"The Want Ad Killer" by Ann Rule-The Perspective of This Book Is the Killer's. It Ain't Pretty. .Guest Michelle Tells of New Cars and Painful Wrists.

Pic of the Week



 

 

 

Harvey Carignan was not a nice man.

 

Ann Rule is a wonderful true crime writer.

 

This was not a true crime book on a normal par with Ann Rule.

  

I love Ann Rule, let me state this right now, right up front, with truth and honesty.

I didn't much like this book.

No wait!  I DID like this book, I liked it about as much as I like most any other well-written true crime book.  I was disappointed in that it was written by the Queen of True Crime and I didn't love it.

I am currently reading a book by Ann Rule and I love it.  So she hasn't lost her touch.  It's more how she wrote this book that made it go a tad flat for me.

Rule evidently had a lot of access to this murdering nut job who murdered four women, if not more.

 

We learn about Carignan's pathetic life, his alleged childhood abuse and, let's kick the elephant in the room, the fact that Carignan is a very stupid man.

 

It happens.

 

He's dumber than an entire box of rocks and yet several women who were way smarter acted without caution.  Meeting someone for a job interview, interviewer will drive? 

 

Not to blame the victims, of course, but a stupid man with primitive violent impulses preys on such women.

 

I did read the entire book so it was interesting and readable. 

 

The story of the vulnerable women was the most interesting part of the book.

  

 

Drivel: Fingers, Wheels and Groceries

A lot has been happening here and I wasn't able to update you because I was restricted from computer time by my Worker's Comp doctor. But I guess I should start at the beginning, eh?

On the 15th of March (has it really been that long ago?) I awoke in the morning with the ring and pinkie fingers of my right hand totally numb and dead to me. That alone isn't so strange; once in a great while I sleep with one of my arms under me and that's how my hands feel when I do - no sensation and they seem to be about four times their regular size - like your jaw after a dental visit. Within a fewminutes, circulation resumes and the affected body part starts to tingle and give the impression of being swarmed by ants. Then it all fades into a memory. This time, though, the numby-tingly phase didn't go away.

After half an hour, I panicked. Like a surgeon, my fingers are my livelihood and without them, I'm pretty useless. They weren't getting better and I didn't know what might be wrong. I remembered something about the heart - which hand would that be? - and images of nerve damage flew through my head (there are definite disadvantages to being a writer).

Still, I had obligations and my doctor doesn't open until 9am. I wasn't in pain and I could bend the fingers, so I went to work.

I did my necessary morning tasks (made a lot of typos!), then notified my team that I was visiting my doctor and hoped to be back soon. I was at my doctor's office when he opened. Filling out the forms was interesting. Waiting to be seen was agonizing. Visiting with my doctor was shocking.

"Worker's comp," he said, and called for a nurse to come give me more forms. I started to cry. Odd, isn't it? Thinking it might be my heart, I was dry-eyed. Being worried because it wasn't going away, I was dry-eyed. But mention WC and I became a basket-case.

It isn't that I'm indispensable at work. (If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.) But . . . one of our team had walked off the job within the week and a second had given notice. My backup had been pulled to cover the loss and train with the one leaving, so my area had no one else to run it. Add in that a major replacement project is underway, and the thought of being pulled off work by a Worker's Comp doctor terrified me more than whatever was wrong with my fingers.

I guess I have an inflated sense of duty. Good thing I never went into the military.

To skip all the icky details, my doctor sent me to the Worker's Comp doctor and that one poked, prodded, and recommended Ibuprofen. He couldn't pinpoint my issue but thought it was either a nerve issue in my right wrist or the tendon there was inflamed, making the nerve
*think* it had an issue. He hoped it would go away and asked me if it interfered with my job. His expression said I could be off work if I wanted to.

But I didn't. I said no, I just made a lot of typos, and he released me to work but I needed to return in a week. Put heat on it, he said, and stay off the computer as much as possible. He also suggested an ergonomic evaluation at work.

The numbness faded daily and the tingle finally went away on Sunday, March 18. Three days of that feeling has made me really appreciate my hands. Monday I went back to the WC doctor, who again poked, prodded, and said come back in a week. Useless guy, if you ask me.

I had my ergo eval last Monday and will need to change my desk setup. I'm waiting for the equipment to show up - keyboard tray and trackball - before I rearrange anything, and then I will try to match the setup at home. Until then, I'm staying off the computer more and sometimes
wearing a wrist brace in bed to keep my right arm from being pinned under me at night. (So now you know why this reads like a Reader's Digest version; I'm trying not to type so much!)

During all this, Honda sent us another "we want to buy your used car!" letter. Since the 2010 Civic Hybrid has always had the battery issue that plagued the 2007 the final year we had it, I made an appointment to go see what the new ones were like.

"You know," said Harry, "Toyota is right next door. Maybe we should go there first."

Why not? We're actually Toyota people. If you remember, we ended up with a Hybrid Honda because the Prius is just so ugly to me. Now, lots
of models come in Hybrid versions.

We ran the Toyota salesman through the wringer, but really I wasn't asking for much. Why is it those people never listen?

My list was short:
* Pay off the Honda
* Keep my payments the same
* Hybrid model
* GPS (map/location guidance)
* XM radio

The car he let us drive had those, plus:
* Mag wheels
* Leather seats
* Backup camera
* Sun roof
* Power seats
* Keyless lock/unlock/driving system

Nice car. I'm sure it had stuff I've forgotten or didn't know about. We gathered in the inner sanctum to review paperwork and they came up with the first offer:
* Miss payoff of Honda by $1500
* Payments of more than double what I was paying for the Honda

I almost laughed at him. When he went away and came back, the result wasn't much better. I think he tried three or four times and finally I told him I needed my papers back so we could go next door to Honda. Obviously Toyota couldn't meet what I needed.

Once he saw I was serious about leaving, he changed tactics. The manager came out with a better deal on the car, but still couldn't bring those payments down to what I had for the Honda. Best case was still more than $100 more per month.

Then we told them we didn't really *want* all those bells and whistles- we don't like leather seats and we don't care about mag wheels and I never use a sunroof anyway. So then we got to look at the Toyota color book, choose a color and list what we really wanted. To the above "first" list, we added the backup camera and power seats, two things near and dear to Harry.

They found us a car in the Bay Area that matched our needs, and the price was lower than the souped up demo model, which also already had 3,000 miles on it. After fiddling with the numbers again, we got what we wanted. The Honda has been paid off (I hope) and my payments went up about $7 per month, but I'm now driving a new Toyota Camry Hybrid. (It took them two days to bring it over from the Bay Area.)

I'm a Camry fan from way back and I *love* this car. I think I'll get better mileage in it than I did with the Honda, since my driving is mostly in the city.

The color is Cypress Pearl and it's not quite grey and not quite green. I finally have a car where I could rob a bank and the witnesses would say "It was grey." "It was green." "It was grey." "It was
*definitely* green!" I've wanted something like that ever since I saw a BMW that was a grey-blue.

In any pictures it always looks grey.

I was able to show off the car to a few people at work last week. "Man," said my co-worker, who had seen the recent Drivels about a new motorcycle and a new big rig, "I wish I could buy a new car like I buy groceries."

Well, actually, I get my groceries delivered.

Michelle
The Desk Drawer writer's exercise
list


Ending With a Smile

 



 

The Lorax-A Review-The Only Bad Thing Was It Needed MORE of One Thing; Guest Writer Michelle Wrestles With Water

Pic of Day

Thank God It Wasn't a Liberal's Wet Dream

I was a bit skeptical about this movie although I totally adore Dr. Seuss.  How well I remember reading his books when I was in the third grade, how I loved his play on words, how I adored the pictures.

Still there are those among us who wrest all that we once held sacred and use it for advancing their own agendas.

I feared it would a movie about global warming or some stupid liberal thing and I wanted to avoid exposing my granddaughter to this kind of propaganda as long as possible.  On a more acceptable, but still wary, note, I also feared the movie would be delivering a message about the fiction of "green jobs" or the nonsensical horror of using fossil fuels to power our lives.

The movie did, to my great relief, deliver a message of kindness to our environment and examples of the consequences cruelty of our natural world might bring.

I might be of Conservative idealogy but no mind that the liberals like to depict Conservatives as mindless of our world, I am a trained Backyard Wildlife Habitat Steward with a yard certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

Indeed I am very conscious of my environment, every year creating a grand compost pile of my yard leaves, adding vegetable peels and such all season until a dark earth is formed that I then spread over my happy gardens.  I provide food, shelter and places to nest for the bird fellows and I live by a rule of thumb to recycle EVERYTHING, at least once.

Thus I am not averse to teaching the environment and love of same to granddaughter.  But I don't want her to hear claptrap about global warming or any lesson that it's somehow against natural law for humankind to use the bounties of nature.

Human beings are creatures of God, as are the insects, birds and other mammals of the planet.  Destroying the surround is against every natural law that can be conceived.  Without the earth and its bounty all animal life would cease.  I get this, all animals get this on some level.

The story of the Lorax involves a pretty community that hasn't seen a genuine tree in many, many years.  As the story unfolds, we learn that a somewhat selfish entrepreneur destroyed all the trees in the surround.  No trees, no oxygen released as is the natural pattern of the plants.  The plants also absorb our exhaled carbon   dioxide.  The disappearance of the trees, though replaced by newer plastic models, some with remote control, makes the air a bit crappy.  Enter another entrepreneur who makes a fortune in Thneedsville selling fine bottled air.

I didn't have a single problem with the movie's message although really, it would be an almost impossible result to remove all the trees from the surround.  Trees have seeds, they grow AFTER they are chopped down, they do a fine job of spreading their seed and pollen, indeed.  Still and so, the world would be sad and unstable if a large generation of trees were suddenly yanked from the earth.  Sure they'd  grow back, unlike the depiction in the movie of a dead forest that never re-generates.  But plenty of damage would be done;  birds and other animals depending on the trees would move away. 

The problem with the movie that I DID have was that there was not enough music.  The music that was featured in the movie was quite good, especially the song of the movie climax "Let It Grow".  I expect to hear that song at next year's Academy Awards.  The song was sang at the movie's ending but by me it could have been presented in a much grander fashion and lasted a bit longer.  I think it should have been  presented like the scene in "The Grinch That Stole Christmas" when, at the end, all the village people sang the song, the grinch joined in.  In that movie, the grand finale song become very much a part of the experience of the movie.  I felt a bit let down with that finale in "The Lorax".  It needed to be way longer and grander.

But if the only problem you have with a movie is not having more of a good thing, that should say it all.  "The Lorax" is a movie telling a good, believable story.  We have some famous narrators in the movie such as Betty White and Taylor Swift.

I never did much think it mattered all that much who was the voice of the characters but I'll mention it.

=================





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Drivel: Wet

On and off and on again rain has turned my world into a wet wonderland.

I love rain and I know it'll be 110 degrees way too soon, so these last few summer storms have been wonderful for me. One day we couldn't get our mail because the mailbox stood in the middle of a small lake. The deck in the backyard was surrounded, too, and when Guia tried to run around it, she found herself hock-deep in marsh. Our lawn is suddenly green and lush.

In the reflected grey of a cloud-covered afternoon, the neighbor's flooded field looks like newly poured asphalt. The drive to El Dorado Hills is full of overnight rivers and pass-the-night ponds where ducks and even a few geese play. The cattle gather tight-packed under the trees, tails facing the wind. None of them notice me.

The afternoon clears and the sparkle of sun on roadside water is blinding, winking at me as I drive home. A hopeful crow searches a sodden pasture for nest-building twigs and a red-tailed hawk pounces on something in the grass - perhaps a mouse whose home has flooded. Sorrow amid the joy. Along with the aquarium, just more proof the many days of rain don't make it a wet wonderland for everyone . . .

The weekend was wet on Saturday and pretty dry on Sunday, so Harry and I decided to do a water change on the aquarium. The fish and shrimp (and snails; where do those come from, anyway?) have been doing pretty well, although our nitrate levels are a bit high. Consequently we're fighting an algae infestation, but we'll have that under control soon.

Harry had bought a bigger machine to make good water; this one has standard hose flow and we can hook it up to a faucet with hot and cold water so we can put the right temperature water in the first time. I think it's a reverse osmosis machine, but I'm really unclear on the difference between that and a de-ionizer.

Harry hooked it up to the garage sink and it promptly sprayed water everywhere. The fittings were a bit leaky. We captured some of the water fountaining from it and tested - good ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and one hardness test but it flunked the other hardness test. Harry got some other fittings and reconnected everything so we could move it into the house without washing the walls when we changed the aquarium water. That done, he put it into the hall bathroom - no leaks. We tested the water again and all levels were good.

A length of hose helped us drain old aquarium water into the kitchen sink, and then we carefully modulated the temperature of the machine water to keep it close to the 79.5 the fish are used to. All good, we filled the tank back up. When I flipped the pumps back on, I noticed one Congo tetra wasn't swimming so well. The other fish were racing around the tank.

Since the timing was "dawn" for them, this wasn't a good sign. A quick test showed the pH had dropped to 6.0 (or less; that's as far down as the test goes). As Harry and I shut down the pumps and did an emergency drain of some of the aquarium water, more and more of the fish succumbed to the sudden change in levels. All were toward the top of the tank, many being pushed around by the current without any sense of balance or up or down. It looked like we'd managed to take a pretty nice day and kill every fish in the tank.

One of the big shrimp tottered out onto the golf course and fell over. Make that "kill everything in the tank."

I managed to suck two of the disoriented fish into the draining hose. I felt terrible about it, but my focus was on saving as many as possible and they weren't swimming away like normal when warned from the hose. It didn't look good; my heart sank as we stopped the drain and switched to putting our crappy tap water back in. We knew it would bring the hardness problem back, but the suddenly low pH would certainly kill everything.

 Adjusting the tap water to keep temperature as consistent as possible, we replaced about half of the water we'd originally removed and refilled. As the water level came up, some fish began to look better.

 By the time we were done, all but a few fish were doing okay, and the shrimp on the golf course had gotten up and gone back into the bushes. That night, all the fish were doing well enough to eat when I fed them. Both big shrimp were out and about, too.

We had three known casualties, but I'm sure there were others whose bodies I'll never find. Apparently the water poltergeist curse is still in effect in alaHouse . . . but I do wish H-2-Uh-Oh would stay away from my aquarium.

The Desk Drawer writer's exercise list

TV Revs-Chase,The Whole Truth,Delaware Political Tidbits,Miscellaney

Time to catch up on politics,new TV shows, Guest posts and some amusing miscellaney.

Here’s a review of two new shows: “The Whole Truth”-a stellar series about a prosecutor and some spellbinding tales. “Chase” is a series about U.S. marshalls and some, eh, “chase and capture” scenes. One we look forward to, the other we’ll not watch again.

Christine O’Donnell won Delaware’s primary for U.S. Senator. We’ve got some recent pics and video of her and many thoughts on where Delaware’s GOP might be going.

Guest Writer Michelle goes to Disneyland and takes the readers along with her.

Finally, some miscellaney to amuse, including Lucy the Cat, thoughts on the Food Police, how to know if you’re from California and an invention needed.

Pic of the Day

=================

 

ABC’s “The Whole Truth”

ABC’s Web Page for this show.

Maura Tierney is most well known for her role in the long running series “ER”. As I recall, there were some problems with her and ER, something involving other cast mates.

Wonder of wonders, Maura Tierney shows back up with a series of her own. I must suppose there’s a dearth of actresses in Hollywood that an actress with a Diva-like reputation gets an entire show for want of such actresses.

But I jest.

Folks, this is a really good show. Maura Tierney plays Kathryn Peale, an Assistant DA who prosecutes interesting cases along with a street savvy sidekick and a wet-behind-the-ears newbie she is expected to mentor.

Rob Morrow, who I’ve never heard of, plays a veteran defense attoryney, Jimmy Brogran. Character Brogan has a relationship with character Peale that is not quite clear to the audience.

But that’s part of the show’s charm.

First, I’m not majorly in love with Tierney as an actress but she does okay. I never much liked her character on ER, which I once watched with a devotion. However, I must allow that maybe it was the character I didn’t much like as opposed to Tierney’s acting.

Frankly I’m not overly in love with Kathryn Peale the character and at some point I begin to ponder if this all isn’t because, well Tierney’s smile doesn’t exactly light up the world. She has a huge overbite with that top lip and it comes off as a kind of pout but maybe it’s just me.

Kathryn Peale is a tough as nails prosecutor who staples her blouse sleeves for lack of buttons. She can, if need be, apologize for her errors or admit to going down a wrong prosecutorial path. She can, but she doesn’t like it.

It’s the show’s story line which has enough of an appeal to actually make me look forward to it, now going on two weeks in a row.

What’s the big appeal?

It’s a story with a beginning, middle and end.

And ah, folks, you got to stick around to the very end to find out who did it.

Which doesn’t mean the beginning of middle build up of the story line doesn’t keep one’s attention. Indeed for the premiere of the show we had a very nice teacher fellow prosecuted by Peale, and found guilty by the jury, that had me guessing if he really murdered the adolescent girl as accused. This past week we had a young woman who, maybe, maybe not, really pushed her father off of the ferry, the poor man in a wheelchair and unable to save his self.

There’s enough rocks and nooks and crannies in the storylines to keep this viewer guessing. We might have devout nuns, dedicated wives, confused children, helpful neighbors, and witnesses with questionable pasts. All become part of the story and all lead up to this show’s unique in terms of this sort of televised genre.

For the viewer will not know, until the very end, no matter how the trial outcome, no matter the jury’s verdict, who really did the deed.

And it is a surprise, even to short story mystery writers such as myself.

Tune in to this show. It’s different and a most surprising and positive way.

”Chase”

NBC Web Site for this Show

Just to clear things up from the get-go, blurb from the NBC web site for this show below:

Chase" is a fast-paced drama from Emmy Award-winning executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("CSI" franchise, "The Amazing Race", "Pirates of the Caribbean" films) and executive producer Jennifer Johnson ("Cold Case") that drops viewers smack into the middle of a game of cat-and-mouse as a team of U.S. marshals hunts down America's most dangerous fugitives. Kelli Giddish ("Past Life") stars as U.S. Marshal Annie Frost, a cowboy boot-wearing deputy whose sharp mind and unique Texas upbringing help her track down the violent criminals on the run. Cole Hauser ("K-Ville"), Amaury Nolasco ("Prison Break"), Rose Rollins ("The L Word") and Jesse Metcalfe ("Desperate Housewives") also star as members of Frost's elite team.

A series about U.S. Marshals whose job it is to locate and bring criminals to justice would involve, we must imagine, some action capture scenes.

This is not to say that this is not an entertaining sort of show. Common sense would dictate that such a show would feature, duh, some serious, er, CHASE and capture scenes.

On the series’ premiere we had two such scenes, one to begin the show and one to end. At the beginning we had, I’m not making this up, U.S. Marshall deputy Annie Frost actually running through an ongoing rodeo to catch the bad guy. The final “capture” scene had her jumping off of a bridge in pursuit of the bad guy who had just jumped to hoped-for freedom in the river below.

And that’s pretty much it in terms of this show. We have a bad guy committing all sorts of crime, a somewhat predictable story line, and some chase and capture scenes to end it all.

I’m not going to watch it again because….well I’ve seen enough.

Yon readers’ mileage may vary. I’m just telling my opinion.

 

Lucy the Calico

She poses so I put her pic here just because…well she deserves it.

============

Invention Needed

I always know whether I’ve closed the garage door when I pull the Jeep INSIDE of the garage because…well hey, the door’s right there where I can see it.

It’s when I pull out of the garage and drive off to my destination that I often can’t remember whether I’d closed the garage via the handy dingy-thingy in the Jeep just for the job.

Husband has same problem.

Thus I often must phone him up from some point down the road and ask that he check the garage door is shut cause, well I just couldn’t remember.

He too will phone me from some destination down the road and ask that I too go check if he closed the garage door.

If we both drive off together, yes we’ve had to turn around and check if we closed the garage door.

For to leave that door open is to hang out a big sign, burglars stop here, free stuff in the garage and hey, the door to the house is also unlocked.

So here’s the invention needed. I hereby relinquish all rights I have to any monies from my idea so long as I get the invention.

Somehow create an “open/Close” sign on the thingy that opens and closes the garage. My Jeep has a built-in thing requiring matching up the signals in some fashion but I’d be willing to carry a device if it had, say….a big red OPEN on it every time the garage door was…well OPENED. Same thing with the word CLOSE.

Thus I pull out of the garage, I push the button to close the garage door, which would have a big LED “OPEN” on it, and which would then flip to a big LED word “CLOSED” upon the push to shut the thing.

I’m sure such a thing is possible here in this great United States of America and some smart entrepreneur who would want fame and fortune, or maybe just fortune.

Then when I am down the road and concern comes upon me as to whether I closed the garage door, bingo, I pick up the garage door-opener device and am comforted as I see the big LED word “CLOSED” in bright red letters assuring me that the homestead is safe.

=================

Just for Smiles

CALIFORNIA

So as not to be outdone by all the redneck,hillbilly, and Texan jokes, somebody had to come up with this, you know you're from California if ...

1. Your coworkers each have 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can't remember ... is pot illegal ?

6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can't remember ... is pot illegal ?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon morethan anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can't remember ... is pot illegal ?

14. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news station: "STORM WATCH."

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY !!!! Is pot illegal ???

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists, psychics, personal trainers and cosmetic surgeons.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver's license. If you're here illegally, they want to give you one :)

Heh.

============================

The Food Police and KFC’s “Double Down”

Once a week, on grocery shopping day, I treat myself to some sort of wildly unhealthy food that might contain sugar, cholesterol, calories, fat or all of the above.

Hey, we gotta have a break once in a while or we’ll break the healthy diet ALL of the time.

It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I have cut out all sugar from my diet, almost. I mind cholesterol and fat levels and of late I’ve taken to reading the caloric counts as well.

So I stop at Kentucky Fried chicken and folks, this is really rare. Usually my once a week “treats” might be some super-market produced ready-to-eat product, perhaps some dip for crackers.

I saw the KFC chain’s product called “DoubleDown” as I pulled through the lane.

Here’s a food product that has the Food Police in our midst, these being folks with no life of their own and who must devote their lives to policing the rest of us to vanilla boredom and endless political correctness, all in a tizzy. Main Food Police Maven, First Lady Moochelle Obama-she who hardly wins any prizes for lean and mean, practically rolls eyeballs back to the back of her skull, over the audacity of any food chain daring to offer such a food symbol of fat, calories, grease and everything else good, in one fast foot offering.

This product consists of two deep fried chicken patties that serve as a sort of “bread” for a filling of tomatoes, lettuce, pickles and cheese within.

I read somewhere that one of these things is over 800 calories alone.

I thought about it, sitting in the Jeep. I thought about my heart, the bypass, the clogged arteries.

As much as I wanted to, just once in my lifetime before my heart will suddenly up and quit on me, taste this food of such ill-repute, I just could not do it.

Someday, if the Food Police have their way, such purchases will be recorded directly into my medical record and sent directly to my Cardiologist. The gubmint will probably get a copy and next day I’ll get a warning email from the Doc and Moochelle will warn that my health insurance will be dropped should I do such a thing again.

Though I write tongue-in-cheek, if not tongue-in-double-down, folks, it’s where we’re heading.

Moochelle and the Food Police dream of this deep into the night.

=========================

Fish Matriarch and Visit

She’s 80 years young and I must admire how she plans her trips, orders the driver for the airport runs, schedules the flites and all involved with catching the airplance to come here to the swamps of Delaware for an annual visit.

It’s my mother-in-law and Fish Matriarch, Betty Fish, picture below.

We had a great visit and looking forward to next year.

===================

Christine O’Donnell and the Sussex County Republican Woman’s Club

Frankly I don’t know what’s going on with the Republican party in Delaware but for now I sense there’s a “wait and see” attitude.

So far as I am concerned Tom Ross, Delaware GOP Chairman, lost any scrap of credibility he had with his “dogcatcher” remark. I could understand if the candidate challenging Castle for the GOP nomination for state Senator were some kind of rogue outlier, but O’Donnell had been nominated by Tom’s OWN PARTY to run against Biden in 2008.

As of this writing, Mike Castle managed to get one leg in his man pants and decided not to run on a write-in vote. With just a little effort he could have shrugged the pants on completely and endorsed the Delaware Republican base choice as voted on fair and square…Christine O’Donnell.

At dawn in the morn after this writing it will be October and the race for Delaware’s Senator will begin its full frenzy.

As I understand it, O’Donnell has hired a campaign staff of professionals and she has a battalion of volunteers all ready to get out there against the Democratic liberal Chris Coons.

Heh. Coons, who raised property taxes under his reign as NCC Executive by, get this FORTY THREE PERCENT!

Coons, who spent time in Kenya to return home with a sudden insight that America is not, eh, all it’s cracked up to be.

Coons….WHO IS HARRY REID’S “PET”….that alone is a real hoot and hardly any claim to electoral fame.

I don’t think Coons is going to win this race, not for a single minute do I think this. This is a short, bald, America-hating, Obamer-loving, Harry Reid’s “pet”, charisma-less nothing burger.

The O’Donnell campaign, with a treasury almost three million strong, funded by us little boobs who elected her from all across the fruited plains, will make mince-meat out of this guy.

Delaware would rather have a witch than Chris Coons, y’all mark my words.

On 9/22/10 I attended the Sussex County Republican Women’s Club (SCRWC) monthly luncheon, of which I am a member. All of the local and state candidates were there becauset yon non-Delaware residing ladies gems, Sussex County is a way bigger political force in this day and age, way more than New Castle County.

Below some pics of the event.

Below, some video from the event

O’Donnell sneaks in

O’Donnell gets together with politicos

O’Donnell says to extend bush tax cuts

O’Donnell says to eliminate death tax

O’Donnell on how the gubmint CAN’T help

O’Donnell on the American dream

O’Donnell on the eyes of the world/the media

Little old Delaware, who’d have thunk we’d capture the fancy of America?

 

Drivel: Disneyland, Driftwood and Deja Vu

Captain Eo is back, HERE!

The year is 1986. Harry and I are still newlyweds of four years, not too long back into the northern area from our two-year sojourn in southern California. We take a trip to Disneyland and of all the rides and shows only one stays in my memory for the years since . . . Captain Eo. It's probably the first 3D show I saw, and I was amazed. Featuring Michael Jackson's music and dance, it had a somewhat cheesy science fiction theme, but I was entranced by it.

Flash forward to 2010. It's the end of April and Harry has made time on his busy spring calendar for us to take a trip to Disneyland. Even though we went in 2008, we heard Captain Eo was being brought back (no doubt for Disneyland to make some money from Michael Jackson's death) and Harry and I both wanted to see it again. This time, we're not so much newlyweds anymore, and we've seen *lots* of 3D shows. Regardless, it was everything I remembered, if a bit more cheesy. The music and dance are still excellent, and that little fuzzball with the wings still entrances me at the end when it floats there directly in front of my nose.

Unexpectedly, I cried, both times we saw it. The loss of the talent that was Michael saddens me, much the way I grieved over Michael Landon's too-early death.

The rest of the Disneyland trip was exquisite. We treated ourselves to luxury. Last time, in 2008, we stayed at a Best Western up the street and had to wait for the shuttle to take us to the park. This time, we stayed in the Paradise Pier Hotel, which is one of the Disneyland hotels, and could walk in.

We had a twelfth floor room with a view into California Adventure. We could hear the screams from the California Screaming roller coaster in our room, if faintly. The windows were apparently pretty thick. Early one morning Harry awoke me to come see the show; the park was testing their colored lights and water fountains for the soon-to-open World of Color show. It was beautiful.

The luxury didn't stop with the room view, though. We valeted the car; gave the keys to the guy standing in front of the hotel and didn't see it again for three days. We had a bellhop (I'm sure they don't call them that anymore) take our luggage up to the room.

We got room service both mornings, because it felt good and because that got us into the park early. As a guest at a Disneyland hotel, you get entrance to Disneyland an hour early (only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland rides are open) but the restaurant doesn't open until 7am, the same hour you're allowed into the park. Add in time to order and be served, and you're not really early in the park at all. Room service, however, starts at 6am.

We charged restaurant meals and drinks at the bar to the room. We also found out - as a guest of a Disneyland hotel - we could charge park items to the room, too. Gift shops and restaurants and even that place that has your terrified picture from the roller coaster all can be charged to your room. We didn't know until the last day that some would deliver your purchase to your room, as well.

I felt pampered and I loved every minute of it. Every staffmember from the guy in the Goofy costume to the waiter at the hotel restaurant made it their personal job to see we were happy and satisfied. Way different from "service" locally, at least most of the time.

The only um... bad... part was that I let Harry talk me into going on the Space Mountain ride. Now I remember why I don't like roller coasters. We got that terrified picture, though, since I don't expect to be on another. I look dead, while Harry looks like he's having a great time. Hmmm...

Oh, and here are three of my favorite quotes from the trip. While Harry does a scary ride, I wait groundside and sometimes the conversations going by are just funny.

The first was a dad and his daughter, hand-in-hand, running by as I sat on a bench. The daughter looks maybe 10; dad likely late 20s/early 30s. Daughter is clutching a backpack and moans as they run past, "Do we have to run everywhere?" Seems to me it's supposed to be the other way around.

The next, as I wait outside a beer-tasting event (Harry spent $10 and tasted four beers). A couple, with a young boy, confer once they see the price on the entry booth. After a bit, he goes inside, while she and son walk into the park. "No," she says as they walk past me, "we're going to have *fun.* Daddy's going off to be an alcoholic."

And the last, as I wait at the exit for the Matterhorn, a couple comes off the ride with their two children. The kids are both wailing and looking a bit green. The mom shrugs and says, "I guess they're a bit too young."

Once we'd gotten home and rested a bit, we put the driftwood from our poor bathtub (it's a bit brown now) into the tank. The aquarium looks better but I'm having trouble getting a good picture of it. I think because the gravel is black, the darkness makes it harder.

The pH battle continues. I got a tip from my good friend Ken, and now have some peat moss floating in the sump (contained in partial panty hose with zip ties). The pH has dropped from the original 8.8 plus down to 8.0 and seems to be continuing to fall. When we change the water it's down in the 7s for about a day, but comes back up to the 8 range again. At least overall it is dropping. And the fish are hanging in there. No doubt they'll do better with it lower, but I haven't found a dead one in weeks.

And last, do you remember Drivel: Junk Mail? Yep, we did it again. I don't know if I told you that our Honda Civic Hybrid was having some battery issues. Not the starting battery, but the engine assist battery. Yeah, that big one in the trunk that costs an immense amount of money to replace. For no apparent reason, it would drain while I was sitting at a stoplight or railroad track. We had it in for service but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. No computer codes, and no idiot lights.

Weird thing only seemed to happen when it was warm, too; I went all winter without issue and then it started up again about a month ago. Just about the time the main warranty expired, too. The warranty on the battery was still in effect, but if they can't find a problem, there's nothing to fix, right? Plus, Harry tells me, it's likely the battery charging system, not the battery itself.

I began to not trust my car.

Then, lo! In the mail comes another letter from Honda. They're doing it again... offering us a great deal if we trade in our old car on any new or used car on the lot. So I make an appointment and we go see Ben on a Saturday about two weeks ago.

I looked up Kelly Blue Book trade-in value for our old car first, and stuck to my guns about what I wanted for the old one and what I was willing to do for monthly payments. After all, we didn't have to trade. I could just wait for this one to finally die. And yes, I did tell them the battery had some kind of issue the service department couldn't find. I don't think they listened.

And... now I'm driving a 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid. It doesn't look much different. This one is a bit darker grey, and the plates are dealer new-car placeholders. But I *feel* much different for two reasons: Because I trust this car (the warranty starts again) and because of something Harry said when we were at the dealership.

We were offered colors, since we didn't like anything on the local lot. If the car we wanted was available at another dealership, Ben would drive there and get it. The car comes in these colors, with these interior colors. The only two interior colors are blue and beige. We had beige on the 2007. And Harry says, "I don't really care for the blue, but it's your car."

How sweet is that? It's my car... what more can I say?

Michelle

The Desk Drawer writer's exercise

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Book Review; Some Politics; A Guest Post & Intriguing Miscellany

Book Review:-"Everything She Ever Wanted" by Ann Rule. Pat Taylor Allanson liked to cook for folks but she had a heavy hand with the arsenic. Her story is shocking, a story of a woman who wanted so much that she'd kill with no compunction to get it. A riveting read.

Guest Writer Michelle still working on that aquarium and the conversion from salt water to fresh is a tale of success and failure.

Some miscellaneous stuff this week that defied classification. First, a Delaware political race which affects every one of yon readers.

Some monarch caterpillars pay a visit, daughter gets a huge haircut, how to get rid of all your joint pain and America's Top Ten Pet Names.

Pic of the Day

 

The Delaware O’Donnell/Castle Race

A most recent update to my little rant below is this American Spectator Article on the danger of Mike Castle and a lameduck congress. Hand to God this article came out today though it repeats much of my concern below.

Just so you know it’s not just me.

Mike Castle is Delaware’s only Representative in America’s House, Delaware being one of the few states with more Senators than Representatives for its small size.

Mike Castle was Governor of Delaware for two terms and has been a Representative in the House for about forever.

He is a RINO…a Republican in Name Only.

Now some would say that Delaware is a purple state, not solidly red or solidly blue and that Mike Castle represents that dynamic.

Perhaps.

He voted for the so-called stimulus, against the Iraq surge, for federal financing of fetal stem cell research, the recent free speech impeding DISCLOSE act…in other words, DEMOCRAT legislative agendas. The last straw was his vote, along with only one other Republican in the House, in favor of Cap and Tax.

Nothing wrong with a legislator voting for this stuff. Except, ahem, Mike Castle is a REPUBLICAN!

I am a Conservative. Which is not necessarily the same thing as a Republican but for now, Republicans are all we have.

All across the fruited plains Conservatives are sick of so-called Republicans voting like Democrats. If they’re going to vote Democrat, damn them, BECOME A DEMOCRAT!

There’s many Conservatives in Delaware that are very mad at Mike Castle and want him to go away.

Well Mike Castle is not only NOT going to go away, he is now running for the position of Delaware’s Senator. Remember Joe Biden? Yeah, our Vice-President. The Governor of Delaware appointed a place-holder for Biden and now Delaware is going to fill Biden’s seat.

It was widely believed that Beau Biden…yeah, son of Joe, would be running to fill that seat. Only Delaware AG Beau Biden’s got a big child-molesting case going on now and the poor guy, a young man, just recently suffered a small stroke. He really wasn’t ready for the job those who would be honest would tell you.

Mike Castle was scheduled to retire at the end of this congressional term but somebody got the big idea he should run to fill Biden’s seat.

He’s like a big cancer to me at this point. He votes like a Democrat. I thought it was his last term. I did vote for Castle last time on the recommendation that this would be the LAST time we’d have to hold our nose and pull the lever. Now we are going to give this guy MORE power by electing him to a position where he’ll only have to face the voters once every six years and he’ll now be one out of 100 as opposed to one out of 430 or so?

Even more important, whoever is elected to replace Joe Biden would be seated in the senate right away. While other senatorial races would not have the winners seated until January, the Delaware senator would be seated during the upcoming infamous lame-duck session when it is rumored the Democrats will pass cap and Tax, provisions that everyone must get a divorce and marry a homosexual, taxes will be raised to take ALL of our salaries and anything else they can get in because they likely won’t get another chance for about forever.

And we are not to assume that Mike Castle will be right in the thick of this Lameduck session and goodness knows what damage he can then do?

Sussex County Delaware is a bastion of conservatism. They like to make fun of us, calling us the Taliban, labeling us as “teabaggers” and the like. We are mostly older type folk, many retirees from the surrounding states such as New Jersey and Merryland where the debilitating property taxes drove us off.

We obey the laws, watch American Idol, go to church on Sunday, and, I add as point of perspective, one of the largest gay communities in America is located within Sussex county. We hire these folk for our businesses, we shop with them, we bathe with them on our beaches. We get along just fine, our provincial, racist, queer-hating selves.

There is absolutely no justification for the Sussex county GOP to have nominated Mike Castle for Senator, none at all. I could understand infamous and very liberal New Castle county, site of mighty Wilmington, a Baltimore-wannabe city but a big nothing burger suburb of New Jersey and Philadelphia. I could maybe understand mid-state Kent county. But no way would the citizens of Sussex county, at least the Republican ones but probably the Democrat ones as well, have condoned the nomination of Mike Castle in Sussex county.

And yet didn’t they go and nominate that man, the Sussex GOP, many of them friends and colleagues of my association through the years here in Delaware?

I don’t know how they can sleep at night, the traitors.

Backbones….they have none.

Christine O’Donnell is a woman who has run for elected office before here in Delaware. Back in 2006 she ran as an Independent for Governor and in 2008 the Delaware GOP did nominate her as candidate to oppose Joe Biden in his run for Senator. The GOP hates Christine O’Donnell. She is an avowed conservative. They only gave her the nod in 2008 because they knew that no one would beat favorite son Joe Biden, who was simultaneously running for Vice-President that year.

Even at that, O’Donnell didn’t do half bad against Biden.

So now the Delaware GOP has nominated that godawful Mike Castle to run for Senator to officially replace Joe Biden. Christine O’Donnell is running against Mike Castle and it’s an uphill battle.

For Mike Castle has power and money like few have. You don’t stride that congressional aisle for so many years without making lots of friends everywhere and, indeed, Mike Castle has done so.

The Delaware GOP loves to make fun of O’Donnell, calling her, gasp…POOR….dag, imagine that- a poor person running for an elective office. They mock and joke about her, calling her supporteers “pathetic”.

It gets so I despise the Delaware Republican party.

Try and get in the way of the perfectly-coiffed, superbly suntanned, professionally nail-polished GOP country club set and watch them turn vicious.

Anyway, I will vote for Christine in the upcoming Delaware primary on 9/14/10. If Castle wins the GOP nomination despite how reviled he is in most of Delaware save the leeches in Wilmington, I will NOT vote for him.

No, I will not vote for the Democratic candidate, a little midget nothing burger like most Democrats. I will not vote for anyone for Senator from my state to replace Joe Biden.

Thus the Delaware GOP has denied me any voice in my state’s senatorial election.

Because we have TWO Democrats running against each other.

Below, a compilation of pics I took from a recent party I attended where Christine O’Donnell showed up to my complete delight.

The Caterpillar Babies Return

There were only two or three of the handsome fellows left when husband spotted the beautiful monarch caterpillars on our Butterfly Weed plant. A couple of pics of these beauties below.

Last year we had a bush filled with these caterpillars and were excited beyond compare. It was the first year we had seen such a thing and we were proud as if we were the parents of those black, yellow and white striped beauties feasting on our plant.

We did some research and discovered several things. First, this so-called “Butterfly Weed” thhat I’d purchased from a garden catalogue for its ability to, ahem, lure butterflies was not quite what I thought.

Turns out it is a common milkweed plant, the “host” plant of the monarch butterfly. It was a pretty plant and grew happily in the place I chose it to grow. It had pretty orange flowers but I lamented how I saw few butterflies hanging around the thing.

A host plant is the plant a butterfly species will use to lay its eggs for hatching. The eggs hatch and the caterpillars then eat the plant on which its parents put it. The caterpillars grow until one day, from a signal from a gene somewhere deep, the caterpillars crawl off and wrap themselves in something called a chrysalis. The chrysalis hangs, usually underneath a protective leaf on a big plant, and over the course of about a week the caterpillar within turns into a beautiful butterfly.

Last year we did find a couple of the caterpillars’ chrysalis’, hanging on, of all things, a houseplant summering outdoors.

Husband and I are in dispute over the timing of last years versus this years monarch caterpillar hatching. I could swear that last year we didn’t have the caterpillars until close to Halloween. This year the pretty things hatched closer to the 4th of July.

We only spotted a couple of them this year and we’re not all sure if there had been many more of them. Whatever the case, they were only with us, eating and pooping on the Milkweed for only a few days. We never found a single chrysalis.

But yes, I am quite proud of my little monarch butterfly nursery although there was no plan for same.

Top Ten Pet Names

Some of these names are clever beyond all clever.

Joint Pain

When my knee first began bothering me I was convinced I’d somehow sprained it.

For it was only one knee causing me grief and the concept of deteriorating joints had never occurred to me.

The knee pain got worse until at one terrible point, even standing on it caused me so much pain I wanted to scream.

Couple of things here: First, I get no younger. I never felt old at all, or even anywhere near approaching old, during the decade of my 50’s. This year I hailed age 60 and, well, now I feel like I’m getting old.

Further, I did have, two years ago, a heart bypass. My coronary arteries were clogged bejeesus but at age 57 I was fairly young and bounced back quick.

In fact, it was because of this operation that I may have hastened the decline of my knee joint although I knew nothing about anything concerning all this.

Finally, I am what might be considered, a person of…ahem, “wide body mass”. That’s what the medicos call fat people who put more pressure on such as knee and hip joints than the thinner amongst us.

I’m not all that huge but I am a big-boned woman who some would say kindly carries her weight well but make no mistake, no matter how well you carry that weight, the knees still feel every ounce.

One of the best ways to stay healthy as we age is regular exercise. Ask any medico. Exercise helps the blood burn up excess sugar, cholesterol, lipids and all kinds of stuff that gets into blood and settles where it shouldn’t oughta.

Walking is one of the best exercises around and most all of us can walk a little bit. So I walk around my own backyard every day. I enjoy it, I play with the dog, my blood sugar, lipids and cholesterol, helped by medicine let’s not kid around here, are way down.

The walking was making my knee joint weary.

ELATIONS!

Just a little container of this Kool Aid type of drink and all your joint pain shall be gone.

Well the stuff wasn’t cheap, around $12.00 for eight of the little things. But my knee hurt and I was getting worried about the possibility that I might have to stop my exercise routine which had proved so beneficial for me and the dog.

The instructions warned that it might take a while for any relief to come so I kept drinking the stuff, groaning about the cost and more important, wondering if it was doing any good.

Around May of this year husband was hospitalized for surgery. It was supposed to be way more of a routine thing than it turned out to be but, amazingly, my knee suddenly became just fine. Which was indeed a blessing in that every day I had to traipse to the hospital, climbing parking lot berms, walking long hospital hallways, and keeping up with the daily exercises for both my health and hey, the dog needed tending to.

Husband ended up being in the hospital for a whole month and for that month I was totally free from joint pain. I stopped taking the Elations, convinced that it was bogus, that I only had a sprain of some kind.

Within two weeks the pain came back with a vengeance. While I felt like I was starting to get old, I did not think I was old enough to require knee replacement. And in fact, I stopped the morning walk routine for a week for the pain and it did disappear.

So I didn’t have severely damaged joints but they were not up to snuff for my rather rigorous morning exercise routine.

It was not hopeless, or course. There was no requirement that I had to WALK, only that I MOVE. I came up with a daily exercise routine that had me exercising in place, even sitting down, maybe dancing in place and far fewer walks.

The pain was gone.

What I also did was to find some of that joint stuff that had glucosomine and chondroitin in it. You don’t need Elations. There’s a million of these joint meds around and in fact I found a generic brand carried by Walmart. I have no idea what the hell glucosomine and chondroitin but I had, by now, ascertained that the Elations, which included those two elements, did, indeed, help my aching knee and by stopping it the pain came back.

It took almost 45 days but indeed my joint pain is all gone.

Amazing.

Glucosomine, as I understand it, is the stuff that creates the gel that helps to cushion joints. Chondroitin helps the body create new ligaments.

This is the layman’s interpretation of it all so don’t believe me. Look it up.

I get a big bottle of horse pills from Walmart for around eight bucks for 60…about a month’s worth. No need to pay for fancy Elations or even some of this same thing advertised on TV as the miracle of all.

It is a sort of miracle. You don’t know how much you miss having painless joints until every movement brings agony.

Daughter Give Hair to Cancer Patients

She really needed her hair cut. It was long and lovely but daughter has such a pretty face that she would be better served by a hairstyle that framed her heart-shaped face, emphasizing her beautiful eyes and pretty skin.

Well that’s how I saw it but daughter never listened to me.

But when she told me she was off to get her waist length hair cut and was donating it all to make wigs for cancer patients I was very proud.

Below a pic of daughter with new, shorter hair. Also, her cut hair on the table, braided and ready to make a wig for a cancer patient.

 

”Everything She Ever Wanted” by Ann Rule

I held the impressive tome in my hand at the local yokel library and marveled.

The cover looked brand new. Indeed the entire book looked brand new. I thought I’d read every book written by Ann Rule but here was a book copyrighted in 1992 and further, I felt pretty sure I’d watched a movie with the same title on Lifetime.

I put the big book in my bag and pondered that I’ll probably read a few chapters when I will realize that I’d already read the thing. This would be nothing new, especially with Ann Rule books.

The saga of Pat Taylor captured my imagination immediately. Indeed her crimes, those that she got officially charged with plus those the reader will rightly suspect, took place in the early 80’s on through the early 90’s.

Pat Taylor was a piece of work.

And no, I had not read this Rule book before and over the next couple of days I enjoyed that curious but satisfying joy that comes when I’m reading a book that I enjoy so much that I look at the thickness of the pages I have left to read and get excited the thicker it is and get a kind of sad as the “read” thickness begins to build up while the “unread” thickness gradually decreases.

Well, maybe you hadda be there.

Rule provides a background like no other True Crime author I’ve read, such as the following gem:

"The white marble Fulton county Courthouse took up the entire block and was constantly being refurbished and expanded, so that its bulk hunkered over sidewalks and seemed about to burst into lanes of traffic. There were six huge columns on the Pryor Street side and wide steps leading to three double doors. Bronze pedestals supported a profusion of round white lights, and sheriff's cars and vans nudged the curb in front.

Ann Rule told the story as only Ann Rule can. Pat Taylor was a beautiful woman who wanted things in life. And if she didn’t get those things, she had no compunction about killing to get them.

Yet to all the world she would seem a most ordinary genteel southern bell.

Indeed Pat’s parents, and likely the sources of the reason Pat Taylor was so spoiled and with no concept of deeds and prices to be paid, were law-abiding, well-respected folks of Georgia. Margureitte and Colonel Radcliffe of Georgia only broke the law when it came to daughter Pat.

Most of the book dwells on the strange marriage of Pat Taylor and Tom Allanson. Tom Allanson was a man so smitten with his manipulative wife that before he knew it, this normally big galut of a genuinely nice guy done shot and killed his father AND his mother.

How the hand of Pat Taylor played into this horrific event (and trust that via a complicated series of actions she likely brought the tragedy about) is never resolved. Tom Allanson went to jail for the crimes and while he was in jail Pat went on a mission to kill Tom’s grandparents!

Only this time Pat got caught and went to jail. She was not successful in her quest. They found arsenic in both Walter and Carolyn Allanson’s hair and fingernails.

Both Pat and Tom eventually get out of jail but they divorce. It was never an intent for Tom to survive that shootout in the basement of his parents at any rate and Pat moved on to other elderly prey.

In due course, and in the strange ways of a bureaucracy, after Pat was released from jail she was assigned a job taking care of elderly patients. And Pat found some elderly patients with some money. She was charged again with attempted murder and was again sent to jail.

This is a convoluted story of strange events, possible murder attempts-some on Pat’s own daughters!

I do remember watching a movie on Lifetime. The Lifetime movie concentrated more on the attempted arsenic murder of Pat’s husband’s grandparents as he was in jail for the murder of his parents.

Pat Allanson wanted, you understand, to inherit all of the Allanson wealth. But first she had to get rid of the grandparents, the parents and, of course, her husband Tom.

And she did try to kill them all.

The Lifetime movie didn’t move on to Pat’s second attempted murder or did it deal with the many other strange events that seemed to happen to all involved with Pat Taylor Allanson.

This is one of those cases where only a book will do.

And a great book it is. An Ann Rule masterpiece and I’ll never know how this book came out of nowhere to sit brand new on my library’s shelf but it was a great read.

Pat Taylor is still alive, might even be out of jail by now.

Should you come across her in your travels, do not eat any food she may prepare for you.

 

Drivel: The Struggle

So first, the good news: the pet shop did indeed find that last missing saltwater fish, and rescued it. Yay for that.

The struggle for survival goes on in our renovated saltwater-to-freshwater tank. The first thing we had to do was modify the protein skimmer. If you've ever seen the skim of ick on top of ocean waves at the beach, you've seen protein skimming nature's way. In the aquarium, a gadget with a tube, a catch tray and a pump does the work. The function of it is to "froth" the tank's saltwater which makes the garbage in it come to the surface, and then catch that crap in the catch tray.

Except the thing doesn't like fresh water at all. We didn't expect it to actually *function* but we hoped it would act as an aerator. You know that cute little column of bubbles in most freshwater aquariums? We don't want one of those. (And no, no slowly rising and falling divers or bubbling volcanoes, either.) We want our bubbles to happen in the sump, which sits in the aquarium stand, invisible to someone watching the fish. The protein skimmer wasn't aware of our desire or simply didn't care. It stopped working. Harry restarted it. It stopped working again. So Harry modified it. (You know that's one of his major skills, right?)

Now it has no tube or catch tray, and the pump is merrily shooting bubbles into the sump. One for our side!

Once the air supply was stable, and the tank had been up and running for awhile (and the die-off rate of the plants had slowed to almost none), we added a bunch of tetras, two plecostomus (plecostomi?), and two corydoras. For those of you who aren't fish-savvy, that's a bunch of nice little swimming fish, two algae eaters, and two small catfish as cleanup crew.

We lost fish immediately.

Well, yeah, sometimes you do; transport and shock and stress always weeds out the weak ones. I didn't worry about it too much at first.

But when it didn't stop, I worried. And tested. Water tests revealed excellent levels of ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, hardness, and salinity. No, normally you don't test for salinity in a freshwater aquarium, but since it's a conversion, it was a good thing to test.

The culprit was the pH level.

The pH test goes like this: you take 5ml of water in a little tube, add 5 drops of the pH test solution, cap and shake the tube, then match the color of your results against the nice pH test card included in the kit.

I mixed, shook, and saw the water turn

Michelle

The Desk Drawer writer's exercise list

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A Brain Infection? A Medical Journey Surpassed by Few

A Medical Odyssey to a Quadruple Heart Bypass

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Reviews: Movie-"Despicable Me". Book-"Brayn Food"; Guest Post-The Aquarium Conversion; Kaitlyn Visit and We're In the Newspapers!

8/1/10

If you’re a Conservative, If you’re a Tea Partier, here’s a book that you have GOT to read.

FreeRepublic regular Gary Bray penned the book “Brayn Food”, subtitled “For the Tea Patriot Hungry for The Truth”.

It’s a little Coulter, a little Levin, a lot Gary Bray, who finally took to publishing his whimsical, thoughtful and very true thoughts in a book that the world, even liberals, can finally “get it”.

Guest Writer Michelle tells of aquarium conversion, the good, the bad, the ugly, the heartbreak and pain.

Here’s a review of the latest hit movie of the summer of 2010. It’s “Despicable Me” and it’s perfect for a 6 year old granddaughter. We’ve got stolen moons, cute orphans, nasty turning nice and, of course, a happy ending.

It’s stereotypical but it’s good for a rainy or extremely hot summer matinee.

There were political rallies, visits to the beach, a hot afternoon movie matinee and I’m not making this up, one very unusual but very much enjoyed magic show.

Kaitlyn visits Mom-Mom and we’ve got pics and videos of it all.

Plus WE’RE IN THE DELAWARE NEWSPAPERS!!

Pic of the Day

Senior Cell phone

 

Summer Movies, the Delaware Seashore, a Magic Show and a Political Rally…Kaitlyn Visits Mom-Mom in July 2010

It was a very hot weekend beginning on Friday 7/16/10 when Kaitlyn came to visit Mom-Mom for four days in the middle of an exceptionally hot July.

We began the weekend by attending a political rally, a so-called “Conservative Coalition” organized on the fly here in the swamps of Delaware.

Christine O’Donnell, pictured below with Kaitlyn, is running for the seat being vacated by the vice-President America so adores, Joe Biden. She is running AGAINST the GOP nominee, Mike Castle, who is vacating his elected position as Delaware’s only Representative in the House.

Lots of other political folk there as one might imagine, including former Governor of Virginia, George Allen. Kaitlyn’s in pic with the lot of them. Some of these nobodies gets to be President some day, I figure the pics will be worth big bucks, insert smile here.

Below, a short video of Kaitlyn on the Moon Bounce at the Coalition.

The day following the Conservative Coalition Kaitlyn and I had quite a busy day. Part of which was immortalized forever by the local newspaper, link below.

From Delaware News Journal

I know of Abbotts Mill from my affiliation with the Delaware Nature Society. It was an operating grain mill owned by John Abbott and now maintained by the DNS as an educational resource for the public. There are a couple other such sites here in Delaware and by me, and as reported in the linked newspaper article, it’s the best deal in town.

On THIS visit we got to see the actual operation of the mill. It was fascinating in that the mill ran completely by the force of the water in the man-made pond.

A video of the mill as it was running, below.

Before going out to see the mill, Kaitlyn spent some time inside, playing with the turtles as she loves to do. Below a short video of Kaitlyn with the beloved turtles.

Later that night, Kaitlyn and I attended a live Magic show. It was touch and go for a while in that I couldn’t find the “theater”.

Said theater being located in the Magician’s actual house but hey, it was a good setup, actually.

The guy was once a magician who traveled on such as cruise ships and to Las Vegas. He and his wife decided they wanted to settle down in one place and have the audience come to them. Hey, this is all new but it was really a great show. Kaitlyn adored it.

The guy put on quite a show in a building in the back of his house that was outfitted with theater type seating, a stage with a real curtain. His magic act featured an overhead video and some pretty technological advanced stuff.

He was very talented in front of an audience which that night consisted of only about 8 people. Mr. Bloch combines comedy with magic and audience participation and he had Kaitlyn laughing so loudly and heartily that he and his wife fell completely in love with the child. There’s a pic of Kaitlyn with Mr. Bloch and his wife in the pic compilation at the beginning of this article.

On Sunday of this still very hot and desultory weekend, Kaitlyn and I went to church, then to the dollar store. Folks, you want to really, really entertain a kid, take her to a dollar store, give her three bucks to spend on anything she wants and they’ll be happy.

We then saw the movie “Despicable Me”, reviewed above, and, of course, had lunch at the local play McDonalds. I even bought the child Chicken McNuggets even though the liberals tell me they will kill her.

The following Monday Kaitlyn and I did something that made me very nervous.

Way I figure, what’s the use of living near the ocean if you can’t take your grandchildren to the beach when they visit?

Now I’ve taken Kaitlyn to the beach during a visit but always on the off-season, the one time I did was in October.

Cause the beaches in this resort area are packed during the heat of summer, not to mention parking being almost an impossibility. So I sweet-talked husband into dropping us off at the Lewes public beach and picking us up when I called him.

The Lewes public beach is…just that…public. There is no cost to get to it, there is a lifeguard on duty, it’s kept kind of secret from the maddening crowds of nearby Rehoboth, Bethany and Dewey beaches, just so locals like myself can enjoy the beach. This year there was a tongue-in-cheek rush to enjoy a beach visit before the BP tar balls starting floating ashore from the Gulf oil spill.

The Lewes beach is not located directly on the ocean but is, instead, on the Delaware Bay. It’s immediately adjacent to the Lewes Ferry, in fact. Kaitlyn thought watching the big ferry boats arrive and take off to be a big treat in fact.

The beach’s waters are calm, without the roaring waves of the ocean. As a young woman I would miss the big ocean waves but as a grandmother with a young child I appreciated the quiet Lewes beach more than ever. Kaitlyn adored it, check out the videos below.

In the video below there is an introduction to the beach, spans of the water…that sort of thing.

Below is the best video of all. Kaitlyn was sitting and playing in the sand, singing to herself and oblivious to the world around her, happy as a child should be.

The video below would be the stuff of America’s Funniest videos except I couldn’t see a thing as I was filming. Kaitlyn had purchased a play snorkel set during her visit to the dollar store the day before. She was so excited at the prospect of trying out her snorkel which would really let her breath underwater.

Except she had to learn how to use the thing.

When I saw her sitting in the waters and dipping her head under the waves I had to smile. She was determined to learn how to use that snorkel.

Only problem I couldn’t see, because of the bright sun, what was being recorded. So the camera kind of bounces around a bit.

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.

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

The Desk Drawer writer's exercise

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