Breakfast Sandwiches

Gourmet Chef Elaine makes the best breakfast sandwiches, and we have them nearly every Sunday for lunch.  It's a toasted English muffin with a slowly cooked sunnyside-up egg, a slice of American cheese, and either oven-cooked bacon or skillet-fried sausage.  It's better (and bigger) than every other breakfast sandwich I've tried.  Lucky me.

Beer Hat

Sitting out in the sun at a Dayton Dragons baseball game is a great way to spend a couple of hours, but if your beer is also in that sunlight, it can get warm quickly.  Years ago, I developed the "Beer Hat" you see below.  You take the free (I love free) program they hand you when you enter the stadium, crease it both lengthwise and widthwise, and slide it between the seatback and your beer.  Depending on the angle of the sun, you may need to rotate it ninety degrees so that the program completely covers the beer.  You'll get around 15-20 minutes extra cold beer time, assuming, of course, your beer lasts that long.

Require Touch ID

This is an iOS feature that I wish Android would copy.  Require Touch ID is exactly what the feature is; when you tap an application icon, it requires you to touch your fingerprint to the iPhone/iPad's fingerprint reader before the app will launch.  To set up this feature, long-press an icon, which brings up the option menu shown below, then tap "Require Touch ID."  This feature would be useful for a shared iPad to keep prying eyes out of your email or apps like Reddit, which has both useful information and a seedier side.

Information on how to set up Touch ID can be found at the link below.

https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/set-up-touch-id-ipadcb11e17d/ipados

Paragon

It's been several years since we last had our living room's sofa, love seat, and La-Z-Boy deep cleaned, and we again went with Paragon.  It's a one-man show, and he has a Better Business Bureau rating of A+.  It took a couple of hours of effort, and the furniture looks new again.  

https://www.paragoncarpetcleaning.com

One-Minute RipOff

Somewhere down in the fine print of our Frontier flight itinerary, it states that we need to check in 60 minutes before our flight is scheduled to depart.  We didn't know that or what that would entail, and we found out the hard way.  We had already self-tagged our bags, but when we finally reached the agent, his computer would not allow him to accept our bags because it was 59 minutes before departure.  That meant we had to have TSA hand-check our bags and remove items that are not allowed on a plane.  I'm guessing that since we have TSA PreCheck and the TSA agent had some history with people getting screwed by Frontier, he did a quick check and all he took was our creamy sunscreens, irritating but no big loss.  Then we had to have our bags gate-checked and Frontier gobbled up another $25 per bag, even though we paid the baggage fee up front.  My opinion of Frontier is summed up in the AI-generated image below.

Sheet Pan BBQ Chicken

Sheet pan equals easy cleanup.  Add aluminum foil and it's even easier.

I can't been to describe how delicious this dinner that Gourmet Chef Elaine baked recently was.  She started with a rub for the chicken thighs that had paprika, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, brown sugar, and ground black pepper.  She added some broccoli to the corn on the cob, red onion, and zucchini to the original recipe at the link below.  35 minutes in a 375-degree oven, then basted with BBQ sauce (Heinz Original Sweet & Thick is our fav) and broiled for a couple of minutes until it begins to char.  This guy had two helpings before I managed to push myself away from the table.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/bbq-chicken-sheet-pan-supper-21102040

Modelo Oro

We are not fans of light beers, but recently we were introduced to Modelo Oro and it's pretty tasty.  90 calories and 3 carbs usually mean the flavor is closer to water, but this one delivers a real beer taste. Oro is the Spanish word for gold, and that well describes its color when poured into a glass.  We haven't found this at bars or restaurants, but we'll be keeping a keen eye out for it.

https://www.modelousa.com/products/modelo-oro

Floridian Aquifer

In our rental condo in Panama City Beach, Florida, we encountered an unexpected bathroom feature: two shower heads, one in front and one behind.  That's way different than the low-flow pieces of s#^t you find in most places.  Every time we asked for a glass of water at a bar or restaurant, we were served with a 32-ounce monster of a drink.  Maybe being right on the Gulf of America meant no issues with the water supply.  Well, there are no issues, but it's not the Gulf; it's the abundance of water is thanks to the Floridian Aquifer, which spans an area of about 100,000 square miles in the southeastern United States. It underlies the entire state of Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.  It daily provides 3.64 billion gallons of water, about half of which is used for irrigation and one-third for the public water supply.  Read more on this monster water source at the link below.

https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/floridan-aquifer-system

Battery Share

My Google Pixel 7 phone supports Battery Share, which allows Qi-certified devices (like Gourmet Chef Elaine's iPhone 16e) to wirelessly charge by laying them on the back of my phone, just like you would use a wireless charging station.  That's pretty handy if she's low on juice and I have some to spare.  You can also set a limit on how low your battery can go before (see the Stop sharing battery slider in the screenshot below) before it automatically stops wireless charging.  I'm generous, but taking my phone down to 10% is not going to happen.

https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/android-phones/how-to-charge-other-devices-with-pixel-wired-wirelessly

No Dirty Birds

Over the pool at Treasure Island Condominiums in Panama City Beach is the mesh of very thin wires, as shown in the picture below.  From eight points on the building to eight poles on the far side of the pool, these wires were 100% effective in keeping birds from making a mess.  From our 19th-floor condo, they were completely invisible, preserving the beautiful views unobstructed.  Pretty clever!

https://treasureislandresortrentals.com