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19444. arkymalarky - 5/22/2006 1:18:26 AM They had the bbq cookoff this weekend and I didn't even get to go. I hate that. Lots of great food, cheap or free. 19445. judithathome - 5/22/2006 6:34:49 PM Arky, have you seen some of the new homes being built? Kitchens are the largest rooms in those houses and they all have bathrooms the size of my den. And every new monstrosity of a home, with no recognizable "style", has to have a home theatre...complete with lush movie-palace style seats bolted to the floor and one entire wall made up of a gigantic screen plasma TV. 19446. PelleNilsson - 5/22/2006 7:50:18 PM Bathroom in the kitchen? The bulemic's dream. 19447. Adam Selene - 5/22/2006 8:42:27 PM I want that tv in my bathroom, along with a fridge. That way I don't need the movie-palace style seat, and I only have to leave when the fridge is empty. (I think that was a Tool Time episode...) 19448. arkymalarky - 5/23/2006 12:12:38 AM All the poor bulemic needs is a sink, and almost every kitchen has one of those.
Sounds like you need a one-room house, Adam. 19449. arkymalarky - 5/23/2006 12:27:43 AM I've seen a few recently, and maybe it's subconscious sour grapes, but I cannot see the appeal at all.
When I was building my house some other friends were building as well, and others just went along to look and help with ideas. We went to see a few houses like that being built and they were a huge turnoff to me. It's not just the size, it's the whole look. We went into my opthamologist's 7000sq ft house and it was just unattractive--large and sprawling and unattractive. And people are building them twice that and more. It's ridiculous.
And it's also evidently the mark of "white trash with money," as Rosanne Barr's ex-husband what's-his-drip put it, to have all kinds of expensive stuff installed and then strip it out and start over because of some little thing they see that they don't like (forget that they picked it themselves).
Bob's mother lives outside a tiny town with a GORGEOUS view (Judith, you may remember the view there?), and a very wealthy chemist who's had some very successful inventions (and is a SUPER great guy) built a lodge-style second home out there for his family--probably around 8-10,000sq ft--and his wife, who told my MIL that she was "high maintenance" was so bad in micromanaging the project and changing things every five minutes (including tearing out a HUGE fireplace right after it was finished) that a friend who did their wiring said "never again." The house is built and she's gone, so I guess she was too high-maintenance. The watering system just for the lawn cost over $40,000 and he had 12 fishing ponds--several very large ones--installed on the property. It's gorgeous, but I'd just as soon live in Bob's mom's house with seven fish ponds (part of their huge family estate) and much less crap to keep up with or pay others to keep up with.
We also found out when one burned up and lit the whole sky a few years ago that we have two log "mansions," as someone called them, around 10,000+sq ft each, behind gates right up the road. The owners only visit there seasonally. No one lives there. Bob's never seen them and we probably never will, even though they're a mile or so away. I don't get it. I get wanting to live in beautiful places you love, but why so much house and stuff? Especially in a vacation home. 19450. judithathome - 5/23/2006 12:34:24 AM I love the view from Bob's mom's house, which I certainly do recall quite well. And no huge mansion type house could improve that view one whit. 19451. arkymalarky - 5/23/2006 12:37:09 AM I like Thoreau's line, "we are slaves to our possessions." I get to feeling like that so much sometimes I want to just throw everything out. I'm not as bad as Bob, though--or Mose, for that matter. When they get in that mood, you'd better go through the garbage carefully. No telling what they'll throw out. 19452. Magoseph - 5/23/2006 8:46:39 AM Good morning, Mac. How are you? 19453. Macnas - 5/23/2006 8:55:47 AM I'm good Mago, hope you and Flexi are as well.
Traditionally, Irish people are slow to throw anything away. In my mothers house there still stands the dresser made early last century. It’s tall and wide, 3 shelves and two drawers, with a cupboard underneath. It was made in a nearby town, and if current values are anything to go by, its worth a nice bit of money.
However, it's too heavy and full of time to move, it bulges with letters, pictures, old cracked delft, ribbons, purses and pocket books, holy mementos from various pilgrimages made by 3 or 4 generations to one shrine or another, st.Brigids crosses, woven from rushes, dry and brittle.
You could be rummaging for a biscuit tin, only to find it contains all the old sports medals won by every family member since they were able to jump and run.
Badges from communions and confirmations, fading photographs of children, "is it me? no that’s you, remember, we were given a ride on Jack Desmonds plough horse that day?" Brass buttons and one hundred recipes for christmas cake, cut from ancient magazines. A drawer full of rosary beads, some palm hanging on the side, and on top, behind the mitred facade, bits of old rods and reels, a box of Eley Grand Prix cartridges from the 1960's, and the good pliers, kept up out of the way.
You couldn’t move it if you tried, and how could you? There's more of us buried in it than in any graveyard.
19454. wonkers2 - 5/23/2006 3:55:25 PM Great description of the dresser and its contents! Reminds me of Thomas Pynchon's description of an old car and its contents in "The Crying of Lot 49." 19455. arkymalarky - 5/24/2006 2:19:40 AM I'd make it the centerpiece of my house.
When my grandmother went to the nursing home I made sure we were the last to go through her house of all the family, and the things I came away with are all what I never remember not seeing, and it's very cool having them around the house. Everywhere I look I see something from my grandparents' house. My favorite item is a crochet-covered satin pin cushion that Grandmother made. She sold them during the Depression and made good money off of them, even in those hard times. 19456. Magoseph - 5/24/2006 10:46:21 AM Great description of the dresser and its contents!
Yes, Wonk, Mac's writing makes my day--I didn't post anymore yesterday because I wanted people to click on the tread seeing his name and we had a slow day, darn it.
Mac, Flexy is fine, a little sad that he has to give up all the pleasure he usually has working with bushes and dead wood in the spring. He shouldn't be driving the rest of this year because of his arm and eyes, according to the the doctors.
19457. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:01:34 PM I am always unsure if Flexi is your cat or your husband. But, of course, cats don't drive. C'est clair! 19458. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:05:20 PM I wonder, as I look at the mouth-wateringly luscious picture of the cake I am making with blueberry filling in Bon Appetit if the editors, a coalition of baking Queens, deliberately put nouveau cooks like myself through a kind of hazing process by omitting little tricks like adding corn starch to the filling, just so we can feel badly about ourselves.
Well fuck you biddies--I know about the corn starch trick..so you and your picture-perfect filling be damned! 19459. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:11:25 PM The tragedy is that I am out of corn starch. 19460. judithathome - 5/24/2006 7:46:13 PM Here's one you can add to your bag of tricks, Webbie...use arrowroot instead. It makes for a glossier finish.
Of course, you have it on hand, too, to make this work. 19461. webfeet - 5/24/2006 9:36:55 PM Arrowroot? What is that? What aisle would I even find it in?
Have you ever used Dr. Oetker's 'Whip it' --I just discovered this today. It's apparently a 'stabilizer for whip cream' and I need it for a strawberry layer cake that I'm bringing to a barbecue an hour or so away.
That should hold like hairspray on the cake. Nice-n-stiff. 19462. judithathome - 5/24/2006 10:40:22 PM Arrowroot is a white powder extracted from the root of a West Indian plant, Marantha arundinacea. It looks and feels like cornstarch. You can use it the same way you would use corn starch.
You can find it in the spice section of your grocery if it is worth a damn (Spice Islands has some in nice little jars) and if not, at a local health food store that sells spices, foods and such in addition to vitamins.
I like it better than corn starch because I've never, not once, had it make lumps and corn starch? Can't claim the same for it. That could be "cook's error" but I prefer to attribute it to the superiority of arrowroot. 19463. Magoseph - 5/25/2006 10:40:43 AM I am always unsure if Flexi is your cat or your husband.
Web, Flexi is my husband and he chose the Mote ID flexiflange some years ago, the only word that came to his mind and that he heard pronounced while having his teeth cleaned. Butch is an Orphan of the Storm’s Labrador Retriever Beagle Mix who came to us already baptized.
I realize the names Flexi, Butch, and Magoseph do not describe well what we three are—the lovely, charming, oldest non-posting Motie, the ever fiercer and loving dog in the world, and yours truly at your service who, as everyone knows, never cease to talk lovingly and charmingly about herself.
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