I felt the need to change things up a little.
I also was pretty ticked when I didn’t renew the domain www.ideatreks.com and it was bought out from under me.
I no longer want to blog under the name www.ideatreks.wordpress.com
So, come visit me at the all new www.simpleblackcoffee.com
At my local Toledo Kroger last night I spotted these 12 packs of Bud Light. Quite an innovative marketing strategy really. The colored cans appeal to Ohio State and Michigan fans, yet Budweiser doesn’t have to pay a licensing fee.
Cool view of a July 4th sunset in the rearview mirror as I motored east to Bowling Green.
I first watched this video a year or so ago. I was amazed. I watched it again today, I’m still amazed.
I stumbled upon this video by using Flixxy.com. It’s just under 3 minutes and very funny. Watch and enjoy!
One indicator of how the economy is affecting American families is apparently measured by tracking the food they buy.
Banquet dinners are selling quite well, supposedly in part because they are comfort foods, although I’m pretty sure the $.87 price tag is a big draw as well…that’s cheaper than a McD’s Double Cheeseburger! (I bought one tonight for dinner…a Banquet meal, not McD’s…I’m no Dollar Menuaire)
Another brand undergoing a decent revival is SPAM. Not the junk e-mail, the canned pork-based meat product.
Last week I spent a few days in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a working vacation. I didn’t have daily use of a vehicle so any tourist activity was done by walking…and in Milwaukee that’s actually quite a bit. I didn’t make it to Lake Michigan, but I’ve seen that lake from the south and eastern sides several times by now so I imagine the western side looks much the same.
I stayed on the 11th floor of the Hyatt Regency which provided a very nice view of downtown and the Milwaukee River.
I can’t stand TV execs.
The Boston Globe, among many sources, is reporting:
It’s not a big surprise, but for many of us, it’s a big disappointment. ABC has cancelled “Pushing Daisies,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” and “Eli Stone”! The network has not actually used the word “cancelled,” but it is not picking up the shows for the second halves of their seasons. Which, essentially, means cancellation.
I, for one, was a regular viewer of ALL 3 of these shows. I can’t speak to the defense of “Dirty Sexy Money” I guess, sometimes it was a little too soap opera-y. But “Pushing Daisies” and “Eli Stone”! I loved those shows. I suppose because it was something different and unique it must have not garnered enough attention in the ABC world of decisions. They’d rather keep airring a stupid show like “Private Practice.” That show was a spin off of “Grey’s Anatomy,” which I enjoy every week. But “Private Practice” is hardly unique…or good.
I take relative solace that “Life on Mars” was spared the impending hatchet…for now. However, the show is shelved til January where it will follow “LOST” when it returns.
So, if you are a fan of the 3 cancelled shows, enjoy them while they are still on the air, the remaining new episodes will be used up by january.
Today, Thursday, I returned to the EMHE worksite to see the progress being made. Having watched 13abc all week I knew that major work had been accomplished, but it’s something quite different to see it all in person. I last visited on Tuesday and posted pictures my friend Cindy took. Today I managed to take some decent pics of my own.
The popular ABC show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is building a house in Toledo this week. The family was notified on Sunday that they were selected. They were then whisked away from their home and sent on a vacation to DisneyWorld. On Monday, production went into full swing by preparing the site for work. Trees were removed, fences set up, neighbors yards became work spaces and everything was turned into one GIANT set to film a television program.
Today, Tuesday, was the day that the real action started. The husband/father is a Toledo firefighter so the TFD was an instrumental part of the initial phase of demolition. They cut a hole in the roof of the house and knocked out interior walls…all of which was filmed for the show. I didn’t get to the site in time to see the demolition, I arrived right after of course, but my friend Cindy took lots of great pictures and allowed me to post a few. Thanks Cindy!
The house, gutted and prepped for knock-down. Wouldn’t be difficult to envision this house as the scene of a fire would it?
I’ve had a strong urge the last few months to eliminate a lot of the clutter from my life. I used to collect all sorts of things when I was younger and those things are now seemingly permanent residents of my attic. Stuff like baseball and football cards, comic books, coins, buttons, patches, pins, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. Things didn’t get too much better after I was an adult…just more expensive perhaps. I have a lot of Green Bay Packers collectibles, plus a lot of CDs, DVDs and books that I don’t really need or want anymore. I’ve started the slow process of cleaning this stuff out. Plus I gotta say, the library system is great for finding almost all of the music, movies and books I’ve accumulated.
Such an interesting idea…
Here’s an article, one of dozens I imagine that have been written.
And here’s the link to the eBay item, it went live yesterday and will stay up till next Sunday.
Thursday was a hot day and pretty humid too. I’ve discovered that the older I get the faster I can acclimatize to heat when it starts to get towards summer. When I was a kid I’d sweat buckets constantly all summer long. So when it got hot like it did Thursday (88°) I was surviving but wanted to turn on the central air conditioning. Molly was still at work and I knew she’d probably not be too thrilled if I turned it on just because it was the first day above 80°. So I lived with it. She came home and, like I assumed, upon my suggestion that we turn on the air she replied that we didn’t need to.
Fast forward to late evening when I arrived home from work…
I walk in the door and am greeted by the refreshing hum of the a/c and the cool feeling on my face immediately makes me smile. I drop my stuff off at my desk, let the dogs outside and check on the family. I walk into my bedroom, Molly sorta half wakes up and I said something about the a/c. All she said was that Tupper (our Jack Russell Terrier) was panting so she turned it on. I went about getting ready for bed simply happy that it was cool in the house. But after letting the dogs back in and laying down next to my wife the gravity of what she said hit me like a wet noodle.
Wait a minute! I’m the man of her dreams, provider for the family and love of her life but when I complain of the heat and humidity in the house I get nothing. All the dog has to do is stick out her tongue and pant and the a/c gets powered up?
The next day I confronted my wife with this theory and all I got for an answer was hysterical laughing.
Sheesh.
But, it did provide me with a contingency plan for the next time I want the a/c on. I’ll run Tupper up and down the street a couple times and then let her in to go find Molly, flop on her side and pant.
As has been the custom since Molly and I married, Memorial Day weekend was spent at Maumee Bay State Park on the coast of Lake Erie in Oregon, Ohio. Molly’s parents, my parents, her immediate family as well as several of her cousins, aunts and uncles all come for a weekend of camping. Several other family members stop by for a big dinner one afternoon as well.
I took pictures for a bit of a photo essay. The only things I didn’t get pictures of were the lodge, the golf course and the nature center and boardwalk.
Right off the bat I’ll state I’m not a fan of mushrooms. I don’t appreciate the taste and I don’t like the texture…not even on pizza or in spaghetti sauce. So when I find morels in my backyard it’s a lucky day for someone else. Today I was mowing the yard and saw a couple of these babies sitting under an evergreen we have. I didn’t remember seeing them last week when I mowed so the conditions must have been just right in the last 5-7 days for them to pop up. It’s actually been a couple years since I remember seeing them in my yard. Because I saw a couple I knew there were likely more so after mowing I gathered them up to give away. I was surprised to find 8 of them, I wonder if there’ll be more later on…maybe next time I mow?
Where are the common areas to find them? The wikipedia entry for morels states that:
Trees commonly associated with morels include ash, sycamore, tuliptree, dead and dying elms, cottonwoods and old apple trees (remnants of orchards). However, they are more commonly found under deciduous trees rather than conifers.
So the morels I found today were oddballs since they were all growing in needle covered dirt under several of our large White Pines.
I snapped a couple pictures of course. Happy Morel Hunting!
