HappyTrails

Since we are saving for a cruise and really watching our budget, we are not eating out as much.  It is giving me withdrawal symptoms!  Some hot and crunchy breaded chicken wings or some kind of appetizer would be nice.

Likely the weather is getting to me as well.  Colder air has been blowing in and the front screen door is banging against the frame; that only happens when it is really windy out.  We are going to be getting zero and below zero temps, and cold weather really just is not my bag any more.  Snow is fine, as long as the temps do not go low, but this is just too cold for comfort.

Fortunately, we went food shopping earlier today, because it is just too miserable outside to do that now.  Shopping can be exhausting when you go to several stores to stock up on the specials and bogos.  One of the places had a favorite vegetarian canned soup on sale.  After all the driving around and shopping, I was not planning on spending an hour cooking dinner afterward, so that was part of what was easy for dinner tonight.

I decided we needed more than just soup, bakery bread toast and hot spiced applesauce.   How about some appetizers?  They had to be easy, I was tired already.

We had just bought some fresh low fat deli ham thin sliced, and that would help ramp up the protein for dinner.  Ham and cream cheese appetizers sounded good, and they really tasted pretty good.

Take a thin slice of ham, spread with room temperature cream cheese and well drained, chopped green olives with pimento.  Roll the ham slice and chill.  Just cut it in serving sections — and use about three thin ham slices per person.  Yummy appetizers, and it seemed like a special treat because it was different.

To make spiced hot applesauce is pretty simple too.  Heat the contents of the can or jar, add a couple heaping tablespoons of brown sugar, and a few dashes of cinnamon.  Stir well and serve.  Occasionally we add a teaspoon of lemon juice to the mix, but not everyone likes that.  My family just prefers it sweet with cinnamon.

The ham appetizers will definitely be made again.  I was looking for some simple ones, and while this video starts out slow getting to the point, it was definitely worth watching to see these appetizers being made.  Well, now I am hungry again, I will not mention for what, but I have the bacon and the breadsticks…

We officially opened a bank account to save for a cruise.  Most of the time we really do not travel that far away for vacations, or just work on the house.  Real exciting time painting, cleaning, fixing, forget it!  One more time this year we will stick close to home and split time between fixing the house and going places that are close, but 2010, here we come!

Hubs and I have not yet decided where we want to go.  Just throwing around a few ideas and trying to decide where to go.  So far we are considering taking a cruise ship to the Caribbean, Alaska or Hawaii.  If we pick the Alaskan cruise, we both decided that it will have to be during summer weather; at this point in time, nobody here is interested in going anywhere cold!

It will be about a year and a half before we can go as we want to pay for the cruise ahead of time and have spending money, too.  That is a great incentive to tighten our budget and save more.

We will be trolling the internet to find cruise lines and discounted cruises and then plan accordingly.  Neither of us have ever been on a cruise, so anyone with any favorite cruise lines, please leave a message on this post.

What are your favorite cruise lines or line, and is it worthwhile to buy trip cancellation insurance? What did you like or not like about the cruise ship?  How do we get the best discounted cruises?

Our gas company should be making quite a bonanza of money this winter, our temps are lucky if they are two digit and the forecast says it is going to be even lower this coming week.   We turned the thermostat down to a chilly 66 degrees to keep down our escalating utility bills, and we are all grumpy about that.

Some Happy Trails today, it is just plain cold, outside and inside.  The only difference is when you have been outside, the inside feels like a heatwave.  Stay inside awhile and a lousy 66 degrees feels cold.

Hubs has Merino wool socks and thermal underwear.   And right now, some thermal underwear and Merino wool socks would make a big difference in my attitude.  Something very soft and luxurious and warm.   Hubs has to put those on when he visits his brother.  They are keeping their inside temperature at 62 degrees.  Now that is really chilly inside.

About the only places near here that would carry the good Merino wool socks will charge way above what a little work to search online reveals as the going price.  A lot of the online stores also have the thermal underwear available too.  Delivery charges are worthwhile not to have to run outside to run from store to store.  In the meantime, I have a blanket when I am sitting down and two pairs of old socks to stay warm.

Well, no wonder these Merino wool socks are a bit pricey,  up to $11,000 for a ram…

We have a winter wonderland outside tonight and by tomorrow we will have even more snow.  Hubs promised to teach me how to learn cross country skiing, but with all this snow, he is not going to have any more excuse to put it off.

It is not as though we do not have a place to go, and I can borrow some cross country ski equipment from a friend nearby.  The salt trucks have come by and spread more salt tonight, so the roads are passable — we will see what happens by tomorrow though.

One of the country clubs in the area permits the neighborhood kids to sled ride and ski down the sloping areas, so that should be a safe enough place to start learning.  And if Hubs does not quit telling the story about how he used his cross country skis on the local roads and had to be careful because other richer neighbors were driving snowmobiles, I am going to scream.

If this birdbrained ostrich can ski, so can I, and I do hope those are not famous last words…  Even if this is a spoof, it sure looks real.

Maybe I just do not go shopping enough?  Last year I ordered a pair of winter boots from Penney’s on sale,  got my size, and the darn things did not fit, they were huge.  Disgusted, I put the box away and forgot to return them, so all that is left to wear is my winter boots from about 6 years ago and they really need replaced.  Getting a little sorry looking, but right now that is the only pair that fits.

Boots are a pain to put on and then carry shoes around as well, so we all tend to pretty much avoid wearing them if possible.  We are supposed to be getting some pretty heavy snow this weekend, so going without might not be an option.

Hubs has a couple pairs of waterproof boots that he likes and are still in good shape.  My old ones are just getting too old, but you know how you hate to throw something out that actually is what you really like and cannot find a replacement.  You just do not want to part with them.  They are the perfect pair of boots, ladylike and waterproof.

Maybe shopping sales for something ladylike and waterproof at the same time just do not exist in winter boots fashions any longer.    Guess I will just have to try the internet stores again to find winter boots, or, we could go out shopping this weekend and then have to stop somewhere for lunch…that would be nice.

In the alternative, I could go sock shopping and get a few more pairs, then maybe the ones from Penney’s would not fall off my feet if worn all at the same time.

We had a lot of rain the other night and today was so cold, maybe 20 degrees for the high, but a little windy.  Just perfect weather to get a hot shower, bundle up and stay inside.

We should have checked the car earlier today because Hubs forget to stop at the store yesterday to get something he had ordered.  Big mistake to wait until evening and not check the car to scrape the ice on the windshield and see if the doors open.

The spray can of defroster was out of pressure, and due to the temperature, there was no talk of walking to the closest store that is almost two miles away that might have it.

You really do not want to know how long it took outside in the cold to use a hair dryer to open the driver door.  We had to attach some plastic to the car roof rack and hold the sides to prevent the wind from blowing away the hot air from the hair dryer.  This takes two people freezing their rears off to accomplish!

Why are we not using the garage?  Besides the fact there is no room for the car, I have a blow dryer!!  Just get out a heavy extension cord, heavy plastic to shield the door from the wind and plug in the blow dryer.

Hubs and I were talking today about going to a bowling alley for some exercise.  We have not done that in ages, and neither of us has bowling shoes anymore.  I gave away our bowling shoes a long time ago because we just did not use them.  Rentals are usually available at the bowling alley, but Hubs will not wear anything that was already worn by someone else.   That will mean he will have to get a new pair.

It would only be fair if he can get new bowling shoes that I can get a personalized bowling ball with German Gal emblazoned on it.  Our discussion deteriorated from there because we started adding up what it would cost us to start bowling again.  It really would not matter so much if bowling was something we would keep as a regular activity, even if only for the exercise, but that is debatable, especially when my fibromyalgia flares up.  A flare-up can go on for a long time.

One of our biggest problems is there are no places to go bowling within 20 miles of where we live.  The nicer place to go is about 35 miles away.  Years ago, there used to be about 5 different places to go within about 10 miles, but those bowling alleys are all closed and it would be a long trip just to bowl a game or two.

Since we would be out a long time, we also figured in the cost of eating a meal out, snacks and drinks at the alley.   We will talk about it some more, but I just do not think it is going to work for us without an alley much closer.  Bowling is fun and really helps you exercise different muscles.  Somehow that long trip just throws a real gutter ball in the whole idea.

Watch this guy bowl backwards…

It is cold today, raining and icing over everything since early afternoon, and not a good idea to try walking anywhere outside on the ice.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better, but hoping that has done nothing for me today; we were basically stuck in the house.

It was a very good thing we had dinner early and settled down to answering email, visiting favorite sites and posting in forums.  It has been a long evening without being able to go out and do anything tonight.  One of the forum posts I read today was about using a neti pot for nasal irrigation to help with sinus problems.

That sounded simple enough, so it was time to check it out.  Wrong move, I went to YouTube to see what they had in the way of explanation and video.  It was totally gross to see people inserting the end of the neti pot up their nose and watch the process on video.  Another product called Nasopure did not look as bad.

I will not describe what I saw or post it, except to say that people with real sinus problems were being filmed to post as videos.  One gal with a sinus problem apparently could not afford the neti pot, so she was using a watering can and made her video anyway.

Is it really that important to become famous in a home made video and be totally gross at the same time?

Hubs needs to get up a bit earlier to find interesting (and I use that term rather loosely) things online to email me.  We have his and hers computers, because neither of us wants to share, so he emails it.  Anyway, I was at the already been there, done that stage with reading the article and obsessing over yet another additional possible rise in the prices of meat and milk.

Your friendly, and at your service, Environmental Protection Authority seems to think that if we could just tax pigs (no comment here), beef cattle and cows, there could be rules and regulations on gaseous emissions under the Clean Air Act, a cash cow to call their own.

Initially, I had visions of getting all the animals together and getting them to agree on no more belching, farting or defecating.  Anyway, that isn’t what the EPA has in mind, it just wants tax money.   Plain and simple, it is a fart tax.  If this needs paid on the animals, could we be next?  Oh, we already pay more in taxes than we get to keep, just nothing designated, yet, as a fart tax.

If the EPA does get its way and taxes the animals, the animals are going to tell the farmers they will have to pay for it or go out of business.  Not one of the animals I polled could produce a W-2 form or had a Social Security number.   There was lots of confusion here, the hens were feeling left out and the raccoons thought it was fair they were not mentioned because they did work chewing up leftover garbage and reducing the load on the landfills.

Personally, I blame volcanoes, among other things.  Taxing animals and putting farmers out of work is just not the way to go, especially in our economy.  The taxes will move up the food chain, one way or another.

Here’s the article http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081230165231.aspx

This is our New Year’s resolution for 2009, and we are going to see how well we can stick to it.  Hubs and I both love our coffee, but Hubs never misses a chance to bring the vacuum pot with him to get tea when picking up our order at the local Chinese restaurant.  I like the Chinese tea, but cannot drink much as it has a lot of caffeine in it — maybe not a lot, but more than one mug of Chinese tea is too much for me.

Our local groceries carry so many kinds and flavors of herbal tea and expensive gourmet tea, that I feel like a kid in a candy store.  I love to pick new brands and flavors.  We still have our standby favorites like herbal tea with lemon, mandarin orange, cinnamon, and a few others, but it is always exciting to try a new flavor or brand.

We usually embellish a cup of herbal tea with honey or sugar, and sometimes slices of lemons, limes or oranges.  Hubs will try some of the new flavors with milk, but usually goes back to sugar, and fruit if we have it.  Gourmet tea is only for morning (after I’ve had my coffee first, of course) because the ones we pick always seem to have caffeine, and I do not drink any more caffeinated beverages during the rest of the day.

Tea is steeped in American history, it sparked the American Revolution!