antimony

That is the stupid-est decree I have ever heard. Your job is hard enough as it is without taking away some of your your relaxation. Morons.

Dude, you *must* post the recipe for blueberry yum-yum! I know it's a hard situation to deal with, and you and Mr. Snarky have hugest hugs from me.

Yup, I'll be doing it! I missed the last round because I'm just not ever in the swap forums. Your post was what tipped me off that the next round was starting!

Woooo! Pomegranates! I love those purple flowers! I like things that bloom when it's crazy-hot. It makes me happy that *something* at least is loving the heat, even if I am not!

I love my boyfriend, he is super-super-smart, but sometimes I think he's a little too quick with the paranoia. Someone recently tipped him off to the dangers of fluoride. This person apparently convinced him that you consume enough fluoride in drinking 8 glasses of water a day to cause measurable harm to the body. I've heard this before too, and after reading up on the topic, I am confident in my point of view that that is a load of crap. Yes, flouride in large doses can hurt you - so can water or alcohol. Here's the solution: Don't eat your toothpaste. But, that's not what prompted me to write this. The thing is, he's all concerned about 1ppm of fluoride in the water, but he *smokes*. If he's concerned about ingesting toxins, maybe he'd like to have a little chat with his lungs. I'm sure they'd be happy to stop getting coated in tar, and dosed with carbon monoxide. Me, personally, if I had to pick just one substance added to things we food and drink that poses the biggest, baddest health risk? It wouldn't be fluoride (which totally would not be in the top 10, probably not even the top 100), it would be high fructose corn syrup. That is some nasty shit.

Basically, high fructose corn syrup is just sugar syrup. The problem with it is that fructose is *very* quickly absorbed by the body. Regular sugar, the white granular stuff, is sucrose, which is a disaccharide, it's got two sugars in it, it's actually a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose bonded together. When things made with sugar are digested, that bond has to be broken first, then the two constituent sugars are absorbed. That's still a pretty quick process, but the fructose and glucose in corn syrup are already separate and are absorbed *immediately*, and so cause an even more dramatic spike in insulin production than plain sugar does. (When you read about "glycemic index" in reference to carbs, that's basically talking about how intense of an insulin response that particular carb produces.) Anyway, so it's those floods of insulin into the blood stream that contribute to pre-diabetic insulin resistance. Plus, since high-fructose corn syrup is so cheap, and has preservative effects in food, manufacturers use a whole ton of it, and suddenly there's a whole lot of calories packed into some pretty small packages. To top it off, things made with corn syrup often don't taste as good as things made with sugar. Since glucose and fructose taste slightly different, things sweetened with sucrose have a kind of well-rounded sweetness. Things sweetened with high fructose corn syrup alone often, to me, taste like getting beat over the head with un un-subtle brick of SWEET. Though that might be just because of how much they use... 11 tsp of sugar in a can of soda? I couldn't make myself sit down and eat 11 tsp of sugar! anyway, I'm sure you knew most of this already, but I'm having a rambly kind of day...

On hot days, rural southern boys are required to wear tighty whities in the swimming hole. It's the law. ;-) (i wish I were kidding. I mean, I am about the law part, but there seems to be some kind of long-standing tradition about rednecks and swimming in briefs. I really don't get it. You wouldn't see it at a swimming pool or anything, but out on a lake...)

I had to grab a picture of the masterpiece I've got painted on my big toes. The picture doesn't capture it well, but the nails are a really rich, slightly sparkly red (though they were out of I'm Not Really a Waitress!), the flower petals are white, the center of the flower is coral, there's a rhinestone in the center, then the flower has some littel accents in blue, and there's silver glitter along the little swoopy thing. And just because I'm vain, a better shot of my pretty manicure:

First of all, I'm only including a handful of the pictures I took last weekend, since most of them look just like the week before. But... I visited my parents last weekend, and while I was there, I grabbed leaves off of my mom's christmas cactus and jade plant. I've got them outside right now since it's hot out, and it hasn't been raining. The christmas cactus leaf: The Jade leaves: And a side shot of one of the beautiful pots I found for them on an obscure shelf at Lowes: --- And now, on to this week! First of all, the bounty we harvested today! The bowl is full of red ripe tomatoes. A rose bud is opening right now: The most spectacular thing this weekend, though was the moonflower that finally bloomed this weekend! It smells beautiful Here it is this afternoon before it opened: And here are three shots of it this evening after it opened: Unfortunately, my camera doesn't really do well with close ups in the dark.

Thanks for noticing the manicure, guys! I got my nails done this weekend, and I think they turned out great. The girl doing my nails did a great job with the white parts, but unfortunately, the top coat she used was all bubbly, so the finish on them isn't perfect. She did the whites the way I like, where she painted on a little extra of the white polish, then used acetone and a paintbrush to bake a really crisp edge. I'll have to take a picture of my pedicure, though. I asked for flowers on my big toes, and got very pretty, very sparkly flowers. I get a smile just from looking at them. dawndie, I would love to see pictures of your garden! darkity, I didn't even think about the plants needing each other's support. Oh well, to late for that now, I guess. And yeah, it is kind of night-of-the-living-dead-ish, isn't it? You know that if that cutting ever sprouts, that plant will forever be the "zombie cactus", right? valentina, I was in awe of the bounty myself. It is such an amazing feeling to know that I grew all of that. That I nurtured those plants, and fussed over them, and they did more than just survive, they've just showered me with fruit!

My brain is all over the place... come back, brain! I did take garden pictures last weekend, I'll post them tonight. Last weekend, I took my parents' cat back home to Kentucky. She was staying with me while my parents were out of town. Well, according to my mom, the cat is totally out of sorts since I left, sulking, only coming out when she's on the phone. My poor kitty. I am giving my mom instructions to pick the cat up a lot, call her silly pet names, and basically do all of the things she never tolerated when she was younger and snootier. I have a nasty headache. I took advil and drank a big glass of water, but neither is helping. Rusty was out late at the campaign office waiting for the primary results to come in. This would be the 2nd night in a row of crummy sleep because I hate to sleep in our bed alone. (Though I sleep fine alone in my old room at my parents house, but that kind-of makes sense) Perhaps the bad sleep and the headach are related. Nah, that would make too much sense. The guy whose campaign Rusty was working on didn't win the primary. He was the leader in St. Louis County, but lost in St. Charles and Lincoln counties. Damn. Also, there was a pretty sane, rational guy runing against the incumbent in the Republican primary, I would have liked to see him in the election, but he got crushed. Mercifully, no one here is stomping around about running as an independent. Dear Joe Lieberman, Put on your big boy pants and deal with it. You lost. Fair and square, you lost. If you wanted to run as an independent you should have started there to begin with, but you threw your hat in the ring with the democrats, and you lost. YOU LOST. Seriously, grow up. I love my plants. I snagged leaves off of my mom's jade plant and christmas cactus when I was home visiting. They're both suposedly pretty easy to propagate, so I hope I can convince them to sprout. I've got them outside in the heat with ust a tiny bit of water every couple of days, so I'm hoping the mama leaves don't succumb to rotting. As long as the mama leaves are ok, there will be baby plants... eventually. Though I'm hoping the warm weather will help them sprout a little faster. I am so in love with the idea of sharing plants, and growing plants off of cuttings from friends and family. There's something warmer and sweeter about it than just buying something at Lowes (not that I don't have a bunch of Lowes plants too) Yesterday, we cleaned the kitchen so I could make lasagna. I love my clean kitchen. I just want to stand in the middle of it and bask in its wonderfulness. Tonight, I'm going to do something similar with the living room, so I can lie on the couch and bask in its wonderfulness too. When I'm PMS-y, I get the overwhelming urge to clean. This is good, since it means the apartment is clean once a month, at least. Today, while I'm home for lunch, I'm going to fold laundry. Fun! I need to remember to pick up some mesh laundry bags next time I'm at Target. I am absolutely enchanted by those liquid soaps that foam by themselves. I've got one from Method in the bathroom, it smells like green tea and aloe, and feels so soft and nice. In the kitchen, I've got Dial that's all yummy and pear-scented. And when I was visiting my parents, I used the Aveno facial cleanser that foams itself, and loved it too. I just really love the foam texture, and the fact that it soesn't leave you with little soapy blobs or slimy smears to try and rinse off your hands and face. Plush, I just enjoy foam. Saturday morning, I am hauling myself to the salon as soon as it opens, and getting my legs, underarms and eyebrows waxed, and getting a manicure and pedicure. In a spa chair. And I'm going to ask them to paint cherry blossoms on my big toenails. (In general, I am against "nail art" on principle... but I like having little sakura blossoms on my big toes. Everybody needs a little whimsy in their life) Why won't this damn headache go away?

Isn't this exactly the kind of thing the TAL oil "STFU" is for? In this case it wouldn't be exactly silencing gossip, but I think you could still use it to silence a malicious and atention-hungry person.

My boyfriend is very involved in politics right now, so we seem to be going to multiple events every week. Last night, we went to a meet-and-greet for two candidates, a woman running for the state Senate, and a man running for the Federal House. (My boyfriend is working quite actively on the guy's campaign) My sweetie is *extremely* progressive. We don't always see eye-to-eye, but we are always respectful of each other's views, and we take the time to understand each other's positions. As for my own beliefs, I'm a little disillusioned, kinda cynical, and am a strong believer in financial accountability, personal privacy, plain dealing, and giving everyone an equal opportunity - though what they do with it is their own business. 40 years ago, I may have been called a republican, but now, I just don't believe there is a place on the political spectrum for me, though I stick with the democrats, since the current republicans don't share my stance on *anything* (*grumble*grumble*fiscal mismanagement*grumble*insane war*grumble*intruding on my personal life*grumble*lying SOBs*grumble*grumble*) Let me preface my story by saying that the event was early in the evening, so I didn't change after work. I was wearing an ankle-length black velvet skirt, a button down shirt, and high heels. There was another lady there, who was wering a hat covered in progressive pins, and who was putting off a very activist vibe. (Which is fine, it's her right... But personally, I find wearing advertising, whether commercial or political, a little tacky. I am not a billboard.) I didn't think any less of her, after all I'm living in sin with a guy who is hanging out way to the Left of me politically. But anyway, she didn't seem to like the look of me. Anyway, in the course of conversation she lets loose with the statement that we should never have electronic voting machines because she doesn't want the democratic process to be ar the mercy of energy companies. I'm thinking, fat lot of good paper ballots do you if the lights are out! So I respond with mentioning that that could easily be adressed by requiring polling places only be set up in buildings that have generators (since the polling places are usually schools, community centers, and government buildings, it's fair to say a lot of them already have generators anyway) She looked at me like I had sprouted tentacles for even accepting the idea of electronic voting machines. I am of the opinion that the current electronic voting machine technology is a travesty. But this is America, and people like things that are shiny, new, and space-age. So we have to accept that they will continue to exist, and push legislation that requires a paper trail, verifiable security measures, and publicly auditable code. Honestly, if we took the requirements Nevada sets on slot machines and made the same requirements on voting machines, we'd be 90% of the way there. Well, that only made it worse! I was clearly mocking democracy by comparing voting machines to slot machines! She then railed on about how the requirements that I was talking about were never going to happen, and I was living in a dream world of woulda-coulda-shoulda. But *she* was only concerned with reality. And reality to her, was that because the voting machines available now were criminal, and paper works just fine, that the correct answer is to ban electronic voting machines, and go back to paper. Now who is in a dream world of woulda-coulda-shoulda? You can't put the shaving cream back in the can. Electronic voting is out there, people have bought into it, and I don't see any chance of it being abandoned wholesale across the country. Maybe we didn't need it, but we've got it, so as Tim Gunn says, we have to make it work. So, in the course of this discussion, she is squirming in her seat like she wants to scoot as far away from me as possible, throwing up her hands and exclaiming over and over again how she just can't talk to someone like me, and that I'm just impossible, and that introducing electronic voting machies was just like starting the Iraq war, and whatever. By the end of the conversation, I might as well have been Richard Nixon and Cthuhlu's love child. This has caused me no end of amusement. The whole drive home I was asking Rusty how he likes dating an evil republican baby-eater.

The part that drives me most insane is that I am on her side, damnit. I hate when people who hold any polarized political opinions get all sniffy at moderates, like we're some kind of wishy-washy fence-sitters. Eh, Rusty reminded me that just before she tore into me, I was ranting about how the federal government needs to move from using cost acounting to accrual accounting, so we can just maybe start to get a handle on when and where money *really* comes and goes. And everyone knows that people who know too much about accounting *must* be mindless corporate drones.

I don't french manicure my toes (I agree, it's ridiculous) But on my hands, sometimes in the summer I like to sport what I've heard called a "cuban manicure", red nails with white tips.

Cassis is black currant.

About 4 years ago, a friend admitted to me that she and her husband were trying for their first baby, my immediate resonse was, "But people our age don't have kids on purpose!" Then I realized that we were about 23 years old, and plenty of people our age did, in fact, have kids on purpose. That was a shocker, though none of my close high school or college friends, not even her, have actually procreated yet, and we are certainly inching up on turning 30.

i understand e-mailing the customer service address with their disapointment. That's what costomer service is about. But showing up in a celebration thread in a fan forum to complain, that's just pissing on someone else's good time for no reason. It's sour grapes, pure and simple.

It's been a great week in the garden. Four Morning glories this morning: And check out the crazy moonflower bud that will open soon: Another angle showing of the strawberries' prison break: The current extent of the tomato jungle: Clusters of growing tomatoes: Some of the making of tonight's tomato/basil/mozzerella sald: I have my first ripening pepper! Remember what the Experimental tomato looked like just three weeks ago? Look at it now: Finally, the roses are blooming again! Something like 10 buds all over the plants:

Hee hee. This is awesome! I'm Devious Honey Marek Flow. I dig it.

Oh. My. God. My boss called me in to her office this morning to tell me she just put in her two weeks notice. I'm happy for her, she's going to a larger insurance company where there's more upward potential for her (she's already the senior actuary in our little division) But dude, again? I first came on board with this company last September. I was brought on to work for a guy who was crazy smart. Unfortunately, his work style did not mesh super-well with the rest of the office. He ended up jumping ship this past spring to go be the chief actuary at another small company. I wasn't too bummed out, since I ended up wotking for *his* boss, who was also a super-actuary She's the one who quit today. This is even more familiar, because when I first got hired out of school at the big consulting firm I worked for in San Francisco, I got hired by seriously one of the most brilliant actuaries I have ever met, and worked directly under him for the coolest 6 months ever. Then he got headhunted away to be chief actuary at a big insurance company. After that, I ended up working for a couple of mediocre-by-comparison managers who totally didn't inspire me, but at least they didn't quit (Well, one of them did, almost right after I did - that would explain why he was so happy for me!) Part of me has gotten into the habit of thinking (is it me? Do they hate having me work for them so much? But you know, that's really just not it. Somehow, thanks to good interview skills, good luck, whatever, I have managed to maneuver myself into these great positions. Even 6 months working under a mega-egg-brain is so much more educational than 3 yars working for someone who's just average. Unfortunately, having a mega-egg-brain opens a lot of doors, and those are the kind of people getting chief-actuary-type jobs thrown at them. And until i get to management-level, I won't be reporting directly to chief-actuary-level people. I guess the only thing to do is keep doing what I'm doing now, maneuvering myself to work for managers who are right on that susp, to learn as much as I can right now.

Awww...

Godwin's Law says whoever invokes Nazis/Hitler in an argument first loses. In addition to this, a friend and I decided today that if, in the course of an internet argument someone declares their authorativeness based on being a member of MENSA, they also automatically lose.

I'm not getting the Coty imposters vibe about the new sttuff, I just don't get the same iconic feel from them. The new scents aren't as classic or as *solid* as the old ones to my nose. The very first scent that Beth suggested for me (back when she still did suggestions by email!) was Anne Bonny, and it's still my very favorite going out scent. Most days I reach for Embalming Fluid, and I often smudge on a little Snake Oil before bed. All of the other bottles in my collection (and I have more than I could use in a lifetime, I think) sit unused for months or longer. There are a handful of LE's that I have also fallen in love with, but beyond that, I haven't found much else that really rings my bell. I've gotten to the point now that I only order LE's and scents that might work for wearing while dancing (though nothing has beat snake oil yet for that purpose, either)

Hooray for falling in love with the garden! You need to post plant pictures! My tomatoes want company! They want plant blogging buddies to hang out with