Inside The Perimeter

One of the benefits of having time is cooking dishes which take time. Case in point, red beans and rice. Following the recipe in Emeril Lagasse’s book “Louisiana Real & Rustic” my dinner took a little more than four hours to make. Was it worth it? To me, yes. I used some of the vegetables and meat that I had in the refrigerator, and also decided to toss in some frozen okra from last year’s harvest.

In addition to dinner, yesterday I baked a pan of bacon, baked a breakfast casserole, and, made a large jar of bread and butter pickles with cucumbers I harvested in the morning. I also dirtied a lot of cookware in the process…

I was going to attempt my first bike ride since Saturday this morning, before heading up to get some education at Schoolhouse. Instead, I have decided to do some much needed cleanup in the basement and in Wee Little Farm.

Wordle: three, my starter was TREAD

When you are old, fat, and untrained, perhaps riding a 69-mile route that contains about 6000 feet of climbing is a bad idea? It was for me. But I did it…

If that wasn’t a big enough gaff for Saturday, I also forgot to take a screenshot of my Wordle board so I don’t know which four words I played between my starter (USAGE) and the solution (SLUSH). Yes, to me it matters.

I was glad it appeared as if it would rain in Brevard, NC yesterday, as I don’t think my legs could have taken another day of riding, even for a 28-mile flat route. Instead we ate breakfast in Brevard, broke down camp, and then some of us drove to Walhalla, SC to visit Freehouse Brewery.

Wordle: two, my starter was BRUTE

This is my reminder to you, as well as myself, to never click on links in email if possible. Stupid me clicked on one, even though I KNOW BETTER, and wound up getting redirected to some weird site. I realized my stupidity quickly and closed the browser tab before anything really bad occurred.

Have a great weekend, all. I’ll be doing an anti-rain dance all weekend.

Wordle: four, my starter was WAGER

Apparently Irish folk musician Glen Hansard died in a motorcycle accident the yesterday. While I am not a huge fan of his work, I did enjoy what I heard, and was moved by his death at 56.

Yesterday I watched a short interview about woodworking with actor Nick Offerman on YouTube. The channel posting the video was called “Highland Woodworking”, so I thought it was from the (one time?) furniture capital of the world, Highlands, North Carolina. Nope, it was from the Highland Hardware store next door to George’s Bar in Virginia-Highland.

Wordle: four, my starter was CABIN (it was going to be CRASH, and then I found out about Hansard)

Not feeling it.

Wordle: four, my starter was YODEL

I have nothing.

Wordle: six, my starter was CRASH

On Saturday morning I did my self-appointed civic duty of picking up trash from the ITP-Estate to East Atlanta Village. While there was less trash than normal, it always astonishes me how shitty humans are.

Later on our walk Betsy stopped Molly, a woman that was once part of the Flickr/Twitter crowd back in the day, and introduced us to her. I see Molly out running almost every Saturday, and have seen her thrice on my bike rides to Trees Atlanta on Thursdays. Betsy asked Molly if she knew who I was, to which she politely said “yes”, but I have my doubts. Molly was someone in whom I had much interest, but she was probably too young and pretty to date me, and wound up marrying someone else from our collective.

I have been spending a lot of sweaty hours over three days in WLF digging out a specific, but unknown to me, pernicious and prolific weed from the farm’s borders. A lot of the plants were starting to go to seed, so I needed to do this ASAP. Have I removed all of them yet? Nope. Did I pull them all out with their roots? Nope. Will the return next year? Yep, though I hope not as densely.

I’ve given up watching Atlanta United this season. I predict Tata Martinez will step down as manger/head coach at season’s end.

Last night I made a new version of jambalaya from Emeril Lagasse’s book “Louisiana Real & Rustic”. This jambalaya used shrimp and ham instead of andouille sausage and chicken, and included a can of tomatoes. The fact that I had shrimp and ham which I needed to cook, made it an easy recipe to choose. Would I make it again? Absolutely, but I rarely have shrimp on hand.

Wordle: three, my starter was SLIDE

Happy Birthday to ITP-Reader David aka The ITP-Reader formerly known as “Lurker”.

Last night I did a good couple of hours volunteering with Concrete Jungle. A large group of people came down from John’s Creek (bless them) to volunteer, and they also brought some delicious Indian food that they shared.

For a long time I couldn’t understand why my credit card bill is so high this month, and then I remembered that part of it is a $1200 charge for a new bicycle…

It’s bad enough that I am spending way too much money, but this month my healthcare provider’s billing system decided to triple bill me. They have acknowledged the error, but I have created a recurring reminder to check my credit card to ensure two of the charges have been reversed.

Wordle: three, my starter was STAKE (this should have been the solution the day after the solution was STEAK ten days ago)

I’m back in Atlanta, which is good because I have a CHaRM appointment this morning as well as a Concrete Jungle volunteering shift this afternoon.

I probably should have spent one more night in Clemson so that I didn’t spend so much of my birthday driving home. I did have an interesting stop in Lavonia however, where I was surrounded by my elders at the bar and heard all of the town gossip. I was even gifted a beer, but in the end wound up paying it forward for a future healthcare worker’s next beer.

It appears that in my absence my neighbor’s have cleaned up the fallen tree. I was hoping to be out there when they did to spy on their work, and see if I could pay cash to have another problematic tree taken down cheaply. It was pissing down rain when I arrived home yesterday, so I need to get out there today and inspect, and hopefully see that they didn’t come over to my yard and kill my paw paw trees in the cleanup process.

Wordle: four, my starter was FAUNA

Happy birthday to ITP-Writer Paulie. Oh wait, that’s me! 😀

Also birthday greetings to Jen, wherever she is. She is one of the women who have dumped me during my Atlanta years. I always wished that she liked me, because I think celebrating a double birthday with your partner would be awesome.

Today would have been Alex Trebek’s 86th birthday, which is a big hint for today’s Strands.

In my life I’ve met two other people who share the exact date of birth as yours truly; one person was a friend in Huntsville, and one was a coworker at Echostar.

After yesterday’s session I imbibed at Keowee Brewing Company in Seneca, SC. It seemed as if I ate all day long yesterday, but it was 5:30pm by the time I got to Keowee so I had a burger for dinner since I figured I would get back to Clemson before 7:30pm.

I’m sitting in Clemson again today and will be making my way ITP after the session ends. It won’t be a direct drive however, because somewhere along the way I will stop for beer and food to celebrate my birthday.

Wordle: three, my starter was NAKED (as in a birthday suit)

Fun Fact: these have been the Wordle solutions on my birthday since the game started in 2021.

2026: ?????
2025: BURNT
2024: CADET
2023: FROZE
2022: TRYST
2021: CROAK