10 Things From This Week

In no particular order...

1. We are continuing to grow our little stockpile of food (see photo above, this is in addition to the full pantry in our house).
2. I just learned that Vitamin D is a hormone and not a vitamin.  How did I not know that all of these years???
3. I also learned that there is such a thing as psychogenic fever, where stress or trauma can cause a person to have a fever, sometimes for weeks or months on end.  Another one to add to my store of odd maladies...
4. The Library of Congress blog has a cool post they do every so often where they ask the public for help identifying pictures in their archives.  Here is the newest mystery photo contest and here is an older one (for more see the sidebar on their blog).
5. We have been pretty happy with our three-month trial using Mint's cell phone plan so I renewed both of our accounts for a year more of service.  At $15 per month ($180 each for the year) per phone for unlimited texting and calling and 3GB of data, I think it is a great bargain!
6. Today I am voting.  I requested a permanent mail in ballot as it makes it easier to research each candidate or ballot issue and take my time voting (as opposed to trying to make a list of what I want to vote for and take the list to the voting booth).  I'm really glad I am voting at home as our ballot for this election is four huge pages long!
7. I wasn't really surprised when I came across this article about the middle class being priced out of the new car market.  Our last car cost $25k which I thought was reasonable; of course we are hoping to keep it for a minimum of 20 years!  My friend's son just bought a new truck for $75k (for a truck!!! OMG) and when we priced new vans, they have increased almost $10k in the last five years!  Needless to say I hope never to need/buy a new car again in my lifetime.
8. Amazon Prime Day (days?) is October 13th and 14th.  As usual, we probably won't buy anything as there is nothing we need.  I also read that many other retailers will look at different ways of doing Black Friday this year so their stores won't be overwhelmed with people.  On the flip side, there are also people calling for a boycott of Prime Day.
9. We are looking forward to seeing the daughter, grandson, his wife, and their daughter when they arrive this week.  Obviously during a pandemic is not the best time to travel but this is when they wanted to come so we hope everything works out OK.  There has been so much violence in Las Vegas over the past few months we are going to suggest they go to tourist places outside of Las Vegas (they mentioned going to the Grand Canyon and maybe Zion which would be a great experience for them).
10. Politics, social media, regular media...everything is awful in regards to, well, nearly everything right now.  I try to watch home and garden shows as much as possible because I find them relaxing.  Speaking of which, I have been watching 'Sell This House!' on TV a lot so when we heard we were going to have guests, instead of feeling like I should renovate the house or run out and buy new stuff to make our house look better, I just did what they do on the show and deep cleaned each room, removed any clutter or extra stuff, and changed furniture around for a new look.  Now our house looks great and it didn't cost anything to do this!

I hope you are enjoying the fall, avoiding all of the contentious stuff online and most importantly, I hope you vote!