I'm back!

November saw the death of both my “free” wireless internet connection and my wonderful little Macintosh iBook, so I had to take a leave of absence from blogging. I’m back, though, and hopefully I’ll have more brilliant thoughts for you to read. For today, however, I think I’ll just bless you with pix of my cute kids.

Farewell Turbo

My rat Turbo passed away today. He’d been ailing for the past couple of weeks, but kept eating and moving around a bit. Last night it was a noticeable turn for the worse. He spent most of his life as a lone rat, which is definitely not the idea situation, but as he didn’t care much for other rats or people, his options were limited. I got him from the Humane Society when he was probably a few months old. I am glad that he got to live his life in comfort and even a bit of luxury--he loved it when I’d give him a hammock, but never could leave them up for more than a few days before chewing down one or more of the corners. Needless to say, I didn’t keep him in hammocks all of the time. When I saw him at the HS, I was really excited because he was agouti, and you rarely see those in the pet stores. I don’t think I’ve ever seen agoutis in the stores, probably because they look like “wild” rats, but have seen them on breeders pages, and know other people who have had them, so they aren’t too uncommon. While Turbo wasn’t very keen on being handled, he always amazed me at how gentle he was when he’d take food from my hand. He’d do it ever so gingerly, which was a nice contrast to some of the snappers I’ve seen/had.

Anyways, I just wanted to do a little tribute to my lone rat. Rest in Peace little guy.

Oh the CUTENESS!!!

I am in love with this pup’s sweet face! His name is Duncan and he's at a rescue in Missouri.
BHMS Rescue

Belated Halloween Blog

So my internet was down nearly the entire week. Halloween this year was a lot of fun. Noodle was Little Red Riding Hood, Spud was the Woodcutter, I was Granny and David was the Wolf disguised as Granny. We went to a little Trunk or Treat at the church, and then took Noodle trick or treating around a nearby neighborhood with our neighbors. This was her first year going door to door, and Noodle was in her element. She’d run up to the doors at full speed and knock heartily, then say “Trick or treat!” very enthusiastically. After getting the goods, she’d head away from the door and shout a loud “THANK YOU!” back at the doorway. Then she’d return and report to me whether or not the person had said “You’re welcome.” She was going strong the entire time, and outlasted the neighbor kids, both of whom are older than she is. She was so excited and kept asking if we could go to another house. I had as much fun as she did, I think, just watching her go up to the doors. I hadn’t been too keen on Halloween since I’ve been too old to TorT, but I think I’ve rekindled the dormant flame. I can’t wait until next year!

Clever little rat!

Adventure Rat This is great!!

daily update

I am a woman obsessed! I look on Realtor.com nearly every day in many or all of the towns we could move to, and I also peruse the websites of the real estate offices to check out their featured listings. I don’t know if it is a good pasttime or not. (It doesn’t really take that much time.) I like to think that I am familiarizing myself with the market, but sometimes I think I’m only torturing myself when David says we won’t be moving until January, at the soonest, 10ish weeks has never seemed so painfully long. So, I’m especially ancy to do the holiday shopping, as well as shop for Spud’s b-day (Christmas Eve!). As if that will hurry time along. It was quite cool here today, reminding me of the painful imminence of winter. Since I’d hoped to have moved south before it turned cold, I think I’m trying to live in denial. It only works on sunny days.

I went jogging this morning for the first time in months. I felt it. But I felt good during and later, after my lungs forgave me for the cold air. Hopefully I can make it a habit of sorts.

The Comic Life

Peek-A-Boo!

Isn't this little fella cute? Nope, he isn't one of mine. But I did take the picture at the rattery where I got Marco & Berkeley. I was cleaning out old photos today and noticed this guy. I really don't know why some people view rats so negatively. Sure, there's the naked "wormy" tail, but that is pretty easy to get over. And with faces like these, who can resist?

comic life

New program I played around with today. I just used some pix I had on hand of my late rat Frisco. No, my captions aren't very clever, but hopefully I'll get better.

In the News

Hey hey! Mormons are the feature story in this week’s Newsweek.
The Mormon Odyssey
Q&A with President Hinckley






“You go through life, you try to be nice to people, you struggle to resist the urge to punch ’em in the face, and for what? So some pimply little puke can treat you like dirt because you’re not on the team. Well, I’m better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt. I mean not that fancy store bought dirt. That stuffs loaded with nutrients. I... I can’t compete with that stuff.”

Moe Szyslak

Blahs

I’ve been having a case of the blahs lately. I find that it makes me want to buy things on eBay for the momentary thrill and the happy anticipation of getting something worthwhile in the mail. Luckily, though, I’ve been able to refrain so far. This case of the blahs also makes me have insane chocolate needs at about 3:30 every afternoon. Sadly, the only readily available chocolate in the house is hot cocoa, and I already had some. It didn’t do much to curb the craving, though. Sigh....



“You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is ‘never try’.” ---Homer Simpson

An elected official with a brain

Sadly, I think her voice of reason is drowned out by hysteria, so I suspect the Aurora (Colorado) pit bull ban will pass. I reiterate my position that the stupid population is overrepresented in government. Particularly local governments. (Though state & federal aren’t far behind.)

Go Rep. Stafford!

Noodle at the park

Just wanted to post these pix of my little Noodle girl when we were at the park.

Courtesy Laugh

So Spud does this thing now where it’s like he’s giving us a courtesy laugh. When anyone else in the house is laughing, or sometimes if he just thinks we’re being funny, he’ll do a “Ha ha huh!” sort of chortle/giggle. It’s pretty hilarious, and never fails to make us laugh harder, so I guess it’s effective. He’s walking about 10 steps or so at a time now, which is way too many since he’s only NINE months old. Sheesh! Oh well. It makes him happy and I really don’t think he can get into more than he does already...he’ll just do it faster! He’s a happy little boy, though. Our friends might take issue with my use of the word “little”. He is nearly 30“ tall and probably weighs 26 lbs now. Not excessively chubby, just a solid little guy. Noodle was the same way as a baby--very solid and muscley. He does have the bad habit of biting EVERYTHING, though. He’s constantly trying to bite my pant leg, or my arm, or my shirt, or ANYTHING. And those little baby teeth hurt! So, I’ll be happy when tooth #8 finally erupts, as it might give us a reprieve from the biteyness for a while.

The weather is turning cold now, and it leaves me feeling desperate. I don’t think I can handle another winter of being cooped up in our 750 sq foot apartment again. At least I won’t have post-partum hormones to deal with this time, but seriously, this place is too small to weather a cold & gray winter. Plus David has the car 99% of the time, so I’m quite stuck at home. Sigh... Hopefully we’ll be moving south to a friendlier climate in January. Until then I guess I’ll just have to buy a new hoodie.

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