Bfth's Boring Blog

Summer has it's own special treats.  There's fresh corn on the cob and cool Italian ice.  For some people it's fresh from the ocean/bay crab or other shellfish.  (Not for this girl who is allergic.) My favorite treats come from my father's garden.  The photo above might not be so hot, but those little orange yellow tomatoes are bursting with a flavor that is out of this world.  I can not aptly describe them either. As I've said before, my father is truly a gifted gardener.  The produce from his garden, which currently includes cucumbers and a variety of tomatoes, tastes better than anything you could buy. (Even from a fresh farm stand.) But these little tomatoes...there is just something about them. He's given me plants so that I can grow them myself.  When I do, they come out good..delicious even, but there is something better, tastier about the ones that come from his garden at the NJ shore.  It could be the soil, but I think it's the s...

For most of my 50+ years, I have lived in the same town.  As a child I walked to the elementary school (one of 4 in the quadrants of town) and then to the middle school.  (Which by chance was in the "middle" of town.)   By the time I got to high school, for the most part I got rides to and from, although I did occasionally walk home...UP HILL!  I walked to friends’ homes.  I walked to the local convenience store.  I walked to the movies.  (Back in the days when there were multiple theaters in the area.  Now one is an office building and the other part of a strip mall with only one occupant.) Over the past 5 or so years I've become an avid early morning walker, at least when weather permits. I started out with a "route" but I've found for me that gets boring.  I like walking in the park and around the track at the middle school, but I can't do it every day.  I need to see different things.  Plus some days there are time constrai...

I LOVE summer.  Although it is NOT my favorite season (that would be early fall; when there is the feel of summer during the day, but the evenings are definitely fall).  I love so many things about.  I like the warm (and even the hot for the most part).  I love going to the beach on a sunny day (or even a rainy day).  I love being outside in the sun.  I love the flowers (particularly sunflowers).  I love the fruits and veggies.  I love the smell of summer.  I love the vacation of summer.  (I'd say I love the slower pace of summer, but recently summer hasn't seemed all that slow.)  I love reading summer books.  I just LOVE summer. But there is one thing I do not love.  There is one thing that I truly HATE.  And that is... Cicada Killer Wasps (aka Ground Digger Wasps). They are gross. They are disgusting. Don't believe me??? Gross, right??? The mere thought of them makes me want to vomit. ...

It's no secret that I am a sucker when it comes to make up.  I may be in my 50s (did I just admit that?), but I still have a teen (pre-teen) fascination with make-up.  Walking into a drug store or beauty supply store, you KNOW I'm not going to come out empty handed.  I am lured in and hooked. As I have aged (sigh), I've noticed that certain things that used to look good on me, just don't look so good any more.  (I've talked about it before:  http://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/make-up-make-over.html).  Whereas I used to always be a powder woman, I'm seeing that I'm going to need to go with creams.  At least when it comes to eye shadows. (Which leads me to the question:  what do I do with all the powder shadows that I have that are relatively new and hardly used?) One item that I have always had difficulty is foundation.  I am fair, but my skin is also reddish. (This is due partially as a result of sensitivity. Also I also hav...

Thank you all for your feedback and thoughts on slow cookers.  As you can probably tell, I took the plunge and bought one...the day AFTER Amazon Prime Day!  (Perhaps I could have timed it better?) Before making the purchase, I went to my local Bed Bath and Beyond to get "hands on" experience.  There's that $5 off/20% perpetual coupon that was burning a hole in my pocket.  Unfortunately, the selection at the store I visited was extremely limited (which made me wonder if people around here actually DO slow cook).  I was also trying to decide which would be the best economical way to make the purchase.  Did I want to walk in, actually hold the product and purchase using my coupon so that I could go home and use the next day?  Or did I want to go on line and use the remainder of Amazon gift card that I had and not know when I would get to use it?   After seeing the selection (or lack thereof) and pricing, I decided to go online and make...

We will be getting a new television for our living room Friday.  My husband has wanted a larger and better quality television for a while and as his birthday is around the corner, he has been gifted the funds to purchase what he wants.  With it being Amazon Prime Day this week, he was able to find (what he tells me is) a great deal on a Samsung.  (Don't ask me the specifics, I don't know.  Although apparently you can talk to the remote.  I find this somewhat mind boggling, as I remember MANUALLY changing channels on a black and white set and that doesn't seem all that long ago.  But perhaps it is.) There is nothing wrong with our current television.  (At least not in my eyes.)  It works just fine, although it is big and bulky.  It is also incredibly heavy.  Just how heavy I will find out as we take it from our house to the church where we will be donating it.  (You didn't think I would let a perfectly good television go to wast...

With the hot weather of summer, who feels like cooking?  To be honest, do I ever feel like cooking?  The answer is rarely and I just don't have the time to make a "real" meal after working all day.  (But your husband is at home and he could make dinner!   Ummm...well that hasn't happened on a regular basis.  He does cook, just not nightly.)  I've been trying to think of ways to make easy meals that are somewhat nutritious. In the past, there have been times where I've made a corned beef (stove top) before the day got too hot.  I'd start and my husband would finish up.  As good as that is, every time I make this I end up with water spillage and a messy pot. More recently (when it was not too hot) I thought I could get a couple of meals and save some money by making pulled pork in the over.  I started the pork shoulder early in the morning and my husband finished it.  (And cleaned it up.) While it was more cost effective than buying pr...

Its summer and prime time for roadwork.  Schools are out, which makes things a lot easier (I'm assuming) for road crews.  Traffic SHOULD be less too.  I know in my town there are a LOT of roads that need some attention.  My own little dead end got paved last summer.  It was a pain the you know what as the 14 or so families on the block had to find places to move their cars and leave them.  The later you got home from work, the further away you had to park.  Unfortunately for me (at least when it comes to the parking situation), I go to work early and get home late most days in the summer.  (But then I get home early on Friday.)   I don't recall if I bitched and moaned about last year's situation.  (Knowing me I probably did.)  But I/we did get a really nicely paved street as a result. A year later it's still pretty nice. Over the past several months or so, many of the town streets have been closed off and portions ...

Things were a little "messy" (to say the least) over the holiday weekend here in NJ.  There were some governmental "issues" (that I won't begin to get into or even claim to understand).  There was a budget to be voted on/approved and it didn't happen by July 1.  As a result, the governor had to (as in he had no choice), shut down the government.  It's happened before (and not just on this governor's watch), but the shutdown impacted State Parks and it was, for most people, a long holiday weekend.  Summer, holiday weekend, no parks...recipe for a mess.  Recipe for a REALLY BIG MESS! But what made it worse, and what captured everyone's attention, is that the governor and his family spent part of the weekend at the governor's summer residence, which just happens to be at Island Beach State Park .  So while the park was closed to everyone, the governor and his family were able to enjoy the sun and surf on Sunday. In this era of social media,...

Do you know these names? Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton, , Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery, Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush,  John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross, Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean, Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton. If not, you SHOULD.   These men along with John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,...

Ok, so the answer to laundry question (http://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/one-week-of-camp-how-much-laundry.html) was actually 5, but to be truthful, that's because I had some laundry from the week and it wasn't all my son's.  Plus I needed to wash his pillow (and had to throw mine in as a counterweight)  Although it WAS mostly my son's. My son did have a phenomenal time at camp.  (He always does.)  We had a relatively quiet week while he was away.  And at camp, he was doing all sorts of wild stuff that I never hear about.  (Getting information out of my son is next to impossible.  I need some better interrogation techniques.  Perhaps I need to get some FBI or other government training so that I can pry it out.)  I do know that he hiked a bit, found some turtles, did the zip line (I would love to see photographic evidence of this...every year he's said he's done it, but I've never seen a photo) and played shaving cream whiffl...