07.31.08
Expanding poetry
This evening, I finished the expansion of my poetry forum. I’ve added a new category to discuss poetry and created four new forums. The process wasn’t as complicated as I had remembered when I began a month ago, probably because I’m more familiar with them. I did make a few mistakes along the way because as I built them, I kept them hidden. It took a few tries to bring them live before I remembered that I had to “unhide” them.
Last night I had stayed up until the wee hours of the morning again. I turned in at 03:00 and was bound and determined to wake before Daniel left for work. At 06:30 I was up in that half awake state visiting the john, and I realized I just couldn’t get up in an hour so I wrote Daniel a barely legible note asking him not to wake me. I slept until 10:50 this morning. When I went outside, it was already 82 degrees. I’d lost my most productive hours so as quickly as I could, I watered Daniel’s squash garden from the pond, cleaned the filters then started to refill the pond, did a load of laundry and pulled shrimp out of the freezer for dinner. By then it was 12:15 PM. I thawed the shrimp in cold water over the next hour while I hung out the laundry, fed the fish, ate a bowl of cereal and started to water the herb garden.
I’ve never eaten Vodka sauce, but there were two jars on the pantry shelf. About six weeks ago Daniel went grocery shopping with me, one of his first outings after his last hospitalization. He wanted Vodka sauce, but then we never used it. I removed the shells from the shrimp and cooked them in a sauce pan over low heat with just the water that was on them. After they started to turn pink, I added garlic powder and sliced dried garlic, McCormick’s Italian Seasoning and some extra dried basil. When the shrimp had dried out a little, I added a half jar of the Vodka sauce and let it all simmer over a low flame for about an hour. I cooked myself some Italian green beans and we had the sauce over penne and the remainder of the green salad from yesterday. Daniel finished the last of the cornbread. Daniel said the sauce tasted like nothing he’d ever had before. I’m not sure if this was a compliment or not, but he did say that Vodka sauce is usually used with a gamey tasting meat like pork. I’ve never thought pork tasted gamey. I thought it tasted quite good but it does have that slight vomit like taste. It reminds me a little of brie. Oh well experiment over.
Just before I finished the revisions on the forum, I made spinach dip with Lipton vegetable soup mix. Daniel’s been asking for it for about a week and the last time we went shopping I picked up a few bags of frozen spinach. I sliced a can of sliced water chestnuts into sticks and added them into the dip. We’ll have this tomorrow evening.
Before I went to bed tonight, I saw a very bright light low in the southern sky. It wasn’t moving or blinking, so I know it wasn’t a plane. I wonder if it was Jupiter. I don’t think it was Sirius, as that star is seen in the winter months if I recall. I’ll have to ask my friend Christine about it. She has a telescope and has written quite a bit of poetry that involves the heavens. If I recall, her entire thread of poems for the NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) thread at Poets org was on this theme. I wish you had had the opportunity to read it.
Even with the private forum operating for only two weeks now, there’s some incredible work posted there. It’s amazing to me how creative these folks are, and what’s even better is that I get to read their work for free. I can’t wait to read what’s yet to come.
Good night everyone,
O.P.W.