Category Archives: Rancho Roly Poly

My electric lawnmower

It annoys me, sometimes, dragging the extension cord around behind the mower, and trying not to trip or run over it. It does look mighty Green, and should easily qualify for the EPA’s proposed new Global Warming rules on every emission.

As long as the lawnmower inspector doesn’t complain that the source of the electricity is the city’s power plants which are run mainly by fossil fuels. In their case, a lot of natural gas, supplemented by a little nuclear and a little wind. I suppose I should worry what will happen to the landscaping guys I pay to do the front yard. They use plain old gas mowers trailing black smoke exhaust. The restrictions could make them significantly raise their charges, ultimately putting me out dragging the extension cord of the electric mower in the front yard as well.

Ambrosia salad

From the Rancho Roly Poly Recipe File:

1 13.5 oz can pineapple chunks, drained

1 cup flaked coconut

1 cup mini marshmellows

1 can (11 oz) mandarin oranges

1 cup sour cream

Mix pineapple & oranges, coconut, marshmellows, sour cream. Chill, at least 3 hours.

Yum

Inspiration by Miriam’s Ideas.

Wi-Fi

Got ourselves a wireless router and plugged it in and so Mom was wandering the Web, in between some last-minute office work, in the kitchen last night. Only problem now is to arbitrate Mr. B.’s desire to use his Nintendo DS gameplayer’s Wi-Fi ability. Have to see how that works and where it will take him before turning him loose with it.

My eye exam

STANLEY_IDREYE.jpg

This is the retina–the light-sensitive tissue on the back wall of my right eyeball–in a digital photo taken by an optometrist Monday in my complete eye exam for new glasses. He said the point where the optic nerve comes in (the white area) has a bit of normal degeneration (for a sixty-four year old) on one side, but the blood vessels are clear, and the dark spot on the left of the retina is only a normal amount of macular granularity. The left retina was the same. Hence, with no disease discovered, my insurance wouldn’t cover the test and I paid the whole sixty-eight dollar fee. But the good news was that my eyesight seems to be good to go for a while longer.

You can’t pop corn with cell phones

Whew. That’s a relief. I was taken in by this idea from a YouTube clip some high school chums were passing around. Then I passed it on in conversation on our trip last week to California. I’ve since emailed the correction to those folks, and will post the link here to the refutation (and explanation) by the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News for anyone else who has also been taken in by the trick video.

Flagged for security

Once again, the TSA has flagged my name on a flight to California tomorrow, as we leave the rancho for a week to visit relatives. That means I can’t print out a boarding pass tonight, but must go to the ticket counter tomorrow and present my driver’s license so they can verify that my address is not the same as the person they’re after. The weird part is this doesn’t come up every time I fly. It did back in the fall of ’06, for a flight to the East Coast, but not earlier this year for a trip to Mississippi. Maybe it’s the coasts the TSA is worried about. For this guy who shares my name. Or it’s just an old list of names that keeps recycling through the system. Bureaucrats.

The heat goes on

Ten days of a hundred degrees and four of ninety-nine so far this month. The front forty at the rancho is turning brown, despite our best efforts to water it after midnight–which is illegal now that Austin is on mandatory water rationing for things like lawns. Meaning you can water two days a week only. Trying to balance whether the five hundred dollar fine for watering other days would be cheaper than buying new sod and starting over. Probably not.