Archaeology

[rebeccmeister]

In this morning's vacuuming, I have learned that a recent occupant owned a long-haired dog. I also earned $0.05 and three Lego pieces for the trouble of vacuuming out the remaining intake vents. Is it typical to have a bunch of extraneous wiring running through intake vents? And, how often do people actually clean them out? Every five years?

I might go back over to the bike co-op this afternoon to continue doing some archaeological digging over there, too. We shall see.

Today I am also attempting to make injera using a mesh strainer instead of the blender step, and using extra teff and whole-wheat flour instead of white flour, because I ran out of white flour and want to completely use up the teff.

Sadly, the mesh strainer is dying. I think I bought it at an Ace Hardware store about 10 years ago. It has served me very well, but now I wonder if it's worth shopping for something higher-quality that should last longer.

Have any of you ever shopped for Turkish or Persian rugs? I'm thinking my general budget will favor something used off of eBay, but I don't know anything else about what to look for or watch out for. My goal in this department is to acquire something nice for the long-term, so I'm not in a hurry but want to start exploring the options.

Comments

[bluepapercup]

My parents own a number of Turkish/Persian rugs (what were usually and still sometimes referred to as Oriental Rugs) and acquired them at a number of price points. I'll talk to them about it and get back to you!

And yes - some people do not ever clean out the heating registers.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Cleaning out heating registers wouldn't be at the top of my list, in general, but this place needs a thorough purging, so there I go. :-)

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, ac wiring in vents is never okay anywhere in the US.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think this apartment complex has suffered from some interesting maintenance decisions over recent years...I don't think the stuff running through the furnace intake presents a huge problem, but it was...hmm, interesting?... to encounter. At least I don't own the place. :-D

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Well, if it was the furnace intake there's a good chance it's the furnace control wiring. That's low-voltage. It's a bad idea to have it in the heating vent, but it's of the will-short-out-and-the-furnace-won't-run sort, rather than the burn-the-house-down sort. You can do approximately whatever with low voltage dc, as far as regulations are involved. Building inspectors will take a very dim view of it, but that's about all.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Injera with a blender step? My injera mostly had a sit and wait for the fermentation to take hold, which usually took enough time that lumps weren't an issue? (If the blender was for lumps?) I usually did like refreshing my starter a few times and keeping it in a warm environment for a fairly quick and not-too-sour process.

My only real experience shopping for Turkish rugs was when I lived in Turkey, which sounds like it should be helpful, but likely isn't much, when it comes to navigating online sites. (This was more navigating extended families and drinking lots of mint tea, though I came out of it somewhat more knowledgeable about styles and dyes and so forth. And with expensive tastes, alas.)

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the blender was for lumps - I had no trouble whatsoever after sieving the mixture. I wound up blogging about my injera-making experiences not too long ago, but that was before we friended. The end result yesterday was delicious, but I think I want to make it more sour next time. Not that that's going to stop me from eating up all of the injera from this batch!

Regarding Turkish rugs - actually, that's highly entertaining experience. I'm figuring that what I'm looking for will be expensive...it's partly shaped by having had family members living in Pakistan who brought back nice rugs. Things are still very much in the theoretical stages at the moment!