I can't get this song out of my head. I find myself humming it to myself throughout the day.

"1 2 3 4" by Feist



One Two Three Four
Tell me that you love me more
Sleepless long nights
That is what my youth was for

Old teenage hopes are alive at your door
Left you with nothing but they want some more

Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, You know who you are

Sweetheart bitterheart now I can tell you apart
Cosy and cold, put the horse before the cart

Those teenage hopes who have tears in their eyes
Too scared to own up to one little lie

Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, you know who you are

One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten
Money can't buy you back the love that you had then
One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten
Money can't buy you back the love that you had then

Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, you know who you are
Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, you know who you are
Oh, who you are

For the teenage boys
They're breaking your heart
For the teenage boys
They're breaking your heart

My four favorite day-to-Day coffees are from Starbucks. They are:

Espresso Blend
French Roast
Italian Roast
Gold Coast Blend

Are these the absolutely best beans you can get? No, but the quality you get for the price are hard to beat, plus they are always easily available.

When I want to treat myself my favorites are

Black Cat Espresso Blend from Intelligentsia Coffee

Dead Man's Reach from Ravens Brew

I've found the best brewing method for my tastes is the French press.

I measure 5 tablespoons of unground beans for 0.5 liters of water or 8 tablespoons of beans for just under a liter of water and then grind them in a burr grinder at the coarsest setting.

After the water has come to a boil in my electric kettle I wait until I don't see any more bubble action in the water, put the grounds in the press, pour the water into the press, stir the brew well with a spoon, and then let it brew for 4.5 minutes. Don't let the coffee stay in the press after you have pressed it because it will keep extracting and give you a bitter and too strong coffee.

The most important thing you can get if you want good coffee at home is NOT the brewer, but the grinder. The little grinders with the spinning blades inside are not good for a couple reasons. The most important is because the particle size will not be consistent. Some particles will be smaller than average, others will be larger. The smaller ones will be over-extracted and the larger particles will not release their entire flavor.

What you want to get is a burr grinder. They are designed so all of the particles are uniform in size. I have the Braun KM30. Cuisinart also makes a good grinder. Both are in the $40 to $50 range.

One of these days I want to get the KitchenAid grinder. It is $200 which is why I don't have one right now.

Mitch told me to make this super-cool post.

Watch video

My new theme song.

Kenny Loggins
"I'm Alright"



I'm alright
Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?

I'm alright
Don't nobody worry 'bout me
You got to gimme a fight
Why don't you just let me be

Do what you like,
Doing it nat'rally
But if it's too easy
They're gonna disagree

It's your life
And isn't it a mystery
If it's nobody's bus'ness
It's everybody's game

Gotta catch you later
No, no, cannonball it right away

Some Cinderella kid
Get it up and get you a job
(Dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip)

I'm alright
Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?

I'm alright
Don't nobody worry 'bout me
You got to gimme a fight
Why don't you just let me be

Who do you want?
Who you be today?
And who is it really
Makin' up your mind?

You wanna listen to the man?
Pay attention to the magistrate
And while I got you in the mood
Listen to your

Own heart beatin'
Own heart beatin'
Own heart beatin'
Own heart beatin'

Don't it get you movin'
It make me feel good

Wow, Cinderella kid
Then give it up and give it the job
(dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip)
(Boom, boom, boom, boom)

I'm alright
Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?

I'm alright
Don't nobody worry 'bout me
You got to gimme a fight
Why don't you just let me be

I'm alright
Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?

I'm alright
I'm alright
Just let me be

Immediate Saturday plans: rake leaves, pick up dog poop, cut grass, rip up tomato plants and other annuals, cut off dead parts of perennials.

After that I will shower and run some grocery store errands, and then watch Ohio State play Illinois.

My A1c was 6.2 on Saturday. Three months ago it was 6.5.

I weighed Mitch tonight and he was 71.6 pounds. He is getting about 700 caleries per day plus assorted bits of plastic.

At my brother in law's urging I just purchased the SpaceNavigator 3D mouse I wrote about earlier. I got it at Amazon for $50 and free shipping.

If you felt the Earth move a little bit today it was because my parents bought a laptop computer and a wireless router. I never thought I would see the day.

I had about 50 or 60 trick-or-treaters tonight.

Mitch liked it. He just stood at the door and smelled everyone's bag as I dropped candy into them.

Everyone really liked him except for one mom that grabbed her daughter and pulled her back about 10 feet. When she saw that Mitch just liked greeting everyone and getting his head scratched by the kids she let her daughter come to the door. He never once tried to dart out or even step on the porch. He is such a good boy.

I haven't really felt like posting much the last few months. Part of the reason is the template for my blog "broke" and I didn't feel like taking the time to fix it. The biggest thing that was wrong was the archives disappeared. To fix it I had to select a new template and lose all of my previous customizations. Before I restore those customizations I will live with this template for a bit and see what I think about it. Any comments on it are welcome.

I am sitting on the couch waiting for trick-or-treaters. At 8 PM I am going to turn off the porch and foyer lights and go upstairs and do a few chores.

I have my summer-weight bedspread in the dryer right now.

I am going to try and post more regularly. At first it might just be a sentence or two about something I did until I can get back in the groove.

This is a 3-D mouse called the SpaceNavigator and I think I will probably end up buying it soon.

You can use it in Google Earth, Live Search Maps my favorite on-line mapping site, ArcMap, PhotoShop, CAD programs, etc. Rather than try and explain why it is so cool, just take a look at these videos of someone navigating the applications with the 3-D mouse.

Mitch weighed in tonight at 73.7 pounds. I guess I will drop him to 14 ounces of food per day.

An update on Mitch's weight and food: For the last several weeks I have weighed Mitch on Sundays and if his weight hasn't changed from the previous week I have added an extra ounce to his daily ration.

This morning he weighed-in at 70.8 pounds which is an extra pound since last Sunday's weigh-in. This last week he has been on 15 ounces per day. I am going to keep him at 15 ounces per day until he adds another three or four pounds.

Once he is in the 73 – 74 pound range I will take away an ounce and see how things go. I don't think I want him over 75 pounds.

I have been wondering what to get a four year old for his birthday. Finally had the perfect idea yesterday: the Dremel 400 XPR!

What does a four year old need with a Dremel tool? Pedicures! His doctor said it is a great way to trim their nails. After a little research on-line I was sold. If you nick the quick it actually cauterizes the wound because it spins so fast rather than bleeding all over the place.

When I first heard about doing it this way I thought I would just use my drill. My drill has a pretty fast top speed of 2,100 RPM. No problem. I thought the only advantage the Dremel had was it was smaller and easier to handle. I looked up the Dremel speeds and they have a range of speeds between 5,000 RPM and 35,000 RPM!

I got it home last night and it works great. I get a much better and cleaner cut than with the clippers. With the clippers his nails can splinter sometimes, and I don't cut them as short as I want for fear of hurting him. With the grinding wheel I can just keep taking a little bit off at a time until I can see the distinctive pattern on the cut portion that tells you when to quit.


This is a page that had a lot of useful information on grinding their nails.

I still want to get them shorter, but the quick needs a chance to recede after the nails are shortened. Every four days or so I will take a little more off until they are greyhound active length.

I started Mitch on Iam's dog food a month or so ago. When I started he weighed about 73 pounds. I weighed him yesterday and he was 68 pounds. I would like him between 70 and 75.

The feeding instructions say a 70 pound dog gets 2 2/3 cup of food per day, and an 80 pound dog gets 2 3/4 cup of food per day.

The difference between the two is 8/100 of a cup. That is too small for me to reliably measure each morning, but it apparently makes a difference. The food must be very nutrition-dense.

Because I am me, this morning I measured out four 2 2/3 cup servings, weighed each one and then averaged their weights. I did the same for 2 3/4 cups of food. There is about a one ounce difference.

So, for the last month or so I have been feeding him 11.3 ounces of food. Starting tomorrow I will weigh out his food for him each morning and will start feeding him 11.8 ounces per day.

Feeding him by the ounce will also give me much finer control over his food. After a month if he still needs a little more weight, or he if he has put too much on, it will be a simple matter to add or subtract a tenth of an ounce or two from his daily ration.

I also know exactly how much a bag of dog food will last him too. A 40 pound bag has 640 ounces, so at 11.8 ounces per day it will last 54 days.

I read the Sunday paper at Burger King this morning for a couple hours just to get out of the house.

After than I picked up some of the new Diet Pepsi Max that was advertised in the Target newspaper ad today. It has twice the amount of caffeine as regular Diet Pepsi, as well as ginseng.

From a few quick Internet searches I think that gives it about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. I could be wrong, but that's what my 30 seconds of research seems to suggest.

I just got in from planting six tomato plants I bought last night at Menard's for $0.49. I got Better Boys. After I planted them I fertilized them with Miracle-Gro tomato fertilizer.

I also put up some wire fence around the tomato patch to see if it will keep Mitch from stomping through them. Then I cut the stems from the dead peony blooms and watered all the plant beds in the backyard.

Now I am going to take a shower and tackle some paper work that has been waiting for far too long.

Some times I still can't get over what a beautiful beast Mitch is. I think he is truly breathtaking. I am toying with enlarging the first picture to put above the fireplace. I would crop it just slightly so that he is on the right third of the picture. The second picture really shows off his long neck.

Sheri is in Seattle for a two-week business trip. Last weekend I flew our for a four-day weekend in Seattle with her. I have a bunch of pictures and I intend to post about it, but I have just been too busy to get around to it.

This is a picture of the first cappuccino I had in Seattle at Espresso Vivace. Notice the neat little design they make on the top of every drink.


The pastry to the right had spinach and feta cheese. It was also very good. As soon as I finished this cappuccino I went back up for an iced Americano and continued to read the paper. When I left I got a hot small triple Americano to go.

I drank so much coffee while I was there. It is so good and it is every where. I intended to bring back at least three pounds of beans, but I only brought back one pound from Espresso Vivace.

I've been having problems getting motivated to get going in the morning, so I just went downstairs, ground 5 tablespoons of coffee, put it in my French press, and brought that upstairs along with my electric kettle and a coffee cup. Tomorrow morning knowing that a perfectly brewed cup of hot coffee is only seven minutes away once my feet hit the floor should be a good motivator.

We hosted our first Gourmet Club dinner at our house last night. The theme was dishes from famous Irish restaurants. We started out with a bowl of carrot soup. We were responsible for the main course which was a stuffed pork loin with homemade gravy and homemade apple sauce. We had one of the women at dinner that is on the Gourmet Club committee and said that my gravy turned out way better then the test batches they made while preparing the menu. The apple sauce was a big hit too.



Current scones and rustic potatoes were served as sides.

Dessert was kind of like a pineapple upside down cake with hazel nuts.









Everything worked out really well. The first couple came over just a few minutes after 7 PM. Everyone left around 10:45 PM.

When we started cleaning up the kitchen drain stopped up really good. I took the trap off under the sink and opened the access port in the basement and could still not get to the clog. I just kept working at it with the plunger. After a half hour of that I thought maybe I should use hot water in order to loosen things up. I also started dumping dishwasher detergent down the drain on the hypothesis the enzymes would start eating away at whatever was stuck down there.

I took a break to go in the basement and make sure the access port was not leaking from me taking it off and screwing it back on. Everything was dry. As I was walking back upstairs the hot water and enzymes finally had the desired effect it whooshed down the pipes. It almost sounded like a toilet was flushed. Yeah!

By this time I am really tired and my back was hurting from cooking, and then hosting, and then plumbing all night. I took a little break on the couch while Sheri continued to clean.

She had to be dialed into work from about 1:30 AM until 5 AM to make sure all of her servers in all of the time zones handled the new Daylight Saving Time date. I was able to stay with her until about 4 AM and then couldn't keep my eyes open. I think she said two of her servers had problems and needed extra attention.

She was able to get about an hour of sleep before she had to get up and get to the airport for her trip. She also got the entire kitchen cleaned up during the breaks she took from work overnight.

I am feeling pretty beat, but I have already showered, had leftover scones, and done a few chores. I don't know what I am going to do next. I have a list, but it is very possible I might just fall asleep on the couch. It is also possible I might get a second wind and go run some errands. Right now I don't know. I think I am running on about 3 or 4 hours of sleep.

Sheri is on the board of our neighborhood homeowners' association. The person that did the newsletter could not do it anymore, so I stepped up and volunteered. There were some camera-ready ads that needed to be scanned either because they were new last month, or the existing scans looked really bad. We decided to go ahead and buy ourselves a scanner. To my surprise almost nobody makes just a flatbed scanner anymore. Everyone is making the all-in-one machines. Fax-copy-scan-printer. One place we went had two flatbed scanners, but they were clearance and they only had the floor models left.

We walked over to the all-in-one section and started looking at those. We ended up with an HP C3180. After the rebate it will only be $65, so that wasn't so bad. I did not even install the ink cartridges that came with it because I like our current printer and I am just going to use it as a scanner.

I have had some fun scanning some old pictures around the house, and will probably continue to do that as I come across them.

In this 1942 picture my mother is the baby in lap of her grandmother. The writing on the back of the picture says (I left off all the last names):

Left to Right (Standing) Mary, Glen, Katherine mother – (Martha), Jacob, Michael (Grandma B's brother)
Sitting: Great Grandma and Grandpa Nick and Fannie, Beverly

click for larger picture


If anyone is interested in a larger picture for getting prints let me know. The original scan is very high resolution; 5,058 x 3,850 pixels.