Well my wife found a place online to buy a replacement lid for the casserole dish that I accidentally broke the other day. She ordered it and it came the very next day! That was really fast! I was surprised that she found a place to buy one! Isn’t the Internet wonderful!
I was surprised, however, by how much the durn thing cost! It cost about $20! For just a piece of tempered glass! I must be in the wrong business! But the thing fits perfect, and I’ll be sure to not make that mistake again!
When we first moved into this house, my wife started talking about hooking up a Home Security System. She pointed out to me that the house had ADT stickers on all of the windows, and she took it to mean that the previous owner had a Security System installed, and that perhaps that meant that there were some issues in the area with burglaries. So she said she would like to talk to the neighbors and see if any of them had any problems with burglaries or thefts.
Well, we’ve met the neighbors and so far everyone assures us that no one has had any problems with break-ins, so my wife has stopped talking about being afraid to live here. But a couple of weeks ago I thought I saw some people snooping around and peering in the windows, so now I’m beginning to think maybe she’s not so crazy after all! I don’t want to scare my wife, but I think maybe an alarm system is in the near future for us after all.
Well I learned a lesson today that I won’t soon forget. This evening I was helping my wife by cooking supper. It was one of our favorite dishes that she taught me how to cook; a simple chicken dish. It involves putting pieces of boneless chicken in a casserole dish, dumping in a couple of cans of cream soup and cooking it in the oven for a while. Well, I took the dish out of the oven when it was done and put the hot lid of the dish in the kitchen sink. Unfortunately, the faucet dripped one single drip of cold water onto the hot lid, and it exploded into a million pieces of glass! Boy was I surprised! And MAD too! Fortunately all the food was far enough away that no broken glass got into the food, but now I’m faced with the problem of buying a replacement lid for the casserole dish!
If you’ve been reading my blog from the beginning you’ll remember that I love cars, trucks, motorcycles, and machines in general. You know, stuff like John Deere tractors, not stuff like ipods. Don’t get me wrong, ipods have their place, but I like big noisy things that you can ride!
My wife has suggested that since we haven’t lived here very long, and since I’ve just recently discovered the joys of the computer and the Internet (although I like working on my hot rod truck more) that I might benefit from joining the new social networking site that she has found. She said that the members join up and find topics of common interest and share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences about the different topics. She told me that they have an auto network that I might be able to use to find people that are interested in hot rods and chat with them over the networking site.
I read that Susan Boyle was joking when she quipped on “Britain’s Got Talent” that she had never been kissed. And that there appears to be a huge public outcry that she admits that she was joking. People are calling her a liar; quite upset over it.
Well, I have to say this about that. Get over it people! She was joking! When I heard it say that, I immediately thought it was a joke. So if you feel foolish that you believed it, well then that’s your problem. Joking about stuff like that happens all the time. So, get over it people! She’s still got a great voice! And she deserves a great record contract.
My daughter called me last night, telling me that she was looking through the lapolicegear.com website to check out their closeouts. I’m pretty sure that I’ve told you that she is a police officer in New England, so we talk about police things a lot. Especially when she is asking me to send her money to help pay for some uniform or equipment thing that she wants. So she was telling me that the website is having a 35% discount sale on their Maxpedition gear. The sale is only good for a few days, so she wanted me to let her know if I could help her pay for some of the things before she placed her order.
There have been reports that the FEMA trailers used by the US government to house people who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina have/had 5 times the safe level of formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, and there is evidence to support the worry that the people who have been living in the trailers already are, or will be in the future suffering from various ailments from asthma to cancer as a result of the prolonged exposure to the formaldehyde.
The US Government KNEW about this since 2006, and yet there are still thousands of people living in those trailers! I consider this an outrage, and a crime against humanity!
Let’s face it, although there are a lot of things we can buy over the Internet at a great price, there are times when we need to find something locally. Like plumbing services, or a good local restaurant. I don’t know why it is, but whenever I am looking for the paper version of the local yellowpages, I can’t seem to find where my wife put it!
I know she has a system of “A place for everything, and everything in its place” but I can never remember where the places are! That’s why I never put anything away – if it is not out in plain sight, I can’t find it! I get so aggravated when I look for something and I find out that my wife “put it away!”
So even though I know we have several telephone books in the house, instead of trying to find them I just go on the Internet to the local.com website to do a local search for the businesses and services that I need to have done. It’s quick and easy, and I don’t have to try to remember to put it away when I’m through with it!
Well, apparently more people DO judge a book by its cover than they should! Case in point; the audience and judge’s reaction to contestant Susan Boyle! Everyone pre-judged her by her humble appearance. I have to admit that I found it difficult to understand her when she talked, and when she said she wanted to be a professional singer I wondered how that could possibly happen! But it wasn’t long before I realized that her singing voice was wonderful, and when she sang her accent seemed to disappear. I have to wonder how a person can sing without an accent if they can’t talk without it! I’ll be very interested to hear how her new career works out for her. I’m sure that she will have a big recording contract even if she doesn’t win the Britain’s Got Talent show!
A nephew of my sister-in-law has decided to befriend our family, and it seems that he spends every waking minute here. If he’s not here, he seems to be calling here. He likes to come over and help me work on my truck, and sometimes I help him work on his car. He is in the antique business, and he has a booth at an indoor flear market in a nearby city. He’s been trying to convince me to take a booth at the flea market too. I’ve been talking about it with my wife, and she suggested that I give it a try for a couple of months and see how it goes. We certainly have enough “junk” to haul down there to try to sell! It wouldn’t hurt to clear some of it out of our basement and make a few dollars from it! And it would be nice to get out of the house a little bit more now that the good weather is coming. The only thing that bothers me about it though is that if I do the flea market venture then I would not be available to go to the car shows that are held every weekend around here. Well, maybe I can alternate weekends so I can still go to a few car shows.
But if I DO get into the flea market business and it works well, I’m going to be looking at buying a van to haul the merchandise to the flea market. My wife has been telling me for many years that she has always wanted to buy one of the mini vans that were so popular a few years back. But now that the children are grown, I’m not so sure a minivan would do the trick for me with my needs for a flea market vehicle. I think that with the family situation the way it is now, my wife might be happy with something more like the Toyota Highlander or a Saturn Vue than a mini-van. They both seem like a good family car.
Besides, I don’t consider myself a mini-van type of guy! I’m much more the type of guy that would drive a sports car. I used to own a Mazda RX-7 back in my youth! It was silver and what a chick magnet that was! And it wasn’t too long ago that I had a corvette. Believe it or not I traded that in for my current truck! What can I say, I needed the truck!
Today I was driving to the post office and was noticing all of the different beautiful trees, shrubs,and flowers that are in bloom. In my mind it is still early spring; back where I grew up there is still snow on the ground and there is NOTHING in bloom! So it just amazes me when I drive around here that I see people have already mowed their lawns and so many flowers are in bloom. There are beautiful forsythia, cherry trees, pear trees, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, and much to my complete amazement I saw a very tall rose bush in what appeared to be full bloom! I could NOT believe my eyes! I wonder if it was a fake? It just doesn’t seem natural; the azaleas haven’t even started to bloom, and here is a blooming rose bush? Is that even possible?
It seems hard to believe that my wife bought her Subaru Impreza eleven years ago! She had just transferred from a clerical position in one designated location with her employer to one where she was going to have to travel around the state every day. She had been driving an older car that was fine for short runs, but once she hit the road with her new job it was breaking down every week, and it was costing her a lot of money to fix it. So she traded it in on a Subaru.
That was the first year that the Outback Sport was released – that was voted the “car of the year” by (I think) the Car & Driver magazine, and a few other places too. It was smaller than she would have preferred, but it was all she could afford, and it had all wheel drive which was what she wanted. And of course she was concerned about reliability and safety, and we had heard that Subaru cars were very reliable and safe. We’ve heard that they will run forever if you take good care of them. So far I’d have to say that seems to be the case with her Subaru. We’ve recently passed it down to our oldest son to drive to and from work because it gets great mileage and we feel it is a good choice for him to drive.
My brother-in-law has been trying to convince us to trade it in on an Acura rl sedan. He says that he thinks that it’s time we drove a luxury sedan. I was checking the reviews of it on the website thecarconnection.com, however, and have to say that I’m not impressed at all with the mileage! And to be honest, the price is a little bit out of our reach right now! While I was on their website I checked out the reviews on a few other cars, such as the Chevy Tahoe and the Kia Soul and came to the conclusion that if we are going to buy any new car in the near future, we will have to do a lot of careful research! I’m glad I found this website!
Well the contractor came back and finished fixing the doggie door. The dogs have learned to use it pretty quickly, but they aren’t going out through it much yet because it has been raining all day. It sure has been a relief to not have to get up and let them in and out and in and out every five minutes! I’m glad we got it, and the contractor that put it in charged us a very fair price. I was expecting to have to pay him more because it took longer than he expected; but he charged only what his original estimate was. I’m thinking maybe it’s because I baked a batch of my famous peanut butter fudge cookies and let him have a few! One interesting thing that came out of this is that he has offered me a job, and I’m thinking about taking it!
Personally, I like green cars. I have a green truck. And by that I’m referring to color! But this post is actually about the “other” kind of “green.” The type that are more environmentally friendly. You know, the hybrids. I’m really glad to see that more car manufacturers are turning to the newer technology of going electric and/or hybrid. We’d really like to get one of the hybrid cars someday. Hopefully the economy will turn around soon so we can buy one!
My mother in law bought a hybrid car a few years ago. I think it was a Honda. She bragged about what great mileage it got – about 50 miles to the gallon! Unfortunately one of her sons convinced her that it was a good idea to get rid of it when it was only two years old – he told her that her battery was going to need to be replaced and that was going to be really expensive. So she traded it in for a car that doesn’t get as good mileage. Sadly the dealer that took her trade in ripped her off and did not give her the full value of the car! Personally, the next time she buys a car I’d like to see her buy a new Nissan cube; I think she would be really happy with that!
My wife keeps talking about checking out the Ford Fiesta; she thinks it’s really cute. It’s been a long time since I’ve owned a Ford! As for me, I’m more inclined to want to buy a Toyota pickup truck: I owned a nice Toyota pickup truck when I was younger, and I really liked the way it handled. I’ve always wanted to keep a pick-up in the household for all of those chores that required a truck. I just can’t imagine what life would be like with us only owning cars and no trucks!
Today I decided it was time to give the dog a bath. We’ve had him for two years now, and have never bathed him. I’ve wanted my wife to give him a bath but she keeps telling me that the only reason to give a dog a bath is if he smells bad; brushing him should get the dirt out. And my wife keeps telling me that before a dog gets a bath he should get a good grooming to keep the mats from getting worse. So today I gave the dog a good brushing and gave him a bath in the laundry tub. He did well in the tub, much better than I expected! As soon as I lifted him out of the tub and dried him with a towel, though he got squirmy. I carried him out to the back yard so he could shake, and the first thing he did was find a patch of mud to roll in! So much for squeaky clean!
I’ve been reading a lot of articles in magazines and newspapers, and even online about how the credit card companies are making it more difficult for the consumer to get and use credit! I think that this is one of the reasons why the economy is still suffering. I know that several of my credit card companies have sent me notices that they are cancelling my account because I haven’t used them in six months. That’s very irritating to me because I know that looks bad on my credit report when a credit card closes my account! One of the reasons that I haven’t been using those credit cards, however, is because those particular cards have been charging very high interest rates.
I would prefer to find and use low interest rate credit cards. There is a good website called comparecards.com that I found that I can use to compare credit cards and see which ones will work out the best for me. The only thing I’m worried about though, is that even if I can find a good card, that I might be rejected because of the way the economy has been going, and the recent account closures that have happened to me.
A couple of weeks ago we bought a doggie door. We’ve hired a contractor to install it, with the theory that he would be better qualified to put it in than I am, and if anything goes wrong with the installation, he is the one that has to deal with fixing it. Well he was supposed to come last Friday but called and rescheduled for today. He came out today about 11am, and expected to be done by 2pm. Well, he made a few mistakes and was still working on it at 6pm when he called it quits for the day. He said he’ll be back out tomorrow to fix it. I hope so! I’m looking forward to having the dogs enjoy the convenience of letting themselves in and out!
I enjoy going to trade shows. My wife and I especially enjoy going to the shows regarding home and garden, recreational vehicles, manufactured homes and boats. My wife enjoys the garden shows the most. She likes to take lots of pictures of the sample gardens that the landscaping companies design to bring home for inspiration. Some of the fantasy gardens are absolutely fantastic!
We also enjoy going to the other parts of the show where the vendors have booths set up to sell their various wares. We see some fantastic trade show exhibits at the shows that we go to. Some of the best looking trade show exhibit booths we’ve seen are at trade shows that feature kitchen and bath ideas at the home shows. I’ve asked a few people where they got their exhibits, and they told me that they got them from the http://www.gilbertdisplays.com website. I can remember many years ago that the booths were fairly crude, but now they look very sophisticated and seem to be an art form in themselves!
Well, while my wife and her sister went off red-hatting today I decided to do my wife a favor and go to the grocery store to pick up the week’s groceries. Boy, was that a mistake! The store was absolutely mobbed! Now I know why my wife tells me that she will NOT go grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon! I always thought she had a screw loose by being stubborn about it, but I had to stand in line for a very long time at the checkout counter, and I was exhausted when I got home! And I was, I regret to admit, cranky. I guess I’ll make a point to NOT go grocery shopping Saturday afternoons myself!
I’ve noticed that a lot of companies are now using postcards to market their products and services, instead of simply putting advertisements in the newspapers. I think that is a good marketing strategy because a lot of people don’t read newspapers anymore, and it is easier to send your postcards to your targeted market than to simply put an ad in the newspaper that ends up unread or reaches a lot of people that you don’t need or want to target. Why pay for advertising space that reaches the wrong target?
I think that customized color postcards will catch the eye of the recipient when they sort through their mail, and they will actually LOOK at it for a moment or two before deciding whether to keep it, act on it, or throw it away. One of the benefits of advertising through postcards is that if they want to keep it for a future reference they don’t have to cut it out of the paper with scissors, they can simply clip it to their refrigerator or tack it on their bulletin board right then and there. That makes it very convenient for them to be able to do that.
The postage for postcards is a lower price than mailing out envelopes, which makes it more attractive in a cost-efficient way. And the recipient doesn’t have to decide whether or not to open an envelope from someone they don’t know or make the judgemental call of whether to toss it in the trash unopened! All in all, I think that using postcards to market a business is a good idea.
There is a good website called vistaprint.ca that sells custom made postcards in two different sizes. You can use their own pre-made designs, or custom make it using your own design. Their service is quick and affordable. I like browsing around their website to see what they have to offer – I love their free products that they offer! It gives you a chance to see what kind of quality items that they sell.
Well we are having company over for a few hours tomorrow for Easter. They are all coming over around 2 in the afternoon to visit and play games, then we are going out to eat at a restaurant. My wife has to work tomorrow from 10-2, so today is the day she is frantically running around the house cleaning. I offered to help out by staying out of her way and running to the grocery store to buy fruit and veggie tray ingredients. My wife’s sister is over here, too, helping to clean the house. She says it’s better than having the whole family come over to her place! Later today my wife and her sister are going to a Red Hatter’s Tea Party. So they should have a good time! It’s funny to see them dressed up in their red and purple outfits!
As more people find themselves the victims of downsizing, rightsizing, or whatever “politically correct” verbiage their companies are using to sugar-coat the fact that they are laying off people, I think that more people are going to be turning to the Internet to try to find ways to make money. I think many people are going to try their hand(s) at self-employment opportunities.
The technologically savvy among them are going to be looking for ways to use the Internet to help them to market their new businesses. They will be looking at buying their own domains, finding a good webhosting service and trying to create their own web pages. Some people will be using the services of other people to actually create their webpages, and some will buy some kind of software to help them do it on their own.
One of the most important things to consider in this entire package is finding the right webhosting service. There is a great website dedicated to helping people find the right match for their needs. It is called webhostinggeeks.com. Their website has great articles about webhosting, and rates and reviews many webhosting services. I especially like the link that they have to webhosting services that are environmentally friendly – they call that link the “green web hosting.”
Over the past few weeks there have been several tornadoes touching down in Tennessee near where one of my wife’s sisters happens to live. She has been fortunate to not have been a victim of the tornadoes, but it certainly is nerve wracking to both my wife and her sister that the tornadoes are touching down so close. From what my wife has heard from her sister, one of their favorite restaurants is on a block where a tornado touched down and several of the businesses were destroyed but the restaurant itself was spared. I have never seen the destruction first hand of a tornado, and we live in an area where tornadoes DO happen. My wife gets very worried when tornado warnings appear on the radio and television and talks about going down into the basement until the warnings are over. I guess that is another good reason to get our basement finished – even if no one ends up living down there we could at least be comfortable staying down there until the storm warnings pass!
I think it would be a lot of fun to travel around North America a little bit. I’ve always wanted to do that, and as I get older, my feet are getting itchier every day. I’d absolutely love to go to Toronto this September and buy some Rogers Center Tickets to the U2 concert. I’ve never been to Toronto, but that is one of the cities I’d like to see. From what I hear, I have some distant cousins living near Toronto, and they could act as tour guides to the area. That would be a lot of fun!
And I’d love to go to Houston Texas and buy some Toyota Center Tickets to the Eric Clapton concert this June! I’ve always wanted to see Eric Clapton in concert, and I’m a little bit jealous that my wife has seen him in concert before we met. She said it was one of the best concerts she had ever been to, so I would love to see him!
Our old neighbors became snowbirds recently and migrate to Miami Florida every winter. They’ve invited us to come visit them next winter and stay for a few days. I’ll have to check out what concerts might be playing in Miami for me to buy some American Airline Arena Tickets so we can see a good show while we are down there.
Just last Saturday I was out driving my Harley; it was in the mid-70s and I was sure summer was on it’s way! I had a great time, I must have driven for about two hours. Drove down to Fredericksburg and checked out a flea market that some of my friends work at. They’ve been trying to convince me to take out a booth and try my hand at flea marketing too, so I thought I’d check it out for myself. But that’s another story.
This morning it seems that every time I looked out the window, there was snow spitting. It really didn’t feel cold enough to snow, but there’s no denying that is what it was – the dandelions haven’t appeared yet to be dandelion seeds floating around! The first couple of times I saw the snow spitting down I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but when my wife told me that it was spitting snow, I had to believe it was for real! Well, I sure hope that is the last snow of the season!
One thing that I’ve noticed as I drive around this area, exploring roads that I’ve never driven down before, is how many great looking Personalized Mailboxes there are around here. Where we used to live in New England, practically no one spent the money on Custom Mailboxes because in the winter time the wicked and most dreaded snowplow driver would frequently damage or destroy so many mailboxes that it was a cause of great frustration to many homeowners.
But now that we live in an area where snowplowing is not done frequently, I have noticed a lot of nice looking Whitehall Mailboxes lining the streets. It actually is quite pleasant to drive through neighborhoods where the mailboxes are not all rusty and dented. A nice mailbox gives the casual observer the feeling that the occupants of the house actually CARE about taking good care of their home and yard. They make a really nice first impression.
I’m pretty sure that the cashiers and bagger that work at the grocery store get training on how to properly bag a customer’s groceries. It never ceases to amaze me how poorly a job of bagging groceries some of the cashiers and baggers do. First of all, I think that the big stores that make the cashiers scan the groceries and do the bagging is expecting the cashier to do too much. I think that each cashier should have a bagger so that each can concentrate on doing the job right, instead of doing it fast!
It never fails that when we come home from the grocery store and my wife and I are unpacking the groceries, that at least two or three things are beat up from improper bagging. It is almost a “given” that the bread will be crushed. We ask the person bagging the groceries to put all of the “cold” things together so we can put them in an insulated bag to keep them cold until we can get them unpacked. But if we don’t watch like a hawk, the bagger will put something cold in a bag with things that are not cold. You would not think that was a big deal, but when we get home from shopping, we are tired and would like to just put away all of the cold things as soon as we get home, and let the room temperature things wait a while. It’s very annoying to put away all of the cold things when we get home, and realize that something cold is missing and have to rummage through the other bags looking for it!
So, in a nutshell, I wish baggers did a better job of bagging groceries!
I really like wearing hiking shoes when I’m out working in the yard. Unless of course I need steel-toed shoes when I’m working with my power equipment! But for the most part, hiking shoes fit comfortably and give me the support I need when I’m out there tending to the chores that need to be done, such as raking and weeding and picking up the brush. We have a three acre lot that I’d like to work on clearing a little bit more. Cut down a few trees and clear out the underbrush. My wife keeps telling me that I should leave it alone because that is where the deer hide and sleep, but I keep telling her that they will like it better cleared out. It doesn’t really matter who is right, I’m planning on clearing it out anyway!
The hiking boots that I have been wearing over the past couple of summers have pretty well worn out. They’ve certainly earned their way! I’m hard on boots, but the regular “work boot” just isn’t comfortable enough for me to wear when I’m doing yard work. I was looking out the window at supper time tonight and was realizing that it is time to drag out the lawn mower and start the yard work for the season. So I’d better get cracking and buy my new hiking shoes this week!
As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I are trying to fix up our basement. We’ve started spending substantial time looking at craigslist and freecycle to see what people are giving away that we might be able to use. So far we have a toilet, a pedestal bathroom sink, a couple of kitchen cupboards, some Formica kitchen counter-tops (with kitchen sink,) an electric range with hood, and a refrigerator. Everything is in good shape. Things are going pretty well, I’d say! I was really worried about how much money it was going to cost to fix up the place, but I’d say that with this “smart shopping” the costs are going down steadily!
My wife and I like stamps. My wife likes to do rubber stamping on her craft projects. I can remember a client of hers giving her some very large clay pots to paint and decorate and she used some rubber stamps to decorate one of them; it came out really cute! When we lived in New England and we ran our landscaping and snowplowing business we used custom stamps on our invoices and envelopes that we really liked.
We’ve used custom stamps to endorse the backs of our checks, getting them ready to deposit to the bank; those stamps saved a lot of writer’s cramps! And we liked using custom stamps that expressed our appreciation to our customers for giving us their business. And when we were running the business, we got a “signature stamp” that had my signature on it so that my wife could use it to sign outgoing checks and endorse incoming checks. It was really handy, having all of those stamps!
One of my favorite places to get rubber stamps is through the vistaprint.com website. They sell high quality stamps; you can even order a free customized rubber stamp! They offer a lot of free samples of the their products. I really like that because then you can see for yourself what the quality is like before you make a commitment to buying.
