Saturday's Apron: Playing Catch Up

You want to know my favorite kind of blog contest? - The kind where I win, of course! I have been on a real winning streak lately. I haven't told you about all of them, and it's time to catch up. Plus since most of the prizes were aprons, I'll combine this with a Saturday's Apron post.

First of all, I won this cutie pie from Christine of Pies & Aprons. A cute, diamond-shaped half apron with a tulip print and lots of pretty yellow rickrack trim.

Next, I won Michael's blogversary contest, the one I linked for you here. See, it all comes out in the wash.

As did these pretty aprons that he sent. A wash, starch and session on the clothesline, then a touch-up with an iron, and they are all ready for another few years helping out in the kitchen. First is this cobbler's smock style apron. I'm not normally a big fan of them, and this one looks silly on the dress form, but it looks unusually cute on ME.

 

Next is this full apron with a cute heart-shaped pocket decorated with rickrack. Love, love, love.

But wait, there's more! Here's my favorite of the aprons from Michael:

It was made of a blue and white border print. It fits so cute, and I feel gorgeous in it. I need to make more just like it. Where are my border prints, anyway? :)

Michael also sent more goodies:

Fabric trims, rickrack and gift wrap ribbons:

And a cute little souvenir plate for Missouri, about 4 inches across:

That's all the prizes. I also bought this little half apron with big comfy useful pockets at a garage sale. It's not pretty, it's just a hard workin' little apron.

The print fabric is all pockets. See what I mean?

And finally, I have to show off a really beautiful apron that I bought from Cate's Vintage Linens in Arizona. She has closed her blogs and so I can't link for you. I miss her! Anyway, this appears to be an unused cotton apron. I love it so much. I plan to make more just like it. I think there would be quite a demand for them.

I don't have any really handy ways to store and show off full aprons. Any thoughts, anyone?

On reduced pay for editing versus transcription

Webmedx pays less for editing "intelligent speech recognition," or ISR, than it does for transcribing the same reports from a voice file. This is not unique in the field; all the major MT companies of which I am aware do the same. But I disagree.

Editing involves listening through an audio file of physician dictation while editing the text file created by the ISR engine. It requires exactly the same knowledge that medical transcription requires, with possibly an increased level of alertness, as at least I find it very easy to "zone out" and miss important errors if I am not the one typing the words myself. The only thing that does not match up with straight transcription is the number of times one's fingers pound the keyboard to produce the same length of typed text file.

The skillset is the same. The experience that makes a good medical transcriptionist is the same experience that makes a good medical editor. The training is the same. Why isn't the pay the same?

Sometime, try saying to your hair stylist, "I have thin hair, so I have fewer hairs than most people, therefore you will not be cutting as much hair, and there will be less wear on your scissors. Please charge me less." See how far that gets you. The same skillset is required. (Possibly even more, because the hairstylist can make even you, with your thinning hair, look just as good as the last person who sat in that chair.) We don't pay for haircuts by weight - as in, 6 ounces of hair ended up on the floor, therefore we pay six dollars, or whatever. We pay for the skills and talents of the hair stylist.

I am not paid by the number of times my fingertips hit the keyboard. Or I should not be. I should be paid for the accuracy of my transcribed or edited reports, paid for the fact that my employer, and hence my employer's client hospitals, can count on any reports that pass across my desk to be accurate and precise, that any errors I find that I cannot legally rectify are brought to their attention to be fixed by someone who can rectify them, that patient care will not be compromised by a sloppy report that will make them look incompetent if it ever ended up read out loud in court.

I know this blog post isn't going to change anything, but I wanted to say it anyway.

Replacement lids for vintage spice jars

From time to time I get requests for a source for replacement lids for the old spice jars. You can get them several places, but they're usually quite costly. Right now on eBay there is a seller out of Colfax, Iowa, that is selling them, along with a lot of repro hardware, for unusually reasonable prices: Bea's Treasure Chest. She also has vintage and repro parts for Hoosier and Sellers cabinets, such as flour and sugar bins and tambour cloth. Great resource. I have not bought from her, just passing on the information.

Shopping expedition into the Northwood

Taking inventory at Northwood Country Market

I just realized, I'm coming up on a year of making almost all our bread here at home, from scratch (except for 2 loaves of store-bought that were sneaked in against my will, and hotdog/burger buns, which I don't always make from scratch). And I don't have a great source for flour yet.

After reading about Wheat Montana flour from Judy Laquidara, I determined that I would try to track some down. First of all, you can order it from the website, but the freight charges are a deal killer. So I called my friend Jan who has made her own bread for a long time and asked where she gets her flour. I didn't mention Wheat Montana in particular, but she told me she gets her wheat (sometimes flour, sometimes wheat berries that she mills herself) from a Mennonite market in Sparta, Wisconsin, and that it comes all the way from Montana. I asked if it were Wheat Montana brand and she said it was, and that it's great. My next question was how much is it? She pays just under $25 per 50-pound sack. Not bad.

She offered to have her husband pick me up a sack, since he works very near to the store, but then I realized I had to come into Onalaska today anyway, and that I had some time to spare - so we made a field trip out to Northwood Country Market. I took both the girls out there with me. I, at least, had a wonderful time. The girls didn't mind too bad. I bought 100 pounds of the white whole wheat flour. I also wrote down a few other prices:

• Mindoro Blue cheese (a local blue), 6.99/lb
• smoked swiss cheese, 4.49/lb
• local honey, $8.50/3 pound bottle OR you can get it in bulk if you bring your own container for about $2.65/pound - I forgot to note exactly
• very dark brown sugar, 91 cents a pound
• toasted wheat germ, 2.77/pound 
• farina (cream of wheat), 43 cents a pound
• fruit gelatin in bulk, 1.82/pound
• instant vanilla pudding, 1.65/pound, or chocolate, 1.80/pound 
• liquid caramel, 5.17/pound (like for baking or for dipping apples)
• red wheat berries, 60 cents a pound
• stick cinnamon 6.48/pound 

They have quite a bit of local produce (pie pumpkins!), an extensive meat section and do their own cutting, and they have a deli section with lots and lots of cheeses cut to order. Not all they carry is organic or even supposed to be healthy, but most of it is available at bulk order prices.

For the flour alone, it is probably worth the trip for us every so often. Not sure how long 100 pounds will last me, but if I make that trek a couple of times a year, it will probably be worthwhile.

P.S. - I just talked with Jan on the phone, and she said that they grind their own peanut butter at Northwood! It's done fresh every couple of weeks. Yum! I didn't see everything, obviously.

Anti-recommendation: MagicJack (really cheap phone service)

I was so excited about MagicJack, the VoIP phone service that costs about twenty bucks a year (not a month, a year). I ordered one and tried it out this morning. Good voice quality, check; quick connection time, check; call my  neighbor to tell her how great it is... Wait a minute there! It would not call any New Albin number. Lansing was cool, but not New Albin. I could use my house phone to call the new MJ line, but I could not call home from the MJ line. This was not good.

I spent some time with live chat support and they seemed mystified, and eventually escalated my issue to the engineers and said they'd e-mail if they found anything to help.

So I googled and found out that there are a TON of small local exchanges that suddenly (as in, since about mid August) no longer can be called from a MagicJack line. Just can't do it.

Here's an incredibly long discussion of the topic. You can read the first page and then skim from there.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24566829-HELP-Magic-Jack-cant-call-local-ISP-area-code

And here's a running list (editable) of exchanges that people have found so far that don't work with MagicJack:

http://typewith.me/pdoGh5rvgf

The short version is that MagicJack has begun to block the small telcos, which are not cost effective for them. Which is fine if you don't call any of those exchanges, ever. You won't even notice. And besides, who would miss someplace like New Albin, Iowa? or Great Falls, Montana? Or the entire state of ALASKA??!! Yes, it's true. If you have a MagicJack, Alaska just got rubbed off the map for you. No polar bears for you, buddy!

I'm going to try netTalk next. They promise me they don't block anybody. Of course now that I have given them the idea, maybe they'll do that, too. But I'm going to try. I am on a mission.

A bad case of the Mondays

It's Migraine Day again today. Not as bad as it was a couple of weeks ago. I have started a calendar to get some hard information on what my headaches are doing.

One thing that trips me up is that many of my headaches seem like sinus headaches in some ways, but migraines in others. I hate to take sumatriptan if it's not a migraine, because then I would get to deal with the muzzy feeling for the rest of the day (and still have the headache). But in the literature, an awful lot of people think they have sinus headaches when they actually have migraine syndrome. Guess I'll break down and take a sumatriptan in another half an hour (tried ibuprofen at 7:15, acetaminophen at 10:30).

Here's one abstract on a double-blind study of sinus versus migraine headache. And here's another.

Caledonia City-Wide Garage Sales

I spent a couple of hours saling around Caledonia this morning in the blustery wind and cold (but at least it wasn't raining). It was so worth it! I found a 10-gallon fish tank with filters and all the other gear for a dollar (and it doesn't leak, yay) for Lil Miss A who wants to get black moor goldfish; a vintage-looking Christmas tablecloth; a vampire cape for Kieffer!, a Dorothy in Oz dress for Lil Miss A; and THIS:

Not the sink, that's an older acquisition (I didn't think to take the picture till after we had stuck the sink in the tub). The tub. It's a 6-foot clawfoot in great condition. My awesome son helped me unload it and put it in the corner of the garage. Then he started making noises about how it would have to go into his retro home someday. Yeah, right. Anyway, it's a beauty, and these big ones are hard to find. I'm very excited.

This means that I can sell this one:

It's a 5-footer that was in that corner of the garage till it got booted out to make room for the 6-footer. It needs a lot of wire brush work and repainting of the outside, but it's also in good condition, and it has a nice brass faucet.

Who wants to buy a clawfoot bathtub? Think of the romance!

P.S. Kieffer would like to announce that he hates how Joss Whedon ruined "Angel."

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