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themartianchick

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Everything posted by themartianchick

  1. I have a little tiny laptop that can also fold back and be used as a tablet. It was really inexpensive a couple of years ago. It is the computer that I travel with because it fits into an ordinary purse. I will see if I can find it.I thought that it was an HP, but it is a Dell. It was on sale a few years back right after Thanksgiving for $130. It is handy, though it is a little slow. Here is the model info: Dell™ Inspiron i3185 2-In-1 Laptop, 11.6" Touch Screen, AMD A6, 4GB Memory, 64GB eMMC Storage, Windows® 10, i3185-A626RED-PUSQuantity Shipped: 1 Item # 8790314 I assume that they have a newer model/version of this now. It is just so darned convenient!
  2. I spent today in my own home, as I had the day off from work. Hubby and I went to 2 stores this morning when they weren't very busy. We bit the bullet and purchased a lot of meat at a locally owned grocery store. Mostly beef for hubby and then I added a few large packs of chicken thighs @ $1.19/lb. The beef ribs were $3.99/lb but they had to be cut apart before freezing. Hubby also picked out a couple of packs of beef bacon at the astronomical price of $7.99/lb. We paid a total of $80 and it all fit into a single reusable grocery bag! I repackaged everything and reorganized the freezer to ensure that I could make it all fit. I forgot to mention that I have been doing a no-spend month for March. Groceries are exempt from that. I will continue to get the households stocked up for whatever may come. This afternoon, hubby and I went birdwatching in a nearby nature preserve that we had never visited before. Then we picked up some lunch using a gift card. Restaurants are against the rules for a no-spend month.
  3. When I had livestock, I also had a mealworm farm in a small plastic aquarium. It was very easy to maintain and I fed them to my chickens and quail. One day, I was cleaning and raking out the space on the ground (beneath the quail cage) and found that there was a whole colony of mealworms living there. I also cleaned out the indoor chicken run for the stealth chickens and found more living beneath the straw, dried leaves and wood chips. That was when I realized that I didn't need to cultivate mealworms at all. I believe that a few had gotten away from my birds and decided to live in the feed-strewn litter. They tended to live in places that were inaccessible to the birds but still gave them access to overlooked or spilled food. From then on, I simply grabbed a shovel full of the discarded litter and gave it to the birds to scratch through. I found this old photo of my quail cage with my first hatched flock. We eventually had it resting on 2 pallets to allow it to sit up higher. This made it easy to slip a narrow garden rake under it and pull out old bedding and mealworms. I used to use the roof of the cage to grow potted herbs and salad greens. The second photo is my original mealworm farm.
  4. I have never heard of this, Jeepers! I can imagine that you dehydrate some zuke chips and then powder them. That could be very helpful. I don't have a lot of space for growing grains but I can grow a million zucchini on a couple of plants. If I am not mistaken, I lent my dehydrator to my daughter in 2020. I should probably ask for it back! I also took a moment to check on my waterbath canner... My daughter borrowed that in 2020, too. I am a homesteader in need of the most basic tools!
  5. My new computer still uses Windows 10 and I am grateful for that,
  6. Mom and I don't eat a lot of meat, but my husband is liable to become dangerous if he doesn't get some kind of meat to eat!
  7. You can sometimes find bread machines in thrift stores...especially after the holidays. People receive them as gifts and either use them once or not at all.
  8. Oh, I didn't say that I SHOULD be using one...just that I have one! Bread and pasta are two of my downfalls. I haven't gotten enough exercise in recent years and the scale is not my friend. I brought my bread machine to mom's apartment when COVID hit in our area (March 2020). We were already seeing grocery shortages and I wanted to ensure that we had access to bread. I think that I only made it twice. The machine is now in the closet that I am supposed to be cleaning today. That still might happen today... 🙄
  9. Good morning! It is a chilly 43 degrees in NY, today! I am hoping to get the storage closet organized. That is where I keep a lot of miscellaneous stuff and it is a bit of a hot mess! Reorganizing the freezer is definitely in the plan. If I manage to get anything else done, then that is just a bonus. I have tomorrow off from work and I'm hoping to get some stuff done in my own home. I may even look over my garden beds to see if there is anything that I want to grow in pots. My old potting table is still out in the main garden, but it looks a little worse for wear. If nothing else, maybe I can grow some herbs in pots. I love fresh herbs and they are so expensive at the store! Have a great day, everyone!
  10. My mom has Parkinson's and the tremor is particularly strong in her dominant hand. She tried to learn to write with the other hand but it also shakes and the handwriting is still illegible. She has had to sign a few important documents in front of a notary. It is still hard for her to accept because she used to write in shorthand to take meeting minutes and could type 90 words per minute.
  11. Welcome back, Spider! My condolences on the loss of your mom. It sounds as though you have had a difficult time in recent years. Many of us have commented that Darlene's email touched on something deeply emotional and spiritual. It is so much nicer to share our troubles and triumphs here. The more people who return, the lighter the burdens feel.
  12. Hi, Nana! It is so nice to see so many of the old personalities here. With so many folks coming back, it feels really good to be back HOME again!
  13. This is really interesting... I don't think that I've ever used a really old recipe.
  14. We used to have chickens, quail, and a dog. Today, we have no critters at all. When our last dog died, we were too heartbroken to get another. When we were finally ready, we decided that it would be a bad idea because hubby was retiring and we wanted to be able to travel. So, I made do with my stealth chickens until a raccoon killed most of them. When those last few hens died, I didn't replace them because Hubby was really close to retirement. After hubby retired, our youngest daughter took care of the quail for us when we traveled because she was still living at home. I didn't bother to hatch any more chicks after that batch died. The Quail Jail (as we called their backyard cage) was dismantled last summer. I miss spending time with my critters, especially the chickens. I am in need of chicken therapy! 🐣🐥🐤🐔 We feed the birds, squirrels and rabbits at mom's apartment. I guess that they'd be on the menu, if things got really bad around here.
  15. Oh my goodness!!!! This one works!!! I also learned how to change the entire color scheme. The alien on the back is now my favorite shade of purple. The best thing is that the lights on the back at the bottom (called TRON lights) are finally off. The backlighting is off, too. It is kind of a complex way to do it. Since it is after 9 pm, I guess that I should turn the keyboard lighting back on. I just can't see the keys in the dark! Thanks so much Ambergris!!!
  16. That doesn't seem to work... Pressing the alienhead causes the keyboard lighting and the screen to go black but as soon as you touch a key, it comes back. I tried the FN plus F5 and F6, as well as just F5 and F6 (without FN and nothing happens at all. It is vexing.
  17. My computer is an Alienware (What else would a Martian use?) The keyboard is perpetually backlit with no apparent way to turn it off. The power button (shaped like an alien) glows nonstop when the machine is on. This feature is useful when the machine is charging because it changes colors as it goes along. There is external lighting on the back of the laptop that serves no useful purpose. All of this extra lighting causes the battery to drain faster than a regular laptop. Otherwise, I LOVE this machine because it is lightning fast, even when I have a bazillion tabs open! I believe that the external lighting is just for the cool factor... I can imagine that some teenaged gamer would be impressed by it! Here is a stock photo of it. My cell phone camera doesn't capture it quite right.
  18. My machine is quite old. Hubby bought it for me as a Christmas gift in the early 90s and I used it once. The bread was horrid and I never tried again until the 2000s. It became my favorite appliance! It is a Breadman brand machine and it can make jam and quickbreads, in addition to pizza dough and traditional breads. It has the delay and will keep the bread warm until you turn it off. My only complaint is that the loaves that it bakes are odd-shaped. I usually use it to make dough and then bake it in a standard pan in the oven. Coming home to fresh bread after working all day was a treat. I bought another bread machine for my parents a few years ago. It was made by the same company but it was a different model. It worked the same way and I tried the same recipe that I always use for white bread. (I always encourage new bread bakers to try a white bread recipe first.) My parents were in their early 80s at the time and they thought that a bread machine was a pretty novel thing!
  19. Great idea, Dogmom! I'm not to far from Cornell University. They have a similar setup, though I haven't visited in a few years. Somewhere, I have some photos stored of the herb gardens and a few others. I took the photos in the hopes of using them for articles.
  20. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped. However, I did order groceries through Instacart and managed to sort through the grocery cabinets and household supplies. That made me feel better about our preparedness. I may get to the freezer tonight, but I doubt it. I am working on a couple of loads of laundry right now. I decided to put my management skills to good use and... DELEGATE! Hubby is working on a list of supplies that are needed for our house, based upon his (cooking, cleaning, etc.) abilities. He is likely to overlook some things but it still gets our own house better prepared.
  21. Don't forget to count your hot water tank as a part of your water storage. You can always access it via the little draining spigot on the front of it. My house has two hot water tanks due to the fact that it was originally a 2-family house.
  22. I didn't know that, either! Great tip, Dee!
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