Amy’s Gripping Commentary

free stuff – Freecycle

I am impressed with this year’s I Vote stickers. I wore it on my sweater all day yesterday and stuck it to Emmy when I got home, and it’s still there this morning.

I spent five or six hours at the emergency vet today with Emmy, who hurt her foot/leg yesterday while on squirrel patrol in the yard. It’s not broken (unless the radiologist sees more than the emergency vet did), but her foot is swollen and she’s limping. She scrapes up her feet and legs a lot in the yard, but this is the first time her limping lasted more than an hour. It’s been over 24 now. She has a slight fever and is resting a lot. I’m glad it’s not worse!

Meanwhile, I had planned to go to work all day but those plans were scuttled. I did some work at the vet during the long waits and now I’m still plugging away at reports here at home. Last week I was in a four-day project at work that did not allow me to get normal work done, and the previous week I was on vacation, so I feel VERY behind. Someday I’ll catch up. (I’ve been saying that for years.)

My mom had a scary medical incident a few days ago and we are all grateful she’s home and feeling good now!!

Not much else to report. I rode my bike to the Irvington Halloween Festival this weekend (funnel cake!! Did you know there is different batter for an elephant ear, which has cinnamon sugar, while the funnel cake gets powdered sugar?) and I’m working working working. Clover continues to heal. Happy Halloween tomorrow! I haven’t busted into the candy yet.

Mom look: a Huffy Sea Pines bike!

Matt just finished his triathlon here in Indy. I rode my bike downtown to watch with Dad and Andrea.

April 5 is the tenth anniversary of this website! I can’t believe that much time has passed. For an example of how it looked in times past, check out old deitchley.com. I had an even older site hosted in college (I was the first person in my dorm to be able to see — get this — PICTURES on the web using my data phone in my room), but that’s been, oh, 15 some years and it makes me feel old to think about it.

Now that that’s out of the way, no real news. I’m slowly organizing things at home after being away. With every item that goes to Goodwill or the used bookstore or the shredder or the free junk spot that is our curb, my mind clears a bit. Arliss also has shared her thoughts on being back home at her blog, including a few pictures.

Come on spring! The weather here is really crazy/unpredictable compared to what it was in Ireland.

Wow, that was a long unplanned blog break!

I am back in the United States. My year in Ireland turned out to be a year all over the place! Actually, looking at my complicated tax calendar:

I would definitely do it all again, but of course there were some low points too. I think those would have happened at home anyway so it doesn’t change my opinion of being abroad nor make me any less thankful (especially to my employer) for the experience.

I hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of months again beginning around Christmas. I guess I’ll attribute to that malaise why I haven’t been posting here, and I definitely feel better now after a bit of medical intervention in the midst of a lot of overwhelming stuff (largely managing a very demanding job with a lot of hours while trying not to be overwhelmed by another international move!). I’ve been home since early March and just now feel somewhat settled. We still have a lot of things to unpack and we haven’t properly restocked the pantry, but I’d say things are getting back to normal.

I still hope to catch up here on the missed travels, including Sweden, Tenerife, Amsterdam, Belgium, and around the rest of Ireland. I have lots more pictures to share.

Ms. Vegas bunny passed away less than a week before I got home, which was very sad. My other pets have come home now, including Arliss bunny with her much younger boyfriend (everyone is much younger when you’re an 11 year old bunny, it seems), the guinea pigs, and the frog. The dogs made it back ok and don’t seem to care where they live as long as we are with them.

Here’s to catching up!

Two weekends ago, David and I did an all day sea kayaking course. Our group picnicked on Sandycove island which got smaller and smaller as the tide came in, saw a seal poking its head out in the harbor because boats mean fishermen feeding them, and explored caves in the cliff walls from Kinsale Harbo(u)r down to the Old Head Pier. Neither of us fell in! Can’t say the same for some other guy who was adjusting his shirt one moment and slipping into the sea the next. I was INCREDIBLY exhausted the next day; not sure what was up with that but it made work a challenge.

Wildlife was mostly cormorants, jellyfish, and mussels, plus all the seagulls. Anyway the kayaking was fun but I opted out of course day 2, while David and our friend Kathleen did that this past Monday. They had to practice getting back in after intentionally falling out of the boat, and it doesn’t sound like the water was particularly comfortable even with a wet suit!

Flashback: I found a disposable 35mm camera at a petrol station (€12!) and used it during kayaking, then found a place in town that actually develops fillum. (That’s film but we can’t get over the way it’s pronounced here.) Fortunately the processing was cheaper than the camera itself. The pictures aren’t the quality I’m used to with my digital, but the risk of drowning a good camera was too high to try for snazzy photos. Also, I didn’t think paying a fortune for a special case to take my camera underwater was worth it.

And now, time to reminisce about working nights at Qualex… are they even still in business? [nope!] On busy summer nights we’d develop, print, cut, and package 40,000 rolls of film. The slowest night still had 15,000, the amount of film used by northern Indiana, southern Michigan, and a few remote MI towns that flew in their orders! The couriers would drive to every pharmacy, grocery, and photo shop within a couple hours and that’s how all your next-day and two-day processing happened. Didn’t matter if you took it to Target or Kroger: same place made it into prints.

At the time I couldn’t predict there wouldn’t be a market for any of it just a few years later. Those nights in factories make me appreciate where I am now! I did enjoy that kind of work, though.

Here you go, scanned fillum photos!

Our second day in Dublin (last weekend) included a trip to the Guinness brewery. Here’s how a conversation went after seeing the old flower ad above: How do you define flourish? Then looked up fleur de lis. That’s the symbol of the Three Musketeers. They were in Slumdog Millionaire: what were their names? Athos, Porthos, and had to look up the other one. Aramis, but can only think of someone in Ghostbusters… Harold Ramis!

Ireland is a country in love with its courgettes and aubergines. Now, I thought I loved zucchini and eggplant, but darn it, I’m getting tired of them. At home every token veg dish is pasta and here it’s pasta with aubergines or some other variation of aubergines with courgettes tossed in for good measure. Hasn’t anyone heard of BEANS? I miss beans.

There are no screens in the windows. Cheerios taste like sugar cereal here and are marketed by Nestle, not General Mills.

The letter Z is pronounced zed here. We have a lot of abbreviations and acronyms at work, so I hear zed just about every day. And I always think of General Zod from Superman II.

I found this handy from Wiktionary: (Latin script letter names) letter; a, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, aitch, i, jay, kay, el, em, en, o, pee, cue, ar, ess, tee, u, vee, double U, ex, wye, zee/zed. But I’d also like to note that H is not aitch here, but rather haitch, so it’s p-haitch at work and spelling my name includes haitch in the middle too.

I’m sure it’s not dominating the US TV and water coolers like it does here, but the World Cup is going on in South Africa right now. The Irish folks at work said they would be rooting for the US since they didn’t want to root for England. We get a lot of British TV so I’m seeing a lot of support for England as it is. David and I watched the England/USA match last night and I still think soccer is boring. Somehow the US is considered to have “won” even though it was a tie game. And there was this horrible buzzing noise from the crowds the whole time. Oh well, I’m going to have to live here longer to understand this one.

Some good news from the States:
California bans plastic bags
Pet-friendly license plate will be available next year in Indiana!

Albuquerque bans companion animal sales in pet shops: “Since the ban started, animal adoptions have increased 23 percent and euthanasia at city shelters has decreased by 35 percent.”

And yes, I get almost all my news from Facebook.

Some random thoughts to prove I’m still alive.

I did indeed have cadaver bone put in during my osteomyelitis treatment! It was irradiated, powdered, and mixed with what is basically plaster of Paris, but it still sounds exotic. Unfortunately I’ve had some additional dental pain recently. You’d think I traumatized my teeth or something.

Arliss had her fourth surgery a week ago (vet and I agreed she didn’t need a CT scan after all) and she’s doing great! She even gained weight in the last two weeks.

Loving the Indy Winter Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. The place is PACKED and I love seeing cyclists with panniers riding in the snow! Note: the local chickens went on strike when it got super cold the last couple of weeks, so eggs were harder to come by. I like being able to get a half dozen a month since we don’t use more than that, and then I can take the carton back to the farmer to use again.

I discovered recently-reopened El Sol de Tala. This town has more Mexican (I use that as a geographic/ethnic term loosely) restaurants than you can imagine, but this one place stands out. They even have a veggie menu. It’s not the same old enchiladas anymore, people!

Following a craving, I had French toast at Denny’s, and even if they hadn’t ruined it with cinnamon and powdered sugar, it still was nowhere as good as Dad’s. He also blows away every pancake on earth.

I’ve finally heard from some of the relocation folks and the target start date in Ireland is March 1. There’s so much to do that it’s hard not just to plop on the couch with 81 SVU reruns on Tivo and ignore the obvious (that’s how many were scheduled in this two week period). One of my current focuses (okay, foci) is pantry raid: use up all the groceries that line our cupboards and freezer. In the past week we had breakfasty stuff to use up biscuits and fake sausages and last night I made chik’n and rice casserole. My freezer has several fake meat products that I’ve always kept as backup, but usually have been creative enough not to need for most cooking. I see a lot of chili in our future for the ground ‘beef’ crumbles…

Recycle your Christmas tree into compost/mulch now until January 31 at various Indy parks (free), or for ten bucks there’s a guy who will come get it from you first! And you can recycle cardboard, styrofoam, and electronics on January 9. More info here and here for the Jan 9 event.

Tired of all those In God We Trust plates? No specialty plate that appeals to your convictions? Join me in petitioning for an Indiana license plate that supports spay/neuter for low-income residents’ pets. Spay Neuter Services of Indiana (SNSI), a local organization which already does this great work, is applying for the license plate, which would support more of this subsidized-surgery-funding statewide. They need 500 signatures to be considered for the plate.

SNSI also sponsors low-cost spay/neuter a couple times per year without the income restrictions. We actually used one of their certificates to get Walter fixed a couple of years ago. They also sell the cool Peace Love Spay Neuter shirts.

You can click here to get the info and print a petition. They need actual, hand-signed signatures mailed to their P.O. box by December 31. The petition is presented to the BMV who decides if the plate will be issued. A spay-neuter plate has been attempted in the past unsuccessfully, if I remember correctly.

Note that signing the petition is a ‘pledge’ to purchase one of these plates at a $40 premium to the normal plate fee, $25 of which goes to the S/N surgery subsidies. (However, I don’t think anyone beats down your door to compel your purchase of the plate!) If you’ll be seeing me this week, I have a copy on me, so feel free to sign it and I’ll send it in for us.

I took this week off work and have been pretty much lying around, still recovering from last week’s illness and also unfortunately doing some work from home. I have (not particularly intentionally) reverted to my night owl ways, staying up very late and sleeping until normal persons’ lunch times. Something about 2 a.m. just seems like a great time to start projects or settle down to watch TV to me.

After illness and work stress and just not wanting to leave the house, we decided to stay home for Thanksgiving. It’s the first time I did not eat with one of our families. It was great! Of course I missed the folks at home, but I just didn’t want to drive six hours in a day, or even to David’s family event closer to home. And get this: I made great food I was excited to eat! Being vegetarian at Thanksgiving provides a lot of side dish opportunities but is overall not the meal I used to look forward to when I was a kid. This time, I chose the menu, and holy cow I haven’t had gravy that good in years.

The mushroom and spinach galette was ok to good (NPR article/recipe); the pastry is a bit dry for my tastes but the filling has promise in another application. But the gravy recipe at that page was terrific! I suppose all the fat (olive oil) and flavor (onions, garlic, veg broth, spices) just came together in a way that reminded me of the tasty drippings of yore. Tasty, yes, but again this year I adopted a turkey instead.

David made mashed potatoes and I whipped up the standard roasted veggies for a meal so filling I didn’t have room for the pumpkin pie I also made. I’m excited about the (gravy) leftovers! I had intended to do a Quorn turk’y roast as well but Kroger was out and we had way too much food anyway.

eat more chicken vegetables graffiti, Indianapolis

Of course today was Black Friday, and while I look forward to the ads for some reason (still a holdover from a history of the expectations of the season), I’m not usually compelled to go out in the fray. This time I considered it, then figured out I could shop online and actually pay less with online discounts than going to the doorbusters at ‘o-dark-thirty. Then I went back to bed!

When we were kids, we would craft our wish lists from looking at the Sears Wish Book and any other catalogs that came to the house. We often had rating systems to indicate how badly we wanted particular gifts. I remember the moms and grandmas and aunts getting together after Thanksgiving meal to discuss who was buying what for which kid–we knew to stay out of that room so they could decide! From then until Christmas was an exciting time, and I don’t think we were too spoiled, but maybe I just think that because our cousins got more junk than we did! It was easy to think we sacrificed for the family financial good when they had new stereos and TVs in their rooms each year while we just shared a video game system two years after it was initially released. I think our families were careful to get the items we would really play with, and the anticipation of Santa and stockings and the surprise Big Presents at the end of marathon gift opening sessions all made for a pretty neat holiday–not to mention the big family meals and waiting to watch each person open something in turn rather than tearing into the pile at once.

I still really enjoy Christmas, but I try very hard not to ask for or purchase items that won’t be valued and used. I definitely take more pleasure in buying for others now and in watching what others receive. It’s relaxing not to worry whether I’ll get some new gadget because I’m now in a position to just get it myself if needed. I try not to take that for granted. And I’ll be making my own gravy this Christmas as well.

The sun is shining through my huge window in my energy-efficient office building, where lights go out when motion is not detected. From here I can see the giant smokestacks of Covanta, where the city’s curbside-collected trash is burned to make steam and then electricity. I think this is a pretty neat way to handle waste, and I learned that they recycle the metal that comes through the trash too. I’m sure it’s because they can sell it/can’t burn it so well, but the net effect is good for resource preservation.

Next Sunday is America Recycles Day.

The site has a recycling conversionator/calculator (which was niftier than I expected), a pledge, and a few links to recycling information. Now, I’ve been recycling as long as I can remember, and I think it’s pretty neat that my Dad has been into it longer than that. I pay extra for curbside recycling because it’s incredibly convenient and shows the neighbors I care. Curbside even takes #1-7 plastics now along with the cardboard, glass, and aluminum.

This one from the website was a shocker: Every three months, Americans landfill enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet! While I hear arguments sometimes how it’s not ‘cost effective’ to recycle glass and paper when the economy is down, aluminum is pretty universally agreed upon as probably worth recycling, even by folks who just don’t give a crap about any other recycling. Aluminum has value to anyone who takes it to the scrapyard. Of course I set it out with the curbside pickup (our biweekly recycling tote is usually full and also larger than our trash volume) because as long as it gets to a recycling facility, I’m happy. I also trash dig at work and pick up recyclables in parking lots and when I walk the dogs in the park. I know I’m the weird one, but Americans are so lazy that we landfill airplane loads of metal?

Anyway, thanks for taking a moment not to put a pop can in the trash. It’s really not that hard to put it in a recycling bin later.

Best recycling info in Indy is at Keep Indianapolis Beautiful. Their new website looks nice but I’m not sure the map of where to recycle stuff is as useful as the list they used to have.