Winter rages on! Sometimes I like global warming for the warm spells it sends our way. Unfortunately it does not mean it’s just going to get warmer. It means we’re going to have even more extreme weather!
Today is no exception. The wind has blown over my patio furniture and one of my ornamental trees. It even blew a child’s toy truck (steel Tonka) onto my lawn. Not sure where it came from or how far, but it’s there none the less.
It’s the evening now and it does not appear to be letting up. I can hear the wind howling from my basement! Tomorrow does not sound any better. We’re supposed to get the snow storm on top of this wind storm. I think I may work from home tomorrow – or sneak it after the rush hour depending on the weather and road conditions of course.
While I can pray for warmer weather – I simply can’t make the cold weather go away immediately. So, tonight I am just going to hunker down in front of my warm electric fireplace in the basement (the gas one is upstairs) and watch a movie. I’ll have to resign myself to a couple more months of winter. Atleast I can hope we’ll have some snow to go with the cold temperatures.
{{Chris}} As a kid I was a little firebug and always enjoyed a campfire!
Now that I am an adult, I still enjoy a great campfire! Fortunately I have a five year old son who likes them too, so he’s my perfect excuse for a fire in the summer. Since we live in the suburbs I bought a fire place table for the backyard and now in the summers when we’re not at the camp ground I pitch our tent in the backyard, and sleep outside after a nice campfire! My son loves it because his friends come over to roast marshmallows and hot dogs – which most kids don’t get to do unless they are camping.
What I miss though is a real fire in our house. I grew up with one, and all that we have in this new house is a gas fireplace. I’d even love to have a wood stove installed in the basement. Perhaps that’s a project for next winter.
While a gas fireplace does not smell as nice as the real thing it is certainly easier to maintain. You just flick a switch afterall and for the most part you don’t have to worry about setting your house on fire. If you have a regular wood fireplace and are tired of the mess you should check out these ventless gas logs. They are less expensive than gas inserts and look really great! What’s amazing about them too is their ability to heat a room in minutes. We often turn ours on during cold winter nights and withing minutes the room is super nice and warm.
So it’s been approved – we will be getting a garbage incinerator in Durham Region. In fact it’s not too far from where I live. I’d prefer the province would find better means of handling our garbage. For starters, they should start changing all manufacturers the cost of disposing their packaging materials. Many European countries already do this, and what do you know – they find better, smarter ways to package their products and still make money!
So until that happens we end users are stuck recycling their packaging for them. For a while I tried leaving all of the packaging at the store. For example toothpaste. Why the box? I left it in the store a few times but you get so many weird looks. Eventually I resolved to simply recycle the cardboard boxes.
What do you think of the new incinerator? It’s not a done deal yet so don’t fret. I am interested in knowing what everyone thinks about it though.
It’s right about now that all of those Christmas credit card bills are coming due. Fortunately for us we’ve not overextended ourselves this year despite spending on our friends and family. However, if you’re one of the unfortunate ones with a big credit card bill coming due you may want to consider using payday loans to at least get a payment done on the credit card before you get dinged with it’s high interest for carrying the credit over the month.
I’ve never needed to use a pay day loan myself so I can’t speak about the service from first hand knowledge. Clearly the best thing to do is not over extend yourself with credit. Once you do have the card(s) paid off I recommend you get rid of it entirely! Here are some credit counseling services that may be interest to you:
Good luck!
{{chris}} So the first pay per post went through just fine. Now I have to setup my banners, and start promoting the blog. I need to increase my pagerank, my AlexaRank and get some more traffic! So let the fun begin!
This is not my first blog – so I know what I need to do to start building the traffic and increasing my pagerank. I just need to go out and get er done so to speak!
Once again, if you have any questions about this process – please comment and I’ll be happy to answer them!
{{chris}} I am slowly but surely monetizing this blog over the next few months!
As part of my experiments with earning a living online, I am going to monetize this blog and join the ranks of hundreds of others earning money online. There are many ways I can monetize the site such as:
- Banner Advertising
- Text Links
- Audio Advertising
- Pay Per Post
- Adsense
- Contextual Text Based Ads
- etc…
To start I am signing up for Pay Per Post as it’s the simplest and easiest way to get going! Over time I’ll be adding additional means of collecting revenue and I’ll be reporting on the results right along here in the blog! If you’re interested in finding how it goes, and how much I earn I encourage you to subscribe to my feed and get all of the details, OK! If you think you want to get involved in blogging yourself but don’t have a clue on how to get started please leave a comment ( I read them all) and I’ll be happy to contact you and help you out with all the details of setting up hosting, installing WordPress, getting a template design, customizing it and optimizing it for the search engines! In fact, I may write that whole process up in the blog too.
So wish me luck and stay tuned!
{{chris}} Christmas is over and Valentines Day is on it’s way! What is everybody doing this year?
Yup, it’s true. Christmas is over, the lights and decorations are down. We’re ready for summer. Unfortunately we have a few more weeks of winter left. Yeah, usually the worst weeks of winter actually. Fortunately, Valentines Day is on the way!
So I’m getting ready for it. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it will likely include dinner at one of Oshawa’s finest restaurants like Soprafino’s which happens to be where I met my wife! If you want a romantic dinner – that’s the place to go!
Hopefully the rest of you other there are thinking about this special holiday too. I guarantee you should prepare otherwise you’ll regret it later – trust me!
{{Chris}} One of my favorite spreads – Sun Dried Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper.
This is super simple – I like it that way. Go to your favorite grocery store and buy some roasted red peppers and sun dried tomatoes from the Antipasto bar. They will be packed in Olive Oil.
Put all of the ingredients into a small food processor and chop until smooth! Spread over your favorite crackers or bread. You can even use this as a base for Chili (I often do this) or for Spaghetti!
Enjoy!
{{chris}} Do I need to pay even more property tax in order to get some salt on my street?
OK, so this falls into the category of “ranting” but I pay more than enough property tax! I should be able to have my street plowed and salted! If the other main streets in my neighborhood (Grandview and Beatrice) can get salted – why not my street? Clearly it’s doable – but when I got home this evening my street is a nicely plowed icerink! Have a look for yourself. Is this happening in your neigborhood? Post a comment and let me know.
My ice rink, err, I mean street:
{{chris}} Happy New Year! We celebrated the great event last night at Tosca with our good friends Kim and Mark!
The dinner was outstanding (although large), service was great, and the DJ kept everyone dancing.
| The night started out like this: |
 |
| Then ended up like this: |
 |
Needless to say we had lots of fun! Thanks to Tosca for putting on a great event.
