Democratic Donkeys, pineapple juice, and a picture of Barack Obama.

oh yeah some really good ginger cookies with a pumpkin spread.

This was a themed snack. The guy who brought it is a die hard bleeding heart liberal Democrat and thoroughly enjoyed the presentation. He also signed up for St Patrick's Day..I can't wait to see what he comes up with.

I took Washington's Birthday and plan to make something with cherries in it, probably muffins or fruit bread.

We got him from some friends when he was bout 6 months old. He was truly one of the most relaxed laid back cats ever. He has been slowly going downhill for about a year, losing weight, dehydrating. Thursday night he stood up to get out of my husband's lap and couldn't move his back legs, then he had no balance. We thought he had a stroke. turned out to be brittle spine, possible abdominal tumor, or other old age issues.

OUr kind and gentle vet gave him pain relief until I could get home from work then we took him back down to have him put down. We sure do miss him and will for a long time but he had a wonderful life with many adventures.

Mixed Siamese Multidactyl :


A lover of the rabbit's foot keychain, MyLittlePony brushes, PixieTail hair clips who would play hockey with these things for hours and yowl and pace in front of the refrigerator/washer/dryer until we raked them out for him.

Imitator of mink stoles. :


Hunter of birds, :


Defender of His House against all Invader Kitties and yet patient elder uncle of new kittens, who grew to be much larger than he yet still viewed him as the Big Old Cat Who Must Be Respected.


Possessed of the most magnificent purrbox I have ever encountered in any cat anywhere.

They are quite good.

tomorrow I may make Toll House, or perhaps snickerdoodles.

class (or two) that you have to have to get a degree?

My daughter is severely math impaired. I believe she may be worse than I am, which is pretty damn bad. Hey, if I could do all that higher math, I would be a physician today. The biology was not just easy , it was fun.

anyway kid wants to go back to school and what she wants to do will require her to get a couple of math classes passed.

she is terrified and depressed.

all help will be appreciated.

just heard it many times.

A dear friend passed away last year, and he loved Scotland, loved golf and had even played St Andrews. He was buried in his full formal kilt, which he wore to ALL our Christmas parties and other fun events, even to church occasionally.

Part of the service included a bagpiper in the courtyard of our church, and he was playing 'Scotland the Brave' as we exited the church over to the reception hall.

He also played "Amazing Grace", 'Loch Lomond", "Black Watch March' and other well known pieces; he played for about an hour. The attendees busied themselves melting into little pools of tears. Seriously we were all hugging one another and weeping, over that wild wonderful and totally sentimental sound.

John would have loved it.

I went with my husband so he could vote since he may have to head back out of town before Election Day. (I am voting Election Day, myself).

So off we go to the Sub-Courthouse, which was surrounded by campaign signs of every type, mostly local candidates. In the parking lot, an elderly lady on oxygen was being assisted with a portable voting booth by an election worker, and my State Rep was out in the free electioneering zone shaking hands and asking for votes.

We went over to talk to him, he said it had been steady all week, and he feels really good about it.

Went in and while my husband was in line, one of the election judges let out a shout "First Time Voter Here!!" The whole room applauded! Apparantly they have been doing this all week.

Another young lady came in who had registered on line late in September and of course didn't have her card yet. So she was told to go ahead and get in line and if her name had gotten in the book she could vote. So she got in line and a few minutes later, I heard the judge tell her to "just have a seat, honey and we will call downtown because they have the master list and if you can't vote today you will be able to vote tomorrow or Tuesday." Extremely polite and kind to her;

She was a young African American woman, excited to cast her first vote and she was treated with the utmost respect. I was very proud.

Over 40% of our registered voters had voted as of end of day yesterday, with today still to be finished.

I am excited about Tuesday, because if I have to wait in line at my little precinct after this many people have already voted, it will mean we have had one hell of a turnout here.

we are not a Christian nation
as long as 46 million citizens are uninsured or underinsured
as long as our Veterans are underserved by the nation that put them in harm's way
as long as children go hungry
as long as homeless shelters need to exist

add your own

keeps that off your credit score. Hit the principal on that one later.

Be sure you are both authorized to discuss the account with the lender before you call. !!!
Otherwise only your partner can do the talking.

Talk to the lender. BUT BEFORE YOU DO:

Many lenders will tell you they can't do much until you are actually 90 days or more in arrears. That means (using October 1 as the first defaulted payment) that the payment which should have been received in October is not received by December 31. So even if your Oct payment is late, it postpones the foreclosure. So continuing to pay even if you are 30 days late a couple of times, is better than not paying at all. Neither option is better or worse for your credit score, what we are talking about here is losing the property. Many lenders will work with you on setting up a payment plan that allows you to put 'X' amount each week and when enough is there to make a payment it rolls out to the payment side. This keeps you out of the danger zone for foreclosure if you are able to make that payment. They will review your financial obligations, and income and determine if they can do this. Sometimes they can't because of your state regulations, or terms of the loan, but if they can they will especially in this market.

The amount of time before a lender can begin foreclosure is based on the terms of the NOTE, not the mortgage. The note is drawn up in accordance with state banking regulations where you live. Get out the loan documents for the mortgages, and if you are with a major lender you can view them online. The terms of default should be clearly stated in the Note.

The mortgage is the legal owner ship part of the deal. The NOTE is the financial transaction part of the deal.

are both loans w/same lender?
Things to ask:
can they be combined, at a lower rate of interest, or can the main mortgage be refinanced at a lower rate of interest.
do you have taxes and insurance in escrow? Is there any overage in the escrow?(a call to customer service will help with these and the following questions)
Can you acquire less expensive insurance, which would lower the escrow portion, and lower the payment, and/or create an overage in the escrow account (or a refund from the old insurance co)
Are you sure your property taxes are as low as possible? Do you have a homestead exemption in place, if your state offers one?
is there PMI on the loan that can now be taken off?
if it is an ARM, does it qualify for workout to reset it at a fixed rate lower than the current rate?

I was a CSR in a call center for a Major Lender, and I specialized in Escrow account servicing. Sometimes all the pieces fell into place enough that we could generate some funds for the homeowner which we rolled over to the mortgage, or put in partial payment for the homeowner to supplement to create a monthly payment.

If you can ride out w/o triggering a foreclosure and keep the payment under 90 days in arrears, when you file taxes, if you get a refund, you can use it to catch up.

In the current climate, the lender does not really want to foreclose, it is a money loss for them.

I hope this helps. When you do make your call to them, you will be asked questions which will trigger other questions on your part, take notes. It can get hellaciously confusing. The rep has your entire account history right there on the computer, and all prior calls should be documented.

I strongly recommend you review everything you can about your loan(s) on line before you call, print out stuff to have handy if you need it, reviewed and highlighted.

Most mortgages do not have a late fee until 15th of the month, some are 10 day. But the report to credit services is based on what is in the system on the final day of the month. Verify how your lender determines final day of the month when it falls on weekend.
Pay on line whenever their system will allow it if you have to pay at last minute, because it posts instantly. My old company would allow up to 30 days late to pay on line, but would not take partial payments.

I wish you all kinds of luck with this, and I hope I have helped you some.

Whether they are Fundamentalist Assembly of God offshoots, Branch Davidian Adventists, Polygamist Mormons, Baptist, Church of Christ (NOT UCC!!!), or even Muslim. (are there fundamentalist Buddists? Hindus? just wondering). They are ALL scary. Fortunately they are not all 'Joel's Army' recruits.

This sense of being the only ones who know, of having the only true divine connection, in addition to empowering them to arrogance both as a group and as individuals, also provides a type of intellectual security blanket. A place that is safe, separate from the evil world, where free will is not part of the equation (thus relieving them of the need to actually think about anything). Factor in the primary objective of getting to Heaven, as opposed to making the world a better place, and the belief that the End Times are Here and you have fearless automaton armies of God who aren't afraid to die.


We should all be grateful that for the most part they function as individual congregations, and don't form alliances with other rigidly "We are the only ones" groups, except maybe on things like abortion, prayer in schools etc.

Still scary, but what I mean is these offshoot end times AOG (and other) congregations are not going to ally with all of the say Non Instrumentalist Church Of Christ congregations as a group because the One True Way mentality makes them suspicious and unwelcoming of each other.

C of C is very very conservative, but you won't catch them speaking in tongues, casting out demons, or anything like that, at least not the churches where I grew up. Their worship is very respectful, quiet, and plain; the prayer leader will include every sick person,every family suffering a loss, every one they feel needs support (what we call Lounge Vibes) throughout our small community. They do focus on each person attaining Heaven and are into Revelations as a source material but more in an individual way; each person working towards Heaven in their own way. (Some scriptural interpretations vary widely congregation to congregation..I have seen more than one C of C church split in half over the meaning of some Biblical passage or another, with some serious hair splitting going on in the process.)

Do they support social views opposite of mine? Oh yeah. Does it make me nuts that they don't consider you 'saved' or a real Christian if you aren't dunked in THEIR private pool ...OH YEAH !

I don't agree with them but I attend their worship when I visit my sister, and have many life time friendships in that congregation, a major part of my history; I love these people dearly and leave them alone on issues. Not worth the stress, actually.

well, it was good getting THAT off my chest.

was probably Nelson Rockefeller..another person of privilege who chose public service and fought for the betterment of others.

I can't think of any others, right off the bat, but I am way way tired.

and I am really sick of being told we Christians are being discriminated against and pushed around and that In God We Trust is being taken off the money(got that old retread email 4 times this week).

In my opinion we don't deserve to have In God We Trust on our money as long as we have 45 million persons on the brink of financial disaster if a family member has to go to the hospital,

as long as we have homeless families living in shelters, as long as schools can't even provide Kleenex for classrooms,

as long as a mother has to be on welfare because she can't earn enough to pay for babysitters and a roof over her head and food,

as long as choices have to be made between medicine and food..

for as long as these and many other injustices prevail, we are not a Christian Nation.

did see part of it and thought Obama did an excellent job, as did another minister I spoke with ..(both good Democrats, also)

However we didn't talk about it at all in my Sunday School Class. Our program today was our representative to Jurisdictional Conference to give us the LowDown on the Conference, which we have every 4 years. This conference elects new bishops, and conducts other regional business. However.......

This was the one where the big vote was happening regarding SMU and the Library.

Turns out the speaker (and I also consider her a friend) was one of the initial instigators of the movement to get the Think Tank/Policy Institute kicked out of the package. She actually is a Republican and openly admitted to our class (which took a lot of guts in THAT room) that she had only voted Democratic once and that was for JFK. She told us that because she wanted to emphasize her objections to the project are not partisan in nature.

She was steadfastly opposed to the Policy Institute sharing campus with the Library itself much less SMU. Period. As she pointed out, Jimmy Carter's deal is not part of the Library. No other presidential library has anything of that type on the campus with the library and museum, and she went to all 12 of them to see how they were done. Not all of the former presidents have policy institutes, either.

Also the manner in which the whole thing was put through was not in accordance with the Judicial rules of the United Methodist Book of Discipline and therefore there is still a chance to stop it.

She said "Library, Schmibary, don't really care about that part but this other thing just has to go, you know?" If you could have heard her tell this you would have done a lot of laughing because this woman is a hoot; very droll and funny with lots of little editorial asides (former teacher, wish she had been mine).

The Bishop's Judiciary Council of the Jurisdiction still has the opportunity to vote on this in October, and they can tell SMU to withhold the lease on the Policy Institute, and if they do that it is probably as far as they will go, but it is a good start.

anyway this is my favorite piece of Public Art in Fort Worth. I just love this painting. There are many great statues and other things around town but to my knowledge this is the painting. There is a neat mural in Sundance Square of a Chisholm Trail cattle drive



(yeah, I am chicken, couldn't let myself put Public Art in the topic line, I started imagining the copycats it would generate and thought better of it)

I am personally acquainted with many of the farmers receiving subsidies. I don't know about the ones with corporate sounding names, because I don't know who owns them, but on that list are people that I have known for my entire life,including my brother in law, his father, friends of my sister, guys I used to date, relatives, so I know them WELL. Do scroll this all the way through for a small county in a place like Kentucky or Tennessee and then click on the breakdown per year

AND THOSE ARE 10 YEAR FIGURES for the grand totals. I suggest checking out the list farther in and you will see that what looks like a lot of money after breaking it out by crop and year, it isn't so much, especially the smaller independent farmers. My brother in law got $145K according to the summary page...over a 10 year period. The most he ever got in one year was $26K and almost $4K was a disaster subsidy,probably due to drought or maybe a barn fire. I know my sister is living in a nice little house, and they make ends meet and save money but she doesn't have a lot of money to throw around either. She is frugal by nature and necessity.

YES I RESENT THE HELL OUT OF THE CORPORATE FARMS THAT HAVE MOVED IN AND ARE REAPING ALL THIS MONEY THROUGH A PROGRAM DESIGNED ORIGINALLY TO HELP THE SMALL FARMER AND ENCOURAGE PROPER CROP MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION OF THE LAND. but I know what the small farmer faces every day and no matter what their politics, religion etc. I love them deeply and respect them tremendously for doing this work that they truly love. Because make no mistake, they LOVE what they do and they do it well. None of them would consider doing anything else it is in their blood.


HOWEVER I will say this:

the individuals with whom I am acquainted will also be riding the roller coaster of weather and other influences on the other crops they grow. Let's say the farmer has 2000 acres ..the subsidy is based on the farmer NOT planting the entire acreage in one crop every year. The farmers will naturally let a field lie fallow periodically to refresh it, this is good land management. So probably every one of these farms grows some wheat, some soybeans, some corn etc. Crop rotation, etc. They probably also have some type of livestock, cattle, pigs, dairy etc. which has to be paid for and fed.

The subsidies secure the farm against severe losses on the crops that are being grown in the event disaster strikes. Otherwise all the farmers would just collect the subsidy funds and move to Jamaica. Let me tell you, every person whose name I saw on that list that I recognized is a HARD WORKING sunrise to sunset worker, getting dirty, breathing dust, pollen, chemicals, risking severe disabling or fatal injuries, dealing with equipment failures and malfunctions and hoping the rain comes at just the right time and there isn't a flash fire that takes out the corn crop and the tobacco barn doesn't implode ( a major consideration there) and fixing the combine or the seed driller with wire and a prayer, and the increasing cost of fuel and other petroleum based necessities to run the farm ......irrigation costs..

OH yeah the insurance premiums on the house, the barns, the sheds, the equipment, the crops that are in the field, life insurance on the breadwinner. Even with the subsidies, things can get tight. Most of them are paying off notes on land purchased or remortgaged after a bad crop year; many of them also sub-farm land owned by others (old ladies, absentee owners etc) and get a commission on the crop; landowner gets income, farmer gets a cut. So all the expense involved in working someone else's land is theirs ..and we haven't gotten to actual living expenses, this is just business expense

And I know farmers who are working their butts off in the field and also have second jobs. Don't know how much subsidy money they are getting, they are not on the list, unless farm name is how they are listed and I don't recognize it.

So as in everything else there are always two sides to every story. This is my city girl point of view of my roots.

Parade Magazine and it made me cry.
My dad was in the Battle of the Bulge, freezing, stringing communications lines along. As a corporal he was the highest ranking member of his team to survive so he took command and they mushed their way across the snows. My dad was from Kentucky, and he hates snow,

of course I now know WHY he hated snow.

anyway Durning's article really expressed the depression these WWII vets endured after the Bulge and after the war. I obtained a lot of insight into what made my father tick and why he succumbed to severe depression @ age 57 and took his own life. It was one of those really long (for Kentucky anyway)winters, with lots of cold and snow and it just got him. His father had just died and his job had sort of flipped out from under him ..temporarily..he was lifer with USPS so they were going to find him SOMETHING to do until he was 65

but I digress..Durning's writing was spot on for my Dad
Tony Bennett also wrote of his experiences during that dreadful time and how it impacted his life choices later on.