2,190 days. That’s how long it took aO$U to beat Michigan in football. Now the clock resets.
I only got to see the first half due to Nutcracker rehearsals, but that was painful enough. They got my hopes up with a decent enough first drive, followed by an interception and field goal. But we just couldn’t do anything after that. The Bucks just outplayed us.
The Jaishawn Barham incident with the official disappointed me. There’s no call for that. You might try to argue that it was accidental contact (I don’t think it was accidental at all), but there was no reason for Barham to be that close to the official in the first place.
And there was never any question in my mind about Jeremiah Smith’s supposedly bobbled catch for the Buckeyes’ first TD.
I note that Coach Day’s record at aO$U improves to 82-10. The Wolverines are responsible for four of those 10 losses – that’s 40% of his losses. And Day has the honor of losing to two different Michigan coaches in just 4 years.
On to the bowl games and our next season. And I still have to decide who to root for in the B1G Championship game next week.
Here Comes The Sun
Or maybe “Who’ll Stop The Rain?”
Back in 2020, we invested in a photovoltaic system for the house—solar panels. We bought a 7.0kWh system from Shine Solar and have been pretty happy with it.
A few months ago, we noticed some water damage to the ceiling in the kids’ bathroom. The leaks looked like they were coming from just below the peak of the roof, and if you looked at the roof, it was just under the upper edge of the solar panels.
We had a roofer out a couple of times and he couldn’t find anything specific, though he added some caulk here and there.
It was still leaking, though.
We had another roofer out this week, and he immediately found the problem.
A solar array uses wiring in conduits to carry the power from the panels to the electrical panel and into the house. The conduits are supposed to be mounted to a block which is mounted to a piece of rubber so that when the block is screwed to the roof, the screw goes through the rubber which prevents any water intrusion.
That’s not how ours were installed. The conduits were attached directly to the shingles.
The roofer said the whole installation needs to be redone.
So we went to Shine Solar’s website to contact them.
They went out of business in March after nine years.
Sigh.
The announcement said they’d sold everything to Tite Energy, another company in Arkansas. We’ll be contacting them this week or next to see how they’re going to handle the repairs.
Thanksgiving
Number Three Son drove in from Ohio Wednesday, and Youngest Daughter came home from school the same day. Middle Daughter kind of passed through Thursday between visits to a couple of other homes.
Planned for about 18 for dinner. Ended up with 19, but it was extra kids, so it was all good.
We planned to eat earlier this year than usual, which meant the turkey needed to go in earlier, which meant the fire needed to start earlier. So to save myself from getting up really early, I prepped the bird on Wednesday.
I spatchcocked it like I had before, getting the opportunity to use the kitchen shears that Diana got me for Christmas last year. They worked the treat, chopping easily through the backbone.
I’ve been threatening for years to make stock from the giblets and neck and backbone, and since I prepped the turkey the day before, I decided to go ahead with the stock. I chopped the giblets up, cut the neck into three pieces, and tried to cut the backbone, but I was too tired to get through it, so it went in whole.
Next, I added dried minced onions, celery seed, a couple of bay leaves, and herbs de Provence, all measured with love. I used a cup or so of the stock for the instant gravy, and everyone seemed to like it. It was much richer than gravy made with water.
Smoking
This was the third year in a row that I’ve smoked the turkey. Number Three Son said I’ve spoiled him and he doesn’t like regular roast turkey anymore.
I tried tenting the bird this year to cut down on how dark the skin gets, and it didn’t work at all. This turned out to be the darkest I’ve ever done. In fact, when I opened the cook chamber to pull the bird, I thought I’d ruined it. Came out terrifically juicy and flavorful according to everyone who had some though, so I was happy about that.
Last year’s cook took two hours longer for a slightly smaller bird (17.7 pounds vs 18.9), even though the temps ran higher, according to the graphs on my Smoke app.
I really need to smoke more food so I can get better control of the temperatures. I think I need to stay under 18 pounds and keep the cook temps below 200.
The only other real thing I could change would be to get a smoker with a bigger cook chamber, but that’s not really in the budget right now.
I hope you and yours had a good holiday.
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