Bogieblog

Garden Cleanup

Last weekend I started cleaning up the garden: taking up the walkways, taking up the weed blocking fabric and brought my one lone, still green pumpkin inside to ripen.

Today, WS came over to clean up the leaves and he mentioned I still had peppers on the plants. So I went out and picked all the peppers - amazing that they were still good considering we have had plenty of 25 degree mornings. There were also two plants that were thriving in the cooler temps, and I decided to dig them up and overwinter them in pots, to be replanted next spring wherever I end up living. Being in the vegetable garden, they would be rototilled under if I left them in the ground.

 

The one on the right is a cooking thyme, the other is of the mint family. It used to have a marker, but it got lost so I'm unsure exactly what it is (although I can assure you it isn't the classic mint).

Hopefully they will thrive thru the winter, but if not, I haven't lost anything - I have gotten my $4 worth of herbs off of them over the summer.

Tables Galore

I have been keeping my eyes out for furniture and in the last couple of weeks I have had some great finds.

At the swap shop at the local dump, I found a solid wood, octaganal end table that has a door in the side and a swiveling top. I love the design on top and it will clean up quite nicely when I refinish it. The sides and base are in good shape, so if I can match the stain color, I may be able to get away with just doing te-doing the top. Then upon opening the door, I found about 70 music CDs,  about 30 of which are to my taste - double bonus!

 

Early last week, at the side of the road,. someone put out another nice end table. It too is solid wood and has a small drawer for holding odds and ends. Although a bit beat, it will clean up nicely with sanding down , re-staining and a bit of polyeurathane.

 

The next day, at the same place as I found the square table, there was a bunch of furniture out. I bypassed the dresser (I have plenty thanks to Cop Car and HH), and the chest of drawers (which was not solid wood, so would not have refinished well. However, amongst the other stuff was a solid wood coffee table. It is extremely heavy and 60" long (our current coffee table is 50") so getting it from the Jeep, up 2 flights of stairs, thru the hallway into the back room was challenging, but I prevailed.

 

All of these pieces of furniture are older, made of heavy wood, so will easily serve me well for the rest of my days. A little TLC, which I am well practiced at, and they will be as good as new.

Map Sharing

The Weekend Pundit has a great map that details the United States in a whole different way than what you are probably used to. No, it isn't politcal, so go look!

Grass Drags 2013

Last Sunday I had a first experience, going to the Grass Drags. Those are snowmobile races on the grass, held in a farmer's pasture. WS has always gone with Jimmy, and I didn't want to intrude on their "buddy time", so I had never been before. 

I went by myself and found a lot to see. There were grass drags, water drags, and exhibition jumping:

There were vendors with all kinds of cool stuff like a machine that looks like it will go thru just about anything,

and another that is supposed to do work, but just looks like good old fashioned fun

There were helicopter rides, which I wanted to go on, but you had to have at least 2 people in your party. They weren't placing seperate parties together, so I just stood and watched the two helicopters do their thing for a while:

Then there was a sign that you don't see very often - at first I thought it was a No Guns Allowed sign, but then I saw I was mistaken and had to smile at the sentiment - so of course I had to go into the establishment:

and there was abanner on the right to bear arms:

I had a great time, just wish I could have seen the drag final. Unfortunately I had to get home to take care of Prince, who much appreciated being taken for a walk and being fed, so that was okay with me.

Electronically Challenged no Longer

I spent most of the day on the road today. I had taken it off to use up a vacatin day without any idea of what I would do. Then I ended up having to have a medical appointment, so I left this morning at 8:30 for that. I accomplished that, stopped at WallyWorld and Where the Pets Go, to pick up a few things. I also had to pick up my dead laptop along with the backup hard drive that the contents had been transferred to. The old laptop was in Concord, I was in Amherst and right across the street from Staplers.

So, I stopped in and looked at laptops. I really miss being able to listen to the news while doing computer related work, so thought maybe I could find a deal. I did. I found an HP Pavillion (that is what the old laptop was) with a big discount. I also needed Office and Antivirus, so I got to dickering with the sales guy. Office, I got on discount because I got it with a computer, I also got a discount on a triple pack of Antivirus for the same thing. However, I didn't need for multiples (I had renewed my subscription on the other computers recently) and told him that although it was only a $10 difference, I didn't like it. Then, he said I also could get a $40 discount because I have a Stapler's reward card.

SOLD. He had issues getting the system to take in the multiple discounts for the Antivirus, but finally got it to 5 cents less than he had quoted me. SCORE! I also saved by installing the software myself. So I was really happy with what I got.

I then headed to Concord to pick up the old laptop and the backup. When I got there, I discovered that the salesman at Staplers had not given me my credit card back. Fortunately the charges for retrieving the info off the HD wasn't too much so I just used my debit card. Once that was taken care of, I called up Staplers and explained how I lived miles away and it was a huge inconvenience to spend another  hours on the road to go back and get the credit card.

Whining works - they gave me a $20 certificate for my troubles.

Yeah, I spent a lot of extra time on the road that I could have used doing other things (mowing, stacking wood - neither which have been done in 2 weeks), but the extra credit doesn't hurt as a soother in that regard. Plus, since I was in Concord when I discovered the issue, and not at home, I spent less time than I could have (not to mention mileage and gas).

I finally got home about 4:30, took care of animals and household chores, then settled down to set up the laptop. I immediately took it out of Windows 8 mode and set up the wireless network. Then loaded software, transferred some files off my zip drive, and set up for wireless printer use. Guess what I computer I am typing this post on?

All in all, I would call it a lucky, and good day!

My Lucky Week

I've had a run of good luck in the last week, so thought I would share them:

1. Read in the Sunday paper that by downloading the DD app, I could get a free small coffee. I was totally in - and it worked!
2. Went to buy a coffee maker last weekend. I have never owned one, WS never liked the smell of coffee, so I just bought coffee on weekends (the only days I drink coffee at home. So I went store to store looking, but not finding the perfect size, type etc. Finally went to Sears, and was looking at their large selection, when I found one that was acceptable. It was $34 and I was trying to justify the cost to myself (never mind that that is only about 17 weeks worth of coffee - well, more adding in the cost of the grounds). As I was standing there, an Associate walked up and put at sale price sticker of $17 on it. Woohoo - my lucky day! Needless to say the coffee pot came home with me.
3. After breaking my brand new phone back in July, and buying a refurbished on (at more than 1/2 off the price of repair), I have two batteries. That is great, for when the phone runs thru the juice more quickly than I want, but that still meant my useable phone was on the charger a lot. Then early last week I asked myself, "I wonder if the broken phone works well enough to use as a charger for the spare battery?. To my delight - it did, and does. Now I can change out batteries and not have to chain my phone to a charger!
4. Yesterday I went to Staples and bought an external hard drive to back up my desktop (Yes DCE - I had been thinking the very thoughts you and Cop Car expressed). I also bought it before taking my dead lap top to an independant computer guy. I didn't neccessarily want the thing fixed, but wanted to see if I could get the pictures off the hard drive. To make a long story short, he called me up last night saying he had bad news and good news. The bad news was the mohterboard was fried and at 7 years old, he wouldn't suggest trying to replace it. The good news, was of course, was that he was backing up the hard drive to the new external hard drive, so all my stuff is saved! He also gave me a list of suggested laptops to look at for replacement, based on what he DOESN"T see at his shop. It did not include HP, which makes me sad because that laptop had been a rock and really, I got way more life out of it than anyone (especially the computer guy) could reasonably expect. So, since I am getting the pictures back, I am counting that as totally good luck!

That is 4 in a row, in a week's timespan. I am definitely on a roll. Hope it continues!

Pretty Much Sums it Up