Chuck Grimmett

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Month: July 2022

  • Week of July 18

    We went to a cookout at our friends’ place on Friday and figured that Charlie would get sleepy around 8pm and we would head home then. 8pm came and went, and Charlie was still the life of the party, playing with three dogs and crawling around to everyone there, so we decided to see how long it would last. To our surprise he lasted until we left and 10pm, but was asleep in his carseat before we even backed out of their driveway.

    Charlie seems to be adjusting well to daycare, and we are finally getting in a morning routine. We’ve had time a couple mornings this week to go for a walk by the waterfront before daycare, which has been really nice.

    Instagram turned into QVC 2.0. I’ve complained about it here on the blog before. I’ve been trying to think about what I can do to minimize my usage of Instagram.

    What I’d miss about it:

    • We live far away from family, so a lot of keeping up with extended family is done on Instagram.
    • We also live far away from lots of our friends. As people have kids, texts, emails, and calls become less and less frequent, but at least we have Instagram to keep in touch.

    I don’t really want to lose those two things, so realistically I’m probably going to stay on Instagram. That said, I think there are some ways I can nudge people toward better communication mediums:

    • Encourage more friends to blog and help them set up a blog
    • Emails newsgroups with friends
    • Letter writing
    • Book groups, preferably with a group blog where everyone can share their thoughts. Wouldn’t that be a cool use of P2?

    We planted six grow bags (7gal size) of potatoes this year, three bags of a white variety and three bags of a red variety (Adirondack red). The red variety was ready to harvest, so we dug through them this morning. Charlie grabbed one and started chomping on it 🙂

    Red potatoes from our garden
    Charlie eating a raw ed potato

    We cooked some of these tonight. Parboiled, finished on the grill, then tossed with butter, parsley, salt, and pepper. Probably going to use some in brown butter potato salad with dill next.

    We also picked some of our first snow peas and added them to our salads tonight.

    I baked Alison Roman’s Blueberry Cornmeal Tart for the aforementioned friends’ cookout. It turned out great! We’ve been getting 2 quarts of blueberries a week for the past four weeks from the fruit share we are a part of. Charlie eats about as many as Amanda and me put together, so we’ve been going through them. But we’ve frozen enough to make a couple more of these tarts this winter.

    A Trader Joe’s opened close to us this week! Very exciting to be able to shop there whenever instead of needing to plan for a 40 minute drive each way. A lot of their stuff is “convenience food” and more expensive than making everything yourself, but at this stage of life with a 1 year old and both parents working full time, we are willing to spend a bit more for the time savings. We tend to get things like their tamales, the marinated meats like chicken shawarma and carne asada, dips, and some pantry items like rice pilaf mixes, pasta, couscous, and sauces. We rarely get fruits and vegetables there (we get most from local farms during the summer and fall), but if we do it is usually a convenience item like shredded cabbage for a quick coleslaw or base for a bowl.

    I can manage my heartburn/reflux by watching what I eat and not eating anything after 6 or 7pm. At least once a month I think it will be fine to eat pizza and have a beer at 10pm and it never is.

    Red wine, amaro, and liquors without mixers are my best bet for avoiding heartburn if I want a drink. Beer just doesn’t sit well with me anymore. Neither do cocktails with lots of citrus. Dry ciders are mostly okay.

    I picked up some kefir today and am interested in making a glass of it a day part of my regular diet. I’d like to start making it again, but probably not in the cards right now.

    Speaking of fermented foods: We found a great babysitter a couple months ago whose parents are Haitian immigrants. We often chat about Haitian food. Today she brought us some pikliz (spicy pickled vegetable slaw that slowly ferments). I’ve been having a bit with dinner the last couple nights. Really good stuff! I think I might make some of my own. This version is cabbage, carrots, habanero peppers, white vinegar, and lime juice. Some recipes online have onions or shallots, some don’t. I’m in favor of leaving onions out, because they tend to get pretty pungent and funky after a week or so.

    When I’m feeling unmotivated, down, or generally off, it is so important to either accomplish something right away (even something mundane like emptying the dishwasher) or get outside and go for a walk. I usually need to drink water, too. I rarely drink enough water.

    An important question I’ve been asking myself recently: What are some things taking place during this season (of life, of work, meteorological) that I can embrace instead of focusing on the things that aren’t?

    Reading

    Currently reading:

    • Sand, Wind, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
    • Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
      • Second book in the Montana series. I already had book one and read it a couple weeks ago (English Creek), and I was able to find nice hardcover versions with good dust jackets this week at the local used bookstore, Bruised Apple.

    Books I learned about this week and added to the ever-growing “want to read” list:

    • The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
    • Candy House by Jennifer Egan
    • Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
    • Wild Problems by Russ Roberts
    • The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
    • This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

    Around the internet

    Until next week—keep blogging 👋

  • Week of July 11

    Charlie has been very active this week, crawling and exploring as much as he can. He is fast! So curious, too. One of our goals is to keep fostering that natural curiosity as much as we can.

    I brush his hair every morning before daycare and he started grabbing the brush and trying to brush his hair himself. So cute.

    Charlie helped spin the salad spinner tonight and he loved it. I can’t wait to find little things that he can do to help out and feel a sense of accomplishment.

    We still haven’t gotten in a good groove with breakfast, getting ready, and taking Charlie to daycare in the morning. We are getting closer, though. I made a frittata on Sunday night so we have an easy, healthy breakfast for the first half of the week, which should help. The main disruptor is still how often Charlie gets up during the night. On nights that he wakes up less, things are smooth the next morning. If he gets up a lot, we are all tired, groggy, and tend to fall behind. We’ll get there.

    We usually listen to classical or jazz with Charlie, though occasionally we throw on stuff like the Beastie Boys or Chali 2na and get him dancing. While we were out for dinner this week, Rancid’s …And Out Come the Wolves album came on (one of my favorites) and he seemed to enjoy it and bopped along with it. So now we listen to some of the cleaner Rancid songs sometimes on the way to daycare. It is good to be musically well-rounded.

    Friday night we went to the Italian festival in Verplanck, celebrating its 100th year. The thing to go for there is the sausage & peppers booth. We went for the first time last year while Amanda was still pregnant, two weeks before Charlie arrived. I’m excited to start yearly traditions like now that with Charlie.

    Saturday afternoon we made calzones on the deck and ate them on a picnic blanket in the yard. Charlie got his own with sausage, mozzarella, and sauce.

    Saturday night I found myself sitting on the porch after Charlie goes to bed, reading on a lounge chair that I built, reading a book and sipping a Belgian golden ale while the setting sun paints the sky above the trees gradients of purple, pink, orange, and grey.

    Sunday night I find myself writing this post.

    Lots of tomatoes and tomatillos, but none ready to pick yet. Two of the roma tomato plants are showing some bloom end rot, so even though I solved the watering issue, I must not have fertilized enough. The okra and pepper plants are finally looking good, and we have snow peas to pick this week. This coming Monday will have the first rain we’ve seen in a couple weeks.

    The hummingbirds seem to love the nasturtium and borage!

    Lots of data munging at work this week, so lots of time working in spreadsheets writing formulas. I stuck some of them in P2 so I can find them again later, but this is a good reminder to stick them in my digital garden, too.

    I think there are two prevailing mental models for spreadsheets:

    1. Tables that can live anywhere in the sheet(s)
    2. As a lightweight relational database that is primarily row and column driven

    I’m strongly in the lightweight relational camp and find it difficult to efficiently work with spreadsheets from folks in the table camp.

    The Query Loop block in WordPress needs the ability to exclude certain parameters, too. For example, it would be nice to exclude posts in certain categories or tags. This is of course possible in WP_Query, so I expect it to get added to the block eventually.

    iOS now has the App Library feature, which means that apps do not need to live on one of your screens or deep in some folder. It also has useful widgets. So for the first time in years I’ve rethought my homepage with a single page of the apps I use most often and a second screen with two useful widgets. I’m liking the change so far.

    Reading

    I finished reading Ivan Doig’s English Creek and started reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand, and Stars. I’m also still listening to Neal Stephenson’s Odalisque.

    I’m keeping my eyes peeled for more Ivan Doig books at used bookstores.

    I’ve decreased the amount of time I’ve spent on social media again this week. It has been nice. I’ll try to keep it going.

  • Week of July 4

    A week of trying to get back to normal after Charlie and I were sick last week. Lots of playing catch up, but I’m glad to report that Charlie went back to daycare and Amanda and I got back on normal work schedules.

    A couple things I’ve been trying to get back to doing each day:

    1. Listing three things I’m thankful for. Good to keep gratitude in focus.
    2. Going for a walk, preferably with Charlie and Amanda. Spending a bit of time outside when it is cool in the morning or evening is restorative and grounding.
    A shadow of a dad with his 1 year old son on his shoulders.
    Charlie on my shoulders

    The wineberry patch I like to pick looks like it should be ready by Wednesday or Thursday this week. Not sure what I plan to do with them yet, but I’m sure I’ll decide in the next couple of days. Most likely another flaugnarde.

    The Swiss Giant Snow Peas I planted are finally blooming and producing pods. Looking forward to munching them in salads and stir fries!

    Made some progress on my current batch of orange bitters I started back in April. They should be ready to bottle later this week. Let me know if you’d like a bottle!

    One of the best parts about doing a veggie share is being challenged to think creatively about how to use the veggies you get each week and eating something not in your regular rotation. We’ve been having lots of salads, sheet pan dinners, and grilled meals full of vegetables. Also lots of sautéed greens (turnip, chard, kale, beet, etc) with garlic scapes as a quick side dish.

    Charlie LOVES blueberries, which are in season around here right now 🫐

    Farmers markets local vs food terminals

    I love going to farmers markets on Saturday mornings. There are two really good ones that all of the best vendors go to about 20 minutes away each (Cold Spring and Tarrytown), but the local one here in Peekskill is gaining some steam. We usually go to the one in Peekskill, but occasionally make the drive to Tarrytown or Cold Spring if we have the time.

    I love buying from local growers, bakers, and makers, which is what keeps me going back. I do get really frustrated by a certain type of vendor commonly found at the smaller second-tier farmers markets: The truck with “[Generic name] Farms” painted on it that clearly buys produce from the food terminals, puts it in baskets, and tries to pass it off as their own. Things like sweet corn and plums in late June that clearly aren’t in season locally yet. Stickers painstakingly peeled off before the cucumbers get put out, the broken down waxed Andy Boy boxes stuffed out of sight behind the tables. Stuff that is no different than what is being put out at the grocery stores. There is probably money in it, but I refuse to buy stuff from those booths. They go against the ethos of the small local farmers markets. One thing that makes the Tarrytown and Cold Spring markets really good is that they keep these kinds of vendors out and give the actual farmers and producers a chance to shine.

    Saturday was a day to fix things around the house:

    • Reversed the gate on the back porch so it only opens in to prevent Charlie from falling down the stairs
    • Fixed the pin going into the ground on the secondary fence gate. It isn’t normally used, but I had to move some big stuff into the yard last month and needed to pull the pin so I could open the second gate and make the opening large enough for a wide landscaping dolly to move through. When I tried to open it, I discovered that whoever put it in before we bought the house put it in wrong, so it was impossible to get the pin out. They must have put the pin in and then screwed the brackets on without trying it. I took the brackets off last month and tossed them aside, so I finally took a few minutes to put them back correctly so the door could be opened.
    • Screwed a few loose deck slats back down.
    • Screwed a shelf back in place in a bookshelf.
    • Put wall anchors on all of our bookshelves now that Charlie is mobile.

    I got two of these umbrella clamps to put the umbrellas up on the deck railing instead of needing to be in a table. They free up a lot of space and give Charlie more room to play on the deck without being in direct sun. They were one of those “I wonder if this exists…” purchases and I’m delighted they do.

    Logging out of Twitter in my browsers and deleting the app off my phone was a good idea. Having instant access to the news around the world (negativity gets pageviews!) and everyone’s hot takes about it is not healthy. I’m not ready to say goodbye to Twitter forever, but I am glad to have less time on it.

    I’m currently reading:

    1. Odalisque, book three of volume one of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. Currently listening to it on audiobook while I run errands and do dishes.
      1. I’d love to have a Stephenson book entirely about Enoch Root, who appears in the Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, and Fall.
    2. English Creek by Ivan Doig.
      1. I love reading books in the same season they are set. Part II of English Creek takes place over the July 4 holiday, when I started reading the book.
      2. I’ll probably finish it in my next reading session.
      3. I’ll definitely pick up the other two books in Doig’s Montana Trilogy, and probably some of his non-fiction, too. I’m hooked.
      4. Some characters play the card game pitch, which I hadn’t heard of. Time to get out my 1970s “Hoyle Up-To-Date” book and learn how to play.

    I learned this week that you can install a non-current version of a plugin pretty easily via wp-cli.

    --skip-plugins --skip-themes plugin install SLUG --version=VERSION --force

    This is pretty helpful when an update breaks something. Make sure to turn off autoupdates for that particular plugin, though.

    Toronto’s major internet and cell service outage this past week reminded me that I still need to get a store of cash to keep at home in case of just such an outage. Credit cards are so convenient, especially when you pay them off in full each month. But cash is king.

    Virtually any business or service that relies on Rogers for internet or mobile connection is warning customers that debit machines, ATMs or phone lines are not working.

    Music I encountered this week for the first time that I’m digging:

  • Week of June 27

    Charlie’s illness ended up getting worse early this week, despite looking like it was clearing up over last weekend, so it was another week of keeping a sick baby home from daycare while we tried to work. The doctor said that the poor guy had a double ear infection.

    Then I caught whatever caused his illness, which knocked me out for a couple days, too. I assumed it was Covid, but everyone’s tests came back negative. Some other upper respiratory virus, then.

    Thankfully the antibiotics seem to be working and Charlie is doing a lot better now. I’m still recovering, but also doing better.

    I think the only thing of note to report this week is Charlie’s mobility. He graduated from army crawling to regular crawling! His holding on to the furniture and walls while cruising has greatly improved, too. He can make it around corners, transfer between objects with gaps as wide as his arms are long, and climb over obstacles in his path. He is on the move now.

    I finished listening to King of the Vagabonds while rocking a sleeping Charlie this week.

    I’m thankful for the break this holiday weekend provides. I’m going to spend as much of it as I can offline because I spent entirely too much time on Twitter while I was sick, which isn’t good for one’s mental state.

    Looking forward to splashing with Charlie in his little turtle pool, taking some walks, having a small cookout with friends, watering the garden, getting ice cream, and reading Ivan Doig’s English Creek.

    See you next week 👋