It was truly a wonderful visit but I was, as is always the case, exhausted by the end of the four days. I arranged to meet Kaitlyn’s other grandmother to pass her off for the remainder of what was her parents’ childless vacation.
Kaitlyn lives almost three hours from me but me and her paternal grandmother live a half an hour apart. So when the child comes down this way we figure out a way to share without long trips to Baltimore.
She’s a doll, this grandchild, just as well-behaved as any grandmother could wish for.
I’ll always love you Kaitlyn…the apple of my eye.
”Despicable Me” Movie Review
As is the drill with such films, granddaughter and critic-in-chief joined me as I viewed this popular animated film of the summer of 2010. There is a 3-D and a regular version of the film. Granddaughter and I always see such things in 3-D because a 6-year-old thinks this is really cool.
The main character of the film, a really bad fellow who fell upon his evil ways because of a mother who utterly failed to instill in him any sense of self-esteem, is deeply involved in a life of bad deeds. His latest and greatest goal is to steal the moon right out of the sky and hey, this is cool.
IMDB site for this movie.
However Gru has a competitor for despicable greatness. A fellow named Vector is closing in on the cartoon curmudgeon and Gru despairs.
This is when we have three cute orphan girls come on the scene.
Using this trio, Gru manages to sabotage his nemesis and get inside his home. Said act helps him gain access to an invention that one would necessarily need if one wants to swipe the moon outta the sky.
Much of the movie is taken up by two story lines, both of them happening simultaneously. Gru plots, plans and steals the moon while falling in love with his three unwitting orphan cohorts in crime.
Hey, it’s a good movie, good characters, has action where action is needed, has sweetness as required. The viewer is left thinking there really is no hope for despicable Gru when the human spirit, as it always does, awakes to a brand new morn and life’s priorities are once again set straight.
The movie has, as expected, a happy and heart-warming ending.
I’m not convinced this movie will do for the 10-12 year old little boy hellions out there in movie land. I’m not convinced that children much beyond age 8 will demand to see the thing although once in DVD I think it will nicely occupy a few hours time.
Parents will like it as there’s enough adult wink-winks and nod-nods in the film and we get it.
It’s a stereotypical film but then again, what’s wrong with that?
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”Brayn Food” by Gary Bray
The book is subtitled “For the Tea Patriot Hungry for The Truth” and it is, indeed, almost required reading for the Tea Partiers across the fruited plain.
Amazon.com Widgets
Disclaimer: I know this author by my association with the web site FreeRepublic. He is a poster to that online politically Conservative forum and for about four years now I looked forward to his essays on that forum.
Not that this fact matters in that this is a book I would read and enjoy had I ever met the author in any form or fashion.
The book is formatted in a most intriguing manner. Each chapter begins with an appropriate biblical quote that aligns with the chapter’s content. Also, Bray writes in an online manner. I have no problem with this at all, being very familiar with online shortcuts and quotations but if an alien from Mars that had never read anything on a computer screen were to read this book, well it could be confusing.
One more caveat…Bray not only editorializes with his words, but also with how he spells and uses these words. Thus the name George Soros will be typed as George $oro$ and “government” will be referred to as “gubmint”. None of this is confusing and it all does, indeed, add to the book’s pleasurable read.
Bray begins the book by detailing the story of his conversion to the political ideology of Conservatism. His is a compelling but very American story. Throughout the book he will add interesting personal details of his life, such as an idealogical debate with his son’s college professor.
The subjects dealt with in this book are many, varied and mesmerizing. Bray throws his unique and literally picturesque words at the reader, as well as thoughts that roil from the pages into the reader’s brain to agitate that organ to compelling thought.
The Earth is not a Greenhouse, there’s no roof so why do the Global Scammers refer to it as one? The reason they use the term Greenhouse gasses, is the same reason they call killing babies, “choice” or “women’s rights” to create a false visual. They want everybody to imagine walking through a Greenhouse so you can feel the heat and humidity you feel inside a greenhouse. If they can label gasses greenhouse then you fear these gasses will somehow make a roof to hold in the heat to make the oceans boil or freeze, whatever. This is as phony as the claim babies Choose to die.
The book is filled with such explanations as above and he’s right on.
Other subjects dealt with by either derision, sarcasm or mockery to an eventual truth include Iraq, Rush Limbaugh and the NFL, Joe the Plumber and Hurricane Katrina.
Bray writes with a touch of wit and has a whimsical touch of Coulter. He presents his argument to the reader then moves on to that final truth that leaves the reader mentally saying “ahhhh…so that’s what it’s all about.”
It’s a new era, the era of the Tea Party. No matter how they mock and deride us, it’s folks like Gary Bray who will keep presenting their lies with a bit of mockery his own self.
This is a book that belongs in the library of every Conservative and should be especially cherished by Tea Partiers.
The writing is terrific, the thoughts challenging, the truths indisputable.
Get this book today.
Even if you’re a liberal might not hurt to know that someone’s got your number.
Drivel: Conversion
The tank is converted. Our lovely 125 gallon reef has become a freshwater tangle of dying greenery. I have hopes that the plants will sort themselves out and recover, but we gave them a nasty shock so I don't know. Eventually, though, the aquarium will be a wonderful freshwater community tank.
Just not yet. Our timing on just about everything for this conversion was crappy.
Friday was D-Day for the aquarium. We went to see our tax accountant that morning, and I got sidetracked by a nice pet shop in a neighboring city. They had some of the substrate I wanted (black planting gravel for freshwater aquariums; who'd have thought it would
be so hard to find locally?) so we swung by to pick it up. That place is *nice*! They have a lot of plants, fish, and some really cool setups. We got the five bags of substrate (all they had, and not enough by half), and ten shrimp. They're cherry shrimp, itty bitty red
ones and they're so cute!
When we left the shop, a storm had hit and we didn't get back to the house until almost 5pm. (Well, okay, we stopped to eat, too.)
From 5pm to after 7pm, we tore the tank apart. Harry, Win, Greg, and I tried to get all the living things out of the reef and to the local saltwater pet shop. They close at 7pm, but stayed open longer so we could bring them all the corals, urchins, hermit crabs, shrimp, fish, rocks, and even the sand.
From just before 8pm til almost 10pm, we put it back together in freshwater.
It sounds easy on paper, but once we started pulling rocks out, the water grew more and more cloudy. Soon we couldn't see at all. I had a list of the fish I'd seen in the previous few days, and we checked them all off . . . save three. Of the four blue damselfish I'd got
when I flooded my tank with damsels, only three were in the bucket. And of the sunrise dottybacks (I had two, by accident), there was no sign at all.
The pet shop found one of the dottybacks among the waterless, bucketed rocks and got the poor thing to water quickly enough, but I don't know if they ever found the other. I keep meaning to ask them and forget.
The damsel was a certified casualty, as it didn't appear until long after the switch was made. All the animals were gone, the pet shop was closed, the tank was drained and rinsed (but not taken down) and drained and rinsed and drained and rinsed and drained, the substrate added and then it was filled. It wasn't until the tank was filling with water that we saw the lone blue damselfish, struggling to survive in a cold, freshwater aquarium.
With no saltwater left, I put the fish out of its misery rather than watch it die of suffocation. I don't understand how it stayed in the tank throughout all that work, but it did. I mourn its passing; an innocent life tragically shortened.
And the new plants aren't doing so well, either.
They shipped on Thursday afternoon from the online supplier, FedEx-delivered on Friday.
While we were gone.
The boxes stayed on the porch, in the rain, for at least some of the day. We brought them in when we got home, and since I figured water plants would be transported in water, I left the boxes sealed until we were closer to ready for plants.
How was I to know the box was wet on the outside but not on the inside? There was more water in the raindrops than on those plants, which were packed in wet-when-the-boxes-were-sealed newspaper. By the time we opened them, most of the newspaper was no longer wet.
Then we put the now-almost-dry water plants into the cold aquarium. All but a few are showing signs of the strain, and a couple look beyond help.
The driftwood arrived on Friday, too, and it's soaking in our bathtub. Each day I drain the brown water and replace it. When the water is not brown for three days, I can put the driftwood in the tank. At least the driftwood can't die.
We have not yet gotten any fish, and will not for awhile. The shrimp I bought are happily hanging out in the little tetra tank, the 14 gallon that sits on one end of the big aquarium's stand. That little tank will be dismantled when we're done, and all its occupants moved to the larger quarters.
After the plants there stop trying to die.
And the driftwood is out of the bathtub.
And the aquarium is once again the living room centerpiece it's meant to be.
Michelle
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A Brain Infection? A Medical Journey Surpassed by Few
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