Scattered Thoughts . . .

I just spent a little bit of time cleaning up the comments section of this blog.  I used to check the comments weekly so I could respond to any questions that may have been asked of me but, since the pandemic, I have really been slipping when it comes to effectively managing and updating this blog.  This morning I found that there were a bunch of spam comments peppered throughout this blog but they have been now been deleted.  I certainly welcome civil comments that are related to the content, however, if any comment includes a link to a business, to a product, to anything remotely resembling spam, it will be deleted.  If the comment is unrelated to the content of this blog or the particular blog post, it will be deleted.  If I find myself spending too much time deleting comments, I will simply turn off the comment feature on this entire blog.   UPDATE - 17 February 2022:   I am tired of seeing two blog entries about Zenni Optical in my left hand column of "Most Popular" blo

Y esterday was our family Christmas celebration.  It was delayed due to some COVID-19 quarantining but we managed to get together yesterday for a nice belated celebration.  Although the kids needed to wait a couple of weeks for their Christmas gifts, we had a house full of laughing, happy and excited grandchildren yesterday. Sheila went over to her parents' house earlier in the morning to help her mom get ready for the day then Sheila drove her mom to our house to start the day.  Sheila is showing Sue some photos of the grandchildren in this photo... We have about eight sets of eyeglasses that turn bright Christmas lights into stars, Santas, Christmas trees, snowflakes, etc.  Ellie enjoyed viewing through all of these glasses over and over throughout the day... The older grandkids are now patiently waiting (mostly) for gift-time... Liza opened Ace's gifts while he was on her lap and he seemed to like playing with each gift.  He cried whenever the previous gift was taken away so

B ack a little over four years ago, we installed a new quartz composite sink.  We really liked this sink because it was so large, very deep and we even liked the color.  Unfortunately and very obviously, it is not nearly as durable and heat resistant as claimed.   While I was prepping our Christmas dinner, the sink shattered while dumping the hot water from cooking the pasta.  It had chipped and cracked slightly about a year or so ago when Sheila dropped a big, heavy Dutch oven in it but it was not leaking nor was the chip noticeable.  The hot water from the other day, however, shattered it with a deafening pop.  This shattered crack is so pronounced that we can easily see light through the crack.  The sink was now leaking like a waterfall.  As a temporary solution, I used some duct tape to seal the sink as best as possible.  We now only use the smaller other sink basin for running water.  The duct tape should have no problems effectively draining splashes from the smaller basin on the

I n addition to Sheila's doorstep colony of frogs arriving late, we had a new mantle clock arrive on Christmas Eve.  So, this was sort of a late Christmas gift to both of us from ourselves.   Most people simply use their cable set top box to display the time near the television.  Unfortunately, when Comcast installed their high end, high speed Xfinity set top box at our house, the first thing the technician pointed out was that this box has no display on it at all so there is no clock.  Actually, it is not even a "box"...   it is a big, monstrous tower that just barely fits in our shelves next to the fireplace and under the television.  I figured, "No problem...  our router can display the time" and that is what we used for a short while.   Our high speed router has a big colorful display on it which makes using the router abundantly easy.  It didn't take long before we noticed that the router was beginning to work intermittently.  I pinpointed the problem t

O ne of Sheila's childhood friends passed away a few years ago.  She left Sheila with a porcelain frog because...  well...  Dawn loved frogs and it was something that Sheila had always been very aware of throughout their childhood.  Sheila inherited this frog as a reminder of Dawn always being with us.   Well...  this porcelain frog sat comfortably on the step outside our door for only a month or so before I accidentally bumped it while doing some landscaping.  The frog fell off the step and shattered into too many pieces to repair.  I felt terrible so I immediately brought Sheila out shopping so we could pick a new frog.   We found a frog statue that is a frog sitting next to a Welcome sign.  We placed this replacement frog at our front door on the topmost step to our front deck.  This frog, by now affectionately name Dawn, sat there safely for years.  Unfortunately, the sun has not kind to this little frog and it is deteriorating terribly now.  I figured Christmas would be a good

Note:  Kenzie will not receive this Christmas gift for another week  (New Years Day)  so, if you should happen to be reading this blog before then, please say absolutely nothing to Kenzie about this gift.  We would like this to be a surprise for her! I 've been busy the past few weeks designing and building a new dollhouse addition for Kenzie.  A few years ago, I designed and built a dollhouse townhouse for her and, over the years, we've added to the interior furniture and the number of dolls for the townhouse.  We've even added window boxes, shrubbery and a tree in subsequent Christmases.   This year, Kenzie asked for some food for the dollhouse.  She wanted only food, presumably to put on her kitchen table and countertops.  She circled a number of items in one of my dollhouse catalogs so I purchased these items for her townhouse.  I still felt like her gift should be more than just a bit of food for her dollhouse, so... Since Kenzie enjoys cooking and baking, I decided to