A different dog.....

I decided to get my dog a nice short summer cut since the weather is starting to warm up..... She must have a really thick coat because i have noticed that she seems "happier" in cooler weather and always finds the coolest spot on the floor to lay on.....

So I took her in on Saturday. When I went to pick her up, I was told that she did not like the haircut at all and she was trying to bite the groomer when he got down to her legs which was a total surprise to me since she is always such a good natured friendly dog. My other surprise was how she looked!



After, I got over the intial shock of bringing in a black dog and getting a grey one back (!!) the cut is growing on me. The funny think is, she looks like a totally different kind of dog now -- more hound like. And apparently (hopefully) she will turn back black as her hair grows out.

I still think she's cute!

Uh hmmmmmmm!!!!

Happy Birthday Brunsli!!!!!

What fun we've had! To many more years to come!

Kitchen overachiever.....

I am a kitchen overachiever....... I started my interest in cooking when I discovered that I could give my parents an anniversary gift by cooking them dinner and get them to pay for everything!

Now, I say this but I think the seeds were really sowed much earlier than this given that the menu I chose for my first solo endeavor included steak, homemade crescent rolls and a black forest cake from scratch that involved soaking cherries in kirsch (what 11 year old knows what kirsch is!?!? I definitely needed help purchasing that!) My mother is not really into cooking. In fact, my dad has been the primarily chef in my parents house since about 1990. She likes to say "I cooked the first 25 years, now it is your father's turn!" And turns out, my dad actually likes to cook and grill and smoke meat. He cooks dinner every night. I do remember, or rather, there are pictures of my mom and I making cookies when I was young and I had the hugest smile on my face.

But honestly, I think I get my love of cooking from my grandmother, my mother's mother. I was lucky enough to live 5 minutes drive from my maternal grandparents for the first 17-18 years of my life. It was the greatest! There is nothing like grandparents! Every holiday we would go to my grandparents for dinner where my grandmother would cook this huge feast. I have managed over the years to keep a couple of her recipes going and come with a number of originals and favorites of my own but over the years cooking has truly become my creative outlet.

I have learned over the years that this interest is not quite typical. I actually like grocery shopping! Sometimes I get inspired by an unusual ingredient that I find in the farmer's market... It really is one of my passions.

So, when my parents told me that we were going to go to a friend of theirs for easter dinner this year and that I needed to contribute a side or dessert or something, of course I couldn't decide.... So being the overachiever that I am, I made 2 sides and 2 desserts! (and my mom made my grandmother's famous Monkey Bread and some cookies.) It was quite a spread and all were fat and happy!

Here is a look at my desserts, Lemon Pound Cake with Strawberries and Cherry Amaretto Cheesecake (an RDP original!)

Watch out, Kermit! It's getting easier and easier to be green!

Okay, I don't want to get a reputation of being the tree-hugger of our little blogger community but it is Earth Day/Week so I thought I would just pass on these links.......

http://www.walmart.com/green - purchase CFL lightbulbs and clothing made with organic cotton

And please don't think that this in no way indicates an endorsement of any of their employment policies.... these products can be bought at other stores.......

Earth Friendly Goods - Sells items like this organic cotton/soy blend skirt and other earth friendly goods.

Under the Canopy - clothing made from organic cotton and soy fabric

"Lucy - Cotton/Soy workout clothing

Moonrise Jewelry - This collection features designs made entirely of ethically-sourced materials and Fair Trade Semi-precious Gemstones.

Green Karat- offer jewelry made from recycled precious metals to reuse the waste of extractive gold mining.

Sumiche Jewelry Co. - Sells handcrafted fine jewelry made from Certified Fair Trade/Eco-Gold and Platinum and conflict-free diamonds.

So consider buying these items when you have a need for clothing, jewelry, lightbulbs etc.... It will send a message to the market that there is a need for non-extractive, safely and less environment destructive goods and hopefully lead companies to change some of their manufacturing processes.

Call me handy!

This morning, determined to get back into the home improvement state of mind, I got up and decided to install the new touch screen programmable (why does programmable have 2 "m"s???) thermostats that I had bought a month or so ago to replace the existing ones I have.

Now, the ones that came with the house are no slouches. They were state of the art back when they were installed 20+ years ago but they don't have the ability for 7 day programming which can be quite an energy saver, especially since I often forget to turn down then thermostat when I leave.

So, armed with screwdriver, hammer and drill, I decided to get to it! First step, head down to the circuit box and turn off the power...... Okay, these breakers aren't very well marked.... Sounds like a project for another day..... Then, the words of my friend's husband who is a contractor resonated in my head...... "I never turn off the electricity when I change thermostats..." While, I am in no way and advocate of this, it is contrary to all instructions that people give you, I decided to give it a try...... I figured I would be really careful and, well rubber doesn't conduct electricity, right? I will just wear these rubber gloves I have! (A little bit of knowledge really can be dangerous!)

So, I followed the rest of the directions to a "t". Labeled the wires, connected them in order, installed the base, tested everything and to my joy... it worked!!! :-) I felt so empowered that I did the other one as well.

So now, I have 2 cool, new, touch screen, 7 day programmable thermostats in my house! And I didn't electrocute myself! Just call me Handy RDP!

Now I just have to figure out how to program them!!!

Joys of owning a puppy and the saga of the poopy foot!

So I was excited to get some relatively consistent warm weather this week and decided to plant the flowers in the flower pots by my front door that I had purchased right before a freeze came through a couple weeks ago. I had been, with limited success, keeping them alive in the garage until I could get a chance to plant them. Last night I did.... I was relatively pleased with myself! I got out my garden gloves (first times really used, except for the hellish weekend I spent cutting down kudzu last year ---Kudzu is the devil's spawn!!) and I used the Miracle Gro potting soil that I had picked up at Home Depot. As the sun started to set, I stood back, pleased with my efforts, with visions of huge over-flowing flowers tumbling from the boxes in the next month or two...

This morning I let the puppy out in the morning as usual. But, when I went to let her in later on, to my horror, her little mouth and nose were covered with....... Miracle Gro soil!!! :-O Yes, my cute little puppy had proceeded to tear apart about half of the plants I had planted the night before! :-(

I couldn't really discipline her for this, although I was rather upset, because dogs don't really get discipline unless you correct them when they are in the act. So, the most I could do while I was sweeping up dirt and looking for plant fragments with root stems to re-plant was scold her if she came near anything with I was doing my clean up....

Then, I took her to doggie day care (yes, I know.... more on my slightly neurotic dog mommy habits later) and as we were approaching the door, unbenounced to me, the puppy stepped in a pile of dog poop that another owner had so lovingly left as they were bringing their dog in for the day.

The puppy is very, very excited to go to day care and play with all of her friends. In fast, her starts getting excited before we even leave the house! So, by the time we get there, she is really wound up. She was especially wound up this morning, so much so that she proceeded to pee right as we got in the door. (sigh!) The owner can to get her and get a mop to mop everything up. So he is holding the puppy's leash with one hand and mopping with the other.

Meanwhile, a woman is standing at the front desk. I recognize her because she lives somewhere near my neighborhood and often walks her big black Great Dane by my house. We are talking and then..... to my horror..... the puppy jumps up, while on the leash that the owner is holding and plants the poopy foot right on the back of this woman's sweater!! I see this all happening in slow motion........ Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! And there we were, me with my shame and embarrassment and her with her poopy sweater as she was on her way to work! (Ugh!) So I tried to help her get it out. The day care place had some stuff that got the smell out and most of the stain but I felt so bad..... At least she was a dog owner and could be a little bit more understanding.....

I would have offered to pay for dry cleaning or something but it wasn't really a dry clean type of sweater. I have decided that the next time I see the owner again, I am going to pay for a day of day care for the woman........ That, and that puppy and I are going back to obedience classes starting next week to work on not jumping!

Despite it all, how can you not love such a cute face!!

A little change of pace....

Inspired by the fast that my hair didn't fall down when I fell asleep with it up after taking a shower last night, I decided to wear my hair up to work today! I am typically the kind of person who, when they find something that works, sticks with it until it doesn't work anymore so typically I haven't diverged from hair down or back in a ponytail at work. But hey, who said there is anything wrong with changing it up every once in a while.

So here we have it! And I happened to get this cool spiral effect going on too... Who knows if I will be able to duplicate it again!


I will say that about mid day my neck started getting a little tired! My hair doesn't typically feel heavy to me but it when I have it in a bun it is just so much more compact and concentrated...

Too many.....

Another case of unarmed black men being shot to death by police officers who are supposed to protect and serve......

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/04/15/0415manshot.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild25=p6g6Gj6dGV1NYpPSFJ3GsHBmMwmPmRW0XWhLT1h9tPwJhX2vwkBz!233271245&UrAuth=`N]NUObNZUbTTUWUXUVUZT[UUUWU]U_UZUaUcUcTYWYWZV&urcm=y

The reason why police officers have guns is that they are supposed to have gone through training so that they know how to envoke protocal in highly charged situations and to only use these guns as a last resort.... But there are too many stories of inoccent poor black people being shot and/or killed in circumstances where quite likely no shots should have been fired at all. How does an unarmed man get shot in the back of the head and killed in the front of a club....... Or an elderly woman, scared to death, brutally shot when her house is bumrushed in the middle of the night by police serving a "no-knock" warrant because of "confirmed" drug activity. Or a man, at his bachelor party, shot at 50 times by cops with no evidence of shot being fired at the police.

This is not a Scarface movie! This is real life. I understand that being a police officer can be extremely stressful but the reason why they are allowed to patrol the streets with guns is that we assume that they will conduct themselves with higher standards than gansters!

Doing good for the environment.... daily and palatably

So, I recently came across this website called Ideal Bite, which provides readers with "bite sized ideas for light green living." The site is designed to provide fun, conventient tips for how people with busy lives can do little things that have a big effect on our environment. The information is designed not to be scary or require a lot of sacrifice but to provide reasonable things that regular people can easily do to make an impact. They also provide "biters," as they call their readers, with daily email "bites" delivered to their email box.


So, check them out by clicking the logo below. You can do good for the environment in easy ways without having to gett out your granola, birkenstocks & tie-dyed tshirts!

My thoughts on the latest media Imess....

So I had wanted to post about this mess with Don Imus and his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team but I didn't get a chance to yesterday and I had a feeling that one of my other blogger compatriots would get to the subject before I did --- and it happened. Bygbaby has done a great job of summarizing and quoting the comments by and about Don Imus in the past week in his post from April 8th. I know that when I first heard that something was said about the team and that they were called "hardcore hos" and nappy-headed hos" I was annoyed but not as offended as when I heard the entire conversation and all the comments that Imus made. As Bygbaby, mentioned he did go as far as comparing the Rutgers and Tennessee women's teams to the "Jigaboos" and "Wannabes" from Spike Lee's School Daze but he did additionally talk about all the tattoos on the Rutgers women and also went on to contrast to how the Tennessee women were "so cute." So now I am pissed......

The Backlash
So, initially, Imus has gotten a two-week suspension however, it won't start until Monday. And there has started to be some other public backlash, albeit small...... Cal Ripken, Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles baseball player, declined to fulfill his appearance on the show scheduled for this week in light of these comments. (It is also worth noting that John McCain, Republican Presidential Candidate, said that an apology was good enough for him and has decided to still come on the Imus show as planned. He's not the one who needs the apology!!! Is this the kind of sensitivity you want in a president???) Staples & P&G have canceled their advertising on his radio show and MSNBC just announced that they will cancel the TV simulcast of his radio show in light of his comments. Barack Obama has called for Imus' firing and C. Vivian Stringer, the coach of the Rutgers women team, held a dignified press conference on the matter and the team has agreed to meet with Imus on the matter. But what I keep wondering is how come the NCAA has not come out to comments on these comments made about their players??? I would expect them to at least issue some statement taking about about how they don't support derogatory comments made about college athletes etc...... What signal is that sending about how it supports its athletes? And what about Pat Summit? Shouldn't she be making some comment in support of their rival team and the coach who has been a good friend of hers for 30 years??? Well, I suspect more reaction is yet to come but I am disappointed that it so slow in coming.....

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In an example of exactly why Imus' comments should not be taken lightly and should be approached with the appropriate consequences, a DJ in Allentown, PA thought it would be cute to make the phrase in his station's "Phrase that Pays" contest on Tuesday, you guessed it, "I'm a nappy-headed ho!" Three of the listeners who called were awarded tickets to a NASCAR promotion at a local club. Nice, huh? He was subsequently fired, with the justification that "he uttered the slur in a premeditated manner, 'with full knowledge of the reaction to Don Imus' use of the exact same phrase.'"

Puppy's first snow!

So there was quite an accumulation of snow on the ground by the time I woke up this morning. I still think this is totally surreal......


Snow in April!?!?






Snow in these locks that had just been basking in the natural glow of the beautiful Jamaican sun!


This was also, however, I realized, the first time my dog has ever seen snow! So it was fun to watch her "discover" it for the first time!






Running






up the stairs









Eating

Snow beard!

Okay.... I can't deal.....

A little over a week ago I was in the fun and sun of Jamaica and now I am driving through snow...... :-l This is not right!

If I click my heels three times, think I will end up back in Negril?!?!?

The pot of gold at the end of the.......beach!

In Negril, our hotel was situated approximately right in the middle of the beach. The first day we got there, in the spirit of exploration, we walked to one end of the beach and back. During the course of this "short" walk of about 6 miles, I think we were approached, hassled and hit on by no less than 50 people, with absolutely no exaggeration! I think they could see our pale, tan-less bodies from a mile away, a sure sign of fresh-off-the-plane tourists!

So, a day or so later, when we were somewhat bronzer, Brunsli and I decided to walk the other way down the beach for a little exercise. So we took off to the north, this time our walk took us past a uninhabited section on the beach, closer to the road where there were no hotels. Part of this section actually had no beach at all, but once we got past the section we arrived at a beautiful, secluded section of beach with a nice large section of shallow ocean, so we decided to take a swim!


Oh yes, I forgot! We also happened upon a naked black man, laying out on a beach chair in the sun. :-0 Sorry, no pictures! We actually just tried to walk by quickly, eyes forward.....

Anyway, after our swim, we continued on, walking up the beach. At this point, we hit the all-inclusive part of the beach. Sandals, Beaches etc... Everytime, we crossed over the property line onto another resort, a nosey security guard came out and asked us where we were staying....

"Excuse me! Where are you staying?!? Are you staying at this resort?!?"

Now, there is no law against walking on the beach and I am pretty sure that we do not, by any stretch of the imagination, look like Jamaican hustlers or prostitutes..... After being asked this for about the 3rd time, we started to get a little attitude! We are just walking on the beach! Trying to enjoy our walk in the sun! Interestingly, when we replied with attitude, the whole demeanor of the guards changed. "Oh, no, there is no problem! Okay, enjoy your afternoon"

Sigh........

At the end of the beach, after four miles or so, was the infamous Hedonism, called "the Zoo" by Jamaicans ...... We, the only clothed people in the place (besides the folks who worked there) walked through, again trying not to let our eyes linger anywhere...... Talk about a let down! A whole bunch of older, pudgy and sagging pink (and sometimes red) white people! Nothing interesting to see.....

We crossed through the gate at the end, and there were these people standing there....

They introduced themselves, offered us a seat in the shade, and proceeded to offer us something to smoke (which we don't do, of course), some drinks - beer, champagne, water- and sheparded us around the ocean on a floating tube/raft!

Jamaica is magic!

If this is how you get rewarded for exercising, I would probably do it more often.

Sunset.......

Can you say "Aahhhhhhh!"

For the sake of fashion.....

So on my first day back to work after vacation, I decided that i wanted to look super cute and wear something to show off my tan. My slight dilemma was that it is too cool to wear something short sleeved..... So I decided to wear my teal skirt and shirt. I have recently discovered that teal looks pretty good on me. So I pulled together my outfit and then realized that the shoes I have that go with the outfit have impressively high heels (see left).....

What the h*$!, I have to wear the matching shoes..... Right?

So, by the end of the day, my feet were screaming! Probably not the best choice after a week of wearing flip flops........

Ah, the things we do for the sake of fashion........

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Addendum:

Oops! I almost forgot! My matching hairtie!

A gift from a friend.....

I got this bracelet from a friend in Jamaica. It is not particularly feminine but it is silver (in color) and I sorta like the juxtaposition of functional and ornamental. ;-)

Yes, it is made from a bike chain........

Jamiacan hospitality....

We had a great time in Jamiaca and I just wanted to thank all those we met for the Jamaican hospitality! Yes, there were the fair share of folks hawking watersports, souvenirs and that infamous Jamaican plant, but there were also a number of gracious people who made our trip even more of a pleasure. There are many more people than depicted here who looked out for us and shared the Jamaican love, including King, Needle, Kevin and Mark 2 at the Idle Awhile bar.

Special shout out to Still Waters who traversed the island (more than once!) to hang out with us during our visit!