Live Your Dreams Billboard

Billboard seen in NC: On one side a picture of Kermit the Frog, next to that reads "Eats Flies. Dates a Pig. Hollywood Star...Live Your Dreams"

You can see a picture of the billboard at their sponsoring organizations website 'The Foundation for a Better Life":
http://www.forbetterlife.org/billboards/live-your-dreams

Frog Leg Buffet

We just stopped for dinner at the border of Virginia and North Carolina ... at the 'Down-Home Buffet'...they had frog legs on the buffet. Word.

Wikipedia

I love wikipedia. I love the philosophy of free and easily accessible information. I love the collaborative nature of the website. I love that I can find a plethora of information on just about anything.

I love this quote from their founder:

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."
— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

How cool is that.

The problem is ... there's no such thing as a free lunch. Computers and bandwidth and developers all cost money. Someone has to cough up the dough so that we all can benefit.

If you feel similarly about how totally amazing wikipedia is and are in a position to do so .... click below and donate a little money for their annual fundraiser.

A Tasty Vegetarian Lasagna

A few friends from work came over for dinner last night. Some of them are here visiting from India and are vegetarian. I queried my expert resources (i.e. my vegetarian sister, Natalie and always-experimenting-with-new-recipes sister, Melissa) for a yummy recipe to make. The last time I had Indian friends over, I made this North Indian chili that was ... well, it's not like it tasted bad, but it didn't taste good either. Just kind of tasted like kidney beans and onions and a lot of spices without a coherent blending of flavors.

So Natalie suggested a yummy vegetarian lasagna (click here to get the recipe) that she had made from a recipe on epicurious. After a series of phone consultations with both sisters, I made two lasagnas, one with asparagus/sweet peas, and one with marinated artichoke hearts/sweet peas. I added a couple big spoonfuls of minced garlic and some red pepper flakes to the filling ... and the end result was quite tasty.

I sent some leftovers home with my Indian friends, and this morning they told me ... "The food was very good. We had it for breakfast." :)

Quilt of postage stamps

I am very bad about going to the post office to mail a card and purchasing a whole book of stamps ... and then the next time I need to mail something I forget or can't find the book of stamps so I buy another one. My sweet honey lamb has changed all that! He has collected all my partial books of stamps from over the years ... all different denominations reflecting the different postage rates over time .... then he bought some 1c, 2c, 3c, and 5c stamps and now every time I need a stamp he pulls out the big envelope and comes up with a combination of stamps for me to use. As you can see from my christmas cards (pictured below .... 3 or 4 stamps for each one!!!!) this makes for a very colorful patchwork on my envelopes! The more postage I need ... the bigger the quilt of stamps!

Contumacious ... my new favorite word.

Definition: stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient

Seriously .... I know several people whose picture shoulde be in the dictionary next to this word.

A friend heard it used in court to describe their opponent. I think it is perfect. I told my husband tonight that he was contumacious. He denied it.

A Community Affair

Parker was asked to play bass guitar to accompany the choir at his middle schools choir/band concert last night. I was able to attend and am so pleased that I did. While the musical talent displayed was not unusual for middle school level (although the 6th grade band was particularly adorable), the level of community involvement was surprising and heart-warming. The concert was held in the school gymnasium and if you have ever been to a middle-school concert before, you would understand me saying that normally you would have no problem getting a seat. However at this one .... it was standing room only!! I am serious that there had to be 75 or 100 people standing around the edges of the gym .... plus the bleachers were full as well as the folding chairs ... kids sitting on laps ... it was complete mayhem.

The school makes an effort to include a large portion of their students in the event ... they had a theme 'The Starry Night' and the art classes made decorations themed after Van Gogh's painting entitled the same. The faculty also participated in the program with a joint faculty/student choir and the science teacher (wearing a spiderman santa cap) played electric guitar as part of the choral accompaniment. It was a riot.

Gingerbread Cookies

We were getting ready to decorate gingerbread cookies and when Ed got the huge stacks of nonpareils from the cupboard, Matthew's eyes got wide and he exclaimed 'Oh. Oh. Oh!!' I thought we might have to ride herd on him to keep from dumping huge piles of them on top of every cookie ... but instead he decorated all three of his gingerbread men the same way: White frosting, red sprinkles, and silver balls. All those choices must have overwhelmed him!

The stacks of non-pareils:

The resulting gingerbread cookies:

Rudolph the Red Nosed Taurus.....

Miriam gave me a costume for my car .... It is a red velour stuffed nose and antlers. So my car is rudolph. And as I drive around in my reindeer car, I sing Christmas songs and laugh about my 'sleigh' ... I perform my Christmas errands with extra verve and zest ... I am one of Santa's helpers!

Note to self: In future, do not unroll window while driving through Burger King for sustenance during your Christmas errands as your antler might fall off and you will have to get out in the drive through and go pick it up!

42" TV

My husband finally agreed with me that we needed a new TV in our living room .... The one we have is old and dark and really hard to see things on. Sitting at breakfast one day, he was trying to decide what was the right size to be comparable in size the old tve. A normal person might have just looked up a couple of models on the INTERNET to see what the height/width dimensions were for a 42" TV ... but no, my sweet nerd of a husband proceeded to dust off his geometry skills figure it out.

Gotta love him.

Go to the bathroom before reading

My sister sent me an email with a subject line of ''Go to the bathroom' and a link to the below website.
http://www.tamponcrafts.com/

Good thing I heeded her advice or I so would have peed my pants laughing.

Etiquette for house guests

I want to preface this by saying, I am not the queen of etiquette.

In fact, I would venture to say that in most things I am far too casual -- party etiquette ... RSVPs, invitations, etc. I just am not that organized.

However, with regard to house guests, I have some basic expectations of appropriate behavior.

1. I expect my house guests to give me a general schedule indicating when they will be leaving/returning to my home. It does not need to be specific, and I understand it could change, but I think it is only fair that you tell me if you are going to be walking in my door at 2 AM so that I am not awoken by the strange noises thinking burglars are entering my home.
2. If I prepare a meal while you are at my home and you don't already have plans to go out, I expect that you will sit down and eat with me. For example, if I get up on a weekday and make waffles specially because there are house guests, and the house guests get up and say they don't have plans for breakfast, but won't eat my waffles, and then later decide to go out to breakfast .... Call me crazy, but I will be offended.
3. I expect my house guests to participate in at least one activity with me while they are my guest -- eat a meal with me, play a game, or at least invite me to participate in one of their planned activities (sight-seeing, etc.) even if I am not able to attend due to my schedule.
4. I expect a thank-you. At a minimum say it -- better to send a thank you note after the stay. For close relatives, I don't expect a hostess gift, but if you are a 'friend' or a friends relative ... then the appropriate gesture is to offer some small token of appreciation.

I think these are pretty basic expectations. If you aren't willing to follow through with these minimum requests, then please, my home is not Motel 6. If you just want a bed to sleep in, then get a hotel room.

Operation NICE

I like this blog:
http://www.operationnice.com/

I added it to my blogs I'm following and would encourage you to do the same. The author posts almost every day and it is a good reminder for me to reach out of my shell and be nice to the people I come across in this world.

Lately I have been feeling particularly uncharitable .... Examples: making snide remarks about tacky wedding outfits, picking fights with my dear husband about stupid crap that doesn't really matter, becoming quickly impatient or angered at stupid people or people who are intentionally nasty, etc.

None of those things help make me a better person. And they definitely don't make me a nicer person.

So, I guess I will just have to keep working on suppressing my bad habits and encouraging my nice ones to flourish. Probably going to be a lot of hard work still to come in that arena.

Check out the site and let me know what you think.

The world can always handle a few more good turns.

'Mother of the Groom' or 'Hooker'

At a recent wedding, the mother of the groom wore a uncharacteristically gaudy outfit and was dolled up to the point of having a comment made about her appearance that she looked like a 'hooker'.

I have never actually met a prostitute, so I'm not sure what one looks like. I only have the movie or television stereotype to go by, but even though I wasn't there, I'm certain she didn't look exactly like that.

However, I completely understand what I think is the real meaning of this comment ... the sequins, elaborate hairdo, fancy makeup job, unfortunately high heels .... they combine to create an image that does not in any way resemble the person underneath the facade.

I have witnessed this phenomena myself on several occasions, and I don't understand what possesses people to do it. I mean I can understand dressing to impress, but please. Do yourself a favor and don't try to look like someone you are not. You will always look like a fake. Its extremely unattractive and rather pitiable.

Miriam and I and our Chicken Necks ....

We had a 'few' friends over for Ed's birthday on Sunday ... I say a few as there were only two families, but as each of them are quite large that was about 18 people plus Ed, Matthew, and I makes 21 people in my little ranch .... good thing we like each other!
My friend Miriam and I had our picture taken and the first time she was a little disappointed because the picture showed her double chin.
So then the friend taking the picture (Wendy) told her that we have to stretch our necks out to get rid of the double chin .... we were totally cracking up and stretching our necks back and forth .... picture a barnyard of chickens strutting around ....

It was a fun party!

Over 100,000 people turned 52 yesterday ... my husband was one of them.

So my husband and I are perfect together .... but sometimes he is really a nerd.

So I say to dear husband last night something about how special he is because today is his birthday ... and he replies that he's not so special as lots of people were born on this day. I say yeah, but not so many are turning 52 .... so then he proceeds to calculate an estimate of how many people in the world celebrated their 52 birthday yesterday. You gotta love him. He is a piece of work.

First he had to list the assumptions -- some of which we realize are false, but make the problem too complex to do a simple estimate and they aren't false enough to make a significant difference for purposes of our discussion:

• 6 billion people in the world



• Youngest 1, Oldest 100



• Constant distribution of current ages from 1 to 100



• Same rate of death from 1 to 100



• Constant distribution across specific days of the year - in other words we are not taking into account seasonal spikes in birth rate

Then to do the math in his head:
There are 365 days in a year, over a hundred years that is 36,500 possible different birthdays. Divide 6 billion by 36,500 .... he rounded to be able to do the math easier and came up with 100,000 as the number of people celebrating their 52nd birthday with him.

I just did it on the calculator and its actually 165,000 for each day. Which is actually only 0.0000275 % of the total world population so ... I think I am right and he is still pretty special!

Pumpkin Carving and Painting

I love pumpkin carving and painting! That and handing out candy on Halloween night are some of my favorite Halloween things to do!

When I was a little girl, my Dad was a farmer. He would grow pumpkins to sell at the farmers market and my Mom would paint cute faces on them ... She would always do some for us too, and we would beg her to let us keep them as long as possible! Mine are not as cute as hers, but I still have a fun time doing them!

Ed loves to carve pumpkins. The last few years he and Matthew have found a fun carving pattern online and used that for their jack-o-lantern's face. Last years was a pirate/skull face that required using a drill to carve out each individual tooth in its spooky grin! This year they went a little simpler with the 'scary flame' jack-o-lantern.

Stadium Pal

I think David Sedaris is freaking hysterical ... One of my favorite sarcastic sites (Dooce) had a link to this video. I just about peed my pants laughing. I would buy one of these for my DH except I'm afraid he might use it!

Scrapbooking in the Poconos

My sister and a couple of friends went to a scrapbooking weekend in the poconos this weekend. It was so much fun and I was so productive! I made 24 pages! Also made 16 Christmas cards for a card swap we're doing.

I'm working on finishing up Matthew's albums... I printed out a bunch of pictures for the books I made him for his 7th b-day, but I wasn't able to get through them all. I might have been a little ambitious ... I printed out pictures from age 2 (the earliest pictures we have as we only have copies of the digital pictures and evil BM won't let Ed make copies of the film pictures) through age 6.5 ... a huge stack of pictures! So I' didn't finish them all in time for his brithday, but I'm still wading through them as he really loved his book.

Here are some of my favorites from the scrapbook pages I made this weekend:

Matthew's October Pack Meeting

Matthew's pack went on a hayride and pumpkin picking for their October pack meeting. Of course the event started at 4:30 and Ed's visitation doesn't start until 5:00. So he asked to pick Matthew up early and Kathy refused. She instead insisted on bringing Matthew to the event and handing him over to Ed at 5:00 when his visitation starts. It doesn't seem to matter to her that the judge told her that any time his father asked to have him early that it was her responsibility to give Matthew to his father early. Or that maybe it might have made it easier on Matthew to not have to transition between his parents in the middle of an event. She really doesn't care about anyone but herself. October is the perfect month for her ... she doesn't even have to dress up as she is a witch all year round.

Anyways .... here are some pictures from the pack meeting ...

Frugal Food

Below is an interesting website I came across in my search for a good recipe for green tomato salsa
www.hillbillyhousewife.com
There are lots of advertisements on it, but if you can tolerate that there are some good ideas for frugal eating. Also it had several amusing little rants/soapboxes. One regarding the merits of powdered milk and the other below a recipe for making Wendy's style Frostys at home without ice cream. V. interesting.

Melissa's new kitten Sasha

My sister Melissa has the cutest kittens ever ... Her older kitten 'Daisy Madonna' (a Blades family name) was acting lonely, so she decided to get a baby brother for her. They are both Russian Blues and are so sweet. They are totally spoiled and possess every single cat toy known to catdom! If Amazon.com sells it, they have it!

Melissa has posted some really adorable videos of Sasha. Below is a hysterical video of him attempting to disembowel one of his toys.

Black Bean and Corn Salsa

This is a recipe from a friend AJ Porschett ... I love it.

Black Bean and Corn Salsa

Mix together the following:

2 gloves garlic minced
1 7 oz shoepeg corn drained
3 T Chopped Fresh Cilantro (possibly more)
16 oz can of black beans rinsed and drained
3/4 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp tabasco (suspect use more closer to a tsp)
1/2 green bell pepper chopped
1/2 red onion chopped (could use vidalia about 1/2 to 34 cup)
1 Tomato chopped -- regular one the take out seeds - or 2-3 plum
1/2 cup italian dressing (italian parmesan)

I have had a ton of grape tomatoes from the monster tomato plant in my garden, so I actually just sliced some finely in the food processor and used those instead of a regular tomato ... it was delicious. Also AJ serves these with the white corn bowl style chips ... I think thats the ONLY way to eat it! Enjoy!

Taco Soup anyone?

I made like the most ginormous pot of taco soup. I think I could feed the Stokes family for at least 2 days with it! I learned to cook for my family of 6 growing up and I just have never gotten over the "make an enormous pot so there's plenty for everyone and enough for left-overs" mentality. Oh well ... good thing that Ed will eat the same left-overs indefinitely! I have the best husband ever!

And BTW, I love my in-laws! They are so nice and I'm so glad they decided to visit! Ed took them to NYC today and the last txt message I had from him he said they were pretty tuckered out from walking all over NYC. They didn't get in until 5 AM so I think they were worn out to start with!

In-laws coming to visit ....

I've never met any of my in-laws. I am a little anxious about it, but I'm sure everything will go well. They will only be here a few days and they sound really nice.

Of course my house is a disaster given that I went right from canning season to preparing for ISOP graduation to going to Georgia for my brothers OCS graduation. Add on top of that that I'm not the most organized person to start with! Ed's sister Kathy, her husband, and their daughter will be here in just a few short hours .... so I think I better get cracking!

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

ICanHasCheezburger .... my new favorite website ... my sister and I are peeing our pants laughing every day about these pics ... check it out!!!

Funny t-shirts

So someone in my Scrap Etc yahoo group posted a link to a completely hysterical (although not PC) blog listoftheday.blogspot.com

So after running to the bathroom so as to not pee my pants, I then took a look at one of their links to www.snorgtees.com where again I was peeing my pants laughing at the t-shirts. I seriously need some of these! My absolute favorite was:

Lying

My DH was listening to the radio and they said that women lie an average of 3 times per day and men lie 4 times per day.

I was trying to figure out if social lies count -- you know -- the ones where you don't want to hurt someones feelings or say something that is unnecessarily going to cause pain or unhappiness. But technically they are still lies. I'm not going to stop telling them though. I guess I'll just be going to the hot place ... I'm sure I'll have lots of friends :)