Today's shopping

Was out grocery shopping after visiting my manga guy for maybe the last time since Diamond is gone. Scooby Doo cereal had a $2 coupon. Doritos Late Night Fully Loaded Taco is excellent, Lay's Bacon Grilled Cheese really should have been Grease. Butter Beer Hershey's Kisses - You have my attention. I bought 2 bags. Also the pile of $2.25 Pączki. I should have bought $20 worth. But I held back with 1 box of Raspberry. WHY WAS THERE NO DIET 7UP??

 

 

 

Did the survey from the register slip & got asked what I thought about the spicy breakfast sausage patties. "I am depressed & eat spicy foods so I can feel something."  I wonder who gets to read that.

Discoveries

Well, I found out some things today.

The little white box for converting composite video to VGA signals works! I bought this device off eBay about a year ago? It was last year anyway.

And one of the chargers which I bought in bulk & suddenly stopped wanting to charge my LG56VL actually works as this is what I'm powering the box. The image looks best in 720p mode.

As for the color... The tube is working fine as the self-test showed me. This is an input problem. Likely with the cable having a broken wire somewhere or it could be the box not outputting the correct colors on the correct pins. I don't know. The monitor has no way to adjust the color guns through the config menu. So I'll probably do something about the cable. This monitor is a Multisync model & best at adapting to odd video signals.

Product ideas for Palmer's

After eating some of the chocolates from the latest bag of stuff I bought at the store from Palmer's chocolates, I thought it would be more fun if the bag had more chaos.

As the bag comes, there are 4 different versions of the heart shaped chocolate. And the version you get is the same in each wrapper. If you grab the Gold wrapper chocolates, they're all the same. But what if you had 50 or 60 different wrappers & the one you grabbed was not what you were expecting? eh? Sound good? You hate the white chocolate ones but you can't just avoid picking the neon pink wrapped candies. It's just fricken random! Maybe a green one, next a puce colored one! 4 flavors, all wrapped differently.

Another idea came from during Christmas when I bought a little mesh sack of chocolates obviously meant as a stocking stuffer. Missed opportunity by not having nuts in some of the candies. Almonds, Walnuts, peanuts, etc. I also have the perfect name for this. It's absolutely brilliant.

 

 

 

Winter 2026 anime The Mushroom Witch ending theme "Kimi wa..." You are...

Seems like some websites hosting content they don't have the license to like to prevent people from merely copy & pasting text from their pages - and a little snippet of Javascript (easily blocked) tries to stop that. But it's just as easy to view a page with No Style & then it's just bare bones with text you can easily lift out. To wit... The lyrics & a better translation of the ending theme as indicated by this entry's title.

Kokoro no naka ni shimatte oita      Kept hidden in my heart
Itsuka no kanashimi                  was someday's sadness
Ima wa kirei da ne                   Now it’s pretty

Eien no isshun shizuku ni natte      An eternal moment, becoming a drop
Mabuta no uragawa hikatte iru yo     is shining behind my eyelids!

Ah kimi wa yume                      You are a dream
Ah... hoshizora                      The starry sky
Ah kimi wa ai kimi wa...             You are love, you are...
 

Saurkraut Rice Maki Rolls

So after eating your New Years' saurkraut & ham, you're left with water from the crockpot. What do you do? Dump it out? Hell, no! You find out how much water you got & cook rice in it!

I noticed I had almost 2 cups of saurkraut crockpot water left from cooking it, and there was flavor needing enjoyed. 1 cup of rice would be perfect. But what to do afterwards? I had some nori sheets hanging around so I made maki rolls! These really are meant to be eaten cold. Hopefully next time I get the idea to make some, I can wait patiently with these in the fridge much like breakfast pizza. I had enough rice to make 4 maki rolls. I managed to not eat 2 until later & that's when they held firm & cut easily.

The flavor was amazing. With my sister's hand crafted kraut according to the Algonquin Mill recipe & a small 1 pound brown sugar cured sliced ham - after 12 hours on low in the crock pot - produced something divine. I didn't even make any mashed potatoes... A bit salty as expected, slightly diluted by the water I had to add to give me 2 cups of fluid. I didn't stick to my rice pan nor did it burn. One thing I will not do next time is add any rice vinegar. This really didn't need any.

 

You know it's almost Christmas when...

Top Ten Signs of How To Tell When It's Almost Christmas:

10. When the cashier at Walmart actually manages a smile when she says "Happy Holidays!" during a busy period.

9. When you rush out to get some Christmas cards to mail out to all the people who suddenly sent you one at the last minute.

8. When there are more pine needles in your carpet than on your tree.

7. When light displays on everyone's houses in the neighborhood convey the true meaning of competition.

6. When you bake up a couple dozen cookies to mix in and give away with all the other cookies everyone else gave you.

5. When you want to give fruitcake to all the people you don't like but you still have the fruitcake you got from them last year.

4. When thousands of soloists without enough musical talent to tune a kazoo are somehow invited to sing "O Holy Night" in public.

3. When the plastic light-up manger goes up on the roof of the local pub.

2. When TV specials get crazy ridiculous: "Charlie Brown and Frosty the Snowman Track the Grinch Who Stole Rudolph's Red Nose and Started All the Animals Talking when he Surgically Transplanted it on the Littlest Donkey."

And the #1 Sign of How To Tell When It's Almost Christmas:

When stores start advertising "Only 375 shopping days until next Christmas."

Random time for a random memory

What a moment to pull out a faded memory. My mother at one time was in the middle of a serious hobby in photography. By the time I arrived, mom had a 35 mm camera - a rather good one she used for color film & slides. Unfortunately, nearly 400 color slides were lost in 2005. I managed to scan the ones left in a metal box - something I had a hand in happening. The camera ended up getting broken & eventually destroyed, and us being a dependent family, didn't have the money for repairing it, among the many other things we didn't have money for.

But the things I remembered randomly were her having a light meter device. I remember a random device I played with but didn't know how it worked or what it was for. It's such an early memory I don't remember what it looked like. I don't know what happened to it. But I remember there was this thing & that had to be what it was after seeing a video online. I just can't pick out a light meter model & sadly Mom isn't here to identify them if she still even could.

Mom also had a photographer's film developing kit & it vanished after we moved from the Mount Jackson house. Some years later I figured out what I saw in the attic of a house my father owned. A family member was saying how he was going to get to use it when he got older & Mom used to talk about her developing kit on occasion which got taken from her. I finally put the 2 things together some years ago. It could have been the same thing. A shame my mom gave up her hobby to raise a family. It wasn't the only thing she abandoned for a family. She had an X-ray Technician certificate at one point.

Delight & Despair at the store

Went out today to grocery shop at Walfart while it wasn't snowing or below freezing today to get hopefully enough supplies for hopefully the rest of the month before it snowed again (which it did) & then went below freezing... Doritos / Cheetos had advertised their NKD varieties on Facebook  - Doritos & Cheetos without artificial dyes, etc, and then you saw the crowd of "Ewww, seed oils..." & my thought was "You guys grew up eating all that stuff & never complained and you listen to a few Toktik influenzas & suddenly you think you have a problem??" I really wanted a bag of regular Doritos NKD but all people left was Cool Ranch & I find that flavor gross. But if there was another flavor other than Flaming Hot Cheetos, I couldn't tell - but I like Flaming Hot anyway, as can be seen in Flaming Hot Dill Pickle Cheetos... 

AND THEN I FOUND KELPO!! As well as another new flavor of Pebbles cereal! And the best discovery of the trip - DiRusso Italian Sausage patties returned! As could be seen, tis a popular product as it was nearly sold out. Got me a new box & decided to have the one still in my freezer for supper. It's been in there for 6 months (Best by date was in June!), still cooked up fine. Got the last bag of Shredded Queso & bless the person who moved my favorite Chicken Smoked Sausage off the top shelf to near the bottom. I needed 3 for crockpot dried beans recipes. 

There were 4 products I did not find at all 😢  - Egg Nog ice cream, Peppermint hot cocoa, Hostess Hot Cocoa cupcakes (they had them in but was obviously sold out dangit), and Peppermint Mocha Oreos. I did find Reese's filling Oreos but I decided I'm making cookies anyway with walnuts & toffee pieces. Didn't see any insane crazy Reese's products like last year ($30 bucket anyone). But got Mint M&Ms. 

So glad I got out to hopefully stock up on foodstuffs. Now I got my cat's teeth to deal with.

Toybox Lid Repair Went As I mostly Expected

Another project a long time in being resolved is my broken toybox, its lid damaged since I got it as a wee lad. It was made by my grandfather & right off the bat it was the hinges on the back of the lid which broke off & the wood they were screwed into which completely split & the lid never again worked as made. Also as a kid, I enacted the only repair I knew - simply rework the lid so the hinges would attach. And for the most part, that plan pretty much worked.

And that was the state of the lid ever since. For over 50 years this toybox rarely held any actual toys; when I first got it, it was where my Steve Austin $6 million dollar Man & associated stuff resided. And up until May 2018, I still retained Steve in his rocket until evil stole it from me. During the time in Mom's home, it was eventually home to 7 Atari 2600s. Also stolen from me. When I got older, it rarely held any toys, much like my dresser which never held any actual clothes but instead contained my oldest videotapes.

When I moved, the toybox became storage & a seat for my kitchen area. Being of reduced & limited physical ability, it was essential. But when I moved into my current place, I decided I would figure out how to completely repair the lid problem. I decided on using Piano Hinges (aka Continuous Hinges) to replace the 2 little failed & bent hinges originally put on it. I also found out about wood filler products to fix the damaged edges & had applied some but never finished that step. But I did get to see how well the product would perform. I hope the unused portion is still viable in the cans/ I bought 2 small cans, opened only 1.

Another item I obtained, this time from Amazon, was a lid stand. Actually I think of it as an action limiter. It will hold the lid up by itself, but also prevent it from opening too wide. I seem to recall there being one but it was angrily removed & lost to time.

The only problem in fixing the lid was its eventual split. I figured I would find a way to repair it using wood dowels & proper strong wood glue. The only problem with that is I needed a drill bit large enough for the dowels I would use & a proper way to drill them perpendicular to the surfaces of the wood & on top of that, in spite of the irregular edge it now has due to splitting. Elmer's glue was not strong enough.

After a visit to Lowe's, I obtained said hinges, a small hand saw for cutting the dowels I had bought months earlier at Walmart (5/16 inch diameter), and a proper size drill bit. What I also needed was a dowel drilling jig. I got 1 of these off eBay. It came with no box nor instructions, however a video or 2 on Youtube showed me the tricks of getting this doohickey to help me get it positioned. What I also needed was a way to keep it square. That task fell to my straight edge level & 2 Atari 2600 cartridges - at least their shells.

After that was a logic puzzle to sort out how to square things up, clamp in place, then drill. 8 drill holes later after developing a flow & technique, I was fitting the dowel bits, gluing it up, & clamped. The result of that you see above. The main part was applying enough glue to have it spill out during clamping. As Julian Baumgartner has said, you want that extra glue to squeeze out so the joint isn't starved of adhesive.

Once this step has finished drying, I'm looking to once again fix the edges with that putty filler stuff (I forgot what it's called but I got it at Lowe's), drill pilot holes for the screws, replace the cross bits inside the lid I had to remove years ago, add the lid stop, and do the hinges. And then maybe clean it out? I guess I should.

My next project is fixing the other assemble it yourself bookshelf. I need more screws maybe. I thought I had some for that already. Then getting a service manual for my Magnavox big screen TV. It turns on, but no picture & I believe the CRT is getting some voltage. I hope to see a burned out resistor or transistor.  

The results of my cooking Thanksgiving 2025

The results of my cooking this year:

The pumpkin pie was baked on Tuesday & after 2 days in the fridge, I found the flavors to have a definite sweet note with the spices really being there. It's like the Pumpkin Spice mini wheats cereal. I've never tasted it so sweet so maybe the recipe I followed on the Walmart canned pumpkin needs the sugar reduced a bit?

I changed how I cooked the turkey breast roast. I put it in while still mostly frozen into an oven coming down from 350F, and baked it for about 30 minutes until the oven recovered at 325 like the wrapper said. Then I covered it with aluminum foil. I had already sprayed it with cooking spray while cold. Then at 2 hours into roasting, I added water to the roasting pan to prevent the residue from drying out since the fat had rendered out unlike other times I've cooked these. In the end, I got a good amount of drippings (if you could call it that) which made the gravy packet turn out really good for once.

I kicked up the greener beaner casserole a notch with some imitation bacon bits. I also weighed out 5 ounces of french fried onions & put the last 2 on top from the 7 ounce packet.

The loaded cornbread was different this year, but still came out okay. I also measured the cheese by weight which I probably shouldn't do.

And instead of mashed potatoes I decided to microwave a single potato & mashed that. It tends to take up a lot more room than a dollop of pre-mashed. The gravy came out kind of salty though.

A rice dish I considered was cancelled. I still have the garbanzo bean crockpot stuff in the fridge, & I'll likely open the cranberry sauce later.

I ran live streams for the Macy's parade on my laptop since the TV needs serviced. The tube seems to be getting voltage but a burned out component (hopefully just a resistor) needs replaced.

I miss my mom. She loved the holidays. At least I still cook.