Average Jane

Category: NaBloPoMo

  • Average Jane Stays Home

    If you're visiting from Nerdy Apple Bottom's blog–welcome! You won't find anything quite as groundbreaking here, but I recommend that you browse my recipes. Thanksgiving is coming up and I have some good stuff for you.

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    As usual, I'm reaching the end of the year with a ton of unused vacation time that I have to burn through or lose. Thus, I have this entire week off from work–except that I can't stop myself from checking my e-mail and answering work-related questions.

    Aside from the road trip I've already discussed at length, here's what I've packed into my vacation week so far:

    • An oil change, which also ended up including a new battery, a change of brake fluid and a new air filter.
    • One morning walk so far. I have another one on the calendar tomorrow.
    • Lunch and shopping in Lawrence, Kansas, with my sister and aunt.
    • Two doctors' appointments.
    • Check-ups and vaccinations for Trillian and Velvet.
    • Laundry. Lots of laundry.
    • Two trips to different grocery stores.
    • Finally watched "The Walking Dead," which gave me nightmares, but in a good way.
    • Numerous futile attempts to pare down my Google Reader bounty.
    • A jam with my former guitarist and some of his friends.
    • A couple of restaurant meals with my husband.

    Clearly I am not good at this whole "vacation" thing.

  • Average Jane Drives Across Kansas

    My trip to the 140 Characters Conference was bookended by three-hour drives across the Kansas prairie. Most of the drive looks like this:

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    Ignore the dusty dashboard.

    If you're lucky, you get to see some cattle, horses or sheep. I also like to play "spot the hawk."

    My biggest fear was that I'd hit a deer, which is why I chose to stay overnight on Monday rather than drive the mostly two-lane, unlighted highways after dark. The only deer I saw on the trip were dead on the side of the road. There were many equally unfortunate coyotes, raccoons and skunks to be seen as well.

    I brought my trusty road companions, Pete and Inga:

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    Pete didn't have much to say, other than occasionally shouting, "K-A band!" when we were approaching a highway patrol speed trap. That's basically his only job, but he's good at it.

    Inga is a lot more talkative (and sometimes a bit snippy), but on these trips she got to save her voice because after "continue 95 miles," there's no room for color commentary.

    When I first started out, I thought it might be nice to just travel with my own thoughts instead of playing the radio, but I gave up on that as soon as I started feeling sleepy. The landscape is pretty hypnotic.

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    Hey look! Cows!

    So I turned on the radio and scanned around to find anything that wasn't country music or a preacher. Ultimately, I ended up listening to light rock most of the way. The next time I take a long road trip, I'm loading up on CDs that contain distorted guitar.

    I didn't stop at all on the way to Hutchinson. I'd packed a peanut butter and cheese sandwich, a banana and an apple, which fortified me until I got there.

    On the way back, a water and snack break was called for. I had quite a few opportunites to stop, but I held out until I reached the Flint Hills One Stop in Strong, Kansas, where I happened to run into Guavalicious and her husband.

    The trip back seemed faster than the trip out, but I'm still a bundle of sore muscles from the drives. It's trips like this that make me wish I had cruise control.

    Still, I always enjoy hitting the open road and the freedom of driving my own car to a travel destination. I'm thinking my husband and I need to plan a road trip vacation next year sometime.

  • Average Jane Goes to a Conference

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    Yesterday I attended the 140 Characters Conference in Hutchinson, Kansas. It was the first social media conference I've ever attended that focused on Twitter rather than blogging. It's actually misleading to say that the 10-minute presentations were about Twitter – they were really about communicating with other people using online technology.

    I drove the approximately 250 miles to Hutchinson on Sunday and made it there in time to change into my Halloween costume and head to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum with my roommate Gigi Belmonico, who was one of the speakers.

    There was a reception in the lobby and we took advantage of the opportunity to tour the museum itself, which is 650 feet below ground level in a working salt mine. A tram took us around various parts of the mine while its driver explained the history of salt mining in the area. This is the mine where Mike Rowe filmed the salt mining episode of "Dirty Jobs."

    Here's Gigi in her Halloween costume and hard hat (every visitor and worker had to wear a hard hat and carry an emergency breathing apparatus) posing by a giant chunk of salt:

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    Dynamite car:

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    An example of the movie memorabilia stored in the mines:

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    The conference itself was from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Monday. The format was for presentations to last 10 minutes each, which allowed for a tremendous variety of topics. Because the theme of this particular conference's location was "small town," there was some emphasis on agriculture, small town tourism, etc., but most of what was said could be applied to any business or person in social media.

    After the conference, there was a reception at the Kansas Cosmosphere. It's only been about five years or so since my last tour of the museum, but I appreciated that we were given the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of their collection.

    Here's the hatch of the Apollo 13 command module, which was just sitting in the office:

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    Here's a Russian space suit they had filed away:

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    I love this stained glass window above the entrance to the museum. The slogan at the top is also the Kansas State motto, which seems very appropriate for a space museum in Kansas:

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    Obviously, space tourism is big in Hutchinson, but I was still surprised and delighted when I saw the water park in the middle of our hotel. This was the view from our room window:

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    If I'd been a kid, you wouldn't have been able to get me out of there with a crowbar.

    All in all it was a great way to spend the beginning of my vacation week. My thanks to Jeff Pulver and Becky McCray for all their hard work putting on the conference and related activities. Thanks again to Gigi for inviting me and being a great roomie.

  • Average Jane’s Favorite Cleaning Product

    I ran across a vintage Chore Girl ad on J-Walk Blog the other day. As the post mentions, the product name was later changed to Chore Boy. My aunt refers to it as "Chore Person."

    Goldenfleece I don't use the regular Chore Boy scrubbers, but the brand also produces Golden Fleece, which has been my dishwashing scouring product of choice for years.

    Golden Fleece can be a little difficult to track down in stores these days, so I bought a half case of them in 1998. Last week, I opened my last box from that case, so clearly I get a lot of use out of them.

    I ran across a site that sells a full case for $20.28. That might be enough to last me the rest of my life.

    By the way, I'm doing NaBloPoMo again: a blog post a day throughout November. It'll be my fifth year, so you can look forward to many more posts about things like common cleaning supplies and other mundanity. You're welcome!

  • Another Average Jane Giveaway

    First of all, I'd like to congratulate Natalie, who won the GiveCard from last week's drawing. She says, "I would donate to Guide Dogs for the Blind… my mom is on her second dog from them, for 15 years she has been able to "see" with the dogs. Amazing."

    This week's giveaway is a gift card from SnapGifts. If you live in Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, you can get a gift card to one of your favorite local businesses. For people in other metropolitan areas, they offer gift cards from national brands.

    Some cards are available to be e-mailed immediately; most are traditional plastic gift cards that are mailed to the purchaser or recipient. It's a new company, so some of the markets have limited gift card options, but there's lots of potential for additional local restaurants and stores to join in.

    The entrepreneur who started SnapGifts is a friend of mine, and I'm delighted that the company is providing me with a $25 SnapGifts card at no charge to give away to one lucky winner.

    To enter, just comment on this post and tell me which company's gift card you would choose if you won. Deadline to enter: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at midnight. I've been looking over the Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas lists and I can say I would have a seriously difficult time choosing from all of the great restaurants and shops.

  • Average Jane Gears Up for NaBloPoMo

    Even though I already post five days a week and seem to do just fine with the "whatever pops into my head" method of post topic selection, somehow NaBloPoMo makes me feel as though I need a strategy. Therefore, I’ve developed a schedule for my posts throughout November:

    • Mondays – Recipes
    • Tuesdays – Childhood photos and memories.
    • Wednesdays – Memes – So if you have some, please tag me!
    • Thursdays – Stuff I Like/Product Reviews
    • Fridays – Potpourri (Whatever I feel like writing – just like a regular day!)
    • Saturday – LOLcaturday
    • Sunday – Photos

    Cagey is doing something similar, although her categories are more coherent than mine.

    I’m going to do my best to include photos with the recipes, so you’ll be seeing a lot more photos than usual next month. Let’s hope my digital camera and scanner don’t let me down.

    I’m not completely certain how the NaBloPoMo site with its blogging capabilities figures in. Thus, I think I’m going to put post titles with links on my profile each day to prove that I’ve posted. Is that what everyone else was planning to do?

    If you’re participating this year and I haven’t befriended you yet, please visit my profile and ask to be my friend. This is going to be fun!