Category: Life

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 230

It’s been getting cool enough that a little warmth in bed seems like a good idea. We dug out our old “Safe and Warm” electric blanket a few days ago and plugged it in – it worked perfectly…for a couple of days, then the controller on my side failed. It would turn on, and a few seconds later, it’d turn off again.

I looked at the wiring this morning and discovered that one of the two wires leading into the blanket had come out, so the controller was seeing an open circuit and (quite properly) turning itself off. After much prodding, I got the connector pin out of its casing (see above) and discovered that the wire had broken. If I had a spare connector pin, I could probably strip the wire and crimp it, but I don’t – and I don’t know where to get one (or what I really need). I guess I could go to Home Depot and see if they could help me, but I’m not optimistic.

On a brighter note, we tried a new recipe for dinner this evening, America’s Test Kitchens Summer Skillet Lasagna. It was pretty easy to make, though I put in too many lasagna noodle pieces and we could have used more vegetables. I made the full recipe, which was far more than we needed; next time, I’ll cut it in half instead of going for leftovers. I would have liked to have been able to read comments from others who’ve made the recipe, but ATK wants $70 for a year’s subscription to their website, and I’m not familiar enough with them to know whether it’s worth it. And I’m not making SO many new recipes that I’d be able to tell during their 14-day trial. Anyone have any experience with them?

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day 229

We decided not to offer candy this year because of the virus, so we didn’t decorate our house and we kept our outside lights off.

But we have neighbors a block away who spent several days building a candy delivery system from their balcony to their yard and we wanted to see it in action, so we decided to walk over to their house. As soon as we opened our door, we found a bag of persimmons waiting for us (I was afraid it was a bag of something else entirely at first!).

When we got to our neighbors’ house, there weren’t any kids around, but the neighbors were sitting on their balcony and invited us to come and ring the bell so we could see the candy delivery system in action. I did, and they obliged – the M&Ms got caught on exit, but the Dum-Dum flew across the yard as planned.

We had a pleasant chat and finally found out their names (not, as it happens, the same as their Instagram handles), then wandered onward.

There were quite a few houses with tables out front for kids to take candy, and it looked like kids were being respectful and not emptying the candy bowls (we tried that a few years ago, and the candy vanished within minutes). There were also a few houses with people waiting for kids to arrive; one person said he’d had about 30 kids through the course of the evening.

We returned home and tracked down the donor of the persimmons (our next-door neighbor, as we thought). Not too scary after all!