It’s time for word association! Today’s word is: coal

No pics today folks, I find myself needing long breaks while baking to put my foot up, so I didn’t bother with the camera.

I did, however, attempt my first loaves of sourdough bread. I think I’m going to need to work at it a bit. The dough turned out entirely too moist and sticky, so I ended up dumping the mess into bread pans least I end up with sourdough crackers. The loves, unsurprisingly, look ugly. Very ugly.

But that’s okay. I’ve got time to learn. And if I decided it’s not working out, I have no problems going back to normal yeast breads–I’ve still got plenty of experimentation to do there as well.

And since I don’t have any pictures of my own for you, I leave you with this: an xkcd wedding cake.

Labor Day in the United States exists to celebrate the rights that workers in the United States have achieved in the past century, and to give us time to allow those who keep the power on and the trains running and all those other jobs that require you to get your hands dirty, a day to be recognized for their work.

We must remember the past, and some of the incidents that made labor unions so critical, and continue to make them important today.

Health and safety have improved vastly across the board in the past century. We hope never to have another incident like The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, where 146 men, women and girls died when the exits were barred and a fire broke out.

However, some industries seem hardly to have changed in the past century. Farmworkers struggle to live on less money than most Americans make in a year.

The median personal income from farm work and other work sources combined was between $5,000 and $7,500.

And the modern meatpacking industry seems in some ways hardly to have moved beyond conditions described by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle.”

…the reported injury and illness rate for meatpacking was a staggering 20 per hundred full-time workers in 2001…

…OSHA administrators and independent researchers have found a common corporate practice [in the meatpacking industry] of underreporting injuries of all kinds. One recent estimate puts the undercount of nonfatal occupational injuries across industrial sectors as high as 69 percent.“

And then there is the industry of my home state, the coal industry. From the Mine Wars in the US of over a century ago, to modern mine disasters, such as the Upper Big Branch Mine and the Sago Mine men die while trying to make a living digging coal.

[Massey Energy] amassed more than 1,100 violations in the past three years, many of them serious. Federal regulators even ordered parts of the mine closed 60 times over the past year.

…two Massey Energy Co. officials who spent four unsupervised hours underground immediately after the deadly April 5 explosion.

[Coal companies including ICG and Massey Energy] …hope to use newly loosened campaign-finance laws to pool their money and defeat Democratic congressional candidates they consider “anti-coal,” …” they want to “”create a politically active nonprofit under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so they won’t have to publicly disclose their activities — such as advertising — until they file a tax return next year…

Today is the day to remember those who have lost their lives and their health doing nothing more than trying to make living.

Yeah, my garden is still a mess and I am resigned that it will remain so until next year. But there are still a few bright spots of beauty.

A volunteer sunflower!
(more…)

You may remember that a couple weeks ago someone busted up part of our fence.

Yesterday, Michael finally got around to making the preliminary fixes. He had to purchase new support poles, but the rails managed to (somehow) come through unscathed, and so could be used again.

He just go the poles in the ground yesterday to get the fence up. Cementing them in the ground will come later.

Why do I have a fence you may ask? Because this is not even close to the first time someone has driven into your yard. (They have also take out the light post, driven into the upper yard, and knocked the hell out of the railing around the parking space.)

(more…)

You won’t move? Fine. Won’t stop me from sitting Right Here.

It’s word association day! Today’s word is: shopping

Or would you rather be a fish?

It’s time for the once a semester GA meeting, so, as the one who called the meeting, I figure it’s my job to supply enticements.

Last meeting was a week after I broke my ankle, so all they got was pizza, but this time I felt up (with rest & elevate the ankle breaks) to make cookies.

Mmmmm!

Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright

I had a Monday. How about you?

Funny how some life changing events don’t seem to be so at the time.

When I fell on May 14th, I didn’t have a clue how much my life would change in the following months.

Of course there was being laid up for six weeks–that I knew when I came out of surgery–it was everything else that came as a surprise.

First, there is a lot of stuff going on that I’m not writing about, because it doesn’t involve just me, but one major thing is that my grandmother has been in Virginia with my aunt & uncle since the 16th of May, and while she was there she fell and broke her femur, and now we have no idea when (or if) she’ll return to Morgantown. That’s a major thing.

But there are little things as well.

I am a very active person (some might even classify me as hyperactive) so not being able to dash up and down the stairs or walk at warp speed is quite bizarre. And this led to the other unforeseen consequence: I gained weight, and it’s not coming off. It’s not a lot of weight, just enough that most of my pants are too tight and I need to go up a size, but since I was wearing nothing but skirts and sweats for six weeks, it did come as something of a shock. The fact I’m can’t get enough aerobic exercise to help me drop the weight was a little more unpleasant.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not obsessed about my weight, the most annoying thing is I need to buy new pants, and I hate shopping.

But this is the new normal for me.

I’m hesitant to mess with my diet too much, because the x-rays made it quite clear that I still have a lot of healing to do, and I am not going to do anything to jeopardize. So for now, I’m going to accept this as the way things are, and concentrate on doing what I need to so I can again run up and down the stairs and walk across the building at warp speed. Once I’ve reached that point, then I can worry about dropping a pants size.

After all, “If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.”

Nothing to see here, move along.

OK, well, if you insist:

So You Need a Typeface

iFixit

Russian, in color, a century ago + this + this

The start of the awesome Chickweed Lane comic WWII thread

Supernatural collective nouns (Wondermark)

Flickr – The Commons

Flickr – Pulp Fiction Cover Gallery

The Chart of Fantasy Art: Urban Fantasy

Trends in Fantasy Art Covers

The Best of Miss Sweetie Poo (Improbable Research/IgNobels)

Well, I did say they were for ME, and not for you. It’s not MY fault if you were bored.

Happy 90th anniversary of women having the right to vote! Go us!