Comics, skunks and apples, oh my! Oct. 27, 2010

First, a little funny one for you.  Several weeks ago, at the family yard sale, my 9 year old niece asked what I had around my waist.  "My fanny pack,"  I replied.  She questioned me further, and I showed her the .357 magnum revolver I had in it.  I told her I had it because we had a large amount of cash, and we did not know the people who were coming by.  She understood my logic with no problem.  She has also seen and understands my EDC kit.  This past weekend, she gave me the 10/17 Bizarro comic strip from the newspaper.  I shall now be known to her as Marsupial Man!

This morning, I let the dog out at 5:15, as usual.  Several minutes later, I heard him snarling at the back door, so I flung it open to find him, and the entire area around the back door, smelling horribly of skunk.  The malodorous scent wafted into the kitchen, and infused the house.  So, three showers for me, four baths and a haircut for him, later, I finally got to work about five hours late.  At least the boss is understanding!  Anyway, the point of this is that I found a good remedy to the smell.  We've long known that tomato juice doesn't work (yes, same dog had been skunked multiple times over the years).  Last time, we tried vanilla extract, and it worked pretty good.  I looked on line this morning and found this tip from AA Animal Control from Orlando, Fla.  The peroxide, baking soda and dish soap worked great!  I even took one of my showers with the formula.  The wife went out to the store as soon as it opened and got about 10 bottles of peroxide and 8 boxes of baking soda.  We may now be on some sort of potential meth lab list, but it works.  Both have long shelf lives when kept cool and away from light, and they're cheap, so considerable supplies of each will be in the larder by this weekend.

I mentioned several weeks ago that we had gone apple picking and I had ordered an Excalibur food dehydrator.  Well, the Excalibur lives up to its reputation.  I am very satisfied with it.  I got the 5 tray (it also comes in 9 tray, but it is just the wife and me) with the 26 hour timer.  Working long hours, I like that I can set the timer and the unit will shut off so the food doesn't get over dried. I also like the thermostat so that food dries but doesn't cook.  I did a batch of apples the other day.  I got 14 apples, sliced into 8 pieces each, into the unit.  I set it for the temperature suggested in the included booklet, and about 3 hours longer because we have pretty high humidity.  The apples turned out wonderfully!  So much better than previous batches I had done with the old $25 round unit from the department store.  Those apples were too dry, I had to rotate the tray positions, they had a slight "burn" taste to them, and frankly, stunk up the house.  The apples from the Excalibur were tender, tasty, and left a pleasant smell in the kitchen.  The Excalibur is expensive, but worth it!

Finally, while sitting here typing this, the Midland WR100 Weather Radio went off alerting me to a Tornado Watch in the area until 2 a.m.  It feels good to be prepared and aware.