| I survived jury duty! |
[05 Feb 2009|02:12am] |
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Other than the having to get up before 7 am for the first time in at least a decade (and going to bed by midnight-thirty, ack!) it was pretty fun and interesting. Very convoluted case, and the other jurors were very talkative and entertaining during breaks. The bailiff was awesome, gave us lots of practical advice and did so in an amusing way. I didn't end up getting to deliberate (I won the lottery and became an alternate after hearing all the testimony) but I was allowed to call to find out what the verdict was and they voted the way I would have. Thus renewing my faith in my fellow humans. :)
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| Enormous kittens |
[16 Jan 2009|05:19am] |
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For anyone who has wondered about little (now huge!) Sam kitten: I wrote a story of Sam and how huge he has grown with pics for the daughter of an old friend, you can see it here.
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| gacked from Kat |
[23 Nov 2008|04:58am] |
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What has surprised you the most about me (if anything) since joining my flist? Was anything completely unexpected or have I always fit the picture of me you have in your head? Post this in your own journal and see how you have surprised people!
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[05 Nov 2008|02:58am] |
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Hope everyone voted and enjoyed watching the returns tonight! It was cool to see such a huge turnout all over the country (although my precinct was as dead as always at 3 pm this afternoon and it took me all of 15 minutes in and out). I was working while watching on another recent client The Detroit Literacy Coalition, so I still have to ferret out whether a couple of interesting ballot initiatives passed in my state (legalizing medical marijuana and expanded stem cell research).
Big thumbs up to Obama!
(And I credit Kat and Gordon for turning their respective swing states around) ;)
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[24 Sep 2008|03:46am] |
I don't know how many of you have been paying attention to the current meltdown on Wall Street. But if you haven't, the current deal the Bush administration is trying to plow through congress at lightning speed is, um, highly suspect. (Steven Colbert did an awesome "The Word" segment on it tonight, btw). Basically, they (Henry Paulson, Secretary of State, and Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed) are saying we are going to fall into another Great Depression unless we, the taxpayers, cough up $700 billion dollars to buy out bad debt (in the form of a hugely expanded public debt) from investment banks so they can fix their balance sheets, regain liquidity, and go on about their merry way handing out loans to people and businesses. Oh, and Congress needs to decide on it this week.
I'm not an economist or a lawyer, but the part of the proposed deal that I find the scariest is this:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
So, we hand our money over, for the Secretary of State to do with as he sees fit, with no oversight by our duly elected representatives or by courts of law, or anyone else. Yay!
This guy here gives a great rant on why our Secretary of State might not be the most objective guy in the world for the job:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/587-The-Mother-Of-All-Frauds.html
There are a number of Republican senators that are more or less saying, screw 'em, let the banks fail and let the market correct. The Democrats are attempting to add several modifications to the plan:
-Oversight by a congressional committee;
-Help for homeowners who are in danger of going into default via court review of their mortgages to possibly give them better terms that they could then actually pay off and stay in their homes;
-limitations on compensation to CEOS and other high-ups in these failed corporations;
-the US government receiving a stake (I assume in stock) of the corporations they bail out, so that if they get turned around, the taxpayers would get some recompense for taking the risk of buying up bad debt.
Personally, I kinda think a better plan would be to just help out the mortgage owners, allow them to pay back at lower interest rates, over more time, and maybe a slightly lesser amount, given the deflation of the housing market. This would make a lot of those bad loans good, would keep people in their homes, and paying property tax, and keeping neighborhoods from turning into ghettos and deflating property values further and stuff, but that's just me. Well, and Bill and Hillary, and apparently Lou Dobbs (from CNN), too. Sheesh, never figured I'd agree with him on something.
But that's not likely to be an option in the next few weeks. I would urge you to support your congresspersons to stand firm against accepting the deal as is. It seems to me to be one more (last?) Bush Administration act of an offer we supposedly can't refuse in a moment of crisis. And those have generally not ended all that well.
/public service adisory
*apologizes for wonk*
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[18 Aug 2008|03:07am] |
It's been eons. But I have been legitimately busy the last month--two brand new websites! Hugh Leal and Charlie Gabriel, both jazz musicians. Charlie Gabriel is originally from New Orleans and has a long and very cool history (4th generation in a musical family) and it's been a lot of fun going through some of the news articles and photos for his site.
( I brag about the garden )
Anyhoo, aside from parental health issues and some family drama (on Jim's side!)--and who really wants to hear about that?--that's pretty much what I've been up to!
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| Book meme |
[27 Jun 2008|02:56am] |
Stolen from Amy.
( Book meme )
Most of these were read when I was a kid or in college or soon thereafter. I have so little time or patience anymore for reading great books! And why isn't there a single Vonnegut book on the list but pretty much everything Jane Austen ever wrote??? I mean, I read them all, but they could be lumped like Shakespeare or Harry Potter!
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| Belated B'day, mea culpa |
[25 Apr 2008|04:44am] |
Happy OMG two days late Birthday Amy!!!
Well, ya said you didn't want to think about this one, right, young'n? I hope it was a happy one. ;)
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| From Binxy-baby |
[02 Feb 2008|02:35am] |
YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine ... You're on my list, so I want to know you better!
BE HONEST! COPY FROM HERE, THEN SEND DIRECTLY TO ME IN A COMMENT, THEN REPOST THE EMPTY QUESTIONS.
1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
A.
2) What was your dream growing up?
A.
3) What talent do you wish you had?
A.
4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A.
5) Favorite vegetable?
A.
6) What was the last book you read?
A.
7) What zodiac sign are you?
A.
8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A.
9) Worst Habit?
A.
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A.
11) What is your favorite sport?
A.
12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A.
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A.
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A.
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A.
16) Do you have any pets?
A.
17) What if i showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A.
18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A.
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A.
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A.
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A.
22) What color eyes do you have?
A.
23) Ever been arrested?
A.
24) Bottle or can soda?
A.
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A.
27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A.
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A.
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A.
30) Do you swear a lot?
A.
31) Biggest pet peeve?
A.
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A.
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance? [note: feel free to answer this as two parts if you feel as I do that these are two distinct questions]
A.
35) Do you believe in God?
A.
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A.
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| Brrrr |
[20 Jan 2008|03:02am] |
It's freakin' cold here tonight. Just checked the thermometer and it reads 7*F. It is, however, pretty good inside without jacking up the furnace because since the last cold snap we have:
1) put 15+ inches of insulation in the attic;
2) used those window cover kits on the older windows (after getting new windows in the kitchen and upstairs, we have 5 left to replace, hopefully this year); and
3) covered 2 of the 3 storm doors with bubble wrap! Makes an amazing difference. Particularly when Sam wants to go in and out about fifteen times a day. I recommend it to anyone with leaky storms: we got the bubble wrap with really big air bubbles at Staples, and taped it together with ordinary clear 2" mailing tape, and then taped it over the storm doors. We had to tape during the day because there was too much condensation at night for it to stick.
( TMI )
Anyway, hope you're all staying warm!!
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[09 Dec 2007|03:47am] |
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[04 Nov 2007|04:02am] |
Heh, mildly freaky result--that was the year I was married.
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| Quick note |
[19 Sep 2007|05:14am] |
I just updated my website bigtime, so anyone who may have had images hosted there will find them missing for the time being. I do intend to go through the site and restore at least my own recent images from this journal. I will do so for anyone else, too, if they give me the link where they were supposed to be found. Some, I'm sure, are so old as to no longer be relevant, but I am still happy to host images people were still linking to. It was just too complicated to try and figure it all out during a major turnover.
Anyhoo...if you've a mind to check it out: whole new design. Not totally finished--still need to make pop-up links for some of the stuff on the graphic design page. And, sorry Kat, I still have spiders. Although they are smaller. Which isn't necessarily less creepy. ;)
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| Meet the kitten! |
[16 Aug 2007|04:06am] |
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Well! Our kitten on layaway fell through. Angel and her sister got fleas and Jim's niece sent them off to a farm (kinda without even asking us if we minded). Which bummed me out. But, we had already purchased kitten food and the house was clean and sorta kitten proofed (there is no such thing as a totally kitten-proof house--they will always get into places you hadn't even considered. But I did clean under/behind the stove, and sure enough, he explored it today.) So today we went to the kitten store (the pet shop where I buy cat food--they often have kittens roaming the place, so it's always a fun errand). And voila, we have a new baby boy.
( Kitten! )
I think I'm in love!
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[16 May 2007|03:55am] |
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music |
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Sling Blade on TV |
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Happy Birthday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ithika!!! I hope the year ahead is exceptionally good to you and a working car soon falls into your lap. Only not literally, because that would result in a smooshed Taffy. :)
( A bit of an update, since I'm actually posting and all )
Anyhoo, hugs to all. Sounds like things are looking a bit more up for most of the flist.
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| Jewelry |
[17 Apr 2007|02:50am] |
'Cause Amy asked to see pics of the jewelry I've been making.
( jewelry pics )
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| Paintings |
[15 Feb 2007|12:47am] |
Here's some paintings I've been meaning to put up for ages. The mums are all watercolor, the others are combination watercolor/pen and ink--I scanned the one of my house before adding the ink.
( Paintings under here )
Other than that--work has gotten a bit busy with the jazz site adding four new CDs to the catalog. CSS still doesn't seem to really work the way it's supposed to in Netscape, although IE 7 does (and seems to have really nice font rendering all of a sudden). And we got totally dumped on with snow yesterday, got some exercise shovelling the driveway today. I also took some photos and started a snow painting this evening. I'm kinda pleased by how the snow came out--will post it when it's done.
Happy V-Day!
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[19 Dec 2006|02:45am] |
Still here, just very, very busy with holiday stuff. Finally got cards made, sent and a couple of gifts ready for the post office--Jim promised to go in the morning, yay. We put our tree up tonight and I realized I hadn't even put anything on the door yet (I usually molest the gigantic white pine in the backyard for a few sprigs of fresh greens and make a swag kinda thing). The lights are nice this year, though. The weekend after Thanksgiving was positively balmy so I put them up in comfort. And we have this bush that has grown a lot and perfect for wrapping a few strands around, so...yeah, it's pretty bright out there.
Tomorrow I need to make cut-out cookies, and I was planning to make fudge except one of the boxes of chocolate I grabbed at Meijers was unsweetened instead of semi-sweet, so I have to wait until after I make a Kroger's run on Wednesday. Evil Meijers, mixing up the baking ingredients like that!
How's your holiday season going?
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