Sunday Dinner, March 15, 2009 & The Usual Rambling

Diane's Sunday Dinner is in the works as I type this. Most of it anyway.

I'm cooking a good-sized pot of big yellow butter beans as we call them in these parts, otherwise known as large white lima beans. I buy these dried in 1 or 2 lb. bags at the grocery store, right beside the dried pinto beans, great northern beans, dried blackeyed peas and other dry beans and peas.

I just boiled some whole potatoes to make some of MY HOMEMADE POTATO SALAD. The potatoes are cooling and the boiled eggs for the potato salad are done and cooling.

Remember last Sunday when I said I was making Brussels' sprouts for dinner? Well, I lied. I decided to fix corn on the cob instead, so this week Brussels' sprouts are back on the menu.

Big yellow butter beans, HOMEMADE POTATO SALAD and Brussels' sprouts and possibly some cornbread or panbread. Just depends on how many want the bread.

As of right now, as far as I know, it will be me, Lamar and my sister Ducky for lunch, and possibly my sister Cecil. Cecil's hubby, Brian, has been out of town for work so if he's home tomorrow Cecil will be spending her day with him. Jessica, Jason and Emmy weren't sure what they were going to do for Sunday Dinner, so we'll just have to wait and see if they show up or not.

Now, what's on the menu at your place for Sunday Dinner? If you'd like to participate this week just share your plans/menu in the comments.Believe it or not, I remembered to take some pictures of last Sunday's Dinner. I know a few of you were curious about the butterpeas, so here's a closeup of those, and also a pic of the Italian flat green beans, bacon and potatoes and the corn on the cob.

I trust you can decipher which is which, or else my photography leaves even more to be desired than I already suspected.

Oh, and those pots the food is in? They're on my table. We stand on ceremony a lot around here, and serving the food directly out of the cooking pots is a favorite ceremony of mine to stand on.I have some photos to share and another story that's related to the photos, although you probably won't see it coming.

Wednesday night into Thursday afternoon, this is what was happening around here. Again.See that? Yep, more ice. We got about a quarter of an inch of freezing rain that froze on the trees, power lines and raised surfaces, along with probably an inch or so of sleet and a couple of inches of snow. It was all mixed together and as Thursday wore on it gradually melted off as the temp rose above freezing late in the afternoon.

If you'll click on those pics to enlarge them you'll see that my poor redbud tree is in bud and about to burst into bloom, and my flowering quince IS blooming under all that ice. Poor things. My redbud in particular had already lost most of its upper branches and several more in the January ice storm, so I hope it survives.

Now I should mention that this ice storm was NOTHING compared to the one we had back in January, but our electricity did go off for a minute or so, just long enough to mess up all the clocks in the house. All the clocks that we just had to reset when we did the Spring Forward thing when Daylight Savings Time started. I'm sure you remember that.

Well, before the power went off, my internet service was working fine. When the power came back on, my internet service didn't. I couldn't access the internet for over 24 hours and it was almost physically painful for me. Not that I'm addicted or anything of that nature.

And when I did get online again on Friday night, I had about 60 updates on my Facebook and almost 70 new posts in my Bloglines! Why can't you folks just hold back a little when I have to be offline?!?

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. After the ice storm in January I became very familiar with having to reset my modem and my wireless router for my laptop and desktop computers. Just about every time the power flickered or the linemen turned the power off and back on, I had to unplug my router and modem for 5 minutes, then plug them back and and wait for them to cycle back on and everything was hunky as well as dory.

So I did the unplug and wait thing a half dozen times before I finally admitted the problem was beyond my ability to diagnose, so I called in the big guns. First I called my internet provider and gave them the lowdown and they had me do some stuff with my computer and they figured out that if we bypassed the wireless router and hooked the computer directly into the modem, my internet works dandy.

Of course that means that the problem is with the router, which I bought brand new in October. It also means that I knew I had a stressful time ahead of me dealing with their tech geeks, because this particular router manufacturer outsources their geeky biz to India.

The reason I knew that is because I had to deal with them when I initially set up the new router. I was on the phone for 2 hours with a guy in India who could barely speak and understand English, and I don't think I have to tell you that Indian dialects aren't my specialty. Not to mention that I'm from Arkansas and my English is distinctly Southern accented.

It wasn't purty, y'all.

But we persevered and eventually got things working. After 2 hours that is.

Knowing what was in store for me this time, I made sure I took a potty break, got a cold Coke*Zero and settled in for the duration, and let me tell you brothers and sisters, I DO mean the duration!

I was on the phone with an Indian tech guru who could barely understand me, and I didn't even barely understand him. We were on the phone the first time for an hour and a half. He had me do stuff to the guts of my desktop and laptop that I didn't even know was possible, and I was perfectly happy to remain ignorant of those things. Not that I remember what I did any of those times, but I do have my IP address memorized now.

Whatever is wrong with my router has that guy stumped. He hung up and called me back twice so we could work on it some more, for a total of 4 hours phone time and this piece of junk still won't work.

He finally said he wanted to call me back at a later time so we could try again. He called back this afternoon but it wasn't a convenient time for me (Emmy was here, more on that in a bit!) so I'm supposed to call him back when I'm ready to get back on that merry go round again.

I had a sick headache that wouldn't quit when I got off the phone with that goomer yesterday, and it almost made me physically sick, trying to deal with all that technical geeky stuff.

For now I'm using my laptop and it's wired directly into the modem. It works for now, but I'm tied to the desk in here where the modem lives by the desktop. It didn't take me long to get used to blogging and surfing from my recliner! Now I'm spoiled to it.

I sure hope it doesn't take much to get the wireless router going, but if it doesn't work after this next go round with the tech guru I'm going to take it back to Wal*mart and whine a lot. Maybe they'll have mercy on me and exchange it or give me my money back so I can get another one.
As I mentioned earlier, Emmy visited with me and Lamar again today. It was cold and rainy here most of the day so Emmy didn't get to go out for a walk in her stroller with her Papaw. Don't think she didn't try to talk him into it though!

We had a good visit together and Emmy took a 2 hour nap at noon, after her dinner of Vienna sausage and green beans. Her choice. Not that she ate very much, but she did eat. Of course that's besides the granola bars, cereal bars and pretzels she nibbled on all day.

While Emmy was napping I did a couple of loads of laundry.

About 3:30 pm Cecil, Ducky and Sue came by to visit with us for a while, then Jessica and Jason came to get Emmy. After everyone went home I made pancakes for our supper then started the potatoes and the butter beans cooking for Sunday Dinner.And now you're caught up with what's going on in my little corner of the world. I've got to assemble the tater salad and get it and the butter beans in the fridge for the night, then I'll be heading to bed soon. I got up early this morning so I could be ready when Emmy got here, and Sunday means it's another early start to a long and tiring day for me.

Y'all have a great Sunday. May God meet all your needs, and may you have enough to share.