Ohio Welcome Center

Coming into Ohio from east to west on I-70, the rebuilt Welcome Center, near mile marker 210, is now open, and it's a beauty.  There are native Ohio plants and landscaping, dog-walking trails, and rocking chairs.  The inside is adorned with Ohio history and unique places to visit, and, of course, the usual concessions.

The only Rest Areas on I-70 that are still under reconstruction are west of Columbus near mile marker 71, and after a long period of inaction, they're making progress on these.

https://www.transportation.ohio.gov/traveling/rest-areas

Surf And Turf

Part of our order with D'Artagnan was two 6-oz Wagyu filets and two 6- 7-oz lobster tails.  Gourmet Chef Elaine cut open the lobsters, boiled them for two minutes, and low-broiled them for another two minutes.  The filets received the normal treatment of four minutes in a cast-iron skillet, followed by four minutes in a 425-degree oven.  Add a little melted butter and we're eating like royalty.

https://www.dartagnan.com

Medicine Cabinet

The recessed medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom needed to be replaced, and after much measuring to make sure we got the exact width and an acceptable height, we settled on this all-metal, thin-black-edge, big mirror choice you see below.  Inside, it has three shelves, including one high enough for Gourmet Chef Elaine's tall hair products.  I had to cut a couple of 18"-wide 2x4's, screw them into the vertical studs at the top and bottom of the opening, cover them with pieces of drywall, and patch, sand and paint them.  The cabinet slid right in and four screws are used to keep it in place.  

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D22HYF9X

Transition Strip

We recently had our upstairs bedrooms carpeted, and as you can see in the first picture below, the old wooden transition strips did not do a good job of covering the seams. We were concerned that over time, they would fray even worse.  I was fortunate to buy new transition strips that were a bit wider, as shown in the second picture.  But what you can't see is that the metal U-shaped channel the transition strip gets secured to was not tall enough to reach.  I figured that I would just buy a taller channel, but I couldn't find any at Home Depot or Lowe's.  I resolved the issue by buying a 1-inch-wide, 1/4-inch deep piece of wood from Greive Hardware, cutting it to the proper width, removing the channel, screwing the wood into the floor, screwing the channel on top, and pressing the transition strip into place.  While it took ten times longer (at least) than I thought it would, the result was worth it.

Dustin Miller

After the new carpet, chairs, and bedspread, the paint on the walls of our bedroom and dressing room had to change, and we opted for Sherwin-Williams Cashmere brand paint.  The two darker accent walls in the picture below are Aleutian, described as a cool denim blue that settles on your space like calm personified.  The other walls are Alabaster, a warm, cozy, peaceful white.

The painting was done by Dustin Miller, who does a lot of painting jobs for friends of ours, and he did a great job, finishing in one day.  If you find yourself in need of a painter, I'll be happy to send along his contact information.

https://www.sherwin-williams.com/en-us/color/color-family/white-paint-colors/SW7008-alabaster

https://www.sherwin-williams.com/en-us/color/color-family/blue-paint-colors/SW6241-aleutian

Apple Mail Inbox

A recent update to Apple Mail on Gourmet Chef Elaine's iPad resulted in a significant amount of additional content for each email, as shown on the left side of the first screenshot below.  The first two lines of the email were added below the subject line, and a totally worthless picture, initials, or a star occupied the space on the left side of the sender's name.  Calling upon her technical support staff (i.e., me), a quick solution was found.  The culprits were "Shown Contact Photos", which was turned on, and "Preview", which was set to "2 Lines", as shown in the second screenshot.  In the third screenshot, you can see the changes to those two settings that resulted in the condensed left-hand panel shown in the last screenshot.  

Happy wife...

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