I’m on vacation in Ft. Wayne this week. It’s so nice. I haven’t been here in over a year and a half, and haven’t seen my relatives in about that long. Dawn and I have done some sewing projects, cooking projects, and lazing around. I saw Mitch in action at a city council committee meeting and have learned a bunch from his garden. I also spent a day with Janel, and we had some tasty food and did a little shopping. Today is a putzing day, I’m just doing some little projects: mending jeans, doing laundry and adventure cooking with the bushel of tomatoes that the garden’s producing.

Friday, I’m off to Illinois for Amber’s wedding. Whoo!

Yeah, I started another blog to keep the major wedding stuff all together, so it’s easier to find and categorize the wedding crap. Plus, I didn’t want it all to take over my regular blogging life.

The Event of Awesomeness

They started fixing the joists and taking off the roof yesterday morning. Holy crap, it sounded like they were going to come through the ceiling at any moment. But I’m happy that they covered and moved my plants, so they didn’t get smooshed by falling roof debris.

Since the dumpster guy was 7 hours late and the shingles delivery about 5 hours late, they weren’t able to get much beyond repair and scraping done before the rain came yesterday. When I got home, they had the roof covered with blue tarp. Though that totally wasn’t the roof color we picked out , it gave us a different perspective: since the tarp hung down, the sky looked bright blue at all times. And we couldn’t see so many trees.

Today, they pulled up to get back to work as I was leaving for work this morning, since the rain had stopped, and TCB reports that they’re nailing on the new shingles. Hooray! I’m looking forward to sleeping under our new roof tonight.

Tonight for dinner, I tried a recipe out of Grandma Harper’s Panhellenic Cookbook: Meats. I had originally started looking at the “Ground Beef and Pasta” dishes, and really wanted to try some that Erna had marked as “//good”, but we didn’t have all the ingredients. We did, however, have all the ingredients (including our garden) all the ingredients for “Hamburger and Pepper Casserole.” It was very tasty and easy. Saute green pepper (and onion), add beef and brown (I actually reversed this, nearly browning the beef first, then adding the green pepper after while the beef finished.) Then add 3.5 cups of canned tomatoes (the recipe doesn’t specify more than this, so I used a large can of diced tomatoes, plus a cup of water), herbs (basil, black pepper and salt;  I also added some paprika and marjoram) and 1/2 cup rice (I used nearly a full cup to balance the extra water I added.) Simmer for 25 minutes, then top with cheese and continue simmering until cheese is melted.

It was full of yum. After a few more tries, including following the recipe exactly, I’ll be ready to add my own “//good” to this one.

Hate-spooning incidents are on the rise at the office.

At lunch, Tyler killed some flying insect (that was trying to nom his food) with a spoon. So, he literally spooned it to death.

Hooray! It’s my birthday! (I’m hoping TCB will learn how to make birthday pancakes.)

The tree came down this morning! And this tree company cut it into manageable sections for us, so we don’t have to borrow a chain saw to get it into pieces small enough for chopping. Plus, they were fast. On the whole, we were pretty darn happy with this tree-removal service.

Inspector came over yesterday, after we called the insurance peoples back and said, “um, this tree’s still in our attic? Shouldn’t someone come look at this?” and they went, “Oh… the tree that fell on your house is in your house… yeah, we’ll get someone on that.”

First, the damage: 4 cracked/broken joists, the beam that runs the entire length of the roof was broken, the outside wall is bowed, the gutter is dented, the fence is broken, the eaves are … not right.

The good news: They’re replacing the entire roof (hooray!) due to storm damage (wonderful, because it needed to be replaced soon, anyway.) And fixing the other things that are wrong. Still have to pay the deductible, but that’s way cheaper than a whole new roof would have cost us. I think good things will come out of this.

That was a wild storm last night! The wind was whipping branches and poorly-attached leaves around, and there was plenty of lightning and thunder. The lights were flickering before they went out (at around 7:10 last night, we got it back around 5am). And then, just after the lights went out for good, a tree fell on our house.

We’re fine, it got the apex of the house on the corner above the guest bedroom. Didn’t come into the house, and it stopped raining almost immediately after the tree fell. Did crush some stuff, so it’ll be a bunch of repair for the insurance to take care of.

Whoo. Tree.

• Margaret Ringenberg passed away while attending OskKosh
• obit, Ft. Wayne article
• Girls Can Fly- Margaret Ringenberg’s site
• WhiteKnightTwo debuted at AirVenture
• NASA exhibit at OshKosh