The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Hungry Anyone?

We never got this when we were in Ariziona, but Sprout's Farmers Market in Phoenix sells a scrumptious marbeled Deli Rye that goes well with spicy mustard, mayonnaise, and whatever fillings are on hand.  It is sometimes available at Grocery Outlet stores in Southern California. 

Today I'm having it with turkey pastrami with pepper jack cheese layered with a generous mound of my hydroponic scallion tops minced with a few leaves of basil that needed pinching back. 

I'd like to say dessert was this:

But the truth is that although edible, these Campanula Get Mee's from Trader Joe's are too pretty to gobble up.  More about them on my gardening blog:  Ann's Air Gardens

Time allowing, I will keep adding to this page as well:  Blissful Bellflowers

Hail to the Chief!

What a great name for a police equipment supply store.   Their name is Chief and here is what they supply:

florida police equipment

You must be wondering how I find these places.  This one was a little tricky because this online stores doesn't have the Chief logo, a white 5-pointed star on a blue background encircled in red.  It doesn't even have the name Chief, but I recognized the street address of one of their stores.  I was attracted to their tool section, especially this item:

A Cool Tool

$45.95 is an impressive price for the Gerber 600  Pro-Scout Needlenose, especially when it is shipped free. 

Here is the fine print:

Why Shop CHIEF?
Because CHIEF Is More Responsive, Period.
CHIEF has outfitted the Fire, EMS, Law Enforcement and Surveying industries since 1977.

Our competitive pricing, personal customer service and fast delivery ensure that you will be satisfied from the moment you begin working with us. Unlike other online stores, CHIEF has had its distribution channels, customer service and sales staff in place since inception – meaning better service, more products and fewer headaches for you.

Here are other reasons why you should turn to CHIEF...
Worry-Free Ordering
•Easy-to-use, award-winning website (no required registration or annoying ads)
•Order your way: phone (888) 588-8569, mail, fax or online, via our safe, secure online ordering
•Personalized customer service for departments/agencies
•Net 30-day terms to qualifying departments and agencies
•Our worry-free 90-day return policy
•Privacy guaranteed (we will not sell, rent, or lend your name!)
•Our secure online ordering system is certified by McAfee Secure and protected with up to 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption
•GSA Advantage pricing

More Pictures of My Plants

Not having time to start any tomato plants from seeds  this season, I started some from cuttings instead.  A photo is posted here:

Ann's Air Gardens: Milk Jug Tomato Clone

When we came down here, we didn't know how long we would be staying, so I didn't bring a lot of stuff.  

Critters

A while back I inherited 5 lovely stone slabs from a neighbor who was moving away.  Here is one of them:

  When I dragged one across the back yard , I noticed something had dug a hole under the gravel, chewed through the plastic barrier and burrowed right underneath our shed. 

So I stuff a plastic trash bag with some metal jar lids and other recyclables, and push that into the hole and then covered it with an unopened trash bag, shoveled gravel back over the top, and we shall see where they dig next.

The neighbors think it is the work of ground squirrels, although I've never seen any about.  What do you think?

Crash, Crunch, Ouch!

The "ouch" is from watching dollar bills fly out of one's pocket after the crash and the crunch. 

We have only had to have auto body work done 3 times in the last 35 years or so, but as in all that time we never damaged anyone else's property, it was annoying each time someone damaged ours.

Each time the vehicle was parked while one of us was at work, running errands downtown, or in one instance just opening the front door after having gotten off from work.   I guess we should be glad we weren't involved in moving accidents, but the problem with having your car crashed into while it is parked is that usually the culprits get away, leaving us stuck with the deductible. 

What adds insult to injury is having to chase around town trying to find a repair shop.  Those folks are busy!  Other people must have more accidents than us.  There is usually a long wait even to meet with someone to discuss the repairs. 

But now there are some Collision Repair Experts who can be booked online:

auto body shop irvine

What else is really kewl is they post a customer satisfaction index and reviews on the home page for every shop in their network. 

Corn Fed

I grew up in corn country and even worked for the DeKalb Agricultural Association, long before they were purchase by Monsanto.  The best perk of that job was that employees got to buy as many cartons of eggs as they could use at the then discounted price of 25 cents a dozen.   When I took an undergraduate biology class at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, the whole semester was devoted to corn genetics.  Ackkk!  I wanted to disect a frog!

Imagine my surprise when I learned that the DeKalb Alumni Association is not a group of NIU grads, but rather of former employees of "the AG" and if you never drove through the midwest and noticed the little flying ears of corn logos posted along just about every country road, here's a reproduction:

Alumni Association

I missed the History Channel's recent feature on corn, but Discover has a great page on this versatile vegetable in their How Stuff Works series:

I'm Retired but Corn Isn't!

I love that photo.  Speaking of great photos, this page on hydroponically grown corn has some too:

Hydroponic Corn Gets Seven Feet High

 

All About Online TV

I don't watch much TV and when I do it is usually filtered by TIVO or some other service that lets me be very picky about what I spend time seeing.  True, I miss one or two cute commercials that way from time to time, but guess what?  All of the really adorable commercials, such as the little dog who sings about having no bugs on him, for example, can be viewed online anyway.

For that matter, there are also some TV shows I've seen online.  I used to have a tuner card in my home computer many years ago, and then when we got the Media version of Windows, it came with an external tuner, and on those rare occasions when there were two good "somethings" on at once, hubby could record his on TIVO and I could record mine on my laptop.   But now I'm running wireless and don't want the baggage, so I've been looking around for a legal way to pull some shows in over my laptop without having to have any extra equipment.

Spreety TV Online : Watch TV Shows Online Free

The above link is sort of the mother of all free online TV resources. It has way more information about what is available than anyone could possible use and to help you wade through it they have several training videos on how to navigate over there and also many genre pages.  Before I headed on over to gardening (that would be the Home & Garden Online TV page), I noticed that there was a section on 4th of July fireworks displays.   So I got distracted by a few webcams links they had posted there.  Not TV, but apropos.  The real ones haven't started yet where I live, but we live near a resort casino that puts on a display every year and it is about time.  We should be able to see a few through the window any minute now.