Glass Martini Glasses

We've had a pair of martini glasses for a couple of years that look similar to the one shown below, but they are made of plastic and not the best mouthfeel.  However, keeping our drinks cold for an hour or more was a good tradeoff over a traditional martini glass.  But when we ran across a pair made of glass at Von Maur, shown below, we just had to splurge.  They are stored upside down in the freezer to allow the internal gel inside the double-walled insulated glass to freeze all along the sides.  The silicone band at the bottom keeps your hands from freezing while you sip.  You can pick up a pair at the Amazon link below for about $10 less than we spent.

https://www.amazon.com/Host-Martini-Insulated-Silicone-Cocktail/dp/B0D6WMMTDP

Seat Back With FOB

Gourmet Chef Elaine likes the driver's seat in the Infiniti G37x way up and I like it way back.  That's OK but if she leaves the seat up and I try to get in, it's a tough squeeze.  Looking around the car's owner's manual, I found that I can program the unlock button on my key fob to include selecting my seating option and it will move the seat back giving me room to enter more easily.  This also works on our Infiniti QX60, but its "seat slide option" moves the seat back automatically.  Directions for setting this up can be found in the owner's manual or at the link below.

What is a fob?  It's not an acronym.  Back in 1653, a fob was a small pocket for valuables. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a fob had a dual meaning as the pocket used for a pocket watch and for any ornament hanging from the chain of a pocket watch.  In the early 1980s, when remote keyless entry systems started to gain popularity, new and used car dealers started to call the remote transmitter a fob.  

https://nissanpros.com/syncing-your-infiniti-key-to-seat-position-a-comprehensive-guide

The Best Of 2024

As is my yearly tradition, I keep track of notable events and experiences during the year, then narrow that down to the top ten, and publish the results on my Life Experiences blog, each with a short descriptive paragraph, which you can find at the link below.  Each of the pictures below is representative of one of the top-ten adventures.

https://lifeexperiences.paulishing.com/2025/01/the-best-of-2024.html

Duck To Avoid

The ceiling-attached box in the picture below comes from a shuttle bus at the Cincinnati (CVG) airport.  An instruction of "Duck To Avoid" on an overhead object should not be needed for most human beings since we learn that at a very early age, but the more I wonder about the obviousness of this, I believe its real purpose is just to make you aware of its presence.  The "Emergency Exit" at the bottom doesn't say "open this in case of an emergency", it's just expected that you would be bright enough to figure that out by yourself.  Maybe the box should say "Overhead Box", "Watch Out For Me" or "Danger Will Robinson".  What would you have it say?

Street Meet

Street Meet is a restaurant on Hilton Head Island that promotes itself as an American Tavern, which is true but is the only place I've ever visited that was a dedicated Ohio place.  We went there because (1) we were hungry and they had great food and (2) we wanted to watch the Ohio State football game and we knew it would be on one or more of their many televisions.  As you can see from the picture below, they have flags from many of the Ohio colleges including Miami, Toledo, Ohio State, Kent State, and Youngstown, and our professional NFL and NHL teams.  It's worth a visit if you find yourself on the island.

https://streetmeethhi.com

Rí Rá Las Vegas

Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale is one of my favorite beers and I can only find it in some very select Irish Pubs like the Rí Rá Las Vegas shown below.  I stumbled onto this place around ten years ago when attending a conference at Mandalay Bay and during our recent trip to Sin City, I made sure to pay it another visit.  Being Vegas, they charged $9.25 for a glass.  Their location in Charlotte charges $7.25 and a mere $6.00 in Portland, Maine.  It certainly did not stop me from having another.

https://rira.com/las-vegas

Do Not Disturb

The mechanism you see in the picture below was in our hotel room at the W Las Vegas.  Located next to the door, its two functions are self-explanatory.  Pressing Do Not Disturb turns a light on the outside of the door red and pressing Housekeeping lets the staff know you want your room serviced by turning the light green.  Housekeeping would turn that off and the light would turn white, letting you know from the outside that your room is ready.  

From the information at the link below, this device is networked to a system that keeps management and staff informed on the workings of the hotel.  It sure beats hanging those plastic door placards and hoping they don't fall off.

https://cloud.axxind.com

Anveo

The little box pictured below is an OBI200, a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) solution for those of us (not me) who want to hold on to their landline phone number but not pay the high prices the big phone companies charge.  You connect the box to the Internet with either an ethernet cable or a USB WiFi adapter and connect your telephone to the Phone port.  

This solution used to be supported by Google Voice and provided a free (I love free) service.  But last November Google announced it was no longer supporting this solution. While it would continue to work for some unknown length of time, another VoIP provider would eventually be needed.  Enter Anveo (see the link below) which supports the OBI200 (and many others) and for about $99.99/year gets you 1,000 minutes per month, voice mail, and text messages (try that on an old-fashioned telephone line).

Big shout out to my older brother for smoothly making this transition.  If he can do it, so can you.

https://www.anveo.com/consumer/default.asp

Snow Mode

A few weeks ago I took our Infiniti QX60 to do an errand and its pick-up was so bad I thought I would be taking it in for a service call.  It was fortunate to notice that the Drive Mode Selector was turned to SNOW, presumably by the guy that just detailed the car, and that reduces engine output to avoid wheel spin.  A quick counterclockwise twist to return it to normal driving mode (the dot position shown below) restored power.  The knobs on either side select heated seats, nice in the winter, or cooled seats, surprisingly nice in the summer.

https://gearshifters.org/infiniti/what-does-snow-mode-do-on-infiniti

Potato Skins

Gourmet Chef Elaine commented that it's been ages since she had potato skins and that we never see them in restaurants anymore.  I made the skins you see below with the recipe at the link and then used all the scooped-out potatoes to make a batch of gnocchi.   Crumbled bacon, Cheddar cheese, sour cream, and green onions are added to the baked skins and then put under the broiler for a couple of minutes until it bubbles.  Combined with her perfectly cooked filet and asparagus, this made an awesome Sunday dinner.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/282216/homemade-potato-skins