I'm moving Jesser to a different server so there might be outages over the next couple of days. Stay posted. We'll be back.
Skinned Alive!
I'm very happy to say that I've completed another 101 objective … skinning jesser. You may already be noticing a new look around here. Well, you've got the power to control it. There's a little drop down to the right where you can select your skin. Blueberry is the old fave, but there are three new ones to choose from.
This project has taken me over a week, grabbing a scant hour or two as I could, but I know the hard-work will be worth it, because now that I've retro-fitted Jesser, I can add new skins (fairly) quickly and easily. Such good possibilities!
Film on the Rocks
Tonight kicks off another season of Film on the Rocks. At the world-famous Red Rocks Ampitheatre, they start out with live music and then sum up the evening by showing a new-classic film right on the rocks in the beautiful Colorado night.
To kick off the season, they're showing one of my all time favorite movies, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm so excited to see this!! I never saw it in the theatre, and I can't imagine anything better. Except perhaps The Princess Bride playing 2 days before my birthday!!!!
I ♥ summer!!
Boring, but Good
We had one of those weekends where almost nothing was scheduled. This is pretty rare for us. We spent Friday night working on my lap-top trying to restore it to some of its former glory. We had the hard drive that was in it and one Dell sent us to replace the one in it. We put the one inside the machine into a hard drive enclosure (like the one pictured left) and effectively turned it into an external hard drive (a very small/cute one at that). Then we put in the new hard drive and pulled over necessary files from the old one. All of this is part and parcel of a 101 goal, but unfortunately, it's not done yet. I still have to format the hard drive on it, but I'm reluctant to do it so far, because I don't want to lose some data I forgot to take off.
Saturday we took a ride from hell around Green Mountain. I stupidly did not eat before we left and when it was time to climb the big hill, I crashed bad … not physically … but I had 0 blood sugar left and I got all dizzy. So not a terribly successful ride, but I did go farther otherwise than I ever had before, so that was good. And we spent the rest of the day chilling out and watching errands. Continue reading “Boring, but Good”
101 page is Done-oh-Done
Democrats are for the Middle Class?
The Democrats have long sought to portray themselves as the party for the middle class while casting the Republicans as the party for the wealthy. However, a report by the Democratic think tank/non-partisan not-for-profit strategic advocacy organization, Third Way, “Unrequited Love: Middle Class Voters Reject Democrats at the Ballot Box,” paints a different picture.
If the report is correct, even though the Dems attempt to cast themselves as the party for the middle class, this group actually votes Republican. For the purposes of this report, people in families making between $30,000 and $75,000 are middle class. Third Way reports that Bush won this group by 19 points in the last election. Democrats showing with white voters was the poorest. According to Third Way, staring at $23,700 per year, a white voter was more likely to vote Republican than Democrat. Contrary to logic, whites making more than $75K per year were more likely to vote Democrat than those making $50 – $75. While whites are firmly in the Republican camp, Hispanics are beginning to move away from the Dems. Kerry only won Hispanics making $50 – $75K by 2%. This move is fueled in part by a increased wealth in the Hispanic population. Black voters are the only group who consistently votes Democratic despite income.
Based on income and pure numbers, i.e. not thinking about race, the Democrats do best with the poor, then the wealthy, and worst with the middle class.
**I don't remember where this number came from, I may be wrong, but I read that the top 1% of income earners vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Continue reading “Democrats are for the Middle Class?”
Mmmm… Frozen Meals
Love to cook as I do, I can't always get some yummy leftovers or a nice samwich to take with me to work. And I don't like to leave the office for lunch if I can help it. I'm a get there, work, go home sorta girl. For a long time, I took a stash of Lean Cuisine to the office fairly often and ate through them as I needed. Lately though, Lean Cuisine had lost their appeal. So I started pawwing through the all natural frozen dinners at Super Target. I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't all lentils and mung-beans. I selected one from “Amy's Kitchen” and one from Linda Mc Cartney's line. Amy's was cheese enchiladas, though she carries a wide variety of ethnic food and home-style faves. Linda's was butternut squash ravioli. I loved both of them. They weren't overly salty. Portion sizes were good (though so tasty you wanted more anyhow) and excellent flavor. They were a wee bit pricier than the average TV dinner, but not enough to make me think twice.
I'm anxious to try Linda's other gourmetish dinners and Amy's Indian, Asian, and homestyle dishes. Check 'em out.
Weekend Adventures
We had a very very nice weekend. So nice that I hardly got anything useful done, but that's OK. It happens. On Fri, my parents and sister came over. We had some lambrusco and a lotta pizza and a little salad and watched Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy, which was veyr good for some silly laughs.
We got up bright and early on Saturday and drove into the mountains to take pictures. The results of that trip are represented above and will be posted in greater detail at a later date. Since we've had so much moisture so far this year, there were lots of beautiful wild flowers and green green green. Loki had an excellent time smelling all of the new smells.
Saturday afternoon, we took my cousin Tessa out for a long-awaited birthday celebration (her b'day is in January). We went to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants which I highly recommend, along with the books that spawned it. We did a little shopping and had dinner at Buca di Beppo. Can you say more pizza? Continue reading “Weekend Adventures”
New Meal Monday
Well, we did successfully cook a new entree this week. We did a Rachel Ray 30 minute meals. It was her “Meatballs and Saabs: Things to Thank Sweedes For” menu. It consisted of Sweedish meatballs, noodles and a salad with romaine apples, radishes, onions and creamy poppy-seed dressing.
We dutifully took our (slightly more than) 30 minutes and cooked it up. Well, verdict was … nothing bad. But nothing very good either. Our favorite part was the noodles! The salad on its own wasn't bad, but the dressing was too much and too sour-creamy. The meatballs needed something … more. They were just sorta flavorless. We may try it again and see what we can do to it, but for now, it remains decisively out of Matt and Jess Make a Mess.
The Little Emperor's New Clothes
I've been wanting to write about the new collar and leash we got for Sir Loki a week or two ago, but I wanted a picture and Loki (living up to his name) is a hard guy to get a hold of. This morning, I made him sit and took a picture of him. Don't be fooled by his attentive stare and that austere little white beard. He's as much puppy as he ever was. We found this cute collar and a leash to match at Petco. Now our dog is stylin. Minus the cheesy sunglasses.