Friday Wisdom – Home Improvements

Posted on 08/11/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This week we had all the windows in the house replaced with new fancy energy efficient ones with better security locks. We also had a few upgraded to fancy obscuring glass. It’s a big house so it took the crew two days to replace all the windows. It’s a nice improvement to the house. I like making the house better so here’s everything I know about home improvement:

I went to the home center a few months ago to check out my options for buying new windows. An employee came over to ask if I needed help. I said, “No, just window shopping.”

Okay, so an elephant walks into a bar and now the bar is being renovated.

My neighbor was getting his house renovated and it was robbed during construction, but the burglar left his hand print in the wet cement. Police were able to make an arrest quickly based on the concrete evidence.

They were doing some renovations on Big Ben in London. It wasn’t easy — they had to work around the clock.

Circular saw: a portable tool used to cut studs too short.

Belt sander: an electric tool used to turn minor touch-ups into major refinishing jobs.

Hammer: a device used to locate the most expensive breakable items close to where you are working.

I was told I have to install a new smoke detector, or as we call it, “the cooking timer.”

What kind of nails don’t carpenters like to hit? Finger nails.

My friend had to sue his contractor over the faulty window installation. It was an open and shut case.

When one door closes, another opens – the sure sign you hired the wrong carpenter.

They were worried they might drop the new window – that can be pane-ful.

I had to fire my roofer – he couldn’t stop eavesdropping.

At Lake Tahoe there are two seasons: Winter and construction.

I did an interview to become a carpenter. They asked me to join two pieces of wood together. I nailed it.

The tallest building the world is a library — it has the most stories.

I know a contractor who has dogs that work on building sites. They’re woofers.

I had to leave my construction job. I just could lift the boards anymore so I gave my too weak notice.

Posted in wisdom | Tagged , , | 22 Comments

As The Pizza Cooks — Episode 15

Posted on 08/06/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This week I’m thinking about iced tea.  Normally I’m a big tea drinker, as in I drink a lot of tea.

What bothers me about iced tea is the way people pronounce it.  Just listen at a restaurant and you’ll hear, “I’ll have an ice tea.”

No, it’s “Iced tea.” With a ‘d.’  You don’t make tea out of ice.  Steeping an ice cube in hot water gets you warm water, not tea.  You make tea and then “ice” it to make it cold.  Maybe we should say, “I’ll have a cold tea.”  Likely, you’d get a room temperature tea as it’s not hot and therefore cold, but not ice cold.  In the summer I want my tea cold.

No sugar. No sweetener, just tea over ice.  Black tea, none of that fancy herbal stuff on ice.  All I want is just plain, no nonsense back tea poured over a large glass of ice.  I don’t travel much in the south, but when I do, I’m careful not to order a sweet tea, which is iced tea poured over a pound of sugar with a pound of ice.  As I tell the waitstaff, “No sweetener, I’m sweet enough.”

Nobody laughs at that.  I think they’re just so stunned that someone doesn’t like sugar that they just stop listening when I say, “No sweetener.”

In past years I made my own iced tea at home.  Maybe I should say, I ice my own tea at home.  I shutter to think how they make iced tea at a restaurant — likely some weird powdery thing they get from a machine, but I will drink it there.  At home, I’d do the regular, brew a pot of real tea and pour it over ice.  In the last few years I have gotten lazy and will often buy it in bottles at the store.  The local supermarket will often have Tejava black tea on sale at two big bottles for $5.00.  It actually tastes like real black tea and at the price, I’m willing to ignore the manufacturing methods for the convenience of just being able to open a bottle and pour over ice.

I should point out that cold/iced tea doesn’t have milk in it.  Hot tea on the other hand must have milk.  You brew the tea in a pot, pour the milk in your cup and then pour the hot tea over the milk.  Not the other way around.  I’m not going to explain why.

I do find it strange that when I order just “tea” in a restaurant, they’ll ask me, “Hot or iced?”  Which I find weird because should be hot unless it’s iced.  I guess that I’m one of the few who think.  Of course, you don’t get many people in an American restaurant ordering hot tea so I’m just the strange customer who doesn’t want coffee with breakfast.

Summer is the right time to be drinking iced tea, but even in summer I like my morning cup of “hot” tea and my afternoon tea and cookie.  Heather likes that too and most often I’m the guy who makes the tea.  Heather is British and does like to comment on my tea making faults like not enough milk or letting it brew too long.  On these warm summer mornings we often have tea in the garden.  I’ll drink it while sitting and admiring the garden.  Heather has it while she works in the garden.  Often she gets out before I do — be fair, I’m inside making the tea — and I’ll end up having to chase through the yard to find out where she is (it’s a big yard).

This morning I couldn’t find her in the normal places.  Then I saw the gate to the front yard opened and I thought, “Oh no. Someone left the gate open and Heather escaped.”

Turns out Heather was just out digging in a front bed and not really lost.

Next time, I think I’ll discuss the difference between a shovel and a spade, but now it’s time to cut the pizza.

Posted in As The Pizza Cooks | Tagged , | 26 Comments

Friday Wisdom – Colds

Posted on 08/04/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

Last weekend we flew up to Seattle to visit our grandson who is doing his summer engineering internship there. I managed to pick up a cold on the flight home so here’s what I know about colds:

Simple jokes are like a common cold – everyone gets them.

There’s a song about the common cold, every catchy.

Why don’t other viruses hang out with the common cold? They think he’s a bad influenza.

I’m working on a joke about the flu … hopefully you won’t get it.

There’s an email going around saying you can catch swine flu from canned ham — delete it, it’s spam.

You get more colds in the big cities because there is a high level of congestion there.

Actually I think I got the Amish flu – you know first a little horse then a little buggy.

I’m afraid to call the doctor about about my cold. I think I got it at an airport – that’s a terminal disease.

I heard this joke about how the flu can cause amnesia, but I forget how it goes.

Did you hear that all the teachers at our high school have a cold? They say it’s a staff-infection.

Never lie to your X-ray technician — they can see right through you.

Just this morning my computer sneezed. I think it has a virus.

Well, that’s it for today because I feel like a cookie, you know, crummy.

Posted in wisdom | Tagged , , | 35 Comments

As The Music Plays #6

Posted on 08/01/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This is a series of posts about the music I play while writing.  This time we move on to The Moody Blues and their song, “Nights in White Satin.”  Written by Justin Hayward, this song first appeared on the 1967 album Days of Future Passed.  The orchestral music along with the simple poetry of the song create a thoughtful meditative state in my mind so it comes early in my play list.  Of course, the best version of the track includes the spoken word poem at the end, Late Lament, just tops off the feeling I get from this piece.

Listening to this song also brings back memories.  The song was rereleased when I was 12 and I heard it on a local radio station.  It made it to number two on the Billboard 100 list and was getting good air play even though it is a long song.  That year I had also just gotten my first regular yard job with the elderly lady who lived next door.  Actually I inherited the job from my older brother who went off to college that same year.  Mostly I just went over every week to mow the lawn, water and put the trash out.  I didn’t get paid by the hour, but rather by the job.  I never really understood the formula Mrs. Beaty used to calculate want I got, but each week I got between three and five dollars – a lot of money for a 12 year old in 1972.

My mother made sure that I put some in a savings account but I was allowed to spend most of the money on whatever I wanted.  I was interested in electronics and stereos and such.  Our family owned a TV and a small record player, but not good quality sound equipment.  There was no way I could afford to buy a fancy stereo system, but there was an ad for a decent clock radio with a cassette player at the local Radio Shack.  I think it was something like $90 and for reasons I never understood myself, I decided I just had to have that radio so I saved my gardening money.

Also I started getting random yard jobs from members of our church, things like pulling weeds, mowing lawns, digging soil in a new bed.  Seems like one elderly lady called the church office one day asking if there was a nice Christian boy she could hire for some yard work.  My mother was in the office that day and I had nice little summer business going riding my bike around town doing odd jobs.  My mother was my agent and she’d tell me where and when to go.  She also negotiated payment terms.  It wasn’t a bad deal, most places I’d get money, lunch and all the ice cold drinks I wanted —sometimes they’d even drive me home.  It didn’t take long and I had my money for the radio.

I went to Radio Shack with the ad and my cash and bought it.  I got home and read every page of the manual, plugged it in and set the time.  I spent several hours checking out all the stations I could get and eventually found a station I liked.  One of the songs they played was Nights in White Satin.  One of the features on the clock radio was an integrated cassette recorder/player which could record directly off the air.  Well, I liked Nights in White Satin so much that I waited a few hours until they played it again and I recorded it.  I knew I could have bought the album, but I never felt the urge to spend my money on records.  In fact, it wasn’t until CDs came out that I started buying music.

I played the song endlessly, but eventually tired of it.  Somewhere over the years I lost the tape with the song, but I kept that clock radio for decades and used it as my daily alarm clock.  It finally stopped working in about 1998 and I replaced it with a cheep $20 thing that I’m still using today.  The clock radio manufactures never made much money out of me.

Over the years I’d hear the song from time to time, but it wasn’t until YouTube and Spotify that I renewed my listening to it.  Like many people, I confused the title with “Knights” rather than “Nights” and was a little surprised when my search for “Knights in White Satin,” returned, “Nights in White Satin.”  At its heart it just a love song.  There’s love, loss of love, regret and so on.  It is a “moody” song.  The poem at the end of the song, Late Lament, is sometimes omitted when played.  You can find edits of the song that include or omit the poem.  In later releases of the album, Late Lament is sometimes listed as a separate track.  It’s that way on Spotify, and on YouTube I found this video that includes the poem as I remember it from 1972:

As much as I like the overall song, it is Late Lament that really draws me to this.  It is the kind of poetry that I wish I could write.  It just has some great lines like, “Bedsitter people / Look back and lament” and … well just all of it.  Go look it up and read it.  You’ll see what I mean and know why it’s on my list.

Posted in As the music plays | Tagged , , | 28 Comments