scott's parents got us a nice digital camera a few years ago for christmas - i think i posted a few months ago that i realized that i can play with the aperature and shutter speeds and things like that.
fast forward to this morning, i was looking at flip video cameras because a tiny pocket sized camcorder sounded like a fun thing. i was checking out the video resolution, then wondered what kind of resolution we have on our current digital camera (which also takes video!) - found our camera's manual online, and it turns out that we have 640 x 480, which is the same as the non-hd flips, thus, is probably not too shabby. nix the flip from the christmas list.
as i continued to scroll through the online manual, though, i got to pages 108-109 and stopped short. could it be ... ? no ... wait, but that picture ... i can get lenses for my point-and-shoot camera! fuji sells a special lens adapter that fits around the existing lens, then it has special lenses that fit onto the adapter. i think that they only have two lenses - a wide angle and a tele angle - but still, that's better than my current nothing! i frantically googled around, and heaved a giant sigh of relief when i found that you can still buy the lenses and the adapter. i've been itching for a nice dslr, and maybe someday will get one, but in the meantime, i've got a sweet point-and-shoot with lots of pseudo-slr capabilities. i'll probably continue stalking the pioneer woman's site in hopes that she'll do a dslr giveaway again someday, though, not going to lie.
sorry so remiss
wow, this is not a month of inspired postings on my part, is it? let's see, things going on here:
1. this last saturday, we got to drive down to c. springs with mike and maura and kinley to see our old friends lori and aaron and their daughter (now 8 months old! this is the third time we've seen them since they moved back in july) and their new house down there. the visit was a lot of fun, as usual, but it started snowing early in the evening, so the roads coming back to denver were not fun. we made it home alive and in one piece, though.
2. thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow and i'm trememdously excited. in part for the food (mike and maura are having us over for dinner - her parents are in town for the holiday this year), but also for the 4 day weekend. love it. plus, thanksgiving means the start of christmas music season, and that i can put my pretty red berry wreath (from the martha stewart collection at kmart a few years ago) on my front door. also, and i guess this goes back to the food, i get to make green bean casserole, and that's never a bad thing. i'm debating making an extra green bean casserole for my fridge since i'm not sure if we'll have any leftovers from dinner, but i think that might be considered glutonous.
3. on saturday, one of the girls in our sunday school class is having a craft and cookie afternoon at her house, and i'm a little bit excited for that, too. i can't precisely decide what to bring - on the one hand, i started a little knit scarf for kinley like two years ago that i paused on because i realized that kids shouldn't wear scarves until they're two, so i need to get that finished if i want to get it to her for christmas. on the other hand, i'd really like to start cutting my quilt squares for my picnic quilt and that might be a good motivation to work on that. knitting might be more portable. (the scarf is cute - it's a pale yellow, because i started it before kinley was born and they didn't find out the gender beforehand, and ribbed. each row is something like 3 knit, 3 perl, etc, which makes a nice fat ribbing when you do it right. i'm going to see if i can get some bright yarns and make brightly colored pompom tassels on the ends.)
4. in a stroke of dinner genius last week, i made spicy honey-brushed chicken thighs for dinner on wednesday, then chopped up the leftover thighs on thursday, added rice, black beans, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream - and voila, chicken burrito bowls! (spicy honey brushed chicken thighs are basically the easiest thing to make - especially if you use my generous sprinkling method of seasoning, rather than measuring out spices and rubbing them on. so what, like 10 minutes of effort for two dinners? sweet.) unfortunately i decided at the grocery store last time that i would give dried beans a try, and despite soaking for about 10 hours during the day and then simmering on the stove for close to an hour while we were at the gym pre-dinner, the beans were pretty tough. i've heard that slow cooking dried beans all day works well, though, so we'll give that a try next time. i saved the leftover beans for slow cooked chili this next weekend, i'll call that my trial run.
1. this last saturday, we got to drive down to c. springs with mike and maura and kinley to see our old friends lori and aaron and their daughter (now 8 months old! this is the third time we've seen them since they moved back in july) and their new house down there. the visit was a lot of fun, as usual, but it started snowing early in the evening, so the roads coming back to denver were not fun. we made it home alive and in one piece, though.
2. thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow and i'm trememdously excited. in part for the food (mike and maura are having us over for dinner - her parents are in town for the holiday this year), but also for the 4 day weekend. love it. plus, thanksgiving means the start of christmas music season, and that i can put my pretty red berry wreath (from the martha stewart collection at kmart a few years ago) on my front door. also, and i guess this goes back to the food, i get to make green bean casserole, and that's never a bad thing. i'm debating making an extra green bean casserole for my fridge since i'm not sure if we'll have any leftovers from dinner, but i think that might be considered glutonous.
3. on saturday, one of the girls in our sunday school class is having a craft and cookie afternoon at her house, and i'm a little bit excited for that, too. i can't precisely decide what to bring - on the one hand, i started a little knit scarf for kinley like two years ago that i paused on because i realized that kids shouldn't wear scarves until they're two, so i need to get that finished if i want to get it to her for christmas. on the other hand, i'd really like to start cutting my quilt squares for my picnic quilt and that might be a good motivation to work on that. knitting might be more portable. (the scarf is cute - it's a pale yellow, because i started it before kinley was born and they didn't find out the gender beforehand, and ribbed. each row is something like 3 knit, 3 perl, etc, which makes a nice fat ribbing when you do it right. i'm going to see if i can get some bright yarns and make brightly colored pompom tassels on the ends.)
4. in a stroke of dinner genius last week, i made spicy honey-brushed chicken thighs for dinner on wednesday, then chopped up the leftover thighs on thursday, added rice, black beans, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream - and voila, chicken burrito bowls! (spicy honey brushed chicken thighs are basically the easiest thing to make - especially if you use my generous sprinkling method of seasoning, rather than measuring out spices and rubbing them on. so what, like 10 minutes of effort for two dinners? sweet.) unfortunately i decided at the grocery store last time that i would give dried beans a try, and despite soaking for about 10 hours during the day and then simmering on the stove for close to an hour while we were at the gym pre-dinner, the beans were pretty tough. i've heard that slow cooking dried beans all day works well, though, so we'll give that a try next time. i saved the leftover beans for slow cooked chili this next weekend, i'll call that my trial run.
the dump
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labels:
opinion
a few weeks ago, after finishing trimming our bushes for the fall, we loaded up all of our yard refuse and a few old sections of fencing that were laying around the yard from when we had the wall redone, i think, into scott's truck and headed to the dump. (which, by the way, is not cheap - $45 for us to unload our bed full of bush trimmings.)
anyway, it was my first time being even remotely near a dump, and i have to say, it's probably one of the more humbling experiences i've had in my life. from the outside, driving up, it almost looks like a ranch - rolling grassy hills surrounded by fencing. once you get inside, driving back on the dirt roads toward the dumping point, it still almost looks like a ranch, but with much taller grassy hills. i commented on how pretty it was, then realized, oh wait, that hill is probably made of trash - just older trash that's been covered and seeded. we drove up to the dumping area and parked alongside 4-5 other pickups (with a line of trucks waiting for us to vacate our spots). you get out, and you're standing on dirt, but if you look, you can see plastic grocery sacks mixed in with the dirt, and pieces of trash sticking out the top. there are giant machines with enormous spiked tools on the front churning up dirt to break down and cover the trash as people dump it. then you drive away and realize that the dumping area is itself on top of a hill, and that hill is probably made up entirely of trash mixed with churned up dirt.
garbage seems very sanitary when you throw it away at home. put it in a plastic bag in the cupboard, when it gets too full, move it to the canister behind the garage, take the outside cans to the curb once a week and it disappears while you're gone at work. put most of your recyclables in the green tubs in the garage, except when it's a margarine container and you don't feel like cleaning out the bits of margarine left on the sides of the plastic tub so you just throw it in the trash, or the junk mail when you're cleaning off the counter and the tiny recycle bin in the cupboard is pushed to the back and you don't want to kneel down and retrieve it - then you just put those in the trash.
somehow actually seeing the landfill and realizing that your curbside bags of trash combine with the other 2.3 million people in the metro area's trash puts it into perspective, though. the stuff i throw out is actual trash, does go to a real landfill, and will sit there for a long long time, making giant hills while it decomposes. i'm trying to get better about actually putting recyclables in the recycling bin, but it's a little frustrating that there's really only so much that you can do - part of being a consumer is that you consume things, and unfortunately, a lot of things right now have giant plastic cases and styrofoam included.
anyway, it was my first time being even remotely near a dump, and i have to say, it's probably one of the more humbling experiences i've had in my life. from the outside, driving up, it almost looks like a ranch - rolling grassy hills surrounded by fencing. once you get inside, driving back on the dirt roads toward the dumping point, it still almost looks like a ranch, but with much taller grassy hills. i commented on how pretty it was, then realized, oh wait, that hill is probably made of trash - just older trash that's been covered and seeded. we drove up to the dumping area and parked alongside 4-5 other pickups (with a line of trucks waiting for us to vacate our spots). you get out, and you're standing on dirt, but if you look, you can see plastic grocery sacks mixed in with the dirt, and pieces of trash sticking out the top. there are giant machines with enormous spiked tools on the front churning up dirt to break down and cover the trash as people dump it. then you drive away and realize that the dumping area is itself on top of a hill, and that hill is probably made up entirely of trash mixed with churned up dirt.
garbage seems very sanitary when you throw it away at home. put it in a plastic bag in the cupboard, when it gets too full, move it to the canister behind the garage, take the outside cans to the curb once a week and it disappears while you're gone at work. put most of your recyclables in the green tubs in the garage, except when it's a margarine container and you don't feel like cleaning out the bits of margarine left on the sides of the plastic tub so you just throw it in the trash, or the junk mail when you're cleaning off the counter and the tiny recycle bin in the cupboard is pushed to the back and you don't want to kneel down and retrieve it - then you just put those in the trash.
somehow actually seeing the landfill and realizing that your curbside bags of trash combine with the other 2.3 million people in the metro area's trash puts it into perspective, though. the stuff i throw out is actual trash, does go to a real landfill, and will sit there for a long long time, making giant hills while it decomposes. i'm trying to get better about actually putting recyclables in the recycling bin, but it's a little frustrating that there's really only so much that you can do - part of being a consumer is that you consume things, and unfortunately, a lot of things right now have giant plastic cases and styrofoam included.
voice
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labels:
bargains
now that we have paid $50 or whatever for qwest phone service to be installed in our home (+ $27/mo after taxes and fees), i think i have a brilliant idea for cheap phone service:
google voice is more or less here, and basically its function is to give you a single phone number that people can call which will forward calls to ring on any and all of your phones - home, cell, work, you name it. that's kind of awesome because that means that people don't have to try each of your numbers individually to track you down. the downside is that in terms of home phone service, you still have to have a landline. in reading the comments on an article about the service on cnn, though, i came across a user who combines google voice with a magicjack and bypasses the normal monthly landline charge. color me intrigued.
according to magicjack's website, you pay $40 for a little flash drive sized gadget that lets you plug in a normal home phone on one end and plug the device into a usb port on your computer on the other, and voila, home phone service. $40 for the gadget and first year of service, $20/year after that and you get unlimited local and long distance calls plus call waiting and caller id. there are pretty mixed reviews online - some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, others can't get it to work for the life of them. but there's a free 30 day trial, apparently, so i think i might order one and give it a whirl. there are definitely downsides - 1) we have laptops, rather than a desktop, which means that having our phone plugged into a usb port could be a little bit cumbersome; 2) the magicjack only works if your computer is up and running with good internet signal, but ours usually are. if it works, though, it could easily save us $280-300/year - and would let us place long distance calls from our home phone. add the convenience of google voice's free single number to reach us anywhere, and you've got a pretty sweet setup.
google voice is more or less here, and basically its function is to give you a single phone number that people can call which will forward calls to ring on any and all of your phones - home, cell, work, you name it. that's kind of awesome because that means that people don't have to try each of your numbers individually to track you down. the downside is that in terms of home phone service, you still have to have a landline. in reading the comments on an article about the service on cnn, though, i came across a user who combines google voice with a magicjack and bypasses the normal monthly landline charge. color me intrigued.
according to magicjack's website, you pay $40 for a little flash drive sized gadget that lets you plug in a normal home phone on one end and plug the device into a usb port on your computer on the other, and voila, home phone service. $40 for the gadget and first year of service, $20/year after that and you get unlimited local and long distance calls plus call waiting and caller id. there are pretty mixed reviews online - some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, others can't get it to work for the life of them. but there's a free 30 day trial, apparently, so i think i might order one and give it a whirl. there are definitely downsides - 1) we have laptops, rather than a desktop, which means that having our phone plugged into a usb port could be a little bit cumbersome; 2) the magicjack only works if your computer is up and running with good internet signal, but ours usually are. if it works, though, it could easily save us $280-300/year - and would let us place long distance calls from our home phone. add the convenience of google voice's free single number to reach us anywhere, and you've got a pretty sweet setup.
foodie
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labels:
recipes
another new recipe for your tasting pleasure: whole wheat pasta with broccoli sauce. pappardelle's pasta is a local "gourmet" pasta company (seriously, i just checked their little online store, and it's like $7.50/lb for their pastas) - i've never had their pasta, but my coworker picked up some pasta at a farmer's market this summer, and it came with this recipe. i just used barilla whole wheat fettucine, and normal broccoli instead of broccoli rabe. (primarily because a) i'm not entirely sure what broccoli rabe is - some type of green?, and b) i don't think my across-the-street grocery store has broccoli rabe, and i didn't feel like going down the street to whole foods. plus i like broccoli.) oh, and i used reduced fat cream cheese. and i added italian sausage since scott basically boycotts meatless meals.
my edits aside, though, it's a really easy/tasty pasta recipe. the cream sauce is really light - it's mostly chicken broth with a little cream cheese melted in, so it's not heavy and thick like an alfredo sauce. the sauce is almost more like a glaze on the pasta; it gives a nice flavor to every bite without being overwhelming. i did a 1.5 recipe since there were 8 of us total for dinner, but we have probably enough for a good lunch or dinner for both of us left (we served salad and garlic bread with it). i'll have to figure out how to reduce it down to be suitable for a dinner for 2, but i'll definitely be making it for us again. maybe like 1/2 box pasta, 1/2 cup ckn broth, 1 onion, 1 broccoli crown (since 2 was about a pound), and 3 tablespoons cream cheese. anyway, i recommend it highly. (particularly if your husband makes homemade creampuffs drizzled with chocolate icing and with strawberries on the side for dessert.)
speaking of amazing dinners, we went out for indian last night, and wow. there's an indian place in a little strip mall that's basically in the parking lot of the home depot near us that we had seen and wondered about, then we got a coupon in the mail and figured we'd give it a whirl. apparently the newspaper restaurant reviewer gave it an a-, and i'd say that's spot on. we tried the chicken ticca masala and the chicken curry (yes, both mild, we've been burned before by too-spicy indian food) and the plain naan, and it was SO GOOD. so good. so so good. good to the extent that i can't express in writing how tasty it was - i think "mmmmmmmmm" is the only phrase coming to mind that sums it up. apparently our coupon is only good sunday-thursday (whoops), but we were not at all sad that we'll just have to go back another time to use it. we shared leftovers today at lunch, and still loved it.
oh! and another terrific recipe that i tried and loved this week: tilapia tacos. i've always made fish tacos with tuna steaks before, but tilapia was so much cheaper at the grocery that i went for it and figured i'd make do. i was really pleased, though - the tilapia cooks quickly since the filets are so thin, and it has such a mild flavor that you think more "mm, good tacos" than "ah yes, i'm clearly eating fish tacos that happen to be tasty". (i almost didn't make them because i was just so not in the mood for fishy smell/taste.) i'm not much one for measuring my spices, nor am i one for spice blends, so i just threw some cumin, coriander, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and maybe some garlic powder and salt and pepper on the tilapia (on each side), then squeezed some (bottled) lime juice in and let it cook. my filets fell apart in the cooking process, so i just used the spatula to flake it up in the pan. very good! i had an avocado in the fridge that was about half-good still, so we chopped up the good parts, added some cherry tomato, and sour cream - yummy.
i'm impressed, we've eaten well this week. okay, monday night we had the mini cheese pizzas that came with our jack o'lantern pizza from papa murphy's last saturday - they weren't amazing - and tuesday night i made cheeseburger crescent rolls. but hey, three days in a row of good food is not too shabby.
my edits aside, though, it's a really easy/tasty pasta recipe. the cream sauce is really light - it's mostly chicken broth with a little cream cheese melted in, so it's not heavy and thick like an alfredo sauce. the sauce is almost more like a glaze on the pasta; it gives a nice flavor to every bite without being overwhelming. i did a 1.5 recipe since there were 8 of us total for dinner, but we have probably enough for a good lunch or dinner for both of us left (we served salad and garlic bread with it). i'll have to figure out how to reduce it down to be suitable for a dinner for 2, but i'll definitely be making it for us again. maybe like 1/2 box pasta, 1/2 cup ckn broth, 1 onion, 1 broccoli crown (since 2 was about a pound), and 3 tablespoons cream cheese. anyway, i recommend it highly. (particularly if your husband makes homemade creampuffs drizzled with chocolate icing and with strawberries on the side for dessert.)
speaking of amazing dinners, we went out for indian last night, and wow. there's an indian place in a little strip mall that's basically in the parking lot of the home depot near us that we had seen and wondered about, then we got a coupon in the mail and figured we'd give it a whirl. apparently the newspaper restaurant reviewer gave it an a-, and i'd say that's spot on. we tried the chicken ticca masala and the chicken curry (yes, both mild, we've been burned before by too-spicy indian food) and the plain naan, and it was SO GOOD. so good. so so good. good to the extent that i can't express in writing how tasty it was - i think "mmmmmmmmm" is the only phrase coming to mind that sums it up. apparently our coupon is only good sunday-thursday (whoops), but we were not at all sad that we'll just have to go back another time to use it. we shared leftovers today at lunch, and still loved it.
oh! and another terrific recipe that i tried and loved this week: tilapia tacos. i've always made fish tacos with tuna steaks before, but tilapia was so much cheaper at the grocery that i went for it and figured i'd make do. i was really pleased, though - the tilapia cooks quickly since the filets are so thin, and it has such a mild flavor that you think more "mm, good tacos" than "ah yes, i'm clearly eating fish tacos that happen to be tasty". (i almost didn't make them because i was just so not in the mood for fishy smell/taste.) i'm not much one for measuring my spices, nor am i one for spice blends, so i just threw some cumin, coriander, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and maybe some garlic powder and salt and pepper on the tilapia (on each side), then squeezed some (bottled) lime juice in and let it cook. my filets fell apart in the cooking process, so i just used the spatula to flake it up in the pan. very good! i had an avocado in the fridge that was about half-good still, so we chopped up the good parts, added some cherry tomato, and sour cream - yummy.
i'm impressed, we've eaten well this week. okay, monday night we had the mini cheese pizzas that came with our jack o'lantern pizza from papa murphy's last saturday - they weren't amazing - and tuesday night i made cheeseburger crescent rolls. but hey, three days in a row of good food is not too shabby.
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