Coastal Tan

Needing a base tan before setting sail on our Caribbean cruise, we visited the Coastal Tan shop in the Fairmont Plaza Shopping Center in Kettering and found good deals including one for new customers to check out each of the four different tanning levels for just $4.  On Wednesday's, for $5, anyone can tan in any level bed, and they offer a nice selection of monthly and per minute packages.  Add clean and friendly and it can't be beat.

https://www.coastal-tan.com

Password Checkup

Password Checkup is a Google Chrome browser extension that lets you know if you enter a username and password that has been compromised in a data breach that it knows about.  Reset that password, then also reset it everywhere else where you've used that same combination, focusing first on web sites you care the most about, such as banks, social media and online shopping.  I don't have a lot of password rules, but one of them is never using the same password across the sites I really care about.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/password-checkup/pncabnpcffmalkkjpajodfhijclecjno

Wall Shelves

Installing shelves on walls has not been the most pleasant experience in the past, usually leading to them slowly bending forward as their weight and gravity overcome the strength of their poorly designed attachment. But our newest wall shelves, shown below, are not going anywhere thanks to real steel brackets attached with molly bolts to the plaster wall.  The brackets were installed first, being very careful to keep them level and aligned, then the wood planks slid into place.

https://www.wayfair.com/storage-organization/pdp/loon-peak-farrell-industrial-wall-shelf-lopk4837.html

National Park Fonts

Jeremy Shellhorn and his students have created a digital typeface by creating rubbings from signs in our National Parks and it's available for free (I love free) in four weights, Regular, Outline, Heavy and Thin, available at the link below.  Might just be the font I use for Christmas card envelopes later this year...

https://nationalparktypeface.com

Chicken and Fennel in Rosemary-Wine Broth

A successful weight-conscious dinner needs lots of flavor, and this Weight Watchers recipe we recently tried delivers.  Sauteed fennel and onion each add their strong vegetable goodness, with the rosemary also punching up the flavor.  Of course, everything's better with garlic.  You can replace the red wine with some vinegar and water, but we keep one of those little wine boxes in the fridge for these occasions.

https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/recipe/chicken-and-fennel-rosemary-wine-broth-1/5626a63d3d92b3c10eb8dcf2

Golf Tees

Golf tees are surprisingly useful for more than just its primary purpose of teeing up a golf ball.  For example, I store a couple hats in our garage to keep my bald head warm during chillier runs or protect it from the sun when I'm out awhile.  For years those hats hung on rusty nails, but recently I pulled them out and tapped in a couple white tees, as shown below.  Nice little upgrade.

The link from This Old House has ten more golf tee ideas that you might find useful.

Shout out to my friend Keith F, who introduced me to the incredibly flexible golf tee!

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/10-uses-golf-tees

Wilmington Pike Loon

A loon is not only an aquatic bird, it's the name given to this notch in the road to enable safer U-turns, such as the one shown below on Wilmington Pike at Brown Road.  Northbound traffic has a left-turn lane into the loon so they can turn around to the southbound lanes, and pause if needed.  There are a few more in the area, which I had never noticed before, but none are anywhere near as large and well-marked as this one.  Check out the link below for a 360-degree Google Street View look at the area, fortunately taken on a nice sunny day.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6672009,-84.1088595,3a,75y,5.56h,101.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sHP7gfSxeg4rl58Bp1pGS0Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

WiFi Signal Strength

Distance from your wireless access point is not the only factor in determining signal strength, for example, many older homes, including ours, have plaster walls constructed on a metallic mesh that serves as its framework, and this metal can cause extra signal loss.  To solve this, I have a 5+ year-old Netgear N150 Range Extender plugged into an outlet in the kitchen that has a direct line-of-sight to my router, and that helps get coverage to the backyard patio.  The image on the left below, using the free (I love free) OpenSignal app, shows a weak signal for my primary WiFi network from the patio, but switching to the Range Extender (with the _EXT suffix on the right), gets us back to a strong signal.

https://opensignal.com

Screen On While Charging

Sorry, this is for Android only.

There was no way to keep my phone's screen on continuously, which I wanted in certain circumstances and almost always when it was being charged, like listening to SiriusXM or Pandora while traveling.  A little digging found how to do what I wanted, which involved turning on "Developer options", then the "Stay awake" option as shown below.  The first link has the instructions to enable developer options, which involves locating and tapping the Build number seven times, and the second link shows how to, among other things, keep your phone's screen on while charging.

https://www.greenbot.com/article/2457986/android/how-to-enable-developer-options-on-your-android-phone-or-tablet.html

https://www.greenbot.com/article/2463970/how-to-keep-your-android-phones-screen-on-longer.html

Chicken Quesadillas

This is a delicious recipe for stovetop quesadillas, but we offer these tips to make the going easier.

• If chicken breasts are thick, cut them in half first to speed up the sauteing 
• Make the chicken cubes 3/8" or smaller, or even shred it
• Fry only one tortilla at a time, fill one side and make it like an omelette 
• Make sure to start with the cheese on the bottom, this helps the rest of the filling stay put
• Don't over-stuff the filling or it will be difficult to keep together
• Save some time and use store-bought Pico de Gallo

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/chicken-quesadillas-recipe-3645030