2009 is drawing to a close, and 2010 is waiting in the wings… Our dynamic team at Badec Bros Deco will be taking a well-deserved break from 18 December 2009, until 6 January 2010. You have until Thursday, 26 November 2009 to place your orders for delivery in 2009! From next week on, we will be taking the orders for 2010.

Therefore, should you wish to have your very own signature Cubedec steel dustbin, interactive sculpture, Cubedec shelving, Cubedec miniature Zen garden box, 2010 Soccer World Cup décor, mild steel lamp shade, mild steel screen, Cubedec laser-cut logo, gabion counter, narration stand, gabion light cage, gabion bollard, gabion water feature, sculptured living wall, sculptured flagpoles, unique pot and drip tray, customized sculpture, Cubedec bench, trendy steel décor with your company logo emblazoned on it, mild steel inspirational slogan, steel laser-cut signage, mild steel mould, Cubedec Pot, hanging sculpture, gabion pot, gabion wall or gabion terrace, wooden or steel feature poles, bar code trellis, Cubedec water feature, pergola, arch, sculpture or trellis, you can contact our energetic and knowledgeable sales representative, Mareleen van Zijl, on her cell phone at 078 800 5112, the office number at 012 460 7990, or via e-mail at mareleen@badecbros.com

She will gladly arrange an appointment with you to listen to your ideas and to stun you with our own creative ideas! You dream it, we manufacture it!

Badec Bros Deco will create a 3 dimensional render and calculate a quotation FREE OF CHARGE for you! We can deliver your unique Badec Bros Deco product(s) within 10 to 15 working days, upon acceptance of the design and quotation and the required 50% deposit. These services come standard and will not cost you a cent extra! We offer a 1 year guarantee on all our products.

2009 is drawing to a close, and 2010 with all of its opportunities and challenges is peeping around the corner …

Our dynamic team at Badec Bros Deco will be taking a well-deserved break from 18 December 2009, until 6 January 2010. We thank you for your valued support and wish you a blessed Christmas and joyous festive season. We look forward to collaborating with you in the new year.

Remember, should you wish to have your very own signature Cubedec steel dustbin, interactive sculpture, Cubedec shelving, Cubedec miniature Zen garden box, 2010 Soccer World Cup décor, mild steel lamp shade, mild steel screen, Cubedec laser-cut logo, gabion counter, narration stand, gabion light cage, gabion bollard, gabion water feature, sculptured living wall, sculptured flagpoles, unique pot and drip tray, customized sculpture, Cubedec bench, trendy steel décor with your company logo emblazoned on it, mild steel inspirational slogan, steel laser-cut signage, mild steel mould, Cubedec Pot, hanging sculpture, gabion pot, gabion wall or gabion terrace, wooden or steel feature poles, bar code trellis, Cubedec water feature, pergola, arch, sculpture or trellis, you can contact our energetic and knowledgeable sales representative, Mareleen van Zijl, on her cell phone at 078 800 5112, the office number at 012 460 7990, or via e-mail at mareleen@badecbros.com

She will gladly arrange an appointment with you to listen to your ideas and to stun you with our own creative ideas! You dream it, we manufacture it! Badec Bros Deco will create a 3 dimensional render and calculate a quotation FREE OF CHARGE for you! We can deliver your unique Badec Bros Deco product(s) within 10 to 15 working days, upon acceptance of the design and quotation and the required 50% deposit. These services come standard and will not cost you a cent extra! We offer a 1 year guarantee on all our products.

We have had quite a few requests to provide décor ideas to hide unsightly air conditioning units in gardens. Badec Bros Deco specializes in feature walls, such as gabion feature walls. These designer walls are ideal to hide air conditioning units, unsightly views, or ugly old walls, without having to remove the existing wall.

We manufacture our gabion walls from 30mm x 3mm angle iron, which is welded together to ensure a strong frame. Then we weld strong, steel mesh onto the frame to create the shape of the wall. Once the hollow wall structure has been manufactured, we install it on site and fill it with pebbles, slate stone or chunky quartzite gravel.

Alternatively, we can also construct mild steel feature walls and add intricate detail to the surface of the steel to decorate it. There are three finishes to choose from. We can powder coat the feature wall in any colour imaginable, or we can apply mild steel finish or a rusted finish. Our powder coating is SABS approved.

Badec Bros Deco can also manufacture mild steel screens. These screens can be used to create privacy or to hang Cubedec hanging pots or hanging sculptures onto. We can customize our mild steel screens to any size and shape and with a wide range of finishes, such as powder coating in any colour, mild steel finish or a rust effect or even wooden cladding.

Should you wish to have your very own signature Cubedec feature wall, steel dustbin, interactive sculpture, Cubedec shelving, Cubedec miniature Zen garden box, 2010 Soccer World Cup décor, mild steel lamp shade, mild steel screen, Cubedec laser-cut logo, gabion counter, narration stand, gabion light cage, gabion bollard, gabion water feature, sculptured living wall, sculptured flagpoles, unique pot and drip tray, customized sculpture, Cubedec bench, trendy steel décor with your company logo emblazoned on it, mild steel inspirational slogan, steel laser-cut signage, mild steel mould, Cubedec Pot, hanging sculpture, gabion pot, gabion wall or gabion terrace, wooden or steel feature poles, bar code trellis, Cubedec water feature, pergola, arch, sculpture or trellis, please feel free to contact our energetic and knowledgeable sales representative, Mareleen van Zijl, on her cell phone at 078 800 5112, the office number at 012 460 7990, or via e-mail at mareleen@badecbros.com

She will gladly arrange an appointment with you to listen to your ideas and to stun you with our own creative ideas! You dream it, we manufacture it!

Badec Bros Deco will create a 3 dimensional render and calculate a quotation FREE OF CHARGE for you! We can deliver your unique Badec Bros Deco product(s) within 10 to 15 working days, upon acceptance of the design and quotation and the required 50% deposit. These services come standard and will not cost you a cent extra! We offer a 1 year guarantee on all our products.

COED Magazine has posted on their blog an article busting the five biggest marijuana myths.

While I don’t need any convincing as to the merits of Pot and how little dander it poses it’s users, I love posts like these. Reasonably well written, it‘s an interesting and informative piece.

Check it out here:

http://coedmagazine.com/2009/11/12/the-5-biggest-marijuana-myths-debunked/

Hey everyone, sorry about the lack of posts lately — I caught the flu and was laid up in bed for the last week. The flu sucks ass and so does taking cough medicine. Do you think medical marijuana would be a better substitute? I sure as hell do!

Anyway, I came across this funny little comic, and I have to agree, these are good suggestions on how to smoke dope and not go to jail.

(Click to enlarge)

After an annual trip to Costco, my fridge looked like it was going to explode at any second.  You had to precariously open the door, for fear of anything from oversized sauce jars to heads of broccoli falling on your unsuspecting foot.  Without even realizing what I’d done, a ginormous tray of sliced mushrooms kept pleading with me everytime I snuck in for a quick snack.  I do love a mushroom and I happened to be in the ball and realized I was overdue in my soup of the week, so I thought: let’s kill two birds with one stone (figuratively of course!!).  This resulted in a creamy, earthy soup that tasted even better as my warming lunch the next day.

.

INGREDIENTS:

1 TBSP butter

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 TBSP olive oil

2 dozen crmini mushrooms, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 cups stock (your choice – as long as it’s rich and good!)

1 cup boiling water (you may use more or less, depending on the thickness you desire)

1 tsp sea or kosher salt (if your stock is super salty, use less)

1/3 cup 10% table cream

Pepper to taste

.

DIRECTIONS:

1)      Bring a large pot to medium heat and sauté the onion in the butter and olive oil until just browned.

2)      Add into pot the garlic and mushrooms, and sauté until browned and softened (about 5-10 min).

3)      Pour stock, water and salt into pot, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 min (or until veg are very tender).

4)      Turn off heat and allow soup to cool slightly, then add in cream.

5)      Pour 3/4 of the contents into a blender, and blend until smooth (you can add in extra liquid if it’s too thick).

6)      Place puréed soup back in pot, add in pepper to taste and re-heat slightly (you do not want to burn the soup, so keep a close eye).

7)      Serve hot with crackers or bread!

Ho

I texted West Coast while high last night. I know I said I’d never smoke weed again, but oh well. I was in a really good place last night.

He looked great for the dinner but I didn’t see him at the dance. So I told him he looked good and that I was too high to worry. He didn’t respond, but there’s nothing I can do.

Tomorrow is the boyfriend’s birthday. He managed to get some weed from a friend so I have to think of something else to buy him. He’s turning into kind of a big stoner, which isn’t good because his grades are suffering anyway… but that’s not for me to worry about, it’s his cross to bear.

My grades are what I need to worry about. I spoke with the advisor for students with disabilities on Friday, and he told me he could help me with classes that I don’t have the energy to wake up for. Sometimes I feel so weak that I can’t get out of bed, and he said that it counts as a disability. So what that means is I’ll get to live in a single next year at no extra cost and that my professors will all be notified that I have some debilitating illness that prevents me from having perfect attendance.

My attendance is near perfect, but I don’t want to drop from being an A student to a B+ student just because of depression and anorexia.

I weighed in, and my BMI is 18.4. I’m underweight, but barely. I mentioned last time that I’m doing the “Skinny Bitch Challenge” and that I’m liquid-fasting right now, so I’m hoping to see that number go down soon.

I set a goal at 95. That’s when I’ll be able to smile again. Not so thin that I black out while walking, and not fat enough to invalidate any fleeting moments of joy I might experience.

I’m feeling really tired, but I’m going to go into town to get a gift for the boyfriend later. I’ll need more coffee first I think.

This is a classic youtube video that you’ve all probably seen. I think it’s funny, but most of all –check out the knockers on this chick!

Here is something completely different, but a funny one too…

(CFD.net.au – Contract for Difference, Share, Forex, ETFs, Commodities Traders) – Police say a drunk driver has hit 10 parked cars in Sydney’s inner east, knocking one to its side on the footpath.

Police say the 30-year-old had nearly three times the legal blood alcohol limit when he wreaked havoc in his ute on Victoria Street at Potts Point at 3:50am (AEDT).

The Mona Vale man was arrested on the street and charged with negligent driving and drink-driving. His driver’s licence was suspended on the spot.

Joanne Pridham works at a backpacker’s hostel on the street and went to inspect the damage herself.

“I saw a backpackers’ station wagon with a lot of their belongings on the street and it was pretty obliterated,” she said.

“The back windows were out. The tyres were all flat. The bumpers were off. They’re going to come out and see their car and they’re not going to be amused.

“There are about three or four cars with their wing mirrors knocked off and damage to their tyres and bumpers.”

The man will face Sydney’s Central Local Court on November 5.

Police want owners of the cars to call Kings Cross Police on (02) 8356 0099 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Source: 'Drunk driver' smashes into 10 cars

I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick lately. I’ve already talked about I.O.U.S.A. and I just finished Maxed Out, which takes on personal debt and the credit card companies as opposed to the national debt. Just like I.O.U.S.A. it serves as a wake-up call for financial responsibility. I first had this wake-up call after attending a Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace class about a year ago and I can’t stress enough how important is for the individual to maintain financial responsibility. Debt is crushing people out there so I suggest you take control before it comes down on you. One probem I had with Maxed Out is that they never told the consumer to take control of their finances. All the film did was points it’s finger at the big, bad credit card companies and debt collectors and while I agree that these companies take advantage of consumers, I also believe that these consumers have the opportunity to avoid a lot of this if only they would take financial responsibility and control

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room was another pretty fantastic film. It seems like between this one, I.O.U.S.A. and Maxed Out we cover governmental financial irresponsibility, corporate financial irresponsibility, and personal financial irresponsibility. So that makes for a nice trio. It’s a very interesting film and it leaves you with a pretty good understanding of why that company was destined to fail.

I also just recently saw Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. Certainly an interesting little documentary about an extremely interesting football game. It’s wild how many people are mentioned as being associated with the team, who went on to become quite famous. People like George W. Bush, Al Gore, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Garry Trudeau. I also was very impressed to learn about Brian Dowling. Dowling was the inspiration for B.D. in Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic and up to the point of that tie, there had not been a game in which Dowling had started and finished and been on the losing team since the 7th grade. That is just amazing. I do not know how he fared collegiately from a W-L standpoint after the Harvard game, but that’s a remarkable feat. He didn’t fare too well in the NFL though.

I also just watched Super High Me, which chronicles comedian Doug Benson’s “investigation” into the affects of marijuana on the human body and mind. Inspired by Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, Benson takes it on himself to not smoke marijuana for 30 days while undergoing a litany of tests. Then he follows that up with 30 days where he smokes so much that he’s high during pretty much every waking hour. I think he could have done more in the way of medical testing. I exaggerated when I used the term “litany”. There is also a point where the DEA is raiding and shutting down medicinal marijuana dispensaries and I believe he should have done more to show the legality of those actions. Yes, the filmmaker did point out it was legal with a quick message on the screen, but no one ever dared argue with the protesters who were acting so offended or even ask those tough questions to play devil’s advocate and inspire the protesters to choose their words wisely. At one point you hear a protester yell (Or maybe this is a combination of two quotes) “The DEA isn’t doing their job! Their job is to stay out of California!” …uhhh, how remarkably stupid is that? That is the DEA’s job? Well why isn’t someone paying me? I’ve stayed out of California my whole life. In this film we also see Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt (of Big Fan fame), Dave Navarro, and the apparent Prince of Pot, Marc Emery. (Who knew?)

So do I feel more educated? Well, I dunno. I certainly prefer the classroom. Not in the sense that it’s more enjoyable, or easier to have a conversation about. But in the sense that if you take a class on a topic you should leave it with a pretty solid foundation of knowledge. These films are great for digging that hole for you to pour that foundation, but they are not a foundation. For one they are almost always biased. Maybe the bias is subtle (I.O.U.S.A.) or maybe the bias is obvious (Super High Me). Either way it exists. Yes, I’m sure it exists in the classroom also, but in the class room you spend much more time on the topics, also you are usually sent out to write things like research papers, which encourage you to do your own fact finding. This leads to a more rounded informational intake. Which in itself is probably the main reason the class room is a better way to learn. The breadth of information is much wider. That can’t even be denied so I’m not gonna to even explain myself.

I have another batch of documentaries lined up to watch so maybe in a couple weeks I’ll be doing this again. I don’t see why not. I would suggest all of these if you have plenty of time. It just turns out that the way I ordered them in this blog is probably the same order I’d suggest watching them.

(CFD.net.au – Contract for Difference, Share, Forex, ETFs, Commodities Traders) – Police say a drunk driver has hit 10 parked cars in Sydney’s inner east, knocking one to its side on the footpath.

Police say the 30-year-old had nearly three times the legal blood alcohol limit when he wreaked havoc in his ute on Victoria Street at Potts Point at 3:50am (AEDT).

The Mona Vale man was arrested on the street and charged with negligent driving and drink-driving. His driver’s licence was suspended on the spot.

Joanne Pridham works at a backpacker’s hostel on the street and went to inspect the damage herself.

“I saw a backpackers’ station wagon with a lot of their belongings on the street and it was pretty obliterated,” she said.

“The back windows were out. The tyres were all flat. The bumpers were off. They’re going to come out and see their car and they’re not going to be amused.

“There are about three or four cars with their wing mirrors knocked off and damage to their tyres and bumpers.”

The man will face Sydney’s Central Local Court on November 5.

Police want owners of the cars to call Kings Cross Police on (02) 8356 0099 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Source: 'Drunk driver' smashes into 10 cars

This morning, it being a weekend, and the weather being dry for a change, I visited BHS to have a breakfast in their Restuarant.

I must say, whilst it is not anything fantastic, it is remarkably cheap.  I worked out a while ago (can’t say I’m a regular there, possibly every few months) that they make their money on their drinks.  I had an 8 piece breafast once, with an orange juice and a pot of tea.  The food was something like £2.50 – the drinks £4.20! 

Anyway, so, this morning I had my breakfast, with a pot of tea.  Since I last went (I have worked out it was end of August) they have obviously changed the pots they use for this.  I was most surprised to see something that appeared to have come out of a child’s play set.

I poured myself a cup of tea – well tried!  As can be seen the entire contents of the pot was just enough for one cup.  So, why do they bother with the uselessly small pot?  Must be twice as much cleaning costs, but I suppose they make their money by charging £1.25 for a pot, which sounds better than for a cup!!

In case you have never used a slow cooker before. The crock pot has the role to boil the food at a particularly low temperature. This way the cooking lasts for roughly 8 hours. But the great advantage is that you don’t have to supervise anything. This is because there is no risk to burn the beef. Due to the low temperature. ]

Here is what you will need for the roast crock-pot recipes. You will need between three and five lbs of roast ( meat ). Also a massive fresh red onion is required. You will need six carrots. The carrots need to be peeled. Four or 5 potatoes are a must . Optionally you may ad 1/2 a lb. Of fresh green beans. Other ingredients are : 1/2 a cup of catsup, a package of beef seasoning, a package of Sazon and a cup of water.

The first step of the slow cooker roast recipe is to cut the onion. Then you add the onion on the bottom of the crock-pot. You may wish to spatter a little bit of flour on the onion. This will help to the general texture. Then you have got to melt 1/2 a lb. Of butter on the already placed onion.

the very next step of the crock-pot roast recipe is to add the meat. After these are all placed acording to the recipe you have got to mix the seasoning with the water, the Sazon and the tomato sauce. After they’re totally mixed you have got to pour them over the beef. Once this is done simply stir.

The final step of the roast crock-pot recipe is to add chopped potatoes and carrots over the mixture. Once this is done cover and let it boil. You will have to leave it there for 6-8 hours. This relies on your preferences and
time. But usually the longer it boils the better it tastes.

you will be dazzled by this amazingly easy Pot Roast Crock Pot Recipes. It’s simply the best crock pot recipe. You have to do extremely little work and it’ll have great taste.

roast beef crock pot recipe

An Australian report estimating the world wide popuation of Pot smokers at about 160 million people has prompted renewed call for lealization of the green, leafy substance in Canada.

Read the report here:

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/report-weed-use-prompts-call-legalization

Title: Chronic City
Author: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 9780385518635
Pages: 467
Release Date: October 13, 2009
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Literary
Review source: own copy
Rating: 5/5

Chronic City follows the pot-laced bonding of Chase Insteadman, a former child actor and his new buddy Perkus Tooth, a Marlon Brando aficionado who once garnered some acclaim as a music critic. An odd pairing? Perhaps. This makes Chronic City a darker, ironic and hilariously brilliant criticism of Manhattan’s wealth and excess. Chronic City is flush with descriptions, observations and dense with detail. Yes, it can intentionally be pompous, meandering and verbose. If it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t be a Jonathan Lethem novel. And this makes it good.

While reading Chronic City one might come to a point where you question what is going on. Just settle into the labyrinth of situations and structural arrangements of the novel. Sometimes with Lethem it is less about the story and more about the characters and indeed with Chronic City, this is a character study of the utmost kind—it is bursting with cerebral reflections on Manhattan’s lavishness. It’s extravagance at a time where it’s gauche. Lethem has mastered writing craftsmanship. For him, writing a sentence is like composing a song. In Chronic City one will appreciate his stylized use of language.

Amy Steele [AS]: How have you changed as a writer in the past decade? I know you were in California for a while, so you wrote your first few novels out there, but now you are living back in Brooklyn where you grew up.

Jonathan Lethem [JL]: Actually I lived in Berkeley for a decade which is really where I spent the whole starving artist part of my growth curve. I worked in bookstores and wrote most of four novels there and now it seems very far away. I’ve been back in New York City for more than a decade and because the better known books are grounded in New York City it all seems strange and almost impossible that I was there. In fact, I was a Bay Area writer for a while. The early novels are fantastical. So there’s an unreality to their setting but my first three have all Bay area/ west coast settings and I’m very fond of that place. Ultimately I was a New Yorker in some way. There were people and social temperatures, ways of living out here in New York that I missed too much. So it’s made a lot of sense to me that I’m back.

AS: What do you do differently now that you didn’t do when you first started?

 JL: Well, I’m an old writer by now. I’ve been at this for 25 years and in a way I could say I do everything differently. I was blundering around in the dark at the start. I was 19, 20 years old and I wrote three novels on an electric typewriter, which isn’t very common anymore. I think that I was trying to learn how to tell a story and so in a way the storytelling is the most prominent part of my early work. I didn’t have time to be as devoted to language or deeper structure as I would have liked to be and I certainly eventually have become. I was desperately trying to keep the balls in the air: to keep the story alive and to make the characters mean something at all. And so that’s very prominent in the first couple of books and by the time of Girl in Landscape, which as always felt like a watershed book for me, I began to relax that eagerness to be a storyteller and became much more committed to the characters and to the language. And I think those are the commitments that have defined what I have done ever since.

AS: Your books are very filled with details. How do you keep track of all the details?

 JL: Yeah, no, I don’t really have an answer except what may sound like a flippant one. I don’t keep track of them. I just dwell inside them. Especially with a longer novel like Chronic City or The Fortress of Solitude which seem overwhelming like an ocean of detail. You know I always think that the idea that you can hold all the novels’ contents in your mind either as a reader or as a writer is quite silly and quite mistaken. Actually a novel is an immersive medium. You can’t back up, like you can with a painting, and look at the whole composition simultaneously. Anywhere you’re dropped into it you’re at sea in the details and they mimic the world’s sensory overload that way and that seems to me a good thing. One of the things I like about Chronic City is it’s got a way of mimicking the world’s overwhelming endlessness. It’s not a two-hour movie and it’s not a painting with a frame around it and it’s not a poem you can see.  It’s maybe more like some long opera or something where you’re punched into it and you’re just in that moment. So the details organize themselves into a thematic shape by an unconscious process but if you try to orchestrate that yourself in a super-conscious, deliberate way, you’d probably go crazy immediately.

AS: One thing when I read your novels is that you have this sort of way to arrange words that are almost like arranging a song—structural arrangements—it’s really wonderful. You look at a sentence and it’s really WOW!

JL: Well thank you for that. It’s taken me along time to get to the point where I would boast about my language. It’s become a primary commitment in the work. That’s where the action is. The fiction is made of sentences and that is where all the music energy is going to reside. And so I’m very consciously trying to keep a sense of a verbal or musical sense of anything I write down. I want it to be alive to the ear. That seems to be the basic sense of anything I’m doing. Nowadays it’s the basic standard of what I’m doing.

AS: When you write are you approaching as a participant-observer or do you feel that you are an outsider looking in?

JL: Well, when it’s going well, I feel like I’m a participant-observer. That’s a great description of the ideal result. You live in fear of those days where you’re an outsider looking in. When there’s something you can’t recapture or re-inhabit. For that reason I like to work very persistently. I’m not that fast a writer but the one rule I have per day is that I try to never stop, like the tortoise in the Tortoise and the Hare, I just keep writing every day. I make a total mental connection to the life of the book.

AS: Why Chronic City? Why did you want to write about a former child actor? How did you come up with the characters of Chase and Perkus?

JL: I’ll take this backward. Well, I had Perkus before I had the rest of the book. The whole social milieu. He was a very emblematic character for me. You could say I’ve done characters like him before: cultural obsessives, and just plain obsessives, impractical types and I’ve certainly done Bohemianism before. In a way it’s where I come from. I write about characters who are artists or dissidents or who want to be part of a sub-culture. This book really came to life for me when I realized I had an urge to write about something I don’t know very well and I’m not very comfortable with. I feel a lot of hostility toward it. Glamour and money that attaches upper stratum of Manhattan life these days and suddenly Perkus was much more alive to me because I saw him against that backdrop. And Chase arrived almost simultaneously because I need one of those sensitive, close-observing but also shape-shifting types of narrators. He could bridge between Perkus’s obsessive position and the place that Manhattan has become in this book. When you invent a narrator in a book he becomes interesting himself and becomes a subject. Chase’s motives and his complicity in what was going on in the story almost became the main subject.   

AS: What do you feel is the role of women in Chronic City?

 JL: Well I’m very proud of Oona who is maybe not a terribly likable character but she’s one of the most interesting and complicated women I’ve ever written. Her voice makes me laugh a lot too. I think I made a character who’s funnier than I am. In a way she’s the only really strong woman in the book by its design. The greatest surprise in writing this book, the character I hadn’t planned at all was Georgina. Given that all she was meant to do was be a walk on in the party scene, and then she ended up sticking and ending up as a foil and a kind of tonic to the masculine nature to the guys who hang out so often. She really moves me a lot. I find myself quite endeared to Georgina and I haven’t had a character announce themselves out of the backdrop and walk into the foreground of the book that way in quite a long time. She’s meaningful to me. I wholly have to say it’s fairly a boyish book. The male friendships take up a lot of the foreground. But I’m going to make up for that in my next book which has a lot of strong mothers and daughters in it. [Writer’s note: excellent. cannot wait to read that.]

 I miss the female characters when I don’t have them around.

AS: Is there anything else? I think that’s pretty much it.

JL: Well great. Those were great questions.AS: I have to say I was very, very, very nervous to interview you and I’ve interviewed hundreds of people. I know you’re married but I have a literary crush on you.

How many times have I told you to cook with love? Really, how often do I mention within these posts the importance of sprinkling your food with fairy dust and passion crystals? There exists a direct correlation between your success in the kitchen and the amount of love spells dissolved in that pot on your stove. I stressed it enough over the months for you to think I would know better than to step into my cooking chambers all bitter, and with electric current of fury streaming through my spine.

Why, you wonder?

If you miss your best friend’s birthday extravaganza because your mate’s left part of the brain has grown twice in size over the course of one week due to work overload, and on top of that he’s drying out of hunger and thus turning into a pile of dust on a desk in his office as we speak, and you must forgo obeying the law while flying through all red lights of the streets of City of Angels rushing to him with a meal that will save his life, and you call your friend from the car with no headset (oops, another violation!) to let her know of the extraordinary circumstances causing your absence at the party, promising to make it up to her in the next few days, she should understand, right?

She didn’t. She was all “I get that Jason was stuck at work, but you could have shown your face at least”. Oh, Mother, when I heard that, a yellow puff of anger mixed with hurt snuck out of my wide open mouth. Really? I was so pissed that she didn’t give me the credit of the doubt, knowing how fiercely loyal I am, and understand that I must have had a damn good excuse to miss her Celebration Of Aging. And frankly, I don’t need to wait for her birthday to raise a toast for the three new wrinkles she’s developed, and the gray hair she’s grown …on her leg, way up there. And she also should know that the minute her boobs get soggy and her butt widens out of her mind so that she has to buy TWO airplane tickets to fly anywhere, and she gets stretch marks after her first childbirth that will resemble the fjords of Norway, I’ll be the first one to make her a FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH FRESH RASPBERRY SAUCE, and stick candles in it no matter the date. Because that’s the kind of friend I am.

In such a frame of mind, I crossed the threshold of our kitchen to make dinner – a pot of hearty soup, one of my favorites, the soup that Jason’s parents loved so much they took the recipe down and entered a soup contest with it in TEXAS. In all modesty, I must say that if there is anything I know about cooking, soup is IT. That’s my forte.

I started peeling my carrots and parsnips all the while thinking of my dear friend, that itzy-bitzy little thing with a big mouth, enormous heart, and a really dirty mind. I crisped some pancetta and sautéed chopped leeks with an onion in a big pot. I tossed all the veggies in along with a few lightning bolts of anger and a dash of salt and pepper. I added two legs of chicken, a handful of spices, and completely engaged in the dialog in my head. From that point on, I have no recollection of the events that took place in my kitchen. I was so busy picturing myself as an old(er) woman with a handful of grandkids parked on the floor around my rocking chair, while telling them the story of a beautiful friendship wasted over …nothing.

The soup was done, and ready to serve. I took a spoonful to taste, and almost spat it back into the pot. It was absolutely disgusting. It was the most repelling thing I ever made. My poor soup, it took it all in – all the bitterness that I got out of my system, and dumped into the pot along with the veggies et al. There was no way to fix it. All I could do was to flush that sour and bitter mixture down the toilet, and drive to see my girlfriend to hug the hell out of her, and give her the birthday gift we both worked on with Jason, and tell her how much I wished I had been there to help her blow the candles, dozens and dozens of them. So many in fact, that the fire marshals arrived, the real ones this time, and not the touring Chippendales in disguise.

When we hugged it all out, I gasped “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. Are you still upset?” She quickly cut me off “Don’t even sweat it. I was PMS-ing”.

I know PMS. You don’t mess with a woman who is PMSing, period. (No pun intended.) And you definitely don’t want to mess with a woman that is PMSing ON HER BIRTHDAY.

Long story short, I have no recipe to share with you today, as I used it all up during my ANGER MANAGEMENT session with self.

Cooking is therapeutic, have I not told you?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VERONICA!

"Hell of a job, Brownie!"

Rising CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Sea Level Rise Finds Antarctic Study by Louise Gray, Environment CorrespondentThe Telegraph/UK

Sea levels could rise by up to six metres if the world fails to get pollution under control, according to the latest study in the Antarctic.

The British Antarctic Survey is the latest research to warn of the consequences of increased greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate. Carbon dioxide is rising at record rates putting the world on a pathway for a 6C rise in temperature, which will cause a sea level rise of up six metres, threatening coastal cities like London, New York and San Francisco.

The recent studies add pressure on world leaders to agree to an international deal on climate change at a UN summit in Copenhagen this December.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/18-6

How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply By Yasha Levine, AlterNet.

A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California’s most precious natural resource.

A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they’ve pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California’s most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us — and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California’s increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California’s environment.

California is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people’s fear of drought to push a massive waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking the state’s rivers dry. …This drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really help small farmers — of which there are very few anyway — but would deliver more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a war waged for water by California’s megarich on everyone else.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/water/144020/how_limousine_liberals%2C_water_oligarchs_and_even_sean_hannity_are_hijacking_our_water_supply

Rachel Maddow Interview with Former Evangelist Frank Schaeffer: Christian Right Is ‘Trolling for Assassins’ AlterNet.

Schaeffer: “There is a crazy fringe [receiving] messages that have been pouring out of FOX News … talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him.”  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/144054/rachel_maddow_interview_with_former_evangelist_frank_schaeffer%3A_christian_right_is_%27trolling_for_assassins%27

Shocking Benefits of Legalizing Pot By Ami Cholia, AlterNet.

There are some pluses to legalization that you probably haven’t heard about.

The war on drugs may be a noble intention, but the illegal growing of marijuana is destroying our environment.

Primarily run by Mexican drug cartels California’s illegal growers aren’t your typical peace-loving hippies of the 70s. These men live illegally on farms all summer, putting tons of waste into the soil and water. Pesticides drain into creeks and enter the food chain, sickening wildlife.  Each plant also uses about 15 gallons of water per day soaking up a large part of the water resources around.

Organized crime groups who cash in on the drug war’s distortion of supply and demand dynamics have little regard for the environment. Even illegal growers of organic marijuana impact the environment by felling trees in national forests to make room for illicit grow sites. The plants are seasonal, but the environmental damage lasts forever.

There is a serious exception to be made. Many medical – legal – marijuana growers are among the most responsible citizens around. They buy soil in bulk, use rat traps instead of poison, water with timers and drip systems. They have very little physical impact on the land.

Outside of the obvious benefits of hemp — bio-diesel, burns cleanly, soil builder, better cheaper paper, etc. — organic and sustainable practices for growing marijuana would bring in tons of revenue for the states, clean up the environment, and save the government $150 billion on policing and courts, since 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related.

We’re not promoting drug addiction.  The positive benefits to the environment by making marijuana legal definitely seem enough to take action.

Even Glenn Beck seems to think this is worth it.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144052/world%27s_biggest_polluters_strike_a_deal%3A_u.s._and_china_agree_to_comprehensive_clean_energy_and_climate_plan?page=3

World’s Biggest Polluters Strike a Deal: U.S. and China Agree to Comprehensive Clean Energy and Climate Plan By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress.

The overall plan is much more ambitious in scope and depth than anticipated.

A comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change was announced in Beijing by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao. The plan contains directives to create various institutions and programs addressing a wide array of cooperation on clean-energy technologies and capacity building, including very important efforts on helping China build a robust, transparent and accurate inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions.

These efforts include cooperation in the following areas:

1.      Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

2.      Joint Clean Energy Research Center. (Factsheet)

3.      Electric Vehicles. (Factsheet)

4.      Energy Efficiency. Building on the Ten Year Framework on Energy and Environment Cooperation, government officials of both countries will “work together (Factsheet)

5.      Renewable Energy. (Factsheet)

6.      21st Century Coal. The two countries will “launch a program of technical cooperation to …develop clean coal and carbon capture and storage technologies.” (Factsheet)

7.      Shale Gas. The U.S. and China will “assess China’s shale gas potential, promote environmentally-sustainable development of shale gas resources, conduct joint technical studies to accelerate development of shale gas resources in China, and promote shale gas investment in China through the U.S.-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum, study tours, and workshops.” (Factsheet)

8.      Nuclear. The two countries reaffirmed the goals of the Third Executive Committee Meeting of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to promote the peaceful use of civilian nuclear energy, and “agreed to consult with one another in order to explore such approaches—including assurance of fuel supply and cradle-to-grave nuclear fuel management so that countries can access peaceful nuclear power while minimizing the risks of proliferation.”

9.      Public-private partnerships on clean energy. A new U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP) will “leverage private sector resources for project development work in China across a broad array of clean energy projects, to the benefit of both nations.”

The two countries hope that the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen will follow this example and focus as much on bottom-up technological strategies for achieving real reductions in emissions as it will on top-down targets for carbon caps.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144052/world%27s_biggest_polluters_strike_a_deal%3A_u.s._and_china_agree_to_comprehensive_clean_energy_and_climate_plan?page=3

Push to Curb Credit-Card Rates Fades as Democrats resist consumer outcry by Michael KranishThe Boston Globe

WASHINGTON – Efforts in Congress to cap credit-card interest rates are faltering because of opposition from Democrats and a lack of specific support from the White House, despite growing consumer outrage over a rush by banks to impose rates as high as 30 percent.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to back a strict limit on credit-card interest rates. But the White House is not yet behind any plan.

The Senate soundly defeated legislation in May introduced by Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent, to cap most credit-card interest rates at 15 percent. Nearly half of the Democratic senators joined Republicans in defeating the measure, 60 to 33.

Consumer groups say the problem of skyrocketing interest rates has worsened since that vote, as banks scramble to boost rates in advance of a new rule scheduled to take effect in February, requiring banks to give consumers a 45-day advance notice of rate increases.

Sanders said many of the credit cards in the hands of American consumers are issued by four banks that received taxpayer bailout money after last year’s economic meltdown: Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

“People are disgusted. We bailed these [companies] out and they then had the gumption to raise interest rates on the American people,” Sanders said in an interview. Sanders said he plans to reintroduce his proposal to cap rates at 15 percent; he predicted it will have more support this time.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/18-7

ok, basic upkeep and cleaning doesn’t have to be a big score. Still, if you have an interest in saving money on your household bills and having your appliances work their best, a little occasional maintenance can go a long way.

With everyone’s schedule continuing to become even more busy, it’s important that your appliances work their best. A method to protect and care for your appliances is to remember to do routine maintenance on them. With proper care, you can expect a lot of them to supply good service for years to come.

one. Replace the furnace filters at least once a month. This is especially true if in a less warm climate and during the Autumn and Winter seasons.

If you have central aircon, have the unit serviced and have them check the condenser coils for dirt. You never can say if the prior homeowner did the required filter changes.
Your furnace will run better and heat your home simpler with a clean filter.

2. Check the kitchen exhaust fan over the range / stove for grease build up. It can’t work if it’s’s clogged with grease and dust. To scrub, unplug the unit and you might use a spray bottle of household cleaner to remove the grease and dirt. Rather than those dear cleaners that cost several dollars a bottle, use a more cost-effective option like ammonia and vinegar.

here is a great ( and cheap ) general cleaner recipe that may be used to refill those costly spray bottles after being well washed and cleaned.

1/4 cup baking soda ( sodium bicarbonate )

one cup household ammonia

1/2 cup white vinegar

one gallon warm water

be sure to identify what the product is and include the recipe right on the bottle for when it is time to make some more.

A clean exhaust fan can remove cooking odours and smells in your home. By having an effective and operational exhaust your Monster Steam Cleaner, longer.

three. Dishwasher not cleaning your dishes as well as it probably did when new? What about cleaning the dishwasher unit itself? Hard water and minerals frequently collect on the surfaces of dishwashing appliances. Usually, you can see the mineral build up on the heating element in the bottom of the dishwasher.

to get rid of, go to the hardware store and get a tiny bottle of CLR [calcium -- lime-rust] or Lime-A-Way. These are excellent cleaners in their own right and will also take away the mineral deposits in your dishwasher quickly and easily.

How? First, don’t do this with dishes in the machine, so empty it before you start to clean it.
Ok, now get the C-L-R cleaner and add a cup or 2 into the base of your dishwasher and run the pots and pans cycle. This cycle typically uses the most up to date water and a soak cycle. When finished, check and see if the heating element looks cleaner. If you think it may use more cleaning, repeat the process. A cleaner machine will result in cleaner dishes.

four. Fridge. The fridge is one appliance that appears to be the point of interest of most kitchens. Check your chiller and either in the back or underneath is a series of pipes that look a lot like a radiator. For your refer to work at peak potency, these pipes must be clean and free from mud and dust.

mud builds up on the radiator and needs removed for optimum efficiency. This is where the long hose attachment on your vacuum actually will be useful.

dirty pipes can limit the ability of the refrigerator to cool down the chemical and that in turn makes the unit work harder and longer to keep things cold inside the unit. Do yourself and your electrical bill a favor and clean this part of your refer every six months or so.

The key to a long service life for appliances is occasional maintenance. You should expect better performance and a longer service life from a well cared for appliance than one that is’s simply used and abused.

ladybug steam cleaner

A good dinner means first of all great food. But you want time to prepare other stuff aside from the precise food. The slow cooker recipes offer you all of the time you need. But they still are delicious. Here is one of the rival roast slow cooker recipes. Recipe that may make your dinner lovely.

there’s nothing what Rival could do to boost the time-saving Crock-Pot. Their new programmable Smart-Pot is a total winner. Rival controls about 85% of the 100 million $ crock-pot appliance market. It offers about 50 different models. Their latest model is the Smart-Pot. This Rival is divided into an oval slow cooker and a Cool-Touch slow cooker.

And to essentially use it here goes the ideal roast crock pot recipe for it. It really is one of the finest out there.
Ingredients :

. A boneless meat roast, about 3 to four pounds ( rump, top round, lean chuck, for example. )
. Four cups water
. A cup cider vinegar
. Three large spoons brown sugar, forcibly packed
. A bottle of ketchup
. Three lg. Onions, quartered
. Pepper and salt to taste
. Four full cloves
. Four bay leaves
.a heaping tsp. Mixed pickling spices

Preparation :

Wash chicken and pat dry. Cut into chunks about 1/2 to 1-inch and put in a giant bowl. Add the soup, mushrooms, and onions ; stir to mix. Spray the crock pot insert with cooking spray.

Spoon the chicken mix into the slow cooker and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

combine all ingredients except meat in crock pot. Stir to mix ingredients. Add meat roast to mix, coating with mixture. Cover and cook on LOW for ten hours. Then just place roast in crock-pot. Add remaining ingredients and enough water to cover beef. Cook on low 8 to 10 hours, or till meat is extraordinarily tender. Shred beef, serve on split sandwich buns or garlic bread.

This is one of the finest roast rock pot recipe out there. There is nothing better than a Rival Crock Pot Recipes. A real timesaver but also an glorious delicious meal.

roast crock pot recipes

This plant looks completely harmless doesn’t it?

One might even go as far as to say that it is “nice”.

You’re fucking WRONG!

That plant would slit your throat in your sleep. It would steal your car, rape your wife, burn your house down, commit grand theft auto, break and enter and possibly claw it’s own skin off, just for a little taste. A taste of what, you say?

SUNLIGHT

That might sound a little far fetched until it happens to you, and if you don’t believe me then consider the following information.

Have you ever seen the way a plant looks at sunlight? Just like a fucking meth addict. Yeah, I know, crazy right?  They are always looking for some illegal* shit to put inside themselves. Seriously, if you don’t believe me then move your house plant away from the window the next time you water it. I bet you fifty bucks that mother fucker moves by itself. How is that even POSSIBLE?! It has no fucking limbs! No muscle, no brain, no ANYTHING….  Except an unquenchable thirst for photons.

Hell, back to water, try not watering your plants for a while. I bet that they will overdose on sunlight without even thinking twice about the kids that live in your house and then what?!  BAM, you’re explaining the reason for your dead inhabitant’s selfish and inhumane ways. Have you ever tried to explain hardcore drug use to a five year old and how it pertains to the loss of a loved one’s life? Yeah, you should ride that train some day, non-believer. Hell, while you’re at it, you should just show them first hand by giving them illegal drugs. I bet you will believe me then.

I know, some of you may be saying, “Oh! But, Anthony, plants create oxygen! We need oxygen to live!”. You know what? Oxygen is a byproduct of drug abuse and so are hand-jobs, if that is the case then I say we forget about oxygen and just live off of hand-jobs. There is really no comparison when it comes to satisfaction, which is what life is about anyway.  Buzz Aldrin didn’t need oxygen on the moon and Sharks don’t need oxygen in the ocean so you know what I say? Fuck oxygen. Biochemical companies have plenty of oxygen in bottles anyway. If you really think you just have to have some then buy a few canisters. It’s probably cheap, considering it’s free if you go outside. Just like bottled water, use it and then throw it out of your car window while you’re driving through a national park.

If you don’t heed my advice then I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it when you wake up dead due to some seething lilac plant’s evil ways so fuck off with that noise, bro.

*Sun is illegal if you're serving a sentence and you are confined to solitary or if you live in hell.

     My last post I wrote soon after getting home from the hospital.  At the time it was the hardest thing I’ve been though emotionally and physically.  I didn’t know that things would get worse before the summer was over.

     I’m really such a lucky woman, when I broke down, and believe me I broke down I was able to go to one of my best friends and just unload everything on him.  I didn’t want to break down with DH, he was going through his own mental freakout.  When I went to my friend and unloaded everything on him, he just sat and listened to me, and that’s what I needed more than anything.

     I think about my 16 year old daughter dressing my by herself so I wouldn’t be naked when the fire department and EMS arrived.  My neighbor was hear when the ambulance brought me out and was sure I wouldn’t be coming home.  Even now, if DH can’t reach me on the phone he panics, and I spent weeks afraid to fall asleep, scared that I wouldn’t wake up. 

     I remember vomiting so much the night before, that cognitivly I wasn’t able to put together that the more I threw up the more my blood sugars would increase and I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around the fact that I needed to get to the hospital.  My family and I sure learned alot.  I printed and posted the symptoms of DKA, so we would know what to do if this happened in the future.  I remember my ribs hurt when I took a deep breath, but I kept telling myself it was just a panic attack and all I needed was a good nights sleep.  I guess that explains the pneumonia.

     I’m still having effects from the coma.  My short term memory seems to have left me completely, I figure it’s either the coma or all the pot I smoked in high school coming back to haunt me.  I prefer to blame the coma.