Baldur

Oh my 3000 posts.
Is this insane?
This is the online equivalent of Jerry Seinfeld's Show, which incidentally Baldur never found to be funny and couldn't sit through an entire episode.

Baldur

Speaking of fast typing, Baldur has never learned to type actually.
I only use my index finger on my left hand for the letters and my left pinky to hit the shift key. The only variant being when a letter from the right side of the keyboard needs capitalization in which case Baldur uses his right hand index finger for the shift key.
General however my right hand rests on the mouse while typing.

sheftali52

Sheftali liked the Baldur/Matthew shopping pic. Baldur's humor is appreciated. For one who types with a single digit, Baldur does extremely well (and is quite speedy, too!)

Baldur

Thank you Sheftali.
Here is the Primrose weather update.
Last night we hit a low temperature of 22 degrees.
Gardening season is officially over. The pumpkin, squash and tomato vines all liquified. The cucumber vines withered and turned grey.
Oddly the okra plants must be in a hot spot because they look relatively good. The turnip greens, dinosaur kale and leeks just laughed off the cold.
Baldur was outside this morning clearing away the carnage.
I must admit the tiny unripened cucumbers eaten out of hand in the chill morning garden were quite delicious.

Baldur

We went to Goodwin Farm around the corner and bought a couple large bags of potatoes and a couple sacks of apples. Also some beautiful local broccoli, a couple perfect large tomatoes and some more beets.
The local beets are so perfect Baldur couldn't resist even though there is still a goodly amount of borscht in my icebox.
I'll parboil the beetroots, peel them and freeze them for midwinter. The greens will get sauteed and eaten over the weekend.

Baldur vows that someday he will have a root cellar. Friends in Vermont showed me their cold storage area a couple summers ago, it was a balmy day and it was still barely 50 degrees down where they kept their potatoes and such. They still had a couple winter squash left that were hard as rocks despite having been harvested 10 months previously.

Baldur

I mentioned having leftover rice that had a future as a pudding but that plan has changed. It's going to become broccoli fried rice with mushrooms instead.
Dinner needs to be early as Robert is headed out to his friend's sauna.
I may take a quick ride over to Michaels Crafts and look at beads, there is a need here for some tiny ruby glass beads, the color mixture has been primarily honey and amber for too long.

Dragon

When I was a girl my grandparents lived in a beautiful old house in Darlingford, Manitoba. It had a root cellar off the kitchen. Basically it was simply a small below ground room with an oiled dirt floor and simple shelves on the stone walls. It had a steep wooden staircase with open backs instead of risers at each step and no handrail. As a child Dragon found this the scariest place in all of Manitoba. Something about that cold room with a dirt floor (which was quite unfathomable to this big city girl) and those freaky stairs just creeped me right out. I wouldn't even stand in the open doorway when my grandma went down there for preserves. I still get a little flutter when I think about it.

Dragon

On a side note I always loved the rest of the house. I think Baldur might enjoy it too. It beautiful wooden doors, some of which were painted with intricate farm and small town scenes all in shades of brown and sepia. The upstairs bedroom doors had those little windows above them that you can open to let in the warmth of the rest of the house. The heating grates were quite large and had lovely scolling patterns. My favorite thing as a child was the big doorknobs and the locks for which there was a big old fashioned skeleton key. I would spend hours going through the house locking and unlocking doors. The house also had a large veranda on the front where grandma and I would spend an afternoon shelling peas. Everytime I shell fresh peas it always takes me back there.

sheftali52

Oh Baldur and Dragon--Sheftali loved reading about cellars. The only time I lived in a place with a cellar was in Germany, and I loved it. We kept wine, beer, and veges down there year round, where the temperature seemed to stay a constant 50 degrees. The cellar was oddly shaped, with walls 18-24 inches thick. On those rare hot days in Germany, I'd go down to the cellar and sit in the quiet coolness, enjoying the peaceful dark.

I like the idea of the ruby glass beads, Baldur. Will you hang them in your windows?

Baldur

I will add the ruby glass beads to the bead bowl and string them for the windows. There has been ruby glass added to the mix before but it's never been the predominant color.
Baldur thinks as the amber color dwindles I will go heavy on the red.

Baldur

On Baldur's second European trip (back in the late 1980s) I got to encounter a German cellar.

Having been to Austria and Germany 2 years before this adventure led to it's sequel. My closest friends were Frank and Stephen. We decided to go on a vacation together and Germany, Austria and Switzerland were chosen as the destination.
Stephen's mother had been born in Germany and she was ecstatic that her son was interested in going. She contacted an old friend and arranged for us to stay with her (and her husband) in a little town just north of Munich.
That would be the last leg of the voyage, after we had seen Austria and Switzerland. It worked out exceedingly well as it meant we had free lodging as our financial resources were dwindling.

Dragon

Baldur always seems to be in need of more strings of beads. Will you ever have enough strings or will you start taking apart some of the old ones and continue right on beading? It sounds like a relaxing pass-time, I think you'd miss it if you didn't have any more to do. (Plus beads are just so pretty to have around, I love them but never seem to find uses for them and can't justify buying more.)

Baldur

You will enjoy knowing that Stephen had an endearing nickname.
We called him DumDum, and had for ages. In polite company we shortened it to D-2.
He was indeed highly intelligent and worked in a very technical position with the defense industry, but he was very limited in terms of life skills.
All of his family lived in New Jersey, so he was fairly on his own in Rhode Island. He had friends here though from his college years.
Over the course of our young adulthood Baldur cooked many of his meals, until eventually he learned a few culinary tricks of his own.
I also taught him how to do laundry, how to fold fitted sheets, how to sew a button onto a shirt... what he never learned as a child was endless.
Eventually Baldur got to know DumDum's mother fairly well. She actually asked to meet me on one of her visits up here when she realized her son had learned quite a bit in his short time living alone.

Back to the saga...

When we finally got to our host's home it was the biggest culture shock of the trip. We had been staying in Pensions, which are like small hotels but occupied by the families who run them. They are a bit more complex than bed & breakfasts, having more guestrooms, but the breakfast is still usually included with the room.
Our hosts were an elderly couple named Willi und AnneMarie. They preferred we use their first names rather than Her oder Frau Surnamen.

AnneMarie had lived in the USA for a decade in the postwar era and was a godsend helping us to understand some of what had happened on our adventure. We had a list of phrases we'd encountered that made no sense using a German/English dictionary that she was able to explain. She also walked us through local customs. It was an amazing week.

Willi was very stiff and formal upon being introduced to us and remained so with DumDum & Frank but immediately took a liking to Baldur.
It must be mentioned here that Willi spoke no English, and Baldur's German vocabulary was limited (but did contain some odd unexpected words).
Within a few moments of setting down our valises Willi was giving Baldur the grand tour. Included in this tour was the cellar where he kept his beer.
I was made to understand that I could help myself ay any time.
DumDum & Frank were never offered that courtesy.

Baldur

Dragon, just string them up and dangle them in a sunny window.
Actually Baldur even has them in shady windows. More on beads later.

Baldur

Willi had a beerman.
This would be similar to what we call the milkman here in the USA.
The local brewery sends it's trucks out a couple times a week to deliver to houses. It was rather fascinating.
There was a beer-door that led directly to a small room in the basement.
The beerman had a key to this door. He would come in, count the amount of beer (and bottled juice too by the way) that had been consumed and replenish it, placing the new cases under the old. Then he would remove the cases of empty bottles.
Willi received a bill for this every month.
Now Baldur is not much of a beer drinker and never has been. I may consume 8 bottles of beer in the course of a year, normally because someone thrusts one into my hand. Rarely do I make a conscious decision to drink the stuff.
In Germany one drinks beer (well bier to be technical) so Baldur shattered previous records and had at least 1 bier a day for 2 weeks.
Whiel staying with this couple, especially after being granted run of the beer room, it was pretty much necessary that I be seen drinking it. Willi might otherwise have been offended.

Baldur

After a couple days Willi learned an English word, and it was entirely my fault.
He learned 'DumDum'. I had slipped and called Stephen that within his earshot. He apparently thought it marvelous. Much to AnneMarie's horror from that moment on Willi only referred to Stephen as DumDum.
Later he was on the telephone with someone laughing and speaking German far too quickly for any of us to follow, but the word 'DumDum' came up in the conversation several times. Poor Stephen.

Baldur

I might add Stephen loved beer, always did,
Frank just wouldn't drink it. He actually had a sip of mine whenever I ordered one just to see if he liked it, but generally he had a soft drink.
The culture there pretty much demands that you drink.
By drinking beer one gets accepted a bit more readily.
Willi however never warmed up to DumDum, beer or no beer.

Baldur

Her +r =Herr

Baldur

Whiel -iel +ile =While

sheftali52

Your German tales go right to my heart, Baldur. Sheftali's husband also had beer delivered to our haus in Altenglan, Germany. We would set out the case of empty bottles, and the fellow would set a full case in its place. We'd have payment for the full case set in the empty case. There was a vegetable truck that went through the neighborhood a few times a week, too. It was nice to buy some fresh veges and perhaps a few eggs from that guy. Sheftali's rented haus was on the side of a hill. At the top of the hill, you could see forever, and it was indeed like scenes from The Sound of Music. Sheftali loved the volksmarches in Germany, and only regrets that she didn't discover her love of them until two years before leaving Germany. Our landlady's father, Alfred, also wanted to be called Alfred and not Herr Leisner. Alfred was quite a character, and we loved him and his wife, who adopted Sheftali and husband from the start. That was a great five years we lived in Germany, immersed in the local community of a very small town.