In the meantime rather than post about my own CBG I’ve been building…which I really should do.  I’m going to post about Cigarboxnation so I can try and win a professionally built CBG.  In exchange I promise I’ll come back and post a real writeup about my CBG at some point…and update this software…and install Amy a blog for the upcoming baby.  Oh yeah…I guess I haven’t even mentioned that here lately either.  Facebook…you made me lazy!

Anyway, here’s what finally made me remember my password and post an update:

How to build a cigar box guitar – Free Plans at www.cigarboxnation.com.

Oh.  And I know that both nevermindthesand.com and blog.dunephotos.com are having problems getting here right now.  Just haven’t had time to deal with it.

So there’s a locally owned chain of gas stations here in Yuma who offer a cash discount.  Overall this seems to be a very popular offering based on the comments I hear around town and see in the letters to the editor of the local paper.

Conversely we also have AM/PM stations who charge a “credit/debit” surcharge.  Which is almost universally despised and complained about at any opportunity by anyone who stopped at one for gas without knowing about it.

Essentially they’re both the same – you get charged more for using a card and pay less if you pay cash.  Yet one marketed as a discount is loved by consumers while the other portrayed as a penalty is hated.   Many times by the same people.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily some people let themselves be misled into lousy deals.

I also found one last bag of the grass seed I’ve been using in the backyard and another bag of starter fertalizer since things are starting to brown a little back there (I cut back my watering schedule a little prematurely it seems) but haven’t got that down yet either.  I did however get this up:

Flag on our carport

I’ve been wanting to put a flag up since we moved in.  There really isn’t a place in our front yard for a tradional flagpole.  And thanks to the carport I couldn’t really mount one to the house.  But I figured the carport itself would be a nice place to mount one.  That tube was uncapped though so I couldn’t just bolt a bracket on.  I ended up cutting a piece of wood to fit inside the tube, then screwing another piece to the end that would be big enough to mount the bracket to.  Seems to work like a charm!  I also picked up a cheap solar light which is mounted on the wall under the carport to shine up at the flag – we’ll see tonight if it’s bright enough to do any good or not.

Oh yeah, the photo was snapped with Amy’s new cell phone which we got on saturday.  That was the main reason we didn’t get much else done this weekend.  Once we got her her new toy she wanted to come home and play with it   Looks like it does a decent job on photos.  And she’s really happy with it since she finally has the UK fight song as her ring tone.

In other news friday night I was “treated” to the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tried to eat in my life.  In Yuma the late night options are rather limited so we ended up at Denny’s.  I ordered a western burger which I’ve had before and quite enjoyed.  But this time something went wrong.  I don’t know if it was someone in the kitchens idea of a sick/cruel joke…or if they ran out of BBQ sauce and tried to cover for it…but instead of BBQ sauce my burger was covered in A1.  And I don’t mean just a splash…I mean swimming in it.  Now I like A1 just fine…but it’s not something to be eaten in that kind of quantity.  The first bite of the burger brought tears to my eyes.  I recognized the taste…but couldn’t quite place it…so I took another bite to try and figure it out.

After 2 or 3 bites I figured out that it was A1 and not BBQ.  At that point I attempted to scrape off as much as I could…but it was still way too much.  To add insult to injury they put tomatos on my burger after I asked for it with none, and the bug was both stale AND soggy.  Apparently my burger sat under the heat lamps since the bun was soggy from the outside/bottom up due to condensation NOT due to juices soaking into it. After a few more attempted bites I couldn’t handle anymore…thankfully our server showed up around that time to ask how everything was.  He tried to claim that it was a mix of BBQ/A1 but I pointed out I had ordered this before and something was quite wrong tonight.  He offered to get me something else but at that point even though I was hungry, I could eat no more as my stomach was in knots from the quantity of A1 I had consumed.

I overheard the server talking to the manager which I believe is why he came back with a new bill that didn’t include my “meal”.  And I heard him going into the kitchen say “well, I got you off the hook on this one” which leads me to believe the kitchen knew full well what they were doing.  Had they just told me they were out of BBQ I would have gladly ordered something else.  Now instead I’m afraid our late night dinner options may be even more limited for awhile

I’m getting rid of the twitter box.  It just slows things down too much and I don’t update it enough.  So maybe the site loading quicker will help inspire me to post more.  Plus I just made some big progress on my Manx that I’m anxious to talk about so that may also spur some more posts.

Of course I’m also still enjoying watching grass grow in my yard – so “more frequent” posts may be a relative kind of thing   Keep your fingers crossed!

You see, there are more than one set of exercises that they do. While the one at that school is now too far away for me to watch – there’s another at a local park which just happens to be a few blocks away from my new house! The big tree that gives us so much shade over the house and patio and the RV shade block most of the view – but if you’re quick you can still snap a few as they pass overhead.

The fridge is now at a safe temp – but it’s cranked all the way up to do it so we are going to have to have it looked at…but it can hold for a few weeks since this just isn’t a good time for us to be worrying about fixing the fridge. I may also go into a bit more detail about what happens when I get a new obsession with some more talk about coffee. And just for fun a couple of fisheye photos from Christmas that I found on my memory card when I took the photos for this post. So read on for the rest of the fun.

The dishwasher ran very well with it’s drain now clear. I was amazed that other than not having any signs of adhesive left on it the plastic button looks completely unharmed. Given the amount of noise it had been making I assumed it would be a mangled mess. My first guess that it was bouncing around on the impeller didn’t make much sense. Either there would be enough room for it to get past the impeller – or either it or the impeller would have ground up rather quickly. When I saw it in the drain hose a few weeks back I knew it was past the impeller – and it was making way too much noise to just be bouncing at the bottleneck. Once I removed the house the cause was pretty clear. The shape of the drain meant there was a little chamber inside the hard plastic of the impeller housing and this plastic chunk was basically trapped in there. The sound was it hitting against the equally hard plastic walls. With the red bit removed the dishwasher seemed MUCH happier but it still didn’t get off the haze it has been putting on our glassware since it backed up.

I’m still organizing my files after moving, and the new dishwasher manual is one of the things I’m still not sure where I filed it. So while I was waiting for the PDF to download I did a quick google search and found this suggestion. The owners manual suggested something similar though omitting the bleach step. Gave it a try today and sure enough our glasses are nice and clear again – and the “new plastic” smell our dishwasher has always had is finally somewhat better!

The fridge is also showing about 38F-39F measured in the middle of the second to top shelf. As I already mentioned it’s set to its highest setting to achieve this though so we are going to have it looked it. But at least for now we know our food should stay a little fresher.

Anyone know what this is?

It’s our popcorn popper. A 1200watt White Westinghouse. Works ok, but tends to burn the popcorn a bit and we tend to just nuke our corn now. So it’s been collecting dust. It’s one of the reasons for my newfound fascination with coffee however. You see, the past few years I’ve been bouncing into coffee hacks that sound like fun to me. And the one I kept hearing again and again in different but all universally positive ways is home roasting coffee in a popcorn popper. But to be honest I think it’s the roasting itself that first intrigued me.

And that’s thanks to Williams Brewing a homebrew supplier I’ve bought from off and on over the years. Their kits are nice for the beginner but a little too “Packaged” for my preferences. Though every now and then they’re great for a lazy background brew, like during a party:

They were also where I got my brass tap tower for a remarkably low price because it was a “Scratch and dent”. The “dent” was a tiny little thing in the top, most people don’t even see it when they know it’s there and are looking for it until it’s pointed out to them. But the point is a few years ago Williams started carrying home coffee roasting supplies and green coffee beans.

I didn’t even like coffee but the idea intrigued me, and the roasters they offered intrigued me further. The fanciest was a hot air device that immediately reminded me of a popcorn popper. The other was a pop-corn popper, the stovetop kind with a spinner in it. And the third was a basket for use over a grill – though it was warned that this method took a LOT of practice and skill to do even passably well at. And the stovetop method wasn’t very easy either. $75 for the roaster killed my interest on top of me not being a coffee drinker. But the simple methods nagged at me and I kept thinking about ordering a small bag of green coffee to play with along with my beer order. I order from Williams so infrequently though that it was never very likely to happen. Still it nagged at me that there must be a quick, cheap, and easy way to roast coffee at home based on what I had just learned.

And sure enough I would shortly learn about people using hot air popcorn poppers. And it just happened that our popper was the correct style – though it’s wattage may be a bit low. I’m not too concerned though since I’m not looking to push things to a french roast. And even a vienna roast will probably be something I do more by accident than on purpose. Apparently the lighter roasts are supposed to let more of the “local” character of the bean show through instead of the roast. And I’m rather keen to learn the differences between various coffee beans. I ordered up an 8 pack sampler selection (4lb total) from Sweet Marias (Side note: Apparently SM was started on Columbus Oh where Maria worked as a curator at the Wexner Center at OSU, one of my favorite museums, how could I not order from them!)

I’m not going to do any modifications to the popper just yet, aside from some kind of chimney to replace the plastic top that’s in bad shape. I may eventually add a speed control to the fan, but we’ll see if I need to get that crazy. I have some other ideas on home roasters that I may also pursue if this works out. But like I said, when something tweaks my interest I do tend to go a little deep into it. And hey, 4lbs of green coffee, even with shipping, is less than 4lbs of store shelf coffee would cost me. And I’ll have a lot more flavor experimentation possible.

And Finally the fisheeyes from Christmas that I found:

Oh – and Wordpress apparently released a new version over the weekend. I’m testing the new gallery with this post and I don’t think lightbox will be working with it. In fact I’m not even sure if lightbox is still working on my old posts after this upgrade, I should go check that out!

So when Rich called to remind me that tomorrow is our pickup day for the citywide cleanup I just explained that we had already got rid of a ton of stuff to move and don’t really have much more built up again yet. He then told me about how well he trimmed his trees – and offered me his trimmer. Heck he’s only a block away and a nice long pole trimmer would let me do a nice job. I may not feel safe to drive a car or stand on a ladder under the influence of this medicine…but a pole trimmer within walking distance. I guess I can try that.

The activity did me pretty good actually. My ears unplugged and with my blood flowing I started to feel better – my throat is still pretty rough from all the coughing but overall I’m feeling a lot better. And the yard is looking at LOT more open. Here’s a quick pano I snapped. It’s got a bit of a focus problem in the kitchen, and the last frame showing the empty ficus area was unusable…but compared to the shot I uploaded a few days ago you can see how much more open the main backyard tree is now.

Oh yeah, it also shows off how our yard lights up at night. This is without the kitchen “work” lights on.

See, the thing is I have a lot of different hobbies and past times. I don’t have time to maintain a website or blog for each…and they’re all so varied that I never could quite figure out how to do one overall site for everything. So I’ve decided to stop thinking about it and just do it.

Yeah, my dad starting a blog WAS the final straw. When he started talking about my old darkroom that clinched it. So I’m not sure where this will go, but I basically just plan on posting the kind of stuff I usually send friends – it will just be shared with everyone now. So hang on and be prepared for just about anything…