Friday, January 30, 2009

Whew! I'm Back

Crazy January.  And I know I should have posted, but I was cooking up something and just couldn't seem to get up the energy to blog.  But I'm fine.  In case you were worried.

So here's the deal...I've decided to open a yarn shop, the kind of little local spot people can come to and hang out and have a cup of coffee and BUY YARN.  (I have to pay the rent!)  I know it seems bizarre.  I just quit school, and now this?  Well, back before Thanksgiving DH and I were eating dinner and I told him, "I should just open a yarn shop."  And he said, "I think that's a great idea!"  So of course I was off and running, reading books about retail and yarns and looking at every store in the area.  I haven't been knitting my whole life, either, so I've been knitting like a madwoman.  

This is soon!  The landlord in exactly the spot I wanted came through with a very generous offer, so he pushed my timetable up a lot.  The lease starts on Sunday, and there is an incredible amount to think about:  business license, POS system, renovating the space, meeting with vendors and sales reps, trying to get the word out about the new shop.

The web site will be up soon, and when it is I'll post a link to it.  I'm not going to link from there back to this blog, though, because I still like talking about politics and I don't want to mix business with that.

So, here we go.  DH has always been an entrepreneur but I never have been.  Retail can be challenging...lots of time in the store, dealing with the public, the inventory.  But it is also so exciting.  I don't want this to be a bad bet.  There is an expression:  "Worried women knit."  Let's hope that lots of worried women find their way to my store!  (Men, too.  We're equal opportunity knitters!)

Friday, January 9, 2009

Sarah Palin Interview

My favorite Republican is back, being interviewed by John Ziegler of howobamagotelected.com. Check out the video:  

It's worth watching the whole thing.  I'm looking forward to hearing more from her in the next few years.  And can anyone really say she less qualified than Joe "Jobs-is-a-three-letter-word" Biden?

Upside down and Inside out

Did you ever look at the news at just think, "What the hell is going on?"  (Sorry about the cursing...I don't use it that often but it is good for when you need that extra emphasis.)  That was my day yesterday, like a nightmare, but now I can't seem to wake up.  I was actually YELLING at poor DH yesterday over the idiocy going on right now, both locally and nationally, even internationally.  The yelling didn't last, by the way; we both started laughing and then poured another glass of wine.  Anyway...

Read this article.  Seriously.  No, I mean NOW.  (And then come back!)  Atlas Shrugged, way back when I read it, was the longest novel I had ever read, 1,064 pages.  It was powerful, the kind of book that really makes you look around at things in a new way.  Stephen Moore has perfectly captured what is going on right now and shows how it lines up with the novel.  Good Lord, he is right.

Locally, our school board made Drudge a couple of days ago, which you know must mean something utterly ridiculous must have happened.  It did.  Not only do they want to make the teachers give back their 2.5% raise, the superintendent also wants to send out an additional property tax (retroactive) to all of us property owners.  We just passed a SPLOST here, for an extra 1% sales tax, not that I voted for it.  And back in July all of the incompetent I mean incumbent school board members were reelected without a whiff of a budget problem.  Something is truly rotten there.  I can look at this like a purely financial issue since I don't have kids in the system and it makes me so mad!  They have wasted so much money on real estate speculation and a bloated county administrative staff that it is hardly a surprise that problems are showing up now.

Nationally, oh, so much.  Obama wants to spend a TRILLION dollars getting us out of the poor economic conditions we're in.  What in the world makes in seem like taking the money from me and you, giving it to the government, and then having the government disburse the money to worthy projects is a better, more productive way to stimulate the economy than just letting all of us keep more of our money and using it as we see fit?  The U.S. Conference of Mayors is salivating...they have a 1557 page list of "shovel ready" projects!  Here is a partial list of those worthy projects...I swear I could not make this up if I tried.  Well, maybe, but take a look:
$35 million for the Music Hall of Fame in Florissant, Mo.; $35 million for the Scottsdale Museum of the West in Arizona and $20 million for the Virginia Key Beach Museum in Miami, Fla.
This is brilliant...we are in debt, so let's spend more.  I think I'll try that here at home, because there are these shoes I've been eyeing...

The porn industry wants a bailout.  Rich.  These people should be embarrassed to be associated with this business.  Instead they are bold enough to ask for your money and mine to save their sick business.  I think they won't get the money, but they have the nerve to ask!

Charlie Rangel's ethics investigation was supposed to be done by January 3.  Nancy Pelosi had promised!  But now it has been delayed.  Even better, thanks to Pelosi's rule changes, Rangel looks likely to not only continue serving "honorably" but also as the chair of the Ways and Means Committee for as long as he wants.  This is truly the fox guarding the henhouse.  What is wrong with the Republicans??  Why aren't they out in front of cameras talking about these things all the time?

Seriously?  You want to put a 70-year-old guy into a position for which he has only tangential experience, as Chief of Staff for Clinton, into one of the most important positions in the whole country?  Panetta as CIA chief is flat-out scary.  Transitions are high times for attacks, and I want a professional spook or ambassador in that position, not some high-level manager.  And look at the intelligence decisions made during the Clinton years:  the first World Trade bombing in 1993, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, the explosion of Al-Qeada (no pun intended).  This is a bad pick, and worse yet it is dangerous to all of us.

This was such a cheerful post!  Hopefully I'll find some good new to share later.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Changing the House

Not mine, Pelosi's.  I mean, she seems to think it's hers to change.  The Democrats are doing some rule changing, making their majority harder to overcome.  This is terrible, in fact, turning back the clock and making everything less clear--did you even think that was possible with the Congress?! What they are really doing is undoing some of the changes put in during Gingrich's Contract with America days.  So apparently, openness is good when the Republicans are in charge, but once the Democrats win then let's shut things down.

And related to my previous post about the word "rule," look at the fourth and fifth paragraphs from the bottom of the AP article:  "four decades of Democratic rule" versus "Republicans took control."  Words mean things.

The rule of words

Words mean things.  Which is why the repeated use of the word "rule" with regard to the government is really bugging me.

When I was in high school civics we were introduced to the concept of the "rule of law."  I found it a confusing phrase, because I kept thinking of a ruler, like with inches and feet, and not a ruler of a country.  But I finally get it, that the authority of the government in our country vests not in any one person or group of people, but in the Constitution.  Those people elected to government, in particular the President and by extension the rest of the executive branch, are guardians of the Constitution.  The President does not RULE.  The laws rule.  

So why does it seem like I see "Obama's rule begins" or "Pelosi's rule" (I know, Pelosi, how scary is that?) in the press so often?  I really don't recall the word "rule" associated with Bush or the Republicans in years past, but I am sure hearing it a lot now with regard to the Dems.  So I'll google it and see what I get:  2,140 hits, and I agree that all of them don't apply.  But that doesn't include the infamous "Obama will be ready to rule on day one" quote from the campaign.  I DON'T WANT A RULER!  What about the Democrats in general?  909 in the past year.

So what about Bush?  Okay, 5570, but I went through the first through pages and all of these refer to rules made by the Bush administration.  Rule of Bush?  123, and it looks like a lot of those are bloggers.  (Maybe I can finally get Googled by someone!)  But, from what I can find, no one is using "ready to rule" or "not ready to rule." 

So here's my point...there is a glee surrounding Obama and the Congressional Democrats, and it is coming from within and also from the main-stream media.  We didn't elect a new king, we elected a guardian of the Constitution.  The problem is that if we start looking at the "rule of Obama" or  Pelosi or whomever, then they step outside of the law.  The perception is that the ruler creates the rules and is not subject to them.  It isn't true, at least not yet.  The problem is that if you say something often enough then it becomes the truth.  (Lenin said that, not me.)  I don't want this to become the truth.

Monday, January 5, 2009

The New Year is Off and Running

No posting last weekend...yes, we were at the lake.  We got seven glorious days down there, quite a lot for us, and now we are pulling things together here, taking down the Christmas stuff (high time!), and generally getting ready to go back to real life.  The kids don't start back until tomorrow, so that gives us a day to find uniform shoes, clean out backpacks and get haircuts so that we are all ready for tomorrow.  I thought January 6 seemed late to go back, but right now it is terrific...it is raining, wet and grey outside right now, and it would have been tough to roll everyone out of bed at 6:50 this morning!

A quick update on some of my Christmas stuff, because I know you are waiting:

Aquaglobes rock!  I went out and got a couple of houseplants and set up my aquaglobes in them.  They are actually attractive and my plants seem to be getting watered steadily.  This may be the answer to my black thumb with indoor plants, and I'm thrilled.

Wii Fit is awesome, too.  I've used it a little every day, and while it is no fun seeing my weight on the screen every day, it does provide a little incentive to eat a little less or make different choices.  My balance scores are improving and I especially like the Hula Hoop and Boxing games.  (Hey, Casto, definitely put this on your list after you've played Wii sports enough.  We had ours for about eight months before I got my board, and it is the perfect thing to keep me coming back.)

We watched Prince Caspian a couple of nights ago...if you love the Narnia books then it is a great movie.  DH never read them (I know, how is that possible) and so he sees the movies as a pale imitation of the Lord of the Rings movies.  Still good, just not as great as those.  I loved the books and love the movies so far.  Voyage of the Dawn Treader was always my favorite book in the series so I'm really looking forward to the next movie.  Now that I'm writing about it, I see that Disney has pulled out of the project.  I hope Walden can find another partner, so I can see this one on the big screen.

Time to get everyone going today, get our chores done, and enjoy this last day of freedom (for them...my freedom starts tomorrow!).