Monday, July 18, 2005
Carnival of the Capitalists
The July 18 Carnival of the Capitalists is up at The Club For Growth.
Next week’s edition is scheduled for Political Calculations.
As always, the list of hosts is at the Carnival of the Capitalists page.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Your Daily Sadie - Blog Surfing Series
Sunburn Bad, Swimming Good
Today Yesterday we hung out in and around a nice pool with my nephew, his awesome wife, and my three grandnieces. They provided a yummy lunch and we had great fun. I haven’t been swimming in a few years. Which is sad, because it’s one of my favorite things and is exercise without feeling like it. I have wanted whatever house I get when I grow up to have an in-ground pool since I was a kid, even if it’s expensive and adds nothing to resale value.
It was Sadie’s first time swimming and she loved it. She seemed less averse to getting her face wet than she is in the tub; go figure. Between twisting around, leaning over the side of her float and trying (too often successfully) to taste the pool water (which she also sampled liberally by dipping and then tasting a finger), and sometimes getting dipped when leaning low if the float got a solid push, she got her face all wet and got it in her mouth and nose. This didn’t bother her at all.
For some reason she seemed to know what “kick!” meant, but maybe she learned that from the context of her kicking, us cooing and applauding, and us saying “Sadie, kick!” when she did it of her own accord. Which I guess must have been learned watching everyone else, or was a reflexive behavior. She liked the float, but she liked at least as much simply being held in the water where her arms had better access to it. She got a big kick out of watching Emily, sporting cool goggles, submerge and then burst out of the water again, kind of like peek-a-boo. She also got a kick out of spinning or otherwise moving fast. She’s not going to appreciate my reticence about roller coasters when she gets older.
Sadie had on ample amounts of SPF 45 baby sunscreen. It worked!
Some of us neglected to take such precautions (which, yes, is our own damn fault). Now, bear in mind I have been exposed for similar lengths, in similar conditions, and come out barely red. This was not one of those times. Ouch. Deb too, but not as severely because she used some of the aforementioned sunscreen in spots, and covered more with her suit. Yay Deb!
Poor Sadie. She resisted sleep vigorously, as she so routinely does. To the point she repeatedly started to nod off in the float in the water, and either jerked herself back from the brink (we can imagine her, a little older, saying “I’m awake!"), or woke when her face started to hit the water because she was using the side of the float as a pillow. She not only fell right to sleep in the car, but also slept through being taken out of her seat and carried halfway through Wal-Mart in Halifax. We needed diapers and a couple other things, so it worked out perfectly for getting aloe gel for the burns while we were at it.
Between repeated applications of aloe gel, drinking a lot, and pain relievers, I got through the night and it’s feeling much better. It affected my appetite. I made Deb some frozen fries in the toaster oven. For Sadie I heated up leftover shells and melted cheese on them, and heated up leftover summer squash. I ate maybe half the squash and until the middle of the night I was done. In the wee hours I developed enough appetite to have several Wheat Thins, some with peanut butter and some with cream cheese. That and I had a couple glasses of Polar Diet Orange Dry during the night.
The town made the whole cooking and drinking thing fun. Friday night there was apparently a fire (either that or they did some flushing on a different night and more vigorously than usual), so the water was brown with sediment. Disgusting. It took most of a day to appear to settle out and taste only mildly bad, then last night it got worse again. I drink primarily water from the faucet. Luckily we had some soda and we keep a bunch of bottled water in the fridge to take in the car, to waiting rooms, or in the diaper bag.
But jeez. The landlord pays $2000 a year for water for each apartment, and having it be too sedimented and/or swampy to use or drink is routine. Not to mention the total lack of water pressure. I recently found out that only 10% of the town’s water comes from MWRA, and the rest from seven wells in town. I thought it was all MWRA water, and that was why it cost so much.
Anyway, I digress.
I’ll post more pictures eventually.
Ah, To Be So Young Again…
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You Are 30 Years Old |
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30
13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what’s to come… love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You’ve had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!
40+: You are a mature adult. You’ve been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.
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Your Daily Sadie
Remember to click for a larger version.
The post associated with this didn’t get finished last night because of my extreme sunburn and the need to feed Sadie. Figured since I am up long enough for some fluid intake, pain reliever, and yet another slathering of aloe gel, I’d put up today’s picture.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Happy Birthday
To good friend and blogger Ith, who is [mumble mumble] today, but still only as old as she feels at heart. Which I daresay makes her young and spritely.
Not A Quiz
You just give it your month and day of birth…
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You Are A Rowan Tree |
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You are full of charm and cheer. You light up a room. And while you crave attention, you do it without ego. You are an interesting mix of contradictions - and very unpredictable. You are both dependent and independent, calm and restless. You are passionate, emotional, gregarious, and (at times) unforgiving. |
Friday, July 15, 2005
Your Daily Sadie - Blog Surfing Series
Carnival of the Recipes and a Correction
I am mortified.
The recipe for oatmeal fried chicken chunks that I published on the 10th and was linked and Insta-echoed by Carnival of the Recipes today, the 15th, contained a mistake. Now, someone making it might have guessed the dry incredients were short and adjusted, or it might have barely stretched and seemed fine. However, it was not what I cooked, and would not have given you the look and flavor of what I made that came out so good.
I had typed 1 cup of Bisquick and 1 cup of oatmeal. It’s a two to one ratio, at least, with the oatmeal the primary. I used two cups of oatmeal. If I were cutting to reduce the amount leftover and possibly improve the coating, I would reduce the Bisquick, It comes out fine, for instance, at 1.5 cups of oatmeal and half a cup of Bisquick, but I seem to run short of coating every time I make it, so I upped both of them.
My apologies if anyone tried making it with lousy results.
Ith had asked me if flour could substitute for Bisquick. When I made a guess that it probably could, I was thinking in terms of the high ratio of oatmeal. If I had to make it that way, I’d probably go half a cup of flour to two cups or so of oatmeal. I can’t imagine it working with a cup of flour to a cup of oatmeal. Or not as nicely, anyway.
As implied here, Carnival of the Recipes is up! It’s hosted by One Happy Dog Speaks, who did a nice job, including navigation links to individual categories within the post. Very cool.
More on mandatory health insurance
Thre’s a good back-and forth developing in the comments on this post about forcing people to buy health insurance. Steve has also posted a follow-up expanding his argument a bit. He seems convinced that since some of us disagree with him, we must not have understood his post. Or perhaps I’m not understanding this one?
In any case, the elaboration is helpful. And believe it or not, I read the whole entire thing!
Your Daily Sadie
Darn, she sure looks athletic in that one. It’s from a month ago, at my grandmother’s house.
She has now mastered going anywhere in the house, barriers notwithstanding. By Deb’s desk, she can pull herself onto a box 13.5 inches tall and either drop off the other side, or climb onto an adjoining box 16 inches tall and sit there happily pleased with herself. At the door to this room, we have a pair of plastic milk crates, each containing enough weight to make them not readily pushable. Those she had trouble with, getting partway up, then getting uncomfortable and screaming. However, now she clambers right into them and out the other side. The barricade in the hall by the living room has a 13 inch high box she also scales. She’s strong, agile, fearless, and has an amazing learning curve. Fast, too, once she knows what to do.
Luckily, she also smiles and giggles a lot, and seems to have a completely natural grasp of what is funny. Once she learned clapping, and before that, waving bye or hello, she does them all the time, whenever it’s remotely appropriate or might get attention. She knows our saying “yay!” and clapping go together. It’s amazingly cool.
We have to figure out something for keeping her restrained. If the barriers get much taller, we’ll be challenged by them.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Happy Birthday (updated)
To blogger Dean Esmay.
Update:
Dean sure sounds happy, even as he pines for his youth. He also is looking for a literary agent for a very cool novel.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Blake Powers.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Jeff Jarvis.
Interesting.
Rehnquist says he’s not retiring.
Normally I’d breathe a sigh of relief that the matter has now been settled. There’s nothing normal about the world anymore, though. I predict that this will only fuel wilder speculation as everybody tries to guess at whether or not his health continues to permit.
Via Viking Pundit
Clever Marketing
Today’s mail at the office is an “early reminder,” congratulating me and soliciting an order for 1oth anniversary stickers for the business. They actually look kind of cool; embossed red and gold, scalloped circle in the middle with a banner off to each side. Left banner says 1996. Right banner says 2006. Inner circle says !0th Anniversary, with a huge 10 and the word underneath it. Above the central 10 loops “Your Name Here.” Below loops “City, State.” This is from an outfit named Stephen Fossler Company.
Nw, I’d never spend the money on these, so they won’t get my order, but I suspect many places would. What amazes me is that they have tied together my name, the business name, and… the year we started? I’m trying to remember who I have ever told that information. Beyond that, it boggles me that they would keep track of it as criteria for renting a mailing list. I’ll take businesses that started in 1996 for 5000 addresses, Alex.
The incident made me marvel that it’s been, at this point, just about nine years. We should rightfully have gone out of business long ago. Or grown significantly more, which is why option one is still far from out of the question and likely to be decided within the next year.
Most annoying food issue of the pregnancy so far:
Aversion to peanut butter.
It is such torture to want to eat something so badly yet gag at the smell of it. I miss my PB&J desperately. Desperately, I tell you!
Sigh.
Alrighty, then.
Since the theme of my day today seems to be irritated at the world, now would be a good time to launch a series I’ve been considering for a while.
You see, I’m rapidly losing my patience with the Republican Party. Not that there are any alternatives, really, but on many things big and small my agenda and their agenda don’t meet up. Some of these I was aware of before I signed up. Others are only now becoming clear.
In any case, this disconnect has inspired me to start listing out the ways in which I am a lousy Republican. Some are silly, and some are serious, but it seems that I add to the list almost daily now. Irresitable blog-fodder.
So here you are. Reason I’m a lousy Republican, #1: I’ll never, never boycott Ben & Jerry’s. Ever.
More to come.
Damned stupid, irresponsible, non-rich people!
Looks like Steve Verdon and Mitt Romney think alike. All those damned irresponsible people who don’t buy health insurance need to be dealt with:
Believe it or not there are people out there who don’t buy health insurance on purpose. I think we should basically make such behavior punishable (yes, as in, “I’m sorry, you are just too stupid on this decision so the act of making a decision has been taken away. Now, pick your health insurance or we’ll get really nasty.")
After this baby comes, our health insurance bill every month will be more than our rent. And we don’t exactly live somewhere cheap. (N.B.--That’s without prescription coverage.) A couple grand a year that we likely won’t even qualify for isn’t going to help. Jay recently figured that our total healthcare expenses for the year will run over $11,000. You’ve got to make a hell of a lot of money before that becomes manageable. It’s insane to tell people that a significant percentage of their income just went “poof!” because you deem their choice of how to spend it *stupid*.
And you know, I object philosophically to the gubmint setting people’s spending priorities for them. To some extent they already do, since you have to pay your taxes before anything else or you can wind up in a pretty unpleasant situation. But the solution to the failure of one government program is rarely to institute another one, and that’s what this crazy-ass scheme does.
I also really hate to see anything that discourages self-employment and business creation, and you bet your sweet ass if it becomes a criminal matter not to carry insurance, and individual coverage continues to cost what it does, people like us are going to have to shut down the shop and go to work for the man. Going out on your own will be far too risky if another 10 or 15 percent or more of your income is dedicated to what the government says you must spend it on. That money might be the difference between getting off the ground or not, and it is not *stupid* to take the risk of getting sick in that time and use the money elsewhere. If you’re terrified that someone else might wind up paying, then make it impossible not to pay medical bills the way it’s impossible not to pay your tax bill or your student loans. But leave people the choice.
You know, I’m going to stop, because I could go on about this all fucking day. It’s wrong on a lot of levels, but I take it really personally because I live down here in the part of reality where living without insurance is an option that has to be considered. When it’s that or giving up a business that you’ve poured years of your life into, it doesn’t seem that bad. When it’s that or not paying the heating bill, it seems even better. And you’d better bet that if it ever gets between food and my babies’ mouths, I’ll tell anybody who tells me that I have a moral obligation to society to pay my health insurance bill first to go do something anatomically impossible with themselves.
Your Daily Sadie
These are probably going to stop being “daily” Real Soon Now, if only because we’re taking fewer pictures, and fewer of them are as cute, interesting, or for that matter unblurry. It’ll probably remain common, but be some different theme, and at longer, less regular intervals. We’ll see. Plus we have to prepare for baby two to share the spotlight and perhaps even take over as the primary photogenic focus for a while next year.
Happy Birthday
To former President Gerald Ford.
Born in 1913, that makes him 92 this year, three years older than my grandmother, and among the longest-lived Presidents.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
I’m just a blogging machine. Not.
I’m having a terrible time locating things that I feel compelled to comment on today. I’m so boring right now. All I can think about is how wonderful it will be in a couple of weeks when the nausea goes away and means it. Oh, and I think about whether the fact that it’s actually milder this time means that it might taper off sooner. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I can’t really help it.
The sickness is reassuring, but it still sucks.
I’m also fully aware that I have it much better than a lot of women in the nausea category, but that doesn’t really make me feel better. It just strikes me with awe that anybody survives worse. And sometimes more than once!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you gals who get pregnant and go on like there’s nothing happening freaking amaze me.
Safety Madness Strikes Again
Maybe this is nothing more than a sign that my cynicism is reaching unhealthy levels, but nothing about this surprised me one bit:
Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection.
But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don’t change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes—rear-enders, for instance—car seats actually perform worse.) The real answer to why child auto fatalities have been falling seems to be that more and more children are restrained in some way. Many of them happen to be restrained in car seats, since that is what the government mandates, but if the government instead mandated proper seat-belt use for children, they would likely do just as well / without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.
Now I’m not about to start a crusade to end car-seat use, but we have got to get a grip on ourselves. Really. Because the booster seat thing has gotten right out of control. Here’s a map showing the current laws. In Wyoming you have to be nine years old and weigh eighty pounds before you can legally ride in a car without a booster seat. That’s just nuts. It imposes a huge cost for a marginal--or nonexistent--increase in safety.
And hey, don’t forget...if you’re under twelve, you can’t ride in the front seat because another government mandated safety device might kill you.
Being a kid just isn’t what it used to be.
I still hate Matchbox 20.
But I suddenly like Rob Thomas a whole lot better. Heh.
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
I haven’t posted about Kelo lately, but the matter is far from over. You might even say that the political process and the various balances of power are working as they should. Which is not to say it should have required a landmark case and near universal outrage for action to flow in the direction of property rights.
Via Alphecca, via Nashville Files, SCOTUSblog reports on the continuing fallout from Kelo.
The powers that be in Connecticut have placed all local eminent domain plans on hold pending possible changes to the law. This is great:
Rell was harsh in her criticism of the Supreme Court. “This issue,” she said in a statement Monday, “is the 21st Century equivalent of the Boston Tea Party: the government taking away the rights and liberties of property owners without giving them a voice. But this time it is not a monarch wearing robes in England we are fighting—it is five robed justices at the Supreme Court in Washington.”
Referring to the Court’s ruling in the New London case, state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat, told reporters in Hartford: “The legal case is over, but towns in our state exist by virtue of state law...theoretically, we could tell them to stop if that’s what we wanted to do.” In an account of his remarks, the New London newspaper, The Day, quoted Lawlor as saying: “I think we all agree that we want to draw a line to make it impossible to seize private homes simply to benefit a private developer. We want to prohibit it.”
Heh.
Perhap Susette Kelo lost the battle, but in doing so has won the war, benefitting us all.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Suppose You Had Two Pints of Fresh Blueberries…
That you bought because they were insanely cheap. At least, 99¢ a pint is cheap around here. That seems cheap even to someone who places a low value on blueberries because he grew up being able to step into the woods and pick mass quantities of them for free.
What would you make with them? That doesn’t require baking? Other than blueberry pancakes or feeding Sadie some raw blueberries as something different? (Apple & blueberry babyfood was one of her top favorites ever.)
Any suggestions? I figured pancakes, but that will only use so many.
Your Daily Sadie
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Now that’s more like it!
I know, I know, my whining about the weather is getting boring. But the average high temp for July here is 81 degrees. We don’t have air conditioning. Ninety-something so much of the time sucks, especially with the whole morning sickness thing going on. So pray or send vibes or whatever it is you do to affect the weather, ‘cause there’s a chance that it might actually be nice for a week or so. See:
The Answer (to your bloggy boredom):
Grand Rounds #42 is up at Shrinkette.
Eight Weeks
Since Margi went and skipped a week (yay!) I had to go track down my own summary. Heh.
From BabyCenter:
How your baby’s growing: Your baby is now 5/8 of an inch long, about the size of a kidney bean. She’s constantly moving and shifting, although you won’t be able to feel these womb wiggles for several weeks yet. Her embryonic tail is disappearing, and her eyelids practically cover her eyes. Still slightly webbed, her fingers and toes are growing longer. Her arms have lengthened, too, and her hands are now flexed at the wrist and meet over her heart. Her knee joints have formed, and her feet may be long enough to meet in front of her body. With her trunk straightening out, her head is more erect. Breathing tubes extend from her throat to the branches of her developing lungs. The nerve cells in her brain are also branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. Though you may be daydreaming about your baby as one gender or another, the external genitals still haven’t developed enough to reveal whether you’re having a boy or a girl.
31 weeks to go…