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Nailing Jello to the Wall

As most of you know by now, I've decided to move our blog to new digs at WordPress. This blog was one of many -- hundreds? thousands? -- blogs that got caught in a Blogger "spam blog filter." I don't think there's anything devious about this occurrence. I think instead that Blogger (i.e., Google) overreacted to reports that they are the number 1 host of malware. I think, basically, they turned the spam filter to "eleven," which any Spinal Tap fan knows, is more powerful than "ten."

I was considering moving to WordPress anyway, because it's a much more robust platform for us to continue our conversations. Yesterday when Blogger locked me out, I decided it was time to take the plunge. But as you can see, only 24 hours after I received the email saying I had been locked out and could not post until further notice, Blogger reviewed this blog and we're back up and running. In the end, that's not bad for a free service.

Nevertheless, please join me at our new home, conveniently called:

Nailing Jello to the Wall.

So, Sue J, what's going on?

We have hit the ground running since we got back from vacation. The top of Killington Mountain seems like a distant memory. *Loud sigh*

As you may remember, just before we left we had a bit of a plumbing catastrophe that we uncovered in our innocuous remodeling of the upstairs bathroom. Well, $500 later and three plumbing issues have been resolved. So yesterday Unnamed Partner and I finished laying down the subfloor and the backerboard. Thats sounds like so little work, but when you factor in the 98 degree heat outside and the fact that we just have window AC units, the number of times we had to go down to the basement for this tool or that, or carrying pieces of subfloor (plywood) and backerboard (which is really heavy) upstairs. (Oh yeah, and the requisite trip to Home Depot in the middle of everything.) We were so beat that we actually fell into bed before it was dark outside. And when I say we "fell into bed" it's not quite like the old days. We were both asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

If you want romance on a Saturday night, don't renovate a bathroom all day long.

But, I'm skipping over the fact that Unnamed Partner treated us to Indian carryout, and that I had my all time favorite comfort food, Chicken Korma, accompanied by a delicious Bass Ale. What is it about hard physical labor that makes good food and good beer taste all that much better?

I know this post sounds a bit random, but I guess I'm trying to explain why my recent posts have not been very substantive. I haven't been very good about scheduling my time lately, so emails have gone unanswered and posts just roll around in my head.

We're headed off to church in a few minutes, and I know I will have some things to write about when we get back. It's an Episcopal Church in our neighborhood that we started attending when Unnamed Partner's brother, known to the blog world as Scepter66, began to lose his battle with pancreatic cancer. The priest, a woman, came to visit him and we all just fell in love with her. Well, she's leaving this church this month and moving to Connecticut. And I just found out recently her history with this particular congregation before we started attending. Seems she stood up and publicly backed the Episcopal Church's decision to ordaining a gay man as bishop -- and a third of the congregation left. She's been trying to rebuild the congregation ever since.

UPDATED: Sen. Obama, I'm trying, but you're not making it easy for me

UPDATE: MyBarackObama.com is back up and running. I encourage anyone who's as frustrated by Obama's vote on FISA as I am to sign up for the "President Obama, Please Get FISA Right" group. So far, it seems to be a fairly polite and articulate discussion of the issues. And hopefully if enough of us object to Obama's stand on FISA, our collective voice may be heard.

***

Yes, it's true that I wore an Obama sticker when I marched in the 4th of July parade. The next president of the United States will be either John McCain or Barack Obama, so ....

Part of the reason why I felt comfortable with the sticker is that I had some really good conversations with my cousin in Vermont who is a strong Obama supporter. I felt that he respected my previous support of Hillary Clinton, and that he understood my concerns with Obama's recent stands on issues such as FISA. In fact, my cousin encouraged me to go to the Obama web site, where many progressives who are displeased with this recent move to the center have been leaving comments urging Obama to reconsider some of his recent statements. Enough people have been commenting that it has made the news. Computer World reports:

In a development that shows how users can take Web 2.0 sites in unexpected directions, a group of Barack Obama supporters is using his presidential campaign's official social network to protest the Illinois senator's stance on a bill extending the so-called warrantless wiretapping program.

The social networking group set up on the MyBarackObama.com site to urge Obama to vote against the extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) had attracted more than 24,000 member entries as of last Friday, although some of the entries appeared to be duplicates.

So I thought that I'd check it out this morning and see if I left a thoughtful and polite comment, would I be attacked as a "troll" and all the rest of the things I was called at Americablog, Huffington Post, and the rest. Unfortunately, this is what you get today when you go to mybarackobama.com:

I'll keep checking. Hopefully it'll be back up soon ....

Perhaps I should go away more often

Although I am a little disappointed to come home and see that you all did not in fact finish the bathroom for us, I am also quite relieved to see that there is no evidence of a jello-shot party here, either!

What can I say? We had a wonderful time, and with only occasional opportunities to go online -- plus the fact that we forgot the cord to download from the camera to the laptop, so I couldn't post any photos -- there just wasn't much time to blog. I thought about blogging quite a bit, and went into my own withdrawal, there is no doubt. But it was also nice to fully experience the moment, without the constant thought in the back of my head ("Oh -- I've got to post about that!") Bloggers, you know what I'm sayin' ....

Well, now all photos have been downloaded and you, my friends, are in grave danger of me deciding that "you must look at slides from my vacation," as we used to say back in the old days. I won't subject you to that. But I'll show you a couple of examples why I was too busy to write:


This is me at "The Falls of Lana" near Lake Dunmore in Vermont. (I love that name -- I kept looking for The Lady of the Lake!) The hiking trails were easy and well maintained, but of course we crawled over rocks to get down to the water. The water was so cool and clear, Unnamed Partner took off her shorts and went for a dip, but I'm not allowed to post those photos ...

We took the gondola to the top of Killington and walked around up there (which sure is a lot easier to get around when there's no snow, but I guess if I were a better skier I'd appreciate the unbelievably long trails a little more...) There was no wi fi at the top of Killington ....

And you know we ate well on our journey, because we always do! Most of the time we stayed with my relatives in Rutland, Vermont, and in Odessa, New York, and they all took such good care of us! We had many great meals and conversations. On our jaunt out to Odessa, we also stopped in at the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca:

I have much more to tell you about, and some more images to post (including me marching with the Rutland County Democrats in the Brandon Vermont 4th of July Parade, which is led by Warren Kimble. And yes, I was wearing an Obama sticker. I'm all about taking back the White House -- but I'm still going to take him to task on FISA, gun control and the death penalty.)

Thank you for indulging me in this absence, and for keeping each other entertained while I was gone. I always tell people that I enjoy blogging because I've met the most interesting people here! Honestly, I was worried that if I didn't post for 10 days you all might wander away and never come back. But to be in such a serene place -- both physically and spiritually -- I knew I'd just let it be, and see what happened.

O.k. But for now, I've got a bunch of laundry to do.

While you wait ....

Hectic day today, so I'll leave you with this nice meeting of "my boys," Fritz the Dog and his BFF Earl.

As many of you remember, Earl the cat was taken in by Unnamed Partner and me a few months ago -- at which time Fritz seemed to feel he had found his new best buddy. Unfortunately, the other two cats of the house did not share Fritz's enthusiasm, so Earl moved on to live with Big Brother and the Parents. Earl is now living the life of Reilly doing quite well there. We went for a visit last weekend and it was nice to see that once a BFF, always a BFF!

Hopefully I'll be back before the day's up with another post I'm working on, but you know how jobs can be. Sometimes they really get in the way of things!

This is not my beautiful wife! How did I get here?

Well, it's getting close to the end of the month, so let's take a look at the wacky world of key word searches. This month's most interesting search words were:

• whitest white man
• what do you do with a drunken sailor tanker
• jello heiress (which I am not, by the way)
• Robin Roberts
• lesbian gang fights back (oh yeah, the old 'lesbian gang' stories ... me an' my peeps!)
• jello high fructose corn syrup (oh no — am I subconsciously endorsing HFCS?)
• 1975 CHRYSLER CORDOBA
• strike at Kos

laughter yoga in abu dhabi

Let me explain the title of this post.

As you may or may not know, this is a relatively new blog. It began in its original form in May 2007, with some updates over the past summer. I must say, I’m still amazed and humbled that readers return here to see what I’ve written. Thank you! I love reading your comments. (Well, usually, that is. Some of the comments on the tiger attack story got a little creepy and so for the first time I had to close the comments. Sheesh. I mean, I’m not Andrew Sullivan – I want to read your comments!)

I’m always interested in increasing our readership, so occasionally I check sitemeter to find out how you get here. If you have a blog, you probably do that, too. I’m pleased to be listed on several blogrolls around the universe, and occasionally one of my posts will be reposted elsewhere. But many people simply land here after doing a Google search, and I love to see the words they typed into Google. It’s a fascinating, and sometimes scary, peek into the minds of you readers. Here are some of the more interesting words that readers searched on to land here:

write a poem about jello that start with j
vodka
laughter yoga in abu dhabi
benedict gays new year threat
core values neo pagan
get rid caucus
vicious grannies
obam will lose in navada
huckabee son dog strangle
nevada caucus sour grapes
fred thompson dog york sc
god every means page

I have no idea what that last one means or why you ended up here. But I don't think you stuck around. Or did you?

Image thanx to digitalheretex.com.

Bad blogger! Bad!

Posting will be a little light today. The icy roads this morning meant my university opened at 10 am, and — bad blogger that I am — I chose to sleep in rather than post.

So now the day is in full swing, and I'm a little behind in my writing. But please do check back, because I've got lots of things to write about!