What are you doing today?

[Essjay]

Once again words not crossing the Atlantic.

When you said grind the meat the image that came into my mind was of a giant pestle and mortar and you trying to pulverise the meat. So I googled meat grinder and discovered it's a mincer. I use minced beef to make cottage pie, spag bol etc with.

Now you will tell me that mincing means something completely different in the US.......

 

[GaryE]

My elderly Uncle lived in a home for years. He couldn't live with us because a traumatic brain injury had caused moments of violence, but there were no incidents in his nursing home. Partly, that was meds, but it was also the skills of the staff. Amazing people doing a thankless job. I used to visit a lot and got to know a lot of people, both staff and residents. I lost a lot of friends there during the COVID pandemic - good people.

@Back in the fold I fell into the caregiver role for a couple of years when my wife had cancers, chemo, surgeries and such, through the pandemic period. What I see of you will do a good job. I'm lucky in that my wife is now probably stronger than I am, and doing well. Getting there taught me many new skills - ones you'll learn.

Fishtanks make a good outlet/escape because they keep you close to home, but engage you in something much less intense that's enjoyable. You need an outlet. It's good news with your wife, very good news, and I'm sure I haven't been alone wondering how you two were doing. That's just human solidarity, and you will do fine.

@Essjay When I was a kid in southwest Montreal, we ate minced meat, but now, for anyone under my age, it's ground beef, and mincemeat is the Christmas treat I can't eat anymore. A lot of Irish and British expressions and phrases hung on in my community as it was a working class English speaking enclave in a French speaking province. American English won out though, in the long run. We're even forgetting how to spell in Canadian English.
I'm really made aware of the differences as one of my best friends is an immigrant from northern England who hasn't adjusted linguistically after 20 years. I often have no clue what he has said. I have learned that tea is a meal, not always a drink.

 

[Essjay]

My great uncle and his wife emigrated to Canada (Ontario) in the late 1920s. I met them when they came back for a visit in the early 1970s just before my grandfather and great uncle both died. Great aunt spoke like someone born and raised in Ontario; great uncle still had a broad Lancashire accent after 40 odd years.

Even in England meals are called different things depending whether you live in the north or the south. I was born and raised in Lancashire (north), went to university in Cardiff (Wales, a whole different kettle of fish) then spent 2 years in Cambridge (south) before moving back to Lancashire then even further north to Teesside (on the border between the counties of Durham and Yorkshire). The people in Cambridge used the wrong names for meals

Accents are as bad. It took a while for the Welsh accent to click when I lived in Cardiff, and again in Cambridge. When we moved here I couldn't understand a word the Geordies (from further north again) said. At least the Yorkshire accent is similar enough to Lancashire, though southerners can't tell them apart

 

[GaryE]

Our accents are being destroyed by media. There is an accent with a hard fast clip on it in my current city, not unlike a Newfoundland accent I grew up hearing in the family. I met a fellow while I was walking the dog on the beach today, and we had a good talk as we went along. I had to strain a bit to catch everything, as the rhythm was different to my Montreal ears.
We all have accents, but I had to learn a new one for my job as a teacher, and go for a more general "Canadian/CBC " one. My cousins from Ontario have strange vowels. I say my name as Gahry, but they say Geeeery, through their noses. They live in Onteeeeeeeeeerio.
It's all the same accent for people from other places, I expect. I can sort of tell northern English from southern, and rich people's accents in the UK jump out.
I see a lot of difference on the forum, in how we write. Words like ""Yall", "Y'all" etc are very exotic to me. A lot of British English is really fun too, especially the slang. I love the differences in this language.
My daughter is taking Scots Gaelic courses through her job. Her great grandmother was born in Canada, in Cape Breton, and only learned English in her teens. There was a large Hebridean community regionally, and sometimes you hear the influence of translated grammar in the English of older people. For me, from Quebec, there is a lot of French in my daily English. It's fun stuff, this language of ours.
I'll have to get off the gallery and go to my formation - I'll stop at the dep and maybe if you give me your coordinates we can meet in front of the garderie and go to a resto.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

@Essjay If I talked about mincing my elk, people would think I was weird. But ground meat is indeed called minced meat outside North America. In the USA, at least, mincemeat is a sweet treat made out of heavily sweetened, heavily spiced meat (among other ingredients). We try not to talk about it too much, because it's disgusting.

There is also shredded meat, which is often served in Mexican restaurants and has a consistency more like pulled pork (do you have that in the UK?) than like ground (or minced) beef. It is most excellent on tacos. I plan to shred some of my elk and make tamales from it, with homegrown corn.

...but none of that will get done while I'm playing on the fish forum. Back to work...

 

[Back in the fold]

Spent the day with the wife today at the nursing home . I brought some flake food with me to feed the guppy horde in their 55 gallon aquarium . They acted like they hadn’t been fed in a long time and the aquarium is in need of some maintenance . The water level is down almost too far in my opinion and the HOB filter and the heater might quit if that isn’t taken care of . I’m going to talk to someone there and ask if they could use a volunteer to care for the aquarium . There is also another aquarium in another sitting area and this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen . It’s rectangular and very deep and not very wide or long . There’s three fancy goldfish in it . I’ll try to get a picture tomorrow because you have to see it to believe it . Strangest aquarium I’ve ever seen for dimensions . And guess what’s in the 55 ? Yep , a big old common Plecostomus , a six incher at least . Where do those things come from ?

 

[Back in the fold]

Here’s the 55 at the nursing home . Needs a little TLC huh ?

 

[Back in the fold]

Other pictures of it .

 

[Alice B]

I'll bet they will appreciate the volunteer assistance with the tank. I got 2 treadle machines sewing this afternoon, after digging up weeds and bagging them this morning. need to rearrange the back bedroom to accommodate a plant shelf for when my succulents come in. My smallest dog has probably had a metastasized mast cell for about 3 years. Amazing things turmeric paste and an antihistamine will do, but claritin quit working this past spring and zyrtec isn't now, so I added a morning benadryl and he's still chewing his paw. And tender on his right side of belly..... I've done the whole works with a dog chewing his foot before. Surgery only makes mast cell tumors metastasize faster. 3 years is a pretty good run. Talking to the vet end of this week.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Made about 16 pounds of elk Italian sausage tonight, after around 40 pounds of burger yesterday. Another 20 pounds of bratwurst are planned for tomorrow, then I'm done processing this beast.

Then I'll go antelope hunting Saturday.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I'm also making bone broth. Never tried that before; my dog would disapprove since it means less bones for him to chaw on. But I hear it's really healthy and makes tasty soup base, and it's a way to use more of the animal. I hope to get, oh, a couple gallons or so?

Sadly, the hide is ruined. There wasn't room for it in our freezer, and with this unseasonably hot weather, it spoiled--I mean, really, seriously rotten--before I could get it scraped clean. I'd have loved a bark-tanned elk hide to play with, but there just wasn't time. Hopefully I'll do better with my antelope hide.

 

[GaryE]

Looking at Hurricane Milton developing. It won't come up here, but it is tracking toward some friends in Florida, who are getting out of its way. I hope everyone dodges that bullet - it looks bad.
I'm leaving for Montreal in a couple of hours - taking the road through Maine and up into Quebec, for the simple reason it's pretty. I go down to Bangor and then up through yesterday's mill towns into the woods. It looks very northern in Maine, but then you cross the border and in a few minutes are into southern looking Quebec farmland. We humans sculpt our environments.
The hurricane connection is I'm picking up a generator, a barely used one a friend upgraded from, while I'm there. Our climate is changing and the storms are different - we've had 2 hurricanes in a couple of years, and while they aren't as catastrophic as ones over warmer water, they still pack the kind of punch we aren't accustomed to seeing this often. It's best to prepare.
I've already placed an order for a box of fish I'll pick up - 3 ex-Corydoras species (arcuatum, concolor and atropersonata) some pencils and tetras. I'm expecting to bring home around 10 species, and to have blown most of my fish buying budget for the rest of the year by Friday. Once winter comes, I have to stand pat.
I was an active member of the Montreal club from 1992 until the pandemic. I moved at the end of that dark period. I regularly went down to Vermont to speak during that time, so this will be a chance to see a lot of old friends. It's a crazy short trip, with 2 days of driving for 2 days there, but well worth it.

 

[Oldspartan]

Today I have rented a small bulldozer. I will build a crude but serviceable road down to the lowlands where Alex the Woodcutter made a good-sized clearing when he cut trees. The area is about an acre that I want to address. The dozer will remove and pile stumps and brush as well as make a berm to prevent the Snookhill from flooding that area when we have a repeat of the spring monsoons, or at least that is the hope. NEVER had this concern in the past. The brush and stump pile will be the subject of the local fire department conducting a controlled burn in the spring as practice for a brush fire. Works well for them and us.

The new area is now open to the sun for about 6 - 8 hours daily. After I remove rocks and wood with the dozer, she will take some soil tests and we will prepare the soil for something as yet to be determined. Most likely fruit trees and berry patches. Will have to wait until spring for the plantings to make sure the berms hold. I have never built berms before so it should be interesting.

 

[gwand]

It is 65 degrees in my house today. Time to turn on the heat.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Today I have rented a small bulldozer. I will build a crude but serviceable road down to the lowlands where Alex the Woodcutter made a good-sized clearing when he cut trees. The area is about an acre that I want to address. The dozer will remove and pile stumps and brush as well as make a berm to prevent the Snookhill from flooding that area when we have a repeat of the spring monsoons, or at least that is the hope. NEVER had this concern in the past. The brush and stump pile will be the subject of the local fire department conducting a controlled burn in the spring as practice for a brush fire. Works well for them and us.

The new area is now open to the sun for about 6 - 8 hours daily. After I remove rocks and wood with the dozer, she will take some soil tests and we will prepare the soil for something as yet to be determined. Most likely fruit trees and berry patches. Will have to wait until spring for the plantings to make sure the berms hold. I have never built berms before so it should be interesting.

Just make the berms nice and wide, so they'll be more durable and look more natural. When we put berms around our pond (to keep it from flooding the yard during irrigation season) we planted the berms with rhyzome-spreading grass to further stabilize them. If you have some clay in your soil they should hold up just fine.