Anonymous Comments

To everyone who has recently commented on my blog as "Anonymous" and everyone who might in the future...I will not publish your comments.

Why?

Because you seem to be pushing websites of you own and I don't trust these sites to be reputable. I won't even open them myself, never mind make them available to followers of my blog.

I'm sorry if this doesn't sit well with you, but this is the deal.

If you want your comment to have a chance to be published, you MUST sign in with your NAME. Chances are I still won't open your web page because, quite frankly, some of them sound really kinky.

Thank you for your interest in my writings and I hope you will consider using your real name in the future.

Searching for the Perfect Cup of Coffee

I have been on a quest to find the consistently perfect cup of coffee. Using a KitchenAide automatic drip coffee maker, I would sometimes get that perfect taste. More often than not, I would achieve too strong or too weak. Blaaahhh! Plus, I had to make the minimum amount, which was twice what I would use. I was wasting water and coffee and money.

I vowed to buy a single cup coffee maker when my automatic pot went squat. The theory was: each K-cup would produce consistency. I just didn't expect it to go squat so soon. It happened one day as I was making my afternoon cup-o’. PANIC! Out I raced in search of a single serve. I bought a Keureg...and a couple of reusable filters. If you think I'm going to pay $.70 for a cup of coffee...

I tried the different coffees that came with the coffee maker and decided I liked the dark roasted, bold. The best was Newman's organic.

Now the craziness begins to find something in a canned coffee that was as good when using the reusable filter. The short version is: there isn't any.

Upon analyzing the coffee used in the K-cups, I found the coffee is ground so fine it's a powder, not grounds. You won't find that grind in a canned coffee. I'm not sure you could get that fine by grinding the beans yourself. Even if you ground beans twice on the fine setting, I don't think you could do it. Also, there are three tablespoons of coffer powder in each K-cup. You can get three tablespoons of regular grounds into a reusable filter, but not the flavor.

On top of that, when I put the coffee powder from a K-cup (of a strength I’m happy with) into a reusable filter, it's not the same as the K-cup alone. What?

What I have been doing is kind of bizarre, but here it is: I open a K-cup and empty it into a reusable filter. There’s room to spare and I fill the remainder with a bold, dark roast canned coffee. I told you it was bizarre. That gives me my consistent, good cup of coffee.

I will try one more approach to this problem of the perfect, cheap cup of coffee. I frequently get 20% off coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond. I will use these to buy the Newman's organic, which is perfect.

Eventually, I will have that perfect cup of coffee…cup after cup.

Merry Christmas

A very Merry Christmas to one and all. 

If you are reading this, you, like me, survived the “end of the world.” I sincerely hope you didn’t really believe that civilization was going to be wiped out.

Are we going to undergo changes? Of course. We have from the beginning of time. That’s progress. That’s evolution. I hope we never stagnate.

As a civilization goes, we have come a long way, but we have a long way to go. I do believe we can iron out our differences and become a Planet of Peace. It starts with each individual.

The Soul speaks to the Heart and together they speak to the Mind. Uh oh. There is the stumbling block…the wall, if you will. The Soul/Heart can’t always get through to the Mind. I don’t know how to change that. On an individual level, I try to listen to my Soul/Heart, but I’m not always successful. Or, at times I’m just plain willful. I hear the Soul/Heart but I refuse to listen. The results are never pretty. When will I ever learn?

Let’s try harder to be less willful and more Peaceful.

Wishing everyone a New Year filled with an abundance of all good things.

Unspeakable Tragedy Comes to Connecticut

I can't imagine there is anyone, at least in the United States, who hasn't heard about the shooting of 20 children and six adults at the Stony Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.

I grieve for all of them, especially the little ones whose lives were snuffed out at such a young age. They were all six and seven years old. They had not had a chance to really live yet.

How did society fail them? Did we fail them by not having stronger gun control laws? Did we fail them by not having in place programs to identify and treat those who might act out and do the unthinkable?

I'm not sure either of these options, if implemented, would stop such mass shootings. I do have to ask myself if they would, in some measure, help.

The news accounts also talk about the six adults killed on that day at the school. No one wants to give voice to the shooter, Adam Lanza, or his mother, Nancy. No one wants to talk about what tortured souls they must have been. Adam's mother apparently knew her son was a threat. A man who came forward to speak about being Adam's babysitter10 years ago, told how the mother told him to never take his eyes off the child...not for one second, and to never turn his back on him.

Did the mother try to get her son help? Did she give up? Did she live in fear of her son? Had she ever tried to have him hospitalized? These are questions we may never get the answers to. We may never learn the "why" of what Adam did, in spite of our intense need to know.

Nancy and Adam Lanza deserve our prayers as much (if not more) than the 26 other souls who lost their lives that day. I ask you to find it in your heart to pray for ALL the victims of the Newtown shooting.

Computer Problem Fixed

A not so funny thing happened on the way to Cape Cod this past September! My computer went haywire. It was fine at home before I left for vacation, but by the time I arrived at the cottage something had gone wrong. The cursor was in “select” mode and selected everything in sight…whether I wanted it selected or not. I thought it was having iPad envy…since I had just bought my iPad.

Had I known how easy it would be to take notes and jot down thoughts on the iPad, I would not have disturbed MacScene.

When I returned home my first stop was my Apple certified computer guru, Mike. At the shop, my computer behaved perfectly. He spent a lot of time troubleshooting and found nothing. That wasn’t cheap.

A few days later I was back. Mike replaced the top…keys and touchpad. The keys and touchpad were pretty worn. Not cheap. The problem persisted. I took MacScene over to a friend’s house and she behaved beautifully! The computer, not my friend, although my friend behaved, also. But I digress. :)

I called Mike and he suggested I run a diagnostic and see if anything pops up. I did and as far as I knew, everything was OK. But then, when it comes to things like that I have no idea what I’m doing. Back to Mike. He ran a diagnostic and the battery came up as “failed.” Now I have a new battery. Not cheap! And the problem persists. I’m getting the feeling Mike is at the end of his expertise or patience.

I went to Best Buy…three times. Mike (a different Mike) is baffled. He suggested I try wireless mouse, which would disable the touchpad. I bought one. Not cheap! Brought it home in order to configure it to my computer and went back to Best Buy to have them do it.

I have to say here, the Boys of Best Buy not only spent a lot of time on my problem, they did not charge me!

So far I have to say this is the first solution that has actually worked! Everything else was most assuredly necessary, but all the replacing didn’t fix my problem. It still takes forever for my computer to connect to the internet, and I’ll have to wait to see if I will still lose the connection from time to time.

After spending in the neighborhood of $400, I have my fingers crossed that MacScene is back to mostly normal. I can live with a balky internet connection…I couldn’t live with my cursor sending my emails before I had time to thoroughly proof read them. Talk about living dangerously! :)

Kitchen Talk

 I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately…cooking and washing dishes. Yes, I wash dishes because the dishwasher that came with the condo stinks. That’s ok, I don’t mind washing dishes. It’s like ironing…mindless.

Anyway, I have been spending a lot of time making soups, cakes, cupcakes, and muffins. That, in addition to my regular meals.

I have come to this conclusion: other than regular meals the rest of it might not be worth all the fuss and time. Mostly because it takes a lot of time to do from scratch what can be done by opening a box or a can.

Let’s start with soups.

The cream of broccoli and cream of asparagus that I make is good and worth continuing because I like them. If I had use for them as a cooking sauce, I would buy Campbell’s. My cream of mushroom is best left to Campbell’s and used as a cooking sauce. It’s good, but…

Today I made what looked like a great tasting soup, actually a bisque, but it was a great disappointment. It was a butternut squash and sweet potato bisque and after all the work it took to make, I don’t like it. I have packaged for freezing what is left in the hope of finding someone who does like it.

My cream of tomato and chicken soup is worth making. Easy to make and really taste good.

Cupcakes, etc.

Sure they taste good! But…why go through all the mess and clean up when I can open a box and be done with it. Homemade from scratch doesn’t have all the preservatives...point for that. But…

Coffee

My cup of coffee in the morning and another in the afternoon is very important. I want my coffee to have some body to it. I don’t want anything weak and watery. And I want it to taste the same cup after cup.

With the two Kitchenaid coffee makers I had (in two years) it seemed that no two cups were alike. I wanted something I could count on. I made the decision that when my Kitchenaid went squat I would look into getting a Keureg. However, I did not expect my Kitchenaid to go squat so soon.

I did buy a Keureg and two refillable filters. I will not pay all that money for the pre-filled K-cups. And so the search begins.

I tried some of the K-cups that came with the Keureg. Thank goodness there was a book giving the strength of coffees available for the Keureg…some of them were in the complimentary pack. I soon weeded out the weak and totally unacceptable from the dark roasts and bolds. Dark roast and bold…ahhhhh!

I figure I’m saving a lot of money, water and coffee by using the refillable filter. 

I measured the coffee today and found that in the Keureg refillable I use 3 tbsp of coffee. With my old coffee maker I used two 2-tbsp measures...rounded. So I'm using one tablespoon less coffee now.

With the water, instead of using 5 cups (which was the minimum) and throwing away a cup of coffee because I didn't drink it...I now use only the water it takes for one cup...in the case of what I used this morning...I used 14 1/2 ounces. I use a BIG mug! Because I use a refillable filter I am not throwing the K-cups into the garbage!

So in the long run, I am saving $$ and the environment with the Keureg.

Computer Heebe-Jeebes

When I took my computer with me to Cape Cod it was acting up to the point where I was unable to use it!  After spending $300, it still has the heebe-jeebes.

It seems to have a mind of its own...opening files, closing files, selecting text or photos. The most fun is when I open a file and my computer sends it to the "dock"...for safe keeping I suppose.

The top of the case has been replaced (the touch pad and keys); the battery has been replaced having been shown by diagnostics that is was failing. And it's still acting on its own!

I am wondering if perhaps what is acting up is the router and/ or modem!

I have a MacBook that is 6 or 7 years old, and so are the router and modem. I have a problem having to wait for one of them (or maybe both) to connect to the Internet. Hmmmmm!

I will take MacScene over to Barbara's house to see if it acts up over there. If it doesn't (it doesn't act up at the fix it shop), then I think I have found the problem.

I just love electronics. Right now..Thank goodness for my iPad!!!!