Un-plugged, De-plugged, and Re-plugged

I am unplugged.

Today the electricians are at the house doing the first step toward re-wiring the whole thing: upgrading the service to 200 amps and installing a new circuit breaker panel. While I’m not sure I need 200 amps (my Google search was inconclusive), the panel had to happen because there wasn’t enough space in the existing panel to re-wire the interior rooms that need grounded outlets. All these things I’m learning. Also, the head electrician said installing a new panel would eliminate the fuse subpanel that the home inspector really didn’t like, so all in all it’s hitting several nails on the head all at once. So that’s worth not having electricity for a while (battery powered devices excluded, obviously).

Being without power today makes me realize how much time I spend watching TV and doodling around on the Internet, which is a little unflattering. So far (and the power’s only been off around four hours) I have written a thank you card to my grandmother for the Christmas money she gave me (“Thank you Grandma, I used it to buy a cordless drill and install lots of things around my house”), I read several pages of Harry Potter in Spanish and congratulated myself on remembering or deducing enough Spanish to understand it, I cut up a box full of memorabilia T-shirts as the first step of making them into one or more quilts, and I got halfway through a novel my sister left at my parents’ house to be donated which features a cantankerous cowboy who loves babies, like they all must do if you believe the romance genre has any basis in real life.

I’ve used my Christmas ice cream maker twice now and the ice cream is freaking delicious. I remember I made tortellini once by hand, which was excruciatingly tedious, and determined that the end result tasted just like store-bought except a little purer and cleaner so just buy the store stuff and put sauce on it and you’re even. But the ice cream, though it tastes like vanilla ice cream like you expect, is purer and cleaner in a delightful way. Enough that you don’t need chocolate sauce, which is a revelation. Normally I buy vanilla ice cream because I’m either A. putting it on something or B. putting something on it – never to eat on its own. The homemade ice cream is worth eating on its own. The little pamphlet that came with the machine has other interesting recipes to try, like coffee butter almond, chocolate mint, pumpkin pie, and raspberry gelato. I’d also like to look up a recipe for Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream because I think that would be delicious, and I finally found the Thai tea in Ranch 99 (segregated from the proper teas, past the coffee even, which explains why I never found it before).

Of course, this making my own ice cream will only likely recur when Costco sells heavy cream for $6 a half gallon. $4 a pint at Safeway is not going to cut it. Plus, I have about two gallons of ice cream in the freezer right now so those have to get worked down. What? I have priorities in life.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how much dust and crumbs has to get into a laptop keyboard before it stops working.

Obviously, blogging freestyle like this turns into the stream-of-consciousness writing my college roommate Catherine was the recipient of when I used to write her letters during down times in a summer internship. Beyond a lengthy diatribe on the audacity of Lifesavers to change the green colored candies from lime to watermelon and describing a (male) chemical engineering classmate as a Canadian ice princess I have no idea what they said, but Catherine said they entertained her whole family and that she would keep them, meaning I can never enter politics in case she unearths them.

This past week I’ve been experimenting with Asian noodle dishes (hence the Ranch 99 visit mentioned above). I was trying to re-create the chow mein I liked at the Zen restaurant I went to with my sister, so I bought dry chow mein noodles, fresh chow mein noodles, and then on a whim also got fresh ramen noodles and yakisoba. The fresh ramen I wouldn’t get again because while the broth was tasty and the noodles had a good texture the noodles didn’t have any flavor themselves, unlike 10 cent ramen in the package. And this cost over ten times as much, so that’s an obvious choice. I do enjoy yakisoba. Yesterday I stir-fried some onions, cabbage, and bean sprouts, and then added tofu I had marinated briefly in grated ginger, garlic, and soy sauce (having learned the tofu has to have something added to it or it’s worthless squishy lumps), and then added the yakisoba noodles and seasoning packet as recommended. I enjoyed it. And the chow mein recipe I tried that used hoisin sauce was very good too – just not like the restaurant. Next I’ll probably try a recipe that uses oyster sauce and honey, but I foresee this going down the road of pad thai where I learn how to make decent versions, just not the one I want to make (and therefore give up, never to try again).

Now, later, I can say that I had an eventful evening. Since the electricians packed up and left around five I have had them come back and had PG&E out too! Separate issues. One of the light switches the electricians installed didn't actually switch off the light fixture, so the owner of the company came back and fixed it, which I appreciate (he gets a good Yelp review from me). I don't blame them for not getting it right since the power was off, it was dark in that bathroom, and there are two light fixtures going to one switch so it would have been easy to miss a wire. The other thing was that while I was checking out the new circuit panel I realized I smelled a little gas coming out of my meter. When I called PG&E they didn't just reassure me that that is normal, which I wanted them to do, but they did send someone out within an hour who did detect a small leak (unfortunately reinforcing my worrywart tendencies) and fixed it. He also checked all my gas appliances for gas leaks and said they look good, which I did appreciate.

So now I'm going to have some ice cream, watch the Work It pilot because a guy from church whose mother I know is a writer on it so I'll give it a chance despite it being a blatant Bosom Buddies rip-off, and go to bed early.

I like this electrician. He's always calm and never gives me the impression my wiring is going to burst into flames and kill me in my sleep.

That's what Google is for.