Valentine Gift To Myself

Yesterday I went out and bought myself a Valentines gift.  My husband has been getting irritated with the fact of my phone dying anytime and anywhere.  I have a smart phone (Samsung Fascinate) and it takes a lot of energy to play games, Shopkick, and get my Checkpoints.  So I went and got myself an iPhone 4s.  I used some rewards from Best Buy and from Shopkick to get the phone cheaper, so that was a plus.  I'm also super excited with the fact that it has a really nice camera, front or back.  My Samsung's camera stopped working a couple of months ago, do to some memory card glitch.  Now I just need to figure this new phone out. All in all, Valentine's Day was a sucky day for me and I'm glad it's over.

If anyone has some tips on using an iPhone, I'm all ears!

So here is my afternoon in pictures:

I think it's cool you can see the birds nest in the trees.

The days are semi nice and the snow is melting.

The creek is running, yet there is still some ice holding on at some points.

I walked the .9 miles to school to pick up my daughter at school.

Here is to more sun shiny days!

Can We Fix It?

We have only had our washer since August, but we have already been receiving error codes. I would put a load in and a couple minutes later it would beep. It still got our clothes wet and spun around, but it was very annoying to have soaking wet clothes left inside. So I called and made an appointment with a local company to come check it out under warranty.  One thing that changed after we got our washer was that we also installed a water softener. We belive this made the hoses collect residue from what was inside our pipes.  He just disconnected the hose near the washer and took out the screen piece on the washer, washed and brushed off the green/white powder and reconnected. Once he cleaned this out the water came in a lot faster. He also opened up the valve more, which I'm not sure why when Lowe's installed they didn't seem to do. Lowe's also shoved the drain hose way down in the drain pipe which he said could also cause problems.  He took it out and put it in the drain pipe only a couple of inches so it would hold.  Another thing about front loader is the soap. He recommended powder which doesn't contain animal fat, which makes it smell and mildew. Also use about half what you would use normally especially with a water softener. Here is a great article with Q & A and a lot insight as to why you should use HE detergent with an HE machine:
 http://www.cleaninginstitute.org/assets/1/Page/HE.pdf.
I hope these tricks might help someone from acquiring an expensive repair bill that they could have easily fixed themselves.

Food for Thought: Power Outage

Here is the problem with technology: it is about as reliable as a person. I woke up this morning with no power. I wasn't sure if it was just me or if it was the neighborhood. I threw away my phone books because I never used them and they took up space. I figured I would just look up the number on the Internet if needed or through my GPS. So I don't happen to have the electric company's number memorized since remembering things isn't really my thing. I couldn't look on any bills because I have e-bills, and with no electricity there is no modem and no Internet. The electricity didn't take too long to come back on so I didn't check my GPS for a number. I don't know if I could of counted on the GPS anyways since it relies on satellite and the rain and thunder bring a lot of blocking clouds. This just brings about a lesson to have utility and emergency numbers posted on the fridge. I also only have a cell phone for a phone, but thinking about those phones that run through the Internet, those wouldn't be to helpful in a lot of emergency situations either.