Where there's smoke

...There's an underground coal fire. This is one of the strangest things I've heard, and it's happening right here in Ohio. I quote from today's WCLT radio's news briefs:

Underground Coal Fire In Perry County
Threatening Wayne National Forest

An underground coal fire that was started almost 120 years ago in New Straitsville is slowly working its way under Wayne National Forest.U-S Forest Service archaeologist Ann Cramer says smoke started coming up through cracks in the floor of the 233,000 acre forest last summer. She says it smelled like burning tar.

An estimated 200-square miles of underground mineral deposits have burned since the fire began in 1884. The coal seam is up to 14 feet thick and there's about 600,000 acres of coal and abandoned mine shafts surrounding New Straitsville, which is about 49 miles southeast of Columbus.

The town's official history says the fire was set in October 1884 by anti-union workers. They soaked railroad cars that were loaded with timber with oil, ignited them, and rolled them into mine openings.

I didn't know a fire could burn that long, and no doubt the protesters didn't either. I guess I never thought about it, but the fire has its two needed sources: fuel and oxygen. But for something to burn like that for over 100 years....Wow. I know the earth spews lava from volcanoes, but this just sounds so weird. I hope some of those idiots got their hands burned.

If you'd like to read more about the fire's history, pick up a copy of Ohio Oddities: A Guide to the Curious Attractions of the Buckeye State. Lucky for you, though, the story is excerpted at the publisher's site.

The Wayne National Forest is beautiful, one of our favorite places to visit. We love going to the clean little lake down in that area - Lake Hope. No gasoline-powered boats are allowed on that lake, and it's so clear you can see your toes when standing shoulder-deep in the swim area. It would be a real shame if this underground fire ignites the forest.

I want one of these!

Remember my glowing review of the Anti-Pull Harness? Well, Joe Sporn, president and founder of the company (and recent visitor to gw.com!), has a website with other great pet products. I would *love* to get one of these Sporn Pet Lockers to hang by our back door. What a neat product, complete with a spindle for "Bags of Duty" (what a euphemism).

No More Aggitation

Well, we found a solution to our washing machine's aggitator problem, and this is it.

My MIL and I have each always wanted a front loading machine, and we kind of ganged up on Howie. It didn't take much convincing, though, because he could see the money savings in the more expensive machine, too.

This washer will wash sleeping bags, pillows and comforters, items we have had to take to the laundromat. We figured, taking those large items to the laundromat cost us at least $20 a visit in quarters, and we took them 2 or 3 times a year (if none of the animals urped on them - then we took them more).

It's a Frigidaire Tumble Care Front Load Washer, model FWT645RH. Epinions has reviews of one of the step down models from this, the FWT449. Frigidaire must have made some changes, for I can't find anything at their site (other than archived PDF's of our washer's documentation) except the GWT series now.

This washer holds a huge amount of laundry AND uses only 1/3 the water of a standard top load washer. We had an extra-capacity top load washer, so this uses less than a 1/3 of what we used to use per load. In a nutshell, we're able to do TWICE the laundry per load as before, and use less than a 1/3 of the water we used to use for ONE load before. That's less detergent, less bleach, and less fabric softener. We're talking savings here, folks. It's also so very quiet!

It also has this nifty dispenser. You can watch the clothes tumble, too, which Howie and I did on its maiden voyage (of course).

I'd seen the commercials for the Maytag's Neptune and Whirlpool's Duet washers and drooled over them in the stores. After all, their marketing is top-notch and the products look more like luxury cars than appliances. But I could never justify spending over $1000 for a washer, not when the Frigidaire was $597 with free delivery to boot.

The things I've read said this washer performs every bit as good as the beautiful, pricey ones. It doesn't have to recoup the cost of major ad campaigns, for one. Sure, it doesn't have their digital displays and touchpad buttons. But I don't want to program my washer, I just want to wash my clothes. I'm quite happy to just turn a few dials like this one and that one rather than tap in my choices and navigate menus.

It might have a smidgen less capacity of those Cadillacs of washers, but it doesn't have the Cadillac price, either. As it is, the new Frigidaire's washloads almost maxes out our dryer's capacity, so I wouldn't want to do more; I'd have a backlog of stuff to dry and that would negate any benefit to me.

I'm thrilled! I've completely caught up on all the laundry now - I'm so excited! The washer will wash - and wash well - a heaping laundry basket of clothes. I'm talking heaping, like all our towels and washcloths. Or five pair of dress pants and five shirts, plus other stuff. I can do laundry in a fraction of the time it used to take.
I must be getting older, because I am way too excited over this machine. But then again, I am all for things that make sense, and the design of these front loading machines just works.

Love/Hate Relationship

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to computers, digital photography and imaging, desktop publishing and printing. I love the artistic process. I adore writing, designing, embelishing; most of the time, the hours I'm in front of a computer just fly by.

Tonight the hours have flown by, but not by choice. I am so tired right now, I could just lean back in my office chair and be gone, out like a light. But I can't sleep, because I still have the second side of 100 wedding programs to print. At this rate, I'll be lucky to have them all done by the time the father of the bride picks them up here at 8:30am. This has turned into one of those marathon jobs from the very pits of...Well, maybe not that bad, but right now I'm not in the best of humor.

The creative process was a blast and I'm pleased with the final product, but I've had problems with my Epson Stylus Photo 820 printer all night long. It's just not made for jobs like this - so many pages at a time for so long a time.

I've figured out I can only safely load 5 pages of this Gartner's program card stock in at a time, and I must be right there to make sure it doesn't misfeed. For, when it does misfeed, I end up having to run the nozzle cleaner on the printer several times before I can get prints that are crisp and not goobered up somehow (like that technical term?).

Even running the printer in high-speed mode (where it prints on both the forward and return passes across the paper), I've been printing since about 10:00pm, so almost six hours. And there's still side B to print on the backs of these originals. I've printed extras. Thank God he bought many extra pages!

I would KILL for a Kinko's or other all-night printshop. At this point, I'd pay them to run copies onto the program stock for me. Alas, our one such all-night business closed a couple years ago. Some day, if I really want to do desktop publishing on a legitimate scale, I will have to get a decent printer. It's too expensive to outsource that kind of work, and our home printers - even the good ones - are never up to the task. It just ends up being frustrating and crazy-making.

*Yawn*

So...Here I sit, babysitting the printer and mindful that I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm very thankful for that! It's not that I resent doing the job -- not at all. I really am happy to do things like this for people because it's my thing, you know? I enjoy having an outlet for it and get really pumped when people are pleased with something I've done just for them.

I just hate computer and printer problems. And this is far less stressful than the night before a morning wedding. I'm very happy in my shoes, thank you. :)

To her credit, Pangie stayed here and played games online with me, humoring me and keeping me sane. Brave girl! Actually, we found a funny game over at PopCap - PsychoBabble. You know those magnetic words you can buy to put on your fridge? This game has people arranging the same groups of words into sentences, then the participants vote on the funniest uses of the words. It's a riot!

But even Pangie flagged; she finally had to go home and snuff out her eye candles for a few hours before her nephew's ball game later this morning. Thanks, Pangie - I appreciate your hanging around as long as you did, and thanks for the backrub!

Free to Good Home

We're trying to find Buddy a good home around here. We've done everything we can, accruing big vet bills in the process of elimination (no pun intended), but he just doesn't seem housetraineable. It's not fair to him to be crated for hours upon hours, but we also can't subject our neighbors (or the whole south end of town, for that matter) to his beagle baroooo all hours of the day and night by putting him outside. He needs a new home.

I'm taking him to the vet for his follow-up chest x-ray today and hoping it shows no enlargement of his heart. If it is enlarged, a simple and inexpensive medication will be needed for him, but he'll remain a healthy doggie even so. I'm putting this flyer up at the vet's office and a few other places in town, and we're going to carefully screen anyone wanting to take him. I listed the URL to the flyer so people can acess it easily online, too.

** Later **

His heart is fine, the vet said. Yay! The vet also said that any dog that can hold it for nine hours in his crate, yet pees all over the office floor when he's just been outside an hour earlier wants to pee inside. He said beagles are notoriously difficult to housebreak, and that he had to find a new home for his own beagle for the same reason. His was a female, and she just would not be housetrained.

Harnessing the Hurricane

Hubby and I were browsing the pet aisle at our local Super Wal-Mart when I spied the package way at the bottom of the display.

Of course, I had to remove the harness from the package to see if it would fit. So, while Howie stood rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me, I held the contraption out before me something like this (dramatization courtesy of Angie).

Just then, an unsuspecting Wal-Mart employee came walking around the endcap and saw me. The poor girl's face morphed into three expressions almost simultaneously: first boredom, then surprise, finally confusion. She then averted her eyes.

Would you blame her? That thing looks more like something you'd find at Fredericks of Hollywood product than an innocuous dog harness in a local megamart's humble pet aisle.

Considering Emma's 42-pound heft and propensity for dislocating our shoulders with her pulling, we decided to give it a try. I'm happy to report the harness works great. Here's Emma sporting her new Yuppie Puppy Anti-Pull Harness (sidenote: we're about as far from yuppies as a couple of folks can get, except maybe for our unhealthy love of tech gadgets and coffee shops).

When we pull on the leash, it causes the padded straps running beneath her front legs to pull tight, thereby stopping her in her tracks. She can still pull, but she doesn't seem to want to. When she's pulling her hardest, I can still control her now. We rue the fact we weren't consistent with her early training and allowed her to get this bad.

Ah well, we can't change the past. We're back on the right track now and I've been giving her verbal cues as well as a tug on the harness. It seems to be helping, though she still has trouble when there's a squirrel or bird zipping by nearby, or when she sees grandma and wants to say hi. Still, I think she'll catch on again.

I have the DG's

That's what I get when I can't get to Dave's Garden; they're like the DT's, only much worse. Something's happened and DG has been down since yesterday morning. E-mails from fellow DG addicts are cramming my inbox: Do you know what's happened? Is it my computer? Is my ISP okay?

I'm as clueless as anyone, and I know that if I am angst-ridden about not getting my daily DG fix, he must really be in a pickle. I wish you and the DG juggernaut well - hope it all comes back online for you soon!

Thanks To Our Washer

I bid our humble 10+ year-old Whirlpool washing machine a thank you for its floundering agitator. Had it not ceased doing its job, I never would have found fixitnow.com.

Where else can you go to read a great blog and see step-by-step photos of appliance repair? Sounds like one of the combo deals Paul Reiser writes about in Couplehood, actually...It's a blog and an appliance repair site!

But I digress. The self-proclaimed "oracle of appliance enlightenment" tackles our aggitator problem and so much more. And it's all written in a decidedly tongue-in-cheek fashion that makes me want to read about appliances we don't even own. He also has a Beer Fund (have your volume turned up) and an amazing money-making opportunity that's hard to beat.

So surf on over there! Just don't forget where you came from; I'll leave the light on for ya. Maybe I'll even put up a donation link for a Whirlpool Duet Washer (droooool.....).

Construction: Day Three

Work's progressing nicely. The former garage door opening is now a wall with two windows, a door, and vertical vinyl siding. The latter was the idea of Contractor John; he thought vertical would be better than horizontal, and it really does give the illusion of the wall being taller. The raised subfloors in the front room and bedroom are down, as well as some floor extending outside the bedroom into the laundry/storage area of the basement.

Because the height of the doorway is shorter than standard, we had three choices: getting a custom door, getting a smaller door only 32" wide, or getting a standard 36" door and cutting some off the bottom. The custom door would have been too pricey. The smaller door was, well, just too small (imagine moving furniture in through a 32" wide door). So, let's make a deal...We chose door #3.

I'm still getting used to it being cut off short. Because it's a steel door with panels, it's obvious the door's been cut off at the bottom. I've been fiddling with Photoshop, though, and notice it is not so noticeable if we paint the door dark green and the frame of the little lemon wedge window white. That draws the eye up from the lower portion of the door. There will also be a screen door which, alas, must be cut down to fit, also. I'm crossing my fingers that it will look a little more normal.

I know, I know...A picture's worth a thousand words. I have more pictures, but I've been busy today and just haven't gotten them into an album and uploaded just yet. Right now, I have homemade stuffed peppers baking in the oven, a hungry tummy, a hubby with a hungry tummy, and a videotape of tonight's Survivor.

Priorities, you know.

Construction: Day One

John was here at about 8:30am and worked all day. He got the garage door taken down, the raised floor installed in the front room (previously the garage), and framed in the outside wall where the garage door had been. He has the two windows installed, but has to cut down the front door and install it tomorrow. Pictures are posted in The Gallery under Basement Construction (the MIL Suite).

I'm pretty tired, so that's all the thrilling prose you get tonight. I have to work tomorrow morning, so am going off to slumber soon. I've had a headache since, well, forever today, and I'd appreciate it if you praying folk would breathe a little prayer to God about this noggin of mine. I have to put on my creative thinking cap tomorrow and work on some brochures, rumor has it, and I'd like to feel downright perky tomorrow!

Construction-Unction What's Your Function?

Okay, so it doesn't exactly flow like conjunction, but that's what came to mind. Construction on our basement remodel/MIL suite begins tomorrow! John was supposed to start last Wednesday, but had a car restoration job he had to complete first. So, the target date was moved to Friday. THEN, Lowe's couldn't deliver the building materials until Monday.

Today, he called and said his wife had a migraine all weekend, so he had to take her to the doctor's office for a shot. He said he'll be here tomorrow morning. I don't begrudge him this, because I know how terrible migraines can be and I feel badly for his wife; I do, however, wish he'd already started. Howie says we have enough time built in that we don't have to sweat it, but you know me...I just want to get this all over with and move on (and move-in my MIL!).

The first thing he'll do is remove our garage door and its hardware, then frame in a wall where the door is. There will be a front door in the middle, plus a window on each side. He's putting in those nice tilt-in windows my MIL wants. Sure wish we could have the whole house re-done with them! In time...In time. Since we're dealing with a shorter-than-standard height due to the thick, metal header over the garage door, he had to go with 34" door rather than a 36" one with the lemon-wedge window. It's not the end of the world.

For now, we're going to have white siding on the new outside wall, but eventually we're going to put brick or stone up to the bottom of the windows and have a little ledge above the stone. Long-term, we'd like to have a balcony over her entrance, with the balcony acting as the roof to a screened-in porch for her. That's wayyyyy long-term, though. We really need to fence in the yard before we embark on anything like that!

Part of the construction we're having done includes a new tub for us upstairs. Woo-hooo! You can tell we're getting older; the thought of a new tub and surround really excites us! We're considering a big shower instead, though, one with two seats in it. It's a standard 60" width, like the tub we're taking out. Howie's back really pains him, and it would be easier for him with a built-in seat rather than having to work with one of those plastic tub seats. (Been there, done that, hate them).

Anyway, I can count on one hand the number of times I've taken a bath since we bought our house in 1999; we're just shower people, so why not put in what we'd best use? We figure we'll be here at least another 15 years, if not longer.

I'll be posting pictures in my gallery as things progress.

Picture This

Thanks to a visit from the Pangie Pixie, I was finally motivated (read: coerced, pushed, goaded) to update my photo gallery Wednesday evening. I did put up the pet portraits section April 4, but kept putting off doing the rest. Thanks, Angie!

I really hate how the web is so picky when it comes to being so doggoned case sensitive. I had to rename so many darned picture files because they had a jpg extension instead of JPG. But now I know.

On the flipside, I really love two little programs which made my life much simpler today: Web Album Generator and Picture-Shark. The gallery creator automates photo gallery creation in an incredibly simple way, even resizing them and making thumbnails for you. That done, I ran my finished full-size images through Picture-Shark, which automates the watermarking of batches of photos. I did edit the main index page of each gallery in Frontpage, just to simplify adding my navigational links.

Gosh, I love technology!

P.S. If anyone can show me how to make my column widths so someone viewing my page at 800x600 doesn't have to scroll horizontally to see everything on this blog, please let me know!

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho

It's off to work I go. I only tortured Howie with four snoozes on the old alarm clock. Poor guy. They need to make a wireless alarm that fits in the sleeper's ear like a hearing aid, one that won't disturb one's bedmate. Note to self, give Howie a big smackaroo for putting up with my non-morningpersonishness.

Dusting off the alarm clock

I head back to work tomorrow, for the first time in about a year. Aside from taking a couple of short-temp temp jobs here and there, I've not worked since summer 2000. I'm going to be working part-time at my church, probably just a half day a week. So, tomorrow I shall find myself awaking to the rude sound of an alarm clock - ack! But I'm really looking forward to working there, so I'll survive. ;)

Howie and I worked out in the yard for two hours this afternoon. We decided to work in the yard together two hours a day, before he has to get ready for work. I deviated from the plan and ended up working out there until 6:30pm, though. I made up two window boxes with brilliant blue and purple wave petunias and yellow pansies, and one box with wave petunias and a couple of Martha Washington geraniums (pelargoniums, if you want to get technical).

Lastly, one big pot now has six white peruvian daffodil bulbs nestled down in its middle, topped off by yet more wave petunias and pansies; that ought to be really something when it's all blooming. I've missed having annuals. Color! All season long! Wooo-hooooo!

There are a few less weeds out in the island bed now, thanks to some labor-intensive hand-weeding. I am going to zap some stuff with Round-Up, but some of the grass and weeds were growing in with good stuff and I don't want to risk any spray getting on my precious babies.

Well, I am dog tired and am going to toddle off to bed and play Bookworm on Howie's PDA until I fall asleep. I have to get up at about 6:30 or 7:00am. The horror of it all.

The Power of a jealous Doggie

Tonight when I went to take the dogs out, I somehow managed to slip both leashes' choke collars onto Buddy...And nothing on Emma! I didn't even realize what I'd done until I saw Emma with Sarah at the back of our property and looked down to see two leashes leading to the beagle! I was in my nightgown and the last thing I wanted to do was chase after Emmy-Doodle at 10:30pm.

She is a real runner, part greyhound and all about long legs and speed. She also has not a whit of sense about roads, so we worry when she gets loose! From past experience, I knew better than to advance toward her or to use an angry or startled tone in my voice. So, I crouched down and said, "Emmmmmmma! Hi, Puppy! Hi! Go get 'im!" (much like this) and made a fuss over Buddy.

Thank goodness, Emma couldn't resist. She zoomed right over attack Buddy and I was able to snag her by her mesh collar. Whew! God saved my tushy, I'll tell ya.

It's ironic, babies

In the corner of the small cemetery at Denison University is a granite marker that simply reads: "Unknown Infants." The remains of 23 fetuses buried there show how both technology and philosophy have changed medical education. The fetuses had been preserved in Formaldehyde and were used in teaching human anatomy and development. Today, detailed computer models and other tools have taken their place. Other universities have used human specimens in the past. Professors say they stressed that they should be treated with respect. For the same reason, disposing of the specimens presents a dilemma. The Denison specimens were found in a locked cabinet during a cleanup in fall of 2000. While cremation is acceptable, officials at the central Ohio school opted also for a small funeral.

This was in WCLT news department's newsletter for Monday, April 14. How ironic that these infants/fetuses/babies are treated with such respect while it's common practice to abort babies the same age or even older with no respect (or funeral) whatsoever. I'm not posting this for an argument, but rather to give you something to mull over. Laws and attitudes vary so widely depending on circumstances, you know? Should they? I guess that's a moot point, really, because they do.

Great Gardeners

One of my friend Dave's creations has earned the recognition of Forbes.com's Best of the Web Directory. Congratulations, you guys! The Garden Watchdog was already mentioned in Organic Gardening a few months back, and this is just one more example of its growing popularity (no pun intended...and much deserved, I might add). Best yet, it's a great resource because it's a community effort by gardeners. That reminds me of the DG motto: For gardeners, by gardeners.

On another note, I saw this smart gardener's site linked to from Dave's Garden and had to share. The gal's come up with a self-watering pot for seed starting, using the humble 2-liter pop bottle. I suppose you could do the same thing with any similarly-shaped plastic bottle, but 2-liter is a good size. I am impressed! If you wanted to keep plants in such a container, you could always drop it into a basket to hide the plastic. Guess this gives me an excuse to buy more pop...and hoard bottles. Bwaaahahahahahah!

Pup's Growing Like A Weed

My folks came over for a little visit today so I could take some pictures of their Siberian Husky puppy Nikolai. It's been a while since I posted any shots of the little pooper, so here's a little collage I put together and printed for them today. It spans the time from about February 27 to today.

Many hands make light work

Even four hands can make a real dent in things. Shoot, I even have a blister to prove it. Yes, this soft girl worked hard enough raking to take the skin off her right thumb..

Howie and I worked in the yard from about noon until three this afternoon, cleaning up more perennial debris and mulching more of the leftover leaves while we mowed. We salvaged one compost bin out of the two stacking ones which were given to us last year; the timbers in half the pieces were rotten so we consolidated them into one bin. It's not pretty, but it sure looks better than the pile of bin sections we had back there before. There's still a lot of cement and pipe to haul away from when we redid the back steps last summer.

The pond still needs to be pumped empty and cleaned, but that's going to wait until two weekends from now. When Everdry worked at the back of the house, they unplugged the pond pump while digging the trench in that area; it didn't get plugged back in and, considering it was about nine degrees farenheit, everything froze over solid in short order. We couldn't turn the pump back on until everything had thawed, like around mid-March.

Everything, all the fish and all the water plants, died because of there being no way for the gasses to escape from the water. If I'd have thought about it, I would have put a piece of styrofoam in the thawed circle the circulating water had left; that would have allowed the gasses a way out. So, we have a big, stinky, leaf-filled pond until we can clean it out and refill it. Live and learn!

When we compare our back lawn to our neighbor's, it makes us green with jealousy. Theirs is green and beautiful, a carpet of lush grass. Ours has green patches, but it has far more brown patches, and a lot of dead grass. Then again, they don't have three dogs. Oh, and they raked their leaves up last fall. And when our Emma's greyhound genes kick in and she goes crazy-dog dashing around, her claws just rip the grass to pieces. Such is life with three dogs. I think we'll probably end up fencing in a section in back with picket fence, a place for them to run and play. The fence will hide the poor, grassless ground at least.

I sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I guess I'm still doing a mental inventory of what all we still need to get done. All in all, it was a great day. It was nice getting outside and sweating alongside my hubby. Work goes so much easier when you share it with someone else and can share in the feeling of accomplishment. If I can drag myself back out there, I'll take some pictures...I don't know though, because a nap is sounding really good now that I've had a hot shower and some lunch.

My hands...Are saved!

When Howie and I went to the chiropractor today, me for my regular visit and him for an initial consult, I mentioned to the doc that I was unable to give Howie a good massage because my hands hurt too badly. The doc showed us the niftiest little massage tool, and we bought one on the spot. What a livesaver it is for my hands! Here's pictures of my paw cradling this plastic wonder:



I found the company's website tonight and wrote to them to tell them how much we like the product. I believe in praising people when they've done a good job on something, not just firing off complaint letters (though I sometimes have to write them, too). Like I said in my letter to the company, when I find a product that really works - especially one which safely helps people alleviate pain - I want to shout it from the rooftops!

After writing, I saw they have an affiliate program. Hmmmmmm...My dilemma. I haven't really put sponsored stuff on my webpages before, but I have to tell you, this thing really works and I am 100% comfortable associating The Plot's good name with it. So, without further adieu, here is my official link to the Omni Massage Roller site:




And yes, if you buy from them directly, using my link, I will receive a small commission. It will help defray the costs of this website (and my visits to the chiropractor, incidently). I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging. ;)