Back in the 80s I had a chance to visit the father of a friend in Caracas. Our first night there they fed us arepas for dinner. That was the whole meal, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Boron is one of those micronutrients which can be tolerated up to a point.  If the boron levels exceed ‘that point,’ then it becomes a poison.  Ask any cockroach.  It works the same for plants.  It is a micronutrient to a point, and then, WHAM.  Instant death and sterilization of the soil. 

I have my daughters trained to send me a picture of the dashboard lights so I can tell them what to do. 

Frying and/or cooking bacon is where I bring out the induction “burner”. Mine will hold a temp to 5 degrees F, of course with no flames to deal with. In fact another thing I do, since it is induction, is put a thin dish towel on top of the cook top under the pot/pan to catch the spatter.

The dog version of 1984. 

That picture was from a noticeably non-buggy area.  I was disappointed in the catch.  I do not know if they serve a purpose, but I do know that their eggs turn into grubs in the lawn, where they serve the purpose of eating grass roots.

Here’s a picture of my beetle trap. I use it for June bugs in Texas, but it works for Japanese beetles, too.

I was 16 back in the 60s when my dad decided to take us to the Colorado River, north of Blythe, CA to camp in July.  Daytime temps were in the 110s but it cooled down to 99 at night.  Fortunately it was not muggy.  In fact it was so not muggy that we tried to cool off to sleep by wearing a t-shirt into the river so…

After getting a degree in engineering, my fiance had another year of school, and it was cheap enough at the time, so I remained in school another year taking “easy” business classes. One class was Real Estate. Part of the class was to determine what all the hidden costs were for maintenance on ownership and rentals…

Absolutely proof read your deed. I’ve read thousands of deeds in Texas, and far too many of them contained mistakes which cost buyers and subsequent buyers a lot of money and hassle. I’ve even seen banks which did not read their deeds and ended up repossessing and reselling the wrong house. I’ve seen residential lot…

Get to know how your local appraisals work. Every state is different. I worked for two appraisal districts in Texas and noticed some (illegal) differences between the two. In Texas the buyer and seller do not have to disclose the sales price to the appraisal district. Smart buyers will never disclose, but many sellers…

If you link to the paper, the list was ultra processed foods which can be mixed into an otherwise healthy mix of unprocessed foods to form a relatively healthy diet over a week’s time. So the entire list above was UPFs from that week of diets. Even the rotisserie chicken.

What’s in your high fiber soft tacos? That’s a potential hidden explosion of processed food. 

WOW! This is excellent. Leave it to Claire to find new potato topics for us to enjoy. Thank You!! Are you Irish?

Every situation is different. Back in ‘99 we joined 9 other families adopting babies from an orphanage in Samara, RU. Our agency took care of all our accommodations and travel. When we arrived to depart Samara Regional Airport and fly back to Moscow, we entered the building and were immediately hustled upstairs to…

$30 plus having Microsoft watching your every move through their store subscription “service.” I already have Google watching every move. My dream is to die with the fewest conglomerates knowing about it.

Mosquito dunks came on my radar in the mid 90s, and I’ve been using them ever since. We used to have a 5-gallon bucket of water for our dogs to drink out of, and it always had mosquito larvae in it. Guppies worked to control them until the dogs noticed the fish and started the game of bobbing for guppies. They left…

The folks at gcn (??) would be wrong. WD-40 is a pretty good cleaner to wash away grime and oils, but it is not a lubricant for heavy use. I had an off-road motorcycle back in the 60s and cleaned the chain about once a month. Quite often I used gasoline or brake cleaner to remove the dirt and sludge and then oiled it…

Well, isn’t that genius. Chemistry. Who’da thought?

I had a fast-fuse incident when I was a kid. We had to go to Mexico to get fireworks, but they were definitely from China. This was back in the 50s when “Made in China” was more of a warning sign. Anyway I lit one of those 1.5-inch long red things with one hand, and it went off immediately. It stung like a MF, but I…