Friday Thoughts

In the midst of the nightmare and circus that is Washington, the good news this week was the passage of the Shepard/Byrd Hate Crimes legislation. It was good to at least see some positive movement in the direction of protecting people from such crimes.

I must confess to you all that I was not as bad as I intended expected to be this week. I had figured from some hints that the other guy would not show. I did at least grab a cup of coffee from MickeyD’s while there. Other details are not important here. Suffice it to say that I am convinced that it is as much a part of Family DNA to stand people up as it is to design.

Speaking of design, the work on the stoles continues to progress. As of now, each of the new stoles has been sewn in terms of the basic plain stole. I ran into a snag on Thursday when I realized that the initial artwork design for the one was obviously too small. When I revised the artwork, I needed some other supplies that I could not locate in the area. I think I know a store in which I can find what is needed but it is an hour away. We are currently on hold in the hopes of securing the supplies.

Two of my dessert creations were a hit with Mrs. G this week: pineapple upside down cake and a banana-blueberry loaf with crumb topping. Both recipes used standard off the shelf mixes as a basis and just added a bit of a twist. She liked them anyway.

We received the estimates this week on some home improvement projects for which we sought bids. Of the four “phases” of work, we will only proceed with two: insulation and attic stair replacement. They are important to energy use as well as safety and for a number of reasons it is more cost effective to have contractors do the work. The bids for the other two were *way* out of line! We will be looking for alternatives for those projects.

In preparation for the the work that is to be done, I spent one day this week in the attic moving all the “stuff” into one half of the space. The workers will complete the one half and then I will reverse the action, moving everything to the completed space so that the workers can finish the job. I am about six inches too tall to stand erect in the attic [I just *had* to express it that way! ] and to stand stooped over is a killer on my back. I took an old office chair (on casters) up to the attic. Sitting on it, I wheeled myself and the boxes from one side to another. It was somewhat like being on a funhouse ride.

Channeling my inner Lez, I took advantage of a Homo Improvement Store program to turn in an old drill for a coupon off a new lithium-ion one. I had an old battery-powered one that never really worked and I was glad to get rid of it. I like the new one.

I also got rid of some other items that have been cluttering up the place. Yesterday afternoon (Thurs.) I took the items to a local charity that sells such things in their thrift shop. Two TV’s that were in good working order, but that we did not need or use. A single bed frame. A desk lamp. A set of cooking pots. A coffee table “inherited” from my parents. Unfortunately I could probably make a trip like this every week for a year and still have items to go.

Have a great weekend!

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

“Eternal Vigilance…”

via the Cajun:

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Mondayne

There’s not much to report from this weekend.

We had some high winds and heavy rains through Saturday, but Sunday was a picture perfect autumn day. We are nearing the peak of color here at Lake Gonebelow.

One benefit of the storm was that we noticed that the new satellite dish was true to the installer’s claim that it would not lose the signal often. During the storm we did not lose the signal at all. The image never even pixellated.

Speaking of storms, we watched The Perfect Storm on Saturday night. Neither Mrs. G. nor I had ever seen it. It was on one of the “commercial” channels. I was a bit surprised at the ending. I also had a chuckle from the one line in the movie spoken by one of the Coast Guard: “They always come from Gloucester!” I think I may add that to my repertoire.

On Saturday we stopped by the local crafting chain stores. The one was having major sales on autumn-themed items. (They were clearing out their stuff to have room for the Christmas items.) We walked out with some very nice autumn pillar candles and accessories (which we also supplemented with items from the local Dollar Store) for cheap.

All in all, with the laid back weekend, it turned out to be a fairly “crafty” weekend. I printed out family crests and framed them in a frame I bought on sale at the craft store.

I also worked on making two liturgical stoles (red and Advent blue). I had bought the material this summer. I designed the symbols via the computer and transferred them to special cloth that you can print via the computer as well. I may enhance them with some gold embroidery thread. Yesterday I cut out the cloth and the sizing for the stoles themselves from patterns that I made. I have the cloth pinned and ready for sewing. I could sew it myself, but Mrs. G. will do a better job.

Today I am off to meet with the property committee of the church we attend. The heat for the building is controlled by a computer program that no one understands how to use. They are asking me to take a look-see to help them figure it out.

I may have a story to tell of my “less righteous” adventures tomorrow, but we’ll wait until the end of the week to see if any real plot unfolds or if we are just talking fantasy.

Have a great week.

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Friday Thoughts

We had purchased an LCD TV a bit ago after our younger son asked if we thought that our TV was blurry. Here, we thought it was just a result of geezer eyes.

We finally upgraded our [satellite] TV receiver this week to HD. When I initially investigated upgrading the receiver to HD, I was given some erroneous information and so I delayed. Recently I investigated the situation more thoroughly and gave it the green light. The tech was here on Thursday and did a great job.

In previous posts I have commented on appreciating the music of Tom Goss. I also saw him perform at our local Pride. I had emailed him a while ago to comment on how much I liked his song Lover. Recently he returned my email. It was a personal email, not an automatically generated one. I thought that was sweet. I also learned via a different venue of his involvement in helping the homeless in DC. He will be involved in a fund-raising walk for this cause. If you are interested, you can contribute.

This week I had two contacts via a social networking site. The first was very interesting. It turns out that he lives in the same zip code as I. His initial contact was “upfront” to say the least. His message was a two-word “invitation” to participate in the most intimate of activities. We have not met as yet. The other fellow lives a tad too far away, but appears to be a real sweetheart of a guy.

My previous post of the video of the WWII veteran speaking on behalf of same-sex marriage in Maine really touched me at two points. One was his comment at being asked the question of whether he favored such. His response of incredulity at being asked the question tickled me. His statement that such was the reason he (and others) had fought (and died) in WWII was right on the mark. I also deeply appreciated his comment that he did not fight in order for three of his sons to have rights that one of his sons could not have because of who he is (gay).

If you are not a new reader, you probably know that last week we attended a wedding. The reception was held in a modestly large banquet room of a small country club. As I have found typical for years, the DJ blasted the music at a decibel level that would have been fitting for a football stadium. I have never understood this phenomenon. Having spent thirteen years of my working career in the field of acoustics, I know that this practice is wrong on *so* many levels. It was absolutely impossible to carry on a conversation with the other guests seated at our table.

This morning I read an article that some musicians are incensed that their music, played loudly, was used as a means of torturing prisoners at Gitmo. They are attempting to hold the President’s feet to the fire on his promise to shut this obscenity down by January. Within that article was also a comment about a right-wing group who is opposed to shutting it down. Their response is that the prison is filled with people who hate America and wish to do her harm. HELL-O! If I were held in a prison by anyone for nearly a decade without charge and without legal recourse, I certainly would not feel warm and fuzzy about my captors. If they did not hate America before, I can assure you that they do now. That is only keen perception of the obvious!

My mind reels sometimes. The latest: Those responsible for detouring the troops from Afghanistan to Iraq and for not responding to requests for more troops are publicly critical of the President for not sending more troops to Afghanistan. Those who were conspicuously silent on the warrantless wiretapping and spying on citizens of the last decade are now spreading the fear that President Obama bailed out GM so that onStar in vehicles could be used in Orwellian fashion to track the whereabouts of every citizen. This same person has also theorized that the flu shot is really just a way to implant RFID chips in everyone. To parody the song Signs by the Five Man Electrical Band, “Fear, fear, everywhere a fear! Messing up reality, all I hold dear!”

BTW, is there something in the water in South Carolina? Just askin’.

Sometimes I think I live in a Monty Python world. Only, I think that if I really did, it would be a whole lot more fun.

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

What He Said…

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Mondayne

One of the major themes this weekend must have been Marines. In my Special Weekend Report I noted getting the vapors over one of the groomsmen* at the wedding. On Sunday afternoon after diligently surfing the multitude of channels for something to watch, I settled on the movie Jarhead. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, a fav since BM. I had read the book a few years ago.

One of the other activities frustrations of the weekend (actually, of Friday afternoon) was contacting the Social Security Administration by telephone. It was a nightmare trying to get through to a living, breathing human being. Once we got through our experience was good. The automated system repeatedly tries to get you to give up on your quest to speak to a human and is at times rude by my standards. There was a sizable error (in our favor) in data and deposits for Mrs. G. I am not sure that it has been rectified even now, so we will continue to hold it in savings for a few months so that we can return it when they come for it.

I can only imagine the frustration of the elderly who have no advocate and who try to use this telephone system. I am sure that a lot of issues go unresolved because the person gives up in anger or confusion.

BTW, we tried calling the local office and they hung up on us in the midst of their automated answering service.

The cold rain has finally left and now it is just a bit more chilly than is normal for this time of year.

I got the princess a different kind of dog food. I had a coupon and with an in-store reduced price the whole bag cost me 49 cents! And she loves the new food, too. Win-win!

Have a great week, all!

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*BTW, I actually found a picture of him on the web. [It does not do him justice.] I googled the name and found him listed on a site dedicated to members of his high school class who had joined the military.

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Special Weekend Report

We interrupt this weekend to bring you the following Special Maelstrom Weekend Report.

[cue dramatic music]

There have been a couple of developments since the last Friday Thoughts and I just couldn’t wait until Mondayne to share them with you.

First of all, weather-wise we continue to have nearly constant cold rain. Please note that here at Lake Gonebelow we have had rain. Were you to travel into the hinterlands of our Grand State of Denial, the very lands which bred and birthed this humble blogger, you would have experienced *snow*. One report that I read stated that it is the earliest snow since the very early 1900’s. The trees in these here parts have not as yet fully turned let alone lost their leaves, so a wet heavy snow has been disastrous in places. Given our geography and the amount of rain, I am also fearful of major flooding in some parts.

I received a very nice thank you card for my recent visitation services. It was signed by every member of the council. I was very moved.

The major story on our news front, however, was a wedding that we attended earlier today. The bride was a co-worker of Mrs. G. Overall it was a very nice affair with some very special touches, such as the couple making a donation to a deserving charity in place of buying table favors for the reception, favors that most people would throw away anyhow.

The wedding was held in a church in a small town about a half hour’s drive from Lake Gonebelow. The congregation dates to 1730 and the building to the late 1800’s. The church is well preserved and has gorgeous woodwork and spectacular stained glass windows.

The pastor was a bit too loosey-goosey for Ole Lem, but Lem was willing to give him a break. The pastor joked a lot in his comments that were interspersed throughout the service. He commented about the traditional controversy over putting down the toilet seat. And then he brought it up again. And again. At the fourth toilet seat comment, Lem had decided that this pastor was a bit too fixated on toilet seats.

The bride’s major colors were a deep cranberry and gold. The bridesmaids were beautiful enough, I guess. Ole Lem did not notice them much, except to note how beautiful their dark cranberry gowns were and how flattering the material and the cut of the gowns were on all of them. Now, just where did that come from?!

However the Hunkdar (patent pending by Lem) and regular ‘dar was operating in overdrive. The ‘dar did not produce too many candidates, but the Hunkdar was constantly beeping. Of particular note was one of the groomsmen who was USMC and attired in his dress uniform instead of a tux as were the rest of the appetizers. Cpl. USMC was cute. as. a. button.! Broad shoulders. Illegally narrow waist. Killer eyes, smile, and dimples. The other appetizers were cute too with a wide selection of lions and tigers and bears twinks and bears, o my.

At the reception the DJ announced the party in couples and they entered to rock music. As Cpl. USMC got to the head table with his bridesmaid, the previous groomsmen grabbed his hand and the Cpl did a little jitterbug-dance twirl. O, be still my heart! As the dance music got started after the meal, the Cpl joined a group of the women doing a kind of line dance. Sorry I do not remember the song, but it had more of a rap/rock flavor than a C&W flavor. Later on when about ten of the women were dancing a stroll, the Cpl and another groomsmen joined them. I observed some pretty sharp manuevers by the guy in uniform. He was obviously in his element.

I lost sight of my future ex-husband for a while, but he appeared later and was clearly in the company of one of the other guests – a woman. *sigh*

As we left the reception, he was outside on the portico smoking a cigar.

If he enjoys cigars, perhaps there still is hope.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled weekend.

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Friday Thoughts

It is cold, damp and rainy here in Lake Gonebelow. The weather pattern hit yesterday and it appears that it is here for the weekend.

Lots of nothing this week. The princess went for her occasional visit to the spa. We had a contractor stop by to give an estimate on some work that we would like to have done. All of the work would increase the energy efficiency of the house. I’m itching to get my hands on the bath or the kitchen, but first things first.

This weekend is the local county’s electronic recycling program. It is held twice a year. I decided to recycle most of the eMachine that was given to me. I kept the hard drive and used it to test and wipe clean other hard drives that we laying around. To my surprise some of the drives that had crashed appear to be usable. I wiped them clean, but I decided to keep them for the time being. I’m keeping my friends monitor. It is an old CRT-type, but the screen is bigger than the one I had in the basement. So I recycled mine and I am keeping his.

Tomorrow we are attending a wedding – a co-worker of my wife.

I did some initial yard clean up this week. We have not as yet had frost, but it was a good time to be out and about in the yard.

Have a good weekend, folks!

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Mondayne

It was a busy but low-key weekend here at Lake Gonebelow, normal stuff with a bit of variety thrown in.

Friday evening we attended a local high school football game. Because my own sons are long out of high school and because we did not live here during those years anyway, we have no allegiance to the local sports scene. The BIL directs the band for the school that was playing a local school so we went to see and hear the band perform at half time.

Ole Lem was frequently otherwise distracted. *a-hem* Such events ooze testosterone and this one did not fail. Although it was a bit chilly, it did not stop the manly men among the fans from going shirtless and painting their chests with war paint. Lem did not mind. Of course for obviously legal reasons, it was look but not touch, and I much prefer my eye candy with a bit more aging, like the finest wine and cheese. Even so it was fun trying out the ‘dar on the young to see if I could guess who might be Family and who was definitely not. One bit of entertainment was a young man who was dancing up a storm on the track while the band played a particularly rockin’ song.

On Saturday friends from the old place stopped by for a pleasant visit. There was a fall nip in the air so I decided to make chicken corn soup with rivels. Rivels are similar to mini-dumplings. Among the other fare was my homemade, warm apple sauce that was a definite hit with the friends.

On Sunday I played with the eMachine a bit. ME is gone. I wiped the hard drive clean. In so doing I discovered that what I thought (from the paperwork) was a 40GB HD turned out to be only a 20. I had thought of using it as a server on my network, but I am again thinking that I will rip out the hard drive and add it to my Ubuntu pc. I will then recycle the remaining parts. The local electronic recycling is this coming weekend.

I have a long list of honey-do’s for the day, so I’ll stop for now. Have a great week, readers!

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Friday Thoughts

The theme for this week has definitely been computers. The week started with notification that the laptop that I had tried to resurrect had lapsed into a coma. My friend from the group met me Monday at a local shopping center parking lot and we “dealt computers out of the back of our cars” in his words. He was coming into town to do some errands and it saved me a trip out to his home. He handed me his unconscious lappy and I handed him his old eMachine tower from which I had capture his pictures. After a short conversation, I regained possession of the tower. He was only going to trash it, and, as a member of the Society and Dumpster Divers Anonymous, I just could not let that happen.

So I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday on the laptop. I nulled out the hard drive and started from scratch. Unfortunately that meant the sacrifice of most of the application software that had come with the laptop. Either the manufacturer had only provided a OS install CD or my friend had lost the application install CD. I reinstalled Vista and *very slowly* updated it step by step until by Wednesday I had it up to SP2. It worked well. I found an install of the only local application that he used. Yesterday I returned the lappy to my friend and he his pretty much back in business.

As for the eMachine, I was told that it was also pretty much dead in the water. Yesterday afternoon I slapped it upside the head and got it to boot. It has ME. Woe is ME! I’m not sure what I will do with it, I have a couple of ideas. I uninstalled unnecessary apps and last night I did a defrag.

And now for something completely different…

I heard last night that Levi Johnson Johnston may pose for Playgirl. Hmmmm…. The news brought both a chuckle and a bit of drool to my face. I have not bought magazines in print for ages, although I have been given to understand that this one no longer appears in print, only online.

It also set my mind back to remembering my encounters with “instructional magazines to be read only for the articles.”

I really never “read” a Playboy magazine until I was out of college. Some of you may find that hard to believe. It was while doing my studies after college that a friend in my dorm was a subscriber to Playboy. I would go down to his dorm room and read the current issue. And read I did, because the instructional images did nothing for me. HELL-O! But I was too dumb then to admit to myself why. I used to enjoy reading the letters to the editor most of all.

I would be working for three years after completing all my schooling when, during a flood, we stored a neighbor’s possessions in our home. The son of the neighbor had stashed an open box of magazines in our basement. I had my first look at Penthouse and Hustler. These were the first magazines that I had seen that included male as well as female nudity, although there were no explicit depictions of intercourse. These images were much more instructional.

At roughly the same time in the midst of a conversation with some teenagers, I learned of a new publication called Playgirl. The young fellow who spoke of it told disgustingly that it had pictures of men. Of course I made mental note of it all and shortly thereafter had procured a copy of an issue so that I might read the articles. “A sound mind in a sound body”, you know.

Not too long after that I was in the magazine section of a [regular] bookstore when the section of adult magazines (Playboy, etc.) caught my eye. I saw the customary magazines noted above, but then I spied a section with some new titles: Blueboy, Honcho, In Touch.

At that time in my life, I found these latter magazines to be even more instructional. The illustrations accompanying the articles were superb. At last art met literature.

I am now eager to read more about Levi.

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That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!