It took 58.20 minutes Sunday, but I walked 3.1 miles. My first 5k. Felt great, too. Today it took a little less, 58.07. Still feels great, though odd bits of my feet and legs hurt off and on throughout. That’s normal, I think. Just kept going.
The first mile is all about raising my heart rate, the second is about maintaining it. And now that I have a third… well, it’s whatever I feel. Less of the heart rate raising stuff, the silly gyrating/hand and arm flinging that makes me look like an electrocuted chicken, but still… at 2.6 my right heel felt like someone stuck a knife in it and I just cranked up the incline and FF’d to Groove Is In the Heart.
Is it silly to train to walk a 5K? Because that would be cool.

The Honey Badger keeps a baby cache close, even while she sleeps…

I’m thoroughly in love with this cold weather. Well, 55 is cold for us!

Does anyone understand Google+? And why I would need to?

Did you see the USB drive designed to look like a tampon? What are they thinking, that nobody would dare steal it? What about a woman who needs a tampon desperately? And wouldn’t that be a hell of a surprise?

Foxy, 14 1/2 year old sweetheart, and her little buddy ‘Sprout’. He’s got her moving again, but he’s about to go to his forever home.

Did you know that the War on Terror is over? Yep, killed all the bad guys. Move along, nothing to see here…

“Now that we have killed most of al Qaida,” the source said, “now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

I’d rather believe Congressman Allen West…

A twofer: Tomatoes and Dogs. Doesn’t get any better than that… unless the dogs were in focus, I guess.

Saw this on Facebook and couldn’t resist posting it here… One cartoon to rule them all…!

Our neighbor is having a garage sale so we, the humans, are cleaning and dragging stuff out to the curb to utilize his traffic. Only belatedly did I realize that we should have set a sale up as well. Maybe we could coordinate with him in the future, because most of this crap is not moving with us.

Know what I hate? Move furniture around and you notice… I don’t want to say ‘filth’, but there it is… where the furniture used to sit, regardless of how well you thought you cleaned. So there you are, spot cleaning. Then you notice with some dismay that dadgummit, the mop really doesn’t clean well next to the baseboard, so your spot cleaning now encompasses the baseboard and the floor next to it… and before you know it, you’re pulling out the couch because this shall not stand and your knees are screaming because it’s been an hour and where did all the time go…?

It’s break time. We’re eating cupcakes because until the federales make it illegal, we’ve earned them.

The dogs are enjoying a beautiful south Florida day.

Breagha, Collie Extraordinaire, barking. I knew you’d want to see it.

Daisy, with her beloved yet shrinking chewy. Her shots are embiggen-able.

This mockingbird brings his little seed things up onto the porch to peck at them… very cute! Took this through the window.

I heard something out back this morning and when I took the dogs out saw what had happened: the feathery remains of a mockingbird were scattered for about 12 feet. Is it too much to hope he got away?

 
Horrible post-operative picture of Angel, complete with e-collar. Just for fun we conferenced into the White House…

Biden… well, you know Joe. I doubt he really knew why he was worked up, but he put on a good show anyway. What an empty suit.

Pelosi skeeved me out with her talk of piecing together 101 Corgi ‘pelts’ for some coat she had in mind, so she was the first to be disconnected… but Obama didn’t really seem to understand why we were so excited. Mike and I already have 2 dogs; why couldn’t we be fair and share with others? Heaving his size 10s up on the Resolute desk he said “Besides, people eat dog where I come from; and it does not taste like chicken”.

Poor sweet baby. Deb asked the vet when she’d be well enough to travel by air and he said “right now”. WHA…? Oh, yeah. Today, tomorrow… so she’ll watch her for a few days and see what she thinks… but we might have her by this weekend!

I’m hearing a lot about 5 dollar gasoline, but Newt has a common sense energy plan that includes the energy independence of drilling here, drilling now. The Reaganite Republican has much more.

I’d never heard of Adele until Whitney died and I finally, painfully, perused the entertainment news. So, the girl won a bunch of Grammys. Lovely for her. But… I finally listened to a couple of her songs this morning on YouTube and I thought she sucked. Sorry to any fans out there, but where was the range? Where was… ugh, never mind. I don’t want to think about her any longer than necessary. At least when Alanis sang about the end of a relationship, you could feel it. This chick never modulates her voice. It’s like listening to Yanni or maybe the strange clicks of African tribesmen.

Just my opinion based on two songs only. Maybe I picked the wrong tunes, but they were the two favorite on YT.

Ah, Whitney. What a waste. And now we’re left with… Adele?

The Nanny State Federales finally shut down the Amish farmer for selling fresh milk.

Guess who grew up on fresh, raw milk? Yup. And none of us ever got sick.

This is bullshit. The man has a small business and his customers adore his product. One of his loyal customers:

“I can’t believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food,” said one of them, who asked not to be named but received weekly shipments of eggs, milk, honey and butter from Rainbow Acres, a farm near Lancaster, Pa. “In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank.”

Again, yup.

Of course, I must say something about the Nanny State of North Carolina confiscating a preschooler’s homemade lunch.

I see Missus obama’s hand in this; nobody can do anything on their own, least of all feed their family properly.

Could someone tell me what the hell a government agent is doing inspecting children’s lunches, in preschool or otherwise? And what is wrong with a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, chips and apple juice???

Good grief.

I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a dull day outside; everything along the back fence has returned to the wild so I’m sorting it out. Over cast skies mean I don’t bake… or fry. Though I’m still unacceptably wobbly from 2 weeks of the nastiest cold evah. Heck, I’m still sick! I read that the effects of a cold shouldn’t last past 10 days. ORLY? The guy who gave this to Mike? His case lasted a month. If you hear someone coughing: run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. This is the plague.

Yep, I know Newt lost Florida. Santorum split the conservatives. All those Romney voters evidently want to hand obama four more years.

I’ve been told that I misunderstood, but Mitt’s statement that he’s not concerned for the very poor, because they have a safety net, is troubling. I don’t care how you parse it, tell me that’s not what he ‘meant’. Whatever. Maybe Mormons don’t have things like Catholic Charities, but almost every Catholic I’ve ever known sees the poor as their concern. It has to do with “the least of these”.

A safety net. Guess that’s why there are so many former job-holding, tax-paying, law-abiding, people out on the street these days. And the ‘doubled-up’ population is soaring:

The “doubled up” population (people who live with friends, family or other nonrelatives for economic reasons) increased by 13 percent from 6 million in 2009 to 6.8 million in 2010. The doubled up population increased by more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2010.

Whereas Newt invited the poor, along with all other groups to “join us”, Mitt’s unconcerned. It feels wrong.

Ah, the corn. Late last night I brought a bag of frozen corn into bed for Mike to counter the effects of Bree’s hard head against his elbow. Then I went to sleep. I’d been up for awhile this morning when I poked my head back in to the still dark room and asked “Is the corn still in the room?”
As so many things do, it seemed a little too silly and I laughed…

I cannot think clearly when sick, therefore I cannot blog. Couldn’t pick a good resolution, like ‘eat more beets’. Oh, hell no; it’s got to be ‘blog more’, which I promptly break like Spring ice. Fortunately the sofa portion is over and I’m back at the computer where I belong.

My reader is overflowing, most of it politics. Santorum’s meteoric rise, Gingrich’s ire, the Paulbots blame of Israel. It’s the Jews. It’s always the Jews. Good grief, those people are not even useful idiots.

Obama launched a hotline to report ‘unfair mortgages’ and Michelle likes being called ‘Your Excellency’. Saw an old video of Moochelle declaring that Barack cannot even go pump gas, because he’s black. Everyone knows that black men get shot while pumping gas, dammit! The mindset is… racist, with a bent. I guess listening to Rev. Wright for 20 years only serves to reinforce that sort of crap.

Like Palin, Herman Cain is starting a bus tour. Don’t know why, exactly, but at this point, don’t care.

So, the dogs and I were huddled on the sofa watching TV a couple of days ago. You know the drill; it’s on. There’s no caring what channel or what’s coming out of the thing, it’s just on. Want to really freak yourself out? Unwittingly hit upon a marathon, drift off to sleep a couple of times… and each time you wake, the show is still on.

Not a marathon, but I did see something freaky: The Young and the Restless. Haven’t watched it since the 80′s, maybe some in the 90′s… but everyone looks basically the same. It’s odd… Nikki’s still speaking her mind, but now her face is rather pillowy. Hear that happens when using fillers to erase wrinkles. I think I’d rather have the wrinkles.
Victor is 70 now and in prison for something, but he wants to marry his ex daughter-in-law Sharon? That’s a little too weird for me… and his son Nick. Of course I didn’t recognize a lot of the people. Okay, most of them.
I always loved the Victor/Nikki relationship, the powerful businessman/beautiful but poor stripper fantasy. Not exactly Disney, is it?

Ah, well. The thing that really turned me off soaps was the incestuous nature of its inhabitants. Scripted or not, it’s a deal breaker. One day I just had enough.

Daytime television is uninspiring and sometimes downright nasty. I ran across something called ‘Maury’ in which people basically scream epitaphs at each other and do DNA tests, aided and abetted by Maury himself. Think ‘trailer park trash’ in the Colosseum, but the participants were all animals. It’s sad and the audience, screaming for blood, is even sadder. Makes me wonder about the state of our civilization.

Needless to say, I turned to Netflix.

The only halfway decent picture I’ve taken so far this year.

During last night’s nocturnal viewings, I met Sarah Jessica Parker at a Home Show in Coconut Grove, drove drunk twice and Mike learned how to create a new wall. I also met a very friendly Boston Terrier named Fred.

Really? SJP? And I’m not allowed alcohol. Plus, Mike’s constructed new walls before. My dreams are becoming more ridiculous.

Remember when the nanners were cute? Nothing about this hot mess says ‘cute’ to me.

Lazy blogger, lazy photographer, lazy birdbath cleaner. So I dropped some pennies into the thing. Pennies will keep it clean, so I reasoned they might clean a flithy bath, albeit much, much slower.

Not really; they do clean any area they touch, such as where they sit, but not overall. The effect is somewhat charming, though.

I went back out to see if I could get some more pictures this morning, but we’ve finally received one of those much-ballyhooed Arctic fronts and the north wind is creating white caps in the bird bath.

Everyone’s doing that new meme; first sentence of the first post of each month in 2011… but after rummaging around in the archives, I’ve decided to give it a pass. Two words come to mind: ‘boring’ and ‘pedantic’.

I’m blaming obama.

Nanner development continues at a brisk pace…

Nobody’s Perfect

Son of a bitch, I’m so sick of the constant picking apart of the candidates. This one has too much ‘baggage’, that one cares more for fiscal matters than social, the other one, well… he’s a damned train wreck. Don’t care what you think personally about the various contenders, looking for perfection in a man or woman is like searching for the perfect shell on the beach; there aren’t any. We all have flaws; they help shape who we are as human beings.

Hey, here’s an idea: instead of tearing our guys apart, how about we go after the monster occupying the White House for a change? Myself included.

Rant over. It was Dick Morris’ piece at The Hill probably set me off…

Evangelicals don’t like Romney because he is Mormon. Unfair, unjust, bigoted — but true. Tea Party types don’t like him because of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, a more legitimate beef. Both groups would probably prefer Gingrich to Romney, but neither is enamored with Newt. Evangelicals choke on his personal baggage and remember that, as Speaker, he tended to put fiscal and economic issues first. Southern Baptists — who make up half the evangelical vote — are not thrilled with a converted Roman Catholic from the South. Tea Party people see Newt as part of the Republican establishment. He’s not as bad as current Speaker John Boehner, in their view, but he’s not simpatico with the Tea Party, either.

In a two-way race, the Tea Party and evangelicals probably would go with Gingrich to stop Romney, but it’s too early to have to settle for a candidate they don’t really like. So there is clearly an opening for another candidate to make it a three-way race — at least in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

I don’t believe there’s room, at this late date, for a third; but if that’s true, bring it on. Of all the candidates at this point I like Newt the best, but only because he’s more of a hardass who doesn’t shrink from speaking his mind. Whoever wins the primary should get my full support and will, even if it’s Romney.

Nekkid Daisy

I shaved her again; not that there’s all that much actual hair, but those long guard hairs gets tangled and nasty. She’s still Daisy, though.

And Bree is still Bree…

Growing Grandkids

As much as I love the grandkids I much preferred holidays when they were small and a ten dollar Wal-Mart toy brought delight and wonderment. As they grow their intellect and tastes naturally keep pace and we find ourselves purchasing high tech gadgets… at high tech prices. Even low tech things are absurdly expensive.
How do grandparents on a strict budget manage when everything on the list is expensive? Eat dog food that month?

Thank God we can afford to buy them what they want now, but I guess the fear is more for the not-so-distant future when they’ll be lucky to get a card. Children shouldn’t bear anyone’s worry, so this rant is over as well.

There and back in nothing flat.

Opened up my email yesterday morning to find an invitation to join my ex-husband’s network at LinkedIn. So I made up a little poem to express my feelings on the subject.

My hair is still blonde
My eyes are still blue
And I still want nothing
to do with you

He’s lucky it included no jibes at his personal attributes. But no animosity, I hope he has a nice life. The end.

Things were certainly heading downhill this morning when I saw a vid at Folly’s called ‘I Got 15 kids by 3 baby Daddys and Someone Needs to Pay”…

BUT this vid at Jim’s made everything all better… as he says, there is hope… and to end on a high note, his is the last site I’m visiting on the net today.

Baiting birds and awaiting their inevitable visit, while cloaked in the shadows, is among the various things I do to amuse myself. They’re much smarter than I, the grackles, mockingbirds and mourning doves, and I’m grateful when they tolerate my presence.

I love this mourning dove, her reflection, her downy breast.
Click to embiggen.

Just a mockingbird.

Not a great photo, but I like it nonetheless. The morning light broke through, illuminating the the bird as she prepared to take flight.

I was reading some Robert Frost this morning and came across something that seemed perfect for this particular day on this particular strip of sand: