..with our friends Patty and Mike Briggs. Mike had a nasty cold.
And now I think I do.
Theraflu and Emergen-C are my friends.
Jane is starting on them, too.
Meanwhile I got the Matala filter cleaned out. It’s got 8 mats to wash, the finest of them weighing about like a full sack of canned goods when fully loaded with crud.
I had to attach the pool-hose (screwdriver and quick shove of hose onto the pipe.) And then you have to take all these filter and hose them out, which requires standing in cold water. (Garden sandals.) And spattering crud all over. But the pond water is beautiful.
Meanwhile the main tank is going through a belated hair algae bloom—this happens when phosphate bound up in the rock starts leaching out, and feeding hair algae. Glug.
This too shall pass. I’m running a resin that uptakes the phosphate. So it will ultimately die out.
We did find our resident shrimp putting in an appearance: this is a sign of not-bad-water quality, re fish and inverts. The corals won’t be happier until we solve the phosphate problem—but we’ll get it.
Meanwhile I figure I’m going to feel like crap for the next week. Probably Jane will.
But hey, we had a good time on the drive. The Prius is a joy to drive. It’s particularly fun when you hit the downhill and coast with no engine. 😉 We normally used 14 gallons of gas on that drive, in the not-bad-mileage Forester. That’s 50.00…to drive down there and back. We made it round trip on 7 gallons, or 25.00. So cha-ching! that’s 25.00 toward the purchase price of the Prius, eh?
We’re getting about 45 mpg on the highway, with a lot of hills. In town, we’re around 50. We got the car in mid-July, and if we hadn’t taken the trip south to see Mike and Patty, we’d have been into October before having to buy gas. This is nice. We’d been filling a 14-gallon tank every couple of weeks. This is 6 weeks on ten gallons with no fill.
Ah, and you ask what the cats think of the new car, which they hadn’t been in. I think it was a hit. It’s quieter. They were up and about, going to their usual places for the drive. They were quite cheerful.
We used to get better mileage from our Prius in warm weather. So if you see a drop as cold weather comes on, don’t despair. Things will improve.
I always had so much fun trying to drive in a thoughtful way. coasting wherever the traffic flow would allow etc. Our current car gives you current mileage expenditure but it is so depressing that we turned it off soon after we bought the car and have never looked in 2.5 years.
A tablespoon of this:
http://catherineboley.blogspot.com/2009/08/preparing-for-winter.html
Two tablespoons of 80 proof, and fill your cup with hot spearmint tea. If you are still avoiding the hard stuff, just leave it out,but it works faster or better with it in…
CJ, I hope you and Jane feel better soon. Having a cold or other is just the pits.
Eye strain has been a real bear for me lately. I had one day blissfully free, and can’t figure if it was what I ate before then or extra rest or what helped, but I’d sure like to figure it out.
Tommie, that link sounds very good. I’m curious if it really is that simple, just honey and lemons sliced and a bit of ginger. Heck, sounds easy to try. I’d just need to pick up ingredients and slice, scrape, and dice.
I like lemon-flavored tea anyway in winter, and this sounds great. My grandmother used to swear by a glass of warm/hot water with lemon and I think a bit of honey. She loved natural honey. She’d surely like this icea. She was very big on health foods, natural products, lots of vitamins, and exercise. Her farm girl upbringing helped a great deal too.
Mint tea is also nice, though it depends whether I’m in the mood for it. I went through a phase where I had it very regularly. Might do so more often this winter.
My favorite tea, though, is orange and cinnamon spice, Constant Comment by Bigelow, or other similar brands.
Almost any tea suits me but not Earl Grey, can’t stand the Bergamot oil in it, tastes bad to me. Too bad, Capt. Picard!
Best Wishes, CJ and Jane. At least it’s early, not full winter. Be good to yourselves and let the diet ease up if need be until you’re both well. :hugs:
Got a good, authentic Chinese restaurant in town? My favorite cold remedy is a big bowl of Hot and Sour Soup! 🙂 😉 But it’s got to be the old classic Chinese recipe, hot and sour!
(You know it’s the old classic recipe if they have lily pods in it, rather than faking it with julienned bamboo shoots.)
Hot tea. Honey. Lemon. A shot of alcohol if required. Repeat as needed. Homemade chicken soup is also your friend; I suggest mixing it up a bit and making chicken long rice, with carrots, celery, dried shiitake, and bean thread noodles. You appear to be starting the cold and flu season early; that just means I will have to get my care package on the way to you and Jane a trifle earlier 😉
I guess it also means it’s getting on to be time for my annual flu shot! 😉
Could’ve sworn I replied, pressed Post, and it took. Dagnabit.
Lol—thank you all. Not too bad this morning, but my nose is a bit drippy.
I got to saying to Patty I haven’t had a cold in 10 years…and the gods of contagion may have heard that.
BTW, the cargo content of said Prius on this trip: 2 cat carriers, covered litter pan, 2 guitars, two massive bags of filk books. 6 regular bags of ‘stuff’ like our diet snacks, Jane’s dolls and project, an absolutely massive duffle we got at a truck stop that you could hide an NFL linebacker’s body in, a rolling suitcase (of painting clothes) purses, etc…and we could have packed double that if we’d been willing to obstruct any windows.
We discovered to our great delight that the back seats slide forward about 8″ when folded, so you have a totally flat back end, and that means we can pack more efficiently. This holds more ‘stuff’ than the Forester could, and the Forester was pretty amazing. We could probably have managed one to two more passengers if we’d been willing to pack ‘high’ instead of wide. The cargo room was what we were worried about going hybrid, and this one really does the trick.