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{ Category Archives } House

Crazy Amounts of Snow

We measured 22″ at 8 am this morning, and 27.5″ at 1 pm. It took us three straight hours of shoveling and snow-blowing to clear a path to the hot tub, a fire escape path, and enough driveway for one car to get to the road… which was last plowed about 16″ ago… so we […]

Before you move that snow…

Take a peek at the weather service forecast for your location over the next several days. If like us, your area is predicted to get daily high temperatures only a few degrees warmer than freezing, you should know that the snow you need to move this morning is going to be sitting wherever you put […]

Fantastic weekend

This weekend was going to be a living history public show at Colonial Plantation in Media, Pennsylvania with La Belle Compagnie, but the wise event coordinators cancelled/postponed the show given the inclement weather. Many members of La Belle gathered at our home instead, where we could talk, work on projects, eat all the food that […]

Premium Smoke Detector Bulk Purchase

I am considering a bulk purchase with some co-workers to try to reduce costs on several Kidde Silhouette smoke detector/alarm units. These units differ form the crappy builder ones in most homes in four ways: they use an enclosed, sealed, rechargeable lithium battery so you never need to replace batteries in the unit they are […]

Hot Day

Thermostats say 93F in the shade here, and humid… Summer is definitely here at last. We got nearly a bushel of cucumbers and summer squash from the garden today; and I lost about a gallon of sweat whilst bringing in the harvest, some tomatoes, and staking up the tomato vines that had sagged to the […]

Pool is nearly ready for swimming

Water is clear enough that I can read small labels at the bottom of our 8.5′ deep pool. Chlorine is between 2-3 ppm (a little high, but will burn off with sunlight) pH is 7.2 (a little low). The test kit I have suggests adding two pounds of pH up (Alkali). Total alkalinity is between […]

Used Love Seat, Free to a Good Home

This is a cheap La-Z-Boy brand love seat that has been in our family room for a year or so. The recliner mechanics have failed, so it is love seat only unless you feel like repairing it. Our house has two gentle cats, so if you have allergies to cats you’ll want to steam clean […]

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New Garden Beds

We had Merrifield Garden Center come put in new garden beds for fruits, vegetables, and some decorative plants along the back side of our garage. They did a fantastic job as you can see by these photos. MobileMe Gallery of new garden beds We plan to grow figs, tomatoes, corn, lettuce, broccoli, Thai bird chili […]

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Marketing Fail!

Doh! Apparently, every Intel based Mac since early 2006 has had a new feature that Apple has completely failed to market. I have owned a few of these Macs and never knew about this feature, and others have probably skipped Apple products not knowing it was available. The feature I am referring to is the […]

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Anyone using Boxee?

Are any readers using Boxee on their Mac, Linux, or AppleTV hardware? If you are, do you like it? How stable is it for you? Does it make watching your favorite TV shows easier/cheaper? I tried it briefly tonight on my Intel based Mac laptop running Leopard (10.5.5) and it played “The Daily Show” and […]

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