Dear Apartment Next Door Neighbor,
Your bedroom wall is right next to my bedroom wall. I know this is a difficult concept to grasp, but we share this wall. When I have to pound on OUR wall to tell you that your music is too damn loud, you should be a polite, conscientious neighbor and turn your music down.

I've tried working with you. I don't care if the throbbing bass can be heard all over my apartment in the afternoons. But when it's 6:30 a.m. on a weekday morning or 6:40 a.m. on a weekend, you should know that the apartment has "quiet hours" from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. every day. I shouldn't have to frustratingly pound on the wall until you get the message and turn the music down, only to be woken up the next morning by your bad taste in music. This has been happening at least three times a week for the past two months, ever since you moved next door. More often than not, I wake up with a migraine because of your incredibly loud music.

This has got to stop.

I came over and talked to you this morning and you promised to fix it. No, I don't think the apartment complex will tear up your wall to insulate it better- they don't care for your music, either. I think you should move your stereo to the opposite side of the room and take the bass off the floor. If you don't turn your crappy music down, I will wake up at 5 a.m. every morning and blast the High School Musical soundtrack against OUR wall. You don't want to get into a crappy music war with me. My husband will attest to this. I will win with my copious amounts of Disney soundtracks, 80's songs, marching band music and Indigo Girls.

And then I will slash your tires.

No love,
Your neighbor

ok folks...the menu...WAS A HIT!
ESPECIALLY the energy bars...

however, i learned a few lessons...

when rehydrating...do the eggs and chicken SEPARATELY.
potatoes REALLY are a water hog *grin*

oh well. a little crunch with a meal aint bad, eh?

lol

( a few pics for your viewing pleasure... )

HIKE ON!

1. Is that one of his seven houses in the background?

2. That's nice that he wants to tell us the names of the pork-barrel lobbyists'-bitches politicians. He can start with his running mate, who after changing her mind on the "bridge to nowhere", kept the $283 million of pork anyway.

3. I think it's awesome that all of the "home made" signs (including "Hockey Moms for Palin" and "Hispanics <3 McCain") are in the same handwriting and same paint colors. I wonder if they were able to find a Hispanic person to hold the latter. So far in the four days of convention coverage, I've seen one person of color in the audience.

4. Obama passed a corporate welfare bill for oil companies?! Could someone please explain?

5. If you believe in a culture of life, why don't you repeal the death penalty?

6. $700B a year to countries that don't like us very much? What is that in reference to? Foreign oil? Interest on national debt?

7. Iran is on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons? Why does this sound familiar...oh wait. Another Republican told us the SAME THING about a country called Iraq.

8. POW, POW, POW. How many times can you tell the same story in one night?

9. I've never heard such a soft-spoken, unenthusiastic call to warms. "Stand up. Stand up. Stand up and fight....if you want to..."

In general I found this speech unexciting and unmemorable. It just seemed...tired.

If you want to be informed and know some facts instead of trusting sound bytes, please, please do yourself (and America) a favor, and read this, from the AP.

Knowledge is patriotic.

(Oh, and just for funsies -- but enlightened funsies!) 

Really wanted to go tonight as its been a loooong week. But I've had a migraine all day. Going to listen to my inner voice this time and just stay home in bed.

The application is sent. Wish me luck!

Steve

I took the kids and our lunches down to the lobby to eat next to the water fountain today. It was much nicer than staying in the room -- roomier, with a higher ceiling (the lobby is really an enclosed courtyard, with the ceiling up at the top of the hotel above the 8th floor, and live semi-tropical plants growing all around, which must be really impressively different in the middle of the Minnesota winter), more room to run around, and a decorative fountain in the middle. The tables are pretty, the chairs are comfortable, the noises are different, and the change makes everyone behave a bit better. Plus, there's more room for running around, so behavior that's annoying in the hotel room isn't annoying down there. :)

J hung out near the rest of us at first, standing next to my chair to ask for more crackers (he "asks" by making fussing noises; I ask him if he wants more, verbally and with sign language, and he starts making happy noises, so I guide his hands through the sign and then give him the cracker; he's obviously recognizing either the sign or the words or both, but he isn't making the sign spontaneously yet) and sitting down to eat them. He has an incredibly messy eating process right now -- since he only has four teeth, all in the center front, he chews food by passing it from hands to tongue and back again, biting repeatedly along the way, with predictable results; I'll be very glad when he gets a few more teeth. But eventually he tired of this and discovered that there are *gasp* elevators!!! I was interested to note that while he did once try to get to an elevator by climbing the stairs to the far elevators and going directly up to the elevator door, he usually went for the near elevators -- and not for the elevator door itself, but for the call button on the wall next to it! (Thankfully, this button is about a foot higher than he can reach, even when stretching.) I got a fair bit of exercise running after him and pulling him away from the elevators, which he accepted with his usual happiness, smiling and patting my shoulder and squirming to get down and try again.

D finished her sandwich and crackers and asked for more. This is the one thing that's hard about eating downstairs: Seconds are a long way away. I hemmed and hawed for a moment. Then she suggested that she could go do it herself. I thought about it. The entire hotel is open to this enclosed courtyard; I could watch her go up in the elevator, see that she went into the right room, and hear her if she yelled for help. And I knew she knew how to operate the elevator; she and T have been competing over the chance to be first to push the buttons since we got here, and ostentasciously checking the number on the door to "make sure we're at the right one" (and show off their ability to read numbers). So I let her go back to the room alone, make her own sandwich, and come back. She did a great job, including putting all the supplies back in the fridge when she was done, although it did involve more than one round-trip in the elevator -- she needed help unscrewing the mayonnaise lid. She had a strange companion on the elevator twice; one had a pleasant conversation with her, and the other tried to make her wait for her mother and insisted on asking me what floor she wanted, as if she couldn't speak for herself, but she handled herself well throughout and had a very positive experience. (She is often shy around strangers when drifting along with the rest of the family, but when she has A Purpose in mind, she can be very determined and outspoken in persuing it.)

Then we went to the parking lot next door, where there is a very large Steak & Ale that is now closed, and thus no car traffic. The kids ran around; I walked around with J in the carrier (the other option is to hover near him, trying to prevent him from swallowing rocks, which is not condusive to exercise); and everything would've been almost perfect if T hadn't pooped in his pants, lied about it twice, tried to insist on bringing some rocks back to the hotel in his pockets, and generally fought me every step of the way back. (We had to come back; in addition to the poop in T's pants, I also had D saying she needed to go potty "RIGHT NOW!" Carrying a 35 lb. child while wearing a 20 lb. baby is awkward.) But hey, we can't have everyone being cute and perfect all at once. :)

Newt

We find ourselves overloaded with beets from our CSA. As of right now, we have two quarts of pickled beets in the fridge and at least three bunches of beets that haven't been cooked yet, plus we're getting more this weekend. We've already had borscht up to our eyeballs.

My question is this: can I substitute shredded beets for shredded carrot or zucchini in breads, cakes, and muffins? What other tasty (and healthy) things can I make with beets?

I'm going to try using the big zucchini we got to make stuffed zucchini tonight (stuffed with couscous). All of a sudden I have a giant fear that I actually used up all the couscous and we don't have any left in the pantry . . .

Disturbing Discussion #1: While escorting laundry and kids around the hotel on Tuesday, we shared the elevators with lots of different people, all for very short times. Since almost everyone staying here right now is here with the Convention, this meant riding with lots of Republican Delegates, spouses of delegates, reporters hoping to accost delegates over breakfast, etc. One such person, an older woman, mentioned in her 30 seconds in the elevator with us that, "We've been invited to all these fun parties, and we probably won't be able to go because it's not safe. A couple people were killed last night. It's not being reported in the news, but it's true. And people wonder why we don't want to go anywhere!"

I am astonished by several things in this conversation. The first is the mind-set that violence, of any sort, has any place in the political process. And yes, I know, some variety of protesting, often with violence, is traditional for party conventions. It's still astonishing to me. The second is the "it's not in the news" bit. Either she's alleging some sort of conspiracy-theory cover-up, or she's telling a perfect stranger about something that the news has been asked not to print, likely for security reasons, and if you're that scared, why would you compromise security like that, or else the media has decided that the deaths of a couple convention-goers is not newsworthy, which also seems bizarre to me.

And then there's the fact that this woman dropped this heavily laden comment, which I have trouble processing, in front of three small children. I'm all for helping children understand that death exists and what it is and so on, but this goes so far beyond that, into areas of the yuckiness of human beings that most of us have trouble dealing with, and she just dropped this conversational bomb and then walked out of the elevator, leaving me to deal with all the questions she'd raised, both mine and the kids'!

Disturbing Discussion #2: This one isn't nearly so bad. The news is always on during breakfast here, but the volume is turned way way down, which is nice because there's plenty else going on, and usually it's on Fox News, which does a good job of having some sort of words up there for you to read always (although they could do a better job of making them more informative). So the kids have gotten in the habit of asking me periodically, "What's the movie talking about now, Mommy?" and then I try to figure out how to translate the little bit of information from the headlines into something they can understand. Monday and Tuesday mornings, it was almost all about levees in New Orleans. So we discussed levees, and the city that almost disappeared three years ago, and the storm that was coming to New Orleans this week, and what might happen. We looked up levees in Wikipedia, which provided us with pictures, and read about the amazing number of breaks in the levees in 2005. And then T told me that the artwork above the couch, which depicted a really tall building last week, is now a levee, which is going to break, but that's OK, because it's going to be fixed and so everyone in the city will be OK.

Question, sort of: We stayed up late last night, mostly because Chris needed to get some work done, but staying up late allowed us to watch Sarah Palin's speech to the RNC. I found myself wishing I'd watched some of the speeches at the DNC last week, for comparison. I can, of course, do a YouTube search this afternoon, but if any of you happen to have a favorite speech from the DNC, or one you particularly think I ought to watch, or a handy link lying around that you can drop in the comments for me without having to run any searches yourself, that'd be great. :)

Oh, and a note on practicalities: I hadn't really realized before just how large a political convention is. There are 45,000 people in town for the RNC, staying in 34 different hotels; if we'd been paying attention to the Conventions at all, we probably would have been more surprised to not have delegates sharing our hotel, given that we're in Minneapolis/St. Paul this week. Also, the speed with which McCain/Palin gear (buttons, hats, shirts, etc.) appeared after the VP announcement was rather staggering. Since the Hawaii delegation is staying here, I can state with certainty that some local florist is importing far more leis this week than this city ever has need for normally. And I had a very pleasant, not at all disturbing, conversation with a delegate couple from southern Indiana this morning over breakfast. They were very nice people.

Newt

Well I was in the Buffalo area - and the meat there was FAR supierior to the meat at Tops or Jubilee (and I worked here so was much more convient for me to shop here)
All I'm saying. Is I can't even get the kind of Hambergur Helper here I like (store only carries a few varieties - I mean Chedder Brocoli - not an uncommon flavor to find) Can't even get Loganberry Lemonade in the store anymore. *sniff* Never found the prices higher - and all I was saying was missed the variety. I didn't like much about my time in Buffalo - but I miss the food. I miss Wegmans.

OMG!!! I just saw a commercial for a NKOTB conncert.

It's relatively easy to find an inflation-adjusted list of top-grossing movies. Does anyone know if there's a list out there that also adjusts for population?

(Of course, the result is going to be that Gone With The Wind was even more overpoweringly popular than you think it was, but I'm kind of curious about magnitudes...)

Play: Cymbeline
Movie: The BBC version
Reason for choosing movie: No other versions exist
Tropes noticed: Faux Death, Berserk Button, God Save Us From The Queen, Sweet Polly Oliver, Mistaken For Cheating, Wrongful Accusation Insurance
Moments of WTF: Cloten failing to count to three. The random shots of birds (including a fight scene that we didn't actually see--instead we saw a different fight, between two birds).

Also, this is hysterical. Having recently seen Pericles, I can vouch for its accuracy.

If any MALE politician said that hockey moms were just dogs wearing lipstick, he'd immediately be lynched. But Palin does it and the crowd erupts in cheers.

Giuliani: For -- for four days in Denver, the Democrats were afraid to use the words "Islamic terrorism."

You're right, Rudy. And it's been three days of RNC speeches and I still have yet to hear anyone say "economy."

Giuliani: (Referring to Georgia) Obama's first instinct was to create a moral equivalency, suggesting that both sides were equally responsible, the same moral equivalency that he's displayed in discussing the Palestinian Authority and the state of Israel.

Did he just criticize Obama for suggesting that both sides in the Israel/Palestine conflict bear responsibility for the conflict? Do the Republicans really not understand that a one-side-is-always-right (or wrong) stance on foreign policy is not only naive, but not exactly conducive to diplomacy?

Giuliani: Well -- well, the first day -- as far as I'm concerned, the first day she was mayor, she had more experience as an executive than -- than Obama and Biden combined.

Really? Up to that point she'd been on the town council of a town of 7,000 people. If he really believes that is more experience than Obama and Biden combined, I'd say it's time for him to schedule an MRI.

Giuliani: One final point. And how -- how dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president. How dare they do that.

Who is "they"? I haven't heard a single person affiliated with Obama's campaign say any such thing -- the only places I've heard such statements are in the freaking comments on CNN's ticker. And those comments primarily seem to be coming from "family values" conservatives...

Also, I like how in his speech Obama took a stance against character assassination, and said that he would never criticize McCain's patriotism. He even went so far as to say that John McCain loves America just as much as he does. And yet, every speech I've seen so far at the Republican convention has been nothing but character assassination against Obama. Way to take the low road, guys.

No matter what - history is being made in this election.

In the process of tearing up the Life section of USA Today, J brought to my attention an article with the headline, "Democrats, teachers unions now divided on many issues." Apparently, the Democratic Party's platform on education now stakes out some new positions, including "paying teachers more if they raise test scores, teach in 'underserved areas' or take on new responsibilities such as mentoring new teachers." The article references long-standing union opposition to such ideas, "saying teachers would compete for jobs rather than cooperate and share ideas." Ummmm.... This might be true if, say, only the top X% of teachers could get higher pay. But if any teacher could raise his/her pay simply by doing a better job of teaching or taking on more work, I would think that would motivate more teachers to share ideas with each other in an effort to find ways to meet the pay raise criteria. It works that way for the private sector, after all. (One could argue that there is finite money to go around. But no other area of government spending seems to be that concerned about that. And I'm sure there are other programs that could be cut, certainly at the state and federal levels even if not always the local level, to pay for this.)

Apparently, there were a series of forums on education in Denver last week, in association with the DNC -- standing room only. It'll be interesting to see if this results in (a) better educational policies and/or (b) a break in the NEA's support of the Democratic Party.

Um, yeah. I normally don't have anywhere near this much time to devote to politics. But I'm beginning to think that maybe I should find a way to change that. Ack. Too many things to pay attention to, too little time....

Newt

When cooking in a hotel, the electric 18-qt. roaster and the rice cooker make a good combination of appliances. The knife block and chopping board were good tools to have in addition. But a few more things would have been nice for optimal cooking:

- A mixing bowl. Preferably large, as excessive size is rarely a problem. Even better, a few mixing bowls.
- A wooden spoon, and perhaps a whisk, especially if baking is contemplated.
- A can opener. Many otherwise easy-to-make-in-a-rice-cooker meals require a can opener.
- A measuring cup. Even boxed cake mix requires measuring the water and oil.

Newt

For those of you who now think I'm a complete jerk (for lack of tact in my previous post, or otherwise), take comfort - my watch battery died, and it's driving me crazy. I can't even brush my teeth properly, since I use it to time how long I'm brushing.

BONES IS NEW TONIGHT!!!

So glad I was reading my Entertainment Weekly. I would have missed it!!!
Why does Fox not want to promte this more??

There's nothing a conservative hates more than a liberal candidate.

Unless it's a conservative candidate who's not quite conservative enough.

It reminds me of those stupid high school football competitions, where you don't mind Random Across The State High School winning the state championship, because it'll mean that at least someone could beat the next high school over, so you can laugh at them and ridicule them when you met them in town.

And I'm sick of it.

Yeah, OK, so I'm a SAHM, and I think that the world would be a better place if more other people were also SAHMs. But ya know what? That's not the only important thing in the world. And the truth is that having either parent totally leave the house and go to a whole 'nother area, miles from home, to work 40+ hours/week, with people whom the rest of the family (almost) never meet, doing things they have nothing to do with and see the results of only in the money that gets auto-deposited into the checking account, is a really modern invention, and not that great a one at that. To the extent that any family model could be labeled "ideal," my picture of the "ideal family" involves a whole lot more interconnectedness among all the family members than the modern mainstream family model leaves room for. So yeah, I'm all for SAHMs, but I'm also all for any model that leaves Mom and Dad both with as much time as possible for the kids, because I think they're both important.[1]

But here's the other thing: I am dead sure that the "ideal family" is NOT one in which either parent is in the Army and deployed frequently, or in the Navy and on boats for however many months at a time, or the President of a nation (any nation, of any size) facing any sort of major crisis -- or, for that matter, the CEO of a major corporation facing a major crisis; let's face it, major crises are hell on family life for the guy(s) at the top.

But someone has to shoulder that burden. Someone has to have the family whose family life is sacrificed for the good of something larger.

Do I want that someone to be me, or my husband? No.

Are we working to have a life that is closer to what we think is "ideal?" Yes.

If our country, or our world, or our God, needed us to be that family, to sacrifice our family life for the good of something larger, would we accept that call? If we could be sure of the need and our calling to be that family, yes.

So, to the questions actually being asked in the general public right now (since no one is proposing that Chris or I run for any public offices):

Will Sarah Palin's family life be impacted by her being VP, should she be so elected? Yes.

Is Sarah Palin's family life already being impacted by her being Alaska's governor? Undoubtedly, yes.

Will her young children suffer from her being in public office? Perhaps; perhaps not. George W. Bush and countless other offspring of publicly elected officials can doubtless answer that one better than I ever could. And of all working mothers, Palin is surely in one of the best possible positions for finding ways and means to offset the negatives.

Is the choice to allow those effects, or to seek means by which to minimize them, any concern of the general public's? Absolutely not.

Sarah Palin and her husband have no doubt faced many decision points along the path of her political career. I'm sure that they faced another one sometime in the past few weeks. They, like the Obamas, have chosen to sacrifice much of their leisure and privacy in the remaining weeks before the election, with the very real possibility of continued sacrifices ahead. That is their decision, not ours. We as voters should be respectful of this as we make the decision that is ours: Are John McCain and Sarah Palin the right people for the jobs? For this determination, we may well need to examine their attitudes about family. But as we do so, let's remember that running for public office may be a disregard for family -- or a sacrifice of something dearly loved in service of something larger, and also dearly loved.

Newt[2]

[1] I do believe there's a special role for a mother in the life of a young child. Let's face it, babies are biologically primed to bond closely with Mom, and Mom has the necessary equipment to feed the child naturally and thus strengthen that bond. This does not negate the need of the child to have both parents active in his/her life.

[2] I have chosen, here, not to go into any of the theological reasoning behind any of this, partly because I know that most of my readers aren't Christian and therefore wouldn't care anyway, partly because I don't have the time, and largely because Amy Scott says it better than I ever could've anyway.

I am choosing not to link to the commentaries that have gotten me so riled up to begin with. They don't deserve the readership, however slight, that this might give them.

(I can't make up stuff like this. I'm not that inventive.)

This morning, before any of the kids were up, I heard some whispering noises in the living room. (We're living in a hotel suite right now, with D and T sleeping on the hide-a-bed sofa in the living room and Chris, J and I sleeping in the bedroom.) In hopes of letting the non-whisperer sleep as long as possible, I opened the door silently, walked in, and held the following whispered conversation:

Me: Is anyone awake in here?
T: Not me!
M: Yes, you are!
T: No, I'm not! I'm tired!

Ah, if only it worked like that!

This afternoon, D and T are pretending that they are Celeste and Babar, from the classic children's books. Overheard was this interesting line:

D (speaking to T): Let's say that I got pregnant without you noticing.

Newt

According to Sarah Palin:

1) The Iraq war was/is a part of God's plan
2) Developing Alaska's resources doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's hearts aren't right with God
3) The appearance (attractiveness) of missionaries is important in getting people interested in JC

Sort of a day early, but whatever. 34 weeks down, 6ish to go.

Yesterday in our birth preparation class, the partners were required to pretend to be the pregnant women and practice pushing. This was a) to give partners a chance to put themselves in their partner's shoes, b) to spare very pregnant women from sitting on the floor and pushing (which we shouldn't be doing right now anyway), and c) for laughs. We learned I'm terrible at providing encouragement. Or maybe I'm terrible at encouraging my husband to pretend to push a pretend baby out of his pretend uterus.

( Status update (latest complaints) )

( There are good things, too )

PSA: You are now entering a tact-free zone. ( Proceed at your own risk. )

Disclaimer: I do not speak for Google, I'm just a software engineer. The following are my own opinions.

I'm fairly sure I can talk about this now: prerelease versions of Google Chrome have been my primary Windows browser since April, and if it was out for Linux it would be pretty much the only browser I ever use (except for a couple of work-related situations where the ProxyButton Firefox extension is more or less mandatory). The speed increase is noticeable but not dramatic: it won't blow you away, but everything just kind of clicks better; it's almost a subliminal effect (this is partly because nobody has yet built web apps that take advantage of Chrome's speed, since everyone has to design their apps for the lowest common denominator). The real win is the process isolation features: when a plugin crashes, you don't lose the browser, and you don't even lose the page, you just lose the plugin. In most cases you can just reload the page and get the plugin back. Even if the browser does crash, each browser tab is its own process, so all you lose is the current tab. To the best of my recollection, I've never had the whole application crash (i.e. I've never lost more than one tab) in all the time I've been using it.

Funnily enough, only last weekend we had a little snafu where jmpava wound up seeing a running instance of Chrome on my laptop while he was visiting, which led to a few moments of panic while we tried to figure out if he'd notice, and how we'd cover it up if he did (Google takes confidentiality very seriously, because leaks threaten our ability to be as open as we are internally). Fortunately, he didn't appear to notice, and now it's all moot anyway.

Don't think I'll make the Baroney meeting tonight - Rich is home late. Maybe he'll bring home Arby's though - still haven't had any in a long time and have been craving it all summer.
Need to schedule Monkey's physical - we missed our apt last time due to Dylan's funeral. *Sigh* I can't believe how big my boys are. 1st and 2nd grade. House is very quiet. Once they are in more of a routine will be getting house more in order and looking for a job.
Anyone heading to Dance tomorrow?

Sophia is precious. My little bugaboo girl. She is three now, and really "coming into her own." My being gone during the day has forced her to play more independently.

It's so funny now, she's very, very interested in her environment. It used to be she was only interested in OMG BEING ON MOMMY OMG but now if there are any changes to an area she is in a lot, she'll forego OMG BEING ON MOMMY to go check out what the changes are.

A few weekends ago I sprayed down the patio and rearranged some of it. I did this in the early morning, but since I was using bleach on the cement, I kept the fids inside. Not wanting to wake them up yet, I also kept the curtains closed.

When I got them up a little while later, she jumped onto my shoulder and then hopped over to the playstand, scurried up the curtains, up to the curtain rod, and raced over to the window where she promptly ducked down, little feather butt up, to see what had been done to her patio. She looked and looked and looked. It was really adorable!

She still claims ownership to the big cage that now belongs to Athie (was Petey's). Yesterday we played musical cages since Athie was in Petey's cage, I put Petey in Sophie's cage and Sophie in Athie's cage. Later when I switched them all back she had to run over to "her cage" to check out what had been done. LOL

It's kind of cool to see her acknowledge her environment and be curious as to what is happening in it. Kind of reminds me of the little girl from Animaniacs: "Whatcha doin'? ... Why?...Why? .... Why? ... OK I love you buh-bye!!!"

Another kind of cool thing is that I always try to encourage her not to be "clingy" and to play on her own. Now when I'm on the patio she has her favorite spots to play and hang out, and she'll hop off of me to go to them.

I love my little bugaboo. :) She's still such a cuddle bug and adorable Mommy's girl!

getting kids back into the routine = not fun.

I have found the perfect way to pass as male:
- shortish rumpled hair
- plaid flannel shirt over T-shirt
- roomy shorts with pockets
- sensible leather sandals
- head cold.

What I have not figured out is why this worked much more consistently than jeans and a sweatshirt. A's theory is that it was because of Seattle[1]. I can't believe Seattle doesn't have women in the butch/lazy area of gender presentation. Or, you know, female computer geeks.

[1] Short trip with no working phones and no notice, or I would have attempted to contact/hang out with people.

Officers use gas and pepper spray on protesters attempting to comply with their disperse order. How is that at all fair?? Who the hell is in charge of the St. Paul police, and are they a Republican?

I'm sorry, I can't help it.  Thanks, Danny, for this.

So here's a new conspiracy theory.  John McCain, pissed off at the GOP for the way they've been hatin' on him lately, has turned his whole campaign into one huge practical joke.  He chose Palin only to guarantee that Obama wins in November, as the last hurrah on his ridiculous tour of America, after which he will return to one of the houses he hasn't forgotten he owns.  

Honestly, I'm waiting for the "GOTCHA!" that surely must be coming.

And today Joe Lieberman is speaking at the RNC, whereas if things had gone just a hair differently eight years ago, he might well be the Democratic nominee for president right now. 

Is our nation trapped in someone's twisted imagination?  It all seems like the plot of some far-fetched novel.  Or a telenovela, even.  All it's missing is someone getting thrown over a balcony. 

Peace.

BAck from the farm trek - might or might not do a post later - most likley will wait till tomorrow.
Still cannot find my camera - know I had it at the boys bday party - havent seen it since *GRUMBLE* tomorrow is the first day of school and need to take photos.
Panda will be going full time - will start to look for job once they are settled back into a routine.
What else - found all the "specific" school supply items - only took me 3 stores - yes we need "CRAYOLA" itmes - and i did not find the "correct" pencils - but oh well.
If anyone in this area needs to find composition notebooks still - they are at office max - for like $.50 - so that at least was a deal.
now to hope everyone will get along with their teachers.
I can;t believe its september already - Halloween is right around the corner.

How can family be off limits when you so blatantly use them in your political scheming?

Seems like Gov. Palin has a lot of dirty laundry.  You know I don't believe for a minute that McCain "knew" about the daughter's pregnancy before he chose his running mate, and I'm starting to wonder if he asked any questions at all, or just played eenie meenie minee mo with all the obscure female republican leaders in the US when he chose her.  

Anyway I'm sick of thinking about this bitch, so I'm gonna go to trivia now.

Peace.

1. Go to Ikea
2. Stand around innocently in the checkout area
3. Be assaulted by a woman with a cart carrying a sharp-cornered picture frame
4. Acquire from said frame a slice in your leg that bleeds progressively more and more
5. Send your spouse/friend/whoever to get ice cream while you construct a mountain of bloody napkins
6. Agree to an employee's offer to provide wet wipes to clean up said wound more effectively
7. Wait around, still bleeding, while your spouse holds two ice cream cones (eating one of them)
8. Finally get the wet wipes, only to discover that makes the bleeding worse, then foolishly accept the same employee's offer to get some band-aids
9. Wait some more - still bleeding - still with the spouse holding two ice cream cones
10. Finally get the (giant) band-aids from the concerned employee

I would have felt really dumb if I'd injured myself. As it was, I was mostly entertained. After the initial pain of having someone seemingly try to cut off my leg, at least. I felt more kindly disposed towards my assaulter when she observed the damage she'd done (while I was building my mountain of bio-hazard) and offered a wet-wipe of her own (that had gone dry, it turns out), and a band-aid that was far too small. It's the thought that counts, right? Anyway, at that point I knew that, were I in her shoes, I'd feel awful. Also, it wasn't really hurting anymore.