End to the week

It has been a very long week for me.  Luckily, my only appointment today canceled on me.  It is snowing quite hard here and it would have been difficult to get to their house anyway.  I’m home for the day now, then early Sunday morning I head up to St Paul to begin my HDTV calibration certification training.  I will be coming back home Thursday night.

At least I can see across the street now, earlier today it was snowing so hard I could barely see the houses across the street.  We were planning on going grocery shopping today but I think it would be a bad idea to be out on the streets if it weren’t completely necessary.  I’ll have to get creative for dinner here.

I'm running out

It would appear that lately I have been running out of things to say here. Ah, I thought of a short story to tell about something that happened to Anna and I a few days ago.

We were doing a shopping spree in town of various items we needed. It is coming near the end of the year to spend my Healthcare Spending Account money or I lose it all. Unfortunately there is a lot of money still in there because they seem to deny every doctor visit I have submitted, but they have no problem if I buy 5 bottles of Tylenol.

We stopped by Target to stock up on more medical supplies and found some very nice disaster/first aid kits. Full of all sorts of bandages, ointments, thermal blankets, and other disaster-preparedness items. There were kind of expensive so we decided to get 3 to really use up some of the money. One for each of our cars and one for the house.

We then had to pick up some groceries so we headed over to Wal Mart (yes, I still feel dirty for shopping there) and as we were getting out of the car we heard someone's car alarm going off. No big deal, someone bumps into the car and it goes off, right? Well soon another alarm goes off, then another, and then a 4th!

Anna and I looked at each other as we were walking to the Wal Mart entrance and I asked Anna half-seriously if we should run. We were able to swiftly walk inside and avoid whatever gremlins were causing the car alarms to go off. The rest of the shopping inside the store went uneventful. On the way out, we almost got hit by a car which honestly I expect every time I'm in the Wal Mart parking lot.

We are headed for home less than 2 miles away and up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. No, it was not the Hotel California but 5 emergency vehicles. It would appear that there was a collision between one of those large vans that can transport 15 people and some other vehicle that was already gone. The van was pretty smashed up, it is my theory that some idiot pulled out and tried to make a turn when the van was coming right for them.

Between the weird car alarm stuff and all the emergency vehicles at the accident site, I felt very relieved that we were ready for any disaster with our new kits from Target. Needless to say, once we got home, the front door was immediately locked and we stayed away from all windows. Safety first!

below freezing? Booooo.

Its a chilly morning today, thankfully I have the day off and don't need to leave the house unless I want to. We were thinking about a road trip in March, head out somewhere for a few days but we realized we really can't afford it right now. As much as we'd like to take some time off and get away, we would end up having to charge it to the credit card and thats just stupid.

We're loving the new grill, I think I've cooked dinner on it more times in two weeks than I used the last grill all summer. Did up some BBQ pork ribs last night, and although they didn't turn out as good as the ones I made last July 4th, they were still very tasty.

I found out yesterday that I was confirmed to get ISF Certified to do professional calibrations on high definition TVs. Its actually a very big deal and would be quite expensive if I had to pay for the courses on my own. My employer will be sending me to Minneapolis for 2 days for about 15 hours of training. Then I will be able to calibrate a client's TV set which would give them much better picture quality and decrease the electricity usage of the TV by up to 70%.

Kitty House!

We (I) decided to turn the box our grill came in into a kitty play house. I cut a couple doors, a window, and a skylight in for them.

Its the weekend!

…for me at least. I have Thursday and Friday off work and I greatly need it. The past few days at work have been pretty rough and trying on my sanity. Luckily, Anna and I went out for dinner and drinks at Applebees last night and I felt much better from the good food, drinks, and company.

I do have a couple errands I have to run today but that is no big deal, plenty of time to get things taken care of. In geeky news, I’m normally a Mac user in the computer world, but right now I’m using Windows Vista so I can test out some software. Let’s see if that also chips away at my sanity. I’m sure I’ll be just fine.

We’re going to have to go grocery shopping today so that means we can buy more stuff to cook on the new grill. yay!

Thank you, Taxman

Anna and I have been talking about getting a new grill for quite awhile. Our charcoal grill was falling apart, and I'm not even sure the food cooked on it was safe for human consumption. We really wanted to go with a gas grill for the convenience of it and the ability to slow-cook food on it.

We decided to use some of our income tax refund and pick one up. I found out that Sears was having a clearance sale on their Kenmore brand of grills and we decided on a beautiful red grill that normally would have been out of our price range if not for the huge sale they had.

When the Sears warehouse person wheeled out the big box it came in, we realized it was not going to fit in our car. Lucky for us, a very nice gentleman in a pickup was getting something and offered to bring it to our house for us. I took him up on the offer and we loaded it up in his truck and I hopped in the passenger seat. There really are nice people still in this world.

It took us about 2 hours or so to assemble it. I ran and got a full LP tank from Kwik Trip down the road for a killer price. Sears wanted to sell me an empty tank for $40. Kwik Trip sold me a full one for $49.99. I was very happy with that price.

I brought the tank back home and hooked it up. I had a bit of an "OH MY GOD ITS GOING TO BLOW UP" scare when I first attached the connector to the tank and it did a little burst of propane. But I tightened it up and there were no problems. I waited a few minutes then fired up the grill for the first time. All 3 burners inside lit with no trouble and there were no explosions.

We had some steaks to cook up and they turned out delicious. I didn't get any pictures of it because by that time it was pretty dark outside and we were too busy getting everything ready anyway. I'm pretty sure we're going to be doing a lot more grilling now that I don't have to mess with charcoal.

The grill in its new home

The old dying grill

Me reading the instructions carefully