Friday, June 11, 2010

Compost

If you've been composting --especially after the first year when you've had the chance to use that lovely black dirt-- but extenuating circumstances mean that you cannot put your kitchen scraps in the compost bin for a couple of days, ...

it just about kills you to throw all those wonderful nutrients (onion peels, watermelon rinds, bread crumbs, etc) into the trash, like as if it were garbage or something!

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

An Overfull Key-Ring

We have had to replace a couple of ignition cylinders on our cars. It's not cheap. Worse yet, it becomes darned inconvenient in figuring out which key opens the car door, which key opens the car trunk, and which key turns on the engine.

The mechanic recently pointed out something to me. He said our key-rings are often so full of keys that the weight wears out our ignition cylinders too fast. The key is not sitting in the ignition completely straight because all those other keys are pulling down on one end of the car key. And then there's the exaggerated bounciness that results from the clump of weight's motion as we are going around corners or over not-quite-smooth roads. The mechanic said that keeping your key-ring small and light (or keeping your car keys on a separate key ring) should prevent your need for new ignition cylinders.

Wow! A small life-style change to gain a big savings later!

Monday, June 07, 2010

Leap Year

Cute movie! It's a romantic comedy that follows a typical story-line of how being together creates affection and love. (This frequently prods Gary into commenting on the harm that comes from men and women in the same workplace, spending all day together instead of with their spouses. And these kinds of story-lines frequently prod me into commenting about why/how arranged marriages actually worked.)

But anyway, the reason I mention this movie is because, when it was over, Andrew said, "That was a really clean movie!" And when I thought back, I realized how right he was. Clean, funny, and good. "Leap Year" would be one I'd recommend to my mom ... assuming she could get a copy with closed-captioning. (With the Irish accents in the movie, sometimes I missed dialogue.)