Friday, August 29, 2008

Vacation

Friday, Happy Birthday The Kitty's Feeder,  Cat Blogging

McCain Picks V.P

...And she's an interesting choice...
Wow.

My house is filthy. I'm going to have to run home at lunch and hope for some heavenly assistance's if I';m going to get the rest of my chores done and at least make the house presentable, I leave for vacation tomorrow at 0'Dark Thirty tomorrow morning and I still have a to-do list as long as my arm. I hope when I stagger in the door in three weeks I'm not too mad at myself for not doing more about it when I had a chance.

I think I'll forgive myself.

I went to see The Speech (full text of remarks) last night instead of staying home and doing housework. When was the last time you put more thought into where you were going to watch a political speech than what you were going to do for New Years Eve? When was the last time you had choices? When was the last time you cared?

My house is a mess, but I was doing something  more important. I looked online to see where I might go to watch the speech, I didn't want to watch it alone and I thought watching it with a crowd of my fellow Democrats would be kind of cool. I found a gathering at the Raleigh Obama headquarters just blocks from my house. I had a number of other choices, in swankier locations but I decided that watching free of charge and gigantic screen ( otherwise known as the side of a building) would be better.

It was awesome. The pulled chairs out of the headquarters so we could all be comfortably, there were vender's selling snacks and the TV stations sent their trucks. It was kind of heady. Then the speeches started, and the crowd started growing and cheering and it was wonderful.

Bill Richardson rawked and why couldn't Al Gore speechify like that eight years ago?  And
then right before the main act, it started raining. We all hustled inside and waited anxiously for the to get the TV ready to go. The crowd went nuts for the woman for NC and we all roared at Barney Smith/Smith Barney.

And then it was the main event, the reason we were all there, the reason we ventured forth on a rainy school night to sit on folding chairs in a parking lot to listen to a speech. We all could have stayed home and watched from the comfort of our couches but we didn't, we couldn't. I could have stayed at home and watched it with Dogger and The Kitty and I could have probably gotten a lot of my chores done and I most would have a much cleaner house right now, but I couldn't and I didn't and I am so glad!

Today is a historical for many reasons, the least of which being that on August 29, 1968 I was born into a swirl of history, yesturday I got to be part of history.

Today in History

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Odds and Ends

I’m trying to do all my last minute things all at once, brilliant planning, I know. I pretty much have the big things taken care of, but it’s all the smaller things, not less important, but literally the little things that are a large part of my day and my life. They are so integrated into my day that I don’t even really think about them. The kind of things I could easily forget while I am trying to remember everything else.

I spent twenty minutes sorting out the animals meds. It was a lot of work. On the road, Dogger will get  seven pills a day and The Kitty  four pills. Every day, I spend a lot of time  every day with my hand stuck down one or the others throat. I do all this pill planning and then I’m off  doing other things and watching the convention and trying to think about how much food I’m going to want in the car and what I really want to eat verses what I should eat verses what I will eat in the car for three days when I have nothing else to do. And then I said Wait, what about my pills? Duh. I needed to go take care that. How did the creature highest on the food chain become the lowest on the list of it’s own priorities?

While I’m sitting here, I just realized that there are more things I need to pack for Dogger, aside from her meads. I all ready packed her bag with three leashes: an extended leash for those days she’s needs her space and both of her daily leashes, both of her harness, a back up collar in case something happens to the every day model and two glow-in-the-dark add ons just in case. All of this for a dog that shouldn’t really go on many walks longer than to and from the foot of the drive way and hasn’t walked further than the front yard in six weeks. I’m packed her multiple anti-itch/licking potions and her brushes and nail clippers and I haven’t even packed her toys or her bedding! The Kitty is so much easier, other than his meads, he needs his “baby” and his food and a soft place to sleep and he’s good. He is a creature of few needs and fewer things.

Damn. He’ll be lucky if I remember to bring him.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Hey Kids! Want a free Obama/Biden Sticker?

Click this link to get a free Obama/Biden sticker: Here
Bring It.


I’m halfway listening to the convention. Tuesday night is Ladies Night? The Hell?! I don’t want to hear how heroic my gender is, I don’t need anyone to raise a toast to my vagina. I don’t want to hear about wymynhood sisterhood or Women’s Contribution to Blahblahblah. I want to hear about how the Democratic party is going to save our economy and set our nation free.

I don’t need this Hillary shit, the party doesn’t need this Hilary shit and the country most certainly doesn’t need this Hillary shit. Hillary needs to sit down and shut up and tell her crazed followers to get with the program or face a pogrom because that is what is going to happen if they keep up their spiteful bull shit and they get McCain elected . I don’t want to hear Hilary's’ name again, I don’t want to see Hilary again and I want to not have to think about Hilary again. I want her and her dog and PUMA show to go away.

We need to hear how John"George W. Bush"  McCain is going to bring ruin and destruction. We need to hear how the republican party is the enemy of the people, we need to hear frothing agit prop about how evil the republican party is from every single person who stands in front of the microphone.

We need to hear that Obama is going to save the nation after the republican party tried to destroy it. We need tales of how he and the Democrats are going to pull us out of the grave the republicans tried to bury us in alive. I want to see the Democratic Party cast as rescuers! as first responders! as freaking Batman! We do not need to hear about Hilary Clinton. We need to hear two themes over and over and over again 1) An Obama Administration is going save the nation and 2) That John “George W. Bush” McCain Administration will make what is bad, worse. And we need to have that repeated and repeated and repeated.

Another meme : John McCain = George Bush. We need to have those names to become one. I don’t want to think about George Bush with out thinking John McCain. Every time Shrubs name is used, I want McCains name used. Over and over and over again. We see McCain we see Shrub, McCains name is used, Shrubs name is used, I want this nation brain washed. I want the nation to wake up and call itself The United States of Tanya.

When there is a pause between programs, I want them to repeat John McCain = George W. Bush. I want that to be the tune running through every ones heads the next day and everyday until we vote Abomey in and the republicans out : Voting for John “George W. Bush” Cain is voting for four more years the destructive, costly, deadly administration of George W. Bush. I want to voters over the next week to learn to hate John McCain as much as they have learned to hate George W. Bush over the last eight years. I want the word “Republican” to be commonly synonymous with failure and death.

You Lost you home to foreclosure? It's the Republicans Fault!, You lost your job? It's the Republicans Fault! You can't afford gas? It's the Republicans Fault! It takes too long to get through check in at the airport? It's the Republicans Fault!. I want to hear  that as a call and response every night. Short, easy and to the point. If it is bad it is the Republicans Fault. I want the Democrats to blame everything on the republicans. I don’t care how small. If it went wrong I want the Democrats to say it was the Republicans fault. By the end of the week if someone stubs their toe at home, I want their first thought to be ”this is the Republicans fault!” It’s not hard, if something has gone terribly wrong the republicans did it and they made a profit off it. There isn’t anything that has gone badly for us  in the last eight years that wasn't the republicans fault.

Monday was sweet. I enjoyed it. Now its time to bring the pain.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The prodigal friend.

I checked my email Sunday night and saw a header in my junk mail file that said “NAME from My Space has a message from you!” and I said I don’t know any Name. I’m going to delete this right now! but I didn’t. I decided to read it in the morning.

If you are a woman member with Myspace you periodically receive unsolicited emails that are essentially solicitations. These guys are cyberjohns. They send the same email to just about every woman’s name they run across and hope they get a bite. Delete!delete!delete!

Well, this time it wasn’t just some yahoo wannabe john. I knew the yahoo! It was my old friend Name under a different Name. I hadn’t heard from Name in a long time and the last time I heard about him at all was when he was on the front page of my local paper for getting arrested for being a one man crime wave through my home town. He was being real dumb. Which made me sad because I had known Name since childhood and it hurt me to see him like that. Not just in jail, but in jail because he was just so damned stupid. He wasn’t a stupid guy. He was my friend Name damn it! He was smart and funny and the first of my guy friends to have his voice change.

By the time we were in high school more than Names voice had changed. Name changed. One day in the hallway he gave me a drink from a can of soda and it wasn’t soda. I graduated, Name didn’t. And then sometime after high school, Name was a name in the headlines.

More time passed and life went on and a lot of friends from my childhood disappeared from my radar. We all grew up and out and left our childhood homes and moved to on our own homes. And it was all right, it’s what you are supposed to do. I still thought about Name every once in a while. I had thought about him a lot while I was in college and around a lot of gay men. I wondered if he would be friends with my new friends. And I wondered if he was alive. It was a bad time in history to be a young gay man.

Really, if it wasn’t for Name I might not have made it through college at all. In sixth grade, Name taught me to cuss. It’s a little known fact that you can get course credit in most theatre degree programs for the ability to correctly conjugate the word Fuck... If you can’t do this on stage without blushing, you wash out of any serious theatre program in the country. Honest to Gawd, and later, if you are looking for a job in theatre and can’t think of at least eight different variations of it on demand, you can forget about working in big time professional theatre.

Even more time passed. and I left my hometown all together and I packed up my childhood and stored it away. And this was okay, it’s what you do. Years past and I went back for my reunion and saw a lot of my old childhood friends but I didn’t see Name and no one had heard anything about him. It had been a long time.

And then Sunday night I got an email from Name and he’s alive and mostly recovered from his case of stupid, it turns out he's a bitter end Hillary person. But has a real life and he’s doing great and he’s happy and I’m just kind of thrilled.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Working

Some weekends I do so much nothing it’s a little shameful.  This weekend I worked. I got up early and I did things. I went to Wallyworld to buy craft supplies and 40 pounds of soil additive, I went to Sam’s and picked up prescriptions and nothing else I was very strong. I went to the plant place, I did laundry, I made last minute packing choices, I dropped off my sickly bicycle with Alphagal and Brosky and picked up reading material for the trip, I corrected my hair color, which wouldn’t be on my list except my hair has follicular alzheimers and it just can’t remember what color it is supposed to be.

In preperation for Christmas Card 2008, I broke down every cardboard box I could find, and then ultimately, only used one of the broken boxes . I also learned that there are as many mosquitoes in the front of my house as there are in the back of my house. Who would have known? I was shocked. Another shock? My driveway has no give, I thought concrete was springier for some reason, more padded. Sadly, it is not.  I am now sore from spending too long crouching in my  really hard driveway with an exacto-knife clenched in my hand cutting through the thickest card board ever in the entire world.  I cut out with much difficulty star shapes, it was a lot of work for what is going to be a total of five tree toppers. Don’t worry, it will make sense later, right now they are like a phrase taken totally out of context.




And then, and then I started the fall garden experment. Great timing right before I leave for vacation but it would be too late if I waited until after I got back. The fall garden experiment is smaller than the spring version but, winter is not really a hugely productive time for most plants. I planted eight broccoli plants in two varieties and I will be planting garlic later in the fall.

August 24, Fall Garden


The spring garden experiment has worked out fairly well. I didn’t get the yeld I thought I would have but I also didn’t plant enough to really get enough to get what I thought I was going to get. In my mind I was planting whole crops of tomatoes instead of just two plants and for some reason I thought if you planted many squash plants you would get say, many squash. I was wrong. I planted twelve squash plants and got no squash, six cucumbers and ended up with two producing vines, two tomato plants and got a huge amount of small tomatoes and enoughish large tomatoes and both plants are still producing. The four peppers are all producing and were going to be very productive until I killed the most productive one. My experiment taught me that next spring I’m going to plant more peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers and no more squash, eggplants or greens. I will also try not to decapitate anymore plants of any kind.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

HAPPY   SUNDAY     !!!!!!!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

HAPPY   SATURDAY     !!!!!!

Friday, August 22, 2008

The Drug Dealer doesn't live here anymore...

Friday Watching The Kitty Watching The Olympics Blogging

Fresh Air

The hand breaks on my bike do not work and I decided that for $46 or whatever I paid for the bike that maybe, you didn’t get real hand breaks at that price point. Peddles, sure, handle bars? For sure, and if you’re cute enough or they really need to make the merchandise move, they’ll throw in a seat.. But not the hand breaks. If you could afford a bike with hand breaks you would not be bike shopping at Wal-Mart.

For $46 you wear shoes and you get in touch with your inner Fred Flintstone. I learned to not wear sandles - they don’t have the breaking capacity that my sneakers have and with sneakers I don’t worry as much about my toes. I never worried so much about my toes than when I was trying to make my bike stop while wearing sandles, I never thought about my toes and then I was thinking about them a lot and then I was thinking about them getting mangled. Some people see their lives passing in front of them as they try to make a speeding bike with no breaks come to a stop at the bottom of a hill, I thought about my toes. I got in the habit of wearing real shoes and I stopped worrying about my toes so much. I thought I had the hand break issue on the bike figured out.

Today, I thought that I should put air in my tires. I hadn’t added air since I brought the bike home, so I thought that maybe I should, I’m pretty sure this is something you are supposed to do on a fairly regular basis but its been a really long time since I last had a bike I interacted with on a daily bases, so there are a lot of things I forget I’m supposed to do for it; for instance, the last time I worried about putting air in my bike tires, you could get air for free from the gas station. Today they wouldn’t give you CPR for free at the gas station.

Anyway, a while I ago I put air into the tires and shockingly, the next time I tried my breaks they worked! If the breaks can’t come in contact with the tires because they are under inflated, the breaks can’t work! A light came on over my head, angels sang. I finally Got It : The Hand Breaks Work Best When The Bike Tires Are Properly Inflated!

And life was good. I squeezed the breaks and the bike came to a stop without my assistance. I began to dream of riding my bike in cuter shoes!. And it kept working! I would squeeze the breaks and the bike would stop. I once again had a bike with breaks. It was a heady experience. And then I squeezed the breaks and nothing happened, they stopped working. It’s not as big a deal when I’m riding on campus because where I ride on campus its mostly flat, there are minor variations but I can stop the bike while wearing sandles and not worry about mangling anything, and my route at home while there are more variations, and I can not wear sandles , I can still bring the bike to a safe stop as long as my (un-cute) shoes don’t wear out.

But I don’t love this. I have hand breaks and I would like to be able to use them. I paid $46 for the bike and at least some of that must have covered the mechanism for the breaks. Although, price point may be an issue here.

Today, I parked the bike in my driveway and pulled out my tire pump. It’s sleek, and red and sporty, it’s kind of everything my bike isn’t. It is also more complicated than I remember bike pumps being back in the Reagan Administration, the last time I regularly put air in bike tires. I remember bike pumps were cylindrical metal tubes with a foot thing and a gauge and a tube with a thing on the end that the air came out of and you attached this end to the bike tire. The pump I have looks pretty much like the old pump but the widget at the end is bigger and it can do more. I don’t need it to do “more”, I need it to mate with the thingy on the tire and then I need them to make sweet love to one another until the bike tire is properly inflated. The End.

I tried to put air in the tires. Pump, Pump. Pump. The bike pump became disengaged from the bike and it spewed brown water all over all of us.

The tire and I felt dirty and badly used. I shamed the bike pump and tried again, and this time all parties worked together. The tire seemed inflated, it wasn’t spongy or anything. It rode better and eventually I need to bring the bike to a halt. And... It was a good thing I was wearing shoes.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Dumb Ass

It started to rain out of nowhere, actually, it started to rain on my neighbors shed, on the other side of the fence It didn’t start to rain on my side the fence for a few minutes. It was an odd sensation. It was raining hard two feet away and all that I was getting from the rain was splash off the sheds roof. I of course, had just finished watering. I was outside to experience this phenomena because when I had gone out there to turn off the sprinkler, I noticed the peppers were listing badly. The eggplants developed a list a week ago but in their role as the aubergine headed step children, I wasn’t doing anything about it. The peppers are a different story. Lucky eggplants.

My peppers were tilted and I tried to straighten them out and they bounced back and so I did it again and the same thing happened. I tried one last time, but this time I said stay. My vast knowledge of gardening and plant life in general really came into play here “Stay plant, stay!”. Yeah, I took college level botany. I know a thing or two about plants, buddy. Damn skippy.

The leaning towers of peppers were as disobedient as the eggplants. I told the eggplants they were ugly and I went inside to find something to prop the peppers with. The first prop candidate I found seemed like a great idea, tension rods! Straight, light weight and tallish. I thought these would be a great fix. Until I got them outside in the rain, and they were too short and even if they had been the right height they were missing something, tension perhaps? One end was in the ground and the other was where? Ah! I said. I need something to attach the plant to the thing! Okay!. I did have some very nice plastic whatnots but I don’t know what I did with them. Very useful, those plastic things, they come in variable lengths and are self locking.? Well, I can’t find them. I needed something else. Rip Ties! The plastic whatnots are called Rip Ties

String. String would be great, the plastic coated string I used earlier in the season would be great but I can’t find it either. My house is like a giant trap, useful things go in but they never go out. The cure for cancer might be upstairs in a box marked both bathroom? and tennis balls but I’m not sure...And then I remembered I have yarn!. I dug around in the linen closet... well, where do you keep your yarn? And shockingly, found it. I trooped back outside armed with a paring knife because my scissors had disappeared and set about tying the peppers up. In the rain. Because it was important for this to be done immediately.  And then it started to rain really hard. But I felt like I had done something useful and I had done it in the rain - because I tied them up but good.

I had been inside for a while when it hit me:  Do you know what I had to walk past every time I went in and out the back gate? Tomato Cages. In various sizes. The perfect solution! Huzzah! I said. I went right after the (hard) rain and wind had past and cut the yarn and replaced it with the cages, because this had to be done right now and in my haste, I decapitated one of the plants! the one bearing I found out after I brought it inside, four peppers. Yeah. I’m feeling pretty good right now.. Not at all like an idiot. That plant doesn’t need a brace now. No sirree Bob, it ain’t tall enough for that anymore. Yeah. Feeling real good. I haven't been waiting, oh, four months for the plants to produce.... It was the most productive plant I had... I’m feeling just great, I might have also damaged the tomato plant in the bargin. I’m feeling just great.


I think I’ll leave the garden alone for a few days. I think it would prefer it that way.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Travel Sizing


I’m going on vacation in oh, nine days and there are all these things I need to remember to do, like everything.I have made a start, not because I am really efficient or anything but because when I go to sleep at night I would like to go to sleep and I can’t do that if I am trying to remember what I did with my flannel shirt the last time I wore it in January. It’s very hard to get shut eye when your to-do list is running on an endless loop across your eye balls.

For instance, I was able to snip the list a little by simply finding the box I’m going to pack my clothes in. Yes, I said box. The Beverly Hillbillies don’t have no use those fancy valises. Them are hard to stack and aren’t water proof and you can’t duck tape them to the bed of the truck. We haven’t driven cross country in years that we didn’t bring a ladder, a half ton of yard waste and a bath tub. Yeah, you’ve seen us.

Yeah, we’re those people. We might even had a couple of piglets back in the bed of the truck, you know, for snacks. This year with gas so expensive we’re under orders to travel light so I’m limited to a single thirty gallon tub to pack my stuff in and it is seriously cramping my style, I mean, I don’t want to bring everything I own, I have to bring everything I own! And everything I own hardly fits in a thirty gallon tub! We’re going to be there for a while and what happens if I get called upon to play dress up with my cousins little girls? Its real hard to play princess in sweat pants and tee-shirt so I need to bring my prom dress! And my crinoline. And my tiara. And my full length opera cloak. I don’t understand why I have to explain this every year.

And what if there is a cranberry picking party? I’ll need my waders! And what if a last minute blizzard happens? I’ll need my parka! Okay, if its snowing, its cold And what happens if by packing light, I am limited to warm weather pajamas only? And then what happens if I brought warm pajamas but  I am totally in a flannel nightgown place and all I have with me are pajamas? It could be scaring. And what about a heat wave? If all I have to choose between is a either blue shorts or tan shorts what happens if I brought a top that only really goes with the cream skort I had to leave at home? There are those times when a skirt would be too dressy and a little presumptuous but if you came in shorts, you would just be too casual and in those cases your only real choices are to wear either a A) skort or B) capres and what if you had to pack light?! Oh My God! You would be totally ruined. And what if it turns a little autumnal and everything I brought are hot pinks and yellows? I mean hello! We’ll be there into September? You can’t wear hot pink in September! I wonder if I should pack my boots and faux suede skirt? How about a couple of blazers? And if I’m bringing blazers I’m definitely obligated to bring the boots. I might need another bin.

Being a woman is hard. Packing light is not an option.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Garden Gossip

I’m sure you’re asking yourself So, Diana how is the garden? Well, good and bad. My largest, nicest bell pepper suffered from sun scald and then got attacked by some malicious, opportunistic insect that took advantage of its weakened and pulpy state, so the pepper had to go. It hurt me to take it off the plant. Literally, it was hard to get off and I had to go and get scissors to finally separate it from the plant.

And then I had to compost it. It killed me because this was the first little pepper button that formed and gave me hope the plants weren’t just mocking me. I was very proud of that pepper, it gave me hope about my legitimacy as a Gardner and then it died. I had other peppers though and that helped comfort me through my loss. The alpha pepper is gone but beta pepper and it’s little friends were still there. The plants have set more since than and so the loss of that one sting a little less. Five of the six plants have formed buttons and four of the six have set legitimate peppers. Plant 6 is still mocking me. Mock, mock, mock. Mocking bastard, I’m about to compost it. And I won’t feel bad about it. Ha! Take that lazy, mocking pepper plant.

I was feeling pretty secure about their progress to maturity until I came home and found that one was either very premature or it committed pepper suicide. I blame the mocking pepper plant, the Mean Girl of the garden. I came home after work and went to check on how everyone was doing and I found that one of them had snapped it’s own stem and was on the ground. It took scissors to take the other one off and this one just jumped off the plant. Popped right off and it was delicious, the bad feeling life left in it’s pepper mouth was not reflected in it’s taste. I hope knowing that posthumously improved its self esteem.


And playing with a setting on New Camera, the “food” setting, here it is being pretty tasty, thus filling it’s pepper destiny. I know there are those that prefer red bells to green, but this one was crunchy and sweet and it smelled Divine even in it’s very young green state.


The tomatoes for their part of rallying. The large tomatoes are coming back after producing six good sized specimens and three smaller ones. I wish they were coming in like they did before,in clusters, but the one at a time thing works for me just as well. The remaining fruits don’t have the same blossom end rot issues that took two of them early one. Actually, they are looking happy. Knock wood. The smaller variety is still producing hugely. I wish there was more that could be done with the smaller tomatoes, especially since I don’t eat raw tomatoes, but chopped and cooked they do make a nice addition to food, they are the redness in the pepper dish above.


The single eggplant is still an only child despite the multiple eggplant plants still in the ground. It keeps growing and developing and I’m not completely sure that it is not some dwarf variety since it all ready has a very nice purpleness to it and it looks just like a full sized eggplant, only smaller. I don’t know anything about eggplant husbandry and the books don’t talk a lot about how big they are supposed to get. I tried to get a picture of it with the old camera but it didn’t turn out and I didn’t get a chance to try to see if it would get over its camera shyness and thus be more photogenic with the New Camera. It looks like an eggplant, only smaller.

The cukes keeping cuking along. The vine is just covered with female blossoms and I would be thrilled if even half of them ended up pollinated, but sadly, since the plant seems have worked overtime producing female blossoms this time around and forgot about the need for pollination, for which we need male blossoms.. We also need bees and there are fewer bees than there are male blossoms! It’s not looking good for more mature cucumbers at this point, but maybe when I’m doing my morning visit with them I’ll get a nice surprise. You know what’s going to happen? I’m going on vacation in a couple of weeks and the plants are just waiting for me to go out of town to really start producing like gangbusters. The six pepper plants are going be bent under the weight of their fruits, the tomatoes of both varieties are going to go into over drive and get ripen dozens of fruits simultaneously and of course the eggplants are going to make bushels of eggplants and the cucumbers are going to go crazy...

While I’m out of town!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Whee!

And how was your weekend? I mowed the lawn, did the laundry, emptied/filled the dishwasher, watched a whole lotta Olympics Go Micheal Phelps!! but still found time to finally watch the Edith Piaf movie that I've had sitting around since, well, way too long. And then I went toy shopping.

Meet my New Camera!     Thank you Mom and Dad!

Look at what it does to a lowly baby cuke:

Roses do pretty well too. Who knew the best time for flowers at the Raleigh Arboretum would be August?

Sunday, August 17, 2008

HAPPY    SUNDAY    !!!!!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

HAPPY    SATURDAY      !!!!!!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Friday Cat Blogging

(Not) Getting to know me, getting to know nothing about me

What are you looking at? What are you looking at? ...You don't belong here white lady!

I was on my bike tooling down the street, looking at a boarded up but architecturally interesting warehouse. I was  ignoring the hectoring because I didn't realize that I was the target, I thought it was one kid arguing with another until the voice called me out You don't belong here white lady, What? Who me? Does the little bigot not know he or she lives in a very desirable section of downtown? Does the little bigot not know how attractive the warehouse could be if it was renovated into $300,000 lofts? and  does the little bigot not notice the blocks and blocks of newly constructed, attractively priced infill that make up his neighborhood? Does the little bigot fear the ergonomically designed, fair trade, 51% post-consumer recycled material boot of urban gentrification? The only reason he had to yell at me was because otherwise I couldn't have heard him over the sound of rapidly approaching progress.

Brat.

I was on his street because I'm searching for a bike route with fewer stealth hills. My current route is pock marked with stealth hills and I don't like it. I've walked the route for years with Dogger and I never noticed I was walking up and down hills, it was a  real shock to find them on the bike. The stealth hills work my nerves. You're riding a long, everything is smooth and flat and then out of nowhere STEALTH HILL. Bastard. It doesn't look like a hill, it's not a hill if you are walking it, you don't notice it if you are driving but ride you bike on it and you might as well be riding up a wall.

The little snot's street has two hills but  they are real hills and you can see them coming and prepare for them. Too bad for the little bigot. I'll be back. His street isn't perfect, i.e suitable for use to land planes on, but I did it without too much cross-training. I miss walking my dog. No one ever  yelled at me or called me names when I walked her past their houses. Dogger is such a good ambassador. Also? she's a great big dawg and no one really wants to mess with a great big dawg. Piss with me when I'm on my bike?  You might as well go for it, there is almost no chance of me stopping and making you call me names to my face; Walking with  my great big dawg? I might feel brave enough to make you call me names to her face. .. And then you'll meet her and fall in love with her and the next time I walk past your house all you'll yell out is Hi Dogger! Once people get to know Dogger they hardly notice the white lady on the other end of her leash.

I'm shopping for a new bike route and my my options are few, my other ideas had to be disguarded because if there wasn't too much traffic, there was too much trafficing, and  I would  as soon not have to get away from a car trying to get away. I've watched cars trying to get away and they really don't want to share the road. They need to think twice about trying to run, the last guy who tried to run from our cops,  got away real good, he got dead. The cab thief died.

Too bad for the little bigot. I'll be back.  His street isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but since it doesn't require to much cross-training so it stays on my list.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

One step at a time


Yesterday was one month to the day since Dogger hurt her knee. I haven’t had to chant, cheer or cajole her into doing anything in probably a week and a half. She continues to eat and void normally and her diet has been a rousing success, she looks fabulous and the weight loss has clearly taken some pressure off her knee.

In the evenings, after work I take Dogger out for her pre-dinner pee, on advice of one of the R.N’s at work, I let Dogger lay in the sun for as long as she wants to in order to help her joints loosen up and let get some fresh air. I no longer hustle her back inside (why???) immediately like I was. I bring a magazine outside and tie Dogger to her tie down and we both chill for a while. Dogger bakes in the sun for a while and I can think of worse ways to wind down after work than sitting on my front steps reading a magazine. I’m thinking after this winter when Gawd closes down his sauna that I am going to get her a heating pad for her knee so it doesn’t get locked up or painful because of the cold. Arthritis in that knee is a real issue now.

Miss Dogger has graduated from being bed fast  twenty hours a day to moving back into her old room and her old bed and she now she gets up to greet me at the door in the mornings, instead of being  a lump in her crate and making me the worlds grumpiest cheerleader at 6am every morning to force her up and out. She seems happy about being off of bed rest and I think it’s improved her all ready good spirits and for some reason her rehab has also appeared moved forward since she moved back into her room.  Regardless of her sleeping arrangements, she is still taking her pain meds and will be through out the course of her recovery and rehabilitation.

When I take her out to pee, she no longer needs to lay down and rest every few minutes, an unwelcome part of her post-injury routine that caused a lot of cheering and chanting. Tuesday, she didn’t want to go back inside in the morning, but it was because the workers at the drug dealers house had left the basement lights on all night and Dogger was curious about them, but as soon as I told her to get up, she did. She’s doing everything she did before only now when she does it, she hops. The good news is that when she walks deliberately and slowly, she uses all four legs and the damaged leg appears to be weight bearing - But if she wants to get anywhere faster than a slow walk, she hops to where she wants to go. When she stands she appears to be standing on the tip toe of the hurt leg and that it seems to be for balance. I’m a little worried about the muscles in her injured leg atrophying and her “good” leg getting over worked.

Four weeks in I’m feeling hopeful about her recovery. I worry that she’s never going to be like she was four weeks  and two days ago and I really miss that dog.  I’m afraid that the running, jumping and fetching chapter of ours lives is behind us now and that makes me want to cry. I’m afraid that I’m so happy she’s alive that I’m blinded to fact that just living isn’t the same as having a life.

So far though she seems happy enough and to be adjusting quickly to the way things are now and she way she is now, and in fact, she seems to be adjusting to everything better than I am.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The 40s were not really in black and white

New York City, June 1941 The Cushman Collection, beautiful pictures of The City and Niagra falls. The collection goes on and on.

Walt Disney's Dumbo wouldn't be released for another four months.
Two weeks before, the British sank the Bismarck.
Two weeks from now, Germany would attack the Soviet Union.
1,000 days before D-Day.
Less than 200 days before Pearl Harbor.


(courtesy poster at Fark.com
Eat it, just eat it. Put it in your mouth and eat it

I woke up and went outside yesterday morning and got a surprise.

It was cold. Okay, "cold" might be too harsh a word. How about "the air was cooler than my body temperature. It was still a shock though. It's been months since I went outside first thing and didn't break into a sweat. It was also dark, It's been like that in the morning for several weeks now and I really do not approve. Clearly, mistakes have been made, its August for Gawds sake! High Summer! and even worse? I've found dead leaves in my yard but I've also found dead rats, so I know it's still summer. I don't find many dead rats in the winter time. Nothing says "summer" to me like bagging up a dead rat at 6:15 am.

This year through the dead rats are my dead rats. I think one of my neighbors is taking the initiative and poisoning the little beasts for me, which is nice but, my question being, Why do they always, all of them, die in my front yard? All. Of. Them.. It doesn't matter who is killing rats, next door, three blocks away, Garner, all the dead rats walking come to my yard to die. Over the years I have become the neighborhood rat undertaker, the problem this year is that I am shopping less and have fewer plastic grocery bags, the gold standard in dead rat disposal, and so I have been having to utilize plastic newspaper bags and they are turning out to be the green ribbon of dead rat disposal.

And then I went to work and the woman in charge of the snack basket promised me she was going to replenish it with chocolaty goodness. Somewhere between then and now, she attended a Wellness Committee meeting and got born again. Instead of candies and cookies she restocked the basket with off brand fruit roll ups, granola bars and crackers. The only bow to the majority she made was some chocolate biscotti of questionable origin. Have you ever tried to dunk a biscotti in a coke can? Oh, and before you ask, no we do not have a communal office coffee maker nor or we allowed individual coffee makers in our offices.

For my .50 I am expecting a sugar high. I don’t go up there hoping to lower my cholesterol.

Before that damn meeting she had promised me afternoon brownies! I’m a somewhat regular customer up there depended on what she has available on a given week - On Monday if all she has a bags of pretzels and crackers I'm done for the week. She knows their customer base prefers the chocolate/salt treats over the cardboard/window blind treats end of the spectrum and yet she is still pushing her health fascism. If the Wellness Committee gives her a hard time about her stock she should just remember who provides the funds for that stock. We’re not asking for much, myself, I am not asking for a selection of Little Debbie’s or Pringles and I’m not totally against healthy snacks on the whole, but granola bars? And plain granola bars at that! Special K makes some very nice energy bars that are quite healthy as well as being liberally drizzled with chocolate.

It’s about meeting us half way. Health, with a spoonful of sugar to make our medicine go down.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

It's Okay if you are a Republican...

Mukasey: No prosecutions in Justice hiring scandal

The laws are clearly for other people. If these were Democrats they would disbarred and on their way to a federal pen. Monica Gooding would all ready been disbarred, publically thrashed, her family would have been forced into hideing and she would be in jail.
Dog Cookiepalozza

Months ago I promised my friend at work that I would make cookies as her fundraiser for her non-profit dog charity, WAAG. I said Sure! I’ll make cookies! No problem! . And then I asked when she would need them... It seemed like such a long time in the future. And of course I was going to be on vacation at that point, so I would need to get moving on these early.

Time flies when you are putting things off. These cookies needed to be made and they needed to made soon. But first I had to over think it. I had to decide what shape the cookies would be, the containers I picked up weeks ago are decorated with little dots, do I want to make round cookies? That would be really cute; or would that be too ha ha spot on? Would they look too much like people cookies or rather people crackers? Why haven’t I found some sort of dog paw shaped stamp? Do they make dog paw shaped stamps? And if so, where are they? I’ve looked.

Do I want to go with another shape? What shape is September? Autumn leaves? Do I have a leaf shaped? Yes, yes I do but it’s kind of big and I’m thinking that since they are planning on selling these, this should be about quantity over clever shape. With freebies I would go with seasonal shape and every one would get one or two and I could get away with larger cookies. Okay, but these aren’t free, bones it is. Big or little? I have a couple of different large bone shape and a couple of smaller ones. I decided to go with smaller bones.

Okay. Small bones. Now what are they going to taste like? Dogger can’t have molasses so I don’t want to make those - Even if she doesn’t to get any of these charity batches, she’ll smell them being made and feel left out. My poor little dog! I don’t like dealing with peanut butter but it’s not as bad as it used to be. I’ve learned tricks, but I really don’t want to deal with the mess. I decide on the relatively tidy cheese and bacon.

Time passes, I buy the cheese, I make the cookies, count the cookies and do some quick math. I don’t have very many cheese cookies !@#$%^ I have twenty little tubs to fill up and these aren’t going to fill tubs!. I was going to have to make more cookies or fill fewer tubs. These are for charity!. I’m going to have to pad with stars.

I buy more cheese.

I buy bag’o bacon.

Have I mentioned how unfun cookie baking is? It’s not fun. It’s a great upper body work out and doing the baking does make me feel full, always a good thing, but it’s a lot of work and time spent in a hot kitchen. MAKING FOOD I CAN NOT EAT. I shake it off. I make stars. I make bacon bones. I make bacon stars. I have a lot of cookies and then I have to count them. I do the math again.

The Math

@235 star cheese cookies

@235 star bacon cookies

@100 bone cheese cookies

@100 bone bacon cookies

670 cookies. 20 tubs.


Each tub will hold either 63 stars or 16 bones.

More Math

For twenty tubs it comes out to 11.75 stars per flavor and five per flavor for bones. So, 22 stars and 10 bones per tub, more or less there are some fractions at work here that I have chosen to round off. That’s not bad, and I’ll have some left overs for Dogger.



Monday, August 11, 2008

Framed Up

I got new glasses, they are very different from my old glasses. This was intentional. My old glasses were black plastic, I want to point out that hey were cooler then they sound, “black plastic” sounds so black and plastic. They were black and plastic in the Buddy Holly vein not the Revenge of the Nerds style. So. A new day, a new prescription and a new look. For my first pass through the frame store I entered through the optometrist office, the back way into the store. The back way funnels you towards the designer frames, the pricey frames. This is fine because I have insurance.

I looked at the pricey frames. I don’t understand the appeal of Versace. The clothing I’ve seen in magazines manages to look bad on 6 foot bulimic dress dummies and the glasses frames just look awful - And I am not six feet tall or bulimic. It takes a lot of misogyny to make glasses frames cause the wearer to look  fat. The frames were very stylish though, only one arm, one of the lenses was square and the other was kind of oblong and it would help if the wearer had one eye in the middle of her forehead. For $300 you too can look like an impressionist drawing - Great for the weekends but it would be hell for updating those spreadsheets Monday morning.

And there were others. Lots of others but not as many as the last time I was there two years ago. This time there were fewer frames to chose from and fewer that my insurance would pay 100%  - That is both good and bad, it’s good because otherwise you can just go crazy trying on eleventyteen frames and lets face it, they all look pretty much the same - Or at least they do after you finally decide that the very stylish square frames that look so good on everyone else - Make you look fat. Square frames make everyone else look really good and thus the store is full of magic fat making square frames. I also was on my own and suffering from dilated eyes.

I was in trouble when I asked one of the store staff if they had any glasses that looked like Tina Feys. The woman didn’t know who she was. How could she not know who the patron saint of girls who wear glasses! The woman who single handed made wearing glasses cool! And the frame store salesgirl didn’t know who she was? If I could have seen better at this point and wasn’t technically still in the middle of my appointment, I would have left and gone to a frame store with more pop culturely aware staff.

I went back to the frame store  apres' appointment through the front door and low and behold was funneled past the clearance frames. Ta da! Not even close to Tina Fey, but better than my previous choices which were  either kind of awful or really cute, but purple and pricey. I’m not going to pretend I don’t wear glasses and the last pair were after all, black, but I was having a hard time seeing myself living full time with purple frames - but they were miles better than my other choices and I could have really liked them. I’m pretty sure I could rock a pair of purple frames. The new pair are metallic and gold toned. Not one single person at work on Friday noticed I had new glasses. I went from wearing black plastic to gold metallic frames and not one single person said a word.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

HAPPY    SUNDAY  !!!!!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

HAPPY     SATURDAY      !!!!!

Friday, August 8, 2008

Friday Olympic Caliber Cat Blogging
Olympics

Did you know this is an Olympic Year? Did you know the opening ceremonies are tonight? Yea, I just found out. I really need to watch more network TV.

I’m very excited about the games. I know, I know the Chinese have a human rights record that makes ours look like Sweden’s and they are being real hard asses about Tibet and they don’t think the Dali Lama is all that and sure, they have a lot of civil liberties issues in that they really don’t have civil liberties and they cling to being Communists, I mean even the Russians aren’t communists anymore and they hold the original patent. I mean, The Soviets are capitalist pigs! I mean except for a few over heated backwaters, the whole communism fad thing is so over.

Anyway. I can’t wait. I love the summer games because nearly all of them are things I can do. Swimming? I can swim!, Diving? I can dive! Running? Not as fast or for as long but I can run! Who hasn’t run a relay? Gymnastics? I took gymnastics as a child! Beach Volleyball? I suck but I’ve played Volleyball in the sand! It’s like I’ve been in training my whole life.

I’ve been reading other sites and the commenter's are all saying Oh. No. I’m not watching this year. I’m boycotting it, or I’m offended by China’s human rights record or Snif. I only watch the winter games, Oh get over yourselves. I prefer the summer games because there are fewer props involved, no skis, no skates, no funny rubber suits, no carts or sleds, no aerodynamic helmets, no snow to blame or ice to curse at. It’s all about the athletes.

And the Olympics aren’t about China. The Olympics are about the best athletes in the world coming together in China to compete among themselves. The best of the best doing their best. It’s not about the venues, it’s about what happens inside them, the worlds best runners, the worlds best divers, the worlds best swimmers and yes, the worlds best beach Volleyball players. It’s all about celebrating what the human body is capable of. It’s about displaying what human beings are built for.  Its for the aliens, we do this for them.

These athletes aren’t any different from us, they are built with the same factory parts as the rest of us. They have the same hearts and kidneys and livers that we came with too, the same knees the same forearms. There is nothing on them that we don’t also come equipped with. We just don’t use them in the same way. Most of us also lack the talent, the drive, the skills and the heart that these people have. It’s not that they have the same foot bones that we possess, it’s the drive it’s the desire and ability that are totally part of a gold package the rest of us didn’t come with. Can you dive and hit the water without splashing? Can you run a quarter mile in a seconds? Can you dance across a balance beam? How is your crawl stroke?

Which is why they are so much fun to watch! I’m always damn impressed with human beings after I’ve watched an Olympian do something amazing. The Olympics make me proud to be a human and how often do you find yourself saying Wow! Look how awesome as a species we are!

The Olympics are all about dreams. Tell me you don’t watch the athletes and superimpose your face on theirs, tell me you have never watched a runner do something super-human on the track and didn’t imagine yourself doing the same thing? Extra points if you ever went into the yard and tried to long jump over the sand box . How many of us signed up for kiddie gymnastics after watching Nadia?  And what about the anti-Nadia’s? Most of the athletes aren’t going to win anything, and they know this, they have prepared every minute of their lives to come in fifteenth place .The vast majority aren’t going to make past the first heat on the first day. The Olympics are about the players and their talent and skills and heart, not where they are playing.



Olympic caliber cuteness

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Myths

On my way home from work I thought about all the things I needed to get done ahead of my parents visit over the weekend. When I arrived home post garden watering, clothes changing, dog and cat pilling and feeding and sneaker/bike break finding I decided I would be too busy to sit down and make a list. Before I got too involved with housework I prepared  for a  therapeutic bike ride,  it’s important to pay yourself first.

But where? Where should I ride to? My decision was that I should accomplish something on this ride because being useful is good. I thought of the Blue Planet  sitting half watched in the DVD and I decided that for the greater good that I should first finish watching the disk then ride my bike to the post office and mail it back. I felt very efficient  as I sat back to watch evil, evil Killer Whales kill helpless baby sea lions. I was horrified, but somewhat comforted to know my species is not the only beings to kill for sport and then play with torture its prey before throwing it away. Killer Whales really do deserve to end up spending their days ignobly, having as a species truly earned the living hell of being humiliated in water shows. Jail Willy!

And then I went for my ride. When I walk my bike up hills, it is not because I lack the stamina to ride up them, it is because I am cross training!  I made note to find out if hand breaks on $54 bike are actually supposed to work as hand breaks or if they are instead, props to add vermisilitude to the “bike” riding experience . Made another note to self to research how much more one would have to spend to get a bike with working breaks.  Healthy exercise and netflix housekeeping duties safely taken care of, I returned home to eat small, nutritious dinner and then really started on my to-do list for the evening



To-Do List


1. Deep clean house, top to bottom. Kitchen, bathroom, upstairs etc.
2.Make two more batches of dog cookies.
3. Store winter clothing and bedding.
4.Re-set clocks all over house due to unscheduled power outage Monday.
5.Clean out car.
6.Wash hair.
7. Watch subtitled, award winning French film
8. Mythbusters at 9pm!

I cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the downstairs. I decided I should pace myself, my parents won’t be here until later in the week and I have to live here in the mean time and so do the animals I don’t want to have to get everything tidy and then just have to do everything again... I did watch Mythbusters.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Shooting in Southeast Raleigh

Please don't let it be near, me, please don't let it be near me...

Damn it! not again.

Why can't these people put their petty criminal needs aside and think of my property values? Do I drive down their property values by willfully  murdering my associates in their backyards? No I  most certainly do not!.

And I really love it that the clerk decided that since it was a child running into his store in the middle of the night to report a shooting that it just wasn't all that important, but when an adult reported a man down, the clerk called 911.  He could have saved the victim but instead he let him die in the lot bbecause he assumed the wittness was a bad reporter. I think most children wandering around after dark are questionable, but if a child walked up to me and reported shots fired and a man down, I would at the very least go verify the information, or, ya know called 911 and let them know there was a man down and he may have been shot. GAWD.
Garden Watch 2008

Well. I had to terminate a couple of my tomatoes today. I know it happens in the best of families but it is always a disappointing development -  Blossom End Rot. I should have known, the two offending fruits didn't look as much like the other developing tomatoes, like smaller, greener versions of the adult selves, these appeared to be pumpkins. Cute, little green pumpkins, but not at all like tomatoes. I should have known.

Cute, little green pumpkins with flat, black bottoms.



I wasn't going to say anything to them, I mean what do I know about tomatoes? I just thought that maybe it was some new tomato fad that was going around with the kids. I'm hopeing since they are all further away from the offending branch that spawned the BER  that the others will not be affected.

Despite my unhappy tomatoes, I do have some good cuke news. There had been a sad little baby cuke just sitting on the vine for a while, it wasn't doing much since the vine was also supporting three adult cukes and the plant didn't have much left over for its youngest. I harvested the three adult cukes and had given up on the non-maturing baby one and honestly, I was about thisclose to pinching off the misbegotten little cukey in hopes of forcing the vine to produce more - when I noticed it had changed, it was growing!!  It just hung there and did nothing for the longest time and now every time I go and visit the garden the little cuke that could  it has gotten a little longer and a little thicker. I am very proud of it. Now if the vine would just grow some more flowers and give little cuky some brothers and sisters I would be even more thrilled.

Speaking of thrilled!


And that is just the most senior! Every day when I go out to visit the garden in the morning before I leave for work there are new little pepper buttons waiting to greet me and what was buttons the day before have matured into something more spool sized . When they get big enough they flip themselves around and begin to look more like conventional peppers.

My friend the eggplant is also perking along after a long wait



And of course, the best producers of them all, the tiny tomatoes


Of course, mine are nothing like my Mothers tiny tomatoes that produce like bait fish. My parents get pints of tomatoes a day off of two plants! I haven't harvested a pint total from my single plant all season.

Edited to add: Cab thief shot by police the cab thief wasn't a Dix patient and it didn't happen where I had assumed it happened, i.e the out of the way spot I eat my lunch everyday and where I often see cabs parked eating their lunches.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Apparently a taxi cab driver was mugged and his car stolen on the Dix campus this afternoon. The driver of the cab received a few scrapes but is o.k. Campus police were notified and spoke with the victim and are investigating. Please be careful when walking and about the campus and when going to your cars. I recommend, when at all possible, to not walk alone but to walk with one or more people. Do not hesitate to report any suspicious activity to campus police at: .

"Report suspicious activity", for the time being, this is a campus of a STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL as well as a work place for hundreds of State Employees, you can't swing a cat without bumping into someone doing something that looks "suspicious". I feel so comforted and safe that they notified the CAMPUS POLICE about this. Shouldn't a car jacking fall under the real police?

Edited to add:

Police have blocked off an area near Lane and McDowell streets in downtown Raleigh after a chase with a yellow cab. WRAL has a crew on the way and will have more information as soon as it becomes available.
Yea! Tuesday!
I found out how many hours a weeks worth of scanning is: Three and a half hours give or take. I discovered this because the scanner at work broke and instead of opting to just mail all these documents last week, to the people who needed them, we opted to let them sit until the replacement scanner came in - Which could have taken Gawd knows how long to arrive and all the time, more and more documents would stack up doing no one any good. There is a worst case scenario scanner up stairs but the less said about that scanner the better, there is nothing "wrong" with that machine it's just even less up for the task than mine is and I don't want to set any precedence of using the lesser machine when ours is out of service.

In a perfect world I would have just emailed all the interested parties and told them the scanner was out of service and for the next amount of time that I would mail them their material and they would just have to work with only having a hard copy of whatever it is instead of both a hard copy and a scanned copy. Life would be hard but if we all pulled together and all we would have to fear is fear it self and we would all be home for Christmas when it's over, over there.

I think they would have been fine having a hard copy, as that is all they have had forever and its been good enough, and getting that material ASAP instead of waiting around and getting their documents a week and half late but scanned. I guess I've had worse Mondays but I was like a jack-in-the-box all morning. I decided to look at it as being in motion is better than standing still, bodies in motion and all that.

Speaking of jack's in-the-box, I am still up and down, up and down. I agreed to make dog cookies for a find raiser for my friend at works' dog assistance group. They buy toys for shelter dogs and arrange for adoptions and take dogs to places like Petsmart and Petco for adoption fairs. They do good work Well, the fund raiser is going to be held while I am away on vacation so my donated dog cookies would have to be competed before I left - Which is now only three or so weeks away and I needed to get moving on it so I got moving. I made one batch of cheese and one batch of bacon and I'm pretty sure I'm going to make another batch of each.

I bought these little plastic containers for them and I thought they will be the right size but they turned out to be a leetle deeper than I thought they were. Before I started, I filled a test container with some store bought dog cookies to see how many it would hold and Answer? More than I had planned... so I'm going to end up making a few more cookies than I had originally planned on and Dogger is going to get fewer than she had hoped for - But that's all right because I'm pretty sure that she prefers the store bought kind to my home made anyway. The custom shoe makers' doggy prefers mass market shoes.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Lets talk about Polls, baby

I answer a lot of online polls. A lot. In Dallas it was phone polls and for a while I controlled the music on the radio. The pollsters would call me, play a few bars of whatever and I would either say I liked it or I didn’t or it was over played or underplayed and then another pollster would call me and ask the same questions about the same songs and then a few days later a third one would call me and so for a few months in the late mid nineties I controlled the Dallas radio market . It was heady stuff.

In today's world,  in between election cycles. hardly anyone does polls me over the phone  about my music preferences because I am too old.  My Ipod knows this and plays Umbrella Man four times an hour just to spite me.

Right now though, we are right in the middle of a very hot election cycle every other time my phone rings, someone, usually a very young someone who wants to know who I’m voting for and to what degree I am in the bag for them. I’m being polled like a son-of-a bitch and that’s just phone polls, I can’t check my email with out Harris Interactive or Polling Point or Zogby breathing down my neck as to my party affiliation and who I voted for in 2004. Today's Zogby poll was different. I was shocked, I’ve never answered a Zogby poll that wasn’t single minded in its pursuit of my political leanings. I know the questions by heart:, everything from whether or not I voted last time around to what flavor of church I attend and how often I'm there.

The questions are always the same. So when I started my little poll I got ready to just zip through it. This time it was different. The first question was about the word “Authentic” and how I defined it. It then asked about how I felt about the relative authenticity of the candidates. This is fine. I like a little polling shake up every once in a while. After we got through discussing authenticity and how it pertains to the candidates we moved on.

For each of the following possible technologies, please tell me how likely you would be to use or do each. Then, whether or not you would use the technology, indicate how you think the technology would affect someones authenticity :

1. Download your brain onto a computer disk so that you could become pure energy and virtually live forever?

2. Do you believe downloading their brain onto a computer disk would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

3. Install knowledge or learning chips into your brain that would allow you to learn anything immediately?

3a. Do you believe installing learning chips into their brain would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

4. Do you believe using virtual sex partners would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

5. Do you believe that using Microscopic computers floating through your body that would detect disease or injury immediately would make someone more authentic or less authentic or not affect their authenticity?

I shit you not. Lets talk about sex Zogby, lets talk about You and Me, lets talk about all the good things and the bad things virtual sex/learning chips/downloading our brains onto computer disk/macroscopic computers in our blood streams can be... Lets talk about you poll writing guys at Zogby? Do you need a vacation? Would you like to speak with Employee Assistance? Do we need to talk about the Mental Health coverage in our insurance? They also wanted to know how I felt about virtual vacations and if I felt that taking a virtual vacation would effect a persons “authenticity”, not whether or not I saw the experiences one would have in a virtual environment were authentic or not, but if I felt taking part in a virtual environment would cause the participant to become less authentic. Less human. Man, some people are just four square against stay-cations.

I see in the future that we could have all of the things the poll covered but I’m almost absolutely sure that these are not issues I am going to have to wrestle with in my lifetime - I some how do not see the capacity to down load my brain as being a plug-in available as free ware in the next few years - I mean, at present we don’t come with USB ports - But then, I am old, I may have to check out Tiny E though, she’s a much new model and she may have that upgrade. I do like the tiny, floating computers or in the language of grown-ups: Nanotechnology, though, I like that idea, you know, zap that cancer, fix that broken bone! But why didn’t they just say “nanotechnology” instead of the scary sounding “macroscopic floating computers in your blood stream?

I think a pollster at Zogby may have gone off the deep end on got a hold of their address lists. The last time someone wanted to hysterically rant to me about tiny computers and brain downloads was on Edenton Street and I set my dog on them.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

HAPPY       SUNDAY       !!!!!!!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

HAPPY     SATURDAY     !!!!!!!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Friday Cat Blogging

Garden Update

Wednesday night I came home from worked and made dinner, pilled everyone, fed everyone, did laundry, rode the bike all the way to Krispy Kreme and then washed the dog. Thursday night I came home, made dinner for everyone, pilled everyone and then fell asleep in front of the TV. It’s not my fault, I was watching a Blue Planet DVD and the whole disk was about life on the ocean floor. It is very dark on the ocean floor.

Earlier, when I was more wakeful , I went to the farmers market to see it would be possible to buy garlic yet. I would much rather buy from a local source than have to order from one of my very sexy, very expensive seed catalogues, especially since I all ready know I’m going to be buying fancy tomatoes from them in the spring. It was a bust. Nobody was selling seedlings except for herbs and I don’t want herbs. I think I’ll go back looking for garlic in the fall, and no, you can’t just plant the garlic you buy at the store, that garlic gets treated with stuff to keep it from sprouting. I think this is done on the advice of the makers of the sexy seed catalogues.

I noticed the farmers market was piled high with peppers and eggplants. How did they get theirs so soon? I planted mine arguably, too early and it’s only now starting to fruit, how did they who are more discipline than I am, have mature, harvestable produce? They had all kinds of bell peppers and several different kinds of eggplant and all I have are pepper and eggplant fetusi. It’s not fair. I also noticed they didn’t have a big market for their eggplants either. It looks now like I’m going to have a grand total of two eggplants and I think that is about all I am going to be able to re-home when the time comes. Tomatoes, cukes, peppers, all easy to find slots for but so far I’m not perceiving a big demand for eggplants, I mean, I don’t want to eat them, I’m not sure I’ve actually seen anyone eat eggplant actually except for once on a Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, Buffy ordered a grilled eggplant sandwich. I hate to think that is the reason I planted them but I think it is.

The peppers are producing now at last and I think they are going to do well and I should get a good harvest from them, the peppers after all are the only seedlings I planted that all the plants lived to reach maturity. The cukes all died except for a single plant and it seems a little weary now, the squash which were the most plentiful thing in the garden are down to two plants that grow but do not produce, I think there were five eggplants at the beginning and now I have three left and one of those looks ill, I harvested the collards early so they are all out of the ground,. The Tomatoes are still doing well and I wish I had planted more.

It looks like for the fall  it's  going to be garlic and maybe broccoli if it will grow here and only if I can buy seedlings. I’m a little concerned that neither of those crops will be finished up in time to get my spring planting done at a reasonable time. The spring crops is going to be several different varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, and a couple different pepper varieties. I’m not really sure yet. I do know for sure what I won’t be planting: No collards, no squash, and no eggplants.