Back to school week

Candle flame photo
Earlier in the week, I lit a candle when I was out on the deck, then decided to try to take a picture. I didn’t quite get it right, then on a walkies with Bode remembered that I neglected to choose the macro lens setting on the camera. Doh! That worked a lot better.

We haven’t had any storms since Saturday evening. That one was pretty spectacular. It came right at Bode’s evening walk time, but he got more than enough exercise running between the front and back doors to bark at the lightning and thunder. That may end tonight, there is a chance of a thunderstorm.

Evening on Allegheny River, motor boat

On Tuesday evening Bode and I went for a longer walk than usual. I saw several pleasure boats on the river, guess people are taking advantage of the last days of summer. The county school district began classes on Monday and the technical school started earlier in the month.

Bode watched the sunset while I rested on park bench

By the time we got back onto the trail, I was quite tired and persuaded Bode to stop at one of the park benches. So we watched the sunset together.

Plans for Wednesday morning included arriving at the Farmer’s Market before 9 am, doing a bit of shopping at Franklin Village stores, then returning home and going to the YMCA for an hour in the pool. I got up briefly at the usual time. Bode was up but wasn’t very persistent. I fell asleep and had a dream where I took Bode to town in the car and found I had no purse when I needed to put money in the meter. We went out and Bode found a dime, then we couldn’t find the car, which was not too comfortable because it was snowing. When I woke up, it was almost 9:30 am. So, yesterday was a semi-crash day. Spent the rest of the morning eating and then had a nap in the afternoon. It was the first day of choir practice after the summer recess, so was glad to have recovered enough to attend by evening. As a special treat for Bode, we went to Kittanning early and spent some time in Riverfront Park.

In the don’t you just love the Internet category, I think about all kinds of things, like why wouldn’t it be possible to make panna cotta with coconut milk instead of cream? Searching google for the words panna cotta coconut milk yielded plenty of results, and affirmed that I wasn’t totally crazy. I looked at a number of more traditional panna cotta recipes and came up with the following:

14 oz can of coconut milk
1.25 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 envelope (0.25 oz) gelatin

I sprinkled the gelatin over the cold milk and let it set in a saucepan for 10 minutes, then added the sugar and coconut milk and heated it over a medium burner until it got to 180°F, then divided it into 6 small pyrex custard cups. I then set it into the refrigerator to cool and set.

It turned out OK, the only unanticipated part was that the coconut milk started to separate, so when I put the cups in to cool, the fat globules that rose to the top surface formed a kind of crust. That was good, didn’t need to cover the cups to store them.

Another thing I have been thinking about is the timing of major resignations of personal friends of our president. Is it just me being cynical, or does that suggest they want enough time that a sympathetic person will still be in office should a presidential pardon become necessary?

Seems I have passed most of the morning writing and surfing. Time to get serious about lunch, like meat and potatoes serious.

About Kathy

Perl, MySQL, CGI scripting, web design, graphics following careers as an analytical chemist and educator, then in IT as a database administrator (DBA), programmer, and server administrator. Diagnosed with Mitochondrial Myopathy in 1997.
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