Tales from the Shark Tank

Via the friend-of-a-friend sort of thing, I started reading the blog of a young woman (college age) in Norway.  She mostly blogs in English.  I’ve never asked her why, but if I didn’t know she was from Trondheim, I’d never have guessed.  Her use of English is quirky, but not so much more so than some of my other friends.

She started having some problems and talking about them, and I commented, sometimes telling her about applicable things I’d seen, sometimes asking questions that (she said) made her think rather than simply react, sometimes simply being sympathetic and telling her someone wished her well.  They’re all things I do in the way of listening, just this time it was in writing instead of in person.

Somewhere in the process, I seem to have acquired another fledgling.  She e-mails me now to talk things over that she doesn’t want to post publicly in her blog.  It seems what I have to say matters to her.  We’ve never met in person, but that doesn’t matter to her, or really much to me.  In everything but making her tea and listening in my own living room, it’s exactly like the other fledglings I’ve had.  On the one hand, it feels perfectly normal.  But when I stop to think about it, I find it utterly mind-boggling.

A couple of days ago, an old friend e-mailed me asking if I still maintained my law license, and if so if I would help him and the grandfather of another friend with a contract house purchase.  The only complication is that the seller is living in the Philippines, and I figured that was resolvable by a Power of Attorney to the granddaughter.  Half an hour later I had e-mail from the seller saying he liked my attitude, and we were off.

Except this guy doesn’t live in Manila, where the American Embassy is.  So now I’m researching how to get an acceptable verification of signature without an American notary, because he’d have to fly to get to Manila, and there isn’t a branch consular office.  That’s led to researching the Hague Conventions, which regulate the details of business agreements among signatory countries sort of like the Uniform Commercial Code works (mostly) between states.  I’m also juggling property tax issues and a couple of things related to the condition of the house, which has turned out to be a fixer-upper in spades.  (It’s been vacant for a couple of years.)

It was supposed to be quick and simple.  It isn’t.  It is interesting, though, which is good.  And the guy who gets the bill is one who has never caviled at paying me, which is also good.  I’ll see where it goes, but meantime, this is kind of fun.

I am much amused. A young woman (18), the daughter of a woman I mentored when she was in her teens, just e-mailed me. She has started up her own Pagan coven, and was looking into what foods would be appropriate for a harvest festival, as she would be hosting their Mabon Circle. (I keep telling people I’m not the Encyclopedia Galactica, and they keep not listening. But I digress.)

So I did a little hunting, and e-mailed her a bunch of Sukkot recipes. There’s a vegetable stew, and roast chicken with root vegetables, and a barley bread with dried fruit, and eggplant stuffed with mushrooms and barley. Best source I could think of for harvest-festival recipes, y’know?

The appliance wars are over, and House Deer is victorious.

The saga began on the Friday before Labor Day.  I don’t know where in the appliance code it is written that failure must take place on or immediately before a holiday weekend, but it’s got to be somewhere.  I’ve had a microwave die the day before Thanksgiving with a full feast to cook, my oven thermostat go on strike with bread rising and cookies on the tray for a 4th of July party, and my dishwasher turn up its toes while I was making a Passover Seder.

This time, though, they outdid themselves, with two dying on the same day.  First we found that the refrigerator had stopped refrigerating.  The thermometer inside read upwards of 60.  So I called until I found a repairman (crochety old man; he really knew his stuff and was both willing to explain and far less crotchety when he found out I would actually listen.)  He came out, did what he could, and warned me that it might not be sufficient and why.  Then he left.

That accomplished, I went to move towels from washer to dryer, only to find that they were still water-saturated.  So I set them to spin again.  More water came out, but not much, and the sound was odd.  Opened the lid to smell something hot, and found when I moved the towels that the tub was indeed extremely warm in one spot.  Tried to move things and check, and figured out that what the last repairman had told me was coming had indeed arrived; the bearings were gone and the motor burning out.  Okay then; it’s New Washer Time!

Meanwhile, the refrigerator still hasn’t come back on.  Not good.  Checked again a few hours later.  Silence.  Go to bed.  Checked again at about 3:00 a.m. when I made my usual pilgrimage, to find that it was finally both running and cold.  Yaaay!  So as soon as practicable (Monday), I went out and committed an act of washing machine.

I had rejoiced too soon.  The refrigerator continued to operate for a whole 48 hours.  After that, the freezer worked fine but the fridge wouldn’t chill below 55.  (I found that very strange.)  That is not a temperature that prevents spoilage, to say the least, so we started helping it along with bags of ice, acknowledging that life support was not a terribly satisfactory solution and that it was simply time to say kaddish for the poor thing.  I also started cooking so that there would be no leftovers after I had to throw out a quart of chicken corn soup.  And so the next hunt was on.  Have I mentioned that appliance shopping is an element in the set of things which is no fun?  No?  Well, permit me to rectify the oversight.  But I finally found one, buying it, in an amusing small-world twist, from the young man who had purchased our house in Indianapolis in January 2006.

So we now have a full complement of working appliances.  The washer was delivered last Thursday, and the refrigerator today.  I’ve done a whole lot of laundry, and filled the new refrigerator with the things that survived the demise of the old one.  So ended the appliance wars.  We even won, but as is the case with any war, victory wasn’t cheap.

Our son, still enchanted with the Cartoon Network survival show, decided to shelve the cat-tail quest until spring, but decided that now would be a good time to acquire a different skill.  He decided that he was going to learn to build a campfire.

At first I tried to discourage this, but the subject would not stay closed.  Finally I decided that the best way to prevent unauthorized, unsupervised and generally dangerous experiments was to take control and provide lessons in safety.

First lesson was lighting matches.  We went through about a dozen, standing in the middle of the kitchen, before he could light his match pretty much every time.  We also blew them out and then dropped the spent matches into a pot of water, with appropriate comments on what could happen if they fell on paper instead.  So far so good.  Then we talked about how to choose a safe place for a camp fire, and what supplies to have at hand.  (Basically tinder (dry grass, bark, etc.), dry sticks of varying sizes, and a large bucket full of water.)  We forbade any attempt until we had cinderblocks to set up what is essentially a fire-proof box, and until Mom was present to instruct and supervise.  He gathered tinder enough for half a dozen fires, and a similar supply of sticks, while he waited with increasing impatience to actually see a fire started.

So finally yesterday afternoon, with all ready, we went out.  I showed him how to construct it, taking advantage of the fact that fire by its nature moves upward.  And then I impressed the heck out of him by lighting one single match, setting it under a corner of the structure, and having a good fire burning in about 5 minutes.

We let it go for about half an hour, at which point the original fuel was pretty well used up.  In the meantime, I showed him what happens when you push fuel in toward the center or spread everything out.  He also learned that no matter how you try, you’re going to get smoke blown in your direction.  Then I poured about half a bucket of water over the whole thing, (which had never been very big) and we went out to commit an act of washing machine, ours having died its final death on Friday.

So today, after homework was done, out we went and repeated the procedure.  This time he looked around and made certain everything we needed was at hand, built the structure, checked wind direction, and began trying to light the fire.  And trying.  And trying.  And trying.  When he finally gave up and asked me to help, it took me a good few tries as well, the breeze being stiff enough to blow the fire out even once it looked like it was going well.  He was getting frustrated by the time we finally had something.  He also learned that you can put a fire out by feeding it too much or too quickly and blocking the air-flow.

So he’s gotten some hard and fast rules drilled into his head, both of the safety variety (Do Not Play With Fire is Rule numbers 2, 4 and 6) and of the parental variety.  (Never Without Direct Adult Supervision is Rule numbers 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9.)  So the obsession has been channeled into safety lessons for now.  I predict the next thing will be a demand to spend the night outside in a tent.  Oh, and rule number 10?  That one’s for Mom.  Put the matches somewhere he won’t think to look.