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Showing posts from July, 2008

FYI: Windows Update KB950582 problems have wrecked my life

Well, not quite, but our machine got trapped in an endless cycle of update / roll back / reboot / Windows not Genuine as described by another user  here : KB950582 killed my Vista machine It downloaded, restarted tried to install, shut down, said it was "improperly configured" and tried to roll itself back. Rebooted and got the "Windows not genuine" screen. Don't bother going to the activation process. That didn't work. Booted to safe mode got to a restore point. Restoring brought things back to normal. Rebooting from last known good configuration did not work. I put that update in the "Ignore" file. Thanks a bunch, Microsoft.  Warned Judy not to get a new machine with Vista because it's not stable yet.  But she's banking on it being stable 2 years down the line... and in the meantime, supported by Microsoft longer than XP will be. Ick.   Anyway, the only reason I'm blogging this is in the mad hope

Wayback Machine? Old foodie post.

Here's a really, REALLY old post from about a million years ago... well, ten at least. All about the food we eat & how I cook.  I had forgotten most of this.  The two kids referred to are, of course, the ones we now call the BIG kids.   I found this bc I told my old friend (now Facebook Friend) Emily I thought of her every time I make rice pilaf, because she taught me how from an old cookbook she bought me called Food 101.  She replied that she knew bc she'd googled herself and found this post.    So here it is... Enjoy!     PREFACE: Everybody's always asking me, "how do you do it?". Being a single mother, working full-time, being frum, and all that... Well, it's actually easy, as long as you have an extra twelve hours in your day. Which I don't, so I try to make an extra two or three extra hours in the day, and learn to cut corners. My rules of thumb in the kitchen and around the house are: It's never easier in the mo

Fw: Vileda Bee mop problem

----- Original Message ----- Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 3:48 PM Subject: Vileda Bee mop problem > Two or three months ago, unable to find a refill for our previous mop, > we purchased a new Bee Mop (multi). > > Somehow, after only a few uses, the handle seems to have become > "detached" inside the bumpy black handle grip. This has made the > handle very easily bendable and means the mop is almost useless for > cleaning floors (you can't apply any pressure or the handle will > wobble!). > > I'm attaching a couple of pictures where I'm applying pressure to the > handle so you can see how easily it bends - you only need to push a > little bit; it feels very flimsy now. > > This has never happened to me with any type of mop before - even bee > mops, which I have used very happily in past. I do enjoy the > "scrubber" feature of the new mop head, but t

Too bad it's only got 3 leaves.

Drat - overfilled the pool AGAIN! And thoughts on hair, my no-'poo secret, etc.

I always resolve to remember to turn off the hose and then I always forget! Well, okay, this is just the second time it's actually overflowed... and it is kind of pretty in a zen-garden kind of way. Except for the bright blue colour. Funny. My hair was getting kind of greasy the last couple of days and I actually started feeling annoyed - like, maybe this "no-'poo" ('poo = shampoo) thing isn't working anymore - because, after all, I just washed my hair last month when I went to the mikveh! And then I was, like, uh-oh... need a sense of perspective here. Remember when I used to have to wash my hair every single DAY? So, the no-'poo thing. I use two squirt bottles, from the dollar store. They're yellow and red, for mustard and ketchup, but never used for that at all. I fill the yellow bottle with hottish water and add 3 tsp or so of baking soda. In the red bottle, I put a bit of apple cider vinegar, maybe 1/3 of a cup, then fill the bottle all the way t

Hey, why did that "thumbs" post come up twice?

Weird... I tried to post and it crashed. Guess it hadn't crashed after all. Here's the result of all the laundry I've been doing the last few days: almost all the serviettes are clean, sorted & stacked up. What a hodge-podge! But believe it or not, we go through almost all of these in a typical week. If only they all matched... Elisheva would certainly be happy. Rabbi Posen had a heart attack. Say Tehillim for Yosef Ezriel ben Chava Rus. I'm shocked - he's been walking from Lawrence down to Eglinton every single Shabbos, Yom Tov, etc, for I don't know how long. So youngish, healthyish... well, of course, that happens. But still: saddened. I should say tehillim instead of posting here. :-(

Ad in Now Magazine - The Batty Old Lady strikes again!

----- Original Message ----- To: visitorservices@harbourfrontcentre.com Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 11:26 AM Subject: Ad in Now Magazine First of all, I'm thrilled that the free films are back at Harbourfront! However, I was appalled at a recent ad in Now Magazine that indicated that these free movies make Tuesdays "suck less." I don't believe there's any need to stoop to that level - the inarticulate vocabulary of pre-teens - to make the prospect of a free movie sound inviting. It's a FREE MOVIE; you could probably just say "FREE MOVIE" and fill the seats on a decent-weather evening. You don't have to make it sound fun, or hip, or relevant; if it's a decent movie, it will do its own promotion. I'm also not sure, to address the underlying message of the ad, that Tuesdays actually DO suck. Isn't every moment of life supposed to be precious? Okay, it may sound trite, but our culture's widespread message that every single hour

And by the way...

YOU try taking pictures of both your thumbs - it's a challenge, let me tell you. :-)

Blisters on thumbs from the new broom!

Gack. I didn't notice the damage until I was finished... this broom really is heavy-duty. Yes, it was Shabbos. I just figured I was sweeping and it didn't hurt or anything until I looked down and realized my skin was off. :-(((

Thumb blisters from the new broom!

Gack. This new heavy-duty broom sure did some damage when I thoroughly swept the driveway... YES, it was Shabbos. I just figured I was sweeping, and didn't notice the injury until I was finished. :-(

If Gavriel Zev was a triplet...

Cute, yes??? Visited friends Charlene & Jeremy and their twinnies today. It was a celebration of the twins' first birthday and also their new house. Well, kind of new... they moved in back in May, but this was literally my first chance to get there and see it! Later on, GZ & I walked to Blockbuster, chose a bunch of videos, then stopped at the park to swing at which point we got rained on. Came home, thoroughly drenched... gack. Now he's sleeping, and theoretically, that means I have work to do. But I'm feeling soaked through and lazy now! <3 J

It's grass, man...

OK, first of all... what the HECK is going on here??? In the time it took me to type this, I have sneezed FOUR times. Just sitting in the computer corner of the room, apparently, is enough to make me violently sneezy. I have opened the front door wide - at the risk of letting in the annoying mewing neighbourhood cat (Ted found her in our room one day last week and downstairs another time, so this is a very real risk). I just cannot stand being here another second. I'm all hot & flushed and sneezing my bloody head off. Speaking of which, I can't seem to stop myself saying "bloody hell," an annoying Britishy affectation that prompted Naomi last week to mimic it as "bloody who." So now, of course, I'm trying to cut back. So! <----- This is grass. Eco-lawn grass in little trial-sized growing pots. It's my attempt to salvage our lawn area. So far, so good. My plan is to transplant each of the four pots as a "plug" in a differ

Ville de ma naissance! Avec ma famille!

Which means... hey, welcome back to Montreal! It's so rare that four pictures of me taken in a row look half-decent, I pretty much HAD to post them, non ? Moi, ma fille et mes deux grands garcons. Moi et mon garcon. Moi, forgetting how to say husband (mari?), ma fille, garcon et autre garcon. Moi, demonstrating mes bras [arms] tres, tres grands. Et les arbres. Et tout l'extent de ma vocabulaire francaise. Luckily, we came down the mountain then before I actually had to say anything French. Supper at the world-famous Ernie & Ellie's Place on Decarie in the run-down depressing Mall of Broken Dreams that also includes our second-favourite Montreal place, the ever-more depressing Dollar Cinema . Despite the name, they have raised the rates to $2 per movie per person... but the snack bar items remain $1 as ever. We saw Wallace & Gromit again - saw it in theatres a couple of years ago, but Naomi never saw it, I think, or maybe she was a baby. Then we met Abigail

We're Back! From Ottawa/Montreal!

For ten minutes, at least, and then Ted turned around & took everybody le camping . ;-) And now I'm blessedly child-free (well, 3 out of 4) for the rest of the week and on into Monday!!! <3 J Supper: Who knows? Who cares!?!?? I'm FREE!

New car pics!

These and more new car pics at my picasaweb page here !

What are you doing with her in the fall???

Already it's starting... people asking if Miss Chooch here is ready for kindergarten yet. They assume she is, since she's almost 3 and a half, but with a February birthday, she's past the cutoff. Nobody seems to like my answer of "just hanging out" in response to what I'm "doing" with her. And definitely nobody likes my answer of "waiting till the baby is big enough and then the 3 of us are going to just hang out and go cool places together." OK, maybe I'm overcompensating a bit for sticking the older 2 kids in daycare... but okay. I mean, if you were given a chance to redeem yourself, even if the previous situation was completely not your fault (which I don't completely buy anymore anyway), wouldn't you take it? If I think daycare / preschool / etc is such a horrible mistake, why wouldn't I take the opportunity to relish the couple of years I have with my children before they will be in other people's care forever?

I believe the technical term...

is RIOT. As in this is a RIOT of colour here in this disorganized garden bed. Just for contrast, here's how neat and tidy it looked right when I first planted the alyssum a couple of months ago...

Einstein? Or Down Syndrome child?

She either looks brilliant or retarded in this picture. Not sure which. She has "borrowed" YM's glasses and kippah, which he's technically not allowed to permit her to even touch (yes, it's HIS responsibility to keep his stuff away from babies, to a certain extent). But in the end it was so cute I had to take a picture. She looks like a squished-up nerdy ten-year-old boy. So we're off to Ottawa - somehow - tomorrow. No music for the road trip - waah!! And did I mention that I had to do a dvar Torah at the ladies' Shalosh Seudos today??? I was asked a few weeks ago, but then they found another speaker, who was listed in the Shabbos bulletin this morning. Naturally, I spent all of yesterday anxiously preparing and was thus somewhat peeved that nobody told me I wouldn't be speaking after all. BUT - I was also relieved because my DT wasn't finished yet and so I basically printed a bunch of rough ideas that I'd planned to polish up at the las

Aha! The fungus among us!

The patch of yuck in the garden the other day has been identified by astute Web helpers as a non-fungal life form known affectionately as the DOG VOMIT SLIME MOLD! In case you haven't seen enough of it, here are more pictures: http://images.google.com/images?q=dog%20vomit%20slime Apparently, the slime mold is a completely separate type of organism - not a plant or a fungus... WHO KNEW? Gut voch! <3 J

Ringed with stones!

Here, at last, the pictures of the stones going around the garden bed. Just came inside to shut down for Shabbos. It's an inferno in here, and here's what we're eating for Shabbos food! Supper: BBQ sos chicken, oven fried rice, garden vegs roasted Lunch: milchigs - don't remember what.

Gack. Dying. Heat.

What IS this stuff?!?

Garden High: Golden Tansy

OK, this plant deserves some credit. It grows like a weed, tall with graceful, ferny foliage in an astonishing lime shade (I wouldn't call it gold, but there you go), attracts wonderful beneficial insects and now it's gonna have flowers, too. It may not look like much, but it's my Golden Tansy and it happens to be my Garden High for today. I cannot tell you how many hours have passed with me just sitting there, sighing as I stare at this thing contentedly. Gnite! <3 J

Tomato hubris & downfall

Supper: Sausages (Lazer Yitzchok, Mexican-style) with Ace Bakery Bread and garden beans steamed with corn. Not even lightly steamed... oops. But very, very yummy (although texturally no different from tinned). So... last week's tomato hubris, my gardener's pride in ripening tomatoes on my super-strong, ultra-vigourous tomato plants has been replaced by... DOWNFALL. Yes, like I said last night: Blossom-End Rot. I dunno. Three possible causes: ~ Inconsistent watering (check!) ~ Excess nitrogen (umm... maybe, because of all that good worm-casting stuff!) ~ Calcium deficiency (quite likely - check!) I have never seen it so bad, or widespread, although the cherries (like the ones seen above) still don't seem to be affected. Anyway, I didn't know whether it was better to leave the rotting tomatoes on the plants or pull them off so it could refocus on making better tomatoes. In the end, I couldn't stand to look at them, so pathetic, and I figured it would make a great