Musings
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Friday Fun
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0[/youtube] I just saw this on Yahoo, and it made me laugh. If you haven’t seen this already, I thought you might like to see a fun wedding processional. 🙂
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Quote of the Day
“If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.” ~Elmore Leonard (Guess who started back at her old job yesterday, after five blissful months of unemployment? Yup, moi. Sigh.)
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I Heart Bissell Right Now
Really. Take this review for what it’s worth, because we haven’t tested any of the competitors. Just the Bissell. But when your dog has diarrhea repeatedly on your off-white carpet, you don’t care what brand you’re using, so long as it works. And work it did. Saturday morning, when we woke up to find Genevieve barfing her guts out, we were worried. But we had a lot going on that day, and didn’t see the shit storm she left behind the television, all over our fancy wiring system for the (rhymes with) Gielson box. We came home later and found a holy mess, and our old carpet cleaner wasn’t up…
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Love is the Answer
(graphic found here) Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald Ted and I watched a very interesting episode of Bill Moyers Journal (you can watch the entire episode by following the link…it’s about an hour) the other day, one which dealt with Faith and Social Justice. The panelists were Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien, three heavy hitting scholars and members of the social gospel movement. They were discussing what our ethics and values say about our society, most specifically how our system encourages greed and immoral conduct, and the culture of indifference in which we find ourselves. They argued…
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The Cola Wars Continue
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgq4knffRKc[/youtube] We’ve been hearing a lot about High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Sugar lately, and we decided to do a very low-tech cola taste test on Saturday. I went to my local grocery store, where I procured one Pepsi, one Coke, one Mexican Coke (aka, Coke with sugar), and one Pepsi Natural (aka, Pepsi with sugar). Ted wanted to try some other cola brands as well, but at $7.80 for four sodas, we decided that four were enough. We decided that a blind taste test was best, so I marked the bottoms of some paper cups with the four varieties, and we each had a sample of all four. We…
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Thursday 13 ~ Some things I’m glad I can do, some things I haven’t bothered to learn, a few I wish I could do.
(Things I can do) Ride a horse. Maybe not well (yet), but I’m not afraid of them, and I’m glad that I feel confident enough when I ride that I don’t need someone there guiding me. Swim. I love swimming. I know people who are afraid of the water, never learned to swim, and it makes me sad. Such a free feeling, and a way to feel your body in a totally alien environment. Cook a nice meal. I truly enjoy cooking, and I’m thankful to my mom for making Richard and me start chipping in with that chore when we were in High School. That gave me some time…
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Wonderful Weekend
Our weekend started with a dinner to celebrate Juneteenth, including bbq chicken, potato salad, a tex mex salad that I found at Scribbit, and a wonderful nectarine and raspberry crisp. Very nice. Saturday I got up and out the door, and went to my first of 6 weekly horseback riding lessons. Yay! This was the assessment lesson, where the instructor found out more about me and my previous experience, and watched me ride a bit, so she could correct my seat, my feet, etc. I have to say, I really, really liked it. The lesson is more than just riding, you also learn about caring for the horse. So I…
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Happy Father’s Day
Several years ago (look how young Maya is in this picture?), Ted got free tickets through the station to go up to Six Flags Marine World, and we went. While there, some photographer guy snapped a photo of us, and ever since then, I keep getting emails asking me if I want to buy a product with the picture on it. Really, I don’t. I’m not sure how many times I have to tell them this, but I don’t. Or at least, not yet. Maybe in a few years, when I look back and say, “Gosh, look how young I am!”, I’ll be more tempted. But if I were to…
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Juneteenth
On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, word of their freedom came to the slaves of Texas. Major General Gordon Granger brought the news via General Order Number 3, which began: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.” This is clearly a truly American holiday, as it marks the end of slavery in the United…
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Great American Food & Music Debacle
One advantage of Ted’s job is that we sometimes get free tickets to local events. One such event was yesterday’s Great American Food & Music Festival, held in Mountain View. This was the first (perhaps last) year for this event. The idea was to take iconic dishes from around the country and bring them all to one venue, bring in some big names from the Food Network, and pair it up with some good music and make a day of it. Sounds good on paper, right? Unfortunately, something fell apart in the execution. I’d be interested to read a newspaper account of what all actually went wrong, but one major…
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I think I forgot to tell you…
That Grandma came home from the assisted living facility on Tuesday, is home watching her soaps and smoking the occasional cig. Though I frown on cigs in general, she’s 86 and entitled to do what she wants, I think. Yay Grandma! Glad you’re home. Enjoy your soap operas. 🙂 I love you. You rock.
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Friday Randomness ~ 5 Things
We’re going to the Great American Food & Music Festival tomorrow. The idea behind the food part is to bring authentic samples of iconic American dishes to one festival. This is the first year for the festival, and they readily admit that there are quite a few classic American cuisines sorely lacking. This is mainly due to the fact that they want small restaurants to participate, and few of them are equipped to fly all of the way to CA and then serve up 5,000 servings of their dish. So there will be no pizza, no Chicago hot dogs, no southern cooking. But there will be hot dogs from Pinks…
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Earth Day ~ A Day Late and a Dollar Short
I heard this poem read on NPR the other day, and it really struck me. It struck me of the beauty of our world, of the importance of our caring for it. Of our stewardship of this Earth. I know I’m late, and that Earth Day was April 22nd. But still, our Earth does not deserve just a day. But a lifetime. An eternity. It’s not just some fruity tree hugger thing I’m talking about here…save the Earth, save the world. Meaning….us. ‘The Well Rising’ by William Stafford The well rising without sound, the spring on a hillside, the plowshare brimming through the deep ground everywhere in the field —…
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Friday Wrap Up
It’s been a busy week…I didn’t do much posting this week, did I? The Thursday 13 took me forever, because I couldn’t find the time to scan pictures. And even then, I had some pictures for some of the places that I didn’t post, because I couldn’t be bothered. OK, I could be bothered, but not much. More interested in napping and cooking dinner in my free time. And I didn’t have a lot of free time this week…Monday is exercise day…long walk, then video work out, then yoga, and by the time I get home at noon, I’m ready for a nap, and then it’s time to pick up…
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Friday Post…
Casey from Live Your Art has a post of things that are making her happy right now. They’re good things, simple and true. I’m taking the idea and using it here, though I’m too lazy to take pictures. Sorry. 1. My book, which I’ve been sort of ignoring for a few weeks now, though I have had this niggling feeling that I would really get into it once I started…well, I’m finally starting, and yes, I’m finally getting into it. Yay! 2. Spring is in full bloom, though the worst of the allergies have passed for now. So it’s about baby ducks in our swimming pool (sorry, they never seem…