My brother-in-law Andy owns a Prius, and has been bragging to me about how much he loves his car. From the sounds of it, he has made a good choice for his family. There’s a website I’ve discovered recently that specializes in electric and hybrid parts and accessories. I was looking through the website earlier today and found some great innovative products that I want to tell Andy about that he could get for his Prius to make it run better and get better mileage.
There is a kit for sale on the website that makes the car use electric only up to 34 miles per hour. It only costs $69.95 and is easy to install. How can you beat that? You can’t!
They also sell a grounds systems that improves the torque, response, starting ability and mileage. That only costs $109.99! Those two products alone will improve mileage, and if you combine the two, you are spending less than $200 – certainly a very wise investment!
For a little bit more money ($224.99) you can buy a Hyper Voltage System that will increase horsepower and increase mileage at the same time!
The website also sells Green car care and natural cleaners to help keep the car looking good without further polluting the environment with harsh cleaning chemicals. All in all, this is a good website to turn to if looking for products and accessories for electric and hybrid cars.
Well I tried to stay out of my wife’s way for most of the day so she could get her cleaning done. When I got home this evening, ready to eat supper, I found her sitting on the kitchen floor, trying to take the vacuum cleaner apart. It seems that the beater bar/brush unit misteriously quit working and no matter how many times she hit the reset button it wouldn’t restart. So she was trying to find out why. She couldn’t find any screws to loosen, and she was quite frustrated. Well, I sat down on the floor with her and after a few minutes I figured out how to take that thing apart and we determined what the problem was – the motor to the brush/beater bar was clogged with dirt and dust from over the years. So we cleaned it up and put it back together, and now it runs like a champ! So I am the hero of the day!
My wife was lucky to have worked at a furniture store when she was in her early twenties and she had bought a few things with her employee discount way back then. One of the things she had bought way back in the 70’s was a sleeper sofa. In the early 90’s (or maybe it was the late 80’s) she had it re-upholstered. That is all well and good, but that upholstery job has started to show its age and now I think it is time we replaced that old sleeper sofa with a new sofa.
I’ve always been quite partial to Leather Couches. I like the masculine feel of leather. I’ve heard that it is really a “tough” material that lasts a very long time, and if families have children and/or pets, that they are a smart investment. My wife has said that she would enjoy buying one of the newer styles of reclining Sofas, but she can’t decide what size to get. I know she is thinking about fabric Couches instead of leather, because she said that she heard that leather is “cold” and uncomfortable to sit on. So it seems we have some negotiating to do! When we figure out what we want, we’ll be shopping online at the buycouchesonline.com website. They have a great selection, great prices, and offer free shipping, plus no sales tax! I’m sure we’ll find what we want there!
When my wife and I got together and we combined our households, I had very little furniture. I moved into her house that she had been living in for years, and her house was fully furnished. Most of her furniture is comprised of family heirlooms (the “polite” way of saying “hand-me-downs.”) Some of her furniture had actually come with the house that she bought, left behind by the previous owners. And some of her furniture she had bought over the years as she needed it. Some she bought new, and some she bought used. You could say our house is very “eclectic” in style!
Years of building hot rods and making sure not to miss any details, especially what was under the vehicle, and not just over and around it, I have learned many auto detailing tips such as saving old toothbrushes and dishrags from my mother’s kitchen. Over the years I’ve used many types of compounds, buffing solutions, and cleaning solutions; one of them recently being Black Magic. Of the three kinds that I’ve used, I’ve always enjoyed having a wet shine on my tires. And a dry glossy look on my rims. I’m very partial to aluminum wheels. And they take twice as long as any other type of wheel to keep clean and looking like new. Anybody can clean a chrome wheel and make it look good from two feet away; aluminum requires anyone looking at from six inches away to look like brand new at any given time.
By hiding any type of pits and gouges that can come from the road film and conditions, Black Magic has come a long ways in producing a chemical compound that not only cleans and polishes but almost restores almost any type of aluminum wheel. But back to the few tips; take this one big tip and go down to your local auto store and buy a new electric powered cleaning brush with four different heads. You’ll find your wheels come out immaculately!
Yesterday we got a phone call from a nephew who is in town for the Thanksgiving family dinner being hosted by my brother-in-law. I’ve never met this nephew before, he is my wife’s sister’s oldest son. They live about 900 miles away. Anyway, long story short, my wife invited him to stay at our place for as many nights as he needs a free place to crash. He accepted the offer for at least tonight, and so now my wife is going nuts getting the spare room ready (fresh sheets and open the heat register vents etc) and clean the bathroom, vacuum the rugs, wash the kitchen floor, and bake some home baked fresh bread (yummy!) I figure the best way I can help her is to just try to stay out of her way! It seems that whenever I try to help her with something I do it all wrong and she ends up re-doing it anyway, so I might as well just step back and let her do it in the first place!
Since I’ve been spending more time at home because of my car accident and injuries, I’ve been spending more time on the Internet. At first it was curiousity, wondering what is so fascinating that keeps the rest of my family glued to the computer for so many hours of the day? A few months after I was injured my wife got tired of me asking her to send email messages to my family and friends and she set me up with my own email account and taught me how to use it! Well, after that I was hooked! She showed me her blog, and explained what she did with it and helped me set up my own blog. (You’re reading it!) Since my physical activities have become so limited I’ve become quite intrigued with figuring out the hows, whats, whos and whys of the Internet and am thinking about setting up a web page dedicated to the business that I’m working on – classic car consulation.
From what I understand I will need to buy my own domain, and a web hosting service. My wife suggested that I might learn quite a bit about the Internet by reading the web hosting blog put on the Internet by the webhostinggeeks, so I’ve started reading that. Some of it is still confusing to me, because I’m a beginner, but I have to admit that it has taught me quite a bit!
If you are thinking about getting a new webhosting service, check out the recommondations at the webhostinggeeks.com website before making a commitiment; it’s worth a read!
The past couple of days the weather has been really crazy. It’s difficult for my wife to figure out what to wear to work – she’s been working part time the past couple of months as a substitute school bus driver until she can find a better paying full time job. (That’s going to be hard to do because school bus drivers get paid pretty well!) Anyway, as I was saying, the crazy weather has made it hard for her to figure out what to wear – the school buses don’t warm up very quickly so when she leaves the house in the morning it is in the 30’s (and this morning it was mixed precipitation!) but by the middle of the day it is in the 50’s.
So she has been dressing in layers and peeling off clothes as the bus (and day) warm up, but it is still a challenge to figure out how many layers, and exactly how warm each layer should be! She has been catching a lot of colds and I suspect that is probably due largely to her being exposed to so many weird weather conditions (in addition to be subjected to the germs the kids have!) I’ll be glad when she gets a job where she doesn’t have to worry about the outside temperature and how many layers of clothes to wear!
In today’s fashion world, eyeglasses are often considered an important fashion accessory. That’s good news for people who actually have to WEAR eyeglasses! From what I understand, even people who wear contact lenses usually have a “backup pair” of eyeglasses for the rare occasion when they either can’t or don’t want to put in their contact lenses.
My sister-in-law wears contacts most of the time, but sometimes when she falls ill her doctor tells her to stop wearing her contacts and just wear her regular glasses while she is recovering. I don’t understand the medical reason for it; I just remember her telling us that. Anyway, most women feel that fashion eyeglasses can make or break an “outfit” and some folks like to have several pairs of glasses to choose from to accessorize what they are wearing.
The Zenni Optical Company has made it easier for consumers to own multiple pairs of glasses, by offering frames for as low as $8.00 per pair. They have a wide variety of Holiday frames that would be great to wear with any Holiday inspired outfit. They sell progressive/bifocal glasses, sunglasses, and wind goggles as well. They also provide anti-scratch coating and UV protection on the lenses for free!
My wife came home yesterday afternoon, a little bit frustrated because the test she took was a lot harder than she expected it to be, and because they told her that they would mail the results to her and it could take up to three weeks. So she doesn’t know if she passed or not. She suspects that she didn’t pass because there were a lot of questions that she simply guessed at. She told me that the books she was told to read the prepare her for the test were of no help at all, and that she feels that she wasted an awful lot of time reading them. So she is quite annoyed about that, and nervous about the test results. She says if she gets a failing grade on the test that she’s going to wait a while before taking it again, she has to find out what are the correct books to study and it will take a while to study them. I really hope she passed! It is hard for her to find time to study.
Their is a website called thecreditexchange.com dedicated to referring consumers who are struggling with debt to companies that can help them with finding the right answers to their debt problems. It is NOT a Debt Consolidation Company , and it is NOT a credit management company. It has affiliated companies that do that. What thecreditexchange.com website does is help you to figure out which is the best option for you and then refers you to the appropriate company to help you to pursue that option. It is the only company that I know of that does not perform the services itself.
Today my wife has to go take a National Certification Exam for Pharmacy Technician. It is particularly bad timing because at the same time she has to go take the test, she needs to go pick up some food that she ordered from the Angel Food Ministries. She told me that she could not reschedule either one of those commitments, so she asked me to pick up the food for her. Well, I really don’t want to do that, but it is such a good deal that we really would be foolish to pass it by. And the food is already paid for, so we can’t get a refund if we don’t pick it up. So I’ll be going to get the food while my wife is taking her test. I hope she appreciates my help and I hope she does well on the test!
My mother called me this afternoon to tell me that her kitchen and living room was flooded because her washing machine had sprung a leak. She had set it to run a load and then went out to run errands with my daughter, and when they returned the machine was pumping water like crazy! I told her how to turn off the water to the machine and for her to call me back when she got the water mopped up so I could tell her who to call to help with the more difficult part of cleaning up.
While she was doing that I went on the Internet and looked up the water restoration experts at waterrestoration911.com. They have a huge network of affiliates that deal with cleaning up water problems like that. When my mother called back I gave her the telephone number to call to get the water cleanup crew out to her house as soon as possible.
I was changing the oil in my truck this morning. During my oil changing routine I always climb under the truck and give it a good “look over” to see if anything is worn out or needs greasing. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the driver side front upper ball joint needs replacing. I’ve never replaced one of those before, but I’ve done a lot of work on a lot of vehicles, so I’m confident I can replace it myself; I just didn’t want to deal with the extra expense and labor involved in replacing it. The replacement ball joint is going to cost me almost $50, which is a hard hit this close to Christmas, and I really need to fix it before winter really settles in. I wonder how my wife would like to open a box with a new ball joint in it on Christmas morning? (Just kidding!)
My brother in-law just graduated from college last spring. He received his online degree in computer technology and he is pleased as punch! The whole family is really quite proud of him. He had been looking for a way to advance his career and make better money, and this was a good way for him to do that. He’s married and has one baby that was born around Valentine’s Day this past winter. He works full time and he’s been taking online courses for a couple of years.
He said what he really liked about taking online courses was the flexibility around his busy schedule. If he had needed to go to a traditional college he says he never could have done it because he would have missed too many classes. One of the great things about online colleges is that you don’t get tied down to one specific physical location. While he was taking these courses he had moved a couple of times to different states. He never could have done that if he was enrolled in a local university.
The degreehound.com website is dedicated to helping students locate the perfect online school for their interests. They have a search wizard where you type in what you are interested in learning and it recommends the proper schools for that need. When you find the school you are interested in you then can request more information to be sent to you. It’s always a good time to take classes, to further your career, change your career, increase your job security, or just to learn something new that you’ve been interested in for a long time. And online classes make it a lot easier to do just that.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of window tint film. I want to tint the windows of my hot rod limo black. I tried to install the film myself without any help, but found that there were a lot of bubbles in the end result and I wasn’t happy with it at all. So after a few days of thinking about it, I pulled the tint off of the windows and decided to try again.
This time I removed the windows from the truck and brought them inside. I laid them flat on the dining room table and installed the tint in the house. I asked my wife to help me, and she did. (Thanks wife!) The end result was much better, there were still a couple of bubbles which I ended up being able to pop with a pin and super glue down. Then I put the windows back into the hot rod and I have to say it looks great!
There certainly has been a brisk business in Stock Trading on Wall Street over the past few weeks! Consumer confidence has taken a huge beating; news keeps hitting the television that big companies are struggling and people are losing their jobs. So the Stock Market has been having a really tough time, going up and down like crazy!
This is a good time to make some money on the stock market if you can get a good Online Broker to do some rapid Online Trading to buy stocks for you when the market is falling – you could get some really great deals if you watch the market carefully! The firstrade.com website is a website to one such online broker that can help you to get involved in the stock market at competitive rates.
Their website has a lot of good articles and advice on the stock market and mutual funds, too. So even if you’re NOT thinking about getting into the stock market right now, it is well worth a read.
I don’t know why I’ve had such a hard time finding beef and barley soup at the grocery store! That’s been one of my favorite soups ever since I can remember but the last couple of years it seems to have dropped off the face of the eastern coast! I’ve resorted to eating vegetable beef soup instead, which is a disappointment as a substitute. Right now I’m craving a bowl of beef and barley soup, but heating up vegetable beef instead. My taste buds will be disappointed. Oh well, I’ll keep looking! On the subject of soup, I’ve noticed that in spite of all of the advertising that “soup is good food” it is way too high in sodium to be healthy. That’s why I don’t eat much soup anymore at all, so when I crave a particular soup, I want what I want!
Being in the hot rod restoration business, if business continues the way it is, I’m going to have to consider buying a spray booth system. My makeshift spray booth won’t last much longer!
Spray Systems Inc is probably one of the top of the top of the line when it comes to state of the art spray booths today. From lawn mower spraying to aircraft, to furniture, to 100 foot booms in the air, Spray Systems Inc makes the right spray booth for any situation. They will install the unit and have trained personnel on the premises the following day to train you how to use it. They manufacture any and all sizes for any job or project. All codes are met and set to your specifications. They manufacture their own fans and filtration systems to create a unique system to fit your needs. They also carry a complete line of wash booths and waste disposal systems combined to meet all your requirements.
I stopped at a traffic light the other night and when I took off I thought I smelled a little bit of exhaust coming into the cab of the truck. By the time I got home, I knew there was exhaust coming into the truck. I crawled underneath the truck and found that the top of the muffler was rotted and split open. It wasn’t making any noise, but it was pushing the exhaust up inside the cab.
I got a price to put the exhaust on the truck from a dealership – it almost scared me to death – almost $800! I went to buy the exhaust for myself at the parts store and it was $460. So I went online to a parts store that I buy parts from, not knowing if they sell exhaust or not and purchased the whole exhaust shipped right to me for half. I’ll be installing it myself next week. I love the Internet!
The average American consumer is deep in debt right now. So deep that many of us are in danger of filing for bankruptcy or losing our homes. What we need is a good Debt Relief program to help us out of this mess.
According to my understanding of what I learned from an informative website called Freedomebtrelief.com about debt relief, the basic ways of debt relief are debt consolidation, credit counseling, bankruptcy, and making minimum payments, and debt reduction. All of these have their pros and cons.
One of the pros of debt consolidation is that if you take this method by taking a second mortgage out on your house, the interest may be tax deductible. The con though, is that the loan will take a long time to pay off, and if you fall behind you could lose your home! With credit counseling, and making minimum payments, you will still have to pay off your entire debt and it may take a very long time. With bankruptcy you end up ruining your credit, which can make life difficult for a very long time. Debt reduction is a good alternative because you negotiate with your creditors to pay them less money than you actually owe them. So you end up paying less money and get out of debt quicker. This website is very informative and they offer a debt reduction service to consumers. So if you think you need some help with debt relief, check them out. They can help you to get out of debt quicker and save you money too.
I was reading on the Time.com website that the EPA is going to be recognizing that Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant. At first I wondered why that was an important story, but as I continued to read it became clear that it is very important because it is going to effect the way new coal plants will be allowed to operate. It means that the EPA will regulate the emissions and that the coal plants will have to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. This means less pollution in the air, which is good for all of us!
Since I’ve been staying at home so much, recovering from that car accident last fall I’ve been spending a lot more time at the computer. So much time, in fact, that my wife broke down and bought me my own computer! She says that she is tired of telling me that she needs the computer to do her bookkeeping duties. I’ve been really enjoying learning how to blog, and learning more about the Internet and computers in general. I really didn’t realize just how complicated it all was, setting up your own website! And there are so many different kinds of webhosting services that are available out there! It’s positively mindboggling and fascinating all at the same time!
I’ve found a good website called the webhostinggeeks.com that has a lot of articles about the different types of web hosting, and it reviews and recommends the best web hosting services available “out there” based on their research. One of the things that I was surprised to learn from their website is that there are some web hosting services that provide free domain names as part of their service! I thought that you had to buy a domain name first, and then find a web hosting service, but this article has shown me that you can pick out your web hosting service first and then get the domain name for free through that company. So this website is definitely worth a reading if you are thinking about setting up your own new website, it can save you some money and steer you in the direction of the best hosting service for your needs.
I really could not believe my eyes when I went down to the mailbox this afternoon to get the mail. We actually got a Christmas card in today’s mail! And here it is not even Thanksgiving yet! My wife and I usually get our Christmas cards out in the mail Thanksgiving weekend, and we thought we were early birds! Wait until my wife gets home and sees that we got a Christmas card! She will be so shocked too! I’m going to tell her “someone beat us to the punch!” What a riot!
One of my all time favorite websites to check out before I buy customized items to give as gifts to people is the Vistaprint website. I love their great selection of affordable high quality Custom Calendars. I like to give them out to family and friends during the Holidays as little “extra” gifts for the “special people” and as “primary gifts” for the people who are the “regular” folks. That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? By “special people” I guess I mean our really close friends and relatives, and the “regular people” would be people that we like but don’t see that often and aren’t are really close friends and family. Does that make sense to you? I hope so!
Anyway, one of the things that I like so much about the Vistprint website is their great selection of inexpensive customizable products, such as pens, business cards, rubber stamps, T-shirts, sticky notepads, and much more. They also have a lot of free giveaways, such as free magnets, free pens, free rubber stamps. Another great thing about them is that they will send you free samples of their products for you to see the high quality that you will be getting when you order from them. They are constantly running great specials, too. At them moment I see that they are selling their customized hats for 50% off, which is a great deal!
Every morning when we first get up I am in a lot of pain. My car accident last year really has done a number on me, and I need surgery in several places because of herniated disks. I’ve been trying for a very long time to get the doctors to schedule me for surgery, but they have been giving me the run around, bouncing me back and forth between different doctors, having X-Rays and MRIs and Cat Scans and Body Scans and all kinds of tests, telling me to try physical therapy (didn’t help) and just putting me on pain meds, and they have finally agreed that I really DO need surgery. So now I am bouncing around from specialist to specialist trying to get one to figure out which surgery needs to be done when, and get the durn things DONE!
But I digress. I started out writing this post to say that thank goodness for those over-the-counter menthol-based pain patches. My wife helps me put a couple on my back every day and they help ease the pain. Of course the pain meds help a lot, too, but the pain patches are a godsend. Whoever invented those things deserves a place in heaven!
With Christmas coming up, I’ve been thinking that might be a pretty good idea after all, getting a few extra cell phones and just leaving them in the cars all of the time. Having cell phones with you all of the time is a great safety investment, and a good way to keep track of where everyone is.
With all of the great Verizon cell phone deals I’ve been hearing advertised lately, I think I’ll be checking into it. The only hitch being, with that company, the cell phone reception in our area is a total dead zone. When we first moved here, all of our neighbors told us that Verizon cell phones were the best ones to get for here, and that is what we got, but we found that our house, and the entire surrounding fifteen miles around the house is a total dead zone for that company. My daughter has good luck with her t-mobile phones in Maine, and they have some pretty good deals, but when she visited here last summer she found this to be a dead zone for that company, too.
My brother-in-law uses Sprint phones in Northern Virginia and swears by their service, but there isn’t anyone in this area that I know that says they’ve had good luck with them, so I’m a little reluctant to try them.
So when our contract ran out with that company last month, I went online to see if I could find some kind of map that showed the coverage areas for the different competing companies – between the major cell phone companies. I saw that the coverage for at&t cell phones was the most comprehensive for the area in which we live so I signed up for AT&T. I managed to get free cell phones for all three of our lines! I was pleased as punch, too, because the plan has rollover minutes and is cheaper than the plan we had with our previous cell phone provider. And they offered a thirty day trial period, so I decided that I had nothing to lose, and ordered their plan. So far we’ve been pleased with that service for our location.
There is no doubt about it, cell phones are becoming a more important part of our daily lives. I can remember, though, not too long ago when cell phones did not even exist! I guess I’m showing my age, now, aren’t I? My wife and I were talking recently about how when we were younger and had to drive somewhere if our car broke down we had to walk to the nearest gas station (or house) or wait for some sympathetic driver to stop and help us out. It was just a fact of life, and we accepted it. It was no big deal. Now if we leave the house and find that we forgot our cell phones, we panic! We’ve even talked about putting extra cell phones in the cars to just leave them there all the time, in case of emergency!
My neighbor’s son recently got a used buick as a gift from his father. He came over today when he saw that I was home to talk to me about buying a buick supercharger for his car, and he wanted to know if I’d help him to install it if he ordered one, and to ask me if I’d help him to find a good deal on one.
I told him to check out the Internet. The www.superchargerpros.com website sells superchargers, turbochargers, and nose cones for a wide variety makes and models of cars and trucks at a very reasonable price. They sell dealer quality new and remanufactured products, but NOT junk yard or used equipment. All of their parts come with a minimum of a one year (or sometimes longer) warranty. The company offers free shipping on their products.
Gee I hate it when my wife is feeling sick. Thank goodness that she is starting to improve, and managed to work a half day today. She plans to work a half-day tomorrow, too. Her boss wanted her to work a full day, but my wife said that if she did that she would risk a relapse and end up being out sick for even more time, so her boss agreed to let her work a couple of half-days so she wouldn’t over-do it. I’m glad that she has such an understanding boss!
