Back to kitchen madness, it’s what’s on my mind lately, I, being a small apartment dweller, have a small kitchen.  Just a tad larger than 10×6, or maybe smaller. Too lazy to measure, it is what it is.  ***BREAKING NEWS*** Beans got off his fundament and measured and it’s actually 5×8, the size or smaller than a normal non-master bathroom ***BREAKING NEWS***

The layout is… like a galley.  On one long wall there is the sink and dishwasher, with some undercounter storage and some overhead storage.  The other wall has a hole (32″ wide by 66″ tall) and a standard sized range with cabinet space above and below the counter.  The far wall is literally a wall.  No window, no fancy cabinets, just a wall.  (If there was a window, I’d have to share it with the next-door neighbor, no thanks.)  The upper cabinets do not connect to the ceiling, so there’s storage space above them, at least.

Cons are that it is a small kitchen. You can literally stand between the oven and the sink and reach most places in the kitchen.  Small.  No window. Old apartment, so the power to the kitchen isn’t up to modern standards so can’t run too many things at the same time.  There is no pantry to speak of, just extra room in the hall closet/laundry area across from the kitchen.

Pros of the small kitchen are… that you can literally stand between the oven and the sink and reach most places in the kitchen.  Like a galley (not the ship that is rowed by ranks of galley slaves but the kitchen of a boat/ship (probably not on a galley, that would be weird, a galley’s galley.)) Seriously, the apartment kitchen is about half the size of the old house kitchen, but that had a drop ceiling which lost a lot of space from the dropped portion.

And… the wall.  The wall of nothing.  The wall that has no cabinets, storage, usefulness at all other than being a wall separating me from Mr. Smokes 2 Packs-A-Day.  Which is a good thing. (Seriously, after living next to me for 3 years and me saying pleasant greetings about 4 times a month in passing he finally replied to one of my greetings last week.  About passed out.  I thought he was a deaf-mute.  Seriously.)

So, from Day 1 of moving in, the lack of serious storage for the tools of my cooking trade forced me to store the various implements in jars and baskets that took up precious counter space better used for storing other things.  Lack of happiness towards that led me to think of possible solutions, including killing the next-door neighbor and taking over his space (this was 2 apartment-dwellers before Mr. Not-Deaf-Mute whose Indian name is ‘Smokes Too Much’ but then I’d have double the rent and that’s a No Bueno moment there.)

Then a brilliant idea struck me.  After waking up in the hospital from being struck (just kidding) I realized that I could put peg-board on the wall-of-blankness.  But normal peg-board like one would use in one’s garage, well, in a kitchen with water and water vapor and oil frying and such things, again, a No Bueno moment there. I saw these plastic pegboard squares, 16″x16″, but they were black and plastic and rather expensive.  

I did buy two starter peg sets and a set of peg-board baskets from Lowes, but… no pegboard.  And stashed said pegboard pieces in that stupid asinine little cabinet that they always love putting above the hole where the refrigerator goes.  (Seriously, top of refrigerator is useful space.  The cabinet?  Useless, unless the cabinet extends as far from the wall as the refrigerator under it.  Stupid cabinet.  Should have just busted it out and bought an even larger fridge… maybe not.)

So I pondered.  Lots of pondering.

Then, during the Covidiocracy, I was meandering through the ‘Zon (Amazon, that is) and searched pegboards and came across metal pegboards.  Powdercoated and sealed metal pegboards.  Perfect for a kitchen or other high-dirt and smutz environment.  Hmmm.  Ponder.

Just so you know, Beans is a ponderer.  I’ll get an idea and can’t move forward without thinking a lot about it.  Sometimes the pondering takes only a few moments. But that’s rare. More likely days, weeks, months, and, yes, years…  Spontaneity is not one of my strong suits.  So much so that the few times when I’ve been spontaneous, it’s shocked the living life out of Mrs. Andrew.  

So, after weeks of pondering, and having the cash at hand via electronic funds, I… purchased two 16″x32″ white powder-coated metal pegboards. 

Like this

From Amazon

On Sale!

And then, I pondered.  Okay, procrastinated, sloughed off, been lazy, but mostly because I couldn’t get my head into actually mounting the boards.  Seriously, it’s a long-standing issue.  I’ll start planning on doing something but it takes time to think about and get the old brain in line to do something (this post has been bouncing around inside my head since, well, I bought the boards mid-2021…)

So… Pondering time.

Finally, last… October, in the Year of Our Lord 2022 (no, not kidding about having to think about things…) I finally mounted said boards upon the wall.  And then immediately began populating it with pegs, pegboard baskets and all the kitchen implements I could hang on said pegboard and in said pegboard baskets.   

And, it’s a good thing.  Lots of space to hang, which immediately became cluttered within 3 weeks, but there’s a place for everything, everything in its place and I have recovered some counterspace.

Valory was a gem, she was ever cheerful, she never commented here but commented often over on FB.

I shall miss her a great deal.

With apologies to Gaius Valerius Catullus¹ …

Farewell Dear Lady.

The Road to Brussels La Belle Alliance on the right. (Source)

To say that I’m obsessed with the Battle of Waterloo is something of an understatement. At the moment I am in the midst of reading yet another book about the battle, the fifth book in a set of twelve by the Andrew W. Field which I wrote about here. So two to go there.

To top it off, I bought yet another book about the battle, The Longest Afternoon, by Brendan Simms –

Said book details the fight of 400 German soldiers defending the farm shown below. (Yes, I’ve been there, more than once, but never inside. It’s still a working farm.)

No, I do not. Unbeknownst to many, the army which fought Napoléon on the 18th of June 1815 upon the field of Waterloo wasn’t comprised of just British soldiers (and by British I mean English, Irish, Scots, and Welsh). Oh no, it also contained many Dutchmen and Belgians, also Germans of a number of varieties.

Embodied within the British Army were the units of the King’s German Legion, soldiers from the state of Hanover (George III was not only the King of England, he was also the Elector of Hanover, Hannover auf deutsch) who had fled their homeland after it was overrun by the French Army and went to Britain to enlist in the fight against the French.

There were also later Hanoverian units formed after Napoléon’s first abdication in Hanover proper. These were typically manned by very young and inexperienced soldiers.

Not to mention the soldiers of Brunswick (Braunschweig auf deutsch). These chaps also skipped out when the French overran their country (1806) and formed their own unit which fought in Spain with Wellington. Though that unit was disbanded, the Duke of Brunswick got the band back together (so to speak) after Napoléon abdicated the first time. The Duke fell at the Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before Waterloo. There is a monument which was placed near where he fell, leading his men in battle –

Monument to Friedrich Wilhelm, Herzog von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel ~  Kampf gefallen, 16. Juni 1815¹ ~ (Source)

The Duke’s father was also killed fighting against Napoléon nine years previous to the son’s death. His father, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand commanded the Prussian army at the Battle of Auerstädt in 1806. The father was wounded in action at that battle, dying of his wounds in November of 1806.

Within the army of the United Netherlands (which had had Belgium added to it, much to the dislike of many Belgians) there were units known as Nassauers, from Nassau, but not the one in the Bahamas. No, these guys were also Germans but their ruler apparently had ties with the Dutch. (The current Dutch royal family is the House of Orange-Nassau, which is why you hear Dutch football² fans chanting Oranje boven! at matches.)

On a side note, a memory just popped up which tends to do so from time to time.

I took that opening photo and added a red arrow where I almost died. Yes. Died. Almost.

See that big truck speeding down the road (and believe me, they go like a bat out of Hell on that chaussée from Charleroi to Brussels), well …

I was leading a couple of my sergeant buddies on a guided tour of the battlefield. I stumbled a bit and nearly fell into the roadway. One of my fellow NCOs was just turning around and saw me teetering and saw a giant-ass truck approaching.

Just about where the red arrow is pointing. There I almost became a statistic.

With a deft tug on the sleeve of my jacket he pulled me out of the road. I felt the “breath” of that behemoth as it passed by, within a foot of my mortal flesh. Bit of a close call that was.

So thanks Tom (or was it Ryan?). If y’all hadn’t of saved my ass twenty-five years ago I wouldn’t be writing about it today.

Old Town Alexandria OAFS Photo

Been doing a lot of reminiscing as of late and while going through the photo archives saw this one. I need to get back down to Old Virginia one of these days. Love that town in particular.

Anyhoo, I also wanted to give Beans a break from carrying the load (which he has done magnificently) and I felt the urge to post something. Anything!

Beans’ mentioning of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass the other day really sent me down memory lane. My parents had a number of his albums. This tune was a big favorite (me being a Taurus¹ and all …)

Sounds very “south of the border,” reminds of Sandy Eggo in some ways. Moi, The Missus Herself, and The Nuke in a Sandy Eggo eatery dining on very good Mexican food and being entertained by a strolling mariachi band some years back (like seven as I recall). Good times, good company, good food.

One of the benefits of being old (ish) is having lots and lots of memories, nearly all of them good. Been strolling memory lane a lot recently. It was good to hear that song again.

As for me, the status quo is being maintained, and for now, that’s all I can ask for.

Be well, mi compadres.

¹ The astrological sign, not the car.