Friday already?

I'm not burning up the streets, but at least I'm consistently walking every day. Today I went around most of the outer perimeter of the Park, and I'm so glad I live where I do. Those who are along Sunrise Blvd have a concrete wall and their access street between them and all the traffic. Almost all the other houses - there are 450+ in the entire Park - are back to back, whereas I have a very small backyard and a wooden fence plus a grassy area behind it that is between me and the walking trail, then an empty field between that and the industry that I can hear once in a while. Surprisingly I don't hear much of my neighbors on either side, but only the yapping dogs as they go by and the folks talking on their cell phones. Some of them use the speaker setting, I guess so everyone can hear that they are talking to someone who answers back. It's almost always men who do this, and only once in a while do I see a woman walking and talking at the same time. I can't even chew gum and walk at the same time!

Some of the houses in the Park are very nice, and I was thinking this morning that I wish I had a double wide, followed immediately by the question to myself, "WHY?" - I certainly don't need any more room than what I have. I think tomorrow I will take a count as I go along of the garden gnomes, and maybe the statues of angels. The tiny little spaces in front of our houses can hold a lot of gnomes it seems, as well as bird baths and all kinds of statuary. I really haven't done anything with the outdoors area, front or back, because my limited energy has been concentrated on the inside.

Although it is only 64F, and that's where the thermometer has hovered for the past couple of weeks, it's the first day I could just use the screen door. And I'm wearing a short sleeved shirt to boot! Pretty soon I'll be opening windows, and then I will have to buy a couple of fans. I'm determined not to use that swamp cooler!

Having 2 different email programs that I use every day I can say my preference is AOL, although the look and feel of the old gmail program make it easier to use, probably because I just got used to it. One thing I've always disliked about Gmail is that no matter what you write in an email, you will soon be finding ads on the subject all down the right side of the page. It makes me feel like someone is reading my emails. I know it isn't a human reading them, but they ARE being read (call it what you like), and I feel it is intrusive on my privacy no matter what the stated noble purpose is - to enable me to find ads of interest. Thanks Gmail, but I don't need your help.

It's dog walk time! To tell the truth I don't feel like any more walking today, but would rather sit in my comfy chair!

A little later I was reading Trouble in TX's blog where she mentions making brown sugar, and I thought I would post the directions for anyone who would like to try it. You can multiply the proportions and use more or less of the molasses depending on how dark or light you want it to be. The proportion is one cup of white granulated sugar to 2 tbsp dark molasses. My s-i-l puts it into a ziplock bag and squeezes it until the molasses is mixed uniformly into the sugar. If he's in a hurry and it is being used in something that is getting blended or mixed together anyway, he sometimes just puts the sugar & molasses in with the other ingredients. That's what I did with the cookie dough, although I think it affected the texture and next time I will make the brown sugar separately.

That reminds me of back in the day when margarine was called "oleo", was white, and came in a clear plastic bag. The bag had a "button" of coloring inside, and the trick was to break the little button so the yellow color flowed into the white stuff, then squeeze the bag until all the yellow was mixed. Voila! You had yellow margarine! That was probably back in the early 50's so you kids might not have known about that.