Winter again

The wind and rain were lashing against the windows last night and this morning there was an inch of wet snow. At least it was only an inch!! The gloomy, wintery weather put me in a blue mood for part of the day. Well, I think I was mostly just tired because I couldn't get to sleep, maybe because of the wind. Anyway, Friday dad asked me to cut his hair---the spring cut, he calls it, which is a crew cut. So now that winter has returned I need to pull his stocking cap out of the drawer. Not to mention the poor dog with her new "do". She has an old blanket to snuggle in.

A couple weeks ago I took my mom's sprouter out of the closet and ordered some organic sprouting seeds. Last night I used two of the three tiers. Mung Beans are on the top one and Alfalfa sprouts are on the bottom. Yummy!

It's going to be sunny tomorrow. Yay!! I need to finish my taxes so I can get them paid. Blaaaa. So we can plan our spring trip to southern Indiana. Can't wait. This time we're spending time in town, hope to meet some people, get a feel for the area.

Last night we has homemade pizza and a movie. We watched Islander. It was good.

Two signs of Spring!

Trixie got shampooed and clipped.......

.........and the crocus are blooming!

It's been unusually mild this March, which usually comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion here around the Great Lakes, so I'm hoping this is our reward for enduring such a nasty winter. I've been hearing nightmare stories about astronomical heating bills of $500 to $700 per month. I'll tell you what I did. Last year dad bought one of these:

Cool digital thermometer with a laser...ooo!

In December our bill was $168, about normal for us. But in January our bill was $214, so I went around the house pointing the thermometer at window sills and any other place I thought might be cold. Then I covered the cold spots with plastic. We cut up an old blanket and rolled the two halves into into giant draft stoppers for the doors. We fully expected our February bill to be over $300 because of the prolonged severe cold, but it was nearly identical---$211. So dad says all the time I spent playing around with the thermometer and covering up cold spots probably saved nearly $100.

Dinner and a movie

Today was sunny and warm enough to crack open a couple windows. I got a lot of cleaning done in the spare room. I also took some neat pictures of my violet flowers. Might put some up in the other blog. We had tacos for dinner and watched Wall-E. It was good! Has a good message too. Hope you get the chance to watch it.

Some good news for asthmatics

Olympic Gold Medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee who has asthma, feels her HFA inhaler is less effective than the CFC MDI she used to use, and has spoken out in our favor. In addition, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is reviewing the ConsumerAffairs.com story. This is probably the best story yet posted on the website:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/03/asthma_hfa04.html
Sunday the story I was interviewed for will run in the Fort Wayne paper online. I'll post a link.

Beautiful Day!!

75 degrees and sunny, with a nice south breeze :-) I did laundry and hung them on the line. Fiddled with my violets and cooked corned beef and cabbage for dinner.

Last night's movie was "Bottle Shock", a surprisingly interesting and fun movie about the California wine industry's rise to worldwide fame after they beat the French in a contest. True story.

8 Days

Here it is past midnight and I'm posting, but I know if I don't I'll forget. On March 5th I had a phone interview with a health reporter in Fort Wayne. I vowed to let him know how the Xopenex HFA was working for me before the article posts on the 22nd. I put away my CFC inhaler and only used the Xopenex HFA. I only made it for 8 days. I was tired of trying so hard to take a deep breath and the fact that it took 3 tries and exhaling extra hard just to do it. If it was the remnants of my cold, at least I needed to find out once and for all. So today about noon I picked up my trusty CFC inhaler and used it. Well, now I can take a deep breath. I still have crap in my upper chest, but at least now I can take a friggin' deep breath.

Guess what. They found out HFA propellant contributes to Global Warming. So now they want to ban that. I'm not up to speed on all the details yet. I'll report back soon.

Weather Station

I bought dad a weather station for his birthday and gave it to him today. It's pretty cool! It connects to station WWV for Atomic time. It has an outdoor sensor so it has indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity. It shows the moon phases (and when the sun went down the stars came out---see them around the moon? Too cute!!!) The 12 hour forecast shows it will be sunny tomorrow. It's supposed to be 75% accurate. It has a light (which is kind of orange) which I turned on right before I took the picture. I don't keep the house at 73, it's just the furnace vent is right below the station.

Happy Birthday!