Shopping On Black Friday

Well, I don't.  I hate crowds.  In fact, the only place I will shop today is the grocery store.  I'm out of fresh fruit, lettuce, and milk.

In fact, I probably won't be in any store until after New Years Day.  So thank you Amazon!  No crowds THERE!

I placed an order there Wednesday (why wait?).  My sponge mop sponge fell apart and wasn't available locally, so I needed a new replacement sponge.  I ordered 2.  I doubt they will be available in a few years. 

I ordered a pack of tank top undershirts.  If that seems odd, its because I twist and turn a lot in bed and rip the seams of regular V-Neck ones.  Walmart never has the tank tops in my size. 

I ordered a cheap plastic watering can.  The reviews suggested that most more expensive models all had the same problems, but the cheaper one sometimes had pinhole leaks.  I can fix that easily.  So if I have to repair a pinhole leak in most, cheap is OK.

Mom sent me 2 microwave-safe plates decades ago.  I ruined one recently by trying to cook bacon on it.  The plate was M/W safe, but not "hot-oil" safe. 

Finally, I was watching an episode of 'Good Eats" with my favorite cook, Alton Brown.  He was using a mandolin.  Now, I ENJOY prepared veggies and using knives.  And I have some really good knives (Wusthof Classic - Got it 30% when a store went out of business).  But as I get older, my hands are wobblier.

So the idea of a mandolin was interesting.  Consumer Report said Zyliss had the best of basic models.  Safe, accurate, easy to use, and dishwasher safe.  So I ordered one as a gift to myself (who knows what you really want better than you do yourself, right?).

I have a Vegamatic in an closet.  It works but takes forever to clean.  I'll be glad to throw it away...

You ever buy As Seen On TV stuff?  Sometimes I do.  The Ginsu knives were good.  I actually tossed a ripe tomato at one of the knives and it did fall into 2 halves!  So was a stackable food container system (and wish I had more of them). 

So shopping is going to be entirely online for 6 weeks...  Except food.

Cleaning Leads To More Cleaning

All I wanted to do was clean the bathroom.  I did the usual from up to down and then it came time to mop the floor.

The sqeezie sponge disintegrated!  The local stores did not stock a replacement.  So, I wiped the floor with small towel from a bucket.  And then wiped it again with clean water.  The mats were drying after being soaked in the laundry tub with a bit of laundry detergent.  After they were rinsed several times the next day outside (garden hose and I left them out to be rained on), I waited for them to dry.

They wouldn't.  Cold humidity is really useless for drying.  It took 5 days for them to get half dry and then I just dragged them into the basement and waited.  And waited.  So they eventually dried and I was ready to put them back in place.

But there was dry grit on the floor, so I decided to vacuum the floor with my stick vacuum.  After a pass, there was more dirt on the floor then before.  Oh damn.  So I dragged the larger cannister vacuum out.  That was useless!  No pickup at all.

So I checked the both for being filled.  The stick bagless container was empty.  The cannister bag was empty.  That meant problems.

I'm not the world's best fix-it guy.  But I can try some things by logic.  It took 15 minutes to figure out how to take the cannister suction head apart.  I got the screws all loose easily, but nothing wanted to come aprt.  Which made no sense.  What were the screws for?

It occurred to me to turn the suction head over.  Then the top came right off.  You wouldn't belief what I found inside!  The entire suction head was packed with cat hair.  There was almost an entire cat in there.  And to be fair given the length, a fair amount of my own hair.

I started by just picking stuff out from the brushes.  Then I realized it was far more involved.  I got some pliers to pull more out. But if I had it to do over again, I would have brought it to the garage and used the air compressor and blow it all out faster.

On the other hand, I know more about the insides of the suction head, so maybe it was worth it.  In any case, when I put it back together, it worked like NEW!  Dang the sucker (literally) worked great.  So I did the rest of the house.

That's how things go sometimes.  You try to do a small thing and it turns into a big thing and you are glad you did it.  I did the whole kitchen like that last week.  Started with cleaning the M/W and the entire kitchen was clean 3 hours later.

And I did get the bathroom mats set back in place...

Product Question

I have a 60" LED TV.  The sound is "OK".  I've looked at ratings for sound bars at Consumer Reports and Amazon.  What I can't figure out is whether a sound bar would actually provide better sound than the TV already does that I would care about.

And the price varies so much!  Is any of it worth it?

Pansies 2

So, I had the pansies randomly sorted by colors (and a dozen of unknown colors).  I had the bed rototilled with a small electric tiller, my measuring stick, a large piece of plywood to reduce soil compression as I kneeled on it, knee-pads to save my aching knees, and a sharp trowel to dig holes for the pansies...

The first row was 12, the second, 11, the 3rd 10, the 4th 9, and the last 8.  It went better than I thought it would.  I get a bit better each time.  Each row is slightly offset from the previous.  And I had a dozen with no flowers, so I didn't know what colors they would be,  so I placed them in the center.  You can't get more random than that.

They will grow larger all Winter.  

Meanwhile, I had set aside some for the deck pots.  I planted those this afternoon and even some leftovers in planters to set out front (surrounded by wire mesh cylinders so the deer can't get at them), but it was too dark to take more pictures.  Sometime soon, though.

Pansies

I love pansies.  They flower in Winter and Spring.  Few plants do.

The local DIY store had a great deal on them.  18 pansies in cell-packs for $16.  Can't beat less than a $1 per plant...  I bought 6 flats of them 3 weeks ago.  Then it turned nasty outside.  When it wasn't raining, it was cold.  Or windy.  And then we went to DST, so it was dark an hour earlier.   I couldn't find a good day to plant them...

But then there was a day good outside, sort of.  Up to 54F and not much wind.  But then I realized I really needed to sort the colors out.

My sunken patio is a good height for that, so I spent an hour doing that.  But then I realized that to plant them "randomly", I needed to have all the colors mixed in the trays where I could easily reach the different ones.  Nothing is simple, LOL!

By then it was getting dark.  DST is a real change here.  Exactly when the DST change happens, the sun path is blow the elevated house west of mine.  I get TWO hours loss of sunlight.  It gets dark at 3:30 pm and cloudy days make it worse.  When I get up and about at 10 am and eat breakfast and read the newspaper by Noon, that doesn't leave much of a day.

But I got them planted.  Descriptions and pictures tomorrow...

New Faucet

OK, it was a couple weeks ago, but I'm just catching up on projects sometimes.

The 33 year old kitchen faucet failed. 

I took a look at it in hopes that maybe some washers would fix it, but no luck.

A plumber examined it and said the parts were no longer available.  I agreed, as the parts were in pieces when revealed.

He brought out some good parts.

After some work, I have a new faucet.  It works very nicely.  In fact it is guaranteed to work longer that I am likely to live.   Ceramic valves etc...

I showed some of this before.  It was to show you this...

The undersink is both clean and organized...

Don't hate me for that.  I promise not to do it again...

Venus Fly Traps

Venus Fly Traps...  They spent a grand Summer out on the deck.  Caught all kinds of small bugs.  And I helped.  Many of those large ants that decided my kitchen compost bin collection bucket was a great buffet came to sad ends.  

I loved watched the traps close on them.  But to be fair, they caught most insects on their own.  I just added a small amount for the pleasure of seeing the traps close.

It's not like insects have much self-awareness.  I once watched a grasshopper caught by a praying mantis and it just kept eating the leaf it had until the mantis finally got to the head.  It didn't seem to know it was being eaten.  So I don't worry about the insects the VFTs catch or are fed.  

And, yeah, I have a certain lethal admiration for plants that can catch and eat insects, since it is usually the other way around.

But it is getting too cold for them outside for the year.  So I brought them into the garage to adjust for the Winter.  By keeping them dark and cold for a few months, they live longer.  Next year, they will grow stronger and send up more traps.

Love them!

Why The Washington Nationals Won The World Series

I caused it.  Yes really...  

Yoy know how some people think that if they root for the home team and wear all the team stuff, it helps the team win?  Even if you just watch the team on TV?

I'm the opposite.  If I wear team stuff, they lose.  If I watch the game, they lose.  If they are winning 4-1 went I'm not watching, they get to losing 5-4 if I watch.  The same thing happens with mens or womens Univ of MD basketball.  If I watch, they lose.  If I come back, they are winning.  If I keep watching, they get behind again.

I know that is all rubbish logically, but the pattern persists.

At the beginning of the last year season, I bought a team hat.

The Nationals went to 19-31.  I stopped wearing it, and they won the World Series.  Is that evidence or what?  OK, it isn't, but the hat sat off my head all after and they won...

And as the announcer says "and another curly W is in the books"!

I will continue to not wear the hat next year...

3 Shots

I never used to worry about getting sick.  I haven't had the flu or even the common cold since I was a teenager.  But I started getting a flu shot when Dad was here because, just because I didn't get sick,  I could carry it.

Now I'm at an age when several things might get past my natural defenses.  So 3 weeks ago, I got the flu shot, a newer shingles shot, and a pneumococcal shot.  All on the same day.

I normally have no reaction to shots, but the 3 combined left my shoulders stiff for several days.  I felt like a baseball pitcher who threw too many pitches.  That's gone now, but OUCH!

I need a 2nd shingles shot in 2 months and another pneumococcal shot next year.  Which is fine.

But I think I won't accept 3 shots in one day again, LOL!

Aquarium

I've had aquariums since I was 20.  My first was built of scrap plastic I found at college.  I kept a few guppies in there.  Then, one day, I visited a department store with a fish area and was offended by all the dead fish in the tanks.  The department manager was drunk.  He asked if I wanted a job.

I should have said "no".  It messed up my college work.  But I was SO broke I accepted.  I cleaned the tanks of dead fish for a few days, started changing the water, read up on fish a bit, and made other improvements.

The company fired the manager and the Assistant Manager was promoted.  She saw what I was doing and asked me to do more.  I set up display tanks, breeding tanks, and even a self-maintaining guppy tank in a 2 gallon "brandy snifter" (I stole it from elsewhere in the store).

I set up Betta breeding tanks, kept the regular tanks perfectly clean.  And flunked out of college (I went back and aced all the classes later).  I had a job and focussed on that.  Bad decision but it made sense at the time.  I was starving and sharing an bad apartment with 5 other guys at the time.

Sadly, the department store closed.  The fish company offerred me a job as manager of their top store location, but I didn't want to move to New Jersey.  I left .

But I've always had an aquarium or two.  50 years of fish that come and go in their short lifespans.  I have sometimes become too casual about them.  I'm down to a couple corydorus, a red-tail shark, an algae-eater, 1 tiger barb and a dwarf gourami.

But I have a glorious amount of live anachris plants so the water is good.  Time to replenish the tank.

I want high fin red minor tetras, cherry barbs, and swordtails.

So I went to Petsmart 2 days ago.  They had fish on sale.  I wait for sales; I'm sensibly cheap.  If waiting a few weeks gets me something I want for less, why not wait.  The freshwater fish only live a few years at best anyway.

I got 5 highfin red minor tetras and 2 painted platys.  They were sold out on the swordtails.  And apparently no one sells cherry barbs anymore.  Which seems odd because even *I* have bred them (decades ago), but who knows the economics of breeding small fish for sale...





I just like to see something moving around in the aquarium.  And they give me something easy to be responsible for...

If you are worried that my hobby is depleting the natural population, my understanding is that these small community fish are bred and raised commercially en masse.  I would stop buying them otherwise.  Just saying...

Veterans Day

Missing Pictures

I posted about some things I've done recently.  But I didn't add pictures the way I usually do.  I was lazy, I admit it.

But here they are...

The broom:

The painted blue planter pots:

I don't recall where I bought them, but they were orange.  The blue is much nicer.  I just hope it lasts.

The old rusted smoker:

It was mostly rusting after many years (even though I mostly kept it covered).  In fact, it is so old, the manufacturer doesn't even sell a cover that fits right.  I will guess 20 years.  It still works.  Partly because I bought 2 specifically shaped metal bases for the charcoal burner offset.  Those are starting to get burnt through and becoming brittle.  Which is why I found a metal roasting pan to set above them and below the charcoal grate.

Cleaning the charcoal burner offset was easy.  Cleaning the cooking area was not.  I had to scrape accumulated meat fat and burnt ashes all inside it.  I have a metal cutting board scooper than worked great for that.  And I have to say that a cleaning product called Kaboom



is a fantastic cleaner.

But back to the smoker...

It looks great, is completely cleaned, and I found a generic cover that fits OK.  I'm leaving the wood platform for Ayla to claw on.  She loves it more than I need it to look perfect.

The Hibachi:

I referred to a "delmonico" to be cooked on the refurbished cast iron Lodge hibachi.  Those those for whom the term is unfamiliar, it is basically a ribeye cut.

"A rib steak is a beef steak sliced from the rib primal of a beef animal, with rib bone attached. In the United States, the term rib eye steak or Spencer steak is used for a rib steak with the bone removed; however in some areas, and outside the U.S., the terms are often used interchangeably. The rib eye or "ribeye" was originally, as the name implies, the center best portion of the rib steak, without the bone.
In Australia and New Zealand, "ribeye" is used when this cut is served with the bone in. With the bone removed, it is called "Scotch fillet".
It is both flavorful and tender, coming from the lightly worked upper rib cage area. Its marbling of fat makes it very good for fast and hot cooking."  ~ Wikipedia

A "hibachi" (in the US) is generally a small charcoal container suited to a single steak or anything of similar size.  I used to have a nice small one but it vanished somewhere along the years.  My current one is larger than I wanted but things get bigger over the years.  My current one is a 2 steak size, but I can live with that.

I painted all of it but the top grate with the 1200F Rustoleum paint after wirebrushing the rust away as best I could.  The Rustoleum instructions said not to paint the cooking surface.  So I oiled it and baked it in the oven the way you would any new cast iron pan.  I mostly use cast iron pans for most of my cooking (and they all have wonderful black patinas inside and are nearly non-stick), so doing that was just a routine matter.  I had planned to use it yesterday, but it was so cold and windy (and the hibachi is open on top) that I decided to postpone the re-use.

Mailbox flag repair:

No picture, nothing to see.  It was a bit of wedging here, a pliers pull there, and some axle grease the rain won't wash away (really thick stuff).  But a "hard to move mailbox flag" became an "easy to move flag".

Hope the pictures helped make the past few posts make more sense.  Pictures are good.

Mailbox

I have the same mailbox I set up when I first moved here 33 years ago.  It had a thing on the top to put the street number in.  Sleek, cool...

Someone kept knocking the top off.  I would find it a few yards away and reinstall it.  Apparently, that really annoyed the vandal.  That person finally tossed it in the drainage easement once.  I found it there and reinstalled.

Finally, it was no longer "findable".  OK, I gave up.  I figured it was someone who would get older and lose interest.  After a few years, I made a fish shape to hold brass letters.  It remained.

But after enough years, the flag assembly began to stick.  I realized the mailperson couldn't lower it easily.  Well, I like my mailperson, so I went out to fix it.  I discovered it wasn't really a good design (it needed to be lifted slightly to lower it).

Nothing like a challenge...

I went at it with a screwdriver, pliers, and axle grease.  By the time I was done, it slid from up to down to up to down smooth as silk.

The next day, I stood by the mailbox as the mailperson came by.  I said "check out the flag".  She did and pronounced it "perfect".

So I also painted the flag a brighter red.  Might as well overdo it, LOL!

Yet Even More Stuff

When you get starting painting, everything looks like a paintable surface.  So I just had to paint the cast iron Lodge Hibachi.

I set it under the smoker a few years ago and it rusted from the humidity.  So I spent a day going over all the surfaces with a wire brush.  I brought the top grill inside and oiled it and set it in the oven to season it as you would any new cast iron pan.

The rest got painted nook and cranny with 1200F rustoleum paint.

I can't wait to cook a steak on it...  Well, OK, I can.  It's night now.  But I have a  DelMonico waiting to go in the evening!

Even More Stuff

Well, as long as I'm in painting mode, why not paint the rusting BBQ smoker?   I had a can of Rustoleum high temperature black.  So I opened it and went to stir it up.

Bad!  It was like tar.  I ruined a shirt and jeans from the splashes.  The stuff CANNOT be cleaned off

Off to the DIY store...

Back with new stuff (and shaken in their machine) I went about painting the smoker.  Its not like a good paint job inside the house, but will serve.

And since I was trying to improve the smoker (I had cleaned it thoroughly of all grease and ashes), I thought why keep doing that?  Why not put some pans under the cooking rack to catch the fats that could be removed and cleaned separately?

Ahh, my friends, the world is designed to not provide pans that fit.  Every pan I could find was just too narrow or long or deep.  Well, "almost".  You know those cheap roasting pans that come with the oven?  They fit perfectly.

OK. so then I needed new roasting pans.  Those pans that come with the oven?  They don't sell them anywhere I can find.

Darn, now I need to buy fancy ones for actual oven use...

More Stuff

Since I painted the broom, I decided to make some planting pots a color I liked better.  I had bought a pack of eight 12" wide pots that were orange in a basketweave look.  I wanted them in blue.  So I bought a spray paint in "Wildflower Blue" described as "for plastic".

Painting the pots was tricky.  I couldn't just hold them and spray.  I like blue, but not on my hands.

I finally set up a 4"x4" post wedged into a cinder block and set the pots upside down on the top.  With a latex glove on my left hand, I sprayed, turned, sprayed, turned and sprayed.  Set each one on a newspaper to dry.  Then sprayed the top of the insides.

It is impressive!  Orange is now blue.

And having matching planter pots is great.  I used 2 for repotting Dracena and 1 for a Poinsettia.  I'll be moving other plants to the remaining matching pots soon.  Well, I do like blue...

Lots Of Stuff

I didn't post here for a while because things got busy.  Part was the stress of the World Series I was sure we would lose (yes, I am a fan of little faith).  Well, optimists may be happier, but pessimists are right more often...

But during that time, I just kept doing small things.

Some may sound silly, but they were important to me.  For example, I painted a broom.  I bet few people have ever done that.  There was a reason...

I loved the bristles on this one broom I had, soft but effective at catching dust.  But the handle broke.  I tried to find a similar broom without success.  So I cut the broken part cleanly and found a PVC pipe that just fit inside it.  I used construction adheasive to join the 2 pieces together.  That failed (I think the adhesive needed air exposure). 

So I drilled holes and put screws in.  That failed too.  The handle stayed wobbly.  But one thing I am is persistent.  I discovered the broom head unscrewed from the handle.  So I brought the broom head to the locval DIY store to see if I could find a matched replacement handle.  None on the replacement handles fit the threaded broom head.

But wandering through the hardware section, I noticed extension poles for roller paint brushes.  They fit!  But the broom head was green and the handles were bare wood or red metal.  I bought the red one.  And spray-painted both the broom head and handle green.

I am insufferably pleased with myself...

The Baseball World Series

I cant believe it.  The Washington Nationals won the World Series!  It was a record-setting sequence of games...

It was so weird.  As a Wild Card Team they played a one game contest against the other Wild Card Team, the Milwaukee Brewers.  The Nationals won.

Both of the best-of-five National League Division Series went the full five games. This was the first time since the 2012 NLDS that both series went to five games.

The Washington Nationals, winners of the National League Wild Card Game, upset the top-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers. The Nationals were 19–31 on May 23, then went 74–38 the rest of the season to finish in the top NL wild card spot.

They then played the St Louis Cardinals, winning in a 4 game sweep.

That meant they would play the Houston Astros, the team with the best record in MLB this year.

The Nationals won the 2 games at the Astro's stadium, suggesting an overpowering series.  But then, at home, the Nationals lost all 3 home games.  All the Astros had to do was win one of 2 games at home.

They didn't.  For the first time in MLB history, the home team lost every game.  From down 2-3 games and having to win both of the last 2 games on the road, the Nationals won both.

The Washington Nationals are the World Series winners.  On Saturday, the town held a parade.  Basically, all the roads were closed.  People went crazy. 

We are used to having winning teams here.  Yeah The Washington football won a few decades ago.  But suddenly, we have the Championship Hockey Team, the Championship Womens Basketball Team, and now the Championship Baseball Team.

I don't expect that will last, but it sure is enjoyable while it does!