My daughter has been talking about taking a Pocono rafting trip with some of her friends, and she was wondering if I’d like to come along. I asked her for details, and she told me to look at the whitewaterchallengers.com website to get a better idea of what trips are available. So I went onto the website to see what they had to offer. This is a larger company than I expected to find! They offer rafting trips in two different states, using five different rivers. They offer not only rafting, but kayaking as well. They have all different levels of adventures, from the very mild, designed for families with children as young as five years old to the very advanced adults only very sports minded athletic type people only. They have day trips and overnight up to week long camping adventures.
So I’ve been looking over the website and talking with my wife about it. I asked her if she wanted to come along, and she said it sounded like a lot of fun, and would have to see if she can get the time off of work. I think we would like to try one of the very beginner trips; my wife is not as athletic as she used to be, and I’m getting old, so we should take it easy – at least on the first try out!
A couple of days ago I was out in the back yard, clearing some brush. When I came in for the day I saw what looked like a small bug bite on my leg. The next day the area was reddish and itched and hurt. The next day the area of the bite was spreading. I showed it to my wife who proclaimed it to be a brown recluse spider bite. I didn’t believer her (of course) and she showed me pictures of a brown recluse spider bite from the Internet. I agreed that it DID look like my bite, so I made an appointment to see my doctor. I saw him today – he was quite impressed – he had never seen a brown recluse spider bite! He took some pictures of it and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics and sent me home. I hope they clear this bite up!
My wife and I have been going nuts over our basement. Every time it rains, the basement gets wet. We have tried a waterproofing service that guaranteed to plug up the leaks, and it did, but we just keep getting more leaks! There are so many different Basement Waterproofing Methods and we have not quite figured out the best one for us to use. We were researching on the Internet and found out about a great service called the B-Dry system that we’d really like to use, but they don’t have a franchise that services our area, so we’re disappointed because it sounds like they would do a really great job of waterproofing our basement.
They have a solution system that they call B-Dry that was patented in 1986. It was developed specifically for treating wet basements. They use a sealer process that seals the wall leaks, the leaks at the floor wall joint, leakage coming up through floor joints or cracks, and wall leaks in stone basements. They install a drainage system and sump pump inside the basement below the surface of the concrete floor, which reduces the pressure that causes water leakage. The sump pump gets rid of water drained from under the floor. Doing this helps to prevent future flooding. Combining this drainage system with the sealer helps keep the basement dry.
Well today the weather was really nice so I decided to power-wash the exterior of the house. When we bought the house I knew I was going to have to power-wash it – it was in pretty rough shape, but I had not gotten around to it. Well, we’ve had the house two years now and I just couldn’t put it off any longer. I had recently purchased some chemicals to help get the algae off of the northern side of the house.
The only mishap was that one of the windows wasn’t tightly closed, so there was a small mess in the bathroom I had to clean up. I’m glad that was the room because it wasn’t carpeted – the floor was pretty wet!
Other than that it went well, and the house looks great!
My sister has a really good paying job, and she is single with no children. So she has a lot of disposable income to play with. She spends a lot of that disposable income “fixing” her body, tweaking this and that so that she will be forever youthful looking. She also spends a lot of that disposable income jet-setting around the world on luxury vacations. She frequently goes with a friend or two so that they can keep each other company and have a great time. Sometimes it is with a boyfriend, sometimes it is with girlfriends. Whoever she goes with, she always has fun!
Her most recent travel plans are to go with a girlfriend to Costa Rica. They have to choose between a few fun vacation packages Costa Rica that she found through the TravelStoreUSA.com website. They are excited about going to Costa Rica because there are so many activities that they can do there while enjoying the exotic location.
She was telling me that they want to go windsurfing, river rafting, parasailing, and take some hot air balloon rides. Cost Rica has five active volcanoes that she says they want to go see, too. She also said that they will go horseback riding if they get the chance. Sounds like an action packed vacation!
I’ve been looking around for a new job lately, hoping to find something close to home that pays well. That is a very tall order around here – most of the good paying jobs require a long commute, and with the price of gas continuing to go up it just is not worth it!
So I’ve been spending some time on the Internet looking for local jobs. I’ve found a few that I’m applying for – one is a correctional office in kiddie jail! It is good pay and good benefits, so I’d like to land that job! Wish me luck!
My friend Dan has had all the lucky breaks one can ask for in life! He was born into a wealthy family, and that has opened so many doors to him that I have a very hard time sometimes concealing my envy at the life of luxury he seems to lead. His parents set him up as one of the Vice Chairmen of one of their corporations in Houston Texas, and one of his duties involves flying around the country from office to office on “business.” However whenever I hear from him he is always telling me about his recreational activities that he manages to partake in after the business meeting.
One of the biggest luxuries that he enjoys is the air charter services that his company provides through Wing Aviation Charter Services out of Houston. He says that they are available to fly him anywhere he needs to go, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. He says that they have a very high level of comfort, luxury and convenience and he would really hate having to travel on a commercial airline after experiencing the accommodations of their services. He’s been talking about having to come up here on a business trip next month and using them to fly up here. He’s offered to fly me back to Houston for a week-end trip on their luxury plane. That is something to think about for sure!
All day long while I was working around the yard I was thinking about how I wanted to take the wife out to eat supper tonight. We haven’t been out in a while (other than a fast food place) and I thought we were overdue. So I took her to the local Ruby Tuesday restaurant.
We ordered the Grand Sampler appetizer (substituted the spring rolls with cheese fries) and my wife had the Asian sauce flavored baby back ribs (full rack) and I ordered a combination plate of sirloin steak with fried shrimp. I was concerned that the fried shrimp might be too spicy-hot for my tastes because the menu indicated that there was some bayou seasoning in the batter, so I asked my waitress about that. I told her that I didn’t like spicy hot food. She assured me that the shrimp was not hot at all and guaranteed that if I didn’t like them that my meal would be free.
Guess what – they were hotter than the hot wings that came in the appetizer! My wife tried one and said the spices were burning her mouth!
So I ate all of my dinner except for the shrimp, and when the waitress came with the tab I told her that the shrimp were too hot for us to eat. Boy did her face turn ashen! She left the table and went to confer with her boss. When she came back she said that she would only charge me for the sirloin part of the meal, and not the shrimp part. Well I told her that was OK, but I was annoyed because she had promised me my whole meal would be free if I didn’t like the shrimp!
My wife and I are coupon clippers/users. Alright, my wife clips them. We both use them. Regardless, we save a lot of money using coupons. My wife usually saves at least $10 a week at the grocery store using coupons. That adds up fast! We get coupons from a variety of sources, we get the Sunday paper and there are usually several coupons in there that we clip and use. We also use coupons and discounts and promotion codes that we find on the Internet at Savings.com.
One of the best websites to find coupons for great savings on Hewlett Packard products and AT&T Wireless services and products is the Savings.com website. That website offers a lot of online coupons, discounts, and promotion codes that save the consumer a lot of money.
One of the coolest things about having lived in New England was seeing the Northern Lights. Now that we’ve moved further south, we don’t ever have that opportunity. I was reading on the Time.com website that scientists are finding out more information about what actually causes the Northern Lights. There are satellites up in space that have been transmitting data to the scientists that is helping them to understand the Northern Lights better than ever before. According to their theory, the Northern Lights are caused by magnetic explosions that occur between the earth and the moon. These storms happen about every two or three days. I don’t remember seeing Northern Lights THAT often! Maybe most of those storms have happened during daylight hours, you can only see the Northern Lights after the sun sets.
My wife is constantly amazed at how many pictures I take. It seems that every time she turns around I am trying to show her pictures I’ve taken. From time to time I borrow our son’s digital camera to take pictures if I’m in a big hurry to get a picture printed off of the computer, but I usually use the old 35mm camera that my wife gave me about ten years ago. My wife is always commenting that we need to take a few minutes and shop for a new digital camera for me because she is tired of me running to the store so many times a week just to get my film developed from my 35mm camera.
My wife suggested that I buy a digital camera from 42photo.com. She said it is a good store in New York, but that we can order online. She found out about the store through a link she found at 42nd Street Stumbles.
Of course, she’s absolutely right, I should buy a new digital camera. Digital cameras are great! I love how you can immediately see how the picture “took” so that you can snap a second picture if you need to. And I love how you can instantly download the pictures into the computer and store the pictures, put them on the screen as part of the screen saver slideshow, email them to folks as attachments, tweak them to get rid of red eye or crop them, and print off the ones you want to have hard copies of. Digital cameras are a great new technology that I think is really great!
I got up this morning and had breakfast, then started to do some lawn work. I started working on some weeds that had been growing since April. They were long overdue for picking! But as I started walking around the house I found several patches of poison ivy, too. So I went out to the storage shed to get some herbicide. I discovered I had run out, so I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of gallons of weed killer, and some degreaser solution to use to clean off the back of my house when I power wash it. While I was at Home Depot I found a really good chemical called Deep Purple that is supposed to work great on vinyl siding, so I bought several gallons and brought it home. I’m going to give it a try this next week on the house.
Yesterday I rode my Harley to a big name social club event in a nearby city. I was invited to attend by my brother-in-law, who is a member of the club. I rode my bike to his house, and he hopped on his Harley and we rode to another friend’s house where he hopped on his Harley and then we went off together. The event was a big club “family picnic”. There was a wide range of ages there, from really young kids to really old senior citizens. I met a lot of nice people, and had a lot of good food. Today my brother-in-law emailed me photos he had taken of the event, and I showed them to my wife. One of the photos was of me sitting at a table eating, surrounded by my new friends. She was surprised to see how obese all of my new friends were and commented that they were probably all candidates for LAP-BAND surgery.
The American Society for Bariatric Surgery has designated Hadar Spivak, MD, FACS surgery practice a “center of excellence.” Dr. Spivak has performed thousands of laparoscopic bariatric procedures, and his office focuses on the most advanced weight loss procedures like the LAP-BAND System, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, and the REALIZE Band. Dr. Spivak was the first surgeon in Texas to perform LAP-BAND surgery.
He also performs gastric bypass revision surgeries in those rare instances when the gastric bypass surgery did not result in significant weight loss, or in the rare event of complications. Dr, Spivak performs his surgeries using minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures.
I went out today to fill one of my prescriptions and I went up to the counter and dropped off my prescription. The girl asked me if I wanted to wait for my prescription. I asked “how long” because there is usually a time limit – sometimes up to a couple of hours. She said today would only be 15 minutes, so I said “great”, and asked her where the sugar free candy was.
As I started to walk around the store I saw a big display of M&Ms. In bright big letters, there were the words “wild cherry” So I walked over and looked at them, and of course they had the big smiley face on the M&M display. ”Try this wild cherry, you’ll be wild about it!” so I bought a package. I’ve had cherry flavored chocolate before but these were extremely good. I thought I’d eat two or three of them on the way home, but by the time I got home I found the bag was empty. It will probably be a while before I buy any more because I’m afraid that I’ll eat the whole bag again! But it was a good chocolate experience!
As you know, I’ve got an old truck that I’m fixing up to take to car shows. It’s my baby and I love it. I’ve been looking around here for some parts and accessories that I want to use to make it unique. I haven’t taken it to any car shows yet since we’ve moved here, and that is something I really want to do. My friends have been telling me to enter it as a “work in progress” because they think that I could take some prizes. I just haven’t done it yet because I haven’t felt recovered enough from my car accident last fall to take on an endeavor such as taking it to a car show yet.
I recently bought a new hood for it that I need to paint; I spent most of last weekend getting the shed ready for me to paint in there, sealing it all up with plastic and making sure that my air hose will reach out there.
My wife suggested that I check out the website by the Truck and Quad Company. They specialize in Truck and ATV Accessories and parts. I’ve bookmarked it to spend some time checking it out over the weekend; I’ve briefly looked at it just now and it looks like I could spend hours on that site ordering parts that I want for my truck!
I’m constantly surprised by how much wildlife I see around our house here in VA. Considering the fact that we lived in rural Maine for so long, I expected to see a lot less wildlife around here. But every few days I see a fox crossing the road, or a few deer here and there. A few days ago there was a fox cutting across our front lawn. That was a first; I’ve never seen one that close to the house before. I was a little bit concerned about how I’ve heard that foxes carry rabies and I considered whether or not to shoot it but my wife convinced me to just leave it alone. I guess as long as it doesn’t try to approach us or our dogs I should just let it be. My wife was a little bit critical of my attitude – “look, isn’t it cool, lemme shoot it!” Her attitude is “look, isn’t it cool, leave it alone!”
My wife has been encouraging me to find a local contractor to work on repairing the leaky basement walls. She found a website called clicksmart that helps people find local certified experts to help them find service providers. Part of their website focuses on contractors that provide remodeling, heating and air conditioning, roofing, electrical, general, plumbing, painting, and/or flooring services. For example you can go to their website and find Cincinnati Contractors if you live in Cincinatti and need a contractor. Local to here I would be looking for a Virginia contractor. We live in a very small town and I did not expect to find our town on their list, but it was there, and it actually listed quite a few contractors! So I’ll be giving them a call to get some quotes on fixing our basement.
Every time it rains hard, the water drain at the bottom of the outside basement stairs gets clogged with leaves and the water raises up above the door sill and drains into the basement. We put a door mat with large gridded holes in it to try to keep it from getting plugged up, but it still happens too often. I think we are going to have to break down and put in a basement entry door over the top of the stairs to just keep the water from going in there. I hate to do that because then we are blocking out the best source of light from the basement, but it is a pain to have to keep cleaning up the flooded floor down there and keep the dehumidifiers running and the big fans going to keep the basement dry. So, I guess I’ll be saving my pennies to get this situation taken care of as soon as possible.
My brother just sent me a pair of Nikon Monarch hunting binoculars as a belated birthday present. Seems odd to me that he doesn’t seem to remember my birthday until his own birthday is approaching! I think he’s figured out that if I don’t get a birthday gift from him, he’s not going to get one from me!
The box that the binoculars came in indicated that he bought them from the Internet site opticsplanet.com. They sell a large variety of really high quality Nikon binoculars. These binoculars he sent me are really something special! They are Shockproof, Waterproof, Fogproof, rubber-armored. I’ve never had a set of binoculars this fancy before! I know they are designed for hunting, but I’ll just be using them to enjoy watching the wildlife in my own backyard.
I’ve gotten pretty disgusted with the amount of people at work who call in sick just because they have accumulated some sick time and want to take the day off, even if they aren’t really sick. It puts a hardship on the rest of us at work that come in; we have to do our jobs and cover for them too. I know they’re not really sick because I frequently see them later in the day – maybe during the lunch hour at a fast food joint or sometimes if they’re really stupid they’ll stop in at work to say hello to some friends. It’s a miracle they don’t get fired! And it is tough on the morale of the people who have a strong work ethic and only call in sick if they really ARE sick.
My older sister tells me that she wants a facelift. She’s in her mid-fifties now and she is unhappy with the few wrinkles and crows feet and goodness knows whatever else is on her face. She has always been one to be more than happy to change her body around, she dies her hair, she had breast implants; she wants to look twenty years old forever.
I talked to her on the phone over the weekend (phone calls on my cell phone are free on the weekend, so that’s when I try to call her) and that’s when she told me that she is going to be making an appointment with a Detroit facelift clinic called Accents to have her face stripped, waxed, buffed and polished. Okay, that’s not what she REALLY said, but as a car enthusiast, that’s what I interpreted it to mean! All I know is that she plans to do whatever it takes to look as young as humanly possible as long as she has the money to pay for it!
I’ve told her that it’s her life, and her body, and her money, and if that’s what she wants to do with it to make her happy, then I’m all for it.
My wife cooks a dish she calls “Western Mac” that she and I enjoy quite a bit. Lately, though, I’ve decided that I want to get involved in some of the food preparation and decided to ask her for the recipe and tinker with it a little bit. I don’t like onions at all, so usually whenever my wife finds a recipe she wants to try she leaves the onions out. She complains that the food just doesn’t taste right without the onions, but that’s too bad.
Anyway, I decided to make my own macaroni dish and cooked some macaroni, drained it. Then I added a pound of cooked low fat ground beef (crumbled) and added a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato soup, and a can of tomato paste. Mixed it all together and warmed it up, I think it came out yummy! My wife likes it too, but she adds a little bit of catsup to hers. So I’m quite pleased that I came up with a meal that my wife enjoys!
I’ve been thinking about buying a treadmill over the past couple of months. My wife doesn’t think I would use one; it would get put in the basement (there’s no room for it anywhere upstairs) and because the basement isn’t finished up nicely yet that it would go unused. I disagree; I really think I’d use one. So I’ve started looking around. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to need one of the treadmills with a sturdy frame so it doesn’t shake around a lot like the lightweight treadmills do. Before I make any decisions I’ll be checking out the treadmillguru.com website to see what their reviews have to say about different treadmills.
I’ve been complaining to my wife how much my feet hurt at the end of the day, now that I’m back to work and standing up a lot, my feet and back hurt more than I expected them to hurt. So she bought me some of those shoe inserts that are orthopedically designed specifically for back, leg, and heel pain. She bought herself a pair of them, too. I told her that I didn’t want to try them; I’d heard from a shoe sales person that they aren’t worth a dime; that what I need is special $200 shoes. She told me to try them out; she loved hers! She said that the shoe salesman just wanted to sell me expensive shoes that I didn’t need. Well, after a couple of days of listening to her how much she LOVED her shoe inserts, I reluctantly opened mine and tried them out. Guess what – they made quite a bit of difference! My feet don’t hurt nearly as badly at the end of the day as before! So maybe I won’t buy those $200 shoes after all!
My family loves video games. Our oldest son spends every minute he can in front of the television, playing video games. It seems that as soon as a new game console comes out he has to go buy it; I think we have every game console ever made since he was old enough to ask for games! At least from the very first Nintendo system!
Of course, we have the newest Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii as well. What self-respecting video game addict wouldn’t have them? As much as it aggravates me how much time he spends playing games, at least he isn’t out doing something illegal that would land him in jail like much of today’s young people are doing! And, we are glad that he enjoys the Wii games that require him to actually get out of the chair and engage in some physical action. When we have guests, they enjoy playing the Wii games with him, which is fun to watch. I’ve heard that there is a new Wii Fit with fitness board game that is a lot of fun to play, and helps keep people in shape.
Shopping for the best deal on the new Wii game can be quite easy online by using the shopping search engine called Quickshop. What is so great about this shopping engine is that it EVERY store on the Internet that sells the item, not just a few selected vendors that paid to get on a list. That’s over 30,000 stores! So you get a much bigger list to choose from!
