National Alpaca Weekend

Another National Alpaca Weekend has come and gone, and as usual I didn't get my cards out in time. Seriously, though, I spent my Sunday afternoon visiting alpaca farms with my daughter. We saw four farms, and could easily have visited twice that many if we had gotten an earlier start, which I'm sure Kat will never let me forget.
It was a beautiful day, and I was happy just to have an excuse to drive around in it- fall, glorious fall. Kat loved seeing the critters, the items made from the critters' fleece, and did some networking, so she may be spending her next interim on an alpaca farm.
One of the crias (baby alpacas) was fascinated with my boot, and kept sniffing at it and trying to nibble on it. I don't know what the attraction was, and certainly none of the others were impressed, but Snickers couldn't stay away. We also saw an alpaca named Houdini do an agility course, and entered a contest to name a new cria.
And, best of all, I wasn't at work.

Her delusions know no bounds

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin defended her remark that the close proximity of Russia to her home state of Alaska gives her foreign policy experience, explaining in a CBS interview airing Thursday that "we have trade missions back and forth."

Seriously.

I RE-enter the 21st century

I don't know if you've heard, but we had some problems in this part of the world last week. A couple of people had power outages, that kind of thing.
Actually, we had a hurricane. This is kind of different for Ohio. Generally, the aftermath of a hurricane brings us lots and lots of rain; Ike brought wind, and plenty of it. Almost no rain. My house was without power from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon, and we were among the ones who got power relatively fast.
I was actually kind of disappointed when the power came on. Things had been kind of relaxed, and I was enjoying the calm, quiet evenings. The younger boys loved having their bedtime stories read by the light of a battery-powered lantern, and with no school in the morning, the reading could go on and on.
I was able to enjoy the lack of electricity only because the weather was pretty mild. If it had been really hot, I'd have done significant amounts of pouting and whining. As it was, only the teenaged ones really suffered- they had no internet access. Oh, and Gregory was distraught about one thing- he had lost his first tooth at school on the Friday before the storm, and forgotten to bring it home. He was frantic. I tried to get him to accept money from me to tide him over until the tooth fairy could visit, or to leave a note explaining to the tooth fairy the usual circumstances, but nothing would do except money left by the tooth fairy in exchange for the actual tooth. Said tooth is, at this moment, tucked under his pillow, awaiting the transfer.
Here are a few things that would not have happened without the windstorm-
1) Jeff would not have gathered load after load of free wood to burn this winter.
2)We would have missed out on three evenings blissfully free of news about the election.
3) We would not have been at the zoo on Thursday. Carrousel rides were free, the animals were active, and we saw Jack Hanna.

I'm just saying...

"I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, to Newsmax, August 2008.


"I believe that man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change."Sarah Palin, vice presidential candidate, to ABC's Charlie Gibson, September 2008.

-reported by Dan Shapley in The Daily Green

In regards to "that woman"

I have spent the last few days looking for more things to list under, " Why Sarah Palin scares me." The sheer number of reasons has made it impossible for me to compose a coherent list. Her love of earmarks, now flipped to a hatred and disdain for earmarks, comes to mind. I was also impressed by her cavalier attitude toward shooting of Alaska's large mammals. Of course, once their habitat disappears they'll have nowhere to hide, making it just that much easier to pick them off from the air. How sporting.
I'll have to stop for now. My demon offspring require my assistance procuring items which they have only just recalled that they need for school tomorrow. They didn't wait until bedtime, so I guess I should count my lucky stars.

Why Sarah Palin scares me way more that McCain ever could on his own; or- Jesus, send us a pipeline!

Maybe my son was right-maybe I have nothing to blog about. I prefer to think that I am simply too busy to keep this up to date.
At any rate, I now have something to say--that woman must be stopped!

1. She seems to genuinely believe that we can drill our way out of our current mess. Perhaps she's satisfied with a "solution" that leaves the problem to be dealt with by future generations, but shouldn't we at least try for better than that?

2. She promotes "abstinence only" education. Please.

3. She doesn't think global warming is, a) a big deal or, b) caused by human activity.

4. She believes that the Iraq war is ordained by God. She has every right to believe this, I have every right to consider her a loon for doing so. God wants young people to die for oil? Sorry, there's just no way I can make this make sense.

We'll talk more about this later.