within a warm box (which is my room)*

[fflo]

I've not stepped foot (nor set foot) out there today, and I maybe won't.  Despite it being trash night.  It'd be a lot of crunchy ice-chunk snow to drag the bin out to the street over, and it's gonna be a freezer out there all week anyway, so if I take trash out tomorrow, it can sit there until next weekend.

Interestingly (to me, but probably not to most folks), our city usually shifts trash pick-up days a day forward for holidays, but they don't do that for MLK Day, despite it being an official city holiday.  So, like, the trash people don't get the day off, though almost all the other city workers do.  This choice seems sucky, and flagrantly ironic, given that MLK was shot while back in Memphis to help the sanitation workers.  They should get TWO days off for MLK Day, right?  And the rest of us should have to pick up their trash.  And our own. Just that one week.

I mean, I'd take a shift.

Only it is really cold.  And I'm old.  And somewhat infirm.  But younger me definitely woulda been all about that.

The house still smells like (and would smell more like, if I went out & came back in) the soup I got around to making today.  When the heat was out yesterday, I grabbed the chicken thighs outta the fridge quick and fried 'em up, to save the fresh animal flesh from spoiling.  It was good standing over the pan, warmed a bit by that air.  Then I packaged the meat to go into nature's fridge (but protected from animals smelling it).  So I had a good start on the soup today.

See the leftovers 
here:

That's my Marquette Castings dutch oven.  My mom and her folks didn't use such a thing, but I've been loving it these past few years.  It's a lot easier to clean that enamel interior than I'd have thought.  Plus it has MARQUETTE CASTINGS embossed on the lid, which is way cooler'n some Big Cookware brand.  (Marquette's in the U.P.)  (It's where the marvelous show "Joe Pera Talks with You" takes place.)  (Except for the big trip to Milwaukee.)  (There's a lot of iron in the U.P.)

This may be a winter of soups for me cuz I partially broke my stove controls, cleaning the panel.  I can't enter any digit above 4, or a zero.  The default Bake temp is 350, and the default Air Fry (I think it is) is 400, but other than that, I can only plug in temps with 1, 2, 3 and/or 4 in them.  This results in a conundrum for each intended temp.  375?  I guess go with the default 350, cuz otherwise the closest I can come is 344 or 411.  And nuanced temps for baking, maybe I'm screwed.  Thus thinking stovetop again.

I very nearly bought a stove that didn't have electronic controls.   Had my eye on a ridiculously expensive Thor one for years, but then was seduced by this one cuz it too has a rich blue interior color.  And I could buy 2 of them for the cost of the Thor.  But with the Thor, I couldn't break it by cleaning.

Cleaning also cost me some of the labels on the knobs.  What kind of design for stove knobs (or stove control panels) necessitates cleaning them only with a warm damp knob, lightly?  So fucked up.


I'm in a workshop thingie now that has homework, and it's about to be a ridiculously busy chorus week (we rehearse or perform every night except Tuesday), so I really oughta do my homework for next weekend now.  But maybe I'll do it tomorrow, instead of picking up santiation workers' trash.  Cuz it feels like time now to put my feet up and watch some teevee, and see if any kitty cats wanna cuddle.  Eddie showed a color remake of High Sierra on Noir Alley last night, and it's awaiting me.  Jack Palance and Shelly Winters, who (according to his intro, which I took in already) was kicked under the table by her manager when she said, during the meeting proposing she be in it, something along the lines of "Why remake a classic?"

*This post's title is from the best part of the lyric of Christine Lavin's send-up of (her friend) Suzanne Vega,

Watch on YouTube

,

thinking of which just now sent me back to play a few songs from Suzanne's first (self-titled) record, where I discovered her great intro explaining how "Marlene on the Wall" came about here, and called up her flavor again with "Small Blue Thing" here.  Was that the one it seemed Christine was getting at?  Or just her whole thing?

This was before the indie hit "Luka" and the later MUCH-sampled/-covered "Tom's Diner".