wager it is at least as old as me.
Saturday Night Open Thread
Absolutely lovely day here in Tempe- just perfect weather. I love being able to walk around her back yard with no shirt on and let the air and sun hit me. And yes, she has an 8′ fence so I am not horrifying the entire neighborhood.
Now that you have that visual in your head, we’ll move on and let you savor it a bit more. Now think of the photo of me in the bandanna/fishnet stocking sleep apnea mask. Swish those thoughts around a while. Good stuff.
At any rate Joelle and I did not get the living room done, although we did go through all the drawers and gathered all important paperwork and got rid of all the old electronics attachments that were decades past usefulness. At one point we were in the kitchen and I said “I think I’m pretty much done in the kitchen.” ANd I am. I have it to the point that it is a serviceable, functioning kitchen- yoiu could basically make anything you wanted in here, AND I have it organized in a way that makes sense for Joelle’s way of thinking and categorizing information, and not only that, I have everything at hobbit height. We’re both very excited about that (and Joelle sincerely is this is not just me being a crazy person and speaking for her).
We also did a bunch of other stuff around the house, changed the sheets, Joelle did a bunch of laundry, etc., so as our reward we went to this place called the Dirty Drummer. It’s a pretty great little place.
It’s basically a dive bar/burger joint with a stage carved out, and they have live music. It feels like a rockabilly bar right out of SoCal, and the clientele play the part. The whole thing feels very Tarantinoesque, and back in the day when I was on the bottle it would have been a nice beer place before going out for the real drinking. The kind of place where they would unironically drink Schlitz and Brian Setzer would be on heavy rotation on the jukebox.
They had a band from San Diego playing, and they were fun, and I had a reuben and tator tots and the lady had some wings. It was very good, and they had an impressive flat top and a well oiled crew.
We’re home now and I am struggling to keep my eyes open.
*** Update ***
I forgot to upload the picture!
Friday Night Open Thread
Another busy day with work and doing things around the house, and there wasn’t much dinner prep because we enjoyed the fajitas so much last night we did it again tonight.
Big day tomorrow because we are going to tear the living room apart, clean, and put it back together, and then we are going out to one of her favorite places with live music.
Good Cookware Is Plentiful And Cheap
This is a random ass post, but I was in scrubbing the kitchen when the Amazon person arrived with a package, and it was the dutch oven I had ordered. One of the things I have learned rather recently is that there is a LOT of really good cookware for cheap.
When I got my first paycheck after grad school, one of the first things I did was buy a really expensive chef knife. It was a Viking, it was super heavy, and it was like 120 bucks. And then, over the last 20+ years, I have slowly built the kitchen one item at a time. I only buy stuff that is going to last. So I will spend 140 bucks on one sauce pan, and then I will have that sauce pan for the rest of my life. A couple of items a year the first couple years, one or two a year over the next few, and then as needed. So I was able to amass a nice setup without every having to do a massive outlay of cash, but also didn’t have to buy a bunch of replaceable crappy stuff over and over.
At any rate, I have all that shit at home, but it is not here. And I have neither the financial means nor the desire to stock another kitchen. So I have been doing shit on the cheap. And so far, I have been super impressed. Two items of note- at home I have a range of matfer bourgeat skillets. I have no intention of doing the same thing here, but we did need one skillet, so I picked up a preseasoned Merten & Storck for 29 bucks off Amazon. And it’s been a great pan. I’ve used it 20 times already, and it is my go to skillet. Were I to do it over again, I don’t think I would spend the money on higher priced ones like I have at home.
Same with this dutch oven. I’m not spending the price of a small car on Le Creuset for here. This Mueller one for 60 bucks looks, feels, and probably is every bit as durable and good as the OG le Cresuset.
So that’s nice to know.
Thursday Night Open Thread
I had an exciting excursion today- I went to a massive Mexican grocery (the El Rancho Market IGA specifically). We’re having fajitas tonight, I needed tortillas, and a bunch of people back east have asked me to look for specific dried peppers, so this seemed like the perfect place.
And it was, and as a bonus, it had a tortilleria. A big portion of the place was nothing but dozens of big 50 lb bags of various flours and a bunch of ladies working on a line as a conveyer belt of tortillas were created. The were making the little corn ones while I was there but I picked up some ones that were made earlier from flour. It was pretty cool and I had left my phone in the car or I would have taken pictures.
Lots of cool things there, but I left with just some limes and tortillas because I didn’t really need much else.
And that is really about it. The cats are doing very well being integrated, with only a couple minor near incidents.
My Gift To You
I was originally not going to share this, but do you remember the other night when I was telling you how Thurston chewed my mask and Joelle had to fashion one out of a bandanna and fishnet stockings? Well, we took a picture because of how truly absurd it looked, and every time I look at it I laugh. And with all the fuckery going on in the world, I thought you could use a laugh, too:
That’s some nightmare fuel- how’d you like waking up to that shitshow.
YOU ARE WELCOME.