Emily Bloss

Tonight, Bleys and I carved our pumpkins. Bleys made an ultra-cool design - it’s carved into the rind instead of being cut all the way through.

And here’s my pumpkin…

Note to self - do not use a Sharpie to draw the design! It makes a real mess.

Check one item off the Someday list - Devil’s Food White-Out Cake. Mmmmmmm!!!

I’ll definitely make this for a special occasion. It’s a bit of work but worth it - I think it’s as good as any store-bought cake. If I got this for dessert in a restaurant I would be happy! Since I didn’t follow the directions to the letter, I’m sure it will be even better next time. Oh and I wasn’t sure the candy thermometer was working right so I had to look up the Cold Water Candy Test. The frosting turned out great - it’s fluffy and not too sweet. Mom, if you’re reading this, I used floss to cut the layers in half and it worked perfectly!!

Today I came across a great article from the Life Coaches blog:

When Is Someday?

Someday, I want to go to Europe. I also want to complete my web site “What Would You Say If I Died?” (a place for people to post all of the kind words they would say about someone when they die, but for the person to read before s/he does). Someday I want to have a nice garden (this one is for retirement, when I have more time to care for the poor plants). Someday I want to learn to play guitar (I have one, and a book to learn, so now I just need to start). Someday I want to start a foundation or something to help homeless people. Someday I want to go back to college and study geology. Someday soon I want to dejunk our house. And someday really soon (like maybe today or tomorrow) I want to make a Devil’s Food White-Out Cake. Mmmmmm!!!

I know most of these things are within my reach, in my lifetime. But will I take the time to go for it? Who wants to go with me? Comments about your somedays are welcome!

I’ve found some really great info over on Dumb Little Man. The other day I came across this great post about 10 Things They Won’t Tell You… a collection of links to articles about different industries and their secrets. I was kind of surprised to learn that most of our lawmakers don’t even read the legislation they’re voting on… they rely on staffers or somebody else to tell them what’s in there. Ugh! And that credit card companies can hike your rates based on late payment of other bills. Now if I can just remember those tips!

A while back, I signed up to particpate in Blog Action Day, a movement to help people be more aware of environmental issues. Today is the appointed day to blog about saving the planet! Here are my favorite ways to help:

• Get involved in online campaigns. Together we can make a difference! My favorite sites for activism are Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Care2. All are respectable organizations doing quite a lot to help the earth. And they make it easy by providing online tools and easy ways to donate to their causes.
• Recycle, recycle, recycle! We recycle all we can… junk mail, food packaging, etc. Veggie waste gets thrown into the backyard for plant food, and we avoid using plastic grocery bags by taking cloth bags to the store. Even bread bags get sort of recycled into trash bags for used kitty litter. Here’s a nice post about recycling other stuff.
• Buy a fuel-efficient car. Our new Toyota Matrix gets pretty good mileage for a car of its size… and we do what we can to keep it running at top performance. For more info, see this article from UCS about Saving at the Pump.

Of course, there are more ways to care for the planet but these are the ones I’m particularly fond of. And once you get in the habit, you don’t even need to think about it too much! Comments on your favorite ways to hug a tree are most welcome.

I use Opera for my web browser, and one of its features that I just love is that it will keep your current windows open for you. So, when I exit Opera at night and come back to it the next day, everything I had open is still there. This works for me and against me, because most of the time I have like 20 pages open and it gets to be a real mess. So from time to time I have to go in and figure out what to do with all those tabs… for each page, I try to decide if I should keep it open, blog about it, or close it. In today’s go-round, I found several articles which are related to healthy eating… I don’t want to forget about these articles, so here they are!

The Ten Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

Top 100 Foods to Boost Your Productivity

26 Top Calcium Food Sources

Hope you find something good!

Since we got a new car, we gave Bleys our Hyundai Accent (that was actually part of the reason for getting the Matrix). He’s not used to driving a standard, so we’ve been taking trips around the block until he gets used to the shifting and all that stuff. He’s been doing really well so far! The only real problem has been a tendency to go a little too fast around curves.

I found this article the other day, and I think it applies to giving driving lessons…

How to Give Kind Criticism

I’m hoping to make this a positive experience, helping him gain confidence in his driving abilities. If he doesn’t cry from learning how to drive a standard, it will be an improvement over my training and we’ll have been successful! 

We got a new car!! It’s a 2008 Toyota Matrix. Here’s a picture of the love of my life, in front of the car he worked so hard researching and getting a great deal on:

We upheld the Bloss family tradition and went for ice cream in the new car (forgot the camera for that trip, though).

The buying experience was great at Sun Toyota.  Trav was well-prepared and knew what price we should have gotten, and we did good! It was no muss, no fuss to get the car we wanted at the price we wanted. Now we can travel again!!! Our first longer trip will be down to Haslam’s bookstore this weekend. It’s in St. Petersburg (about an hour and a half drive) and it’s HUGE (over 300,000 books). Hopefully we’ll be able to bring Sadie to Tucson, sometime in the relatively near future. That depends on how Bleys does with his driving lessons.

I found this really neat test which tells if your brain thinks more like a male or a female:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/

My result was zero, meaning I’m right in the middle. Trav says that’s probably why we get along so well, because I’m not like most women. Hmm! I wonder what his score would be? I would love to know your results - leave a comment or send me an email! Also, here are some more interesting things to do on their site.