Four Wheeling and Miscellaneous Information

I'm having a dull weekend at home, but Holly and Robin have gone four wheeling in their new Hummer this weekend!

This is a photo taken with Holly's phone, and it shows how much fun they've been having! She said they've also scratched the paint. I can see from the photo that they've gotten and installed a roof rack, spotlights and a grill over the front of the vehicle. Oh, and they've also installed a lot of mud!

Looks like they've been having fun!

Speaking of fun, Holly and Robin and I are going to go to the Renfaire on Labor Day! Everett and Jeff have been invited, but I don't know if they're actually going to go. I am so excited I can't wait!

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I've been mentioning information about thyroid problems from time to time on the blog, and ran across a useful post on the Stop the Thyroid Madness blog. Check out Ten Thyroid Tidbits!

There were a few things that surprised me in it. I had heard that most cooking oils tend to suppress thyroid function, and that one of the best things is to switch to coconut oil for cooking (and be sure to cook at a lower temp--coconut oil burns at a much lower temp than most cooking oils), but she sounds like she's talking about eating it. Which sounds gross, except that I've cooked with it, and it tastes sweet. Her recommendation of coconut milk would probably be the way to go if you're not planning to cook with it. One thing you do NOT want to do is drink Silk (soy milk)! Not only does it suppress thyroid function and promote weight gain through that mechanism, it also adds lots of extra estrogen to your system. As a country, we're using so much soy that the excess is causing pollution that's making fish hermaphroditic.

Anyway, if you're interested in your health, check it out!

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In science fiction news, I just found some information about the new season of Doctor Who! The way it's explained, it sounds good, but all I know about it is in the article, so check it out.

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There is a blog that I've been reading since 2004 (wow--six years) by fibermom which is an interesting blog, or I wouldn't have been reading it so long.

I'm mentioning it today, though, because she's doing something she's been doing since before I started reading her blog. She's going to participate in the Holiday Grand Plan, which is a plan which happens to start today, and is intended to get you ready for the holidays without getting frazzled. You can read about it at the above two links.

Yesterday, I suddenly decided I need to start making a list of Christmas presents to get/make for friends and family, so I guess I've already started in a way. Mind you, I didn't actually start making the list, but I thought I should do that since most of the presents I give are hand made.

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Have you ever watched TV and saw someone use a gun with a silencer and wondered how it works? Well, you can find out right here.

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It's getting late, and I've been thinking for a while that I need to try to get out and walk every day. So, I'm going to go and do that. I'm taking my camera! Just in case.

Have a fabulous week!

Steve Canyon in French!

There's a review up for the Steve Canyon series in French! You can read an English translation of it here! It's actually gone through a translation process, and some of it is quite amusing after being dragged into English.

The good part about this for many people will be the listings of which planes appear in each episode. This is particularly interesting to me because I was in the Air Force right after the series was on TV, and we had many of the planes that appear in the series right on base where I got to see them up close, sometimes too close.

Scary Monday Night

I've been wanting to see the movie, Avatar, for a while. I considered renting it from Blockbuster, but then realized that I could get a copy of it free (for a week) from the library! I asked for it to be sent to the library right behind my apartment building, and yesterday I went and picked it up.

But I'd had trouble connecting everything when I got my TiVo, so had to plug in the DVD player, and wanted to plug in the DVD recorder, too. After I was finished watching TV last night, I did that, and thought I'd blown out the RF modulator that I need to connect things because the TiVo doesn't have an RF output.

I couldn't get anything to work! I thought I wouldn't get to see any more TV until I could replace the modulator, and wouldn't have enough money to do that until the third of September.

But I did some more investigation today, and finally discovered that if the modulator doesn't have something plugged into it, or doesn't have something that works plugged into it, it will not function. The true culprit of the piece turned out to be the DVD recorder, which either doesn't work, or it's RCA jacks don't work. I have to do some more research on that.

The recorder is going to be more expensive to replace than the modulator, if I have to do that, but at least I can watch TV at the moment. The bonus is that the DVD player is hooked up, it works, and I can watch Avatar later tonight, after all the good TV is over!

Speaking of which, tonight there are new episodes of: Warehouse 13 (I think this is the season finale), White Collar, Covert Affairs, and Memphis Beat. Almost all the new episodes of shows this week are season finales. After all that, I'll be checking out Avatar. If I can find the remote, that is. It's been so long since the DVD player has been hooked up that I'm not sure if I can remember where the remote is.

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I finally got the last book in Meg Cabot's Airhead series (Runaway) from the library yesterday, and, as with all her books, it's a fast read. You may recall that I mentioned I bought the second book, Being Nikki, for the Nook application on my phone. It's the first real ebook I've bought, and it was an interesting experience. I suspect the actual reading might have been more comfortable on a real Nook, but it was OK. On my phone, it ran the battery down fairly quickly, which shouldn't happen on a real Nook. Otherwise, it was enjoyable.

The one surprising thing about it is that it was suddenly over! With a real book, I can see that I'm near the end, and I kind of expect it to finish soon, but this just suddenly ended.

Part of that was because the three books are really more of one big story that's been chopped into three pieces. The first two don't really have endings, they just stop. I'm already near the end of the third book, and I'm assuming that it's going to have an actual end.

The one thing that I could really get addicted to is being able to decide I want to buy a book, selecting it, and then having it just be there, ready to read! No going to the bookstore, or ordering online and waiting for it! Just press a few buttons, and the book you want to read is magically in your hands! And some of the money in your account is magically in the hands of Barnes and Noble!

It's truly amazing the first time. If I get a Nook WiFi (which I'd like to do), I could download a book at home without having to plug it in to my computer, but with the phone, I can get a book to read almost anywhere!

The twenty-first century is truly amazing!

Eureka is on, and I'm going to go catch the last few minutes of it.

Have a wonderful evening!

Mea Culpa! Errata and Other Stuff

Well, I got ABC Family's Harry Potter Weekend all mixed up!

Tonight is Goblet of Fire and Sunday night is Half Blood Prince. I still don't know of any plans to put on Order of the Phoenix.

Sorry!

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I just got back from the grocery store, where they had one last copy of Vogue Knitting! They don't have any now, because I couldn't leave without it.

There are a lot of beautiful things in this issue, but three things really caught my eye. The least of them is a "Scarf" shown below. I think this is actually circular. It looks like it could be worn without the coat as a poncho, too.

I LOVE things with wings, and the rectangular wrap in this photo is no exception!

There is also a sleeveless coat with similar wings, and I love that, too, maybe even better!

As usual, though, I immediately want to change it all around. I think I'd like it with a hood, sleeves, and I can't leave out the pockets!

I have to run, now. Being Human is on BBC in America, and I may be wrong, but it looks like there are two new ones! Hope you're having a great weekend!

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Important addition!:

After extolling the virtues of Vogue Knitting, and then paging through the magazine, I feel I should issue a warning!

A large percentage of the patterns in the magazine require charts, and they're NOT included with the magazine! You have to go online to find the charts and print them out. In the case of the sleeveless coat, I need to study it more, but it looks like the chart provided is really for the wrap, and I don't see how you could possibly use it for the coat. This requires more study, but at least at first glance, it looks like a colossal mistake!

Another Giveaway and Miscellaneous

Wow! I opened my email today, and there it was… Berroco sent me a notice about their newest giveaway, a kit for the Northampton Kerchief. This is much prettier than it sounds like it would be.

The photo doesn't have a link in it, you have to click the link in the paragraph above.

Pretty, isn't it?

I entered immediately! You might want to do the same, since entries have to be in by the 26th. You might also want to sign up for their newsletter, because the winners will be announced there.

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More knitting content: If you design your own knitting patterns and/or would like to chart your own designs, here's some information about three knitting chart fonts! I haven't tried the fonts yet, but they sound like the best solution to charting yet. And I chart things all the time.

My previous best solution has been graph paper and pencil. Although that's probably the best while you're developing something, I really want to keep a permanent, and reprintable solution on my computer! Not to mention that you can publish it that way!

I'm seriously considering frogging almost all of the Celtic Sweater and redoing it! There are a few things that I'm just not totally happy with. I'm still thinking about it, but you may suddenly be hearing a lot more about it on my blog (with photos, I do have a new phone, after all).

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If you use antibacterial soap, you might want to reconsider.

The ingredients that provide the antibacterial effect for these kinds of product can pose a severe threat to your endocrine and reproductive systems. Please click on the link to find out more.

There are millions of people in the US with hypothyroidism who have not been diagnosed due to the misinformation spread by drug companies to doctors who hang on their every word. I see people around me all the time with hypothyroid symptoms that are so bad that I notice them just from sharing a bus ride with them. And their doctors not only don't know enough to recognize these symptoms, but are actively testing those people with inaccurate tests and telling them that they don't have a thyroid problem!

And, by the way, if you have high cholesterol you do have a hypothyroid problem! Not maybe, not possibly, you DO! And I can almost guarantee that your doctor is unaware of this connection.

If you have high cholesterol and you do happen to be diagnosed with hypothyroidism by your doctor, make sure he prescribes natural desiccated thyroid (Armor Thyroid, Naturethroid or West Throid), which he probably won't want to do. This will fix the cholesterol problem (along with a lot of other problems) whereas Synthroid or other T4 medication won't fix those problems. But the drug manufacturers have told doctors to prescribe T4 medications so that they can sell lots of other drugs for cholesterol and more. Check this link!

I'm glad to hear that it's the FDA that's being sued. Maybe they'll learn to stop rushing dangerous drugs to market so that drug manufacturers can save money on the testing and start making money on drugs that are going to kill thousands. The drug companies won't learn. They make so much money on drugs that they feel they'd rather pay out some of it to the people they harm than miss all the profits. Unfortunately, the episode of Leverage that dealt with this problem is all too accurate! It's called The Double Blind Job, and I'm sure they'll rerun it. Watch for it! TNT (I think) has been airing reruns of Leverage on late night/early morning.

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I was going to post this earlier, but we had a power outage last night, and somehow, it damaged the elevator. I was just about to start the post earlier today, and my computer went off. I panicked for a moment when it wouldn't start up again, but then thought to check the printer, which also wouldn't start, and after a bit of investigation realized that the stove didn't work, either.

I tried resetting the circuit breakers with no effect, and then they made an announcement about the problem with the elevator and said that they'd turned off the electricity in part of the building while they fixed it. It seemed confusing, because the TV and some other stuff, like the microwave and refrigerator, still worked.

Everything's back to normal now, though.

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I love my local library, and read lots of books that I borrow from them on a regular basis. There's just no way that I could afford to continue reading without them.

But I ran into a bit of a problem with them this week. There are some books that are very popular, and I ran afoul of that this week with Meg Cabot's Airhead series. There are three books in the series: Airhead, Being Nikki, and Runaway, in that order. They have plenty of copies of Airhead, and I got that with no problem, but they don't have many copies of the other two books. Unfortunately, Airhead doesn't have much of an ending, it just segues into Being Nikki, so it's kind of like getting half of a double-length book. I picked up the first book, which my local library had on the shelf a week or so ago, and read it. I had the other two books on order, but had to wait because of the demand.

I checked on what books were in, and found that Runaway was sitting and waiting for me, but that I wouldn't be able to get Being Nikki for a while! Who wants to read the first, third and second books of a series in that order? And, since there are other people waiting for the last book, I can't keep it very long.

So, I broke down and bought a real, honest-to-goodness ebook copy of Being Nikki, my first ever real ebook! I got the Nook application for Android on my phone, and it seems to be working well. I'd rather have a real Nook ebook reader, though, because I can run down the battery on my phone pretty quickly when I read.

If you're interested in the books themselves, they are considered "young adult" books by the library, but a lot of adults are reading kids books these days. As I've said before, "A good story is a good story." The premise for these books is a little hard to believe, but if you can get past that, they're the usual top-notch writing that I've come to expect from Meg Cabot.

In the first story, Em dies in a freak accident, her body crushed beyond repair at the same time that Nikki Howard dies from an aneurysm. The doctors having a ruined body with a perfectly good brain and another perfect body with a useless brain are able to combine the two and create a healthy person, who is Em in Nikki's body. Obviously, Em has trouble dealing with a past that she can't remember and another that she can remember, but which is not legally her past.

The Meg Cabot series I've liked best so far is the Mediator series, and I have to say that if you like ghost stories and liked the Twilight series, this is even better!

I'm really tickled about my first real ebook, though.

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There's a new Eureka and Haven on SyFy tonight!

If you're a Harry Potter fan, ABC Family will be having another of their Harry Potter weekends, starting with The Prisoner of Azkaban tonight, Half Blood Prince Saturday night, and finishing with The Order of the Phoenix on Sunday evening! To the best of my knowledge, it'll be the first time Order of the Phoenix will be shown on non-premium cable.

Other than that, the big news on TV is that it's nearly football season, and it's squeezing almost everything else off TV! My only consolation is that it will eventually go away.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Namaste Holster Giveaway!

Hip Mountain Mama is giving away a brand-new, just-out Namaste holster bag!

This seems to be much closer to the elusive project bag design that I've been pursuing for the last few years. You can wear this on your belt or sling it over your shoulder. Either way, it's got a large interior space for your actual project, plus a separate section for things like a measuring tape, extra DP needles, stitch markers and more, and keeps all this paraphernalia from messing up your actual project!

I don't know about you, but I want one, and entered their contest immediately!

For an extra entry in their giveaway, be sure to check out their store. It's mostly for mothers of young children, but there's a whole knitters and crafters section with some nifty stuff!

Enter soon! It'll be all over on Friday! Good luck!