Ankle Support Brace

My right foot/ankle has been somewhat painful in recent months, particularly at the end of a three-mile walk.  I figured some type of support might help alleviate that pain and went searching on Amazon for alternatives.  I decided to try the brace shown below, which is not bulky, has good ratings, and costs only $10, making it a cheap gamble.  I could tell at the beginning of my next walk that it was going to help, and by that afternoon, I was surprised by how much better I was walking, even after taking the brace off.  I hope this continues, and I might even buy another one for my left foot as a preventative measure.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXAGV0H

Sixty-Four No More

The last couple of our iPad purchases were the 64GB variety.  Recently, I noticed that I didn't have enough space to download videos for a road trip, and I would have to clear out downloads to apply iOS updates.  With a little digging, I found that iPadOS and System Data combined (see the bottom right on the screenshot below) to consume over 37GB, about 58% of the 64GB I bought.  The newly added Apple Intelligence is using 6.67GB of the iPadOS space, which is really the culprit in my free space woes.

Our next purchases will certainly be 128GB models, which should get us through for several years.  You can follow the suggestions at the link below to free up space, but that involves a lot of tedious work that I don't have much patience for.

https://www.foneazy.com/ipad/ipad-system-data-huge

Got-A-Go

I got a real kick out of the porta-potties located at the cell phone lot at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG).  "Got-A-Go" is a perfect name, since I would only use one if I really, really "Had-To-Go".  I've seen several other creative porta-potty names recently and will try to snap pictures of the best for future blogs.

https://got-a-go.com

Peach Crumble

We bought an entire box of Georgia peaches at Kroger, and I made the Peach Crumble you see below.  I chose a crumble over a cobbler or a crisp because the awesome topping consists of flour, brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter.  I took the recipe, at the link below, and downsized it to fit a small baking dish for portion control.

The rest of the peaches made a big pitcher of Peach Daiquiris and sliced and froze a bunch for future drinks.  The rest we ate or took to Pittsburgh to share.  

https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a40080202/peach-crumble-recipe

Bottled Water Bliss

We've been members of Walnut Grove Country Club since 2017.  For years, we filled up our Yetis at one of the several 5-gallon water jugs stationed on the golf course.  However, starting with the scorching summer of 2024, they installed several large coolers around the course, filled them with bottled water, and topped them with ice.  They are located at the driving range, 5th fairway, 9th tee/16th tee, and 10th fairway/17th tee.  Together with water and ice at The Grove (8th tee/12th tee/15th tee), we're never too far away from ice-cold water.

https://walnutgrovecc.net

Active Noise Cancellation

As an earpod newbie, I'm still learning about some of the cool features of my Google Pixel Buds Pro 2, and active noise cancellation is my current favorite.  I was sitting at a swimming pool when I first turned it on, and the background noise of kids playing and music blaring was reduced by about 90%.  I was (very happily) stunned by this, and when I turned on some Spotify music, I would have thought I was alone on a deserted island.  The music was so clear that I now know that there are background vocals on John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads, sung by Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, who co-wrote the song with John.  Amazing!  More useful information is at the link below.

https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/12312672

Bathroom Wall

Like yesterday's wall decoration, this one started out costing $40 on Etsy.  It's a picture of the Sea of Galilee from David Miller, the owner of DivineFingerprint.  We hung it in the space that was opened up when the new medicine cabinet was large enough for us to pitch the small cabinet that used to hang there.  We took the picture to be framed at the House of 10,000 Picture Frames in Kettering, and they did their usual marvelous job.  But that increased the final cost to about $200.  Ouch!

https://www.etsy.com

Bedroom Wall

The west wall in our bedroom hasn't had any decoration for many years, despite our saying many times to the contrary.  After the bedrooms were painted a month ago, Gourmet Chef Elaine found the triptych (a work of art divided into three sections) that you see below.  Titled "Indigo Botanical I", it's part of the Kelly Clarkson Home collection on Wayfair and only set us back about $40.  It took a bit to decide exactly where to hang it on the wall because of the slanted ceiling on the left.  And ensuring they were all exactly in line was my chief contribution.

https://www.wayfair.com

Crushed Garlic

We love fresh garlic, and we use a lot of it, so there are times when we have either run out or it has gone bad, so we keep a package of the frozen crushed garlic you see below handy in the freezer.  Dorot Gardens also has frozen versions of basil, ginger, dill, turmeric, parsley, and cilantro, where each cube is the equivalent of one teaspoon.  Pretty clever idea.

https://dorotgardens.com

Swipe Actions

I recently found that I can perform actions in the Gmail app by swiping left or right on a message.  I went into Settings, selected "General Settings", and then selected "Swipe actions" to see how they were set.  Both left and right swipes were set to Archive, so I changed the left swipe to Delete, as shown in the screenshot below.  The other options are Mark as Read/Unread, Move to, Snooze, or None, but they were of no interest to me.  For more details, including pictures, please visit the link below.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-configure-gmail-swipe-actions-on-android-and-why-you-should