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January 1, 2021 By Natalie Leave a Comment

How to Pick Up The Best Car Seat for 2 Year Old Toddler

When your child is at the 2-year-old milestone, your best bet is rear-facing car seats. We highly recommend that your child is protected in this model until he or she has outgrown the seat before switching to forward-facing car seats.

In this article, let’s examine the key factors in choosing the best car seat for 2 year old toddlers.

What Do We Expect In The Best Car Seat For 2 Year Old Toddlers?

best car seat for 2 year old 2021

Weight 

Most parents are comfortable with seats that weigh no more than 10lbs. We also think this is an appropriate standard. Heavy seats will be burdensome while carrying around and difficult to install in your car as well.

Easy To Use

There are a variety of models that offer great flexibility levels. We noticed that mothers love the Britax B-Safe Infant Car Seat, a click & go system for easy installation and removal. 

Another optimal choice is the Graco 4Ever DLX 4-in-1 Infant to Toddler Car Seat equipped with the harness system adjusted up to 10 positions and so on. 

Suitable For Your Unique Requirements

Some of us want car seats that come with cup holders. Some prefer durable models that grow with your child and can be converted into forward-facing later on. Therefore, you need to get down to details about the features that come with these seats before making decisions.

Meets Federal Standards

All you have to do is make sure to check the label that reads:” This restraint system conforms to all applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards. This restraint is certified for use in all aircraft and motor vehicles.” This is the easiest way, and you can’t miss it!

Other Factors To Consider

best car seat for 2 and half year old

Should I Buy A Used Car Seat?

Our answer would be an absolute “No.” It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good discount, or the seller seems reliable. Still, the used seat might have been slightly damaged in an accident before and lose the sturdy construction to protect your child.

What Are “Shell Height” And “Max Harness Height”?

Shell height of a seat means the distance from the bottom to the top (above the child’s head to be exact). And you don’t have to worry about harness height with rear-facing models because the straps are always from below your child’s shoulders.

Best Darts For Beginners – The Latest Tips For You

My Child Has Outgrown The Rear-facing Model, Should I Change It?

Absolutely yes! Actually, it is recommended that children should keep using rear-facing until around 3. However, if your toddler has grown much taller than the seat’s measurement, let’s consider upgrading his seat to a forward-facing one. 

In fact, there are a few models that can be converted to a forward-facing harness, a high-back booster seat or even a backless booster. We will put these in our recommendations right below for your consideration! 

What Is The LATCH System?

LATCH stands for Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children – a sound system to correctly install child safety seats without using seat belts. Most vehicles and car safety seats manufactured after September 1, 2002, are equipped to use the LATCH system.

When Can My Child Stop Using Rear-facing Car Seats?

best isofix car seat for a 2 year old

Many experts advise parents to keep using rear-facing car seats until their child is at least three years old, or even closer to 4 years old.  However, the age limit is just a suggestion. If your toddler has outgrown the seat’s , then it’s the right time for a forward-facing model.

Our Top Picks For The Best Car Seat For 2 Year Old Toddler:

  1. Britax One4Life ClickTight All-in-One Car Seat
  2. Graco Extend2Fit Convertible Car Seat
  3. Safety 1st Grow and Go 3-in-1 Car Seat
  4. Graco Tranzitions 3-in-1 Harness Booster Seat
  5. Graco SlimFit 3-in-1 Convertible Car Seat

Bottom Line

Choosing the best car seat for 2 year old toddlers is quite a demanding job since it’s not only about the level of protection. But also the coziness and comfortability your child needs while traveling. 

We hope our simple yet informative tips and guidelines can help you come up with the right decision for your beloved family.

Filed Under: Travel

September 4, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

Best Darts For Beginners – The Latest Tips For You

“Best Darts For Beginners – Where to buy?”- Have you ever thought about it? No one has the same style, even in darts. Along with style, specific criteria like weight, materials, and barrels also have a big influence on the result. We want to express that the right item makes the difference between a bullseye and a lost eye. Make sense?

In this guide, you will find out how to choose the perfect set regardless of budget or playing style.

Best Darts For Beginners – A Guide to Buying Darts

best weight darts for beginners

Dart Weight – How To Find The Best Weight?

As a rule of gravity, the lighter the dart, the more strength you are required to throw it away. You can quickly realize that some extra weight makes it easier to pitch accurately. 

Why? Because more weight will make you feel the presence of darts. You can’t feel the weight of a dart as light as feathers, right? Thus, the only way is to throw naturally for determining which level of weight fits you most. 

A dart usually weighs about 18-30 grams. You can start your practice process at an 18-gram dart then feel how heavy it is. If your dart loses balance in the direction you head to, you need something more massive. If your dart drops down to the bottom, it’s time you tried another thing lighter.

One thing that you should notice is the balance. There is always a circumstance that the heavier position can be in the front or the back. A well-balanced dart will be stable in your hand, so don’t be reluctant to combine different dart parts to make your own set.

Dart Materials – How To Find The Best Material? 

best tungsten darts for beginners

Typically, when playing, the dart is neatly placed in the palm stretched with fingers. But some injuries can happen if we do not pay attention to the sharp edges. Hence, we should consider delicately which the safest material is.

The markets have a lot of products, but there will be three kinds of material recommended as simplicity. They are wood, brass, and tungsten.

With wooden darts, you can play as an amateur. This item has a reasonably low price and can be easily seen even in department stores. However, this type does not have a high precision tilt as others, so hitting the bullseye is very low.

The second category of darts is brass. We can confirm that this type is the most common of all due to its reasonable price. Besides, both amateur and professional players can choose this type of dart as the primary training stuff.

Last, tungsten darts – items of severe players. These darts are made entirely of metal, so they are very durable and increase the accuracy of the game.

With conventional darts, the connecting part is made of plastic. This feature makes a big difference from tungsten darts as it is replaced with metal, to avoid the dart being broken by falling.

Dart Flights – How To Find The Best Flights? 

best steel darts for beginners

Finally, shall we take a glance at the right dart flight? 

There are many styles as well as materials to make the flight look more eye-catching. If you are a newcomer, you only need to care for 2 samples.

  • Standard: This kind of flight is best-known for steel-tipped darts. For the fact that they work in most cases, they’re called standard!
  • Slim: These flights are usually made of thin plastic. So it is suitable for short darts provided that the darts are not made of metal. 

Note: If we aim at a nearby target, we let the pointy part sticking out from the fingertips, and vice versa, we hold the dart with a low spike when we want to throw it away for a significant distance. So choosing a dart point is also very important in the journey to conquer this sport.

Top 5 Best Darts For Beginners

Based on price and quality, these are five products out of 50 sets of darts that will not let you down: 

  1. 24 Bullseye Steel Tip Darts 
  2. CyeeLife Steel tip Darts 4 Beginners House Darts
  3. Whimlets Steel Tip Darts Set
  4. Franklin Sports Steel Tip Darts Set
  5. WIN.MAX Darts Plastic Soft Tip Darts Set
Best Ping Pong Balls – A Quick Review And Buying Guide

Final Words

Not only a game for comfort, but dart-throwing also brings a sense of logic to the player. You don’t need to go to the amusement parks anymore because now we will provide you with specific information useful for making fun at home.

So, let’s get it and have yourself the best darts for beginners.

Filed Under: Sports

August 31, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

Best Ping Pong Balls – A Quick Review And Buying Guide

Ping pong is one of the most popular games in the world. You can not play table tennis if you do not have a ping pong ball. Sadly, not all balls are tailored equally in terms of size, design, and quality. 

That is why you need to read this article as we are going to cover all the information you need before buying ping pong balls. Let’s jump into it.

Best Ping Pong Balls – What Features Should Matter?

Before diving into the best ping pong balls on the market, let’s take some time to read about a qualified ping pong ball’s properties. 

Physical Properties

best ping pong balls for beer pong

Diameter

The official ping pong ball’s diameter is 40mm. However, variation can happen during the production process. 

In general, the balls need to be in the range of 40mm and 40.5 mm. That is the range you get when you sample the balls at a large quantity.

Weight

Another element that you should notice when it comes to ping pong balls is the weight. People also take a sample of the balls to see the mean weight of them. The result may fall in the range of 2.67 grams and 2,77 grams. 

Lighter table tennis balls are slower and more likely to swing while heavier ones are much faster and more consistent in their trajectory.

Roundness

People measure the sphericity of the balls by calculating the difference between their maximum and minimum diameters. 

For celluloid balls, the difference should be less than 0.35mm, and for non-celluloid balls, less than 0.25mm is an appropriate figure.

Veering is another factor in gauging roundness but also the difference in thickness. A ball must not veer because it will probably go out of the track, causing the inconvenience and disturbance while playing ping pong.

Rebound

best ping pong balls amazon

A qualified ball must show a certain degree of bounce by bounce testing.

Specifically, if we drop the ball from a height of 305 millimeters onto a steel block, 240-260 millimeters is the range of height that the ball should rebound.

Hardness

To measure the hardness of a ping pong ball, we use a computerized device to create a force against the ball, and then any hole or mark is measured. 

In case you do not have a tool to test for the hardness of the ball, you can play with the ball at a bit heavier force to see if any holes, indentation, and scratches appear on the ball.

Surface Properties

Color

You probably know that ping pong balls can only take one of the two colors: White or orange. It is because these colors have a remarkable contrast with most backgrounds, allowing it more comfortable to watch the ball during play.

We recommend you choose your outfits that have a different color from that of the ball in use. For example, you are wearing a white T-shirt, you better go for an orange ball.

Material

best ping pong balls to buy

A ping pong ball can be made of plastic or celluloid. Plastic balls are thought to move slower than celluloid ones owing to the size differences. Besides, players also experience less spin when playing plastic balls than that of celluloid balls.

It would be best if you tried both of them to figure out what style you prefer.

Seam vs. Seamless

The ping pong balls can be divided into two types based on how they are created. 

The first type is seam balls, which are made by gluing two halves. The seam balls can be cheap, but they are not as durable as seamless balls. 

Star-rating

People often print stars on the ping pong balls to indicate the quality of the ball. The maximum star-rating is three, showing the highest quality, durability while no star, 1 or 2 stars would represent for the lower quality.

3-star balls are compatible with tournaments while 1-star and 2-star table tennis balls incline to casual and training games.

Are Gaming Chairs Bad for Your Back? – An Amazing Answer

Best Ping Pong Balls

best ping pong balls 2020

The following list will show you the best ping pong balls available on the market. These brands are not only famous for their ping pong games but also other sportswear. Let’s check them out.

  1. Nittaku Ping Pong Balls
  2. Butterfly 3 Star Balls
  3. MAPOL Ping Pong Balls
  4. JOOLA Ping Pong Balls
  5. Stiga Ping Pong Balls

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, this article has provided you with useful information on the best ping pong balls. The choice depends on your level and your budget as well. 

If you are just a casual player, go for the budget but good enough ones. In case you are prepared for competitions, you should familiarize yourself with the tournament balls.

Thanks for reading.

Filed Under: Sports

August 25, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

Are Gaming Chairs Bad for Your Back? – An Amazing Answer

For any game players who continuously stick to their gaming chairs and their desks for a long time, your lower and upper back problems can be absolutely no joke!

You might have sometimes in the past tracked down carefully to see what is the root of the problem. Is it because the desk is not high enough, or your computer is too far away? Are gaming chairs bad for your back?

If you are still confused and want to find out the answer, our article, therefore, would be a useful source to refer to. Let’s break this down!

Are Gaming Chairs Bad For Your Back?

Terribly-designed gaming chairs can stand a high chance of damaging your back, especially the non-adjustable type of chairs. 

Imagine seating yourself or such a long time in the same chair without being able to adjust posture, in what way do you expect your body to react? 

The body’s unchanging position will transmit some specific signals to the brain, causing the abdominal muscles to loosen and relax instead of doing its supposed job – supporting the back.  

Due to the minimum support the back gets from the midriffs area, it has to take the sole responsibility in holding the body uptight. Obviously, this constant pressure will lead to lots of back problems after some time. 

Be that as it may, gaming chairs might not be the vilest enemy to your back, but your poor posture is the one to blame.

Bad posture can cause back pain

If you’ve been using adjustable gaming chairs but the back pain doesn’t seem to diminish after a while, you should probably take a serious look at your sitting posture. This might be where your back pain stems from. 

Typically, some common posture that can cause back pain includes slouching, hunching forward positions. Sitting in the position in which your back is overstretched and twisted over and over again will result in a muscle problem called lumbar strain. 

This strain will cause ongoing pain in your lower back area and stiffen your back to the point where it would be hard for you to move comfortably in your gaming chair.

Overall, gaming chairs can be bad for your back if chosen incorrectly. However, try to consider other potential aspects that can be the cause of your back pain, such as your sitting posture. 

How To Protect Your Back When Sitting On Gaming Chairs?

To stay as far away as possible from back pain, the most crucial thing to take into consideration is your posture. But what is the ideal sitting posture, and how can you achieve that?

Normally, there are no standard rules to be applied because it can be fairly variable depending on each particular back condition. But there are the few universal tips that you can keep in mind to optimize the experiences without having to endure constant back pain. 

The key factor to bear in mind is the comfort level of your spine curves. They need to be well-kept and firmly supported by the gaming chair. To achieve that, make sure you pay attention to your body alignment with the chair backrest. 

Good and bad posture

Although keeping the straight-line posture for a long time might be challenging and uncomfortable at first, especially if your back is used to the slouching position, just take your time to see how it goes.

Once you familiarize yourself with the new posture, your overall back condition will be remarkably improved. The abdominal muscles will be strengthened to give you maximum comfort and back protection.

Additionally, it would be best if you seat yourself evenly and comfortably across the chair while keeping it closer to the desk. Try not to perch or only sit on either side of the chairs cause that can mess with your spine curves and core muscles.

How to Store a Mattress

How To Choose The Best Gaming Chairs For Your Back

As we mentioned above, any gaming chair without adjustable features is an absolute threat to your back’s health. So it’s advisable to prioritize this feature when seeking out suitable gaming chairs for your personal need.  

To be more specific, the gaming chair needs to be comprised of adjustable seat height, armrest, backrest, and cushion to properly support your lower, upper back as well as your core muscles such as shoulders, hips, arms, legs. 

For instance, when doing works that required intense concentration, you can sit upright pleasantly by fixing the backrest position at 100°. This backrest angle will offer ultimate supports for your spine, especially if you are in a straight-lined position for a long time. 

Backrest Angle Adjustment

Five Best Gaming Chairs

When it comes to the best gaming chairs for your back, here are some of our suggestions that you can refer to when picking out your own.

1. BestOffice PC Gaming Chair

2. RESPAWN 110 Racing Style Gaming Chair

3. XRocker SE 2.1 Gaming Chair

4. Homall Gaming Chair 

5. OFM Racing Style Gaming Chair

Final Words

Are gaming chairs bad for your back or not? We hope that our post has satisfied your curiosity and thoroughly answered your question. 

If you have other questions related to this topic, please don’t hesitate to drop your comments down below, and we will answer them for you!

Filed Under: Home

July 6, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

How to String a Weed Eater with Two Holes: Easy Guide for Using Your Two-hole Weed Eater

What is more enjoyable than taking care of your green garden while breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the trees’ shadow? However, many of us get annoyed by the weed eaters when we need to use them to cut the overgrown grass layers but do not know how to string a weed eater with two holes. Hence, in this article, we will guide you on how to do it step by step.

Keep on reading to take away some helpful tips!

How to String a Weed Eater with Two Holes – Preparation

how to string a weed eater with two holes husqvarna
  • Tools
  • Weedeater
  • A string
  • A small scissor

Yes, we all know that we need a string and a weed eater to do this. But what is important here is that we must choose a suitable line for that specific weed eater.

Make sure you select a line with the right diameter size for your weed eater. If you use a string that is bigger than the sizes of the holes, the line will not fit the holes, or even if it can stick inside the hole, it will be hard (or impossible) for you to take out next time you want to replace it. 

To know the right string for your weed eater, do not judge with your eyes only, but take some time to read the operator’s manual.

We recommend you to have a scissor. This scissor is not for cutting, but for pulling the string out when the string is stuck inside. The scissor should be small and unsharpened.

A scissor can be helpful if the string is just a little bit bigger than the holes. But if the string is too big, then you will have to change a new one.

Place

It would be best if you did this in a spacious area and would be better off without kids or animals around. If you can do this in your garden alone (or only with other adults), that would be much better.

How to String a Weed Eater with Two Holes – Step by Step Guide

how to string a craftsman weed eater with two holes

Step 1: Turn off Your Weed Eater

You should never try to string your weed eater when the engine is on. To turn it off, decide which is the type of your weed eater first. There usually are two types of weed eater: electric weed eater and gas-powered weed eater.

For electric weed eaters, please turn it off by pressing the off button, or unplug it.

For gas-powered weed eaters, press the off button.

Step 2: Let the Engine Cool Down, and Remove Its Spool Back

If you just finished cutting grass with your weed eater, do not touch its head or remove anything right away because it might burn you. There’s no need to rush everything and hastily touch it only after a few minutes to check if the device is cool enough. Let’s stay away from your weed eater and give it around 5-10 minutes or more to cool down completely.

When the weed eaters’ head is cool enough, now we can remove its spool back. To do that, you can squeeze the tabs together, twist them, and take the cup out.

Step 3: Clean up

After removing the spool back out of the weed eater, try to ensure there is nothing left inside the spool carefully. That can be the string you used last time, or grass, dirt, soil, or something else.

Step 4: Cut the Line into Two

how to string a homelite weed eater with two holes

In the “Preparation” part above, we already suggest you choose the right size of the line. In this part, we will need to cut it in the right length.

Now, go back to the manual again to know how long the string should be to be a good fit with your weed eaters’ spool. Then, cut the lines at least the same length as what the manual suggests. Longer lines are ok because you can fix it later, but shorter lines will not work.

Step 5: Put Two Lines in Two Holes

Hold the cup you already took out from the weed eater, and look in the middle of it to spot the two holes in two sides. 

Now, put the first line into the first hole. Make sure you feel or hear the “click” sound so that you can know the string sticks tightly in the hole. The reason why I talked in detail about choosing the right size of the strings is that if the string is too big or too small, then you can never finish this step to use your weed eater.

Step 6: Scroll the Two Line around the Spool

Now, after your two lines stick tightly in the hole, start to scroll both lines around the spool and stop when you nearly finish. Stop scrolling when your lines are around 11 inches left.

Now, look for the exit holes, and push those last part of lines in.

Step 7: Put the Spool Back on the Weed Eater

After you put the lines in the exit holes, now slide or twist the whole spool back to your weed eater. The lines now should be moving freely. 

Step 8: Last Check

how to string a stihl weed eater with two holes

After you have done the work, take some minutes to check if your weed eater can work properly or not, and make it start in the right way.

Turn your weed eater on and pay attention to how it works to spot anything wrong. If it doesn’t function properly, take the cup out and check if there are any malfunctions.

If the weed eater works appropriately, then congratulations. Now you can begin your gardening right away.

What To Choose Between The Echo Vs Stihl Trimmer?

Sum up The Guide

We broke down the whole process in specific steps above for you to know exactly what to do, and you might find it a little bit complicated. But in general, putting two strings onto a weed eater is not so big of a deal. 

First, you need to choose the right string for your weed eater. Then take the cup (spool back) out of the strimmer and hold that cup on your hand.

Cut your string into two, then spot two holes in the middle of the cup and insert each line into each hole.

After that, scroll the string until the end, and put the whole cup back into the weed eater.

Done! That’s a sum up. Easy right?

Warning: Keep it Safe for Kids and Pets

how to string a echo weed eater with two holes

A weed eater is a kind of machine used to strim grass, leaves, and other unwanted plants. And you should keep in mind that anything with sharp blades or shapes for that kind of activity is not children-friendly.

Before you use or test your weed eater after you’re done with stringing it with two holes, you should make sure there are no kids and pets around. They are playful and might run to you in the middle of the work and hurt themselves. 

Final Words

Gardening once in a while might give us a “headache” if we have no idea how to deal with a weed eater – an essential tool for the most fundamental activity in gardening (cutting grass).

In this article, we have shown you how to string a weed eater with two holes. Following our step-by-step guide will make your gardening time more enjoyable. Have a good time in your garden!

Filed Under: Gardening

July 5, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

Is Your Steak Cemented Together with Meat Glue?

Is Your Steak Cemented Together with Meat Glue

If your fridge happens to contain any yak, elk or Llama meat, you have a treat coming, according to an ad for transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue). Slap these singular meats together with meat glue and you can now “create an Exotic Mixed Grill Filet.” Or how about gluing some “Swordfish with Salmon to create a Seafood Filet?”

These unique combos of meat, fish, and even pasta (shrimp pasta anyone?) are now possible thanks to an enzyme called transglutaminase (TG).  Extracted from animal blood or soil bacteria, these enzymes are processed into white powder that’s used as an adhesive to bind proteins to proteins.

Food producers can bind together shreds of meat or fish and mix them with a glue mush that’s shaped into items like chicken nuggets, fish balls or imitation crabmeat.

In commercial kitchens, various cuts of meat that normally would be discarded or ground up can be slathered with glue, rolled up tight and refrigerated overnight to fuse the contents together. (For the visually curious, here are some products that have been shaped with a meat glue kit sold on the internet). The glued meat is then cooked to 165 degrees, the temperature the FDA considers to be safe for this product.

Some of the perceived problems of meat glue are centered on this cooking temp. Some claim the meat on steaks cooked rare or medium rare does not reach 165 degrees, opening up the possibility of bacteria forming inside glue pockets.

Breathing in TG in powder form is a definite no-no. Like all coagulants, it’s dangerous stuff to ingest.

There’s also a debate about an off-taste in meat glue, having to do with ammonia that’s discussed in The French Institute’s Tech’n Stuff Blog. In addition, the article raises a troublesome point regarding the testing of TG, which was paid for by its’ manufacturer. The test subjects were rats and they ingested the meat glue not through their mouths, but through stomach tubes. This means no tests were carried out on the effects of meat glue traveling through the delicate tissues of mouth, throat and esophagus. Also, no long-term tests (over 2 years) appear to have been carried out.

I’m also less than thrilled by the way meat glue is tested for freshness. The blog suggests rubbing a bit of the powder into raw chicken. If the glue smells like plain old chicken, it’s past its prime. If however the glue smells like wet dog, super — it’s nice and fresh. Don’t know about you, but for me, the stench of wet dog is at the very bottom of worst odors in the universe.

The French Institute post was written over 2 years ago when TG was a new product, untried by many chefs and difficult to find in other countries. The lively, enthusiastic comments suggest many chefs were champing at the bit to experiment with the stuff. And why not? Beef is ever more expensive.  Meat glue saves commercial kitchens money, cuts down on waste, is easier to mold and cut and makes a more uniform food presentation.

On the consumer’s side of the fence, rising beef prices are also a concern. But aside from that, I’ll take my meat neat, thank you, hold the glue.

Are you, on the other hand, like numerous chefs, okay with this product?

Filed Under: Money Saving Tips

July 5, 2020 By Natalie 1 Comment

Oh No! Here Come the Budworms Again!

Oh No! Here Come the Budworms Again!

In passed summers I have lost countless battles with budworms as they happily gorged themselves silly on my geraniums and petunias.  As tiny, newborn worms, they stealthily bored into tender, young flower buds and ate their way out, speedily decimating every bud in flowerpots. Fatter and feistier, they then feasted on every blossom in sight. And when THOSE were chomped up, it was on to the leaves, which they carved up into clumps of dried out, Swiss cheese. (Budworm info in detail.)

 Along the way, I tried every Internet remedy to fight the voracious little monsters except poisonous insecticides. (These can be tricky. The budworms have to actually lap up the newly sprayed stuff, a toughie when you’re deeply concealed in thickly wrapped flower buds). Instead I sprayed the petunias and geraniums with soapsuds, coated them with vegetable oil, sprinkled them with onion powder, peppered them with chilies, planted smelly garlic in their soil and offered them beer and tobacco juice. All of which gave them a big laugh as they went on their merry rounds  destroying all my flowers.

Last summer I finally admitted defeat and forever banished petunias and geraniums from my garden. After scrubbing my flowerpots clean of the previous year’s soil, I gave some dahlias a whirl. For awhile they flourished. In fact for more than a while. But late in the summer, guess what appeared on my dahlia leaves? Yep. The budworms were back. (A master gardener writes about bad bug, budworms.)

So this year dahlias too were out. Yesterday I hit the downtown farmer’s market.  Extremely busy lately with a large project, I only had time for some fast web research prior to my flower selection. Not surprisingly, many of the market people who sold the flowers acted as though they have never even HEARD of budworms.  Others claimed their plants NEVER attracted budworms. And still others were as mystified as I about what plant species to try next.

Looking over some lovely verbena plants, about which I knew exactly zero, I noted they had very tiny flower buds, skimpy pickings, it seemed to me, for budworm’s fierce appetites. Deciding that verbena’s small delicate blooms would be far less appealing to budworms than chubbier petunia, geranium and dahlia blooms; I purchased some cheery pink verbena plants.

When I got home, I then made the mistake of searching for “verbena budworms” on the web. Almost instantly, the woeful picture you see above popped up. Are no flowers safe from this crawly scourge?

And so my quest for budworm-free flowers continues…

Filed Under: Gardening

July 5, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

Sorry, CVS, I Don’t Do Cashier Work for Free

cvs self checkout

Yes, I know CVS paid a bundle to tear out their cash registers and replace them with self-service check-out stations so customers would have the convenience (cough, sputter, eye-roll) of checking-out all their own items, but I for one will not be jumping on the CVS customer-as-cashier bandwagon in New York City.

Number one, their new self-service machines slow everything down. With so many disparate devices cobbled together at the check-out stations, they don’t work so hot together. Some stop in mid-transaction and customers have to cool their heels waiting for CVS employees to materialize from where ever they hide out to fix the glitches. And some out and out refuse to do their stuff.  At two nearby CVS stores, each has one totally kaput self check-out.

Number two, by the time I hit my CVS store, I’m finally finito with my errands and am loaded down with shopping bags from other stores so I’m in no mood to deal with the pain-in-the-neck chore of self check-out. To free my hands for the task, I have to drop my shopping bags on the floor (where, being plastic, they immediately flop over and spill contents in every direction (which is not even to DISCUSS the floor bacteria situation). Then comes all the rooting through pocket and purse for eyeglasses to locate barcodes and punch in numbers. I should also add I get plenty of daily exercise, so I have zero need for the additional exercise of schlepping items (some big, awkward and heavy) from basket to bar code to shopping bag, while squinting for bar codes and feeding credit cards, coupons and cash into different talking slots.

Crankiness aside, I resent doing the same work as a cashier and not getting paid for it. I don’t like working for free. And if CVS expects me to do the exact same work as a cashier and receive zero payment, what other free labor do they have in store for me further down the line? Stocking shelves? Slicing cartons open, steam-cleaning floors?

At least CVS hasn’t abolished cashiers altogether. As Yet. Each store still employs at least one cashier for renegade shoppers like myself who by-pass all the self  check-out malarkey. I over-heard one of those teenage cashiers express disapproval of CVS customers who refused to change their old ways, move with the times and use the self check-outs.  Clearly A dream customer for today’s hard-line corporations, this young cashier actually sees self-service check-out as a progressive move — not as an aggressive maneuver to slash payroll costs and increase company profits. What’s your opinion on this CVS move?

Filed Under: Money Saving Tips

July 5, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

NYC to LaGuardia on the Cheapo M60

NYC to LaGuardia on the Cheapo M60

To catch a flight at LaGuardia during the Christmas holidays I could do one of two things: either grab a cab and cough up well over $40.00 OR jump on an M60 bus and pay a sweet little $2.25.

I had already taken the M60 from FROM LaGuardia to New York City when time wasn’t a factor and there was no plane to catch at the other end. But getting out of the city at holiday time can be a dicey proposition. With masses of travelers on the move and roads packed with drivers with short tempers, a traffic snarl could  easily morph into a highway nightmare that could mean a missed flight. And with Christmas flights fully booked, there would be no hopping on the next flight out.

So to maximize my chances of getting to LaGuardia on time, I left my apartment on Sunday morning at 9:00 am, three whole hours before flight takeoff. My plan: Take a Madison Ave bus from 83rd Street to 125th Street, where I’d catch the M60 (map route here). After a cold 20 minutes wait for the uptown bus, I hit my first snafu when the driver informed me his bus didn’t go to 125th Street. But not to worry, he said, I could catch the M60 on Broadway over on his West Side route. Not good – this would be traveling west when I wanted to go east but I had no time to fool around and check other uptown bus routes. I’m not sure how long it took because I was too busy searching for an M60 Bus stop, but the west side blocks seem to stretch on forever by the time I pulled my book bag suitcase off the bus at Broadway and 117 Street. The entrance to Columbia University was only yards away, nicely convenient for students already congregated at the m60 bus stop with their luggage. As the minutes ticked by more students appeared with more suitcases, including a long weirdly shaped green canvas bag that could have doubled as a body bag for skinny corpses. Another standout was a large blazing orange case made of some rigid material shiny as ice.

Around 9:45 an M60 appeared (bus schedule here) and we all clamored aboard. It was one of the new city buses, double long, but just as narrow as the old ones. Which meant by the time we were all seated, suitcases of every size and shape littered the center aisle. With each new stop, more suitcases were added to the obstacle course. For boarding passengers dragging on ever more suitcases, it was like snaking their way through a minefield. And for the numerous standees wedged between suitcases, it was a major challenge trying to maintain their balance while not knocking over luggage or bashing into other passengers.

Because the traffic was Sunday morning light, we pretty much sailed from west to east on 125th Street. The sparse highway traffic in Queens behaved too.

Our first stop at LaGuardia turned out to be on the unfamiliar looking lower level, an area where passengers usually depart from the airport rather than arrive. Anxiously awaiting us, a crunch of travelers surged forward and begged the driver to let them re-board. Apparently they had gotten off at the wrong stop on a prior M60. Not surprising, since the driver neglected to announce which airlines were at that particular terminal. New to LaGuardia, the discombobulated passengers had probably assumed the first stop encompassed the whole airport. To avoid a similar fate I jumped up and asked the driver which terminal housed my departing US Air flight. I had two more stops to go, he said.

To add some additional nail-biting tone to the day, US Air was renovating their space in the terminal and instead of two separate interior lines – one for check in and one for security, both lines had been combined into one VERY long, VERY slow-moving line. Somewhere along the snail-creeping trail I lost track of time. When finally I cleared security and headed for my gate, I had exactly thirty-five minutes till flight time. Just enough time to search for a yogurt in the jammed food court, gulp it down and rush to my gate where as usual a multitude of Christmas stand-byes were waiting to jump into any unclaimed seats.

Lesson learned: Allowing three hours door to door to LaGuardia on the M60 was adequate if the traffic was light. But with busier traffic, giving yourself more time could be a gift to your blood pressure.

Filed Under: Money Saving Tips

July 5, 2020 By Natalie Leave a Comment

20 Lowest Property Taxes in USA

Impatiently waiting for the real estate market to recover from the recession, my niece, spurred on by the $8,000 government tax credit for new homebuyers, finally jumped in and bought herself a house. Happily for her, she’ll be paying property taxes in Virginia, one of the twenty states that have the lowest property tax rates in the country.

Of these 20 low property tax states, the northern most state is Wyoming, which comes in at number 10. For our water-lover friends, eight of these bargain tax states are on the coastline: California on the Pacific: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina on the Atlantic and Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the states are in the sunny South or Southwest.

The rock bottom property tax rate on owner-occupied housing in the country is .14% in the Deep South State of Louisiana. The highest rate is in Texas at 1.76%. For an idea of the difference, if a house is valued at $126,800 in Texas, you would pay $2,232 in property taxes. If that same $126,800 house is sitting on Louisiana soil, you would plunk down $178 for your property tax bill. A tidy $2054 difference.

Property tax rates are only part of what can be a multi-layered property tax situation. Never having owned a home, I just found out that one reason Connecticut property taxes are so high at 1.50% is that a large part of that tax covers schooling. If you have children who go to public school there, lucky you, you don’t pay a dime for their education. But if you have children in Virginia, which has a much lower tax rate with less money going to support schools, you have to pay extra school fees to cover your children’s education. Where this difference really kicks in is when the kids leave school. In Virginia, residents will no longer have to cough up those school fees and can now live in their home with that low tax rate for the rest of their lives. Whereas In Connecticut, residents must continue paying that high property tax even though their children no longer utilize the schools. For retired people on fixed incomes, this could be a difficult proposition.

For a balanced tax picture in each state, the property tax rate and all its ramifications should be considered in combination with State, City and County Income and Sales taxes.

The Tax Foundation, a tax research group in Washington, DC, provides these numbers for the 20 Lowest State Property tax Rates on Owner-occupied Housing in the USA in 2008:

  1. .14% Louisiana
  2. .32% Alabama
  3. .43% Delaware
  4. .43% Washington DC
  5. .47% Mississpippi
  6. .48% West Virgina
  7. .49% South Carolina
  8. .51% Arkansas
  9. .51% New Mexico
  10. .54% Wyoming
  11. .56% Utah
  12. .57% Arizona
  13. .58% Colorado
  14. .61% California
  15. .63% Nevada
  16. .66% Idaho
  17. .67% Tennessee
  18. .69% Virgina
  19. .70% Kentucky
  20. .72% Oklahoma

For a more detailed property tax picture of the entire country, MSN Money features a rollover map covering inter-related tax information in each state.

Filed Under: Money Saving Tips

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