Anhydrous Treen

Like most people in town (at least, the ones of us who have basements), I have a damp basement. What with the thawing and flooding and all, my basement is particularly damp at the moment. And the main reason (well, other than the thawing and flooding) was because my dehumidifier was dead. Tonight, however, I had Bachelor Dad at my disposal. (Mom was off at a Craft Night.)

After allowing my father to buy me supper at Friendly’s, and eating his free sundae so that Lactose Intolerant Father wouldn’t get sick, we went to Lowe’s in order to buy a dehumidifier. They had many on display – all by Whirlpool. Dad explained how they worked (they’re basically air conditioners that collect water from the condensation on the cool coils) and what “50 pint” vs “25 pint” meant. The 25 pint one was the cheapest at $128, but the 65 pint would collect the most water for the least amount of energy (and was $100 more than the 25 pinter). I was all set to get the 40 pint one for $158 when we saw another brand – Roper. It looked identical to the Whirlpool 50 pint job, but cost the same as the 40 pint one. And it turns out, Roper is a Whirlpool company.

I also picked up a 50ft garden hose in hopes of moving the dehumidifier to the wetter side of the basement. Once we got it home (dad even carried it into the house and down to the basement – what a guy!) we checked out the wetter half. It looks like we’ll be able to eventually set it up there, but for the time being, it’s right next to the sump pump, where the old one used to stand. It’s running as I type – woohoo!

This will not give me a dry basement, but it ought to help cut down on the moisture. (And, as always happens at this time of year – it’s too damn damp in the basement, and too damn dry in the rest of the house. Heh.)

Cheese for Me!

I’m rather fond of cheese. I mean, I did write a poem about cheese, didn’t I? 😉 So, for my birthday, Amy & Rachel decided to get me a gift certificate to igourmet.com. When Amy was telling me this on my birthday, I pictured “IgorMay.com” That’s Igor as pronounced in Young Frankenstein. So Igor may, but Igor may not…

Anyhoo, the gift certificate arrived today. I’ve been perusing the website for awhile and there’s a LOT of good things on the site. But I decided to stick with English cheeses, this time. Here is what I chose:

  • The Dorset Drum English Farmhouse Cheddar (the best cheddar, according to the website)
  • The English Cheese Assortment (contains Coombe Farm Cheddar, Royal Blue Stilton, and Sage Derby)
  • The Saxonshires (a five layered cheese containing Double Gloucester, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Liecester, and Cheddar)

I figured this would give me a nice assortment to sample. My next task, when I’m out at Walmart or Meijer or something, is to get a decent cheese knife. I’ve got nice cutting boards which are great for showing off a nice sample of cheeses. (And you know, when talking about all the cool Christmas presents, I forgot to mention the cheeses that elsaf‘s brother’s GF sent along to judiang & me. Very tasty cheeses, though the cheddar was the most popular with my family & friends. Elsa also gave us some of the chocolates that they made during their Chocolate Party.)

So, let’s hear it for cheese! 🙂

First Sentence Meme

Interestingly enough, I did write a post on the first of each month in 2004. Cool. 🙂 So here we go. Wonder if it makes any more sense than my usual posts?

Thanks to my using Judi’s computer while writing this entry, there’s still 25 more minutes left of my birthday. You know, I still dunno what GIP stands for, if it stands for anything… So, this is gonna be a very disjointed post. You know you’re addicted to LiveJournal when you suddenly think of an LJ icon you can design… I always wanted a surprise birthday party, and today, I finally got my wish. If you read about my quest to purchase Big George as read by Sylvester McCoy, you may be happy to know that it finally arrived! I have wonderful friends. So, fellow geeks, anyone know how to set up an ad hoc Peer to Peer network between two machines with 802.11g wireless cards? I’m sure there are people out there who can decide they’re not going to worry about something and then don’t worry about something. When I was much younger (high school age or so) I would occasionally get lockjaw thanks to my gritting my teeth while sleeping. This weekend was a fun one. As gregmce and warinbabylon have mentioned in their journal entries today, it is World AIDS Day.

Nope, I’m afraid it’s not any more sensible than my usual posts. Sorry!

Update & Catch Up & Stuff

I saw the head bus driver at the post office today and asked why school was closed. She said it was because of too many roads (in the country – this is a rural area) flooded & closed. They wouldn’t be able to pick up the kiddies for school. Ah! So it wasn’t frozen rain after all. (Mom & I were suspicious since it didn’t look terribly icy.) Hopefully the flood waters will go down and we’ll be able to have school tomorrow. Not that I would complain if it were canceled, but we only get 5 Calamity Days a year. Would like to have a few for SNOW DAYS. 😉


I am nerdier than 98% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!
Been goofing off today, as I’d planned. I played a little Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth, but it crashed and I decided to work on something else instead. Then I wanted to play City of Heroes for a bit, but first it had to download some expansion packs and install them. And when it finished that, it kept locking up! Still, every time I’d played before, it told me that my NVidia drivers were out of date. So I downloaded them and voila! I got to play. My hero, Violent Viola on the Freedom server, finished her first mission and is now at level 2 – woot! We lost connection with the map server, however, so I decided to quit for now. Gonna have to have gordon_r_d teach me how to do screen captures so I can show her off to you.

Well, now that I have some time, I should mention all the cool things I’ve received for Christmas and my birthday. My family and friends are very generous and I loved everything that I got. I already mentioned what judiang & elsaf got me for both, though Judi went over & above her friend duties and also got me Mary Poppins 40th anniversary DVD and The Princess Diaries 2 for my birthday. I am a BIG time Julie Andrews fan. 🙂

My sister & Rachel got me a cool anniversary set of Colorforms! I made a Colorform dude today, just to play a bit. They also got me cute socks with a kitty on ’em! Mom (or was that Santa) got me 2 pair of my favorite FoxSox and my cousin Deanna gave me another kind of FoxSox – yay new socks! Deanna also got me a magnet toy set (like GeoMag only a different brand – and larger spheres!) and a BW3’s gift card. I might get to use that tomorrow night!

The folks got me a number of things – I mentioned the Dragon book already. They got me 2 Linux books, a book on children’s science books, and a Chicken Soup for the Soul – teacher cartoons. Lots of books to read! I also got a set of bamboo cooking utensils, several nice outfits, a gift certificate to the Night Sky cafe, and a few other things. Thanks parental units!

I received a few other gifts from friends abroad, which were wonderful surprises. A t-shirt for the University of Gallifrey, The Best of the Two Ronnies DVD, a Bill Bailey DVD, and a Bonzo Dog Band CD.

So I’m having a good time today going through my new things. I watched the Two Ronnies today and last night finished Mary Poppins with commentary. I have so many DVDs to watch now, I won’t have to rent anything for AGES! Now if I could just refrain from buying more DVDs until I get my unwatched ones watched. That didn’t work with books, but here’s hoping I can have the willpower with my DVDs. (Who’s kidding whom, here?)

Holiday Fanfic Results!

I’ve done my best to locate the holiday fanfics from my flist. Please let me know if I’ve missed you! What I’ve done is put them all in my memories, so you can check them all out in one place. I included elsaf‘s holiday story in here, even though she wasn’t doing my challenge. But she did work on it at my house before New Years, so I think that counts. 🙂 She says it’ll be 5 parts when she’s done (there’s 3 parts up as of today).

Thanks to those of you who participated and to those of you who thought about it but weren’t able to for whatever reason. Have fun with your fandom(s) of choice!

Alone again…

Well, I took Judi to the airport this afternoon (the plane before her arrived on time, so I’m assuming she got off OK). And now it’s just me & Leo. I played a little City of Heroes and briefly checked out my new game Battle for Middle-Earth, but I’m just too tired to do a lot. So it’s off to bed I go!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year! I had a wonderful day today on my 34th birthday! Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday – the wishes worked!

I’ll get more details later – I’m off to bed! 🙂