This isn’t flower pr0n, so I didn’t post it yesterday, but I loved these pictures and wanted to show them off.

It was 70 yesterday, so we raked the flower beds and now I can see the earliest bulbs starting to come up.

Additionally, Michael got me a macro lense for my digital camera for Christmas (that just came a few weeks ago), so I was able to really try out the lens for the first time yesterday.

What did I think? I think I’m starting to want an SLR. I really liked the pictures I got, but focusing wasn’t always the easiest thing to do.

(If you click through on any of the pictures, there are a couple additional pictures in my Flick account.)

Here’s the front bed after being raked. (For a reminder, here’s how the bed looked last July.) Michael wanted to make sure I got a picture of him working.

The first flower of spring: the pussy willows are blooming. I cut a bunch of stems and they’re now sitting in a vase by Grandmom’s chair in the living room.
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As I was listening to the radio Friday morning while getting ready for work, they played a segment on the plans Obama has for changes to the tax system, and I was struck by one idea mentioned several times by the Republicans: if we change the tax breaks for charitable giving, then people will give less to charity, which would be terrible at this time, while more and more people are relying upon charity.

I immediately thought, are you kidding me?!

Do the Republicans really believe that the only reason people make charitable donations is for the tax breaks?

If that’s true, it explains an awful lot about what’s wrong with the Republican party.

Let me make this clear, I make charitable donations–in fact Michael and I donated two cars to Good News Mountaineer Garage (last when we bought our new car in 2003).

I make donations every paycheck to local United Way groups (I always give money to the RDVIC, Christian Help, and one other group that often changes from year to year.

We make regular donations of clothing and items to either Christian Help or Goodwill (if I can’t make the hours for Christian Help), and I’m always amazed by the people who insist on getting a receipt for their single measly bag of used clothing (they set the dollar amount of the donation).

And we have never once claimed a charitable donation on our taxes.

I don’t do these things because I expect to be rewarded for my actions or donations.

I do these things because it is the right thing to do.

Apparently some Republicans don’t quite get that idea.

Chances I’ll be offline most of the day. Not because I’m doing anything exciting, but because I still need a break, and maybe I can read two books again.

I’ve got a post scheduled for 8AM, but otherwise don’t expect to hear from me until Sunday.

Michelle: (surfing mindlessly)
Woman on Marketplace: …the point at which we all just give up and decide to put our money into canned goods and ammunition.
Michelle: Wait. What?

Thursday was the cats yearly trip to the vet.

As I may have mentioned previously, we don’t crate the cats for travel. We put them in harnesses and on leashes, which works out better for everyone involved.

Aside from some incessant yowling, the trip wasn’t too bad. Especially after Kat decided to come up to the front seat and hang out with Michael.

Although she hid under the seat on the way to the vet’s, once we were there she was relatively calm and relaxed.

Even with the two small dogs barking and growling and yipping and snorting. (Oh yes, they snorted. A lot. Very strange dogs.)

Yes, yes he does occasionally like to stick his head out the window like a dog. But if we drive by a pedestrian, he ducks back into the car until it’s safe again.

As you may have noted over the past couple months, I’ve been writing a fair amount of php code. Although this was partially to learn a new language, it was also so I could make my book database do what I wanted.

Although I’m not entirely there, I’m getting close.

Yes, a lot of work I did was on the back end, that you can’t see. Too bad. But I’ve also done so work on the front end, especially implementing some of the stuff I did on the back end.

So what I’m asking is for you to go poke around the database, and see if you have any suggestions for making it better. I’m considering making an author search that only brings up names, instead of every book written by every author with a similar name, but I’m not sure if that’d be useful.

Please note: not all books have been linked to their reviews, but many have, so if there’s a book lacking a review, there’s a 50% chances I haven’t read that book. Additionally, about 25% of author pages link to pages elsewhere on my site. The other 75% jump back to the current page. I’m trying to figure out how to fix this. And the status is available for books I’ve gotten rid of. I’ll get to that bit later as well.

So please, go visit my book database, poke around, and tell me how I could make improvements.

And while you’re there, if you think there’s an author or book I should own or should have read, feel free to let me know.

Nathan took me to task for not bringing up an important issue in front of the WV Legislature: Delegate Jeff Eldridge has proposed a ban on Barbie dolls.

I’d like to point out that Eldridge is from Lincoln county. I live in Monongalia, so this guy is Not My Fault.

Now, to address this mess.

First, thank the gods this Legislator is male and not female. Can you imagine how this would be spun if it was a woman who proposed this bill? Wackos like Rush Limbaugh would be denouncing the lesbian feminist agenda in our legislatures, blah blah blah. So at least we missed that bullet. Not that what we left with is much better.

Second, I don’t like Barbie dolls, and never had one as a child or pre-teen. (Most of the dolls I had were rag dolls, and they were beat out by the stuffed animals.) I also agree somewhat with the premise that Jeff Eldridge is putting forth: I don’t think that Barbies (being humanly impossible and all) are necessarily a good role model for girls and pre-teens.

Elementary aged girls are now dieting, because they don’t look like the TV stars and models. We are creating a culture where more and more young women are getting eating disorders, and this is a terrible problem, and a problem that needs to be addressed.

However.

Banning Barbie is not a solution. I mean, shall the state police arrest people coming across the border with desired Christmas presents for their daughters and granddaughters? This is an incredibly stupid idea.

Even more importantly, however, this bill is a phenomenal waste of time. I recognize that Jeff Eldridge doesn’t really believe his bill will pass. Which means he has put up a bill solely to garner attention.

Sir? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of an economic recession/depression. West Virginia is losing tens of thousands of jobs as manufacturing companies close down and consolidate.

So why in the holy hell would anyone waste time with something like this?

I can’t answer it, but I hope the voters of Lincoln county demand an answer from Jeff Eldridge. Because we have issues of greater importance to address, and although female self image is important, calling for a ban on Barbie dolls isn’t going to do a damned thing to solve the problem.

Jeri is AWESOME!

I don’t know what I did to deserve such awesome friends, but I’m glad I did it!

I also made another loaf of cinnamon bread over the weekend.

The interesting thing is that it was a little to long, and when I folded it under, it twisted on itself, and gave me an interesting shaped loaf (with air pockets).

I also didn’t add the topping.

Still delicious, without the topping.

Carrot cake is one of the only cakes I like. It’s moist and oh so delicious. And since it has carrots and pecans and pineapple, it’s almost like health food!

My boss got married over the weekend, so I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

When I make these for us, I add everything but the pecans, fill several cup papers, then mix in the nuts and fill the rest of the cupcake papers. This way Grandmom can have come carrot cake, and I can still get the nuts I love. (Make sure to use different colored papers to keep everything straight.)

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 1/2 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup coconut
1 (20 oz) can crushed pineapple, drained (a smaller can is fine, I just like really moist carrot cake).

Preheat the oven to 350 F.


Grease either a 9×13″ pan or prepare cupcakes (I love the silicone cupcake holders. Place a cupcake paper in them and you’re set.)

Beat the eggs and the oil. Add the vanilla and sugar, and beat till mixture is light and frothy.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Slowly add the flour mixture to the egg, sugar and oil mixture and mix until batter is smooth. Add the carrots, coconut, pineapple, and nuts.

Pour into rectangular pan or cupcake pans. Bake cake for 35 minutes. Start checking cupcakes after 15 minutes (I still don’t have a set time yet. Eventually.) Cake is done when cake tester comes out clean.

Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 tbs butter, softened
1 lb powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla (Mexican vanilla is awesome here)
1 to 2 tbsp milk

Beat butter and cream cheese. Add powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add milk if needed to think.

Frost cooled carrot cake.

Eat. Yum!

from the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion All-Purpose Baking Cookbook. This is one of the cookbooks I regularly reach for when I’m baking. It’s not quite as good as the All-American Dessert Book, but then it doesn’t have as many tempting pictures, and I’m a sucker for good food pictures.

A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend about her daughter (16 months old) who is learning to talk.

Two things came up in the discussion that, after some thinking, fascinated me.

First, was that she is learning nouns, and doesn’t yet have any verbs. (We had a brief discussion about whether bye-bye was a verb. I concluded it’s a noun.[We’re going bye-bye.]) That’s a very interesting concept. To have words for things, but not words for doing. (IIRC, young children who are first learning verbs speak grammatically correctly [assuming their parents do that is] but once they start to learn the rules of grammar, they seem to forget what they learned intuitively and then make mistakes of tense. Assuming I am remembering correctly.)

What a strange world, to know that things have names, but not to know that actions have associated words.

It also came up that toddlers don’t really have a sense of time (which helps a bit to clarify why verbs are a problem) and for a toddler, everything is NOW. Not only is there no sense of future, there isn’t particularly a memory of the past, at least memory as we have it. You can’t tell a toddler “we’ll do that in five minutes” or “in a couple hours” because those ideas don’t make any sense to them.

I remember reading one story written from the sense of a creature that had no sense of past or future but only now. It was in the first Thieves’ World anthology series, and was written from the point of view of a dog. The idea in that story is that there is a sense of recognition or places or smells, but not of the past or future. It was a world of nouns, with only a few verbs, such as RUN and SMELL.

Is that how the world of a toddler is? Do they have a memory of senses, but not of events? What a frightening world that would be: not only would you have no control over anything in your life, you would recognize presences that are comforting (or not) and smells and sounds, but if someone goes away, you have no guarantee they will ever return.

I think it’s far more difficult than we imagine, being a child.

Well, I survived yesterday’s day without my computers. I did chores (boo), went out do dinner (yay!), and read two books (yay!).

I don’t have a personal computer ban today, but I’m going to try and avoid spending large chunks of time on the Internet today.

Maybe I can read another two books.