Novel Idea #236

Actually, I've probably only had a handful of useful ideas in my day, but this one's a good one. So recently I discovered the toilet bowl cleanser that you drop in the tank. First of all they work great, and you hardly, if ever, have to clean your toilet. I buy the cheap off brand ones at Walmart for around 2 bucks for 2 tablets. You can get fancy ones with a blue indicator to let you know when its run out (but who wants blue toilet water?). And there's also a pet friendly tablet for those of you with pets who drink out of the toilet (caution to those with kids or pets who may play in toilet water. Either take proper precautions, or don't use). Anyways, one of the only problems with the tablets is that they slowly get sucked towards the output stopper (in the tank) and will cause a continued flush until it is removed and placed back on the edge of the tanks bottom. Well, my novel idea #236 came when I heard about converting your regular toilet into a water efficient toilet by adding a plastic water container to it. Simply put, remove the label from a half gallon of milk. Add some sand, rocks, or pebbles to the bottom and fill the rest with water. Then place in the tank of the toilet. Well, I decided to take a 2 liter bottle (cause who really buys half gallon milk jugs?) cut off the top so that the bottle would be an inch or two below the surface of the tank water. I also cut a few little holes in the sides. Placed the cut bottle into the tank (may need to remove or push aside the ball float). Then I dropped the tablet into the plastic bottle. Voila, a flushing efficient toilet with a bleach tablet that cannot get sucked into the stopper!!! Plus, it will probably make the tablet last longer.

How to Blow Your Money

Two words: Whole Foods. So I got a $100 gift card to Whole Foods for Christmas from a periodontist we referred to in my last office. We finally went yesterday, and boy were we blown away. We started in the produce where things weren't too bad, but as we began to navigate each of the aisles we found our cart to be almost empty. Realizing that our philosophy of just buying "deals" wasn't going to cut it in this store we slowly began to place things in our cart. Well, a little bit here and a little bit there added up to two small paper grocery bags and a bill for $71 bucks!!! Normally we spend about $50 bucks, load each others arms up with bags from hand to elbow, and run like mad for our apartment as our arms are about to fall off. Some of the highlights were the Sunflower Seed cookies (I know you're probably thinking super gross, but actually they're super delicious). They were in a "try me" stand and I ate about four of them before grabbing a bag. Connie's favorite was the slice of chocolate truffle cheesecake; divine. The biggest let-down has got to be the Siggi's Icelandic style skyr.

One of our favorite things to do is product comparisons (I'll add later posts on some of our findings). Yogurt is one of the things we have tested (store brand vs Yoplait). I grabbed a coupon for $1 off two Siggi's yogurts and thought we had to try it. When I finally spotted the Siggi's my jaw about dropped to the floor as they were priced $2.39. I thought, well this has got to be the best yogurt ever!!! So we got two and got our tasting on. Well, the picture says it all folks. If you've never had Icelandic style skyr, let this picture be your warning. The taste was reminiscent of walking into a room that hasn't been vented for hours in an old folks home. And of course any yogurt you spend 2 bucks on you have to finish. Yuck. On a related note, we did find Yoplait to be far superior than the store brand yogurt in an earlier taste test. You wouldn't know it if you tasted them on separate occasions, but side by side there is a HUGE difference. So if you're looking to splurge for a nice creamy treat, spring for the Yoplait and leave the skyr to waste away on the shelf.

No More 5EX!!!

We've cut our final ties with the lovely east coast and have officially become Coloradans(?). Sounds right. Anyways, I still remember the day when Connie received our new "Sex Plates" in the mail from the state of Maryland. I told her no one would notice, but the first thing our neighbor said was, "Whoa, your car says sex!" What's funny is that the once devastatingly hated plates were this close to bringing tears as they were taken off of Goldie.

Well, other than that we've simply been enjoying the wonderful 70 degree Colorado winter. We broke out the bikes and went for a little ride at Bluffs Regional Park, and probably in a couple weeks we'll hit the mountains for some Colorado skiing. Yup, living the life of an unemployed dentist.

Daifuku!

I haven't had any strange cravings, or really any cravings at all for anything, EXCEPT...
If my camera skills have left you guessing that is a delicious japanese bean cake! Interestingly it's one of the only things that Preston has NOT developed a taste for...crazy! I've been to several asian food stores in california and detroit asking for "monshu" and the people always look at me like I'm a crazy person so before I set out on my quest in kalamazoo I did some googling and found that they are called either "red bean cakes" or "daifuku." I had great success using these terms and my craving was satisfied!

Dad finally gets his snow day... at a price!

Dad has been wishing for a snow day all winter and it finally happened but at the price of over 3 hours of shared shoveling! I think I might have rathered gone to work.

As you can see... we were in over our heads with this storm! Dad enjoyed knocking down the overhang after this picture and I had to restrain him from doing it before I snapped the shot. (Yeah, all of you Sugiyamas know that you wanted to knock that snow down.) He couldn't wait so after I took the shot, he hit it with the shovel and my face, head, body etc was instantly snow coated as the snow blew everywhere.

As you can see, I helped with the snow removal. I figured that if I didn't Dad would get a heart attack. I heard Dad say "I should have had another boy..." but I can tell you... I did my share. I insisted that we do it in segments and we took 2 breaks during the 3 plus hours of shoveling. Both of us were sore the next day. It would have been a great time to have hired a snow plow. But the positive side is that I didn't have to go work out. Done and done.

The Blizzard of 2011!

Well, Dad was happy that one of his weather predictions finally actually happened. The Grand Rapids area got 12-20 inches of snow.

It was hard to determine how many inches because of the blowing and drifting that took place because of high winds. Note the difference in snow levels behind Dad and behind Mable. What is behind Dad is exactly what we had to shovel out of the driveway! Not fun.

You can see the final product... with help from a little sunlight... the perfect blacktop driveway is revealed! And Dad is happy.