Christmas potpourri

Christmas potpourri

Misdirected mail

Getting a letter in the mail with part of the address being similar to ours but obviously addressed to Canada made us laugh. Then Beth handed it back to the letter carrier. A week later, an image of the letter showed up in our informed delivery email from the Postal Service. Oh no, here it comes again. Only it never showed up on our box.

My guess? The scanners sorting the mail misread the envelope twice and the letter carrier caught it before it made our box again.

Upgrade my battery?

I took my Subaru Forester in for an oil change. The 40,000 mile service was due. I missed the 35,000 mile service. Northtown wanted $1,300 for a bunch of stuff I didn’t do because I was already in for brakes. 40,000 miles suggested a rotation, a fuel system service, cabin air filter and tire rotation.

I hunkered down in the customer lounge to work on Allstate financial services business. The service advisor walked past me twice while I sat there to talk to other customers. Then she called because she couldn’t find me. We laughed as she came to tell me.

“Subaru upgraded the battery tray and now recommends a larger battery. Your Forester has the original. Tray plus battery will be $530. You don’t need to do it but you should.”

“That’s a lot to swallow,” I said, “I’m going to have to think about it.”

I called Steve’s Auto at Williams and River Roads. Steve answered. I explained the situation.

“I can take care of that for you,” he said.

10 minutes later he called back.

“You gave me a tough one. Interstate doesn’t carry a battery for your car. It is a dealer-only item and you need a new battery tray. I can get it but it will be expensive.”

I agreed to bring it in Monday after he acknowledged it would be less expensive than the dealership.

Sure enough, it was $150 less. Mom and pop beats corporate America. Even small corporate America like Northtown Auto.

Know your food

We had a hankering for beef stew and I looked at a couple recipes. Dimino’s Lewiston Tops had OK meat options but not great. $9 a pound on sale for a chuck steak. I will never know the cow or farmer. I was planning to make stew for a Hanukkah dinner Sunday night. I didn’t feel good about it. Tops meat is better than Wegmans but not as good as beef from Sanborn or Ransomville.

Then I woke up Saturday and remembered the Lewiston Artisan Farmers Market was open and Elizabeth Freck of Thyme’s Right Farm would be there.

Sure enough, she had stew beef for $8.95 a pound. Better beef and less expensive

As I paid her and we turned to leave, I noticed a walking book on her right foot.

She told us a 1,200 pound steer, about ready to go to slaughter, spooked and banged her and she’s healing.

She is a regular merchant at the market, with her husband and children. A busted up ankle is nothing much to worry about for farm people.

Oh yeah, the stew was great. I froze the chuck steak.

Know your farmer, know your food.

About that opossum

The young marsupial showed up on our porch the other day while Gord was walking me. Beth snapped a photo with her phone through our porch door.

I had rushed out after returning home from a tour because, when we visited Whirlpool State Park after getting pizza and chicken soup at DiCamillo’s, it was hazy with mystical fronds of fog floating in the ether.  As the fog hung in the gorge. 

Moments like that are magical. I rushed home, grabbed Gord and the camera and rushed back out. Hey, he needed a walk (he always needs a walk. Alas, when we got to the gorge the fog was middling.) The moment had passed.

That’s the thing about looking at our river – it is beautiful every day but sometimes, when the weather is just so, and there is a chance of rain and some wind and no sunshine, it is just so. Magical. Living here is living to see that mystique after a thunderstorm or some rain when everything is dark and the lighting effervesces.  Those moments are forest bathing or shinrin yoku as the Japanese say.