Daily Dose

How the heck do you wear this thing?

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Personality, Pet Peeves /

Did I mention TW made me a really gorgeous alpaca scarf? She did. I love it (thank you @haldechick and Knit 1.)

Today, I was at Great Lakes getting gas and it was 9 degrees. Plus wind. And it is really really windy in the Great Lakes Naval Station area. As I was pumping the gas, and freezing my ass off, and thanking GOD and TOYOTA for making a car that gets such damn good gas mileage that I only need to put two or three gallons in thus standing in the cold for only a few minutes, I realized that I could wrap that really awesome scarf around my mouth and nose rather than leaving it wrapped around my neck (which was already covered by coat.)

One problem. I don’t know how to wrap a scarf properly around my mouth and nose.

I see people do it all of the time in movies and on TV. I’ve read books where people do this. I’ve even seen a few people up here in arctic Illinois do it. But when I tried it, the scarf just slipped down. I am scarf illiterate.

TW attempted to model scarf wearing. But, it just made me laugh. I think I need more help than TW can give me.

tw modeling scarf wearing



















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links for 2008-12-01

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  • Using Multiple iPods with One Computer | BlogHer
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  • Have You Tried Kombucha Tea? | BlogHer
    Kombucha is a type of sweetened tea that has been fermented using a culture known as a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast.) According to Wikipedia, the drinking of Kombucha dates back to 250 B.C., when it was found in early China and Japan, later gaining popularity in Russia. I can remember back in the sixties when even in a slightly un-hip place like Salt Lake, many people were making and drinking what was then called "mushroom tea."
    (tags: tea kombucha SCOBY kalyndenny)

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Real snow

6 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Pet Peeves /

The weather man has been threatening us with snow for quite awhile and he’s mostly been wrong. We’ve seen some fall but not fall for long. We’ve seen some fake snow that’s like sleet or hail or something that’s harder and whiter than rain but has some stupid made up name that I don’t remember. We’ve mostly had what I consider FRIGHTFULLY COLD WEATHER mixed with HURRICANE FORCE WINDS.

I hate the weather here. I miss hurricanes.

I went out to get the mail tonight, a few minutes after 5. I’d put it off all day because… it was COLD and WINDY and I did not want to go outside. I’m already cold just sitting here in my house wearing two jackets. But I went to the mailbox anyway because somebody has to do it.

It was cold and windy and getting dark. Nothing new or unusual going on out there.

Twenty five minutes later, TW went out the back door to put the dog out and she screamed. I ignored her. She screamed again, threw open the door leading to the office and told me that I needed to “see this”. Bah.

I got up. I went to the door. It was dark. She wanted me to open the door. I refused. I wasn’t getting anywhere near a door that made her scream. So… she opened it.

snow.jpg

Snow. On the ground. WTF? Why do we live here? And how long before the dog refuses to go out in it? Right now he’ll still at least step out onto the ground and look around at it and then he’ll get up on the step and eat snow off of the top step. But how long will it be before we have to drag him out in it?

jakesnow.jpg

How many more months until spring? I am not sure I will survive this. Seriously.











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A Prius Update

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Money Talks /

I think I have solved the mystery of why my Prius gets (got?) so much better gas mileage than Joy’s Prius… The solution to the mystery is not something I’m happy to have figured out (sorry Joy!)

Joy got her Prius a year ago. It was a surprise Christmas gift. She thought she was getting a snow blower. This means she got her Prius when it was COLD… and her first 6 months of driving were in very, very cold weather. (It’s cold here people, I keep saying it and it is TRUE.)

I got my Prius in June. I got it in Florida. The first month I got it, we used the AC a good bit, it’s really WARM in Florida. Then, we got here and it was “cold” to us, so when we used the AC it was on low… or we simply did not use it at all.

Now, here I am just a few miles away from Joy and the weather is frightfully cold. My gas mileage has… tanked.

The Prius does not like cold weather. I believe it’s not just the cold weather, it does not like running the heat on HIGH for the entire time you’re driving. (We tend to do very short trips and the car never really warms up all of the way until we’re back home.)

When I fill up, and then drive the 20 miles home, the gas mileage isn’t bad. I’m getting in the low 50’s. That’s a bit of a difference from the 60mpg I’d been getting on that drive. But, I’m running the heat on low the whole way.

The gas mileage then drops considerably as we drive through the week. Yesterday, as I headed to Great Lakes NEX to fill up, I started at 36.1 mpg. By the time I reached Great Lakes, I was no longer driving with the heat on HIGh and the mileage had gone up to 42.6.

So… based on just a couple of weeks of driving in very cold weather, I can assume that Joy’s low mileage was related to six months of very cold weather driving, with heat that probably ran on high more often than it did on low.

I’m sort of grouchy that I have solved the mystery, ya know?

It’s freaking cold here… and it is going to get colder.

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