When they arrived home from the festival, my wife was excited to show me that she had purchased some hickory syrup from a vendor at the festival. Neither one of us had ever even heard of hickory syrup before, and she said that the booth caught her eye. Having lived in New England for much of our lives, she was familiar with maple syrup – but what was this hickory syrup stuff like? The vendor was giving out free sample tastes, and all three of them had a sample. They all agreed that it was quite tasty, and bought a small bottle of it to bring home to share with the rest of the family. They told me that there was live music, and a lot of vendors and free food samples. And lots of funnel cake booths! Back in New England we called them “Doughboys” and they are so tasty! I guess that the next time my wife extends invitations to go to a festival I should accept it and go along.

After the festival they stopped at a grocery store to pick up the fixings for lasagna for dinner, and when they arrived home they prepared a really nice lasagna and served it with garlic and cheese bread. We created our own dessert by combining lemon cookies and vanilla creme cookies – the combination of the two cookies was much tastier than either cookie by itself. We talked about putting some vanilla frosting in between the cookies to make them stick together, but decided against it for today. Maybe next time!

To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the mail box is on the opposite road of the house that is receiving the mail, and that makes it even more difficult to find someone’s house if you don’t already know where you are going! That is why I think that every rural house should have an address plaque at the end of their driveway with their entire house number clearly visible from both directions.

Properly placed address plaques are not just to make life easier for visitors coming for a social visit, they are important because in rural areas it can be difficult for rescue services to respond to an emergency if the location is not clearly marked. Every house should have clear identification, down by the road, and on the house itself. It could save a life!

So I called the heating company and told them what happened, and they told me to call their carpet cleaner Round Rock company to come out and clean up the mess and to send the bill to the heating company I was happy that some professionals were going to come in and disinfect and dry out the carpet with their huge fans that make me think of airplane propellers I was quite relieved.

This was the first use of the grill this year, and I have to say that these steaks were the most delicious steaks that I’ve tasted in a very long time! Usually I use some A-1 sauce on my steaks, but this time the steak did not need any seasoning at all. Chicken just can’t hold a candle to a perfectly cooked Porterhouse steak.

Last night I was watching a repeat television show of My name is Earl. I’ve only ever watched that particular show two or three times in my life before because normally I am busy doing something else when it is on the air. But last night I was having trouble falling asleep and turned on the television just as that show came on. The show was about how tornadoes kept hitting the trailer park where the show’s characters were living, and that everyone’s possessions were strewn around. When the tornado subsided everyone was going crazy trying to take possession of the items that were strewn around.

In a way it made me think of a treasure hunt, people looking for the “best” find. They had a “finders keepers” rule – whoever gets it in their hands first gets to keep it. What was particularly humorous about this was that people were valuing some items that would hold the interest of most people. The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was demonstrated throughout the show. The next time I’m channel surfing and see that My name is Earl in on, I think I’ll watch it again. It was a little bit slapstick, but funny just the same.

We’ve been thinking about putting some patio pavers on the ground right outside of the sliding glass doors in the basement to make the area look like an outdoor living room/lounging area. I am even thinking about turning the area out there under the deck into a screen room, but first we want to take care of the yard. We’d like to make a path with paving stone that winds down to the platform at the pond’s edge from the back deck.

For now we need to come to a decision about whether to set the stones in gravel, concrete, or go the more natural route and simply have them set in mulch. I’m inclined to go with gravel or mulch because concrete does not fare well in this area. I’d like to do something in the back yard that will reduce the amount of mowing that I have to do back there; there are several steep hillsides that need to be terraced. I think that with a little bit of elbow grease that we could have this yard ship-shape in no time at all!

So anyway I’ve decided to try to dig up some of the plants to space them further apart, giving them a little bit more room to let the air circulate, and then I will try a drip irrigation system of leaving the perforated hose in the garden winding around and through the plants. I think that will minimize the amount of work I need to do, and hopefully will solve the problem. Have you had any experience with this problem? How did you fix it?

It seems a terrible waste to take out the item and them just throw the box in the trash. So I decided to use a box cutter and slice through the packaging tape, flatten the box, and store them under the stairs for future use. Not that I can imagine what future use I might have for them, myself, but if anyone else ever needs boxes for moving I can share these and maybe save that person some money. Boxes are expensive and always hard to find when you need to pack the house up for a move.

I can’t just throw them in the trash. It seems disrespectful to our environment to do that. Hopefully these boxes will have at least one more use before they hit the landfill.

I have to say that I was expecting something a little bit bigger than what came out of the box. The photos on the box are about 50% bigger than the actual biscuit and chicken. In fact, if you are expecting a chicken sandwich like you buy at Wendy’s fast food restaurant, you will be very disappointed.

Anyway, I popped open the cellophane and put these two tiny biscuits on a paper plate and let them nuke for a minute. That heated them up nicely and anything longer would have turned those biscuits into hockey pucks. The piece of chicken is about the size of a McDonald’s chicken nugget. So I added a piece of sliced American cheese and a slap of mayonnaise and had a couple chicken sliders. Not bad for the price and the convenience, once you know what to expect.