Thursday, November 15, 2012

Twilight


posted by Shane @ 9:05 AM 0 comments

The Band

My daughter has discovered that she really loves the karaoke machine we got her which leads me to believe that she would also really like a karaoke machine.  Between that, Brock's drums, and Kylie's piano we pretty much have a band.

Hopefully our kids will prove to have some musical talent that neither my wife or I posses because music is a cool thing if you can do it.  It's a really uncool thing if you can't but try anyway.  I think we've all seen examples of that from time to time.

posted by Shane @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

Pillows

I can not believe how expensive cushions and pillows are.  We bought new (to us) couches for our living room last year and still have not bought matching pillows because we can't pull the trigger on something that is $20 apiece or more and we need like 8.

I'm hoping that we'll find some at a discount at some point but in the mean time we're making do without.  As it is a rolled up blanket works just fine when you want to lay down and I didn't have to shell out $20 for it. 

Plus we just repainted so if we had bought before they would now probably be the wrong color.

posted by Shane @ 8:41 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

BYE

Well the Browns didn't lose this past weekend, thanks to an inspired performance against BYE.  It was a hard fought battle but ultimately the Browns were able to hold them to a tie. 

No harm done to their stellar record this year, and it's on to next week for an equally tough opponent.

posted by Shane @ 9:21 AM 0 comments

Workshop Hoarder

Hoarding is bad in every place besides the workshop.  Out there, you never know when a random piece is going to come in handy.  I have drawers full of bolt, screws, and nuts of all kinds as well as whatever else might come in useful someday.  You never know when that orphaned caster wheel will save the day on some future project.

It sounds silly but I have found it to be a life saver.  Many times I've made use of something that I held onto for no real reason and was able to keep from spending more money on something new.  Plus, machining your own solutions for things out of scrap parts is fun.

posted by Shane @ 9:19 AM 0 comments

Friday, November 02, 2012

Headphones

As I mentioned in my last post, I love to run.  I also love to listen to audio books while I run, but the head phone cords were always annoying.  They would get caught in my shirt and pull the ear buds out of my ears or flop around in annoying ways while I ran.

Recenctly I upgraded my player to a MotoActv.  It's a GPS/MP3 combo that is great for running.  Another great feature is that it comes with bluetooth unlike my previous player the Ipod Nano.  So despite some misgivings about whether or not it would work I broke down and bought some bluetooth head phones (Motorola SD-10).

Man am I glad I did.  They work perfectly and I never have to deal with the cord issues.  I worried that there would be signal issues but so far I have had none.  Definitely worth the money.

posted by Shane @ 8:45 AM 0 comments

Reading

I love to read, but don't always have the time to read as much as I would like.  Thankfully, I've discovered some really cool ways to use otherwise wasted time to get some reading in.

First of all, I have a 40 minute commute, and a few years ago I discovered audio books.  Since then I have been using that time in the car to "read" many books I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to.  Thankfully, our library system here is really good and I've usually got a lot to choose from.

Also, I love to run and I discovered a free audio book download called digital downloads that allows me to check out audio books and download them to my mp3 player.  That way I can zone out when I'm running and get even more reading done.

So far this year I've read 24 books, and I doubt it would have been more than 5 if I hadn't discovered these methods.

posted by Shane @ 8:40 AM 3 comments