Friday, January 24, 2014

Been busy with life!

Well, it's been quite a while since I posted, even though there are things going on politically that cheese me off - but I've been busy with life, and just blew them off.

I also learned in the past few months, make sure your passwords are difficult, and don't use the same password here & there.  Someone got into my NewEgg account, and was purchasing themselves an Iphone 5.  THEN they got into my Sephora account, and was purchasing themselves some perfume. So I got a new debit card, and both NewEgg and Sephora are looking into it. So, I got myself new passwords. I still haven't memorized ANY of them! I misplaced where I put my Google password, so I couldn't log into my blog lol.

I had been seeing commercials for Ancestry.com DNA test..and was curious, as I was adopted, and had no idea what parts of the world my forebears were from...well $99 and 2 months later, I've found out!

1% Africa Southeastern Bantu -Primarily located in: South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda

9% Asia East - Primarily located in: Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Palau

3% Asia Central - Primarily located in: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

44% Ireland

20% Great Britain

10% Scandinavia

5% Iberian Peninsula

3% Finland/Northern Russia

1% Italy/Greece

2% Pacific Islander - Primarily located in: Tonga, Samoa

So I'm quite the Heinz 57!

and the Asian would explain 2 of my kid's eyes - both have Asian eyes. 

We have temperatures in the 40s today here, and a nice fire going in the fireplace to help heat the house.  The space heater has been going the whole time so far today, and not quite keeping up with keeping the house warm.  
I've found a new love for diced tomatoes - the fire-roasted diced tomatoes. They have a wonderful flavor, esp. sauteed with sliced zucchini.  Usually I don't like tomatoes, but these are really good. Give them a try in your next meal. 

Oh yes - BIG news - my youngest is married! They "secretly" got married August 1st, 2013, but wanted to still have the big wedding. They are trying to figure out how to come clean on this marriage, even though most of the people at church have already come to that conclusion lol.  Her wedding dress comes in next month. They are thinking about having the big wedding on their 1st anniversary.  kids! they drive you nuts! 

speaking of nuts, check this out: 

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Back online!

Our internet was out for a while - the Helpful Kitty chewed on a wire leading to the antenna's modem,  and the guy wires for the antenna on the roof required replacing - one had broken.  My house is a lot cleaner now than before, as there wasn't a whole lot to do...TV usually stinks anyway, and so....I cleaned.

Hubby and I had our 25th anniversary last month, we went on a cruise to Alaska!  Travelogue to come - it's on hubby's laptop right now, and he's got it at work with him.  Also I have pictures of Alaska on my Flickr page, but I have to finish uploading photos - those are forthcoming along with what we did on our travel.

Well, the government has shut down.  Funny, stuff is still running, mail is still being delivered, planes are still flying, the only thing is - most of what has been shut down is an annoyance to the PEONS we are (as compared to the ruling class).  National parks have been shut down - IMHO, give those to the states to run - it's in THEIR state, the fed should not be running those.

I read a really good blog post about what is happening during the shut-down - http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/10/government-shuts-down-nation-descends.html

The savage population, which had only been kept in line through a policy of rigorous gun 
confiscations, food stamps and Green Energy programs unleashed its pent up rage in a spree of riots, looting and mass murder that had only previously been encountered in Somalia.

Riots, looting, cannibalism!  I found the link over here > http://thepeoplescube.com/  which is a riot to read! Some good stuff over there.

I was reading a post by Erick Erickson, over at RedState, http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/02/hold-your-ground-and-shut-john-cornyn-up/  and came across this gem:

Then there are John Boehner and Eric Cantor’s staff. Good grief. If you sprinkled salt on them they’d shrivel up.

Slugs! 

I emailed John Cornyn (the RINO) and told him he'd better grow a spine, and hold the position of not funding Obamacare.  Last time I emailed him, I told him if he kept acting this way, I'd go to every house in our county if necessary, to urge them to NOT vote for him, to vote for the opponent.  There's about 14,000 households in this county.. I'd do my best to go to every one.

TALK ABOUT STUPID! sites that are static, that DONT change at all (like the census site) are down.  This is pure spite on the part of the Fed to annoy people.

Obamacare website doesn't work half the time, but it's still up & running.  Guess that ideology rules all.   Ideology is what gave us Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot.  It's what drives the left.

It was Reid that shut down the government - the R's gave three! different bills funding the government, and NOT funding Obamacare, yet Reid turned it all down.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/09/30/report-reid-urging-obama-not-to-negotiate-with-gop-n1713389

Well I guess I will go finish cleaning :)

Oops had to edit to add this little nugget of joy:




Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Okra and stuff

I was reading my FB home page this morning, and my oldest daughter, who lives up in Arlington (a suburb of Dallas), had posted this: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/08/a_swat_team_raided_arlingtons.php

A ....communal living place - had been raided by a SWAT team. Why? because of the name on their website.  A cop "felt" that their wording was suspect.  So they send a helicopter over, and "see marijuana growing".  And a 'tipster' said there were guns on the place.  Imagine this, they actually had the gall to have a fence around their place, with only one exit. Funny, there are a lot of houses around this area that have the same style of fence - the opening only at the driveway.  When we had a fenced backyard (before the black lab knocked it down), there was only one opening. How suspicious!

But back to this SWAT raid...they get up, handcuff everyone, and find.. nothing.  So what do they do? make them mow the grass (in case there's pot growing amid the blades of grass!) and rip out their okra, blackberries, lambs ear, and other garden stuff.  I guess there were no Aggies in the SWAT team, as they evidently couldn't tell the difference between pot and okra.

OH MY GOSH! I GROW OKRA! WILL I BE NEXT!

And no guns were found.

This is just rank stupidity.

To go with this, I was reading an email I get, Godfather Politics, an article about whether Christians are obligated to support marijuana prohibition (and the war on drugs).  The full article is here: http://godfatherpolitics.com/12014/dea-crackdown-christians-are-not-obligated-to-support-marijuana-prohibition/

I learned about a preacher back in Prohibition days, J. Gresham Machen, who was against Prohibition...also jaywalking laws, and other stuff (rise of the police state basically).

He wrote several books, including the book "Christianity and Liberalism", which can be had at Amazon, in several formats, including Kindle. It's on my wish list.

Here is the book description:

This classic defense of orthodox Christianity, written to counter the liberalism that arose in the early 1900s, establishes the importance of scriptural doctrine and contrasts the teachings of liberalism and orthodoxy on God and man, the Bible, Christ, salvation, and the church. J. Gresham Machens Christianity and Liberalism has remained relevant through the years ever since its original publication in 1923. It was named one of the top 100 books of the millennium by World magazine and one of the top 100 books of the twentieth century by Christianity Today. / An admirable book. For its acumen, for its saliency, and for its wit, this cool and stringent defense of orthodox Protestantism is, I think, the best popular argument produced [in the controversy between Christianity and liberalism]. / Walter Lippmann in A Preface to Morals / It is my conviction that Machens book can still speak today. . . . Even for those who do not agree with his central thesis, Christianity and Liberalism can still be understood as representing one of the literary artifacts of a generation that had come to see liberalism as leading inexorably to a sentimentalized religion that had nothing to do with the God of the Bible or, indeed, with real life. / Carl R. Trueman (from the foreword) / Westminster Theological Seminary

Some books seem timeless, like Frederick Bastiat's The Law, which was written around 1848, but is still appropriate for today.  http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html   It's a fairly short read - it was a pamphlet put out.  I highly recommend reading it.  Okra

Monday, July 29, 2013

What exactly IS the reason?

I'm wondering WHY Huma Weiner (wife of A. Weiner, famous sexter) is staying with this louse...and I cannot come up with a reason for her to stay with this little twerp.   He's been caught (again) with his pants down.

I read Robert Spencer's excellent blog, Jihadwatch, and his possible reason for her staying with the pervert is about the only reason that really makes sense. The woman has money, is a good friend of Hilary Clinton, so it's not like she'd be down and out financially, status-wise, or anything like that.

Robert Spencer did an interview over at FrontPageMag, (I think that is David Horowitz's?) that gives a well-thought-out rationale for her to stay with him.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/jamie-glazov/abedinweiner-a-marriage-made-by-hillary-clinton-and-the-muslim-brotherhood/

Read it all. If you want some background on Islam, Jihadwatch also has "Blogging the Koran", which does a good explanation of the verses, and  how it's put together, etc.

I also recommend his books, good reads, all of them!

And in case you guys felt hungry for something, here is what we are having for dinner tonight:

Bacon/Mushroom Quiche (serves only 2 at our house!)

1 smallish onion, diced fine
about 8 slices thick-cut bacon (about..and I nibble while baking, so it turns out to be less than 8 slices!)
8 oz package fresh mushrooms, sliced
about 1/4 cup red wine (don't cook with wine that you would not drink - you don't want bad wine)
1.5 cups shredded swiss cheese
2 tbsp flour (mix with shredded cheese)
3 eggs
2 cups half & half (or heavy cream if you prefer)
pie crust (I use those pre-made rolled up pillsbury pie crusts that are refrigerated, that come in packs of 2)
10" pie plate

Slice bacon into bits, and fry up in a skillet.  Remove, and drain on paper towels.  Keeping some of the bacon grease in the pan,   Stir in the onion, saute just a bit till tender, then throw in sliced mushrooms, add the wine. I eyeball the amount of wine I put in this. Cook down till the mushrooms and onions are cooked. Set aside.   Preheat oven to 425f.  When it's ready, put pie crust (thawed) into pie plate, and prick a bit.. put into the hot oven for about 5 to 7 minutes - just enough to partially cook - making sure if you get a bubble in it, stick a fork in it & deflate it - take it out, while pie crust is hot, turn oven down to 350, spread cooked bacon bits around inside the pie crust, then  mix the onion/mushroom mixture with the eggs (beaten together with the cream), and then stir in the floured cheese - stir it up good,  and pour into the hot pie crust.    Stick back into the oven until knife inserted in center comes out clean - about 50 to 55 minutes.

We're having this with green beans tonight :)

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The simpler life

Oh, how we look back on past times as "the simpler life" without all these darn rules and regulations that the bloated Federal government (illegally, mind you - Congress is authorized to pass law - not individual agencies) lays upon us.  Let's travel back to days gone by...


With a SEARS CATALOGUE! Yep, that old toilet paper stand-in, from 1934, when probably quite a few people still used outhouses out in the country.

You can page through it's glory here > http://www.lileks.com/30s/sears1934/index.html  I'm up past page 84.

This is a great sucker-up of your time however, as I preheated the oven, but forgot to put the cottage pie in the oven to bake for when hubby got home from work last night.  The commentary at the bottom of each page is pretty darn good too...especially on the mineral oil (not a laxative!) page.

Don't know if I've blogged about this before, but if I did, I apologize. This is just interesting, looking at the prices, the items offered, and a bit of history.


Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tale of a Ponzi Scheme

I was reading over at ZeroHedge (some great articles over there), and found this analogy, which is quite good!

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Did you know that you are involved in the most massive Ponzi scheme that has ever existed? To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Sam. When he was younger, he had been a very principled young man that had worked incredibly hard and that had built a large number of tremendously successful businesses. He became fabulously wealthy and he accumulated far more gold than anyone else on the planet. But when he started to get a little older he forgot the values of his youth. He started making really bad decisions and some of his relatives started to take advantage of him. One particularly devious relative was a nephew named Fred. One day Fred approached his uncle Sam with a scheme that his friends the bankers had come up with. What happened next would change the course of Sam's life forever.

Even though Sam was the wealthiest man in the world by far, Fred convinced Sam that he could have an even higher standard of living by going into a little bit of debt. In exchange for IOUs issued by his uncle Sam, Fred would give him paper notes that he printed off on his printing press. Since the paper notes would be backed by the gold that Sam was holding, everyone would consider them to be valuable. Sam could take those paper notes and spend them on whatever his heart desired. Uncle Sam started to do this, and he started to become addicted to all of the nice things that those paper notes would buy him.

Fred took the IOUs that he received from his uncle and he auctioned them off to the bankers. But there was a problem. The IOUs issued by Uncle Sam had to be paid back with interest. When the time came to pay back the IOUs, Uncle Sam could not afford to pay back the debts, pay the interest on those debts, and buy all of the nice things that he wanted. So Uncle Sam issued even more IOUs than before so that he could get enough notes to pay off his debts. As time rolled on, this pattern just kept on repeating. Uncle Sam repeatedly paid off his old debts by taking out even larger new debts.

Meanwhile, since the notes that Uncle Sam was using were backed by gold, everyone else in the world decided to start using them to trade with one another. This was greatly beneficial to Uncle Sam, because the rest of the world was glad to send him oil, home electronics, plastic trinkets and anything else that Uncle Sam wanted in exchange for his gold-backed notes.

Eventually, however, the rest of the world started to suspect that the number of gold-backed notes that Uncle Sam was issuing far exceeded the amount of gold that Uncle Sam actually had. So the rest of the world started to trade in their notes for gold.

And by that time Uncle Sam definitely did not have enough gold to back up his notes. Realizing that the scheme was starting to collapse, one day Uncle Sam announced that his notes would no longer be backed by gold. But he insisted that the rest of the world should continue using his notes because he was the wealthiest man on the planet and everyone should just trust him.

And the rest of the world did continue to trust him, although it wasn't the same as before.

As Uncle Sam got greedier and greedier, he started to issue IOUs and spend notes at a rate that nobody ever dreamed possible. The great businesses that Uncle Sam had built when he was younger were starting to decline, and Uncle Sam started buying far more stuff from the rest of the world than they bought from him. The rest of the world was still glad to take Uncle Sam's notes because they used them to trade with one another, but they started accumulating far more notes than they actually needed.

Not sure exactly what to do with mountains of these notes, the rest of the world started to loan them back to Uncle Sam. It eventually got to the point where Uncle Sam owed the rest of the world trillions of these notes. Even though the notes were losing value at a rate of close to 10 percent a year, Uncle Sam somehow convinced the rest of the world to loan him notes at an average rate of interest of less than 3 percent a year.

One day Uncle Sam woke up and realized that the amount of debt that he owed was now more than 5000 times larger than it was when Fred had first approached him with this ill-fated scheme. Uncle Sam now owed more than 16 trillion notes to his creditors, and Uncle Sam had already made future financial commitments of 202 trillion notes that he would never be able to pay. Meanwhile, the notes that Fred had been printing up for Uncle Sam were now worth less than 5 percent of their original value. Uncle Sam was becoming concerned because some of his other relatives were warning that this whole scheme was about to collapse.

Sadly, Uncle Sam did not listen to them. Uncle Sam knew that if he admitted how fraudulent the financial scheme was, the rest of the world would quit sending him all of the things that he needed in exchange for his notes and they would quit lending his notes back to him at super low interest rates.

And if the rest of the world lost confidence in his notes and quit using them, Uncle Sam knew that his standard of living would go way, way down. That was something that Uncle Sam could not bear to have happen.

When a financial crisis almost caused the scheme to crash in 2008, a desperate Uncle Sam went to Fred and asked for help. In response, Fred started printing up far more notes than ever before and started directly buying up large amounts of IOUs from Uncle Sam with the notes that he was creating out of thin air. Fred hoped that the rest of the world would not notice what he was doing.

It seemed to work for a little while, but then an even worse financial crisis came along. Once again, Uncle Sam started issuing massive amounts of new IOUs and Fred started printing up giant mountains of new notes to try to fix things, but their desperate attempts to keep the system going were to no avail. The rest of the world started to realize that they had been sucked into a massive Ponzi scheme, and they lost confidence in the notes that Uncle Sam was using. Suddenly nobody wanted to lend notes to Uncle Sam at super low interest rates anymore, and people started asking for far more notes in exchange for the things that Uncle Sam wanted.

Uncle Sam's standard of living dropped dramatically. Since he could no longer flood the world with his notes, Uncle Sam could not continue to consume far, far more wealth than he produced. Uncle Sam sunk into a deep depression as he watched the scheme fall apart all around him.

Uncle Sam had once been the wealthiest man on the entire planet, but now he was a broke, tired old man that was absolutely drowning in debt. Unfortunately, once he was down on his luck the rest of the world did not have any compassion for him. In fact, much of the rest of the world celebrated the downfall of Uncle Sam.

All of this could have been avoided if Uncle Sam had never agreed to Fred's crazy scheme. And once Uncle Sam made the decision to stop backing his notes with gold, it was only a matter of time before the scheme was going to collapse.

Does this little story sound crazy to you? It shouldn't. The truth is that you are involved in such a scheme right now. In case you haven't figured it out, "Uncle Sam" is the United States, the "notes" are U.S. dollars, and "Fred" is the Federal Reserve.

Please share this story with as many people as you can. Our country is headed for complete and total financial disaster, and we need to get people educated about this while there is still time.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday's thinkings

Well.. I am rather glad hubby did NOT qualify for the Boston Marathon this year, as on Boyleston Street, is where I (and last year my  youngest) watch the race. And it would be about the time that hubby would be coming in, crossing the finish line.  God is so good!  Although hubby was upset about his knees, God works in ways that we have no idea of, and no realization that it's for our (sometimes eventual) good.  Monday his co-workers were coming by his desk, calling him, and emailing him, to make sure he wasn't at the Marathon again this year.

I was watching the news a while ago, and this picture recently came to mind from a conversation about President Pookie and Vladimir Putin:


Femen was protesting, and it appears that Putin enjoyed it hahaha! I don't even remember what they were protesting, it's just that Putin's expression struck me as funny.

Just to make Bobby G.hungry (go visit his blog at http://the-pa-in-connection.blogspot.com/ - he posts every day, and more than my hit-or-miss postings!), I was looking at my Facebook, and the preacher's wife had posted this lovely picture of mini muffin corndogs! It looks easy, tasty, and something you can do with your small children (or grandchildren), and that they would enjoy:



Ingredients:

1/2 cup melted butter (or 1/4 cup butter + 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce)
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
8-10 all-beef hot dogs, cut into 1″ bites

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine butter and sugar in a bowl, and whisk to combine. Add eggs and whisk to incorporate. Add buttermilk and whisk to incorporate.

In a separate bowl, combine baking soda, cornmeal, flour, and salt, and stir to combine. Whisk into wet ingredients in two batches.

Spray a mini muffin tin with non-stick spray, and spoon 1 Tablespoon of batter into each mini muffin cup. Place one hot dog bite into the middle of each cup.

Bake for 8-12 minutes (oven temperatures vary), or until cornbread is golden brown. Cool in mini muffin tin for 5 minutes before serving. Store leftovers in the refrigerator, and re-heat for 20-30 seconds before serving.

Hubby is attending the ODTUG (Oracle) computer conference this year, in New Orleans - I am going with, and I'm looking forward to getting back there again.  We were last there (for a previous conference) in May 2005, a few months before Katrina hit.  I'm hoping the knitting/yarn store is still there on Royal Street, plus I plan on spending a full day at the WW2 Museum there. Last time we were there I spent a few hours, got to talk to a man that had been at the D-Day invasion of France, and they were planning on expanding into the Pacific theater in the coming years.   Their website is http://www.ddaymuseum.org/  They have an exhibit on POWs in Germany while we will be there, I am looking forward to seeing that.

For your entertainment, here is the link to the gift from Houston that keeps on giving - the Congresswomaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Sheila Jackson Lee - audio of her: http://michaelberry.iheart.com/pages/SheilaJacksonLee.html

Did you know we still have a N. Vietnam and a S. Vietnam?  Enjoy, and get a hearty laugh...at one of the people that keep getting elected to DC.