We are going to buy a new (to us) car very soon. One of our cars needs between $2,000 and $2,600 of work but I think it's only worth about $700. It will probably be a Toyota Corolla because of the Toyota reliability and they get about 40 mpg. But I might also want to look at a Toyota Yaris. I prefer to drive a car into the ground. We have had this one for about eight years.

I am not a "car guy". A car is purely an expense to me and I do not get any pleasure or ego boost from cars. The more reliable and the less gas a car uses the better.

We have fun turning certain TV events into little special little events of our own. Things like the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, Oscars, etc. We make special treat foods to eat while watching whatever it is on TV. Things like my homemade pizza, sauerkraut balls, foot long subs, shrimp boils, steaks, fancy cheeses, enchiladas, loaded nachos, my award winning guacamole, etc.

Tonight we were excited about the MTV Video Music Awards and I had a GREAT seasonal as well has practical idea: fried green tomatoes! I have six giant plants and they are all loaded with green tomatoes, and I don't want any of them to go to waste.

I cut them about a half inch think and sprinkled them with salt and pepper about 15 minutes before cooking them. This lets the salt draw some of the moisture out of the tomatoes so you get a crispier crust.

I dipped each one in milk, then flour, egg, and finally a mixture of half corn meal and half Italian seasoned bread crumbs and the then fried them for three minutes on each side.

I think I cooked up about 20 of them and we only have four or five left.

I dipped them mostly in horseradish sauce and she dipped mostly in honey mustard.

The best line from the awards show so far was from Jack Black: "This show has been laying farts for the last 20 years. Tonight I'm going to light a match."

The hottest hottie so far was Jessica Simpson in her little black dress. We just felt it was a shame she had to talk. I'm surprised I already found a picture of her from tonight's show:

Weekend Recap

Friday
After work we went to Lou Malnati's for dinner. We had a small Lou pizza which is spinach sautéed with garlic, mushrooms, sliced Roma tomatoes, cheddar and mozzarella cheese. (our favorite) We also ordered family sized house salad.

We walked around downtown a little bit after that and then drove to Trader Joes to get some stuff to make an hors d'oeuvre for the following evening. I took 8 ounces of crumbled blue cheese, mixed in three tablespoons of honey (yes, honey!) until it was smooth, and then folded in two tablespoons of chopped pecans. It was a huge hit. Everyone loved it. It tastes amazing even though it sounds weird. Super easy but very impressive. I mixed up when we got home around 9 PM so it could sit overnight.

Saturday
We went to Burger King for our breakfast and to read the paper, and then walked across the parking lot to a hardware store that was having a grand re-opening and had lots of good coupons and, more importantly, a petting zoo.

We wanted to take a cheese spreading knife to the dinner we went to that evening but we don't have one. We walked a few store-fronts down to the grocery store but they didn't have any. We got Sheri an iced Starbuck's and went home.

We putzed around the house for a few hours and then left a little early for our dinner to run a couple errands. We went to Meijer. No cheese knife. We received a promotional cash value card from Home Depot. It said it could have $1, $5, $10, $25, $500, or $1,000. (or some similar combination of numbers) We had our card scanned at the customer service desk and it was worth $1. I couldn't think of anything we needed so I got a 20 ounce bottle of Diet Coke and paid $0.17 for it after using my card. That was kind of fun.

We drove a few stores down to Linens-N-Things. We found ONE set of cheese knives. I was looking for one knife for about $1.80. They only a four-pack for $10. It was also the last one. We went back and forth and then decided to go ahead and get it. They had a nice feel and were made from one piece of stainless steel. I am glad we got them.

We received a coupon good for a free frozen custard from new place, so we went and split one, and then we drove to our friend's house. It is about 30 minute drive to his house from ours.

We had a really nice time. There was some salsa his girlfriend made with peppers and tomatoes from their garden. Grilled marinated shrimp as an appetizer. (everyone got their own skewer.) My blue cheese spread and crackers. Hamburgers. Tomato and cucumber salad in a vinegar, sour cream, sugar dressing. Pickled blue gill fish. (I was surprised that Sheri LOVED it!) Baked beans. Lots of good conversation. We really liked them and have never done anything with them before. I hope we do things with them in the future. We were shooting the shit at work one day for a while and I guess he just decided he liked me and said I have an open invitation to stop by his place whenever I want. So we took him up on it and said we were stopping by on Saturday.

Sunday
We got up early and went to McDonalds for breakfast and to read the paper, and then we went to the zoo for a few hours. It looked like rain and was overcast most of the day, but it turned out to be perfect for us because it 1) kept it cool, and 2) kept the crowds away. It misted a couple of times during the first hour we were there, but it was not even enough to take cover from.

After that we went to Whole Foods for lunch. We each got a few things from their hot bar and ate it in their little dining room. Then we walked around and tried all of the samples. We ended up just getting a sweet onion, a little one ounce Scharffen Berger chocolate bar for me, and the worlds most expensive bunch of cilantro. $2.50!

Last Tuesday when we were at my boss's house for the beer making party he sent me home with a dozen or more Roma tomatoes. We got the onion and cilantro to make pico de gallo. It was actually a good thing the cilantro was overpriced. I didn't feel like dicing up all of the tomatoes, and if we only paid the usual $0.80 for cilantro I probably would have not done it. But I didn't want to waste the world's most expensive bunch of cilantro, so I was incented to get up and make it. It turned out to probably be one of the best batches, if not the best batch, I have ever made. I usually make the mistake of adding too much onion.

We have been watching the Emmy red carpet show and Emmy's since then and are getting ready to go to bed soon.

I made the biggest map I think I have ever made today. It was 24 feet long and three feet wide. It was at 1 inch = 325 feet and covered almost 18 miles. It was an aerial photograph with road detail overlaid on it. When I had it spread out on the floor and standing at one end it looked I was coming in for a landing on an airplane. It was actually kind of weird feeling. Almost like I was looking at a mini Earth.

Sheri picked up a box of reduced fat Cheez-It crackers last week, and I was surprised that I think they are actually better than the regular ones.

The cheese taste is much more pronounced, and the cracker itself feels a little lighter, but it has more of a crunch.

I am totally going to get one of these clocks made with E Ink when they start selling them. It is paper thin. Looks just like paper. It does not require any electricity to keep the display "on". It only needs electricity to update the display. Therefore this clock only uses a little zap of electricty every 60 seconds, and even less to keep the clock chip on time, which means the batteries are expected to last for years.


click for full sized image

At the blood donation today at work they did not have the machine for collecting platelets so I just gave whole blood. I have never felt lightheaded after donating blood before, but today I did. I sat at their snack table and had a few little cans of orange juice some cookies, and that helped, but I still felt a little off even an hour or two later. I feel fine now though. It is probably because I didn't eat as much as I should have before I donated. I had my usual soy protein drink in the morning and a Kashi granola bar about 30 minutes beforehand.

We had our front walk mud-jacked today and it looks good. Money well spent.

The dog we were sitting the last week was picked up by his people at 5 PM.

I put one of my sick days into the sick bank at work. Now if I suffer a catastrophic illness I get up to an extra five weeks of sick time! Pretty good deal.

I signed up to donate blood at work tomorrow, but I don't know if I am going to donate whole blood or just red cells.

When you donate just red cells they spin those cells out and pump your plasma along with some saline solution back into your body. They can take twice as many red cells this way than when you donate whole blood, so it is like donating two pints instead of just one.

The only thing is it kind of freaks me out that they are pumping stuff back into me. I am OK with sterile bags of IV drugs, but it just seems like it would be easy to contaminate my blood while it is outside of my body during the separation process. The rational side of me says it is completely safe and they wouldn't do it if it wasn't, but it just freaks me out.

On the other hand I think the humanitarian side of me wants to do as much good as possible, so I think I will probably get over it and donate just red cells. It takes longer, but they said it is more comfortable because they use a smaller needle.

I have not really posted in a long time and things kind of build up, so this is just kind of a random dump.

I feel fortunate to have always had jobs I enjoy and don't dread going to every day.

Sheri stopped by my office late Friday afternoon and I walked her around to introduce her to people I work with. I was a little surprised that a few of them gushed to her about me. I expect "It's so nice to finally meet Brad's wife." Not "It has been great having Brad here. He has made my life so much easier. He is never in a bad mood. Etc. etc. etc." Of course it was nice to hear though.

We are dog sitting again. Today we took him to walk around our downtown and park area. I forgot how approachable you become when you have a dog. I don't think we were walking more than five minutes before we were stopped by a woman asking if she could pet him. I think for the few hours we were out with him people stopped to talk on average about every 10 – 15 minutes.

On the way home I remembered that we still have a good amount of hummus left but are out of pita bread. We stopped at Trader Joe's just for some pita and I forgot that they have a fantastic soy pita bread. (I think I even wrote about it before but I forget when.) It tastes better than some regular pita I have had in the past. Of course it is very high in protein and fiber and has fewer net carbs than regular pita. Just delicious.

I don't know why pre-made hummus in the store always seems so expensive. I little 8 ounce container will sell for over $3.00. For that much I can make a couple pounds of hummus at home, and it will probably taste better.

The hardest part about making hummus for the average American is they don't keep tahini in the fridge. Tahini is just ground up sesame seeds and is very similar to peanut butter. Do yourself a favor and buy a big jar and keep it in the fridge. I think hummus is about a near perfect food and I can make a meal on a couple pieces of pita and lots of hummus. High in protein, fiber, and good fats, but it is also delicious. I especially like it in the summer because it is cool and refreshing.

I found a neat shareware program that will set the clock on your computer with your GPS called Tardis 2000. They use it on the International Space Station to keep their computers on time. (Yes, you can get a GPS fix in space.) I have it running on my laptop and it works great. It also acts as an NTP server so other computers on your network can get their time from that computer so you only need one GPS receiver for your network.

It is a little pet peeve of mine when people say "GPS coordinates" or "GPS location" or "GPS latitude and longitude". They are still coordinates and locations and lats and longs, regardless if you got it through GPS or not. All you have to say is coordinates, etc.

I think I am getting close to buying this barometer. It is the only one I have been able to find that graphs out the barometric pressure over the last 6, 12, or 24 hours.



We are getting the walk-way that leads from our driveway to the front porch mud-jacked on Wednesday. It has settled and become uneven. They will drill strategic holes in the sidewalk and then pump concrete under pressure into the hole until it lifts the slabs back to the correct position.

At work I can apply unused sick days to my retirement seniority. So if I have half a year of unused sick days, I can retire half a year early.

My tomato plants are doing great. Loaded with tomatoes but none of them are ripe yet. This was the first year I had a tough time finding suitable tomato plants. I could find single plants in a large pot for $1.60. I am used to six smaller plants in a flat for about $1.60. I think we finally found our tomato plants this year at Menards.

So that I don't waste any tomatoes when I get sick of eating them (Sheri is not a huge tomato fan) I think I will cook them down into sauce and then freeze it. Every week or so I will make a batch with whatever I have left over and then just put it into a freeze bag and freeze for later. It kills me to through out moldy tomatoes that have been sitting on the kitchen counter for too long.

I just got my first issue of GPS World magazine in the mail yesterday and you didn't.

I think this new technology called Photosynth from Microsoft could be one of those things that changes to world.

It takes lots and lots (think hundreds and thousands) of digital pictures from hundreds and thousands of users and automatically stitches them together into a 3D world you can navigate. Zoom in. Zoom out. Rotate.

I can envision a site like flickr.com where as soon as you upload your pictures they automatically find their place in the virtual world and add their own bit of texture.

Imagine a big catastrophe like 9/11 or Katrina. Pictures from people's cell phones start trickling in, each with a different perspective of the same things. This could give the rest of the world a better idea of what things look like on the ground very quickly.

Watch this video and you will get a better idea.

We have a lot of pictures at work for every project we do. (Again think thousands.) We were discussing just the other day how to archive them in a way that could leverage the pictures someone else took for a previous project for a totally different and unrelated project. I had something like this in mind, but not quite as fancy or with 3D.