I just thought you all should know something. As I was driving home from Ft. Drum by way of the mall, the dry cleaners, and Walgreen's, I realized that I didn't have my map with me. Then I realized that it was all ok, because I hadn't needed my map. Can you believe it? I have dared to venture from my apartment with no map, and without being so panicked as to have to check the weather forecast before deciding to go. As I walked out my door, I also thought it seemed a little bit warm outside. I was right. It was up to 34 degrees, and it was raining slightly. I consider that to be a nice day. Anyway, I just thought you should know.

-Shellaine-

Maturing the Kiser Household, One Piece of Furniture at a Time

I got a lot of feed back about the tv stand. Just so you know what I had to work with, have a look at this.

Can you say "college dorm"? We picked a tv stand from the ones I showed you here and the winner is...

Credenza! Or I guess us, since we're the ones that got the schnazzy new furniture. I realize having the tv on doesn't help the image, but it's to prove a point. After I moved the tv onto the new stand (by myself! Woohoo!), I hooked everything back up. And it works. See? There's cable on tv. Captain has been curious about the tv stand. He's probably mad that he can't crawl around in all the cords. I'm sure he'll get over it.

The tv stand came from thesimplestores.com. They have a huge selection and fast shipping, as long as you don't mind putting your furniture together yourself. Which I don't. It's better than some careless delivery man in a hurry trying to throw my furniture together so they can get back to their truck. The only thing I'm worried about is how the tv stand will hold up in the next move. I'll let you know.

Light Box

With the exception of the sprigs of green grass buried under the snow, it's almost a certainty that nothing can grow outside here.

I left behind a great little herb garden in Mississippi, and I've really been missing it. Bottled spices just don't have the same visual appeal. Plus, who isn't just a little bit happier with some plants growing in her house? My aunt Wyveta showed me how she and her grand kids built a light box to get some plants started at their house. I decided to make one to get some herbs started. They'll live in my kitchen window :-)

In case you're just dying to grow some plants in your house (And if you decide to grow something illegal, by all means DO NOT tell anyone that I had something to do with it. When I say "herbs," I mean herbs. No quotation marks. Herbs. Period.), here's how to get started.

Gather up this stuff - a water-proof work surface, box, box cutter, plug-in light source, fluorescent light bulb, aluminum foil, adhesive (I have double sided tape), pots, soil, and seeds.

Turn the box on its bigger side if you have several things to plant. If you want to grow tall plants but not many of them, turn it on its small side for extra height. Line the inside of the box with aluminum foil. I used double sided tape, but I don't recommend it. It gets old peeling the backing off a few dozen pieces of tape stuck down in a box. Don't be like me. Use a glue stick. Once you line the box with aluminum foil, here's what you have...

Now put the box on your head to keep the aliens from being able to scan your brain. Just kidding! It looks kinda freaky though. Poke a hole in the top where your light needs to fit through. Then cut the hole just big enough to get the light socket through, but not so big that it can't hold itself up. Once it's through, screw the light bulb in from the inside. Trust me.

Using a fluorescent light keeps it from getting too hot inside the box. Plus it's good for your energy bill. Haven't you seen all those New York PSAs about changing your lights over to fluorescent bulbs? No? Hmm...

Anyway. Turn the light on and...

...that's how you make a light box! Technically, that's true. But I wanna show you the rest of what I did.

Fill all your pots with soil and plant your seeds according to package directions. I planted chives, oregano, parsley, thyme, cilantro, cat grass (also called wheat grass - tasty cat snack), and catnip. But please, remember to write the name of the plant on the pot before you start planting. Otherwise, things get confusing. And messy. Aren't you glad I did this before you? Now you can do everything right on the first try and people will think you're a lot smarter than I am. Just tryin' to help you out.

Put all the pots in the light box, close the door (flaps), and leave it alone. That poor little pot in the front row didn't make a very good soil scoop after a few minutes. I felt sorry for it. I couldn't just throw him away. He needs to die for a worthy cause. Growing catnip is a worthy cause, right?

But anyway. THAT'S how you make a light box. But I love you guys. I wanna show you what's happened since last Thursday. On Tuesday, I peeked in the box and...

Just look at those little grass sprouts! They're trying to get out of their busted pot. That's what they're tryin' to do. And then today (just one week later)...

BAM! Growing like weeds! Well grass...well... Nuts. Growing like wheat sprouts? Does that sound better? Maybe, but just doesn't make much sense. Ugh...

Look at all those tiny catnip sprouts! I promise there are specks of green poking through for the things people can eat, too. It just so happens that the plants for the kittens are the most impressive.

If you decide to build one let me know. I thought it was fun, but then again I'm weird, and I was going crazy without having a plant to tend to. But now look at all my tiny plants :-)

Oh...and don't forget to water. After the initial planting, spritzing might work best so you don't drown anything. It can get a little humid locked up in a box all day and you don't want anything to mold. Happy planting!

Opinions, Anyone?

Now that Nathan and I have moved far, far away from home, we consider our adult life definitively under way. To go with this new life, we've decided to lose some of our ugly, worn out, Wal-Mart furniture (i.e. plastic) and upgrade to pieces made out of something at least resembling wood. We have some great couches on the way, but the next eye sore that needs replacing is the TV stand. What we have is made out of plastic posts and particle board. It looks something like this, but in a different configuration.

This ABSOLUTELY will not do. So here's the quick low-down on our apartment. The living room is carpeted a light-to-medium tan. The walls are a cream - off-white but definitely with some yellow. We have some hideous brown plastic (think doctor's office or military barracks) "base boards," and I use that term loosely. I am allowed to paint, but I'm not sure I want to commit the time and energy to painting, then painting back before we move out. But back to the TV stand. We have two game systems, some controllers, a cable box, a DVD player, a cable modem, and a wireless router that all need to be neatly put away, so please keep that in mind.

So, everybody, what do you think of these? They're in no particular order except how I managed to click on their icons to upload them. I'll give them names so you can talk about them in the comments.

Please talk about them in the comments! I need help here.

Coventry:

Espresso:

Wilmington: (the three "drawers" are a door hiding shelves)

Cameron:

Holliday: (the sides aren't doors - they're shelves visible from the sides)

Credenza:

Just one more question...How important is solid wood? Because if my internet search has taught me anything, it's that I probably can't afford it even if I could find it.

Singin' in the Rain

I know it rained all over the Southeast for pretty much the entire fall. Okay, and half the summer. I was absolutely sick of it by the beginning of November. It seemed like everything was drowning. What had never occurred to me was that water in liquid form, while obnoxious to walk through, drains neatly away in all those street drains. Water in frozen form does not. I started to miss all the dreary brown. The solid white was a beautiful change for the first few days (at least when we weren't driving), but I missed seeing ground. Seeing where I was aiming my car. Seeing where I was about to step. Four days ago, the temperature warmed up to the 40s and the rain started. For two wonderful days, it just kept on raining and melting away the snow. I loved it. This is what I saw...

What is that? It isn't white...I barely recognize it...could that be the actual ground? Oh, but not just any old ground. What color is that? Green?

Ah, yes. Under all the snow, in -16 degree temperatures, grass was miraculously alive. I can barely comprehend this. Grass. I don't get this place. Mom and Dad's yard is brown all winter and all it has to deal with is the occasional dip below the freezing mark. (I know, Dad. It has to do with the kind of grass. Don't get on my case here. You're missing the point.)

I enjoyed the beautiful green view while it lasted though. By this morning, this is the sight that greeted me.

The snow was back :-( And back with a vengeance. Just look at this blowing action.

That snow just kept drifting off the roof in huge puffs. I'm glad I didn't have to go out today. I sweet-talked Nathan into getting the groceries :-D I so love my husband.

New home! Or at least apartment...

I finally resolved all of my picture issues. I found my cable to transfer pictures from my camera to my computer. I found a free picture-editing program. I have downloaded pictures. So here we go...

We finally made it out of Erie, PA. They reopened I-90, although I don't know if I would go so far as to call it safe. This is what we got into by the PA state line...

Now, I know some of you have experience with this whole Northern/snow-living thing. I don't. Mom had the good sense to NEVER take us very far north during the winter. I like the way she thinks. Nathan and I got out of our vehicles, looked at each other and said, practically at the same time, "What on Earth were we thinking???" I told him I was in this mess because I was following him. I didn't know what he was doing there. But I digress.

Even through a snow storm, we made it to Watertown (that's NY for those of you who aren't keeping up), got the cats boarding at a vet clinic, and got checked into a motel.

After a week or so of looking around and finding out there were only two apartment complexes that were going to have anything available for the next month, we decided on one. It took another five days or so to get the lease signed and move in. Well, "move in" would be a better way to say it. We slept on an air mattress for the first few nights with a broken thermostat (very bad when it's 10 or colder outside). After that, things started looking up. We got all of our things from the movers and I haven't discovered anything missing yet. There was some minor damage to some things, but nothing I just can't handle.

And now for the good stuff... On one of our trips to look at apartments, we passed several dairy farms. At one farm, there is somebody with a really big tractor and a really big sense of humor. We found this...

If you're not exactly sure what that thing is, it's a snow man. Yes, a snow man. If you aren't exactly sure how tall it is, I walked up to it and Nathan took another one for you.

I'm guessing 20 feet tall. Those are tires for buttons. I think coal in large quantities has other uses 'round these parts. Like keeping people from freezing to death.

That's all for now. I'll write again soon (sooner than before, I promise. I got my picture problem solved, remember?) about the town and the crazy weather and whatever else happens.

But a 20-foot-tall snowman? Seriously? What kind of people live here anyway?

Erie, PA

We made it all the way from Jackson (TN) to Erie, PA today. I promised a blog entry, so you're getting one. The only problem is I learned that my computer having an SD card reader doesn't help me with my camera's SDHC card. Who knew? That means I can't upload my pictures of the mounds of snow outside that we had to drive through to get to the hotel. I was also going to include a picture of the MapQuest illustration of how far, exactly, the trip was today. Unfortunately, my computer is also currently sans Office, therefore no program to use to edit said picture. As soon as I find a place to live, though, I'll fix my computer and/or get a card reader that can handle my SDHC card and you will get to see what's going on. That's always more fun than listening to me ramble anyway.

Long story short, we hit lake effect snow 20 minutes from Erie and I lost sight of the road. I just had to follow Nathan, and he had to follow the car in front of him. I slid on some ice, narrowly missing Nathan's truck at a traffic light. We got a hotel room, snuck the cats in, and refused to try and drive again till they clear the roads. Side note - Applebee's delivery wasn't half bad. They brought it straight to our room door. I'll let you know if we decide to brave the snow tomorrow and continue driving. If it's bad, we might just live it up in our awesome suite with jacuzzi tub :-)