Latest addition to the house

This past week we installed a new front door on our house. We found this beautiful glass door with a tree design in it that we think is fitting since we live on the site of an old tree nursery. Here's interior and exterior pictures. It still needs to be trimmed on the interior.

 

 

Celebrating a year

The thing I didn't mention in the last post is that the reason we're on this vacation is to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary. How is it possible that a whole year has gone by? The actual anniversary is next weekend, but my husband is on call for work then so we decided to go early.

Here's our anniversary pic to commemorate the anniversary. This is us standing along the Lake Superior shoreline, looking up to the Split Rock Lighthouse.

 

Today we also went to Goosberry Falls State Park to see the waterfalls there.
Here's a picture of the lower falls. The water was gushing at an amazing rate because of all the rain that we've had the past month. We ran into an old military colleague of Jamey's who said he visits the Falls up to 5 times a year and he had never seen it this violent. Amazing.

 

You can see more pictures from our trip in my web album.

On vacation!

My husband and I are on the North Shore of Lake Superior, vacationing at a resort called Larsmont Cottages. It's a relatively new place just south of Two Harbors. Our room is about 50 feet from the shoreline and we've been listening to the waves crashing into the shore (it's been really windy the last couple days).

Our room is a standard hotel sized room, but it has a kitchenette, gas fireplace, whirlpool tub, satellite TV and a DVD player so it's a little nicer than your average room.

Yesterday morning I had a massage at the "massage cottage" that also sits right on the shoreline. It was a heavenly way to start my vacation.

Last night we sat in the outdoor whirlpool tub. It's a little protected from the wind, but wide open to the sky.

Yesterday the weather was really crappy so we spent the first half of the day in bed watching movies. Then we drove to Duluth where we walked around Canal Park, did a bit of shopping and then saw the movie "Michael Clayton." We ate dinner at Hell's Kitchen. I had this amazing sandwich called "Ham and Pear Crisp." It's basically a ham panini but with pears inside and a bread that was a little sweet.

Today we're going to tour the Split Rock Lighthouse and go to Gooseberry Falls State Park. Thankfully the bad weather cleared and the sun was out when we woke up this morning!

Gore's Nobel Peace Prize

I was very pleased this morning to hear that Al Gore had jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize. His work on global warming has been stellar and much-needed. I stumbled across this blog entry that completely sums up my thoughts about the other reason he deserves it. Below is a snippet and here's the full link to the entry by John Marshall.

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000.

My first attempt at canning

 

Above is the result of my first attempt at making applesauce and canning! I helped my mom can all kinds of things (tomatoes, pickles, etc) when I was a kid but I couldn't remember much. Thank god for directions!

I found a web site with step-by-step directions (including pictures) on how to make applesauce. They recommended getting the attachments for the Kitchen Aid stand mixer that I have (the big heavy duty one). The attachment is a food grinder/sieve type of thing that is awesome at grinding down soft cooked apples into perfect sauce. I was stunned at how easy it was.

The attachment came as part of a set that also includes a food grinder and pasta maker. I'm anxious to try the other accessories!

The canning part was a bit harder. I was scared to death that they wouldn't seal properly. I'm still a bit worried cause the second batch I made has some air gaps in the sides. I didn't push down the sauce enough to make sure there weren't any gaps.

I ended up making two batches. The first one used one peck of honeycrisp, one peck of Courtland and a partial peck of MacIntosh. That made just over 7 pints.

So I went to a nearby orchard (just a small one) and got one peck of "red" Haralson and one peck of "red" Courtland. The woman at the orchard said the red varieties were sweeter than the regular Haralson and Courtlands. In the end, I think that batch tastes way better than the first batch!

Next year I'm going to try mixing four varieties of apples. I've read that the more varieties you put in the better tasting the applesauce. Since the canner takes 7 jars at a time, four pecks of apples would be about right for making 14 pints.

For the canning part, I bought a Ball Home Canning Basics Kit

It had everything you need, including a great book with directions and tons of recipes. Maybe next year I'll stretch my skills a bit further and make some kind of jam or even pickles. Jamey would probably love the pickles.

My 'CCO interview

I got a copy of my interview from WCCO radio. This should launch your Windows Media Player. Be sure your speakers are turned on

Saving journalism

There's a great post at a blog called howardowens.com about the 12 things journalists can do to save journalism.

The bottom line is that journalists have to become more techie. They need to know how to build web pages -- including dynamic web pages, how to use blogs, RSS feeds, wi-fi connections, etc.

These are all things that I've learned just in the last 5 years. One of the things they didn't mention is using databases and spreadsheets, which I would certainly add to the list.

Newsrooms have been notorious for being slow to change. The management doesn't force it and very few individuals take the initiative to make the changes themselves. There are always two or three in every newsroom who drive forward no matter what. Unfortunately, that's not enough to save us.

The list above also doesn't talk about what CONTENT we're going to publish with all these newfangled tools. We need to rise above the din and the boring stuff and come up with intriguing, useful, in-depth content.