Author: doug

Ferrous is ready to take a briefcase and head off for work, despite the late hour.

When I have had a long week and am feeling stressed, it’s nice that there’s a polar bear waiting at the house who will have a beer with me.

Ask any carpenter for a top 10 list of secrets for success, and on it will be “use a jig”. Here I am using two scraps of wood hot-glued together, with carefully measured holes, and clamped to a bookcase door. This simple jig means I measure once and drill 6 holes in exactly the right spot for the knobs.

Progress on the bookshelves today. I cut and installed all the fiddly little filler pieces that are needed because, with a 120 year old house, “square” and “level” are not to be expected. I also installed the last of the lights for the top bank.

The biggest part of what’s remaining is to install the crown molding. I also need to finish up the baseboard, add knobs to the doors, and — of course — fill these with books.

Progress on the bookcases in the living room: I borrowed Greg’s sliding compound miter saw, and today I installed enough of the base moulding to finish up the electrical work. If I were a pro I am sure I’d be much further along, but I am taking my time to do this right.

Built-ins for the living room arrived today. I am doing the building-in part, and made good progress today.

Today’s harvest: 7 quarts of glorious homemade brown turkey stock. One will go into soup for tonight and two are reserved for next year’s Thanksgiving dinner (how’s that for planning ahead?). But the remaining eight pint containers will serve to enrich our dinners throughout the winter ahead.

Norman Rockwell, that is, not that 80s music guy.

My laptop’s screen is not supposed to look like this. I can make the vertical stripes on the left go away by squeezing the screen just right, but this is not an ergonomic solution. It’s had this defect once before, and the solution was a replacement LCD panel. This time it’s not an economical repair since this is now a 5-year-old laptop. So I took advantage of Black Friday and ordered myself a new laptop today. The old one will become the Parkercat server.

This year I am trying something different with our Thanksgiving turkey. At 23 lbs it’s far too big to fit into the oven if spatchcocked (butterflied) — which was my original plan — so instead I have partially disassembled the bird. I’ll cook the leg quarters (partially deboned) and wings sous-vide to give them a head start, and add them to the roasting pan with the breast when it’s time to crisp the skin. The plan is that this will result in tenderer dark meat and moister white meat, and also be far easier to carve.