I'm getting frustrated with myself.
I can't find my phone charger. And I'm expecting a bunch of important text messages.
It's too cold to go looking for it. I can't get out from underneath my covers.
I can't find my stash of fruit rollups that my hubby hid (from the kids?) and I can't call him because my phone is dead. (And I'm too cold to get up and look for it.)
And finally, I can't figure out how to request to read someone's blog I've been enjoying reading that is now private. I've tried and tried, and now I can't even leave a comment because it's private now! Lol!
AACK!
What to do, what to do? :P
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
AIG: Arrogant, Incompentent and Greedy
Un-flipping-believable.
Now, I think I heard about this whole ridiculous bonus issue a few months ago, so I was confused as to the reasons why we're all just now freaking out about it. Especially while watching Congress go ballistic after voting themselves an 8% pay increase, all while entertaining lobbyists from AIG and other undesirables, and passing laws (and loopholes) that allowed all this to happen in the first place.
Sad thing is, something like 52 employees that received these "retention bonuses" received them after they had already left the company. One in particular accepted over a $4 million bonus and then resigned.
My husband (always wanting to argue with me whether he truly agrees or not) said to me, "You can't tell me you'd turn down a multi-million dollar bonus if your company offered it to you." I felt like he punched me in the stomach, because OF COURSE I WOULDN'T. I proudly boast a couple rare little qualities known as character and morality. Even if my company would have given us our bonuses this year (which they didn't), I would have at least emailed the president of the hospital and asked him if he thought it was a good idea in the condition of our present economic situation.
Edward Liddy was mobbed...er...interviewed today by Congress (a hypocrisy in itself) where he had the nerve to say that he asked the employees who received over $100,000 to return at least half of it. Half? How 'bout all? And then when Barney Frank asked him if he would be willing to turn over the names of those executives who refused, Mr. Liddy said that he would consider it if there was a promise of anonymity.
Is this guy for real? Barney basically told him that there would be no such agreement, and to expect a subpoena. Hell yea, they should subpoena all these self deserving assholes. Then they should post their identity for public knowledge. Then see how many of them cough it up. McCarthyism my ass. The difference here is that these people aren't teachers and factory workers and nurses that have unfairly targeted for having a minority political opinion. These people robbed us blind. Only Rush Limbaugh, who makes something like $50 million a year would call that McCarthyism.
I don't care if their multi-million dollar bonuses are a minute fraction of what they're used to living on. I don't care if it was in their contract. They should be held accountable and I'm pretty confident that no one will ever do that, because the the people running Congress and the people running Wall Street are pretty much interchangeable. Literally. I'd really like to see the numbers on how many congressmen once had jobs in the financial market and how many CEOs of those bankrupt companies once were lawmakers.
Not that I have any faith in Barney Frank. I don't have faith in Congress at all anymore. Filibuster is now a household word, being used by the Senate something like 112 times in the 2007-08 term, more than doubling its use since the previous term. I doubt they know I (and most of the country) see them as siveling, whiney, greedy and pompous. Their least endearing quality is the fact that I really don't think they even care what we think.
People need to make it a priority next chance to elect some Eliot Nesses and his "untouchables". Electing congressmen on familiarity of their name alone is just as much of a moral crime as what they do with their position after we shoe them in. Everyone needs to take some personal responsibility, not just while deciding on their vote, but in all areas of their lives. A little more responsibility and we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Now, I think I heard about this whole ridiculous bonus issue a few months ago, so I was confused as to the reasons why we're all just now freaking out about it. Especially while watching Congress go ballistic after voting themselves an 8% pay increase, all while entertaining lobbyists from AIG and other undesirables, and passing laws (and loopholes) that allowed all this to happen in the first place.
Sad thing is, something like 52 employees that received these "retention bonuses" received them after they had already left the company. One in particular accepted over a $4 million bonus and then resigned.
My husband (always wanting to argue with me whether he truly agrees or not) said to me, "You can't tell me you'd turn down a multi-million dollar bonus if your company offered it to you." I felt like he punched me in the stomach, because OF COURSE I WOULDN'T. I proudly boast a couple rare little qualities known as character and morality. Even if my company would have given us our bonuses this year (which they didn't), I would have at least emailed the president of the hospital and asked him if he thought it was a good idea in the condition of our present economic situation.
Edward Liddy was mobbed...er...interviewed today by Congress (a hypocrisy in itself) where he had the nerve to say that he asked the employees who received over $100,000 to return at least half of it. Half? How 'bout all? And then when Barney Frank asked him if he would be willing to turn over the names of those executives who refused, Mr. Liddy said that he would consider it if there was a promise of anonymity.
Is this guy for real? Barney basically told him that there would be no such agreement, and to expect a subpoena. Hell yea, they should subpoena all these self deserving assholes. Then they should post their identity for public knowledge. Then see how many of them cough it up. McCarthyism my ass. The difference here is that these people aren't teachers and factory workers and nurses that have unfairly targeted for having a minority political opinion. These people robbed us blind. Only Rush Limbaugh, who makes something like $50 million a year would call that McCarthyism.
I don't care if their multi-million dollar bonuses are a minute fraction of what they're used to living on. I don't care if it was in their contract. They should be held accountable and I'm pretty confident that no one will ever do that, because the the people running Congress and the people running Wall Street are pretty much interchangeable. Literally. I'd really like to see the numbers on how many congressmen once had jobs in the financial market and how many CEOs of those bankrupt companies once were lawmakers.
Not that I have any faith in Barney Frank. I don't have faith in Congress at all anymore. Filibuster is now a household word, being used by the Senate something like 112 times in the 2007-08 term, more than doubling its use since the previous term. I doubt they know I (and most of the country) see them as siveling, whiney, greedy and pompous. Their least endearing quality is the fact that I really don't think they even care what we think.
People need to make it a priority next chance to elect some Eliot Nesses and his "untouchables". Electing congressmen on familiarity of their name alone is just as much of a moral crime as what they do with their position after we shoe them in. Everyone needs to take some personal responsibility, not just while deciding on their vote, but in all areas of their lives. A little more responsibility and we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Garden: March 15th, 2009 Part 1
I was able to get outside today to do some spring cleaning in my garden... Unfortunately last year I didn't prepare for spring as much as I'd thought. Part of my problem is that I still don't have a stomach for killing anything by pulling it up, so I let id die off and by the time it's dead, it's too cold and I don't want to do anything when it's cold (I'm a sissy when it comes to winter). Hopefully this year I'll be better. I took some pictures of before and after the cleaning, maybe it'll make me feel as if I've accomplished something!
Looking west...You can see the remnants of my peppers, and those Japanese onions that surprised me early this spring. Also in the background is my hanging tomato project that was knocked over this winter by strong storms. What a mess.
After I cleaned it all up... Not sure how to get all the leaf debris off my stone. I have the same problem all over my yard, and it doesn't matter how much I rake, there's always leaves because we have so much fencing. I'll be honest, though, I didn't rake anything out of my garden last fall. The closest SFG has a lot of clay in it that I attempted to break up last year. I added quite a bit of peat but it's still very thick. The second has a little clay in it and the furthest garden has the best consistency out of the three.
Looking east...A shot from the other end. To the left of the picture is an area I had sectioned off for perennial food, such as asparagus, strawberries, and rhubarb. I asked my hubby to pick up some steel pipe last year for my trellis and he picked up PVC. I worked with it, though, and it worked alright. It did move with the wind quite a bit, but that never affected my peas.
All cleaned up. Hopefully now the soil will dry out so I can start planting soon. I'm scheduled to plant outdoors on the 18th. The weather report says it will be nice (in the 60's!) this week until Wednesday when it is supposed to rain. I may plant on Tuesday if I can get the soil dried up and workable. I'm still wondering what to do with those onions. They're a little soggy and sad looking but I'm having trouble just pulling them up...
My Backyard
I decided to dedicate a blog specifically to my gardening, partially because I'm OCD and have to obsessively organize all the time to feel sane, but also because I'd love to get constructive criticism and advice from fellow gardeners and I'm not sure how constructive that criticism can be from people who have to sift through all my angry political rantings to find the specific garden blogs I've written. (Wow was that a run-on sentence or what?? Big breath!)
So my garden journal will now be located at My Backyard. I need a written record anyways so I can learn from my mistakes (and possibly successes??) from season to season. I'm so excited! Especially since it's 50 degrees and beautiful! I'm outta here!
So my garden journal will now be located at My Backyard. I need a written record anyways so I can learn from my mistakes (and possibly successes??) from season to season. I'm so excited! Especially since it's 50 degrees and beautiful! I'm outta here!
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Quick Garden Update
I'm not feeling really hot, but I wanted to post a quick update before I pass out for the night.
I noticed one of my broccoli plants poking up today. Otherwise nothing has grown yet. I planted lettuce today, 4 plants, because I plant 4 per square foot. I planted 2 of each of the tomatoes I chose: Brandywine, Earlygirl, and Beefmaster. Hopefully all 6 will take, but if not I'll be happy with one plant each. Especially since I'm sure Brandon will plant his own. It's his only garden contribution every year. All these I planted from seed in a peat pod.
My plans for tomorrow were to hook up my fluorescent lighting setup. But we got so much rain this weekend that our basement is taking on more water than we can pump out. So with 4 inches of water in the basement, I'm not sure I want to fool around with electricity quite yet. But I'm worried I will get that started a bit too late to accomplish what I'd hoped. But we'll see. The rain is supposed to stop late tonight.
I'm scheduled to plant outdoors on March 18th, so I need to get my garden prepared. If I can get the soil dried up enough, I'll dump some compost and peat (at least in the most clay ridden of the 3 SFG) so I can start planting in 10 days! Did I mention yet that I have onions sprouting from last year? Japanese onions that apparently have been kicking ass for the past month or so. But I have a lot of work to do on those gardens before I can accomplish anything, so I'm crossing my fingers for no more rain!
Well, not much excitement, obviously, but a little progress, anyways. So, I'm off to bed... until next time...
I noticed one of my broccoli plants poking up today. Otherwise nothing has grown yet. I planted lettuce today, 4 plants, because I plant 4 per square foot. I planted 2 of each of the tomatoes I chose: Brandywine, Earlygirl, and Beefmaster. Hopefully all 6 will take, but if not I'll be happy with one plant each. Especially since I'm sure Brandon will plant his own. It's his only garden contribution every year. All these I planted from seed in a peat pod.
My plans for tomorrow were to hook up my fluorescent lighting setup. But we got so much rain this weekend that our basement is taking on more water than we can pump out. So with 4 inches of water in the basement, I'm not sure I want to fool around with electricity quite yet. But I'm worried I will get that started a bit too late to accomplish what I'd hoped. But we'll see. The rain is supposed to stop late tonight.
I'm scheduled to plant outdoors on March 18th, so I need to get my garden prepared. If I can get the soil dried up enough, I'll dump some compost and peat (at least in the most clay ridden of the 3 SFG) so I can start planting in 10 days! Did I mention yet that I have onions sprouting from last year? Japanese onions that apparently have been kicking ass for the past month or so. But I have a lot of work to do on those gardens before I can accomplish anything, so I'm crossing my fingers for no more rain!
Well, not much excitement, obviously, but a little progress, anyways. So, I'm off to bed... until next time...
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Garden Stuff
This weekend, I started planting. Two weeks late, I might add. This slightly annoys me, because last year I started planting late and it screwed up my entire rhythm. I promised myself I would start on time this year. According to my Square Foot Gardening book, there technically is only one month I shouldn't be doing anything garden related. Well, obviously I'm not at that level, nor is my house set up to garden in my basement. But there are vegetables that I screwed up last year that all it would take to do it right is to just start early.
I bought a new book, Guide to Ohio Vegetable Gardening, a little calendar, and a notebook, and sat down and came up with a game plan. Based on my successes and failures last year, as well as what vegetables I really got to enjoy and others I'd like to, I decided on the following vegetables: Beet, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, green beans, lettuce, muskmelon, watermelon, onion, peas, habenero, jalapeno, and bell peppers, sweet and red potatoes, radishes, zucchini, and 3 kinds of tomatoes. I'm also planting cilantro, garlic and chives.
The cool thing about the Ohio gardening book is that it suggests the best particular variety of each vegetable for an Ohio garden. Not only that, but I used what I learned last year to decide, for instance, that I wanted a pea that doesn't need a huge trellis, and that I liked my bushing zucchini so much that I'd like to try it again, and this time try bush watermelon and cucumber as well. Obviously it was too late to order all those specific seeds online so I had to go to several local stores to find what I wanted, and I still didn't find some of them.
And because I felt so unorganized last year, I got my entire game plan all mapped out in my little calendar. When to plant seeds, when to transplant, and even when to expect a harvest. I decided this year's goal is to not buy a single transplant. Last year I transplanted some onions, a bell pepper plant, and some tomatoes. I want to do everything from seed this year. Because my ultimate goal is to know that I can do it if I ever had to.
Because I'm planting everything from seed, I thought I'd step up my indoor planting by setting up an extra fluorescent light we have with a timer to help along the plants. Someone suggested also that while growing the seedlings, point a fan at them to strengthen them so they're not so spindly when you do go to transplant. I lost a lot of transplants last year because they were so puny and weak.
Finally, in an attempt to actually make this cost efficient, I'm keeping my seeds. I've got them in a freezer container away from moisture so they'll keep the full 4-5 years. After it's all said and done, seeds really run quite expensive- the cost of seeds has risen, and not to mention I'm growing 26 vegetables. At $2 a packet, it adds up. I would like to compost as well as save rain water this year, but we'll see. That's a different blog.
So after all that organization, I actually did get some planting in... I planted onion, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. I did plant a little extra, because inevitably some (most?) of it will die, but not nearly as much extra as I planted last year. It's odd, but I do feel bad killing off extra seedlings that I can't use in my garden. Almost as bad as killing a mouse or something! So I planted 8 onion, and 2 each of the others. I really only want one each of those, but will be happy if I get two.
That was Tuesday. This weekend I'll set up the light so it's ready for when the seedlings pop up, and next week I'm scheduled to start a couple other vegetables. Believe it or not, soon I'll be planting outdoors. As soon as the soil is workable. A couple more days like today and it'll be ready to work.
I bought a new book, Guide to Ohio Vegetable Gardening, a little calendar, and a notebook, and sat down and came up with a game plan. Based on my successes and failures last year, as well as what vegetables I really got to enjoy and others I'd like to, I decided on the following vegetables: Beet, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, green beans, lettuce, muskmelon, watermelon, onion, peas, habenero, jalapeno, and bell peppers, sweet and red potatoes, radishes, zucchini, and 3 kinds of tomatoes. I'm also planting cilantro, garlic and chives.
The cool thing about the Ohio gardening book is that it suggests the best particular variety of each vegetable for an Ohio garden. Not only that, but I used what I learned last year to decide, for instance, that I wanted a pea that doesn't need a huge trellis, and that I liked my bushing zucchini so much that I'd like to try it again, and this time try bush watermelon and cucumber as well. Obviously it was too late to order all those specific seeds online so I had to go to several local stores to find what I wanted, and I still didn't find some of them.
And because I felt so unorganized last year, I got my entire game plan all mapped out in my little calendar. When to plant seeds, when to transplant, and even when to expect a harvest. I decided this year's goal is to not buy a single transplant. Last year I transplanted some onions, a bell pepper plant, and some tomatoes. I want to do everything from seed this year. Because my ultimate goal is to know that I can do it if I ever had to.
Because I'm planting everything from seed, I thought I'd step up my indoor planting by setting up an extra fluorescent light we have with a timer to help along the plants. Someone suggested also that while growing the seedlings, point a fan at them to strengthen them so they're not so spindly when you do go to transplant. I lost a lot of transplants last year because they were so puny and weak.
Finally, in an attempt to actually make this cost efficient, I'm keeping my seeds. I've got them in a freezer container away from moisture so they'll keep the full 4-5 years. After it's all said and done, seeds really run quite expensive- the cost of seeds has risen, and not to mention I'm growing 26 vegetables. At $2 a packet, it adds up. I would like to compost as well as save rain water this year, but we'll see. That's a different blog.
So after all that organization, I actually did get some planting in... I planted onion, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. I did plant a little extra, because inevitably some (most?) of it will die, but not nearly as much extra as I planted last year. It's odd, but I do feel bad killing off extra seedlings that I can't use in my garden. Almost as bad as killing a mouse or something! So I planted 8 onion, and 2 each of the others. I really only want one each of those, but will be happy if I get two.
That was Tuesday. This weekend I'll set up the light so it's ready for when the seedlings pop up, and next week I'm scheduled to start a couple other vegetables. Believe it or not, soon I'll be planting outdoors. As soon as the soil is workable. A couple more days like today and it'll be ready to work.
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