Second Last Day

I only have to work today and tomorrow and then I'll be retired.  I'm excited--and kind of nervous.  I'll miss the staff, some of the customers, and the weekly paycheck.  I never got rich from those paychecks but for the last almost 25 years they've paid for the family dive gear, our groceries, my week at The Clearing, and for most of the Christmas presents.  Plus it was my walking-around, buying books and yarn money.  I wonder if they'll want their key back?



Last night I finished knitting the second Pink Rebel Girls Hat.  Now all I have to do is sew the top shut, weave in the ends, then I can start on Hat #3 but first I want to knit on that anklet I cast on last week before having this pink hat mania come upon me.

While I was knitting I finished listening to "A Man Called Ove" (oo-vah).  I enjoyed the story but it was a bit depressing as it's about a man who loses his wife and is having a hard time living without her but his neighbors and events around him keep forcing him to be interested in life again.  Almost without him (and the reader) noticing... well, no spoilers but I think you might like it.


I found a recipe on Chef John's Food Wishes.com for American Gyros, which he also calls Mystery Meat.  It's equal parts of ground beef and ground lamb with onions, garlic, fresh rosemary, dried oregano, and some other spices all squooshed together, then patted into a flat pan and baked.  Now it has to cool before being cut into three strips that will then be thinly sliced and crisped in a frying pan before being devoured.  But first I have to make the tzatziki sauce, you know, the yogurt and cucumber sauce that makes a gyro a gyro.  That'll happen tonight, then this weekend we can do some taste testing to see if we need to tweak anything for our tastes.  DD is coming up for a few days over the 4th so we'll have another gyro enthusiast's input.



Durwood noticed this pair of Downy Woodpeckers on the suet this morning.  They don't usually come together.  I wonder if they were on a date...

June 28--Tibet, The Supreme Buddha seated on a Lotus Throne.  It was hard to see the idol in the dim and smoky temple.  Grace squinted against the incense smoke swirling around the worshipers, trying to see the gold Buddha that the guidebook said was there.  She felt so out of place.  She knew what to do in Western churches and cathedrals, she'd grown up in them, after all, but things seemed completely foreign here.  Oh, no less devout, don't get the wrong idea.  She's moved by how the people integrate their religious practice into their daily routine.  Down the street from her hotel is a small temple where businessmen, store clerks, office girls, and school kids drop in to light some incense, bow in prayer for a couple minutes, and then get on with their day.  It seemed to Grace to be a less formal, more personal way to have religion in your life.  She thinks it's a friendlier way to worship than the regimented rites she grew up with and she kind of wished she were Buddhist.

And it just started to rain.  Do you think these leggings attract rain?  After all, they're the ones I was wearing when I stood in the rain for shrimp the other afternoon.  (yes, I washed them in between wearings)  I was working on today's 2-star Sudoku and got it so bollixed up that I had to erase all my work and I was so frustrated by it that I erased a big tear in the paper.  Good thing there's tape to put on the back so I can have another go.  That time I took my time and solved it.  I think I'll grab a raincoat on my way out the door...  Toodle-oo!
--Barbara