text: Clash'N Slash: Worlds Away is a sequel to our highly addictive arcade space shooter where players must defend the planet from aliens with a variety of space based weapons and power-ups. In Worlds Away, as in our original Clash'N Slash, you must defend your planet from pesky alien invaders arriving from all over the galaxy. This time, alien hordes are more diverse and clever featuring more than 70 enemy types and 12 huge bosses. But worry not, as there are two brave heroes on your side! Barry Barnes (codename: Clash) and Liz Valentine (codename: Slash) are there to help you save humanity. There are eight different planets that must be saved and there are tons of weapons, upgrades, and power-ups to make the game versatile and fun. In the end, there are three difficulty settings and a survival mode to satisfy both novice and hardcore players.


text:
The Earths Magnetic Field is the Medium for all of the Electromagnetic Transmissions ; THUS
Electromagnetic Transmissions travel inside from One Overlapping Magnetic Field (such as earths) to Another Planets magnetic field. These Magnetic Fields are connected by overlapping each others magnetic field making one continuous magnetic field.
The earths magnetic field is the medium for all of electromagnetic transmissions.
This answers the question " what are the means of transferring electromagnetic signals from Point A through space to point B ?
Signals from the Earths transmitters and other methods of transmission are attached to the Earth's magnetic field. Fields from planets intersect the Earth's magnetic Field.
For example, a signal from a transmitter at any location on earth becomes attached to the Earth's magnetic field. Once in this field, it can be detected by using a tuned Circuit and converted to useful Applications. The Earth's magnetic field extends outward from Earth into space. A planet's magnetic field then intercepts (overlaps) a portion of the earth's magnetic field and both fields are connected.
This provides a path through their magnetic Fields to transfer data from Earth to planets in outer space.
Signals from a planet use interconnecting magnetic fields from planet to Earth.
A test was conducted using a vacuum within a bell jar. The Earth's magnetic field successfully penetrated the vacuum and resulted in a magnetic sensing instrument inside the bell jar to indicate a magnetic field.
The Earths Magnetic Field is the Medium for all of the Electromagnetic Transmissions.
Earth is Saturated with a Magnetic Field. We Live in this Magnetic Field.
[divider scroll_text=""]
Robert J. Bartol, Jr.
Phone (208) 866-7895
Boise Idaho
[divider scroll_text=""]

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Roof Maintenance & Repair
Maintenance costs are usually the second-largest single expense component for buildings… right behind utility costs. A prudent building owner, property manager or engineer, wouldn't think of going more than six months without servicing an HVAC system or having elevators or boilers serviced. That said, it's surprising how many building professionals completely ignore one of the biggest building wear items until symptoms of system failure have been reported. If your first roof inspection is in response to a tenant or employee complaining about roof leaks, your options are likely to be limited and costly. Roof replacement is never inexpensive and when the expense is unexpected, it can have a devastating effect on your operating budget.
A yearly roof inspection gives prudent building managers and owners an accurate assessment of the current roof conditions, a road map for needed maintenance and repairs to preserve or extend the life of the existing roofing system, and a valuable financial plan to help accurately prepare and time future roof replacement projects… on budget and on your own schedule.
Annual roof inspections also provide low-cost insurance against the unforeseen expense of water intrusion that may cause damage to a building's structure or contents. It's also a great hedge against potentially expensive roof replacement costs associated with a hastily planned project. Practical building management dictates that if your roof is more than five years old, you should have a professional roofing contractor perform a roof inspection every year to assess and preserve the health of your asset. This inspection, if you don't already do this, should be a part of your roof maintenance program for your multifamily property or properties.
How to Set Up a Maintenance Program for a Multifamily Roof
Inspecting a multifamily roof is one important preventative maintenance task that shouldn't be overlooked. Proper maintenance can extend the roof's life and reduce the potential for damage to the building's interior, protecting one of a company's biggest assets: the interior and tenants of the property.
Setting Up a Maintenance Program
We recommend inspecting the roofing system twice a year, spring (after the winter season) and late fall (between summer heat and winter weather). While the time and cost of these inspections fall to the building owner, other inspections, like those following a major event such as a hurricane or hail storm, will be covered by insurance.
Also, once every two years, have your plumber check the roof drain lines.
Creating standardized documentation for each building that is being inspected will help maintain proper records. The documentation should include:
- A file for each roof
- The roof's installation date
- Records or repairs or updates
- Mapping of any current leaks
- The administrator of the roofing program, along with contact information
- How often maintenance is performed
- Blank, printable inspection reports can be found online (or you can download ours here). We recommend using one for each roof, plus taking photos at each inspection, and giving the file to management when the inspection is complete.
What to Look for During a Multifamily Roof Inspection
Whether a member of the maintenance staff or a contractor is performing the inspection, the inspector should examine both the interior and the exterior every time.
When inspecting the interior, these are signs the roof needs maintenance:
- Discolored or water-stained ceilings and walls
- Raised or deteriorated areas on the walls
- Discoloration or water staining of window frames
- Rust or other deterioration of roof decking, joists or other structural components
- Mold on any interior surfaces
On the building's exterior, look for:
- Excessive standing water on the roof's surface (may be caused by structural failing)
- Stored materials (these materials should be removed and stored elsewhere)
- Loose, buckled or damaged flashing or membrane
- Nails or screws from deck backing out through the membrane
- Vegetation in contact with the roof surface
- Gaps or cracks in caulking around roof penetrations like vents, antennas, skylights, HAVC units, etc.
- Debris on the roof on in drains and gutters
- Missing domes on drains
- Excessive granules on roof surface or in drain/gutter
- Cracks, blisters, punctures, or warping on the roof's surface
- Cracked masonry caps or parapets
- Defective, damaged or missing masonry joints
Schedule a Complimentary Inspection of your Multifamily Property Now to Determine What Maintenance Program Works Best!
To experience our fully digital, transparent, industry-leading roofing services, complete the form below and we will follow up to schedule an appointment and give your project the attention, skill, and expertise it deserves.
Error: Contact form not found.


text:
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday - don't trust that day
I knew we were off to a bad start when I came downstairs singing and both girls looked at me, not with a look that said O Mommy! O happy day! O how happy we are that we are here at our home with our math books and our pencils and our shining morning faces!
Meelyn and Aisling got out their math books, both of them as cross as two sticks. The dogs settled down for their early morning naps. I stopped singing and went to the kitchen, noting that it was already too hot on this last morning of April to even consider having a cup of coffee or even tea. I got a diet soda out of the fridge, slurped a serving of leftover Italian Wedding Soup into a bowl, and put it in the microwave to heat. It turns out that ninety seconds isn't nearly long enough.
After heating the soup for another two minutes, I sat down to eat, prayed and lifted the first bite to my mouth, pausing at the halfway point for what I knew was coming.
The swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room burst open. "I hate math, I just hate it," stormed Meelyn, near tears. "I don't understand these dumb problems."
Aisling was right behind her, carrying her favorite new Build-a-Bear Workshop acquisition, a white plush dog named Isabel. "Do you want to give Izzie a kiss?" she cooed, neatly stepping in front of her sister and putting the dog perilously close to my frowning face.
"Hey! I was here first!" said Meelyn indignantly, thumping Aisling on the head with her Saxon math book.
"Ow! Quit!" Aisling hissed like an angry goose, clutching her head with one hand and Izzie with the other. She switched back to the cooing voice. "Mommy, do you want to ki-...."
"Aisling, I will put that TOY in the dryer and tumble it if you don't get back in there and get on task. Meelyn, I will help you with your math when I am done with my soup."
I ate the rest of my soup in gulps and went back into the dining room where Meelyn was obediently bent over her math book and Aisling was balancing a sheet of paper on her head. I snatched the paper and, mindful of the open windows, clenched my teeth and said, "Do. Your. Work. NOW."
"Yes, ma'am," said Aisling meekly.
I sat down next to Meelyn and we worked through the five problems that were giving her fits. What I usually find when I help her with her math is that she already knows how to do the problem, but for some reason has convinced herself that she can't. Math is my most-hated subject and I'm afraid that I passed this on to Meelyn, perhaps by osmosis. Heaven knows I spent enough time when she was little dancing around the room like a fool with a protractor in one hand and an abacus in the other, chanting, "Math is fun! Math is so fun! Math is fun-fun-funnikins-fun!"
It didn't work. Kids can smell hypocrisy on adult like wild beasts can smell fear.
It usually takes us about an hour in the morning to do math and that is our longest time we spend on any one subject. We put forth the extra effort simply because it is not fun and there is a tendency with the girls to rush through it as quickly as possible, making many careless mistakes along the way.
After math, the girls can choose what they want to work on. The next subjects up today are U.S. geography (worksheet covering New Mexico), a Greek and Latin roots workbook (one page), their Seton reading comprehension workbooks (one lesson) or piano practice (half an hour).
Meelyn opted for working at the table on the academic subjects while Aisling went to the piano. It was very pleasant, sitting at the computer and catching up on my email while Meelyn sat in her chair just behind my left shoulder. We made occasional remarks about people or cars passing by outside, the unseasonably hot weather, a funny thing Wimzie had done that morning while Aisling played sweetly. At the end of her half-hour of practice, Meelyn was done with U.S. geography and part of her Greek and Latin roots pagel she decided to finish that up before going to the piano herself.
Meelyn is learning "The Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" on the piano and she plays it very nicely. The problem is, it always makes me tearful. I love Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version and the girls and I have seen it a hundred times, probably, and the love theme is always so sweet and sad, with Romeo and Juliet standing palm to palm behind the curtain, his eager smile, her big, innocent eyes...waaaaaahhhh. It's always so nice to know that Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey are both still very much alive and doing just fine.
"Are you crying again or is it your allergies?" asked Aisling, the little cynic, looking up from her reading comprehension workbook. She acts just like my brother.
"Allergies," I replied with dignity.
With the morning's work complete, the girls broke for lunch. They both had a little freezer meal, heated in the microwave (I can hear Kayte and my cousin Susan simultaneously gasping in horror and I know, I know. I usually don't feed them that garbage but the meals were on sale and I was in a weak -- cheap? -- moment at the grocery and I know.)
After lunch, we sat back down together at the dining room table and did two pages from their Saxon language arts text. Meelyin is a seventh grader and Aisling is a fifth grader, so I compromised and bought the sixth grade text for each of them. This is really the first year I have ever bothered much about grammar and usage, other than the basic nouns, verbs, capital letters and periods. My theory has always been that they both read so much, they'll know proper grammar without knowing that they know it, and so far, I've been proved right. We occasionally have a bit of a tussle over things like plural possessives, but it doesn't take long to sort it out.
We also have a sentence diagraming workbook, which is my favorite thing. I could diagram sentences, like, all day. The girls aren't quite as excited about it, but that's probably for the best. I'm at an age where I can afford to be a loser in a few select areas of my life, and my love of sentence diagraming is one of them.
After language arts and the diagraming, we have one brief hour to relax before heading off to Tipton for art lessons. I find myself thinking how lovely it will be to go for a drive in the air conditioned car. It is hot. Hotter than homemade hell, as my friend Beth's dad used to say.
Meelyn and Aisling have been taking art lessons from their teacher, Kendra, in Tipton for three years now. Kendra is a professional artist and the most awesome art teacher in the world. She has made my kids produce art that has frankly amazed me, considering that when I first apologetically took them to her studio, both girls were still drawing stick figures with no necks for people. Tipton is the dullest, most forgettable little city I have ever seen ( although they do have an unaccountably beautiful Catholic church, St. John the Baptist - the picture doesn't do justice to the gorgeous pale pumpkin stucco interior with accents of terra cotta and gold. It positively glows in there) but Kendra makes the forty-five minute drive through flat and uninteresting farmland worth it. I'm embarrassed to even tell how much she charges per child for these fantastic lessons. Let me just say that if she were based in Fishers or Carmel instead of Armpitsville, Indiana*, she could be quadrupling her fees and parents would be lining up at her door, holding out wads of cash.
Forty-five minutes is a pretty long drive, time that I am not willing to waste on just staring out the windows at the barns, sheep, cows and farm machinery we're passing. At least on the way there, I'm not. On the way home, we stop at the Tipton McDonald's for some iced tea and talk and laugh all the way back to Anderson, but on the way to art, I'm all about learning.
Right now, we are engaged on learning a set of facts about the United States. This is a curricula I kind of invented, which often turn out to be the best kind. I found these geography/history/general knowledge cards at a little shop for about $12 and we've had a lot of fun with them. We've learned facts about D-Day, Ulysses S. Grant, why the building that houses the U.S. State Department is called "Foggy Bottom," and what U.S. city is known as "America's Cereal Bowl."
While the girls are at art, I sit in the van and blissfully read. My cell phone battery hasn't been recharged in a couple of days, so I am completely without interruption. It is heaven. HEAVEN.
We don't get home on Mondays until about 5:45 and by that time, we're all wiped out. I started dinner, a very nice hot-peppery stir fry with grilled teriyaki chicken and the girls staggered upstairs to play PlayStation. Hot. Hot in the kitchen, hot in the rest of the house. Wimzie and Hershey come to keep me company while I worked in the kitchen, their tongues lolling, their muzzles wet with water from the cool water they lapped up.
It's Monday, it's nearly over, and it hasn't been too bad, except for the heat. And the math.
My husband came home, stepping into the house via the back door. He's been at work all day in the air conditioning. "I know it's only April but I thoug-...."
"I'll start closing the windows," I interrupted. He turned on the central air and before I could say "popsicle," cool, calming air starts pouring out of the floor registers. I silently blessed the former owner who installed not only a new gas furncace in this barn of a house, but also that great, big sturdy condenser unit that is discreetly tucked in a back corner of the house, partially obscured by a burning bush to spare the delicate sensibilities of the neighborhood's historic preservation code.
Another Monday, done.
*I feel safe saying that Tipton is Armpitsville, Indiana because I come from the other armpit, New Castle.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
RECIPE: Italian Wedding Soup
I'm going to steal some of my friend Kayte's thunder and post a recipe, which isn't really fair of me. You see, when we were at the Indianapolis Museum of Art last week, I selfishly called dibs on posting a commentary on our tour. Kayte has never selfishly called dibs on posting recipes, something she'd be totally justified in doing. Not only because she is not selfish like me, but also a much better cook. I'm just saying.
Anyway, this is Italian Wedding Soup and it is so good. I hope it is really Italian, because you know how these things go. You spend all this time at the Olive Garden sampling the international cuisine and then you meet a friend who lived for years in Italy and France, who actually married an Italian guy, and you find out that all that stuff at the Olive Garden is just a big, cruel, albeit delicious joke, not Italian, but rather "Italian," and if you can picture me making little air quotes with my fingers and saying the word "Italian" in a tone of voice that means not Italian but really some American's "idea" of what "Italians" really "eat," you'll have the idea.
This Italian Wedding Soup is really, really fast the way I make it. Or you can do your own 10 cups of chicken stock and make your own little meatballs out of 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef and it will probably taste even better, but it will also take longer.
We really enjoy this soup at our house and have it fairly frequently. The first time we had it, my husband looked askance at the spinach leaves, but he ended up loving it. He takes the leftovers for lunch sometimes.
So here goes:
5 cans of chicken broth (or approximately 10 cups of chicken stock)
2 carrots, shredded
1 bag (1 pound) of frozen, pre-cooked Italian-style meatballs (or make your own, recipe follows)
1 cup small pasta (elbow macaroni-sized down to the smaller kinds like orzo or ditali)
1/2 bag of pre-washed baby spinach leaves, washed again
ground pepper and salt to taste
Pour the chicken broth and frozen meatballs into a soup pot and place over medium-high heat. While they heat, shred the carrots and add to the soup pot. Allow to cook for about ten minutes (the meatballs need only to thaw out and be heated through.) Add 1 cup pasta to the soup pot and allow to cook for eight more minutes. Add washed baby spinach leaves; cook for five more minutes. Serve hot with bread.
This serves four people, allowing some very nice leftovers for lunch the next day. Salt and pepper it if you feel it needs a boost.
I serve this with bread, either making a strange-looking French loaf in my bread machine, or zooming over to Panera Bread to buy a baguette. I assume I don't need to tell you that the bread needs to be eaten with butter. Any unbuttered bites of bread can be dipped in the soup.
Truthfully, I don't make these meatballs myself. I like the way the frozen ones taste well enough that I just don't want to fiddle around with rolling all these little things. But if you don't mind that kind of thing -- or if you have daughters or sons who are willing -- then pour yourself a glass of wine and get to it.
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
2 eggs, lightly beaten
4 T dried bread crumbs
2 T grated parmesan cheese (as Kayte says in her "Pas-Tability I" recipe, the fresh kind is best, but the green tube will suffice)
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
two good pinches of salt
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and mix well. Shape into small meatballs. Cook in a skillet in 2 T olive oil, medium heat, turning frequently to brown. Remove from skillet and put into soup pot with broth; follow the rest of the soup directions.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
"Why Am I Catholic?"
"Why Am I Catholic?"
Morning Prayer, Antiphon 3: Give honor and praise to our God; all that He does is perfect and all his ways are true, alleluia.
My Opinion of Sheets
If I'm getting into bed, I don't think that I should feel as if I'm sleeping between two pieces of toast. Burnt toast.
I think that sheets should be soft; they should conform almost weightlessly to the shape of the body they're covering.
To achieve this state of delicious softness, they have to be washed in the hottest hot water the washing machine is willing to spew out. Sheets have to be washed over and over again before they're put on the bed for the first time, in hot water. With fabric softener, the kind that smells like a dessert made out of rainbows and sunbeams.
On no account should sheets be washed once, in warm water because they're a really nice deep cranberry color with little white flower sprigs, dried with a dryer sheet (abomination) and then put on the bed. And then the person who gets into bed first should never, ever feel the need to say, "Oh, finally! Some bed sheets that don't feel like the tissues that people's grannies stuff in the sleeves of their little sweaters."
Defeating the Purpose
Unfortunately, it couldn't drown out any disturbing pressure on my side. There was enough pressure to hamper my breathing, which I am thinking would wake just about anybody up.
I came back to wakefulness and saw Aisling's freckled nose two inches from my own. "Hi," she said, breathing the breath of unbrushed teeth into my face. "Are you awake?"
"I am now," I said in a tone that made her remove her breath from my face and the pressure of her body on my body and run for the door.
I'd tell you what I was thinking just then, only it would make my mother think she hadn't raised me properly.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Okay. Where did I go wrong?
We always have to buy a coffee or a soft drink for the ride home, so we spotted a Hardee's and pulled into their drive-thru. From Hardee's, I could see the Borders Book Store where I happily spent so much time and money, back when I was a single girl (okay, I was an old-maid schoolteacher, just shut up.)
"Oh, look, girls," I said, looking fondly at it, sitting there in all its yuppie glory. "I used to love that store. I used to go there almost every weekend and buy books." I sighed happily.
There was a silence -- a significant sort of silence; a silence as of two girls trading glances behind their mother's back.
"Oh, poor Mommy," Meelyn said, her voice soft with pity.
"I'm so sorry for you," she said.
"Yes, me too, poor Mommy, poor little Mommy," Aisling chimed in.
I was honestly bewildered. "What are you two talking about, 'poor Mommy'?"
Meelyn was foggy with tears. "You didn't have a husband. All you had was a bunch of books."
"Now, wait just a....I had more than..." I spluttered, wanting to tell them about my life as a working woman and the things I bought and the trips I took with friends and the ineffable cuteness of my different apartments. But I stopped. It would only have sounded pathetic, my doing all those things without Daddy.
I drove on, knowing that in Borders Book Store, they likely have several different dictionaries for sale to no-life-losers like me, all of them defining the word disgruntled, which is exactly how I felt right then.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
An Arty Afternoon
My friend Kayte, the birthday girl, is the person who started this event for our group and it has been a wild success. Meelyn and Aisling have only been going for the past two years (they weren't old enough before that) and it has led to a pleasantly expanded view of the world that I have really enjoyed. So have they.
When Meelyn was old enough (twelve) to join this activity, I needed something to do with Aisling and I knew good and well that I was not equipped to do the self-guided thing around the museum while Meelyn went off with the older kids. So the reasonable thing to do seemed to be to start a group for kids in grades 4-6, allowing younger brothers and sisters to tour concurrently with their older siblings. It has made for a lot of interesting conversations in the van on the way home as the girls tell about the different pieces of art they've seen and what the docent has had to say. Or sometimes, they see the same piece of art and it is fascinating to hear what different docents say about the same painting.
Kayte has told me that she has appreciated these tours because she loves the idea that the kids in the group will never feel particularly intimidated by art museums for the rest of their lives. They'll know what to expect whether they're viewing a simple gallery in a university's art museum or whether they're at the Guggenheim or the Louvre. They'll know they belong.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art by night. Of course, we're always there during the day, but
I couldn't resist posting this gorgeous picture.
"Our kids will be able to say, 'Oh, I practically grew up at the Indianapolis Museum of Art,'" Kayte says, her big green eyes glowing. She has a passion for art and learning and she has done a really good thing for our group in keeping this activity going.
This was our last tour for the school year - we'll start up again in September 2007. Here's the year in review:
September - the American Collection - click the link for a slide show of IMA's American art
October - Special Exhibit: Quilts from Gee's Bend
November - Portrait Tour (younger students) and Painting & Poetry (older students)
January - Contemporary Collection
February - Asian Collection, which opened in the fall of 2006
March - The European Collection of painting and sculpture before 1800
April - The Classical Collection (only about nine pieces of ancient Greek and Roman art) and the European Collect of painting and sculpture after 1800
It was a magnificent year of art.
Next year, we're going to start a separate tour just for the moms. We'll all be going on the same tour as our kids and I think that the conversations on the way home will be even better.
I always ask the girls to tell me what they've learned and sometimes the things they say (like, "I learned that our docent is the most boring person in the world") make me want to give them a poke, but sometimes they come up with things that surprise me.
Today, the three of us were all on different tours. Meelyn was off with the teenagers, Aisling was with a group of her little friends, and I served as a chaperone for some other children in the middle school/upper elementary group.
In my group, we learned that Classical art is defined largely by the Greek and Roman love of the perfect human form. Their statuary was also characterized by the way the folds in the figures' robes were carved with such "flow" and also by the exacting detail of the hair. Interesting! We also learned that the Baroque period borrowed some elements of the Classical period by depicting the human figure with defined musculature, "hero"-type men of stunning proportions. Baroque art also is known by the action taking place in the painting. That's not a Classical element, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Meelyn learned that Impressionist artists had to paint very quickly when they were doing an outdoor subject because the cloud formations and the way the light was falling could change very rapidly. (This was from the second part of the tour, where we were looking at European art dated after 1800.)
Aisling told us that she learned that it is very hard not to talk to her friend Rachel, even when the docent is talking. I looked over my shoulder and gave her the Mother Eye, the look that can turn children to stone if used in full force. Fortunately for her, she was able to receive only a half-dose. "I learned that Classical art has a lot of naked people in it," she said.
"Yeah, that too," said Meelyn musingly. "It was so not fun looking at all those naked-boob statues with boys around."
"And there were other statues with....boy parts," Aisling said grimly, lowering her voice to a whisper on the last two words, as if she were afraid that the volleyball rolling around in the back would be shocked and offended. My husband and I have often opined that there is a part of Aisling's personality that was born at about seventy-four years old, a grumpy, disapproving sort of seventy-four.
"Well, yes," I responded, hoping to draw them away from nakedness and back toward art. "What about the Classical period makes you think that there was a reason for this?"
Both girls thought hard for a moment until Meelyn said, "Hey!"
"Yes?" I asked, encouraged by what insight she was going to share.
"There's a Hummer! Wouldn't it be too cool if we had a black Hummer with tinted windows?"
Art. We hardly knew ye.
While Riding in the Car
We already have one dog, Hershey, who is part beagle/part Sheltie, and although he is dumber than a bag of hammers, we are very fond of him. We all love his bark that goes "Baroooooo! Baaaarroooooo!" whenever he sees a squirrel.
We also have another dog, a Jack Russell terrier, who manages to tolerate the vagaries of our beagle boy, although if a dog could ever make that tsk-ing sound with her tongue and heave a sigh of exasperation, she would, watching him cower in fear as a leaf falls from a tree and slowly spirals through the air. Her name is Wimzie. "Tell me again why you stuck me with this freak," she communicates to me as we walk along through the neighborhood, smellin' all the smells and chattin' up the rabbits.
So we all love dogs in this house, and if we had a yard that was bigger than a postage stamp, and if that bigger yard had a fence around it and came equipped with a person who would automatically pick up each pile of poop with a pooper-scooper the minute it touched the grass, I would get another dog. Maybe three more.
But try telling this to Aisling, who whined in that penetrating nasal tone that makes my spine go rigid. "Why can't we get another dooooog? We have roooooom. Our house is biiiiiig. I would take caaaare of it and you wouldn't ever have to. It would be a small one! And it wouldn't be that expensive."
"Because we have enough dogs....No, we don't...No, it isn't that big....No, you wouldn't and yes, I most certainly would...Not small enough for me and yes, it would be expensive. It would need shots and food and heartworm medicine and flea and tick medicine and it would probably need prednisilone for skin allergies and it would probably have dental problems and ear mites and no."
"But whyyyyyyyy?" she continued as my shoulders hunched up around my ears. "It would be fuuuun! You'd love it! We could take it with us, places. It could wear a bandana."
I was suddenly struck with inspiration. "Aisling," I said. "Aisling, I want an Hermès handbag."
"A whatsit whosit?"
"An Hermès handbag. Not a very big one. I'd like an Hermès handbag because although I have some other handbags, I don't have an Hermès handbag. I have a big closet, so it would fit right in. I'll carry it on my arm and never make you hold it while I unlock the front door."
"Huh?" she said.
Warming to my subject, I continued, "And it wouldn't be expensive! Just something over $10,000, but that's a one-time cost and I'm sure that the dogs, all told, have cost us at least that much. Especially the time Hershey ate part of that dead bird and had to be on three different sorts of antibiotics."
"Ten thousand dollars for a purse??!!"
"I could take it to all kinds of different places."
"Ten thousand...??!!"
"Just a small one!"
"What do you need with a ten thousand dollar purse? You've already got some purses."
"What do you need with another dog? You've already got some dogs."
"Mommy, you are so not fair. Just not fair at all."
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
PRODUCT REVIEW: Flexitol Heel Balm
On the one hand, I really like wearing sandals. On the other hand, I feel a little bit delicate about exposing the innocent citizenry to my feet, which have been living all winter inside thick socks and mucky slippers, innocent of pumice stone or polished toenails. That's where the Flexitol Heel Balm comes it. It can take the most callused, cracked and dry-skinned feet and restore them to sandal-worthiness in just a matter of days. No matter how bad your feet are -- and my feet have been b-a-d -- Flexitol Heel Balm will help.
So far, this blog is only being read by about four people who are reading just to humor me, but seriously, I wish this could be a public service announcement. There are some people out there -- women, even! -- going around exposing their ugly-looking dogs, in dire need of Flexitol Heel Balm and not even knowing it. It's really sad, folks. I can't blame the men, because they were cursed by nature with jacked-up feet, but women (and I believe this strongly) have a duty to tend to their feet if they're going to go around wearing sandals. No one wants to see great big yellow toenails that look like pieces of swiss cheese stuck to the ends of your toes, and nobody wants to see a lady's heels with fissures that look as deep as the one Gandalf fell into in The Fellowship of the Ring. Get some Flexitol on those things and stop torturing the rest of us! And polish! Sheesh!
For anyone who hasn't used this before, let me just frankly tell you that it looks like snot - the kind of snot you have when you have a really bad sinus infection. And it doesn't smell very good either. I think the Flexitol people know they have a wicked good product and thus know that they don't have to dress it up to suit our finer sensibilities, nurtured so graciously at the Elizabeth Arden counter. Rough feet or smooth feet. Take 'em or leave 'em.
I'll take them, with a little coral-pink nail polish as well. I have some really cute new sandals and want to do them justice.
Flexitol Heel Balm costs somewhere around $7.99-$11.99, depending on where you buy it and on what size the tube is. You can purchase it at the usual suspects: Meijer, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreen's & CVS. It can be found where foot products are sold. Please don't ask for it at the Elizabeth Arden counter. The salesgirls will only mock you with their perfectly groomed eyebrows.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Open Windows
Despite a good breeze and overcast skies, it's hot. I keep looking longingly at the thermostat, knowing that if I turn on the central air in April -- April! -- my husband will be very disapproving. But I don't like being hot. It changes my personality from one that is generally cheerful to one that is morose and grumpy. Sweat is unseemly. I find harmony with the statement of Orson Welles, who, when told by a reporter that his bride, Rita Hayworth, was sweating, replied with all the biting hauteur one would expect from a cinematic genius, "Horses sweat. Ladies perspire. Miss Hayworth glows."
Orson, I understand completely. Only I don't want to do any of the three. I want to feel cool and pampered, sitting in the lovely, peaceful afternoon shade of the foyer, reading my book and drinking iced green tea. I don't mind sweating if I'm at the swimming pool because if I get too hot, I simply grab my trusty float that the girls named the Blue Burrito and go in for a cooling dip.
So we have the windows open. When it isn't hot, I love the open windows. We have lived here for two years, but I am still in awe of our windows, which are not only wide, but also tall; eight feet tall in our ten foot ceiling rooms. The noise of the downtown traffic whisking by is very soothing. Children ride by on bicycles; mothers walk by pushing strollers. The lawyers whose law firms reside in grand mansions walk back and forth from city court, swinging their brief cases, their suit jackets thrown over a shoulder. Of course, we can see all this when the windows are closed, but it feels so much more participatory in the life of the neighborhood when the windows are open.
We can also hear the church bells down the street chiming out the hours. All the windows in our house are original except for the one in the kitchen and even after all these years, they are still so well-fitted that the bells are completely drowned out, as are the sweet songs of the birds that live in the trees that line the streets. Matins, Prime, Laud, Vespers...it's all lost to us with the windows closed.
We used to have a neighbor, Nancy, who lived in the first floor flat of the Craftsman apartment building across our narrow driveway (leaded glass windows and heart-of-pine floors that have been restored and buffed to a glossy sheen), who favored the music of Carly Simon, which I could hear as I stood before my open kitchen window, loading the dishwasher.
"You're so vain," I'd sing along. "You prob'ly think this song is about you."
Unfortunately, when the windows are open so that we can hear things outside, people can also hear us. I often wonder uneasily what the neighbors think when Aisling, as tempestuous as Beethoven but without the crazy hair, sits down and pounds out Für Elise with much dramatic interpretation, her hands leaping up from the keys like frogs from lily pads, her small nose practically touching middle C. Whatever Elise this piece was für, she must be somewhere covering her ears with her hands and flinching a little bit.
I also wonder what people think when they stroll by to go to the little theater that is two doors down from our house, headed toward an evening of culture and refined entertainment, and hear the girls squabbling in their room, right next to the window.
"I didn't put it there. You put it there."
"I didn't either put it there. You put it there and I saw you put it there and you put it there yesterday and you told me you'd pick it up but you never did!"
"I never did any such thing. I always pick things up when I say I'm going to pick them up, unlike some people I could name who are so lazy and spoiled!"
"I'm not spoiled. You're spoiled!"
"You're spoiled so bad, you don't even know you're spoiled, like a big old potato!"
At this point, the passerby may well be entertained by me as I stick my head around the newel post of the stairway and attempt to make myself heard in a genteel fashion, calling, "Girls! Girls, please stop that bickering!"
There is no response, but a further vehement tirade surges down the stairs like a flow of lava.
"GI-I-I-I-IRRRRLLLLLSSSSSSS," I shriek like a banshee, "shuuuuuuuuuuutttttt uuuuuppppppppppp!!!!!"
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Historic Fire
So as I say, I'm a bit nervous.
We live in the historic district of our city, one block off the really snazzy street where mansions stand with their five, six, seven bedrooms and as many fireplaces; houses with kitchens as big as tennis courts and garret rooms for the Irish maids on the third, or even fourth floor. These houses were the showplaces of lumber barons and the men who made millions from the pool of natural gas that lies beneath this area of east central Indiana: stately Queen Annes stand imposingly next to graceful Italianate manors next to solid Colonial Revivals with a few later additions from the Arts & Crafts Movement thrown in for good measure. The extravagant landscaping, the old-fashioned "gaslights" (modern innovations with orange halogen lamps - absolutely hideous...) and wide sidewalks make it all a real pleasure to be near.
Our house is not grand. It is a big old Victorian farmhouse, one of the older homes in the neighborhood, being a creaky but gracious old lady of approximately 150 years. She wears new butter-colored siding and brown shutters to match her roof, much in the same manner that a woman whom the French would politely refer to as une dame d'un certain âge might wear a mini skirt and false eyelashes. I imagine in another time that she humbly wore a coat of white paint, leaving the shutters to her more fashionable neighbors one block north.
The former owner told us that our house started off as a log cabin with a root cellar, with our living room serving as the cabin's living space and our cellar playing the part of the cellar. We can see how that would be true, considering that the wall between the living and dining rooms in over twelve inches thick. It is an interesting place, our cellar, with walls built from jutting limestone rock and numerous shadowy rooms. I have never yet seen or heard of a tornado that could willingly get me down there and the dogs agree with me.
"We'd prefer to stay up here," they say, resisting all attempts to be pulled down the steps by their leashes, planting their paws on the landing. "Up here, away from the Christmas ornaments and the lawn implements and any possible coffins or members of the living dead."
Our neighborhood is close to a fire station, which is a good thing. Most of these houses are not made of brick, seeing as how lumber was such a plentiful and inexpensive thing to come by and it's nice knowing that the fire fighters are only a couple of blocks away.
Especially this afternoon.
Ever since the fire at St. Anne's, I have been smelling smoke. The other night we had some scented candles burning when company came over, and when Meelyn blew them out, I had a moment of utter panic when I smelled that smoky smell coming from the jars. So I keep trying not to second guess myself, and, as my husband so winsomely puts it, "get a grip."
But when I smelled smoke this afternoon, I knew I wasn't imagining things. And when the sirens kicked on a few moments later, I knew something bad was happening. The huge pumper truck rushed by my dining room window, screaming up the street, but then stopped almost immediately.
My husband came in from the back where he was pulling weeds. "Fire," he said sharply. "Do you smell that?" He went out the front door and up the street to see what was happening.
I nodded, praying, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..." the prayer that the girls and I always say whenever we hear the sirens, praying for the people who are in trouble, praying for their safety and comfort and for the safety of the firefighters. I looked out my front window as I made the sign of the cross, noting that I could actually see the truck and billowing smoke. It looked as if the truck was parked right next to a gracious four story brick apartment building, lovely and symmetrical in its Georgian design, mostly inhabited by young professional people whom we often see coming out to their shiny cars in the mornings we go to Mass, juggling briefcases and shiny non-spill coffee thermos cups and iPods. How awful if so many were driven from their homes, their belongings destroyed by fire, smoke, or water.
I stood, wringing my hands, and Meelyn and Aisling came downstairs saying anxiously, "We smell smoke. We prayed, Mom. Is there a fire here?"
"Yes, right up there. Do you see the truck?" I pointed across the street down our neighbor's driveway where a brief glimpse of the red truck could be seen. I kept thinking about the apartment building and all the lovely wooden homes around it; of a firm of accountants whose "office" is a Victorian gem, everything authentic and perfect, decorated like a fairyland at Christmas time; of a gorgeous Greek Revival that is brick on the outside, but so was St. Anne's. And then there all the houses that might not necessarily be historic jewels in the crown of our neighborhood's historic preservation, but are nevertheless homes of people we know and people we don't.
Whose was it? I continued wringing my hands and praying, thinking about watching the angry red blaze leaping hungrily through of the roof of a beloved church. If fires could be extinguished with tears, surely there were enough at St. Anne's that day to douse all the flames in the world.
My husband came jogging back down the street and up the steps of the front porch. We all spilled out the door -- our beautiful, nine-foot wooden front door with the original doorknob and lock and the original ripply glass that distorts the mailman and the trick-or-treaters in their costumes.
"It's just a van pulled over to the side of the road," he said comfortingly, patting all of us. "Not a house. Just a van."
Oh, God....just as I typed that line, the pumper truck went by again, followed closely by the ladder truck. It's only been three hours since the last time they went by today, the time I've been sitting here writing about, off and on this afternoon. I automatically wonder, now, if the ladder is needed so that the enormous hose can be lifted to pour water on the roof of a church.
Hail Mary, full of grace....
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Two years ago, I bought her a cute little lip balm-and-lotion kit from Hobby Lobby for her birthday. At the time, I had my own little handmade soap business - one of my side lines was making lip balm for grown up ladies out of all kinds of luxe butters and oils -- and she was interested in what Mommy was doing. I figured the little kit would be a nice way for her to experiment and have fun with beee-yooo-teee products without using my (really, really expensive) lip balm ingredients.
I thoughtlessly told her that hey! It sure would be fun to invite some friends over to make lip balm with you! I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth.
She remembered.
And remembered.
For two years, she remembered, and every now and again, she'd get the kit out from whatever closet or underbed storage container or utility shed I'd stuffed it, trying to delay the party. Mostly because Aisling is....how do you say it? High strung. Wound a little bit tight. Zippy dippy take-a-trippy. The very thought of trying to corral Aisling and a group of her little friends into the kitchen to make lip balm made me want to take to the bed with a bottle of bourbon.
Even right now, she is driving me batty. She is sitting at the dining room table behind me, writing a thank-you note to the two sisters who thought this was a birthday party (my bad) and brought her a present. Aisling has asked me how to spell every single word that she intends to write, including ones that I know she knows. Words like "and," "can," and "I". Then she started on the punctuation, insisting on reading me the thank-you at least forty-seven times and asking if she put the commas in the right place. We then started on the different uses of there, their and they're. I gave her the answers she was seeking, my voice getting a little tighter each time she said, "Hey, Mom, how's this sound?"
"Aisling," I said to her, turning and looking at her over the tops of my glasses, "you are driving me nuts. And I don't mean peanuts or hazelnuts. I'm talking almonds. Cashews. Brazil nuts, even."
She subsided and then finally handed it to me, running off before I could say, "Wai--!!" As I suspected, she didn't listen to a thing I said about there, their and they're. I just stuffed it in the envelope. It's a thank-you note written to two little girls, not a Newbery Medal contender. So there.
But anyway, she is finally at an age where she has made some really nice friends - Aisling at eleven is a much more tractable child than she was at nine. So a couple of weeks ago, we sent out some little invitations via email and were very pleased when everyone could come.
As always, we tried to work ahead of the game and did housework and grocery shopping yesterday, picking up two big pizzas from Papa Murphy's (you bake it yourself at home and it makes the house smell wonderful) and grapes (both white and red) and some vegetables and ranch dip. And cookies. I felt very proud of myself for doing the whole grapes-and-veggies thing, very proud indeed. Well, I mean, it's not as if I'm the sort of mother who sets out vials of crack and little pipes for every guest, but I am the kind of mother whose tendency to party fare verges more toward the potato chips, cheez doodles, taco chips and, the best snack food known to humankind, Funyuns. If there could be a more perfect snack combination than Funyuns, some wasabi peanuts and a margarita, I don't know what it could be.
I picked up our party guests at a pre-arranged location because we live so far out of Indianapolis, travelers practically need Daniel Boone to find our city. There were five young girls ranging in age from eight to twelve and one 14-year-old older sister, coming along to the party to keep Meelyn company.
Lunch went nicely, starting off with a prayer and ending with me looking around the kitchen, bewildered, wondering how a group of such fragile-looking children had managed to demolish most of two huge pizzas, 3/4 of a mixing bowl full of grapes, a lot of carrots and broccoli and nearly a whole container of ranch dip, and three dozen cookies. It significantly cut down on the amount of clearing up I'd expected to have to do. Brilliant!
I sent the girls upstairs to play while I tidied up and set out the stuff for the lip balm and lotion making adventure. In the kit was everything we needed, including a packet of beeswax and a bottle of sunflower oil for the balm, plus some mica colorant, some cosmetic-grade glitter (very important to young girls) and an array of lip balm tubes and pots.
We started out by having the girls pick out what they wanted: tube or pot. We had eight girls, four tubes and four pots. I was optimistically hoping that our number would be equally divided between those showing an enthusiastic preference for the pots and those who like tubes. Fortunately, my optimism was not misplaced.
One of the things I like about homeschooling is that you have stuff lying around the house that can be pressed into service for activities other than the primary use for which the object was intended. Which is how our 250 ml beaker came to be taken from our science experiment supplies and used for melting beeswax in the microwave.
Beeswax, the girls discovered, takes a really long time to melt. I had some raw beeswax in my laundry room refrigerator, which is the place where we keep the lip balm-and-soapmaking supplies and the beer. The raw beeswax is golden yellow, redolent of sun and warmth and honey, and as hard as a chunk of cement. I showed this to the girls to illustrate why the creators of our kit had thoughtfully provided us with beeswax pastilles, little tiny chips that melt much faster than huge chunks.
The 250 ml beaker is made of that tempered glass which stays cool to the touch even when the substance inside it is very, very hot. The beeswax and sunflower oil combination was finally completely melted at 200 degrees fahrenheit, which is, in my scientific estimation, "pretty darn hot."
Our kit contained a little ampoule of Berry Scent, which made me feel that, after assembling the beeswax packet and the bottle of sunflower oil and the tubes and the pots, the people who assembled the kit were losing interest. The Berry Scent was one of those fragrances that makes little girls squeal and clap, and adults rub their noses and say, "Ew." Imagine a bowl of shiny fake fruit, aggressively scented with the cheapest, most chemical-ly fragrance known to man, squashed and reduced into a bottle and you have our Berry Scent.
When the girls were done squealing and clapping and I was done rubbing my nose and saying, "Ew," I let each of the girls have a turn at squeezing some drops of scent into the melted oils. They enoyed this very much, as they enjoyed stirring the tiny amounts of mica colorant and body glitter into the mix. When we were done with this, the only thing left was to convey the mixture into the tubes and bottles by means of several plastic pipettes.
We had three pipettes and all those girls, so they took turns stepping forward to fill their little containers and were inordinately pleased at the way the oil and wax began to cool down, harden, and look lip-glossy. We set the tubes and pots around the kitchen, each girl with her own dedicated space so that no upsetting mix-ups would occur, and I gave them a packet of little labels and a container full of our scrapbooking markers and sent the to the dining room to do their artistic thang.
The lotion "making" progressed in much the same manner - all we had to do was add a slightly less offensive berry scent to a large bottle of lotion base and then decant the big bottle into four smaller ones. I felt it was a pretty bogus exercise in crafting, but lotion making is an exacting process that requires sterile conditions in a lab and since I don't have either, we made do. The girls were very pleased with the results.
Crafting finished, I sent them upstairs to play while I did my second round of clearing up and got the dishwasher started, coming into the living room to slump on the couch until it was time to leave to give our guests back to their parents. Why is it that even simple parties with a few cutie-pie girls are so....out-wearing? I think it must be my age, because everyone was perfectly good and sweetly polite and obviously entranced by the whole toiletries-making process. I'm just old. That's it.
"These parties can just wear you out," my husband observed, yawning from his reclining chair. So far, his sole contribution to the party had been coming into the kitchen and eating four pieces of pizza, so I looked at him over my glasses. He smiled sheepishly at me.
"I'm ready for a nap," I offered, picking up the newspaper.
"Oh, so am I," he agreed fervently. "So am I."
Happy Birthday, Kayte!
Kayte is the mother of two delightful almost-15-year-old sons, one who makes me swoon because he's so handsome and sweet and has perfect pitch and big brown eyes and the other who makes me laugh because he does the most outrageously funny things, like dipping hotdogs straight into the bottle of barbecue sauce before grilling.
She's the wife of a "fancy lawyer" (not the same thing as a "fancy woman," see post "Beyond B.S." for further clarification) and the person who got me started on the endlessly amusing hobby of scrapbooking, as well as being one of eleven children from a farm family in Iowa. She also bugged me almost daily for an entire week about starting a blog. I folded like a cheap shirt.
Kayte's one of those gourmet-type cooks who makes me wish to hide the fact that I sometimes serve Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to my family, although whenever I think of Kayte while doing this, I automatically make myself call it nouilles et fromage en casserole. I comfort myself with the fact that it's the fromage-iest.
She has a cute blog called Grandma's Kitchen Table over at Typepad with some recipes and funny stories about her boys. Click on the link and pay her a visit!
(But don't offer her any chocolate. She hates it.)
Friday, April 20, 2007
Beyond B.S.
At any rate, I am moving beyond the Bachelor of Science degree I earned at Ball State in 1986. Yeah, I know that's what you were thinking when I mentioned "moving beyond B.S." You were thinking that, as an English major, there's no way I'd ever be able to lurch out of the vast swamp of B.S. I got myself into, let alone move beyond it. See how you are?
I am talking about grad school. GRAD SCHOOL. Moving beyond my Bachelor of Science degree and earning my M.A. or M.A.Ed. Getting my Indiana State teacher's license renewed (it expired in 1992). Getting a teaching job someday when Meelyn and Aisling are in college themselves, mostly to pay for college so that we all won't have to spend our time as roller-skating car hops or fancy women or fancy roller-skating car hop women.
Ball State was a choice I hadn't really considered making, seeing as how I'd have to commute and seeing as how the price of gas continues to skyrocket upward at a dismaying rate. My first choice was Anderson University, so close to my house I can almost throw a rock and hit their library. Not that I'd ever do anything like that.
They have an interesting M.Ed. program arranged in cohort form, which brought to mind a group of students wearing the armor of Roman legionaries, carrying their textbooks in the famous "turtle" formation and marching through Dekker Hall, mercilessly plowing down everything in their path -- desks, wastebaskets, professors -- as undergrads made a vain attempt to stop them by throwing spiral-bound notebooks, empty styrofoam coffee cups and the cushions from the chairs in the student lounge.
Anderson University sounded very interesting until I contacted the Office of Graduate Admissions and obtained a copy of their schedule of fees. Yikes. Grad level classes are $275 per credit hour, with most classes being three credit hours. Plus books, which could verge on $200-$400 per class. Ouch. I have obviously been out of touch with reality. I know when my cousin Susan reads this, she's going to torture me with horror stories about the tear-and-sweat stained tuition checks sent off to St. John's and Pepperdine.
I gave a passing moment of thought to the University of Phoenix, but my husband vetoed this thought abruptly, believing that it, like Pinnochio at his beginnings, is not a real college. I thought it sounded kind of nice to be able to obtain my M.A.Ed. from the comfort of my own home, but when the agent I contacted apologetically informed me that the cost per credit hour was $612 plus books, I thought I was going to have to call for digitalis. Imagine the nerve of those people at their celluloid university, daring to charge such an unconscionable price! The kind people at the Teacher's College of Managua, who assured me that I will be able to earn my degree in six to eight weeks, mentioned rates that weren't that expensive by half! Plus I can get a diploma suitable for framing! And maybe even a kilo of coke as a graduation present!
That brought me back to Ball State University, which has been attended by so many members of my family, it has practically become our compound, like the Kennedys, only we don't have the keys to any of the buildings.
At latest count, here are the B.S.U. grads in my family. Some dates are approximate:
1. Grandma, B.A. '39, M.A. ?
2. Aunt Peg, B.A. ?
3. Aunt Cynthia, B.A. ?, M.A. ?
4. Grandad, B.A. '44
5. Mary Elizabeth (step-gran), B.A. '43
6. Mom, B.A. '65, M.A. '72
7. Me, B.S. '86
8. Patrick (brother), B.S. '91, M.B.A. '02
9. Angie (sister-in-law), B.S. '99
A few members of the family have seen fit to attend Indiana University, and that's just perfectly fine. Others have spent some time at Purdue University, but we prefer not to mention it. Or them.
The schedule of fees at Ball State didn't make me suck in my breath with enough horror-struck force to collapse my lungs, so it may be where I end up next summer. At $212 per credit hour, it is very reasonable. My husband is holding out for A.U., feeling that it would be nice to not have to commute. But the Ball State nostalgia waxes strong within me.
Shafer Tower, a Ball State University landmark.
And where would I like to teach after getting my license renewed and my own children sent off to college?
I'd like to get a job at this school or possibly this one. I hope my plans succeed.
Cinnamon Bread
My climbing back into bed makes my husband stir. He turns over, heavy with sleep, and says in a groggily cheerful voice, "Hello! I'm pleased to meet you!"
"What?" I ask, surly. Sometimes when I stir in the middle of the night, it jolts him into speech. He's capable of coming up with some really funny stuff, once sitting bolt upright with his arms held out, palms up, in front of him. "Please," he urged me earnestly, his eyes still tightly closed, "will you hold this tray?"
This time, he simply repeats, "I'm pleased to meet you," a little more distinctly and lapses into gentle snores.
"I'm pleased to meet you, too," I sigh, and punch my pillow into a more comfortable shape, wondering if he was selling cars in his sleep. Or maybe he was dreaming about meeting me, all those years ago. I stretch out without really relaxing, breathing through my mouth, thinking that if he's dreaming about me in my mid-twenties -- thinner, bright of eye, with that bloom of youth -- he's going to be sorely disappointed if he wakes up now and sees me -- fat, congested, with mad hair in a pointy ponytail. Out of respect for my marriage, I sneak out of bed and head downstairs, pulling on a sweatshirt over my nightgown and pushing my feet into my yellow Crocs.
Downstairs, what is there to do? There are library books a-plenty. There is allergy medicine. There is EWTN and this new blog. But there is also a bread machine sitting on the kitchen counter and I am inspired.
My bread machine is about ten years old and makes 1 1/2 pound loaves of oddly-shaped bread. If I need to produce an aesthetically pleasing loaf, I put it on the dough setting and pull it out for the last rising, baking it in the oven in a regular loaf pan. But today, there is no one I need to impress, so I decide to let the machine do it all.
The recipe for cinnamon raisin bread is pretty simple: warm water, bread flour, two tablespoons of dry milk powder, salt, sugar, cinnamon, butter, yeast. A very basic, easy bread that I can throw together in about fifteen minutes. There is enough time that this loaf will finish baking just as the alarm clocks go off upstairs.
We will have coffee for breakfast, rich with cream, and homemade cinnamon raisin bread toast. With butter. Everyone will be pleased when the scent of baking bread and brewing coffee drifts up the stairs. Meelyn will want her coffee in her huge Starbucks mug and Aisling will wait until my back is turned before using half a stick of butter on her toast. She will look at me in all innocence as I tell her to put some of it back: yes, I know there are crumbs, but she's not eating all that butter. Aisling will comply, wounded, feeling that her motives in not wishing to put back the butter are perfectly pure: the next family member to come along will be offended by the toast crumbs. I assure her that we'll cope. Meelyn will roll her eyes above the rim of her mug and get out her math book.
Aisling's favorite kitchen
I'll have my buttered cinnamon raisin bread, with coffee as black as I can bear it, hoping that it will have restorative powers after this, my fifth night in this cycle of wakefulness.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The weight of the word
An extremely uninspiring view of our city's public
library. A pox on the architect that designed this
bland, blank monstrosity.
My mom taught me to read when I was four, more an act of self-defense than of an altruistic desire to pass on knowledge of the written word. She would be in her favorite corner of the couch, feet tucked up under her, usually with a bowl of popcorn and some iced tea. She wanted to read her book, usually Agatha Christie. But then there I'd be, coming along with a stack of books clutched to my chest, asking that question again.
"Will you read to me?"
My mother was a good mother, and if she ever told me to hush up and go away, I don't remember it. Even though she did skip pages, as if she thought I wouldn't notice. I also don't remember her teaching me to read, but I know she did because that's when she bought me the first of many satchels so that we could go to the public library together, competing mildly with one another to see who could stuff in the most books. We would stagger out the heavy double doors, hoping the handles wouldn't rip off our bags, and down the steps, eager to get home and make the popcorn and sit down, each of us on our own couch end, and read.
So today, Aisling and Meelyn and I went to the library. I taught both of them to read, and I also have helped them develop the upper body strength necessary to get our vast loads of books out of the doors of our city's public library (which are automatic sliders) and into the car. We were there for just over an hour and brought home 50+ books, a pretty puny haul when compared to what we can do in the summer, when all we have to do is go to the pool and lounge.
I checked out a bunch of books on Ancient Greece, since I am doing some research on that culture for next school year's history bingo, plus an unwieldy load of sugary sweet chick lit. I find writers like Marian Keyes, Jane Green and Emily Giffin very, very soothing -- nice stories with decent character development and plots with a few twists and turns and happy endings. I can't bear unhappy endings, feeling that life is hard enough as it is, what with having to buy a new washing machine and some dumb hose going out on the van directly afterwards, not to mention other horrors such as an arsonist burning down our old parish church and college kids being massacred by a madman on the Virginia Tech campus. I can breeze through several chick lit novels in a week, both the American and British varities, filling in the chinks with some more solid non-fiction. My non-fiction choices right now are What Catholics Really Believe by Karl Keating and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt.
The girls each chose books according to her own tastes, something that I always find fascinating, a little window into their private worlds. Who are these children, really, the ones with faces more familiar to me than my own? I love seeing what they pick out, what their choices in literature say about them.
At fourteen, Meelyn likes an occasional romance book, but not very often. I only let her read Christian romance novels by Grace Livingston Hill, whose books were published from early-to-mid twentieth century. GLH's style is a bit florid and quickly becomes cloying. But at Meelyn's age, she needs books where the girl always ends up with the wonderful young man who treats her well. She needs to know what to look out for, my lovely, dreamy-looking girl with the wide blue eyes and the killer volleyball serve. Mostly, though, Meelyn likes science fiction and fantasy and is busying herself with the books of Madeleine L'Engle. One of her favorite more contemporary writers is Cornelia Funke, author of the delicious ''Ink'' novels, Inkheart and Inkspell. Meelyn is anxiously awaiting the publication of the third book in the series, Inkdeath, so that she can find out what happens to Meggie, a kindred spirit.
Aisling has no truck with "stuff that isn't real" and picks up two novels about girls around her age, which is eleven. She went through a period of time when she refused to read any book that wasn't by Beverly Cleary, which concerned me somewhat. I had to explain to her that all good things must come to an end, including Mrs. Cleary's novels, and, not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs. Cleary herself. Aisling also got an armload of books from the American Girl Library's non-fiction selections, bright and cheerful books about how girls can manage their money and keep their skin clear and negotiate the treacherous paths of adolescence while making little ham sandwiches in the shape of daisies, with a hard-cooked egg laid on for a face.
We filled up four of the library's blue tote baskets and made our way to the elevators, groaning and accidentally barking one another's shins with the corners of our baskets. It took the woman at the library desk about ten minutes to check everything out, even with us obligingly bagging up our books. Then to the van, our arms stretching out like the arms of gorillas, our fingers pleading for mercy as the plastic bag handles dug into our skin.
And then home, where we piled our spoils on the dining room table with several resounding thumps, each of us poring over our bags, trying to decide what we wanted to read first, a succulent decision, like deciding between roast beef or roast pork, between mashed potatoes or sweet potato pie.
Meelyn chose her book and then disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen, re-emerging to say, "I thought I'd pop a little bit of popcorn. Do you guys want any?"
"Yes!" we said, and within minutes, we were sitting with our glasses of tea and our little bowls of popcorn, all in our familiar line on the couch, munching, the only other sound being the tiny, intimate whisper of pages turning as we each started a new book.
I have taught them well.
I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night
Frank couldn't sleep a wink last night and neither could I. We both
look a little bit tired.
Frank was singing about a fight with his beloved that had rendered him wakeful, waiting through the night until it was a decent hour for making a phone call. That wasn't my problem; my beloved was sound asleep in bed beside me and as I turned over and grumpily put my feet outside the covers, he woke up for a split second and said, "Are you getting up again?" Then he took both of my pillows and snuggled happily down, claiming my space as well as his.
I've been up for the past four nights, reading, cleaning, looking out the windows at the dark city streets and puttering around on the computer. Sometimes it's really irritating not to be able to sleep, but most of the time, I don't mind too much. It's about the only way I can claim a few moments of peace.
Last night, I was in the mood for a little company, so I turned the television in the living room on to EWTN and half-watched a program about the Divine Mercy while I answered emails. I can't watch 24-hour news stations in the middle of the night, for fear that bad news from around the globe will keep me awake forever. I also don't watch HGTV or TLC during times of the day when Lowe's isn't open. That's just frustrating, and when I'm awake, my goal is to soothe myself enough so that I can go back to sleep, not work myself up about not being able to go right out and buy that recommended UV protectant marine varnish for my antique front door.
So I sat and dealt with my email, which might not seem like a very restful thing to do, but it was the email that was keeping me awake in the first place. It's been a busy week for me and my two daughters, Meelyn, 14, and Aisling (pronounced "Ashleen"), 11. As homeschoolers we are in a state of perpetual motion, but this week has been busier than ever. I serve our Indianapolis area homeschool group as the activities coordinator and it seems like I always have fourteen or fifteen emails, none of which can be answered with a simple yes or no, waiting in my inbox. I plowed through all of them, setting aside one particularly thorny one to answer later. I felt happy and peaceful, glowing with a sense of accomplishment.
I heard my husband's feet hit the floor overhead and a moment later he came down the stairs to walk the dogs, addressing me with our standard morning greeting.
"How long have you been up?" he asked through a yawn.
"Oh, since around 4:30. It hasn't been too bad. I was just getting ready to come back upstairs."
"Do you want me to send the dogs up when we get back?"
"Only if their feet aren't wet," I replied. "It's been raining."
My husband went to leash the dogs and I went upstairs to my room, climbing into the bed and burrowing into a warm hollow, drowsy and content. As I lay there dozing, my husband said, "Go find Mommy!" from the foot of the stairs and I heard the dogs thundering up to my room, thumping onto the bed, their paws wet on the pale yellow matelassé coverlet, their noses wet on my cheeks. "Hi. Yes. Good morning. I love you, too," I murmur. "Now settle."
The dogs both flop down, sighing heavily, slipping into sleep as easily as a carnival-won goldfish slips from a plastic bag into a bowl of water. As if they haven't been doing that very thing for the past nine or ten hours. Lucky, I think, and then I drift away too, unaware of my husband coming in from his shower, dressing for work, leaving. Although I do retain some slight memory of his kiss on my cheek.
I wake up two hours later in a pool of feeble sunlight, both dogs stretched out to full length. I feel revived, glad that I was able to go back to bed this morning. Some days I can't.
I wonder how many emails I'll get today, and head off for the shower.


text:
top of page
BritGrip Lite - Complete Unit
The BritGrip Lite is a complete unit with a contemporary design based on the Union Jack flag.
Made of EVA, the BritGrip Lite is significantly more lightweight than the classic BritGrip collection.
It is suitable for cemented manufacturing.
Thickness: 8mm sole, 25mm heel
Size Range: UK size 7/8 (European size 40/42). Available in one size at present. Further size moulds can be made to volume order.
Material: EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate)
Stock Colours: Samples can be made on request. Colour ways include: Black, Brown, White, Charcoal Grey, Light Grey, Light Blue, Royal Blue, Indigo, Brick Red, Pink, Almond, Ivory, Mint Green, Olive Green.
Box Quantity: Minimum order quantity is 500 pairs per colour.
bottom of page


text: Founded in 2017, Beautysaur has been dedicated to delivering the concept of green skincare to Hong Kong. They collaborate with more than 30 organic beauty brands from all over the world to provide top quality products to the customers. Living in a hectic pace of life, Beautysaur shares a philosophy of diminishing the "fast food" trend in beauty and bringing back the slowness to our life.*Opening hours listed are for reference only. Information is subject to change without prior notice. Please contact the related merchants directly with any inquiries.


text:
Late last month, a court in Cologne, Germany outlawed circumcision of young boys; a practice viewed as an integral part of Jewish and Muslim religions. Faith leaders in these two communities are outraged and see the new law as a harbinger of religious intolerance. I place child health above and beyond ritual practice. But I want to think critically about this new law because I am not convinced it is only about public health.
"…the court found that the child's "fundamental right to bodily integrity†was more important than the parents' rights [to religious freedom].†— New York Times
The Cologne court decided this based on a case of a 4-year-old Muslim boy whose parents (immigrants from Turkey) took him to a doctor for ritual circumcision. Several days later, the child was admitted to a hospital for what has been described as "profuse bleeding†or "medical complications†as a result of the circumcision. The physician who treated him for these complications reported the case to authorities and that led to a prosecution of the doctor who performed the circumcision. The accused doctor was acquitted by a lower court. The prosecutor took the case to a higher court in Cologne who also found the performing doctor non culpa, but decided action was needed and indicted the procedure instead. I don't have enough facts to say the performing physician should have borne legal ramification. As far as I can tell, the child in question survived and is fine.*
This ruling only applies the the city of Cologne, where this court has jurisdiction, but Jewish and Muslim groups throughout Germany have been outspoken in their opposition of this new law. Both groups view the law as an infringement on religious freedom because they ritually circumcise boys according to religious doctrine. Both groups believe this is another in a string of recent discriminatory practices in Europe.
"…the ban poses a threat to the existence of the Jewish community in Germany and is a new example of creeping prejudice in European law against non-Christians, after a Swiss ban on minarets [minaret defined], French and Belgian bans on Islamic veils in public, and an attempted Dutch ban on halal meat [halal defined].†— Chicago Tribune
Jews and Muslims are not the only ones who see this law as an affront to religious freedom. The German Parliament is set to pass "federal†law that protects parental choice to circumcise for their male infant or child. Note the specified gender…male infant or child. For if anyone suggested female circumcision be protected, there would surely be an international uproar railing against female genital mutilation — myself amongst them. So why do we treat boys differently?
There is a long history of debate about male circumcision and the health benefits and risks associated with it. Some believe male circumcision is rooted in cultural materialism — the idea that cultural practices emerge for practical reasons like economic stability or improving health outcomes, anthropologically speaking — rather than in religious tradition, as most theologians would argue. If you believe the cultural materialist argument, then you believe there is some practical (non-religious) reason circumcision began as a ritual and possibly a reason to continue it. Indeed, there is research that argues male circumcision provides a health benefit.
However, some of this research has been challenged as being methodologically flawed and not replicable. Also, I can't find any research that argues the benefits are so great that male circumcision is recommended, even though it became fairly standard practice in the United States after World War II. There is also research that not circumcising boys has health benefits. The evidence for and against is so contrary, it is confusing and hard to decipher. The CDC seems to suggest it is a good idea, but the American Association of Pediatrics is on the fence and defers to parental choice.
"Although there are risks to male circumcision, serious complications are rare. Accordingly, male circumcision, together with other prevention interventions, could play an important role in HIV prevention…†— Centers for Disease Control
"In the pluralistic society of the United States in which parents are afforded wide authority for determining what constitutes appropriate child-rearing and child welfare, it is legitimate for the parents to take into account cultural, religious, and ethnic traditions, in addition to medical factors, when making this choice.†— American Association of Pediatrics
Suffice it to say we treat males differently because there may be health benefits that warrant the risks associated with circumcision. There are no health benefits associated with female circumcision, only health risks.
"There is no comparison between the two. The equivalent of "female circumcision†in males would be to remove the entire penis and sew the scrotum over the area, leaving just enough opening for urination.†— Ask Dr. Eva
Still some see genital alteration of children as genital mutilation, regardless of gender because children cannot offer informed consent to the procedure. [Jax is included in this group.] And this was the major impetus behind the Cologne court ruling — that children cannot protect their own "bodily integrity†because they cannot speak for themselves, so the court was speaking for them. I understand this and admire the court for wanting to advocate for children. But I am still not convinced this was their only motivation. The court did not rule against body piercing, which is also performed on Hindu children for religious reasons, without anesthesia. The court did not rule against any other ritual body modifications performed on children. The court singled out one case and one procedure — a procedure that disproportionately affects Jews and Muslims. Maybe that was just happenstance. Maybe the court would have made the same decision if the law had opposed a Protestant ritual (the largest branch of Christianity in Germany). I just don't know.
If I ever have a son, I don't know that I would choose circumcision for him. I do not find the evidence for medical benefit compelling. But I want to be able to make that choice. I think parents should be educated, not legislated in this matter. I don't think it was appropriate for the Cologne court to deprive parents of that choice.
What about you realm? Do you think the court acted in the best interest of children?
* I find it ironic I can't locate information about the health and well-being of the child in question. This whole case is predicated on the idea that circumcision puts children at too great a risk. And yet, no one seems concerned enough to report whether or not this child is well and happy after his ordeal.


text:
Students in MSU's Department of Music have access to a dedicated faculty and excellent ensembles at a world-class research university.
- Admissions Checklist - All you need to know about applying to join the Bulldog Nation!
- Department of Music Handbook - All policies, procedures and requirements for the Department of Music.
- For Transfer Students - Thank you for considering MSU to continue your musical education. Here is important information you will need to hit the ground running on your first day.
- Information for Prospective Students - Learn more about our department.
- Scholarships & Auditions - Information for students wishing to continue their study of music at MSU.
- Student Organizations - Learn about the professional, service and social organizations with the Department of Music.
- Department of Music Course Syllabi - A syllabus (plural: syllabi) contains all the information a student needs to participate in a course. Our syllabi can be found at the MSU College of Education website.


text:
Richard Knowles
District Court Judge
2nd Judicial District --
Bernalillo County
Year: 2002
Evaluation: Judge Knowles received favorable ratings in this evaluation. Specific areas of strength include dedication to his work, effective communication, punctuality, and knowledge of the law.The judge received lower ratings for his perceived arrogance in dealing with attorneys, a concern that was also identified during his previous evaluation. Judge Knowles has stated that he has taken steps to deal with this perception. It should be noted that survey respondents indicate that he has made improvements in other areas relating to communication and demeanor.
Experience & Education: Judge Knowles was appointed to the District Court in April 1995 and won election to the same position in 1996. He is currently assigned to the Criminal Division and is instrumental in promoting the Drug Court Program in Bernalillo County. The judge was admitted to the bar in 1983 and subsequently practiced law as a private attorney and a public defender. He is active in various professional and civic associations. Judge Knowles received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida.


text:
Acclaimed Plein Air Artist to Teach Local High School Students in Week-Long Residency
Acclaimed Plein Air Artist to Teach Local High School Students in Week-Long Residency
Written on Mon, 2015-04-13 14:27 by Marie
Art not only can enhance one's life; the process of creating it has also been known to change one's life as well.
That's what happened to Stephen Griffin when he discovered at an early age that his artistic aptitude helped to transform a learning disability he struggled with into a rewarding life-long passion.
This spring, as part of the Avalon Foundation's celebration of Plein Air-Easton's (PAE) tenth anniversary, the award-winning artist will share his passion for creating art with advanced art students in Talbot County high schools during a week-long residency.
Funded by a grant from the Marcia Brady Tucker Foundation, the teaching residency is facilitated by a partnership among the Avalon Foundation (which was awarded the grant), the Talbot County Board of Education, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM), and Attraction Magazine. In addition to the performances that the Avalon Foundation provides to 5 elementary Talbot County Public School grades through its Young Audiences & Outreach Program, this residency will expand the outreach program to local area high school students.
"We are absolutely thrilled with this opportunity to bring a world-class artist like Stephen Griffin here to work closely with talented art students in our local public high schools," said Al Bond, executive director of the Avalon Foundation. "This is also a great way to support the year-round efforts of art teachers with an immersive instruction experience by a nationally recognized, professional painter."
Griffin, who is the only PAE artist to be juried each year since the prestigious art festival began a decade ago, will begin his Talbot County residency on April 15 by introducing plein air oil painting techniques to 30 art students (11 from St. Michaels High School and 19 from Easton High School).
The plein air painting style takes artists out of the abstract studio setting and out into the "open air" to capture the light and mood of real-world scenes on their canvases.
"Observing and learning plein air techniques from Mr. Griffin will not only help students see that a career as a professional artist is attainable," said Kathy Dill, fine arts supervisor with Talbot County Public Schools. "It will also help to inspire a lifelong appreciation of the fine arts as well."
After three days of Griffin's intensive classroom instruction (April 20-22), the students will engage in a plein air "paint-off" at CBMM on April 23 from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., in which community artists will be on hand to offer guidance to students.
In addition to recruiting Griffin and assisting in coordinating residency activities, the Avalon Foundation will also supply students with painting materials, easels, and transportation to CBMM.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Stephen Griffin studied at the esteemed Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia before moving to Maryland in 1993 to study with renowned portrait artists Cedric and Joanette Egeli.
Griffin, who has won several awards at PAE (such as Best Marine category for his work entitled "Eastern Shore Heritage"), says he has a special affinity for painting scenes from the Chesapeake Bay, especially around the Eastern Shore.
"I love to capture the beauty and spirit of the Eastern Shore," he said. "The dialects of people, the way the wind runs up the water, the shapes of boats that are designed for specific purposes. There is no other place like it."
Add comment
Subscribe by email


text:
Print Friendly
Phishing is an attempt by a hacker to trick you into revealing some personal information, such as credentials for online banking or credit card details.
The most common method is emails which look like legitimate communications from trusted companies, such as Ebay, Paypal, Amazon or a bank, asking you to click the link in the email to log in to their system to reset your password, to make sure your account is working, or to gain access to new features. When you click the link you are taken to a website under the hacker's control and any information you provide is fed straight back to them.
Phish attacks are almost always random; if you bank with Westpac, and you receive an email purportedly from Westpac, the hacker/spammer has no specific knowledge that you bank with Westpac. It is just a shot in the dark. You are equally likely to receive one that claims to be from other banks. But in the future the incidence of phish attacks specifically targeting a group will rise. If an email list from a bank leaks onto the internet, we can expect wave after wave of malicious email targeting those users and those attacks will be very successful. †
These emails and the websites they link to do not generally contain any harmful content; the harm derives from convincing you to provide personal details. A phish attack is more likely to be delivered to the user if it does not carry a suspicious payload. However, some traditional email-borne viruses (such as W32/Mimail.j@MM) will also prompt you for information when they have infected your system.
Therefore phish attacks may arrive in a benign form or may arrive in a malicious form. Both types may use vulnerabilities in email clients, web browsers and/or operating systems to make their attacks harder to detect. All antivirus products will detect traditional viruses and there is an increase in detections for benign, but obviously malicious, fakery (such as those that use particular operating system faults: http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100927.htm).
If you double-click the padlock icon the browser will show you the details of the certificate used to secure the site.
It means the certificate used is invalid in some way and you must make a judgement about whether to continue with whatever you are doing. If in doubt, choose No and exit the web browser.
† 25/01/2005 — This has now happened! A badly written web-based "opt-out" function provided by a popular e-commerce site has exposed a large number of email addresses. Since these addresses are all known to be users of that specific service, any phish attacks with this list will be very accurately targeted.
Copyright © 1996-2023 Cadzow TECH Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved.Information and prices contained in this website may change without notice. Terms of use.


text:
For the fourth video we decided to go with something sweet. Pistachio brittle is a favorite of ours and hopefully it will become one for you too. In the recipe we use a combination of white and brown sugar, if you prefer, you can easily substitute all white. The flavor will be slightly different and equally delicious.
Pistachio Brittle
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, diced
1 1/2 cups raw, unsalted pistachios
1 teaspoon baking soda
Combine corn syrup, water, sugar and brown sugar in a heavy sauce pan. Bring to a rolling boil. Turn off the heat and add salt and butter. Over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, cook till the caramel reaches 280 degrees Fahrenheit (soft crack stage). Turn off the heat and add pistachios, stirring to combine with the caramel. Return to medium heat and cook until the candy reaches 305 degrees (hard crack stage). Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda. Pour the hot brittle out on to a sheet tray lined with either a silpat or buttered foil. Let cool to room temperature.


text:
One of the great things about working in District 75 in New York City is that we have regular bi-monthly meetings where the tech liaisons from our 60+ (and 100s of sites/buildings) schools get together to share and learn. We recently had the opportunity to talk about what tools are benefitting us most in the … Continue reading 50+ Useful EdTech Tools
Tag: visualizing learning
8 Tools For Visual Learners (and Others Too)
Multimodal Learning Lectures may work for some students on some topics, but many others need to connect to content differently for it to be meaningful. That might mean using accessibility tools to help struggling learners, engaging reluctant students through game-based learning, or challenging students to think critically through project-based learning. You don't have to completely … Continue reading 8 Tools For Visual Learners (and Others Too)


text:
Free shipping on all orders over 100 €
Free shipping on all orders over 100 €
The Indo Pro is ideal for taller riders (6 feet tall and over) because the larger deck accommodates a wider stance resulting in greater stability. The Indo Pro is also a favorite for users that want to improve their longboard surfing by practicing cross-stepping walking from one end of the deck to the other while keeping their weight and center of balance over the roller.
The Indo Mini Pro is ideal for snowboarders, wakesurfers, wakeboarders, and kitesurfers. The addition of the IndoFLO 24" Gigante Cushion will allow the user to experience a fluid 360 degree range of motion that exactly simulates the rail to rail or heel to toe movement that is prevalent in board sports.
The INDO BOARD Pro (Natural) Deck and Pro Roller features our 42" X 15" Original oval deck coated with a non-slip surface, and our 8.5" diameter roller, and Instructional DVD
Deck dimensions: 42" X 15" ( 107 x 38.1 cm)
Roller size: 8.5" (21.5 cm)
Weight limit: 350 lbs (160 Kg)
Deck construction: 11/16" Cabinet-grade, Baltic Birch plywood
Roller construction: indestructible molded plastic with four strips of grip tape
© 2020-2021 indoboard Greece. All rights reserved.


text:
The Virginia Soybean Association in cooperation with Virginia Cooperative Extension would like to announce the 2016 Virginia Soybean Yield Contest. The purpose of the Virginia Soybean Yield Contest is to emphasize and demonstrate the practices necessary to produce maximum economic yields, to recognize those producers who grow high-yielding soybeans, and to gather data on the practices utilized by these outstanding producers. With the help of various seed companies, we reward and promote the achievements of Virginia's most productive soybean farmers.
There are four Soybean Yield Contest categories: 1) Full-Season, Non-irrigated; 2) Double-Crop, Non-irrigated; and 3) Irrigated (Full-Season or Double-Crop; and 4) Most Efficient Yield (MEY). First, second, and third place winners of the full-season, double-crop, and irrigated contest will be recognized with appropriate trophies or plaques. In addition, cash awards of $200, $100, and $50 will be presented to the first, second, and third place winners in each of these categories. The winner of the MEY contest will receive a plaque declaring him or her the most efficient soybean producer in Virginia for that year.
Printable entry forms and contest details can be obtained from your County Agent or on the Soybean Extension and Research website.