hrj

Last Saturday morning, my e-mail in-box contained a note from the downstairs tenant that her oven was on the fritz and she had baked goods sitting in pans unbaked. Well, the oven was on the fritz, yessirree. So we tried to complete the baking in my oven and found out that it wasn't behaving reliably either. This isn't quite the coincidence it might seem: I use my regular oven extremely rarely (use the small toaster-oven on the counter instead) -- I think the only time I've used in the last four months was baking squashes for

scotica's dinner in December. So chances are my oven's been going bad for some time and I just didn't know. But in any case, I had a repairman in to look at both of them today. Mine was a minor repair but the one in the downstairs apt would cost more to repair than replace. Given that almost all of the major appliances in the house are closing in on 25 years old (or more), I've been living in dread of them all deciding to give up the ghost in close succession. But I'm glad that mine was repairable because I'd rather not replace it for a few years until I"m ready to do the complete kitchen remodel.

However while I was further diagnosing my oven last night, it was in the context of needing to roast a chunk of beef for the potluck for the Crosston Dance Ball tomorrow. I thought I had it heating nicely (if not reliably), but then after the roast had been in the oven for about an hour it was clear that keeping a consistent temperature was just not in the cards. So I ended up finishing it off on the gas grill (out on a cold rainy deck). Tonight's task was making up several sauces to go with it. In the process of browsing through Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks to continue my attempt at mastery of the text, I realized that among the files lost with the old laptop was my initial database of worked-out recipes and commentary from that source. Well, I can work them out again -- it's just a pain.

This got me thinking about what other random things I hadn't realized I'd also lost. Pictures. I'd been downloading pictures that various people had taken of me at recent events and they were sitting there in a folder on the desktop. *sigh* Well, I've been browsing through

shutt3rg33k's albums and have a wish list to ask for copies of. And I've re-found one of the pix of me at Costume Con because I had a link to it in one of my posts. But I know there were a number of random items that I don't even remember where to look for. *grr* Now I'm mad about it all over again.