Up to 3,000 free AAdvantage miles -- this one is easy!

    I just got 2,500 free AAdvantage miles from American Airlines, and you can get up to 3,000 free miles, too. The link is at the bottom of this post.
    I don't get to fly American very much. It's hard to out of Memphis. But I like the airline, and unlike Delta, they have not devalued their loyalty program to the degree that the Skymiles program has been gutted. So you can get a round-trip ticket on American for 25,000 miles far more often than on Delta. In fact, sometimes American offers round-trip tickets for only 15,000 miles.
    In addition, AA miles transfer into the HHonors program at the rate of 6 miles to 10 HHonors points. It used to be 5-to-10, so even AA has been devalued a bit, but the ability to trade for HHonors points can be really helpful when you need a few extra hotel points.
    So what do you need to do? Just agree to receive some emails. For each weekly email (a few may come more often) you agree to receive you will get 500 AA miles. If you already are subscribed to one of the emails, you don't get that offer. I already received one email each week, so I only got 2,500 instead of 3,000 miles (the offer is for 2,500 miles, but after you sign up they give you an extra 500.)
    I was pretty impressed with the website making the offer. It featured an auction appraiser pretending to "appraise" my email address.
    By the way, there's nothing to stop you from setting up a separate email account to receive airline and hotel mail. Just be sure to visit the AA site before you try to sign up for this offer to change your email address. Personally, I like getting the NetSAAver fares and sweepstakes offers. You can cancel these emails later, but don't do so until your bonus points have posted to your account, with may take a couple of months.
    One other tip. If you are trying to keep points alive in a program you don't use very much, try earning a few miles with a rental car or hotel stay. HHonors lets you pick which airline you want to "Double-Dip" with, and I choose American from time to time just to keep some activity. This works for any airline.
    I calculate the value of these points as between $25 and $40. Not bad for getting some emails, most of which I'd like to get anyway. Oh, and you also get your choice of four different sweepstakes to enter. They didn't have a trip for one to Las Vegas, so I picked the family vacation to Hawaii. I can hear the hula music now! Oh, wait -- that's Lucy listening to Youtube.
    Here's the link:
Appraise to Win Sweepstakes

Good Luck!

Eagle reports death of Dean Faulkner Wells at 75

    The Oxford Eagle has reported the death of Dean Faulkner Wells, who was raised by her uncle, William Faulkner, after the death of her father.

Dean Faulkner Wells, 75, a novelist, died this afternoon at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford surrounded by family and close friends. She had been placed on life support after suffering a stroke. The niece of Nobel-prize winning author William Faulkner, Wells was the last surviving member of the children of William Faulkner and his siblings.
Earlier this year she published “Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi,” her recollections of growing up in Oxford. Her father, Dean Faulkner, died in a plane crash shortly before she was born. As a result, her uncle, William Faulkner, became her legal guardian and helped raise her. Visitation will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Wells’ home, 510 S. Lamar Blvd. A graveside service will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Peter’s Cemetery. Memorials may be made to: The Oxford Humane Society, P.O. Box 1674, Oxford, MS 38655. Waller Funeral Home of Oxford is in charge of arrangements.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns

    We've all heard the trite old saying, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." It takes on a whole new meaning when we look at the recent events in Norway, where deranged gunman managed to kill more than 60 people over the course of more than an hour. Nobody had a gun to stop the guy.
    We've had these kinds of mass shootings in the U.S., of course, but with one big difference. We are an armed society, and someone usually arrives on the scene pretty quickly to take out the miscreant. Not so in Norway, where the police have to seek special permission to carry a gun.
    In Norway,only beat police officers in patrol cars have immediate access to weapons. By law, however, they have to remain unloaded and locked in a box in the car unless authorization is given for their use. I can't help but think of Andy Griffith and Barney Fife and Barney's single bullet.
    Mass gun ownership doesn't translate into gun violence. In Switzerland, almost all younger adult males are considered a part of the militia and are required to keep a gun at their home. After leaving the militia they may keep their weapon but it is modified to make it semi-automatic rather than automatic. The bottom line is that everyone in Switzerland is armed.
    Does Switzerland have a massive gun problem? Nope. But if some nut job starts taking people out, it's not going to take two hours to get permission to use a gun, either. That guy's going down. Same thing in the United States.
    Read more about it in the New York Times: Unsettling Wariness in Norway, Where Police Are Rarely Armed
    Norman Lear tried to make fun typical American Archie Bunker, but soon found out that more people agreed with Bunker than with the liberal elites. Here's Archie's views on gun control. Mine, too, for the most part.

Petra to open in old Palmer's location

    Oxford is getting a new restaurant at the site of the old Palmer's restaurant across from the James Food Center. Or to be more precise, a very old restaurant is reopening its doors on a smaller scale.
    I saw some activity in at the building and stopped to ask if a new restaurant was coming in. Owner Maher Alqasas told me that he was reopening Petra, a Mediterranean restaurant that operated in the building which had been the site of the Oxford Steak Company some years ago. He didn't give me a start date, but it looked to me like it should be in the next two weeks. Like Palmer's, Petra will be B.Y.O.B., which means you can bring in a high quality wine for a fraction of what it would cost at other restaurants.
    Alqasas is doing away with the bar area that Palmer had that seated six patrons. Not sure if this is a good idea, but he said he needs more cooking area. Palmer had two tables, one seating four and one seating six and six more could sit at the bar for a total of 16. Alqasas will have three tables seating 14. I would think that sometimes circumstances might warrant the sharing of tables. If done right it can add to the fun.
    Alqasas also told me he planned to add some outside seating. Just to the left of the entrance is a little square graveled area. Not the most glamorous place to sit, but it would be nice enough if the weather is cooperative. He is going to add a couple of picnic tables, or perhaps one picnic table and two regular tables to this area. My thinking is this should make the difference between having enough business to break even and enough to turn a profit.
    Alqasas is fixing the building up a little bit. He's adding another window air conditioner and repairing or replacing the other one. So it should be nice and cool. He's gotten rid of the charcoal grill -- he said it was just too smokey, although it sure produced some good steaks.
    I'd like to see Oxford get more hole-in-the-wall, Mom-and-Pop type places that only serve a few people at a time. The big fancy places are great, but I like the dumpy places with great food where I can bring my own wine and have a great meal for half the price of what I would pay elsewhere. There was nothing fancy about Palmer's, but at each place setting he had a high quality wine glass. I hope Alqasas follows suit; I'll eat off paper plates and be happy, but I want a top-quality glass for my wine.
    Jinny's not a big fan of Mediterranean food, but hopefully there will be something on the menu she likes. Because I'm looking forward to Oxford's newest restaurant opening its doors.

Blogger is now stripping out my indent codes (sad face)

On my most recent blog post, I noticed my paragraphs weren't indented. I thought that was funny, since I go to great effort to put an ampersand, followed by "nbsp;". This has been producing an indented paragraph.

No more. On this blog post I'm putting in the codes, but as soon as I save it Blogger is stripping out my indent codes. What, pray tell, is the harm of allowing me to have an indented paragraph?

Menu ideas to please the kids and protect the wallet

¶Jinny travels quite a bit and cooking for the children often falls to me. Sometimes they don't like my cooking, but more often they don't like my menu choices.
¶I like to serve spaghetti with meat sauce and hamburgers with French fries. A family of three or four can enjoy either for under $5, which is music to my ears and wallet. Unfortunately, the children are of the opinion that I serve these entirely too often.
¶Few things are more dangerous to the family food budget than not having any idea what to prepare for supper. That's when the restaurants start beconimg, with their no-work meals that cost five to 20 times as much as a meal prepared at home.
¶We decided to have a family meeting to make a list of things the family can have for supper without too much work. Perhaps not understanding the purpose of the meeting, Ash suggested that one of our meals should be dinner at Proud Larry's.
¶Ah, what a teaching moment! I explained that a family of four couldn't eat at Proud Larry's for less than $60, and the tab could easily top $80. A meal cooked at home, on the other hand, costs from $5 to $20.
¶Here are some of the supper items we came up with. I am often at a loss as to what to cook, so now I have a list to refer to. I almost always buy my meat off the discount rack and usually stock up on staples when they are on sale. So cooking at home can be really cheap!

Here's our list:
Baked Ziti
Shepard's Pie
Pot Roast with potatoes
Steak and potatoes
Beef Stroganof (Hamburger Helper okay!)
Coc au Vin
Fried Shrimp and fries (from the freezer section)
Tacos
Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni
Poppyseed Chicken (just as good without the poppyseed)
Lasagna (homemade or frozen)
Breakfast for supper
Burgers and fries
Cube Steak (I have no idea how to cook this or exactly what it is)
Chicken Spaghetti or Ro-tel Chicken
Grill cheese and tomato soup (children's idea)
Chicken Cordon Blue (bought frozen in packs of one or two)
Hot dogs and fries or chips
Shrimp or mushroom risotto
Spaghetti (the children say I cook this way too much)
Kabobs
Grilled/BBQ chicken
Ham
Chicken or Turkey with dressing
Chicken Marsala
Chicken Tetrazzini
Fried Chicken
Friend pork chop
Fish sticks and fries
Fried or grilled fish

I'll likely update this list and post a few of our favorite recipes in the near future. Not that they're anything special; just recipes we've found in various cookbooks or online.

For tonight we're having a pot roast I bought off the discount rack a couple of months ago for less than $4. Tomorrow night we're going to grill some large boneless pork chops that I bought this weekend off the discount rack for $5.05. Hopefully we can limit our dining this week to ColRebSez's kitchen.

Simple tax better than outright ban on incandescent bulbs

    Folks are squabbling over light bulbs, particularly the ban on 100-watt incandescent light bulbs that goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2012. Eventually the ban will include standard 60- and then 40-watt bulbs as well. Small-base and oven lights are not included in the ban, and thank goodness, because just look at the small-base bulb in the photo. That is not acceptable!
    Republicans in Congress are talking about repealing the ban. The state of Texas is considering going into the light bulb business, much as Mississippi did with the manufacture of mirex back in the 1970s. I suspect Texas would have better luck than Mississippi.
    I'm a big fan of CFL bulbs, as I've said before. The recessed 65-watt floods cost little more than incandescent floods, and the twirly bulbs have come down greatly in price. While the first CFL bulbs were pretty dreadful, throwing off a eery blue light, they have improved greatly.
    In our home we have approximately 80 recessed and other 60- or 65-watt lights. It's not uncommon for a few hours each night for most of these to be on. I don't go around flipping off light switches and freely admit it (the CFL bulbs take a couple of minutes to warm up, which is a disincentive to flip them on and off). Let's just assume 30 bulbs in use for 15 hours per day. CFL bulbs use 14 or 15 watts to produce the light of a 65-watt bulb, so our total lighting usage is just under seven kilowatt hours per day. With standard bulbs, our lighting usage would be 28 kilowatt hours per day. Nationally electricity costs about 12 cents per kw/hour, so we're talking about a cost of 84 cents per day to light one's home versus $3.36. Monthly that comes to $25.20 versus $100.80. Multiply that by a hundred million households and you can see what a difference the use of CFL bulbs can make for our country.
    Electricity isn't gasoline, of course, and saving electricity won't necessarily solve the oil shortage. But energy is energy, and the more we save as a nation the more we will have. It's a national security issue.
    Nevertheless, I'm opposed to an absolute ban on incandescent bulbs. CFL bulbs, despite their improvements, do have an inferior lighting spectrum. Artists, museums, fashion designers and many others need lighting that will be free of any distortion, however small. Incandescent bulbs provide this.
    So what should our government do? Simple. Levy a tax on incandescent bulbs of a quarter or so per bulb. It's the government's way of telling people to switch to more energy-efficient lighting while still leaving the traditional bulbs for those who truly need them.
    Raise taxes on investments and people will invest less. Levy a tax on incandescent light bulbs and people will buy fewer of them. It's always better to discourage an activity through a tax than to ban it outright, and that's what our government should do with incandescent bulbs.
    As for me, I'm happy with my CFL bulbs, thank you.