Our Family Blog

  
      The man that sent this information is a computer tech. He spends a
      lot of time clearing the junk off computers for people and listens to
      complaints about speed. All forwards are not bad, just some. Be sure
      you read the very last paragraph.

      He wrote:
    
    
      By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.com and/or
      truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via
      email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent
      sites.
    
    
      Advice from snopes.com VERY IMPORTANT!!
    
    
      1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or
      however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get
      bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on
      your screen after you send it" or whatever — it almost always has an
      email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of
      those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each
      time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email
      addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other spammers. Even when
      you get emails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed
      of God/Jesus — that is email tracking, and they are playing on our
      conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses
      – just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a
      missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel
      if that was your child" — email tracking. Ignore them and don't
      participate!
    
    
    
      2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to
      others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to
      send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break
      the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all
      any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie'
      tracking information for telemarketers and spammers — to validate
      active email accounts for their own profitable purposes.
    
    
    
      You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending
      this information to them. You will be providing a service to your
      friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam
      emails in the future!
    
    
      Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of
      listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel
      guilty if you don't! It's all about getting email addresses and
      nothing more.
    
      You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!
    
    
      Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly
      a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's
      not make it easy for them!
    
      ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress of any other
      organization – i.e. social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions
      must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing
      the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the
      email trackers.
    
    
      Tips for Handling Telemarketers
    
      Three Little Words That Work!!
    
      (1)The three little words are: 'Hold On, Please…'
    
      Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead
      of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much
      more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
    
      Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep'
      tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which
      has efficiently completed its task.
    
      These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..
    
      (2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other
      end?
    
      This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls
      and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
    
      This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real'
      sales person to call back and get someone at home.
    
      What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there,
      is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7
      times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed
      the call, and it kicks your number out of their system.. Gosh, what a
      shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
    
      (3) Junk Mail Help:
      When you get 'ads' enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return
      these 'ads' with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their
      own junk mail away.
    
      When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything
      from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw
      away the return envelope.
    
      Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs
      them more than the regular 44 cents postage, 'IF' and when they
      receive them back.
    
      It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around
      50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight.
      In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put
      it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.
    
      One of Andy Rooney 's (60 minutes) ideas.
    
      Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a
      pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day,
      then just send them their blank application back!
    
      If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on
      anything you send them.
    
      You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep
      them guessing! It still costs them 44 cents.
    
      The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of
      their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them.
      Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best
      of all they're paying for it…Twice!
    
      Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that
      e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they
      need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
    
      If enough people follow these tips, it will work I have been doing
      this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
    
      THIS JUST MIGHT BE ONE E-MAIL THAT YOU WILL WANT TO FORWARD TO YOUR  FRIENDS

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store.If you leave them  connected at the stem, they ripen faster.. I didn't know that!

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Adda teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of Spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste Of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert.Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!!Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!

Reheat Pizza! Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

Easy Deviled Eggs. Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

Expanding Frosting. When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size.You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and  calories per serving.

Reheating refrigerated bread To warm biscuits, pancakes or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in A microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

Newspaper keeps weeds away. Start putting in your plants and work the nutrients in your soil. Then wet some newspapers. Put layers of wet newspapers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic but they will not get through wet newspapers.

Broken Glass Use a wet cotton ball or Q-TIP to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

No More Mosquitoes. Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

Squirrels Away! To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it. (Wonder if this works with rabbits? Sure gonna give it a try)

Flexible vacuum To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.Reducing Static Cling Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose.Place pin in seam of slacks and … At DA! … Static is gone.

Measuring Cups. Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such As peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Foggy Windshield? Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth! Re-opening envelopes. If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

Conditioner. Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.

Goodbye Fruit Flies! To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2 with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Get Rid of Ants. Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it home, can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed! (This I will definitely try!!!)

INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS. The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material..

I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well ….the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh. That's what burns out the heating unit. You can't see the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer  sheets to make your clothes soft and static free .. that nice fragrance too. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box… well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that? ! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share! Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO OTHER PEOPLE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. NOT ONLY COULD IT SAVE SOMEONE'S HOME, BUT IT COULD SAVE A LIFE!

With gas expected to reach $5 per gallon by summer, these tips that I received from a friend might come in handy.

I don't know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are paying up to $3.75 to $4.10 per gallon. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money's worth for every gallon:

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thurough the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the round temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the ore dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.