March 21, 2012

• Pictures Worth 1000 Words

  This is a little different format for me!  I thought I’d do pictures n’ blurbs, for fun.

  

  Boom, baby!  Did you check IRIS this morning?  Look at that quake!!  That’s a NICE one!!  And I guess there’s reports of thunder so loud in Oklahoma that it set off the earthquake monitors there, and the ground is throbbing in Wisconsin, and… well a LOT is happening.  It’s crazy out there.  I’d blog about it, but Tomer Devorah already has.  Go and read her blog – it’s a short one, with LOTS more than I mentioned, here!

  

  R.I.P Amanda Jane.  Yesterday evening we lost our first goat, ever.  She was our first Nigerian (well, half Nigerian), our alpha female, and my favorite goat.  She passed away of old age in her sleep yesterday, at the ripe age of 10 years.  It was quite the sobering evening, last night, as the kids got their first real taste of life vs. death.  We’ve lost rabbits and chickens before, but that’s VASTLY different, as they didn’t have personalities and weren’t treated as pets and visited by the kids the way they play in the goat pen with the Nigerians.

  

  It has occurred to me that I don’t have a blinkie on my sidebar declaring me as a home educator.  So I went looking for one.  Most are Comic Sans with cartoon books and apples or pastel color crayons… in other words, SO not me.  But this one?  I think that’ll do, donkey.  ((grins))  I like it!

  

  I saw this and… well, hadda post it.  Cuz it’s so funny.  And with elections and stuff…?  Yeah.  Anyhow, someone on FB linked me to a YouTube of Romney telling a girl (asking for free birth control) that if she wants free stuff, she ‘needs to vote for the other side’.  Which is kinda funny, cuz… I don’t remember anything free being given to the people by Obama.  I know he axed the stimulus we got before on our tax returns, and that he tried to axe the child income credit freebie that Bush instated, but… not s’much from Obama.  Brian (by the way) said something interesting the other day that is SO DEAD ON.  He said, “Everyone agrees our country is in a bad way.  Financially, where employment is concerned, economically… we’ve got some serious problems, and it’s going to take a radical change in the way we run the government to fix it.  The only candidate the press is calling ‘radical’ is Ron Paul… and he’s the only one who’s got a plan that’s REALLY different from what everyone else always says.  Yet they hate him – won’t even cover him in the media.  Call him ‘radical’… like that’s a bad thing, when it’s really the ONE thing this country needs.”

  

  This was featured on SpaceWeather this morning.  It’s SO DARN GORGEOUS… I saved it to my PC for a wallpaper (for the future, someday).  So darn gorgeous, I had to share it with you.  Run to Space Weather for the even bigger, better version of it.

  

  In an update from my chat about e-readers, my friend V (FiberAddict) sold me her old Nook.  She upgraded to an Ipad, so she wanted to sell it, but was leery of Craigslisting (dealing with weird people).  You guys didn’t give her the memo about how WEIRD the blonde over at Xanga is?!  What’s up wif dat?  LoL!!  Anyhow, I’m just glad it’s from someone I trust and like and who I trust with my home address.  ((snort))

  

  Last night we cleaned out and hooked up (and filled!) the hot tub.  It’s supposedly heating up, so maybe tonight we can take our first dip.  Brian’s being the family pessimist and is sure SOMETHING will be wrong with it (well, it *IS* old)… but I’d like to hope that this year, it’ll be good to go with no major hitches.

  It was so nice out, we had supper for the second night in a row outdoors, this time on the glass table.  See, there’s a side deck (with a 4-person glass table that can barely seat the seven of us – free from my landlady 15 years ago – I scrapbook at it in the summer, write letters, sometimes we school on that table).  But last spring I wanted to build an octagonal picnic table for the back deck that would fit us better so the WHOLE family could sup outside.  I lucked out, and my GF Ramona had one in her back yard that she was going to get rid of, so we took it and replaced the too-old boards… but it’s too tall for the kids, the boards on top have big gaps (that their cups fall in), and it’s a six seater – Baby O doesn’t fit as our seventh.  Which is good to know – because the plan I wanted to build was BIGGER, but Ramona’s barely fit on our deck!  Then last week I found this:

  

  It’s from Lowe’s Build-it site, and I actually wanted it just for the benches, for indoors.  See, our dining room chairs are… homigawsh, terrible – the kids have torn off the racking and pulled off the backs and fished out the batting and stuck their toes in the upholstery and ripped open the seats… and I only have six chairs (Owen will be out of the high chair by the end of summer).  So I could reupholster the chairs, but they’ll just tear ‘em apart, again, and I’d still be two short.   I needed SOMETHING, and these benches are the answer!!

  Then I got to thinking… if I built an 8-ft version of this whole set out of treated wood for the deck, it’d fit perfect (the benches could stow underneath if we made them 7ft), and it’d be AWESOME… and I could pay it forward and offer the octagon one to my British neighbor lady (who has no table and only five in her family).  And the plan says the cost is minimal, because it’s all stock lumber sizes!  So… this may be our next big project!!

  Hey, I liked this blog.  We should do pics more often!

  • 4:00 pm
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