Lauren

There’s no photo to go along with this, so I don’t even know why I’m telling the story.

Lloyd and I went to Lincoln to run some errands on Saturday morning. Lloyd only had one thing he was looking for, so he was a good sport while I made him visit my stuff at the hardware stores and Big Box stores. As we left one store, it was snowing a bit, and by the time we got to Costco it was a full-blown blizzard – big, furiously-sideways-flying flakes. It was hilarious watching little kids come out of the store in their sweatshirts, laughing with glee as their parents tried to hustle them to their cars. Lloyd said, “They’re going to be really disappointed they can’t build a snowman later.”

By the time we got out of the store, it was all over.

Shoulda snapped a photo.

Ha! I am so lazy about this site that I hadn’t looked at comments until this morning (Saturday). Hi, everyone, and sorry.

Let’s do some updates. The coat situation is kind of in limbo. My last response to the company said that I felt the way to make this right was to reimburse us 100% of the cost and send us a mailing label so we could give them back this coat, and they needed to respond within three days. No reply. I officially submitted documentation* to our credit card company about the coat, and they are in contact with the seller. A couple of days later the seller contacted me and said that the best they could do was offer us 75% back on the card. I didn’t reply. I’m supposed to hang on to all our documentation until the beginning of May, when this should be resolved. Who knows what will happen?

In other news, we had our Lenten dinner at church and I was – gloriously – just a grunt washing dished for 2 1/2 hours. Next year the people who ran it aren’t doing it, so we’ll see what happens.

At school, there is a Vast Ant Invasion happening. I am The Adult in the building at the start of the day, so people tell me all the problems and I do what I can to fix them until the right person can resolve it. I set out some ant traps in the school age room and let my director know. She contacted our bug person……. who is out of town. So, every morning I’ve been killing rogue ants and setting out more poison. Actually this is probably a good thing, since the bug person just kills. My traps let them take the poison back to the nest, so maybe we’re getting this at the source. Who knows.

That’s about it for now. Hope everyone is doing well! What are your Easter plans?

* Soooooo much documentation. Like, too much documentation. Like ‘the story of John Harlan and the fake screen repair where he sent us a box with a gallon bottle of water inside’ documentation. (That’s to answer some previous comments. )

This story isn’t really ready to tell, because it’s not finished.

In a nutshell, Lloyd has had the same leather jacket since college. It’s held up, but the collar is wearing away and it looks pretty ….. grimy.

Sometime last year, we stopped at a fancy leather store in Omaha and he found one that he liked, but it was $400. We balked at the price and decided to wait. The salesman gave him a card that had the jacket’s information (name and number) in case we changed our mind.

In February, he went online and found the same jacket – same number – on a website. It was only $239! He bit the expensive bullet and ordered it. The website said the company was located in the UK.

A couple of weeks later, a small-is package arrived……from Pakistan. “I’m worried that this is my jacket,” Lloyd said. It was a jacket, yes, but not the jacket he ordered, and it was also a little too small. We decided to return it. I asked him to find the confirmation number to make sure that the jacket information was what he thought ….. and there wasn’t one.

I looked on the website, and there are no actual addresses listed, and the phone number listed was not in service. I tried contacting them but did not get a reply…….and some stuff is happening.

I’m going to end this story until we actually get it resolved. Sorry that I’m leaving you hanging!

I haven’t done anything with my photos from Ireland. I had plans to do something cool, but I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.

I have some good ones of Lloyd, though, and thought if I made one my iPad’s background, I could see it often. This was taken at Avoca – the Meeting of the Waters:

At the Meeting of the Waters, the Avonmore and Avonbeg rivers come together to form the Avoca River.

The ‘Meetings’ as the locals call it, is the place where the famous Irish Poet Thomas Moore penned his famous Irish Melody, “The Meeting of the Waters”. (Click HERE to read more.)

I got a good shot of him looking contemplative, just like Thomas Moore.

Looks good, right? Except for all that nonsense in the upper right. Let’s get rid of some stuff like the lady and the banner and the railing.

Much better.

Yep. That’ll do.

Long ago in another life, Lloyd and I used to go to Lincoln to the surplus auctions. We’d stop off at Super Saver to get a couple of donuts, and usually could get a couple for a buck. Now? Auctions are held online and donuts are over a dollar. Cherry Rosettes are my favorite, but they’re often sold out when I get to the store.

Well, King Arthur Flour has an AMAZING recipe for cinnamon roll dough. (Click here to read it.) I’ve made a couple of batches, but instead of the cinnamon-sugar filling, I’m using raspberry jam.

I make them smaller than the recipe suggests – they say this makes 8, but I make 16. Then? I package them up by twos and freeze them.

Get out a package and warm it up, have with coffee. (It would be better with frosting, but this is just fine.)

Take that, Super Saver.

I’ve been on a baking kick lately, but haven’t taken photos of the process. I do have a couple of baking stories. This one is about Costco’s chicken bake.

The Costco food court is a pretty good deal, but their chicken bake is my favorite. It’s a giant log of chicken-bacon filling inside pizza dough, held together with Caesar salad dressing. when Lloyd and I go to Costco, we get one and split it.

aeWell, the internet says you can make a pretty good copycat recipe, so I made some dough, cut up some chicken and bacon, used parmesan cheese (because that’s what I had), and the Caesar salad dressing that I couldn’t believe was in the fridge. Who uses that stuff anyway?

I rolled it up, sprinkled cheese on it and popped it in the oven. Then I looked at that bottle of dressing.

It expired in 2021.

I exclaimed over the grossness, but we ate it anyway. It was pretty good. I’ve never had Caesar dressing on its own, so I am hoping the tanginess is part of the original flavor, not the result of being expired for two years.

(We survived, and it was actually pretty good.)