Tish Leaving

Several friends gathered for Mass at St. William's Church to wish Tish best in her new life as nun.

Making Waffles

For my birthday, my brother surprised me with a present of beer glasses and a waffle maker. I didn't grow up eating waffles and I've never made them before, so on Saturday I decided to try it out. I pulled up a few recipes from the Internet and then made mine with some experimental combination. I was surprised how well they turned out, fluffy, golden brown, and just delicious.

Here a few things that I have learned:
- Start making waffles before you get super hungry; they cannot be done in 15 minutes. Actually, it will probably be more than an hour to make four waffles from scratch.
- It is OK if you make more batter than you can use for one meal. The batter is supposed to be even better the next day, and it WILL take only 15 minutes to have the waffles ready.
- You can make one waffle at a time and eat it while it's warm before starting the next one. The one minute you'd have to wait to eat the second waffle is less hassle than trying to rush to make them all while at the same time realizing the first waffles are already cold and will have to be reheated.
- If while doing the above you feel unusually warm in the kitchen while, check your air conditioner. Using the griddle is not supposed to feel THAT hot. Chances are that someone in your household have accidentally switched the AC off. Cooking at 85 F is no fun.
- adding two spoons of mineral water to the batter helps with the fluffiness.
- Waffles with cream cheese and sausage are very yummy.
- You can split the batter into two bowls, and add extra sugar for the sweet waffles. The diced blueberries are great edition, chocolate chips too, but if you are going to use cranberries you better add extra extra sugar - they are just too bitter.
- There will be some mess and lots of dishes when making the batter from scratch. Again remember that the meal preparation is supposed to least more than 15 minutes.
- Waffles are spelled with two f's. After doing the spell check here, I misspelled them every single time. :)

Birthday Celebrations

Last week was my birthday. My friend Norma treated me to a dinner presentation at the Tokyo Steakhouse. It is a Japanese restaurant with Teppanyaki type of cooking where eight people are seated around an iron plate. The chef prepares the food right there in front of you, adding a showmanship aspect to it by tossing food in the air and making ceiling high flames. It seems that most groups had someone celebrating a birthday there, because the cooks would sing and drum some chanting happy birthday song around several tables. Each celebrant got a thin sliced birthday cake and and ice cream. Thank you Norma for this really neat experience.

After the dinner I went swing dancing at the Fed, where the Austin Swing Syndicate organizes dances every Thursday night. I haven't been going during the summer because it has been extremely hot and the building is not well air conditioned. I had a fabulous time and didn't waste a single song without dancing. At 10.30 PM they always have a birthday dance for anyone celebrating that week and those people stand with a partner in the center of a circle. During a very long song other people from around the circle cut in and steel you for a half a minute dance with them. It is so much fun to be constantly dancing and having dance partners grab your hand from another. In the middle of the song, all the power went off and it was pitch dark because the heavy drapes don't let in any street light in. The blackout lasted maybe a minute and then another couple of minutes until the music continued, but few of us continued dancing even without the music! It was a fab time.

This Saturday, my friends Julie and Sharon treated me to a dinner at Bombay Bistro restaurant. Neither of us are big Indian food eaters, but the dishes we ordered were very yummy and not too spicy for me. We had a nice time visiting with each other and covering all sorts of topics as usually the girls can do.
Julie and I afterwards went downtown to check out the Ginger Man pub at its new location. It is bigger than the old place, but has the same homey feel to it, "a coffee place without a coffee" as I called it, although some would not agree with me. It was a relaxing time chatting with my friend while people watching from the comfy couches and sipping a good beer.
Thank you girlfriends!

New Roof

Ever since the hail storm we had back in March, many houses in our neighbourhood got new roofs. I finally called the insurance in early July and they declared the roof to be totaled.

I talked to several roofing companies, and got very different estimates, some of which were double the amount that the other had given me. The lowest estimate I got was from the Quick Roofing. They had already fixed roofs on a couple of houses on my street. Their sales people that went from house to house offering their service were very persistent. This all was happening few days before my trip to Bosnia, so I told them I won't be able to get back to them for a month. But, they called few days before I came back, left couple of messages, and then came to my door again. I did a little research to make sure the company is reputable and BBB accredited, talked to the neighbours whose roof they had replaced, and because of their persistence and low price decided to go with them.

Because of the lower cost they offered, I decided to upgrade to a 35 year shingle, instead of 20 year that was there before, and accepted their recommendation to install ridge vents. They also install 30lb felt, instead of 15lb, by default. I added replacement of chimney borders and new gutters (only half of my house has them) to the bill. The only thing that was left to decide was the shingle color. The house used to have dark gray roof, but I was leaning toward reddish color, as it reminds me of red clay roofs from back home. There was some miscommunication, and before I was able to let them know my final decision on the color, the material showed up at our door Monday evening, with the correct shingle color.

The timing actually worked out pretty well for us, because I had to go to the NIWeek on Tuesday and Wednesday, which meant I'd have to leave the house before 8 am (I usually leave after 9). So, I had to get up early those two days anyways, and not be waken up by roofers at an inconvenient time. Before leaving in the morning, I noticed that they brought 15lb felt, so I had to call them and straighten that up to make sure they bring the correct material before workers start putting it up. They did it during the day.

There was not much I needed to do to prepare the job site. I only closed the awning. Thanks to the decapitation of St. Joseph statue at my friend Sharon's house when they had the siding replaced, I decided to take down all the pictures and shelf decorations. Some of these have not be dusted in a long time, so it was a good opportunity to do that now.

When we came back home just after 5, there were 5 adults, one teenager and a nine year old working. They all appeared to be Mexicans, and only kids and one adult spoke English. At that point, the old roof was gone and hauled away, the new felt was up, some of the drip edge installed, and they started with putting up the shingles. I did a little inspection, but there was really nothing for me to do. I thought how if this was happening back in Bosnia, I would have to feed the workers, provide drinks, and probably talk to them and supervise to some extent. These guys did their job, and didn't need any supervision, from me at least. It was 104F (40C) that day, and I was uncomfortable outside after just 10 minutes. They started working probably little after 8 in the morning, and didn't leave until 8.30 PM. That is a 12 hour shift in the worst summer heat. God bless them! They had coolers with water bottles, and the kids were handing them out to the workers frequently. One thing I was wondering about was where do they go to the bathroom the whole day, but I was afraid to ask. :)

They ran out of daylight time and shingles on the first day, so they had to come back on Wednesday. I am not sure if they worked in shifts or did any work during the second day, because there was nobody there when my brother got home around 5 PM, but when I came home at 6.30 there were about 10 people buzzing around cleaning the site after all the roof was complete. There is still the chimney and the gutters to be done, and few minor things about the roof that I'll have to point out, but at least there won't be any more banging and it looks all done. I am pleased with how it turned out.

Before

After