While traveling through other states, I find the road signs on the interstate to be interesting. One sign suggested that you should move your car to the shoulder if you are involved in a minor traffic accident.

To me, this seemed like a common sense act which did not need to be posted on a sign. However, I suppose there are some people who would wait in their lane until the police came.

Probably mouth breathers.

While traveling through a particularly backwoods area, my wife was surprised to see a highway worker trimming grass around road signs with a gas powered weed whacker. This area was so rural that I guess she expected to see them using a goat on a leash instead.

We were cruising down the interstate on a recent multi-state trip when we noticed a sign, “Rest area 2 miles”. The next sign following said “Next rest area 79 miles”.

So I asked Kathy if she needed to use this rest area or if she wanted to wait. She said that she would wait.

79 miles later we saw the next rest area sign. Across it was a magnetic sign which said “Rest area closed”.

We really needed that information 79 miles ago!

OK. A year or so ago I wrote about oven ready lasagna noodles. Ever since that time, I have had over 700 hits per month on “oven ready lasagna noodles”. So, I get the feeling that this a hot topic.

So, here is the deal. If you buy oven ready lasagna noodles, you don’t have to cook them, they are already cooked, just dehydrated. You can just add them to the sauce and go from there. BUT you do have to have enough moisture in the sauce to rehydrate the noodles other wise, they will turn out crunchy or tough.

Since my lasagna pan is about an inch shorter than the noodles, I like to cook my noodles so that they are flexible when I put them in the pan. Now, since I am going to cook them anyway, I may as well get the uncooked kind since the cooking time is only 2 minutes longer than the oven ready noodles.

In short, if you use the oven ready noodles, you need to have a moist sauce. But if your sauce is too moist, the lasagna will be sloppy and if it is not moist enough, it will be tough. Rather than deal with this issue, I like to make sure that my noodles are cooked and that my sauce is firm.

FWIW

A few years ago, an elderly couple bought our neighbors house. The couple was from out of state and had no friends or family in the area. The house that they bought was large, expensive, rather secluded with a lot of steps and five garages. Rather odd for a couple that can barely get around. Plus, they pretty much kept to themselves.

We haven’t seen him in several years. We think that he died a few years back. He had a history of heart problems. There was no notice in the paper regarding his death but since they were not apart of the community, there was no reason to do so.

Well, their house is for sale. A few weeks ago, there were about a dozen trash bags sitting along the curb waiting for pickup and a for sale sign in the yard. It was as if someone had cleaned the house out of stuff like ketchup and sugar and flour and salt and pepper, all of the basic staples of a house. We think that she has either died or has moved into a retirement community.

Still the question remains, why would someone who has no friends or family in the area move to Lowell from out of state? The house that they bought was expensive and ill suited for an elderly couple. They had no need for the 5 garages and all of the steps and since they had no need to be in the area, they would have been better served to have purchased a house elsewhere.

The only thing that might interest them about the house was the seclusion. It has to make you wonder why.

In case you are wondering, there is now a week long gap in my blog.  This is do to a technical hiatus.

My blogging program, Word Press, is out of date and they have been urging me to upgrade it.  So, last weekend I attempted to do  the upgrade.

While I upgraded my blog program, it also wiped out every thing in my blog.  BAH!  However, thanks to the help of my every resourceful son-in-law,  John, he walked me through the steps to restore my blog.   With the exception of a week long gap, I am now back in business.

A huge thanks to John for all of his help!

I don’t think I will be attempting any upgrades anytime soon.