This Stuff is WONDERFUL!

23. February 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

Today was slightly improved from yesterday, but I have to tell you about these awesome tissues I found at Walgreens! Puff’s Plus with Vick’s Vapo-rub. To quote Tony the Tiger: “They’re GRRRRREAT!”

My runny nose kicked in today, and my regular BJ’s-brand tissues, which work well for occasional nose-blowing, started ripping up my nose. So I went to Walgreen’s for some more Nyquil and decided to pick up some Puff’s Plus — you know, the kind with the lotion.

I got a box of Puff’s Plus, but also saw these ones infused with Vick’s Vaporub. They’re so nice!

So there’s my pitch — no, Vick’s isn’t giving me any money for this. Neither is whatever company owns Puff’s….ah yes, Proctor and Gamble. I remember that man-in-the-moon on the back of my parents’ bottle of “Prell” shampoo.

Eleven Years?

11. February 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

This advertisement was on the back of my latest issue of National Geographic:

From AllState

I found this pretty interesting. The statistic, that is. I never gave that much thought to how long I planned to stay out of full-time work. Sometimes I wonder whether I’d go back into meteorology, or if I’d pursue some other career: teaching rears its head most often. After all, our nation has a significant shortage of math and science teachers, especially at the high school level. I could do that…I think.

A woman in my church knitting group recently changed careers and is now a high school algebra teacher near Fayetteville. Some of her stories are scary, but she still is very proud that she can help with the shortage.

So…eleven years. Wow. I just hit 3 years out of the workforce last week.

PS: I agree with all of the tips offered in that advertisement. Make sure your spouse is covered for his/her retirement.

ALL HAIL THE NEW YORK GIANTS!*

04. February 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

*okay friends, name the film!



Okay, I’ll have to admit I wasn’t too thrilled with Eli Manning’s draft stunt in the 2004 draft. As many of you know, I have this…THING…for Kerry Collins. Not really a crush, it’s not like I have lustful dreams about him (he’s married too!), but let’s just say that I’m happy when he does well, and get pretty pissed when he’s not doing well — whether in his football or otherwise.



If I remember correctly, the San Diego Chargers had picked Eli first, then traded him to NY for Philip Rivers (Go Pack!) and the opportunity to be #1 pick the following year. I remember news footage of a less-then-happy Eli holding up Chargers jersey, and an absolutely-thrilled Eli with the Giants jersey. Something like that. Remember, I’m just a girl, so I’ve probably fouled up that entire explanation.



Kerry Collins, the NY Giants starting QB, ended up leaving the team and going to Oakland for the 2004-2005 year, where I believe he was 2nd string to Drew Bledsoe at first. I didn’t find any of that very fair, and I directed that disappointment towards Eli. Dave doesn’t think I’m being fair. He’s probably right.



Tonight was the most exciting Super Bowl I’d seen in years, though. And Eli was certainly deserving of some of the glory! As you’ve noticed, though, I posted a picture of another key to their win tonight: Plaxico Burress, a former Steeler! Caught the touchdown pass on their last score. He was amazing!



PS: I just read that Kerry Collins has a 1500 acre ranch about an hour west of here, in Asheboro, NC. Cool!


Moon Sand Mayhem…Mitigated!

31. January 2008 · Comments Off on Moon Sand Mayhem…Mitigated! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Timmy received a Moon Sand set for his birthday from our friends, Julie and Doug and their kids Evan and Kate. Julie recently had her kids over to play and we broke out the Moon Sand — as we saw the 7% fall to the floor (read more about my estimated 5-7% Moon Sand loss rate here), we had a discussion about the inflatable tray I was interested in. Bless her heart, she remembered and Timmy got to unwrap a set with the tray on his birthday. Yay! It’s quite nifty, with a velcro top — so after Timmy finished, it was really simple to pop on the lid and put the tray away. Probably cut my cleanup time by over 50%!

(All you Air Force-types reading this — how’s that for some action/impact statements!)

So here’s Timmy enjoying his Sand Castle kit in the inflatable tray. What a difference! The loss rate is now down to ~1%, at most! That’s a phenomenal 6% reduction in Floor Moon Sand! More fun and creative productivity for the kids! Whoo hoo!

From 2008 01 26 Ti…

Tangent: Paul sent me this funny story today, and there’s a part of the story about the purchaser having to page through all these web sites that ask you to add more stuff to your shopping cart before you can ever check out (he fell for it and bought an accessory). That reminded me of what I encountered at MoonSand.com when I was trying to look for an inflatable Moon Sand play tray earlier this month. I know you’re curious — go ahead, hit the link, note how the page is laid out to try to canoodle you into buying more and more and more Moon Sand.

What a World We Live in Now…

28. January 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Have you ever received one of those forwarded e-mails about how “back in the day”, you could go outside to play and absolutely take off around the neighborhood and Mom and Dad trusted you to be safe, play nicely and be home by dinnertime?

We received this flyer for a fund raiser today at church…one of the youth groups is selling Joe Corbi’s pizza and cookie kits. I was browsing through the catalog this morning and saw this:

How many of you did fundraisers as a kid? For a sports team? School? Boy Scouts? Girl Scouts? Were your parents like mine? Were you cast out the door with your catalogs and order forms…having to go door-to-door around the neighborhood? Hoping you’d get one or two sales in a 3 hour trudge-a-thon?

It was great when my Dad would take my Girl Scout Cookie order form to work, or to his ship…he said he could just sit the form on his desk, or post it on the wall outside his office door on the ships on which he was stationed…and by the end of one day, the form would be filled.

But that worked well when Dad wasn’t out to sea. For some reason, I seemed to do a lot of fund raising when my Dad was out to sea. Which meant I was back to door-to-door…ugh. I really truly hated doing that. I’m not great about asking things of others (babysitting while I drill in South Carolina not-withstanding), especially their money.

I guess I was shocked, but understanding, when I saw printed on the form that the parents and adults should be doing the fund raising legwork. I think I caught a glimpse of my future: Jacob and Timmy…for whatever activity they choose to do in the future, will have plenty of fundraising for me to do. And guidance will be for me (and Dave, hopefully) to do the legwork.

Hated fund raising then, I will hate it in 4-5 years when the boys start getting involved in it.

Floating Heads

24. January 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Dave said I should talk about this one. The boys and I were looking at the scrapbook my Mom made for my 30th birthday (it’s really really awesome — covers through age 8!), and Dave comes across this portrait. It was taken in summer 1981, so I was 7.

“Who’s that little boy in the upper right corner?”

I replied, “That’s my sister, silly*!”

*I might have said something more severe than “silly”, I can’t remember.

Who remembers these kinds of pictures? I think they were all the rage in the 80s. Aren’t they the most ridiculous thing??? I’m sure the Sears Portrait Studio was showing off this incredible technological breakthrough: take two separate portraits, and merge them into one! WOW!

To put it in perspective, this is what my sister looked like when she isn’t a floating head in my thoughts. She was about 2 1/2 here:

So much for original…

21. January 2008 · Comments Off on So much for original… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

Came across this tonight.

As Paul would say: “Pleh.”

Laundry Day!

17. January 2008 · 9 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

It’s laundry day in the Vollmer house. For those who don’t know, I HATE laundry. Always have. I was quite lucky as a kid — I did a lot of chores in my house growing up (washing dishes, mowing the lawn) but laundry was never one of them. I think my Mom had her way of doing laundry and it was just less work to do it herself rather than deal with us kids messing things up. I understand completely — I get nervous that Dave might accidentally let a bra or sweater go into the dryer and we all know what happens then!

Anyway, before kids, and while Dave and I were both active duty Air Force, our laundry was easily a 1/2 day chore, once a week. One load of whites, one load of colors. Our uniforms were usually being professionally cleaned, so we didn’t even have to worry there.

Of course NOW, particularly in the wintertime, during Timmy’s potty training (that’s another posting, we’re in the home stretch!), the clothes pile up like crazy. Once a week is a no-go. But I’m not disciplined enough to do it daily, which is what many of my friends claim to do: 1-2 small loads per day = 10-15 minutes worth of work per day.

What I do is probably worse: 5-6 very-large-loads every 4-5 days, 1-2 hours of folding/putting away.

And then I really take my time — I’ve been known to let the clothes sit in the dryer or in baskets in the laundry room for as many as 5 days. I’ll just pull what I need from the piles. But typically, I can do everything in one day.

So go ahead — take my poll! I’ve been wondering if I’m sort of a freak because I don’t do laundry daily.

Moon Sand Mess — Pardon Me While I Vent

14. January 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

My boys love Moon Sand. I’m not Moon Sand’s biggest fan, but I’m willing to accept the risk for the sake of happy kids who are exercising their creative muscles and (above all) are sitting still being good. I suggested to Grammy Vollmer that Timmy receive a Moon Sand play set for Christmas and she came through for us with the Neighborhood Playset. That along with some other containers of Moon Sand we had, and we have enough Moon Sand to even entertain friends who come over to play (which we did a couple weeks ago!).

(By the way, the picture of the neat, clean red and blue Moon Sand siding on the house on the product mentioned above is some sort of pipe dream — Timmy loves “painting” the house, but it would never look that nice.)

Hit the link above, check out the customer reviews about it. I feel both ways — I’m thrilled that my boys enjoy it so much, but it is indeed a bear to clean up. And even after the visible sand is cleaned up, if you walk around my kitchen barefoot for a couple days afterwards, you still feel the grit that my vacuum, dustbuster, broom and sponge didn’t quite get up. Again, an acceptable risk for the sake of happy kids, I guess.

There’s apparently this inflatble play box thing for Moon Sand. Tempting. I wonder how well it would actually work, say on our back porch or something.

So this afternoon the boys spent 45 minutes or so with Moon Sand, and even though the boys make a good effort, there’s still a colossal mess on my kitchen floor when they’re done. And since sweeping up the stuff on the floor brings along dog hair, grated parmesean cheese, crushed Cheerios and the like, there’s no way I’m putting Floor Moon Sand back in with the clean stuff. So I’d estimate a 5-7% loss of product with every play session.

I’m also a tyrant about keeping the colors separated. I know, I know, I’m probably hampering their creativity somewhat, and it’s contrary to the commericals and pictures on the packages of Moon Sand of colors, colors everywhere, but they just don’t mix nicely.

Before:

From 2008 01 14 Mo…

After:

From 2008 01 14 Mo…

Toilet Humor!

07. January 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,
So today I decided to open up the house and do some cleaning this afternoon while Timmy napped.

One of my tasks was to clean our downstairs 1/2 bathroom. For those who’ve heard my complaints, the toilet in our 1/2 bath has had a strange odor that I’m sure is attributed to having to potty train two little boys. I’ve tried everything — strong air fresheners, strong chemical cleaners, natural cleaners, and even hit up the stain/odor remover section at Petsmart. Many of those products have covered the odor for a little bit, but after a while the smell would come back.

I’ve gone so far as to get on my hands and knees and get my nose down to the caulking between the toilet and the floor and see if that was the problem (it wasn’t). EEEWWW!

Incidentally, the odor arbitrarily disappeared around Thanksgiving…hey…no complaints here!

My motivation today for hitting the downstairs bathroom was mainly to clean up all the dried soap residue from our sink…the boys tend to get overzealous with the soap. In fact, I’ve recently switched from liquid to bar soap after noticing the boys using one container of liquid soap in about a week.

So I clean — the sink, toilet, and floor. Scrub/wipedown with some Mr. Clean solution.

And now the odor is back.

What the hell? Argh!

PS: In the townhouse we rented in Seoul, the bathrooms had a drain in the middle of the floor. I would wipe down everything with Scrubbing Bubbles, then turn on the shower (connected with a hose) and just spray down the whole room: floor to ceiling. That was awesome!

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