rsc

We switched things up a bit this year.

Moses Sleeper "bloomy rind" cheese
Red Dragon cheddar with mustard and ale
Roasted artichoke hearts in olive oil
Assorted crackers

Roasted boneless leg of lamb
Roasted potatoes with olive oil, paprika, and oregano
Leeks sautéed in butter
Tossed green salad with mustard vinaigrette

2021 Rancho Real "The Language of Yes" Syrah

Whole Foods malted chocolate Bûche de Noël slice

Blackberry citrus tea

I figured a lamb roast would involve less rush and stress than some of our previous feasts, and I was mostly right; and both the potatoes and leeks were relatiëvely forgiving in terms of timing, which helped. The lamb turned out just about perfectly medium rare, although I think some of the leftover sections may be a bit on the rare side. "Moses Sleeper" is a brie-like cheese, maybe a bit milder. The wine was good, but not oh-my-god good (which probably reflects an unwillingness to waste large amounts of money on our not-that-sophisticated palates). The name seems to be a kind of sideways reference to the Languedoc region of France, although the wine is from California.

The dessert looks yummy, but as I write this we haven't actually had it yet.

We went to our first Red Sox game of the season yesterday. The team has been having, um, issues lately, including two successive losses to last night's opponent (the Guardians), and it was rather chilly for baseball (around 50F), so I approached the game with some trepidation.

But the Guardians seemed to have no idea what to do with Tanner Houck (the Sox' starting pitcher), who ended up pitching a three-hit complete-game shutout. (How many starters pitch complete games of any kind these days?) The Sox won 2-0. The game lasted... wait for it... one hour and forty-nine minutes.

Oh, yes, Houck struck out 9 and walked none, and threw a grand total of 94 pitches. A complete-game shutout with less than 100 pitches is called a "Maddux" because Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux was a master of such performances. They're pretty rare.

A very satisfactory evening at the ballpark. And we were one before 10:30.

I couldn't find a map of Brooksby on its website, but Google Maps' satellite view provided me with this:



Everything that's directly accessible from Brooksby Village Drive (except for the Walmart parking lot at the upper right) is Brooksby Village. Our apartment is in the north-pointing corner of the building at the southeast end, on the 4th floor (which is physically the 5th floor, but for some reason in our section of the complex the ground floor is called "T" for Terrace).

The building marked "Braeburn Gardens" is the Continuing Care section, about which I know very little (and I hope it stays that way for a long time). I don't know why Google Maps chose to label that building and not the others. The rest of the complex is independent living. Much of the wooded area surround the complex is part of the grounds.

The 10 residential buildings are grouped around three "clubhouses" – public areas that contain restaurants, mailboxes, a front desk, and various offices plus conference rooms and places where people can congregate, schmooze, play games, do jigsaw puzzles, etc. There are aboveground (second- or third-floor level) enclosed bridges connecting the sections, and adjacent buildings are linked indoors, in almost all cases on multiple floors. The residential buildings are 5-7 stories high, the clubhouses are 2 stories (except for the one on the west side, which for some unknown reason is only 1).

The buildings all have somewhat pretentious-sounding names, ending in words like "Court", "Gardens" "Terrace", etc. Ours is called "Orchard View Court", and although some of it it does face toward the large orchard on the neighboring property (part of which you can see at the lower right), we don't actually have a view of it, because of the wooded hillside between us and it.

Things have progressed since I posted this. I finally got measured for a new prescription on Wednesday of last week, and the new glasses arrived this past Thursday. My impression so far is that my vision in the right eye is noticeably better than it was before all the surgeries. It will be easier to tell for sure in a few weeks.

The bubble is still there in my left eye, but I can now tell that it's shrinking. (When I had my followup with the eye surgeon on Dec. 29 he said it was about half the original size, at which stage my reaction was "You could have fooled me", as I wasn't really seeing any difference. Also, he said everything looks good, which is the important part.) There's still blurriness in that eye, but I feel more confident that it will all be gone soon. In the meantime I'm wearing a patch over the left eye to drive and watch TV, so the blurriness doesn't interfere. This is especially important when driving at night, since blurry lights everywhere get to be a real problem.

And once the bubble finishes dissipating, I'll be done with the strong recommendation (not strictly a "requirement") to sleep on my right side only. At least I came up with a strategy to make that work much better than it had been: If the hip or arm starts to get uncomfortable, I lie on my back with my head turned to the right for 10 minutes or so to let my right side "reset". As a result I'm sleeping much better, and kicking myself for not having thought of this two weeks earlier.

So that's the view (ha) from here.

susandennis was wondering why I hadn't been seen here for a week or so, and it's possible that others had noticed too, so here's what's been going on.

Back in early October, I had cataract surgery on my left eye. My right eye is the dominant one, and in fact the vision in my left eye has been not fully correctable for a long time, so the only noticeable difference was that the vision in my left eye was slightly worse (because of having a completely wrong prescription), so I was pretty eager to get the right eye done so I could actually have improved vision (with new glasses) in both eyes – eventually, as it takes several weeks for the new lens to stabilize sufficiently to measure for a new prescription.

So we scheduled the right-eye cataract surgery for Thursday, Nov. 30, and it went fine, at least as far as can be told so far.. About a week before that, I started noticing an increasing number of small black floaters in my left eye, and I didn't think much of it, but I mentioned it to the ophthalmologist at my post-op follow-up on Friday (Dec. 1), and when she looked at it she decided that I should immediately see a retina specialist, who confirmed that there was the beginning of a retinal detachment in the left eye, and I was scheduled for emergency surgery on that eye the following day. That also went OK, but part of that repair involves injecting a gas bubble into the eye to hold the retina in place while it heals, and for a week after such surgery the patient has to remain face-down at all times (or at least as much as possible). On the clinic's recommendation, I rented equipment from these folks, which allowed me to read without as much strain on my neck as just holding my head down would have done, and also to be able to sleep on my face without suffocating. This was really not as comfortable as the name of the company would lead one to believe, but it was probably better than nothing, as was the two-way mirror that made it possible to sort-of watch TV while facing downward (I couldn't quite see the whole screen – I think the mirror needs to be bigger, and the hinge between the two mirrors blocks the center of the bottom of the image). I really did not sleep well that week; in fact, it was altogether a pretty hellish week, but that part is behind me, thank whomever.

I also couldn't use my desktop computer, and relied entirely on my iPad for internet access; my desktop knows my Dreamwidth password, but neither I nor my iPad do (the one I had recorded in the file where I hide such things is apparently wrong, and I'm still working on fixing that), so that's why I haven't been around.

Meanwhile, the gas bubble in my left eye makes vision in that eye impossibly blurry, and apparently it can take several months for this condition to go away. As for the right eye, it still needs glasses to see properly, but most emphatically not the glasses I already own; I'm better off with no glasses at all (except for reading, which I manage semi-adequately with over-the-counter readers). I can drive during the day as long as I know where I'm going – reading road signs is iffy at best – but I don't get to be measured for new glasses for another two weeks, and then it will probably be a week or two before the new glasses are ready, so I won't be seeing very well until sometime in early January. (And I'll need a new lens for the left eye sometime later, when the bubble has finally gone away.)

Once this is all over, I have a reasonable expectation that I'll be seeing better than I have in years (although I have other vision-related issues that will keep it from being perfect). It can't happen soon enough.

For the record.

"Président" Brie (Shaw's house brand, with an accent added for style)
Gouda
Sautéed duck liver


Roast duck with hazelnut-cranberry stuffing
Baked yams
Brussels sprouts sautéed with garlic and balsamic

"French" rolls
Green salad with mustard vinaigrette

High Note Malbec, 2019

Chocolate-raspberry layer cake


Duck roasted at 475F; I was surprised to discover that it had reached 160F+ after about an hour. (It turned out just right.) Despite using the usual trick of pouring boiling water over the breast an hour before cooking, the skin was not as crisp as I would have liked. Still quite good.

The Brussels sprouts could probably have used another five minutes, but slightly undercooked is better than overcooked.

The wine was quite nice, didn't knock my socks off.

I can't rate the dessert (also from Shaw's, we decided we didn't need to do one more thing), because I'm writing this in the interval between the salad course and the dessert course. We're thinking we'll do a dessert wine as well.

ETA (12/16): The chocolate-raspberry layer cake was yummy, and we still have half of it left.

The date for our move to the retirement community has been set: November 28.

That's five weeks from yesterday. We have a lot of stuff to deal with in the next month. Which is what I should be doing instead of faffing about on the computer.

Does anyone know why, at the start of the bottom of the 6th in last night's Mariners/Red Sox game, the Seattle manager was prevented from taking the starter out? (susandennis, did the announcers say anything useful about it?) I don't think I've ever seen such a thing before.

This is exactly the kind of thing the umpires should announce over the PA system, for the benefit of the fans in the stands, instead of just reporting the bare results of replay reviews (which is not actually any more information than we were already getting from hand signals).

A couple of days ago there were reports that LiveJournal was about to become unavailable because mumble-mumble-Russia. So I hastily created a Dreamwidth account, which I haven't really figured out how to use yet (like, how do I find my old LJ friends, etc.). Meanwhile, LJ continues to be accessible, at least for now.

Maintaining the tradition (and also so I'll know next year what we had this year):

Octopus in olive oil
Mt. Tam triple cream (from Cowgirl Creamery via Whole Foods)
Somerdale "Cooper Hill"
Assorted crackers

Roast stuffed Cornish game hen
Roasted sweet potatoes with cranberries
Asparagus with hollandaise sauce
Dinner rolls from Whole Foods
Green salad with balsamic vinaigrette

Serie Terra B5 Malbec (2019)

Pear and blackberry tart
Gil's peach wine (2006)


Notes on the cheeses: The Mt. Tam is a soft cheese with a brie-like texture and rind, but rather milder in flavor. I think "Somerdale" is a brand name, and their "Cooper Hill" is what I've seen called "Cotswold" elsewhere, which is to say Double Gloucester with chives.

Notes on the main course: These were fairly small hens, with the consequence that I cooked them a little too long, but they were still good. I would not have attempted hollandaise as part of an elaborate meal, but jwg had made eggs Benedict for breakfast, and there was hollandaise left over, which paired very nicely with the asparagus.

Notes on the wines: The Malbec was smooth and pleasant. The dessert wine was made by a dance friend named Gil (since moved away from the Boston area), who always brought a couple of kinds of his home-made wine to our summer party, and as you can see we've had this one lying around for a long time, so we decided it was time to drink it. It's very nice, and went very well with the tart, which is a good thing, since we have a fair amount of both of them left over. (The tart is an old standby of ours, using a recipe we got from my mother many years ago.)