Karin's Adventures

To some New Year's Eve may just be a date on the calendar. The people of Samoa didn't consider this date anything special, so they just skipped it to join Australia's time zone. To me, however, the last day of a year has magical importance. What I do on that date, and how I spend the time around midnight, determines how my next year will go. Or maybe it doesn't, but I enjoy entertaining the thought that it might.

My New Year's Eve traditions include eating herring salad, drinking champagne at midnight, lighting fire crackers, watching "Dinner for One", melting lead, and (for the first time this year) wearing something red and something gold.

Most of the times I understand what my lead objects are trying to tell me, but this year I haven't a clue? Not to worry though, I still have all year to get that figured out.

What do you think these are? 

Our house came with an open fireplace built in 1969. The unlined, uncovered chimney hadn't been swept in years. You could see a crack in the bricks from inside the garage. To make this at least usable we had the minimum of repairs done and burned logs only occasionally, always worried about setting the house on fire.

This year we decided to give ourselves a Christmas present. We had a wood-burning fireplace insert installed, vented through a stainless steel liner in the chimney. Our new EPA certified fireplace insert is rated over 75% efficiency and provides the added benefit of reducing our emissions to almost zero.

Here's to long, cold winter nights, sitting by the fireplace and drinking Glühwein!

It started yesterday with over two inches of rain that turned our road into a river. As the day went on the rain became hail, sleet, slush, then snow. 

Over five inches of that resulted in chaotic traffic conditions, fallen trees, power outages, and a 32 hour shift for Tom and his colleagues.

Online auctions are my favorite way of shopping. If you know how to do it right you can find really good deals on fancy stuff that nobody else has - and it isn't made in China either.

When I look for interesting items I search for auctions ending within 48 hours, with less than 10 bids posted, and at a price that I consider a bargain. Then I bookmark that item and set myself an alarm for 10 minutes before the auction ends.

At that time I check the listing to see if the price is still reasonable, and if it is I just sit there watching the timer count down. When the count-down falls below 2 minutes I type my absolutely highest maximum price in, but I don't bid yet.

As soon as the timer shows less than 1 minute I click 'bid' and then 'confirm' right away. This will post my bid within 30 seconds of the auction's end - too late for anybody else to bid again.

Today I found a plastic bag on the workbench in our garage. In it were half a dozen very strange looking, exotic, light-green, baseball size vegetables. I had never seen anything like that before.

Tom got them from a colleague at work. He said they are called hedge apples and supposedly help keep spiders and other insects out of your house, basement, or garage.

After doing a little research on this peculiar looking fruit I decided to plant one of them in a pot with some dirt and wait for an osage orange tree to grow from it. I'll keep you posted about the success - or failure - of this experiment.