Monday, September 29, 2008

The Market

It's probably not a good idea to check my portfolio today.
Dow Jones Industrial Average -302.50 (-2.71%)
NASDAQ: -92.36 (-4.23%)
10:25am EDT

Blogs

Here's the 2008 State of the Blogosphere from Technorati.

I Love New York - winner short film by Sean Cunningham - a WG grad!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Headlines

Economic Fears Give Obama Clear Lead Over McCain in Poll
By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 24, 2008; Page A01

McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate Amid Financial Crisis

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Mitchell L. Blumenthal
Published September 24, 2008
New York Times

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Best Memory Game

This is the best one I've found.
Memory Game by Zefrank
The Animated one is my favorite - after that, is Dana's.
They're all listed over on the right.

Friday, September 19, 2008

New York is Book Country !

New York is Book Country is back! Clueless me. I didn't know it until I got an email from Books of Wonder TODAY. I wish I could go. It's in Central Park this year. Probably one the best ones we ever went to was the last time it was on Fifth Ave. in 2002.
But, 1999 was a great one, too.
New York is Book Country
Books of Wonder



















Thursday, September 18, 2008

Love Wordle

I love Wordle! You can make all sorts of neat 'word clouds'.
This one is words from a favorite song. It's missing one important word, tho, and I don't know how to get it added.
Make your own at www.wordle.net

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Moo - Timothy Egan, New York Times

This is one of the best pieces I've read about McCain and Palin.
Moo - by Timothy Egan for the New York Times

Polls

I've never been asked to take part in a poll or survey. No, that's not true. Marketing people used to hang around the malls, and I think I did do one of their surveys once. I think it was about cereal. They'd give you a sample, and you had to answer a ton of questions. The secret to not being approached my them was to never, ever make eye contact with them.
Anyway, if someone did poll me about who I think would be the better president, I would say, "The thought of McCain and Palin running the country terrifies me." That about sums it up. I may just buy an Obama/Biden lawn sign. I donated $50.00 to his campaign yesterday. It's the first time I've ever given money to a political campaign.

Bob Herbert Op-Ed

McCain's Radical Agenda - New York Times Sept. 16, 2008

SNL - In Case You Missed It

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Catching Up

Just a few snippets to get me caught up.

I, the new grandmother, babysat the new grandbaby for the first time this morning. We did some 'tummy time', and some swing time. After that, it was snack time, and then it was nap time. I don't know why they call it 'tummy time', but that's ok. It's a big deal now to give babies tummy time everyday. Apparently, not all babies get enough of it, so they have no desire to lift their heads. It's something like that. I wonder if Sarah Palin's kids all got tummy time.
We never had to worry about it because 'back in the day', putting babies to bed on their tummies was THE preferred method. It's a mega no-no now.

I always check the headlines from PC World, and they listed their top 12 favorite & promising, new websites. Read the article here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/151033/12_promising_new_web_sites_and_services.html
I tried one of them: iSearch It's a people search engine. All it did was annoy me. I searched a few family members and the results were pretty bad. They had too many middle initials for me. My phone number is listed, even tho it's unpublished. Several of my listed relatives have been dead for years. A sister's results also had errors. Her age made her about 5 years older than she is. Her husband's name was listed correctly, but also incorrectly. A daughter's results had the most errors. It listed her as living in a far away city, and her phone number was a combination of my number, and the far away city's area code. She hasn't lived in any far away city in over 7 years.
I sent them a feedback asking them to suppress my listing. That's funny. I'm sure they'll get right on it.
Their FAQs say that they're working on a suppression thingy.
So, I don't like the site one bit. It didn't just annoy me. It made me pretty angry. There's that other people finder search engine which does the same thing. There's nothing new about this one. They all get around privacy issues by saying that all their information is gathered from public records.

I'm trying to figure out when to pick my 11 pumpkins. They're organic. (I like to throw that in.)
Some articles tell you to wait til they're orange, some say it's ok to pick them when they're still kind of green - they just have to make the right sound (hollow) when you thwack them. Most articles will tell you to be SURE to leave some stem on, AND to wash the pumpkin, and the stem in a 10% solution of water and clorox. I picked one because I accidentally chopped the vine. It's the best pumpkin of all - it looks just like Cinderella's coach. I'll take a picture of it soon if it doesn't rot. I haven't done the Clorox treatment yet. It could be filled with horrid bugs by now.
This seems to be the best article on the subject:
http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/vegetable/how-to-tell-when-pumpkins-are-ripe.htm

I'm a fairly regular reader of Jesse Kornbluth's Head Butler. He used to be the editorial director at AOL. He also used to do a column over on Beliefnet - it was pretty political. His blood pressure must have been over the top. The Head Butler does reviews - books, movies, wine, whatever. So, today's review is on the book Water Consciousness, edited by Tara Lohan. The main reason why I'm even mentioning it is because there's a link to a neat calculator that calculates your water footprint. It's called the H2O Calculator. I forget how much water I use everyday, but it's less than average. It said I drink way too much bottled water. I'd drink faucet water, but mine tastes either like worms, or Clorox. Sometimes, it just tastes swampy. Maybe the tap water would have enough chlorine in it to kill the bugs that are probably invading my picked pumpkin.

I think that about does it. Time to go pull out the rest of the 10 foot cosmos plants. They got way too tall, and the windy night we had Sunday night blew them all over. Most of them broke.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Gulf Blvd. Indian Rocks Beach

This stretch of Gulf Blvd. could be my favorite street anywhere. I'm already starting to miss Florida, especially Indian Rocks Beach. Woe is me.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Jake Ryan

It was four years ago that Hank Stuever wrote the article "Real Men Can't Hold a Candle to Jake Ryan". It was in the Washington Post on February 14, 2004. You can still read it here, on Hank Stuever's website, which looks like it hasn't been updated since 2005! I really, really hope he doesn't let the site just disappear. There are other interesting articles there, too. An update would be awfully nice.
http://www.hankstuever.com/jryan.html

Sixteen Candles

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Summer's Over

How did it get to be September already? August flew by, and I'm a grandmother for the first time. In one respect, it makes me feel older because I've been bumped up (perhaps it's down) to another generation. Here's a photo of the two of us. He's very cute and perfect. I think we were watching Young & the Restless.