My sister and brother-in-law just moved into a new home that features a teppanyaki grill in the kitchen. Apparently, Stephen was very excited about his first cooking experience in the new kitchen or was attempting to channel the energy of a traditional Japanese chef. Either way, here is what I am expecting to see when we go for our first visit.
Fifteen years in the making, Jeanine’s memoir cookbook is now going to print. Available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble and Amazon, it is expected to ship next week on her 60th birthday. I am very proud to be married to such a wonderful writer and creative cook. Having only heard small snippets of the text over the years I am looking forward to reading it from cover to cover. Now that she is on the verge of fame, salacious gossip has already surfaced about her private life. Apparently, she had a torrid affair with the book’s photographer the entire time she was writing it.
Pictured here is the dust collector that will service my new shop. I have located it in the mechanical room across the hall so that I will not be assaulted by the din generated by such machines while I am working. It appears to be standalone but is actually suspended on the wall. The bin at the bottom is actually an inch off the floor and is lowered onto its casters when it is time to be emptied. Unlike my previous dust collector, this unit is based on a high-pressure three-fan air mover and is about half the size with ducting that is half the diameter. I spent a good portion of the day assembling and installing it. I had to remove the magnetic motor starter and rewire it to start when I turn on any piece of equipment in the shop connected to the system. Keen observers will note the absence of floor molding and a rather unusual construction detail at the base of the walls. Living so close to the river, it only seemed wise to anticipate that one day we could potentially have a flooded basement. With this in mind, the base of the walls and molding are constructed of a product made from rice hulls which is totally impervious to water and could sit in it for months with no ill effect. The molding has yet to be installed in the mechanical room and hence the 6 inch gap between the plywood walls and concrete floor. Today, little was left of the fire that we built yesterday to get rid of the fallen tree limbs from over the winter.
“Today we did a big hike and met some sheep.” Details are sparse but Maya shared this photo of her exploits in Scotland. I will squeeze more information out of her when she returns.
Two Calabria’s returned to the soccer pitch this morning. Nico played in a regional game pitting the NY Metro team against his New England Revolution team. Reporting on the match from Jeanine was light on game details but I am informed that Nico’s team won and that he scored at least one goal. I was unable to attend because the match time conflicted with my spring season opener against Nashoba. We dominated the game winning 5-0. One of the goals was mine scored off a really pretty header from just outside the 6-yard box. The cross from the touchline did not have much on it so I had to really generate a lot of power with my neck to snap it past the keeper.
The videos above were recently published and cover some of the recent activities of the American Amputee Soccer Association.
Jeanine and I enjoyed a stroll down memory lane while dancing non-stop to the music of Booty Vortex at the Sanctuary in Maynard. The funk and disco band played all the hits from the 70s transporting us right back to our youth. We will have to do this again.
In preparation for siding work which is scheduled to commence next week, the site work subcontractor came in today to do a quick rough grade. This will make it easier to position ladders and scaffolding for that work. I could really use one of the baby Kubota’s.
I spent part of the day working on a failure analysis of a high-pressure pump head used in one of the instruments I helped to design for a client. I am fairly confident that I have determined the root cause of the failure and these photos will be part of my report. A substance, which I have yet to identify, is accumulating on the glass piston rod and mating high-pressure seal which increases the friction between these components enough to prevent normal piston motion.
Repeating my early morning drive into Boston from yesterday, I had time to stroll over to the Boston Children’s Museum before another all-day meeting with a client.
Located in front of the museum is the Hood Milk Bottle concession stand. The 40-foot, 15,000-pound structure was created in 1933 by Arthur Gagner as a roadside ice cream stand in Taunton, Massachusetts, becoming one of America’s first fast food drive-in restaurants. It stood as a landmark on Route 44 until it was abandoned in 1967. Hood bought the Milk Bottle, renovated it, and donated it to the Boston Children’s Museum in 1977. Sadly it does not open for business until 11 am and closes at 5 pm during which time I will be working.
“Breathe Life Together” is the title of Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs mural on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in Dewey Square. The mural is a giant, mostly black-and-white depiction of the artist’s 3-year-old daughter, Bobbi Lauren, wearing a tracksuit in front of a 1980s-era boombox. It was completed in June of 2022 and greeted me on an early morning stroll down Atlantic Ave. I drove into Boston early to beat the traffic for an all-day meeting with one of my clients and really enjoyed walking the area. I have another such meeting tomorrow and hope to further explore this part of downtown.
Dinner this evening included this cheese-filled popover that Jeanine whipped up. I don’t pause often enough to say how lucky I am to have married such a creative culinary talent. Thank you, my love.
The kids joined us for a pancake brunch this afternoon. Jeanine whipped up the buttermilk batter and I was in charge of cooking and flipping, jobs I take rather seriously. Controlling the griddle temperature on a gas stove was a losing proposition and I am looking forward to the induction cooktop we will have in our new house. Despite the challenges of keeping the pan at 375F, I managed to produce some rather fine-looking pancakes. Maya heads to the UK next week with a large group of her high school friends and it was fun to hear about all that she has planned. Nicolai had just come from his girlfriend’s birthday party where he met her parents for the first time.
Kyle and I installed the shower in his new basement bathroom. We were both very pleased with the results. The unit is a perfect fit for the space and the sliding door works like a charm. All that remains to be done is the installation of the shower head. The job took longer than we expected because we had to stop in the middle to locate and buy a diamond-tipped drill bit to make 8 holes through the porcelain tile which was entirely impenetrable with the carbide-tipped bit we started with. While we worked on the bathroom, Jeanine did a thorough job of de-stapling and cleaning the stairs after we removed the worn-out carpeting.
I managed to complete the installation of our Zehnder ERV in the River House today. In total, the system has six 8″ trunks; two for the outside intake and exhaust (which must be insulated and appear at the back of the unit, two for the west wing supply and extract (going through the wall), and two for the east wing supply and extract (up into the joist bays). Insulating the outside intake and exhaust ducts took 4 times as long as all the remaining work and was my least favorite part of the job. The whole thing looks a little like an octopus but I am pleased that I kept the ductwork confined to the footprint of the ERV so as not to encroach on the rest of the mechanical room.