TubaOrNotTuba

Bread. As I cut into another (fresh) loaf, with that faint scent of a cultured yeast, and spread some butter from edge to edge, it’s clear. The reason why history has given a seat of honour at the table is because bread wins out. You won’t get that consistent level of goodness from a salad, or fried whatever. If the larder could hold only the essentials of flour, salt, and a bit of oil, we could still manage bread.

As a parent, you keep hoping there are things that won’t catch the attention of your progeny. I mean, there was even a hit song about it, offered up by Sophie Tucker: “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm, After They’ve Seen Paree?” Pay no attention to the date the song was written. Before my time, too. The point is, education of your young depends on keeping their attention away from certain distractions. For example, when trying to inculcate proper table manners, it helps if they miss the annual Nathan’s hot dog eating contest.

If I were a rich man… there are many things I would not change. Happened to watch some videos, involving expensive ways to brew coffee. I mean, I don’t go for cheap (stopped buying instant in a jar, a lifetime ago), but my current machine does everything it is supposed to. Let me elaborate.

Summer makes it easy to throw a whole winter of good habits out the window. Food: where you can get in the car and find a food truck, or a canteen, or a restaurant with a window that sells take-away food. Not to be confused with tonight’s destination that advertised food to “sortir”. Dictionaries don’t always provide the “mot juste”, just saying.

You know what qualifies as “fun”, on a hot afternoon? Learning that some of your hardware can do new things, not mentioned in the owner’s guide. Today, while seeking something unrelated on a website, I learned that one of the DSLR cameras in the house is able to carry on intelligent communications with the iPad. Think of this as a feature that didn’t make it in to the final edit. And even better, the utility software came at no extra charge. That counts for something, in our economy. My only regret is that MY camera doesn’t have this capability, but to be fair, I probably wouldn’t rely on it for the kind of photography I practice nowadays (very much random, point and shoot stuff.) After all, isn’t it my goal to fix things in post-process, whenever possible?

As I watch through the living room window, she who normally watches the birds is busy; trying to feed a chipmunk from a small handful of almonds. It’s not going well. I guess the striped marauder has no experience with almonds, so why try something new. In a sense, I’m glad, because the price of roasted almonds far exceeds the fun of watching a rodent stuff the cheeks and scurry off to wherever nuts and seeds are stored.

Day two, and my water tank refresh is complete. There is something really satisfying when the nose detects the change from antifreeze to bleach (proof that I probably don’t have “the COVID”, based on known symptoms). There is still the “fill the tank, again” step. It can wait.

An unexpected power bump, this afternoon, had an unexpected effect. We have covered most of our bases, in a world where the electrical system is open to glitches: stand-alone generator, buried cables, whole house surge suppression. The only thing that remains without remediation is the reset of clocks. Even there, I can handle most of the inconvenience.

Today, locally, an act of faith took place. Against the odds, this is “setting day”. Has nothing to do with a comfortable couch, or hens. Rather, hundreds of rational people go out in boats about the size of a city bus (more valuable, to boot). Multiple boats, with two or three people in each one. You do your own math. And from the relative comfort of the deck, they throw hundreds of carefully fashioned traps overboard.

The pandemic comes with a whole array of reactions. From the “hoax” label applied to our south, through logical decisions to mitigate, all the way to national quarantines; let’s try everything and see what works. Proof we’re in new territory, medically.