Thought of the day - from my husband

If the grocery store sells extra virgin olive oil, why don't they sell extra slutty olive oil?

Tiger in the Gazebo

My cat seems to be really enjoying the new addition to our yard.  I think this is his way of saying, "Thanks for buying me a new bed."  And, unfortunately, he also thinks it is his new scratching post.  Because, as every cat caregiver knows, every new purchase made is always for the cat.

Something New

We took out our above ground pool and replaced it with a gazebo, or more accurately a "teahouse".  It has a double swing inside.  We haven't finished the landscaping, obviously, but I think it is coming along nicely.  The plan is to plant spirea and butterfly bushes, along with some lantana and some annuals which are yet to be determined.  I've wanted a gazebo for a long time, and I'm so happy to finally have one.

2012 Book List

Here is a list of the books I read in 2012.

Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Chariots of the Gods - Erich Von Daniken
The X President - Philip Baruth
Heat Wave - Richard Castle
The Island of Doctor Moreau - H.G. Wells
The Knowland Retribution - Richard Greener
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson
Naked Heat - Richard Castle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

Eleven books in a year is pretty good for me.  Some were books my husband or kids already owned.  Others were library books.  Still others I downloaded to my new Kindle (some paid, some free).  One (Naked Heat) I actually bought a paper copy of in order to read it.  And only one was I forced to read (The Ghost Map) due to teaching obligations.  Not a bad year.  Maybe, at some point, I'll once again write some actual reviews of the books I read.  We'll see what next year holds.

Reelected!

As is obvious by the previous post, I'm happy to see that President Obama has won a second term.  Results from here in Alabama were about what I had expected; however, Judge Roy Moore's opponent, Bob Vance, gave a better showing than I had expected.

I am very happy to hear, too, that Jon Tester (D-Mont) has won reelection to his senate seat in Montana.  Obviously, here in Alabama I'm a long way from Montana, but I do love the state and I'm happy to see Tester pull it out in that tight race.  I've followed that race closer than some here at home.  Way to go Jon!

I voted!

I did my civic duty and voted.  I voted for Obama/Biden, but since I live in Alabama, I'm sure most of the few people I had the option of voting for will win.  It is AMAZING how many offices were not contested.  But at least I did have the opportunity to vote against Martha Roby, so I most certainly did.

I also had the option of voting on 11 Amendments to our ridiculous state constitution.  I did some research into the amendments, but found it rather confusing on many fronts.  I ultimately didn't vote on Amendment #9, because there were so many arguments about hidden agendas in the language of the amendment.  I figured I didn't want to accidentally vote for something I didn't really want.  I think the state legislature puts a lot of effort into misleading the voters of Alabama.  It is a shame that politicians won't just honestly represent what they want to accomplish and let the people decide without all the dishonest word games.

Music Midtown Festival

Wow, it's been a while since I posted anything here. But this definitely seemed worth posting about. I went to the Music Midtown Festival over the weekend. It was so much fun. I've never been to a music festival like this before. It was like a sea of people out there. We got pretty close to the stage for the shows we were interested in.

This was Garbage performing.

Here is a picture of me and my  husband, just to prove we were actually there.

This is a picture of the crowd behind us before the Florence + the Machine show.

This is the crowd in front of us while they were setting up for Florence + the Machine.

And then, the main event. . .Pearl Jam.  This was the only picture I got that wasn't just a blur of light.  We managed to get pretty close to the stage, but there were soooo many people it was still hard to see.  I held the camera up over my head to get this pic. 

It was so amazing to actually be there and be down so close to the stage where everyone is singing and packed together like sardines.  When you are that close you can feel the music in your chest.  I had a great time and I'm so glad we went.

I'm looking forward to going to see Eddie Vedder perform in Jacksonville, FL in November.  I know it will be a completely different kind of show there, but I'm also sure I'll have a better view of the stage and a place to sit down.  :)

Playing with Wordle

I decided that it might be interesting to make a word cloud of the words actually spoken by Jesus in the New Testament. I looked to see if I could find one and I couldn't. So I started making one. I only got through Matthew. Maybe I'll finish later. Here is what I got. For some reason the code from Wordle isn't working to show it here, but here is the link

I finally went digital

The question is, was it worth it? It certainly shouldn't have been as difficult a process as it turned out to be. But ultimately I did get to watch tonight's premiere of Doctor Who, so it all worked out okay. I do, however, find myself much less enamored with both TiVo and my cable company than I was when the process started.

We talked to the people at our cable company and told them what equipment we had, told them we want to upgrade to digital cable and asked what we needed to do. They insisted we needed a cable box. I set up an appointment to get the installation done the following Monday, this was last Thursday. The guy comes out, and after an hour fiddling with my cable wires and TiVo, realizes that I can't use a digital box with a TiVo DVR. He takes the box in to install a cable card only to realize that my Series 2 doesn't have a slot for a cable card. He brings it back to me and tells me that I will have to upgrade my TiVo or get one of their DVRs. Okay, partially my fault. I should have remembered that my TiVo was not digitial compatible.

Enter TiVo. I go online to the TiVo store to upgrade and get a new TiVo that will accept a cable card. I order a TiVo Premiere and transfer my service to the new box. It says that it will ship the same day and that I will have 60 days (I think) of service on my old box in order to get my new box set up. It even says I will be able to transfer my season passes to the new box. Great right? Wrong!

I'm supposed to get an email when the box ships, but I don't get one. 24 hours later I still have not received an email saying it has shipped. So I call customer service. They say that there was a technical problem with the previous days orders: they shipped, but the emails weren't sent out. Okay, great! Again, wrong! It didn't ship on Monday, it shipped late afternoon on Tuesday. Still no major problem, it should still get to me before the weekend. And, great (for real this time) it actually does. It get to me after 5 pm on Thursday. My cable company is going to be open on Good Friday, so I'm still in luck.

From what I can gather looking at the instruction a cable card is no big deal to install, so I ask if they will just give me a card to install myself. Well, of course not, they have to do it themselves. At a cost of either $50 or possibly $60, I was told two different amounts by two different people on two different days. I was also told two different amounts for how much the service would cost per month. I still don't know how much I'll be paying. . .

Finally, after the cable people had the TiVo for about 5 and a half hours, I got it back and could bring it home and set it up. I get it set up and there are no directions for how to hook the darn thing up with a DVD player. I contact TiVo again, and they tell me that it can only be hooked up to one output source at a time, which I take to mean that I would have to disconnect it from my TV to connect it to my DVD player.

I did finally get everything connected and working properly - the TiVo connects to the DVD player, which then connects to the TV. I try going online to transfer my season passes from the old box to the new, and you guessed it, I can't! The only box it shows for me is the new one. So I have to manually reset all of my season passes. Well, the ones that I can set, because, of course, not all shows that I have season passes for are going to be showing in the next two weeks. So now I will have to remember to reset them before the shows come back on in the summer or fall.

All is fine and good, and my Now Playing shows are transferred and my Season Passes are set. But it was WAY more expensive and WAY more of a headache than I ever anticipated when I set out on my quest to watch the season premiere of Doctor Who. All I've got to say now is that it better be a damn good season of Doctor Who!

Enjoying Number 11

I have finally gotten around to watching the newest series of Doctor Who with the eleventh Doctor. I wondered how I would feel about the new Doctor because I was so accustomed to David Tennant and I didn't know how the show would be with a new writer. I have been very pleasantly surprised. Matt Smith is great and the writing is really good, too. I love Steven Moffat's sense of humor and I find myself laughing out loud much more often that I remember doing with the most recent episodes written by Davies. In fact, I was beginning to grow a bit tired of the final episodes with Davies and Tennant.

I'm not all the way through this series yet and my next DVD won't come from Netflix until tomorrow, but we have been ripping through them just a quickly as we can get them. In fact, I'm so taken with it that I'm considering signing up for digital cable just so that I can get BBC America (only available on digital cable through my provider) and watch the next series without having to wait for it to come to DVD. But I do like British comedy in general so I'm sure I would watch more on BBC American than just Doctor Who.

Update to "My Map"

Today I was looking back at an old post to find a link to a site to make a colored map for use in my American National Government class. I ended up not using the site, because it was specifically for making a map of the US states you have visited, but it reminded me of how out of date my map is. So I decided to make a new one to show my updated travels since January 2007. It has been a lot of fun adding new states to my map. Someday, maybe I can color them all!

My little "lasagna garden"

Here are some pictures of the little garden I planted this year. I never got around to making one last year, because here at the new house it needs protection from the deer in the neighborhood. This year I built a really deep lasagna garden and put a 5 foot tall fence around it. Hopefully that will be a sufficient deterrent to the deer. Here are pictures of the garden itself and the veggies growing within.

Here is the whole garden

This is my "yummy pepper"

My Sweet 100 tomato

My Husky Cherry (with some tiny tomatoes on it)

My Talladega Tomato

My Big Beef (which isn't very big yet)

A row of cucumbers with a wire trellis for them to grow on.

One hill of the zucchini with three little seedling, just starting to sprout their first true leaves.

Song that move me

Today I was listening to a CD and a song came on that was just really moving. The sound of the singer voice was the most important part. In fact, most of the lyrics I can't even understand. The song was Reynardine by Fairport Convention, but there are some other songs that fit into that same category. The first one that came to mind was Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam. In these kinds of songs, it is not about the words in the song, it is about the sound of the singer's voice when he or she is singing it. It illustrates the power of the human voice as an instrument regardless of the words being sung.

Religion and Rock and Roll

As this Lenten season draws to close, I find myself going over two song in my head and contemplating their potential for religious insight. The two songs are Like a Stone by AudioSlave and Michael Jordan by Five for Fighting.

Near the beginning of Lent, I read through the Catechism in my Book of Common Prayer. When I got to the section on prayer it said:

Q. What is adoration?
A. Adoration is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God,
asking nothing but to enjoy God’s presence.
Q. Why do we praise God?
A. We praise God, not to obtain anything, but because
God’s Being draws praise from us.

This was the beginning of my musings on these two songs. First, there was Michael Jordan by Five for Fighting. (I actually hadn't heard the song in some time; it just came into my head.) In it John Ondrasik sings about his adoration for Michael Jordan and lists off the many seemingly outrageous things he would be willing to do in order to be Michael Jordan. At one point in the song he says "my god, my Jordan" and if you think about it, it is apparent that Michael Jordan really is his god, at least in the context of the song. And I thought about it in context of the previously quoted excerpt from the Catechism. It seems to me that this is the type of adoration that God wants us to have for him. Then I have to ask myself, do we? Do we just adore God and wish to do anything to simply be in his presence, or do we always want something in return.

That is what brings me to Like a Stone. In this song Chris Cornell sings:

on my deathbed i will pray
to the gods and the angels
like a pagan to anyone
who will take me to heaven

The truth in this song has struck me for a quite a while now. Do we really just pray to God because we believe that doing so will get us to heaven? To get to some great reward that is often even depicted in a material, worldly fashion (streets paved with gold, pearly gates, etc.)? Is it about the chance to be with God, or is it simply a chance to reunite with loved ones who we have lost?

How could an athlete or a singer or an actor, garner so much more adoration from so many people than we are honestly willing to give to the creator of our entire universe? And yet, if many of us were honest with ourselves we would find that we are willing to do more to see or be close to these types of people than we are to truly be close to God. How do we get past the immediate and the physical to adore someone who is eternal and yet not physically visible to us in a manifest form? Are we willing to do the things that God asks us to do on a daily basis? Would we be willing to do them if our favorite athlete, actor or singer asked us to do them? I wonder.

Now keep in mind that I am not leaving myself out of this equation, nor do I have a real answer to my own questions. These are simply some of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head this Lenten season and I felt the need to share them with anyone who felt inclined to read them.

Political bumper sticker

Today when I was out finishing my Christmas shopping in Montgomery, I saw a bumper sticker on a car in the Target parking lot. The bumper sticker said "Pray for Obama, Psalm 109:8" I wrote the chapter and verse down so that I could look it up when I got home. When I looked it up it said, in the Contemporary English Version, "Cut his life short and let someone else have his job." And in the King James Version, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

If that is not the most un-Christian sentiment, posing as Christian, that I've ever seen I don't know what is. It is one thing to wish him out of office, if that is your politics, fine. But to wish his life cut short is a totally different story. And don't even bother saying that if it is in the Bible it can't be un-Christian, because there are plenty of un-Christian things in the Old Testament.

People like that who call themselves Christian with so much hatred in their hearts just sickens me.

A sad day

Today is a sad day for my family. My uncle, William Ray Strickland died this morning after an extended illness. He was only 44 years old, but has had health issues since 1996 when he contracted encephalitis during the outbreak in Atlanta.

Rest in Peace, Will. We will all miss you.

Musing on conspiracy theories & the 16th Amendment

At the suggestion/request of a student, I watched the Zeitgeist video yesterday. One of many of the conspiracy theories set forth in the video is that the Federal Income Tax is unconstitutional because the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified. So today I did a little looking on the internet to find out what the argument is supporting that position. I found this website that points to all the mistakes made by the states that ratified the amendment, but I don't really plan to research the validity of its claims at this point.

The thought that I do have on the subject and would like to voice is this, How would the other amendments to the constitution hold up to this same scrutiny? It would make a much stronger argument if they could show that it was somehow outside the norm that they behaved in the way they did. Even if they were not acting within the letter of the law, you can't prove conspiracy unless you can show they were acting in a way that was inconsistent with their own past behavior. How many amendments do we have to throw out using this method? How many states do we have to throw out as well? I've heard illegal/unconstitutional arguments thrown around concerning West Virginia and Hawaii, but I'm sure more could be found if you search hard enough.

If it is really illegal/unconstitutional, take a test case to the Supreme Court. If there is sufficient discontent with the federal income tax and sufficient states that don't agree with it, propose a new amendment to repeal it. And no, it does not require Congress to act, there are provision in the Constitution for states to both propose and ratify amendments to the Constitution, it has just never been actually used before (See Article V). There is a legally established process for this, people.

UPDATE: After spending close to an hour looking over the Texas Constitution online, I can find no evidence that it prohibits "the legislatures from empowering the federal government with any additional taxing authority." If it is there, I missed it or it has since been removed through the amendment process (it's no Alabama Constitution, but it has been amended 456 times).

It does, however, require that a bill be read on 3 separate days before voting (as the linked page suggests) but that rule can be suspended, in cases of emergency, by vote of the legislators. I'm not sure why a vote on a Constitutional amendment would be deemed an emergency, but if they held the requisite vote to suspend the rule then that legal argument would be moot.

American National Government & Monty Python

This morning I am working on constructing a quiz for my American National Government classes. To date, the classes have not done exceptionally well on these quizzes, which consist of questions solely from the reading material combined with questions from the power point presentations. Consistently half the students or more have made either D's or F's.

Jokingly, I had suggested to my family over the weekend that I should have three of the questions be as follows: 1. What is your name? 2. What is your quest? 3. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? So this morning, as I was making out the test and therefore looking for a way to avoid working on it, I decided to Google "what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" My quest ultimately led me to this site where someone had actually done some research and worked it out, all with a Monty Python theme.

So if you ever find yourself on the Bridge of Death, just remember, the answer is 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour. Hum, too bad it was 24 and not 42, then we might have found the question to the ultimate answer, but that's an entirely different story.

Tree ID

Does anyone have any idea what kind of tree this is? It is yet another thing that I have in my yard that I have no idea what it is. It makes a cool looking berry.


This is a close up picture of the fruit, or berry or whatever you call it, that it produces.


Does anyone know? If so, I'd really appreciate a response.

Trip Pictures

I've uploaded most of our trip pictures from our trip to New England and Niagara Falls to Webshots. There is a permanent link to my albums over in the side bar, but here is a link to the new album. Here are just a few to get you started. Enjoy.

American Falls at Niagara

Nubble Lighthouse

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse