I've moved

Due to much consternation with the Blogger site and a change in email addresses, etc. I've moved. Dusting off this one proved more trouble than it's worth so if you're still reading this years ignored babble, you will need to find me at my new cyber-residence at Wordpress henceforth. Click here for the redirect

Time to dust off the old blog

Wow. Has it really been a year and a half since I last attempted this blog thing? Where does the time go? Since my last post, I've acquired 2 grandkids, more outside kitties than I can count, switched from a quilt-aholic to a knitting fiend, divorced my gall bladder, purchased a new car, celebrated my 10th anniversary while still being baffled at how so many people seem to hate marriage, visited Phoenix, Legoland in Carlsbad, CA and Washington, DC, completed both my 12th and 13th seasons as a Civil War reenactor and acquired my 3rd sewing machine (first was my mom's old Bernina. We've been in therapy for years but can't seem to get along, my 2nd is Tess, blogged about here, 3rd is Abagail, an 1893 Singer hand crank who sews like a champ and makes me very happy, though I did have to promise my husband I'd only grow the collection if I can find one OLDER than the current models). Oh, and I've arrived in the world- as of this past weekend, I have a refrigerator with ice and water in the door. All things considered life is good. So I think I'm gonna try this blog thing again to keep track of all the things that make it good. Probably with the occasional rant thrown in cuz, well, it's what I do. But mostly I think I'll stick to the things that make me happy. Saved a few old posts in my archives for various reasons and we'll start the story again from here and see where it goes. Stay tuned for more updates!

How much is $787Billion anyway?

I've spent the last several days trying to wrap my head around this enormous figure our congresscritters have just agreed to spend on a bill no one read in full before passing it- hard to do because I don't really have much of a reference for a million of anything, let alone a billion, so once you start talking hundreds of billions, how is the average person supposed to comprehend that number? Actually, I think "they" bank on our not comprehending it- it lets them get away with more and more spending with less and less accountability because we've lost perspective on just how big the number really is. But I digress- the point of today's post is to put this number into terms I can understand so here goes...

The first thing that came to mind is my favorite airplane- the F22 Raptor, the single greatest bit of flying machinery ever assembled in the world. The sound of an F22 flying past is one of the coolest things I've ever heard but that sound came with a hefty price tag, $137.5 million dollars a piece. Still a big number I can't quite wrap my head around, but I did figure out that you could buy 5725 F22s for the amount of money congress just mortgaged our future for. 5725 I can understand. If Lockheed Martin & Boeing turned out one of these planes a day it would take them over 15 years to fill the order.

In keeping with my aircraft theme, I gave the Harrier a run through, too. Probably the 2nd coolest sounding airplane I've ever year- that puppy will rattle your bones during the vertical take off and landings! At a price tag of around $35,000,000, our armed forces could order up 22,485 of 'em- at a rate of production of one per day, that would take just over 61 years to complete.

Still awfully large numbers and impractical expenditures so I took another approach- Lambeau Field... At capacity, the greatest football stadium on earth currently holds 72,928 people. I've been to Packer games and they're all sell outs so this seemed like a good reference point to me. Next trick was deciding what to use as examples, I decided on houses, cars and bread since all are things we can relate to.

First houses- the median price for a home in the US is around $230k. $787billion would buy 3,421,739 houses or approximately 47 houses PER PERSON at Lambeau field on any given home game. I can't keep one house clean so what the hell I'd do with 47 of them I don't know...

Cars- Using an average sticker price of $25,000, we're talking 31,480,000 cars. That means every man, woman and child in Lambeau field on game day could buy 431 cars and have some change left over for gas. If you drove each car for a week at a time, it would take over 8 years before you'd have to repeat the rotation

Bread- I like the good stuff, costs around $2.49 a loaf at the local grocery store. I can't imagine what 316,064,257,028 loaves of bread would look like but I do know that every single person in Lambeau would have to buy 159 loaves per day every day for 80 years in order to buy that much bread. If every man, woman and child in the United States were to buy 1 loaf of bread per day, it would take 2.85 years for us to buy that much bread. I dunno about anyone else but I don't have the freezer space to store that much!

Just for fun, I also looked at how much per day folks would have to spend before they hit the $787 billion of our money Congress signed away without ever reading the bill they passed. Again, using the crowd at Lambeau as my reference point, each and every single person at the game would have to spend $396.75 per day for the next 80 years. Somehow, I suspect 73,000 people spending $400 a day for the next 80 years would do our economy a lot more good than Congress spending it ever will...

Things I'm Thankful For

Someone on my quilt board yesterday said November is "Thankful Month" and posted the question, what are you thankful for.  So this got me thinkin'...  There's always the easy stuff, family, friends, husband, roof over my head, you know the drill, but what about the "deeper" stuff...  So here goes my list of things I'm thankful for and why:

Home.  Beyond the usual roof over my head, I am thankful for my home- most everyone has a house, but a home is so much more.  It is certainly not the house of my dreams but it is the home where my dreams live.  A place of love, comfort, joy...  Everything that makes life worth living resides within those walls. 

Work.  First, it's good to have a job, especially when the job market's not so good.  But more importantly, I LIKE my job (most days) and I work for and with good people.  Yes, we all have our days where the sandbox isn't big enough for all of us, but for the most part, it's a good environment. People get along. There's not a lot of temper tantrums, back stabbing or gossip mongering. And the day is seldom dull.  So all in all, there's a lot to be thankful there, too.

Freedom.  It really is great to be able to love or hate things at will and not be afraid to say so.  It's amazing that people put their lives on the line every single day so that I can continue to have that right and for them I will always be thankful.  

Infertility.  Ask me 8 years ago if I'd have thought this and I'd have told you you're friggin' nuts (though probably not so politely), but as I reflect on those years, I know that infertility has introduced so many wonderful things into my life, I guess in the end it's not the worst thing to ever happen to me.  It's why I've met some of my very best friends.  It's why I've been able to pursue one of my true passions, quilting, to my heart's content.  It's shown me there's nothing in the world my husband and I can't overcome because we can lean on each other and get through it.  Most of all, it's taught me to live and appreciate everything I have instead of dwell on things I don't.  

So that's my list for today.  Will have to keep thinking about and see if anything else comes to mind.  

One of life's coolest experiences

I had one of the best lunch hours of my life today.  A friend & co-worker invited me along for her ultrasound today!  She's almost 35 weeks pregnant so baby's fully developed and just workin' on readying those little lungs and growing now so it was really cool!  No doubt at all that she's a she- you could definitely tell what those parts were!  And because she's getting herself ready for life on the outside, the tech pointed out the chest movements while she "practices" breathing.  How freakin' cool is that? Getting to see the chambers in her heart work while listening to it beat- I know I'm probably not typing anything most of you haven't already seen with your own pregnancies but for me, this was truly an awesome experience I've never had before and I feel quite honored for the opportunity to see life in it's absolute most innocent state.  Can't wait to meet her on the outside now! 

It's been an exciting week

So first I find out I get to be a "grandma" then I discover grandkitties! How much fun is that?

We have a pair of stray cats that have been living in the neighbor's back yard for several months. We've sort of adopted them this summer and have been feeding them (I know, bad us) but have been surprised that the little female hasn't had a litter of kittens- Rich even suggested she may have been someones indoor cat, fixed and at some point let out to fend for herself since we know the male cats been, shall we say friendly, but we never saw any signs of pregnancy in her.

This morning as I was getting ready for work I was quite surprised to see mom come around the corner with 3 little kittens! One is the exact shade of gray as Dad, one jet black and a third I don't remember the coloring on. My guess is they're at least a month old which makes me sad because it means we're unlikely to ever be able to get a hold of them to socialize them and find 'em good homes- months of visiting with mom and dad (Spot and Shadow to us) has gotten us no closer to them than a minimum distance of a yard so I don't expect we'll have any better luck with the kittens but they sure are cute!

Of course this being fall and us living in town, we are going to have to do the inevitable and figure out a way to catch the family and either take them to the humane society or relocate them to a friend's farm, but for today at least, I'm so entertained to discover the cute little things I can't help but smile!

This crazy little thing called life

Once in a while life has a funny way of giving you what you want.  For several years now I've joked about how I'm looking to adopt a nice 25 year old who's married and ready to have kids.  Since the fertility gods don't seem to like me I think it's the perfect solution- already grown so none of those ugly teenage years, through school so no big education bills to afford and already married so I don't have to fork out for the wedding but ready to give me a few grandkids. How friggin' perfect does that sound?  

Well, turns out the joke's not so far from reality...  Found out last night that one of our nieces is expecting.  She's right in the wheel house age wise and since her dad passed away last year, we've kinda become the surrogate parents- the one's who helped sort through her dad's house and wrap up his estate, who she introduces the new boyfriend to and that sort of thing. Not so married, but, well, in this day and age that hardly seems a requirement anymore.  So apparently, at the ripe old age of 35, I'm gonna be a "grandma".  That's a big ol' HA to my mom who had to wait until she was darn near 60! (oh wait, don't tell her I said that...) 

Now the funny part is there is a tiny little part of me that once again feels like I've gotten the shaft... Do things in the "correct order"- college, job, marriage, try to have a kid and look what I don't have to show for it but I really am 99% excited! This is gonna be so much fun!!!