So, Which Car Would You Buy?

Read what's going on here: Ford mocks Cadillac's 'Poolside' ad.

A Hunting We Will Go

Here is a photo of my husband out hunting northeast of Fort Collins, Colorado with our dogs Little Sally Pumpkinhead and Duke, alone with a friend's rottweiler, Rocco. Rocco is the only bird hunting rottweiler I've ever met and he is good at both flushing and retrieving. He started hunting about 2 months ago and took to it like a pro.

I'm The Pided Piper

It must be reading the numerous mentions of the phrase "consciously uncouple" on the Internet the last couple of days that has this song bouncing through my mind all morning.



-Crispian St. Peters

Poor, Self-Deluding, Gwyneth Paltrow

Phrase of the morning, "Consciously uncouple."

Definition of the morning from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: euphemism- "a mild or pleasant word or phrase that is used instead of one that is unpleasant or offensive."

Rephrased Shakespeare quote of the morning, "What's in a name? That which we call a divorce by any other name would hurt just as deep."

Global Warming, Anyone?

Car 54 Where Are You?

There's a hold up in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights
There's a scout troop short a child,
Khrushchev's due at Idlewild*
Car 54, Where Are You?
-Theme from television show, Car 54 Where Are You? (1961-1963)

In the news today:

1. 8 dead, 108 reports of people missing in mudslide.

2. Egyptian court sentences 529 people to death.

3. 6 dead, 18 injured when gunman open fire inside a Kenyan church.

4. 100 Congolese refugees die when boat overturns.


(Sigh) Today I prefer Francis and Gunther's world.



*Now know as John F. Kennedy International Airport.

March Snow

(But not too quickly.)

Reading Words Of Wisdom

Safety has a lot of meanings. Personal safety: lock you doors; arm your alarm systems; look both ways when crossing the street. Have annual doctor's checkups; take your vitamins; don't turn your back on the ocean; cliffs crumble.

But the safety of a nation? How can you control that? There is no way to guard against hijacked planes, hurricanes, massive oil spills, earthquakes. But far worse is the steady rot from within, as society splinters and fragments and no side gives ground on any important issue. Thinly masked racial hatred, each religion claiming that its dogma is the only way to salvation, apathy, the closing of formerly open minds. Fear is a rotten emotion, and in one way or another it had us all in its grip.
- Marcia Muller in City of Whispers: A Sharon McCone Mystery

Spring, Spring, Spring

I Guess She'd (Still) Rather Be In Colorado

Attention Drivers

Some of you seem to be confused by the fact that stop and yield signs have the same colors.  To help you with that here is a quick tutorial.


This is a Yield Sign.

This is a Stop sign.

Although both are red, one is shaped like a triangle.

And the other is shaped like an octagon (eight sided).

The triangle shaped sign has the word Yield written in red letter on a white background.

The eight sided sign has the word STOP written in white letters on a red background.

This sign:

means you should only stop if necessary (e.g. There is a car approaching and if you kept going you would hit it or it would hit you.).


This sign:

means exactly what it says it says, stop.



Let's summarize.


This sign means:

YIELD

And this sign means:

STOP

In other words:


This sign does not mean STOP!

And this sign does not mean YIELD!

Yield:

Stop:

Yield:

Stop:

So, are we clear, now?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Set Wide The Window

One of our house projects last month was replacing all the original windows on the main floor.  They were builder's grade which means they were the least expensive ones the builder could install. Which means the did not keep out the cold that well.  They did such a bad job of it, the metal frames and glass iced up on  sub-freezing days.  I've had condensation and frost form on the room side of windows before but never ice. So we replaced them. The difference is indisputable.  Not only are the windows not icing up, the inside of the house is warmer and the outside noise has dropped to the point of being almost unnoticeable.

One change we made was in a tall thin window in the dinning area.  That window was double hung, awkward to get to, and kind of useless since we have both a huge window and patio doors in the living room that we open whenever we need fresh air.  That is why I had the double hung window replaced with a sheet of glass.

After living with it for about a month I found I wasn't happy with it.  The view isn't that great so I decided to give it some sort of stained glass look using a window film. I bought a roll of film called "New Leaf" which measured out as more than large enough to do the whole window since the pattern repeated, or so the company said.  When I cut the size I need I had half the roll left and more than enough left, or so I thought, to make the repeat pattern line up.  I was wrong.  The pattern did not repeat along all edges but only along two of them.  The way I had cut the roll, which was the only way to cut it to fit my window,  was along the non-repeating edge. This meant that in order to cover the complete window in a way that made the edges matched I would need two more rolls of window film.  The problem with that was I would be paying for those two extra rolls and only using half of my original roll, half of the second roll, and a six inch strip off the third roll.  What a waste.

My husband suggested we buy one extra roll in some sort of contrasting design and I said I wasn't sure I wanted something like that but maybe I could center the "New Leaf" in the middle of the window and  use a frosted glass look at the top and bottom.  I found a frosted glass with a pattern called "Etched Leaf" and bought a roll of that.  When I put the pieces up I left a space between and around all three pieces creating a clear glass border that helps visually to break the sections apart. This you cannot see in the photo below but it works to help tie the sections together.

Who would of thought such that such a simple project would turn out to be so complicated?

Living In An Apple Juice Hater's World

Me and my girl go to the grocery store. Mott's fresh pressed apple juice, $1.79 for a half gallon, that's a great sale, so we get eight bottles.  Eight bottles are on the belt in front of us. There's an old man and he's looking back, shaking his head like, "Nah. Nope."

And I'm like, "What wrong, old man? You mad  'cause we got all this apple juice?  'Cause you can go get some too.  It's over there in aisle four. But if not, stop judging us 'cause, hell yeah, we're hoarding this juice. Taking advantage of this sale before the store realizes what a horrible mistake they made.  And you know what? We're back here happy with our apple juice. You're up there lonely with your Hormel Chili, you lonely Hormel Chili eating old man."

It took me a minute to realize he wasn't shaking his head 'cause of the apple juice. He was shaking his head because my girlfriend was white and he didn't agree with that. But I was so caught up in the euphoria of having all that apple juice, that for like a minute I lived in a world where racism didn't exist. I was like,"It's obvious that this old man is just an apple juice hater.
-Hannibal Buress

Meetings Are Indispensable

when you don't want to do anything. 
-John Kenneth Galbraith

 I went to my subdivision's annual HOA meeting last night. There is always at least one villain (The person who won't shut-up about what they perceive as an act of grievous malfeasance on the part of the board.); random outburst of anger, scorn, and impatience; plus some acting out on the part of a few of the participants. It's better than reality TV.

It's World Plumbing Day!

march 11 every year...everywhere
-World Plumbing Day website

It sounds a little silly but this is a serious issue. Two paragraphs from the World Plumbing Day website:

World Plumbing Day is an international event on March 11 initiated by the World Plumbing Council celebrating the important role plumbing plays in the health and safety of modern society.




The United Nations declared 2005-2015 the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, setting a world agenda that focuses increased attention on water-related issues. This initiative is of extraordinary importance in a world where preventable diseases related to water and sanitation claim the lives of about 3.1 million people per year, most of them children less than 5 years old. Of these, about 1.6 million people die each year of diarrheal diseases associated with lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

Summertime, Summertime, Sum-sum-summertime

Well we'll go swimmin', every day
No time to work, just time to play
If your folks complain, just say,
"It's summertime"
-Summertime, Summertime (1958) by The Jamies

Little Sally Pumpkinhead relaxing. She has no idea it is going to snow tomorrow.

You And Me And Rain On The Roof

Through Early Morning Fog I See

Yesterday

And today in the upper fifties.