Daily Dose of Voting in Florida

News and Politics, Pet Peeves /

Voted Today we voted.  Primaries you know.  Now that I have voted, I’m going to rant just a little bit.  Oh wait, I need to remind Christopher to go and vote – hang on, I’ll be right back.  OK he’s heading off to vote.

My first Florida primary voting issue is with the Republicans and the conservative special interest groups.  They call here too darn often.  By the end of last week I was no longer willing to answer the phone if the caller ID did not indicate someone I knew was calling. I didn’t get any calls from Democrats or liberal special interest groups. Or maybe they just called after I got fed up with the conservatives and stopped answering the phone. Whatever.   

The other problem with these groups is that they don’t always make it clear who it is they want you to vote for or don’t want you to vote for.  Here’s an example…

The phone rings and the nice woman’s voice tells me that candidate ____ says he is a Jeb Bush style Republican but he isn’t really.  (I immediately wonder if this is good or bad, from my point of view or theirs.  Do they like Jeb? Or do tney not like Jeb?  Not all Republicans like him, you know.)  She begins to explain why he isn’t like Jeb and it becomes clear that she does like Jeb after all so this guy maybe is not who they want me to vote for (Or TW actually since she is the Republican in the house).  But then, one of their reasons is because a very large gay and lesbian family group is supporting character ____.  (Hmmm, maybe they do want TW to vote for him after all since TW is a lesbian parent and a Republican.)  Oh wait, she says "Florida deserves better"… (Better than what? Jeb Bush? Candidate ____?)  At no time did they suggest another candidate.  This seemed to be a just don’t vote for ______ phone call. 

To make matters worse, TW investigates Candidate ____ and sees no reason why a gay/lesbian parenting group might support him.  She’s not always aligned with gay/lesbian parenting groups but there’s nothing there that indicates he is even remotely supportive of gay folks.  Weird.  The phone call indicated otherwise.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, there’s the woman running for governor and her only agenda seems to be to ditch the FCAT.  Umm hello, I’m anti-FCAT but you do realize as governor you might have to address other issues, right?  What might your position on those issues be?  What a waste of my time to even bother to research the woman. 

OK enough of that, I was all ready to cast my vote when I discovered my polling spot had been moved!  It hadn’t moved to a completely different place, thank goodness.  I was still to vote at the church around the corner but now I had to vote in a different BUILDING and of course I pulled into the parking lot on the wrong side.  The side where all of the campaign signs were and where the campaign sign holding woman was standing.  Geez.  Could you have moved the signs to the proper entrance? 

At least I got an "I Voted" sticker.  They sometimes run out of them and that really annoys me.  I want my sticker.

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Daily Dose of Vegetarianism

2 Comments / Foodie, Money Talks /

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Are you a fan of Amy’s Kitchen? Do you find yourself occasionally growling over the fact that an Amy’s Kitchen product is twice the price of a non vegetarian version make by some big name food producer? If your answer to both of those was YES! then you should visit I.Ate.A.Pie.Net this week and leave a comment. That leave a comment part is important. Because if you leave a comment to one of her Amy’s Kitchen reviews, she will enter your name in the drawing for Amy’s Kitchen Coupons (which are hard to get, in my experience).


Now what’s your favorite Amy’s product? (All of her burritos) And what is your least favorite? (the toaster pops aka pop tarts)

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Robinson Crusoe

2 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Classics, The Moonstone /

Or maybe I should have titled this “The Legacy of The Moonstone” since I read Robinson Crusoe simply because I loved Betteridge and Betteridge worshipped RC.

Upon reflection and upon finishing RC, I think I was duped once again by The Moonstone. I believe I would have been happier with my simple childhood memories of RC. I do not remember the section in the middle, where RC was so damn fixated on “the Savages” from my childhood. (Please don’t suggest I read an abridged copy, I didn’t. I hate abridged copies and have always refused to read them.) I think I simply skimmed over that tedious bit as a child and moved along to the good part – since I was sorely tempted to do so last night.

Also upon reflection, I did appreciate picking up RC again and reading it with an eye for what Betteridge found so appealing and helpful. I wish Wilkie Collins had written a book of short stories about Betteridge’s life with the answers from RC included in each story – the moral of the story, according to RC or some such thing. That would have been interesting.

Enough with The Moonstone, sorry it has sort of taken over my life. I can usually keep it in check, but sometimes it just slips out!

Robinson Crusoe – long and tedious in the middle. The lack of “chapters” didn’t help it any. The end, back to civilization, it was all rushed and not worth reading and should have been a book of its own rather than a jumble of 10 pages.

I don’t think I can quite convince myself to read The Further Adventures of… or anything Selkirk – though if Skeeter insists, I will obey. After all, she read The Moonstone with me.

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Misquoting Jesus – No Kidding

2006, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Religion /

I finally finished Misquoting Jesus and I learned something very important. Two things actually.

First, reading a book that feels like a sixth grade text book can be incredibly boring. And no matter how interested you are in the subject, a book like that is almost impossible to keep focused on.

Second, The New Testament – it’s not accurate. No kidding, right? Right. I’m not sure what I expected to find in this book, but whatever it was I did not find it. Obviously The New Testament isn’t accurate. We don’t have the original writings or anything close to the original writings. All versions have flaws. No kidding.

I didn’t hate the book, don’t get me wrong. It was ok. It was just sixth grade textbook like, boring and unenlightening. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I’d been reading it with a bunch of sixth graders and we could have discussed each section or something. But I don’t have any sixth graders around who would indulge me in such painful textbook-like reading. So, I was bored.

Onto Robinson Crusoe!

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Daily Dose of Coffee – Caribou

3 Comments / Coffee & Tea /

I am not a Caribou Coffee fan. I’m sorry, I’m just not. I’ve tried and I wouldn’t turn it down if it was the only coffee shop in town, I’m just not going to ever switch from Starbucks to Caribou (not that I could do that anyway, since we don’t have a Caribou in Gainesville, but you get my point, right?).


I do think Caribou’s decision to the Starbucks iced coffee coupons was brilliant and if I had a Caribou near by and drank iced coffee, I would head into their store and thank them. Starbucks has not shown itself to be a brilliant company of late and the whole email coupon thing was just ridiculous.


I can give props to Caribou Coffee for one other thing, and it’s something I’ve been meaning to post about for quite some time… Caribou Coffee Bars! I’m not a power bar, breakfast bar, cereal bar sort of person but these, well, these I truly enjoy. They aren’t a diet bar, people, so don’t buy them if you’re attempting to lose weight. Well don’t buy them if you are attempting to lose weight and find it difficult to limit your serving sizes when it comes to sweet treats. Which flavor is best, you ask? Both are excellent. Michelle prefers the Mocha but I have absolutely no preference whatsoever.


Go Caribou!

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Daily Dose of Cupcake Toppers

1 Comment / Cupcake Toppers /

o1203029.jpgTomorrow is my sister’s birthday so today’s cupcake topper will be in her honor – Oscar the Grouch. You can order chocolate lollipops and take the sticks off or you could go all out and get 4″ plush finger puppets. If you look hard enough and long enough, you can probabaly come up with enough rubber finger puppets but that would take a lot of time and effort unless you just get lucky at a flea market or antique shop. It’s relatively easy to find traditional cupcake picks for the Sesame Street gang but Oscar seems to have been eliminated from the grouping, in favor of the ever evil Elmo. What a shame.

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Summer Reading Challenge

14 Comments / Books in Bed, Meme, Reading Lists /

Src4Amanda is running a Summer Reading Challenge and it’s interesting. I’m not sure what such a challenge would be, for me. 28 books is not all that many, probably about what I’d read when it wasn’t summer, ya know? The other problem is that while some people have more time to read in the summer, I tend to have less. Maybe what I should do is create a list of a certain type of book? That doesn’t seem like it would work well either though because of how I choose books in general – and because almost all of my books come from the library so my reading is based on the speed at which others return books that I’ve reserved.

Updated on May 23rd: I’ve decided what my challenge is – only 20 19 books but these will definitely be a challenge for me since I’ll also be trying to keep up with the “normal” reading we’ll be doing aka keeping up with TW’s normal reading:

Updated June 26: Only 2 down, I’ll never make it!

Updated July 2: Cloud Atlas, Crucible and the Mark Twain – done!

Updated July 15: Kindred, The Ancient Child – 7 finished, just 7! Ack!

Updated: July 21: Vanity Fair – DONE! Taking a break for something GOOD! Heh.

Updated July 23: The Shadow of the Wind – Done! From the “meme section”. 10 down and starting the scarey stuff now…

Updated August 2: Kristin Lavransdatter – finished. 10 down, more scarey stuff on tap!

Updated August 6: 2 more finished, 175 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow but I’ve given up, for now. I might make it after all… maybe… 12 0f 19 finished.

Updated August 13: 16 of 19 finished (plus 1/3 of Gravity’s Rainbow, which I’ve given up on in favor of another Pynchon novel…)

Updated August 19: 17 down, finished The Crying of Lot 49 which I substituted for Gravity’s Rainbow. I have Possession on audio and am ordering Odd Women now, hopefully it will arrive quickly and I can finish before the end of the month. I’m almost impressed with myself!

Updated August 31: Yea! I’m done, I did it! Well, sort of. I am listening to the last book right now, on audio. I’m on cassette 5 (there are 16 cassettes). So I won’t really finish by midnight tonight but I will finish it in a week or so. I’m pretty pleased that I managed to complete this challenge. It was much harder than I thought it would be, too.

Read 1 book I own but haven’t read – 5 (thanks Sassymonkey) Here are the 5: The Girls, The Land of Women, Midwives, Mrs Shakespeare, The Effect of Living Backwards Done 8/13/6

Read The doggone Moonstone – Done 6/6/6

Read The doggone Dragonriders of Pern – Done 6/20/6


Read a classic that I haven’t read before 5. Here are the 5 I’m going to read (thanks to Jules and Sassymonkey for assisting in the creation of this list!) : Odd Women, Vanity Fair, The Diaries of Adam & Eve, The Crucible, Kindred –Done 8/30/6


Read the books on this meme that I haven’t read (3) (2) (1)- problem, it appears I have read all three of the books in His Dark Materials. I reserved the one I don’t own/thought I hadn’t read and it turns out, I have read it after all!

Read books from the Teachers First’s Lifetime Reading List that I have not read 5 (the list: Possession, The Woman Warrior, The Ancient Child, Gravity’s Rainbow (substituted The Crying of Lot 49, Kristin Lavrandsdatter)

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Daily Dose of Life – 101 Update

101 Things /

It’s that time again, time for the 101 things in 1001 days update. Not so hot, really. Lots of books were read, classics and non-fiction (thank goodness for the Summer Reading Challenge). The freezer was defrosted and cleaned, accidentally really. Chris somehow unplugged the thing so the little bit of food that was in there got defrosted, which led to total cleaning. I guess I should thank him, shouldn’t I?


Onto September…

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The Odd Women

2 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Classics, Feminism /

I did it! I finished The Odd Women! For awhile, I thought life was going to conspire against me and prevent me from finishing before the month ended. I’m so glad I read it.

I was afraid I was going to hate it and end my Summer Reading Challenge on a sour note. Gissing, well he’s an odd duck and I can’t decide how I feel about him in general. But I didn’t. It drove me nuts in places, silly women making silly choices and all of those ridiculous men reigning over the women, or expecting to be able to reign over women. Bah. Down with the patriarchy! Heh.

I wasn’t thrilled with how Monica’s story ended. I was very pleasantly surprised by what happened with Rhoda and Everaud, I think that worked well – from the feminist perspective.

The only question I’m left with is why was it so hard to acquire this book? It isn’t available at my library or at the SFCC library (I never had time to check at UF). I checked two used bookstores in town and it wasn’t there. I called Barnes & Noble and it wasn’t in stock. Weird. I don’t understand it.

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