Another day

Another root canal. One of the rather unfortunate side effects of having your head blasted with radiation, I’m afraid. By the time I’m finished, I’ll probably have an entire mouth full of root canals and crowns. The procedures are quite painful, and not because of the root canals themselves (although those are painful while they’re being done): rather, the pain is in my jaw and the connective tissue in my mouth from having to open as widely as possible so they can work at the back of my mouth. They had someone training today, as well – how lucky was she to get to assist on my appointment? Two hours and fifteen minutes later, part one of the procedure was done. Canals found, drilled, filled. Next time we get to do the remainder of the buildup, and then the attempts begin to get an impression of a crown. On the plus side, the vicodin knocks the aftereffect pain down to manageable levels and after about three or four days, things are back to as normal as they can be.

This morning it was 18 degrees when I left the house, with ice all over the car. There are reasons I don’t live up north. This is one of them. I checked out the new pea sprouts, and they appear to have made it through – atleast, they were all standing, frozen – but the beans didn’t like the hard cold snap at all and I didn’t see a single sprout left. Luckily, I have a large bag of bean seed, since my uncle requested some, and we want to do a lot of canning of beans and peas this spring before the weather gets too hot and it’s time to yank them out. Tonight, with any luck, will be the final freeze of the season, and work can begin in earnest outside. The flats return to the great outdoors tomorrow and will stay there, basking in the glory and heat of the sunshine.

Several of the heirloom tomatoes have sprouted, but I can already see one that has snapped at the base of the stem. Since they’re inside, there is no real reason for that to happen, and I’m afraid that some of these varieties don’t want to work for me here. That’s fine: I’ll just replace them with somthing else. This weekend, it will be time to pull the original pea sets and take some photos of what’s going on out there in the garden. The brussels have little sprouts on their stems, and about time, at that. There should be some broccoli for harvest, and the garlics will be coming into the end of their season, ready for pulling and hanging.

We are coming up on spring, and that means spring cleaning – of the cages at the NOC. I forced the boy to come along for the ride, and we pulled out a dozen old servers and old hard drives that need to be destroyed. My goal for the weekend: scavenge the servers for spare parts, replace the drives in a couple that are fine but need larger drives and more memory, and get the dead/replaced drives ready to go to that big bit bucket in the sky.

What a life. We still need to go through some of the cheesemaking projects we have planned. We did a round of mozzarella, which was quite delicious, and worth another round for our homemade pizzas. Next up, some simpler items, like cottage cheese (we made this in my AP Chemistry class, back in the day, and I recall only myself and a couple of others were willing to eat it) and ricotta. Then, some more ambitious plans, like our own cheddar, with a homemade cheese press. That’s going to be something, and yet another experiement to document for the blog here. I wouldn’t mind trying some parmesan, too. Eventually, our raw milk supplier will be able to provide some more milk, or we’ll just go get some elsewhere, because mom found an old fashioned butter churn that we’re anxious to try. Plus, that milk will be better for cheesemaking than the ultra-pasteurized stuff in most cases.

Gonna be a good year for all these sorts of things. I can feel it. And I don’t think that’s just the pain meds talking, either.