Sunday Update - Week 2

Two weeks down, fifty to go.  Woohoo.  The possibilities are out there, people.

Okay, now that the rah-rah is over, let's get down to brass tacks.

I didn't write anything.  I did go back to working on editing an old project, but then I started to think about ROI and whether it would ever make me back what I was thinking of spending on it.  And I set it aside.  Then I started the process of thinking which other project might blow my skirt up.  The jury's still out.  I might continue on with old project or go back and finish something else.  Or start something new.

I set up a sale and marketing for next week for Sleeping Ugly.  That checks January off of my 'one ad a month' goal.

Some reading was accomplished.

My exercise bike arrived Wednesday.  We set it right up and got to work.  Needless to say, I haven't been on a bike of any kind since my time in the apartment complex gym back in Utah.  So, about 15 years.  In under two minutes, my muscles were squealing like the little pigs they've become.  I'm working my way up in duration and quantity.  One 2-minute session a day, then two 3-minute sessions, etc.  I might stand at two 5-minute sessions a day or every other day.  We'll see.  Hubs can go longer, but he's in better shape than I am.  If you're interested, the one we got was the Exerpeutic Folding Magnetic Upright Bike with Pulse.  Reasonably priced. Super easy to assemble, super easy to use.  Big seat.  Totally low impact. but man, can it get your heart pumping and your muscles working.

I also got glasses this past week.  I can see!  I can see!  After all the kvetching and angst about going to an eye doctor, I hit the eyeglass rack at Wallyworld and found out I can see to read at a 1.25x magnification.  They were only $5.88, so I picked up two pair - one for my desk and one for the living room.  My old glasses are now in my purse for when I'm out in the world - writing checks, reading the labels on items, etc.  And no eye exams or visit to dorkbutt optometrists needed.  (My former optometrist was a dorkbutt.)  Of course, I'm farsighted with no other issues, so your mileage may vary.

And we have new shower curtains.  Pretty exciting stuff, eh?  Hubs took the old ones out to the garage to use as drop clothes.  We reuse pretty much everything we can.

As if we don't have enough baked goods in the house, I made a batch of cookies.  I took my mother's old Oatmeal Cookie recipe (at least I think it was hers - it's in the book where I wrote a bunch of recipes before I moved away from home) and added the Nestles maple chips I picked up on sale.  They're pretty awesomesauce.  And since oats and raisins are good for you, it's a win-win.

I also did a pork roast in the new crock pot.  I love this new crock pot.  If you're in the market, I'd definitely recommend this one.  Everything I've cooked in it so far has turned out super yummy.  So much better than the old Crockpot brand.

I did a bunch of woods work earlier in the week, sawing and lugging and throwing and pulling and snipping and raking.  Then Friday and Saturday it rained, so it kind of stopped the progress there.

Speaking of rain, hooee, that was a lot of water.  Thank goodness it wasn't snow or we'd be buried.

Oh, and I cut my hair yesterday.  It turned out super-cute.  No pics, though.  Just imagine me with super cute hair. LOL

And that's it for my week.  How did things go for you?

Being Active in the Winter Sometimes Means Equipment

It's winter.  And while the weather has been unseasonably nice here lately, winter provides a ton of excuses to not be active.  It's too cold.  It's too rainy, snowy, icy, windy... you get the gist.

I could do my dance-exercise thing, but sometimes I'm too achy from the weather to want to dance around the living room.

I have been doing the exer-clean thing, but there's only so much cleaning a house and a gal can take.

Working in the woods is an option, but when it's nice enough to not freeze my ass off, it's also nice enough to bring out the bugs and potentially the snakes.  Ugh.

What's a gal to do?

Well, I'd talked before about buying exercise equipment.  Sunday, I finally did it.  I ordered an exercise bike.  Hubs researched them and I already had the one we wanted in my wish list.  It's due to arrive here sometime between Friday and next Wednesday.  A little assembly required and we'll be good to go.

I ordered the Exerpeutic Folding Magnetic Upright Bike with Pulse.  According to Hubs' research, it's the best bike for the price and even beats some of the more expensive bikes out on quality.  It's pretty simple.  Set it up, get on it, put your hands on the sensor plates, and ride.  It tells you your heart rate and how far you've biked.  It's not for spinning or for beating the hell out of.  You sit, you ride.  Gets your heart rate up and burns calories.  Totally low impact, which is what my crappy joints need. 

And Hubs is planning on using it, too.  Total win.

Anyway, once we get it and start using it, I'll let you know how it works out.  I plan on still walking and maybe dancing, but it'll be nice to have something else to use when I want or when I can't do those things.


Oh, and since I ordered it through the Amazon Smile program, my local animal shelter gets a bit of funds, too.  Win win.

Do you use the Amazon Smile program?  I do for the big things, but I always forget to switch over to Smile when I'm buying books.  Derp.

Thursday This n That

Update on the keyboard saga.  So, I told the customer service rep to go ahead and send the keyboard she suggested and I'd give it a whirl.  I got a keyboard yesterday.  The exact same model keyboard I'm currently rubbing the letters off of.  I sent the CSR a note this morning telling her about the error and telling her not to bother trying to send me any more keyboards.  Enough is enough and I'm sick of dealing with it.  I got an email from them this morning promising to never contact me again.  Let's see if that sticks.

We went out to the park to go fishing on Tuesday.  The park was totally empty except for one camper parked right next to where we wanted to fish.  We went in there anyway.  There was no one at the site.  Just a dog.  By the time we got done fishing, the person had returned.  And wouldn't you know it, she was wearing a Mackinaw Island sweatshirt.  (It's a famous tourist spot in Michigan.)  What are the odds of that?  Anyway, we had a nice chat with her and went on our way.  Lucky gal had the whole park to herself.  And her dog?  Totally was chill about us when we went in, but when we came out, he was totally in protective-dog mode.  Cuz his mommy was home and he needed to protect her.  Good dog.

I've started replanting the irises.  So many bulbs.  I began with putting some back into the cedar bed, where they were when we moved here but on the east side of the bed instead of all over.  It's along the retaining wall.  I used about a third of the bulbs.  Today, I'll start putting them back where they belong.  Leftovers will go in the south facing bed along the garage - where the lilies were before the deer ate those.

Didn't win the lottery again.  Not even a dollar.  This is really getting irritating.

I have to pay bills today.  That lottery stuff would really come in handy. 

A relative of mine got her DNA thing done.  She's point five percent African and point one percent East Asian/Native American.  The Native American I can be pretty certain is from my line of the family.  My 11 times great grandmother was named Mourning Flower and I think listed as Cherokee.  The African DNA?  Well, it's possible it came from my tree.  It's also possible it came down from the part of her tree that isn't related to me by blood.  Interesting but not really critical one way or the other.  I've never really concentrated on the race box of my ancestors, except when I noticed that my mother's grandfather's brother married a woman who was listed on the census as 'half-breed'.

I don't remember if I mentioned the maggot issue or not.  The other day, I went out to the garage to get some gardening gloves I'd left in there and noticed they were covered in these weird little things that looked kinda like seed pods.  Then I noticed the same things were all over this and all over that.  And then I noticed the center of each pod was wiggling.  Maggots of some kind in a webby pod, I assume getting ready to pupate into something else.  We packed everything out of that corner of the garage, throwing out stuff and washing other stuff.  Disinfecting everything.  Cuz ew.,  I had to throw out a whole big container of extra towels and blankets I was saving for dirty work and drop clothes. Last night, Hubs was getting the garbage together to take to the road (they pick up early Thursday mornings) and when he opened the polycart, those maggots were all over in there.  :shudder:  They are not house fly maggots.  They're smaller and yellower with a tiny black head.  I almost wonder if they're moth caterpillars of some kind.  Anyway, whatever we threw out must've had the eggs in it - I never found those - and they hatched.  Gross.  No more of them in the garage as far as I can tell, though, which is awesome.

I'm tellin' ya, it's been the year of the bugs here.  Bleh.

And on that disgusting note, I'll let you go for the day.  What's on your this-n-that radar today?

A TP Rant

I'm trying to find a replacement for Northern toilet paper (which I've used for decades).  I love it, but my Wallyworld has switched to only carrying MEGA rolls of the stuff. 

Speaking of MEGA rolls, why the hell are all the brands moving toward them?  The damn things barely fit on my dispensers, making it difficult to actually get the number of sheets you want without the roll getting stuck and ripping off just one damn sheet.  As we all know, no one can do a damn thing with just one square.  (Yes, I'm thinking of Seinfeld, too.)

First, I tried Great Value, which was on par with Northern.  Mostly.  Smaller squares.  Meh.  I'd keep buying it, though.  However, since I bought the first package of GV, my Wallyworld stopped carrying the normal sized rolls of it.  Gah!

Angel Soft also had mega rolls but it was cheap.  It was also a DUD.  I have to use twice as much to do the same job as Northern.  And it shreds.  Also, Gah! 

I have a really tough time making myself buy Charmin, even though someone I trust recommended it to me.  I find their bear commercials disgusting.  If you can't get away with it using people, why are you getting away with it using cartoon bears?  Gross.


And really, who buys toilet paper from a commercial?  Usually people have one brand they abide by and they never change - you know, unless changes in product or packaging force a change.  Are the grody bears really encouraging anyone to switch brands?  If you go by commercials, Angel Soft is awesome.  Liars.  How do people find a new brand of TP to use?  Do people ask their friends and families for recommendations on toilet paper?

Anyway, the hunt for a good brand continues.  I have a couple rolls left of the cheap-ass Angel Soft and then I get to start on the new package of Cottonelle.  :fingers crossed:

Saturday Fishing Report - 2/11/17

Welcome back!  Here I am, the less than competent angler again, bringing you how this past week's fishing went.

Obviously, the weather is unseasonably warm.  Monday I was out on the river in upper 60 degree F weather.  Tuesday, it was mid-70s.

Monday?  Yeah, I'd rather not talk about it, but that's what we're here for.  So, I went out Monday because it was warm and overcast with a slight wind.  About an hour in, my pretty pink Shakespeare reel bit the dust.  Then about another hour went by and my backup reel (a spincaster) spit out a whole bunch of line all over the ground, which got tangled up.  After cutting everything free, I called it quits.  I did find a huge fake fish on a massive hook to bring home, so it wasn't a total wash.

On Tuesday morning, Hubs and I did some reel research.  We decided to replace my pretty pink reel with a baitcaster that was in stock at Wallyworld, and since I had some groceries to get anyway, I went down there.  The reel I went there for was a Quantum something or other.  I ended up getting an Abu Garcia Black Max - because all specs being equal it was 1) an Abu Garcia and 2) $10 less expensive.  Hubs set it all up for me and I went out Tuesday afternoon.  Umm, yeah, if you haven't used this type of reel, do some online tutorials before you get out to the lake and look like an idiot.  If you don't know how to futz with the thingies*, you'll end up with a rats' nest of line in the reel.  I figured it out, but after untangling the reel about 4 times in an hour, I think I'll be going back to a Zebco closed reel.  (Not Shakespeare.  I've had enough of those and their short lives.)  Let Hubs use the open baitcaster.  Needless to say, I didn't catch anything.

Wednesday was another episode of the Further Adventures of B.E. & the Abu Garcia.  In all fairness, I think I would have these problems with any of the open faced baitcasting reels. (I'm not the only one.  Go ahead and use your google-fu - there are loads of videos on how to use these things.)  So, anyway, I wasn't ready to give up yet.  And I still wanted to fish.  I went back out to where I tried testing the reel the day before.  Tweak the reel, cast, tangle, sit down to untangle, tweak more.  I tried everything and finally got so I wasn't tangling every cast.  Still wasn't getting any distance.  My determination is that this kind of reel is not made for someone like me - whose go-to set up is worm, hook, sinker, bobber.  Next time I'm at Wallyworld, I'm getting a plain ol' regular reel.  And if I want to fish before then, I'll take the spincaster and just get over my dislike of those things.

Frankly, I wonder if the change to other types of reels was ever really a boon to fishing for regular people.  As I was sitting there untangling the line for the sixth time, I came to the conclusion that baitcasters, and spincasters, too, for that matter, are a huge hoax upon us normal folk.  With my little pretty pink reel and pretty pink 5.5' pole, I've caught all kinds of fish and had loads of fun doing it.  I've put food in the freezer with it, which is kind of the ultimate point for me.  Fancy equipment is wasted on me. 

Friday I finally went back to Wallyworld to find a new reel. I was intent on a Zebco, but when I got there, they had a Pflueger with a lighter weight and a smaller profile than any but the dinkiest Zebco, so I got that one.  It's a Trion 10 (prespooled with 75' of 10lb test.)  Hubs attached it to my pretty pink pole and set everything up for me, then we went fishing together.  I tell ya, that reel is like butter.  Casts awesome, retrieves awesome.  I discovered I needed to tweak the drag when I had a 12" bass on and the thing was squealing, but when I hooked the 10" later it worked like a dream.  (Hubs caught a 13" bass, too, so neither of us got skunked.)

Well, that's it for me.  Have an awesome next week and, if you get a chance, do something outside.


*It's a technical term.  This particular reel has a drag like all other reels, but it also has a thing you can set depending on weight of lure and another thing that determines drop speed or something.  It's all very technical, which is why I'm probably going back to something super SIMPLE. 

New Things

I love finding new things.  For instance, this week at the grocery store, I found this agave nectar sweetener for coffee.  My store stocks Hazelnut and Vanilla.  I wasn't feeling adventurous, so I just got Vanilla.  Yummers.  And it's an all-natural sweetener without sugar.  Score!

Ever see those commercials for Tide Washing Machine cleaner?  A-ma-zing.  So, I went looking for it.  It sounds awesome, but it's like $7+ a box.  Yeah, I didn't want to clean my washing machine that bad.  But as I was looking for a dishwasher cleaner (cuz my dishwasher is disgusting inside), I found one that also does washing machines and garbage disposals.  It's called LemiShine and cost me $2-something.  Huzzah!  I tried it out on my washing machine yesterday.  Haven't washed a load yet, but as long as my machine no longer has a funk, I'll be happy.

I'm probably one of the last people in America to be without a Swiffer.  They just seem kinda pricey for something I could do myself a lot cheaper.  Ya know?  Well, anyway, I finally broke down and went shopping for a Swiffer Duster.  I didn't get one, but I did get this other similar thing for a buck twenty five.  Dusted the whole house while I was on the phone with CollegeGirl.  Un-freaking-real.

And my dirty rotten grocery store - those bastards - started stocking something called Volcano Lava Cake.  Seriously?  Why would they do that to me?  I don't know if you're familiar with the concept, but a lava cake spurts chocolate at you when you cut into it.  This brand has a ring of cake with chocolate down the center.  Nuke it for 20 seconds and the chocolate gets all gooey.  OMFG.  It was amazing.  And seriously fattening.  From now on, my grocery store is only allowed to stock new product that is low calorie or helps burn fat.

We won't even talk about the Edy's Drumstick ice cream they got in last week.

Have you found any new products to share lately?  Ever had lava cake?  Is your grocery store evil, too?

New Pandora vs. iHeart: A Writer's Review

I don't know what it is, but I've gotten to the point in my writing life where I need music in the background while I type.  And none of my CDs seems to have just the right flavor - at least not all the way through.  Enter Pandora.  I found it and it was my salvation.  Sure, sharing it with my daughter meant the free 40 hrs went by too fast some months (until I got the kid her own account).  And yeah, the ads can be annoying - especially when they drag.  Still, I loved Pandora.

And then the same day Facebook screwed me with its new format, Pandora did the same damn thing.  All at once, I couldn't be on FB and Pandora at the same time.  And Pandora's new look was weirding me out.  Plus, for some stupid reason, Pandora kept tossing lame-ass songs into my mixes and those stupid bits of cacophony would throw me right the hell out of my groove.

Lucky me, I saw an ad for iHeart (or maybe it was a bit on CNBC about it).  I rushed right over and gave it a whirl.  I tried to love it.  I made a station using the band Bush (the seed for my main Pandora station), flipped my headphones on, and started writing.  Three songs in iHeart threw Creedance Clearwater Revival into the mix.  On a Bush station.  Talk about jarring.  Anyway, I created a Foo Fighters station and all was well again.

The only problem now was that I couldn't add new seeds to my iHeart stations.  Without new seeds, the station started throwing the same songs at me.  Three times in a row, I started the station up to Everlong by The Foo Fighters.  I love that song, but I don't want to hear it first off every friggin' time.

I also can't get a good '80s Dance Music station on the damn thing, so I was switching to Pandora every time I exercised.  And iHeart's P!nk station blew chunks hard enough that I had to start a Sara Bareilles station just to work on UEQ (which is a book that needs Angry Girl Music in the background).

So, I went back to Pandora.  Low and behold, in the time I was away, they fixed the whole 'not friendly to FB' thing.  They also stopped throwing weird bands into my mixes.  For the past couple days, they've played nothing but lovely lovely dark and twisty bands in my Bush mix (the songs Djinnocide craves).

I know iHeart is in its infancy.  I tried to give them feedback so they could make their station more writer friendly, but the feedback area was too confusing.  I may go back to them someday when they've made themselves more like Pandora - without the annoying ads (which also got fixed and don't drag so much).  Plus, it never hurts to have a backup.

For now, though, I'm with Pandora.  It does what I need it to do - which is play the music I need when I need it, with neither songs nor commercials that drag me out of my groove.

Do you use an online radio station of any kind?  Have you tried these?  What do you think?

Made of Awesome

The purpose of this post - which I hope to make a regular feature - is pimping products I've discovered that I think are made of awesome. So, without further ado...

First off, Sensible Portions Garden Veggie Straws.  OMG, these the things are incredible.  And addictive.  That's okay, though, because they're only 130 calories for 38 straws.  Seriously.  For those of us trying to watch what we eat, these are a healthy alternative to chips - because they're made with good for you ingredients and it takes a lot of them to make a portion.  (More than I can eat at one time unless I'm zoning out and stuffing them in my face.)  Although, they're so snackable, you won't be able to keep yourself from stuffing your face.

Another awesome product to take note of is IdeaPaint - paint you can cover your walls with and write on like its whiteboard, but without the mess whiteboards can make.  I want a whole office painted with this stuff.  In the middle of a scene and get a great idea?  Write it on the wall.  Need to make a chart of plot points?  Draw it big so you can see it from across the room as you type.  Throw out your poster board, people.  Loose yourself from the bonds of sticky notes!  :happy sigh: 

And then there's Starbucks Via - lovely little single serve flavored instant coffees.  I have the ladies at Murder She Writes - and Jennifer Lyon in particular - for my discover of this.  A couple weeks ago, I won a Starbucks gift certificate from them.  So, I ordered me up a pkg of caramel and another of vanilla.  OMG.  Talk about yum.  Of course, they're also REALLY strong.  The first cup I made, I used the whole tube of mix.  Ever since, I just shake a little in my regular morning coffee for an extra kick and a little flavor.  Wicked awesome stuff.

How about you?  Any great new products (or new to you products) to share?  What do you think is made of awesome this week?