HUMANE SOCIETY WEB PAGE WITH PICTURES
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COLDER
Okay, it's raining and it's colder and it's going to get even colder and, uh, how do you say . . . freeze and maybe snow tomorrow. South Bend may get six inches, but how much of that will be lake effect is hard to guess.
And, of course, tomorrow is the day Robert is scheduled to get two screws out of his leg/ankle at Parkview Orthopaedic Hospital. Well, hello, winter and hello irony. We won't know whether it will be best to drive down "the 3" to Dupont or to take 8 to Auburn and then go down on I-69. Yea for new tires and front wheel drive. Yea for car heaters. Yea for Parkview Orthopaedic being on the north side of town.
EARPHONES
I live in a house with people who like to listen to music; that is fine, but I ask that they use earphones when they are listening to their personal choice of music. Right now my older son has earphones on his head and I can hear the music spilling out of them into the room and over to where I am sitting. How can it not be blowing his eardrums out?? Jeez . . . it drives me crazy and I am thinking of blowing his eardrums out myself. There is something people here tend to do that is also at odds with the earphone policy: they sing out randomly . . . and he just did it right now . . . "oh, you are always so vain" . . . in a squeakly little voice. Okay, I am blowing out the eardrums and ripping out the vocal chords.
OH, YES THE PLATES . . .
With everything that has been going on here - including Robert's broken leg and Little Ann's passing, to mention two landmark events - I forgot to get the plates renewed on the cars and so this morning when I dropped Cameron off at school, I was pulled over. The policeman was very nice and gave me a citation that would be treated as a warning if I got the plates and brought the registration to the Police Office. Well, I did that and when I drove up to the garage, Cameron met me with a grin and a "Hey, Grandma, did you get pulled over?" Then he said some kid told him an old lady with a poodle was trying to outrun the cops. Old lady? Old lady? And Sydney is an Australian Shepherd, not a poodle. Jeez, I don' t know which one of us is more upset.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
A lot of folks have their lights out, including us - see below. I think I'll go around snapping some photos during the next few evenings, saving a special place of honor for the house just across from the Kendallville Middle School entrance. So far, we have counted six inflatables, including Santa on a motorcycle. Varooom, Rudolph!
PUTTING UP THE LIGHTS
Alison and Summer put the Christmas lights this year, with Summer inside the shrubs pushing the branches down and Alison carrying the light strings and wading through the other lower shrubs. They did a really good job. See:
PICTURE FROM 1986 - WEST CHESTER, OHIO
Robert Grismore, my father; Quentin Vance and Robert Vance, my sons.
GAME
Summer and Alison are watching the Bears . . . and Summer is rooting for the Bears to LOSE. Fie on her; I love the Bears. We lived in Chicago when they went to the SuperBowl and we say the Bearsies are going to win.
UPDATE: The Bears won. HA!
TREE WITH LIGHTS; TREE SQUISHED IN BOX
TREE FOR HOUSTON
Okay, here is the finished product.
Sydney communing with decorator Alison.
Fireplace by decorators - with fire.
Summer elf.
A SEA CHANGE - OR WHATEVER
I am taking a different tack here on Indiana Territory; this is going to be more of a "Say what you really, really think, Jody." Well, not that it isn't already, but just that the scope has not been as broad as I am now tempted to make it.
What prompted this attitude? Maybe one two many Politically Correct adages, maybe seeing how younger generations are learning different things from what we were taught - such as Sherman's March to the Sea was bad. Ha! Yeah, just leave stuff for the enemy. Or wait, how about this for a reason: THIS IS MY BLOG AND I WANT TO TALK.
CAMERON'S BIRTHDAY
Rumor has it that Cameron turned 14 today. I have pictures but they are still in the camera to be downloaded later, then uploaded to Shutterfly for the photo galleries. Right now the fire in the den is so inviting and comforting that I am celebrating by having my feet up . . .
NO FOG DELAY
Aha, we were hoping for a fog delay since there was a planned two hour delay today - sort of an in your face HA HA to YOU moment. Have you ever noticed that when there is a fog delay, the schools do not keep the kids two hours later? Just an idea . . .
HIBERNATOR ON PLANE TO SD
Aha, I got up at 3:58 am and went to the airport with Hibernator driving, then drove home, being by this time awake. So he is gone back to the land of sun and warm weather and ocean . . . and Sydney and I and Co. are here in Indiana. Let's see, had I whacked him over the head and taken his spot, I could be a could part of the way to San Diego by now.
HIBERNATOR TO LEAVE
Well, it is time for Hibernator to go back to San Diego; we will leave for the airport at 4 am. Ack, not a good time for the Jody. As you can see, he did NOT write a reveiw of "Flag of our Fathers", although he, Robert and Cameron went to see the movie at the Strand last night.
He did make a big pot of chili which was not so much like the chili he and Quentin used to make as it is like my mother's chili soup - and so we are calling it "mother chili." Why not? Oh, I hear him in the kitchen calling for hot sauce.
Here's a little cheer for the Bears who pulled out a win after the week Grossman bottomed out and the week he almost bottomed out. Go Bears, Go Bears, Be like the '86 Bears. YEA!!!!!!
JOE KLEIN, THE ELECTION
Joe Klein, who wrote Primary Colors, a fictionalized novel about a non-fictional politician - Bill Clinton - has now written an
article for Time.com about the Democratic take-over of the House and Senate. I think he makes some black and white judgments about Bush and his administration that not the givens he would want you to believe that they are. The sentence
If Jane Austen were writing a novel about Bush's public aspect, the title would be "Pride and Petulance. comes to mind. So does this clause:
This election was not only about a disastrous war and the stench of corruption . . . Jeez.
Newsweek, on the other hand, has this to say:
Hindsight, of course, is a luxury, and life often appears clearer in retrospect than it does at the time, in the arena. The bet Bush has made in the Middle East is a grand one, and history is made, and people are freed, by grand gambles. The American Founders gambled with Britain in 1776; Churchill gambled with Germany in 1940; Reagan gambled with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The line between triumph and tragedy is a thin one, and things may yet work out.
You can read the article in its entirety
here.
HIBERNATOR IS HERE
As you can see from the picture below, Hibernator flew into the Fort Wayne airport last evening at about five. Now maybe we can twist his arm and have him write that review of "Flag of our Fathers" - especially since IT IS PLAYING AT THE STRAND!!
A Picture Share!
WHERE HAVE WE BEEN SINCE MONDAY?
Yes, we have not posted the last couple of days - and that "we" includes Hibernator who was supposed to provide a review of "Flag of Our Fathers." We have been uploading pictures to Ofoto and Shutterfly, talking to people about the election and naming members of the nutcracker collection.
As to the election: "Humbug!!!" It is not that we are against the government helping people; it is that we are against the government adopting policies that encourage people to adopt a lifestyle based on being "helped" by the govenment, not to mention producing more and more helpees, with no regard to the concept of citizen responsibility.
COLIN'S BIRTHDAY
Here is Colin in the room Summer decorated for his birthday.
DIET COKE AND NUTCRACKERS
There is a very good reason why you should not put a fresh Diet Coke down next to a supposedly empty can of the stuff and I was just reminded of it. Yuck. Sometimes I will pour a wee bit of the real thing into the can to give it a boost and someone else will confuse my can with his and take a gulp and then - after a series of tongue gestures - cry out about the presence of Coke in a Diet Coke can. Like that bothers me. It should be a lesson to them in this age of terrorist threats . . . next time it may be Pepsi.
I don't know why I am up now. Well, yes, of course I do: I am restless and can't sleep anymore and my attempts to daydream myself into real dreaming failed. So, here I sit, having checked the CNN news site and read Jon Stewart's address at William and Mary when he received an honorary doctorate. Really, I just read it. Cameron asked me a question about Stewart yesterday and when I googled him this morning, I wound up on the speech page; read the whole thing and it was okay, well pretty good.
Oh, I just noticed my right palm: it has my name written on it in black marker - fine point. Summer and I were giving all the nutcrackers names yesterday, writing them on the bottom of their little feet, and in an odd moment wrote our names on our hands. We have a lot of nutcrackers and yesterday we made but a dent, so we have work before us, dealing with the identity crises of all the guys. She thinks the names we handed out yesterday were old-fashioned - Max and Axel (twins), Randolph, Phillip and so forth - although we do have a Bob, named after Bill Murray tied on the mast in one of our favorite movies. We are going to do the next round in a more modern mood, so we will probably have Austin and Justin and Jason and Cody and Josh.
COLIN'S BIRTHDAY TODAY
Colin is 12 today.
DO YOU KNOW THIS WITCH?
UNPLANNED STOP AT SEARS AUTOMOTIVE
See the huddled masses in the waiting room at Sears automotive department? Well, we came out of the food court at Glenbrook and the back passenger tire was down. There were verbalizations of despair and then the cheerful cry of "It's not our car." But it was.
I totally blanked out and thought "gas station" instead of "Sears is just around the corner," but luckily turned right and drove right to it. So, these three wayfarers were in the waiting room - until two of them took off to go malling and left the other two to wait it out.
