Miscellanea

• Today I made a chicken pot pie, one of my family's favorites. It requires a moderate amount of labor. Although it isn't difficult, I like to carve out a few hours to spend working on it. While I prepped the ingredients today, I realized how much I enjoy afternoons like today: puttering around in the kitchen, some good music playing, snacking on this and that. I didn't eat lunch today, but I grazed all afternoon while I cooked. A celery stick here, some chips and salsa there. A hunk of sharp cheddar, a whole wheat English muffin, an iced coffee...whatever strikes my fancy. Anyway, the chicken pot pie turned out great. We really should do it more often.
  

• Sadly, we lost a tree in our front yard today. We only had two trees (our front yard is tiny). A few days ago, some stormy weather caused one of the trees to lean. Over the next three days it slowly kept leaning until it was practically on the ground. The landscapers came today and chopped it down and hauled it away. I hope they plan to plant another! We lost some vital shade on that corner of the house.

• The shaggy head experiment is over. Alex had been growing his hair for the past three months or so, with the intention of letting it grow really long. I needed a haircut, and a couple of days ago when he heard that I was planning to go get mine cut, he said he was ready for one too. So I gave him a trim in the garage with the electric razor. I didn't go as short as I did last summer (Cristina thought that had been too short) so his scalp has a little bit more coverage this time. But it's definitely still a buzz cut, which makes hair labor (shampooing, combing in the morning) much easier. If my hair was as thick as his, I might give myself the same kind of haircut. But I think I'll stick with Great Clips. Although it really should be called Adequate Clips, because it's not that great.

• My conversion from PC to Mac is almost complete. Yesterday I switched the printer over to the Macbook. So now there really isn't any reason to keep using the PC. Yet, I'm typing this blog on the PC right now. Because it's still here, still works, and it has the big monitor. Soon, I'll switch the big monitor over to the Macbook as well.

• I just killed a fly with my bare hands. We have heavy white curtains that can close off the computer desk and I just saw a fly land on the curtain. He wandered inside the folds, so I clapped my hands on the curtain where he was inside. When I opened up the curtain folds, the dead fly fell out. Score.

• I can't seem to fall asleep. Which is why I'm blogging.

• I just killed a second fly using the same technique! Why are there so many flies upstairs? And why do they keep wandering into the Curtains of Death?