Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Homemade Pasta!!!

Recently, I bought a ravioli form in order to make a special dinner for my beautiful wife.
I filled the pasta with a beef/spinach/ricotta filling- a recipe from one of my new cookbooks: Jam it, Pickle it, Cure it. It's been a winning recipe book so far! Here's the results!




Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mr. Fix-it!!!



Recently, I had the "joy" of replacing the headlight on our trailblazer. I can't remember whether it was the old Mazda protege, or on the Honda civic where I have replaced a headlight before... but this was a little more daunting task. I called the dealership and they said that the repair would cost around $70.00 for parts + labor. I called O'reiley auto parts and found out that the headlight bulb cost a little under 9 bucks. So, yeah... I'll figure out how to do this myself (little did I realize that the owner's manual specifically said for headlights to be taken to the dealership, and when I read about how to fix it online it said to remove the entire front grill).

Well... I did need to remove some components, but thankfully the grill didn't have to come off. Here are the pics!
The non-working headlight on the passenger's side.


My working headlight! :-)


The air filter cover which had to be removed.


The air filter pushed out of the way.

The good, the bad...
... the fixed!!! :-)

So, if a "green thumb" means that you have talent at gardening... does a black thumb mean I'm a good mechanic? :-)

Cheers.

Posted by Picasa

CHORES! a.k.a. I need to get back to exercising!

I think one of the single biggest causes for life's stresses could be from not staying on top of the "little things." Bush had it right (the band that is... ) "it's just the little things that kill."

How come dishes, laundry, junk mail, and spam never seem to end?!? It feels like it's been an uphill battle for years and it's all the more challenging when there are other projects to work on. There's this one spot in our bathroom that's needed caulking for how long, I need to wash the trailblazer, our office is a mess, I want to get our tax return filed (EARLY this year!), there's always budgeting to tend to, grocery shopping & planning, there are boxes that have never been dealt with since we got married, and oh yeah... I'm turning thirty this year.

My body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to. I haven't been running since the marathon. I feel like as soon as I do get around to going for a jog it might help loosen up some of muscle kinks I'm having and as an added bonus it would probably help me deal a little better with the stresses. I'm sure that exercising my spirit would be good for me too. That's probably the even bigger thing that's lacking - prayer, and meditation.

Hope you don't mind me venting a little. I'm open to suggestions as to how you stay on top of it all.