Cell Phone Waiting Lot

We would love to give a gold star to whoever invented the Cell Phone Waiting Lot, but apparently, it just sort of happened.  I remember the old days when you circled around the airport until whoever you were picking up finally appeared.  All the extra traffic and the congestion it brings are eliminated with this free (I love free) lot.  Just park, wait for a text or call and be at passenger pickup in a minute or two.  Brilliant!

https://flycolumbus.com/getting-to-from/parking-options/cell-phone-waiting-lot

Plastic Expansion Wall Anchors

The anchors shown below are my go-to when hanging anything that will put significant stress that will try to pull it out of the wall or door, for example, a Roman shade hanging in front of our French doors to the deck.  The flanges on the anchor are first bent in to make it pointy, inserted into a hole drilled into the door, and tapped flush.  The red key is inserted to pop open the anchor open, pushing the flanges back out and when the screws will pull the flanges tight against the door.  

https://toggler.com/products/toggler-plastic-toggle-anchors

Pesto Pizza

The work of art shown below was our Superbowl dinner.  Chef Elaine started with a store-bought Boboli thin crust pizza crust, thawed a few cubes of her awesome pesto, mixed in some olive oil, and spread that on the crust.  Then lots of the cheese, sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms were piled on and slid into a 400-degree oven, and baked for about ten minutes.  It's can't-stop-from-eating-another-slice good!

Big shoutout to Kim V for introducing us to no-red-sauce pizza!

St. Vincent de Paul Dayton Needs List

St. Vincent de Paul is our favorite charitable donation location but recently learned they maintain an Amazon Needs List filled with in-demand items like blankets, sheets, towels, clothing, and body care products.  We sent them a couple of sets of sheets and it's nice to send them brand-new items that you know will get put to good use.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2WKD1L4SC2TIN

Motli Light

The Motli Light is a safer alternative to gas-flame-based lighters, using an electric arc (the purple at the bottom of the picture below) to easily light candles or gas stoves, but takes a bit more work to ignite paper.  It's rechargeable using a standard Micro-USB cable, a nice change from throwing away disposable lighters.  It also has an LED light (kinda useless), but the four-light battery indicator lets you know when needs charged, which is very nice.

https://theusblightercompany.com/pages/motli

Golf Ball Stamp

Golf Rule 6.3a, "Holing Out with Same Ball Played from Teeing Area", is made much easier if you have a unique marking on your golf ball to identify it.  Instead of making a dot pattern with a Sharpie (boring), we opted for a script "M" drawn by the handy tool shown below.  Even though we're using the same "M", I play with white golf balls while Chef Elaine likes yellow.  

The stamper is supposed to last for thousands of impressions, so maybe it will last, for us, a year.  :-)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019JU5JO8

Smart Air Pump

Manually pumping up bicycle tires and footballs, and the several yearly trips to the Speedway station to fill up car tires, are now a thing of the past thanks to this battery-powered air pump that I snatched up for $40, a 50% savings, at Amazon.  You select the type of device you're inflating, set the desired PSI, attached it to your device, hit go, and it does all the work and shuts off when the set pressure is reached.  It also has a built-in LED light and can charge your smartphone or other tech device.

I know it's February, but it's not too early to add this to somebody's Christmas list. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YY7FLHM

Apricot-Glazed Chicken Thighs

The crazy combination of apricot preserves, vinegar, and finely chopped rosemary that makes this sauce is such a delicious combination that you could put it on just about anything, but it pairs perfectly with these dark-meat chicken thighs.  Chef Elaine did not make the couscous featured in this recipe for no better reason than to avoid their carbs.  If you're looking for a 15-minute-or-less dinner treat, you found it right here.

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apricot-rosemary-chicken-thighs

Sparkling Meyer Lemon Cocktail

The sweeter Meyer lemons and aromatic rosemary give this simple vodka, prosecco, and simple syrup cocktail a refreshing must-be-summer vibe.  The garnish was Chef Elaine's idea for a more appealing photo.  If you're stuck drinking the same ol' same ol', expand your palate with one of these on your next Thirsty Thursday.

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/sparkling-meyer-lemon-cocktail

iPad Air 5th Generation

Both of our iPads were old and struggling so we replaced them both, opting for the little older 5th generation to save a chunk so we could use those savings to get the lighter iPad Air instead of the bulkier standard iPad.  Of course, when jumping over multiple generations of technology we expected the new ones to be much better, but wow are we impressed!  The screen looks a lot larger compared to the old iPads even though the device itself is about a half-inch wider and longer.  While the performance of the older iPads was OK, it's amazing how much faster pages load on the new ones.

The link below has all the technical specifications for the 5th gen iPad Air.

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP866

American Flag

A friend noticed that the flag patch on Chef Elaine's jacket was backward, with the stars on the right instead of the left as we normally see them.  A quick search found that on military uniforms the flag is displayed this way and since her jacket came from the 2022 Military Bowl game, it was proper.  

As the article at the link below explains, the blue star field must always face toward the front followed by the red and white stripes and as the patch is on the right shoulder, the flag must be reversed.

https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/heres-why-the-american-flag-is-backwards-on-military-uniforms

Slim K Cup Holders

In another effort to free up kitchen counter space, we have moved the Keurig K-Cups from their carousel into a drawer using a pair of slim, 5-slot holders.  They can be deployed in several more ways including clinging underneath a shelf or adhering to the side of a wall.  Getting even one additional square foot of counter space is precious.

Before we retired we used the Keurig quite a bit, but now we brew a pot to enjoy during our morning read-in-bed routine.  The Keurig is now mostly used by family and guests and ten pods are more than enough for an average day.  

As you can see below, Chef Elaine is a Steelers fan.  Her sous chef is a Browns fan.  Love conquers all!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFDQLCK4

Dayton Street Eats

We ran across this carry-out-only sandwich shop last summer in Kettering on Bigger Road and it did not disappoint in either quality or quantity.  I ordered the "The Bearded Lady", their spin on the classic Rueben.  Other sandwiches include the pulled pork "Not The 'McRib'", the roast beef "Hardly 'Arby'", and the chicken salad "The Mother-In-Law".  The menu, hours, and pictures that will make you slobber can be found at this Instagram link.

https://www.instagram.com/daytonstreeteats

Stadium Jail

Our vote for the worst fans in the NFL rests with the Philadelphia Eagles.  You might think that pelting Santa with snowballs would land you on the permanent naughty list, but back in 1997 when an Eagles fan fired a smuggled flare gun across the field and dozens of fights broke out, they needed a serious deterrent.  They built a courtroom and a jail inside Veterans Stadium to dispense quick justice, hefty fines, and the revocation of season tickets.  This continued for several years until cases had tapered off and a new stadium was built.  You can read more details at the link below.

https://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-game-eagles-stadium-jail-17743960.php

Analiti Speed Test And WiFi Tester

This free (I love free) Analiti test tool is available for Amazon's Fire TV and on the Google Play app store.  It's one of the best I've seen, combining Internet and WiFi and displaying the results in a (somewhat) less technical way.  As shown below, our home Internet and WiFi are in excellent shape.  Spectrum is delivering on their 300 Mbps service and our home WiFi is capable of speeds that would allow for 8K streaming, thanks to our triple-hub Google Wifi mesh.  

You can install the app to your Amazon streaming devices directly from the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/analiti-LLC-WiFi-Tester/dp/B01MST12IX 

Moving Art

Moving Art is a Netflix series that features beautiful aerial views of exotic locations accompanied by what would best be described as calming, massage-room music.  If you're just wanting to sit back and relax, this would be very helpful, or if you're the type that just likes having the TV on (we're not) for background noise, this might be for you.

Big shoutout to Dan for this introduction.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80174902

Montgomery County GIS

Montgomery County, Ohio publishes a GIS (Geographic Information System) site (link below) that contains a lot of information related to each parcel of land, including its owner.  One way to search their database is by an owner's last name, which is shown below, for my surname.  I downloaded the results and trimmed down the rows and columns a bit to make them more readable.  Turns out there are several dozen Moorman folk in the county, most of which I don't know. 

In this day and age of tighter privacy laws, it's strange to stumble upon this type of data, even if it's public information.  

https://www.mcohio.org/gis

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Chef Elaine made the most delicious chicken cordon bleu (translation: blue ribbon), a dish of Swiss origin made in a moment of inspired desperation (read about it at the link below).  It boasts a combined twenty ingredients between the schnitzels and the cream sauce, so it's not for the faint of heart, but Chef Elaine is fearless.  The lemony cream sauce would also work well with beef or fish.  

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/geoffrey-zakarian/chicken-cordon-bleu-13498014

Cleaning Wiper Blades

When my windshield wiper blades begin to leave water streaks I usually head up to Autozone for a new pair that they install for me or buy a new set and install them myself.  A few months back I had a new thought, "should I try cleaning them first?".  A little research led me to the link below and I followed their directions on cleaning them with isopropyl alcohol.  As you can see in the picture below, I removed a lot of black gunk from the blades, and they now are back in good working order.  

I wonder how many hundreds of dollars I've wasted over the years on prematurely replacing wiper blades.  Probably best not to dwell on that.

https://mechanicspick.com/how-to-clean-windshield-wiper-blades

RYO Shelving

Another demonstration of an RYO ("Roll Your Own") project is the custom-made mini-shelving shown on the right side below.  We've put up with the before version (on the left) for several years and could never find the exact dimensions we needed.  I cut a couple of 2'x4', 1/4" PVC panels and screwed them together with 3/4" wood screws into pieces of quarter-round.  The final product was just what we needed and we're not going to talk about the half-dozen screw-ups along the way.