Change Happens

Vacation in the Sun - Day One

2012-01-26T06:47:00.000-08:00

There's just no hope for this, with school bearing down on me and no end in sight to the legal work, I'm just going to have to throw the pix up on-line and do a very brief explanation.
The day after Christmas we joined M's sister and family on Marco Island, Florida. We flew into Miami and rented a car. The rental was reserved and paid for in full ahead of time and yet when we arrived they didn't have a car for us (so they claimed) and kept trying to get us to pay for an upgrade. They tried to tell us that rentals aren't guaranteed unless you pay for them in full up front. When we proved we did pay in full up front, they had nothing to say. We need to file a complaint with the BBB.

So we drove west out of Miami, which by the way, has really confusing streets. There are streets, roads, avenues, blvds. with all the same names, and east, west, north, south in front of them. So say you're on 34St N and you need to get to 8th Blvd. W, you will see 34St, 34th Ave., 8th St., 8th Ave. all while trying to find 8th Blvd. Once we got lost and looped the area a couple of times we realized avenues ran north and south, streets ran east and west, and major thoroughfares in the middle of the city were the dividing lines between north and south, and east and west. It's actually a very logical system if you know that going into it, but if you have a crappy rental car map that only shows the names of roads every 20 blocks or so, you can't see the big picture how things are laid out. That said, we eventually found our way out of Miami and drove west through Everglades National Park to get to the Gulf side of the peninsula and Marco Island.

Marco Island is a resort community for people with lots of money. I felt really out of place there. We shared a condo rental with M's sister and family that was older and not like the fancier high rises in the middle of town, and it was facing the beach. It was very comfortable and we could just pop downstairs and go to the beach at any time. I'll show you pix of it later and impress you with the beautiful beach they had there.

First, I'll show you our deep sea fishing photos. The first day we were on Marco Island we went a few miles into the Gulf on a fishing boat to try our hands at fishing. We caught tons of beautiful and a few weird looking fish. I caught my obligatory one fish with the first line I dropped and that was enough for me. I spent the rest of the time taking pictures.

While we were fishing a mama dolphin began following our boat. Initially we were full of the oohs and aahhhs at seeing a dolphin. It was even more special when her baby joined her and we could see the baby nursing from her in the water. Then we quickly realized she was following the boat to get our fish. As soon as she saw a fish on any of our lines, she dove for the fish. Next it became an adventure in fishing to see if you could reel your line in quicker than the dolphin could steal your fish. Quite funny actually. So below are the pix leaving the harbor, catching bait fish in a net on the way out and some of the fish we caught. I also included a number of shots of the dolphins. The mama has the cut off top fin, probably from getting too close to a boat's motor, and the baby is next to her in a couple of shots. The final shots are of some of the birds in the harbor when we came back. Sorry I'm not putting comments next to each photo, just no time. The next post I'll show you the condo and the beach, plus the trip through the swamp.

Lessons to learn

2012-01-25T05:33:00.001-08:00

So apparently one of my New Year's Resolutions should have been to learn how to say no and not take on too many jobs. Either that, or as I get older, I'm just not as able to focus and get to the work at hand. Whatever the reason, I'm busy and school starts back next week. I'm trying to finish up legal stuff and tax stuff for clients before next week, thus my absence on the blogs. Oh well.

Until I can manage to squeeze out enough time to finish the vacation post, here's a fun calculator so you can feel worse about your income. I used it and found out Mitt Romney earned as much in a day and a half (work hours) as I made in a year. His tax rate is also half of mine, yet raising taxes on the rich or making taxes on investments higher would be unfair somehow. How is it fair that he gets to pay less in taxes than any average worker? I just don't get it.

Salary Calculator

Popping In

2012-01-20T12:00:00.001-08:00

Just checking in. Would you believe I've been swamped with work, during my break? Ugh. So that's why I haven't posted on the vacation yet. I've got the pictures loaded, just haven't had time to write. While you're waiting on me to juggle my workload yet again, here's something that caught my attention. I don't agree with all he says, but I found a little bit of a kindred spirit here because I believe in God, but I don't believe in organized religion.

Wow

2012-01-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Story about shrinking models

Sorting pictures

2012-01-12T11:34:00.001-08:00

I know, Larena says I'm supposed to share vacation pictures. I've been sorting through them and playing with them on Photoshop, they're almost ready for a post. I will post 4 of the shell shots I took. The beach we vacationed on had TONS of shells of various colors. There were also sand dollars, but we only found broken ones. I haven't found an intact sand dollar since I was little and walked the beach at St. Petersburg, FL with my grandmother. Anyway, enjoy the pix. Oh, and Michele, I did 6.2 miles in 82 minutes today.

Rick Santorum

2012-01-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

You would think when someone is running for President of the United States there would be a certain amount of decorum as befits the lofty office of the President. You would expect candidates to run as if they plan to represent and protect the rights of all citizens, not just some of them. You would expect people who vote for a candidate to judge whether they will do a good job representing the interests of all Americans, not just some of them. I know, I'm living in a fantasy world, however, on what freaking planet is Rick Santorum a viable candidate for President of the United States?!

Here are some of Mr. Santorum's stances on various issues:

Birth control / contraception: 1. No sex for married couples unless you're trying to have a child. 2. No contraception for anyone for any reason. I guess a woman in his world view shouldn't have the right to control her own body. I guess he doesn't understand birth control is used to alleviate many female reproductive issues and is not used simply to control birth. And who the hell does he think he is coming into the bedrooms of married couples and telling them when they can have sex? It's guys like Santorum, who are so religiously nuts, that gives religion a bad name. story

Homosexuality: Mr. Santorum believes a man who is in prison and has abandoned his children is better than two gay, loving, supportive parents for a child. No, seriously, he really did say that, he really does believe that. story

Racism: Mr. Santorum believes Black people are different from white people, and that they're shiftless, lazy, and taking government handouts. story What century is this guy living in? Have his knit sweater vests cut off circulation to his brain? His stance on so many issues is so backward, so offensive, I'm really stunned people are actually supporting him. Do they understand who this guy is? If this guy were a Muslim saying all this, people would be going nuts about all this, but because he labels himself a conservative Christian, well, that's okay. No it's not. It's not okay for anyone, of any faith, to come into my home and tell me how to live. It's not okay for anyone of any faith to try to change the laws and force me to live according to the tenets of their religion. *long scream*

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Book Reviews

2012-01-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I received two books, which in and of itself was either a very brave or very foolish move on Santa's part because I literally have an entire bookshelf of books I've received for the last 3 Christmases that I have yet to find time to read. That said, since we immediately went on a week's vacation the day after Christmas, I took one of my new books with me and read it in just over 2 days, and it's a very thick book.

The book I received and quickly devoured was _The Scottish Prisoner_ by Diana Gabaldon. You may have read a review of one of her books here before, if you've been reading me for a number of years. There are only two authors that I have read this extensively, Diana Gabaldon and Taylor Caldwell. Gabaldon's books are very heavy on history, moderate on medicine and politics, and light on time travel. Sounds like an odd combination, but they really do work well together. Gabaldon's main series of books are the Outlander series about Jamie and Claire Fraser. Claire accidentally stumbles through time through one of those ancient rock formations in Scotland and the Outlander series follows her adventures in post-WWII Europe and 1700s Scotland and America. It's an excellent series and I devour each book that comes out and there are many. I feel like her Outlander series is like the Harry Potter series for adults. Here's a link to her website: Diana Gabaldon website

So the Scottish Prisoner is not actually from the Outlander series, even though Jamie Fraser is a main character in this book. The Scottish Prisoner is from her side-series about Lord John Gray. He's a minor character from the Outlander series who was so popular, that she began writing a series of books about his adventures. What I enjoyed about the Scottish Prisoner was not only another story about John Gray that helps round out his character and life history, but also that Jamie Fraser was included. There were huge gaps in Jamie Fraser's life story from the Outlander series that were filled in, in the Scottish Prisoner. So if you are a fan of the Outlander series, you should read the Scottish Prisoner to add to your knowledge about Jamie. If you haven't read any of her books, this book can stand on its own as a good story. The Scottish Prisoner, like many of Gabaldon's books is heavy on intrigue of the Jacobite uprising of the 1700s Scotland and England. I have every book of the Outlander series and most of the books from the John Gray series. I haven't read a bad book from Gabaldon yet. She is an excellent storyteller and the pace of her books is excellent as well. I would recommend any of her books, but would recommend the Outlander series first. If any of you locals would like to borrow one, I'm happy to share, even though the last person I loaned a book to never returned it and it's been 4 years. I've since purchased a replacement. Oh, and her Outlander series is so complex and interesting, I've easily read each book at least 3 times because each time I read them, I pick up more information that I missed in previous reads.

After I finished the Gabaldon book, for the last couple of days of our vacation, I was working on my appellate case that I had to argue when we returned from vacation. By the time we made it to the airport to fly home, I was burned out on the legal reading and decided to pick up something else to read at the airport. I was planning on getting a magazine when this book, _Sarah's Key_ caught my eye. Just before leaving school for Christmas break, a professor told me he'd seen the movie, _Sarah's Key_ and thought it was fantastic. So I grabbed the book and read it in just about a day. I can honestly say this is a very good story, a good plot, a good mystery and it unfolds nicely. There are things that happen in the story that are harsh realities that help make this piece of fiction believable. That said, there is one character and one plot line in the book that is not fleshed out enough to make it believable. This one character and his storyline attempt to tie up the book in a "happily ever after ending" that is not believable and honestly, very irritating. It was like someone slapped an ending on this story from another book, or the author got tired and just tied things up quickly. The ending was the more so disappointing because all the rest of the story was so enjoyable. I felt cheated by a poorly written ending. I would still recommend this book because everything but the last few pages are good. I also enjoyed this story because my area of historical interest is genocides. I learned something about the Holocaust that I didn't know prior to reading this book. I went looking for a fact based book about this particular incident, the Vel D'Hiv roundup and the only books I could find on it were written in French. If you're put off on books on the Holocaust, don't be with this one. Yes, there are some things in the story that are tragic, but this story focuses more on the culpability of French citizens when they were occupied by the Nazis, and the cultural ignorance and denial that is present in society all these years later. IMDB Sarah's Key

So with all this reading of late, I decided to begin reading the other book I received for Christmas, _Rin Tin Tin - The Life and the Legend_. Anyone who knows me would think this is the perfect book for me. The book starts out on the battlefields of WWI when Rin Tin Tin and his sister are found in a bombed out kennel in France. History, a good thing in a book for me. Rinty, as Rin Tin Tin later is called by his owner, is a German Shepherd. I LOVE German Shelpherds, as anyone who knows me also knows. This should be an excellent book for me. This book also follows Rinty's career in Hollywood of the 1930s and the succeeding generations of his pups who carry on the family business. So far, I'm about a third of the way through this book and it's horrible! The writing is very slow, goes off on tangents about the author's personal life, and the writing is pedantic and annoying. I will keep reading this book in hopes it will pick up the pace and redeem itself, but at the present, all I want to do with the book is beat the author up side the head with it. How could you ruin such a potentially good story like that? NPR story

Woo-Hoo

2012-01-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

One of the other things I'm trying to make more time for, besides reading and home improvement stuff, is exercise. M and I began "jogging" last January as a New Year's resolution to get in better shape and live healthier lives. On the anniversary of that slow beginning, I am happy to announce I jogged 5.2 miles today. It took me 67 minutes to do it, that's just under 13 minutes miles, but I'm so happy that I was able to go that far. It's been all I could do to just make 3 miles each day. The most I've jogged has been 3.8 miles, so this was a big deal for me.

Woo-hoo!

2012-01-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

The big, bad appellate case is finally behind me. I can breathe again. I can sleep in. I can read books, visit with friends, be an actual human being and not a bee-otch. New posts coming soon.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-22T05:56:00.000-08:00

May you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year's Day. I will be away from electronics from the 26th to the 1st, so any new posts will have to wait until after the new year. Enjoy your presents, family, food, and gifts.

People behaving badly

2011-12-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

Raise your hand if you've ever behaved badly . . . okay, there are too many hands. I can't count them all. As I am finally finished with the heaviest workload of any semester I've ever taught, I am now at a point where I can get some sleep, in theory, and I can do a little self-examination of my recent behavior. I am normally a very low-maintenance woman. I'm quiet. I'm laid-back. I'm stoic, not much ruffles my feathers. It takes a loonnnnggg time to get me to lose my temper, but when I do, look out.

So, yes, I have been working way too hard. Yes, I have been getting too little sleep. Yes, anyone who knows me, knows I turn into a major bitch when I don't get enough sleep. That said, the occasional outburst is to be expected, but a long-slow bitchfest that lasts for days, is not acceptable. I am an adult. I do know better. Recently, however, I have been reverting to the petulant child that has lived in me for over four decades. I recognized her the minute she resurfaced, but I couldn't do anything about her. I couldn't when I was little either. I remember very clearly as a child, getting angry or hurt about something, having an outburst, and then holding onto the anger, long after letting it go would have been appropriate, and would have been good for me. I remember being stuck in the anger. Seeing everyone around me moving past the incident, but I couldn't let it go. I couldn't laugh, smile, get over it, I just stayed stuck, with my arms folded, my lower lip stuck out, and pouting, to make sure the whole world knew, I wasn't over this yet, and neither should anyone else be.

I have found myself recently, thinking and feeling negatively about acquaintances. I have had ill thoughts about people's motivations, which is very bitchy, petty, and not like me. I had a particularly mean rant on my son's voice mail for perceived slights and misbehavior, only half of which he was actually guilty of. I didn't pull an Alec Baldwin, or call him any names, but I did call his character into question. Then I mentally beat myself up for days for being a horrible mother. Next "I showed myself." This is an expression I heard often from my mother, while I was growing up. She'd say, "quit showing yourself." Which meant, quit misbehaving, quit showing the world what a little brat you can be, quit drawing attention to your bad behavior.

I showed myself this weekend. I was tired. I was not happy. I didn't feel like doing what I had promised to do. Yet, the adult part of me knew, you don't back out, you don't let a person down, you keep your promise. So I went through the motions, clearly the petulant child, wanting desperately to rush through the obligation, get it over with, and yet again, not slowing down, just wanting to move on to the next task like I'd been doing for months. It took me a good two hours to get over myself. It took me two hours to quit showing myself. In the process, I know I must have hurt a dear friend, and that was never intended. By the time it was all over, I had gone back to my normal self. I had finally relaxed and was enjoying the evening, but at what cost? It's been years since the brat in me has come out so forcefully. Can I blame the hormones of the change for all this? Can I blame overwork and exhaustion? Or am I just human and sometimes, I'm a pain in the ass for no good reason? I'm sorry.

Weekend in DC

2011-12-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

M has a conference in DC this weekend/week, so we've been here since Saturday and we're here in DC through part of today (Monday). Since M was in meetings all day, I took the opportunity to go see sites I had not visited before, the MLK and FDR memorial sites.

It was a gorgeously sunny, brisk winter's day, about 40 degrees. I decided I needed the sunshine and didn't want to stay cooped up in a hotel all day. I hopped on the subway and went to the Mall. I found the MLK and FDR sites on the maps they have set up around the Mall and started walking toward them. They are both set up around the tidal basin across from the Jefferson Memorial. I could have gone directly to them, but by the time I reached the tidal basis, I had warmed up from the walking and it was just so gloriously sunny, I decided to take the long way and walk around the entire tidal basin to end up at the sites.

Unfortunately I didn't have my nice camera with me because both batteries had run down and I lost my recharger. I ordered a new re-charger, but it didn't arrive in the mail before we left for DC. So all these shots were taken with the camera on my cell phone. So, I've been to DC countless times and I live within 3 hours of the place, but I never knew there was a memorial site for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Official FDR website) I learned about it from a tourist travel book in the hotel. FDR's memorial is set up as outdoor rooms marking each of his 4 terms as President. There are pools, waterfalls, statutes, reliefs, plaques and it has a very peaceful feeling to it. Very calm, contemplative, relaxing.

This is one of the sculptures, depicting men on the soup line during the Great Depression.

Here is one of the many plaques displaying quotes from FDR. I thought this one was particularly important for our current economic situation and thought of the Occupy people in all the big cities around the U.S. I think a number of our politicians need to walk through this memorial and take a lesson from what FDR did in our last great economic time of need.

Next I went to the Martin Luther King memorial. (Official MLK website) This is a grand, impressive work of art. It looks like MLK is coming out of a mountain. It's very impressive and moving both from an artistic standpoint and from an historic standpoint.

Here is one of MLK's quotes (click on it to make it larger) that I thought was appropriate today as Rick Perry's recent poltical ad took a swipe at gays and accused Obama of having a war against religion. It's this kind of ignorance that allows injustice to continue in this world. We've got to stop this mentality of "us" against "them," and realize as long as we're attacking anyone, we will never live in the type of world we want. We have to remember we share this world, it's not something to be possessed by one group or one ideology.

Update: Here's what the captions are on the stone slabs in the pictures above since Blogger isn't allowing them to be enlarged when you click on them.

The first from the FDR memorial reads: The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

The second from the MLK memorial reads: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Christmas is coming

2011-12-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

Still bogged down with piles of grading, but I had to share this with you all. Thanks to Marilyn at Maeve's Madness for sending me this.

This young man is from Winnipeg(Story on him.), he played all the music, sang, and recorded this himself. Very talented!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hope you're having a great holiday. M and I got up early and did the 5K Turkey Trek at a local park. We didn't take pix at the race, so I lifted a logo on-line and an actual photo from the event's website. M did take a pic of me after we made it home, but honestly, we did jog the whole 5K. M did it in 35:35, which is slow for her, and I did it in 35:44, which is fast for me right now, but a month ago I did a faster time on a flat course. This one was packed with people, just under 300 I think. It was through woods and trails, lots of roots to jump over and plenty of people in the way so you couldn't jog a steady pace. Oh well. It's done and now I can eat without guilt. Oh, and the broken toe didn't cause me a bit of pain. Now the lungs, that's another story! Happy Thanksgiving!

T-Shirts

2011-11-21T06:10:00.000-08:00

I was looking at the Signals catalog the other day and came across the following t-shirts that made me laugh. Enjoy.

Just for Larena

2011-11-20T16:02:00.001-08:00

First day . . .(these aren't the clearest pix because I took them with my camera on my phone.)

two days later. The bruising is darker, looking more black than red and in fact the whole toe looks a little gray. Other than that, the toe is doing fine. Taped it up and did a short jog today with no problems and no pain. Only pain came when I tried to remove the tape. Looking forward to the 5K on Thanksgiving. Okay, I promise, I will get another post up soon so you won't have to look at my ugly feet anymore.

Ouch

2011-11-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I don't have lovely feet and I have never had a pedicure in my life. My feet are utilitarian in nature and they have served me well.

That said, for everyone's future reference and for the uninformed, as I was, when you break a toe, you should elevate your foot, ice it, and DEFINITELY do not run on it.

So Wednesday afternoon as I was getting changed to go work out, I turned around in the bathroom and smashed my toe up against a wall that juts out around the tub. It hurt like a . . . you know, and I cursed loudly and sufficiently to let everyone within a 100 yards know exactly how much it hurt. That said, I thought I had just stubbed my toe. Never having broken a toe before (to my knowledge) I didn't even know what to look for, so I breathed deeply, continued cursing, and waited for the pain to subside. Then I resumed getting my running tights on and running shoes and went off to work out. I figured it would hurt for a little bit, but the pain would subside eventually, so just suck it up and do my jog. Well, about 2 1/2 miles into my jog, the pain was worse, I was having to land on the side of my foot to avoid making the toe hurt worse, and I had to finally give up and stop running.

So I go home, shower, get dinner, and M comes in from a late meeting. I told her I stubbed my toe and that I had a bruise. She took one look at it and said, "you broke your toe." M, having been a life long soccer player has broken many toes. She showed me the telltale bruise, how it made a perfect straight line across the joint and said, "right there is where you broke it." Hmph. So dummy me, I didn't elevate it, I didn't ice it, and I jogged on it. The bruise is much bigger, bolder, and lovelier today. So I'm being very careful (especially on stairs) not to step directly down on that toe. Every so often I will forget and step down off a curb or a stair with that foot only to be met with shooting pain to remind me, "hey dummy, you've got a broken toe down there." I am changing my workout to lift weights, do the rowing machine, bike and elliptical trainer to give it time to heal, because I am planning to tape it up and run a 5K on Thanksgiving morning, and broken toe or not, I am running that race. Then I'll behave after that and give it the weeks it needs to sufficiently heal. And before anyone warns me against running on a broken toe, athletes and dancers do it all the time, I'll survive. :-)

Nice dinner back home . . .

2011-11-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this post is long overdue and I apologize for how long it's taken me to get it posted, but that's just how busy I've been. So about 3 weeks ago or so, M and I went back to my hometown in NY and while we were there we went to dinner with my sister and her family, plus Marilyn from Maeve's Madness and her husband.

We went to an Italian restaurant that Marilyn recommended, Little Venice. Little Venice is the oldest Italian eatery in Binghamton, NY. I didn't expect much when we pulled up, then I saw the parking situation. The restaurant's parking lot was basically an empty city block and it was full! A full parking lot is always a good sign when you pull up to a restaurant. We weren't disappointed, it was good food in a family environment, not expensive, and we spent hours there talking and eating. I believe we were one of the last tables to leave.

So here we are: me, Marilyn, and my sister, Pat.

Marilyn has a lively, energetic personality and was such a delight to talk to. It was the first time I ever met her, even though I've read her blog for awhile. There wasn't a dull moment and no awkward silences trying to find something to say. She was full of stories and very engaging.

Marilyn's husband, J, also joined us and he was equally interesting to talk to. He and I discovered a common interest, genocides and the Holocaust, and we got into some intense discussions right off the bat. It's not often when I meet people that I'm able to immediately hit it off with them, and even rarer that the spouse is equally as interesting. This was a very fortunate meet-up with very interesting, well-traveled people. So Michelle in Vancouver, you've got a high standard to match when I come out there to meet you and celebrate my 50th. ;-)

It was nice getting to see my sister and her husband, J, again as well. Though, it's never enough time and I always feel rushed. I did go through some old pix my sister has with family and thought she might sit down and go through them with me, but she had a long, cold day at the market and was wiped out. I also got lots of garlic from her and J while there. I got pounds of the stuff and within two week of returning, I needed to send for more. It seem not only M and I love the stuff, so do all our friends and co-workers. Hopefully they'll all be planting some this Fall so I won't have to bring as much back with me next time.

I also got to see my niece K, and her new baby, R while we were there. What a sweet baby! Such a good disposition. You can tell he's well-loved and loves the attention he gets from everyone. I wish I lived closer to family so we could have leisurely sit-down dinners and catch up on a regular basis, or even stay up-to-date on everyone's lives. Oh well, at least I live close enough to make visits a couple times a year if I'm lucky.

So last week, when I first loaded these pictures and began thinking about doing this post, I was fondly remembering the great Italian meal and all the scents in the air at the restaurant and got a hankering for meatballs. I decided to make homemade meatballs and spaghetti for dinner. I think it's easily been more than 10 years since I last made meatballs from scratch. I think seeing a chef's advice on-line to include ricotta in meatball recipes also pushed my craving for meatballs. So I went to the grocery store to get ingredients. I planned to mix beef and pork in the recipe, which I was just winging and came across chorizo sausage when I was looking for meat. I LOVE Chorizo sausage! So I decided I'd use beef and chorizo.

The lighting wasn't good over the stove but here are my babies. Ingredients: ground beef, ground chorizo sausage, one egg, small container of ricotta cheese, oregano, 4-5 cloves of fresh crushed garlic, parmesan/asiago/romano dried cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil, Panko Japanese bread crumbs. I think that's it. The chef said to make sure you use ricotta cheese and he said not to fry them, but to saute them in a spicy Marinara sauce, so I did. I think each batch, I did two batches of meatballs, took 20-25 minutes over low to medium heat to cook. They turned out really light and flavorful. They were the best meatballs I ever made. M really liked them too, which is saying a lot since she's a great cook. Since I made so many I told M we could just put the extra in the freezer and have them another time. She said, no, she wanted meatball subs with the leftovers. So we had spaghetti one night, two nights later had subs and then had subs for lunch a couple of days after that. Okay, I satisfied my craving for Italian meatballs.

Yeah, this is what I've been saying!

2011-11-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

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It's okay to bully if . . .

2011-11-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd keep you informed of what politicians are doing in Michigan.

The animals aren't safe either.

Another post is coming, just bogged down with grading right now.

New Halloween Creation

2011-10-26T06:38:00.001-07:00

Don't worry, the post about the dinner back home and meeting a fellow blogger is coming up next. I just thought I'd throw this post in since it's so close to Halloween.

So this year I thought we should add a new decoration to the yard for Halloween. I'm still trying to fix the gargoyle. I think I've figured out how, now it's just a matter of finding enough time to do it before Halloween. So for this new decoration I began with 80 feet of PVC piping.

I also picked up 32 ninety degree angle fittings. It turned out I only needed 16.

M was out of town last weekend when I began cutting and building the creation so I had to figure out how to cut long PVC pipes by myself. I ended up threading the pipe through the slats on the stair rails and then propping the pipes up on bricks so I wouldn't saw through the steps. It was quite a show with one foot holding down one side of the pipe, a hand holding down the other side of the pipe while my other hand held the saw and made over 32 cuts. My back was sore by the time I was done.

Next came the assembly, putting 32 pieces of straight pipe into 16 elbows.

Then I had to begin painting all the pieces,

and painting,

and painting,

Can you tell what I'm building? Next I began stuffing wadded up newspaper into different sized plastic garbage bags. Lastly I found red reflectors for the eyes. What do you think? They're probably under 2 feet high and around 8 feet wide.

Ithaca Farmer's Market

2011-10-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

While we were in NY we visited the Ithaca Farmer's Market and were very pleasantly surprised.

This market is not as big as the Madison, WI Farmer's Market that wraps its way all around the capitol, but it has a lot more character and beauty as it is nestled in the woods along side Cayuga Lake.

The Market is under cover, yet open-air. As you approach the Market the first thing you notice is the wonderful aromas in the air. Not only does this Market have fresh produce from the farms, it is also host to prepared ethnic foods. When you approach and smell garlic, fresh bread, pizzas, Indian and Thai foods, even if you just ate, you'll be hungry and wanting to sample all the foods in the stalls before you.

The Market also opens up on a lovely dock area on Cayuga Lake with benches and picnic tables so you can sit and enjoy the food while also enjoying the lovely view.

We were there on a brisk Saturday morning and got to see rowing crews passing by the Market as we enjoyed an amazing brick oven pizza.

I can't even begin to do justice to the flavor of this flat bread pizza. We had an apple, bacon, cheddar cheese pizza, all local ingredients and the flavors were robust and rich. I could have eaten another whole pizza it was so delicious!

So the following are shots of the oven and of the various vendors at the Market. There were all the expected fall produce: garlic, pumpkins and other squashes, flowers, local wines, cheeses, wood carvings, leather works, other textiles. It was a meal for the eyes and the nose. I would highly recommend anyone who is in the Ithaca area to make a visit to the Market. The link is at the top of this post so you know how to find it and when it is open.

Important to Hear

2011-10-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Farmer's Market post is coming soon, along with a new Halloween creation post, but first, listen to this.

The Glass Steagall Act

NY Post #1

2011-10-20T08:43:00.001-07:00

Okay folks, my NY posts are going to have to come in phases because I don't have a lot of time to work on the posts and I've got so many great pictures to load, that will also take some time. So this first post will be beauty shots of the Fall foliage we caught while apple picking, hiking and driving the back roads. Post #2 will be of the Ithaca Farmer's Market, which is an AWESOME market. You have to see it and smell it to believe it. Wow. Post #3 will be the great Italian dinner with family and also getting to meet Marilyn over at Maeve's Madness. So, here are the pix of beauty and stay tuned for the next two posts.

Funny or Die

2011-10-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

I will have a post up soon on our trip to NY, but in the mean time, here's the latest from Funny or Die:

A Perfect Day

2011-10-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

Coming Home

First stop, Lupo's for a pork spiedie sub for lunch.

Second stop, The Cider Mill for an authentic nutmeg cake doughnut and fresh cider. Mmmm.

Next, we went apple picking.

Then we went to a Binghamton institution, Sharkey's for dinner. M was very excited to see ethnic foods on the menu: halupkis (stuffed cabbage or pigs in a blanket), pierogies (a ravioli type covering stuffed with cheese and potatoes), salt potatoes, steamed clams, and spiedies again of course. Now we are satiated and planning our day tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be as rainy and cold as the forecast is calling for, planning to hit the local farmer's markets and look for local cheeses, maybe get a hike in and meet up with family for a great Italian dinner. Ahhhh. I must be dreaming.

In honor of the protests

2011-10-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

The Morning News

2011-10-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

So two young burglars break into a man's barn and steal CDs. They discover child porn on the CDs. They turn themselves in, in order to report the child porn. The home owner is arrested. CNN story

Then there's the story of the stupid criminal who takes pictures of himself with a woman's stolen phone and the pictures are posted to her Facebook page. Smile for your mugshot buddy.

Hackers are still running amok around the country with their Zombie warning signs.

Speaking of zombies. I'm on the hunt for materials to make a new Halloween display for the house. Wait until you see it!

"The Revolution is happening, it's just not in the news."

2011-10-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

CNN story

Have you heard about the people occupying Wall St., Chicago, San Francisco? If not, you should be asking your local news source why they are not reporting on the news.

For the past 3 weeks, protesters have been gathering, marching, picketing Wall St. and their numbers are growing. The protests in NYC have spawned other protests around the country. What are they protesting? A lot of things:
*the bad economy,
*the obscene wealth of Wall St. at the expense of the American people,
*the corruption of corporate America that has crippled the American economy
*the trillions of dollars in profits that corporate America is sitting on and not reinvesting it here or hiring people who desperately need jobs,
*the corporate purchase of the U.S. Congress so that the wealthiest few in this nation keep getting richer while the middle-class is killed off and more people sink into poverty,
*the lack of affordable healthcare,
*the student loan industry, making indentured servants out of most people coming out of college.

Basically they're protesting everything that is going wrong with America and it's financial situation that is harming the American people. They say they were inspired by the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. I say more power to them. This rape of the American people cannot continue without somebody fighting back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Swerve Left has a more in-depth post about this and says: "our failed system that has allowed the 400 richest Americans at the top to amass more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom." Sounds a lot like the situation just prior to the French Revolution.

"Something Has Started": Michael Moore on the Occupy Wall Street Protests That Could Spark a Movement | Truthout

2011-09-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

Have any of you been paying attention to the protests going on down on Wall Street for over a week? Trish from Menopausal Stoners will be going down to show her support. Better wear glasses Trish, to keep the pepper spray out of your eyes. Click on the link below and then watch the video.

"Something Has Started": Michael Moore on the Occupy Wall Street Protests That Could Spark a Movement | Truthout

Home Makeover Family Announced

2011-09-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

Video of Surprise

Family's Story You should read this story. The kid was repairing his own house when he lost his hand.

UPDATE: We received our work/volunteer e-mails before our shifts telling us that they had triple the number of volunteers so they didn't need us. We were told we could go over as spectators today. I'll see if I get time to do that today. If so, I'll post pix of the house.

Homemakeover Rally

2011-09-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm just not getting any time to do a decent post about this. So here's a little blurb and a bunch of pictures.

The rally was attended by WAY OVER 2200 people, probably close to 3,000. (Don't tell the Fire Marshall)

There was music (pep rally get you going stuff), singing (who knew today's college kids knew Journey's "Keep On Believing" - it was quite moving), dancing (Chicken Dance), cheerleaders, dance teams, and giant plastic balls that you could walk in and other's used combat style to fight and bounce off each other. I got in one and went from one side of the gym to the other. Pix at the bottom.

Then after all that pumping up of the crowd that stretched down the length of the buildings outside, and eventually filled all the bleachers and the gym floor. The producer of the show and especially the builder for this project proceeded to talk for hours about the build, way too many details than needed, and people began leaving in droves. I'm sure the actually building will be more interesting.

2011-09-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned previously, ABC TV's Extreme Makeover Home Edition is coming to our area to build a house in a week. Our local university is helping with this build. The first rally is on campus today at 5:30. I will be there with my camera and will post info about it tomorrow. I went on the website today and volunteered to help with the build. We'll see if I get called and what they ask us to do. I know my neighbor, Michele and her husband are interested in helping. This happens next week. Will you be back in time Michele? (They're in Canada, lucky people.) Anyway, stay tuned!

=====

UPDATE: I was diligent and loaded the pictures the day after the rally but I've been so busy, I haven't been able to get the blog post together yet. I will have it up by the weekend. We did get our initial e-mails for volunteering, so M and I will be among the volunteers. We just don't know the dates or the build location yet.

Still Kicking

2011-09-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

I've been my normal "too busy" plus a little extra. Instead of doing an overload (1 extra class) I'm doing a double-over load (2 extra classes). I have 5 classes and 169 students. I'm also still doing legal work. M still has our social calendar as full as possible (all work and no play is not good after all). So if I'm not posting as much, don't worry about me. I will get back to it. I have been making the rounds, reading and commenting.

M and I are still exercising. M and I did a 2 mile jog into a 30 mph headwind yesterday, not a good idea for future reference. :-) We've been enjoying football games, Packers won their first two games, good start. Our October calendar is already booked and we're still in September, so expect posts from NY, Baconfest, another Progressive dinner, and a few other things. ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition will be building a house in our area, so I'll try to get a post up on that. Right now, gotta get back to work.

Fat Chick Yoga

2011-09-17T19:30:00.001-07:00

I'm re-posting this link for Michelle in Canada.

Fat Chick Yoga

I hope to post something original soon. I'm so danged busy, as usual!

My hometown is flooded

2011-09-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

The remnants of Hurricane Lee have dropped a bit of rain on my hometown and surrounding areas. As a result, the place is flooded. I've never in my life seen my hometown flood this bad.

I grabbed these pix off the local news site, WBNG, and from a local blogger's site Pirate 4x4.

This is a shot of the riverwalk in the downtown area. The river has come up over it's riprap walls and flooded the walkway.

This is a road leading out of town to go toward my sister's house.

This is a shot of Owego from the last time I went up there. It's your "before" shot.

This is the "after" shot of the flooding. You'll have to click on it to make it larger and see all the flooding in the foreground.

Here's a shot of the Riverwalk area and where the water usually is.

Here's where the water is now.

Here's a video taken from the top of Cemetery Hill where I go each time I go home.

This video is for the benefit of my sister, Pat, who is stuck at home. This is a video of the downtown area of Owego and surrounding streets. In one shot it looks like the old high school on McMaster Street, judging by the levels there, our old house on Liberty Street definitely got flooded.

Here's Newark Valley:

Are you ready for some football?!

2011-09-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Are you ready?

The Green Bay Packers play the New Orleans Saints tonight at Green Bay. (Tweety put your ear plugs in.) There's going to be a lot of smack talk texting between M (who's from Wisconsin) and my sister, B, who's down outside of New Orleans. May the best team win. Go Cheesheads! Geaux Saints!

Min's first apartment

2011-09-04T12:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I helped Min move into her first apartment. She's lived in a dorm before and she's lived on the farm where she worked before, but she's never paid rent and utilities. So this is a first for her in budgeting. She's been working for a Vet for a while now and loving that job, but it didn't pay enough to pay rent and board her two horses. Before you say it, it's next to impossible to even give away a horse in this economy, not that she would have, so anyway. She was either going to have to find a better paying job or continue to stay with family. Or so we thought. She found a second job. In exchange for a brand new apartment at dirt cheap rent, and getting to board her two horses on site for free, she has to take care of the landlord's 5 horses and two cows, which entails daily feeding and cleaning stalls. It's not that time consuming. She can feed in the mornings before going to work and feed and clean after work with the vet. This is the back side of her building. It's a 3 bay garage on the bottom and a really spacious one bedroom apartment on top.

Here's the view from her deck in the first picture. There's the hay barn on the left. The property is primarily a hay farm with woods for hunting. To the right is a huge horse barn with plenty of stalls. The two cows are straight back in the left field, the horses have the right field.

Min is really excited to have her own place and to have so much property to ride on.

So it's a one bedroom, one bath apartment with wood floors throughout. There are windows in every room on 3 sides of the apartment.

Everything is new and pretty. The kitchen dining area is open to the living room.

There are closets galore in every room, so she has plenty of storage, plus she gets a bay in the garage, a room in there as well, plus part of the barn.

The full bath is accessible from the living room and the bedroom.

Plus she has her own washer/dryer on the first floor foyer off the garage. Wow. I never had an apartment this nice when starting out.

The Clean Up

2011-08-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been trying really hard to get this blog post up but I really have been way too busy. So I'll just throw up the pix and you can see for yourself. The sand and the water came up on the boardwalk in Ocean City and when I went there the day they reopened the city, there were bull dozers all over the place trying to shovel up the sand and put it back on the beach. Oh, and we lost the end of the pier. You will see it hanging in one of the pix and we lost the light at the end of the rock jetty. Overall, not too much damage. I found it curious that we got the Category 1 hurricane and had less damage than NJ and VT who had the tropical storm. Luck of the draw I suppose.

Video of Irene at Ocean City

2011-08-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

I just saw this video and thought it was amazing. What you might not know is that in this video, when the reporter is standing in front of what looks like a fence and the foamy water is splashing up on him. He's actually standing on the Boardwalk and that fence is around steps that lead down to the beach. The beach is easily more than 300 yards of sand before you get to the ocean. For the ocean to be up to the Boardwalk is amazing. I'll post our after photos of OC tomorrow.

Hunkering Down

2011-08-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

So Tuesday we had an earthquake and tomorrow we have a hurricane. I totally missed out on the earthquake because I was driving when it hit so I didn't notice anything. If it was shaking I would have assumed the road was bumpy. M and co-workers felt it though. They were on the 2nd and 3rd floors on campus and said the whole building was swaying and pictures and chandeliers were moving. I'm sure I won't miss out on tomorrow's hurricane though, there's no hiding from that. We're getting indications that we will get very high winds 50-100 mph gusts and maybe a 6 ft. storm surge with flooding. They're evacuating parts of town near the river and they've never done that before (at least in the 8 yrs I've lived here.) They also evacuated Ocean City (I haven't seen that before either.) They were busing all the foreign students who work on the boardwalk and beach, out to places near Baltimore (3 hrs. away). They were telling all tourists to leave town. They shut down the city at midnight last night. Only emergency vehicles will be allowed in. So everyone here is taking this one seriously and preparing for it. So for the past 48 hrs. I have mowed the lawn (it's going to be raining for a couple days). I have taken all the deck furniture off the deck and piled it upside down behind the garage for a little shelter from the winds. I have moved all my hanging and potted plants down on the ground behind the garage as well. I have stocked up on water, foods that can be eaten without heat or electricity. I have filled all 5 of my hurricane lamps with kerosene. We already have a huge supply of flashlights and batteries. I filled the gas tank on our generator and got 10 more gallons of gas in case we have to use that for electric for a couple of days. I filled the gas tank on our 4 wheel drive in case we need to drive this vehicle with higher ground clearance. Next I'm going down to the basement and building brick platforms for our dehumidifier so when (not if) the basement floods we won't short out the dehumidifier or electrify the basement floor. We had planned a hurricane party for tomorrow night, but then the forecast got a little more ominous so we canceled the party. We could envision 30 guests getting stranded at our house and we didn't want that. Oh and for this picture. Yesterday all the "D" batteries were sold out all over town for peoples' flashlights in anticipation of power outages. Ace Hardware advertised that they would have a truck in today with more batteries. Ace is lucky if they have 8 people in the entire store on a busy day. Here is what it looked like this afternoon with people coming to get batteries and kerosene. The line went from the front of the store to the back, plus there was a long line for any remaining batteries (the Ds were already gone) and there had to be over a 100 people in 3 lines waiting to checkout. Yes, people are taking this hurricane seriously. Wish us a good strong wind to push this storm further east off the coast.

What would Jesus do?

2011-08-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

Pastor Ted Haggard is gay. Anti-gay preacher George Rekers is gay.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's son has a refreshing view on all this:

Oral Roberts' grandson

The best laid plans . . .

2011-08-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

I made it a point to buy all new, fresh ingredients (flour, sugar, shortening, butter) so that my crust would be as awesome as E's crust. That's why I invited her over afterall, so she could teach me how to make the awesome crust she made at our last cookout. We worked from 3-6 p.m. and made three pies, a blueberry (which we had after dinner) and an apple and a peach/blackberry for tonight's progressive dinner.

I followed her instructions perfectly. She checked the dough and the ingredients as I added them. Everything was done according to the recipe. The dough was crumbly and coarse like the instructions said it should be. We cooked it for the first 15 minutes at the higher temp, then dropped the temperature. Check. We did everything the way the recipe said and just the way E did it last time.

We washed, cut and prepared all the fruit fillings according to the directions. We used tapioca starch for the blueberry filling because E said that made them just the right balance between juicy and creamy.

The dough rolled out just fine. We did have some difficulty getting the dough off the rolling mat and into the pie pan. The bottom crust wasn't too hard to manage because even if it tore or fell apart, you could put it in the pan and mold it with your fingers to the form of the pan. The top crust was much harder, so the crust on our blueberry pie was lumpy and misshapen. That was okay though. It didn't have to look pretty as long as the pie was tasty. So we cut into the blueberry pie after dinner while it was still warm and put some vanilla ice cream with it. We ate on the screened front porch. As I came out I asked how the pie was. Everyone said the filling was awesome. I said that's great, but how's the pie crust? I was hoping it was a light, flaky, buttery goodness. My friend, A, said, "it's a little sandy." I said, "what? What do you mean sandy?" She replied, "well, it's a little gritty. Taste it." It was. It was like tasting a mouthful of flour. For some reason, the pie crust ingredients didn't blend together, and in fact, it didn't taste like the pie crust baked all the way.

Since we now knew the first pie crust didn't do well and the other two pies were in the oven, we watched these ones even more to make sure they baked all the way. They never did. Here's the apple pie. I tried to do a cutout diamond flower shaped top. You can kinda see it here. The top of the pie cooked, but when you looked through the glass side of the pie pan you could see the rest of the crust was a pale white where it hadn't cooked.

Here's the peach/blackberry pie. I tried to do a lattice top crust on this one. This one was like the other two, the top cooked but not the sides and bottom, plus none of it cooked all the way through. So even though it looked well done on top, if you pinched a bit of the dark brown crust, it would dissintegrate into a floury, uncooked mess. We couldn't figure out what went wrong. We did everything according to the recipe and we made sure the heat was right on the oven. We left the last two pies in at least a half hour longer trying to get the crusts to cook, but they never did. So today I made new pies, with ready made crusts and crumbled tops. I also got a "thaw and serve" freezer pie as a back-up in case these last two pies didn't do well either. Oh well. I did try.

Getting Ready . . .

2011-08-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

I'm getting all the ingredients out to begin making pies today. My friend, E, will be coming over to teach me how to make her awesome pie crust. We'll make 3 pies, have one for tonight and two for tomorrow's progressive dinner. I've got apples, peaches, pears (from our tree), blackberries, and blueberries that I picked a month or so ago. I haven't decided which combination of fruits will go into which pies. I'm also making a roast chicken with rice and asparagus for dinner tonight to thank E for her instruction. We'll have another friend over, eat, play backgammon and maybe partake of a little wine.

Surfing Lessons

2011-08-18T05:15:00.000-07:00

So you should know by now that M is a total water baby. She can't get enough of the waves. She's been wanting to take surfing lessons before she gets any older, and of course, I'm not about to do that. The ocean kayaking was scary enough for me. So our friend and co-worker J decided she would do this with M. J has also jumped out of a plane before because another friend was doing it.

So last Saturday J and M took their first surfing lessons. And lo and behold, they both managed to get up on their surfboards in a somewhat standing position before falling into the waves. This was very exciting for them and they vow to get back out there again soon for a second lesson.

This is J. She seemed quite surprised when she realized she was standing on the board. For those of you who think you might be too old to attempt this, J is 53.

Here's M in her glory. You might have to click on the pictures to make them larger. I didn't have copies on my work computer so I pulled them off my Facebook folder.

Tomorrow I learn to make a "from scratch" awesome pie crust so I can make a couple of pies for our next Progressive Dinner Saturday night. I will post on that soon. Haven't finished Min's room yet, just got slammed with a lot of legal work and that has been taking all my time lately. Almost done with that, maybe I'll get a day off before classes resume.

Here are the re-loaded pictures so you can make them bigger.

Laugh for the day

2011-08-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

What did I do before the Daily Show? Oh yeah, Bloom County and Doonesbury, anyway, this is old news, but still funny. Enjoy!

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Mini-Movie Reviews

2011-08-06T14:16:00.001-07:00

That means the review is brief, not the movie.

Captain America: The First Avenger stars Chris Evans, a relative unknown. Which just means I haven't seen him in anything before. This movie is a good, solid family movie. You wouldn't be jeopardizing your children's morals by taking them to see it. It's a good old fashioned, patriotic, war story with a squeaky clean, pure as the driven snow, love story mixed in. For most people this should be a Netflix movie. I liked the the transformation at the beginning and the twist at the end the best.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, and John Lithgow as the three main human characters. It also stars Andy Serkis as the hyper-intelligent ape, Caesar. Serkis doesn't get top billing apparently because his acting was morphed in with a computer, however, the computer generated morphing mimicked Andy's facial and eye features which is mostly how we come to understand and relate to Caesar. Caesar is the star of the show really so I believe Andy should have gotten top billing. Anyway, on to the review. There are great special effects, but I don't think you have to see them on the big screen to appreciate them. The story is good background for how the story of the Planet of the Apes came about. It ties up loose ends, answers questions, and takes a playful poke at the original movies by having them playing on a t.v. in the background and also by having characters use lines from the original movie. It's a good movie but doesn't rise to excellent. If you've seen the other movies in the series, see this one and if you've never seen any of the other movies, see this one, it might get you interested in seeing the rest. This is a good one to Netflix.

Cowboys & Aliens is a good old fashioned western except that the bad guys are aliens. It stars Daniel Craig who makes a _really_ good brooding cowboy. Think "the strong silent type" on kung-fu steroids. It also stars Harrison Ford who does the crotchedy old man part with a soft spot for children and honor. It also stars Olivia Wilde as a lone woman in an Old West town with a secret and who also seems to know something about Daniel Craig's character when he can't remember himself. I pegged the plot twist for her character when I saw the trailer. M was very impressed that I figured it out so quickly. Anyway, this is a very good western and alien thriller movie. I would recommend seeing this on the big screen to get the full impact of the special effects and the jolt in your seats when you first encounter the aliens up close. The story was interesting without being too complicated. The one negative is that there are so darn many cliches in this movie along with a bit of racial insensitivity. But hey, this is supposed to be a period western and they weren't PC then, right? Go to the theatre to see this, if you have to Netflix it, see it on a big screen t.v. with the volume up loud.

Now I've saved the best for last and I'm quite surprised by that too. Crazy, Stupid Love stars Steve Carell. I'm not a fan of Steve's. In a lot of the movies he's chosen to do, his humor is too juvenile for me and he's too typecast for my liking. I had no expectations of him in this movie and was pleasantly surprised. His annoying bits were muted down and he became more genuine on the screen. That was a first for me, no, make that a second. When he starred in Dan in Real Life he also gave a realistic performance of a character you could love. So now I know he's capable of good acting given a good script and a good director. Crazy, Stupid Love also stars Ryan Gosling. No offense to Mr. Gosling, but I've seen him in Lars and the Real Girl and The Notebook and I didn't even remember having seen him in anything before. Either his performances were forgettable, or he so inhabits a role, he completely disappears in it. Thinking back on those movies and other bit parts I now know I've seen him in, I think he disappears into the roles. When I saw the body on Ryan in this movie I was stunned! I now remember seeing him shirtless in other roles and he was definitely not ripped like he was for this role. So this tells me the actor prepares to become the character he's playing. That said, I think Ryan's character was the most complex, heartbreaking and loveable in this whole movie. There's a twist in the movie with his character that I never saw coming, and I'm good at picking up twists in movies before they happen. I think his performance is the best in the film. I was very pleasantly surprised and totally taken in by his performance. This movie also stars Julianne Moore and I found her performance flat and tired. I don't think she really brought anything to the role. That was disappointing because I've seen her do good work in the past. The last main character in this movie is Emma Stone. I've liked the roles Emma has chosen and enjoyed her performances in past movies, so I was hoping to see a lot of her in this movie. She wasn't in that many scenes, however, when she was in group scenes, her performance was just so-so, when she was in a one-on-one scene with another character, she shined. I can't say anything more without ruining the movie for you. You don't need to see this movie in a theatre even though it's worth the ticket price, so if you Netflix it, move it to the top of your list. It's a very good movie, maybe not good for younger kids, but teenagers and older should enjoy it. Happy viewing!

Laugh for the day

2011-08-03T05:36:00.001-07:00

Go Matt Damon!

Okay, so thanks to Anderson Cooper the song has been stuck in my head all day. There's no cure for it but to play it, or rather them. Laugh it up!

Play Review - How To Succeed In Business (without really trying)

2011-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

We went to NYC last weekend to meet up with some of M's family who had never been there before. We took the Staten Island ferry, we saw the Statue of Liberty, we did Chinatown and Little Italy, we put them on a carriage ride through Central Park, we stayed in a hotel in Times Square, we ate at fancy restaurants, and we took in a Broadway show. We had a 15 year old girl with us who is also a Harry Potter fan, so it seemed only appropriate that we see How To Succeed In Business starring Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in those movies.

I didn't have any expectations of the play prior to seeing it. I had seen the original movie starring Robert Morse. You may remember Mr. Morse as a character actor in a number of t.v. shows and movies in the 1960s and 1970s, or from the series "City of Angels" or from "Mad Men." He's had a very long career on both stage and screen.

Because I had seen the original movie when I was just a child, I only remembered the general gist of the story. So when I saw the Michael J. Fox movie years later, The Secret of My Success, I thought it was the same story, just re-done a little bit. Now that I've seen the play and refreshed my memory on the story, I realize they are not the same story. Anyway, back to the play, it was AWESOME!! I can't begin to describe the talent of the cast, or just how physical this song and dance play was for the actors to perform. They really put their hearts into each number. They seemed enthusiastic and each number seemed fresh to them. When the play opened, there was great applause. When Daniel Radcliffe appeared, the theatre shook with the roar of the crowd, and there weren't that many young girls in the theatre. The audience really loved this guy. I would reserve judgment until the end. John Larroquette also got roaring applause when he appeared as well.

As I mentioned previously, John Larroquette was in this play. He played the boss of the company, even though there was a bigger boss above him. Daniel Radcliffe's character has a book titled, _How to succeed in business without really trying_, and it's through each chapter of this book we see Daniel's character miraculously climb up the corporate ladder with really no experience at all. John's character is a lovely man who is easily manipulated by his wife, his mistress and others. John played this part so well, one moment the imperious boss, the next a boy cheering for his alma mater, and the next a nervous man with his knitting to calm him down and his heart on his sleeve. When the cast came out at the final curtain and the audience roared for John, it was well deserved.

Now back to Daniel Radcliffe's character. It would be easy not to like his character, after all, he's a manipulator and uses people around him to meet his own desires. He is in many ways, taking advantage of situations to get ahead when he's really not qualified. So when you find yourself laughing at the ingenious ways he plants himself into just the right situation and at just the right time, you have to cheer for his boldness, creativity and work to study the company and its employees to put himself in that position. What could have been an arrogant little puss turns into a hero with Daniel's acting. You never feel like he's arrogant. You never feel like he doesn't deserve the promotions he keeps getting. You're more of the frame of mind, "I can't believe he just got that!" His comic timing was also impeccable! His facial expressions were hilarious and helped the audience tune into foreshadowing in the play. By the time the play was over, and all the actors were dripping with sweat from the dance numbers and physicality of the play, I ROARED with the rest of the audience at his curtain call. He just did a spectacularly, fabulous job with this role. I would recommend this play as a good old fashioned song and dance show. Very well done.

Ocean kayaking

2011-07-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

is much scarier than it looks. At least I didn't get dumped. You'll have to click on the pix to see them larger.

The Given Day - Book Review

2011-07-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else out there getting a little sick of all the home improvement postings? Yeah, I thought so, me too. So for a little change of pace, here's a book review of the first of way too many books on my summer reading list. Yeah, I've finished just this one all summer. I am trying though.

So, _The Given Day_ is by Dennis Lehane. He has also written _Gone Baby, Gone_, _Shutter Island_ and _Mystic River_. He is a good story teller. He gets down into a character, the time period, the sights and sounds of the period and does a good job of taking you away in your imagination.

_The Given Day_ is a single story with three main characters. The paths and the lives of these characters come together at various times and/or are in the same town at the same time, even if they are not in each others' lives at that given moment. The story takes place at the end of WWI, goes through the huge influenza outbreak of 1918, follows through on the anarchist and Bolshevik uprisings of the 19teens and all the labor unions and strikes. Most of the story is set in Boston, although some parts play out in Illinois, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

The first character is Babe Ruth, the baseball player, but in this story there are only two scenes that I recall where he's actually playing baseball. Most of the time when a section of the book comes back to Babe it deals with his inner demons, his childhood, his insecurities, his traveling, his drinking and philandering and his perspective on the times he's living in.

The second character is Luther. When we first see him he is a black baseball player at a time when the game was played by all white teams. He is a factory worker, a craftsman, a numbers runner and whatever he needs to be to make money. Luther always wants more out of life, more excitement and learns some very hard lessons about life and other people. He is probably the most genuine person in the book but it is only when he really sees other people for the way that they are, that he decides to stop pretending and finally becomes his true self.

The third character is Danny Coughlin, a Boston cop. Danny comes from a successful Irish family. His father is a well respected captain on the force and as a result, there are certain expectations of Danny. Everybody always thinks of Danny as his own man, blazing his own path, yet too many times Danny makes mistakes and isn't man enough to do the right thing or the thing he wants. A lot of trouble comes of this, but in the end he also hits rock bottom, discovers his true self and finds the courage to be his own man.

All the stories are interesting, each chapter will move from one character to another, and you slowly start to see their connections. I really enjoyed all the information on the history of the time period and the author's knowledge of the various streets and neighborhoods of Boston at that time and for also looking at issues from many different perspectives. Overall I'd say the author is a good storyteller, and it only took me a month to read it because I just don't make much time for reading. I'm trying to rectify that. I'd recommend this book as a good summer read.

The knobs have arrived!

2011-07-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

The knobs and pulls arrived in today's mail. I couldn't wait to see them on the cabinet so I put them all on, keeping in mind I will just have to remove them again when I finally get time to whitewash the cabinets. I ended up going with all clear glass because I needed 3 different size knob sets and I couldn't get all the sizes I needed in the colored glass. Probably the clear glass is better in the long run, simpler is better, fewer distracting colors in the room. Here are some before and after shots.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

2011-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Measure, measure, measure, I just can't say that enough.

So, do you remember this corner where I wanted to put this lovely overstuffed red chair from IKEA?

The initial problems were that the chair alone measured 41 3/8 x 35/ 3/8 x 34 3/8, add the ottoman in front of it and it took up too much floor space in the room. I also wasn't sure if having a big red chair in that corner would be too much red in the room. So I was stuck trying to decide on whether to still go with this chair and just not get the ottoman, or to go with this lovely chair from IKEA.

This chair is not as big. It measures 30 3/4 x 33 1/2 x 33 1/8. So, still struggling to decide between the two chairs and no time to run to IKEA to get either one until after visiting family left, I opted to put one of our old recliners in the room and cover it until I could make a trip across the bridge (Bay Bridge 2 1/2 hrs. one-way).

This is when I made a very crucial discovery. So I had my son and one of his friends carry the recliner upstairs and they left it in the hallway because they said it wouldn't fit through the doorway. I thought that was odd, because we have two of these chairs and its mate went through our master bedroom door and sits in there. So then I measured the chair, 29 5/16 x 32 x 32. Then I measured the doorway, 29 6/16 wide. It should fit. What was different? In the master bedroom, we were able to open the recliner chair, turn it sideways and turn the corner with it to get it in the room. In Min's room, you have the door and wall on one side, and you have the built-ins on the other side. There is no room to open the chair to work around the angles. So long story short, with a little of mom's tender loving brute force, I wedged the chair through the opening, taking a little paint and wood with me in the process, but the chair is in the room. I've obviously covered its dingy, beige ugliness with a red blanket temporarily, but now I have the dilemma of what chair to put in the room. Neither IKEA chair will work, and if I decide to buy a new chair, I'll have to forcefully shove the recliner back out of the room. So I study the recliner, are it's shape and style really that bad? Couldn't I just have it re-upholstered and make do? So I call around to some local upholsterers and ask for an estimate to re-cover a wing-backed recliner. They all say it will be cheaper to replace it than to re-upholster it. *sigh* So then I think, maybe a slipcover would work. The vast majority of slipcovers look like crappy, loose fitting blankets. Thank you very much, I already have that look.

So after looking at the red covered chair for a few days and forcefully eliciting opinions from unsuspecting family members, I do decide a red chair in that corner will be too much red, so the slipcover will have to be in another color. Here is the only nicely fitting slipcover I found for this type of recliner and I will get it in blue because none of the other colors they had available would even remotely work for the room. So lesson learned here people is measure, measure, measure, and apply a little brute force if the measurements are close.

Update

2011-07-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

I have completed the sanding down of the night stand and the bookcase.

I primed both pieces.

I finished a second coat of paint on the night stand, and am waiting for the bookcase to finish drying so I can put a second coat on it. Notice the afghan in the picture? I was trying to match the red paint to that color. I think I got pretty close. While I'm waiting for the bookcase to dry, I have to prime and paint the bedroom door. I sanded that down earlier as well because it had a tendency to stick and made it very hard to get out of the bedroom on humid days.

I'm getting closer to my Swedish bedroom inspiration, but I'm going to have to hold off on refinishing the floor and whitewashing the built-ins because we're meeting M's sister & her family in NYC at the end of the week and then they're all coming back here. So I will have the room as put together as I can by today, but then hold off on finishing while I clean the rest of the house get beds ready and do laundry, plus work the rest of the week. Back to work!

(Further Update)

So here's how it looks for now. I have to wait to refinish the floors and whitewash the built-ins. My glass knobs for the built-ins and the nightstand aren't in yet, so I still have a white knob on the nightstand.

I can't make it to IKEA for a few weeks yet to get a chair. I'll probably put one of our spare recliners in that corner and cover it with a red bedspread in lieu of a slipcover.

I have to get more do-dads for the shelves above the bed and hang the Star of Odin I purchased from a craftsman on Etsy.

Oh, and I had to use a miter box and cut shoe molding all around the room. That was stressful. Overall, even though it's not finished completely. I am liking the way it's turning out. What do you think?

Who paints a room the same colors?

2011-07-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll get to that in a moment, first, the floor.

See all those dots on the floor? In addition to removing the tack strips along the perimeter of the room, all over the floor I had to pull up staples where the previous owner stapled the mat to the floor. Tedious.

The hard part is done. After closer examination of the wood floors, I discovered worn spots and spots where the previous owner slopped paint and never cleaned it up. So I have to use paint remover and do some sanding, then I have to re-stain the floor to get an even appearance.

But next came the painting. Remember a few posts back, I can't remember if it was in the post or the comments, but I said I was debating on whether to paint at all because I wanted the blue on the bottom and yellow on the top, I just wanted it paler. So I painted, and after it dried, I challenge you to see the difference. This shot is BEFORE.

Here is the AFTER. The difference is there, but it's hard to tell. You can see the difference in the yellow in this shot. The original yellow was darker with a little more orange. The new yellow looks like butter.

The old blue was a shade or two darker than the current blue. But it was funny, after it was painted and dried, I couldn't tell the difference, neither could M. M wanted to know if it was worth the cost and effort to have it still look the same. I said the colors are brighter, and everything is now clean and fresh, rather than faded, dinged, and scratched. So yeah, it was worth it. I still have to paint all the white trim and shelves, then I'm going to tackle white-washing the built-in cabinets. After that, I will prime and paint some of the furniture a vivid red.

What will we find?

2011-07-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

Oh I'm so excited! What will we find underneath this icky green rug? It's just like Christmas time, you unwrap it all and are surprised by what you find.

Well there's a thick mat underneath.

There are no stains on it, so that bodes well for the wood underneath not being damaged. Keep your fingers crossed.

Ohhhhh, it's a thing of beauty!

Look at those gorgeous hardwoods. Why would anybody put a nasty green rug over such loveliness?

Well, I've got tack strips all around the outside of the room to remove. I also have to remove all the staples where the former owner stapled down the mat under the rug. Thanks to B for using his muscle and ripping it all out. Back to work for me.

Getting There

2011-07-12T07:24:00.001-07:00

29 plastic bins, 4 baskets, and 1 box later and Min's stuff is organized, packed, labeled and stored in the basement. We've tossed out about 4 bags of garbage (mostly catalogs).
Okay, so here's where the bed was and below it where it will be moved to the other side of the room to get more floor space.

The lovely green carpeting will be ripped out tonight. Since the bed will now be up against the far wall, that frees up floor space for half the room.

Over here in this corner is where I plan to put a reading chair. Still not sure if the chair and ottoman I want will fit here. Right next to it I plan to put a bookcase. Tomorrow I will begin the sanding and painting. Wish me luck!

[20 MINUTES LATER]

So, having been a lifelong viewer of PBS's "This Old House" and "The New Yankee Workshop," it is firmly ingrained in me to "measure twice, cut once." So I decided, maybe I should put the furniture in the room to make sure everything is going to fit well before I start painting and before I order the chair. Good thing I did. It turns out the blanket rack looks too crowded up against the bed. Even though you can still open the wardrobe doors all the way, it's still too close. I'll probably have to scrap the blanket rack and continue to let Min use it as a saddle horse.

So the little end table fits nicely next to the bed. But then I got the measurements for the chair from the IKEA website and laid tape lines for the outline of where the chair would sit. The measuring tape is coming out at the depth the ottoman would. So the chair and ottoman I wanted to put in there will be too big and stick out too far, taking up all the free floor space in the room and blocking the walkway to the bed. Hmmmm, I'm going to have to rethink the chair/ottoman combo. Darn.

The good news is that the new bookcase is low profile enough that it fits in there nicely without sticking out too far or taking up too much room. Now that I've moved all the furniture up there, I think I might just throw down a drop cloth and paint it up there as well. It beats moving it all back and forth a few times. Now to find my paint slips so I can go pick up bright red paint, and pale blue and pale yellow paint.

Hey, Michele, what do you think of this Jennylund chair instead of the bigger Ektorp? It's about 11 inches narrower in width, and about 5 inches less deep.

Busy weekend

2011-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was much like any other, too busy, so my cleaning out of Min's room came to a halt. I'll need to get in there with a vengeance soon or it won't be done by the end of the month when M's sister and family arrive.

So as you can see, the bins are being filled with clothes and the shelves are slowly getting emptied. In addition to having way too many clothes, she also has way too many magazines. She told me which ones to recycle and which to donate, that just means I will have to sort them all rather than pitching the whole lot in one fell swoop. *sigh*

Saturday was my birthday, so I was allotted the entire day to do whatever I wanted. It was nothing exciting by most people's standards, but it worked for me, doing what makes me happy. So we went for an early morning jog, then got bagels, then went to the farmer's market and flea market. Then when we got home, I sorted and cleaned my garlic before heading out to see a movie.

Aren't these babies gorgeous? Thanks to my sister, Pat, for the original garlic that I planted to get these gems. They smelled so fantastic when I cut them that I wanted to immediately cook up something garlicy.

While at the flea market I picked up a couple of the pressed glass plates that I collect and this lamp for Min's room. I already had the shade and was trying to find a lamp that I liked when I spotted this lamp. I thought the stem would be a good match for the glass knob on the nightstand where I plan to place this lamp.

I got all sorts of nice things for my birthday, but here's the most exciting, my new ocean kayak. We tried it out on Monday at the beach, but the waves were too close together and too rough. We'll try again in the coming weeks. I'll report back on our success or failure.

We also went fishing with friends this weekend, or rather, M and the friends fished, I sat and read. Fishing doesn't do it for me. :-)

Unfortunately, the crabs were biting and stealing bait like crazy, but we didn't have any crab pots with us. They did manage to snag one crab on the fishing line. They also caught quite a few white perch and catfish. We'll be eating them for dinner tonight.

On 4th of July afternoon we went out to Assateague to meet up with a bunch of friends who invited us for a cookout/bonfire and to watch the fireworks over Ocean City. A number of horse herds showed up on the beach. It was quite a surprise for some people. I'll leave you with shots of the ponies. Hope you all had a spectacular 4th.

Min's Room Makeover

2011-06-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

I just started unpacking Min's closet last night and sorting her various articles of clothing into different storage bins. This may take a while, that girl has a ton of clothes! Anyway, I figured this would be a good time to begin posting about her room makeover. Since I'm doing this in real time, don't expect daily updates. It's going to take a week to clean out the room, another half a week for the sanding and painting and another few days to get everything back in the room, but I will post as I go along.

Okay, let me preface this post with this picture. This is the closest visual example I could find on-line to explain the look I'm planning to do in Min's bedroom makeover. As simple as possible, pale walls, wood floors with pops of color in the furnishings. In more detail, I'm going for a Swedish folk look. Traditional Swedish farm houses would have pale walls to reflect light because the winters are so long and dark up there. They would also add pops of vivid colors to make the pale rooms cheerier. Notice the little red stand on the far left. I found a white stand very similar to that, that I will paint red.

That said, I think I mentioned in an earlier post that this pillow I found in IKEA started all this. I could not walk away from it and I was especially attracted to the red color in it. I immediately began envisioning re-doing Min's room with bold reds. The modern slant on the traditional bed ticking on the back of the pillow also inspired me. I wanted to bring in elements from a 1920s-30s farm house and use traditional ticking in the bedsheets and embroidered and crocheted blankets.

Here's an example of the ticking I'm referring to. For those of you who can remember, or if you've seen it in movies, old mattresses and pillows used to be done in blue/cream colored ticking stripes. Since I wanted to use that in the bedroom, I began searching for just the right sheets last year. I started early because the blue ticking is easy to find and still in use in a lot of bedding today. I of course, having to be different, wanted red stripe ticking. I found just a few examples on-line and they were all _very_ expensive. Also being the cheapskate I am, I had no intention of paying that much. So for at least 6 months I searched on-line and in every store I went into. No luck. I was either going to have to fork over the big bucks (over $100 for a set of sheets) or alter my design. I chose to alter the design and go with solid red sheets from K-Mart on sale. They were horribly thin and wouldn't do.

Then, after I'd given up hope of finding red striped ticking within my budget, I visited a local buyout store we have here, Ollie's. Here I finally found a close approximation of the type of sheets I was looking for, for around $20, and they're actually very nice quality sheets. Yes! Success!

So I decided on Swedish folk for the room. Min already had a traditional Swedish Dala horse in her bedroom for me to pull other ideas in. I like the colors painted on the horse and did research on Swedish Kurbit flowers to incorporate them into the design as well.

Here's an example of the Swedish Kurbit flower. This screams Swedish Folk, but it's also a VERY bold statement and could too easily take over a room and make it kitschy. So I've decided to keep this to a minimum. I will only have two examples of this in the room.

The first example will be on a small wooden bookcase that I will paint red and have Kurbit flowers going up the side, and the second example will be around the heart in this blanket rack. I will paint the rack red, and the Kurbit design will lend itself to wrapping around the heart cutout.

Speaking of red furniture. I knew I needed to find a small bedside end table, but it needed to be period accurate, you know, older in style, not modern. I went looking for that as well. I found this at the local K-Mart, but it was nearly $160. Besides refusing to spend that much money on a little end table, I also planned to paint it. No way was I going to drop that kind of money on something I was going to slap paint on!

Then, like magic, Voila! The redecorating gods and the yard sale gods got together on my behalf and presented me with this perfect table for $3. Can you say BARGAIN?! So obviously, this is going to be painted a vivid true red, and I plan to remove the wooden drawer pull and replace it with a glass drawer pull.

Here's an example of the drawer pull. Remember the glass door knobs in old houses? This knob is reminiscent of that. I'm also planning to remove all the wooden knobs and drawer pulls on Min's built-in cabinets and replacing all of them with glass knobs as well. Oh, so I guess this is a good place in my descriptions to actually show you pictures of Min's room "before" so you can see what I'm talking about.

This is your first view of Min's room as you approach. You immediately see the side of the ceiling-to-floor built-in cabinets, along with her collection of license plates.

As you walk in the bedroom door, you're immediately confronted with the full-sized bed that takes up most of the room. I don't like the placement of the bed like this because it interrupts the flow of the room as you walk in and it dominates the room. I plan to move the bed over into the far corner up against the wall to free up more floor space. We couldn't do this previously because of a wicker desk we had in that corner that I've since given away.

This is some of what remains in that far corner, Breyer horse statues, horse tack, trophies, and ribbons, along with supplies for the room makeover and tons of books I moved out of the office and don't have a place for just yet.

This is going over to that far wall and looking back. Obviously this is a very small room, but it looks smaller because the bed is in the middle of it all. Notice the wall colors in the room, the blue on the bottom and the yellow on the top. I was debating on whether to paint at all because I planned to use blue on the bottom and yellow on the top anyway, then I decided I should re-paint so it will be fresher and cleaner, plus I plan to go with a much paler blue and a much paler yellow.

Next let's take a look at the built-ins. Min likes them because they look like barn doors and that fits in nicely with the horsey theme of the room. I don't like them because they look like barn doors. I'm going for a farmhouse look, not a barn look. I plan to sand these cabinets down and then white wash them so they will bring a lot more light to the room but you'll still be able to see the wood grain in them.

Take a closer look at these drawers and cabinets. Notice all the colored wooden knobs on there? As I said earlier, I plan to replace all of those with glass knobs. However, since the wood will be whitewashed, I'm worried clear knobs will get lost. I'm thinking of going with either a green depression glass or blue glass so they stand out. Remember the walls will be blue. Which one do you think would look better? I'm leaning toward the green because it's softer and looks more period authentic.

Oh, and let's not forget the rug, the lovely green rug. Traditional wooden floors with an area rug or throw rug are what goes in a traditional Swedish farmhouse, not matted green rugs.

Not matted, stained green rugs, that got that way because no matter how many times Min was told to clean her saddles and tack outside on the porch, she ended up doing it in her room, thinking we wouldn't smell the oils and soaps and that an oily bottle placed on the rug would never be noticed. Uh-huh. Needless to say, we're ripping out the rug. There are hardwoods underneath.

Lastly, here are some of the pieces I've already got to put in the room. I have a lot more to pick up, but I'm getting there. This is the red afghan I had my mom crochet for the bed.

This is the traditional embroidered quilt I found for the bed.

And here are other assorted objects I picked up for their color value. What do you think?

This last item is an IKEA chair I hope to put in the room with a matching ottoman if I have room for it. There's a skinnier, straighter version of it at IKEA, but it doesn't have the look I'm going for; I want it to be a big comfy reading chair that just calls to you to come sit down and get lost in a good book. I'm hoping this will become my new favorite reading spot.

A Glimmer of Hope

2011-06-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

Just when I was losing my faith in humanity, I saw this:

The Last 30 Days . . .

2011-06-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

{Warning: View this in Mozilla Firefox for pix and words to line up. They're all over the place in MS Explorer.}

Okay, I'm going to try to breeze through all this, because if I get bogged down, I'll never get a post out. Here's what we've been up to and why I've been so sparse on the postings:

It's been like Destruction Central here lately as we work on home improvement projects. You might remember our front porch step fiasco that we had done wrong by one crew only to have re-done properly by another guy last year. Well the remaining efforts of these first guys was in the sidewalk they patched when they did the front steps. Needless to say, if they didn't know what they were doing with laying brick, they certainly didn't know how to mix concrete. The sidewalk they patched was crumbling like peanut brittle (click on pic to see what I mean) a mess and a hazard to walk around.

Since we _had_ to get this fixed to avoid injury, we decided to also get our front retaining wall fixed. That had also been crumbling in spots as well as tipping over.

The guy came in with heavy machinery which made the destruction part easier and quicker, but it also made a huge mess of our front yard.

All that mess got clean up eventually and the new wall finally got poured.

That just left us with the clean up of all that dirt, and reseeding all the grass. At some point soon, we'll probably paint the whole wall white again so it looks sharper out front.

In the midst of all this destruction, we also had another progressive dinner. The theme for this last one was "Canadian" food, courtesy of Michele who lives here now, but is from Canada. It was fun trying to find recipes. Of course, Poutine was served (fries smothered in cheese and gravy).

We also attended a local minor league baseball game. A couple of the players were #1 draft picks that likely will go on to the major leagues.

We thought the game wouldn't happen because of the chance of rain. We got 2 innings behind us when the rain came.

After that, they kept covering and uncovering the field in between rain showers. We eventually decided to go around 9:30 p.m. rather than wait until around 10 p.m. for it to start back up again.

We also took in an Air Show at the beach one day. There were lots of turbo prop planes and some military jets as well as parachute sky writers.

M's parents came to visit us last Thursday through Tuesday, I believe. So we made the obligatory trip to the beach, ate lots of crab, had a fire on the beach, and,

saw our first dolphins of the season. M had just commented "it's been ages since we've seen any dolphins," when Bam! There they were just off-shore. Click on the pic to see the best shot I could get of one of them as they quickly surfaced then went back under.

While M's parents were here, her mom (who is a weeding machine) began cleaning up our side yard. M then planted all the flowers I'd gotten at the plant sale and brought some much needed color back to our side yard.

Now if all that isn't enough, remember we both still have work and personal things going on, and I am now beginning to do a make over on my daughter, Min's room. Are we busy yet? I expect the clearing out of Min's room to take a week, then there will be the sanding, painting, and ripping out the green rug, before I can put it all back together again. I'll do a starter post on that soon. Back to work!

What do you think of these stories?

2011-06-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

From Anderson Cooper's "Ridiculist"

Who's more messed up - the parents who gave permission, the 16 yr. or the dirty old man, er, new husband?

Is our healthcare system broken?

I knew it! I knew it! Cats are evil and up to no good.

Blueberry Picking

2011-06-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Today was a lovely rainy Sunday, a light rain, a slow soak, so it was much better for blueberry picking than previous years when it was sunny and unbearably hot.

My friend, Julie and I went picking berries. For some reason I have the vague memory that somebody asked me to invite them the next time I went berry picking, but for the life of me, I can't remember who that was. So if you're reading this and I didn't invite you along, I apologize. Just remind me and I'll got out Mon-Wed of this week with you and pick some more.

I really like picking these blueberries because they are up off the ground on short trees or tall shrubs, rather than the squat bushes or ground cover I remember from way up north. It's much easier on the back and I'm all about making manual labor as easy as possible.

The orchard covers a number of acres so there were plenty of bushes to choose from. Some you could tell were picked clean, others weren't quite ripe, but there were still plenty very ripe and heavy with fruit. My technique for picking is to find a stem with at least 90% ripe berries, wrap my hand around the stem then gently roll the berries in my hand as I tug down on the branch to loosen the berries so they all fall into my waiting bucket directly below the branch. It beats picking them one-by-one.

This was the early view of my bucket. I think I picked around 7 pounds, I can't remember. But that's what I picked last time by filling the bucket. I also bought some berries for a neighbor. I took them home, lightly washed them off. Now they're all drying on a towel on the kitchen counter, next I'll bag them up and put them in the freezer. It's as simple as that. Our last 7 pounds of berries lasted us 2 years. We use them mostly on cereal or in hot oatmeal in the winter. Julie says blackberry picking will be in a few weeks in July. I'll go picking for those as well, even though our blackberry bush is full with unripened berries right now.

Comedienne Maria Bamford

2011-06-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Remember this Target ad from Christmas?

Apparently this lady is comedienne Maria Bamford. I just read a CNN article about her and then watched some of her YouTube videos. She's funny and disturbing, just what you need to take you into the weekend.

Mmmmm

2011-06-14T18:32:00.001-07:00

It's been so dry here we fully expected to find dry shriveled bushes, instead we were greeted with the largest raspberries these bushes have ever produced, and a lot of them! They also tasted fantastic! Our blackberry bushes are also full but not quite ripe yet. I'm sensing a cobbler in my future.

Do Not Text In The Theatre

2011-06-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

I just came across this story about the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. They have a dinner/theatre combo from what I gather and a firm policy about no texting during movies. Apparently one young lady was texting and was asked a couple of times to stop. When she didn't she was escorted out of the theatre. Well, she apparently went off to have a couple of brews to drown her sorrows and left a profanity laced voice mail for the theatre. They decided to turn it into a public service announcement at the beginning of their movies.
Full Story

Those Who FailedTo Learn From History

2011-06-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

Allow me to preface this post with, everybody makes mistakes. You can imagine the pressure on a public figure, and the fact that being on camera so much, they're bound to say something wrong or contradict themselves at some point in time. That said, some things people say are not so much "mistakes" as they are evidence of that person's ignorance. When you add a refusal to admit you're wrong to ignorance, you have a very dangerous combination. The right thing to have done in this situation was to say, "oh, I mispoke, I know Revere was warning the Americans, I just got tangled up in my words." End of story, but no, not for Sarah. Let's re-write history rather than admit to a simple mistake.

Weight Loss

2011-06-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

I was a skinny kid, blew up to pudgy briefly at the start of puberty and then slimmed down again. I stayed skinny until age 30, when I put on about 40 pounds in one year. I was stunned because I was running 5-6 days per week, doing the "Buns of Steel" workout every morning after my run, doing at least 2 - 5K races per month and chasing after a house full of kids. I went to the doctor and he told me it was just the middle age spread starting. I argued it was too much weight too fast and told him how much I was exercising. He said I was probably just building muscle. I told him I'd been on the same exercise regime for 3 years, I wouldn't suddenly be building muscle. He was no help, no other doctor was either, and I continued to gain weight. The heavier I got, the less I exercised because it began to get harder and harder to move. It also became painful in my knees and hips. Fast forward 18 years and 80 pounds later, I still struggle not to gain weight.

I'd been on diets over the years, with people and alone. Every time I did a group diet, everyone else would eat more than me and lose twice as much weight as me. It didn't seem fair. I went to more doctors, again, "there's nothing wrong with you." So at the beginning of this year, M and I decided to get serious about eating healthier and moving more. For three months I cut out extras, started exercising on average 4 days a week. I thought those changes would do something, anything. I didn't lose an ounce, much less a pound.

So next we end up taking a week long cruise. I decide I've been working so hard for 3 months with not a change, I'm just going to relax on the cruise and worry about the diet and exercise when I come back. For the entire week on the cruise, I don't exercise and I eat round the clock, more than I've ever eaten before. I also sleep really well for the first time in years. By the end of the cruise, I lose 5 pounds. Within the first 2 weeks back from the cruise I lose an additional 3 pounds. That's the incentive I needed, I begin exercising more than before, more strenuously, being even stricter with my diet, and for the next couple of months . . . I don't lose any weight. I am so frustrated by now! I'm also getting 1-3 hours of sleep a night.

So I'm complaining about all of this to a friend and she offers me some melatonin to help me sleep. The first night I take it I sleep one hour and wake up, then fall back asleep for 6 1/2 hours. Awesome! I can't tell you how great and clear-headed I felt after that much sleep in one night. I took some the second night, and didn't sleep as much, but still better than before. I get on the scale the next morning and I've lost 2 pounds in the 2 days I've taken melatonin and slept! Coincidence?

So I'm all excited to tell my friend this and before I can e-mail her, she has e-mailed me a medical study about light and sleep affecting how a body stores weight. In a nutshell the study says if there's any amount of light in your room at night, it disrupts your sleep and your body's own melatonin production, which will cause your body to produce 50% more body mass than someone sleeping in a completely dark room. So now that I have some additional confirmation for this, I'm covering the digital clocks, the glow-in-the-dark light switch on the wall and putting extra covers over my front window to prevent the glare of the street light from shining in my eyes at night. Who knew sleeping could be a weight-loss technique?

Student Loan Debt

2011-06-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

I came across this graphic on the Man vs. Debt blog and it looked interesting. Hopefully you can read it.

Infographic by College Scholarships.org

Pay Attention To The Language Used

2011-05-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

This is so freaky. I was just having this conversation with my students today but on a different topic. I told them to pay attention to what is being said, the words people choose to use, to understand what's really going on beneath the surface. We were discussing the Civil War and the following Reconstruction period.

So after class I come back to my office and am reading CNN while eating lunch and I come across this interview with, and article by, LZ Granderson on the issue of politicians, abortions and rape.

First, I love his opening statement in the interview that he is both pro-life and pro-choice. I've taken that position before and it confuses people, but you can be against abortion without telling other people what they can do with their bodies.

That said, Granderson wrote this article about the discourse in State and Federal Congresses about the issue of abortion. He rightly tells women, regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, you need to pay attention to what these politicians are saying about "you," women as a whole. The paternalistic and misogynistic attitudes of our elected officials toward women are very scary. We've got to stop electing people who consider us less than men, incapable of making decisions for ourselves and our bodies, and legislating against us according to their religious beliefs.

Can you imagine the outcry if women tried to legislate men's bodies? Castration for all rapists, vasectomies for all the baby daddies, one or the other for all men who break the marital vow of monogamy, a ban on Viagra or at least prevent insurance companies from funding it. What would men do if women told them what they could do with their bodies?

Here's the story:

Abortion Debate Trivializes Rape

Awww

2011-05-31T05:43:00.000-07:00

I just saw this interview on CNN:

Here's the proposal:

I also found another proposal similar to the first. Some guys are really creative.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

2011-05-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Remember.

New Job

2011-05-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

Min has a new job working with animals. She's an Equine Vet Tech and goes on runs with the Vet to tend horses, mules, etc. up and down the peninsula. She sent me this picture of one of her first patients. It doesn't look much like a horse to me, and what is someone doing with a camel on the eastern shore of Maryland?

Cakes by Min

2011-05-03T05:04:00.000-07:00

I had Min make a cake for a friend of mine whose birthday is today. Min was trying to make dragonflies that would be suspended on wires above the cake, but the fondant just wouldn't cooperate and the dragonflies kept dropping downward like a Salvador Dali picture. So it has one giant one resting on the cake. I wanted something bright and beachy in color. I think she captured that.

Happy May Day!

2011-05-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

The May Day Fairies were at it again, up before dawn and hitting five houses, covering ten small children. Hope you had a Happy May Day!

Bunny Cake

2011-04-28T13:04:00.001-07:00

This is a photo of Min's latest cake. She made this for us for Easter. It's a bunny's butt, as if he fell into the basket of candy. The outside of the basket is made from Kit Kat bars, the top is covered with M&Ms and the bottom is a cake. Cute huh? I have better pix of it on my camera, this one was taken with my phone, but I haven't bothered to download the camera photos yet. Hope you all had a nice Easter.

The current soundtrack of my life . . .

2011-04-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

I've recently discovered Mumford & Sons courtesy of Sadie Lou's blog. I recently purchased their CD "Sigh No More" because I couldn't get their song "Awake My Soul" out of my head. Sometimes the Universe whispers to you to wake up, sometimes it sings to you.

The Cave is my second favorite song on this CD.

Really?

2011-04-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

A number of things have annoyed me lately and it makes me wonder if everyone is on some sort of automatic pilot drug and not really an active participant in their lives.

So TSA screeners are doing patdowns on 3 year olds, 5 year olds, is there some sort of profile they have that the public isn't aware of that says these suspicious youngsters could be packing explosives? Really, a 3 year old? What do they do to infants?

The government was in danger of a shutdown, it still might be, and we're going to continue playing politics because we're rich members of Congress and it won't affect us. Just like we can have the cadillac of insurances that the government pays for but the public can't, and just like we get the golden parachute of retirement packages, but everyone else's pensions (people who make substantially less than Congress people) get cut. Does that make sense to anyone? I say freeze all the assets of Congress until they do their jobs, no money, no insurance coverage, and start deducting from their retirements until they actually do their jobs for the benefit of the public and not big corporations and special interests.

Speaking of big corporations and special interests, did anyone else catch the story on GE paying no taxes on $5.1 billion dollars in profits, and then on top of that, taking a $3.2 billion tax credit? Yet the Republicans do not want to close the corporate loopholes or tax the very rich at a higher rate. Really? How can you say that with a straight face? How do you guys keep getting elected? Oh yeah, massive corporate funding and an ignorant, easily manipulated voting public. *sigh*

Then there are the multiple instances of air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. I can understand it happening, but when the telephone rings to wake you up and you still sleep? How about 2 air traffic controllers asleep at the same time at one of the nation's busiest airports. How does that happen? You would think when the first few got caught a couple of weeks back, that the latest ones would have been more careful about sleeping on the job so as not to get caught.

Let's not forget everyone's favorite wacko cult, Westboro Baptist Church. It's no longer enough for them to destroy funerals of military personnel, now they're going to picket the schools of the children of military personnel. Really? Are you that stupid? Do you really think you're going to get converts with that? Do you really think anyone's going to change U.S. policy because of what you're doing? The only policy that's going to get changed is that we're going to come up with stricter parameters on constitutonally protected free speech to prevent nut jobs from spreading the hate.

All this stupidity and lack of common sense is making me feel old and crotchety like Maxine. Have a nice day.

Spring Has Arrived

2011-04-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

We now have 72 very happy garlic plants popping up, M has also planted potatoes, onions, spinach, cilantro, basil, peas, zucchini, and tomatoes. I got some 2 year old asparagus plants for her to plant this year. Every year I ask her to plant asparagus and every year she says, it takes a couple of years before you get any asparagus, but then never plants it. So this year I found the plants and now I'm politely reminding her to plant them. :-)

Apparently all my bulbs enjoyed the snowy Winter and wet Spring because they're all coming up this year. We had a huge number that never flowered last year. We have Jonquils.

Both our peach and pears trees are flowering.

We have Daffodils.

Our Phlox is flowering all over the property. We also have new buds on our Red Maple trees, new buds on both our lilac bushes and our Dogwood trees are also in bloom. This is the prettiest time of year around here. Hope you're getting good weather where you are.

A Typical Weekend . . .

2011-04-05T18:51:00.001-07:00

Last Friday we had another progressive dinner, but because M had to work until 5, I got to be in charge of the food this time. Luckily we had dessert and I can bake a cake, well, two to be exact. So since M is such an amazing cook, I couldn't just do an ordinary cake. I felt pressure to create something beautiful. I went to the expense of buying stencils to decorate the top, getting candy flowers, spray on food coloring, powdered sugar, you name it. I used egg whites instead of whole eggs in the recipes to make the cakes fluffier. What I ended up discovering was that although I can bake a mighty tasty cake, I suck at decorating. That gene must have skipped right over me and landed with my daughter. On this chocolate cake you can just see the flower patterns on top I did with the stencil and powdered sugar. They didn't come out well so I tried to doctor the decorating with raspberries.

Next I also make a coconut cake using coconut milk instead of water, and of course, egg whites and coconut in the frosting. I again tried a stencil on top, it didn't work. I used spray on food coloring in an effort to make it look special and added candy flowers. Overall, it was okay, but a little messy looking. Oh well. At least they tasted good. We used up the left over cake at a cookout on Sunday and today when I was at work, coworkers were asking me about my coconut cake and I had to ask how they knew about it when they weren't at the cookout. Apparently it made an impression on one of the guests and she was raving about it. Okay, so one point for taste, I'll have to leave the decorating to my daughter.

On Saturday morning we each did political volunteering for different campaigns and I'm THRILLED to announce that all 3 of our candidates won their seats for City Council. We FINALLY have a majority on the City Council! We also went to see Source Code that afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. You could basically figure out the premise of the movie from the movie trailer, but I was surprised at all the additional details that were in the movie. Also, at the end of the movie, you're satisfied because it's a good story with a good ending, but then they leave you with a little something more. I like that. I haven't had a movie do that in awhile. I would recommend this movie for all but the very youngest audiences.

Then on Sunday, after a very long wait to find the right tiles for the kitchen, months waiting on the shipping and then another month trying to work out the schedule for installation, we finally got the subway tiles installed for our backsplash in the kitchen, all while preparing for a spontaneous cookout gathering that M is notorious for springing on me at the last minute. :-) So in this shot you can still see a little of the teal paint on the wall where the tile hasn't been placed yet. We got close to matching the color of the walls with the color of the tiles. The tiles are more a smoky blue teal whereas the walls were more of a green teal. M now says we need to repaint all the teal walls in a nice shade of gray. *sigh*

More going in. We still have to put the covers back over the outlets and wash down the tiles to remove residual mastic. We also have to put up quarter round molding over some edges.

Other than that, it's essentially done. So what do you think? Min came home and saw it and said our kitchen now looked fancy. Amazing what a little glass tiling can do. I do have to admit, it is much prettier than the painted plywood. *grin*

The next thing I have to do is finally get the upper cabinets installed. I'll probably have to leave that for a couple of months until I get some of my legal work behind me and finish teaching. But they should be up within a few months. So that's what we were up to last weekend. How about you?

Book Review

2011-03-31T13:40:00.001-07:00

I recently read _The Story of Edgar Sawtelle_ in less than a week when we went on our cruise. I had trouble putting this book down. It was a great story. It had complex characters, and had some history in it. There was a bit of sinister suspense, and then of course there were the dogs, the Sawtelle dogs. These dogs were never chosen for their breed, their size, beauty or any of the typical things. These dogs were chosen for their intelligence and personality and then bred with other exceptional dogs. The story lines in this book weave in and out around the breeding and training of these dogs with the remarkable gaze, knowledge and personalities. Early on, the grandfather in this story is attracted to tales of heroic and exceptionally smart dogs. When he meets these dogs he can tell by the way they look him in the eye that they are somehow more aware than other dogs. He believes these dogs are part of an evolutionary process occurring in the canine species, that all dogs might eventually progress like these few. He becomes interested in breeding these types of dogs to see if he can achieve a quicker result than what he believes evolution is already doing. This book covers the story of the Sawtelle family over 3 generations and their single minded focus on these dogs. Each member of the family has a very different personality from the next, and they each make very different life choices. There's a lot of dysfunctional and criminal drama in this family, and throughout, these dogs are being bred and developing into these very sentient beings. The book culminates with the dogs making very conscious, free will decisions and understanding what's going on in the world around them. That said, I had a little curiosity with where the dogs end up on the last page. I understand philosophically where they are and what their decisions mean, I'm just curious about where they physically are. So if any of you out there decide to read this book, or already have, I'd love to discuss the last page with someone to get feedback on what others think about it. So in conclusion, I would highly recommend this book as a good old fashioned "yarn." It's interesting and you can get lost in it.

Cruising

2011-03-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

So M had been planning this trip for months, thinking about it for years, and it finally came to fruition, and not a moment too soon. Lots of stress on the jobs. We left out of NY (sorry Trish for not stopping to see you, we were literally in and out for boarding and disembarcation). We booked a one week cruise (Saturday to Saturday). It was cold when we left and when we returned, but everything in between was sunny and warm. Ahhhh.

Here are the only shots of us by the pool. This was when we first boarded and it was still very cold out. M was just so happy to be on board and beginning her vacation, that nothing could dampen her spirits.

You can see I have my jacket on because it was so cold out. That changed within 24 hours I am happy to say. So we left NY and began our cruise on the Atlantic a number of miles off the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

M decided this was likely a once in a lifetime cruise and if we were going to do this, we were going to splurge and get a stateroom with a balcony, toward the middle of the ship so we wouldn't get bounced around as much. I took shots from both directions not knowing how the lighting would be.

The room was fabulous! It had a separate bathroom with toilet, tub/shower, and sink. Plenty roomy enough. Then there was the bed area with nightstands, closet and lights. Then the lounge area with fold out futon, desk, chair, cabinets, t.v., safe and refrigerator, then the balcony with two chairs and a table.

Our first stop was Port Canaveral, Florida where we took a shore excursion to see the Kennedy Space Center. It really appealed to the history nerd in me.

The next day we docked at Stirrup Bay, Bahamas, a private island owned by the cruise line. The first day I got up and saw the water, I was amazed. It was a really clear, teal (greenish/blue) and you could see to the bottom. It looked like a jewel tone and not like any water I had seen before. I took countless pictures trying to capture the color of the water and was never able to. It was so beautiful. So was the island. On our shore excursion there, we kayaked on the other side of the island. We saw stingrays, star fish and other tropical fish. Then we came back to the other side of the island, had lunch and swam and played in the water. The funniest line for the whole vacation was when we were with our kayak guides. A voice of another worker came in over their walkie-talkies and said: "apparently there are fish in the water here." (Meaning the beach). The Kayak guide replied: "what?" The voice said, "yeah, some tourists just came and reported that there were fish in the water." How funny. What did they expect, a swimming pool?

We spent all our time on board sitting on the balcony and watching sunsets, reading, or going all over the boat to enjoy the spa, eat all we wanted, or enjoy some of the shows and activities they had on board. We both worried we were going to gain a ton of weight, but I actually lost 5 pounds on the cruise. I think it was because I caught up on my sleep and didn't have any stress. I told M we need to schedule another cruise so I could lose more weight, she told me, "that was a very expensive 5 pounds." So I guess that's out as an option for losing weight. Oh well.

Our next stop was at Nassau, Bahamas. We did a snorkeling excursion which was M's favorite. There were so many beautiful colored coral and so many multi-colored tropical fish. It was like floating in a fish tank. We bought an underwater disposable camera to take pictures. We're waiting on that to be developed. Hopefully we got some good shots and didn't double-expose everything. I can't remember the last time I had to wait to get pictures developed. How antiquated! Anyway, there was a lot of shopping in Nassau. There were all sorts of really high-end, expensive stores and galleries for the uber-rich. We of course shopped in the open air markets where you could haggle for items and get a reasonable price. I got a really cute backpack and tee shirt.

My favorite part of the cruise were these babies, individual hot tub jacquizzies that faced a bank of windows at the front of the ship. You could lie there in warm, bubbling bliss and gaze out at miles and miles of ocean. It felt like I'd died and gone to heaven. We made it a point to get to the spa every day to take advantage of this luxury. Okay, so overall, I'd say the cruise experience was a huge success. We went on the Norwegian Cruise Line which was spotlessly clean and being cleaning non-stop, 24/7 where ever you looked. I took Dramamine while on the ship and only had a mild, underlying nausea while sailing some of the time. I get motion sickness very easily, so I had been worried about that. This cruise allowed us to do what we wanted, when we wanted and we didn't have to dress up or socialize with anyone if we didn't want to. I managed to read an entire book in less than a week. I don't believe that's happened in at least 15 years. The only downside was having to come home and back to the reality of working. *sigh* I will have a book review soon. The book I read was great!

Time . . .

2011-03-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

So a week ago Saturday I took off my watch and didn't put it back on until the following Saturday. I had no cell phone signal so I turned the phone off for a week. I had no Internet access (by choice) and the only satellite t.v. I had access to was repeats of old shows, MSNBC business coverage, the BBC and Fox News (hell no), so I didn't really watch t.v. for a week. There were clocks all around. Since they were all different, I don't think any of them had the correct time. They each had signs underneath. Click on the pictures to see them.

2011-03-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

My daughter recently celebrated her 22nd birthday with us. She made her own cake and brought it home with her.

She's been practicing making cakes and covering them with fondant and making sculptures out of fondant to go on top of the cake.

On this cake she decided to try making a horse jumping out of a cake. Okay, so he's more likely climbing out of it, but I thought it was cute anyway.

Here's the lovely, Min.

This shot is posted specifically for Marilyn. Hard to believe I was ever Min's size, but you know we both have the pictures to prove it. So I took all the previous shots with my new camera, nice but nothing special. So Min takes my camera to the horse farm to take pictures, and voila, you have a clear demonstration of the difference between amateur shots and great shots when you actually know what you're doing. Oh well, I guess I just keep trying.

I love the snippets of daily life she caught.

I love the richness of colors, see that Granny Smith apple and how the background looks purple?

How many of us could just stick the camera in front of us, click it and have a shot as awesome as she took with her blue shirt and the reflection in her sunglasses? I think I might have to hire her to give me lessons.

Okay, going on Spring Break for a week, I'll visit with you all when I return.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2011-03-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

We had our Corned Beef dinner last night, I mashed up my own version of Colcannon. I hope the Swedish Chef, Animal and Beeker singing Danny Boy will put you in the right mood and may the luck of the Irish be with you. I wonder where that luck went when the potato famine happened?

Of course I have to throw this one in too, even though it's about a Scotsman:

NPR Cartoons

2011-03-15T10:05:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to get to another post, I have pictures I took of Spring, but life is too busy right now. So in the mean time, here's some NPR cartoon humor while it lasts, since funding may be cut soon.

America Is Not Broke

2011-03-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

It's Coming . . .

2011-03-08T05:17:00.001-08:00

69 heads of garlic in our garden are making an exploratory mission in search of Spring. Yippee!!

NPR Cartoon Commentaries

2011-03-03T09:47:00.000-08:00