7 Quick Takes (Vol 269)

Here we are, almost August, and I am not sure where July went. Someone stop the Merry Go Round I want to get off. You know your top secret mission. When the blather here starts to self destruct you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my dwindling supply of sock yarn (I only have 41 skeins left!!!!) over to Sverella, who is hosting this week.

I blather because I can.

1.
I would just like to report that despite not looking all that beautiful, the desserts made with the chocolate bowls that I attempted to make yesterday were consumed with great gusto. I filled them with a no bake cream cheese recipe and then topped them with buttered graham cracker crumbs and sprinkled raspberries over them.

I am making myself hungry just writing that.

I will continue with making these. I HATE not knowing how to do something or having something not come out when I know that it should. These cannot be that difficult to do.

2.
HHBL and I have had a resurgence of the cough that came with the plague that we were inflicted with a number of weeks ago. And to make it extra special my voice has also gone back to a lovely, croaky bass. I am thinking to go for an audition to sing basso profundo for the Cleveland Orchestra. That is if I could sing at all….which at the moment I cannot.

This really is a very annoying illness and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Well…….there are a few people.

3.
I have been able to half cross off something from my Bucket List. I will tell you why I count this as only “half” in a minute.

So, last weekend HHBL and I did a whirlwind 30 hour trip out of town. We drove up to Buffalo, NY to visit HHBL’s brother, Kidney Doc. We stayed overnight, hung out with our younger nephew,

Skyped with our older nephew, who happens to be doing some traveling in South America at the moment. It was his 23 birthday on Saturday so of course we had to say Happy Birthday. We ate Thai food and talked. Kidney Doc made me coffee in the morning that was strong enough to strip paint. Excellent. And then we were off to our next stop.

The Chautauqua Institute.

Guys, I have ALWAYS wanted to visit the Chautauqua Institute. It is not all that far from Chez Knit, a bit less than a 2 hour drive, but we had just never been there. We used to drive by it on our way to and from taken the progeny to summer camp and I would look longingly at it. We have some friends who own a house on the grounds of Chautauqua and they had been asking for us to come and visit and have lunch and walk around and take in the awesomeness.

We are SO TOTALLY going back. It was a Sunday so that meant that you can enter the institute during a certain period of time without having to have the little neck lanyard that tells people you belong. The place was full of people and kids were running around and having fun. We had a fabulous lunch. THANKS Bill and Debbie! We walked for 90 minutes all over the campus and down to the lake and looked at all the fabulous houses and listened to part of a choir concert and……I am determined that someday soon HHBL and I are going to rent a condo or a room or a broom closet for a week so we can take it all in.

That is why I tell you that it was only half crossed off of the list, because I need to go back for longer.

Oh, and I SO want to do this to the toilet lid in my office…..

Deb is an artist and when they renovated their house she painted all the tiles that were used and painted the walls and even painted a fabulous rug on the kitchen floor. And the toilet lid was the capper.

4.
In many ways I am a creature of habit. I go to bed at the same time. I make my coffee in exactly the same way every morning, right down to how many seconds I let the coffee grinder run. It makes my world run smoother that way.

So it is a great upheaval when HHBL and I have to switch cars, like we had to do yesterday. He needed to take Coco to the office so that on the way home he could pick up his new bike. That left me with the Prius to drive if I had to go somewhere. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere but then I had that harebrained idea about the chocolate balloon cups so I had to go to the store. I could have walked to the store but I am glad that I didn’t because the closer grocery store didn’t even carry balloons. So I had to go other places and that required the Prius.

But every time I end up driving HHBL’s car I forget one simple thing….how to successfully start the darn thing. You don’t even have to put a key into any ignition, you only have to push the big button that says “On” or “Start” or something. I get in. I fasten my seatbelt. I push the button…..some of the screens come on but…..it still hasn’t actually started. Why is it not working. Darn car! Every single time I always forget……

I must depress the brake pedal before I hit the “On” button or everything is a no go.

Thank goodness all this happened in the safety and anonymity of my garage.

5.
Cleveland in the summer is a fabulous place to be. There are so many things to do that you just can’t get to them all. We Clevelanders need to make up for the fact that the winter months are so jolly horrible that we pack the better months with good things.

Tonight HHBL and I are going to Burning River Fest. And the extra fun thing is that we aren’t just going to the fest, we are helping to man the booth for the Cleveland Metroparks. I am so excited. I get to hang with one of my favorite people (other than HHBL of course).

This is Diane and she is the director of a place called Cogswell Hall. Cogswell is one of the most amazing places in Cleveland, helping the homeless with dignity and compassion. Diane makes me laugh. I hope I make her laugh because this is not a very flattering picture of her but it is all that I have. She will forgive me….I hope.

Oh! And I also get a tee shirt. HHBL mentioned the word tee shirt in connection with the volunteering and I was so stupidly excited.

And to make the things EXTRA special there is food and beer. Great Lakes Brewing beer. I am trying to contain my excitement and the evening to come.

I am a strange bird.

6.
Because I am a creature of habit ( see #4) I purchase my annual orgy of sweet corn from the same vendor. He is about half way between OCK and Chez Knit. Starting earlier this week he had his “Sweet Corn” sign out but every time I managed to drive by he would be sold out for the day. I would not dream of buying sweet corn from anyone else. He picks it in the morning and it is all gone by afternoon.

Today I managed to arrive just as he was finishing getting all the bags of corn out of his pickup truck. The ears were still wet with the dew from the morning and chilly from the temps last night.

I bought 2 dozen ears….which actually equals 26 ears because he always makes it a baker’s dozen.

All ready to be put in containers and stuck in the freezer. I would not even contemplate buying frozen corn from the store when I can have these little nuggets of goodness in my Turkey Corn Chowder on a cold January day.

And now I have to wash my floor because this corn is really sweet and sticky and I was a tad messy.

7.
Instagram…..because I am just too lazy to write anything else.