Three Beautiful Things 08-19-2022: Debbie Returns to Kellogg, A New Salad, Minor Home "Repairs"

 1.  I didn't know what Debbie's plan were for leaving Portland and returning to Kellogg, but around 11:30 she texted me that she was on the road, heading east out of the general Troutdale area. Debbie wondered if I had make plans for dinner preparation. I hadn't. I asked if she had a request. She did: heat up salmon patties and serve with rice and a salad. 

2. I knew I had a cucumber on hand and decided to click around on the World Wide Web and look for a cucumber salad recipe that did not involve either tomatoes or lettuce. I went to the NYTimes cooking section and found just what I was looking for. The recipe called for thinly sliced cucumber, carrot, and apple, a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves, jalapeño peppers or red pepper flakes, cilantro, salt, pepper, and rice vinegar. So I combined the solid ingredients in a bowl and tossed them with rice vinegar. If I make this salad again, I'll use less red pepper flakes, but, fortunately, having a dinner that included white rice and salmon helped me cool down the salad's heat in my mouth.  It's a great salad, simple, flavorful, and, for me, unique. 

3. I spent some time cleaning up the house -- nothing too ambitious, but I definitely wanted to vacuum. The vacuum cleaner wasn't working very well, though, and I'm not terribly handy, but I sat down with the machine, as I had done a day ago, and figured some things out. Yesterday, I cleaned the filters. That helped. Today, I discovered some clogging and cleared out the fur, hair, threads, and other gunk that caused the clogging. In addition, the roller in two of the attachments had a bunch of threads wrapped around them that I cut, allowing the rollers to turn more freely. It's been a fairly decent week for me and small home "repairs". The pipes in the basement had begun to hum again when I flushed the toilet and I figured out how to make that stop. I had flubbed up the settings on the sprinkler system and with the help of a YouTube video learned what I'd done and straightened it out. 

These small accomplishments probably don't sound like much, but whenever I tackle a small home "repair" problem and succeed, it's very satisfying and it helps settle down the anxiety I feel when I decide to undertake one of these minor projects.