OK, I'm actually backed up on entries because of modem & Mac problems this weekend, but I wanted to get this up before the holiday weekend.
My husband and I were driving down the tollway the other night and all of the malf-mast flags for Reagan got me thinking, why don't we honor our real heroes and remind people that our soldiers are dying daily in the Middle East (800+ now I believe). Let's keep the flags at half staff out of respect for our soldiers until the last one comes home from this elective war? Feel free to grab my graphic below (please store on your own server, or it won't load), and please spread the word!
Need it in a different size? Lemme know and I'll post it!
Ironically, this photo was taken just after 9/11 and is a variant of a banner I used for my 9/11 eBay charity auctions. It said "One Nation - Indivisible". Wow, we've come a long way, haven't we?
Another part of our weekend was attending the wedding of a good friend of ours. I was a little worried because it was billed as an outdoors wedding and "summer casual" dress, which I don't really own, but the groom OK'd nice jeans and I was not the only one wearing them, thank goodness. And we (at least Sparky and I) got to spend most of the evening indoors. The back yard and pool were really beautiful, but it's too hot here!
We were almost too late, he had told us to arrive a little after the time on the invite, and it was across town from our home, so we ended up actually walking into the backyard just before the ceremony started. Very lovely, very informal ceremony (the bride & groom have been there before, as have a lot of our friends including me & Sparky). The home was really beautiful, and instead of photos of kids there were photos of the owners two Labs all around. When Sparky found out they were actually there on the premises he went nuts. He's been having Lab withdrawal since out 16 year old baby passed away. I have also, though Phoebe keeps us both so busy we're still very undecided about getting another dog.
The dogs were caged in the back of the house and when we went back to see them they were so excited. Our dog had been very calm and quiet in her last years (though her mate, a lab/sheperd mix had been very hyper) and it was strange to have two enormous full bred very happy male Labs rushing at me. They are so lovable, but SO big and so active. We pet them and Sparky drooled over them, and then they went back in their cages for the majority of the evening. Very well-behaved and well-trained dogs, just a bandanna on their necks, not that a collar and leash could have controlled them if they wanted their way.
In my first marriage we had gotten a dog (my beautiful male mix breed) who had been my baby. He was very hyper & active, though, and after a year we thought he could use some company, and went and got another black Lab mix female. I was actually planning on getting another male, but Tala picked me out. Together they were an enormous handful, especially after I got divorced. Having two large dogs meant I always had to have a house with a yard, couldn't travel, and just a lot of responsibility. We'd always had dogs growing up, but my dad did most of the work. My dogs were barely trained (they could sit and shake paws for treats), the male could jump 5 and 6 foot fences and the female could climb chain link fences, so I was on constant worry mode. They both made it out of the yard several times each, the female just walked around to front of the house and scratched on the door (smart dog). The male went running out into traffic, once I had to chase him down still wearing a motorcycle helmet and full leathers.
Near the end of the party, someone (not us, we were across the house with the hosts fortunately) let the dogs out of their cages and into the main house. Which delighted my husband but caused a panic with the hostess, who had to run around closing off rooms and transferring food out of reach. One of the dogs plunged head first into a bag of garbage, bringing back more memories (the reason I originally bought my kitchen trash can with the step-on lid). We rubbed and petted them both till we got "doggy hands" (more memories, constantly washing our hands, Labs have very oily coats).
Most of the people we spoke with at the party (mostly 30-50 range) had either kids or cats. And one woman said as soon as her kid went off to college whe wasn't having anything at all, not a cat, dog, fish or even houseplant. I can sympathize. I never wanted kids, I actually always wanted a cat but didn't grow up with them so I ended up with two high-maintenance dogs instead. Now that I'm a kitty mama, I really am happy, she's not low-maintenance, though, she's Burmese. Sort of like having a tiny Border Collie. But, she's an indoor pet, I don't have to go out in the heat, the rain or the cold in the middle of the night anymore. I do have to be careful what I leave out because she has managed to reach just about every square inch of the house (up to the ceiling itself) which is a new experience. But for now, we're still on the fence, and enjoying the air conditioning...
Late entry... though I did begin it on time, my internet service decided to freak out, then my Mac went completely bananas. Further proof of the vast right-wing conspiracy in action ;-)
OK, Sparky and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 opening night. Very minimal line, but we saw it way out in the burbs, but by the time the film began the theater was completely full, which is pretty impressive for the biggest screen in a 24 screen megaplex. The stunning pre-credit sequence rolled and then the credits began. The audience is too quiet... Michael Moore's name came up on the screen (a pin dropped..). Dammit, I started clapping from the top row, and got a tentative wave of applause going around the house.
And, also from the top row, some boos? Wow, why are here? Do you enjoy spending money on films by people you don't like, or did you sneak in after the first showing of "White Chicks" let out? Of course, Sparky yelled back at them, that's all I need (sigh). But the cheers and applause (and gasps and tears) superceded the boos for the rest of the film, it would be hard not to watch little Arab children being blown up (and US soldiers also) and not feel a little remorse and respect. There was so much ground to cover, the Bush connections were just mind-blowing, the editing on this film must have been the hardest part.
Sparky and I differed on his representation of 9/11, he thought they should have shown the footage of the buildings, but I honestly think the darkness and screaming, swirls of papers raining down non-stop and the reactions of the observers were more moving. Because everyone has their own memories of that day running through their heads, I think it was more effective to let people use their own imaginations.
I think it should have gotten a PG-13, though from what I've seen a lot of theater owners are enforcing their own rating system (remember the "Passion of the Christ", anyone see South Park's take on that?) and letting more teens in. It was the number one film this weekend and the top-grossing documentary ever, yeah, I'd say it's an important film.
Back in the 80's, I remember going to a local college to see a film on Bush Sr. and such things as how he deliberately delayed the release of the hostages so that they would be free as soon as Reagan came into office, and thinking "Why isn't anyone paying attention to this information?". So let the teens come and watch and form their own opinions, let's encourage thinking in the next generation, that would be a nice change... Maybe it will be "cool" to question authority again.
Definition of Liberal as a noun from my 1980 edition of Webster's dictionary:
OK, after much downloading, testing, crashing and swearing my new browser of choice is Opera 7. Mozilla and Netscape kept fighting with each other's preferences and Firefox would not even install, it just completely freaked out on me. Awhile back when I tried to play with Opera (version 6 I believe) I could never get it to run right, but version 7+ seems to be doing beautifully. It took some work to figure out how to remove and add some toolbar buttons, and even to navigate correctly but in just a few days I've got it pretty well customized to my liking. They have a free version but I went ahead and registered it to get rid of the ads, which aren't that bad, but the targeted ones are sort of unnerving. And I'm super easily distracted these days, I hate seeing things flashing even in my peripheral vision.
I had read in several forums that Opera was even faster than Mozilla and how antiquated IE for Mac had become, I thought it was just me having problems, doh! Apple's Safari browser is not acting right and I'm having what I've finally determined is a font conflict with the Arial family which makes a lot of pages (including parts of my own) display very weirdly. But after playing with Opera this week it really is noticeably faster, especially on eBay, which is worth the price for me alone.
Then this evening everything starts dragging again, then my mail times out (sigh). It's not me, though, it's Time Warner (again) so I sit on hold on the phone for half an hour watching my cable modem lights blink, go dead, then come back on. I finally get an customer service agent and we test it and it really is working slow (at the time they are checking it, what are the chances?). It's running at like half of the minimum speed and I have a "25% packet loss". So service tech coming out midweek, I told her to make sure he brings a replacement modem, this one is 5 years old, the new ones have GOT to be at least a little better. But after the last 3 1/2 day crash, I'd rather not take any chances.
She said I could get a business account and they would come out 24/7 but it would "cost extra". Maybe when I win the lottery, I can barely afford the residential account at like $50+ a month now. It irks me to see the commercials they are running for Roadrunner now, "get 6 months at only $29.95 a month". But anyone using a cable modem for six months is not going back to dial-up, so they've got them hooked.
Another good investment that I actually paid for is Spamfire, I've been averaging about 200 messages daily and about 80% of those seem to be garbage and it catches most of them. I need to play with the email program for Opera, I'm using Entourage now, which has lots of great features, but has been acting unstable lately (again, I thought I'd debugged it).
I got my first randy comment the other day, actually I just found it, it's been hiding for a couple of weeks. At least I know how the IP block thing works now, I need to install MT Blacklist, it's supposed to be very good at blocking spammer comments.