Friends don't let Friends Grow Zucchini!

Need I say more?

Well I knew that once we got the kids packed off to summer camp that our electric bill would be lighter but I was shocked by how much it went down!
The kids were gone most of a billing cycle(3 weeks for 2 of them, and the 3rd kid is still at camp working).
Our bill decreased by a THIRD! And it wasn't because our rates went down or something cool like that.lol

3 Weeks of not running to turn the A/C unit on as soon as they got up in the a.m......3 weeks of less laundry to wash and not using the dryer when I did wash clothes.....3 weeks of less dishwasher running too....3 weeks of not having the upstairs computer on 24/7 and room lights and the tv when nobody was in the room and their celing fans when no one was in the room, etc. etc. etc.

Being July, we did have the increased usage with the pool filter running. But even that added draw on the grid didn't negate all the other energy NOT wasted by the young'uns.

Ok, so I did keep from using the evil dryer during this time too which added to the decrease in usage.

With #1 son away working at camp, his bedroom became my auxillary laundry drying room. The overhead bunk on his futon bed was just right for hanging wet clothes on hangers so they could dry even if rain kept me from hanging clothes outside.

Pelt me with some Soap Nuts for that.

Sluggy

Let's just say that I am a half-assed gardener. I enjoy it some(I'm not an aficianado) and always have grand plans in my head, but between my brain and the execution, things just don't turn out fully. The fact that I now have a bum arthritic knee just makes my attempts even lamer.

But as I stated before, I DO enjoy piddling in the yard, so I continue to garden.

Three summers ago I became a neighborhood pariah. When we moved into this house in 2000, the yard had NOT been kept up well. There was old landscaping and planting beds and overgrown trees and shrubbery galore. Someone who lived here before us thought it was a good idea to make ginormous steps down the steep hill that is our front yard to the street, out of railroad tie frames and concrete embedded with stones 'tiles'. The thawing and freezing cycle of the seasons had raised and lowered the tiles and ties so that walking on them was a hazardous thing to do. Along the side of the 'steps' that were closest to the asphalt driveway that also ran down the steep hill to the street, they planted prickly shrubs. Not sure, as I don't know the names of alot of greenery, but I think they were low-growing type yew shrubs. They also planted tall profile growing types of the same icky shrubs along the front of the house next to the front porch, as well as a 'scrub' pine tree on the corner of the house.

Of course, when they planted all these shrubs/trees they were tiny small, and they planted them with NO forethought to how BIG these things would get and how much room they would need to spread out. The shrubs and pine were right up against the house siding.

Fastforward umpteen years to when we moved in and you have shrubs growing so high they cover your living room window and a scraggily old scrub pine tree that has dribbled pitch on the house siding, permanently staining it and scratching up the window shutter every time a winter wind blows through the tree.

Simply excellent!

So in 2002, the front shrubs got the axe, and the steps down the hill met the landscaper's bulldozer in 2003. The pine tree got a temporary reprieve.

I made a front flower bed in 2003 where the shrubs had been. We planted 3 new bushes(ones with actual Color besides dark, grey, icky green) and I spent a few years just planting annuals in there each spring.

Sawing down the overgrown shrubs did start a revolution on my street. Our next door neighbors began to work more on their planting beds in their front yard. Even the self-styled 'hermit' family across the street began putting up artificial flowers in hanging baskets on their front porch.

The people who live in the exact same style house as us(only a mirror image), next door to the house across the street from us, had the same hideous overgrown shrubbery in front of their house too. A few months after we chopped down our shrubs, a landscaping crew showed up in their yard and took out their shrubs! A nice planting bed took it's place with a nice low profile fancy-pants tree, a boulder feature and extended the design onto their porch with a colorful wooden chair transformed into a flower pot holder. I wonder if they came up with this all or paid a designer big bucks for the layout?

The scrub pine got the axe too in the spring of 2006.

That year is when I made the transformation into Suburban Pariah. I had the gaul to plant VEGETABLES in my front flower bed among the marigold, petunia, pansy blooms. Vegetable gardens are for backyards. Planting a veggie garden on your front lawns? Well, that's just not done in these parts Missy!

In 2007, I expanded our gardening efforts by making a veggie bed along the back of our deck too. Between the CSA share we paid for that summer and what our 2 beds produced, we had veggies to spare. We gave away some of our harvest and froze more of it for eating later in the year.

This spring, 2008, I continued expanding the gardening and made a 3rd vegetable bed, along the southeast side of our house.

This year our CSA is only doing half shares & we are getting less produce, so having more garden space has been a good move.

We don't use fertilizer or chemicals on our gardens by the way. Soil, compost & mulch only. We also have been lucky this season & haven't had to water either(except for the first week or so), as we have gotten rain at good intervals so far this summer.

ALWAYS LOW PRICES, ALWAYS.....BUT AT WHAT COST?

Anybody who knows me, knows that I am no fan of Mega Corporations and how they swallow up the small independent business in the name of free trade and capitalism. You also know that I am one savvy bargain hunter.

Read this article before you go buy another thing at a Wal-Mart Store. Yes, you can get a good deal(see CHEAP)inside those doors but at what cost ultimately to the health of our economy?
If you've been touched by downsizing or outsourcing of jobs AND you've been lured in by the smiley yellow circle's siren song, you may be partially responsible for your own undoing. Yes, that 10 cents off your Jumbo Pack of Toilet Paper is linked to why your job at the Proctor & Gamble Plant was eliminated.
Save 34 cents on that mega-can of Dole Pineapple(sliced or chunks)and see your Dole Stock sink 5 points every year.

We've created a Monster in this Country and it's going to eat us alive if we don't reign it in. THINK before you buy....make wise choices!

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Sluggy

BOXING WITH THE BIG ORANGE BOX STORE

I hope everyone had a relaxing and reflective Memorial Day weekend. I hope you observed a moment of silence or said a prayer for all those who Have Served our Country in the Military and especially for those who paid the ultimate price in that service.

We got alot of errands run and went down the mountain to the BIG ORANGE BOX STORE to pick out carpeting for my daughter's room and buy a patio set.
So I am wating now for the 'measuring gal' to come to measure the room for the carpet. The patio delivery was suppose to be today but after yesterday's phone call, we cancelled that order.
After hubby got off the phone, he looked at me and said slowly in a measured tone, "Home Depot....Bad, Lowe's....Good". I had totally forgotten about the debacle last year with the tile floor, we had installed in the kitchen, that HOME DESPOT botched. *INSERT V-8 Moment here*

Hubby had an accident with a melted aluminum clad pan about 16 months ago. He cooked my brand new Emeril Ware pan til the bottom melted and then slung the pan from the stove to the sink. The little droplets of melted metal hit the vinyl floor and sizzled merrily.


So we took up the vinly in prep for the new tile floor we arranged for HD to lay, only to find that the vinyl floor was NOT original to the house....there was another vinyl floor under it! After removing 2 layers of floor we waited for the tilers to arrive......and waited......and waited......

Yes, a simple tile floor install took 2+ months because the ninnies at HD couldn't even order the correct tile! We had to keep sending it back and reordering. Then when they got that right, the installer came and did the install but kept trying to get me to ok additional side things for additional money-off the books & directly into his pocket of course. Then he stole leftover tiles AND left trash all over my garage where he did the tile cutting and grout/mortar mixing.
For those 2+ months, I had an non-functioning kitchen-a plywood floor and no stove/oven and the kitchen island was living out under a tarp on the deck. And what do I get from THE DESPOT for my $2500.00? Not even a 'Gee, we're so sorry we inconveninced you GREATLY and screwed everything up and turned your home into a Living Hell for 3 months!, that's what!!

So it really shouldn't have surprised me that when we bought the patio set on Sunday that we'd have problems.
First off, they had no tables umbrellas or stands left, just the display model, which of course, they wouldn't even give us a discount on as it was a shopworn floor model. Of course, it never crossed their minds to offer to call the OTHER HOME DESPOT a half hour away to see if THEY had those pieces in stock.
Then they charged us a $60 delivery fee, when I can go online and order this stuff from the website and get FREE DELIVERY as the total is over $49.
But we went ahead and bought it, to just GIT R DONE and arranged for a Wednesday delivery.
Phone call from HD comes in Tueday late afternoon. There is a 'problem' delivering our set b/c the table/umbrella/stand are NOT in boxes-yes, we know that....they are the DISPLAY MODELS.
Everything on the truck has to be boxes so they have to take apart the table and find boxes to put all 3 items in before they will deliver them. So.....I buy a table that's scratched up but I at least don't have to assemble it and they are going to take it apart(I didn't even get a chance to ask if they were going to CHARGE me additional to do that!)and throw it in a box-that it doesn't neccessarily fit in properly so it could get even MORE DINGED UP and then they are going to drive it about 8 WHOLE MILES up the Mountain and I get the priviledge of paying them $60 for this?
Ummmm....on second thought, I don't THINK so! I told them they can save themselves all that trouble and KEEP their overpriced crap patio set.

So I will continue to be patio set-less until I can get to LOWE'S or some other store where at least the management staff's knuckles don't drag the ground when they walk.

sluggy

AND THE WINNER IS.....

Unless you have been in a coma, you probably know that the winner of Season Five of AMERICAN IDOL was crowned last night. TAYLOR HICKS is his name and SOUL PATROL is his game. My 13 yr. old daughter has lived and died by the weekly vote-off of contestants this season. She hasn't had the fervor for watching the show the last week tho since her Pick for the Idol-Elliot-was sent packing.

I've got to say that I am NOT an American Idol zealot. My favorite part of the whole process and the only part I do make an effort to watch are the audition shows. Basically, I watch those episodes because seeing all those HORRIBLY BAD SINGERS who think they are ready for stardom is funny as hell!

I also think that SIMON is the only judge who is doing any of these contestants a favor with his critiques & I find myself usually agreeing with his opinions.
Life is hard baby! If you as a judge are letting self-deluded people continue on a dead end path by NOT telling them the COLD HARD TRUTH about their abilities(or lack thereof), then you are totally disrespectful of yourself and those you critique.

I caught some of the later shows by accident. Since the tv & computer are in the same room, if I happened to be at the computer while AI was on, I got at least an earful of what was going on. From this old 'not-too-interested' viewers opinion, of the top 10 Finalists, there were only TWO singers who stood out.....Taylor and Chris.
Yes, all of them had good voices. Some of them needed more training or polish than others. If someone has good pitch and a good insrument, you can always coach them to be better technically. And you can always dress them better too. What you can't give them is THE "IT" FACTOR. Call it charisma......call it that certain unexplained something. It's that internal spark that some people have and alot more don't. It gives someone their sense of knowing who they are and projecting their presents out into the world through that tv camera. Katherine McPherson is a pretty girl, with a sultry voice but no "IT".
Taylor & Chris have "IT" in spades....as did Kelly Clarkson.
And if Taylor & Chris both get savvy people behind them guiding their paths, they'll both have satisfying careers for as long as they'd like.

Daughter may be bummed about her Elliot losing, but I got tickets to the AI Tour when it comes to our town so she can take solice in being able to hear him at least 1 more time before he disappears into AI history.

I last thing I want to mention here. A local newscaster, in reference to the AI voting, said that more home viewers cast votes in this Final AI Vote-Off than have ever cast votes in a single U.S. Presidential Election.

Now isn't that a very sad comment on the state of our country & culture.

Perhaps we need to have sing-offs in our presidential campaigning process to get the voters to participate in elections?
Or maybe we should give these AI contestants a shot at our top political jobs??
I don't think they would do much worse than the leaders we have now.....
At least they'd be entertaining as they sent our country to hell.

sluggy

BITING THE KITCHEN BULLET

I am in a quandry. One of the final projects in our kitchen remodel involves replacing the old counter tops. Now, like everyone I would LOVE to install granite or quartz, etc. counters. I even toyed with the idea of stainless steel tops but I came to my senses quickly after getting THAT price quote! *THUD*

Here's the thing. With the location & size of our house, combined with where ours falls, in terms of the price/value of houses in our neighborhood, I can't see sinking 20-30K into a kitchen update in a 180K house. Our house is pretty near the top of the values of homes in our development so sinking tons of cash into it isn't house smart in terms of resale. We haven't redesigned the kitchen space but have made improvements in the appliances, new flooring, the paint & window treatments, added crown molding, upgrade lighting & door/drawer hardware....basically redoning the kitchen short of changing the floorplan and cabinets/tops. The cabinets aren't top-of-the-line or my taste neccesarily, but they are in pretty good shape.
With the cost of new cabinetry, we aren't replacing them. The countertops on the other hand, are an eyesore. I think new tops would make the cabinets look good enough to get away with keeping them.

The problem is, you want nice countertops, right? But, being cost conscious, I can't see spending
what they want for stone or corian type tops when they are going on old cabinets. Then again, putting new laminate tops on them might look better than what's on there now, but is definitely NOT an upgrade!
I saw a piece on tv about granite tiles-large tiles, not small ones. Perhaps using that on the countertops instead of solid granite in a dark color and then doing a solid granite top on the island would keep the price down to where I can sleep at nights and would look nice even that I could live with it during my waking hours too.
I'll be getting some quotes for going that route and then make a decision.

After I get the counters worked out the FINAL sticking point in the kitchen is the tile backsplash. It's in good shape BUT.....between the white tiles(which are nice and neutral)are small accent tiles in a dusty/pale blue. Now this color went with the original kitchen color scheme but not with my vision. And once I do get new countertops I KNOW that blue tile is going to stick out bigtime and I won't be able to ignore it any longer. I hate to replace perfectly good condition tile and I know the cost of retiling even this small stretch of wallspace won't be cheap. I sure wish hubby would be confident enough in my technical skills to let us try to do this tiling job ourselves. What's the worst that can happen? We screw it up and have to pay someone
to finish the job....heck, if we don't do it, we have to pay someone else to do it anyway, right? What would it hurt to try?

Once I get past this mental block and get this tile and tops done, I'll have a kitchen that doesn't turn my stomach to look at it.
It's about time I say!
Sluggy