CAMP WILLOW CREEK

New Improved Posting

From email!

But will it actually make me post any more frequently?

Plugins & Widgets

That’s what I spent the weekend playing with. But not here at the virtual camp, over there at
skurtz.com.

For a very long time, I have wanted to use skurtzdotcom to house pictures…or recipes…or I don’t know. I thought it would be great if I could set up an online archive of my recipes, ever since I got a phone that has internets inside. Because, really, could it get any better than looking up a recipe in a grocery store where they sell the ingredients to make that recipe a reality? I doubt it.

The problem was I couldn’t find an easy script out there to install to make it happen. And I really didn’t want to be bothered with learning enough php or mysql to make one of my own. This weekend I buckled down and found enough add-ons and whatnots for the WordPress I am already using to make a recipe archive that does pretty much everything I had wanted it to do.

Right now the recipes that are over there are the same 40 or so that have been hanging around as I have tried various incarnations of this recipe archive, so not much of the content is new yet. But the features are fun. You can search recipes by keywords or browse through the categories. You can print recipes all pretty and you can even rate them from 1-5 stars. On the back-end, I added some templates, so adding new recipes will be a breeze.

Oh and there are pictures too. Old pictures that I took with this stuff called “film.” Ask your mom about it. It was expensive and temperamental. Anywho, one day the Expensive Thing I Needed to Have was a film scanner and it takes all that old processed film and makes handy little digital treats from it. I’ve uploaded some of those digitized shots to skurtz.com. Way more convenient than browsing through a shoebox of old prints, right? I have a bunch more scanned and tons more to scan, but don’t expect any updates in that sector of the skurtzdotcom anytime soon – I’m really more into the recipe thing this week.

Bills of Glory

Since we moved into the Camp, I’ve always thought the water bill seemed high, but I thought maybe it was this county. I also knew we had a leak of some kind, but I admit I didn’t put too much thought in it. We had someone come out and try to find it. He couldn’t. How bad could it be if you can’t find it? Right?

We officially switched over to new-improved leak-free plumbing on January 25. The water billing cycle closed 12 days later, on February 5. The bill was slightly lower – 21% – than the previous month – December 5 through January 5 – when we were gone for about 10 days for Christmas and not using any water. The February 5th bill was also 28% lower than the bill that closed on December 5 and included Thanksgiving. I remember the crushed feeling I had when I got that bill in December because we both made a VERY conscious effort to use less water. I was devastated when it turned out we had actually used more. I mourned with an extra long hot shower the day after getting the bill.

Screw You Water. I’ll use you how I please!

So, the new lower February bill was good, but somewhat anti-climatic. I mean, is 21% worth no ceilings and endless dust all over the place? But I resolved to be patient. March 5th. That would be the true test. A full month on new pipes.

I must have checked online for that bill no less than 30 times Wednesday. It wasn’t updated. By some kind of mind-bottling (“Yeah, mind-bottling. You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle?”) phenomenon, I didn’t check again until a short while ago.

The bill has dropped 74% from last month’s slightly reduced bill and 81% from November’s Nightmare Bill. Holy crap, right? We don’t even have our new low-flow toilets yet. I can almost hear Lake Allatoona rising as I type.

Not a Large Farva

I drank a gallon of water today. A. Whole. Gallon. The End.

Without all that slippery blood

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The fun just doesn’t stop at the camp, let me tell you.

Since we last spoke, our friends from a far-off land called “Augusta” came out to visit. They came bearing card games and fruit pies. Our favorites were Lunch Money and apple, respectively.

Then we finished running our cables for the tv. We now watch our tv like civilized humans via cables that run discretely through walls and ceilings instead like primitive animals via cables strapped haphazardly to the outside of the house. I swear the picture is clearer. Furthermore, our TiVo works as God intended now – it records a show while we watch some other show. Previously, it just scolded us like small children if we tried to change the channel while recording.

Next, I got rear-ended on my way to work. No injuries. Not even the next day. Not even a little soreness. It was weird to be on the other side of the claim for a change. The worst part wasn’t even the impact (we were stopped at a light, so it was very low speed) or the delay in getting to work (she was nice, we swapped info and headed on our ways). The worst part was that I scheduled to drop my car off on what turned out to be the Worst-Timed Storm Ever. There was a nasty line of very severe thunderstorms, complete with nearly hurricane-force winds and disco strobe-effect lightning just before morning rush hour started. Trees fell on roads and interstates. Traffic lights were out on surface streets. Traffic was stopped everywhere. The drop-off should have taken me about 30 minutes, instead, it was two hours and 30 minutes. Which, all-in-all, isn’t that bad since all it was doing was keeping me from work. And now the car is back. The bodyshop did a fine job. All is well.