Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

My Sister sent over some templates for envelopes with a note that said she didn't know how to use them. So here is my photo montage of how to use an envelope template: First of all, let's pick out some pretty paper.  Mine came from a stack of paper purchased at Michaels' in the clearance aisle.  Two pages out of the stack were damaged, but at 60% off, I could deal with that. I put the template on the paper, positioning it where I thought it would look best.  Then I drew around the outline of the template with a pencil.  Why pencil? Because you can erase the marks later. This box template, as I look at it will have a sort of triangular shape.  It will be long and have a very narrow bottom.  So I traced around the whole thing, leaving out the parts in the middle.  We will get back to those in a minute. I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut around the basic shape of it to get it off the bigger part of the paper. Then carefully, I cut the smaller shape...

photo courtesty of Facebook Group Nuclineers What you see are plates that have bacteria growing on them- that's the white, cloudy stuff all over the plate. You put one colony on the plate that has a media on it that allows it to grow. You wait a day, then put the dots on. Those two white dots with writing on them are antibiotic discs. I can't read the writing on it, but they are probably two of your more common antibiotics like cephalexen and ampicillin. See the clear halo around  the two on the left from 2009? That means that the antibiotics in the disc have killed all the bacteria around the disc. The bigger the halo, the more effective that antibiotic is to the bacteria. Now look at the one on the right dated 2019. Same bacteria. Same antibiotics at the same dosage. There is no halo around the left and on the right one, barely a halo. That's called,"Antibiotic Resistance" a once-potent antibiotic is now freaking useless to that bacteria. How doe...

-- BTW: Dave decided we needed to watch Bird Box.  I thought it was stupid and FULL of plot holes.  But on to something more fun: Amazon Giveaways I bet you didn't know they even HAD them, right??? Amazon has giveaways. Sellers on Amazon voluntarily put up a number of their product, select the method of choosing the winner and voila! you can win stuff. Here's how: Go to Amazon.com and in the top field, type in Giveaways like so: Then hit enter.  You must first be signed in to Amazon for this to work the best. I have Amazon Prime and it's always on because we stream stuff from the Prime video. When you hit enter, you will be sent to the first of what usually is 100 pages + of giveaways. It looks like this: So you see the first 4 offers right here: An eye massager, a hand massager, orthotic soles for your shoes and a knife set.  If you could scroll down on that screen, you'd see there is 20 offers per page. Now what I do, is select the o...

So this is not the first time that Netflix has claimed to have zillions of viewers on some movie or television show that they have produced.  It's not surprising but I'll tell you their secret: It's the placement of their movie online that do it. Right there is a screenshot of what comes up when I open Netflix with my computer.  The same comes up when I open the Netflix app on my TV.  We have what is called a TV box, which is a small computer that works like a cell phone; you add apps and open the apps to watch Netflix, Sling, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, etc.  So there it is, a HUGE ad for the next Taylor Swift thing.  So I'm not into Taylor Swift, and I try to scroll down to see what is available that I DO like. But with just a TV remote, it's not that easy. You hit the arrow down on the remote and it will skip from the top of the screen to the 'Play" part. Hit arrow down again, you'll highlight the "My List" and down and down it goes ...

            I was at a party earlier this week having a discussion with a friend when his spouse spoke up.  She feels that I should let go of the regret and pain caused by a family member and ‘forgive’ him.  I’m sure she meant well, but whether or not I’ve forgiven that man for the pain he’s caused me and my immediate family is none of her business, nor is it any of HIS business as well.  My forgiveness, or lack thereof, is only between God and I. And I think this is where most people – even Christians- get it wrong.   They believe that #1: you should personally tell that person that you forgive them.   No, you don’t.   Forgiveness is between you and God.   And whether or not you forgive someone should not be made public.   Imagine if you did bad all your life but others would constantly say, “I forgive you”   The majority of people would just go on doing the damage they’ve been doing all alon...

 There are days when life is just annoying. When all you want to do is sit in your favorite chair, or snuggle into bed and just chill.  Or when you are putting up with other people's crap too much. There is a need to get away from the seriousness, or just get away from the reality of lives. Memes help. I've been stashing memes for a few years now. And I remember one unfortunate time when I was awaiting my Graduation ceremony from Tech School, staring at a friend request on Facebook from a Professor that I really didn't want. Who wants to be friends with the person that ruined what was supposed to be the best part of your experience in your program? Yeah, I'd rather just drill holes in my forehead.  I sat at the nearest restaurant - Culvers, by the way, a local treasure here in Wisconsin -grabbing a quick bite before graduation, staring at that stupid friend request.  At that moment, it was too much stress for me to deal with. So I flipped to a Facebook grou...

Photographs are also helpful with reviews.   When I started thinking that I wanted to become a top reviewer on Amazon, my ranking was like #95,460 and my goal was to be below 90,000 by the end of the year. That's because I did not know how long it would take, nor what kind of competition there is for such a thing. I write honest reviews, try to give the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of all items, whether they are a cool pair of ear buds or a mundane item like a loofah scrubber. Reviews, and GOOD reviews are helpful to other customers. To write a good review, you have to set aside your personal bias for or against an item. That comes easier with the items I've won, mostly because they are so random. I take a look at the item, at it's advertisement first. Then I look the item over and see if those aspects DO sell the item. If they don't, that is written in the review. If they do, I say how much that aspect helps me in my life. For instance:...

The other night, I was working on some dinner plans with our son Byron and somehow the conversation drifted our headboard.  The headboard itself was made by my Father-In-Law a few years ago as a Christmas gift.  Dad had asked what I wanted that summer and I had said that we needed a headboard and I would be proud to have one made by my Father. The wood was harvested from their farm and sawed, turned sanded and varnished all by my Father-In-Law.  It's a wonderful, cherished gift.  A few years ago, I noticed the 'eyes' that stare at me on my side of the bed.   Divine intervention?  Some judgement on the marriage? Or just the fact that the pine had two branches that came out at that area of wood? Well, either way, it's always been a fun thing to point out. And as I discussed the eyes with Byron, I decided to add that Aliens were wankers.  Wankers because they never stop for a good photo op, always probing humans without consent, never even giv...

 We’ve got ducks here on the farm.  The number has been set at a maximum of 7 now for a few years.  They’re all Pekin ducks; the ones that you can refer to as “Aflac Ducks.”  White with yellow beaks, they are great scavengers on the farm.  They stay with the chickens in the chicken coop during the night.  It’s a comfy rental agreement.  The chickens prefer to roost at night and the ducks are quite happy to stay on the floor.  We get one egg per female duck per every other day.   We have four female ducks: Zoey, Bella, Dobby and Winkie.    The three males are Duck-Duck, Malcom and Vito.   Vito is our oldest duck in the flock. In fact, he’s the oldest bird we have in this whole farm.   He’s about 7 years old and will probably only live another few years.   He’s been a good drake (male ducks are called drakes) and has been protecting his girls well. The initial hope was that we would be able to sell the duck ...

I'm enjoying a rare day off. Actually, it's made even rare-er due to the fact I'm actually getting PAID for this! I'm going to go up to a friend's yarn shop and help her take great pics of her store so she can post it online and get better sales. But here at the house, the things are pretty quiet. That's actually GOOD. The geese are doing well, even Sweet Pea, who lost an eye to some sort of mishap two weeks ago.  If you look in the photo, he is the one goose whose eye does not reflect the flash of the camera. Which is why I took the photos in the first place. We were pretty sure that the eye was damaged beyond healing and we've been putting Triple Antibiotic Ointment in the eye to make sure that the eyeball heals over and will be sealed away from bacteria.  As a goose, he'll not want to fly anymore, but as a domestic goose, he'll be fine. We've had a goose before that was born with one eye that did just fine. Knitting-wise, I've been ...

It has been my experience that everyone *should* spend at least a summer doing a stint in a factory.   Doesn't matter which one, but the time spent as a factory worker would make you a lot more aware of the world around you.   Why? Because I honestly don't think those people who work in the front office (lovingly termed the 'suits') know what is going on behind those production doors. Now in the last 40 years of my working life, I've spent about 18 or so of them in a factory setting of some sort.   From making food, to metal parts, to plastic trays, it's been made on a machine and my job has been to take what has been produced from that machine, put it in a box or a cart and move it away. My first job after high school of any note was at a factory that made plastic trays.   What was great about it was that the shifts were 4 hours long, and you got a break of 15 minutes.   Little did I know at the time, but that was not par for the course in a ...

The frustrations of  life will get you down, but working through them, I WILL succeed.  There's not another option out there, and I WILL Succeed.

So as I have almost  reached that pinnacle of the age of 50, I've also come to a few real hard realities out there. I've spent a total of 2 years getting a degree as a Medical Laboratory Technician - only to have ALL of the local hospitals and clinics turn me down for a job. My qualifications are exemplary. I graduated WITH HONORS 2nd in my class. What's the problem? My age.   Tomorrow is my 49th birthday and apparently that means I'm too 'old' to work. At least in the minds of a 20 something HR person.  So............I took a job with a local factory.  This week is my first week.  I get up at 4:30 am, grab a hoodie, yoga pants, my steel toed boots and my lunch and off I go. So far, ugh.  Standing for 8 hours a day is brutal.  Listening to kids 1/2 your age complain about how they are 'tired' and 'their feet hurt' just makes you want to throat punch them. But you try to be understanding, but still...........this is the generation of kids wh...

Hubby pulled the last of the veggies from the garden last weekend.  He was not happy about the harvest, nor the entire growing season.  We were fortunate in our area of Wisconsin to get a lot of rain last summer, but we never got flooded. But what we did get from the garden is has been canned and put up for the winter: 5 pints of carrots, 10 pints of parsnip, 8 bags of Brussels sprouts, 14 bags of sweet corn, and 2 liters of Kimchi/Sauerkraut. On the needles lately is this The Entrelac stole that is made from Yarn Bee Chloe yarn from Hobby Lobby.  They had a 30% off sale and the colorway that I chose was 'pick of the bunch'  With that kind of large changes in color, it almost begs to be made into something Entrelac.  So I cast on stitches, did 5 blocks of 10 stitches and started knitting. On size 6 needles, the project is going, albeit slowly. We are coming up on the anniversary of this little buggers' entrance into the family.  Zeus was a rescue...

Last night I had a dream that I was working at one of those huge resorts, like Disney World or something. HUGE place and my role in it was pretty small.  That day, a few guys and I were working on this movable candy making cart.  It was the size of a caboose and had a copper pot, steam table and another table.  As you make hard candy, you boil the mixture, then put it on the steam table to slowly cool it down while you manipulate it . Its gooey work. So the guys and I are done making the candy and the usual thing to do is to clean out the pot, the table, then disinfect it, food rules and all. NOPE! This supervisor just unplugs the whole thing and rolls it down the corridor, gooey candy is all over the place, and we're screwed.............because the Supervisor didn't follow the rules. So we jump ship, leave the cart and run.  We're all wearing aprons and paper hats, so as I run, I tell the guys to get rid of their shit and blend in. I spot an open door, dodge in and...

Which is kinda an oxymoron if you think about it.  You're trying to focus on something but keep getting distracted!  Here at the farm, distractions come in all sizes: From the loose dogs that killed my duck (bad) to getting hurt at work and not being able to use my hand for a few weeks (worse) to new babies being hatched out (YAY!) Yes, two dogs came into our flock, killed Duck Duck and scattered geese to the wind.  I needed Dave's help to get them back to the farm, but when I was able to talk to the County Sheriff, I simply told him that if the owner's dogs got out again, there will be consequences.  This ain't no "Old Country Buffet" here. My hand..........well! I was working a month ago and a blender accident caused the blades to slice N dice my ring finger on my right hand pretty nicely. I'll spare you the really bad pics, it was gruesome. Seven stitches later, they wrapped it thinking it was broke.  Two weeks later, another scan showed no bre...

SO............ My youngest Son moved out of the house and WAY the heck down to Florida about a month ago. It's been weird. We are officially empty nesters now.  No kids around, and we've been just kinda chilling. There's been some stuff being sent down to near Tampa, but other than that, he's supposedly doing well. The last of the kids to leave the house, Alex I've taken a job as a lab tech at a local company that does catalog sales of stuff like sausage and cheese. You probably have heard of them, Swiss Colony.  Well, I'm working in the Microbiology department.  Our team tests the food to make sure they are safe. There are times when I am elbow deep into samples of cheesecakes and cheese and stuff. It's as close to medical lab tech as I'm going to get for now. The pay is less but the schedule is Monday through Friday so that's good. 40 hours a week for now until after the Christmas rush. Then it's layoff time. I'll deal with that...