geekoftheweek

I have an old Martha Stewart book which I think has some fruit preserve recipes in it, plus I bought Canning and Preserving for Dummies from a book club in the fall of 2007.

There are lots of tips and recipes in it, for many kinds of canned items, not just fruit and vegetables. For instance, there is one in there for spaghetti sauce and a couple for canning meat, as well.

The basics you want to know about canning and preserving are all covered, but some reviewers at Amazon.com said there was very little info about food dehydration (which I’ve no interest in, anyway), but I thought I should share that in case anyone is looking to buy this book with the hopes of learning to dehydrate foods.

I have been saving jars and bottles with a good lid that has a decent rubber seal on them. Every time I empty all the pickles, salsa, etc.

I hope to have enough saved by summer so that when I visit the farmer’s markets I can buy cheaply of all the nice, fresh veggies and fruits to can. I know it’s locally grown and coming from here in Minnesota, and not Canada, Mexico or South America, like when I buy at the grocery stores.

Whenever I go to the farmer’s market I know I’m saving a ton of money. For example, this past fall, I got a head of cabbage which was about 7 lbs(!) for $3 and I also got 2 trays of giant tomatoes (just under a lb, each!) for about $7. I can spend that much easily just buying 1 or 2 small vines with 3-4 skimpy fruits on them at the produce department of my grocery store!

Plus, the food usually is not sprayed with chemical insecticides and herbicides. I just have to wash off a bit of dirt, sometimes a bug here or there in some lettuce, but it’s so much better for me to eat!

I don’t regret all my sexual experiences, but I do feel like I wish I would have waited until I was married to the love of my life before I did any of them.

If you run a business you know exactly how hard it can be to do this! I need a small business tax accountant!

The home-based business tax guidelines published by the IRS is like leafing through the Bible. You can’t just pin-point one answer.

There are tons of loops and hoops to jump through to make sure you are a) getting the most deductions while b) ensuring you are paying the correct amount of taxes that you owe (not less or more) and c) delicately balancing all this and still managing to either break even or pay in without a huge penalty.

I have 2 years of back taxes that are filed but not paid yet because they are incorrect and need to be amended, but the amending procedure is ridiculous! I’m tearing my hair out because I’m lost.

Has anyone done this on their own successfuly? I have used Turbo Tax’s Tax Freedom project (free preparation and filing online because I only earn so much) but I seem to get things wrong! If I only made $15k last year, why am I having to pay over $900 in taxes?? I’m below the frickin’ POVERTY level! Something is definitely wrong.

HELP!

“Be a better blogger”! An alert in email inbox tells me every week.

But I delete it before I can even open it. It’s like I don’t have the time, don’t care, don’t feel the sense of urgency, to blog anymore. I would prefer to read them. I’m tired of putting so much effort into blogs (since 1999, mind you!) and having to play the whole game of doing all the work, and wind up not even being read by 1 person. I think that’s one main thing bloggers want. Readers. What’s all the fuss about, otherwise? Sure, we all blog to get crap off our chests now and then, or because it’s a release of stress, etc. But when it all boils down to it, the human nature of the writer is to want to be read.

Being a “better blogger” to me, meant getting “read”. Getting “read” needs several things, to happen. I had to have posted a blog post regularly, and fairly frequently. Back in 1999 it was OK to blog once a week or a couple times a month. Then some a-hole decided to up the ante and raise the bar, and now everyone these days expects a new post every day. Screw that. I tell you what I do every day… I take a crap every day, brush my teeth every day, make coffee every day, and go for a short walk every day. I work for myself. Those things are the MOST you’re gettin’ outta me, buddy!

I am therefore resigned to believe I will never be a better blogger. At least not ever in this society’s eyes.

So I go to 43Thigns to log in and quit this bitch. I click on “I give up” and the first thing 43Things does after that? Asks me to write an entry about it.

Immediately I want to throw my computer out the window. But even more than that, I want to write to say how much a PIECE OF CRAP I think this 43Things crap is for tryin’ to TELL ME WHAT TO DO. No one TELLS ME what to do, but my mother, and thank GOD she lives a few towns away, else GOD forbid I’d slug her some days. So then my blogger instinct kicks in. And I start writing my feelings. And they’re raw and just “out there”. And when I’m done, it occurs to me that I’ve just enjoyed blogging for a moment there.

But 43Things can SUCK IT if they think I’m gonna be bloggin’ again, anytime soon.

Heh.

Thanks, Mom, but not quite…

OK So awhile back I had told my mom about how I wanted to get an eliptical trainer so that I could exercise at home. See, I love walking. I can walk until the cows come home. I can walk faster and further than most people I know. I enjoy it. I do not drive a car so I feel this only gives me the extra edge that most people I know don’t have. Sure, they get around, go to the bank, the grocery store, pick their kids up and drop them off, etc. But they are sitting the whole time, not really expending tons of energy like I do, when I do the same chorse. (I don’t have kids, to drop off and pick up—but the rest I do regularly).

I have to a) walk or take the bus to do all of these things, and b) even if I take the bus there is a fair amount more of walking involved than if say, I took a car.

The neighborhood I live in, is one in which you DO NOT go walking or running at any time of day, safely. There are thugs everywhere, drug dealers, pan handlers, bar patrons who like to pour out onto the sidewalk to smoke and generally act loud and harass anyone who walks by. That said, if I have to do any business in the neighborhood, I walk out withOUT a purse, carrying only what I need for the trip (ID, money, keys, cell phone) in my pockets, and I come straight back home and run upstairs to my apartment.

Anyway, the point of this post-and I do have one-is that when I mentioned to my Mom all of these being the reasons for me to justify having a piece of equipment at home to exercise, she started to get the idea that this would be a good gift for me. She’s retired and thankfully, unlike many seniors these days, able to live very comfortably—which is bittersweet since the “comfortable” money source is due to my dad dying (very prematurely, of complications due to dimentia) and her receiving his pension and my uncle’s inheritence to her (another death which was premature and still shocking to this day).

So…. she gets this bug up her ass to get me a great big gift last Christmas, and it’s out in the garage. I can’t wait. It’s this huge box and quite literally weighs nearly a ton. It turns out to be a Tony Little Gazelle. WTF? Not that I’m a poor gift recipient…I’ve gotten stuff in years past that many people would turn right around and take back to the store, but no, I happily use it and am grateful. This however, was NOT at all what I was hoping for.

Firstly, it’s not a cross trainer. Not an eliptical machine. These machines have pulley systems and computerized motors which attach to flywheels to allow for smooth tracking motion and controls which allow the user to get an easy vs. challenging workout with low-to-no impact. The Gazelle dealio is this wobbly, unstable beast of a sawhorse looking thing with large foot pedals on it and a grabby bar in front, plus a back-and-forth arm bar on each side with rubber hand grips. It’s really quite an eyesore and does not accomplish what I want.

Granted, it only cost her about a hundred dollars or so but Jeez mom, if you’re going to piss away your riches, you could have tossed another $900 or so into this for something I’d actually USE.

Not only was it not what I wanted, I also could not start using it immediately even if I TRIED HARD. Because my sis was my ride home from Christmas at Mom’s, and her Ford Exploder was full, this had to be retrieved some other day and brought to my house. Dammit. And my sister lives a whole 2 counties away from me, let alone 40 minutes from Mom’s and we rarely if ever, see or hear from her unless she needs something. Ahem anyway that’s another story saved for later.

So finally, I think it was about February, my sister calls and says sha and her hubby are ready to come by with the Gazelle. I’m like, OK, when? She says in about a half hour. “Well, good thing I don’t have any plans!” I tell her. Brat. She always does stuff like that. When it’s CONVENIENT FOR HER. I get off the phone and am thinking, “Guess I’ll just stay tethered here to my phone and wait so that I don’t inconvenience you!”

Anyway. They arrive and I go down to greet them, and help them get the thing into the elevator and into my apartment. Her hubby goes back down to the car and waits. Antisocial bastard. Anyway. So I ask her if she wants to try to help me put it together, or at least open the box and see if we could attempt it.

I made steps to take this monster out of the box, but found out right away that you can’t take it out of the box, you have to take the box off of IT. It literally was wrapped in styrofoam and plastic and zip-tied to itself so that you could not just dump the contens of the box onto the floor and get started.

So we took a look at it, and she helped me lift out the gigantimongus part of it out of the box. I got the rest of the parts out too, and leaned the whole lot of it against the wall, where it sat for a minut while we chatted about other things. She decided she was in a hurry and had to go so I thanked her for finally delivering it and for helping bring it up (it was the MOST I could do).

The Gazelle and all its stuff sat against that wall for about 5 days until one day I got sick of walking by it. So I laid it all down on the floor, took out the instruction sheet and got going on it. It took me about an hour. It should have taken a few minutes, according to the reviews I’d read on the internet about it. But the first 2 times I put the arms and pedals on, they were on backward. The instruction sheet indicated that all I had to do was begin assembling the arms and pedals to the sawhorse part of it (the heavy-ass stand that makes up the main frame of the thing), but nooooo… some schmuck put the items in the box BACKWARD and UPSIDE DOWN, to boot!

OK So I finally get the thing all assembled and flip through the user guide a bit, reading the parts where it shows you how to get onto and off of the beast, and some elementary textbook-style illustrations of people using the thing.

Great. I’m ready to work out, I think to myself. I hop (not literally) on the thing and I begin to wobble a bit. I get back off and look at the book again. It says to be careful when mounting and getting your feet on the pedals. I try it again, one foot at a time and decide that’s not going to work, because if I put one foot on, and stand on the thing with one leg while trying to get the other foot up and stand on it, I could wind up ass over teakettle and be in the emergency room.

So I finally figure it out. The grabby bar thingo in front of me is not only part of the main frame of the beast, but it’s also very sturdy and won’t go anywhere. So are the side bar thingos of it, so I decide to put my hands on each side of me and grab the side bars and sort of hoist myself up off the floor, and put BOTH feet at the same time, onto their respective food pedal dealios. This seemed to be the trick that worked.

OK so NOW is when I think I’ll get my workout. No such luck. Wobble-back, wobble-forth (and yes, part of that wobbling is actually parts of my body, I’m a fatty OK), but most of it is the Gazelle. The thing is so wobbly that it takes nearly all of my muscle tone and endurance to keep my legs and joints straight while moving them back and forth on the thing. I decide that I could control this motion better by using the swing arm thingos, but then it’s like I’m just giving myself an arm workout. WTF?? Also, even though I’m wearing fairly decent shoes (NB trainers with arch support, but with no back on them…you slide them on), I can feel the huge grippy-knobby things on the food pedals THROUGH my shoes. Very irritating.

I go back and forth, back and forth for about 15 minutes but I can’t keep the pace the same easily because when I use my legs more, I’m doing the wobbly-thing and when I use my arms more, It seems to be a much smoother operation, yet I don’t WANT AN ARM WORKOUT, GRRR!

The one positive thing about this whole ordeal? The Gazelle actually does fold up rather nicely into a flatter version of itself so that you may slide it under your bed or lean it against a wall, which is the option I chose. It’s still leaning against the wall since February ‘07. It looks good leaning there. But it sure as hell doesn’t work well for me!

I belonged to Lifetime Fitness (years ago) and was paying close to $40 per month for it. After about a year of membership, I found out the hard way that gyms are not for me…

Pros:
-it was right across the street from where I worked
-it was easy for me to pack a small bag of workout clothes to keep with me and take to the gym
-I had no problems getting myself familar with the layout of the place and using the equipement.

Cons:
-I hated the fact that although I would have a small gym bag of clothes with me at work, I had to tote it home every night but could not simply store these items at the club.

Yes, I know that not storing things at the club is a benefit for THEM because that way they don’t have to manage odor, cleaning, and then they are also not liable for lost/stolen items.

-Also, I did not like that the elevators did not work from the ground floor up. I did not come to a gym and pay naerly $40 per month to use stairs, which I can do at home for free. I would start with a recombent bike for 5 mins, do some weights for 15-20 mins (not doing weights every other day), and then 30 mins on a cross trainer for cardio workout and cooldown. The weights were on the 5th floor, and the bikes were on the 2nd floor (also the floor the lockers were on), but the trainers were on the 3rd floor. After doing a few mins on weights, I could go DOWN from the 5th floor, to the 2nd floor to do some time on a bike, but I had to march UP 3 flights of stairs from the 2nd floor, then back UP to the 3rd floor from after doing the bike. Stupid.

-Another thing I hated was since I got a new job, so instead of being across the street from the club, the new job was 3 blocks down and 2 over from there. I would walk to the club after work (also it was uphill slightly) and it would take me quite a few minutes to get there. By the time I got checked in and got up to the lockers, I had broken a sweat and frankly felt like going home. Kthxbai. I HATED that.

-It became even more inconvenient. I stopped going because my sister was planning her wedding, and for 2 weeks I would have to go to my mom’s in another town to meet up with my mom and my friend and sister to do stuff like plan the menu, invitations, etc., which meant taking the early bus from downtown after work to get to mom’s, at the time I normally would head to the gym/club. So I was not able to go to the club AND be at mom’s for the wedding stuff.

Of course I pondered going to the club during my lunch hour, with my new job I had an actual HOUR for lunch (before it was 30 mins), but I’m one of those people who doesn’t understand how people are able to go work out and come back to work without being a big sweaty ol’ mess!

I did try again to contemplate this, and thought what if I added having a shower to the routine? But then I figured I’d have to rush to get back to work to avoid being late, AND I’d have to have eaten lunch. I could have probably pulled it off—I would have to pick up lunch in a big ol’ hurry and eat it at my desk, which we were allowed to do, but I’d likely never get a chance to eat it because the job at the time was very demanding and the minute I’d get back to my post, the phone never quit ringing, and who eats while taking phone calls at their desk?

See why the gym did not work for me?

END rant

I’m tired of hearing everyone say, “You don’t need an invite code to register, registration is open every Friday.” I can’t WAIT until FRIDAY >:(

I got a new computer recently.

It doesn’t recognize my printer. I need to fix my printer (which is older) and I looked all over the internet for a specific driver! When searching in Google, the only place I could get a match for the driver was at demonoid.

I have some very important things I need to have printed and I cannot wait until Friday to do it!

Someone please help! Surely you understand my predicament! I can’t buy a new printer, I just spent a buttload on my new computer :(

Please email me at woods.bj@gmail.com

Thanks!

a Jim!

You know… “Jim” from “The Office”? He’s played by actor, John Krasinksi. His character is almost exactly the kind of guy I want to meet.

A good friend with a kind spirit, a sense of humor, a nice smile, and lots and lots of imagination and wit to keep you in stitches and cheer you up when things are weird or Not Quite Right.

Granted… this Jim guy is no Mr. Darcy. But I’d settle if I had to. If I can’t find my Mr. Darcy by the time I’m 35, I will accept a Jim any day. Bonus if he wears glasses. I love men who wear glasses!

Since I first added ‘be a better blogger’ to my list of things, I’ll admit it….I hadn’t done much about it.

When I started my blog, it was basically a place for me to rant and I cared not whether anyone read it. I even actually wrote something almost every day. Of course, back then I was not trying to run a company full-time from home, and thereby had more time to ‘think’ and felt compelled to post what was on my mond.

In the last couple years or so, my blog got to where I was only posting when I had something I really wanted to write about, or when something happened to me. Which was not very often at all. I guess it evolved to that mainly because I felt that posting my everyday mundane stuff was not blog-worthy, and in fact I hate reading blogs by people who do this. If there isn’t a moral or lesson to be learned, isn’t witty or funny, I’m not likely to care about your adventures in ‘me-land’. Call me a blog snob if you will. I am one!

But I stepped up my entries since October began, and mostly I guess because I’m trying to take some off time now and then from work. Running a business sucessfully does require many more hours than the average Joe would care to put in to any job, but the business is only as successful as the machine running it. And let’s face it…I need to take time to breathe, relax, enjoy some things other than work, in order for this machine to be in good condition.

I recently posted some new entries about the holidays, feel free to check it out: Kiss My Sass

Colin Firth is one sexy son of a you know what!

Mmmm-hmm!

Last time I did was a long time ago. Must have been at least last year.

I didn’t finish it. But it started out very good. Then it got boring. It was alled Atonement and it was by Ian McEwan.

It started out as a very interesting story of a family, with secrets, lots of character development and LOTS of description. I was intrigued by the beginnings of a storyline, and then hooked by the start of a plot, then I could not put it down for nearly 2 days before there was a very good couple of pages where a buildup of drama occured, then wained after a sensual encounter betweeen the two main characters happened. Then BOOM. The male love interest goes off to war. Bo-RING.

I don’t know why, but I don’t like reading books about war. Though I did like reading that one book in high school about a family in Warsaw. Forget what it was called. Then again high school was over 15 years ago.

It’s hard nowadays because I don’t commute to a job every day anymore, like I used to, for years. I’d read on the bus every day, to and from work, making it super easy to kill a book a week.

Ah, well. Time to move on to another good book, I suppose.

Anyone got any they can recommend??Last time I did was a long time ago. Must have been at least last year.

I didn’t finish it. But it started out very good. Then it got boring. It was alled Atonement and it was by Ian McEwan.

It started out as a very interesting story of a family, with secrets, lots of character development and LOTS of description. I was intrigued by the beginnings of a storyline, and then hooked by the start of a plot, then I could not put it down for nearly 2 days before there was a very good couple of pages where a buildup of drama occured, then wained after a sensual encounter betweeen the two main characters happened. Then BOOM. The male love interest goes off to war. Bo-RING.

I don’t know why, but I don’t like reading books about war. Though I did like reading that one book in high school about a family in Warsaw. Forget what it was called. Then again high school was over 15 years ago.

It’s hard nowadays because I don’t commute to a job every day anymore, like I used to, for years. I’d read on the bus every day, to and from work, making it super easy to kill a book a week.

Ah, well. Time to move on to another good book, I suppose.

Anyone got any they can recommend??