A whole lot of TV watchin' goin' on!

Anybody else watching the Olympics? I've had the TV on every day. I mainly listen and watch the interesting parts as they come up. My wife's been following the women's gymnastic competition. I generally watch anything that's on. The women's beach volleyball hasn't been as interesting as the weather's been too cold for their usual uniforms. I have to admit that my favorite to watch is the swimming events. Goes fast and keeps my attention. That ADHD attention span isn't the greatest and the shortness of the swimming events fits just fine. Long distance running? I browse on it. I do have to admit though that the bicycle road races were fun to watch. Root for the home team!

Still haven't heard anything new on the Prepology cookware. I did receive an email with the same information in the phone call. I'm looking forwards to hearing more from them.

Getting ready to switch the license plates on my truck. They say my old ones are worn out and they're issuing new ones. Now I have to memorize this plate. Once I get that done, I'll have my last four license plate numbers memorized. More useless junk in my head.

Yikes! Don't use it!

If you have read my past posts, you may recall I bought a K37115-Prepology 5-piece Nonstick Microgrill Set Purple from QVC. I received an automated phone call from them last night telling me to stop using it. The sets have been arcing out in the microwave and overheating. Of course, I used mine to make bratwursts for supper last night. No problems for me, but I won't use it again. They said they'd be in contact we me in a few weeks. I hope I get my money back!

Had an exhausting day...

It started yesterday with a sharp pain in my right calf. I could hardly walk. Came home after church and plopped in the recliner. When I did get up, the pain came back. This morning I called my doctor's office, and they were so busy that they referred me to Urgent Care. So I went there and spent an hour waiting to be seen. They thought I might have a blood clot in the leg, so they sent me to a vascular specialist to have it checked out. It's a long walk in the hospital where he is so I valet parked and rode a wheelchair to his office. As an aside, the valet parking is free, provided by the hospital, and the workers who take you where you need to go are also. Allen hospital is a great hospital. Anyway, I waited about an hour and a half to be seen. To be fair, I arrived about 45 minutes early, so my real wait time was only 45 minutes. They did the sonograms on my leg, and much to my relief they didn't find a clot. What they did find was a Baker's cyst behind my knee. I'll have to research it on the internet, but if it has been causing my problems with walking, I can have it drained. I'll know more after I do the research. So I got home around 3pm, did a few things and watched some TV.

Boy was it hot today. We hit 103, tying a record from 1901. When I got back to my truck, it was boiling hot inside. I couldn't even touch the steering wheel. Fortunately I had a pair of gloves in the truck and I used them to buckle my seat belt and drive home. The air conditioner struggled to even cool the truck cab down by the time I reached home.

Some thoughts on Aurora

What happened at Aurora was a tragedy. It was a tragedy for the people who were shot, the people who didn't get shot, all their families, and the shooter. No reason is forthcoming for the shooting at the moment. Many people are speculating on the reason, but what matters is that it did.

From what I know now, I don't think this was a preventable incident. You can talk about gun control, but guns are available beyond the pale of the law. If he really wanted to get guns, regardless of the law, he would have been able to. He wasn't acting "funny", just being reclusive. We don't have a society like Iran where people spy on each other and report them to the police. God forbid that we should. We need to stay alert in today's world, but he wasn't even a blip on the RADAR of acting weird.

The only really controllable factor in this is that he was able to exit through the emergency exit and return the same way. Perhaps if there had been an alarm on the emergency exit door that alerted someone in the theater to check the door. The shooter had to block the door open or put tape over the locking mechanism to be able to re-enter. If someone had responded to a door alarm, the door could have been re-secured before the gunman re-entered. It took some time for him to get his ballistic suit on, so the tragedy could potentially been averted.

Regardless of all that, take time to pray for the victims and their families. Don't forget to pray for the shooter and his family also. And never forget.

Trying something new

Well, I did it. I joined those thousands of people who've bought something from QVC. I purchased the K37115-Prepology 5-piece Nonstick Microgrill Set Purple. I'm on a purple kick, so a lot of what I've been buying lately is purple. Not that I've been buying a lot. The troubling thing with this microgrill set is that they don't have it anymore, so you can't ask questions about it or get to any of the recipes they had on-line. I've used it a couple of times and I like it. I've cooked eggs and bratwurst in it with good results. The information they have in their recipe book for cooking times is off on some things. Here's how to cook bratwurst in the grill pan.

I cooked two bratwurst, about 4 ounces total. These were not frozen when I cooked them. First, I preheated the grill pan and the top press for the time indicated in the book. I should mention that I'm using a 1200 watt microwave oven. I then put the bratwurst in the grill pan and put the press part on top of the bratwurst. I microwaved it for a total of 9 minutes. The wurst were fully cooked and tasted delicious. The weren't really juicy, which I like because the juice just causes a mess. As far as I could tell, most of the fat was microwaved off the bratwurst. I'll definitely do this again as I don't have a grill and only cook for one.