All posts by verily sherrilee

Directionally challenged, crafty, reading mother of young adult
Business, Media, News, Technology

Missing the Party

56 Comments

I missed the “biggest shopping event ever”. Not only did I miss it, I didn’t even realize I was missing it.  I’m talking about Prime Day on Amazon.  Turns out that it’s a great big sale for those who are signed up for Prime.  I noticed a story about it the day after it was over – the first I’d heard of it.

Turns out that 100 million products were sold with the FireTV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote leading the way as the number one seller. I don’t even know what a FireTV Stick is.  The Echo Dot came in second.  I don’t know what that is either.  Apparently another big selling item was the Instant Pot multicooker.  I DO know what that is. In fact, if I had been a Prime member and if I’d known about the sale, I might have been interested.  But I don’t spend enough on Amazon in a year to justify the cost of Prime and getting a glorified pressure cooker isn’t a big enough incentive to change that.

But it makes me worry that not only did I now know that this event was happening, I also don’t even know what the top selling items were. Am I out of step with my own culture? Is the world speeding up while I’m slowing down?

Should I worry?

Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, Technology, Uncategorized

Slice-o-matic

32 Comments

Although I love cooking, I also love any gadget that makes it easier or quicker. So when I saw a strawberry huller online last week, I was intrigued.  Between the jam and the bags of  berries that I freeze every summer, I spend a lot of time over the sink hulling strawberries with a little sharp knife.  I searched around, discovered that the huller was carried at Bed Bath & Beyond and headed over there on my way down to Northfield to get strawberries. I faced the wall of kitchen gadgets and finally found it, a steal at $7.99 if it made the hulling process easier!  Here’s a quick look at how it works:

And it does work, however, not better than my little sharp knife. After all these years I’m pretty fast, transferring the hulled berry to a bowl while picking up the next strawberry with the hand holding the knife.  With the huller, I ended up having to add an extra step of pushing the button to “dump” the stem and sometimes having to pull twisted stem out of the berry.  After the first batch of jam, I went back to the knife.  It does make a very nice uniform hole if you want to fill the strawberries with something but for a big project, it’s not helpful.  Oh well.

This means that my cherry tomato slicer is still my favorite summertime gadget. I usually have tons of cherry tomatoes every year and the little slicer quickly and easily slices the little tomatoes into four bits.  Did I mention it’s fast?  And easy?  At this time of year I use it almost every day.

What’s your favorite summer gadget?

Family, Fifty Words, Nature, pets, Travel

Here Kitty, Kitty!

39 Comments

I mentioned to YA that I have a trip to Maui in a few months.  She told me I should “swing over” to Lana’i while I’m there to visit the Cat Sanctuary.

Lana’i isn’t that easy to “swing over” to but if it were just me, I’d head on over.

If money/space were no object, how many pets would YOU have?

 

 

Family, Food, Kids, Seasons

Strawberry Cheese Toast

24 Comments

You all know I love strawberries. My favorite picking place lost their pick-your-own field in a nasty early spring storm but I went down on Friday to Northfield and got two flats of pre-picked.  It was still cheaper than getting them at the grocery store and much tastier.

After 14 jars of jam, we’re scrambling to get them finished up before they get too mushy. Lots of strawberry shortcake and spinach strawberry salad.  Thinking back to a breakfast that YA ordered at the Highland Grill last January (ricotta and jam on toast), I came up with this recipe this morning:

Strawberry Cheese Toast (for 1)

1 slice whole wheat bread, toasted
2 slices of pepper jack cheese
4 T. strawberries, mashed up a bit
2 T. blueberries

Put slices of cheese on top of the toast. Spread mashed strawberries over the cheese and then sprinkle blueberries on top.

It was fabulous – I’m having it again tomorrow!

What’s one of your favorite summer recipes?

Business, Family, Kids, News, work

Bear Ballyhoo

49 Comments

I just don’t like meetings very much. If you have information to impart, just send me an email.   I’m particularly bad at brainstorming meetings – you know, where you write down all your outrageous idea on post-it notes, or on huge sheets of paper stuck up on the wall.  The moderator ALWAYS starts out with “every idea is valuable” and warns everyone not to bring up negatives.

This is hard for me. I’m a problem solver and when presented with a problem and possible solutions, my brain immediately starts working through each solution to see if it’s viable, if it could solve the problem.  Of course, most of the ideas that get thrown out at brainstorming meetings are ridiculous and can easily be ruled out as good solutions – but only if you’re allowed to rule them out.  As I’ve never been able to stop my mind from looking for the logistics in brainstorming meetings, I tend to sit quietly, taking notes.  Luckily my boss knows this about me and she rarely asked me to take part in these kinds of sessions.

But boy, Build-a-Bear could have used someone like me in the meeting where they decided to run a “Pay Your Age” promotion one day last week. If you brought in your child, you could get a bear for your child’s age… and even if you were getting the bear for yourself, the cap on the price was $29.  Here’s one of the many news stories from Thursday:

“Pay Your Age” could only have come up during a brainstorming meeting in which everybody had been exhorted to listen to all ideas fairly and not comment. It’s hard to imagine a lot of experienced business people not being able to think through the problems with this marketing ploy unless they were cowed into silence. How could they not know there would be an immediate and huge response to them basically giving the bears away?   How could they not figure out that a few employees in the stores would not be able to handle the crush of customers?  And how could they not think about the natural reactions of people with their kids standing in line for hours, being jostled by the strangers in front and behind them?

Obviously my observations are in hindsight, but I’m pretty sure if I’d been in that brainstorming meeting, my brain would have come up with a lot of reasons why this wouldn’t work – at least in the way it was rolled out. But would I have said anything or just taken a bunch of notes about how stupid meetings are?

So bears. Yea or nay?

Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, Uncategorized, work

Stay-cation

31 Comments

For the most part I’m not a fan of new words. I like the words we have and I always have to remind myself that we only have the words we have because at some point somebody made them up.

But every now and then a word comes along that I can embrace wholeheartedly. One of those words is “staycation” – a perfect way to say you are vacationing at home.

Today begins my first day of a nice, long staycation. Because  I’ve been with my company for quite some time, I have a generous number of vacation days and also because of my workload, I don’t get to use too many of them for a chunk of the year.  Now that my big program is out the door, I have to get cracking on these vacation days.  This means a week plus off now, the rest of the Mondays in the summer off and then the entire of State Fair off.

This week though is strictly for hanging out and working on some of the stuff that hasn’t been getting done the last few months – cleaning, straightening, cleaning, yardwork, cleaning. Did I mention cleaning?

On Day One I’m going to make strawberry jam and make some basil-infused oil. I know that doesn’t sound like cleaning, but I do have a mammoth list and it has cleaning projects for every day as well as some of the more fun stuff.

What new word can you embrace?

Baboon Achievers, Family, History, Kids, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized

Family Day

22 Comments

Twenty-three years ago today, a little bundle with a shaved head was put into my arms.

I was half-way around the world, in a hotel in Hufei, China and there were five other bundles being handed off to five other sets of arms at the same time. We spent 8 days in Hufei while all the last bits of paperwork were filled out, signed, stamped and copied (the copier only took one page at a time and after 45 minutes had to sit for a bit to cool down).  Then we headed off to Guangzhou where we had 2 more days of paperwork, but this time U.S. paperwork.

Then the group broke up; Baby and I flew to Hong Kong for an extra day, taking a long taxi drive to the Stanley Market to get a few trinkets, including a Chinese chop with her name carved into it. Then we said goodbye to China and took the long flights to get back to Minnesota.

Most of you know that we celebrate this day every year (usually by going to The Melting Pot). We used to call it “Gotcha Day” since that was when we “got” each other, but when Child was about 10 she announced that she preferred “Family Day”.   She said that “gotcha” made her feel like a package being picked up at the post office.  So now we have Family Day.  Some years we do cards, although never gifts.  I already have the best gift.

Do you have a family tradition that needs re-naming?

Food, home, Stories, Technology

Oven Graveyard

49 Comments

My range/oven is dead. After never giving me a minute’s grief in 27 years, it has given up the ghost. The technician came today; two of the three needed parts are no longer made. I can send the board to be “rebuilt” but it’s only a 50/50 chance that it can be fixed and I’ll be without my oven for at least a month.

Got any good appliance shopping advice?

 

Art, Stories

Stamping Heaven

33 Comments

Even though it was Saturday, I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep. I had directions to Canterbury Downs already printed out, a fully charged phone for photos and a huge wad of one dollar bills.  That’s right – time for my favorite stamp show!

I don’t really need to go to a stamp show. Let’s face it, I already own more stamps and paper and ribbons and ink pads than any normal person needs.  All the companies represented at the stamp show have websites (and you know I have them all bookmarked).  But there’s something about being at a convention full of your hobby/passion, surrounded by folks just like you, who understand your desire to see the stamps and paper up close and in person.  And who get all your stamping jokes.

The Early Bird line (for those who purchased their tickets ahead of time online) queued up pretty early. I showed up 20 minutes before opening and was about 40th in line. They actually counted down the last 10 seconds on the sound system before opening; for those of you thinking it, yes I did yell along with the others during the countdown.

My Motto
Waiting!
Make n Take

This is the stamping show that’s I like best; there are several of my favorite companies there and almost every booth does a “make `n take” (unlike that other not-as-good show that was in town last month). I had my dollar bills in my pocket so I was ready whenever there was a free chair to make a sample; most make `n takes are $1 but a few are $2.  I spent about 5 hours at the show, made 12 cards, chatted with folks either at tables or in line.  I even met the designer who made a 6 x 6 calendar template especially for me back in February!  Didn’t win a door prize (no surprise there) and blew my budget (no surprise there either) but had a glorious time.

What kind of mud does your pig like?

Family, Kids, The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized, work

Johnny

32 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

Pastor Mike married us. And he baptized both kids.

A few years after that he moved back out to the West coast; a place where his soul really belonged.

We’d message on FB occasionally. He was learning to play guitar and I’d ask what he was listening too or what he was learning to play.

Johnny Cash was a common subject for both of us. Johnny’s ‘American’ series of recordings were some of our favorites. Mike would give me a verse from Tennessee Stud or Delia’s Gone and I’d give him the next. It was a neat way to connect with one of my favorite people.

Mike died of a brain tumor this winter.

I’m lighting a production of ‘Ring of Fire’ at the Rochester Civic Theater. It’s a Johnny Cash retrospective. Not much story, just a lot of his music played by 5 different singer/musicians. The other night at rehearsal they practiced Delia’s Gone.

I thought of Mike and how, maybe to no-one but myself, this show was for him.

I left rehearsal and headed for home. Checked some fields along the way. Stopped to check on our neighbor’s house since they are gone on vacation, stopped to close the gates at the end of our driveway and saw a motorcycle coming down the road. And I sort of groan inwardly… dang bikers. Thought I better get the gate shut quick.

As the bike gets closer I see it’s more of a scooter and a couple about my age on it. I say Hello and pull one gate shut. They pull up a little closer and call my name. And when they take the helmets off, it’s John and Mary.

Pastor John who was associate pastor with Pastor Mike.

I’m pretty sure Mike sent them out to see us tonight.

And I thought of this group of Baboons and Serendipity again.

Got a favorite religious person?