Buying board books for toddlers

I've got a two year nephew so had to venture into the children's section of the bookstore the other day. I'd found one set of Dr. Seuss board books at Costco, but wanted to get a few more.

I found the cutest series - BabyLit board books. They are "based" on children's classics - I bought Frankenstein, Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Frankenstein teaches anatomy, Huckleberry Finn teaches camping, and Moby Dick teaches about the sea. There are far more in the series and I was disappointed that my budget wouldn't let me buy more - and that by next year the toddler will be too old for them!

For anyone else who has to buy for little ones: http://www.babylit.com/shop-books/ (not affiliated with the company, just liked their products)

I can't wait to see what the kid (and his parents and older brothers) think of these!

White, Christmas Arrested in Tallahassee Store Burglaries

Just saw a coyote out in our lower pasture - in broad daylight

Big, full grown, healthy looking coyote - not something you want to see on a farm with livestock. Or in a location surrounded by residential properties where people have lots of pets. I went out on the porch and yelled at it, but since it was way down in the bottom pasture, about 300 yards away, it just looked around and ignored me.

Damn. I hate having to do this but I called the father of the family that is taking care of the farm. Last time we had coyotes hanging around he staked out the area where we'd been seeing them and took out one of them. The other one was shot in the backyard of one of the homeowners to the east of us, on the other side of the swamp.

We have prime wildlife habitat on our 60 acres. The bottom 30 acres is in woods and wetlands with a protected wildlife corridor for the wetlands that extends north and south from our east border. To the north a neighbor has 50 acres of mixed hardwoods, pine and wetlands. East and south of us are subdivisions with "ranchettes" between 3 and 7 acres - not big enough for keeping livestock so a lot of the lots have undisturbed woods. Across the highway to the north are 10-14 acre parcels, many of which have not sold and most of which have not been cleared - those used to be a hunting plantation, as is the land to the northeast.

There have been black bears spotted in the woods to the east of us. Back when we first bought here, the county forester came by for a timber assessment - on his way here he saw a large cat jump across the highway. He was sure it was a panther since it had a long tail and cleared the road in two bounds. We've seen alligators, otters and bobcats on the farm and welcome the red and gray foxes that live here. Birds - we have a wide variety, too many to list.

But a coyote bold enough to be out in the daylight that doesn't spook at the sound of a human voice - that is NOT welcome. I'm glad I don't have any foals due this spring.

NEW Simon's Cat! Catnip (A Christmas Special)

Best American holiday based commercial so far this year

Moving Windows 7 Pro to a new, larger hard drive with a system image file

I've got Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on a 128 GB SSD drive. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to keep programs and Windows from putting stuff onto the C: drive, Windows keeps filling it up and then complaining there is not enough room.

So after I saw a discussion of drives with a SSD buffer I ordered a 1 TB drive from NewEgg.com. I looked up how to clone Windows and found what sounded like good instructions for creating a system image with Windows Backup and then restoring that to the new, larger drive. I even checked several sources, compared the instructions and thought I was set.

I created a system image on one of the other hard drives (I have a 3 TB and a 4 TB drive, partitioned into 1 to 2 TB sectors), created a system recovery disc per the instructions, disconnected the SSD drive, connected the new drive, put the recovery CD in, and rebooted. No joy.

First problem - error message: "This very of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows." I tried booting with the Windows installation disc and selecting Repair Windows installation - same message.

So I hooked my SSD drive back up, booted back to Windows, did some internet research. Finally after going round and round, I realized that maybe it was that the SATA bus that the DVD/CD burner was on was set to IDE while the other SATA busses were set to AHCI (I think that's the scronym) - I reset all the SATA busses to IDE, rebooted, SUCCESS - the recovery disc let me get to the system image restore menu. I jumped through all the hoops, clicked on Finish to let it start restoring the image to the new drive. SHIT!

New error message: " The system image restore failed. Windows cannot restore an image to a computer that has different firmware. The system image was created on a computer using BIOS and this computer is using EFI."

OK - maybe I needed to create a new system image with the computer set to IDE for the SATA busses. So I re-connected the SSD drive, went through all the steps to create a new system image AND yet another system recovery disc, disconnected the SSD, reconnected the new drive, and tried again.

No joy. I am stuck.

Has anyone else tried to do this?

I have looked at using third party software - and there are several free versions I've seen recommended. But I don't understand why the Windows Backup system image will not restore. And the third party software most recommended - Macrium Reflect - seems to have some problems with Windows 7 Pro from my reading in their support forums.

Brining the Thanksgiving turkey - suggestions?

I went out today and tried to do all my Thansksgiving dinner makings. This will be the first time in a long time I have cooked my own Thanksgiving meal. Usually we go to the in laws, but there has been no invite this year so I'm planning on my own!

On the way home, NPR Science Friday had a segment on the chemistry of cooking the Thanksgiving meal. They dealt with cranberry sauce, making mashed potatoes that are not gluey, and finally cooking the turkey. The chemist who Ira Flato had on said she was in favor of brining the turkey.

I've never brined anything but this sounds interesting. According to the guest it would be moister and actually cook faster. Since I've gotten the turkey early - and found once I got home that there really isn't room in the freezer for it - I have time to thaw out the turkey and brine it before next Thursday.

I've looked at a few recipes for brining - on the Food Network (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alexandra-guarnaschelli/thanksgiving-turkey-brine-recipe.html), Good Eats (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe.html) and AllRecipes (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/thanksgiving-turkey-brine/). So far, I'm tending towards the last recipe. The first two seem very sweet and I prefer a more savory bird.

Any suggestions, recipes, links?

Interesting - just got my first 2016 polling call

First they asked if I were registered to vote, then party affiliation. Then wanted to know who I would vote in the primaries between Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton - I picked Warren. Then they had a longer list of candidates, including Warren, Clinton, Biden, Cuomo, and some guy I've never heard of - O'Malley?

Then they asked who I would vote for Senator - Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alan Grayson, and somebody else - I said Grayson.

What is interesting is that the survey from 407-205-0191 at the end mentioned Doug Kaplan. The first result in a search from him was from an old DU thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021579317

** A note on my choices during the survey - I have not decided who I will vote for in 2016. I picked the more liberal candidates rather than the standard ones to push the poll more to the left.

Bizarro problem! - some sites think I'm in Mexico!

It started out with Lowes.com - I'd be researching products, try to get back to my search results, get a 404 - Page Not Found error page in Spanish. When I left that page, I was on the Lowes Mexican site and unable to get back to their American site. It's happened over and over. I cleared my Lowes cookies, no change. I can search for products, look at a few then with no warning or change in what I am doing, it goes to the Mexican Lowes site.

That started happening about 3-4 weeks ago. Just now, I was trying to price prescriptions at Costco.com and when I clicked on the Pharmacy link from their main page, suddenly I'm on the Costco.com Mexican page - and I can't get back to their US page!



Obviously something on my computer is doing this, I thought - but my husband tried going to Lowes on his computer, same deal. he'd look at a few things, then suddenly he's in Mexico.

Neither of us are Spanish speakers, so we don't have our computers set to Spanish as a language. Then only thing I do in any language other than English is use Google Translate to translate things INTO English. The only time I've been to Mexico is virtually in Geoguessr.com.

I'm using the latest version of FireFox, but it does it in Internet Explorer, too. On my husband's computer, it does it in Chrome as well.

Any ideas on how to find out what is sending us to Mexico and how to stop it?

French authorities still looking for "Disneyland tiger"