Karin's Adventures

Federal law prohibits the shipment of alcoholic beverages, including beer, directly to consumers. All alcohol has to travel from brewery to retail via wholesale distributors.

That means, if you fancy a special kind of brew, you will have to travel to where it is available.

Hicksville, OH, is our closest source for "Yuengling" beer. So we took a very enjoyable trip through Amish country and came back with a case each of "Lord Chesterfield Ale" and "Porter".

Prost ! 

I'm allergic to all kinds of airborne pollutants. Tree pollen, grass pollen, mold, dust mites, perfumes, chemicals.... which means that I spend about an hour of every day sneezing, coughing, or scratching my itchy eyes for no aparant reason.

Not a big deal, I'm used to that. I don't bother doing much against it either. Except this once. I thought, if we maybe change the cabin air filter in our van, I might cough a little less while I'm driving. The van is a 2000 Ford Windstar. It still had the original factory installed cabin air filter in there. The full 12 years' worth of grimy dust, dead bugs, and other gross things.

I consider myself lucky to have a job, even more lucky to have a job that is fun, and extremely lucky to work at an institution where hard work is being officially recognized and rewarded.

Yes, we do get paid - so maybe we shouldn't even expect something else - but it sure feels nice to get more than just the paycheck.

At our annual Employee Awards ceremony over a dozen individuals receive special recognition, documented with a nice plaque and sweetened up with a tax-free bonus check, for outstanding contributions to their teams' and the institution's success.

This year I was among those honored.

The annual championship in a popular sport is closing in on its finish, deadline being April 15th, as usual.

The promoters of this fine race make sure that the requirements for the millions of participants are a little more challenging every year, just to keep up with the ever growing demand for sophisticated organization.

It takes years of practice and coaching for even the most talented players to get to the point where they can attempt to cross the finish line on their own, without a professional trainer guiding them.

This year I am proud to report that we reached the pinnacle! In my 8th year of participation, we were able to come up with 20 pages worth of federal, and 8 pages worth of state tax returns. We only needed 35 worksheets, and just short of 5 hours to complete the obstacle course. I admit we used the help of a computer program, but that still seems to be legal. After the final counts were in, we realized that the damage was much less than anticipated, and there were no penalties!

Crunchy, spicy, juicy, fat-free..... pickles are on my list of favorite snacks. Until just a few days ago I also thought pickles were a healthy snack. Then I read the ingredients list on a pickle jar. Among a collection of chemicals there was yellow 5, a substance that I had recently read horrible things about.

I don't want to eat that stuff, if I can avoid it. So I went through the entire selection of pickles in the store to find a brand that doesn't have yellow 5 in it. I found that in the German section, at a price of around $5 per jar. That's too expensive.

What do you do if you can't buy something? There are always two options: learn to do without, or learn to make your own.

In the case of pickles, making your own is really easy, fun, and inexpensive. I'll make sure I always keep a jar of pickles handy, just in case you'd stop by and want to taste natural, healthy pickles.