New Toy, New Purse

My Christmas present was an Asus EEE mini-laptop. It's a computer the size of a portable DVD player. Which, of course, calls for a new purse to lug it around in. Like The Equuschick says, even though 2008 is the Year of the rat, that's no reason to be a disorganized rat.

I started with a DVD bag from Walmart and sewed on a strap good and tight.



The side pocket (the one you're supposed to keep the DVD disks in) is the perfect size for the mini-laptop:



Which leaves the main compartment for my regular stuff - cell phone, PDA, sunglasses, etc. I threw together an organizer from cloth scraps and tacked it into the bag. I didn't want to actually sew the bag itself because one day we may want to use it for its intended purpose.



The organizer has two parts. There's a center section, padded for the PDA and cell phone, and it's tacked to the two rings on the side of the bag. And there's a flat panel made from an old sheet that folds around the center section. It's tacked to the corners of the bag into the seams so no pinholes were made in the bag itself. It has pockets for credit cards, tea bags, scissors, mirror, sunglasses and stuff. And, as an afterthought, I made a coin purse from a fabric scrap that was too pretty not to use for something.



Now all I have to do is learn Linux and I'm all set!

Funny Music Video

After reading the "fishing as life" metaphor in Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler and hearing more than my share of formula songs designed to tug at the heartstrings combined with a peaceful nature setting on music videos, I especially loved Cletus Take the Reel on comedian Tim Hawkins' website. I love the moving shot of the fishing rod flying through the air. ;)

There's also a music video on the page about homeschooling, done to the tune of The Addams Family.

Here We Come A-Carolling . . .

The Fog

Welcome

Monochrome

We Didn't Know We Were Doing This, But This is What We're Doing

This is the social activist's (and, more recently, Christian's) response to hyper-consumerism and, more specifically, Black Friday. We've always called it "staying home and avoiding the crowds," but it actually has an official name and purpose.

Wikipedia even has a webpage about it.

Homeschooling Headed for Criminalization?

I saw this at Homeschoolbuzz.com.

So why should we in the U.S. be concerned with the plight of German homeschoolers?

I was quite surprised (yet obviously pleased) that homeschooling developed in the United States with minimal resistance from government agencies. I am even more pleased with the statistics that have emerged on the subject of home-schooled children excelling in extraordinary measure compared to their public school-attending counterparts. In truth, I rather expected a few average American families to have to endure Waco-style sieges, imprisonment and decades-long legal battles over the issue.
So, why all the hubbub over the plight of some German home schoolers?
Well, here’s why. The socialistic European model of government is where the Left in America has us gravitating toward. Read more...

The Strange Things You Think About While Driving

I was driving one son to basketball practice, and we passed a field of cows. They all had tags in their ears, even the little ones. I wondered if they were the same tiny calves I'd seen over the summer.

And then I wondered if, as tiny calves, they'd had any inkling that they'd have to go through the ordeal of tagging. And, even now, wandering in the field with their mothers and the other cows, nibbling a bit of grass when they get hungry, do they have any awareness of what lies ahead for them? I think these are beef cows who enjoy about a three year lifespan. All the older cows in the field will meet their fate soon, but probably have no clue about what's coming. As did last year's cows, and the cows before them, and the cows before them -- history repeats itself again and again, with the same fate for each cow, and has for probably twenty years -- more, if this is a family farm that's been going on for generations -- yet the cows are blissfully unaware of what's in store, and what happened to the generations of cows before them. Existence for a cow consists solely of the three years of its life. There's nothing before and nothing after.

But what if a cow wrote down his experiences to enlighten those who would come after? Would he warn future generations to not go into the truck, no matter much he was prodded, so as not to be led to slaughter? Would he be followed by another cow who would write, and another, so that all the generations of cows became linked with an awareness of shared experience? Would any cows read it? Would they even care? Or would they go on their merry way as long as there was green grass, blue sky, and shade to rest in?

And then I thought of a recent Common Room post, and how much our situation as humans is like the cows'. Yes, there have been some people who have expressed the deepest, most profound essence of their souls and lives, forming a link uniting generations and generations of mankind telling us that we're not alone; people have been here before us, had the same experiences, asked the same questions, attempted to find nswers, laid the foundation of knowledge in art, music, all kinds of things. But in spite of their efforts, generally, like the cows, we prefer to live in blissful unaware ignorance, as if the years of our life were the whole of existence. Nothing of importance happened before, and it's not that important what comes after. The only reality is the time we're here, like a little bubble of time that exists in isolation.

I know we don't really believe that -- sure, we "know" that famous people lived and wrote and discovered and painted. But for the most part, we don't care. It's irrelevent to our lives, and probably inferior to what we're doing today.I mean, people know the names of Blake, Rousseau, Milton, Tennyson. But how many people have actually read what they wrote? Most of us are too busy reading the latest best-seller to care about old, dusty books written by 'dead white guys.' It's the same with music. We know what's current, what's hot, and hits from twenty or thirty years ago are quaint 'oldies.' Never mind that music has been slowly evolving and saying something for hundreds of years. We feel like real music started with the birth of rock and roll.

It's amazing how your thoughts can ramble while you're driving. I wonder if cows listen to music?

It's Not a Yam

I've just done some research, and discovered that I've never had a yam. And I'll bet you haven't, either. In the US, they're all sweet potatoes. The softer ones are called yams, but they're still sweet potatoes. Actually, yams are African. When slaves came to the US, they thought that our sweet potatoes tasted close to what they knew as yams - and that's where the confusion began, because they started calling them yams.

Wikipedia has a whole webpage about it.
And here's a group that's dedicated to Sweet Potato Awareness, and even has a downloadable flyer to print and pass out.

I don't care what they're called, I love them. Baked, cubed and boiled, sliced and microwaved. They also taste great right out of the can.