Umm...
Just, uh...
no.
Just, uh...
no.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Barbeque Maintenance Tips
When purchasing your barbeque grill
, think of it as an investment rather then just another item for your 
outdoor entertainment. You should expect this item to become a large part of your outdoor activities for many years to come. But like any other investments, proper maintenance and care is needed to ensure that your barbeque grill will work for you for many years to come. While some maintenance and cleaning is specific to the type of barbeque grill your own (gas, electric, charcoal or smoke barbecue grill), the majority of maintenance that should be carried on does not change from grill to grill.Step 1- Gathering The Necessary Items
You will need some common household items on hand when it comes time to clean your barbeque grill.
- Brass wire grill brush
- Steel wool pads, preferably that contains soap already.
- Mild dish soap
- Sponge or dishcloth
- Spray cooking oil
- Dry baking soda
- Aluminum foil
Step 2- Brushing Your Grill Off
The first thing that should always be done to your grill is a routine brushing. Using your brass wire grill brush (or other brush suitable to your type of grill) you should brush off all the surfaces. By routinely brushing your barbeque grill, you will prevent any type of buildup. If buildup from food is left to long, it can become increasingly difficult to remove.
Step 3- Spray Cooking Oil
Once you are sure that your grill is free of all buildup and debris, and that your grill is completely cooled off, you will want to spray it down with a light layer of cooking oil. Spraying it down with cooking oil will prevent your barbeque grill from rusting. It is especially important to make sure your barbeque grill is completely cold, as spraying cooking oil on a hot surface may cause the oil to heat up and ignite, which could be potentially dangerous to you and your barbeque grill.
Step 4- Use Baking Soda and Aluminum Foil on Your Grill
Baking soda is a very nice cleaning and polishing agent. Once you have removed any extra debris and buildup, lightly scrubbing your barbeque grill with baking soda will give it that extra shine, similar to the day that you brought it home from the store. This can also be used on handles and knobs to remove any extra buildup that cannot be taken off with a wire brush.
Aluminum foil can also be used to keep your grill looking nice. Gently rub the aluminum foil on your grill, and you will notice that it removes grim and buildup.
Step 5- Clean Your Racks
The racks in your grill are especially important as this is where the food touches when it is cooking. You will have to use the wire brush to remove as much buildup as possible. Once you remove as much as possible, start washing the racks with dish soap. If the racks are really dirty, you may also want to use the steel wool pads. Be sure to completely rinse off all soap and residue before cooking on these racks again.
Step 6- Preventing Problems
The majority of problems that arise from barbeque grills come from lack of cleaning and maintenance. That means if you notice something does not seem quite right with your barbeque grill, chances are it can be fixed with just a simple cleaning. Even if you clean it, and still find that it is having problems, at least you saved yourself the potential embarrassment of taking it to a professional only to find out all it needed was to be cleaned.
Finally, one method of preventing problems with your barbeque grill is protecting it from the outdoors. Covers
are available for grills in all shapes and sizes, so chances are, you will find one that fits your grill. If you have a cover for your barbeque grill, then all you will ever need to do is do the regular maintenance listed above.Monday, July 11, 2011
Square Foot Garden Update: Tomatoes and Beans Galore!
So, that last update with the tomato plants was apparently only half the story. Those bloody things have reached the lilac branches above the box, and are still growing!
I'm told the trick is to keep new shoots trimmed back so the plant puts more effort into growing the fruit. At the moment though, it looks as though we're not going to have any trouble there at all:
In fact, the only thing I'm worried about right now is the pepper plant, which isn't growing very quickly (though it is growing). When it went in, it was about 3/4 the size of the tomato plants. But because of their rapid growth they've shaded it almost completely. My hope is that this will give it an incentive to fight for some sunlight:
Still, I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out in this garden project. The spinach is done...it's too hot now. I think next year I may plant the tomatoes separately; although realistically, everything else is doing just fine. Even the morning glories have figured out what they're supposed to be doing. My thinking is that the tomatoes will do well along the side of the garage, though I'm not fond of the soil there. The sunflowers seem to like it. And if I'm still in this space next season, I may build up another box for herbs (the parsley is the only thing that hasn't survived).
All-in-all, not a bad crop for a first-time veggie gardener:
I'm told the trick is to keep new shoots trimmed back so the plant puts more effort into growing the fruit. At the moment though, it looks as though we're not going to have any trouble there at all:
In the first two pics, you can see there are lots of flowers already on the plants. In the third pic, though, are the first fruits coming in. They're pretty densely clustered, so I'm not sure whether these are the beefeater or cherry tomatoes, but for sure this is going to be a good crop if the weather holds up.
Again, I think that answers the question of whether or not there's enough sun in that part of the yard. Remember, this is without any added fertilizer...just a few bags of manure mixed in with the gardening compost. That manure has led to some mushroom growth around the edges (mostly where it stays a little cooler than the middle), but nothing that can't be handled with a little plucking.
We also enjoyed the first green and yellow beans of the season, which was also a surprise. I actually went back to get some lettuce, but it was my daughter who pointed out that there were beans already on the bushes. The bushes are quite short actually...maybe a foot high or so. But the beans are coming in thick!
Still, I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out in this garden project. The spinach is done...it's too hot now. I think next year I may plant the tomatoes separately; although realistically, everything else is doing just fine. Even the morning glories have figured out what they're supposed to be doing. My thinking is that the tomatoes will do well along the side of the garage, though I'm not fond of the soil there. The sunflowers seem to like it. And if I'm still in this space next season, I may build up another box for herbs (the parsley is the only thing that hasn't survived).
All-in-all, not a bad crop for a first-time veggie gardener:
Friday, July 8, 2011
Men We Admire: Hubert O'Hearn
When I met Hubert O'Hearn, I was just a pup coming up in the arts sector in Thunder Bay. Hubert had the role of antagonist in a cheesy melodrama production I had the dubious honour of directing music for. One thing about a man who knows his craft; whether as an actor or as a writer; is he knows when the upstart who "outranks" him in production needs a subtle nudge in the right direction, and when to stand back and let the upstart's training speak for itself. When a master ends up working for a student, the master's strength shows in his ability to let the student work confidently.
Of course, being a writer, Hubert's interview took on a prose of its own. So I left it. The answers are all here.
Name: Hubert O’Hearn
Age: 53
Occupation: Writer
Relationship status: Engaged/Common-Law Spouse to Kimberly McInnis
For how long?: 6 years
Kids: Two Step-children: Amanda age 22 and Bradley age 15
Pets: Stella Belle - 2 year old border collie (some Labrador was involved with a grandparent, but that’s a family scandal we don’t discuss much in public)
Car(s): Are fine things. I prefer cycling for exercise, or buses as it is much easier to read while riding rather than driving. Grateful pedestrians endorse this decision.
Gadgets: I’m getting less gadget-y ever since I awoke to people’s bizarre obsession with smartphones. My cell phone died last week and I’m seriously thinking of NOT replacing it. Two reasons: One, I’m not a big fan of brain tumors and the warnings about cell phones in 2011 remind me of cigarette warnings from 1948. Everybody laughs them off now.... Second reason: I hate phone conversations at the best of times, with the exception of friends who live in distant places. And with them even, it makes more sense to arrange a mutually convenient time.
Stats: 6’2” 173 lbs., eyes blue, hair hanging (and I do mean hanging, we’re getting to WWE length) in there nicely
Favourite instruments: I sing with words, baby.
Sports: The aforementioned bicycling. When I finally get time to do nothing, I’ll define nothing as golf and fishing.
Visit Hubert O'Hearn's Blog
Of course, being a writer, Hubert's interview took on a prose of its own. So I left it. The answers are all here.
Name: Hubert O’Hearn
Age: 53
Occupation: Writer
Relationship status: Engaged/Common-Law Spouse to Kimberly McInnis
For how long?: 6 years
Kids: Two Step-children: Amanda age 22 and Bradley age 15
Pets: Stella Belle - 2 year old border collie (some Labrador was involved with a grandparent, but that’s a family scandal we don’t discuss much in public)
Car(s): Are fine things. I prefer cycling for exercise, or buses as it is much easier to read while riding rather than driving. Grateful pedestrians endorse this decision.
Gadgets: I’m getting less gadget-y ever since I awoke to people’s bizarre obsession with smartphones. My cell phone died last week and I’m seriously thinking of NOT replacing it. Two reasons: One, I’m not a big fan of brain tumors and the warnings about cell phones in 2011 remind me of cigarette warnings from 1948. Everybody laughs them off now.... Second reason: I hate phone conversations at the best of times, with the exception of friends who live in distant places. And with them even, it makes more sense to arrange a mutually convenient time.
Stats: 6’2” 173 lbs., eyes blue, hair hanging (and I do mean hanging, we’re getting to WWE length) in there nicely
Favourite instruments: I sing with words, baby.
Sports: The aforementioned bicycling. When I finally get time to do nothing, I’ll define nothing as golf and fishing.
Writing was a hobby for me, a nice little earner, a side order of chips to whatever the catch of the day happened to be. I’d first realized I was potentially reasonably good at it all the way back in elementary school. We had these ‘Spellers’ - skinny hard-covered textbooks where each week there was a list of 20 words running down the left-side column of the left-hand page. I’m pretty sure we had these from Grade Two through Grade Seven, possibly Grade Eight. There was always the weekly assignment of writing a short essay using as many of these ‘new words’ as possible within it.
They weren’t new words to me. Our family home had a small library in it, plus bookshelves holding up the walls in the living room and all the bedrooms. I liked to dip in and no one, least of all my mother, ever told me a book was ‘too old’ for me. (That, by the way, was a lesson I brought with me when I directed Children’s Theatre for 4 years in the 1990s and a one year comeback in 2006 - the people who most under-sell children’s abilities to learn great things in huge gulps are their parents.) Anyway, I’d been through mist of Dickens, Hemingway and - in a mighty feat one summer - The Brothers Karamazov by the age of 11. So to find the words ‘suspense’ or ‘indigo’ halfway down the Speller list was no purple-shaded mystery at all.
The challenge was to make these essays interesting. So I turned them ino little one-person plays: mimicking in dialogue Jimmy Cagney, Dean Martin, Humphrey Bogart (I still do an absolute killer Bogart) and whomever else was starring on The Tonight Show that week. The other kids in the class would clamour for me to read these essays and the teachers at St. Mary’s School (since turned into a classroom for hair designers) learned to hold me back for last, or near to last as they must have worried that my ego would burst out of proper Catholic confinement like a baby peacock kicking out of its shell.
So I was good and I knew it. High school was the triumph of style over research. I freely admit this; as the statute of limitations has to have run out by now and regardless I ain’t giving back my Grade 13 diploma. I recall a Grade 12 English class where we were to analyze a Canadian poet - except for Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen at that time in the mid-70s this was the literary equivalent of a Soviet hard labour camp - and I wrote, and got away with, a very nice essay examining the literary merits of Muhammad Ali, who I falsely claimed had been born on a train outside of Oshawa which gave the great heavyweight dual citizenship.
Did I say high school was the triumph of style? Sorry, I meant bullshit.
Writing though remained a hobby for 25 years. I didn’t want to ‘be a writer’. Or I did and I didn’t. My father had been a newspaper columnist for 30 years and Dad was a terminal Irish alcoholic. I did NOT want to look in the mirror one day and see his face smiling back. Granted, he was brilliant, but I was fearful of his weaving path.
I stumbled into ‘proper writing’ when I was close to 40. I’d been doing theatre in Thunder Bay - first with Cambrian Players and then with my own Actors Repertory Theatre (ART) when Cambrian and I had a mutual hissy fit. The Chronicle-Journal needed an arts reviewer and I waved my hand and got the freelance gig.
Now at heart, I’ve always said that I am a sportswriter. Sports lays open the whole gamut of passion, adventure, drama, humour and fantasy. When i was assigned to write the weekly golf column around 2000, I had an absolute hoot with it. From there, the C-J asked me to write a weekly TV column and the rest is history - from that end of it.
But, as to the present, two things changed my world. First, on February 7, 2010 my darling fiancee Kimberly fell to the kitchen floor before my eyes with a burst brain aneurysm. As of this writing, her physical health is pretty good - however she has no short-term memory. None. You could tell her God’s middle name in one second and she will absolutely know it, until a butterfly flaps its wings and then the memory is gone.
I’d started reviewing books for the C-J at the prompting of Elle Andra-Warner just a month or two previously. Through endless weeks, first in Toronto then in Thunder Bay, I quite literally had no other recreation than reading books on teh streetcar or bus, then writing up the reviews on a $300 used laptop I’d picked up on Queen Street East. That started my habit of reading three books a week and writing up the two best. (Except in the rarest of circumstances - when a fraud is being foisted on the public - I won’t do a negative review. Why waste people’s time?)
But then, in February of this year, a true angel appeared in my life. Make no mistake, I adore Kimberly and she is the love of my life and the joy of my heart. But my recent run of success - I am not going to call it luck; I’ve worked way too hard for this - I owe it all to Lydia Cornell.
Lydia starred on Too Close for Comfort in the 80s. While Twittering one day I ran across a tweet of her that had been retweeted and I thought she’d be an interesting interview subject. Well, several hundred emails later, she has become my closest friend and confidant, my inspiration, the person who pulled me out of a depression that I didn’t even know I was in until I came out the other side and looked back.
Lydia taught - or reminded me - to believe in myself, to act with love, and to always give. The story is way too long to encapsulate here - I could do a book on Lydia and if she doesn’t get hers out on the market soon, I may have to. But the long and the short is that I learnt to let go of fear.
So where am I now? Just since STARTING TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS, my marketplace has expanded from Hooterville (pardon me, I mean Dogpatch, er, Thunder Bay - I hate Thunder Bay with a passion, in case you couldn’t tell. That too may be a book, but Sibclair lewis already wrote Main Street, so the material is covered there) to San Francisco, Sacramento, Denver, Winnipeg, an on-line literary review and another large US market about to be announced.
I am planning the Sheer Boredom Tour of Western Canada and the Western US for winter 2012, plus I have received in the last week an invitation to guest lecture at the University of Wolverhampton a year from this fall. From nowhere to everywhere in the space of a month.
But...it can’t all be for me. First it is for Kimberly - when/if...let’s say when...she recovers she has quite a life ahead of her. But even more important, thanks to Lydia and her personal example of giving to others first, I want whatever influence I have to be for good. My plan is for the Tour to be in support of libraries. When interviewers start to ask me what I think of things other than hot new novels, I want to urge a message of peace and dialogue. I want to ‘get people over’ who are great writers not yet noticed.
And I intend to have one Hell of a good time doing it.
Visit Hubert O'Hearn's Blog
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Popular Backyard Activities for Toddlers
It has been said that the early years of a child’s life is important to developing lifelong skills. If you are the parent of a toddler, this means that you will want to instill good habits in them early on. One of those good habits may involve love for the outdoors. While playing outdoors is fun, it is also great way to stay healthy and fit. That is why you may want to start encouraging your child to play outdoors. To increase their appreciation for the outdoors, you may want to familiarize yourself with some popular backyard activities, especially those that are designed with toddlers in mind.
When it comes to backyard activities for toddlers you will find that you have an unlimited number of options. The wide range of options is mostly due to their age. Unlike adults or older children toddlers are pretty easy to please. This means that whatever backyard activity you organize for your toddler, it will likely be something that they enjoy. However, it is important to remember that toddlers are just like everyone else: after a while they may get bored with the same activities. To prevent this from happening, you will want to think about a wider range of different backyard activities.
One backyard activity that most toddlers enjoy is playing on a swing set
. Swing sets come in all different sizes and styles. Most swing sets not only have a swing, but slides, monkey bars, and more. If you do not own a swing set, you may seriously want to think about purchasing one. Depending on your budget, you can purchase an expensive, elaborate swing set, or a plain one for low price. What is nice about most swing sets is that they are able to accommodate children of all ages. This means that as your toddler grows, they should still be able to enjoy their swing set.
Swimming is another popular backyard activity that many toddlers enjoy. What is nice about swimming is that you do not have to have a full size pool. In fact, kiddie pools are a safe way for toddlers to swim. Kiddie pools
are ideal for toddlers because they usually have less than two feet of water in them. As with in-ground and above-ground pools, there are also pool accessories that are available for kiddie pools. These accessories include swim rings, beach balls, and small floating toys.
Another popular backyard activity is playing in the sand. Sandboxes
are not only fun, but they may help your child develop other skills such as cause and effect. If you do not have a sandbox, you can easily purchase one (or build one, like THIS great plan...one I plan on implementing next spring). Like swing sets, sandboxes come in a wide variety of different sizes and styles. If you are looking for a small sandbox, you should be able to find one at your local department store. Many plastic sandboxes sell for around thirty dollars. Sandbox toys can also be purchased from most retail stores, often for a low price. And don't forget to check out the dollar store for plastic toy sets under $5.00.
Swimming, swinging, and playing in the sand are all fun backyard activities that you and your toddler can enjoy together. While your toddler may have fun playing with you, you may also want to give them the opportunity to play with other children. By contacting the parents of a child the same age as yours you could give your toddler a buddy to play with. In addition to being fun, play dates are also a great way to further develop your child’s social skills.
If you are looking for additional backyard activities or supplies, you may be able to find what you need online or at one of your local retail stores. For an affordable price, you should be able to find bubbles, water balloons, kites, balls, and t-ball equipment. These items may help to create a fun, but memorable backyard experience for your toddler.
When it comes to backyard activities for toddlers you will find that you have an unlimited number of options. The wide range of options is mostly due to their age. Unlike adults or older children toddlers are pretty easy to please. This means that whatever backyard activity you organize for your toddler, it will likely be something that they enjoy. However, it is important to remember that toddlers are just like everyone else: after a while they may get bored with the same activities. To prevent this from happening, you will want to think about a wider range of different backyard activities.
One backyard activity that most toddlers enjoy is playing on a swing set
. Swing sets come in all different sizes and styles. Most swing sets not only have a swing, but slides, monkey bars, and more. If you do not own a swing set, you may seriously want to think about purchasing one. Depending on your budget, you can purchase an expensive, elaborate swing set, or a plain one for low price. What is nice about most swing sets is that they are able to accommodate children of all ages. This means that as your toddler grows, they should still be able to enjoy their swing set.Swimming is another popular backyard activity that many toddlers enjoy. What is nice about swimming is that you do not have to have a full size pool. In fact, kiddie pools are a safe way for toddlers to swim. Kiddie pools
are ideal for toddlers because they usually have less than two feet of water in them. As with in-ground and above-ground pools, there are also pool accessories that are available for kiddie pools. These accessories include swim rings, beach balls, and small floating toys.Another popular backyard activity is playing in the sand. Sandboxes
are not only fun, but they may help your child develop other skills such as cause and effect. If you do not have a sandbox, you can easily purchase one (or build one, like THIS great plan...one I plan on implementing next spring). Like swing sets, sandboxes come in a wide variety of different sizes and styles. If you are looking for a small sandbox, you should be able to find one at your local department store. Many plastic sandboxes sell for around thirty dollars. Sandbox toys can also be purchased from most retail stores, often for a low price. And don't forget to check out the dollar store for plastic toy sets under $5.00.Swimming, swinging, and playing in the sand are all fun backyard activities that you and your toddler can enjoy together. While your toddler may have fun playing with you, you may also want to give them the opportunity to play with other children. By contacting the parents of a child the same age as yours you could give your toddler a buddy to play with. In addition to being fun, play dates are also a great way to further develop your child’s social skills.
If you are looking for additional backyard activities or supplies, you may be able to find what you need online or at one of your local retail stores. For an affordable price, you should be able to find bubbles, water balloons, kites, balls, and t-ball equipment. These items may help to create a fun, but memorable backyard experience for your toddler.
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