Tony Brewer

This morning Teri and I went to Wal-Mart to do our grocery shopping, and to buy other things we need (like a Hancock DVD!) One of the things we bought was two printer ink cartridges, one black ink, the other was color ink. The black ink is $7.00 less expensive than the color ink. Imagine my dismay when we got home and I was inputting the purchase into my MSMoney program when I discovered that the cashier had rung up 2 color cartridges and no black cartridges. So I paid $7 more for the black ink cartridge than I should have. What an aggravation! So now I’m going to have to go back to Wal-Mart and go to the customer service desk and try to convince them that the cashier had made an error and give me my $7 back! Teri tells me that she noticed that the prices on everything she was taking off of the shelves was at least 1% higher than last week. I wonder if that is a temporary increase due to fuel prices, or if that is going to be a permanent increase. I hope it’s a temporary one! (They still aren’t selling the Hershey’s Goodnight Kisses hot chocolate I like so much, doggone it!)

For the past several months I’ve been meaning to install the microwave that Teri’s mother gave us.  It is one of those microwaves that fits over the stove, and it takes some muscle, some power tools, and a little bit of patience.  Teri has been very patient about getting it installed; she hasn’t nagged me at all!  The truth of it is, it has been stored in the garage ever since we got it and I needed the room in the garage.  So I figured that instead of hauling it into the attic or down to the basement (where it would stay forever and a day) that I’d just bit the bullet and install it.  Of course that meant removing the existing exhaust hood and emptying the cabinet above the stove.  And drilling with my cordless drill!  (That was fun!)  And I got to make a huge mess of the stove top because I didn’t think to cover it with a drop cloth.

Was Teri mad?  No, she just told me that since I made the mess, I could clean it up!  And she was amazingly quite calm about it too!  I didn’t think that was the proper show of appreciation for the work I had done, but I decided that I’d clean it up and maybe next time I’ll remember to put a drop cloth down underneath where I’m going to make a mess!

Anyway, it’s all installed, and works great, and the little microwave that we had sitting on the kitchen counter is now stored in the basement, waiting for the next time we need a back-up microwave.

I had forgotten how much I like apple cider! Teri bought a 1/2 gallon of it a few days ago when we went grocery shopping, thinking that we might want to drink it when we have our turkey meal this weekend. Well, I went ahead and opened it this morning and had a cup of hot apple cider with my breakfast this morning. Teri cooked bacon (in the microwave, it’s healthier cooked in the microwave, did you know that?) and fried up a couple of “over easy” eggs (my favorite!) and toasted a leftover biscuit for my breakfast. Have you ever taken a leftover dinner biscuit and cut it in half and toasted it? Quite tasty! Anyway, the hot apple cider really hit the spot!

The only problem that I have with apple cider is that several years ago it was brought to my attention that some of the companies that sell it put preservatives in it to prolong the shelf life, and I really would prefer just having some nice fresh apple cider without preservatives. Every now and then I can find the non-preservative apple cider for sale, but it gets harder every year to find that.

Well the meal was quite good yesterday.  We were surprised that the hosts had ordered one of those “complete Thanksgiving meal” deals from their local supermarket, and the food all came out really good!  Last year they did the same thing from a different supermarket and it was a disaster!  The turkey last year was very dry; this year the turkey was very moist.

I especially enjoyed the pecan pie for dessert!  I don’t think I’ve pecan pie for the past two years, and I really like it a lot.  So it was a pleasant surprise to see it there - usually when we go to someone else’s place for a holiday meal they have pumpkin and apple pie, but not pecan.  And as a bonus, we got to bring some leftovers home with us!  So we now have some apple pie and pecan pie, sweet potatoes, stuffing and turkey!  We were quite shocked to be able to bring leftovers home! 

We still have to cook our own turkey, I think we’ll be doing that tomorrow and then end up freezing a lot of the meat after it has been cooked and sliced.  I hope everyone had as good a day as we did!