Sephy’s Platzish

A few weeks ago I was asked if I would be interested in the possibility of getting a free grill. Of course, not being one to miss the opportunity to receive free stuff, I said sure. Last Monday comes around and I get a call that we’re supposed to pick up the grill.

Of course, it didn’t fit in the car pre-assembled, so it was taken almost all the way apart (as in taking the legs off, but keeping the actual grill together), and then brought home for me to reassemble. Amazingly, I almost got it all the way right - I managed to put the cross piece for the left side on the right, and the one that’s supposed to be on the right isn’t on the grill at all (and if you ask me, I’m not sure how the piece on the left is supposed to fit with the tank there). Nevertheless, it does stand on its own and is fairly stable, though it is susceptible to some back-to-front motion.

Last week’s rain had an effect on the grill, as for almost two full days after it stopped, I couldn’t get the thing started up, and then on Sunday, it started up with no hassles at all.

The first meal cooked on the grill was chicken breasts with potatoes (and a couple of mushrooms). The chicken breasts were marinated for a short time in a combination of olive oil, lime juice and lemon juice - plus some garlic powder. Can you tell I’ve fallen in love with this way of making chicken? I’m prone to do it somewhat often now.

The potatoes were washed, sliced and coated with olive oil, sea salt and ground black pepper. In the process of cooking the food, I only lost two slices of potato to the grates because I was a dork and was grabbing the slices on the sides instead of coming in from the front. The end result wasn’t terribly bad, though it tasted like something that I made on the stove instead of on a grill - but that’s just because I’m used to charcoal grilling and haven’t readjusted to gas grilling yet.

And here are some photos

The chicken has just been put on the grill, and I’m experimenting with placing the potatoes on different racks.

The chicken’s almost done now, and most of the potatoes have been taken off of the grill.

And here’s the dinner platter - the leftover chicken made a nice salad on Monday.

Although I did write the how-to to get a blogger feed integrated with Feedburner, it seems that I have had nothing but trouble with getting my feed to properly forward.

Half of the time, it does work right, but more recently, I’ve been finding that the feed doesn’t forward properly at all, and that I’m not able to take advantage of the stats offered by Feedburner. In fact, Bloglines haven’t even checked with Feedburner since Friday, instead just using the site feed that is here.

I’ve gone and reverified the settings, reset the forwarding and it appears to work now. I can only hope that it will continue to work, but right now my confidence isn’t terribly great with the stability of the service.

Interestingly, though, Google has been pinging Feedburner on its own, but I hadn’t seen any of the posts come through with the feedflares on them.

So, my fingers are crossed that it will work, otherwise I’ll try other ways to get it to work properly..

This week, it’s been somewhat cooler, but as I mentioned yesterday, we did get quite a bit of rain, which is good for the garden outside. I also got the chance to use the new grill, I’ll post about that in the next couple of days, it was an interesting experience, that’s for sure.

Posts I liked -

• Chag writes a letter to an ex-lover, ESPN. I can’t disagree with what he writes. I’ll add in that ESPN Classic really has gone downhill too - that’s a post in itself, I think
• Here’s one for us blokes - Community Service Post. The pedantic one in me notices not only the main feature, but the fact that the woman in the first picture is fuelling her car on the wrong side of the pump…
• Interesting news from the world of Google. Google Operating System relayed a report from PDFzone (via Mashable) that says that Google’s Larry Page would have preferred to have alternative PDF reader Foxit Reader in the Google Pack. I know that I switched to it from Adobe and I love it, even if the free version doesn’t work in Firefox
• Mark at MeAndMyDrum asks if we should be making concessions for immigrants who don’t speak English.
• Ronald from the Reader Appreciaion Project mentions some Design Decisions that Annoy Readers, including the advertising popups. If there’s something that annoys you, join in the discussion
• Thiru from How to Live Online has 5 Tricks for success with StumbleUpon. If you’re not stumbling, why aren’t you? It’s a fun way to see pages you normally wouldn’t
• Anthony from BloggingDosh found a great idea to make your goals - set up a points system
• Darren at the Digital Photography School has some Tips for a great Photowalk
• Want to do your own TW3, or weekly wrap up? Snoskred how-to for putting one together

New Blogs I’m reading in Google Reader

• Nelson Daily Photo - these photoblogs are quite addictive. This one is from Nilson Nelson on the South Island of NZ
• Clubtroppo
• passiveaggressivenotes.com
• Persistent Vegetative State - Cugat’s a friend of mine, y’all should read his blog
• Factropolis - interesting facts such as Edgar Allan Poe was a Volunteer Firefighter
• Yeah, That “Vegan” Sh*t
• Daisy the Curly Cat
• Life Learning Today

New blogs this week in the US Blogs community at BumpZEE -

• Computers,Tech & Electronics
• Hummie’s World
• Intellectual Hedonism
• More4kids Parenting and Family
• Let’s Share Feelings
• The American Leaders Organization
• PowerWealth.com

This week around the blog, I’ve been a really bad commenter - only 87 visitors to the blog this week, with Thursday being the busiest day. I promise that I’ll get out and comment on more blogs this week, I know why it’s good and all that, I just need to make the time to focus on it every day, not just one or two days a week. However, my Alexa ranking has gone up from 1.5 million to 1,290,008 - I’m bound to break into six digits soon!

This week’s posts included an excellent How-to on integrating your blogger feed with Feedblitz, which has helped a few people already. I also don’t get freaked about some spiders (just a note - the spider is still in the same spot). Plus, I questioned why people go to the other side of the road when you’re walking around, and the changes at my local grocery store.

Coming up this week, I’ll finally post that movie review I’ve been promising for like forever now; I’ll also have another how-to post, along with the Hump Day Hmm, for which the topic hasn’t been announced just yet. Aside from that, check in to make sure you aren’t missing anything, or you can Subscribe to my RSS feed. Always remember, too, that comments are open and I do reply to them, so if you have something to say, say it.

Monday, 23rd July

This feather (presumably from one of the wild turkeys) is along the path that leads into the main part of the park.

I’m growing into the pattern of using the regular path. It’s not too bad, and quite a workout. There’s another path that I might head down to explore sometime soon. Since it was Monday, I went back to walking in the morning. On most days, it’s the first thing that I do after I get out of bed.

Total distance - 4,999 steps, 3.99km

Tuesday, 24th July

This is one of the more, well, interesting insects that are out in the park. Does anyone know what it might be?

It was the regular route again, though things were a touch easier since there was a bit of cloud in the area, however not a lot. On my way back, I spotted a strange sight - a van sitting on the side of the road. At first glance, I thought it was a van from the phone company, but there were no (from a distance) discernible markings on the van. Not knowing what it was, I didn’t immediately go into my house, but went for a closer look, and as it turned out, the van was actually from the railroad. The really strange thing is that the whole time that they were there, the side doors were open fully. I think they know that the people around here won’t go scavenging in their van.

Total distance - 5205 steps 4.16km

Wednesday, 25th July

Your friendly mosquito - just before it went to its fate for landing on a human…..

This was the first day that I’ve experienced something other than partly or mostly sunny skies. In fact, it was lightly raining, but that did not change anything as I just put my hat on, and put the camera away until the rain stopped, which it did not long after I started. I took the normal route.

Normal route, 5301 steps, 4.24km

Thursday, 26th July

An early touch of fall shows itself as this tree has changed colors, only in this one small area. Some yellow in a sea of green.

I took a shorter route, the same one that I did on Saturday, going into the park, and then back out, as opposed to the loop routes that I usually take. As it happened, it was a good choice with regards to the weather. When I went out it was drizzling lightly and not enough to be a hindrance to walking. However within about five minutes of getting in the house, it started to pour and we also had some thunder and lightning.

Total distance - 4358 steps, 3.48km

Friday, 27th July

Water hangs off of the pine trees after a lot of rain the night before, compounded by the fact that the air still has a lot of moisture in it.

I did something that I should have been doing since I started walking in the forest - used bug spray. It was probably the most peaceful walk I’ve had so far in terms of the bugs, and in fact I managed to encounter a horse on the trail. Yes, it was being ridden by its owner, and they had a dog along with them. The dog couldn’t have cared less about me. I took the long route, even though it was a little wet after all the rain we had on Thursday night.

Long route, horse, 5303 steps, 4.24km

Saturday, 28th July

One of the many planes that fly overhead, moreso this week because of the world-famous EAA Fly-In AirVenture that’s going on to the north of here this week.

After all the rain we’d gotten over the last couple of days, one would expect that the humidity would have gone down. However, it didn’t (and isn’t expected to for a while). I did the regular route and had some fun swatting at mosquitoes.

Total distance - 4929 steps, 3.94km

Sunday, 29th July

A broken tree lays over the trail, almost at the bottom of the miniature valley. This is about 40 feet or so down from the road level.

Today, I took some time to explore one of the off-shoot routes I’ve been passing on the “regular” path. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without having bug spray on, as the mosquitoes were very aggressive as I went deeper into the forest. I almost got lost when I took a shortcut and turned right instead of left. Fortunately, I only went about 10 feet down the wrong path before realizing that I was going too far the wrong way; I turned around and found my way back out.

In other news, I have been making sure to take my medicine every evening; I do notice that it does work in that I do get drowsy soon after taking it. Also, I am averaging about four to five liters of water a day; it does seem a lot, but since I have a larger body, I need more water to maintain a proper level of hydration. As far as my volunteering goes, I haven’t received any word back from the organization that I’ve contacted about volunteering, so I am going to look for other opportunities in the area that I’m looking at - I know that there should be a lot available.

My goals for the week are to contact at least three organizations concerning volunteering for them. Also, I need to get in touch with the local Mental Health clinic to get the ball rolling on counseling. The other thing that I’m starting to work on is getting myself to bed earlier as I have gotten into a bad habit of staying up until I am literally falling asleep in my chair. Of course, I will be walking every day, and I want to make it so that I’m out there as early as possible in the day as the forecasts are saying that the temperature is supposed to get up into the 90s (Fahrenheit - that’s mid-30s C). Getting to bed earlier can only help in that cause.

We had to make a quick run to the local grocery store - one which has not changed much over the six years that they’ve been open for business in this location - to find that they’ve gone and changed a lot of things around. They must have had a consultant come in and tell them that the current layout wasn’t working out for them.

Personally, I think a lot of the “soul” has been taken out of the store since they took out a couple of the things that made it unique. You might need a diagram to figure this out, so I’ll put one at the bottom of the post; it’s not that great of a drawing, but it will do.

The first thing that they did was to make all the non-frozen aisles straight. Originally, the store had the pet products section in its own, for the lack of a better term, alcove. On the other side they had the health and beauty section (noticeably lacking any aromatherapy products). It all worked for six years. Now, they’ve gone and made all those aisles straight like almost every single other store in the area.

The other major cosmetic change that they made was to take out a set of diagonal aisles where they had the bread, magazines, and more recently, a $1 section; again, something that had been there for six years.

And as you may expect, they moved a lot of stuff around in the store, making some, shall we say, interesting pairings. For example, all the prepackaged meal kits (like the bake-in-bag high sodium chicken, and the other pre-mixed seasoning packets), have been moved from their location near the meat to the other end of the store by the bakery, next to the relocated bread. In its place, they put the school and office supplies.

Then, they put all the $1 stuff in the same aisle as the coffee and tea, which was moved to the other side of the frozen foods from where they originally were. They also took a display of supplements and put them in the aisle with the other vitamins and painkillers. I can’t actually remember many of the other specifics right now, but I do know that they didn’t add aromatherapy products to their stocks - I made sure to check fairly thoroughly.

My initial reaction? Waah, I don’t like change, why’d you have to change it, where the hell is the bread? etc. I think it’ll take about 6 weeks or so to get readjusted to the new product placements, and I won’t have a problem with it anymore. Now, if they’d just quit raising prices all the time - considering that we paid $6.39 for 16 ounces (just under 500ml) of extra virgin olive oil, and the price of a lot of other stuff is up as well - things might not be so bad…

The old store

The new layout, it’s not quite done yet, and in both images, I missed the cereal aisle. (and I can’t be bothered to put it in there - it’s between the soup and the spices ;))