Tuesday, June 24, 2008

There won’t be much political blogging here as we lead up to the election. I’m tired of the elevation of the Obama cult. I’m not thrilled with the GOP nominee. It’s a complete mess and I’m very tired of it all.

However, the story of Obama’s faux presidential seal brouhaha is too rich to leave alone. I first thought it had to be some parody by a blogger online, but it turns out to be some nitwit idea by someone in the Obama campaign. How completely arrogant - I wonder if they were planning to make it the real Presidential seal after his coronation in November.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - After days of media mockery, Barack Obama has decided to stop using a presidential-looking seal that his campaign designed and affixed to his podium on Friday.

Journalists said the seal, which features an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, smacks of arrogance. John McCain’s camp had a field day, calling the seal “laughable, ridiculous, preposterous and revealing - all at the same time.”

The seal was conspicuously missing from Obama’s lectern when he spoke to a group of women in Albuquerque on Monday. Not surprising, given how much grief Obama took from a normally laudatory press corps after unveiling the seal at an appearance in Chicago on Friday.

There follows quotes that I would never have expected to see from members of the media who did all that they could to ensure that Obama is the left’s nominee. My favorite is the Quote of the Day:

“The Audacity of Hype,” cracked ABC’s Jake Tapper. “No word on whether they played a remix of ‘Hail to the Chief’ as Obama walked in.”

Ha!

Amazingly, it was the media reaction that caused the campaign to dump the seal. I wonder how the campaign would have reacted if the media hadn’t said anything about it?

Monday, June 23, 2008

After catching a run of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland a week or so ago on cable, I moved up The Invasion on the queue. I know there’s an older, original version - that version scared my mother when she was a child. The Sutherland version creeped me out as a teenager. I was curious how well they did the update.

Beau didn’t like it, judging from the snarky remarks he made throughout. I thought it was OK, but the 1978 version is still slightly creepier. But maybe that’s my nostalgia talking.

The story was updated to today’s technology and the method of body snatching means the phrase “pod people” wouldn’t make sense to those of us who use it based on the 1978 version. It’s actually more insidious. Nicole Kidman is good, but I was distracted by her American accent. I kept thinking that there was no real reason why she couldn’t have use her real accent for this character.

It’s PG-13 for a reason. What disturbed me were the previews that showed before the movie on the DVD - they were not appropriate for the PG-13 rating of the movie, imho. Skip them.

3 stars out of 5.

What everyone needs ... instructions for How to Nap. Brilliant!

[via evangelical outpost]

1. Sad news of George Carlin’s death. He was a funny man.

2. I watch Babies: Special Delivery on Discovery Health at 5am. I was addicted to this show when I was pregnant. This morning’s episode was at Inova Fairfax Hospital, which is where I was cared for and had Jesse.

From the high-risk maternity ward at Inova Fairfax Hospital Women’s Center in Virginia, five women wish to deliver successfully but must face placenta previa, an emergency c-section, low amniotic fluid, advanced maternal age, and gestational diabetes.

The perinatologists in the episode were the ones who took care of me - they are top notch and I’m so glad they were featured on this show.

3. Product Endorsement: I bought a Praise Baby DVD for Jesse a couple of weeks ago. The one I got is My Father’s World. Anyway, they are a rip off of the Baby Einstein DVDs, but with praise and worship music instead of classical music. I love it and so does Jesse - what I love is that the music is well done, sung by good singers (Christine Dente is one of the vocalists) and with kids. You have the option of listening to the full vocals, just the kids vocals or just instrumentals. So far we’ve only played the full vocals - maybe when Jesse starts singing I’ll let him listen to the just kids vocals so that he can sing along with his peers. I plan to buy others as well as a couple of the CDs for the car. And I think I’ll start including one with baby gifts.

4. The cold is much better. My sinuses are still clogged enough that I can’t smell anything and there’s still the hacking cough. But I’m not as miserable or worn out.

And now I’m going to start working because I’ll be taking a break to make a BJs run for the marinade ingredients that I need for the big pork tenderloin cook-off this weekend.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

I think that Beau and I both wish we could get a couple of hours back last night. Beau summed up his opinion of Jumper with one word - stupid. My one word is lame.

The flaws were numerous starting with a serious lack of character development. I don’t know if this was because there was a serious lack of character development in Jumper by Steven Gould">the book as well, or the result of a poor adaptation. Either way, there was no reason to care about any of the people in the story - they were completely flat, one dimensional. And they were amoral as well - there is no consequence to actions and there is no ultimate redemption. It’s not good vs. evil. It’s evil vs. not quite as evil because there is no good guy, imho.

The plot was missing.

The special effects and fight scenes were pretty good.

Jumper gets 1 star for the effects and fight scenes alone. The rest? Don’t waste your time.

There is new video of the kid and the cat at WC. It is definitely boring for non-family, I think.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

We’re supposed to serve communion at church tonight, but we decided that probably isn’t a good idea given our colds. Fortunately, Saturday evening attendance has dropped some since school ended, so they can remove our station with no real problems (we stand at the back of the auditorium).

I’m sad to miss church for the second week in a row but I’m still so miserably sick that it doesn’t make sense to share my germs with folks. And I really don’t feel up to the work of getting prettied up - the shower I took earlier about wiped me out.

I hate being sick. *sniffle*

Friday, June 20, 2008

I’m very excited!

Beau is coming down with the cold now.

I’m pretty miserable and thisclose to notifying office folk that I won’t be working today and heading back to bed. The night was restless for both of us. Annie barked at around 4am - Beau was a prince and took care of her, then he spent about an hour snoozing on the sofa before coming back to bed. I got up at 5:30am when I woke up again. The sinuses are the problem - my head feels like it will implode any minute.

I rescheduled the vet appointment and added Mr. Kitty to the new one - next Friday.

That is all.

Today is Jaynee‘s birthday.

Happy, happy, happy, sistah!

[via Jared]

Thursday, June 19, 2008

So I started reading a hard copy version of John Adams by David McCullough a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t made much progress because the only time I get to read is on my lunch hour at work. What progress I had made hit a setback yesterday in the form of Jesse.

I arrived home and set my tote bag on the landing of the upstairs staircase like I always do. I came down from my nap to find the book, which had been in the tote bag, laying on one of the steps. I left it, thinking to put it back later.

I went into the kitchen to find Jesse in his high chair and wearing the ribbon bookmark that had been in my book around his neck, with the two large beads at the end laying on his bib.

“When did you put my bookmark around Jesse’s neck?” I asked Beau.

“What? What bookmark?” he asked.

“This bookmark,” I held it up for him to see.

“That’s a bookmark? Why was it in his toy bin?”

“It wasn’t in his toy bin. It was in my book that was in my tote bag,” I explained.

“Really? I thought he got that out of his toy bin. I couldn’t figure out where else he could have gotten it,” Beau said.

We laughed hard. But now the problem is that I have no idea where I was in the book. Not far, sadly, but I think I’m going to have to skim through from the beginning until I hit a place that doesn’t seem too familiar to find my place again.

Remember the pork cooking I volunteered to do for the big church dinner coming up?

Mom and I just did the calculating and it looks like we’re talking about 44-46 pork tenderloins that need cooking. We figure I can maybe cook 4-6 at a time in my one oven. She can triple that amount since she has three ovens, one of which is convection. So Mom is going to help me do the roasting.

I just did the calculations for the marinade recipe. The original recipe makes 1 cup of marinade. Factor 1 cup needed per tenderloin and we’re talking about nearly 2 gallons of marinade needed. So using the conversion formula for increasing recipes (it’s not a simple thing, actually, especially for the math challenged like I am), it looks like we’re going to need 2 gallons of orange juice alone. The recipe is an Asian-ish citrus marinade.

I have not done this level of mass cooking since I was in culinary school and even then I never cooked this amount of food by myself. At least I don’t have to do the side dishes, too. I’m nervous about screwing this up, but I’m also kind of excited for the challenge. And I’m grateful for my Mom’s help.

[Added Later]: I’m also doing a sauce for the meat, which is basically the marinade but I’ll add some marmalade and cornstarch to thicken it. So I need to triple the marinade ingredients (figuring 1/2 cup servings of sauce).

Yikes.

1. Dog Watch: Annie slept until 5am this morning. Praise the Lord! I managed to get a good night’s rest, which was much needed for my increasing cold.

2. I left work early yesterday and immediately upon my arrival at home I went to bed. Slept for a solid 2 hours. Then went to bed early. Sleep good.

I plan to leave work early today, too, for another nice nap. Because…

3. We’re going to dinner with my parents tonight - a belated Father’s Day outing since Jesse was sick over the weekend. We’re going to Texas de Brazil, which will be great except that I have a raging cold so I know I won’t enjoy the food like I would otherwise.

I’ve got nothing else. Brain is fuzzy and I need to save what I’ve got for the work today.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

My 30 minute lunch break was spent with my boss and two deputies in the conference room. Our discussion? The intricacies and personalities of the Star Trek universe. Specifics covered:

1. Kirk v Picard - out of which it was determined that as a commander Kirk was actually terrible, albeit being a bold risk-taker. Picard is what made TNG the show that it was.

2. The breadth of the ST universe across all shows and movies.

3. While Khan was a good enemy/foil for Kirk, the Borg were far more interesting and compelling generally and the perfect foil for Picard.

4. Janeway had the most annoying voice.

5. DS9 stunk mainly because they never went anywhere - everyone came to the station. Boring.

6. Enterprise is surprisingly better than originally thought with repeated and consecutive viewings. It was determined that having to wait a week to watch the show made it harder to stick with it, but having a 6-7 episode DVD is much better.

We also briefly talked about the new Battlestar Galactica a bit.