We have Ventshade window vents on our vehicle (a four-door SUV), and one came loose and flew off while we were on the freeway. I contacted Lund International, who owns Ventshade about ordering just the one we needed.

Instead, they sent me a brand new set under warranty! That's outstanding customer service — thank you, Lund!

Everyone that tries this likes it, and it's easy to make. It's the result of a couple of years of experiments and tweaking. If you think I'm a Philistine for not using fresh ingredients, that's okay.

1 large block Velveeta
1 can Ro-Tel Milder*
1 can Ro-Tel Mexican Festival
1 or 2 Ro-Tel cans refilled with water (optional; less water=more stirring)
1 lid cumin
1 lid garlic powder, or 1 tbs minced garlic
1 lid salt (I actually use garlic salt. You can’t add too much garlic; I’ve tried.)
1 lid cilantro
1 tbsp beef bouillon

Optional – 1 pound ground mild sausage*, 2 lids dried minced onion

(Lid = the thing that keeps the seasoning in the jar if you turn it upside down)

If using sausage, brown in pan, adding dried minced onion after meat is brown. Keep stirring until dried minced onion absorbs sausagey goodness. Add more dried minced onion if necessary. Do not drain meat.

Add Ro-Tel, water, and seasonings. Boil for a while, stirring occasionally. To keep from getting bored, slice Velveeta into chunks.

Turn heat down, add Velveeta, stirring until chunks melt. If using sausage, globs of sausagey goodness may float to the surface; keep stirring until they’re mixed in.

We use this as dip for chips, soft tortillas and chimichangas. Without the sausage, it works well on burgers and hotdogs.

* This recipe is pretty mild, and doesn't hurt anyone. If you want it hotter, use Ro-Tel Original, Ro-Tel Extra Hot, hot sausage or just buy a bottle of habanero sauce or whatever floats torches your boat and add it to your personal bowl of queso.

I took a little time today and revamped the look of Acme Anvil Co. I'm now running the latest version of WordPress, and I upgraded several of the plug-ins that I use, and dropped a few that WordPress now does "out of the box."

It took a little longer than I anticipated, so some of you got to see the themes I considered, and even more got to see this one before I had it fully customized. Most of the problem came when I tried to enable widgets, a WordPress function which lets me put stuff where I want it in the columns; apparently there are incompatibilities between the latest WordPress code and the King Text widget; once I disabled King Text, everything worked fine.

There are a few more graphical things to touch up, but they're fairly minor. I did add the widget that shows how many spam comments I've gotten — it's at the bottom of the left column. Akismet is a pretty cool plugin, and as of right now, it has caught 8,522 spam comments!

My good friend William Boyd Chisum has an amazing talent, and an awesome testimony.

Check out his website WilliamBoydChisum.com.

Looking for voice-overs? Check Out Voice123.com

My wife signed us up for Columbia House's video program, which we soon canceled. That was several months ago.

A couple of days ago, we got another DVD from them. I checked my bank statement, and there are two charges on there this month from Columbia House — the second charge is for a video I haven't received yet. I called today, and they said that I was on their "Viewer's Choice" program; I explained if it was truly Viewer's Choice, I would have chosen not to receive anything from them, and asked them to immediately refund both charges. Their representative told me that they would refund the money when I returned the videos. When I suggested that since they charged me before sending the videos to me, they should refund the charges before they received the videos, especially since mail fraud laws say I have no responsibility to pay for anything sent to me without my request.  However, the representative said it is Columbia House's policy that no refunds will be issued until the video is returned to them.

I asked to talk to the representative's supervisor, and was placed on hold. The representative came back quickly and told me that the  supervisor couldn't or wouldn't help, and wouldn't talk to me!

So to recap, I asked to be removed from their program, and later they started charging me and sending me videos without my permission. Now I have to send them back, and hope that Columbia House both receives them and issues the credits. In my opinion, Columbia House is running a scam.

My wife was going to help me celebrate my upcoming 44th birthday with a brand new .44 Magnum (I had to sell all my guns shortly after we married, and I've only acquired a couple since), but since her new job has been postponed for several weeks, we decided to be frugal. 

I debated soliciting funds online for a couple of weeks, but I finally decided 1) I'm shameless enough and 2) I can offer something of value in return.

A couple of months ago, I first saw the Smith & Wesson Model 329, a .44 Magnum revolver made with Scandium, a lightweight alloy. It weighs just a little over half of the all-steel Model 29. Those sculpted wooden grips fit my hand perfectly, so it makes me wonder about the recoil. I'm not especially recoil-sensitive, but ya gotta figure you'll know when it goes off.

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Here's my offer: if y'all help me raise the funds to purchase it, I'll post a video of me shooting it one-handed. If that's not very dramatic, I'll 'splode whatever large vegetables I can get at the grocery store, and the obligatory water-filled gallon jug. 

You can donate by PayPal, and I'll save your email address so I can notify you when the video is posted. The total cost will be about $950, so as soon as I get $700, I'll buy it.

Thanks for helping!

Does Gracie look annoyed? Yes, she does.

Speedbump annoys her most of the time.

All I did was sound out the words — she'll be four in November!

Katie is determined to catch that little flying bug.

 

(click to enlarge)

We finally settled on a name — Isabella Serafina Speedbump.

 

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Isabella in the pocket of my wife's scrubs — where she rides while my wife makes her rounds at the nursing home.

Some evil woman, not content with simply delivering a box of kittens to the nearest Chinese restaurant, instead put them where innocent children could stumble upon them.

Five minutes of begging and five dollars less, we have a third cat. I think her name is Isabella. Or maybe Isabelle.

***Update –  BethAnn, Sarah and I each got to contribute, so she's Isabella Serafina Speedbump.

Well, we had been promising our older daughter, Sarah, that we would take her to stay with her Aunt Beth in South Carolina, and decided to visit my father-in-law and sister along the way.

I planned the route with Microsoft MapPoint 2004, and had anticipated a little under 2000 miles, and hopefully a little less than 100 gallons of gas. We wound up using 98.4 gallons of gas, according to the van's trip computer (2004 Chevy Venture). We also traveled 2185 miles, and averaged 53 MPH and 22.2 miles per gallon. I didn't keep track of gas prices, but they ranged from about $2.85 per gallon in many places to just under $3, in South Carolina.

On Saturday, we drove to my father-in-law's home in Germantown TN - 319 miles. Sunday morning, we took BethAnn to a minor care clinic for her swimmer's ear, and didn't get on the road until after noon. I intended to make it at least to Cookville or possibly past Knoxville for the night, but then we hit a traffic jam west of Nashville - 20 miles in two hours. We finally made it past Nashville to Lebanon, around 6pm. 229 miles, a lot less than I hoped for the day. Stayed at the Comfort Suites, very nice; full breakfast including sausage, biscuits and gravy, as well as cereal, bagels, etc.

I added 50 miles and a 30-minute stop by detouring to JR Cigars in Statesville, NC, but it was worth it. To Beth's house at Ft. Mill, SC was 423 miles, and we got there well before dark. Yes, I smoked a cigar on the back deck. Both nights, first the Hoyo then the JR Ultimate. We stayed an extra day - Lynn, Sarah and Beth went shopping while BethAnn and I read and watched Beauty and the Beast about five times and went for a nice walk.

Wednesday morning we said goodbye to Sarah and headed southwest. We stopped at Cleveland, GA for an hour or so, then spent the afternoon and night in Helen. About 250 miles according to MapPoint, but that doesn't include trying to find a store that carried Floam, which we had promised BethAnn. That was at least another 50 miles, and no one had any. We stayed at the Comfort Inn, which was pretty nice, althought it just had a continental breakfast. I guess in Europe they don't believe in meat at breakfast. Personally, I don't think it counts as a meal unless something died.

Thursday, we eschewed driving the back roads across northern Georgia and northern Alabama, and instead went to my sister Ann's home in Madison, AL by way of Atlanta and Birmingham, via interstate. MapPoint says it's 330 miles, about a hundred miles further than the back roads, but roughly the same amount of time. We found some Floam along the way. We stayed an extra day in Madison, too. The girls went shopping while I read and napped. Sometime during the afternoon, it rained, dropping the temperature to 90 or so - so I smoked a cigar on the back deck, although it was sweltering. This one was a Bolivar Fuerte that I'd brought from home.

Saturday was the longest day yet - over 500 miles, but BethAnn was in a good mood before lunch, and slept at least 3 hours after. Lynn slept at least an hour, too. Lynn kept telling me I could smoke a cigar in the car if I just cracked a window - she knows it's relaxing for me. I tried a Romeo y Julieta Reserve Maduro Petite (the size of a cigarette) (also brought from home) somewhere along the way, during and after a rest stop, but even though Lynn and the girls said it didn't bother them, I couldn't enjoy myself. So… no stogies on the road. We got home around dark, after ten hours on the road. Or eight days…

I'll do the math for you - we sat in the car a little more than 41 hours over the course of eight days. I had just returned from a week of training customers in Abilene, 350 miles west, hurrying to get ready Friday night for the trip on Saturday. I now understand the expression "I need a couple of days off to recover from my vacation!" So, we stayed home today - no Sunday School or church, just chilling. I keep hearing a cigar calling my name… poor lonesome things.

Some observations:

• Video players in cars are great ideas, but ours is hooked into the sound system. BethAnn (our 3-yr-old) had painful swimmer's ear for the first 5 days of the trip, and couldn't use the headphones, so I had to listen to hours of Care Bears, etc.
• Removable seats are great. We had plenty of room for snacks, trashcan, etc.
• Choice Hotels is a nice company. My Mensa membership gives me a 20% discount, and all I had to do was call and ask for a hotel in the area, and had a reservation within minutes.
• The Cabbage Patch Kids are still alive and well - we stopped at their "hospital" in Cleveland GA and watched one being "born." Handmade Cabbage Patch Kids are over $200. Fortunately, BethAnn just wanted a piece of candy…
• Helen Georgia is a neat little Bavarian-looking town, but only on the outside of the stores. Inside, there's not much to distinguish it from any other tourist area. Nice folks, though. Lots of family-type activities which we skipped.
• Traffic jams are hot. I sent this post from the road, in a construction area in Georgia. The outside temperature shows 129 degrees, but that's because we started moving. While idling along a few minutes before, it read 131 degrees!
• JR Cigars needs a professional merchandiser for their outlet malls, at least the one in Statesville. When you first walk in, it's not very impressive. It looked like all the nice stuff was around the walls. The walk-in humidor is awesome, though - biggest I've ever seen, (Stafford & Jones, in Richardson, TX has the whole store humidified, but it's a fourth the size) with an incredible selection. I picked up a half-dozen Hoyo Excalibur 1066s and a half-dozen JR Ultimate Cabinet Selections, a few humidification thingies for the trip, and a "cigar bobken," a device that either converts a cupholder to a cigar ashtray, or hangs itself on a door. It has a holder for a full-size cigar, and I have no idea what "bobken" means. 
• For long trips, I prefer Interstates to regular highways.
• Next long trip, I'll have one of the new GPS navigation devices. A friend has one, and it's priceless when you need to change your route while driving.
• My dad always liked to stop at MacDonalds - he said the food was just average, but you always know what you're going to get. I think that applies to Cracker Barrel also, except that the food is great. Costs about twice as much, of course.
• I figured mountain driving would really cut in the fuel economy when I saw the instantaneous readout drop to 15MPG on a long climb, but then I noticed that it would read 99MPG on long descents. A trip to Dallas will usually yield around 24MPG, so 22.8 is pretty good.

BethAnn is named after Ann - and Lynn's sister Beth.