Verification

I read this on my favorite pundit's website under some of the comments...

Every Democrat elected governor of Illinois since 1960 has either gone to jail or been impeached.

WOAH! Is this true? Can anyone verify this?

I don't consider myself a Republican, but I also don't consider myself a Democrat. And if I lived in Illinois, I would definitely not be voting for any of those hooligans.

New in Town and Gran Torino

We generally don't make it out to the movies much, but since I'd been able to see a couple of movies over the last few weeks, I thought I'd post about them.

About two weeks ago, I caught New in Town with a couple of girls from work. Since we were all without our husbands, we decided on a chick flick. The previews looked good, and since He's Not That Into You wasn't playing at our preferred theatre yet, it was our choice by default.

I was pleasantly surprised. The movie wasn't too sappy and really was a cute film. A corporate girl from Miami is sent to small town Minnesota to downsize the local manufacturing plant - in the dead of winter. After managing to insult the entire town, she begins to fall in love with the heavily-accented caricatures of the area and changes her mind about them.


On the opposite end of the spectrum was Gran Torino. We did a double-date this weekend and caught it with the 'rents. I can't remember the last time that I saw a Clint Eastwood movie, but this was also a good one.

Gran Torino starts out with Walt Kowalski, a retired Ford assembly line worker and Korean War vet, at his wife's funeral. He sees his kids and grand kids as overindulged, selfish people who are only interested him when they think they will benefit from it.

The movie is about how Walt deals with the decline of his once-beautiful suburban neighborhood and his own racism when a young Hmong family moves in next door. The eternal grump, he makes enemies with several different ethnic groups and gangs while forging a friendship with his new neighbors.

Clint's real-life son has a small role as neighbor Sue's date who gets cornered by some local thugs.

If you can get past all of the language, it's a very good movie.

I had several people see and recommend Slumdog Millionare to me over the weekend, so maybe I can talk Matt into seeing it with me before we have to put it on our Netflix queue...

Back-Breaking

Matt's broken back.

This is a big thank you to my honey who spent a good bit of the weekend entertaining my plant obsessions by taking me to Bennett's on Valentine's Day, and then helping me move some monster plants around in the yard on Sunday.


He even broke the "25-Year Warranty" shovel we bought to replace our previously-broken shovel. (Gave me a good excuse to go to Lowe's and get more yard stuff!) This isn't our shovel - since it's now out at the street - but it might as well have been as this is how ours ended up.

This morning, Matt didn't wake up with his usual get-to-work-by-6:45-AM-vigor, and told me it was because he was too sore (from my yard honey-do list). I felt kind of bad, but not bad enough to not ask him for help this next weekend. :) (Hey, I can't lift those 15' climbing roses by myself.)

A Little Culture

Last weekend, we went to Atlanta for a dose of culture. Manda Panda pointed out that the Atlanta Civic Center was hosting the King Tut Exhibit while the High Museum of Art was displaying the Chinese Terracotta Soldiers down the street. She was able to purchase tickets in advance for us at < half price!

The King Tut exhibit, going on in Atlanta through May, was pretty good. It featured a good movie on the discoveries of the mummified Pharaohs of Egypt and the 1923 discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamum, as well as a ton of artifacts from within the tomb and all over Egypt. It was pretty interesting.

As most people know, King Tut became king when he was around 8 or 9 years old and died mysteriously around age 19. What I was most surprised by was the state of his tomb. It wasn't a grand pyramid, but a hole in the ground comprised of three or four small rooms with items stacked up in piles in them. It could have been a different tomb than where he was originally buried, meant to protect his tomb from looters. It is amazing that it avoided discovery and looting, and that it was found and emptied shortly before the tomb collapsed.


My favorite exhibit was the Chinese Terracotta Soldiers display. It was in the High Museum of Art (get there early, or go on a weekday... it was packed!) - which I could have spent several more hours at perusing the other galleries (your ticket gives you access to the entire museum). This display will be in Atlanta until April 19th, and I would highly recommend it. By the way... if the line for the exhibit is really long, you can get to it by going through the Art Museum's adjacent/attached building instead of waiting with everyone else to take the elevator.

The Terracotta Army was very interesting. China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, had a whole clay city built for him to govern when he died. It consisted of over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses, clay animals, minstrels, acrobats, court officials, mercury rivers, a whole palace complex, and the tomb of the emporer in the middle. The whole complex covers a huge area, estimated at 2 square miles, and has over 600 pits with buried clay figures.

Matt's uncle has a jade replica of one of the Chinese generals (only nine have been excavated) in his home. We made friends with him this summer.

The complex was built around 210 BC and discovered in 1974. The excavators have been working for over three decades and have yet to unearth a lot of the items. The tomb has not been excavated yet and is believed to remain largely intact.

Check out the High Museum's info on the history of the tomb.

Valentine's Ox

(AP) "Nineteen-day-old ox 'Heart,' born with a heart-shaped marking on his forehead, relaxes at Yamakun farm in Fujisawa, near Tokyo, Japan, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009. Kazunori Yamazaki, 51-year-old farm owner, said, 'Good timing for Valentine's Day.' "

Crepe Murder - Don't Do It!

Each spring, Matt and I cringe when we drive by those peaceful, Southern trees called Crepe Myrtles (or, Crape Myrtles, depending on your spelling preference), that have been hacked back to knobby/gnarly stubs.

People seem to want to cut off the limbs of crepe myrtles because they think it will promote blooming (since blooms appear on new growth), but the result is a damaged and mutilated tree that is also quite ugly.

Dave's Garden, one of my favorite resources for infinite gardening information, has a wonderful article on how to properly prune and appreciate a crepe myrtle.

A beautiful row of crepe myrtles.

Crepe Murder ("topping") is a very common problem; a quick Google search yielded lots of images and web pages on the subject. The University of Florida has a good article on how to avoid - and recover from - crepe murder.

"Although topping may result in larger blooms, those flowers will grow on thinner, weaker branches that will droop--especially after rain--and may even break. Topping may also shorten the life of your trees.

"To properly prune crape myrtles, use the following techniques.

• Remove suckers from the bottom of the plant.
• Remove crossed, damaged, or diseased branches. For crossed branches, remove the weaker of the two limbs that are crossing or rubbing.
• Prune the tips of the branches to remove old flowers. If old blooms are removed, a second blooming may occur.
• Thin out small twiggy growth to allow air to better circulate in the canopy.
• [Pruning should be done in late winter/early spring before new growth begins. Avoid pruning in late fall because this will force new growth and can prevent the tree from going dormant.]
  

"You have two options for rehabilitating a "murdered" crape myrtle.

• The first method is to choose the strongest two or three sprouts from each stub and remove all of the other sprouts. This will encourage the remaining sprouts to be stronger and the canopy of the tree to be airier. If you follow this procedure for a couple of seasons, the tree is sure to be much improved in health and appearance.
• The second--and more drastic--technique is to cut the tree back to within one to two inches of the ground while the tree is dormant. After two to three weeks of growth, select three to five of the most vigorous new shoots on each trunk and remove all others. Remove any new shoots that emerge later. Within three to five years, you will again have a natural-looking crape myrtle."

'Raspberry Swirl' Crepe Myrtle blooms

Crepe Myrtles come in lots of colors and sizes. You can prune them into a bush or tree shape, but never top them off. They have beautiful bark to admire in the winter and brightly colored leaves in the fall. They're a year-round beauty and put up with our hot and humid summers without a fuss.

PostSecret

Michelle Malkin pointed out this post card from PostSecret and I decided to take a look at their site.


PostSecret is a place you can mail (or email) your secrets on a post card anonymously. They're compiled and posted on the blogsite and/or put in one of their books. The secrets can be funny, sad, thought provoking, etc. I liked this one from 2/1/09:

Atypical Typical Engineer

I got my GRE scores back!

While all of my scores were decent, I thought it was kind of funny when I checked out the mean test scores classified by "broad intended graduate major field".

Next to business students, engineers score the lowest on the analytical writing section of the test, and are right in the middle for their average verbal reasoning scores. While my quantitative (math) scores were on target for my field, my verbal and writing scores were a good bit above the engineering average. In fact, as far as percentiles go, my writing score was the highest of all three categories.

I'm not sure if I should be excited about that or not... does it imply that I'm ahead of the curve, or that the average engineer is behind it??

Matt says that he thinks the average engineer is not known for his skills with the English language. I don't think I'm particularly gifted myself, but I guess I am capable enough - enough that I always got stuck writing the lab reports while my partners were the guys that knew how to wire our circuit before class had even started. I guess everyone has their own strengths (and weaknesses).

Fiscally Responsible

My dad sent me this post from NRO concerning Ms. Pelosi's view of our "fiscally responsible" district:

Fiscal Responsibility [David Freddoso]

Pelosi's spokesman Brendan Daly, on why eleven Democrat House members voted against the stimulus:

"The speaker has said many times that the members are representative of their district . . . Many of the districts are more conservative, and they campaigned on fiscal responsibility, and we understand that."

Surely he did not mean to imply that the stimulus bill was fiscally irresponsible.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18274.html

And She Wonders Why She Wasn't Invited

It's pretty clear why this woman wasn't invited to her sister's wedding.

After showing up univited to her sister's wedding reception to "talk about [their] ongoing family problems", AnnMarie Bricker approached the bride. When the bride, Lori Kappes, tried to ignore her sister's attempts to talk, Bricker jumped on her back and pulled her to the ground. After the groom and two wedding guests pulled Bricker off of the bride, Lori Kappes was left with a broken necklace and missing clumps of hair.

Wow! I'm glad I'm not in that family!

Stimulate This

Okay, so the title of this post sounds kind of dirty, but I was referring to the newly proposed >$825 billion economic stimulus package.

There is a searchable pdf of the proposal here.

Some things in this package include:

- $75 million for smoking cessation
- $4 billion for "neighborhood stabilization" (hello, ACORN)
- $246 in targeted tax breaks for Hollywood
- $600 million to universal health care promotion
- $24 billion to "green job" projects
- $335 million for STD education and prevention.
- $572 million to create 1,235 Coast Guard jobs (this = $460,000+ in spending per job) (pg. 41)
- $200 million for alternative energy vehicles for the Dept. of Defense (p. 23)
- $1.5 billion for a "carbon-capturing contest" (p. 32)
- $3.5 billion for higher education facilities - does this mean that those increased tuition rates due to "the economic times" will be reimbursed? (p. 64)
- $45 million for All Terrain Vehicles - $25mil for ATV restoration and $20mil for trail maintenance/restoration (p. 45)
- $60 million for HIV and chlamydia testing (p. 60)
- $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax
- $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts
- $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years (pg. 42, 83, 84)
- $2 billion for child-care subsidies
- There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons (pg. 13)
- the list just keeps going... see for yourself.

You can't make this stuff up!!

Stripped from the bill include Nancy Pelosi's proposed federal funding for birth control handouts, and $200 million to give the National Mall in Washington, D.C. a facelift (which included 21 million for sod!!). What the heck does this have to do with the economy?!

"The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government." (John Brodigan)

This is just the initial cost if it were to be paid out immediately. With interest over the proposed spending period, the bill will top $1.1 trillion!!!!

Michell Malkin writes, "...the vaunted infrastructure spending will take years and years and years to kick in. Just 7 percent of the total $800 billion-plus stimulus funding would enter the economy by the end of this year...President Obama asserted that there is no disagreement on the need to Do Something. He's wrong. Two hundred economists spoke up this week in an open letter disseminated by the libertarian Cato Institute: 'More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s,' they said. 'More government spending did not solve Japan's 'lost decade' in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today.' "

The Wall Street Journal notes, "This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years...by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus."

John Lott, Jr. notes that the economy isn't actually as bad as some in politics and the media would lead you to believe and that some politicians may actually be making things worse on purpose.

We've already heard how recipients of the last "economic stimulus bill" (TARP) have squandered millions of dollars. $50 million for a private jet, $1 million to remodel an executive's office, hundreds of thousands of dollars on spa days and golf outings.... the list goes on. We don't have to worry about the current proposed bill actually being spent on economic growth - we'll know beforehand that most of it is guaranteed to not be spent on growth.

This is a great example of how you can scare people during a crisis into action - even if that action will most likely make the crisis even bigger.

Note: The bill passed the House vote last night. Our local congressman (D) voted against it. It's going to the Senate soon.

Work of Glass Art

Watch CBS Videos Online

I didn't know that you could weave glass, let alone weave it and create such beautiful objects. Too bad I can't afford any of this stuff!

Bus Driver Brakes for Bad Kids

I read this story and had to laugh. It's one of those stories that you want to laugh at, but you know it's probably not the PC thing to do.

This bus driver apparently slammed on the brakes to throw misbehaving kids from their seats. Now, I would probably be pretty ticked if that were one of my kids being thrown around the bus, especially if they got hurt. Really, this is a definite no-no, but I can sort of understand where she might have been coming from.

I rode the bus for about two years before my best friend was old enough to drive us to school. I loved it. We had a good group of kids on our bus and I also really loved the bus driver, Mrs. Hefner.

However, a few times I had to ride other buses - either because I was going home with a friend or because one of the buses broke down, and some of those routes were no peach. These were not the happy bus rout depicted in Napoleon Dynamite. Depending on who rode the bus, or how full it was, sometimes it was very rowdy. Besides monitoring the kids who liked to make-out in the back seat, the driver often had to break up fights, manage to concentrate on the road with 50 screaming kids behind her, keep kids from mooning the cars behind them, pull spit wads from her hair, and separate bullies from their helpless victims. I did not envy the kids (or drivers) on those routes. Some of those kids probably deserved to be thrown from their seats, or at least have their heads slammed into the seat back in front of them - not that I'm saying that the driver should of done it, of course.

Old or New?

We're about to pick up a new book for our small group study and are considering reading Pilgrim's Progress. The dilemma is... should we read the (old)original version, or a (newer) modern English version (or, let people decide which one they want to read)?

I haven't read Pilgrims Progress since I read the abridged kiddie version probably close to 20 years ago. My 4th grade teacher, Miss Hoogwerf, however did read it aloud to us, although I'm not sure what version she used (can't remember that far back, sorry).

So far, I've read about ten pages of the original version. It's not that hard to read, but it does take about half of a page to get back into it every time you stop. Plus, there were several words that I'd never heard of before and just had to go with the context to know what they meant.

Has anyone read either version in the past? Did you have a preference/recommendation?

Take the quiz at the right --->

No Pants

Weird, but funny. I like the other passengers' reactions the best. :)

Knock Out Roses

'Rainbow Knock Out'

When we first bought our house several years ago, I had very limited gardening experience. I went a little nuts-o with our new flower bed installs and plant picks. Most of it worked out pretty well, but some of it was a steep learning curve.

My experience is only slightly less limited now, at least enough so that I have learned that the best way to garden is to find the right plant for the right spot. One of the things I won't do again (or at least, I'll try to control my plant envy enough to not do again) is to buy a rose, or other high-maintenance plant, that is not classified as extremely disease-resistant and fairly easy care.

Blooms from my 'Climbing Iceberg' last summer.
(They look nice with the diseased leaves stripped off)

Take my 'Climbing Iceberg' rose, for example. I picked this plant when we built our pergola and trellis. I researched climbing roses to find a very long-blooming and tall cultivar. 'Iceberg' is supposed to be moderately disease resistant, but mine is not. It loses all of its leaves at least once every year from black spot - even when I try to spray it every couple of weeks (but who has time for that, anyway?). Now I've decided to pull it up and plant it in the back corner of the yard where it can hang over the fence and look pretty from a distance - no one will know it's got black spot from back there.

Some smart rose purchases I made last year were 'Tamora', 'Sun Flare', 'Mardi Gras', and 'Dream Come True'. All are extremely disease-resistant and heavy bloomers. The latter two are AARS winners (All American Rose Selections - a title bestowed upon only the best performing and easy care roses). They all did really well and I didn't even have to do anything with them except to fertilize once or twice and snip some blooms whenever I wanted a fresh vase of roses from May - October.

'Double Knock Out'

My favorite online nursery, Bloomin' Designs, has several varieties!

But, for the most well-known low maintenance shrub roses, you should consider the Knock Out Rose series. They are prized for their performance, disease resistance, and low-maintenance attitude. They come in a lot of colors and forms. Matt and I bought a 'Blushing Knock Out' for my mother-in-law a year or two ago and it is simply gorgeous. She said she doesn't have to do anything with it. My mom bought a 'Rainbow Knock Out' last year at the plant sale, and I've got the original 'Knock Out' rose at home.

'Sunny Knock Out'

With our addition of several new flower beds last fall, I've got some more room for a few new plants - but I'm trying to take my time and choose wisely. This spring, I plan to move my gardenias from the front bed to the back (I hope they survive the move) and add a couple of new Knock Out roses next to them. I'm thinking that I might spring for two of the 'Sunny Knock Outs', which are a mix of white and yellow blooms for that spot.

Ahh... I can't wait for spring!

You Know It's Cold When...

You know it's cold when....

The dogs won't go outside, not even when Matt has salmon on the grill.
You bend your key in the frozen keyhole of your car door.
Your scarf or face/neck warmer gets crunchy from your frozen breath.
You have to look at pictures of actual flowers, because the yard is desolate and barren.
You know the meaning of "poopsicle" after your pets take their potty break.
You can pull a Schwartz by sticking your tongue to a large metal immobile object.

Looking forward to the rest of this cold spell (and lows tonight in the single digits)!

PS> Matt said he was watching the news this morning when they were interviewing people about the cold spell. One older guy said, "Well, what we have here is a failure of global warming, but don't worry. It'll warm back up again." Haha!

Happy B'day, Amy Beth

I think "Amy Beth" is just the prettiest name I've ever heard. I kind of regret the years of "Amy Beth Stinky Breath" torments that Mrs. Pie and I threw her way - at least the last few, which pushed Amy Beth to insisting that we only call her "Amy" from then on.

Love you, lil' sis!

Demon Dog

I could tell it was going to be "one of those days" this morning.

At first, everything was going pretty well. I decided the night before to get to work an extra hour early to make up for the time I have to miss due to class but when the alarm rang in the morning, I negotiated with myself to make up half of the time the next day - I already had to stay late anyway.

So, after getting dressed with a few extra minutes of sleep under my belt, I was packing my lunch and walked to the car to put my gym bag in the back seat. Five seconds later, I find the demon child - aka "Ace" - devouring my breakfast! I was SO ANGRY. (Plus, it was the last english muffin and we were zeroed out on breakfast foods until Matt could run to the grocery store after work).

On the drive into the office, I realized that I forgot to curl and lace my eyelashes with a coat of mascara - which, for these straight, short Asian lashes, is a big No No when entering any sort of public arena (unless I want to surprise my co-workers with the look of death). No problem, I'll run into Target and grab an eyelash curler and some fruit for breakfast while I'm at it - it's on the way.

Not. Target opens at 8am, and I'm trying to get to work early, remember? Boo! I was forced to turn around and go to the dreaded other place - where I haven't set foot in probably two years. After hiking in from my parking spot in Egypt and fighting with the stupid "self checkout" before getting it to work properly, I was 20 minutes behind when I'd planned to get to work.

Once I finally made it into the office, I spilled my coffee all over my desk - and my purse.

The funny thing is, once I actually started work, the day went really well. I got a lot done, went to class, and didn't even mind when class went long (sorry I missed your Jazzercise class, Manda).

My Bands

A couple of the bands that I've been listening to lately are Spoon and Death Cab For Cutie. Both are relatively new (at least compared to Matt's fave, 311) and not quite mainstream yet, but seem to be getting more recognition lately.

Since most people don't know who these guys are, I thought I'd share.



"I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab for Cutie


"Don't You Evah" by Spoon

What do you think?