Top Ten Signs Your country is becoming Fascist

Happy Birthday 3rd Yungin!!

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday 3rd yungin, Happy Birthday to you!

I tried adding pictures, but I can't seem to get it to work. I'll try to edit later....

Happy birthday!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, SON! (Oldnovice update)

Happy Holidays and Blog Changes for 2008.

Happy Holidays, Y'all!

Made some changes to the blog this week. New year is coming soon, so I'm thinking about what I spent my time on in 2007 and how I want to change that for 2008 (First change involves clickable photos on the right side of the posts. If you do NOT see Photobucket on a wave over a photo, give it a click; you might like (or not) what you find there.). Second change involves disassociating myself from some of the environmentalists who, IMO, have been highly influenced by Peak Oil activists. I'm not "into" the doomer scenario; had enough exposure to that with Y2k and noticed that the doomers from Y2k simply switched hats and moved on to the next doomer scenario when Y2k turned out to not result in their wildest dreams come true.

I have been and will be continuing to look into gardening ideas, including vertical gardening ideas that can be implemented for a song with no skills. Heh.

I'm trying to encourage No. 2 and # 3 to take part more in the blog this year (if their time permits) to pull in a more diverse direction (if diverse can be classified as a direction) of fun stuff.

As part of a resolution to cook less and have more fun, Em and I are leaving tomorrow for 4 days in Northern Nevada (to gamble) :-).

While I'm gone, I encourage y'all to check out the following videos:

Starting with Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff (21 minutes)>, move on, when you have the time, to a series of videos (hat tip to Delta Lady) which explain how the media influenced us to want more through the years. Each video is one hour long, so plan accordingly.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Almost forgot: No. 1 got 2 As and 2Bs, so her scholarship is renewed for another term. PHEW!

We've got gas...natural gas...the OTHER kind.

If you haven't been following the news on The Barnett Shale Formation, you might be unaware of the largest natural gas find in the U.S.

"enough to supply all gas-heated homes in the U.S. for more than five years..."

We hadn't paid much attention ourselves until a gas exploration company set up a town hall meeting in our neighborhood. We weren't able to attend the meeting due to prior commitments, but representatives from the company made the effort to contact us individually. Last night we signed.

This doesn't mean that gas drilling equipment will go up on our lawn or that we'll be another Real McCoy story. The drilling equipment will go up on the other side of I20 and we'll get maybe $35 to $200/month IF gas is found in our collective piece of the formation. The signing bonus will pay our natural gas bill for an entire year. Not bad for doing NOTHING.

My Fall Vacation...The Cliff Notes.

Had a really, really SUPER FUN vacation in Illinois around Thanksgiving. No. 2 and I spent several days together just doing stuff that No. 2 needed to do. Her work and school schedules don't stop just because Texas Mama comes to town, ya know.

After a few days, No. 2 dropped me off at the home of my good friends, Jud and Bob. I'd gotten tickets for a concert near their home, but I needed to help chop vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner if I was to expect them to attend.

Bob and I slaved away in the kitchen while Jud slept. I exaggerate only SLIGHTLY, despite her objections. Heh.



Had a really great dinner at the home of Bob's dad and got to see Jud's family, as well.



Said farewell to my old friends with dinner at Davidson's.



Jen M squeezed in some time for me that evening, too:

Then, it was back to No. 2's place to spend the weekend with #3 and Heather while No. 2 and her roommate went off to a wedding. They acquainted me with Wii. We played tennis, bowled, and a few other things. My favorite was bowling, although my thighs hurt for 3 days afterward.

My last day in No. 2's world, we went to Ikea's. We love to poke around at that store and there isn't an Ikea store anywhere near us here (Closest is Plano). As per usual, we ate lunch there, with No. 2 getting the Swedish meatballs and me the salmon. I think we have another tradition going on with lunch and a poke at Ikea's. I bought four more cloth shopping bags there. I absolutely LOVE their cloth shopping bags. They're larger than normal, accommodate heavy items readily, and have long shoulder straps ... all for the low price of $1.99. I'd purchased one of Jewel's cloth bags during a shopping trip when I first arrived (for $1.00) and use it for produce shopping. She dropped me at the Metra Station before she left for school and I spent the last night of my trip at HI Chicago.

HI Chicago had an outing on my last night in town ... to Smoke Daddy's BBQ place/jazz bar. I joined 13 others who took the elevated train there for dinner. Two of the 13 were guides from the hostel. The fun I'd been having with friends and family now extended to fun with strangers, and I spent my last day downtown with one of the folks I met that night, showing him the sites of Chicago. Good times... good times.

Fall Planting.

My latest experiments in life include an attempt at being more of a locavore. Combining the crayola diet with cheapskating lent itself to growing stuff right here. We planted a few things before I left for a vacation in Illinois: blueberries and blackberries, respectively, for instance.





The blueberries need a mulch of pine tree needles and my old friend, Jud, came up with the perfect cheapskating idea for getting those. "Wait until your neighbors throw away their Christmas trees and snip off some branches." D'Oh!

We still have some raspberry bushes to plant, but we got the peach trees planted yesterday.

That was WORK, as the holes needed to be pretty deep and wide. Em helped me and that little job pretty much drained both of us. We'll probably get the raspberry bushes planted this week; even have a hole all ready for ONE of them. They didn't arrive until after I got to Chicago, though, so they can still stand a little more acclimating to the local climate. There's a lot to be said for acclimation, IMO. For instance, we're still HERE:



Chicago last week was more like HERE:





We still have highs in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s. Drops in temperature into the 40s have us turning on the heat. [Em turned the heat on while I was in Chicago, set to 74 degrees, and we still felt cold!] Sorry, Crunchie! Fortunately, the heat doesn't turn on often. Moved the rubber tree back inside. You might remember how pathetic it looked before spending this summer outside, but here's a reminder:



It's back inside now (after a long internal debate on whether or not I wanted to let it be an outside rubber tree planted in the ground). I'll revisit that thought next year.

I'm easing my way into post-vacation life this week. No. 1 came with Dave for a Boggle yesterday, so it's a very good thing we got the peach trees planted beforehand.

Made my last purchases of "Made in China" goods before vacation. Hadn't even noticed where the stuff was made before I bought it, but decided that "enuf is enough" after noticing. We don't celebrate Christmas, but No. 3 has a birthday on December 23, so he'll be the test case for whether Americans still make decent stuff, I suppose. Let me know, No. 3!

The Next Stop.

Spent nine days in Chicago over the Thanksgiving holidays, several of those days spent with good friends of mine who have a son who entered the Project Direct film competition. I'll be blogging about that trip in the days to come, but for now, I want to ensure that y'all see this short film before voting shuts down.

Their son's entry is:


If you like it, go to Project Direct, click on the VOTE tab and cast a YES vote for The Next Stop. The way you cast a (YES) vote is to click on the thumbs up icon for the film. Click on "next video" until you see the subway scene shown above.

How'd Halloween Go For You?

No. 1 came with Ekans tonight to "charm" the trick-or-treaters.

She did a "pet the snake and get a piece of candy" hawk. lol.

Angelina Jolie as a child showed up at my doorstep so cute that I took 2 photos of her.


I'd say we had 100 kids this year; could have had more adolescent interlopers had we left the light on longer, but we were down to the last bag and a half of three musketeers (which are always saved for last because Em and No. 1 love them), so shut down the operation at 8:51. Em got home from work about 10 minutes after we shut down. He still hurts some, but hasn't had repeats of those spasms. That means life is good.

Your Mama Said There'd be Days Like This; There'll be Days Like This, Your Mama Said.

Forgot all about the wheat berries I've had soaking in the pantry for several days. The bushes are still sitting outside on the patio in their pots (which is okay for maybe up to 7 more days), and I have ALMOST 2 holes dug. 2 more holes plus soil amendments and we can plant those puppies.

It seemed kinda strange that Em had really bad cold symptoms last Sunday that went away by Monday morning (I'd thought) through the shotgun approach I took supplying remedies. He was fine the whole week up until Friday when his back started to bother him. Big day at the Racetrack on Saturday, working 9-9. His back was still bothering him in the morning, but he thought he could do the shift. Simply put, he couldn't. They drove him home about 2:30pm with spasms in his back. They'd wanted to take him to a hospital, but we're not hospital people.

We've been attacking the back problem probably as much as we can (or should) while it's still in the spasm phase. I have some familiarity with back problems having suffered from them over 20 years ago. We figure he'll be okay, but I'll be wondering for a while why he got this at this time and did it have something to do with the cold that he lost within a day that's lingered on in me for a full week now. Who Knows, right?

No. 1 came today to work on a paper for school. She has a plethora of papers due in the next few weeks, all in APA format. The one due this week is for her most anal-retentive professor, so it was kindof the test case and one that really required the services of anal-retentive mama. Who knew THAT feature of my personality would come in handy some day? APA format and Microsoft Word mix like oil and water. Her prof warned her, and we saw first-hand today. Frustrating doesn't quite describe the experience, but after a whole day we thought the product "good enough" and actually managed to save a copy without Word modifying the format. If she wants to (if she's anal-retentive enough), No. 1 will hunt down where the tab is 3 spaces instead of 5 and where the reference source is font 10 instead of 12). She's the one who needs to keep the 3.5 GPA to sustain her scholarship. Or, she can hope her anal-retentive prof is too busy or unforgiving to notice/care. Feeling lucky?

She stopped at the store for a few things for us on her way over and had the realization (fantasy?) that she's become part of the sandwiched generation without the bottom half of her sandwich. Now she's totally worried about us and talking about getting us on her cell phone plan. Of course, Em looked to be about 140 years old with his bad back and I had to ask her to help him out of the chair to come to the phone when his grandson called. The boy suggested he could call back. I had to tell him, "You don't want to get your grandfather out of the chair and then hang up." lol. Good times;good times.

Em's son mentioned coming to town next weekend. Might need to get the guestroom bed made up in case he spends the night here.

In the puzzle/game department, I've found online jigsaws. Right now I'm limiting myself to puzzles within the 50-70 piece category because they take less than 30 minutes to solve. That works for me. I like to mix my more obvious productive time with short sessions of non-obvious productivity and it's really kewl how online puzzles don't require any space in the home.

Wheatgrass and Other Stuff.

Em teases me because I think it's important for us to eat from all the colors in a crayon box. Not the BIG 64 crayon box, but the small one with the 8 colors. The 8th color is green "other". Seriously; I read this. So, as mentioned previously, I decided to get "into" wheat grass juicing.

It takes a while to get the wheat berries "going", and it doesn't help when you soak 1/2 cup of wheat berries and put them into a container that will only accommodate 1/4 cup, then decide (2 days later) that there are too many wheat berries and rip the poor things out and put them into a second container. We live and learn, though. The roots on those things went through the drainage holes on the bottom after only a few days.

So, the process goes something like: soak the wheat berries for 24 hours (or 3 days if you're too lazy to move on to the next step). Drain them and lay them onto soil with good drainage. Cover. I drained and resoaked them every 8 or so hours using an old instant coffee jar with a knee-high nylon stocking and rubber band.



In just a day or two the sprouting grasses started forcing their way through the small holes atop the containers. I waited until they got really forceful to open the lids permanently, but I still rinse them every 8 or so hours. I put the green grass outside if the weather is clear. Developmentally, here's the process from front to back:



In other news, there's absolutely NO TRUTH to the rumor being spread about how I panicked when the fanbelt broke off the car on the way to Oklahoma last Monday. I heard Em say that he couldn't stop or steer the car and didn't scream ONCE. I spent the whole time (while miracle man drove to the car repair place) looking out the passenger window at the lovely Texas scenery. I was even so calm that we continued to Oklahoma once the fanbelt was replaced. We forgot to turn off the hazard lights when we got there, so killed the battery while we were there, but Casinos are good about fixing things like that.

Lots of things are going on this month and next if you look to the right of the blog for information. Em's job precludes us from attending most of these things, but maybe you can attend things in your area.

I've ordered a number of fruit plants to help us maintain our crayola diet. Ordered mostly 2 of stuff so they could pollinate each other a little... 2 peach trees, 2 blueberry bushes, 2 blackberry bushes, 2 raspberry bushes, 6 strawberry plants. Some repetition isn't necessary; for instance, the peach trees are self-pollinating, but we've been looking to put some trees in our backyard for a while now and one at each end worked for us. We'll receive the stuff when it's time to plant them.

Tomorrow or the next day we'll begin "harvesting" the wheatgrass for juice. I'll let you know how it tastes (plain, mixed with other juices, etc.) I'll also let you know if we can leap tall fences in a single bound after drinking a shot of the stuff.

Don't forget Halloween is this month. Lots of kids look forward to the community afforded by neighbors oohing and aahing over their costumes while stuffing their bags with treats.