August 2008

Impulse Buying at the Hardware Store

August 21, 2008

We received a couple of great suggestions as to what to do with our True Value sweepstakes booty, such as a compound miter saw (which we don’t have) and a RotoZip tool. Earlier this week we went to True Value Hardware in Wilmette to browse and see what they had to offer. The shelves were [...]

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Dog Days of Summer

August 20, 2008
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We’ve been lying low lately and not working on many projects, per se. Pete finally hooked up the rain barrels, now that it’s almost the end of summer. We had been holding off on those because we were going to build something to elevate the barrels so the water would have better flow. We aren’t [...]

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My Kind of Town

August 13, 2008
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Last Saturday night we were on board the Evening Star, cruising up and down the Chicago River and out to Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful night — a little cool for August, but pleasant nonetheless. There are so many things I love about Chicago, and the view of the skyline is just one of [...]

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More on CKW

August 8, 2008
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My astute brother-in-law, Bob, sent me a little more information on CKW, or Cicada Killer Wasps. Turns out they are considered to be a beneficial insect after all! According to Wikipedia, Cicada killers exert a natural control on cicada populations and thus may directly benefit the deciduous trees upon which cicadas feed. As he points [...]

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Storm Stats

August 7, 2008

In yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, they reported the statistics from Monday night’s incredible storm: Number of lightning strikes across northern Illinois: 90,000 Period of time it usually takes to record that number of lightning strikes in Chicagoland: 6 months Number of lightning strikes per minute at the storm’s peak: 800 The lightning strike count only includes [...]

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Luck of the Draw

August 6, 2008

As you may have heard by now, we were one of the lucky winners in the Houseblogs.net “Look What I Did” sweepstakes sponsored by True Value. Before you look at our entry and think, “What?! They won for THAT??“, this was not a contest based on aesthetics or project difficulty or anything else, other than [...]

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Solar Lights to the Rescue!

August 5, 2008
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A major storm passed through the entire Chicagoland area last night. Morton Grove’s tornado siren went off a little after 8 pm, so we gathered up the cats and headed to the basement. Pete turned on “God in the Box”. That’s the pet name for his little weather radio, which would tell him the wind [...]

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My Husband, the Rock Star

August 4, 2008
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This is one of the many reasons why I love my husband: Many times, all it takes is for me to say, “What if we…[insert idea that usually involves manual labor for him here]?”, and he usually goes with it. This time it was creating a space for the bird feeder. We haven’t had our [...]

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Changes in Progress

August 2, 2008

Yes, you may have noticed that I changed the look of my blog. It’s still a work in progress, but for one thing, I needed to upgrade WordPress, and I also wanted to move into a 3-column format. I’ve been reluctant to do it, as I know just enough to screw it up and not [...]

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