love my nest

Love love love my nests.  The most expensive winter heat bill with our nest thermostats is -- as you can see -- lower than almost all of the pre-nest winter bills and significantly lower than most pre-nest winter bills.

Plus it manages heat more efficiently which means we feel warmer even though we are spending less.

 

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Easter Morning

Easter Morning
Edmund Spenser 1552?-1599

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And, having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win;
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we, for whom thou didst die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live forever in felicity:
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again:
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought;
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

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Good Friday

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Good Friday in My Heart!

Good Friday in my heart!

GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘Lov’st thou Me?’
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.

~ Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

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Easter Week

Easter Week
by Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)

See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
While the wild birds build and sing.
You, to whom your Maker granted
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
Each his Easter tribute bring-
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
Like the birds who build and sing.

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Software for Writers: Scrivener, How I Love Thee.

I have found the Best. Thing. Ever.  Scrivener, by Literature and Latte is a writer's best friend.  I am using it for fiction, but had I known about it, I would certainly have used it for all those long grad school papers. It organizes drafts, comments, and notes, and I can even stash reader's comments in it.

 

I easily uploaded my working draft into it from MS Office and I can export my draft into pdf, kindle versions, etc. without any fuss at all.  Some of my favorite features are listed below.

The corkboard.  I make for each chapter a little synopsis and then they show up on the corkboard.  This is really helpful for looking at the big picture.

This screenshot is not of my story, but is one provided by the makers.

The compiler.  In my old word-processor, the whole novel was in one document.  A change that required backward revision required a lot of scrolling.  Yuck.  In Scrivener, I can divide the novel into parts, chapters, sections, etc. and view each discrete chunk, or the whole thing.  You can see in the above screenshot the outline on the left.  A click on any heading shows all the content below it.

The character list.  Also in the left sidebar is a list of characters.  As they reveal their personalities and characteristics to me, I can record these details in their character entry.

The comments. Just like in other word-processors, I can insert comments.  This is really useful when I am writing new material and realize that something I am writing now necessitates a small revision in a previous portion.  Rather than stop and go tend to it, I can just toss in a comment to remind me to take care of it later.  When I sit down to write, I can click on the whole manuscript and all the comments appear.  I can pick through them and decide what I want to work on next.  A click on the comment takes me to that section.

And since I am writing and home-school (aka frequently interrupted) I can use the commenting feature to dash off a quick note of what I was going to do prior to being pulled away.

The notes.  I can toggle that right sidebar to show either my own comments or the notes from other readers which I have cut-and-pasted in.  Sometimes reader's comments come in and I am not in the mood to deal with that section yet.  No problem! I just paste the comments into the Notes for that portion and they are there waiting for me when I am ready.

The back-ups.  It saves automatically all the time.  I can also take snapshots of it before I venture off in an experimental direction.  If I dislike my experiment I can revert to the snapshot.  Also, when I shut it down, it backs up everything.

The customer support. I had one small not-my-fault technical glitch and the customer support was prompt and personable and reassuring.

Scrivener runs on Mac or Windows and costs between $35 and $45 depending on platform and whether or not you qualify for the Educator's discount.  This is not a sponsored post, but if you do click on the links here and purchase, I get a small commission.  I'd be talking it up even without the commission though. 

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Coming soon to a blog near you . . .

I have posts brewing on software/apps that help me with the following:

• list-making, project staging, detail-minding
• writing and revising a novel
• mind-mapping family trees and plot-lines for the novel
• garden bed planning and crop rotation
• scheduling and tracking home-school curriculum

So stay tuned!

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St Patrick

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Split Pea Soup

Combine in your large crockpot:

• 4 cups rinsed split peas
• 1 whole onion, peeled and nasty bit removed
• 4 large carrots
• 4 stalks of celery
• a lump of bacon ends, a little smaller than a fist.
• water to cover + 1 inch.

Cook overnight.  In the morning blend to desired texture.  Add salt and pepper.  Serve with fresh bread, cheese slices, and pickles.

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Hearty White Bread

New bread recipe!  Loosely based on the recipe on the back of my Bob's Red Mill flour.  Did you know that Bob's Red Mill is an employee-owned company?  When I can't get to my local mill and have to buy at the store, Bob's the one for me.

Combine:

• 2 C white flour
• 1 C rolled oats
• 1/4 C wheat bran
• 5 t dry yeast
• 4 T sugar
• 1 t salt

 Add:

• 2 1/4 C hot water (tap, not kettle)
• 1/4 C oil

Beat at medium for 2 minutes.  Add:

• 1 C white flour
• 1 egg 

Beat on high for 1 minute. Add:

• 2 C white flour
• 1 C whole wheat flour

Knead until smooth.  Let stand in a warm place (I put it on my food dehydrator) and let rise until double.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Punch down and then divide and shape into two loaves.   Put into greased pans and let rise until double.

20 minutes.

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