Yahoo had an article written by Amy Bele on how people spend their money wastefully.  I’m going to comment on three of these items.

Ink for Printers: is so expensive. Over the life of the printer you may shell out 500% for ink compared to the price of the printer. My experience seems to bare this out. I recently bought both a black and a color cartridge at Staples for my Dell printer; the only place you can purchase the ink other than from Dell through the mail. The black cost $32.99 and the color was $37.99. With the sales or gross receipts tax the bill was $75.95. If you turn in the empty cartridge you get $3.00 each off your next purchase. I know the cost of the ink is very small and they are recycling the cartridge you turn in so the profit margin is great. Obviously they have me over a barrel, since no other cartridge will fit my Dell, so what can I do. I have been thinking of getting a new computer with a Laser Printer. The cost of toner for it cost more but is cheaper per sheet of printed paper.

Greeting Cards: according to Ms. Bele, cost between $2.00 and $4.00. My experience is more like between $3.00 and $5.00. She says the mark up is between 100 and 200%. After all, they are only thicker paper with a picture of some kind and a saying. Worse yet the sayings never seem appropriate or convey my true feelings. Many of the cards are “lovey dovey”.  When you are married many years as we were, the expression of love is much deeper than that. It’s about being thankful that she was always by your side through thick and thin, always thoughtful, meticulously clean about herself and our home and etc.
With your computer, you can make your own greeting card up for pennies and express exactly how you feel in the message  

Bottled Water: Ms Bele points out that if you rearrange the letters in one of the large brand name bottles of water, Evian, it spells Naïve. If you are confined in an airport waiting for your flight, at a sporting event or theme park where you are a captive audience, the price of a 12 ounce bottle of water can be $3.00. This is outrages. Even purchased in bulk at the super market it is still way too much. Driving up the price is the cost of the bottles, filling them, packaging, distributing and overhead for the retailer, not to mention the economies of scale that is lost this way. Does anyone ever think of looking for a water fountain and wetting his whistle for free?

Some of you may say that bottled water taste better from the tap. This may be so and may be not. Be sure when you make the taste test to compare apples with apples and not apples and pears. Here is the mistake when taking the taste test. They buy the bottled water and put it in the refrigerator. Then they pour a glass of chilled bottle water and taste it. Then they pour a glass of water from the tap and taste it. This is apple and pears. If you want to do this way, the next time pour some water from the tap into a glass jar. After chilling pour a glass for tasting. Now compare the chilled tap water with a bottle of water brought from the store before chilling. Yes this is apples and pears too but it demonstrates the taste advantage of chilled water has over room temperature water. For a fair test, try each chilled and or un-chilled.     

15th Amelia Earhart’s guide to the Pacific Ocean. (She was the female pilot to try to fly solo around the world in 1938 or 1939 and disappeared some ware over the Pacific)

14th To all the men I’ve Loved Before by Ellen DeGeneres  

13th A book of Baby Names by George Forman

12th Detroit a Travel Guide

11th Spotted Owl Recipes by the EPA

10th The Amish Phone Book

9th   Everything a Man Knows About Women

8th Everything a Women Knows About Men

7th The Wild Years by Al Gore

6th Things I Would Not Do For Money

5th Dr. Kevorkians Collection of Motivational Speeches

4th America’s Most Popular Lawyers

3rd Mike Tyson’s Guide to Dating Etiquette

2nd My Plan to Find The Real Killers by O.J. Simpson

1st The Book Of Virtues By Bill Clinton

A lady’s clothes dryer wasn’t drying the clothes.  The repair man came and diagnosed that the heating unit died. After putting in a new one he asked the lady to come and watch what he was about to do. He took the lint filter out that had been cleaned of lint and brought it over to the sink. There he ran hot water over it and the water never went through. It lay on top of the mesh filter. He said that even though you clean the lint away, dryer sheets, the product that prevents static buildup repels lint and hair from clinging to clothes, builds an invisible film over the mesh. The film clogs the openings in the mesh and clings to your wash clothes. When his happens it takes a lot longer to dry clothes and makes the heating unit labor, overheat and ware out. It has also been known to cause dryer units to catch fire and potentially burn the whole house down.

I never knew of this phenomenon. Upon reading about it I immediately tested my lint catcher. The water went right through. Perhaps because I only occasionally use a dryer sheet and have a water softening system in my home. The later is particularly appreciated when I come back from a trip where I’ve been showering in hard water in hotels or motels and it is difficult to get lather from the soap.

I just received an 11 x 16 inch recap sheet showing how Catholic Congressmen and Senators have voted on issues, such as abortions, compared with the official Catholic position.  It was published by the Catholic Advocate, a Project of the Morley Institute for Church Culture. The titled it “Scorecard of Catholics in Congress”.

In the house it shows the last seven times a vote came up on these issues and how each and every Catholic Congressman and Senator voted for or against the official Catholic position. It further shows the political party affiliation of each. I tallied up the votes and present a summary as follows:

                                       In the House of Representatives   

With the Official Catholic Position                     Against the Official Catholic Position

Republicans         Democrats                               Republicans         Democrats

225                       114                                          15                         505

                                       In the Senate

46                         7                                              12                         120

The Reverend Benedict Groeschel, CFR sees the above statistics as a problem when so many people who represent us are showing a bad example. He further points out that the Speaker of the House Nancy Pilosi and .Joseph Biden the Vice President of the United States of America., both Catholics that support the right for a woman to destroy the baby in her womb. Rudy Giuliani, a former politician and well known often refers to his Catholic upbringing and education, is still outspoken supporter of abortion.

Maybe we should be forgetting the Republican Democrat labels and start finding out how they have been voting on all issues of importance to us?

Peppers with3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating while peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking

If you are frying ground beef, add a teaspoon of water to help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
 
To make a rich omelet add a spoon full of sour cream, heavy cream or cream cheese before beating eggs.

For a brownie treat, melt mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies for a minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe for a light taste of garlic. For a stronger taste of garlic add it at the end of the recipe.

Chop up some snickers bars, peel, core and slice a few apples. Place the apples in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars. Bake at 350 degrease for 15 minutes. Serve as is or with vanilla ice cream. Sounds great but there are enough calories without the ice cream.

To reheat Pizza do it on the stove top in a non-stick skillet on medium low heat. This will keep the crust crispy but not overdone like in the microwave.

For an easy cleanup for making deviled eggs, put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag, seal it and mash them in the bag. Add the remainder of ingredients. Reseal and mash some more. Cut the tip of the bag and squeeze the mixture into the egg.

When you buy frosting or cake mix from the store, whip it with a mixer for a few minutes. It will double in size resulting in more cake and frosting and it is fluffier and the calories per slice will be reduced.

When reheating in the microwave. Place a cup of water as well. The water will evaporate increasing the moisture in the food so it does not dry out. It will also heat up faster.

Before you pour a sticky substance into a measuring cup, fill it with hot water. Dump out the water but do not dry the cup. This will allow the ingredient to pour out easily.