Twenty years ago my mom was concerned about the Y2k bug. She was raised by people who stored necessities due to being raised during the Great Depression, so she was already well practiced at being a prepper to some extent. While Y2k ended up not being a thing, some of those habits stuck.When I moved…
In addition to the massive amounts of dehydrating I’ve done over the years I also do some home canning. Since moving home after my mom passed last year I’ve been trying to make use of her dream kitchen that she designed specifically to make canning easier and more efficient. There’s a huge island, five burner…
I had some stew beef that I canned last winter that I wanted to use up, so on the way home from work yesterday I stopped and got a few things to make beef stroganoff. My local grocer had several packs of sliced shiitake mushrooms on sale for stupid cheap. Thankfully I have my dehydrator…
Lately I’ve been listening to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks due to lots of solo time at work. One subject I’m stuck on, not surprising to anyone who knows me well, is space and space travel. Today I was working on some back episodes of StarTalk and listened to an interview with Dr. Mae…
The last few years I’ve been learning various new crafting and making skills—fiber spinning is a big one since that fits with the knitting I’ve been doing for years. I’d been thinking of weaving, but one of the roadblocks was the cost of a quality loom. I’d been keeping an eye out for a used…
About two weeks ago I went to New Orleans for an Ingress Anomaly. I’d planned to stop and visit with Ranger and Halo’s breeder, but Mother Nature decided it would be better to rain on her place and make it impossible to have any real fun or allow the dogs to play around. So instead…
Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like raw bananas. Put them in bread and you’re on. I also don’t like the fried-then-dried ones from the store. Then I found the dried mini bananas at Trader Joe’s. The only problem is the price. So I figured out my own version of…
This summer I worked for the local county parks system doing various things along the west Michigan lakeshore. The county stumbled into an opportunity to purchase a section of land that will make a single protected corridor of public land from the Kitchel Lindquist Dunes Preserve in Grand Haven, MI , through North Ottawa Dunes and…
I wanted to tell this story at The Moth in Detroit but, given my current financial situation with the seasonal job and uncertainty for employment after, I couldn’t justify the gas to get there and back. The theme for the night was: PROGRESS: Prepare a five-minute story about baby steps or giant leaps. Fixing what…
My oldest brother recently told me about Kintsugi, the Japanese method of fixing broken pottery with gold. The method celebrates the item’s history by emphasizing the cracks and breaks instead of hiding them. Sometimes the repaired piece is more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it and giving it new life. I’m pretty broken right now…
