Jennifer's Blog

Our website has been down due to the move, but we're back. We were supposed to have phone service Monday by 8 am and DSL by 5 pm on Monday, but Qwest made some mistakes moving so after frustrating time on our tracfone we got phone service yesterday afternoon and internet this morning. If you sent us any mail at elehack while the server was down, it should retry automatically, but we might not get it immediately. I am not one of Qwest's happiest customers, so I'm going to end this post while I still have some happiness about finally getting to read blogs and e-mail mixed in with my frustration with their "service."

I picked up Green from the library.

What I liked:

Read more...

We traveled to Iowa last weekend for a wedding in Ames, and we went over to Cedar Rapids to see some of my family- including my little nephew. During the trip, we had some gas station moments.

A friend mentioned that he had observed that the car gets better gas mileage when it has more than a half tank of gas (actually measuring the gas mileage). I had previously observed that the top half of the tank seemed to last longer, but I assumed it was due to inaccurate measurement of the tank. Anyway, we tried filling up at a half tank of gas, and our mileage was actually better than normal. I would expect it to work marginally the other way as you lose the weight of the gas as the tank empties, so I am curious as to how this works. If anyone figures out why the top half of the tank is better let me know.

Read more...

Head over to Challies.com to find out how to get a free download of an audio version of Religious Affections.

A little over a year ago, I read The Fat Fallacy, and while I didn't adopt all of its suggestions, I did start looking more at the "food" I was eating and purchasing. I started baking most of our bread and checking the ingredients. I gave up margarine (I know it may sound sick but for years I preferred the taste of margarine to butter... when I was young I would sneak off a slice of cold margarine to eat by itself sometimes).

One of the other changes was in pasta and pizza sauces. The stuff I had been using contained lots of high fructose corn syrup and other undesirable stuff, so I switched to buying a can of plain tomato sauce (which somehow avoids most of the additives) and seasoning it myself; I would add in spices, vegetables, and mushrooms as desired. My parents went grocery shopping with me and they thought I was crazy for not just buying a jar of stuff. I thought I would show them why I didn't buy the jars, but I was in for a surprise. Ragu, happened to be on sale, and I was surprised to see their organic label at the same sale price as their others (I don't know if it is all the time or not). Their regular line still had corn syrup in it (although I don't think it was high fructose), but the organic line had sugar.
I am amazed at how good it tasted. I can't figure out what makes it taste better than my usual method, but it does. So I guess I'll be watching for more sales on Ragu.

Read more...

Abraham Piper started telling the tale of a roadside piano, and there is an update today by Noel. I highly recommend reading the comments on the update- Noel has a hilarious scenario for the piano quarrel.

Oh my, Jesse Ventura may run for senate; about all I remember about his being governor was that he insulted Iowa (I was living in Iowa at the time and I still have more fondness for Iowa than I do for Minnesota). I think he would be better than Franken. I admire the fact that he is not tied to a party, and I appreciate that his experience isn't limited to politics. I highly doubt I'll be voting for him in November though.

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

Today is a sad day in Minnesota. Today is the day that state public defenders are scheduled to stop representing parents in child protection cases. I realize that budget cuts are necessary, but I wish this wasn't one of the results. This move will hurt families and children. The extended time that children remain in foster care will also result in higher costs for this care. I know it wouldn't solve everything, but surely some complexity and red tape could be removed from the legal system to ease the burden on public defenders.

Right now, we're planning and starting to move to our new apartment. Friends are helping us move our furniture in a few weekends- so we'll move over more once we have the furniture over since we'll be sleeping over there and we'll be able to put things on shelves then.

We've been thinking about how to organize our new apartment- what "zones" we should have and where they should be. We drew up a scale floor plan about a week ago. We've also made scale sized representations of our furniture, so we've played around with different arrangements. The plan won't be set in stone, so I'm sure some ideas will change when we actually have the furniture over there.

Read more...

Last night, we went to the Twins vs. Indians game. I enjoy a little baseball, but I don't pay much attention to it. My brother knows more about baseball than anyone else I know, and he is an Indians fan. So I was hoping the Indians would win last night, but they didn't.

Since I live in Minneapolis now, I thought maybe I could root for the Twins in general as a regional sports team, but after last night, that is just not going to happen. I was disappointed by the playing and the fans.

Read more...