March 2008

links for 2008-04-01

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Tales from the dark side, errr, the garage

Seared Steele Cut Oatmeal w/balsamic reduction sauceWe got serious about this de-clutter thing and got busy in the Florida Room and the garage, yesterday. But first, we hit The 43rd St Deli (on 13th) for breakfast where I had – gasp – oatmeal. Steele cut oatmeal, pan-seared w/a balsamic vinegar reduction sauce topped with bananas and dried berries (and walnuts too but I picked around those, yuk.) And that pan seared oatmeal – really good. (Do not tell anyone from my “old life” that I ate oatmeal!) (Also, the photo is from the iPhone so not great and I don’t have time to do any editing and photoshopping, sorry.)

Anyway, the clean up. Crazy.
Really crazy since much of what we were de-cluttering had BEEN de-cluttered a few years ago and we broke the biggest de-clutter rule of all… when something is set aside to leave your house, it needs to LEAVE YOUR HOUSE! Bags of old kid clothes, old toys, stuffed animals and just plain JUNK that should have been gone were still there. ugh.

Grandma's old radioEvery car driving through the neighborhood stopped to take stuff from the curb. Many people got out, walked up the driveway and sifted through the piles of stuff. Many, many more people wandered into the garage and attempted to remove items before we’d sorted through them. Many, many people wanted things we were not planning on parting with. I surprised TW by saying I was ready to let the “grandma headboard” and the “grandma radio” go. (The headboard is at the curb, come get it! It’s orange! The radio was sold and the nice man is coming to get it tomorrow.)

We found some other stuff, well a lot of other stuff. But this is the stuff that I was most amused by and can actually share here…

from the garage

Yes, that’s a record of Nazi marches and speeches. Yes, that’s a flash cube. Yes, that’s an Atari tape cartridge. Yes, those are dressmaker’s matches.









Oh, the skink… it was dead and I did not kill it.

A skink?









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links for 2008-03-30

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Two more YA and a Printz update

I accidentally finished two more YA books last night which means two more books from my Printz Award Challenge are complete. Cool. I’m betting 2001 was a tough year to pick the winner. These books were good.

We started listening to The Body of Christopher Creed on audio and got about halfway through it and cassette number four wouldn’t play properly. That was frustrating. The story was really getting going. I kept forgetting to reserve the print version and was pleasantly surprised when I found it on the shelf during our Wednesday trip to the library.

So I picked it up and started in on Chapter 13 and before I knew it, it was 11pm and I’d finished it. It was good. Very good. Loved the characters. Loved the setting. Loved the storyline. Is he dead or is he hiding – building a new life somewhere?

Before that, I read Many Stones which was also good but incredibly depressing. Super short book, very quick read and very depressing. But I said that, right? I guess the murder of your sister when you’re a 16 year old and then facing apartheid can’t really be anything BUT depressing, right?

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Fringe Benefits

So yea, Michelle all grown up yesterday, lots of people asked if she was going for an interview or something. Not an interview but it is election mania at the community college and she’s really hot for student government. In fact she’s running for some office or another.

Cool right?

Student government is giving her the chance to focus her dramatic energy on good causes rather than the latest who is sleeping with who drama that teens and young adults and well, let’s face it, old adults can get wrapped up in.

She’s putting herself out there in new ways and learning how to do “real public speaking” and how to network (she’s at Lobby Day in Tallahassee right now.)

If she actually gets this student government position she’ll be doing even more of this sort of thing and there’s an actual scholarship involved, which is also nice.

But you want to know the best thing of all? She’s really very excited about this part…

She’ll have free access to the official student government sticky notes. (She gets that from her mother, not me – from TW who has a serious sticky note fetish. TW could not be more proud.)

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