Why I Oughta...

I've owned a Staghorn Fern (Dutch Staghorn) for almost a year, but it took buying a second, smaller one to finally compel me to get it properly mounted on a board and hung.  And, now, it has a home on the wall in my office.  You can see the mounted board below, hanging on a peg near a corner that looks at a western-facing and northern-facing set of windows.   My current plan is to keep my mounted ferns on boards in my office during the cold weather, but as soon as the temperatures improve, I'll get them out on the screened porch along with my other containers.  Below, you can see the mounted Dutch Staghorn Fern - a small one - on a board with Sphagnum moss as the base.  I used 1-1/4" screws around the perimeter and fishing line to keep the moss down and attached.   One of the things that I'm going to adjust - going forward - is using a more water-hardy species of wood.  I used pine because I had it on hand, but that's not the best choice....

For the past 10+ years, I've been sitting at this desk for a couple of days each week.   And by calling it a 'desk', I might be being generous.  It is really a table.  With two tiny, slim drawers.  But, I call it my 'desk' when I refer to it.  "Put it on my desk."  Or "I think it is on my desk."  Nat bought it at West Elm when we were first moving into our old house.  When she bought it, I was setting up a tiny home office.  Upstairs in what would become our little nursery outside of our master bedroom.  It is a stable, even surface.  And compact in size.  When #1 arrived, I relocated downstairs to a first floor bedroom that was larger.  But, the small desk was going with me.  And there it lived for seven or so years.  After a few years in storage, we moved it into my new office in our new house.  Until now.  Nat found me a new desk - a desk that I've admired but figured was out of our leag...

As of this morning, it has gotten down to -22 degrees fahrenheit with wind chills down to -49 degrees fahrenheit.  You can see in the image above that it appears that tomorrow early am is going to be a couple of degrees colder. But, not sure it will break the record of -27 degrees - which happened during my lifetime in January of 1985 .  I don't have any memory of the cold of 1985, but I *do* have vivid memories of the Polar Vortex of 2014  that sat over Elmhurst (and all of Northern Illinois) for two days.  It was cold those days, but not so cold that they shut down the mail.  In fact, Nat spotted our mail carrier out delivering mail and invited him in to warm up.  We had another smaller Polar Vortex in 2015 (I think it was classified as such??) and I posted about how we ended up with just a little bit of cabin fever and went outside to make a quick snow angel for like 4 minutes here on the blog . So...how cold is it today?  The United States ...

As I do every January (at least lately), I've been documenting the good/bad/cool/useful things that were gifted me via a series of "Christmas Haul" posts.  These are in the spirit of "Haul Videos" that are still all the rage on YouTube.  Unfortunately, I'm neither a YouTube Star nor do I get paid to promote things.  So, these are genuinely all things that people gave me. But, this one, technically, isn't.  Meaning...no one gave me this. Rather, it came as part of a family grab-bag thing.  You know the type of grab-bag.  You all put in wrapped gifts.  Pick numbers.  Go around and 'steal' things you like.  There's a certain number of 'steals' that any one item can receive before it is out of play.  We do this a few different times and it is both fun and a cost-effective way to gift a large family. So...this is part of my 'haul' but it was something that was pulled from the pile in a grab bag.  A draft guard that you can s...

A few weeks past, I posted a photo of a couple of soda pop bottles that I picked up for my Dad at a garage sale down the street .  In that post, I mentioned that I bought a desk chair, too.  This, is that desk chair.  It isn't destined for my desk, but rather for my office as a chair the kids can sit in while they're in there with me.  The chair was priced right and didn't require any haggling, so I snatched it up and put it in the back of my car.  It is well worn, but still rocks and spins and seems to be very solid.  After I got it home, I noticed a few tags on the lower parts of the chair that tell the chair's story.  Check out the tags below.  First one says:  U.S. Department of Agriculture.  F.S.A. Farm Security Administration.  It appears that the number for inventory control has been scratched out.  On another leg, there's another Department of Agriculture FSA tag with the letters "U" and "S" on either side of...

One of my nephews gave this to me for Christmas and it has been sitting on my desk ever since.  It is a 'pen rest', but that's not the cool part.  First, he made it!  Yeah...like he made it in shop class in school.  I'm thinking it was some sort of computer-driven machining tool?  He programmed in my name and (most importantly) the Illini shield - which I'm over the moon for - and then stained it all by himself. Kinda awesome, right?  Especially because he's just a 12 year old.

Over on eBay this weekend, I came across this beauty of a lamp .  It is listed at $85 and has no shade, so it isn't a steal, right? But it *is* awesome.  But right now, it isn't for me.  ( remember that whole Joe Rhode-thing about that says: " It is enough to enjoy the existence of things without possessing all of them" ???) Looking up the helmets in the Helmet Project site , it seems that this one with the blue facemask, the arched "Illini" that is outlined in blue is from a very specific few years:  1977 to 1979. As a child of the late 70's, I kinda love that.  We don't have a house yet, let alone a place for this lamp, but I bet it'd look pretty awesome in a rumpus room, right?  At $85, it might not go fast, right?  All it takes is one nutball like me to buy it, though!

Back in 2011, I posted here on the blog about how the University of Illinois Athletic Department was rolling out a limited number (just 77 of them.  Get it?  Grange was #77??) mini replica statues of the famous (and massive) Red Grange statue that sits on the west side of Memorial Stadium . But they were $4800.  Wowsa.  Obviously, I passed. Fast forward to this fall and the Athletic Department announced that for Homecoming they were going to give away smaller replica statues to the first 5000 fans who entered Memorial Stadium for the game against the Minnesota Gophers.   We weren't heading to Homecoming, so I figured I would have to hop on Ebay to find one of these to sit on my desk.  Welp, the first few weeks after the giveaway, there were a few statues popping up on Ebay, but the auctions were driving the prices pretty high (at least for me!) and I just stayed on the sidelines.   But, I kept 'watching' auctions and I finally foun...