Janice Manilow

I really like pizza

Janice — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:11:36 +0000

One of my favorite foods is pizza. I especially like the fresh-dough soft crust. I’ve recently heard that Domino’s has changed their pizza recipe, and I think I’d like to give it a try. My favorite has always been Pizza Hut when I go out – Domino’s was never willing to deliver all the way out to my house, and the few times I bothered to go there to pick it up I really didn’t care for it. But I found that I can make some pretty good pizza at home, using frozen bread dough and pizza sauce from a jar! My favorite pizza is Hawaiin pizza – which has ham and pineapple on it. My second favorite is hamburger and mushroom. Both are easy to make at home. Come to think about it, I think I’ll be making some homemade pizza this weekend! I’ve made myself hungry writing about it!

Power outage

Janice — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:26:46 +0000

I absolutely love living in rural Virginia. I love looking out from my living room window at the cows, sheep, and horses grazing in the fields across the street. I love how quiet the nights are, and how easily I can see the stars because the is virtually no light pollution. But let me tell you, with this blizzard we just had, we had a power outage of seven hours, and even after the power came back on the cable television and Internet did not come back on for almost twenty-four hours!

My entire family was just about climbing the walls because we had no Internet access for so long! I think I’ll be checking out the wildblue satellite internet services to see what their rates are. I don’t want to be without Internet again! I can’t believe how dependent my family has become on it for so many functions – entertainment, communications, paying bills, shopping….. We depend on it so much!

Now that the Internet has come back up on line, the entire family has parked themselves in front of their respective computers. Watching shows, checking their emails, playing games. I have to make sure that the bills I needed to pay got paid! I hope I didn’t miss any deadlines!

I was mortified

Janice — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:42:18 +0000

I wanted to bake a cake earlier today, and I remembered that I had a couple of different cake mixes in the cupboard. So rather than dashing to the store to buy a mix I thought I just find the mixes I already had and bake one of them up. I was mortified to find that both the cake mix and can of frosting had expiration dates of August 2007! So I threw them away. Rummaging around I found more cake mix and frosting that hadn’t expired yet so I pulled them out onto the counter. Reading the directions, it calls for oil. Looking in the pantry I pulled out the jar of oil and see that it is almost empty. Not quite sure I’ll have enough, so I went out to the “auxillary pantry” to pull out a full one. That was was pretty far back on the shelf, so I decided to check the expiration date on that as well. Darn if it was expired too! Not by as much, but expired just the same.

I guess that means that it is past time for me to go through the cupboards and check the expiration dates on all of the goods and throw them out! Not a fun job, but one that needs to be done. I hate wasting food!

Starting a new business

Janice — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:26:15 +0000

My husband has been encouraging me to start my own business. He’s heard that there are a lot of business grantsavailable for women entrepreneurs. It’s nice to know that he has such confidence in me! The thing is, I’ve got so many different skills, talents and interests that it is hard for me to pick which one to try to turn into a business!

Although I’m good at a lot of things, I’m not sure that there is a sustainable market for the things that I do! Once I do figure out what I want to do, though, I will certainly be turning to the National Institute of Small Business Grants for guidance on where to find the right business grants for the business I want to start! I’ve taken a lot of college courses on running a business, and to be perfectly honest at this stage of my life I’d much rather be retiring than starting a new business!

New Year’s resolutions

Janice — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:16:06 +0000

My New Year’s resolution? Hmmm…. I really hate to make one! OK, how about this one – to try to shop more frugally. And combine trips to town so that I don’t waste a lot of gas and time by making extra trips into town. No, I’m not going to resolve to lose weight! The doctor says I’m at the ideal weight so even though I’d rather be about ten pounds lighter I’m not going to put myself through that aggravation! Um, and to try to get more sleep! I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, and that makes me cranky! That’s a good one – sleep more! What are YOUR resolutions?

I love cookies

Janice — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:49:05 +0000

I love to give unique gift baskets to people for presents. I like to find out what their interests are and then try to come up with a gift basket full of goodies that are related to their interests. For example, if it is a woman who loves to experiment with colognes I might give her a gift basket full of different sweet scented body lotions and creams, and maybe some nice scented soaps to go along with it.

For a health nut, it might be a basket of fruit. For people who enjoy chocolates, it would be a basket full of a wide variety of chocolates. As for me, I love cookies to snack on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t eat a lot of cookies every day, but I do have a sweet tooth, and chocolate gives me heartburn! So when I think of a sweet tooth I have to think outside of the candy box of chocolates! That’s why I think this gift basket of a variety of cookies would be a perfect gift basket for someone with a sweet tooth like me! The Scottish shortbread and the danish butter cookies are cookies I know I already love! And I see some other cookies that sound interesting to try. Cookie Monster would go crazy over this basket, don’t you think?

Remote starter

Janice — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:38:03 +0000

When I first bought my Subaru back in 1998 I had a remote starter put in it. I loved that remote starter! I used it every time I drove that car. I loved that fact that I could warm up the car in the winter without even leaving the house so that when I got into it the windows were already defrosted and the interior nice and toasty warm. And in the summer I could start the car up and let it cool off for a few minutes before climbing inside. Lately the remote starter has not been starting the car. This has happened before and I’ve taken the car back several times to where we got the remote starter installed to fix it. But we have moved about 800 miles away from that place and now I don’t know where to take it for repair! What a bother!

Rick’s off to Dallas

Janice — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:16:52 +0000

I was sad to see Rick drive off in his Chevrolet Silverado two weeks ago. I was really hoping he would stay through the holidays, but he was anxious to get to Texas to find a good job. He said that lots of people told him that Dallas was the place to go for a good paying construction job, so that was his destination. My hubby and I tried to convince him to stay and get a brake job on his truck before he left. I really didn’t think he could make it to Texas safely.

Rick called us last night to tell us that he made it to Dallas safely, although behind schedule. He had picked up a friend on the way and had to take a major detour to get him. but now that he is in Dallas he has found a job and is going to be taking his truck to a Dallas auto repair shop to get his brakes fixed. I hope it doesn’t cost too much!

An almost first for me

Janice — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:32:36 +0000

I decided to try to dye my hair last night. I remember trying to dye my hair once about twenty years ago and all I did was make a huge mess. It didn’t cover up the gray and it stained the shower curtain! I was so distressed that I lost all interest in trying it again for a very long time. Well, twenty years is a long time, wouldn’t you say? My older sister suggested that I try one of the cream hair dyes that don’t drip. So I decided to give it a try; the gray hairs I was seeing in the mirror made me look so old and washed out! I bought a box of L’Oreal’s Excellence Creme hair dye. I picked out a box of hair dye that looked like my natural color (dark brown.)

Well, the process took a lot longer than I thought it would take. Most likely because my hair is very long; almost down to my waist. So it took longer to saturate all of my hair. The directions on the dye said to let the dye stay in for thirty to forty minutes. I think that by the time my hair was saturated it had already been thirty minutes for some parts of my hair!

And even though the box claimed that it wouldn’t drip, it did in fact drip. I’m glad I was standing on a black towel and leaning over my bathroom sink because my bathroom has carpeting in it (it came with the house.)

End result – my bathroom sink is now stained (grr…) and my hair is almost black. My hubby loves it. I”m not used to it – next time (if there IS a next time) I’ll pick out a lighter color! Overall I’m pleased that I don’t see any gray hairs! But it is a shock when I look in the mirror!

Don’t you just love the Internet?

Janice — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:49:50 +0000

Susan called me last night all in a panic. She had decided to drive her Toyota Corolla to Chicago for a week’s vacation to see her family. As luck would have it (or should I say as bad luck would have it?) the water pump broke and she didn’t know where to go to get her car fixed. So while she was on the phone I went online to the repairpal.com website and typed in ”Chicago auto repair.”

Using that website I was able to get Susan an estimate on what it should cost to get her car fixed, and where the repair shops are located near her. I think that’s a great website to use – especially if you are not someone who is extremely savvy when it comes to car repairs. It is good to know in advance how much something should cost so if you end up going someplace that tells you it is going to cost a lot more than that you can know that they are trying to rip you off and just take your business elsewhere.