It’s All a Blur

Literally. I broke my glasses the other day, the stereotypical geeky crack dead center of the bridge. We could get me new glasses here, and less expensively than back in the US. But I don’t want to do that. I want to wait until we are back in the US to replace them. If I get them here the bifocal line will be in the wrong place, just as the progressive lens areas of the glasses that just broke are in the wrong place. I’d only have to get yet another pair of glasses in the US that would be right. Jim is willing to do that for me, so I can see. But to me it’s spending an extra few hundred dollars that we don’t need to spend. I’ll wait and spend it just once.

I have a couple of weeks of daily wear contacts, and reading glasses to use with them. I can go blurry most of the time, and use those when I need to be able to see. I can read at length in comfort without any glasses. I’ll be fine.

Reasons to Live in Thailand

as opposed to living in the USA.

1. Having a maid one full day each week: $35 per month.

2. 2 hour Thai foot massages.

3. Batter-dipped, deep-fried lettuce.

4. Shower gel, deodorant, talcum powder, and lotion in matching scents.

5. Unlimited voice, message and data plan for iPhone: $14 per month

6. They bring you freshly cooked food and bus your table, even at McDonald’s.

7. Being stunningly beautiful; pale skin color compensates for being fat and middle-aged to the point of getting drop-jawed stares from even young Thai men.

8. Grilled salted fish.

9. Gold I’m not allergic to – 23K.

10. Watermelon year round, pre-sliced in packages.

Reasons to Live in the USA

As opposed to living in Thailand, of course.

1. No pit vipers in your mailbox, ever.

2. You can drink the tap water.

3. No need to run the air conditioning 24/7/365. At least not in Michigan.

4. Packages arrive when mailed to you.

5. Actual seasons.

6. Fritos.

7. No International Gateway restricting Internet 3 meg access to .5 meg (at best!) for US sites.

8. Kindle Whispernet.

9. Fragrance free products (read: allergies)

10. That creepy doorman at The Mall who I always felt compelled to sprint past only to hear him call after me: “Welcome to The Mall…enjoy your day…good luck to you sir…farewell, my sweet prince…etc. etc.”

Baking Bread

Jim doesn’t like bread machine bread. It’s a texture thing. He does like bread kneaded by hand and baked in a real bread pan in the oven. Particularly white and rye bread, not whole wheat. So 39 years later I am back to making bread the same way I first made it. I am trying to eliminate commercial mass-produced bakery products from our diet. It’s not important here, as they don’t use HFCS and frequently use palm oil instead of hydrogenated oils in the commercial baked goods, but in the US it will matter.

Baking bread is a process I enjoy. We get delicious bread instead of the rather questionable tasting loaves here. So yesterday I baked bread again. I made a double batch, enough to make two loaves. We don’t eat bread rapidly enough to require baking 2 loaves at once, but I wanted to try making hamburger and hot dog buns. I let the buns rise a second time in the bowl so they wouldn’t need to be baked until after the loaf was done baking. I have a small oven, you see.

The bread turned out perfectly. The hamburger buns appear to be perfect, as well; I will confirm this after eating one as part of my lunch. The hot dog buns are a bit too short and fat. I will know how to shape them better next time. All in all it was simple and I plan to make more buns in the future.

I still haven’t gotten around to trying to make English muffins.