bbq with the carolina chocolate drops

It’s gonna be knee-slappin’ and finger-lickin’ good!

(photo links to an NPR interview and music)

i want to smash your firecrackers…over and over…

Call me a cranky old fart, but I dread July 4th in Missouri. Here’s why. Last night just as I was about to drift off to REM sleep, around midnight I hear what sounds like multiple missels shrieking and then igniting in our back yard. Of course it didn’t start or stop there, all day yesterday and even this morning firecrackers are booming through the neighborhood followed by every neighborhood dog barking their heads off. Every dog that is except mine. One of our dogs rarely barks and the other one was shot before we adopted her, so every time a loud boom occurs, she runs and hides behind our recliner. This happens over and over and over again. I have this theory that everyone in our town comes to our neighborhood to set off their cheap firecrackers. We get the firecrackers and south (wealthy) columbia gets the trick-or-treaters.

here kitty

Oh the adventures of Nate’s job… so once a week Nate travels 30 miles south to a job-training farm where he hangs out with formerly homeless men. For the last few years, this farm has become the dumping site for a variety of unwanted animals, ranging from dogs, cats, and goats, but especially CATS. Two or three abandoned un-spayed cats, eventually leads to a dozen and then a couple dozen, and then soon you have a Hitchcock film. The local human society near the farm is always full and is never accepting animals. But the town we live in, they for the most part will accept any animal. So this leads to a new job for Nate today,–animal control and transporting boxes full of cats 40 miles to the human society. Sounds pretty harmless right? Hmm… no. The mama kitty who is pretty much pissed about the entire situation finds a way to chew her way to escape, followed then by all her little kitties. This leads to kitties crawling all over the car, up Nate’s leg, batting his head, and this is all happening while he is talking to me on the phone and driving the car down the interstate. I could barely hear him over the screaming meows. But here’s the best part… mama kitty decides to show her extreme dissatisfaction over the entire situation and poops all over the backseat of the car.

I am so a dog person.

for the love of wii

I am AMAZED at what people will do to get a Nintendo wii… if you are one of those poor souls who have tried the normal route of walking into a store to purchase a wii or wii fit, you have probably been given the salesperson’s tired speech, “NO, we do not have the wii OR the wii fit and NO I do not know when we will get them in (how dare you ask me such a stupid question).” So here is another route you could take, Heather Armstrong’s mother could call your lucky number.

So now it is time for my confession. Yes, I was one of those poor souls who stupidly asked a salesperson at a box store if they had a wii or a wii fit (BTW Tara H. is to blame for my wii hunt). So, instead of saying okay and walking away from the wii purchase headache, every once in while (Nate will like this) my OCD side will pop out and decide to spend 4 hours of my life tracking down something that is impossible to get. Yes, I managed to score a wii and wii fit by calling every store within 60 miles of our town, all because I heard you could snowboard and that you get your own personal trainer. After calling over a dozen stores, I found this little town called Eldon, MO which is 50 miles from our house, and I managed to talk the sales lady into hiding their last wii and wii fit in the back storage room for me. I gave her and her big hair the biggest hug! Now that we have the wii, I will say it is pretty fantastic. But of course I skipped a few generations of video gaming… the last video game system I owned was an Atari back in the 80’s. Gotta give props to Frogger and Space Invaders.

Dobson’s politics

Those that know me, know that I’ve never really been a fan of Dobson’s family ideologies or treatment methods, and secretly I would love to have a bumper sticker that reads “Focus on your own damn family”. But after hearing and reading Dobson’s recent political and theological attacks on Barack Obama, I now must add Mr. Dobson’s ad hominem logic and blatant distortions on Obama to my “what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you” list (with all due respect). I especially appreciated (and recommend) reading Jim Wallis’ response to Dr. Dobson’s politics here.

5 films to view this summer

5. Savages

4. The King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters

3. In the Valley of Ellah

2. Lars and the Real Girl

1. War Dance

The povertization of women and welfare reform

I am currently researching and writing on social policies surrounding women in poverty and welfare reform. It is fascinating, challenging, eye-opening, and at times infuriating. Sometimes I wonder how certain policies can even make it into a political proposal, let alone become the national standard. But to avoid jumping on a soap box, I will instead recommend a book for a summer read.

The Weekend

One of the things I love about our town are the many local social and environmental events. Yesterday we attend the Sol-a-bration in downtown. A few highlights: Nate was invited to speak on environmental concerns–he did an excellent job of bringing the issue to a local scale. Also there was a phenomenal local bluegrass family band (I love family bands), that everyone should check out.

Tonight we are going to hear a talk by Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and author of “Target Iran”, addressing the urgency of avoiding a war with Iran and the actions we can take. Musicians Lizzie West and Baba Buffalo will be performing, they are also worth checking out. This all takes place at Sacred Heart Church, corner of Waugh and Locust at 6pm.

interesting morning

I love the neighborhood we live in… but sometimes we see and hear difficult things. This morning we woke up to see various trucks loaded with city officials carrying clipboards and frat boys with workgloves, descend on our neighbor’s house. I looked and Nate and said this doesn’t look good. Yes our neighbor collects a lot of junk in his yard, but we’ve gotten to know this neighbor and realize this is his way of feeding of his family–fixing up old lawnmowers, selling scrapmetal, etc. So to watch the city with a wave of the pen, begin gathering up all of our neighbor’s “treasures” and throwing them in trucks to take to the dump, well my stomach turned watching this act of “neighborhood clean-up” at work.

This is one of those difficult situations… as a homeowner I do understand the value of having city codes and neighborhood standards to uphold, BUT I also (idealistically) would hope for compromise, especially when a family is trying to survive by working. I don’t think this story will have a happy ending.

(I should add that one of the city officials did compromise with an electric dryer… Nate talked him in to letting us store the dryer for our neighbor instead of taking it to the dump.)

where has the time gone?

First off, yes it has been awhile since I have written anything substantial here… now will not be one of those times…

Secondly, I have a paper due in 16 hours and counting so of course, here I am blogging…

Third- we booked our airline tickets to Vancouver for July 17th! We are headed up to beautiful BC to see a good friend get hitched to someone we know from an entirely different context. Should be fun.

And lastly, I want to tell you to see the documentary “the 11th hour”, yes that is the one with Leonardo DiCaprio narrating, it is still worth see, let me know what you think.