I made a mistake...

Hi:

Yesterday, I started to make peach honey from the peelings from 52 pounds of peaches. I ended up with over a gallon of the stuff, so the instructions said to cover the peelings with water. But once I did that I had so much I decided to make peach jam rather than peach honey. So I added sugar and a package of liquid pectin. I though pectin came as a powder but this is a viscous liquid. I had two packages but added just one. After boiling the quart jars, I noticed that I have peach syrup not peach jam. It is quite liquid and runny. It will make a great syrup. So now I have 18 quarts of peaches and 3 quarts of peach syrup.

It ended up watery because I added too much water. To make the jam I should have cooked up the peelings with very little water to get the juice from them, then use that juice for jam. Oh, well, now I know...

Labor Day this year is the last day possible, on the 7th of September. Are any of your children starting school this week instead of waiting until the day after Labor Day?

I remember starting law school, going from quarters at the U of O to semesters at Willamette Law School. The year before I started students complained about starting school on Labor Day, so the year I started law school we started the at the beginning of the last week of August, getting in a full week of school so we could get Labor Day off...

Instead of reading The Magicians in a few days, I have been reading it very slowly over a week. Not a page turner like most good mysteries, but a good story and not predictable at all. I will try to finish it today.

Even though I have not reserved any more books at the library during the past two weeks, I now see I have five waiting for me there now. This is the advantage (and sometimes to my disadvantage...) of a regional library. We have access to all of the libraries in the Chemeketa Community College area, ranging from Lyons to the east to McMinnville in the west.

I did read some time ago Eugene had a vote on starting a regional library there, but I do not know if the vote won. Can anyone tell me if Eugene now has a regional library?

Have you watched Ax Men on the History Channel? Pretty stupid to try to make a reality show of logging. I see they follow crews in Washington and Oregon.

I see on The New York Times today some teachers are letting students pick a book to read for a literature class. If you had to pick a book to read what would it be? I read so many I don't keep track anymore. I used to write a review of every book I read but I stopped doing it some time ago. I should start doing it again if only to remember what I read so I can refer to it at times like this.

I can go the library website and see my reading history, the books I checked out for the past 10 years.

The picture here is the docks at Yaquina Bay in Newport.

Steven