Mid-Life Done Right

If you're going to have a mid-life crisis, don't pussyfoot about the thing.



Here is an illustration of someone doing it right. Really right.

Maple Leaf Festival

So we went with Grandma Mary to the Maple Leaf Festival. Both because it's in my home town of Baldwin, Kansas, where I lived until I was five, and because it's the last hurrah of the fair circuit.





Being late in the year means school is in session, so lots and lots of marching bands. Osawatamie, Tonganoxie, Wellsville, etc. And for whatever reason, no Shriners in Tin Lizzies or Blue Devil go-carts.





Em had fun putting grass in her sister's hair while we waited for the parade to start. She got probably ten stalks in before Mo noticed. And I bought a bag of pork rinds for the girls to try, and they dug them.





When the parade was starting, I noticed the woman standing next to us was talking on her cell phone with someone who was in the parade. 'No, we can't see you yet, right now it's the fire trucks. No, we're past that, closer to the corner where it turns...' Is it just me, or if you're in a parade, shouldn't you get off the phone?








Those old bicycles, with one giant wheel up front, I never understood those. Now I get it: no gears or chain, so having a huge wheel gets you better speed, because the outside has to go so much faster than your feet.





The rides were priced pretty fair for carnival rides. $25 for twenty tickets, but even the zipper was only a two-ticket ride, making it about a third to half the price of the Zipper at some other festivals we've hit.





It's my favorite ride, I think, rivaled only by the Power Surge for it's sheer terror.





The disappointment was a bunch of the rides turned out to be for kids under 48 inches, which mine are not. But Mo still wanted to ride them. So we ended up doing the Zipper and the Merry-Go-Round twice, and Em took a second ride down the Super Slide.

I asked Mo if the Zipper was fun and she said, 'No.' But when I asked if it was thrilling, she said 'yes.' When I asked if it was tight, she said 'yes.' When I asked if it was phat, she said 'yes.' And when I asked her if that phat was PH or F, she said, 'PH.'





The line for Buffalo Burgers was still unreal, so we ended up dining at Long John Silver's for late lunch/early dinner.



The weather could not have been better. There ought to be more of these things in the fall, when it's not so hot out.



We drove by the house I lived in until I was five. It's cute, but when I lived there I thought it was huge. It's a two-bedroom Arts & Crafts bungalow, so no, not huge. I've met the current owners, seen the inside and all that. They're a pair of academics, if I recall, and they've got it just cute as a button but I can't imagine trying to raise two kids in it.



Baldwin's a charming town, one I'd like to live in if it wasn't even further out than Gardner, plus it's expensive because it's become a bedroom community for Lawrence.

Bolognese Pesto Lasagna

So I was going to make Lasagna Bolognese from the Joy of Cooking.



The recipe points to the page to make Bolognese sauce, which they claim is very tomatoey, despite only having two tablespoons of tomato paste in it.



I read through the recipe, and I had everything to make it except white wine, and I had some very dry cider that I figured would suffice, so I set out to make this stuff.



I browned the beef, I diced the carrots, the celery, the onion. I added garlic, though the recipe didn't call for it. But you can't have lasagna without garlic, can you?



I'm planning to make it a veggie lasagna, add some mushrooms, green peppers and black olives to the recipe, so I prep those ingredients while making the Bolognese sauce. The recipe calls for white sauce, too, but I'm planning to sub a jar of Alfredo sauce for that.



Then I go to add the mile and I notice a detail: you add the milk two tablespoons at a time over the course of two hours.



I thought I was going to be eating this stuff before two hours was up. Then I notice the lasagna recipe calls for 8 cups of Bolognese sauce, but the Bolognese sauce recipe only makes 4-1/2 cups.



Plus, you're supposed to cover this sauce and refrigerate for 24 hours and then skim the fat before proceeding.



Plan B!

Which was mid-week, when I supplemented two kinds of pesto sauce for part of the recipe, my Gladware full of supposedly Bolognese sauce, my Alfredo sauce, my veggies, some Ricotta cheese, and so on. Spiked it with some extra oregano, crushed red pepper, healthy dose of black pepper, etc.



I don't know what the 'tomatoey' deal is, but if you asked me to pick out flavors in the Bolognese by itself, I'd never guess it had tomato in it at all.

Nash Metropolitan

I like it, but I doubt I could fit behind the wheel.



Think of it as a very, very retro sort of Mini Cooper.

Close Call

So we launched a rocket or two Friday evening. It was so obscenely nice out, but daylight was fading fast.



Thor's Candycane and Chief Broom both had good flights, and I finished up with Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, my two-stager. I went with a C6-0 to B6-6 combo, and this was a mistake. He almost hit the ground before his parachute deployed. Almost, but I think a B6-2 would have been a more appropriate second stage. Or a C6-5, there wasn't any wind really.



So I go to find him, and I'm afraid he's in the basement of some soon-to-be-completed tract house. They're already messing up my rocket field with houses. Houses I couldn't afford and wouldn't want to live in because they are kissing-close to the railroad tracks.



But no, KKTFSB lands in a puddle. I thought he was ruined at first, but it turns out he'd landed just-so, and no water seems to have soaked in to the paper tubing. The parachute was pretty soaked, but it seems to have dried well on my work bench.

Oh, Yeah

I didn't post this stuff last weekend, and here it is, almost a new weekend.



What is this blog coming to?

We went to Crown Center to do Kaleidoscope again, and the Pumpkin Patch as rained out so they were giving away free pumpkins.



Which means Mo getting up at the crack of dawn and heading to the basement to retrieve a pumpkin and me explaining that the pumpkin carving is next weekend at Heather's house, we have to save the pumpkins for that...



We also made it to Wonderscope, and pizza at Grandma Mary's with my brother and his wife.



I also got to try Gelato for the first time. And Mo had a seizure in Auntie Jean's. I had just realized that I'd finished my Gelato and she was maybe halfway through hers, and why? Because she was about to check out. Even got a picture of her before I realized what the signs were, but when I look at the picture it's obvious.



I think Mo knew the seizure was coming. We got there, and asked her if she wanted an ice cream and she said no. This is bizarre, borderline on impossible. Then, after refusing a few, she finally said, 'I want the pink.'

Well, she was pointing at the Hot Tamale version, which is pink but cinnamon, and Mo does not, far as I can tell, do cinnamon.




So I told them to give her a sample of Strawberry Sorbet, which seemed to turn the tide. Do you want a bowl of that? 'Yessss!'

The Gelato was great, though. We'll be back there.

Shit on a Shingle

Not exactly health food, but I had a jones for this.




I split the difference between the Joy of Cooking, which called for eight ounces of chipped beef, and the package which called for only two tablespoons of flour and neglected to cook the chipped beef prior to the flour.



I put about a tablespoon of Smart Balance in the pan with the 2.5oz package of chipped beef (cut up a bit). Then four tablespoons of flour and 1-1/2 cups milk, lots of stirring, a tablespoon of Worcestershire, quite a bit of freshly ground black pepper and:

Shit on a Shingle.