A Bright Spot!

I'm trying to live in my house AND do construction on it at the same time. ILL-ADVISED, friends. Especially for a borderline OCD organizational freakazoid like meself.

However, I am loving watching progress be made. And I am loving the toys that the constructo-dudes leave behind for me to play with. I almost put these on while everyone was gone for lunch ... but my reasonable side kicked in: "Hey, L, get into mischief here, and you're likely to bust yo' ever-lovin keester. Or your melon. Either way, you'll be lying there 'til lunch is over." So, I employed every ounce of patience I have and waited til I could strap 'em on while properly supervised.

This is how I tromp around in stilts:


This is how you're SUPPOSED to do it (note the cunning use of BALANCE!):


I think I need to get me some'a them. I'd probably wear them to the grocery store.

Pond Wildlife

So there's this log kinda lounging in our new pond. Well, as it turns out, we've discovered that it is, indeed, a Lounging Log! Or, perhaps this is where the turtle kids go for recess, and I just happened to catch them at a game of Red Rover ...

Food (meat, actually) for thought.

It's time to play "Who's Getting Fired Over This Screwup?!" Yeesh, PETA's really stuck their foot in it this time. This article is from Penton Media Group:
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"According to public records from the Virginia Department of Ag and Consumer Services, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have been euthanized since 1998 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) workers. In fact, last year, PETA killed 2,124 pets and placed only seven in adoptive homes. It’s for that reason that the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) – www.consumerfreedom.com – has petitioned the Commonwealth of Virginia to classify PETA as a slaughterhouse. You can read the article at: consumerfreedom.com/.

“PETA has a $32-million annual budget. But instead of investing in the lives of the thousands of flesh and blood creatures in its care, the group spends millions on media campaigns telling Americans that eating meat, drinking milk, fishing, hunting, wearing leather shoes, and benefiting from medical research performed on lab rats are all ‘unethical’,” CCF says.
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They killed more than 2,000 dogs and cats last year?? Maybe they're on a kick to feed the local buzzards? Maybe somebody didn't read the PETA Employee Handbook down at the shelter?

In my very humble opinion, animals are to be respected. Treated as well as possible, and allowed to fulfill their purpose while living. Then, when it is appropriate for them to be useful in dying, they need to be dispatched humanely. And that is what an animal is for - to be purposeful in both life and death. I believe that what groups like PETA are trying to do is make animals exist without a purpose. And even humans like to live their lives with purpose.

My house is like camping.

I woke up this morning to this view from my porch. I think I'm going to like it here. :)

You can move, but you can't hide

A few weeks ago, my DH and I bought a house. Eager to get out of our rental situation, we closed and moved THE SAME WEEKEND (don't ever make that mistake, FYI). And of course, in all the pre-move and move-in hustleup, there were a couple of small things "we" (read: I) were remiss in completing. Granted, in a move, there are always going to be things that get forgotten. Someone thought someone else was going to move the utilities, no one thought to schedule the cable hook-up ... other minutiae.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, when I get my every-other-month fix of MentalFloss magazine. I devour it, as usual, learning new factoids and truthisms, then put it in my purse to carry around and chew on whenever I need a little gray cell diversion. On one such occasion, I absently gazed at the cover for a few nanoseconds before casually flipping it open ... then snapped it back shut. What the DELL?! I had been getting this magazine delivered to my house for almost a year. Now, on most occasions, that'd be reason for celebration - aces to the Postal Service! But this was more of a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot cause for pause: when I subscribed to this magazine, I didn't know exactly where I was going to be living, so I put my parents' address on it. Since I subscribed, I had moved. Twice. The address label still had my parents' address on it. But it was still being delivered ... to MY mailbox!!

This revelation prompted me to do a little more postal probing. My investigation revealed that several companies had been sending mail to different addresses for both me and my husband, but everything was still being delivered very competently to our current address. (Which is a good thing, because some of those bits of mail surprisingly weren't junk!)

Come to find out, no, I did not have a postman stalking me. And no, I don't have some kind of invisible force field that attracts my mail to whereever it is I might live. Chalk it up to Small Town Livin'. The same postal guy who runs my parents' route, also runs the route where my DH and I USED to live, AND our new house where we live now. And, knowing where we were, he didn't want me to miss an issue of Mental Floss, or a bit of useless promotional mail, bless 'im. Ain't that convenient? It's nice to have someone looking out for you when you forget those little things. Now if I could just get the UPS guy trained like that ...

He is Risen

You're welcome, Kansas City.

In my eons of free time, I like to do activities. One activity I like to do is freelance advertising writing. Recently, a client approached me with a small budget and said, 'How far can we stretch THIS on the radio?!'

We managed to make several pretty sweet spots. How'd we do it? With my history in the biz-nass, I was able to write, produce, direct, and star in the spots. The bonus? Mr. Client said my voice was the voice he'd have picked out of a lineup for the spots anyway. I'm not sayin' I'm like buttah or anything. I AM saying I have a very good operator-type voice.

So, KC, perk your ears up for the Wellspring spots. They'll be on the air starting this week. Yeah, yeah I know. You're welcome.

heh. :)