Places

My brother (click on "brother"to view his blog) has 21 places he wants to visit. I have found 2 for him to look at in a different light.

Got to love this guy, he travels like we all wish we could.

Click here to go to wasabi ducks' blog and to see how he got his start...oh and what he's up to now.

This is another place my brother wants to see. I want to see it too... if I could do it like this.

Sorry

Today is a ...well...A crap apple day.

Dar and I played a game inside because the temp. outside was 36 deg. thats the good part, the wind was blowing at 28 mph. with a wind chill below freezing.
So we stayed inside.

My brave Meg did venturer out to get a paper and some much needed groceries....what a brave soul don't know if I could have done it.

I,m going to win!!!

He won...and it was within the 5 last card's!

Mud Puddle

If you have read Meg's blog then this is just a repeat.

The snow is FINALLY melting and as I write this we have had none stop rain, but yesterday it was nice and the kids had a chance to play outside as I worked on getting the grill ready for it's first cookout of the year.

She love's to drink and play in muddy water...aka (mud puddle's) if your from the Midwest this is also referred to as a bathing hole.

Her sweats were pink

We made them take off all there clothes outside and into the tub the kid's went ...if we wait to long they might get worms and I can't get my fishing license until the 28th.

Tons of sud's

We ate hamburgers off the grill just in case you were wondering.

New fun

KAKURO

This is a new game to me. It's like sudoku but a little harder. It's cross between a crossword and sudoku because it uses numbers not words. I'll have to make sure my Dad saves all of these out of his news paper everyday.

Meg picked up some good 'ol black and White's. Goes great with my girl a dark room with a candle or two and a bottle of wine....oh and no kids.

Superman

If you don't cry then you have NO heart.. This guy has never ran any kind of race at all but his son wanted to...so he worked out and did it just for his little boy...what a great dad. Would you do this for your son???

Turn on your speakers and realize this is a triathlon, just for his son because he always wanted to run one but needed justs a little help.

Cleaning Cloths

I decided to make another buy the other day and all I can say is WOW.

They are "Microfiber Cleaning Cloths" and they are so amazing. If you don't like or can't use cleaning chemicals then this is for you. Meg likes them to because after we got them in the mail I was running around the house cleaning the kitchen the bathroom, all the mirrors, T.V. computers you name it man I was there and it worked on everything....like I said NO chemicals just some good old water, that's it!!! These guy's when dry are great dusters and when damp it cleans and polishes everything with only water ..NO streaks no pain nothing. Man what a great buy this was. We have gotten things clean with just water that we couldn't get clean before using chemicals. You know just how hard that is to do when you have kids don't you?...oh crayon is also super easy to remove in case you wanted to know.

I'm sold

Real H2O

Every water purification system says they are the best. I saw this the other day and had a good feeling about it and the 30 day free trial sounded good too, so if I didn't like it we could return it. OMG! this one is the real deal. I'll show you on the pictures below.

We also have a TDS(Total Dissolved Solids) meter. TDS is basically the amount of mobile charged ions, including minerals, salts or metals dissolved in a given volume of water. The U.S. EPA's Maximum Contaminant Levels of TDS for human consumption is 5.00 ppm. The lower the TDS level in the water you drink, the more efficiently your body's cells are hydrated.

Let's test some water.

We have very hard water, not to mention a bunch of other additives. The meter reads 3.40

This is from the water filter we thought was doing a great job. It's one of those filters that hooks on the faucet and you flip it up for the filtered water and down for the tap water. It reads 3.48

This is God's gift to us: snow. You would think it would be pure, but I know it picks up particles from the atmosphere. It reads 0.12 That is so low it's cool.....hummmmm

How good is bottled water? This is a name brand, very expensive bottle of water. I can't afford to buy it all the time for drinking, cooking, making coffee and ice cubes, but I was very happy with the reading. It was 0.01

Our new filtered water. Just like they said it would be. Zero water, pure H2O.

Reading o.oo

Book's I'm reading right now

Why do I do this to myself? I have all this information I want to get in my head really fast, so I get all these books and start reading. This would work, If I would read one at a time. Instead I start them all at the same time and try to read them all. I know I'm losing half the information I'm reading. I feel like I'm working backwards by doing this.

Just for fun and a break.

How do I do what I want to do!!!?

This is written by a Sherpa. There has only been 2 books written about Everest, by Sherpas. This guy and his father. Meg got this book for me at the library after I watched several episodes about a climb on the Discovery Channel. I wasn't real sure I would like it, but it is awesome. A recommended must read. I don't know why she checked it out for me, not like I plan on climbing Everest.

This is a book about how to be happy in everyday life. It's written by a neurologist with 20+ years experience. He tells you how to basically reprogram your mind so you can get negative thoughts out and positive ones in, and also how to adapt to any situation and accept it for what it is and be happy.

This is all about the development of aviation. Very interesting.

This is a book on understanding the sky, atmosphere, and how it all works. It also talks about micrometeorology. It tells you how to judge thunderstorms and turbulent air.

This book tells you how the FAA gets their information about the weather.

This book is basically the step by step guide on what to do to get your pilots' license for hang gliding. The tests you have to take and all that good stuff. Very involved.

What to do with frozen beer?

Beer was on sale so Meg picked up some extra for me to have on hand. I had put some in the shed to keep it cold and save room in the house and then we had a week of freezing weather. It was 2 days later when I remembered that the beer was in there so when I went to check on it thinking it was froze to my surprise it wasn't, it was just super cold so I thought I would be ok, so I just left it out there. Then the temps dropped even more, were talking about lows at 2 deg F and maybe if were lucky highs at 20 deg F. That's when it froze. As you know once beer freezes that's it, game over, the beer WILL taste like crap. Since summer is a long ways away I knew I wouldn't be able to use it for cooking, so I needed another plan. I didn't just want to trash it, so I decided to conduct an experiment and thought I would line them all up outside and see how long it took before they exploded.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

What is going on? If I leave beer in the freezer over night and part of the next day it explodes, so why am I having such bad luck? Then I thought maybe it's colder in our freezer...so let's find out.

I had to use what I have on hand.

A wooden skewer stick and a digital thermometer.

Tall glass of H2O.

I soaked the stick in olive oil hoping this would coat the stick and keep the stick from absorbing water then freezing to the ice making impossible to remove.

Ready for deep freeze.

See you tomorrow.

Well that didn't work at all the stick was stuck to the ice like a ice-pop. Now I have to think of something else...ok so I took Vaseline coated the stick generously then wrapped it in tin foil and back into the freezer.

IT WORKED!!!
As you can see it's been a lot colder outside then it gets in my freezer.

I was now out of ideas and was going to give up it must have something to do with a freezer being a closed environment, then I went outside this morning and...

Payday. Can 9 exploded.

Only one but it will have to do, the good old ice chest still works best.