I cannot tell all of you how different it feels to be able to read again. This morning after breakfast I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my day and suddenly realized I could spend a lot of time reading. This has just not been an option for so long that it didn’t even occur to me at first. I’ve now very comfortably spent several hours reading and loving every minute of it!
Eyelid Surgery Follow-up
Sometime last year it started becoming more and more difficult for me to read. I just couldn’t get my eyes to focus and even with setting my Kindle to larger print, I just didn’t see well enough to enjoy reading. For me, as a life-long serious reader, this was a real change. I watched a lot more TV and played a lot on the computer.
I am very, very happy to report that I can now comfortably read again! I am already lining up books on my Kindle and looking forward to catching up with some favorite authors.
Eyelid Surgery
My upper eyelids have been drooping more and more over the past few years and it finally got to the point where it was seriously messing up my vision. Two weeks ago today, I had surgery on both lids. Here’s the aftermath on the day of the surgery:
And here’s today after the external stiches have been pulled:
Apparently, it takes a couple of months for the swelling to entirely go away. The important thing, of course, is that I can see much better!
Brooklyn, Part 3
I stayed at a very nice hotel in Brooklyn: the Hoxton, Williamsburg. The bed was so comfortable that I asked them to tell me who the mattress manufacturer was.
As with many hotels, though (especially, I find, European ones), the only covering on top of the bed was a 4-inch-thick duvet. For the life of me, I do not understand the appeal of a big, thick duvet as the only cover. Whatever part of my body the duvet is on spends the night over-heated and sweaty, while the part I leave uncovered is cold. I spent the first night trying to find some sweet spot that would even out the hot and cold but was not very successful. In fact, halfway through the night, I took a big bath towel and used that as a sheet for the upper part of my body. Much better!
If you’re going to give me a duvet, at least give me a single top sheet to go with it. I did ask for a sheet the next morning and slept beautifully the next two nights with the duvet over my feet and the sheet over the rest of me.
That was an easy fix, the next problem not so much so. The bed had 6 or more pillows on it, all of them were filled with down (or some equivalent). I have never understood the appeal of down pillows if a nice foam one is available. I asked for a foam one when I requested the sheet, but, alas, they simply provided me with yet another down one.
Here is what I don’t like about down pillows: you fluff them up before going to bed, then you fluff them up every time you get up during the night, and yet, this is what you get in the morning:
My head is resting on about 1-inch of material, meantime, as I am a side-sleeper, I am almost suffocated by all the down that is no longer under my head.
Using two pillows doesn’t change things very much:
Here is what my Isontonic pillow looks like before I go to bed:
And here is what it looks like in the morning:
Give me a good-quality foam pillow any night!
Brooklyn, Part 2
I visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, The cherry trees still had some bloom, the bluebells were out, and the tulips were magnificent!
Brooklyn, Part 1
I was in Brooklyn for 3 nights over the weekend. Lucked out and had perfect weather.
Here’s the view from my hotel window:
Vintage Pyrex
I made a dish this past weekend that used a recipe that has been in my family for many years. It’s a dish I helped my mom with many times as we often took it to potlucks. As I set out to make it, I realized I couldn’t picture mixing it in anything other than my mom’s (and now mine) yellow, Pyrex bowl. The bowl seemed almost as much a part of the recipe as the ingredients themselves!
From what I can tell from a few online sites, these bowls were manufactured in the 1950s. They are still the bowls I use more than any others.
Here’s the original recipe:
Stuffed French Rolls
1/2 dozen hard boiled eggs, chopped
1 pound. cheddar cheese, shredded
1 t salt
1 c vegetable oil
1 c tomato sauce
1 large onion, chopped
7 ounce olives, chopped
24 small french rollsCombine all ingredients and let sit for several hours.
Scoop out insides of rolls. Fill cavity with mixture. Wrap in foil and steam in heavy covered roaster for 3 hours at 200°.
My main job as a kid was scooping out the insides of the rolls. As I got older, I filled and wrapped the rolls as well. When I decided to use this recipe for a party I had this past weekend, I wanted to find an easier way to use the filling without all the effort of stuffing and wrapping rolls.
My solution was to pull out my mini-muffin pan and buy some puff pastry. I cut each sheet of pastry into 24 squares, pressed them into the muffin pan, and filled each little puff with a dollop of the filling. Then baked at 400° for 12 minutes or so. Perfection!
The other change I made was to cut way, way down on the oil. I think I used about 1/8 of a cup; just enough to make everything come together. The recipe made enough for 72 little puffs: perfect vegetarian appetizers.
Tsunami of 2004 Documentary
I wholeheartedly recommend watching the National Geographic documentary: Tsunami: Race Against Time. It’s on Disney or try this link: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/show/caafb96b-b9bf-4995-b8b5-b5e7ab7043fd
The number of lives lost and the amount of destruction is horrifying, but ultimately, the stories of the survivors and the courage of everyday people makes it very uplifting.
The Final (?) Laundry Room Experiment
Yesterday was wash day again and I decided to try one last experiment. This time I turned all the underwear inside-out before putting them in the washing machine. The final count: 10 inside-out and 3 right-side out. After the dryer, the count only changed by one: 9 to 4.
Obviously, the washing machine does something to keep or turn underwear inside-out. My working hypothesis is that it has something to do with the seams on the inside of the underwear. However, I am not planning on exploring this phenomenon any further!
Another Experiment in the Laundry Room
You may remember that in my post back on April 1st I pondered the mysterious question of why underwear panties seem to come out of the wash turned inside out so often. Yesterday I did another load of wash and decided to do a more controlled experiment.
12 pairs of underwear went into the washing machine, and I made sure every one of them was right-side out. When I took them out, the count was an amazing 10 inside-out and only 2 still right way round! This certainly seems to point a finger at the washing machine as being the culprit.
Next, the dryer: 10 pairs of wrong-side out went in along with the 2 that were correct. Here’s the count when the dryer was finished: 7 inside-out and 5 outside-out. This result is in keeping with my feeling that, in general, it’s a toss-up as to which way the panties come out of the laundry.
Not sure I care enough to explore this issue further, but it did make doing the laundry more entertaining for the day.
Tuples and Attributes 