Cranky n Stinky.com

These were written at or around the same time Tasha was writing her thoughts, Saturday night. My spirits got significantly lower on Sunday am, when the toilet was frozen, and it was 32 in the bedroom.

As we approach hour 40 without power, I've been reflecting on the experience so far, and I have to say it hasn't been terrible.
Yes, it is currently colder than 40 degrees in my bedroom, and yes, I am suffering from internet withdrawal. I am not however going hungry, dying of boredom, or even all that cold. We've managed quite well, despite the lack of alternate power, or heat. We've gotten by with extra layers, extra blankets, cat warmers, and disposable hand warmers. Not to mention the kindness of family and friends. We've spend significant amount of time at my brothers, showering, and getting connected (power and internet). We've even dropped our fish off there yesterday. They seem to be doing ok, last we checked today. We've also been lucky enough to have numerous offers of help from our friends, and even borrowed some dry firewood. Everything I could acquire locally at this time is not really worth burning, it's so green and wet.
While it is getting old fast, and it is sapping our spirit a bit, since there doesn't seem to be much progress on getting power pack, I am sure we can endure a little hardship, and bare another night without power. I don't think however our heating via fireplace will keep the house warm enough for us to stay another night after tonight. 39 is pretty damn cold.
I am getting a bit worried about the pipes too, supposedly it takes a few cold days to freeze pipes, we've had 1 and a half, one more cold night could do it. I'll be running the water tonight, hopefully, I'll wake up either sweating from the furnace kicking on, or to the bright ball of fire in the sky and a 50 degree day.

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While I was not very verbose, I was confident we were fine the night, but not much beyond that. By mid morning on Sunday we had given up, we had called around to find a shelter or kennel for the cats, and had made plans to stay the night at my brothers. We were done!

Even a few days out we are still 'recovering', and all in all we weren't hit that hard. We didn't have any damage to the house, very little in the way of tree damage to our fences, or out buildings. The two impacts were to the fridge / freezer, and the fish tank. I would estimate I will be throwing out about 50-100 worth of food. Thank god our chest freezer stayed frozen solid, otherwise the tally could have reached 1k if we didn't find a home for our meat.

The fish tank on the other hand is nearly a total loss. We were wise enough to move the fish on Friday, they are still in a bucket today. The rest of the tank, the large open brain, corals, snails, crabs, even the bristle worms are all dead. The water is murky, I have been working hard on performing water changes, and changing filters to get the water and live rock back into a livable state. It's so bad, I haven't even tested the water. I need to work somewhat fast because the fish cannot live in that bucket indefinitely. I hope to do another large water change today, perhaps 20 gallons, I did about 15 yesterday. I will also try to remove any dead stuff from the tank, I haven't yet because I wanted to give it all a change to bounce back, if it was alive, but I don't see that happening two days out.

The local fish store is helping us out with water, and livestock, so, perhaps by the end of this weekend we can have the tank back on its feet. 

However as the saying is, live an learn. I think I've learned a bit from this experience. We are buying a generator.

After returning from Austin, and Austin City limits Festival, we are both battling colds which put a damper on our weekend. Despite our colds, I think we were reasonably productive.
Friday evening I baked a pie, not from scratch, but still quite good none the less. I used the apples we picked at Kimball's fruit farm with Joe, Katie, Kristen and David.
On Saturday morning, we visited the final day of the farmers market to get our weeks produce, and bagels. It's sad that it's over, but I think the participating vendors are happy for it to be done for the season. After speaking with a few of them, they indicated that the numbers have been steadily declining since the start of school. This was our first year shopping there, and we really enjoy supporting the local farmers. So, I hope when they return next July, not only are the numbers strong, but we will be one of them!
In the afternoon T mowed the lawn, while I cleaned the garage. After noting the increased amount of scalping on the lawn, I think we may have some work to do on the tractor. I hit a rock while mowing the stony field earlier this summer, after which I replaced a severely bent blade, but I think I may have bent a shaft. So that will require some further investigation, and perhaps money.
I spent the evening Saturday converting my recipe bookmarks to Evernote. I was using google reader because it's where I find most of the recipes I want to make but relying on RSS and live bookmarks just doesn't work. People delete, move, and change content. After searching out some recipes that interested me a while back, and finding more and more dead links, I thought it was best to capture the content incase the link goes dead. It was also a nice chace to take inventory of the recipes I've collected, and logically sort them. Now if I could only have all my cookbooks digitized, I could find all the great recipes I'm missing.
We had a lazy Sunday, I went grocery shopping, cashing in some coins for an amazon gift certificate. I wonder if they realize that with amazon prime, and the fact that amazon sells grocery type stuff, they are losing a sale by charging for coin star and not GC's.
While I was shopping T cleaned up the coop, the girls are acting a little more like layers each day. Some of their cheeks have become quite red, and we've seen them hanging out in the coop under the nesting boxes. However we have still not been able to gather that elusive $1000 egg.
Later in the afternoon, T and I visited the girls at Silver Oak Alpacas. It was nice to see the farm they are at, and to see the ones I've never seen. We are still pondering names for the two young boys.
After visiting the girls, I whipped up a loaf of bread, and made some slaw. Not bad for a 'sick' weekend... Heck, I even posted a blog entry.

I just updated this 7/15/2010 to simplify and refine the recipe, originally published 2006-09-08 15:27

This cold soup is perfect for a summer dinner party. The hot sauce is completly offset by the sourcream and smoothness of the zucchini.

4 small bowls:

• 1/2 large onion


• 1 clove of garlic, sliced thin.


• 2 table spoons olive oil


• 32 oz of chicken stock or vegetable stock. 


• 2 medium zucchini and 2 medium summer squash totaling 3-4 cups


• 1/2 cup low fat sour cream


• 1/2 cup low fat milk


• 1 teaspoon curry powder


• 2-3 table spoons of lemon juice


• 1 tablespoon hot sauce


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• siracha as a garnish



saute onion and garlic in oil when softened but not browned, add squash / zook. Add about a cup of stock and increase heat to steam / soften zuc. Add curry powder, sit, then cover and cook over medium high until squash is cooked. Remove from heat, add the remainder of the stock, and milk. Stick blend until baby food consistency, add the sour cream and hot sauce. Throughly chill, then season to taste with white pepper and a touch more salt




Serve in a bowl, drizzle some siracha onto the top, and slightly stir for a swirl effect.