Say What?

I received a Facebook friend request Sunday night along with a short message: "Last night, my niece and I were going to try making lefse for the first time. (I inherited my moms lefse making equipment, but had never made lefse with her). Since we didn't really know what we were doing, I sent Ashley to the computer to find us a YouTube video to watch. She found one and we watched it. When we were finished, I checked to see who made it. Low and behold, it was your lefse making video. There are scores of lefse making videos out there, and we watched the one made by the guy across the street. How funny is that! Jenny" It sure can be a small world at times! Here's the video Jenny was referring to. I've been battling a sinus infection for weeks. I finally broke down yesterday and went in to be seen and walked away with a prescription for Amoxicillin. I'm happy to finally be on the mend. This thing has been kicking my butt the past week. I'm sit...

My Candy Crush fixation has begun to wane after a few months of diligent play. I'm on level 257 and finding that the game doesn't intrigue me the way it once did. It's been a good run but perhaps it's time to find another distraction. Hmmm. I'm considering reinstalling Wordfeud on my phone. I was quite sure I wouldn't be putting up Christmas lights this holiday season, in fact, I promised myself that last year would be the end of the tradition. I'm a softy. Over the last week or so my resolve to go into these holidays in a less than festive mood is weakening and the idea of involving our new addition in our outdoor light display has been gaining momentum; so much so that I went out to Fleet Farm yesterday and bought a bunch more LED light sets. I've sort of wanted to lay some off-white lights over the top of our pergola so this will be the motivation I need to get out there and do it. I took yesterday off from work so I could get a head-start on the ...

I was driving home from work recently, flipping through stations on the radio until stopping on a Christian station that at one time in my life not all that long ago I would occasionally listen to. The person hosting the show was laying into Jehovah's Witnesses and how they're all going to hell because they're not interpreting the Bible the way he thinks they should. When he finished bashing them, he turned his attention to the practice of judging other people while encouraging his listeners to be more judgmental of one another and to not follow the trend in some circles of society where being judgmental is frowned on. He said the Bible calls on us to judge one another and that we should be doing this constantly throughout the day. Great. Let's all do that. I'd like to begin by judging him but really, I've got better things to do. I reached toward the radio and said something I shouldn't have before turning to NPR, upset with the thought that this guy has ...

When Tammy was in college she took a watercolor painting class as an elective study. She put together a nice portfolio of work during the class but in the 18 or so years since then, she hasn't taken the time to dabble in the art. I've tried over the years to encourage her to get back into it but I'm not one to nag. But she's finally going to! She signed up for a watercolor class taught by a local artist and will work with her over the next month. She's excited about it and so am I. I told her that I can totally see her setting up out in the sun-porch with her materials; it will be a perfect spot. She has a birthday coming up next month and I think I'd like to get her an easel. Rachel is in Maryland this weekend for another ballroom dance competition. I got a text from her Friday afternoon as they passed near New York on their way: "NYC doesn't scare me anymore" "you know how it can be a bit intimidating at first? I can handle it now...

"I got a text from Rachel a few days ago: "Soooo the amazing race...are we gonna make it happen?" The Amazing Race is a program on CBS that we've been following since it first aired in 2001. It's a 'reality tv' show where contestants complete challenges as they race around the world. We've been talking about trying out for the show for at least the last six years . They're taking applications now for the cast/participants of the next race which is planned for this coming spring and summer. It would work for Rachel's schedule but not mine...unless I retire. Hmmm. The show is as much about relationships as it is about a race and they've never had a stepfather/stepdaughter combination. We've always thought that could work to our advantage. Rachel said she'd compile a storyboard of our lives together for a video submission from us. We'll see. I finally made it out to the mountain bike trails at Murphy Hanrehan Park about 6 m...

Politics. I sometimes enjoy kicking around political topics on forums and Facebook but I'm growing weary of it. Maybe it was all of the venomous political back-and-forth associated with the government shutdown the previous two weeks that sapped my desire for it. I was in one conversation where a woman was ranting about 260 billion Muslims and how 10% of them are terrorists and blah blah blah. I had to ask her several times to please explain what she was referring to because she wasn't making sense and did she have a link? She condescendingly told me that the information is online and that all I had to do was Google it. I replied that there are only just a little over 7 billion people on the planet and her 260 billion number was confusing me to which she replied: "my bad, lol". It's that sort of thing that has me questioning why I bother to try. I doubt I'll throw in the towel but I think I'll be more selective about who I engage with. Politics 'now...

My life is one that is sometimes conflicted because my actions don't always reflect what's in my heart. I'm an animal lover but yet I eat meat. I confess that I'm a hypocrite in that regard. Maybe you saw the video a few weeks ago of some NRA lobbyist killing an elephant. I was troubled by it as were many others. Elephants are being illegally killed for their ivory at an unsustainable rate yet this is allowed to happen. How does someone justify that? I can only guess that the big-game hunter is seriously lacking in some other area of his life. With that video fresh in my mind I saw this  and it brought the previous video into an even more sobering perspective. It really touched me. To think that their bond had survived all those years is just so moving. We've had a changing of the guard . The guy who delivered our new mower took one look at the mower I was trading in and said: "we get maybe 1 in 50 that look that nice!" That was nice to hear because I ...