Amy

Infusions Bistro was on the cover of the Lifestyles section of the Lowell Sun today. Great food, and Chef Phil comes out to every table to chat with the patrons and ask how dinner was. The article makes me want to head to Ashby for some ultra-fresh lamb.

( Prep is going surprisingly well )

I decided to abandon my swiss army knife at the TSA checkpoint, rather than mailing it home. It was a sad moment, and I'll have to think of another way to carry scissors, a nail file, and tweezers compactly in my purse (do they still make the swiss army card?)

I fear my knife ended up as Spiders, or maybe on eBay.

I've been steeped in planning and fretting (and at a family reunion) so it's time to finally say

We're getting married!

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Interesting Recycling Facts: 22 Bits of Recycling Trivia ( I've copied them below, for reference. )

The personal finance blogosphere has been discussing Food Stamps vs. WIC, and most people who have used both feel that WIC is much more restrictive, but it does avoid the stereotype of the welfare mom buying cigarettes with Food Stamps (which you can't do, but the stereotype is still out there). Anyways, I found the WIC rules interesting/a good cost effective healthy guideline, and thought I'd share:

"WIC chooses food package sizes that offer the best value. This is why WIC requires you to buy cereals that are 12 ounces or larger and other specific food sizes and quantities."

The list also says no Organic, no flavored milk, the fruit juice has to be 100% fruit, no Deli slices of cheese, no cheese food or flavored cheese, and no baby carrots.

WIC Food List

I am impressed that Yes, you can buy name brand cereal. I am surprised at the lack of whole fruit (juice only), whole vegetables (again, juice only, or carrots for breastfeeding women only), & bread.

I took apart the roomba, following these instructions. And couldn't get it back together right.

Scott had to spend the next 2 hours with various glues and adhesives and surrogates for triangular screwdrivers (yes, he had to deal with those tamper-proof screws) and lots of swearing, but he got it back together.

I'm not allowed to disassemble things anymore.

This past week,

- Scott spent an hour at Home Depot, bought PVC for the Fish Tank project
- I bought shorts and a paper towel stand at Marshalls
- Dinner at Bertuccis
- Europe airfare
- New Tires and an oil change
- Dim Sum
- Head-mounted flashlight
- mosquito-repellent hat at REI
- refill filters for the litterbox air freshener
- groceries
- And finally, a new computer for the kitchen from woot last night.

Man, if we go into recession, it's definitely not our fault, we're doing out damnedest.

Chatting with out silicon wafer inventory man, Ralph, I learned that the value of a 200mm wafer as scrap has gone from $0.50-$1 a few years ago to $40 now. Whoa! Why has the value gone up so quickly? Thank IBM and the burgeoning solar cell industry.

Video

What do the wafers look like? There's a bag of them in the upper right on this site.

Ugh, the weather's so hot/humid/threatening rain that I drove the half mile to Marshalls to buy new shorts.

I'm about to make banana cookies and now I'm a little frightened, after finding Bacon Cupcakes in the archives. O.o

Man, Caramel candies need to be more popular. I bough 100 grand bars last week, and Sugar babies just now, but both are hard to find. What do people have against caramel?

Caramello isn't in our vending machines anymore either. *sad*

Last night we sealed the deal, and bought our airfare for the November European river cruise.

Whee! First time in Europe for either of us. Where are we going? Up the Rhine! Here's a map.

Love it!

I read a lot of personal finance blogs, and got fed up with the smug "We are better than all those stupid average Americans because our credit cards are paid off and we drive a paid off car." The perception is that the average American has thousands upon thousands of dollars in credit card debt, a new car, granite countertops, a subprime loan, and on and on.

In reality, 55% of Americans do not have credit cards, or they pay the balance in full each month, so if you don't have credit card debt, you're in the majority and don't have to toot your horn as someone "special."

In reality, cars are getting older, the median age is 9.2 years. So if you drive a 2000 model year or newer, you've got a new car compared to the average Joe.

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I just realized that I'll make my last car payment on my baby brother's 30th birthday.

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Just put the numbers into fueleconomy.gov, so here's the final tally for the curious. Includes some driving to/from work, as we didn't top up the tank at the start and end of the trip:

2560.6	miles
37.7	mpg
$289.22

Most expensive gas was in Ontario, then Michigan, then New York. Massachusetts was cheapest, and is actually down to $3.97/gallon at the place I normally go.

I would think the lack of sunshine would give everyone SAD and they'd send themselves into fudge comas every December. But this nice map of obesity in North America shows that No, people in the South have us beat.

Apparently in a battle between poutine and fried chicken, the chicken makes you fatter.

Taubes Lies!

There was a moment where I seriously considered it. I went through the Nature Conservancy's Tensas River basin project. It sounds like a great project that will preserve and grow natural area, sequester carbon, blah blah blah. Promising! So, I went through the carbon footprint calculator on their site, and was not surprised by the carbon footprint (very large because we fly so much), but I was surprised by what they charge to absolve you of your sins:

( Indulgences have gotten pricey! )

Tucker peed in my shopping bag Monday night. It was quite a startling discovery. I glanced down and realized that "Hey, I left this bag on the floor weeks ago, I should put it away!" Leaned down, swooped up the bag, and water spilled out. But no, not water! Slightly yellow, as I could tell with the contrast against the white papers it landed on (that I should also have put away months ago). A moment of confusion. Did the air conditioner drip into the bag? Did I spill water in the bag while filling Tucker's water dish? Oh, TELL ME this isn't pee. *sniff* Well, it smells a little like pee, and the liquid that's soaking into that paper is kinda yellowish. But only kinda, and maybe the pee smell is just the fact that his litter box is over there, and Scott's cleaning it?

And then I stepped out of denial, and accepted that Yes, this is Cat Piss.

Papers into trash. Paper towels to dry the entertainment center I'd splattered, and mop up what I could from the floor. My skirt went in the laundry. Bag was rinsed, and laundered too. And we got out the vacuum and steam cleaner, and steamed the carpet. What a debacle.

On the upside, no pee last night. We were worried that he had a bladder infection, because cats with bladder infections tend to pee in non-litter-box places. Nope, looks like his box just got filthy while we were away, and he was protesting. Scott was actually in the process of deep cleaning the litter box when I made the discovery. And then Scott deep cleaned Tucker's drinking fountain for good measure.