Mary's Ferret Blog

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

It's been a little while since I wrote here.

First: Aunt Jacky is beginning to improve a little -- she's able to come of the respirator for a few hours at a time.



We're trying to get all our web stuff up and going and trying to finish Issue #32. As if we don't have enough hurdles being a small, independent publisher, our printer has gotten weird on us, too. So more delays are imminent. Just when you think you've solved things, someone else drops something terrible in your lap. I'm getting past my limit on crises. Or maybe I'm past it already.

It's raining today and that bums me out. Besides that rain is just plain depressing, we can't drive anywhere in the rain until stupid Isuzu gets in the new switch for our headlights (in NY it's the law: wipers on, headlights on). We ordered it on Oct 31. I hate incompetence. It makes me angry. If you don't want to do the job, don't do it. But don't say you will and then do a half-assed job of it.

The ferrets are all plush and chubby. I love winter ferrets. They're especially cuddly.

I'll try to write again in another day. I guess I didn't have very much to say at the moment.

Friday, November 02, 2001

I’ll start with the bad news and move toward the more neutral news.

Earlier this week I found out that my Uncle Tom and Aunt Jacky were in a very serious fire. Their house burned completely, they lost their dogs and cats, and they are both in the hospital. Aunt Jacky has serious burns and lung damage from smoke inhalation. Although we expect she’ll pull through, it will be a long and difficult recovery. We learned about how arduous recovery from burn injury is when our Cousin Frankie was in a horrific explosion at work and landed in the hospital for months and months. He has permanent scarring. But, God bless him, he has such a positive outlook that he is still the same Frank. I can only hope that Aunt Jacky does as well. Uncle Tom has a less serious injury, but it is serious nonetheless.



I have been reading a book called Ancient Mysteries by Peter James and Nick Thorpe. I got it through the QPB (Quality Paperback) book club. So far I’ve read about Atlantis, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Mayan civilization and other stuff. It’s like having my favorite History Channel programming whenever I want it.

Last night I suddenly got the urge to learn how to make potato dumplings the way my Grandma Drews used to make them. I remembered that you need to rice the potatoes (not mash them as some recipes call for), and that she used farina in the recipe. So I went to a couple of the big recipe web sites and found nothing that even came close to what grandma used to make. So I did a google search for “potato dumpling farina” and came upon the web page of recipes of a Czech-Slovak (one parent was Czech, the other Slovak) woman named Eleanor. As I began to look at the recipes, all the Czech words my grandma used to call these foods came back to me. It was wonderful. I bookmarked it.


That’s about it on the news front. If you haven’t yet looked at our new Security Cube, go here now:

http://www.ferretplanet.com/security-cube/index.html

Also take a look at our newly re-vamped Ferret Books web site:

http://www.ferretbooks.com



Soon I should have a new poem up on the Shefferman.com web site. You can use the link on the left for the Shefferman web site and go to Mary’s Poetry from there. But not yet, because the new poem’s not there yet.