Surviving the Circus

I can't do it. I must speak. Even though the photo is self explanatory, I find it next to impossible to post a photo without a description. I guess I'm not very good at Wordless Wednesday. So here we have four rising seniors, one of which is my daughter. Have a great day!

Bloggers are great, especially Entrecard bloggers. I have found so much information that is helping my blogging efforts. Here's one for getting your blog featured at Entrecard from dreadbob.blogspot.com "I was wandering on Entrecard to find something to boost my ad sales on Entrecard. Then in the Shop there, I found a lot of things which you can buy at the cost of your Entrecard Credits. I entered the Upgrades Section where I found Featured Status item. It costs you around 750 Ec." Technorati Tags: blogging , entrecard , site promotion Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

Iran is still executing those found guilty of adultery and other sex crimes. Death is by stoning. Men are buried up to their waists. Women are buried up to their chests. Then the stoning begins. The first stones thrown are not to be large enough to kill immediately. Torture - that's what is happening here. Currently, there are eight women and one man who have been sentenced to death. The women are accused of adultery, prostitution and incest. I can't help but wonder if these charges are true, or if they are twisted to protect the men. The women range in age from 27 to 43. The man is a 50 year old music teacher who had relations with a student. Maybe we should sentence our pediphiles to life in Iran. LINK: Read the full story at the BBC. LINK: Learn how you can help Iranian women at Amnesty.org. Technorati Tags: iran , stoning Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

We all know how important backlinks are. Many bloggers have experienced a higher authority rating at Technorati and other social networking sites by joining groups at the same networking sites and then helping each other out. Now there's a more legit way to get those backlinks.... it must have been a secret because this is the first time I've seen this information. Just a SUPER simple way to get some valuable .gov and .edu backlinks for your SEO efforts.Check it out! read more | digg story

So far, today is not just another manic Monday, at least not at my house. Of course, it IS a manic Monday for Obama, McCain, Bush, Schumer, Gramm and The New Yorker. But I'm not worrying over any of that right now. I just saw this photo my daughter took down by the marina. She's in the middle, snapping their reflections in the river. Pretty cool. She's turning into quite a photographer, but what a muddy river! Technorati Tags: photography , life , teens Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

The US has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve known as SPR. It is the world's largest supply of crude oil which is kept in case of an emergency shortage of oil. It was started after the oil embargo of 1973-74. When needed, as in the aftermath of Katrina, the oil reserves are sold to US markets. You can learn more about the SPR at http://fossil.energy.gov Nancy Pelosi has strong feelings on releasing at least some of the SPR to help lower the prices of gas... LINK: Peloshi to Bush: Free our Oil “Americans convinced the Bush Administration to not keep filling the SPR a number of weeks ago. We are calling upon them now to free our oil, call the White House, e-mail the White House so that we can increase the supply to reduce the price at the pump. The President’s number is (202) 456-1414, and his e-mail is comments@WhiteHouse.gov.”

The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) are the regulators of the IndyMac bank which was seized yesterday following a panic withdrawal of funds by many of their customers. “It’s the biggest failure in 24 years,” said Chip MacDonald, a banking lawyer at Jones Day in Atlanta. “You haven’t had a lot of failures of that size, yet.” LINK: NYTimes The OTS is at least partially blaming the panic on a letter written by Charles Schumer, the democrat senator from New York. So our question should be, why did Schumer target one particular lender? Was this really to benefit the American public, or is their some more dastardly reason for his letter? Hopefully, someone who "can" will find the answers for us. Hopefully, the right reasons were the basis of the letter. Perhaps making the letter public was the mistake. Obviously people will react to such warnings. The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the O...

Today launches not only a new site for the Republican party, but also a new day - one which should have arrived much earlier. You can now tell the Republican party exactly what you think, and hopefully have some positive dialogue addressing platform issues. You don't have to be a Republican to participate, but be advised that if you are there to just trash the party, your comments will not be published. Genuine users can log on and submit their ideas, issues of concern and things that they would like to hear discussed by the Republican party. All in all, it's a good idea. Could it be possible that the powers that be, of the Republican party, are indeed clueless as to what our primary concerns are? Gas prices Healthcare jobs and wages the homeless credit card companies and their outrageous practices environment living in a self-sufficient country, dependent on no one for our survival ... in other words, our economy and our future. And here's another one - who is in charge? W...

Mondegreen is the word to know... Merriam Webster has added 100 new words to the most recent update of their collegiate dictionary. The new words are associated with technology, food and science, among other things. Here are some of the new words: Webinar (1998): live, online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments. netroots (2003): grassroots political activists who communicate via the Internet, especially by blogs Pescatarian (1993): vegetarian whose diet includes fish A mondegreen most often comes from misunderstood phrases or lyrics. Mondegreen is defined as a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung, according to the update. Mondegreen was first coined by author Sylvia Wright in 1954 in Atlantic magazine, when she confessed to a childhood misinterpretation of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Moray." When she first heard the lyric "they had slain the Earl of Moray and had l...

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Just another manic monday... A song by the Bangles, read the lyrics to Manic Monday here. OPERA Browser Upgrade I downloaded the upgrade to my Opera browser and it's running faster than ever! My computer hates these things... I stopped using Firefox because it took up too much ram. My computer is old, I've had it since 2002. It was one of the first PCs to have Windows XP, so my ram is minimal compared to today's standards. Other than that, it works just fine. I joined Social Sparks last week, but apparently their site is based on Java, and again, it's such slow going that I doubt I will remain a member. Another thing that annoys me and my slow computer is FeedJit. I HATE this widget. Why do we need to have a live feed on where our visitors are coming from? It takes forever to load. You can opt out, but you have to do it on every single site and frankly, that just takes too much time. Opera saves me from these annoying widgets. The Opera browser shows how many objects...

So thankful am I for the freedoms I share without any suffering, thinking or care I go along living and laughing each day, forgetting the price those before me did pay but just as my dear Father taught me to pray, he taught me to stop and remember this day the family would gather to fish, cook and play, ice cream and watermelon, feasts of the day my Father has passed to the next phase of life and so has my Mother, his partner, his wife fondly I long for those days of the past and wish that my childhood forever did last but now I have others that I must inspire to wave the flag proudly and pray for world peace May God keep us safe from the enemy's fire May God bless our troops - and bring them home please. God bless America!

How would you like to receive a $250 Visa Gift Card? A winner will be chosen on July 11th, so hurry up and enter! This thirty-something stay-at-home Mom who cooks from scratch (don't you just hate her?) and gives us recipes is now giving us a chance to win some cash! She has many contests going on, so be sure to check out her blog frequently. MyWoodenSpoon.com I found a great and simple recipe for oven roasted shrimp that I hope to try next week after my daughter comes home from vacationing with her Dad. Technorati Tags: contest , recipes Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

Memo to myself... Must add technorati tags. Guess what I discovered today? While blogger labels are great and do seem to get picked up by Technorati, they are not actually "linked" in the technorati cloud of labels, as seen in my Technorati widget on my right sidebar. I discovered the cool technorati widget this week. You can choose which features you want in your widget, but unfortunately, you cannot choose the colors, which is why that awful green is clashing with my teal. Since I use the classic blogger on this blog, I really liked the fact that I could include my label tags in the technorati widget. I randomly chose a tag to click on just to make sure it worked as I thought it would. Immediately I noticed that there was only one or two posts listed for the label. Then I checked my own label tag and realized that there were more that should have been listed. I checked another label in the technorati widget, and suprise - no posts were listed. So now, I have to go back and...

I just read a pastor's blog post on the " Jesus for President " authors who are now on tour. No, they are not advocating a sign-in vote for Jesus. This goes much deeper than that... "This whole project is about the political imagination of what it means to follow after Jesus," Claiborne said. "The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say 'Jesus as our commander in chief' today." (from Cnn, see link below) Below is my reply (comment) to the pastor's blog post, which you can read here. I have quoted the sections I responded to. It seems to me you missed the point of the Jesus for President movement. I see it as a way to undo the damage done by those who have tried to hijack Christianity for the Republican party by focusing on 2 emotional issues, which is the real abomination. Inspiring people to vote with the heart of Jesus is not a mockery - it is truth. They are not advocating one party over the other...