What's New This Week? We were a couple of days late but we've posted the new October recipe on our web site recipe page. Go to www.runnerduck.com/rdcook.htm and check it out. While you're there check out some of the neat stores we link to.

Last Friday morning we got up and saw that the plants in our pond were tipped over and torn up . That could only mean one thing, the Raccoons were back! Fortunately it doesn't look like they got any fish but if you've ever tried to count fish it's very difficult, especially when there are about 35 of them milling about. We decided that we've had enough of these guys. Ken went and bought an electric fence power supply and all the insulators and wire. We made wooden stakes and attached two insulators each. One for the hot lead and one for the ground. Since the wires will go over some rocks and a wooden bridge we needed to provide a conductive path via the bottom wire. We drove a copper rod five feet into the ground, attached the ground wire to it and then on to the bottom insulators. We connected the hot lead to the top insulators and turned it on. We have a pretty good feeling that those hungry little critters will not be feeding on our fish any more.
Interestingly enough it looks like the moles are working with the Raccoons. When we got back from our weekend of fun we noticed that there were two fresh mole mounds pushing up a couple of stakes. We figure that the Raccoons have recruited the moles to knock the power lines into the pond to zap the fish and make for a free meal. Now we need to figure out a way to put an end to the moles.

     Have you heard of a .pdf file? Those are those terrific files that generally documents like technical manuals or flyers. The great thing about them is that they are fairly small files and the person that receives them cannot mess with them like you can with a Word document. You need Adobe Acrobat Reader™ to read these files and most people have Acrobat Reader™ installed on their computer. Many people have asked us how they might create a .pdf file so they can send a document that they don't want changed. You have a couple of options. Adobe sells the full blown Acrobat package. It's a great program but if you only have a few documents you want to convert to .pdf it's pretty spendy.
We've been trying another program that works really good and costs nothing, our favorite price. It's called pdf995 and makes it easy and affordable to create professional-quality documents in the popular PDF file format. Its easy-to-use interface helps you to create PDF files by simply selecting the "print" command from any application, creating documents which can be viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer. They have a couple of companion programs that you can check out while at their site. You will need to download and install two files to make it work. The Pdf995 Printer Driver and Free Converter.
Just go to www.pdf995.com and start sending PDF's.

Trick-or-Treat Candy Corn

     Being October it's time to start planning for Halloween. These corn husk wrapped candy corn treats will be really be a hit with those little crumb crunchers. You can also use them for serving candy at your Halloween party.

Here's what you'll need:

A package of corn husks wrappers
Orange yarn or ribbon
Candy corn

For trick-or-treat pour some candy corn into the corn husk and tie the ends. Make sure that the corn wrapper is closed so that the corn will not fall out.
For a candy serving dish tie the ends of the corn wrapper with the side open.
Fill it with candy corn or other candy and set them out for your guests to enjoy.

This is a very simple project that will be fun for the kids to make.

     We hope you enjoy Marilyn's Corner and look forward to all the fun things she brings you each week. If you have a fun project that would be suitable for our newsletter we'd love to share it with our readers. Just contact marilyn@runnerduck.com and we'll do the rest.

Remember we have all of our past projects archived on our web site at www.runnerduck.com. Just click on the Projects or Kids Only Eggs.

Halloween is coming fast and it's time to get those costumes on order. Here are three of the most popular costumes for that special little trick-or-treater that will be out collecting treats this year. Just click on the pictures to check them out.

(CLICK on the Pictures)

Here's another wonderful musical joke from our friend Jeff F.

The engineer of a train passing through Poland could see no lights because the power had been knocked out. "We're running out of coal," he said to his fireman, "but I think we're coming to Gdansk or Danzig, or whatever they call it. Let's stop and send the porter out to buy fuel."

"Can you see the sign on the depot?" The fireman replied, "It appears to be Danzig in the dark."

And the engineer shouted, "Buy coal, Porter!"

     The Tempos big swing band is available for hire. If you have a special event that could use the wonderful music of a classic sixteen piece big band be sure to contact thetempos@runnerduck.com. We perform all over the Seattle area for all sorts of events.

Pick of the Week

This week's pick comes from my collection of favorite videos. Harry Connick Jr. is one of those gifted performers who plays, sings, arranges, writes and acts. Although this video is 12 years old it is timeless! If you love hard hitting big swing bands then this video is a must have for your collection. I get goose bumps every time I see it and I don't see that ending any time soon.

(CLICK)

Remember, we have a link on our web site, www.runnerduck.com, to our ever popular Grammy® Shopper site. If you haven't been there yet just click HERE to see all the 2003 Grammy® winners complete with links to purchase any one of them.

      Do you like leftovers? I know there are a number of you out there that don't but there is also a large group that do. I fall into the latter group. I've noticed that some food actually tastes better the second time around. If you are one of those that likes leftovers then make your meals a little bigger and freeze what you don't eat. It costs minimally more to fix a larger portion and saves a lot of money the next time you eat it. Of course these leftovers make great lunches but quite often they can be combined with other leftovers to make another full meal. This day and age every little bit we can saves really helps.

If you have a conservation tip please send it to conservation@runnerduck.com and we'll post it in our newsletter.

The RunnerDuck web site is hosted by

This was submitted by our high finance piano player Wayne.

On Retirement

If you had bought $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.
Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.
This is my new retirement program; I call it my 401Keg program.

   THIS WEEK'S FREE RECIPE

• Crab Cakes:
  
• 2 Eggs
• 2 Tablespoons Parsley
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• Tabasco, to your taste
• 1 teaspoon Dry Mustard
• 2 Tablespoons Mayonnaise
• 2 Cups Flaked Crab
• 1/3 Cup Bread Crumbs
• Flour

Remember, if you have a recipe you'd like to share please send it to marilyn@runnerduck.com.

     Every month we post a new recipe on our web page. Be sure and check out the NEW October recipe at the RunnerDuck Kitchen Store.
We'd be happy to post your favorite recipe there or in our newsletter and give you credit. Just drop a line to marilyn@runnerduck.com.

We were out looking for good cookbooks with other crab cake or New England recipes and we decided to let you choose for yourself. All Recipes has more recipes than you can shake a kitchen spoon at. Just click on the link below and then enter "crab cakes" in the search box. You won't be disappointed.

(CLICK)

Be sure and visit the RunnerDuck Cookbook Store for other great savings on cookbooks and cooking supplies.

5 Drawer Tool Box

Circa 1940's

This is week three for this project and we're moving slow. By now you should have glued and cut your panels to size for the box and lid. We'll leave the list of materials up in case you haven't ordered them yet. If you missed something along the way you can always go back and check the previous weeks newsletters by visiting www.runnerduck.com/rdnews.htm

Here's what you'll need.

WOOD:
1/2" Oak 204" X 6"
1/2" Plywood 2' X 2'
1/4" Plywood 2' X 6'
1/2" Maple 19" X 72"
1/4" Maple 5" X 60"

HARDWARE:
We ordered all our hardware from Rockler and it arrived within a week. They had what we needed and their prices seemed fair. To place an order with them just click on the link above and enter the SKU numbers below.

Brass Plated Corners
1 package of 4 SKU 27508

Leather Handle
1 each SKU 90255

Brass Plated Unpinned Loops for Leather Handle
1 pair SKU 90241

Brass Plated Classic Oblong Catches
4 each SKU 89921

Butterfly Hinges
1 pair SKU 25783

Tool Box Lock
1 each SKU 79236

Briefcase Support
1 each SKU 34090

Brass Plated Locking Drawbolt
1 pair SKU 53538

It's time to start routing and dadoing the panels. This is pretty tedious so take your time and measure twice, cuss once ;-) Whether you use a dado or routed you'll need to clean up the ends of a lot of these cuts with a chisel.
The ends are the toughest to cut. Here are the pictures of both sides. Click on the pictures for a bigger image.

The bottom is a little easier. Dado or route 1/4" X 1/4" on three sides. The notch in the from two corners is 1/4".

The back is a little tricky. All the grooves are 1/4" X 1/4".

The front is all 1/4" X 1/4" groves.

The middle shelf is routed 1/4" X 1/4" all the way around.

The top is routed 1/2" X 1/4" on the front and back. The edges are 1/4" in 1/4" X 1/4".

I hope you can make sense of all this. I'm going to work on my drawings to make them better. Next week we'll put the box together.

We hope you enjoy our projects. Remember, if you ever have any problems with our projects just drop us a line and we'll try to help. Since we build every one of these projects we have a pretty good idea of how to get through them. We also make lots of mistakes so we can help avoid them. If you have a project that you would like to share please send us an email and we'll help get it published in the RunnerDuck review. We are looking for woodworking, gardening, crafts and kids projects so send us your thoughts at projects@runnerduck.com .

     If you forward these newsletters to your friends just send us their email address and we'll do the rest. Remember, we never share our email list with anyone, period! Just drop me a line or go to our registration page and sign up your friend.

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