Monday, October 13, 2008

The time of the half project

Seems like I got a lot of things halfway done this weekend.

I got the lawn half-mowed before running out of gas...

I got the halfway done on the crown-- got it sanded and about 6 feet of it painted...

Our little front porch kitty's been recovering form a spay surgery; it turned out that she had already been spayed, but it was not a certainty before they put her under. She was a little drunk Friday night, but she's purring and loving and rubbing her sweet little face on everything in sight now.

We also went to Oktoberfest. It's a small affair here, a charity event for a children's treatment facility. Some extra yummy brats and sauerkraut, and some good German potato salad, but not as good as my mother and grandmother's recipe. My mother grew up very, very German Lutheran and let me tell you there is nothing better than good, authentic German potato salad. I'll have to make that my next recipe post-- I'm long overdue for one anyway.

And lets not forget the beer. Pitchers of Sam Adams Oktoberfest were $10 to start with and $6 for refills and we keep the pitcher. Not bad over all. A girlfriend of mine split a few pitchers with me while our kids ran wild and the men stayed sober to drive us all home. Then she and another friend and I went to play bunco with her mother.

Wow.

I'm not sure how I've missed this game. It was the first time I played and I think it's fantastic. They eat a lot of food, drink some booze and play this bizarro combination of bridge and craps. And there's prizes! I won some sweet little harvest-themed scarecrow decorative statues.

I might be hooked.

Oh! Speaking of hooked-- I've taken up crocheting again. I haven't really done that in a good 15 years, so I had to spend Sunday practicing and boning up on my stitches. I'll be back in the swing in no time, and making some new throw pillows for the living room.

Frankly, this was all to distract me from the news. I'm a politics junky and I watch news from the time I get home, to the time I go to bed. I listen to news podcasts on my drive home, I listen to Morning Edition on the drive to work. I just read the John Adams biography and I'm about to wrap up reading a book about the 1787 writing of the Constitution. I really should have moved to DC.

I never wanted to get too bogged down in it here on this blog, though. DIY knows no politics.

I will just say, however, that I'm concerend about the level of misinformation in the world and the amount of negativity that's been spewed forth in the last few weeks. The world is in a precarious place at the moment, and race, gender and religion shouldn't factor negatively into the way we move forward. It's become almost hard for me to watch.

Let's talk issues, solutions and plans and then let's get ourselves out of this mess.

6 comments:

Joanne said...

It's okay to sneak politics in every once in a while, I think. :-)

We're political news junkies, here, too. The presidential debates are a time for ordering pizza to eat during the debate and beer for the two or three hours of talking heads commentary afterward.

Just A Girl And Her Craftsman Bungalow said...

it's all wild fires on the news around here right now.

Octoberfest sounded fun!

I have to try to not sound so depressed in my posts but who is happy right now in this economic political rut we're in? ha! hopefully things can only get better from here

Amalie said...

Yes! It's beer and pizza for us, too, and the 3 hours of commentary is pretty much like any other day...

We've been hearing about the wildfires out here, and I'm sending good thoughts out that way.

Let's hope it only gets better, cause the worst seems to have been stirred up in a lot of people lately.

I think I'm gonna need another 6 pack for tomorrow night.

Jennifer said...

Political junkie, too! We just put up a yard sign. It's the opposite of the rest of our neighborhood... and has already been kicked down once by random teenagers. It went back up. :) I'm not talking about it on my blog, either, though!

Poor kitty and her two spays! I was sort of upset at the unattractive and sloppy suturing/healing of my female dog's spay... until they told me that it was the only way to tell if a dog had been spayed. Leaving an ugly scar would prevent any unecessary scars.

Amalie said...

Yeah-- if we could ever get a yard sign up, it would also be opposite of most of our neighbors. Unfortunately, headquarters is out because they keep being stolen.

Grr.

Poor kitty had a scar but they said it didn't really look like a spay scar and the only way to tell is, indeed, to open up. Since she's outside, there's a ton of male cats beginning to sniff around, and she was already under anesthesia-- probably the riskiest part-- I said it was ok to go ahead. And then I felt horrible! She seems to be doing ok, though. A bit of an upset tummy that appears to be righting itself and a lot of love for us all.

Anonymous said...

Yeah - we're junkies too. We haven't done pizza and a beer. Popcorn maybe - and we find ourselves more "rooting for our candidate" than listening to the debate. I've a bunch of friends on the other side of the aisle at work - we love to talk about who's in the lead.