Around the House: Stone and Ravioli

Finally got motivated to do a stone walkway project that has been churning around in my head for a year or so. I purchased the stone for a decent price last summer from a neighbor who didn't want it. It's been sitting while I tried to figure out what I could do with it.

A plan finally came together after we built a new deck and salvaging some wooden 4x4s from the tear-down of the old deck. I'm not one to waste anything that I might have to purchase. Re-use, recycle, re-purpose is a good thing. Once the new deck was a reality, I was able to start imagining a walk-way from the side of the house down to the gate leading to the arroyo.

But I kept putting off the project because it has been brutally hot here this summer...but not as hot as Arizona, California and parts of Texas - but too hot to work comfortably. With the temps plummeting down into the high nineties the last two weeks, I got my tools and went to work.

There is something about stone. I like stone. My grand father was a stone mason. My other grandfather could whip up concrete and make a sidewalk that never cracked. The only drawback to working with stone is that they tend to be heavy.

The back yard slopes downward toward the arroyo and so it seemed like the way to go was to terrace a walkway down the side and from the steps of the deck. Those 4x4s came in handy for the terracing. I drilled holes and secured them to the ground with 2-foot lengths of re-bar. Using a sledge hammer I was able to pound in the re-bar without hitting solid rock. That was a miracle because when I planted some Italian cyprus in the front yard it took 4 hours to dig two 12-inch deep holes and required the use of the sledge hammer and a chisel.

Here are some photos of the almost finished and the finished walkway. I just have to cover the rest of the landscape fabric with crushed stone, which I will have to acquire or borrow from another part of the backyard. The backyard still needs lots of work to make it the garden I want it to be. One thing at a time.

Finished the walkway today
to the gate that leads to the arroyo

The veggie/flower/herb garden -
many of the plants are "volunteers"

The new deck

Ravioli.

I took a bit of a break from landscaping to make a little hand-made ravioli. More about the recipe and prep at "Dinner's Ready" blog.

The tomato sauce

The Swiss Chard to mix into the ricotta

Trimming

Filling

The mess

The reward

The detail

Masonry and Cooking in One Afternoon or What An Old Gay Guy Does For Fun

Our house is built on the side of a hill, so we have these concrete stairs from the driveway to the deck. The person who built them decades ago was an amateur (I should talk I don't have any credentials in masonry but I've mixed a batch or three of cement in my life).

The steps are all different heights, from seven inches to almost nine and a half. (I could make comments here, but I'm tired and just want to make the point that some of us can go from doing masonry to cooking a semi-gormet meal without a second thought.)

There are also gaps in the cement and some holes that were formed because whoever poured the concrete did not bother to make sure it seeped around the rock filler they used.

Anyhow, we have lived with these these stairs for fourteen years and could never figure out what to do with them. We had a mason give us an estimate recently that included replacing the stone wall on either side of the stairway. That was going to cost a minimum of $9,000.

So, that was out of the question.

I thought about how to fix the steps for cheap. I decided that if I raise each step by putting a layer of concrete on them I can get them to be roughly of uniform heights. I bought a couple of bags of concrete and went to work - from the top down. This will result in the last step being about 10 inches to the driveway, so I will have to make a landing or stoop to ease the transition, I hope. Leon thinks I will be in trouble there.

I finished two of the eight steps today. Then I went in and made dinner. Grilled Salmon, Cabbage and Fennel Slaw and Green Bean Salad.

I will post the finished masonry project if it comes out good, otherwise I will be up a creek without a trowel.

Gay Popcorn Movie 6 - And Netflix Binge Picks

2/20/2014 Update: Just watched Cloudburst on Netflix. With Olivia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker, Ryan Doucette (eye candy). This is a cool lesbian film. Dottie and Stella have been together for 31 years and due to family interference in their lives as Dottie's health fails, the two decide to go to Canada to get married. This all takes place in our neck of the woods - well close enough - Maine and Nova Scotia, with some great filming locales. Olivia is brilliant as usual. And there are some priceless lines and a little male frontal nudity for good measure. Don't expect a great artistic film - it is very outrageous, the character of Stella is over the top and there are some stupid scenes, but it is certainly entertaining on a cold winter day.

Satellite Reception on a Stormy Day

We pulled the plug on our our Satellite TV in December and cut that bill by 100%. (which was about to go up to over $120/mo for 5 thousand channels of mostly crap).

Now we have no Cable, no Dish, no Direct, no Uverse, no PAY.

We get 30 or more channels over the air and that includes the major networks, PBS, and a few sub-channels like COZI, Create (love Lydia Bastianich) and others that offer mindless entertainment and old TV shows like Maverick, McMillan and Wife, etc.

The only thing we really miss is HGTV (Homo and Garden) and USA (White Collar and a few others)

Leon purchased a TiVo for $49 special offer which does require a modest monthly subscription ($15) for your local guide and is configured for Netflix, YouTube, and a bunch of other streaming sources. This allows you to record several programs at once IN HD (unlike AT&T Uverse) while watching TV or streaming Netflix. Obviously you cannot record a Netflix show.

We have had Netflix streaming (currently $7.95/mo) for several years and while they do not offer a great selection of movies, they do have a number of award winning TV shows.

What makes watching TV shows on Netflix nice is the ability to "binge" - that is watch back to back episodes until you can't take it anymore. Doing this during the long, long, brutally cold winter makes the practice somewhat forgivable.

This winter we have been hooked on three shows in particular that we binged on: Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, House of Cards. Leon has a couple of others, mostly UK shows that I often find I can't follow because of the language barrier.

The three I mentioned have something in common that disturbs me. We watched them, like we did OZ and Dexter, and Damages, thinking we must be sick and depraved to be watching, to be wanting to see more.

It is very disturbing to find one's self routing for the serial killer (Dexter) or the sexier prisoners (OZ) or the less bad bad guys vs the more bad and the most bad bad guys (Breaking Bad). There is something disturbing about one's fascination with ugly power and corruption (House of Cards, Damages) or the power of corruption to break someone (Orange is the New Black).

What does our addiction say about us? What do these dramas say about our world? How much more cynical can we become? Yes, these stories are fiction (mostly), but there is some truth running through them all. And it is scary. They are the New Horror Shows.

I'd hope these TV shows would have a chilling effect - one that helps us put a brake on those whose money and power has got us by the balls, but I don't think that beyond "entertainment" these shows really have an impact. That is sad, if true. I'm not really sure how I feel about watching these Hollywood depictions of the world, but disturbing is the best I can come up with.

For a little less serious tone or when you need a break from the intensity of power mongering and criminality, we've binged on The Glades (eye candy), The Finder (eye candy, but if you make it to the last episode, you will be pleasantly surprised I think), Emily Owens, MD, Bomb Girls, Land Girls, (kind of chick flicks) Orphan Black (sci-fi) and a few others that we watched in previous seasons, United States of Tara, Drop Dead Diva, among others.

OMG we watch a lot of TV. Can't wait till all this snow melts and we can get outdoors a bit more in the evening. We just looked out the window and the 2 feet of snow is now covered with a nice sheet of ice, as is the driveway and the cars.

Back to the TV, I guess.

A Sunny, Mild Winter Day - Midwinter Report

Winter goes on. And on. Not my favorite season. Not much is new or exciting. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

It was a pleasant day today. A hike with the dog and Leon and Dottie and her dog Katija.

Vacuumed out the disgusting interior of the Honda Fit. Between the dog and winter crud, the car never stays clean in winter.

Did some writing and getting the basement ready for a project - Leon wants to put in a closet and some shelves so I had to move a bunch of "stuff". We will definitely have to go to Homo Depot because I don't have enough scrap lumber for this project.

Don't anyone hold your breath - it's going to be weeks (hopefully not months) before this is done.

Those Home and Garden shows make projects look SO easy. Everything goes smoothly. They have all the right tools.

When we do anything the drill bit we need is broken or breaks, the saw blade is dull, we don't have the right size screws, we cut the 2x4 one sixteenth of an inch too short, paint gets on the bottom of a shoe and the carpet, the fixture is too big or too small, another trip to the Depot...you get the picture.

There's always FOOD. That is what I do best.

Made some home made pasta tonight with cauliflower and tuna. Mostly because I had cauliflower in the fridge and several cans of tuna in the cupboard. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how good it was.

It's not often I make home made pasta, but I should do so more often. It's fairly easy and the results are so deliciously different from any dry box-pasta. Try it.

Details on my blog: Dinner's Ready.