My Boring Life
Between this last drawing, and the one before it, I won a whole $12! Woohoo!
Before someone points out the odds, I didn’t really expect to win the big one, I would have happily settled for a 3rd place prize of $50k. Also the money spent on tickets came from the “fun and pizza” part of the budget, so we’re not shorting ourselves. I didn’t even bother to watch it on TV last night, just checked the numbers this morning when I got up.
Recently the Hess gas stations in my area were bought out by a company called Speedway. I’d never heard of Speedway before, but they kept their prices comparable to the Hess before them (Hess having been one of the cheapest stations in my immediate area), and other than the signage changes there didn’t seem to be any other significant changes.
We bought alot of our kerosene at Hess, and then Speedway. Although our primary heating source is wood we do have a kerosene burning furnace in the house, and it kicks on during overnights and when Husband and I aren’t home for extended periods (such as during the work week). We can get kerosene delivered from the fuel company, but they charge quite a bit more per gallon, a “rural delivery fee”, than if we bought it by the gallon at the pump. So instead Husband and I will occasionally toss the kerosene cans into the back of one of the cars and on our way home from work stop off at Hess/Speedway to fill them to add to the tank.
We’d been a bit lax about keeping up the practice this fall, the warm weather had us being lazy since the furnace was barely running. But the cold snap kicked us into gear.
And then we discovered that Speedway is now recording all kerosene sales. They have a “signature sheet”, which records name/address/gallons purchased/signature, where your signature says you agree that the kerosene purchased will be used for residential heating and not for vehicles (which is supposed to be taxed).
Now we’re using it for residential heating, no problem there. And they’re not checking ID or anything, infact they’re handing the sheet to you to fill out and then stuff it back under the counter without even looking at it. But I find myself not liking it. I’m not a HUGE privacy conspiracist, but at the same time I feel like I’m already getting tracked for everything everywhere and now they’re tracking my heating fuel purchases too??
I hit the internet, and a quick search didn’t turn up anything about legal requirements for this record keeping. Does anyone know of any such that I couldn’t find?
If it’s not a legal requirement I find myself in a bit of a bind. First off, if we were buying it from the fuel delivery folks they’d certainly be recording it. Second, Speedway is the only station that we pass by on any kind of a regular basis that sells kerosene. There are others in the area who sell it, but none of them are convenient. And the last time I did go to buy kerosene from one of the others I found their price to be almost as high as the fuel companies prices. I suppose I could just fill in bogus info on the sheet, since the clerk isn’t checking it when I fill it out. But that seems like a bigger risk, since if someone DOES go back to actually check the info for some reason the bogus info would likely stand out.
Choices choices……
This isn’t the first year we’ve not had a white Christmas. But usually it’s because we had a thaw a few days before, not because it hasn’t snowed at all.
This year it was mud and more mud and green grass. Seriously green grass. Which is a little disconcerting to look at when it’s Christmas and you’re headed to dinner with the family. Christmas Eve it hit 68 degrees out.
Over all though it was a good Christmas. Dinner was great. And not even ruined by the fact that my (Husband’s) niece is 12 going on 17 and managed to push her dad into an epic argument in the middle of it all. Knowing the two of them I doubt it was the first time its happened, and it sure won’t be the last.
Before we headed to my Inlaw’s for dinner we took the time to do a proper round of the property lines. We’ve been lazy about it recently. In the process discovered some interesting wildlife tracks.
(Ok, this first one was actually taken a few days earlier and I forgot to post) This must have been a BIG White-tail checking out the fruit trees. Rumor has it that a big 16 pointer has been seen in the area (always in non-hunt-able areas), makes me wonder if this is him:
If you look close there’s a (comparatively) tiny print in the top left corner.
Then right along the back line I found these:
Racoon:
Coyote:
But then I also found these, and I’m a bit baffled:
Not significantly bigger than the coyote tracks, but wider, the pad marks are wider and slightly differently shaped, and there’s no claw marks. In mud that soft there ought to be claw marks if it was a canine, even if they were well worn claws. The NY DEC insists that we don’t have big cat here, but I’m almost wondering if thats what these are from. I moved our one surviving trail camera from the trail by the stream to a spot where it can watch this trail. Hopefully my scent all over as I muddled over the tracks won’t scare off the wildlife……
Speaking of the weather, it looks like mother nature is going to try for a winter after all:
Tuesday morning’s work commute ought to be “interesting”……
I don’t do alot of traditional Christmas music these days. Not because I don’t appreciate it, but because after working retail for most of my life I’ve heard more horrid versions of it than I can count. And trying to sort out the good from the bad to listen to just isn’t something I want to go through.
But some songs just belong, especially on Christmas Eve.
Course, then you have to find someone singing it who doesn’t murder it. Turns out more than half the folks who’ve done this song professionally have “played” with it. Made it fancy. Added vocal trills.
Simple is good folks. This is a simple song.
If you’re on social media you may have already seen this. But I’m sharing it anyway.
While it doesn’t beat out the original, its a damn good re-make.
If you ever get the chance, ground buffalo meat makes awesome tacos. One of these days I’ll get around to making up my own seasoning mix!
Its been an incredibly mild fall and winter so far. Scarily so. We had a couple nights dip towards 20 degrees (F) but thats the coldest its gotten so far. The ground isn’t frozen. We had the barest dusting of snow, once.
Which has me a little worried about what January and February are going to bring. Even if it stays comparatively warm out. All this warm means that the Great Lakes aren’t freezing over. This means that storms coming over them are still picking up massive amounts of water that is then dropped on us folks here in Upstate NY. So far that’s all come down as rain. Which isn’t my idea of fun, especially with the mud it creates, but it could be ever so much worse.
If the “right” storm comes over, it could all drop as snow. And that would be bad. Anyone remember the storm that hit Buffalo NY last year in Nov? The one that dropped 6ft of snow in about 24hrs? Yah, thats what happens when the “right” storm hits the Great Lakes before they freeze. But at this rate they’re not going to freeze at all this year…..
I’m lucky enough, this year, to be working for one of the retailers who has decided to not open on Thanksgiving. So I had a fairly peaceful and enjoyable day yesterday.
Today I get to go deal with the masses. Thankfully I didn’t have to work the opening shift today. But that won’t save me from much.
As you’re shopping this weekend please remember that “quantities are limited” is the mantra today, even if it’s something normally carried in stock no problem.
Please remember that if it’s on the front page of the ad it’s probably already sold out by the time this post hits the internet. Being that asshole won’t get you any closer to owning one of whatever it is.
Please remember that retail employees are people too, and if they’ve made it this far into their day today without loosing it at some customer they deserve extra respect, not some asshole screaming in their face cause you weren’t fast enough to catch this sale or that product.
The Adaptive Curmudgeon has been working on installing a wood burning (cook) stove in his workspace. The discussion reminded me of a set of fans that we bought for our woodburning stove, and a quick check of my blog shows that I don’t appear to have ever posted about them.
THIS* is an itsy bitsy thermoelectric powered stove top fan. It doesn’t require an electrical outlet. All it needs is for the surface its sitting on to reach a minimum temperature. And then it pushes air, almost completely silently. Quite well I might add. We have two, one is a two blade fan, the other is a 3 blade fan. The three blade requires a bit more heat to really get going, but pushes noticeably more air.
Now don’t get me wrong, our woodburning stove has an attached electrical powered blower. Which pushes alot of air all by itself. But what happens when the power goes out? Our first winter in this house the power went out several times, almost all of them for a span of several hours. Though certainly the stove itself works fine, without the blower to move the air the spaces further away from the stove chilled quickly. By themselves our two little fans can’t completely replace the electricity powered blower, but they move alot of air and can keep the house warmer than without them. And when we combine them with the powered blower the combination warms up the house very nicely.
If you go to buy one or more of these fans I do highly recommend shopping around. Prices vary ALOT depending on who’s doing the selling.
In addition we also have THIS* steamer, cause we couldn’t resist!
Update: pictures and short video clips
The top of one of the fans with the data for it:
The two blade fan:
[videojs mp4=”http://scaryyankeechick.com/picture-s/videos/fan1.mp4″]
And the three blade fan:
[videojs mp4=”http://scaryyankeechick.com/picture-s/videos/fan2.mp4″]
At the time that these were taken I had only just started a fire not long before, and the cheap little magnetic temp gauge that we put on the top of the stove was still reading less than 200 degrees (F).
I will try to get a video later today of what they look like spinning at full speed.
Here’s the 3 blade fan at full speed. The stove top thermometer says 400+. The noise you’re hearing is not the fan, but other stuff running in the background (promise).
[videojs mp4=”http://scaryyankeechick.com/picture-s/videos/fan3.mp4″]
*Links to Amazon in this post will take you to Amazon via my Amazon Associates account, which means that if you buy something from Amazon after clicking through one of these links I might earn a few cents. Also, this is not the exact fan we bought, but it was one of the less expensive links when I did a quick search for one to link to for this post. In addition all products mentioned in this post were purchased by me for my own use and I was not paid for this post in any form.
We test drove the 2016 Honda Pilot EX-L, and loved it.
Bought it.
Picked it up Thursday.
Friday we loaded 5 adult humans, 4 collapsible lawn chairs, and Apollo into it and headed off to the dog show for the morning. Apollo still had room to lay down. Yup, this’ll do exactly what we wanted and more! I was sitting in the smaller of the 3rd row seats. There was enough room, though a longer drive would have left me a bit cramped.
We really wanted one in one of the blue shades they’re offering. The one that Husband looked at briefly on Saturday was blue and he loved the color. But when we came back Tuesday for the test drive the blue was gone, and all they had was a black and a couple white ones. We didn’t want white. They did a quick search for us but none of the dealerships in the surrounding areas had any blue ones either, and we didn’t want to wait for one to come off the line, so we bought the black one with the black interior. More than we wanted to spend, especially once taxes etc had been added on. But not as bad as it could have been. Plus they gave us more for Husband’s old Nissan than we’d been afraid they would.
My Caliber is a bit closer to the camera, screwing with the perspective, but you can still see the size of the Pilot there. We put a good 200 miles on it this week, between all the back and forth, and the dog show, and then running Arty up to a Barn Hunt practice. Averaging 24mpg for those 200, considering that a good portion of that was on city streets I’ll take it.