Errata, etc.

First, a quick correction.  The tobacco I mentioned from Iwan Ries is Three Star, not Four Star.  A minor difference, but still...there are standards that I strive to maintain.

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Quite some time ago Uncle Ken asked me about my new digs and the other folks in "Geezer Gulch."  Enough time has passed for me to say that there is not much to say.  I saw more people as I was moving in, entering and exiting a few times a day but now I hardly see anybody.  The place is very quiet and I rarely see anyone in the hallway on my floor.  Once in a while I'll see some folks by the entrances or the mail room but I'm not complaining.  There have been some activities that I manage to ignore, like Bingo.  I suspect that folks are content to mind their own business and do whatever it is they do behind their closed doors.

I'm still slowly sorting things out,  going through old crap and tossing it out and shredding old paperwork.  Now that I'm comfortably settled I don't see any need to rush things.

A surprise benefit that I have is meeting a lot of the neighborhood dogs as I am walking out and about.  When I see someone walking their dog, I'll stand still when they're about ten feet away and see how the dog responds.  Most are friendly and well socialized and I usually say "Hello, puppy."  If they approach with tails wagging and their human gives them a little slack, all is well and I ask the human how the dog is doing.  Just about everyone stops and is happy to talk about their dog and the pups love the attention.  Who doesn't liked to be petted and have their belly rubbed?  I try to keep track of the dogs by getting their name and breed.  There are eight that I've met so far and my favorite is Ellie, a Golden Retriever.  I call her name and she goes nuts with happiness, one of the friendliest dogs I've ever met.  Other dogs I've met are Winky, Kim Chi, Pebbles, Lucy, and Max.  I don't have all their names yet, and I don't have any of the humans' names; I can recognize the dogs but not the people, go figure.  Some of the breeds are Shih Tzu, French Bulldog, Boston Terrier, and Pit Bull.  The fanciest one so far is a Brussels Griffin, a cute little sprout, ha, ha.

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Mr. Beagles hit the nail on the head solving my bread problem; I wasn't paying close enough attention to the ambient temperature.  The temperature in the apartment isn't the same in every location but I have it sorted out now.  I let the bread rise in the unheated oven with just the light on, a balmy 85F; no worries.  You're supposed to cover the bowl with plastic wrap but that is too fiddly for me and the film is too narrow for me to get a good seal.  So, I put the bowl with the dough in one of the huge Zip Loc type bags that I have and seal it up; the bag puffs up after a couple of hours so I know the yeast is happy, doing it's thing.  After the second rise it's off to the hot Dutch Oven and a good, crispy crust.  If you are still looking for a good crust on your rye bread, Mr. Beagles, I bet that a big oven bag for roasting turkeys would work.  Put the dough on a piece of parchment paper, slide the whole thing in the bag and close it up the best you can with binder clips of something similar.  Bake at 450F for 30 minute or so and remove bread and parchment paper from the bag and bake another ten minutes or so.  It should work; the bag duplicates the effect of a steam infused oven and that last blast of dry heat gives you a good crust; bake longer for a crunchier crust but don't over do it.  Don't ask me how I know.

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I know Beagles is not much of a news junky, not so sure about Old Dog...

The term is junkie, but who cares?  So little of the news "product" is personally meaningful to me that it isn't worth my time to play close attention to it.  I reserve the right to be a crank, having the opinion that political differences as portrayed are illusory, at best.  We've been fed a line of bullshit all our lives but not many are willing to admit it.  George Carlin said it best, "It's a big club and you ain't in it."  I'll let it go at that.

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“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.”     ― Mark Twain