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Relaxing en passant...
Sep. 14th, 2003 09:38 pmMy trip to the grocery store last night included a stop at the video counter, where I rented About Schmidt. I was so tired once I got home, I only got to watching it today. It turns out to be one of those "slice of life" stories that Nicholson is famous for, and which I generally avoid, except for when Nicholson is playing in one. The result of having watched something like this is the enjoyment of watching Nicholson's character react to what are in essence painful yet also comedic situations, but I could not for the life of me imagine watching this one again any time soon.
After closing the store yesterday, I drove out to Williams Creek, which is about 20 miles down Piedra Road, away from Highway 160. The fact that the store's last client left almost an hour after the nominal closing time had the effect of clipping that hour from my sojourn. I did, however, get to walk around the lake out there.
Of course, I was out looking for mushrooms, and I found quite a number, but of the ones I can recognize as edible, nearly all were on the old side and dry. I did find one Boletus edulis the size of my thumb, a small handful of Suillus granulatus, and about a half dozen small Suillus brevipes. I also ran across exactly three chanterelles and a small bunch of what I think are Lycoperdon perlatum puffballs, in the edible stage.
Unless it rains soon and temperatures stay moderate, the mushroom season can probably be considered over. I should have gone to the woods in the day or two following the rain last week. Then the edibles I found would've been fresh.
Because of yesterday's slim pickings (and because I had stuff to do at home), I didn't go anywhere today, although I was tempted to. Feht called Friday to say he probably wouldn't be up to going anywhere to hunt mushrooms today, and it turns out it's a good thing we didn't spend an entire day at Williams Creek. Or maybe it wasn't a good thing; mushrooms aren't everything.
* * * Oh, that fabulous Internet. Slashdot started today's little quest with an item pointing to instructions on how to make silly putty. The recipe involves Elmer's glue and sodium borate (aka "20 Mule Team Borax), which are both fairly easy to obtain, so I may try to make some of the strechy polymer someday, just for the heck of it. Maybe I'll make it a joint project with Huntur, when she's a little older.
However, the instructions for the silly putty refer to another recipe at the same site, for "slime", which is just a little bit harder to make (in terms of ingredients; which is to say that polyvinyl alcohol is not in my medicine cabinet). Rather than do the intuitive thing and replace "Sillyputty" with "Slime" in the URL, I did a Google search for the slime recipe, including "site:chem.umn.edu" as a search parameter, which was fortunate, since it led me to a brief series of posts titled Sabbatical and Other Adventures in Spain. I found the memoir a pleasant distration.
Cheers...
After closing the store yesterday, I drove out to Williams Creek, which is about 20 miles down Piedra Road, away from Highway 160. The fact that the store's last client left almost an hour after the nominal closing time had the effect of clipping that hour from my sojourn. I did, however, get to walk around the lake out there.
Of course, I was out looking for mushrooms, and I found quite a number, but of the ones I can recognize as edible, nearly all were on the old side and dry. I did find one Boletus edulis the size of my thumb, a small handful of Suillus granulatus, and about a half dozen small Suillus brevipes. I also ran across exactly three chanterelles and a small bunch of what I think are Lycoperdon perlatum puffballs, in the edible stage.
Unless it rains soon and temperatures stay moderate, the mushroom season can probably be considered over. I should have gone to the woods in the day or two following the rain last week. Then the edibles I found would've been fresh.
Because of yesterday's slim pickings (and because I had stuff to do at home), I didn't go anywhere today, although I was tempted to. Feht called Friday to say he probably wouldn't be up to going anywhere to hunt mushrooms today, and it turns out it's a good thing we didn't spend an entire day at Williams Creek. Or maybe it wasn't a good thing; mushrooms aren't everything.
However, the instructions for the silly putty refer to another recipe at the same site, for "slime", which is just a little bit harder to make (in terms of ingredients; which is to say that polyvinyl alcohol is not in my medicine cabinet). Rather than do the intuitive thing and replace "Sillyputty" with "Slime" in the URL, I did a Google search for the slime recipe, including "site:chem.umn.edu" as a search parameter, which was fortunate, since it led me to a brief series of posts titled Sabbatical and Other Adventures in Spain. I found the memoir a pleasant distration.
Cheers...
