Gosh

(Current view of the pond.)

It’s been a while, eh?  Poor blog.  I haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping it up to date.  Even my 50 Books Project list is way behind the times.  I also need to do a Move 2008 update.  That will happen after I sit down and do the math.  I’ve been recording my mileage.  I just haven’t bothered to add it up.

M and I went east for 2 weeks.  Way back in March we went to Atlantic City for a quick trip.  We stopped in Ocean City to have a look at the third floor apartment of a house we were thinking of renting.  It was small, with lots of stairs to get up there, but good enough for the two of us.  Plus it had an extra bedroom for any guests that might come along to spend some time with us.

So, we rented the place for two weeks, starting on September 6.  Less than a week or so before we left, I got some bad news from my parents (which I won’t go into in great detail).  The timing is pretty similar to our trip last December.  We were there in time for my mother’s surgery.

I’m glad we were there to see her both before and after the surgery.  I wish we lived closer so I could see more of both my parents, and all of my siblings.  But things are what they are, so there’s no point in dwelling on what they are not.

The beach part was nice.  We had lovely weather for most of our days at the Jersey shore.  We even had quite a few hot days which made swimming in the ocean quite pleasant.  The ocean temperature, so we were told, was warmer then it had been all summer.  It was in the lower 70’s.  Not bad, really.  Refreshing, especially on the hot days.

At the beginning of our second week we received word that Hurricane Ike had visited Ohio, leaving behind destruction from high winds and power outages due to that destruction.  Our area was one of those hit with power outages, downed trees and tree limbs, etc.  The power went out on Sunday.  Ohio Edison, our crappy power company, did not get it turned back on until sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning.  Rumor has it that the reason it took so long is that some of the power company crews had gone south to Texas to help out there.  Gotta wonder if the people who made that decision were even thinking about what would happen when the storm moved up this way.  Idiots.

I wish we could sue their idiot butts.  I processed and froze a lot of veggies before we left home.

• 17 lbs. of broccoli
• 1/2 peck of yellow sweet hungarian peppers
• 1 bushel of green peppers
• Close to a bushel of yellow wax beans

I had also stocked up on some fish and meats that were on sale.  We occasionally eat meat and the kids always eat meat (neither of our sons have followed their parents lead when it comes to mostly vegetarian eating).

All that hard work, in an effort to save money, is going to end up in the trash.  I thought about pouring the vegetables into the compost pile so that I’ll get something from them, but I can’t bring myself to do the additional work that would entail.  Perhaps I’ll change my mind as I start tossing stuff into a trash bag.  We decided to wait on the tossing into the trash part.  The fridge is cleaned out (and sparkling), but I left the freezer items until garbage pickup day (which is Wednesday).  It didn’t make sense to have it sitting in the garage rotting since it refroze after the power came back on and before we arrived back home.

(Storm damage.)

The rest of the storm damage on our property is pretty minimal.  We lost one tree in the front yard (parts of it are pictured above).   Some kindly person with a chain saw already hacked up the bigger pieces for us.  We’ll be using the tree to keep us warm this winter.

The garden fared well.  The volunteer tomatoes (or freebies, as I now think of them) were loaded with green roma tomatoes when we left for our vacation.  The tomatoes ripened nicely while we were away.  I picked about a peck of tomatoes today.  I’m going to slow roast them and use them in soup.

Since I started writing this entry I made a trip down the road to the local farm where we buy most of our veggies.  Bell peppers, both red and green, are still coming in.  I’m going to buy a bushel and start over once I have the upstairs freezer emptied.  It’ll be a few days worth of work, but worth it.  It killed me to buy green bell peppers at the grocery store yesterday for $1.49/lb. when I had a whole bushel of them for $20.  Red peppers are $4.99/lb. at the store.  I can get those for $20/bushel, too.  Maybe I’ll go for broke and get a bushel of each.

I also plan to visit the Hartville Market this weekend in hopes of picking up a few more pecks or bushels of something to replace some of what we lost.  It depends on what’s in season and what looks good.

I’ll be back soon with a Move 2008 update.  I’ve been trying to get caught up with everyone, too, so I expect you’ll see me around here and there in the blogosphere.

---