Today’s tip is for PC users, specifically anyone using Windows 10. If you use a Mac or something else, there’s probably a way to do what I’m going to talk about, just not the way I suggest. If you know what it is, let me know.

I watched a YouTube video that had twenty tricks for using Windows 10. I wrote down five of the tips and want to share one with you.

There could be many reasons you want to magnify what you see on your screen. All the ways I’ve ever seen tried were annoying to deal with. The tip I learned today is easy to apply, easy to remove, and does a great job of increasing everything on the screen.

Whenever you want to magnify the screen, hit the Windows button and the + button (which is also the = button.) A full-screen magnifier will appear. You can increase or decrease with just one click. Super easy. When you are done, just X out.

Try this out yourself, and you’ll see how handy this tip is. It’s also easy to remember because the + sign can remind you of magnifying things, which is helpful no matter how bad your eyesight is.

I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid, I don’t know when that love started, but there is a family story that when I was six, I told someone I wanted to be a paleontologist. 

My favorite dinosaur has always been the brontosaurus, even when there were no brontosauruses. I would tell that to anyone, whether they asked me or not.

Last Saturday, our friends visited with their daughters. Ellie is three, and Emmy is one. Ellie and I have discussed dinosaurs before, so I knew she’s a fan. 

Ellie came into my house, and after giving me a thank you card for her birthday gifts (she took it out of the envelope herself), she asked if she could play with my dinosaurs. I have four dollar store dinosaurs that Hubby gave me for Valentine’s Day a few years back. I, of course, told Ellie to have fun.

After a few minutes, Ellie picked up one of the dinosaurs and asked me what it was called. I told her it was a stegosaurus, and she said it was her favorite. I hope she tells everyone this, just like I did.

Most kids grow out of their love of dinosaurs. Ellie might too, or perhaps she’ll become a world-famous paleontologist. Either way, I’m just glad to have someone to play dinosaurs with.

If I say, “It’s supposed to rain the day after tomorrow,” that’s normal. But if I say, “It’s supposed to rain overmorrow,” you would wonder what I meant.

Overmorrow means “the day after tomorrow.” It disappeared from the common language in the early twentieth century. Who decided that? I think overmorrow is a useful word, and it takes the place of four words which seems handy.

I think it would be a good word to bring back. “The Zoom meeting is at 10 a.m. overmorrow.” See, it’s a useful twenty-first-century word. I need to find an influencer to bring this word back. Maybe Grammar Girl could do it. We can all use a forward-thinking word.

This title sounds like a show on the Food Network. Actually, a fun COVID-safe cooking show would be to have three contestants make a dish using only the food in their house. All the dishes would have the same theme. I don’t know how it would be judged, but it would be fun to see people’s homes and maybe realize that your own pantry isn’t nearly as full as some.

A long time ago, on a public radio show called The Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper would create a dish based on five ingredients from a caller’s fridge. It was an entertaining segment. Some of the callers had items I’d never heard of. I don’t think Lynne was ever stumped.

My pantry doesn’t have anything odd in it, just items that I don’t know what to do with. A while ago, I talked about the jar of lemon pie filling and how I enjoyed it just the way it was. Along with that jar, I had two jars of cherry pie filling. The cherry one wasn’t quite as good by itself, but I found two fun ways to enjoy it.

The first was to add a dollop of cherry pie filling to the top of a small bowl of chocolate pudding and spray whipped cream on top. Delicious!!!

Once the pudding was gone, I made a small bowl of just the pie filling and the whipped cream. That was good too. It didn’t take long to empty the two small jars. More items out of the pantry. Hooray!!!

I stumbled across a How It’s Made video that brought back a memory. This episode showed how chocolate coins were made. I found it fascinating, which is weird because I’m not fond of chocolate coins.

In the video, quality chocolate was melted to make the coins. My experience is that chocolate coins are mediocre at best. This is why, in December 2008, after I scarfed down a bunch of chocolate coins, I decided that enough was enough and gave up all chocolate for 2009. I almost had a couple of slips (the brown spots in those pancakes weren’t blueberries), but I successfully met my goal. Unfortunately, I didn’t lose any weight because I ate more cheesecake than normal (I looooove cheesecake.)

I had been afraid I was addicted to chocolate, but it turned out I just like the stuff, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Ghirardelli or chocolate coins. I’m not sure I’ve had any chocolate coins since 2008, but after watching this video, I’d like to try one again—just one.

March is National Celery Month.

This was a new one to me. I like celery. In fact, I eat it plain. It has a sweet, juicy flavor. I like it with ranch dressing or peanut butter too. But I didn’t know that this dieter’s friend had its own month. That’s good marketing.

It gets better than that. As I was researching National Celery Month, I found a contest. Duda Farm Fresh Foods, out of Oxnard, California, sells Dandy Celery. (I buy celery often, and I’ve never noticed the name on the bag. I’ll have to check the next time I’m at Walmart.) They have a great celery website, with a lot of recipes, an opinion poll, and a free contest to enter.

The Grand Prize is a $500 Visa gift card to “stalk” your fridge (their pun, not mine), a Vitamix blender, and fresh Dandy celery. That’s an impressive prize to promote celery. I encourage you to enter here.

I created my own celery survey.

• Do you like celery?
• If you do, how do you eat it?
• Do you:
  • chop it up in dishes?
  • scoop dips with a short stalk?
  • garnish your bloody mary?
  • eat celery in some other inventive way?

Let me know in the comments. I like it as food, not as a drink or garnish.

Good luck with the contest. It’s a great way to celer-brate a tasty vegetable.

I picked up a much-anticipated hold from the library, so I’ll be busy reading for the next twenty-four hours. Of course, it’s the newest J. D. Robb book, Faithless in Death.

I’ll be done with the book today, so a new, fun post will be out tomorrow. Happy reading.

I’m writing this just before dinner, and my tummy is wambling.

No, I don’t need to see a doctor because wamble is both a verb and a noun that means rumble. (You can have a wamble, and your stomach can wamble.) It can also mean to move unsteadily, which doesn’t seem to have any connection to a hungry stomach, but that’s English for you.

This word that we never use originated in the 1500s. I bet there was a lot of wambling back then.

The next time your stomach lets you know it wants food, tell it to stop wambling. It’s a fun word.

When I make a turkey dinner (for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, or even February 28, 2021), I make the same dishes every time. One of those items is pumpkin pie. My pumpkin pie isn’t fancy; I just follow the recipe on the back of a Libby’s can of pumpkin. It turns out good, but not amazing.

If you read the above list, you know I made a turkey dinner last Sunday. We had a turkey in the freezer that we wanted to use, so we invited friends over and made the whole shebang.

I normally buy frozen pie crust for my pumpkin pies, but I had a premade graham cracker crust in the pantry, and I wondered if I could use it instead of a normal flakey crust.

Since I’m trying to empty my pantry, I decided that I should use the graham cracker crust no matter whether it tasted okay or not. In fact, I used up a ton of items from my pantry to make this dinner. I was thrilled.

So I crossed my fingers and used the graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie. And lo and behold, I got more compliments on this pie than any other pumpkin pie I have ever made. Even I thought it was better than usual.

I’m using a graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie from now on, no matter what time of year I make my turkey dinner. It’s a delicious surprise.

In like a lion, out like a lamb.

Welcome to March, the harbinger of spring, St. Patrick’s Day, and sometimes Easter (not this year, though.) I like March; it is a month of change and growth.

Unlike the winter months, there are lots of happy, positive March poems. I chose the first one I liked, but I bet there are many more that are just as good.

Written In March