AmandaVT
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Posts posted by AmandaVT
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Ugh, I'm so sorry. I would have been mortified and have certainly offered to replace your computer! I'm sorry that woman had such bad manners.
I'm thinking the accident is too old for this fix, but I accidentally dumped a can of seltzer on my laptop a couple of years ago. I flipped it upside down and open, resting the keyboard on a doubled up towel and left it there for 3 days to dry. It had made a zapping sound and turned itself off after the seltzer spilled into it. Letting it sit for that long upside down dried the entire thing out and it started back up fine and still works. So on the off chance this ever happens again, flip it over and don't touch it for awhile and you may not lose the computer. I will say, I never keep a glass/can of anything liquid on the same surface as my computer now. I'm paranoid. :-)
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We have the Frontier too. DS has been in it since he was 3 and it's a great, long lasting seat. We converted him to booster mode when he was around 5 and the seat will grow with him until he is ready to sit without a booster.
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Thank you both!! Those changes make sense. I think I'll add on 6 stitches to the garter section to give it an extra inch in length. I won't mess with the garter vs. stockinette on this one. Maybe for my next pair. If they come out nice, I want to make a few pairs for different friends for Christmas gifts. :-)
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Any experienced knitters out there? I want to make fingerless gloves and found a pattern I like, but I would like them to be a bit longer. I realized after attempting to make sense of the pattern (my first cable project) that it's knitted sideways. Or at least I think it is. So I can't just knit more rows. Would it work for me to cast on more stitches? 80 instead of 60 or something? One more question - the middle of the pattern is in garter stitch. Could I just do it in stockinette instead or would that not work?
http://www.classiceliteyarns.com/WebLetter/272/GarterCableWristlets.pdf
Thank you so much if anyone is up for answering!!
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Obligatory responsible answer: I would wait until high school, for Stephen King.
Real answer: I had read all of King's then-published novels by the time I was 14. They were eye-opening and some scared the heck out of me. For years after reading It I was scared of drains. Good times. :laugh:
Glad I'm not the only one! I read everything of Stephen King that I could in Jr. High. My best friend and I watched the It Miniseries in 1990 and scared ourselves silly!
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Or maybe my kid isn't old enough for it? I downloaded and printed Life Science and it's dry and boring so far. I don't want to suck the love for science out of my kid. Am I missing something? Doing a connect the word to the definition worksheet about biomes and organisms isn't exactly what I had in mind for this year.
Back to the drawing board...
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I love this thread. And I just invisible liked a bunch of posts which was great fun. :-) And added a few stars for good measure. Stars on thars.
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I just ordered custom buttons from a seller on Etsy. I loved her buttons, but wanted a different color combo than she offered. She was happy to make my custom order and said she was thinking about adding the color combo I requested to her shop because she liked how they came out. She also was happy to sell me 7 buttons for a project I needed rather than the 6 that her shop was selling. I made a point of leaving very positive feedback.
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I agree - we started DS with the blue bucket of mixed lego pieces and creator sets. I love the 3 in 1's and DS likes to make one, play with it a bit and then rebuild as something else.
Blue bucket (don't pay this much though - ours was less than $50)
http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Building-Set-Pieces/dp/B000NO9GT4/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1408498020&sr=8-14&keywords=lego+bricks+and+moreDS just got his first Chima set for Christmas, and they are a fair bit trickier than the city and creators. I had to help him with a couple steps and I usually don't have to help with any of the creator or city sets.
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Black coffee in the morning - anywhere from 1-3 cups. Then I switch to water and sparkling water for the rest of the day. In the winter, I'll have a cup of hot black coffee or tea with honey in the afternoon and occasionally either a glass of wine or hot tea in the evening. I also keep a large glass (mason jar) of water on my bedside table because I usually wake up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and then realize I'm thirsty, which then leads to more bathroom trips...
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Our house has a footprint of 1000 sq feet, but we don't have near that in living space. I'd say about 750 and it's not well laid out. My dad's house has 1600 sq feet and there were 4 of us and it felt pretty perfect growing up and still does. Enough space, but not too much. I hate the new mcmansions that are so popular now and would prefer an older house of 1200-1400 for us. With some storage. Currently we have 1 bigger closet and 2 tiny ones for everything, no basement and no attic. It's not enough!
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Your dh's full time job pays about $16 an hour but your federal tax burden is more than $4900? Something seems wrong here.
I pulled the numbers from our tax returns. DH works a full time job and has a private therapy practice as well, and I work part time, so our total household income is more than the $16/hr. We couldn't make ends meet at the $16/hr wage!
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Fun!! Congratulations - just set the DVR to record it.:-)
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Here are some yummy lunches I've made recently. Feel free to add chicken or shrimp (we're vegetarian)
Summer veggie ramen: saute up diced summer veggies (I used corn that I scraped off the cob, zucchini and green beans - all from the garden, so free!), Bring 1-2 cups of your favorite broth to a boil - I used Trader Joes Ginger Miso broth, add in noodles from 1 packet ramen (no flavor packet). You could do rice noodles too. Put noodles and broth on top of veggies in a bowl.
Quinoa veggie bowl. Cook up 1 c quinoa in 2 c water. While that's cooking, dice up celery, cucumber, tomato, kale (any veggie you like) and put in a big bowl. Made dressing. I made a lemon, minty garlic dressing. 1/4 c lemon juice, 1/2 c olive oil, 2 cloves minced garlic, small handful of mint leaves. Blend it up really well. Toss cooked and cooled quinoa with veggies and dressing. Top with 1/4 avocado.
Sesame noodles - cook up soba noodles or a thicker spaghetti. Dice up cukes, celery and snowpeas. Toss cooked pasta with veggies and Annie's Asian Sesame dressing. (this is DS's favorite lunch)
BBQ salad - chop up any salad veggies you like: I use corn, tomato, cucumber and lettuce for this one. Toss with black beans or chick peas and your favorite BBQ sauce.
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Not accurate at all for us:
Food - $553 for 2 adults/1 child. We can't come in under $800 for the past year or so, grocery prices have gone up too much. And we're vegetarian, so are not buying expensive meat! Our number does include toiletries, which isn't too high.
Medical - $309. DH has over $225 taken out of his paycheck every other week for insurance, so that puts us well over that number off the top. Then we have a $750 deductible each year, random prescriptions, and dental stuff. Oh, and eye dr's and contact lens fees- all out of pocket.
Housing - $840. Fairly accurate. Our mortgage is lower than that (not including property tax) but that's about right for rental. But I'm not including utilities and I believe that calculator is. In VT, we have fairly high heat and electric bills.
Transportation - $587. That's about right if there is no car payment. Gas runs us over $300 a month and car insurance is around $250. We have shopped around, and neither of us has been in any accidents or had any kind of traffic violation (in other words, nothing should raise our insurance)
Other - $158 - not sure what other is supposed to be. Phone and internet? That's about right. We have to have a home phone due to DH's job.
Taxes - $4907. We pay more than that in taxes. We paid more than that just in federal tax last year, let alone state tax and property tax. I would say $5-8K is an average for property taxes here.
DH's full time job, barely pays our living wage of $16/hr. It also requires a masters degree and years of experience.
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Huh. I'm not sure if *bias* is the right word. I mean, surely there are plenty of parents who could have taken pictures of kids who were miserable in a car, period, whatever their seating arrangements. I had a couple of car haters that made trips oh so much fun, lol. My niece screamed bloody murder in the car through her entire infancy. We still had to follow the laws of the land and of physics.
A poster said she couldn't picture larger kids being comfortable. I directed her toward images. :::shrug:::
DS was (and still is) a very carsick kid. He screamed nonstop, from the day we left the hospital, every time he was in the car for more than 5 min. We still kept him RF until he was 2 1/2. Did it suck? Yes. Was it a lot safer? Yes. That's why we did it. I drove a small, older Subaru Legacy at the time and we all fit fine - even DH who is over 6'.
My parents were car safety "nuts" when my brother and I were small. We both had carseats from the time we left the hospital until around 5-6. That was 37 years ago. They also insisted that we wear seatbelts once we were out of carseats and neither of us were allowed in the front seat until around 12. Served us well when we got hit by a drunk driver going 60mph while we were stopped in traffic. Had to pick shattered glass out of our hair and had some bumps and bruises, but nothing like what could have happened.
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Shows made for STARZ, HBO and the like have more graphic adult scenes, and more blood guts and gore.
Outlander will be no exception.
Oh I know. And DH loves the blood and guts and graphic stuff. I will say I prefer Game of Thrones to Drugs Inc or Intervention or any of those other disturbing shows he loves. The mind of an emergency mental health worker is a dark one! I am a bit of a TV wuss though, I tend to like more lighthearted stuff - Frasier, Star Trek, Eureka, Gilmore Girls, older Law and Order, heck, I still love the Brady Bunch! :-)
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Oh my, that was seriously laugh out loud funny!
To be honest though, even though the stories are good in their own right, I have no doubt that the sex is what brought both these series to the screen. Sex sells.
For me however, I close by eyes during those parts, even in the books. :lol:
I thought the show was well done. There were parts that were different from the book but not in a way that changes the plot line. Well, there was the absence of little Roger from the Reverend's home. Not important now but will be in the next season.
I was looking for Roger (he's one of my favorite characters) and even had DH looking for a small boy while they were at the Reverend's house. Diana said Roger had been cast and was in a scene, it must have been cut though. And I hear you on the eye closing - I definitely paid more attention to my knitting project during the WWII hospital scene and when Claire popped Jamie's arm back in. I'll probably have to hide under a blanket during the Wentworth episode!
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DH and I watched last night - I've read all the books and he has not. I think we both liked it, though I'm the type to prefer the book 99% of the time. DH did turn to me about 20 minutes in and said "so your favorite book series is basically p*rn" I told him that in the books, there are intimate relations for sure, but the TV show seems to be playing up that angle a good bit more than the books. Then I reminded him that he reads and watches Game of Thrones and that show is way more explicit than the first episode of Outlander!
Love the scenery and costumes! I was overall pretty happy.
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My friend has done the 20/20 research panel and gotten a couple of $100 or so visa gift cards. I signed up for it and have gotten selected for a pre-research screening, but haven't met the criteria they were looking for yet. Here's the link:
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When money was tighter here a couple of years ago - like $6 left the day before payday tight, I would have definitely written and down and planned every book I was going to buy. Things have loosened up a bit now, but we still make sure to have monthly budget meetings and I keep a daily eye on the accounts. I do the majority of the budgeting as I get less stressed about bills. :-)
Two things that have helped us a lot is using mint.com for keeping an eye on the big picture and I have a google docs spreadsheet that keeps track of what day everything is due and what day they're paid. Maybe your DH would be willing to set up a (free) account with mint. Then you can see where your money is going as well.
Good luck.
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Coffee in the mornings, iced tea in the afternoons during the warm months, hot tea when I'm sick or at night in the winter.
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I wouldn't sink $2k into a $400 car either. A payment on a $10K van won't be too bad. Our rule of thumb was to figure out how much we spent on the car over the year vs. a car payment. Then we realized that we were not able to drive down to see family as often as we liked because of the unreliable car. That's when we decided to take back on a car payment. It's been worth it.
Good luck on your car hunt!
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I bought BA 3A and I'm hoping to use both MM and BA. Fingers crossed that it will work, like MotherofBoys' son, DS likes MM (and PCM which we use for fun extra stuff) and I'm worried he'll balk at BA.
What age to start chapter book read-alouds?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Around 4, but we still did (and still do) lots of picture books as well. DS has been on a Gossie and Gertie kick for the past week or so. :-)