At long last!

Scratching and clawing, I pull myself back onto the ledge that is "The End of the Earth". There's been tidbits of excitement, relatively speaking. One girl's excitement is another's boredom.

By special request from his 'Mom', here's Lucky. Poor Fry is having to make do with my parent's dog, Larry. They've been fast friends, probably because Fry loves giving out treats as much as Larry likes eating them.


Hubby and I took Lucky to the park yesterday. We let him do some serious swimming in a large creek that runs along the walking trail. Right now, he's outside. I've left a sprinkler running to cool his pool and in case he wants some fresh water.


Here's a picture of the project currently driving me nuts. It's cotton, which is fine, but is taking what seems to be forever. If July 1st begins 'forever'.


Look what the dog dragged in!

Ok so Lucky didn't drag this sweet little thing in so much as flush him out from the backyard bushes. I'm thinking the nest is under the deck's steps. I'd already checked and the official wild bunny site said to put them back and their moms will reclaim them. Hubs and I were worried bunnies were like birds, once touched by humans, forever orphaned. Isn't this the sweetest?


Speaking of sweet things... Part of why the blog was so quiet around here was this kid. She and I had girl's day out nearly every day before July 4th. Now, she's out camping with my parents, having to fish off of a pontoon boat, riding an inner tube, and playing on a waterslide. Poor little baby. Even on dry land she'll get no peace from my parents, who take the Spoil Grandchild duties of grandparents VERY seriously. I don't blame them, though. She's very spoilworthy.


The picture isn't so significant as much as I just want one of these. We have a topper already and don't need or can't use this tent. Isn't it cool, anyway? It'd make a great birthday or Christmas for my outdoorsy sister...


Someone asked me recently, "Are you finished with your pond, yet?"

Um, no. Is someone with a pond ever done? I don't think so. There's always something to do, fix, or enhance. At the moment, I'm working on the waterfalls, getting them splashy and leak-free. My thinking is the leak is not so much a leak as evaporation in action. We're going to need more rock to hide the tarp. Hauling rocks up a hill to put in the back of a truck is a great workout.


Hubby took us out to Howl at the Moon in the Power and Light district of town. There were happy hour drinks, finger foods, and two pianists taking requests. We had a great time just hanging out and want to make this a habit.

Is this good or bad?

39 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

Either way, I love quizzes.

It happens in threes.

Unless it's the lottery, of course.

What, you may ask, am I talking about now? Deaths. We've lost Dick Martin, Sidney Pollack, and Harvey Korman one week in the past May. Who were they? Not guys you'd know off the top of your head, unless you're in the 40's, maybe late 30's. Their comedy, once you saw the faces behind the laughter, is much better known by all.

Now with Tim Russert passing, my Hubs and I are wondering which two news guys, nationally known, will be next.

Edited to add, because I'm a doof: Duh! I totally forgot Jim McKay! HE was the first, although, I'd have never guessed Tim Russert to be next. Dang. Russert was way too young, even at 58. Funny how the idea of 'young' changes, the older a person gets?

Good news? There's only one left in the trifecta. Bad news? There's still one left.

End of edit.


This three at a time thing is so much a bummer.

For the inquiring minds: I haven't heard on the submission, yet. No news is good news, I think. In the meantime and while Fry is at Aunt Toppa's until tomorrow, I'm writing up the latest sock pattern. Also in the works is a simplified Aran sweater for the guys, a shawl showing off the colors of Oklahoma in the spring/summer, manly socks for the guy, and a leafy lacy triangle shawl.

These are all projects not counted as works in progress, which, I do need to finish soon. I don't like them hanging over my head, waiting to be done. Here are pictures of them and you'll see why I couldn't leave them alone.

I'm it!

Chelle tagged me for a meme. I'm not sure what a meme stands for, other than me me me, since the list is always about me. But, what is a blog except a lot of navel-gazing, hm?

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? What year is this...? We lived in Lenexa, KS and I was a computer programmer consulting around the city. Probably working in downtown KCMO, which was very cool. Like Chelle, I weighed less and looked younger. I think the 35-45 year span in a woman's life is the big slide downhill in aging, then levels off for a while. It's harsh, because it's the first big age slap.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? Dishes(not done), exercise(ick), dinner(not done), take Claude to vet(done), call Kimberly (done)

3. Snacks I enjoy: Ice cream or ice pops, cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, salad.

4. Places I’ve lived: Walters, Elk City, Sayre, Weatherford Oklahoma. Perryton and Amarillo Texas. Lenexa Kansas and Kansas City Missouri. Louisiana and Utah very briefly. I know, nothing too exciting, but I've liked the places.

5. Things I’d do if I were a billionaire: Other than the obvious, pay off things and pay bills, this is tougher than you'd think. Charity? Probably, but which one? Start my own? Would I really want to run one? Heck, even after bills, being a billionaire is wealthy enough to buy your own American President.

In other news, school is out and while I'm usually driven crazy by now with the free time intrusion, it's not so now. Fry and I have had a great time, every day being 'Girl's Day Out'. There's been Spongebob watching, walking to the store, drinking overpriced coffee at Borders, lots of fun.

We've had interesting weather, nice, but stormy, and the pond still isn't done. Yeah, I've procrastinated a little, but mostly have been trying to find the small leak. The ponds leak only when the water runs through the system, and if the ground would dry even a little, I could trace where the oops is.

Anyway, there's been a ton of knitting, just none I can blog about at the moment. As soon as I can, you betcha I'm telling. I've also been trying to avoid buying yarn, since the yarn room is getting full and the projects are going slow.


In the interest of entertainment, and because I can't show any of the latest pictures due to incriminating the terribly guilty, I leave you with this, stolen like a thief from Knitting the Blue's blog. She has a cool blog, how can anyone not steal a neat idea from her?



Click on the above picture to make it larger.

1. Water Lily, 2. Food and Wine, 3. Flying W Land Run, 4. Verde no Aquarius, 5. Chris Meloni, 6. { PEPSÌ diêt }, 7. Reykjavik Iceland at night, 8. Blueberry Cheesecake, 9. Three laboratory retorts, 10. Cambridge streets: Victoria House, 11. disneyland reflections, 12. Laura's Coffee Shop

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
The rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.


I tag anyone with enough free time to do the above meme's. :)

I'm bored and don't WANT to clean my room.

Is it time for PMS already? I'm bored and don't want to do anything one minute, and want to do everything the next. There's a pond to finish, a secret project that's getting close to done, pets to play with, a house to clean and spiff up, books to read and write, and walls and pictures to paint.

I'm also wanting a new digital camera, one that works with my current Pentax's Tamron lenses. While loitering in Barnes and Noble on the birthday, I tried reading the latest photography magazines. They looked like English, but read like Greek. There was one article in Outdoor Photographer about landscape photographers and their preference for film based camera. Finally, something familiar. Still, I want the digital.

Me, and my birthday cake. Can't see the number, can you? Ha ha haaa!

It has to be PMS. I've been wondering, do I deserve a digital SLR when I have the camera phone? No one's paying me to take pictures. This is that week where I think any talent I have is the talent for procrastination and general laziness. And eating. I'm fantastic at that.

My friend, Chelle, has been going through something similar mentally to what I'm thinking but not blogging. The midlife weight, the am I doing all I can, and what was it I was supposed to be doing, anyway type questions. Me, too.
Except for the weight. I weigh more. Woo hoo! I win, I win!



Um, wait. That's not winning, is it. <- Yes, a statement, not a question.As you can see, here, I've been reading every diet book, trying to figure out why I keep gaining.


Last, and most important: Today is the Toppa's birthday AND my parents' anniversary. Two for the price of one, hm? The Toppa's big 40, or yet another 29th, birthday party is on Friday. We're all going to party down then. Toppa is an amazing person. She's been through things guaranteed to make a person crazy and still is a sunny girl. She's also one of those who is the center of social information and is 'in' on every trend. Athletic, energetic, and direct, Toppa is amazing because she's often the exact opposite of me. Although, there is one thing she and a lot of my family members share, including me and the Fry. If we're dancing on a table wearing the lampshade, it's for the laughs and never because we're drunk. Ever. Who needs to drink to be silly? Not us!

Second part of the last: My parents' anniversary. I can NOT imagine being married to someone for 44 years. The very thought of being committed to one person for that long makes me shudder. But then, that's more than my whole life so far. Maybe when I'm in my early sixties... Naw. If I'd stayed in the first marriage, it'd have been 22 years. Yechhh. Thankfully, my parents did it right the first time and married the love of their life. Their marriage has been a great example to see. Never perfect, but always full of love. Which is how I think it should be.

For my parents, since they're the only ones still reading this drivel... Here's the baby, her beautiful face covered by those ugly glasses. She LOVES those glasses, and has taken my favorite mock turtleneck shirt. It's black, shortsleeved, and she looks like one of those coffee house poets. So brainy! Fry has also commandered another of my mock turtlenecks, a grey one. I'd be upset if she didn't look so darn cute in them.

It was a bit rainy a couple of weeks ago.

First of all, thanks for the compliments on the sweater! I'm pretty partial to how nice looking the model is, too. He's a great sport about my pushing him into poses, and even had final say over photos showing off too much of his scalp. :P

He loves the sweater, too. Happily, it's much too warm to wear it. Since then, I've been working on a project to submit and one of the rules about it is no blogging. It's my stealth project and has been tough to not talk about. Happily, my Mom has tons of patience for boring chatter and I've been bending her ear when I can't stand not talking about it any longer. Plus, I have some great test knitters who have really been great with questions and the speed of their knitting. They're amazing.

What can I show? How about this? The fun thing is, I've already started the heel flap so the picture is out of date. Why do I blog on cloudy days? I don't know, but the next sunny one, I'll snap lots of pictures for the next gloomy day post.


Spring showers created a pond out of our creek in the back yard!


Sadly, it didn't last very long. This is the same creek where Hubs's sweater pictures were taken, and all that was underwater.



Is spring cleaning done? Well... I can't decide when to let the carpets be soggy, so officially, no. Other than that, it's the usual mess around here.

There's been working out, bike riding, walking the dog, but with Mother's day (champagne brunch), Hometown Buffet, Jose' Peppers, and the looming birthday visit to the Cheesecake Factory... If I maintain the weight, I'll be doing GREAT. :D

Update time!

Here's my husband's latest sweater.

He wants everyone to know, it's the sweater that has a tummy, not him. Really.


In the news... Not a lot going on around here. Someone got a new bike, someone else has been walking around the neighborhood with a pup, and still others have had dental work. I already had a new bike, and all of us have walked Lucky at one point or another, and poor Hubby is the one needing a new crown.

Funny Chelle, saying I've been spring cleaning for weeks and weeks, or what seems like. She's right, it does seem like weeks, but... Cable guys, bug spray guys, and Schwan's guys have all interrupted the 'fun'. Once the carpets have been steam cleanned, I'll call the spring cleaning 'done.

I'd show off knitting fun, but honestly, other than the sweater, everything's been going in slow motion. Is it because the biggest needle I'm using is a 1US? For the agriculturally savvy members, a 1US is almost as big as baling wire. There's a couple of stealth projects in the works, one a present, one I want to submit as a design. The present will be a hit, I know, while the submition, at worst, will be a new garment for a guy around here.

In the "Oh no you didn't" news, I've learned there's a big difference in what a body can do at age 17 and at nearly age 43. (Me? 43? Can't be true.) How do I know this? Well, when I was in high school, my mom and I used to do Jane Fonda's workout. This was on RCA's Laserdisk, obsolete before it came out, seriously. It's the original and the best. I want to buy the video, since the Laserdisk copy is very skippy, and then copy the video to DVD. Cool, huh? Maybe I'll go crazy an copy the skippy copy, if it'll come out ok. I've done tons of workouts in the past mumble-mumble years, and this is the only workout that continually kicks my butt. Literally. When I last did this, Sunday, I had to remind myself of the age difference in my young self versus the old self. The youngster weighed 115, now I'm up a bit from that.

I'll wait until the crowd stops snickering. Yeah yeah, I'm heavier but am a much better cook.


Oops! Thunderstorms, gotta go.

Too much to say and not enough that's interesting.

I know! It's true, though. While I've been running around town or spring cleaning, I've done nothing that's very riveting. What's worse, my blog reading is way behind and I have no idea what my friends are up to unless I've seen them in person. Thursday, when rain is scheduled, is when I can catch up on the reading.

Like in the movies, let's do a montage. Play whatever cornball '80s music you like best, be it from Rocky (barely 80's) to The Karate Kid (barely watchable).





















In between posts there's been lunches with friends, walks with Lucky, obviously yarn shopping, and spring cleaning. At long last, the top floor is 'done'. Dusting and steam cleaning the carpet are all that remains for up there. Here, as in life, the stuff is rolling downhill. I've tried to declutter the kitchen and living room when sick of the bedrooms, and they're half done.

In knitting news, there's not much. It seems I can buy much faster than I can knit. Still, I'm on the second sleeve of Husband's sweater. I'm trying to keep my focus on that, since if I start anything else, or even pick up a current work in progress, the sweater won't see daylight for a long while.

I should blog...

...but I've been busy.
Between catching up on laundry and fighting off a headache, I've been working on this, an eensy square at a time. The colors of the Noro Kuryeon sock yarn overpowered my will. There's already four other projects on the needles, so I didn't really want to start a long-term project on size 0 US needles. Ah well, such is the pull of Noro's colors.



This, though, was done on the road trip. It's fun, and I knit a lot further than I thought I would in the driving time.


I ran around today, visiting the neurologist, Yarn Shop & More (always fun), a free trade store, a Persian grocery, a seafood store, and Italian deli. After that, a health food store and Home Depot. By then, the migraine I'd been fighting all week had me down for the count. No worries, a couple of Relpax and a nap later, and it's all gone. :)

P.S. I not only have the best family members, I have the best friends. I consider myself a very fortunate person.

I don't care for Ravelry forums.

No, I don't. Unless I actually know the people and they know me. Some of the people on the forums have this idea than I'm a moralistic religious fanatic that wants to turn the world into a nicy nice zombieville.

Even my Mom is wondering, "They're talking about you?" Sure, I have morals, but not so many I'm no fun. Enough to keep me out of jail, but not so many I wouldn't flirt with the hot cop trying to book me. I mean, come on.

I'd piped up on an "Is this appropriate" thread in the group thing. Mainly my point was maybe if what you post isn't safe for work, then should it really be posted? I'm running around all day, with the computer in the kitchen, and don't let things rated higher than PG-13 on the screen. Which is silly, I suppose, since the screen saver kicks in at 5 minutes of a mouse being still. My thoughts are, if you wouldn't say it or show it to a kid, why post it on a public knitting site? Hm, well, a lot of the others wanted no censorship of any kind anywhere near them.

One person even said she never censors her children, ever. They're allowed to see whatever she lets them. Yeah, whatever SHE lets them. Let's review censor as a verb.

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 2censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): cen·sored; cen·sor·ing \ˈsen(t)-sə-riŋ, ˈsen(t)s-riŋ\
Date: 1882
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable ; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable

Oxford English:
censor
• noun an official who examines material that is to be published and suppresses parts considered offensive or a threat to security.
• verb suppress or remove unacceptable parts of (a book, film, etc.).
— DERIVATIVES censorship noun.
— ORIGIN Latin (denoting a magistrate in ancient Rome who held censuses and supervised public morals), from censere ‘assess’.

A lot of definitions for those who think Merriam-Webster's and Oxford's dictionaries aren't accurate. I've run into a lot of people who think this, by the way.

Do I believe in the Unites State's First Amendment in the Bill of Rights? Of course I do. I firmly believe "My blog, my rules" for everyone. I also happen to believe when in public, as in a public forum, respect others by not using vulgar language or posting pictures that is considered indecent exposure. Am I offended by such stuff? Not really, but I'm not wanting to see it, either. I'm pretty picky about who I want to see naked and know how and what to Google. Since I've been told if I don't like how they talk on the forums then stay away, I will.

I was called rude on the forums, and can't see how I was. No telling other people flat out they're wrong, no saying how bad their kids are going to be from the raising they're getting, nothing like that at all.

I've also been compared to mothers whose daughters are now strippers, whose daughters were pregnant at 15, and whose kids were wild with drugs, booze, and sex once away from home. All because I waited until Fry was 12 before intentionally telling her about the details about sex and letting her see pictures (medical book cross sections) of the male anatomy.

Things I'm not too keen on telling her right at the moment? The finer details of all the types of sex to have besides the male with female basic reproduction. (I'd list them, but the fetishers would be pissed at finding how dull this blog really is.) For some of the questions, I'll tell her that I'd rather wait until she's older, because I think it'll gross her out. She'll nag, I'll finally tell her, and she'll be grossed out and wished I hadn't told her. Now all I do is say, "Are you sure you really want to know this?" and she'll back off if she's not ready to be grossed out. I just think 12 years old is too young for some of the seedier parts of sex.

Because I think this, of course, I'm on Morality Mountain and want the world to be censored and sanitized so I don't have to do my job as a parent and watch out what my kid is exposed to. I'm trying to push off my job as a parent on the rest of the world and I'm warping her by keeping her ignorant with my own ignorant view.

Did they say all this to me? Yep. Can I prove it? I can but would rather not have to read all that again. Did I post that how they were raising their kids would cause their kids to be pregnant teenagers or addicts? Nope. I'm not there and don't have a crystal ball. Plus, I don't assume their point of view makes them a bad parent.

In other news: Easter and family fun, meaning, road trip with lots of knitting. We didn't get to stay long enough at anyone's house and we all miss our family already. Missed seeing our sisters and hope to make up for that soon. I'll have to post pictures of the Scalloped tee since it's coming along a lot faster than I'd thought. It's looking really cool. I'd started the eensiest bit of a Noro sock yarn sock, not even an inch's worth. It's on size 0us needles, which explains a lot.

How about the day after the day after tomorrow?

aka, Friday fun. Which means, picture time! To be honest, I've not been able to enjoy the great weather due to migraines. Gotta love the monthly reminder I'm female. <-sarcasm

So anyway, there's been some knitting, some cleaning, and a lot of sleeping. When all of the above hasn't been happening, I've been goofing around on Ravelry, that really cool knit site. While my beloved Hubs created me something like this for Christmas one year, it's very exclusive and has invoicing and order capabilities. More of a small business application. There, like on Ravelry, I've not inventoried my stash, instead relying on a simple Word table. Even now, I need to update the Word to be even with the Ravelry, never mind the QuickKnitted application (Hubs created).

Wow! Totally interesting, huh? So anyway, Ravelry is very cool, but also a great addiction. There's groups of knitters who have the same interests like, beagles, Law & Order:SVU, and Monty Pythons. It's a place to hide and share your obsession over the pups and shows. There are other 'obsessions' like certain knit designers, a type of yarn, even geographical locations. That's fun. There's a lot of things to love, but what's THE best is the cross referencing. Say I have a pattern I want to do, but have so much in my yarn pile that I should use some from there. I find the pattern in Ravelry, click on "Yarns", and that shows what everyone else who did that project used as yarn for that particular item. With pictures, no less. Who doesn't LOVE pretty pictures?

Speaking of which... I still want that digital Pentax SLR, but, haven't had the self-control to stop buying yarn and save for it. In the meantime, here's what the camera phone snapped:

Look who's matchy-matchy! I think she likes her jacket! Whew! It's not been a ton of work, but still. I made it out of Red Heart just to be long-wearing and washable. Plus, if something disasterous happens, I can reknit it.


One of my beloved Simply Lovely Lace Socks has a hole in the ball of the foot, finally. I'd wondered how long I could wear these once a week before one of them wore out. The weird thing is, the night before I found the hole, I'd dreamed one of them frayed a huge hole in the back of the heel. ::cue the Halloween music::


This is pure glee. The Red Heart Strata is what I'd made Fry's jacket above in, and my own little matching Jaywalker as a show off. I can't WAIT to get started on this, making it into a pullover with no hood, instead. While Frygirl is a hoodie type gal, I'm a pullover type, myself. Later, I'll have to dig up Hubby's yarn for his matching pullover and socks.


Here's my sweet baby terrorizing the cat. She's been teasing him so much with a yoyo, he rowrs at her when she walks by him. At that, she'll go "What?" and I laugh. She's on spring break as of noon today, so by next next Monday, one of them will be injured. My bet is on the girl. Notice her lovely nails? We had a Girl's Day Out a week ago and I let her get the fakes. I'm trying to break her habit of chewing. She doesn't like the color, while I do, but she does like the nails. I'll have to repaint hers sometime today.


I have such a lovely kitchen for it to look this bad, hm? This was taken long enough ago that all the dishes are now washing, the extra yarn is back in Stashville, and Fry has some of her stuff on the island. Left on the island are books to read and study for my own writing, how to draw and paint books as a refresher, this month's magazines, loose catalogues and papers, my control journal, and home improvement articles.


Here is a wonderful quote for dealing with the horror in the photo above.
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
-Eleanor Roosevelt

A bit of snark...

What's the difference between a Republican sex scandal and a Democrat's sex scandal?


If there's women involved, you know the guy is a Democrat. (Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer)

If young boys or men are involved, the guy is a Republican. (Mark Foley, Larry Craig)

There are always exceptions, James McGreevey and Arnold Schwarzenegger first come to mind. I don't think either party has dibs on dirty laundry.

There's been misbehaving from the very beginning, it seems. Powerful men, when they mess up, do so powerfully.

Tomorrow, we're back to knitting and other family activities, I promise.

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry..."

Things have really been bothering me, politically. I hate how people can vote for our current president but be too chicken sh't to either enlist in the armed forces themselves or send their kids over. They'll support him and his administration, but let others go over to fight him and his fight. If people REALLY support Bush, let them prove it by enlisting. Everything linked or quoted below is the copywrite of their respective owners or writers. My text is mine, and I've explicitly quoted non-biased sources. Or at least, supposed to be non-biased.

Barbara Bush:
Jenna and I are really not very political, but we love our Dad too much to stand back and watch from the sidelines. We realized that this would be his last campaign, and we wanted to be a part of it. Besides, since we've graduated from college, we're looking around for something to do for the next few years ... kind of like Dad.

While Jenna says this concerning whether she and her twin should enlist for Iraq. "Obviously I understand that question and see what the point of that question is for sure. I think there are many ways to serve your country. I think ... what's most appropriate for me to do is to teach or to work in UNICEF and represent our country in Latin America."

The article linked above goes on to say, "But, Jenna is a kid barely out of her teens and is just trying to talk about her pending marriage and helping kids." Poor girl! Barely out of her teens at 25 years old! Like these guys and girls:
Casualty List
After importing this to a Word document, tabling the names, then sorting by age, I counted up the casualties from age 18 to 25. According to this list, almost 2400 young men and women the same age or younger than our President's offspring have died in Iraq alone.

When we went to war in Iraq, Great Britain was and is our ally. I don't know their motivation for sure. Is Tony Blair in Big Oil? I don't know, but what is sure is he has big bollocks for saying "Iraq is a 'disaster' admits Blair" Still, I don't see how he personally profits as much as Bush for this war. In fact, Bush brings up Iraq in their first meeting.

"It got off to a very good start, almost from the first syllable uttered, because Bush said to Blair, 'Welcome to Camp David, Tony. May I call you Tony?' And Blair said, 'Well, thank you for this warm welcome, George. May I call you George?' Then the president said to Blair, without any sort of ceremony or farce or some kind of grandiloquent statement, 'Well, what shall we talk about?' Blair said, 'We might as well start with the Middle East,' and Bush said, 'Good idea. Shall we do Iraq first?' "

Surely Tony didn't just jump into a war for no reason? But wait! What's this?

Tony Blair will be paid £2.5m a year for his post at US investment bank JP Morgan, it was revealed today.
It is the first of a series of posts that could see the former prime minister rake in a staggering £40million.
...
Tory defence spokesman Gerald Howarth said: "It will be viewed with some contempt by the armed forces that he picks up this large cheque when he was happy to send British troops into battle ill-equipped and in insufficient numbers."
JPMorgan is heading a consortium set to make billions as Iraq's economy recovers from the war spearheaded by Mr Blair and U.S. President George Bush.
It was chosen to run the new Trade Bank of Iraq, which has raised billions in trade guarantees by mortgaging future oil production and will make huge profits from the deals.

No matter if Bush pushed Blair into, sob! going into a very profitable war, I have to ask why are we in Iraq? Could it be money?

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

I think so!

In charitable contributions alone, the Saudis gave at least $3.5 million to Bush charities -- $1 million by Prince Bandar to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, $1 million by King Fahd to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy, $500,000 by Prince Al Waleed to Philips Academy, Andover, to finance a newly created George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, and a $1 million painting from Prince Bandar to George W. Bush's White House.

Then there were the corporate transactions. In 1987, a Swiss bank linked to BCCI and a Saudi investor bailed out Harken Energy, where George W. Bush was a director, with $25 million in financing. At the Carlyle Group, investors from the House of Saud and their allies put at least $80 million into Carlyle funds. While it was owned by Carlyle, BDM and its subsidiary Vinnell received at least $1.188 billion in contracts from the Saudis. Finally, Halliburton inked at least $180 million in deals with the Saudis in November 2000, just after Dick Cheney began collecting a lucrative severance package there.

In all, at least $1.476 billion had made its way from the Saudis to the House of Bush and its allied companies and institutions. It could safely be said that never before in history had a presidential candidate -- much less a presidential candidate and his father, a former president -- been so closely tied financially and personally to the ruling family of another foreign power. Never before had a president's personal fortunes and public policies been so deeply entwined with another nation.

Ooo, sounds like Blair is much more the patsy than Bush. Ah well, not as many Britons died as Americans, so maybe he didn't earn the money like our President did, hm?

Whatever you want to say about the Royal Family Windsor and the publicity stunt of Prince Harry in Afghanistan... At least Harry went.

He might have had a security detail, but the British media kept the tour quiet, and Harry IS in the Royal Army. Not only that, but Prince William is slated to fight in the war as well. Wherever the two men are sent, at least as leaders, they have courage. Even with security, no one is really safe. I think the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto proves that.

I think we can guess what the current administration's attitude is.

Who ordered another dose of winter?

Seriously. How warm was it yesterday? How cold is it today? I'm trying to figure out how to stay in the house all week and ignore the freeze. It's already not working, I had to check the mail (might have been a yarn catalogue in there!!!) and clean the front glass door.

Since I think I'm PMSing, or at least let's hope that's why I'm feelin' crabby, let's ruin Christmas for my sisters. Since this IS March, it's time Christmas was wrecked for them, don't you think? In fact, let's ruin the Little Goopa's birthday as well, since it was on Martin Luther King's birthday.

Goopa's Christmas, as modeled by the newly ear pierced Frygirl.


Little Goopa's birthday present sans sleeves. I sewed one on, then undid due to the crap job I did. I loathe finishing, the result is never good enough for me. My next task is to knit up swatches in this yarn and practice mattress stitching them together so this looks somewhat professional. Always the goal, you know.


Here we have the lovely Toppa's Christmas, perfect for wearing over a light shirt. This is perfect for the spring when it's sorta warm, sorta cold.


This isn't a Christmas present, it's mine. Finally, after a year, I'm calling this puppy done. It sat in my laundry room for nine months, gathering dust and pissing me off. I don't like UnFinished Objects and the KnitALong died on the vine. It's pretty busy as is, so all I did was weave a few beads on the front, none on the back due to the sitting on a pea feeling I knew I'd have. Pick up and knit around the sleeve edging, including beads along the way. Finally, I took some ribbon yarn and wove it in the yarn over holes lining the bottom hem. It gave the Not a Poncho some sparkle without overwhelming the garment. I love it and look forward to showing it off in real life sometime.




Progress on Fry's cardigan...


Here's the first sleeve at my favorite haunt, the computer. This is where my butt gets flat every day. There's a space heater at my feet, a TV to the left, and a fridge right behind me.


Oh, and a cat hanging around, too. I'd spent most of the morning upstairs, putting away laundry and he followed, meowing a "What? You don't like the space heater?" His fur gets ruffled if I don't keep to the schedule of feeding him, letting him sleep on the bed, and pushing the space heater closer to him.


Since we hang out together so much, I know his expression says, "I was sleeping. Leave me alone."