Just a couple, while I’m drinking my coffee:
Lissa has an awesome story and picture up. I happen to think the picture is ‘shopped, but its funny anyway.
And for your dose of cuteness today: 5 week old Corgi puppies!
Ruth
Snow blower
Ok, so we’re finally shopping for a snow blower. Shoulda done it sooner, but well, see my previous posts about life, but we’re getting a little close to winter now to be leaving it much longer. We got away last winter without one, and for the majority of the winter that was tolerable. Till that big storm back at the beginning of March. If we’d had a snow blower I’d probably still have not made it to work, but at least Husband probably wouldn’t have been late to his job, and the only reason HE made it to work was his dad came over with the truck and plowed for us (since its a 1/2hr + drive in good weather thats saying something).
So, snow blowers…..the driveway is long, at least 40ft long, and almost that wide at the point closest to the garage and carport. Partially paved, partially gravel. I know we need at a two stage model, I’d love a zero turn model (or whatever they call it on snowblowers), but there’s a definite upwards price limit. Also have to keep in mind that it would be nice if I could manage it myself, but I’m not an especially large person and have very small hands which can sometimes make handling controls interesting.
We’re looking at this one, not not necessarily from Amazon (though its listed with free shipping….). Any suggestions, advice or whatnot for us?
Blog look
Playing around with header images and other such stuff. If something catches your eye, good or bad, please let me know, I’ll probly be playing with it for a while.
Snack food
So I posted way back about how I use the Vermont Powered Cheddar cheese from King Arthur Flour to make a home-made version of Smart Food popcorn. I’ve loved the cheesey popcorns since the first time someone introduced me to Smart Food when I was a kid. The stuff’s addictive and I can’t NOT eat a whole bag in one sitting. So since I could really stand to loose a few (ok, several) pounds I don’t buy it at all any more. But that left the cheesey popcorn craving just so unsatisfied till I found the cheese powder at King Arthur.
Just the difference in calorie counts is huge. According to the Smart Food link above a 1oz serving (of which I usually eat 3 or 4 of) of Smart Food contains 160 calories, 10g of fat, and 14g of carbohydrates.
My homemade cheezey popcorn (recipe to follow) approx 95 calories, 4.5g of fat, and 9g of carbohydrates (nutritional data for the cheese powder is on the above link, for plain popcorn see here)
See what I mean? And my recipe makes a whole lot more than a single 1oz serving.
How to make homemade cheezey popcorn:
First off pop your popcorn in the method of your choice, keeping in mind that if you pop in oil it may raise the above numbers a bit. I use a Whirley Pop popcorn popper and love it (got mine locally, Amazon is a handy link). My Whirley Pop will do a 1/2 cup of corn comfortably so thats the amount I usually do at one time.
Sprinkle 2 to 3 tablespoons of the cheese powder over the top of the popped corn and mix in (yes this requires a very large bowl, or you’ll have popcorn everywhere).
Then sit down in-front of your favorite movie and enjoy!
If you wish to save some for later bag it up into single serving size ziplocks as soon as its cool enough to handle (which happens pretty quick), as the longer you let it sit the more stale it’ll taste later. Make sure you get all the extra air out to help keep the popcorn from going stale. You could bag it up in a single big bag, but I find the single serving size handy when I’m rushing out the door to work. I’ve found it’ll keep that way just fine for at least a couple days. Might keep longer, but I’ve usually eaten it by then!
Ok, thats kinda scary….
I was following links, from the Gun Blog Black List, and ran across this video. Forgot to save the link to the blog where I found it, sorry, if you think it might have been your blog please let me know.
But thats scary to watch. The fact that there was apparently no loss of life (at least in the mine itself) is amazing.
As much as I’m not looking forward to winter…..
…..I do have to say that I AM looking forward to getting rid of the mosquito’s. I know some area’s of the country are dry as hell, but here we’ve had the opposite problem, its been so wet as to having low grade flooding almost constantly all summer (which the exception of the month of July), seriously, we’re talking standing water in my yard every time we get even a little bit of rain. And that doesn’t even take into account what Irene and her ilk dumped on us. So the mosquito’s are a constant voracious pest, even at high noon they’re all over. I can’t wait till they’re gone!
Just came in from taking the puppy out for a potty break and even with the Off Clip On (which normally does a pretty decent job at keeping them off) I’m itching in several spots.
Facebook, part 2
The only reason I’ve kept my account there through all the things Facebook has pulled is because its the only contact I have with a bunch of people that I used to be good friends with. After I moved out of state my contacts with them (partially my fault, partially not) dwindled and disappeared, so I was thrilled to see them on Facebook, where we could occasionally chat at least.
So this latest Facebook update has annoyed me to no end. Don’t screw with my news feed dammit. Its how I keep up with some of these folks.
Someone came up with a partial fix.
1:Log into Facebook, on your homepage, in the top right corner is a down arrow, click on it, click on Account Settings in the box that pops open. In Account settings click on Notifications, on the notifications page, in the top right hand corner is a box about email frequency, make sure it is NOT checked (default is checked and its a new “feature” so likely its checked).
2: Go back to your home page, if you have “Top Stories” sorted out of your feed by Facebook (seriously, talk about a stupid idea) there are two ways to unmark them as “top stories”, first on the top right hand side of each story is a down arrow, click on that, then click on “unmark as top story”. the other, on the top left hand side of each story is a blue triangle, click on that (DO NOT DO BOTH, only one or the other). Do that with ALL the “top stories” (note, apparently Facebook doesn’t ALWAYS sort out “top stories” so if you don’t see any don’t freak, just keep in mind what to do when they DO popup).
3: Now thats not perfect. Facebook, in its ever so great wisdom, has decided that people’s news feeds were too crowded and thus things needed to be seperated out. I don’t understand why, or how they decide what goes in your main news feed or what, but unfortunetly there isn’t a good fix for this, only a really bad partial one (at least so far). So, on the left hand side of your Facebook home screen is a set of “Lists”, defaults include “Close Friends” and “Aquantiances” among other things. Now you can also create your own lists, so if you really want to be creative go for it, but that will only complicate things when you’re trying to read your feed. All you really need to do is put all your friends into one or two lists. I sorted everyone by “close friends” (which means you want to see everything they post) and “Aquaintences” (which means you don’t want to see everything, you can change what you want to see on the list screen). To do this, click on the list you want to add people too, then in the top right hand corner is a “manage list” drop down box, click on it, then click on “add/remove friends” That will pop up a box with all your friends who have not been put into this list yet. Click on everyone you want to add to this list, click done. Now all the news from those people, that doesn’t make it into your regular news feed, you can see by clicking on the name of the list from your home page. Yes its annoying as heck.
On a plus note to all this, as of 8am this morning viewing Facebook on the default browser on my IPad still shows the originial view, and I’m hoping it’ll stay that way! I also like that I can now go to an individual person’s page and tell Facebook I dont’ want to see Game Updates from that person (you can also do this from the individual list page), as the Game Updates are annoying. I’d figured out how to get rid of them under the old format, but it ment I had to do it for each game or app, now I can just say “no game updates” and there are no game updates, that IS cool.
Dear Facebook
….Please see my previous comment to Blogger about the difference between making things fancier and actually improving them.
Today’s links
Your car come with Onstar? Might want to make sure you REALLY canceled that account….
THIS is how you handle a grizzly. Ok, a high powered rifle from a safe distance would be even better, but I’ll take it.
Bet you thought YOUR kid was a picky eater!
Fark headline: Perhaps the second time you hit the same house is a good time to evaluate your driving skills
Scientists on trial for Manslaughter after failing to predict an earthquake. So according to the article, all the people wanted was to be told that there COULD be a big quake, so they could leave….sounds good right? Except since no one can predict WHEN a quake is going to hit, if one hadn’t hit right away then how long do you think it would have been before someone was suing for false info? Talk about a catch-22. And really, if you’re getting “minor” rumblers bad enough to feel, then a major quake is a possibility regardless of the scientific data, if only for what you should do for your self preservation’s sake. Besides, what do you think the chances are of getting enough people with enough scientific know how to be able to understand the data as jurors!
Ok, just stop.
Well, the good news is that it could have been EVER SO MUCH WORSE.
The bad news is we just spent $500 more on my car than we expected too.
Took my car in for new tires today, I probly could have gone another winter on the old ones, but it would have been pushing it, especially if we have a bad winter again. Cringed at the price of the tires, but yah, about what we expected. Go ahead and do an alignment, and do an oil change while you’re at it please. Did NOT go to the Dealership for this, unless its warrenty work we never do, a reliable local place is almost always cheaper, not to mention nicer to deal with.
So they put it up on the lift, pull off the tires, and come back out to tell me that there’s a problem. The lower control arm/ball joint connection is badly rusted, on both sides of the car, and needs replacement ASAP, like “I’m not sure its safe for you to drive” ASAP (and they just don’t say that there, they’re the perfect example of live and let the customer do what they want).
Crap. So while they’re calling to find out if they can get the parts and how much they’ll cost, I’m calling the Dealership to find out if they’re covered under warrenty. Or, I’m TRYING to call the Dealership. The line is busy. How is the line busy, its a multi-brand dealership with major multiple lines? Maybe I have a wrong number. So I dig out a business card out of my purse. Nope, right number. So I use my phone to Google for a different number, if nothing else one of the other car brand desks can transfer me to the Dodge repair shop folks right? Nope, every number rings busy. WTF?! So the shop guys hand me their landline phone in case its something with my cell. Nope, busy signal. F*ck. Well I’m not going to drive it over there (risking life and limb, cause of course now that I KNOW there’s a problem it would be NOW that it would fall apart) on the hope that its covered only to discover that its not and that the Dealership is going to charge twice as much to fix it. So I tell them to go ahead and do it. This is why we keep a paid off credit card with a high availible balence around. One of the repair guys, sensitive to the fact that I’m still not happy about not getting ahold of the dealership, tells me to come with him out to my car, and procedes to remove the passenger side lower control arm so he can show me how bad it is.
Now for those of you who (like me) aren’t car savvy, the lower control arm looks like a big metal boomerang with the ball joint inset at one end that attaches to the wheel assembly, and a bushing inset at the other to connect to whatever in the car it connects too (or at least the one from my car does, online data shows they differ from car to car). From what I can find online its what keeps your steering tires inline when you hit bumps and bounce around on the road. Having one fail (in any way shape or form) while driving can mean loosing control of your car in a very painfull way.
So he pulls it off the car, and says “crap, now I’m really glad we’re doing this…..” which doesn’t fill me with thoughts of joy. He points out the ball joint, and the area around it, and how rusty it all is, and says that THAT is what initially caught his attention and the recomendation for the replacement. He then procedes to point out the bushing on the other end, grabs ahold of the bushing and starts to say “but this is even wor….” and the metal holding the bushing in place disintergrates in a cloud of rust leaving him with the control arm in one hand and the bushing in the other. Cool huh? Yah, not so much.
So, $220each for a new control arm with ball joint and bushing for each side of the car, plus an hour’s labor, on top of the price of the new tires, and I’m off, and hey, the extra squeeling sounds I was getting on corners is gone! Well thats cool. Though I never did hear any of the other warning sounds the repair guys kept asking me if I’d heard (seriously, I think 5 different guys asked me the same question at some various point during this whole thing. I promise I’m not that car clueless, if it had been clunking on corners I’d have already had it into the shop).
Seriously Life, I know it coulda been alot worse, but can we just stop now? I’d like to have a few normal months for a change so I can get things back under control!!