Found it!

It's Aloha Friday...

This column by Paul Greenberg validated my decision to NOT listen to whatever President BarryO had to say, not just the other night, but any night before, or since...here's some of it...

He blamed his predecessor for the vast deficit he had inherited — just after pushing a three-quarter-of-a-trillion spending package through Congress that will make it vaster. (Obviously, President BarryO, Queen Nancy, & Court Jester Reid are forgetting COMPLETELY that he was - and they were - part of the Congress that sent spending bills to President Bush? This man's memory is worse than mine!)

Promising economies to balance the budget, in the next breath he was handing out goodies all around — to the deserving, undeserving, in-between, it scarcely mattered. (In the grand scheme of Big Government, isn't this called Pork?)

He was going to encourage private capital to invest — by raising taxes on it. (Not sure about anyone else, but in MY opinion, this is a losing idea.)

He would restore our sense of personal responsibility by blaming others. (Now THERE'S an original thought - if you're six and your sister just tattled on you!)

This next paragraph is just priceless -

It wasn't just the words that didn't fit together, it was the sights and sounds, the tone of the thing. What he said no longer cohered. He had lost the thread, and with it decorum. He had started speaking softly to each of us. Soon he was delivering a humdinger of a speech at party headquarters on the South Side. Nobody messes with Joe! Laughter, applause, nudges in the side, all on cue. Above him Joe squirmed modestly while lacquered Nancy Pelosi jumped up and down like a teenybopper at every applause line. It was embarrassing.

Yes. Exactly. Not much more than a month into the new Administration, I am profoundly embarrassed, almost every day. Any word on what new levels of integrity Gary Locke has sunk to?

Needing some amusement to filter the embarrassment through, I got an idea. If I have time later, I'm going to see if there's a way to put sound here - I see an 'Add video' button, so maybe that'll work. When we were in Hawai'i, I woke every Friday to the sounds of "It's Aloha Friday, no work till Monday..." Rick Hamada started the day that way for me & I like to hear it again sometimes.

Anyway, it's a beautiful Friday morning in NE Florida, the sunrise is mighty pretty, the cats are demanding food & potty time, & I am...well, I'm up. More later, I hope.

bleh

I was going to post a newer picture of my Pixie, but there's nothing newer in my folder than Halloween & she looks NOTHING like that anymore. All the good pictures are either on my phone or in a different folder & I am too tired to futz with it anymore.

G'Night, y'all, let's do this again tomorrow!

Or not.

Gators Want Big Boom?

FBI raids UF Nuclear Power Institute

UPDATE: from Rodrigo, more information - Orlando Sentinal story

I know nuclear research doesn't necessarily involve making weapons - I've been the recipient of some of the medical miracles that come about because of it. I'm wondering if it would've made the papers at all, had Professor Anghaie not been Iranian.

I still say - in this part of the world in particular -- as long as the football team isn't involved, it ain't no thing.

UPDATE II: On further reflection, the nuclear medicine programs & research at UF are probably some of the best in the country. The UF medical school, in partnership with Shands Hospital, is a fine teaching school - & serves many indigent people in Duval County with excellent medical care they would otherwise do without.

Greed has no national or educational boundaries, does it?

Happy Wednesday

I hear the pontification by BarryO went off without a hitch - Michelle is blessed with good dressers - & I'm not sorry to have watched whatever it was I watched on the MLB channel instead. I'm listening to WMAL in D.C. right now (our last duty station was the Test Pilot School at Pax River). I get most of my political news from Grandy & Andy.

After I get up in the morning, I usually feed the cats & pour coffee, then come here to the computer to check mail & read some blogs. First on my list is Lileks. From today's posting:

Sir. Six oysters for breakfast with a rasher of bacon is an indulgence. Three showgirls in your lap is an indulgence. Racing a car at high speed on weekends is an indulgence. Having a moral tuning fork that twinges when someone drinks water from a plastic bottle is an affectation.

Gotta love this level of puffery & hypocrisy & arrogance. I'll love it from a distance, though, thanks. Anyone in my daily life who acts that way is usually laughed back into some semblance of sanity...or excised from my daily life. Lileks is always a good morning read - click here, or the link in the sidebar .

My lil pixie is here now, so we're going to go have cheese toast & bananas for breakfast. Thanks for stopping by & please, enjoy your day, no matter what.

O-BINGO!

Paco had this link & even though it might be too late for people to see it before the (sorta, but unofficial) state of our Union address (but not REALLY, he just loves to see himself on tv, be surrounded by adoring fans, & hear himself TALK, fercryinoutloud) by BarryO tonight, it is STILL gonna be funny tomorrow!

I have a copy of AA Bullshit Bingo somewhere & this is so close as to be quite scary.

from the American Spectator

Glad I didn't miss this column by Shawn Macomber:

A few years later Jim went off to war. He returned scarred. Difficult. An essentially good man with demons that thrived, never drowned, in the bottle and a sad past like an implacable dark cloud. Forbearance and self-sacrifice in relationships, of course, long ago fell out of vogue with the rise of the Boomers’ Nation of Navel-Gazing. No matter. Alice loved with a stubborn unconditionality, seer of the diamond in the sometimes very rough, a living example of a commitment.

Brought tears to my eyes. You? One With The Underdogs

Gator Pixie?

Her Daddy grew up a Gator fan. I don't remember who gave her this cheerleader uniform, but I think it was the right thing to do!

I used to think if I did something wrong, the expensive machine my husband worked so hard to pay for would go up in smoke or burn to the ground. I've come a long way since then, but computers have also come a long way - we got our first one in 1990.

It's a cute picture, but the biggest reason it's here is because I'm learning how to do this blogging thing. Swampie, the 'trial & error' seems to be working, thanks for the idea!

Skewed Priorities

Thomas Sowell:
First of all, the day-to-day life of most Americans in these times is nowhere near as dire as that of the band of cold, ragged and hungry men who gathered around George Washington in the winter at Valley Forge, to which they had been driven by defeat after defeat.

Only the most reckless gambler would have bet on them to win. Only an optimist would have expected them to survive.

Against the background of those and other desperate times that this country has been through, we cannot whine today because the stocks in our pension plans have gone down or the inflated value that our houses had just a few years ago has now evaporated.

Our mutual fund account has lost 32% this quarter. I don't particularly care what the value of our house is (our mortgage was less than the value when we re-financed in November), because we're not selling and we won't borrow against it...because we don't borrow money anymore. "The borrower is slave to the lender." It is our ONLY debt. Everyday life is as good as anything I could expect, if I had expectations.

However, Sowell continues:

One of the many symptoms of this decay from within is that we are preoccupied with the pay of corporate executives while the leading terrorist-sponsoring nation on earth is moving steadily toward creating nuclear bombs.

Thomas Sowell column - A Fatal Trajectory

And G-d knows, Heath Ledger's family picking up his Oscar is FAR more interesting, isn't it?

Now, to improve my mood, I'm going to go pick up the cutest little blond chickie you ever saw.

UPDATE: Just my luck, Rush read the Thomas Sowell column on his show today!

A short explanation

Friend emailed, asked why I named this blog "Pixie Place." I have a couple pet names for my daytime job, which is caring for my granddaughter (now almost 17 months). When she started smiling at me, well over a year ago, she reminded me of the little creatures Lileks calls Jingle Pixies. So that's what I called her. She is still a little blond pixie, her mother has decorated much of her room with Tinkerbell stuff, & it just fits her little self, in my opinion. Lots of the other things are the popular-this-season ladybug items, so I also call her Bug...but it's usually StinkBug, not Ladybug!

She's an important part of my day for the foreseeable future, so my place is the Pixie Place.

Besides, it's kinder than Bullshirt from an Old Broad...

Now ya know. Whether you wanted to or not.

I'll post a picture of my pixie soon, when I'm up for trying something different here.

Thanks for stopping by, I'm HUNGRY again!

UPDATE: Who am I kidding - I'll post a picture when I have time to figure out HOW to post a picture. Most of the instructions may as well be written in ancient Aramaic for all I can see. I am NOT trained in computers, I just wander & stumble my way into things. My memory wouldn't remember most terms & definitions for more than a moment or 2 anyway. This may be the biggest foul-up I've made in quite some time...

Is it Spring yet?

The first Jacksonville Suns game is April 2. They're not on tv, even locally, which BITES. I will be cheering louder than ever for them, cuz they're no longer a Dodger farm team, they're Marlins. YAY! It's murder to go to a game after June, so time is short! I want to get to as many as possible.

I've been a Padres fan since 1997, when we lived in SoCal & went to lots of games & watched on tv or listened on the radio when we couldn't go. It was heavenly. The last member of that team was let go recently, so I'm officially moving my fan-ny to the Marlins. I follow the Rays, too, but they're American League. MOST of my favorites in any sport are small-market teams. Hey, I'm a small-town girl. I also like the Cardinals, Cubs, & Royals.

I do not like basketball, especially past junior high. The worst part of the year for me is right after the SuperBowl. No football till ...is it August? And there hasn't been baseball since BEFORE my birthday! The Daytona 500 & the NASCAR season sorta fill in a bit, but durnit, those west-of-the-Mississippi races are tough for an old broad like me to stay awake for.

Thanks for stopping by, I'm going to find something to eat now. Finally.

Twenty Four Years!

Many thanks to Mikael & Andrea.

Gotta change my profile soon - today is our 24th wedding anniversary. Wow. No idea how he's put up with me all this time (we were together for 3 years even before that), except he likes to eat & I like to cook!

To celebrate, we're going out to the Florida Trail, where My Chief will hike a small section while I do some cross-stitch & read a bit. As he hikes today, he'll be planning a hike for a section of the Appalachian Trail - Irwin to Damascus in time for Trail Days.

Beautiful sunrise out the window this morning - gotta love it!

I really don't know how to do this

I started a 'blog' on the MySpace page I set up quite some time ago. It's private, by invitation only, so readership has been...low. That's ok, I'm not trying to make a big splash or get a lot of attention, I simply wanted a place to say what I think & post some things I find interesting, amusing, or important, where I can also gripe about the political landscape & fume on the pussies my Fellow Americans have become in such a short period of time.

Well, I was over at Paco Enterprises today & realized I could have a blog that some of my new friends might be interested in. Or not. But more public. Because it's come time to stop hiding behind Nice so much.

I'm not a good writer, I'm not terribly opinionated on many things, I've pretty much spent my life getting along to get along. MOST of the time. If I'm not amused, I'm usually not interested in the least. So, Paco...Andrea...Kae...Saint...Swampie...here goes. Posting will be sketchy at best, I'm afraid. Thanks for your help!