Archive for August, 2007
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
I just placed a phone call to the local Agway to pre-order my wood pellets for the year.
Every year, (I have been doing this for two years now) I like to get my pellets in August. I always think I am beating the rush. I guess I am, but there are quite a few people ahead of me this year. The lady on the phone told me that there were three truck loads to be delivered before me. I am thinking, “Ok, like three pickup truck loads?” No, three tractor trailer truck loads. There are twenty two tons on each truck. That’s a lot. I am going to get my delivery after those go out to the other people who pre-ordered.
I ordered three tons on discount, because it is before the season. The price goes up after the season starts and the demand is higher. I paid $199.99 per ton with a $30 delivery charge. That’s not bad. I only ordered one ton last year and kept finding myself at various stores buying bags of pellets. I didn’t want to run out this year.
The pellets I am going to get are made out of hardwood saw dust and come from Pennsylvania. It is recycled from the lumber mill. Apparently, this is the good stuff. I was advised that the softwood clogs up the stove, which reminds me that I have to clean my stove out for the season. They say that you should do that after every one ton of pellets burned. Hmmm…maybe I will write a post about how to clean your pellet stove.
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Monday, August 6th, 2007
Yesterday was pretty fun. We did something that I have been waiting a while to do…to go hiking at Sam’s Point in the Hamlet of Cragsmoor. If you remember, we went up there on Christmas. That was pretty cool, but I didn’t get all that many great photos.
I have been suggesting that we head up to Sam’s Point again and I guess my suggestions paid off. Laura was gingerly excited about the hike. With the hike, came nice pictures, so here you are…
Here we are, down in the parking lot, looking up at the cliff. I thought I really wanted to do the whole walk around Loop Road, but at that point, I was thinking about just getting to the top of the cliff and coming back down. Laura made me do the whole loop. She is a woman of power and not to be underestimated.
At the top of the mountian, past South Gully Trail and High Point Carriageway and about half way through the almost three mile walk, I took a few photos of Lake Maratanza. Using my awesome Photoshop skills, I pasted them together.
A bit past the lake, there was a trail down to the ice caves and Verkeerder Kill Falls. We didn’t walk down that way, but it was a good opportunity to get a shot of some mountains, probably the Berkshires, because we were facing East.
After we made almost all the way around, I begged Laura to take a picture of me. Here it is.
These are some pictures I took of the Sam’s Point lookout. There were a bunch of shots, but I had to narrow them down to these. They all kind of look like each other.
This was a cool big rock we passed on the way back down to the lodge (if that’s what it’s called). Again, I pasted a few shots together to get this one.
This is the bottom of the trail, back at the lodge. Prett cool, huh?
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Monday, August 6th, 2007
I had to write this post. Along with my three reasons for living (fiber, vinegar and mulch), I love beer. I am not a huge beer drinker, but I do love a nice, rich, creamy beer. The darker and richer, the better. With that said…
…I had the best beer of my life yesterday. After Laura and I went hiking up at Sam’s Point, we drove up to Emmanual’s in Stone Ridge. We did some shopping for our Harry Potter date later in the evening. We haven’t seen any of the Harry Potter movies and thought it would be cool to jump on the band wagon, or off the wagon, whatever. While we were shopping for very expensive food (everything is expensive in that store), I decided to refill my beer stash in the fridge. I ran out last week and have been feeling the loss. I decided to pick up some Sam Adams Double Bock along with some Honey Brown.
I was so excited to get home to open the bottle of Double Bock. I have never tried it. I got home and popped the top off. I took my first sip and said, “WOW.” I handed the bottle to Laura and had her try it. I have to say, it is the richest, creamiest beer I have ever had. I like creamy beers and this topped the cake. I just had to write about it because I was kind of excited. Give it a try.
I am going to have a bottle of Honey Brown tonight so I don’t spoil a good thing, but tommorow, I will be back to the Sam Adams.
This is a little addition to the original post – What the heck is it with these stupid age verifications on these beer websites? Heaven forbid someone under the age of eighteen read about beer. Yes, that’s it, let’s keep them so sheltered that the minute they turn twenty one, they get totally blitzed. Like they aren’t going to put in a fake date anyway.
I remember one time, back when I was seventeen, I read about a beer in a magazine. I was so inspired that I went out and bought a keg. Yeah right.
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
For our television enjoyment, we had satellite service installed way back when we moved in. I remember it was a Thursday. With this, comes a bunch of channels we don’t use, but there are a few channels that I come across that have something that makes me pause. One such channel has the “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns showing a few times a day, every day.
I always liked the Dukes of Hazzard. It was sort of like the little boy’s version of “Little House on the Prairie.” My brother and I had this little thing going…we would want to know which car was faster, the General Lee or Kitt from “Night Rider.” Personally, I think Kitt is faster, with the Turbo Boost and all.
Anyway, today I was watching “Beauty and the Geek” and I discovered that one of the “Geeks” is the vice-president of a Dukes of Hazzard fan club. I thought this was pretty interesting, so I searched Google for his smiling face. I couldn’t find it, but I did find this pretty exciting fan club. Luckily they came up first in the search results. I didn’t go too far down the page. I looked on their “Fan Club Bios” page, but didn’t see any geek from the TV show. Oh well, you should take a look anyway.
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
I have always admired people who can explain things much better than me. When I try to explain something that’s on my mind, I usually get so frustrated that I give up or move on to something else.
Ok, I was searching Google and (for the first time) a YouTube video came up. I clicked it, probably because I was bored. I saw this dude talking about something and I almost clicked back. He kind of reminded me of my cousin Benjamin. I sat and listened for a little while and decided that I would post his video. I feel like this guy deserves some kind of recognition for making a video in the spirit of what YouTube was originally created for. So, here it is.
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
If you know me, if you know who I really am at the core, you would know that I love mulch. I think I may have described my love for mulch in a few past posts, but let’s say it again…I love mulch.
Ok, now that the tender intro is out of the way, I will tell you a little story. When we moved in, I noticed a little problem with the back yard. It seems as though there has been a bit of erosion over the years. Every time there is a hard rain, more and more of the dirt, or topsoil, if that’s what you want to call it, finds its way down to the bottom of the hill that makes up the yard. I think the poor schlub who lived here before us tried to spread a bunch of topsoil out over the area and plant grass seed, but before he knew it, that rolled down the hill as well. It’s not really that big of a slope, it’s just that the soil around here doesn’t have much organic content in it. If there isn’t grass growing on it, it turns in to dust and is gone with the wind. What’s left is a nice layer of crappy dirt and rocks. This isn’t much to look at and really causes problems when I try to mow the lawn. If there is grass growing, it tends to be thick and green. Strange, I know. The trick is to get the grass to grow.
Since I didn’t want to end up like the last guy, I decided to travel a tried and true route. I had ten yards of mulch delivered just this morning. Two things – First, I think I got a small ten yards. Either that, or I got a big five yards last time. Second, I thought it would be a real blast to get out there and shovel the mulch in to the wheelbarrow and wheel it to the back of the house for spreading. Well, it is 2:52PM and I am inside feeling a little heat on my neck. Sunburn. Not bad, but enough to make being outside annoying. I think I’ll wait until about 6PM before I pick up where I left off. I am just glad I have a project. I am not fun to be around when I am bored, just ask Laura.
Here are some photos of what I am talking about…
This is the pile of mulch before I tackled it with the shovel.
I put some mulch around the arborvitae and holly that I planted. I didn’t go crazy under the porch, because that will hopefully be covered up by the bushes soon.
You can see how I am spreading the mulch over the bad areas. I would say the layer is a few inches thick. I did this same technique on another area of the lawn last summer and the grass is nice and thick there now. All I ask for is a few nice rains to get the mulch packed down to stay. If we get a torrential downpour, I think I may have ten yards of mulch at the bottom of the hill. After one season, the mulch should be broken down enough to plant some grass seed. It is also good at holding the dirt and rocks bad from eroding even more. An additional bonus is that this mulch was recycled from a bunch of old stumps right down the road from me. I watched the guy do it last year, it’s really cool.
Unfortunately, I though ten yards would be enough, but I think I may need twenty to get where I want to be. Mmmmmm, that’s going to be fun.
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Friday, August 3rd, 2007
I heard this story on the radio this morning, while the DJ was reading off those ridiculous things that happen around the good ol’ US of A.
I am not sure how I felt about this. I think I remember a little bit of rolling over and a hint of eye rolling. I do have my opinions, but more importantly, I have some questions.
1. How many children is too many children?
2. Is there a little “Natural Resources” problem on this planet?
3. 17 kids – Is the body really made for this sort of thing?
I know that there are all different kinds of thoughts about this kind of thing. I know that in my part of the country, this sort of lifestyle is frowned upon. Perhaps in other places, this is the cool thing to do. Maybe?
The story said that this family has gone through 90,000 diapers. C’mon, that can’t be true. No municipality in the great nation would let that happen, right? Is there a limit on how much garbage a household can toss in the landfills, or can anyone just keep contributing and contributing and contributing and contributing and contributing and…
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Friday, August 3rd, 2007
I don’t know where the heck I’ve been. I am usually on top of these types of things.
Well, anyway, I was fiddling around with my blog last night and I noticed that I had accidentally placed more than one AdSense link unit on one of my pages. The strange thing is that it showed up. I was a bit puzzled, so I checked the set up page and well, well, well. It now states that publishers are allow three link units per page.
I did a Google search on it and found this guy saying the same thing. He seems like a nice guy, right?
If you are interested, you can read about the policy change on Google’s AdSense Blog.
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Friday, August 3rd, 2007
I took the day off to finish up the trim on the screened in porch. This was pretty much the last thing I had to do before we start populating it with furniture. Good thing it was supposed to be 1,000,000 degrees out today. Hmmm, let’s add 3,700% humidity to that, ok?
I got started at about 8AM. I know this because I gave the wife a kiss goodbye and walked around to the back of the house. Basically, the trim story is the same as the last trim story, only this time there was some height and angle cuts to compete with. I accepted the challenge and conquered the…the…porch. I guess?
Now, let me just tell you that this whole porch project is not for the average home owner. I just did the finishing up of it, but it was still quite challenging. What’s my secret? Well, I’m a super home owner, that’s all. Ok, here is what I do. Say I had to put some trim on the side of the porch, like I did today. 1) Have no plan. 2) Set up ladder and climb it. 3) Look around. 4) Climb down ladder and scratch head. 5) Get all the stuff you are going to need and get it done.
See? It’s that easy. All I need now is a toolbelt.
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Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Sometimes I come across different and interesting sites out there in this world of ours.
Today, I bumped in to one while doing a little research on another one of my sites…it’s called Rankmon.com. Here, take a look over yonder…
I think you can get the picture once you click the link. Plug in your own site to see where it lies with various keywords and then click the “Competitors” tab to see where you measure up with the big boys.
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