It's the end....

This is the last post on this blog.
I've wrestled with and procrastinated on this question for a very long while.  But the time has come to suit action to thought.
During the primary dust-up, I became aware of Google's shady associations, and I'm not happy about it.  But the thought of moving the blog is daunting.  So, there ensued a protracted wrestling match.  The voices of my better angels have prevailed.
I'm packing up and moving over to Wordpress.  I've got a site set up and I'm going to start an introductory post over there now.
No telling when I'll get it done and posted, but I'm working on it.
If yer at all interested, you can check out the new site:

Wild Rambles

I can cook...

It's a good thing, and I ought to 'own' it.
So...
I can cook fairly well...

I make a pretty good spaghetti sauce.  The past few years, I've had enough homegrown tomatoes to make at least one batch from scratch.  We're bagging up tomatoes for the next batch now.  I've already got homegrown oregano dried and waiting.  I'm hoping to have some good peppers for it this year.

I'm getting close to a really good meatloaf.  I've got the mix down for taste.  I'm still working on the balance of consistency and cooking time, so it's not squishy.  I don't like squishy meatloaf.

I have achieved the lifelong ambition of a decent batch of chili, check it out:
HappyDale Homestead's Taco Chili

I've cobbled together a pretty good Sloppy Joe recipe.

I can bake a decent loaf of bread.
I've adapted that basic recipe several different ways.  The latest metamorphosis is a Garlic-Pepper-Parmesan roll that goes with the Sloppy Joes really well.  The Asiago cheese version was a big hit.

I can make good cookies of all kinds.

I have made a fairly flaky pie crust.  I can bake Brownies, corn bread, pies, and cakes from scratch.  I've fried, boiled, and baked eggs and potatoes.  I've made crepes, pancakes, turnovers, popovers, donuts, and candy from scratch.  I've made many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  I've even made some diabetic treats.  I like to deep fry things.

Thanks to my Deary Departed, I have a killer recipe for Egg Nog:
And I can make Wassail.

I have baked scratch made biscuits on a campfire.  Yes, they were cooked all the way through and turned out light and fluffy.  Only a couple were scorched on the bottom.

This last weekend I grilled a satisfying, medium-well strip steak, with a grilled baked potato, and a plethora of grilled veggies.

And, I am a good Frankenstein cook.
Steve, my Deary Departed, and I perfected Frankenstein cooking back in the day.
Frankenstein cooking is the practice of walking into a kitchen, surveying what is there, (Frankenstein cooking allows for a limited supply run.  As long as it's not a grocery run made solely for the meal, and the additions are minimal.  If you know, you have veggies and meat at home, and you pick up 1 or 2 things to add, it still qualifies as a Frankenstein meal.  Remember, the good doctor had to go out for parts...) and crafting a meal out of it.  This is a vital skill when money is tight.  If yer eating Ramen Noodles for a week, it's good to be able to change it up a bit.  I've made things with Spam and macaroni that weren't half bad.
Last night, I made soup.  The last of the steak was gone, and I still had a whole lot of roasted veggies left.  I had to go get a printer cartridge yesterday, so I got a roll of hot sausage, some vegetable broth, and a box of noodles.
I didn't want a whole lot of meat in the soup, just enough for flavor, so I only used a quarter of the roll of sausage.  The rest is frozen, awaiting a future use.
I grilled the veggies with a garlic pepper, butter, Extra Virgin Olive Oil mix.  But, unfortunately, I didn't think to grill any garlic.  So I chopped up a few cloves and threw it in with the sausage while it was browning.  I also threw some chopped onion in with it.  I did grill an onion last weekend, but only one, it was particularly tasty, so there wasn't much of it left.  There was a yellow bell in the fridge that needed to be used, so I chopped that up and threw it in, too.
While the meat was browning and the vegetables were sweating, I cut up the leftover grilled veggies.  There was most of a Zucchini left, which was what inspired the soup idea.  There were a few asparagus, half a red bell pepper, and a little of the onion left.  I grilled mushrooms too, but I ate all those.
I dumped all that in a pot, added the vegetable broth, water, and some chicken base.  I dumped in the sausage and the fresh veggies and put it on the stove on high.  While it was heating up, I threw in some oregano, a little thyme, and a pinch of ground coriander.  When it boiled, I threw in some tri-colored noodles.  Only about a quarter of the box, they were just there to add some body.
I let it all simmer till the noodles were done.  Made a nice big batch of soup.
And, now I have some sausage and noodles for some other meal.
No telling where they'll end up.

Tonight's time waster....

A spur of the moment thing. 

Too Synchronicicratic to ignore....

Sitting here with the first cup of coffee this afternoon...

I didn't go to bed till 5am this morning, so getting up at 10am was doing good.  Don't judge me.  This is a day off, I had the option of sleeping in.  I'm being slow to start the day.  But, I did start it,

So,

Yeah, one for my side!





Sitting here with the morning cup, I'm pondering motivations.  I've got stuff to do.  There's rearranging my desk, so the cats won't be sitting on the computer, litter boxes need cleaning, floors need vacuuming, the kitchen needs attention, I've got seeds to start, I need to make a grocery run....
I've even got a job I could go do.
But, that's all for the day ahead.  First cup of coffee time is free time.  I get to sit with the first cup.  It's a reward for getting out of bed and starting to deal with the day.  By the time I get to that first cup I've been out with the dogs, and fetched water for the hoards.  So, I did accomplish something this morning.
As I do so often, I opened up Blogger and toyed with the idea of a post.  I have actually contemplated the idea of a post several times in the last week.  If I get one up soon I'll beat the year mark for lags between posts.  Which will be another 'Yeah, one for my side'.
But...
These things eat a lot of time, and that list above is only partial.  I worked a lot the past 3 days, I've got a lot of work to do in the next 2 days, at least.  I don't have time to be eaten.
And there wasn't anything burning to be said.
So it was, again, a glancing consideration.
I opened the Dashboard, and then closed it, and moved on to more pressing concerns, like feeding my FB zoo....

I finished wasting time.
And then I had an idea....

That was the idea.  I went searching for a picture to fit the caption, and voila....
It was just the completion of an old idea, or rather a continuation of the evolution of an idea.  I've got a couple other pictures to try....
But, it started as just a quicky doodle.  It started as a one and done idea.
Cuz, I've got a lot of other stuff to do.
The idea was fanned this morning by a couple of things I saw on FaceBook.
There's almost always something in my FB feed that makes me want to have a 'Come to Jeebus' moment with a lot of people.  I've had a couple of my own 'Come to Jeebus' moments in the past couple of weeks.
And then the phone went off.  I'd say it rang, but most phones don't now-a-days.
Usually, I don't answer unknown numbers.  If it's important, they'll leave a message.  I'll decide weather or not it's something I need to pay attention to later.  But the number looked like it might have been a call from work.
So, on a whim of chance, just as I was putting the finishing touches on the above PNG, I answered an unknown number.
And it was the loan company that I paid off yesterday.
Back in November I needed some extra cash to pay bills and insurance.  I already had a loan with my credit union.  So I went to the internet, and didn't do too much better with interest rates than I did at the Cash Store.  I borrowed $200.  I paid back, and remember, I SAVED money paying it off early, I paid back $611.
And they called this morning wanting to know if I wanted to renew my loan for half of the interest rate they raped me with the last time.
And Jeebus beckoned....
And something was burning....



And it was burning pretty hot till I went to make that graphic.  That simple little doodle took me most of the day, cuz first I had to find the hard copy of the picture, then I scanned it, cleaned it up, and did a quicky Powerpoint file.  Then something went wrong when I tried to save it to a PNG, and I couldn't figure out what, so after having spent hours on that, I made a grocery run, came back and started from scratch.

I've run out of steam for the meeting, for now.  I've got other stuff to do.
But I did get two little doodles done.
And I will post this, just so I can say I did.
So it's not a whole year without a post....

Ah well  Not a TOTALLY wasted day.

What could they really do....

Imagine, if you will...
You sleep late.
Have a good lie in; reading, listening to music, having sex, whatever...
When you finally get out of bed, there's nothing you have to do.  It's just a nice lazy, relaxing day around the house...
Now imagine if every worker in the country did this on the SAME day....
What if everybody who works for less than $15.00 an hour just stayed home instead of rushing off to cheerfully serve their corporate masters?
What if, instead of rushing out to the mall to buy crap you don't need you took a day to do nothing?
Think about it.  They can't afford to fire everybody, and even if they did, the fast food restaurant across the street is gonna be looking for new workers too.
The loss of a couple days revenue would be noticeable in even the biggest business.
And all we have to do is NOTHING!

(Had to renew the Image on this one.  Wasn't showing in the blog...)

What could the really do?

My contribution to the John Goodman memes...

Decorations....

Was gonna put this in the last post but I got side tracked....

We didn't do a lot of decorating this year.  For the first while all the tree had on it was a cowboy hat, lights, rubber ducks, Airplanes, and ninjas, a Pepsi can and a Stag can.

Yeah, we were stylin....

When we originally decorated the tree, my decorations were in the shed at Granite.  I don't remember moving them out there, but that's where they were...

The ninjas and rubber ducks and stuff were things that I had left over from treat bags.

On Christmas eve I further decorated the tree.

I found a place for the snowmen to sit...  

  

Max and the Grinch found a safe place...

Security is mostly a superstition...

 It does not exist in nature, 

nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. 

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. 

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller 

Found that over on Brainyquote.com 

Looks like an interesting site.  I'm gonna have to spend sometime over there.

Reading the news from Boston yesterday and today....

My first reaction was too wonder just what it is the PTB are trying to distract from.

Yes cynical, I know.  But I always wonder when things like this happen is it real, or is it advantageous?

With the evidence mounting from 9/11 I'm almost ready to switch from my stance of 'I don't think they engineered it, but they did allow it to happen' to 'shit yeah, they did engineer it.'

Watching the spike in fear and anger around the bombings in Boston, it makes me wonder...

This is really gonna heat up the debate on gun control, can already see that coming.  'Home Land Security' could get a big bump from this.  At a time when we keep loosing liberty without even realizing this could be a killing blow to actual personal liberty.  An argument for more unregulated surveillance.  More cameras, more searches....

Without knowing who planted them, it's hard to say which group of people is going to be on the receiving end of a whole lotta hate.  Cuz someone will be.  Someone always is.

I'm sure the radical religious right will find some way of blaming gays and undocumented immigrants...

The initial out pouring of grief and condolences and support, is wonderful to see.

But it always gives way to an uglier side of human nature.

Which leads to musing on human nature...  

Which ricochets off in several directions....

And today I'm coming back to the question of safety.

And the illusion of safety the average American lives in.

In this country we actually think of death as a risk.  As something that can be avoided.

The facts of the matter are that everybody dies.  You are never really safe.

And all the cameras, searches, surveillance, and guns in the universe won't change that.

So, you insure that you have enough ammo to ward off a small army, to keep you safe and healthy....

But what about that misstep off the ladder?

Or the tornado?

Or the out of control bus?

Or the slip in the shower?

Or the infected tick?

The ways and means of our ends are as many and varied as we are.  You can't foresee every eventuality.  You can't assure the number of your days.

You are never safe.

Killing and bombing will never make you safe.

Sitting somewhere doing absolutely nothing will not make you safe.

Which explains the rate of anxiety disorders....

So how do we deal with this?

My approach is to lighten up and stop worrying about it.

I'm not advocating a wholesale abandonment of safety precautions here.  While you can never be totally safe, you can be safer, and there is the possibility of being unsafe, which should be avoided, if at all possible...

But, we are expected to plan for the future, invest for retirement, and never even consider the fact that we might not get there.  The illusional obsession of the Dark Ages was living this life for the next.  The illusional obsession of our age is living this life for later.

I think we need to start living our lives for this one, here and now.  For the moment.

And consider, each hour that you spend slaving away at your job, is a gamble that you make it to the next payday.  Each moment you don't spend with a loved one is a gamble that you'll get another.  Each time you put something off is a gamble that you'll have the opportunity to do it ever again.

I think it's time that we all agree to flip the saying 'time is money' to 'money is time', and get our priorities straight.  I think we all need to realize that another second of our lives is not guaranteed and start seriously thinking about how we want to 'spend' our time.

We need to stop obsessing about the length of years and be more aware of the quality of the many moments.  The world would be a lot better off if we all concentrated on Being, rather than on being safe.

My thoughts and good wishes are in Boston, with the victims and families.

Slip sliding away....

Wow, for me, 2012 is going down as a lost year.  Looking back on it I didn't really do too much in 2012, only one post for the whole year and not many pictures....  Which is telling for me.  I play with my camera a lot,.  09, 10, & 11 have at least 2 uploads from the camera every month.  2012 there's only 8 uploads for the entire year.
What I did in 2012 was work.  I worked for 4 different companies in 2012, still work for 2 of them.  Just the thought of doing the taxes hurts my head.  I worked a lot of hours in 2012 and the best I can say for the year is, I survived.  It wasn't a good year, filled with all sorts of minor disasters that had to be dealt with.
Sitting here, now, I am awed how an entire year can slip away.
Back in the fall of '11 when M passed, I lost Anya and Bird so close together....
I lost ambition or motivation...  Not quite sure what.  I meant to keep blogging.  I had things I wanted to write about.  I had ideas that I wanted to work on and things I wanted to do.  But all that got lost in the daily shuffle.
Head down, with all its implications and metaphors intact, I plowed through each job, each accident and occurrence, each day...  And I made it to the end and onto the beginning of the next.
And the wheel turns....
Cuz what has brought me back to reflection is Asheron's passing.  Strange that death triggers the swing on both sides.
Sorting through the pictures, trying to find the last ones taken of him....

Taken in March 2012.  The weather outside was frightful and Ash spent sometime inside.

I realized how few there are for 2012.
Which made think about the year.
Which has made me think.....

Still too early to tell if 2013 will be any better.  We'll have to wait and see.

Time to get serious....

Believe me, nobody wants to do that less than me.
But, the circumstances are beyond my control.

Check out this article from Monday:

Long road from farm to fork worsens food outbreaks

Now, I have to wonder about that.  Cuz really, most everything sold in the produce isle at the store I can grow fairly well in my backyard.  There are some exceptions, cantaloupe not being one of them.  Why is getting food from the farm to the table such a problem?  We used to be pretty good at it.  Since the turn of the last century, when we started checking and regulating things we've kept a large portion of our nation fed and healthy for a very long time.  I haven't checked the history, but I don't recall too many tainted food stories before a few years back.
So, what happened?  Last century we had a good system in place and most people got good, fresh food in their local markets, and this century we can't manage it?  Really?

"Increasingly with agribusiness you have limited producers of any given food, so a breakdown in a facility or plant or in a large field crop operation exposes thousands because of the way the food is distributed," says Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

Ah yes, now I understand.
Big corporate farms are not a good thing?  What a shocker.
It used to be, back in the day of mom and pop, those much maligned oldsters.  There were a lot of small, independent farmers.  These farmers traded directly with the consumers of their areas, or at least no more than 3, maybe 4, levels of local middle men.  Things moved pretty quickly from the field to dinner plate.  Since their were lots of smaller farms people grew a wide verity of things locally to offer to the market and you could pretty much get whatever you wanted.  We operated on that model for decades and with a little oversight and tweaking here and there it worked, and people didn't die.
Now with the advent of large corporate farms things that are grown down the street are getting shipped half way round the world, and the land around you grows 1, maybe 2, different crops.  Things have to be shipped farther and farther, and people are getting sick.
We really need to rethink this system.  I, for one, will seek more and more to get my food from local sources.  I already deal with small, local businesses for some of my provisions.  It's time to see what else I can find.
I would really like to know where my food has been.

Poor Oz

I've been messing with some new scrapbooking software.  Which we'll talk about in detail in a bit.

And I've been searching for pictures to use in a couple of projects.  I went looking for pictures of all the animals alone, just one animal in the picture.  I had to go back over a year to find one of just Oz.  Which leads me to consider, am I ignoring him?
I've got plenty of pictures of all the animals solo, doing cute things, and I've got pictures of Oz with others, but not many of just him.  Which could imply a lack of attention on my part.
After all Oz, like his name sake, is a very low key, mellow kinda of guy.  He's not as demanding as Dusty, as needy as Luna, or as annoying as Anya.  Oz is a confirmed indoor kitty, so he's not sitting on the steps with me in the evening, like Ashron.  I visit with Bird while I'm working on the computer.  Oz is too big to sit comfortably on my lap when I'm working.
But, Oz is my most active snuggle buddy.  Now that there's someplace comfortable to sit in the living room, he's a very happy camper.  He's already learned that sitting next to me, rather than on me, is the way to go.  Cuz even if I sit down to watch TV, I'm not gonna stay down.  There's always some reason to pause the program and move.  If he sits next to me, I'm not constantly throwing him off.  But if he's within arms reach, I will pet him.
He's, usually, next to me when I wake up in the morning.  But he's not pushy like Ashron.  Ash wants to sleep on or in my face.  Oz curls up a few inches away, so I don't always notice him.  He, like the dogs, moves the minute that I do.  But, unlike the dogs, he doesn't pester me till I get out of bed.  He goes and sits on the dryer.  He sits on the dryer and waits till I let the dogs out and then he says good morning.  He gets a scratch or a good petting, depending on how awake I am.  Come to think of it, lately he's been hanging out on top of the dryer a lot, and he's there when I come in, or when I'm playing the-other-side-of-the-door with Dusty.  So, I guess, he does get his fair share of attention.  He's just so laid back, I don't notice it as much.
I'll have to remember to take more pictures of him.

While we're in the subject of the Peanut Gallery...

Dusty, silly goof that she is, ran face first into the trash bin Wednesday.
I have no sympathy for her.  It's a huge, red thing.  If she can't watch where she's going, it's her own fault.
There's no permanent injury.  It did slow her down, for about 10 seconds.

TGIF!!

Although, for me, it don't really mean much.  But I'm with all you wage slaves in spirit.

I did get a response from a place I applied to almost a month ago.  They regretted to inform me that the position had been filled.  But, hey, at least it's something.  Was beginning to think that all the apps were going off into the ether twilight zone.

It's been a long month.  A long couple of months, what with the swapping of operating systems, loading and unloading programs, messing with the Office stuff, switching of internet providers and such.

Yeah, last week I switched from Charter to Clear.  Clear's set up is way easier than Charter.  They sent me the modem and I set everything up.  Didn't need a technician to come out.  Which was cool.  It's gonna save me about $20 bucks a month.

I've been having trouble with Charter.  I was losing signal anywhere from 1 to 5 hours every week.  It was happening most often during the work day, so before I got laid off I probably just never noticed it.  But, since the internet is now a very large part of my day, which I'm happy with, not having it was a problem.

I am happy that most of the application process has moved online.  I don't have to drive to the various places to apply.  Saves a lot of gas and time.

2 weeks back from Friday to Saturday my internet was down more than it was up.  Call Charter and they give you a message about a problem in the area.  Get through to a person and they say there's no problem, lets reset the modem...

Go through all that and still no improvement.  Monday and Tuesday it was in and out all day.  I couldn't get anything done.  So I called and signed up with Clear.

The switch went fairly well.  I had signal problems Tuesday morning, though.  The verdict is still out.  That, and I can't get Netflix to work. consistently.  I think it might help to move the router, but I don't have a long enough cable right now.

So last week I spent time tearing the office apart and moving cables and wires and installing a new modem.  I reorganized the desk while I was at it.  It's not all totally back together, I still want to move the router, but I have to get a cable for that.  I cleaned out a lot of old files and threw a lot more stuff away.  Then I redid the living room.

Then, last Sunday, I lazed around all day, enjoying my new living room.

My girls, enjoying the couch

We all like the living room.  Oz has discovered that there's enough room for comfortable snuggling, and takes every opportunity.

Unfortunately, the advent of the couch has strengthened Dusty's lap dog delusions.  She's getting used to the idea of snuggling next to me, but she doesn't like it.  She really wants to drape herself across my lap.  Still can't convince her that she's just too big.

And, of all things, Stupid Dog figured out that she can bark out the window now.

And then she introduced Dusty to the pleasures of barking out the window.  We've been having conversations about that for the last couple of days.

Being a bed there's no back or arms, and that is a slight problem.  I've got ideas on how to fix that problem.  But, that will have to wait until I have some sort of income.

I'm working on that.  I'm gonna start trying some more active internet marketing.  I'm checking into merchandising and demo jobs.  Next week I start applying to the temp companies.  I don't really want to go there, but there's not much choice.  I'm moving into the panic zone.  I need to turn up something soon.

But I can still pay the bills for next month and there will be money left for food and gas.  So not all bad.

This weekend I think I'm gonna do some sewing.  I want to make curtains for the shelves in the kitchen and the cloak is all cut and ready to sew.  Next I start cutting for my Archon costume.

I've got some plants to plant, I'm gonna do that tomorrow morning.  I think I've decided where to put them.

Right now, I'm gonna go work on an entry for the garden blog.  I've been neglecting that all month.

Hope everybody has a great weekend.

Saying goodbye...

To the fish sheet!!

When I moved in a year and 3 months ago I didn't have a couch or anything to cover the big front window.

What I did have was a twin bed frame...

For various reasons I didn't want to keep the couch that was left here.  So I decided to keep the frame and get a new mattress for it.  I found a couple of mattress for about $100, and I was going to get one of them, but a twin mattress is not something you can bring home on a bus, and arranging for transport never panned out.
The only thing I had big enough to cover the front window were a couple of old sheets.  So, for the past year I've lived with the bed frame as little more than a catch all for the yard sale junk and the Fish sheet covering the window.

I bought curtains back in January, when Walmart had the ones I liked on sale.  The plan was to tie dye some old sheers that I had and hang the curtains.  But I could just never work up the motivation for tearing the living room apart.  Without some place comfortable to sit, there didn't seem much point.
I was closer to motivated when I started pulling out the yard sale stuff.  But with nothing to keep the dogs from bouncing around on the bed board there really was no point in going further.
Well last week, a friend of a friend gave me the motivation, and a twin mattress.  Finally things came together.  Someone wanted to get rid of a mattress, free for the taking, and I had the means to go and take it.
I spent this weekend working on the living room.  I finished sorting all the yard sale junk, dragged it all out from under and on the bed.  I tie died the sheers.  I dismantled and cleaned the living room and hung the curtains and put the mattress on the bed.  So now, after living here for a year and 3 months, I have a living room.

And it is really kinda cool.

I like the effect of the sun shining through the curtains.

It makes the front room way brighter and it's much more comfortable.

 

 

Everybody agrees.

Another one bites the dust...

It's not technically Monday anymore.  But I haven't been to bed yet, and my internet has been down all day.
Another week passes.
I got stuff done, and I submitted applications.
It seems like I'm just marking time.  But, really, my whole life feels like marking time most days, so not a lot of change there.
Felt like crap all day.  Saturday I had a wicked sinus headache.  Today... well today something's not sitting well.
But, I got up and I got out and I got things accomplished.  So not all bad.

The Inner Sanctum

My office, where I spend a good chunk of my time, surfing the net, working on graphics and such, or, sometimes, just playing a game.  Lately I've been playing Penguin Puzzle.
The week before last, when I was messing around with the Linux, I thoroughly cleaned and organized the office.  I had a lot of time while I was waiting for programs to load and unload.

So what looked like this, once upon a time...

 Now looks like this...

 I got the CDs all back in their cases and organized.

 And I got all the wall stuff up.  Including my collection of pictures of all 11 Doctors.

I'm getting the house together, slowly but surely.

Holy Moly!!

There's a car sitting in my driveway.
And it's mine.
Free, clear, and actually legal.  Which, for me, is a big change.
It's been a momentous couple of days!
So many things have happened since Tuesday.
For those of you who don't know, my driver's license expired about 10 years ago.  Like so many other people, I wasn't paying attention.  It was about a year before I noticed that it had expired.  We didn't have a car at the time, so I just got a state ID and figured I'd replace it when we had a car...
In order to get legal, I had to take the driver's exam, both the written and the driving part.  I almost feel like a teenager again.
Almost, my knees and hips have been hurting too much to fully live the part.
I went down to the DMV on Wednesday and did the eye exam and the written part.  I passed with flying colors. 100%, nothing missed.  That sure surprised me.  I expected to fail.  I always expect to fail...
Yesterday E and I went down to the DMV and I did the driving test, and I passed.  Not 100%, more like by the skin of my teeth on that part, but I am now a legally licensed driver in the state of Illinois.
So, ya all better watch out.  :->
While we were there, we did the title switch and I got my plates.
All thanks to some INCREDIBLY AWESOME  friends!!  I have a car!  It has plates and everything.
Again, nothing fancy.  It's 2000 Hyundai Elantra.  The drivers side door handle is busted.  Today, when I took it out to get gas and such, the window fell into the door and now there's a CD stuck in the disc player...
But it runs good.
And while I was trying to get the window out of the door, had to partially remove the door panel.  I couldn't get it all the way off, couldn't see how to disconnect the electric window controls...
But, I got it loose and I got the window up and back in place, and it sorta works.  While I was doing that, I sorta fixed the door handle.  Sorta, The handle on the inside is hanging out of the door.  I couldn't get it to screw all the way back in.  Which in the end is a good thing, cuz now I can open the door from inside and I don''t have to worry about loosing the window down inside the door every time I want to get out of the car.  All I have to do is grab the handle and give it tug.
It runs.  It has enough room to carry just about anything I want to carry.  Even 9 ft. lengths of PVC, which I need for a project I've been planning for a while.  So it's all good.
My days of buses and taxis and being a burden to my friends are over.  If I ever get an interview I'll be able to go where ever I have to, no worries.
Life is good.
It takes very little to make me happy.  I got a car and I can almost bend my little finger again.  I'm doing good.
Oh, and hey, nifty household hint.  When I got done messing around with the car I had blank sticky stuff all over my hands and arms.  Soap didn't do any good, and even the alcohol only took a little of it off.  But I remembered something I read about WD40.  A couple of good squirts of WD40 and a few paper towels cleaned it right off.
I'm still submitting apps all over the place and I still haven't heard anything from anyone.  That's a bit discouraging.  But, now I can apply to places like QuickTrip and MickeyD's and be able to tell them, with no hedging, that I have reliable transport.
And I can apply for things that require a license.
And I've been working with Office 2007 and I can honestly say that I have a basic knowledge of Access and Excel.  I stand a better chance of getting some sort of job before the money runs out.
Next week I'm going to take a serious look at the flea market thing.  That will hopefully bring in a little income.  It's worth a try and I need to get all the yard sale crap out of here, it's driving me bonkers, there's little enough space in this house, and having that crap piled all over the place doesn't help.  Once it's all outta here I'll be a much happier camper.
What with prepping for the driver's test and the injury to my hand and studing the Office 2007 stuff I've been a little stalled on the sculpting.  I've been trying to make a Halfling, but I'm having trouble with the nose.  I had one with a good nose the other day, but then I messed up the eyes...
I'm still working on it.
Today I went and spent money I really don't have on a folding table.  It was $40.00 bucks at K-Mart.  Not much, but when you've got nothing coming in, even $40.00 going out takes some consideration.  In the long run I'm calling it an investment.  Weather I set up a flea market stall or have a yard sale, I'll need the table.  And now I have somewhere to lay out fabric for cutting, so it wasn't a total waste.  We'll see how I feel about it next month when the money gets really tight...
The other Holy Moly thing this week, happened Wednesday evening.
Dusty actually got a squirrel.
I don't know how it happened.  I only saw the aftermath.  The squirrel wasn't in the yard when I let them out.  I stand at the back door and make sure the stupid things make into the trees when I let the dogs out.  There's been a few close calls here and there, cuz the stupid squirrels will just stand and watch the dogs for a few seconds before they scamper for cover, but I always wait and call her off it looks like she's gonna get too close.
I check to see what the dogs are doing from time to time.  Dusty's been rooting in the flower garden.  Seems Ashron has taken to hiding out in there and Dusty thinks nothing of diving in to find him.  So I keep an eye on them.
Well, that evening I looked out and saw her with her head down, but I couldn't see what she had.  The last time I intervened in a similar situation she was about to grab a wasp.  Silly dog will go after anything.  I would have just let her get stung, but I can't afford a vet right now, and I don't want to deal with her having a nose twice as big as it should be.  I opened the back door and yelled at her.  She usually comes pretty quick when I do that, but that evening she wasn't moving.  I went out on the back steps and called again, still no response.
Then I heard the screaming of the squirrels, one from the big tree in the middle of the yard and two or three from the trees on the side.  I knew something serious was going down.
The squirrel was dead before I got out there.  I think it was dead before I opened the door.
The stupid squirrels have been laying into the tomatoes kinda hard lately.  They've gotten more than I have, so I'm not too upset over the demise of the little bugger.  But I could have lived without my dog being a cold blooded murderer.  Not that she's mean or anything.  When I got out there she was just staring at it.  I think she was wondering why it had stopped playing.  The blood on her paws was a good clue.  So Wed. I disposed of a corpse.
And then Thursday morning I disposed of another one.  I went to put laundry in the machine and found a dead mouse in the utility room.  Seems it's been a week for dumb animals.  But, ya know, if they're stupid enough to come in this house, or yard, there's not much I can do.
At least the squirrels haven't been hanging out in the yard quite as much the last couple of days.

Welcome to reality...

How many times have you heard that in your life?
I think we all share some familiarity with this phrase.  Usually uttered by someone near and dear when you were dealing with life altering disappointment.  I can recall hearing it, or some variation, from parents, sibling, and friends.  Quite frequently coupled with 'life's not fair'.
Which is a very valuable lesson that we all need to learn.
Cuz, life isn't fair.  In fact, real life is downright harsh and brutal.
Which is something that we humans, as a species, by and large, have forgotten.
In the past, when I've heard the utterance of 'welcome to reality' it was in an instance when the working complexities of modern American life were suddenly revealed, when the unfairness of the system was naked and apparent.
I think in the future the phrase will take a whole new meaning.
Cuz the 'reality' I was sarcastically being welcomed into, is in fact, an all encompassing illusion.
Pause for a moment and consider the uproar surrounding the finical market, and realize that the average person's lively hood is tied to a system that deals almost solely in intangibles.  Face it, our entire economic system is just a huge Monopoly game.  There's very little real, tangible substances underpinning the market.  If it were based on something concrete we wouldn't have hedge funds,or be able to just print more money to pay a debt.
(If I tried to do that, which, given the right equipment, I could....  I'd end up in jail.)

The capital stock (or just stock) of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors. Stock is different from the property and the assets of a business which may fluctuate in quantity and value.

From the Wikipedia entry on stock.
Note the word 'represents' in the first sentence.  When you buy stock yer not buying anything real, yer buying an idea of something.  If yer lucky, you get a piece of paper to represent your representation, though now days I'm sure that's not quite as common as it used to be.  Supposedly you are paying for a part of the business, but I'm sure if you turned up and tried to use your part ownership in some real fashion all sorts of hell would break loose.
In real terms our entire monetary system is based on the idea of the value of a dollar, and the dollar is no longer tied to anything real.
And even if it were still backed by gold.  What is that in reality?  It's a pretty rock, that in and of itself really isn't good for anything.  You can't eat it, use it to make a fire, or wear it.  If yer stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a lump of gold, it's not gonna do you much good.  Though I guess you could throw it at the bear that's trying to eat you and hope you have good aim.
The only real value gold has is the value that we agree to give it.

Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context.^[1][2][3] The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past, a standard of deferred payment.^[4][5] Any kind of object or secure verifiable record that fulfills these functions can serve as money.

 Again from Wikipedia.  I added the emphases on 'generally accepted', cuz it just goes to prove my point.

 The whole of modern human existence is a consensual illusion that we all automatically embrace.  The vast majority so deeply immersed that we think this is the only way the world could be.  The truth is, the world could be a vastly different place, if we choose to make it such.
The era of industrialization is coming to an end.
And I'm not seeing a graceful decline in the cards.
We need to start asking ourselves what we want the future to be.  We need to realize that our lives, as we have made and accepted them, are in REALITY just one big game.
Ask yourself what happens if the market collapses?
What happens when a dollar is only worth the paper it is printed on?
What happens if the oil runs out?
I'm not saying that any of these are going to happen anytime soon.  I know better than to make predictions.  All I'm urging you to do is to entertain the possibility.  Play 'what if' for a few minuets.  I feel that this is a very vital thing to do.  Cuz we are living in a house of cards.
And I think most of us realize just what that really means.  If you've never tried to build a house of cards, and I'm sure there are quite a few in the younger set who have not, give it a try.  (Pokemon cards will work just as well as a traditional deck.)
We need to start trying to come to grips with the realities of the world.  We need to start thinking seriously beyond the present game and asking the hard questions.
What is life going to be like when the environment is used and polluted beyond repair?
How would you move around, heat your home, if there were no oil?
What do you have that you could trade for a side of beef?
What are we going to do when our Monopoly game comes to an end?

Maybe if we start thinking about it now, we'll have an answer when we really need it.

Just a note...

Before I head back into the weeds.

I'm sitting here putting on my boots and watching:





I keep coming back to those 2 clips.
And this go around, a couple of things occurred.
These 2 clips are perfect examples of a couple of my pet thoughts.
Yeah, I do keep some of them around.
One of my favorite things is to see someone enjoying what they are doing.  It's one thing to see a performer give a skillful, technically proficient performance, and something completely different to watch someone who's having fun.
In the Plain White T's clip you can tell they're having fun, they are on and they know it.  Sure it's not technically perfect, but half of a live performance is the spirit and the energy.  Here, it's all positive.  I like that whoever shot it got some good footage of the guitar players.  You can see the energy there.
And the clip of Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte is just cool.  You got two very talented individuals, who respect each, having fun.  Danny Kaye really wanted to sing that song, and Belafonte was happy to oblige.  Lucky for us it was one of those spontaneous moments that was filmed.
Which is a whole nother idea, for later.

House Work

My house.

You've just been laid off!

What do you do?
Me, I start a blog.
It's something to do, and it looks like I'll have some time to work on it.  But right now, I've got to go work on the flower garden.
I'll be back...