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

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

Video of Surprise


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

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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

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.

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!

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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

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

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

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?!

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

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.