Cute doggy!

So, I'm still dreaming of the day when I can get a dog. I like to play a little game called, "If I could get a dog today...." where I pick a dog from one of the pit bull rescues and dream of having it join our family. Today's dog is Flash, from BadRap Rescue in San Francisco. Isn't he adorable? And what a nice sit he has!

I'm so frustrated and sad. Spud was crawling around in the kitchen tonight, and managed to pull on a dishcloth on the table, and pulled my favorite handmade ceramic mug off the table as well, and it shattered on the floor. It's the only thing one of the kids has ever broken that was actually special to me, and as I knelt down to clean up the mess, I just cried. It was the best mug I'd made, and I loved using it for milk or cocoa or ice cream. It was perfectly sized and sculpted for me to hold, and I loved the finished glaze. I know it was only an object, but it was something that I really loved, and it brought me joy every time I used it. I'm just sick about it. It's such a loss to me.

Another stupid city enacts a stupid ban

I'm starting to think that the stupid population is over-represented in government. I'd like to think that only 60% of the general population are stupid, but it seems that at least 87% of politicians are near morons.

David's birthday was Friday. He's 28!! I made him a chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting, from scratch! I was proud of myself, and he really enjoyed the cake. So, yay!! That evening we went out for dinner with the stake president (church position) and his wife, who had wanted to take us out for Indian food for a while. It was delicious, and a lot of fun to spend the evening with them. We stopped back at their home afterwards to watch clips from the comic Brian Regan, who is hilarious. David and I laughed so hard. We're going to try and find a video of his to rent, because he was great.

We've kind of decided/realized that it really won't be feasible for us to move down to St. George until January, at the earliest. The housing prices down there are just such that it will require more $$ for down payment & closing costs than we have at present. Also, he's hoping that in December/January he can ask for a raise to better support us down there. Other than the high cost of housing, the cost of living down there is about the same as here. So, we'll see. We're both kind of bummed about the reality of the situation, but oh well. We both just really want to leave this apartment, and would REALLY like to be out of town before winter begins...which will unfortunately most likely be in about 6 weeks! We are not snow people. So the plan is to keep living as "poorly" as possible, and to save about $1500/month. Adding $6K to what we have would give us about $13K, which would be an okay down payment, I think. More than 5%, but less than 10%. In a perfect world, David would receive some sort of "backpay" for the work he's been doing on the bank for the past 10 months (even $1000/month would ROCK!) but sadly that's not going to happen. He does have a couple of things that could help speed up the process, so we'll just have to pray for one or more of those to work out, too. That'd help out a lot. It's kind of discouraging for me to just be sitting here at home, not contributing financially, but I guess my part is to help us save the money, since I can't earn it.

On NPR they just said that Little Rock Air Force Base has been serving as an international airport, and planes from 21 countries have landed with supplies for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and 94 countries, total, have offered/provided aid (many monetary aid). I think the guy said that 1727 tons of aid supplies have been dropped off there thus far. It warms my heart to know that the nations of the world will reach out to help America in our time of need.

Calendar girl

I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've decided that I really don't like the Roman calendar that we use. It's utterly meaningless. I think it was poor decision making that made the Roman calendar the one most widely used, and I blame the Catholic church! I mean, get a load of the brilliance behind it:

"The Romans borrowed parts of their earliest known calendar from the Greeks. The calendar consisted of 10 months in a year of 304 days. The Romans seem to have ignored the remaining 61 days, which fell in the middle of winter. The 10 months were named Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. The last six names were taken from the words for five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Romulus, the legendary first ruler of Rome, is supposed to have introduced this calendar in the 700's B.C.E.

According to tradition, the Roman ruler Numa Pompilius added January and February to the calendar. This made the Roman year 355 days long. To make the calendar correspond approximately to the solar year, Numa also ordered the addition every other year of a month called Mercedinus. Mercedinus was inserted after February 23 or 24, and the last days of February were moved to the end of Mercedinus. In years when it was inserted, Mercedinus added 22 or 23 days to the year."

Uhhhh...yeah, inserting a MONTH every other year seems like the best way to solve the problem. Crikey! This means their seasons weren't even always starting in the same months.

They did have a good idea, early on:
"At the time of their early kings, Roman months were of a length identical to the lunar cycle. Each month was divided into sections that ended on the day of one of the first three phases of the moon: new, first quarter or full. All days were referred to in terms of one of these three moon phase names, Kalends, Nones or Ides."

So, anyways, I wish we had a good lunar calendar. Or I guess the correct term is lunisolar calendar, as that takes into account both the lunar cycles for months and the revolution around the sun for years. I prefer meaningful measures of time, and I think that being in touch with the lunar cycle would be a good way for us to be more in tune with nature. I'm sure that a big factor behind the adoption and spread of the Roman calendar by the Catholic church was that it was NOT that firmly attached to nature, and the church liked that as it was another way to separate themselves from the pagans (nature worshippers). Personally, I think we could do a little better to have a bit more of a nature worshipful attitude. Perhaps then we would take our stewardship more responsibly and not have quite the extent of environmental problems that we see today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html

I've not been online much lately, partly due to my internet connection being so sporadic, and partly due to the fact that for the past couple of weeks I've been reading books 4-6 of Harry Potter. I stayed up late last night and finished book 6. Wow!! It was fantastic! I'm almost sad to be finished with them (until book 7 comes out) as they were so fun to get swallowed up in. But I'm glad, too, as I won't feel compelled to read it at every spare moment. Plus, David and I were both reading it, so it was a matter of switching off and sharing.

Other than that, I'm working on developing a good pair of fairy wings. My inspiration is coming from the wings on this site: www.fairylove.com (I'm too lazy to make it a link right now.) Noodle has some generic store bought wings, which she really loves, but I'd like to make her some fancy & fun ones. I also want to make some for my little niece who has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, as she is also a big fairy fan, and I think she'll really appreciate them. And I'm sure I'll make some for myself, too!

Rub a dub Spud

I love freshly washed babies!