Alive... It's Alive. My Computer, That Is.

My computer has been reborn, reformatted and reloaded. Yes... I lost some data. Mostly old artsy fartsy pictures that I use for wallpapers. To be honest, I just boldly deleted the porn before taking my computer to Dr.D's. The files I *needed* to keep were backed up on a separate disk. I do so love USB disks. So nice and compact!

So I'm downloaded and installed new versions of things like Spybot Search & Destroy, AVG anti-virus, MailWasher (have I mentioned that I really love Mailwasher?), and Ad-Aware. Oh.. and Iconix for email validation from companies. It tells if its 'real' or phish.

Then there was my iTunes to mess with. Whine, whine, whine. Had to reauthorize the computer, but it wouldn't synch because of the "other" lost playlist. But I did get my all my bought music files back. Spent about 4.5 hours tonight importing stuff from my CDs.

Made a kick ass dinner tonight for me and DH. Fettucine with green chile alfredo, steamed brocolli and sauteed chicken breast seasoned with Italian herbs, garlic, fresh pepper and salt. Nice & simple and really good! Kind of a slightly belated anniversary dinner. Shoulda made it for dinner last night, but we were both too wiped to worry about eating.

DH brought home a DVD of Spiderman 3 to watch which made me take a time out from reorganizing my computer. It was good and the rest was nice. My eyes feel like I haven't blinked in days even though I know that's not true.

Phew... A Pardon

Some of you may have been following the story of the Saudi woman who was raped and initially sentenced to some 90 lashes for being 'in the company of a man not a member of her family' just prior to the rape. Her lawyer protested the sentence as unfair and unwarranted (basically speaking), so the judge in the case modified the sentence to 200 lashes "for speaking to the press."

I guess having 4/5th of the world outraged had some influence - King Abdullah pardoned the woman "in the interests of the people."

But lets call it what it is. It is double speak, folks. It means that he's capitulated to pressures from the US and other countries. It does NOT mean he wasn't supporting the judges. But it's real hard to maintain a defense of a judgement like that when some 4/5ths of the world agrees a sentence like that for a rape victim is beyond barbaric.

I sure hope the young woman and her loyal husband are able to stay safe and find safe haven if they choose to leave the Kingdom for a more tolerant country and that they live a long and fruitful life.

Purple, On My Feet & In From The Cold

That's my foot over there. Nice bruising, eh? It's even prettier in sunlight. It looks the same way on the inside too. Just from a simple misstep.

The good news is that the swelling is down to near normal, I can put my weight on it and walk normally. Well, mostly normal. If I move or shift weight too quickly it hurts like a sonovabitch! I suspect it's a real good thing I lost the weight I did this year before hurting my foot. It could have been worse.

Friends, it's cold outside! I set fresh water out for Raven about one o'clock this afternoon. Took her on a walk around three and saw that it had started to skim over with ice. That was with the bowl in the sunlight!

I bundled up good, but even thermal bottoms under my jeans didn't stop the breeze from pushing the cold into my thighs and making them feel like the fat layer was turning into a solid like lard! I've been home from that walk almost 4 hours now and still feel like bits of that thigh fat are still thawing out. I'm so grateful this isn't Tulsa, Chicago or Minot... or any other even colder place.

The walk was good for me if not a little slow going. We went over to Hyder park and I scoffed the law and let Da Dawg off her leash so she could play with some of the other dogs there after she did her business and I finished scooping and disposing of it. Even before getting Raven, it has been one of my routine walking places for years.

It's a good place to people watch too. Today I was rewarded with seeing three young men playing croquet near the SE corner of the park. All dressed in black, but one especially stood out in his knee high lace up Doc Martens with bloused black cargo pants, steel chain key or wallet fob draping down the side of his leg in a graceful arc, black bomber jacket open at the throat revealing tats up to his collar line, wearing a watch cap. He stood there calmly with what looked to be a home made square mallet insouciantly shouldered like one would a tennis racket, while waiting for one of the other players to complete their move. It's not the image one usually associates with croquet which makes them stand out.

Oh, how about the Justice Department today trying to tell Congress to back off on those CIA tapes that got destroyed? Congress is not liking that "back off" warning very much. Neither do I. The CIA is between a rock and a hard place since they were first ordered "Get that information and if you have to, use stronger interrogation techniques, including waterboarding to get it." by the administration. Now they're in a three way tug of war between Bushies Administration, the Justice Dept AND Congress... 2 branches of government bickering over the same stick and each wanting different results? Hot potato, hot potato!

Tin Man

Did you see Tin Man on the Sci Fi channel? I really got a kick out of it and hope it gets released on DVD soon!

Now, I read all Baum's Oz books growing up, and they weren't all nice nice stories. The "Wheelers", for example, scared the bejabbers out of me, chasing me in my nightmares for a few years. So Tin Man's dystopian take on OZ didn't break my heart at all. The overall package worked from storyline to sets to costuming....

Three cheers and all that!

It is believed that use of this copyrighted image falls under fair use rules to provide a single image of characters of the show. All copyrights belong to the show's producers.

The Sand Dancer

Ephemeral art is one of life's special pleasures. Whether it is chalk on a sidewalk, a Navajo sand painting or Tibetan mandala, or just sand on the beach, the image is transitory. If you're lucky enough, you get to see the work from when it commences to when it disappears. Some people memorialize this ephemera with photography. National Geographic, for example, has had photo essays & stories on mandalas and sand paintings off and on over the decades.

My link today goes to a CBS news story about a man in Christchurch, New Zealand named Patrick Donnelly who is called "The Sand Dancer." Please enjoy seeing the video that clicking on the title will take you to. It's a delightful story.

Interesting Comments About Futile War On Drugs

You Gotta See For Yourself

As my good friends know, I'm a news reader. I have been this way all my life. My dad taught me to read the newspaper, The Saturday Evening Post and Time Magazine. One story at a time, starting at the front and reading to the back. One did not strew the sections apart. I still read like that. After he died and my mother went back to work when I was in 4th grade, I discovered to great glee, that when Time (among others), was delivered on Wednesdays that I could read it cover to cover before Mom got home from work. "What a deal!", I reckoned, "I don't have to wait til Saturday, anymore! Friday if I'm really lucky!" Ok, Mom got to read in between dealing with the six of us, mediating our spats, cooking, teaching us household chores and her working and going to night school to brush up on her bookkeeping and stenography skills. I liked it too, sitting curled up in the living room, in the formal wingback, the curtains drawn to bring in the sunlight.

My imagination has been captured over the years by a hugely eclectic variety of stories. Some stories can resonate deeply with me for some reason, others I forget promptly by the time I've read the last word. Sports has typically been drier for me than the business reports. Now, I'm sincerely glad there are ways to embed these 'bits' because sometimes, when I was a kid and would tell people that I'd read about stuff like this, I thought they thought I was just making this stuff up. And a "So There!" to 'em if they did think that!

So here's this clip about a kickboxer who also happens to be a glamorous model and I think her intrepidness must be similar to what some of my favorite science fiction writers have in mind when writing some of their cool heroines.

http://clipsyndicate.com/publish/video/442817?wpid=1904

Genarlow Wilson Prediction

I want to follow up a bit on Genarlow Wilson. My prediction is that he is going to prove to be an outstanding human being throughout his life. He lived through one of the most unjust prison sentences I've ever seen and within a day or so of his release was candid and gracious toward the men who prosecuted him and sent him to jail. According to CNN:

"Although Wilson believes his sentence was foul, he tells CNN that he understood that prosecutors were just doing their jobs, and he's not blaming anyone.

"We did everything we had to do throughout the court system, and justice was finally prevailed," he said. "No words really can explain how thankful me and my family are. The Bible says there’s a time and season for everything. I guess that time finally came.”"

Lemme tell ya, folks, that is grace personified.

'Burque Segue

'Burque is shortspeak for Albuquerque. Rhymes with turkey. Everyone not from here says Albuquerque is a mouthful. I like to think most of us around here are a pleasant people on the most part. Certainly we got some quirks and an interesting sense of humor. Take food, for instance.

In fact, local eateries all around town have a version of the Albuquerque Turkey sandwich on their menu. Ideally, this sandwich should be done with grilled sourdough bread just barely kissed with a sweep or two of clarified butter so the bread carmelizes to that perfect golden brown on a griddle. Lay on a couple thin slices of provlone while the bread grills and smoothe on a couple tablespoons diced fresh roasted Hatch green chile so they melt into the cheese. Layer 3 full slices of moist turkey breast and cover with the second slice of grilled bread. Turn once. Serve with guacamole on the side to dip the sandwich in or add as a spread. Mm-wah! The frou-frou -- lettuce and tomato can be ignored unless they're exquisitely garden fresh, in which case get extra! I like salad on the side with my sandwich, but that's part of keeping my cholesterol down too.

Oh and there is the famous New Mexican green chile cheeseburger that Bill Clinton used to love. He'd get a few from Monroe's whenever he was campaigning in or around Albuquerque. It was always local news. And he had good taste. They make a fine, juicy burger and oh! the green chile they get to go with it! Yee-haw! Good stuff! Of course now, I smirk everytime I go past there. I did win myself a tee-shirt out of Clinton's sex scandal. It was a contest where writers "confessed to having sex with Clinton, too!" It was total fiction of course; folks like me don't get in messes like that. But I like the local connection anyway. Just that tiny faint lil' thread of one. Course, I don't get to eat too many of those tasty wonders these days, what with trying to keep up with my diet and exercise.

No doubts here. I'm seriously watching how things are shaping up with Hillary and Barrak these days. They both have their merits. Although what either of them will be saddled with when Shrub goes is anyone's guess -- it's messy now, but in the next 441 days, 1 hour, 18 minutes and counting, who knows what more will be added to the mess? Oh, and speaking of messes, how about what's happening in Pakistan with Mousharrif suspending the constitution there and then going after the lawyers instead of the Taliban and Al-Quaeda? That's a scary mess. I STF (work it out) don't want nukes getting into those two groups hands. No. Not at all. Brinksmanship is not a game zealots play. It was bad enough living through it with Kennedy and Kruschev.

Tonight's local news carried a story about a 3 year old toddler who was the victim of an accidental shooting. The guy who shot him was a 20 year old. A kid himself. I'm sure there will be the usual polling to get the work on the guy's rep. I asked my hubby Jim, "What are people thinking when they bring handguns out in the presence of toddlers?" I reckon if ya gotta be a gun owner and ya need to have it out, how about locking yourself up in a room separate from the rest of the family area? Or waiting until the kid(s) are in bed asleep? Some preliminary words are that the shooter was the kid's father. I wanna smack him upside the head for being immature and way stupid. I get real tired of stupid human tricks and I so, so do not want to hear any reportage of the shooter getting whiny and saying stuff like: "I didn't think anything like this could happen!" Bull shite! Well he'd be right, he wasn't thinking! Yet, it's exactly the first thing he should've thought of when he bought the gun. He had a kid in the house, fer crying out loud! Gun safety shouldn't be an afterthought!

On the other hand, I'm NOT going to agitate for even more anti-gun laws because of this either. Our 2nd Amendment rights are in place for a reason and I wouldn't support repealing it anytime soon.

Painting is "Autumn in San Antonio, NM" by Carl Von Hassler

City Journal

I recently discovered a new journal titled City Journal. It has some very thoughtful articles and the current online issuse has 2 fine articles in it this quarter.

The first is titled What The New Athiests Don't See by Theodore Dalrymple, the second is From The H-Bomb To The Human Bomb by Andre Glucksmann. Google will lead you there. I hope you take a few moments to read them. Both are worthwhile considering as we look into tomorrow and the day after.

What do we want, how do we get there and what do we believe will get us there?