Tag: boxes

The Price of Tea

On By Michel McDonaldIn Products I LikeLeave a comment

In my blog I talk about things that I find interesting or disturbing. My blog is more like a bad episode of Seinfeld. So… now I’m going to talk to you about the price of tea lol.

I went to the grocery store to buy some tea bags. I grew up on it and I like to make it as an alternative to soda. In my opinion it’s cheaper than anything else out there, all you need is a coffee maker, a tea jar and some sugar or sweetener. My mom used to brew it in the sun but I find it much faster to brew a pot of water in the coffee maker with the tea bags clamped on the coffee pot lid. I had an aunt who used to boil the water on the stove in a large saucepan then steep the teabags in the water then pour it into the jar. I like my way better.

I was a little confused about how much they charge for their teabags though because it didn’t make any sense. I was looking at the 100 count box which was $3.99. Ok that is a bit high but it’s not that bad I guess. But, I don’t need a big box, I just need enough to get by until Next week when I get some money. I looked at the box with 50 bags and it’s $3.49. What? It’s only .50¢ less? Well that’s not right. It’s half the bags, it should be half price right? $2! Then I looked over at the one that only had 25 tea bags and that one was $5.49 WHAT?!? How can it be possible? It has 1 quarter of the bigger box. How can it possibly be more? The box with 25 tea bags should cost $1 not $5.49.

Then I look and see all these boxes that only have like 10 tea bags and they cost more than the box of 100 bags. What is wrong with this picture? Why is tea so expensive when it’s in a smaller package? Why is this big box of 100 tea bags so cheap compared to the other ones? I don’t understand. And the box of 50 and 25 was the same exact brand and same exact flavor as the box of 100 bags.

Lipton, Lipton, Lipton, can we have a chat please? Is there something we can do to fix this? It just doesn’t make any sense what you are doing here. I just don’t see your logic in charging so much money for smaller packaging. It should be less but you charge more. Why? Is it because you are going broke? Is it because the packaging cost more than the tea itself? Maybe we can think of a cheaper way of packaging the tea bags then. I just can’t understand why you would charge so little for 100 bags but then jack up the price for the smaller boxes.

I’ve been a Lipton fan since I was a kid and I remember in my 20’s buying the smaller boxes of 25 bags and they were only $1.50 per box. I’m sure there was a mistake in pricing at the grocery store but it looked like it had the correct label so I don’t know. I just think that it’s a big waste of tea bags and packaging if nobody is going to buy the smaller boxes when they can get the bigger box so cheap. You know what I mean?

Ok, my tea bag rant is over lol. I’m stepping off my soap box now. Carry on.

Yes… that just happened.

End of Plateau?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, FoodLeave a comment

I’m finally losing weight again. I wonder if this is the end of my plateau or not. In order to give you a glimpse of why I plateaued I have to tell you this.

A few weeks ago I was doing great. I was losing 3-5lbs a week and I was happy. Every morning I would wake up and would be giddy after weighing myself. Ok giddy is a strong term, I was happy.

Unfortunately, both Darrin and I were sick of my menu. It was the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. 4oz of chicken (boneless/skinless) 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 cup of vegetables. After a few months anyone would get sick of that twice a day.

I said ok we can cool it with that for lunch. I started buying bread again which was my big no-no but the bread I was buying was only 50 calories and it was 100% whole wheat. I was also buying very low-calorie lunch meat but I don’t think I can blame that as the cause.

I was also starting to eat more junk food again. Darrin was tired of eating healthy all freaking day and so he started sneaking cookies into the house, Chips Ahoy to be exact. It has his name in the brand, what’d you expect?

So I caught wind of the cookies because he left the boxes all over the coffee table and I was bound to see them. Then he started going to Taco Bell and buying other things and I was eating them too because I am so sick of this diet.

Let me clarify that, I’m sick of this “new lifestyle change” lol. I’m not allowed to call it a diet because diets don’t work but a lifestyle change will if you stick with it.

In the last week or so we haven’t been eating so much bad stuff because we’re both broke so we have to save what money we have left on actual food instead of junk and now that I’m not eating as much crap anymore I’ve started losing weight again.

I think I was stuck at 222-224 but yesterday I weighed in at 219 and this morning it was 218 so I’m very happy to see those numbers dropping.  Also a pair of shorts that I haven’t been able to wear in years finally fit me but now they are getting so loose, too loose in fact.  I’m going to have to stop wearing them again which sucks because they are good shorts.

I’m hoping that those cravings will start to go away now that I’ve finally tasted the bad foods again. Unfortunately when you eat bad foods they taste too good to stop eating but we will see how it works out for me. I really want to get into the 2 teens and out of the 2 twenties you know?

Maybe when I’m 215 I will start to feel like I’m getting somewhere.  In reality I should be 215 by now if it hadn’t been for that plateau.  I should be 200 by October 12th so if I’m going to be there by then I have a lot of work to do and I need to start eating better again.

And by the way, the Nook was supposed to be my reward for going down to 200lbs and I’mplanning on buying it sooner for some reason so my reward system isn’t working for me at all.  I think if it were a sponsor who were rewarding me I would take it more seriously and maybe that’s why I’m plateauing because I’m offering myself rewards.  A reward for losing weightshouldn’t be a thing but more a feeling.  Nah screw that, I want devices.

PSP eBook Creator

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBook, PSPLeave a comment

I’ve finally figured out how to turn my PSP into an eBook reader. I’ve googled the term “PSP e-book reader” before with bad results. You know, those homebrew programs. Yeah, that’s a bad result. I refuse to brick up my PSP just so I can see if I can read an ebook on it.

In my google search I did find a message board where they talked about a PSP e-book reader so I checked out a couple of ideas, this is one of them.

“ PSP eBook Creator ” which is actually not a bad program. What you do is click File then open a “.txt” file, you can change it from portrait to landscape, change the background color or give it an image, change the text color, change the font, font size and make it bold or regular then create an output folder then build your e-book files. Once all the images are made all you need to do is upload the folder to your PSP Picture folder, turn it on and start reading.

What it does though is it creates an image for every page of the e-book . If this is a long e-book, this process will take a long time and the size of the entire book might be huge especially if you are running low on space. Not to mention that you won’t have a book cover image to look at since all the files were taken from a text file.

Since it only uses text files you will have to figure out a way to convert your e-book to text format with Calibre.

Here is a sample of what one of the pages will look like in text format as a .jpg file.

It’s not a bad image to look at although you will see some boxes here and there (as seen before Cover Photo Credit…). I read this book from beginning to end last night on my PSP just to see if it would hurt my eyes at all and even though it’s not that long of a book my eyes were ok for a while. But if it were a 400 page novel I’m sure that reading on a PSP would start to hurt your eyes after an hour unlike e-Ink.

If I were to make some changes to make it easier on the eyes I would probably put in a dark background image, make the text white, bold and bigger. For this test I made the font Comic Sans regular size 12. Default is regular (non bold), size 10 but I don’t know what the default font is.

You don’t have to worry about a bookmark since all you have to do is leave the image part of the PSP. Once you go back into it you will be right back on the last page (or image) you were on. That is unless you turned the PSP all the way off, then you would have to find where you were again.

If I were to give this a rating I would give it a 3 out of 5.

My Pez Collection

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog1 Comment

It was time to dust off all of my pez dispensers.  They collect a lot of dust sitting on the shelf that I made for them and I don’t clean them very often because it’s such a job but they desperately needed to be cleaned lol.  While I was cleaning the dust off I decided to take pictures of them in all of their collections.

There are a couple collections that I wasn’t quite sure about like the first one with all the bugs.  I’m not sure what those are from.  I think 2 of them are from Bee movie but then some are from Bugs, I don’t know.  They are all bugs so I just added them together lol.  Then there are the Madagascar ones, I accidentally added a panda to it not knowing where it belongs but apparently that collection only has 3, not 4.  But I don’t care lol.

The very last picture is all of them on the shelf (except for the boxes and the petz, those are on another shelf).  I made that shelf by the way out of very very thin wood that I found at Home Depot when we were still living in Hollywood.  It started out as a smaller shelf but then I kept adding to it so I had to buy more wood and made another shelf.  I’m getting to the point where I think I’m gonna need to plan a bigger shelf lol.

I wanted to compile all of these pictures into a video and put on YouTube but I looked at other peoples videos and they all put mine to shame so I thought that they just deserved a blog post at least lol.











bat

Edit 8/28/09: I went to Walgreens today and they already have the Halloween stuff in their seasonal aisle so I went to look at the Pez dispensers and they have the new glow in the dark Bat Pez.  I added the picture above next to the pez dispenser collection rack.  Click on it to see full size.

Box for Vedra

On By Michel McDonaldIn Birthdays, craftsLeave a comment

Today was (Darrin’s cousin) Vedra’s birthday and so we went over to her house to give her the box.  I put 2 bags of Hershey’s Kisses, 2 different flavors inside the box.  I know 1 flavor was peanut butter but the other was truffle creme with dark chocolate or something like that, I forgot what the name was lol.  Anyway, she loved it.

I went to Walgreen’s and bought one of their ready-made gift bags with the ribbon on the front and the different color tissue paper inside to match the bag color.  Then I came home and took the tissue out and put the box inside of it then tucked it back into the bag.  Then of course I put the card in there too.

When she pulled the tissue paper out of the bag with the box in the paper then she peeled away the tissue the expression on her face was priceless.  She goes “OH NO!!!” hehe.  Oh No meaning I can’t believe you got me this, I love it.  I know Oh No usually doesn’t sound good but in this case I could interpret it hehe.

She looked at every inch of it and was just in love with the design and the paint job and her name being on the top.  She was really happy so that is all that counts.

Here is my original post with the video of the box on YouTube:

Wood Burned Box

Well, now that I know what kind of reaction she gave me I think I’m going to go back to Michael’s for more boxes from here on out until December buying up as many boxes as I can afford to make boxes for everybody for Christmas 2009 lol.  Well, not just boxes lol.

Wood Burning Shading

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

A friend of mine bought me a Creative Versa-Tool wood burner but I never bought a book for it because the Michael’s in town has a very small wood burning section.  So I was looking around and asked someone about it.  I asked if I am wasting my time with this cool tool or should I save up for the expensive big boy tool and this person told me that I can just get a lamp dimmer and use that.  Well, I just so happen to have one of those.  I tried it and it works great.

The only issue that I have with this light dimmer is that it doesn’t really have a dial, it has buttons instead.  Like “Bright” and “Dim” so I had to plug in a lamp into it and press the dim button while counting lol.  It does 0 dim to 15 bright so when I use the wood burner with it I have to just count lol.  I think it would be a good idea to buy a piece of wood and trace like a checkerboard and number it 1-15 and just do shading in each of those boxes so I will get a better idea of what each shade looks like so in the future I will know the exact shade I need lol.  Good idea eh?

If someone has a Creative Versa-Tool wood burner, I would love to hear your comments if you have some good suggestions on how to do things.

Preoccupied

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I haven’t been blogging the last few days but I’m still here.  It’s unusual for me not to blog since I typically blog 1-5 times daily lol.  But I’ve been preoccupied with other things.

We just had new tenants move in on May 1st and so I helped them carry boxes in the house from the U-Haul truck and I’ve been watching TV.  Catching up on Stargate SG-1 on Sci Fi as usual.

I have noticed some weight loss thanks to my new way of thinking about eating and stuff.  Before I was just riding hoping that would be enough to lose the weight considering I lost nearly 20lbs last year with exercise alone.  It doesn’t seem to be enough now so I’ve been measuring my food and drinking slim fast for lunch too.

I’m afraid of talking about my progress because it seems to never fail, I talk about how much I’ve lost then the weight loss stops completely then I plateau for a couple of months before I give up.

About maybe 5 years ago I was eating nothing but salads and snacking on sliced cucumbers and baby carrots and I remember I was 212lbs and then one day after about 2 or 3 months of this diet I decided to weigh myself and I was 172lbs.  Well from that day forward the weight stayed the same, it just stopped then I got frustrated because I plateaued then gave up and the weight came back almost as fast as it left. That’s because I started bragging about how I lost the weight.

All I’m going to say is that I’m working on it.  I’ve decided that by not talking about it I’m not bragging about it and if/when people come up to me and tell me OMG you’ve lost so much weight I’m just going to say thanks and move on from there.

As long as I’m eating right and not over eating and exercising I think I’m going to do good and lose the weight I need/want to lose then I can get back on with my life.  But not talking about it lol.

Kindle Comic Books?

On By Michel McDonaldIn KindleLeave a comment

I wonder if someone can respond to this.  I’m very curious about Comic Books being available on the Kindle 2.  I know that some comic books are full size like magazines so you have a larger page and if it’s shrunk down for the kindle will it be harder to read.  Or perhaps if it is available for the Kindle, will you only get 1 box at a time,  What about the bigger boxes that take up the whole page of the comic book?  That will definitely be harder to read.  Maybe it would have a zoom?  Or does the Kindle 2 have zoom?

I think it would be a cool idea to have comic books available on your Kindle.  If someone googles Comic Book with the word Kindle please respond to this if you find this post and let me know what you think.  Is this going to be available?  Would you like it to become available or is it just better to have them in paper form for their value in the future?

Just so that I don’t look like a complete moron, I went to Amazon and searched for comic books and found this Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback).  I see that it’s not available for Kindle so I clicked the “I’d like to read this on Kindle” link.  Yeah, I know, I don’t have a kindle yet but I’ve been clicking that for a lot of books just so they do become available.  At some point I’d like to get one, some day.  But that Serenity book says paperback but it is a comic book.

I looked up Spiderman comic books and they all say paperback and they all have the “I’d like to read this on Kindle” link.

Decorated

On By Michel McDonaldIn HolidaysLeave a comment

The house is finished being decorated.  The tree up, all ornaments on it, the wreath on the door with the plastic canvas candy cane I made for it.  It’s all done finally.  I’ve been putting ornaments on the tree here and there because standing for a length of time hurts my back so I can’t be decorating constantly until it’s all done.

We’re not lights on the outside people so that’s not a problem.  I wish we were but I’m just afraid that in this neighborhood someone will come along with a knife and cut the wires if they are low enough to be able to cut.  I know, paranoia right?  Wrong!  One morning I came outside and saw that our hose which was rolled up in the planter was cut and it was a significant amount of hose too.  I went to walk to the store and saw the piece that was cut laying on our grass.  I don’t give anybody in this hood the benefit of the doubt.  They don’t deserve it.

However, we do have an indoor patio which is actually kinda sorta outdoors.  It’s the space between the house and the garage, it has a wall in the front of the building with a door and the back with a giant window and a door so it’s pretty much closed off.  Darrin bought 2 boxes of lights that he wanted to hang out there, not for holiday decoration but just for regular decoration for mood.  Tonight when I was at the store I picked up these holiday light hanger things that have nails and you hammer the nails into the wood then you just press the wires into the plastic and it holds the lights.  This way if you decide to take the lights off you can then when you want to put them back up you don’t have to do anything, just push the wires back in.  It’s really cool.

Bike Repairs

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

I rode my bike to the store the other day and I noticed that my back tire has been going flat and it wont stay inflated and so today I decided to go through my boxes in the closet to find the inner tubes that I got when I got the bike originally. When I bought the bike I bought those tire tubes that have the green goo inside of them which is supposed to fix your puncture if you run over a tack or a nail but I didn’t know that it doesn’t protect the sides, just the outer part. So, I took the back tire off and pumped the tube up by itself and held it under water which is what you do to find the leak. Found it, fixed it. All new again hehe.

Then I realized that the seat was really too high up so I lowered it and boy does that make a hell of a difference. So, I feel accomplished today hehe. I rode it over to our neighbors and back and I noticed it wasn’t stopping fast enough so I got off the bike and looked and my front and back brakes are shot lol. Which means I better not even think about getting on it until I go to Snyder’s Cyclery to buy some brakes and while I’m there I want to see their lights and a helmet. Not too many people wear helmets so I’d probably look dorky but I’d rather look dorky than dead.

When I was 16 my parents bought me a bike and they bought me this light set that had front and back lights that ran on a generator (the back wheel and my peddling was the generator) so I’d like to see if they have something similar to that, those are a bit more difficult to steal because it’s a lot of work to get it on so it must be a bitch to get off. I do recall how horrible the lighting was for the headlight. Every time you start to slow down the light started to fade away lol. I’d like to see if they’ve made improvements on that system.