Autumn crocus, end of September

Not a perfect photo, but these are autumn crocuses....back again. They grow over by the Metro parking lot.  There were some fabulous mushrooms with them, but somebody mowed the lawn yesterday, and the mushrooms are gone.  That's what happens with nature around here:  lawnmowers!  What a plague.

Green Eggs & Ham?

My brilliant friend & former coworker Linda found HenCam, a blog on chicken keeping (well, hen keeping) when she was investigating yesterday's green egg discussion here. Whoa! What a fabulous resource! I'm adding HenCam to XE's list of "blogs I love." And HenCam's post on shell color was fascinating. She also mentions how commercial chicken keepers sometimes give marigold flowers to their hens so that the yolks will be yellower (something like that). Perhaps the particular chicken that laid my chartreuse egg went hog wild on the marigolds! HenCam, or one of HenCam's commenters, mentioned another colorful item besides marigolds that chicken keepers add as a dietary supplement, but I have to go back and look for that.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the chickens' art. I'm almost out of eggs, so I'll get some more. One of the stores where I buy eggs (Giant?) sells local Maryland eggs. I'm thinking Whole Foods may have these, too. And of course, there are local (well, West Virginia is considered local hereabouts when it comes to produce) farmers selling their eggs at the weekend markets in Takoma Park and Dupont Circle.

Thanks for this great info, Linda. You've elevated my egg buying to new aesthetic heights!!

And welcome to the XtremeEnglish family pages, HenCam!

Feliz Lunes-y! (with addendum)

Monday again in Snoozeville. 

Highlights so far:

Broke open two eggs this a.m., and one of them was chartreuse!  It smelled ok, and the two bites I could force myself to eat TASTED ok, but huh?  I remember the days when the egg yolks turned from pale yellow to almost chromium orange and tasted stronger, too, as soon as the hens could get outside and start eating grass and bugs.  My childish palate didn't like this stronger flavor much, but that was explicable.  Where did the chartreuse color inside my egg this morning come from?  What are they feeding laying hens in Texas these days?  (I assume this is where the eggs came from--most of them do, no matter the brand name).

Found half a shell in the garbage grinder, and was pleased to see a bit of "egg white" attached but still glowing GREEN.  So sorry I did not photograph the entire green egg.  I am such a newbie at this.  But you see the ominous bright green/chartreuse color here.  Imagine trying to eat a whole fried egg of this color?  WTF???!!!

I always buy brown eggs, but often I've noticed some wee speckles here and there to make me wonder if they are not white eggs that have been sprayed!  Maybe this could account for the color inside the shell??

Rearranging the furniture:

I kind of like shifting the space in here a bit.  I may move the little desk from the den to the living room.  It's from that wonderful stationery shop on CT ave just south of Dupont Circle.  The shop went out of business maybe 5-10 years ago and sold the fixtures.  The desk was sitting on the sidewalk one day with a sign:  "For sale: $10."  I bought it and carried it home.  The desk itself is no beauty, but I loved that store.  Still think of it when I walk that way.  They had the funniest little lapel buttons!  Mostly very clever, snarky slogans against housework, the right wing, and other oppressive realities!

The clutter will stay in the den until I figure out what to do with it.  But maybe some of it will transfer to the l.r.

The desk will go against the wall ahead, in front of the outlet!

Anyway, stay tuned! These are sort of interim photos between "before" and "after."

Photos along my path this week

Seeing-eye Dog on the Bus

Butterfly on Four O' Clocks

 

Dinner at Roscoe's

Well, the dog on the bus photo is from this afternoon.  The bus was very crowded,  and I got up to let the dog's owner sit down in the double seat so there'd be room for her dog.  The dog was totally wonderful.  She licked my hand (which recently had been holding a fried egg sandwich), and then lay down next to my foot.  I don't know if she's allowed to do this, but it seemed heartfelt.

The butterflies, so familiar in autumn, have been here and gone in the past week.  I don't know the real name of these flowers, but I have always called them "four o' clocks."  They look a bit like the flowers my mother used to plant that would not fully blossom until about 4 p.m., Fargo time.  There are genuine flowers with this name and this habit, but I don't know if these are they.

Roscoe's down on Carroll Avenue is one of those fancy restaurants whose pizza is CERTIFIED to be just like they make in Italy.  Further, it's named after the famous rooster who used to walk around our town and wake people up in the morning.  When he finally died, some people were late for work!  The salad is called "root slaw" on the menu.  It's made from carrots of two colors:  orange and yellow.  The deviled eggs are to die for!

new office, August 2012

Sally & Jay's Affinity Resource Group has a sparkling new office in a big old house in Montclair.  Love the kitchen area on the ground floor.  Now that Sam's away at college, they've commandeered his rug.  The fireplace is in the conference room, which is on the first floor.

Beach in September 2012

Be Prepared!

Yesterday, I had a nuclear/echocardiogram imaging study, locally called a "nuclear stress test."  It's kind of a complicated procedure, involving their injecting me with a radioactive isotope, doing an EKG, taking photos of the blood flow through my heart, then running me ragged on a treadmill, then injecting more isotope and taking MORE pictures.  I also had to eat a fatty snack in there so they can see how my heart & blood flow work after I've eaten something.

I don't like this test much...I don't like having to FAST from liquids and solids from midnight before the test, and I really do NOT like doing the treadmill.  It seems as if they're trying to make me collapse entirely if I have to walk fast and get my heart rate up.  I don't like the injections or the IV port.  It seems like a lot of folderol, but we'll see.  It's a blessing, doubtless.  At least I did not keel over or run out of breath or anything dire like that.  Every time I go near the clinic, though, my blood pressure soars, and they raise hell about that.  And they also carry on about my high cholesterol.

The clinic personnel are wonderful, though.  I love asking them where they grew up.  One nurse was born in Maryland nearby, and the MRI tech is a native of Virginia (with a famous old Virginia name, he said), and the PA is Indian but born in Silver Spring.  I forgot to ask her the name of the best Indian restaurant there.  The Langley Park neighborhood there has many Indian restaurants, and I'd love to sample them.  

But, the part that really got me was when they asked me how I got there yesterday?  Did I drive?  Take the Metro?  I said "Metro."  Then they told me that the Metro is set up to detect radiation, and being as yesterday was the 11th anniversary of 9/11, they gave me a copy of my medical work order (or whatever) "in case they stop you."  Great!  I imagined alarms sounding, lights flashing, folks in dayglo Metro vests charging down the aisle of the car, big German Shepherds sniffing my pockets.

Ha.  When I entered the Metro station, I approached the manager, who was explaining the ticket machine to some outlanders.  "Hi," I said. "I'm radioactive.  I just had a nuclear stress test."  I rolled up my sleeve to show them the bandage over the puncture wound in my arm, and I fished out the medical form.  The manager laughed...."You don't have to show all of that," and waved me on.  I said, "Good!  I'm going home now."  And he said, "Good...have a nice trip."

Nice to know that our Metro system is prepared but doesn't get all flustered when radioactive grannies show up.

Retirement activities

While searching through my bookshelves this a.m., I came upon a commemorative book published for the Millennium by my youngest grandson's school in Scotland.  The grandson, George, is a hulking college sophomore this year, so the book is quite old as these things go.  This was a page in the book that talks about living in a house with a bat nursery!  Not George's house, but one belonging to his schoolmate James.  The Pipistrelle bat is the smallest bat found in Europe. 

The recipe sounds very good in addition to being very old.  The last item in the ingredients is boiling WATER. Doesn't say how much.  I may try this.  It may produce biscuits!