Earlier this week I went hiking with my niece and her two boys. On the way to the trail another hiker told us to be alert: Bears had recently been seen in the area.
We can now attest that the bears are still in the area.
Donna Freedman
A winner, on my way out of town.
Melissa Allison was the one whom the random number generator loved best this week. She gets the $20 Amazon gift card. Everyone else gets to try again on Friday.
My first week here has been fun: Little sleep, but plenty of family, friends and food. The weekend was given to attending (and recovering from) a reunion of current and former women of the Anchorage Daily News in picturesque Hope, Alaska. This was a great group of kickass wimmen, and of course the food was major.
Oh, and yesterday my niece and her boys and I ran into a couple of bears while hiking.
Lactobacillus love: Is it wrong?
I never cared much for yogurt. It generally seemed too sour to me, unless it was turned into tzatziki sauce on a gyro sandwich.
Apparently I just never had the right kind of yogurt.
I’d heard that the homemade version was better than the commercial kind. I’d also read about people making yogurt in a slow cooker. After looking online for instructions I settled on a slight variation of the process described at A Year of Slow Cooking.
And then I improved on it.
How to kick your Diet Coke addiction.
I can remember my grandfather grousing about the price of cigarettes. He swore he would quit when it went up past 35 cents a pack.
It did, and he did.
Now I know how he felt, although my particular vice is brown and fizzy and gives me reward points. At an Anchorage supermarket I was shocked to find Diet Coke selling for $8.19 per 12-pack. Thank goodness there’s no sales tax here.
That works out to 68 cents a can. It won’t break the bank. But really? More than eight dollars for a 12-pack? For something that I can’t even get drunk off of?
Blog roundup: Waterboarding the cat edition.
I love animals, but I don’t want any pets. It’s probably because I don’t want to be responsible for another living being.
Or to be responsible for torturing another living being.
Want to go to the movies?
If so, ask South County Girl — she has an extra ticket, now that she’s been declared the winner of the AMC movie giveaway.
My $1 tax refund.
It’s a little nervous-making to get a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. My first reaction is always, OMG I’m being audited.
Nope. “We changed your 2010 Form 1040 to match our record of your estimated tax payments, credits applied from another year, and/or payments received with an extension to file,” the letter read. “As a result, you are due a refund of $1.”
Some people might think, “A buck? Not worth the gas to take it to the bank.”
Stamp Out Hunger 2011: Spare a can for your fellow man.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 50 million people in this country are “food insecure,” i.e., they do not have regular access to adequate nutrition. More than 17 million of them are children.
You can help, at least a little.
The winners.
I wish I had unlimited prizes so that everyone could be a winner. I don’t. Is it too corny to say I think you’re all winners?
(It is? Well, too late. I just said it.)
Here’s how the first-anniversary giveaway turned out:
13 travel essentials that don’t weigh much.
When I got off the Megabus from Cardiff to London I was weary from a couple of days of hard walking. Fortunately there are markets in Victoria Station so I picked up a bread “baton” (larger than a hoagie roll, smaller than a baguette), some sliced ham and a single carrot.
Back at the hostel I pulled a Rubbermaid container from my suitcase and took out packets of butter and spicy brown mustard to garnish a simple ham sandwich. The carrot provided a bit of crunch. I finished up with an apple and a small container of Devon Custard Rice I’d bought previously.
Sure, I could made the sandwich without mustard and butter, but it wouldn’t have tasted nearly as good. And eating Devon Custard Rice with my fingers would have been the stickiest of wickets.
When I go to Alaska, I travel with mayonnaise. On all my trips I pack some or all of the following items — small, light, extremely practical things that are worth many times their weight in frequent-flier miles. They don’t take up much room but they pack a mighty impact.