7 = 14

Fourteen loaves in seven hours.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean what could possibly be the down side of baking enough bread for one hundred people when you’ve never really baked that kind of bread before or even any type of bread similar?

I did learn some things and you, or at least me and my youngest sister, could see the progression. The loaves were baked two at a time; by the time my sister saw them, some had cooled enough so they could be stacked on each other. I needed to stack them be cause I was running out of cooling racks and counter space.

I said to her “You can see the progression,” and then started to point from pair to pair. She replied “Yeah, I was going to say that that one looked the best,” as she pointed to the last loaf out of the oven.

I like bread.

I’m not certain that you can get the best result from following the recipe, though. I’m not certain how anyone can carefully move a slack piece of risen dough to a peel without degassing it, at least somewhat. Towards the end I would let the dough rise again while it sat on the peel while I had a batch in the oven. But the loaves only took twelve minutes to bake.

In the future, if I need fourteen loaves of bread and have seven peels, I will let the dough rise on the peels.

The last rising takes an hour.

I had hoped for a different end result but even so the bread was delicious.

Tonight I might bake ciabatta bread

All my candy is gone. The last of it disappeared while I was gone. The peanut butter cups went first and then Kit Kats and then the Crunch bars. I read my daily blogs as the fluorescent light buzzes above. Through echo location, I know it’s not one of mine; it belongs to a long vacant cube.

The quiet seems to be slowing my life force down so I turn on my iTunes.


…

There are so many things I think that I want to do that I end up doing nothing.

Tonight I might bake ciabatta bread. The poolish is in the frig.

I just knew come Monday that I didn't want to walk in the street

I read her post and started to draft an email about how the last time I had Prosecco was after I removed 21 inches of snow from several of my neighbors’ sidewalks. One grateful neighbor knocked on my door a couple of nights later and handed me a bottle of the Italian Champagne.

I was also going to mention materialism and how I didn’t think she fit the definition. I was going to make an allegory between an art collector who collects for sake of status or investment as opposed to someone who just enjoys art.

But then I just moved on. I know she’s busy.

Walking home from the subway, two days later, I was called to from a neighbor’s stoop. She was with her neighbor from across the street and they both brought up that day, 10 months ago, when I walked my snow blower up the street and back. The storied blossomed into me doing the entire street; but I only actually had done half the street at best.

I explained that it was a Saturday so what else was I going to do.

Bliss

We were sitting having coffee just like we do most mornings and I was asked if I had any plans for my scheduled vacations days. I said that I was going to try to fix the roof. I was then asked if I was having trouble with leaks which caused my other buddy to spit out some of his coffee as he started to laugh.

I said “No, I just don’t like the color.”

brazen means made of brass

The thing is: if I know the deal, I’m bold as brass.


I’m probably the busiest lazy person you will ever know about. Or at least that’s what I think. I think I’m lazy despite all the stuff I do, mostly because I look at all the things I’m not doing.



I know some day it will catch up with me; I’ve been lucky so far.


The things I usually think about writing while I should be concentrating on the day job usually get shit canned.


I’m bothered when someone who knows nothing about the process is asking questions about it on half on someone else. “Dude, just have that person call me directly because I don’t want you fucking up the message.”

I don’t want to hear you mangle my message and then hear you explain to that person that that is what I told you.

Why do you always want to be the middleman? Nobody likes the middleman unless the middleman is acting as a shit guard.

So 09-19-08

o, I have seven of those little evergreen trees. I started with five. I added a sixth when I felt five wouldn’t cover the length I wanted covered.

The guy next door installed an eight foot high white plastic fence. My plan with the trees was to disrupt the ugliness of the fence with evergreen. I dug up the soil, fertilized it and added peat moss, which left a six foot wide 25’ long scar in the grass. I set the trees in a line and envisioned them twelve feet tall and three and a half feet wide.

In years, they will hide enough of the fence but I felt a line of equally spaced trees would be too symmetric and plain.

Isn’t this an exciting story?

So, I wanted something different than a line but I also didn’t want to sacrifice any more of the yard. Yards are a premium in Boston. I changed my plan to include a seventh tree that will be placed in-between and in front of either the first two trees or the last two trees. It will cost a little bit more of the yard but I think it will be more visually interesting than just a line of trees.

Over the years to come, as the trees develop, I will keep you posted.


I also bought a pot of mums to replace the ones that were stolen but instead of white I got white ones that had pink at the extremities of the petals.


I’ve been feeding the turtle red leaf lettuce. There are a lot of precise rules for the care of Red Ear Sliders.



Even though for years, he’s been kept in a plastic container no bigger than a shoe box and has been feed nothing but Tetra Reptomin and has survived, I worry about his health and well being.

Who just walks in?

When I got back to the office, there where people waiting, a phone call on hold and a few messages. I handled the phone call and then the people waiting and then started with the messages while more calls were coming in and then I got a call from the front desk that someone else just strolled in expecting to find me.

He had a problem that needed me to phone people and make a copy. I got up from my chair to make the copy when my supervisor jumps from his chair and asks if I need help, help with making the copy.

I gave him a look and he said that he notice that I was extremely busy, to justify his offer. I told him that I didn't need help with making a copy of a single sheet document.

Dude, just because you can't handle pressure doesn't mean I can't. And if you take any more messages please try to get the name or at least the phone number right.

If people just walk in unannounced then they can just wait while I walk to the copy room.

The sweat was rolling off the guy and he started to get irritated because he wasn't getting the answers he wanted. I told him sometimes things just happen in a way that doesn't work out for anyone and that it looked like this was one of those times.

"Well, what if I hadn't come in? What would have happened then?" he asked.

"I guess you would have been waiting at home for paperwork that never would have shown up."

"So it's good that I came in."

"Well, most people just call when they get nervous about it."

I sent him on his way while I waited for phone calls and later he called me to say that the paperwork should be crossing my desk soon and then he asked if he could come by the next day at noon to pick it up.

"Well, after I sign it, I have to have my boss sign it and I can't guarantee that he'll have it signed by then, so it's best if you call first."

How much gasoline is a person supposed to consume?

So, I took the carburetor off then I tried to blow air throw the hole for the gas and nothing would of go so I tried to blow harder but in doing so, sucked a tiny bit of gasoline into my mouth.

The taste of gasoline doesn't leave your mouth easily or at least it didn't for me.

I did get air to flow through it though and I got the wood chipper running.

I am awesome just in an incredibly uncool way.

I often forget awesomely talented I truly truly am.


If I can go around the mountain in a similar amount of time as you can go over the mountain, then I’m walking around it.


I dozed off Sunday afternoon and I remember thinking that I needed to get up and do things when a hazy consciousness returned. The only thing that I really had assigned myself to do was a white laundry which would finish off the third and final load for the day; but a part mental and part physical struggle ensued. My body didn’t want to move even though I was arguing the point that it shouldn’t be that tired.

I swung my feet to the floor and the rest of me begrudgingly followed.

I moved the lights to the dryer and tossed the whites in the washer. I then decided that I needed to take the carburetor off of the wood chipper to see why it wasn’t working. When I got the shed I further decided that I needed shelves in the shed so I would have to toss so much stuff around. I drove to Home Depot and spent a hundred and fifty on wood and at the end of the day I had one large L shaped shelf taking up two walls.

I didn’t get to the carburetor yet.

the thing is...

It's not that I wouldn't make time for you; it's just that I don't think you should be wasting time on me.

I do things like use a tiller to tear up the yard so that I can plant trees.


I was walking through the living room to get a glass of ice water when my six year old niece asked "Timmy, where's your harness?"

I had been fixing part of the roof and I was wearing a safety harness because where I was fixing was on the slopping part of the roof and if you start to slide or slip on this part of the roof, the first thing to stop you is the ground which also turns out to be the last time to stop you.

I found her question condescending, which made me smile a little bit because it showed she was thinking.

I took that TV antenna down. I was holding it on the second story roof when my niece asked if I was going to throw it off the roof. I told her that I wasn't but I ended up doing it anyway.

The rain will check my roof work

Sometimes I just want to hear the point of the story. Like when the house is on fire, I don’t need to hear how it caught on fire or what you did to try to get it uncaught on fire just tell me the house is on fire.

My house wasn’t on fire by the way.

Occasionally I get accused of being able to see the future and I guess it’s somewhat true but it’s not that I see a vision of things that will happen, I extrapolate from what I’ve seen in the past. I guess at what happens next.

When people marvel at my abilities to guess at what will happen, I quietly think “You must suck at chess.”

Just a day

A skin knee causes concern.


It looks crooked at the bottom but I assure you it's not.


I was looking serious, trying not to worry that my camera was being handled by my niece.


Serious to the left. I had just finished mowing the lawn on a rather hot day.


That hole used to be white garden mums.


Just hosta.


That's my mom as captured by my niece. This shot was the second one in a series of eight. My mom didn't expect this one; that's probably why it's the best of the bunch.


I'm not a big fan of roses.


Youngest niece. Sometimes, I think she knows more than she lets on.


But then other times she'll do things like this.


Untitled.


Untitled.


He's not my biggest fan.


That antenna is always on the list to tear down.

I've heard the grumblings

People are asking, if this turtle truly exists then where are the photos.

Well first I would like to say: If you are very concerned about photographic proof that the adopted turtle is actually real and not just some fantastic story that I fabricated, then you may want to examine your life's meaning.

And I guess there is no second point. I guess I shouldn't have put that first in that sentence.







I sat across the room and used the bigger telephoto lens and I used the flash.

There is a difference between photojournalism and photography which is what I remembered when I wanted to take a photo of the hole in my garden where a few days ago I had planed a white garden mum.

I think the difference between photojournalism and photography is the same difference between telling a story and reciting poetry, or at least something not dissimilar.

Don't tell them that they may be eaten

At least today was productive but putting in a new door on the side of the house wasn't on my list for this week of things to do. It's so quiet in the back hallway now.

I truly am amazing.

The old deadbolt doesn't fit the hole in the new door, so I ordered one up from the locksmith, to be keyed the same as the old one. We reminisced a little bit - the locksmith and I.

I then dropped by to get a new spare tire, actually the tire guy calls them wheels. If it's just the rubber part then it a tire but if you need the rim, then it a wheel.

I them went up to the roof and started fixing things. The first thing I had to do was to sweep off the raccoon droppings.

I don't like heights, I sometimes get dizzy but I strapped myself down and did a good bit before I had had enough.

I also bought some feeder goldfish and tossed them in with the turtle. I don't think he's quick enough to eat them but he tries. I asked the lady at the pet store for some of the smaller goldfish. She asked "You want the feeders?" Yeah, I did want the feeders, I just didn't want to call them that.

My niece renamed the turtle to Crazy and when I asked her why she said "Because he's named after you."

He's in a 29 gallon tank now and he'll eat river shrimp out of my hand.

My feet smell like fire

I had the turtle in the front yard as I was moving the mums that I had planted earlier. I didn't like the layout so the layout had to change. I placed the turtle in the sun, I figured he's never really been out much and I know that the turtles in the wild like to sun themselves.

He mostly just sat there, moving a little towards the neighbors yard. I would check on him after awhile and then awhile later once I noticed he going too far, if at all.

I took the hose out and started watering all the new additions to the yard, and then I watered the plants that have been around for years, and then I checked on the turtle.

I check where I last saw him and then I check the spot he could have gotten to since last I checked on him, and then I checked the neighbors yard and that's when I started to worry a little. The last thing I wanted to do was to put up "lost turtle" signs.

"Last seen in my front yard. If found please call 1-800-I'm-a-loser."

I found him at the edge of the two foot wall that drops off to the sidewalk.

His kept in a container about the size of a large shoebox which I didn't think was big enough for him so I went to find a tank for him. On the way, while I was waiting at a red light I noticed that the ground was smoldering next to a traffic light control box. It was smoking pretty good and I wondered why nobody was doing anything, so when I light changed I pulled over to stomp out whatever was smoking.

There was a ring of dark mulch with a cigarette at the perimeter. I cursed the careless smoker and then kicked at the ring of smoke. Now I've done this before, I've put out three or four other smoldering piles on mulch caused by careless smokers so I did what has worked for me in the past and kicked the mulch around. Only this time, it just spread the smoldering embers to a large circle. Then I curse myself. It's been rather dry around here and I should have known that because that;s why I was watering the plants.

Anyway, It took me a few tries and about fifteen minutes to get all the things that where smoking to stop. Fifteen minutes is a lot of stomping. And my sneakers smelled like smoke afterward.

I'm making soup

The younger niece was walking through the kitchen to the living room and without slowing down she asked, “Why is there a turtle on your table?”

I felt I was being judge.