Summer brings new friends

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Summer is here. I have the AC on occasionally, except for the zoom room, which the AC is on all the time I am in there. Since we had so much rain awhile back, the mosquitos are unbearable. I called for air support from a pest killer company. June brings new fawns in this area. We have two new ones in the back yard, learning about the world. There was a nice Pitts Special that showed up at the EAA 690 breakfast this past week. I picked up another traffic control device. I will add an appropriate relay and sell to someone with a man-cave or bar. Wisdomino is certainly keeping me busy. I am a professional networker now. A lot to juggle.

My exercise regimen is paying dividends. I am somewhat surprised at the progress. I am running 3.1 miles (5k) in 24 minutes now. The amount of weight I use on almost all the machines has increased, except for the biceps. I have backed off a little bit on the overall routine just to take the edge off it. Further progress I am sure of, but I can take more time.

Bonnie's sister is down this weekend and we celebrated Bonnies birthday.

I made Baked Alaska. I did quite a bit of research before I started. My recipe was a combination of recipes I gleaned from the web.

I made a 13 x 9 inch chocolate cake, cut into 6 pieces. I took a half gallon of french vanilla ice cream and cut that into 6 even slabs. I refroze the ice cream slabs in foil in the big cold freezer we have downstairs. Then it is time for the meringue. I used our own chicken eggs being careful to use the oldest eggs we had. I read that you should use eggs at least 4 days old. (That was difficult). I had about 9 or 10 egg whites being very careful not to get any yolk and avoiding getting any hand oils in the egg whites. I added about an 1/8 of a tsp of cream of tartar in 1 cup of confectioners sugar. I very vigorously beat the egg whites with an electric mixer and slowly added the sugar-mix. Minutes later I had a stiff meringue. I assembled the deep-frozen slabs of ice cream and cake on top of brown paper on a cookie sheet. The assembly then got covered with the meringue, carefully and completely down flush with the brown paper, looking for leaks. I froze this new assembly for a couple of hours. Placed the alaskas in the oven at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes. (could have gone longer). I garnished with canned pears and chocolate sauce. It was good.



I had quite a treat this morning. I have pictures of a Sundog. Sundogs are created much like a rainbow except that the refraction is done in atmospheric ice crystals. They are distinctive from rainbows since they most often look almost purely vertical. In my pictures you can see they are gently curved, although not nearly as much as a conventional liquid-water rainbow. I was very pleased to get the pics. I am again surprised at the number, variety and intensity of rainbows I have seen on the farm. As with all rainbows, seeing them in person far exceeds the experience seeing them imaged.

Here is a decent link that explains Sundogs. Sundog


Click pic for video


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