WORK IN PROGRESS

WEDDING COMMENTS ON THE WAY!!!

The Heck-of-a-job, Brownie Award goes to....

[ Hey , there is SEC football EVEN on a Royal Wedding day! ]

The Macon Bulldog Club

Thursday Night

It's May, all there is too do is gather in rooms, drink beer and ask Coach Richt questions. One guy in Macon, full of either beer or the last few UGA seasons, just told St. Richt that. "Bobo Sux !!", or some such comment came out of the crowd, and according to the Macon paper this " lit a fire under His Holiness ".

“I see your frustration, I understand your frustration,” Lough quoted Richt as saying.“I wasn’t born yesterday, I’ve coached football for 25 years, so I know what the hell I’m doing, OK? . . . I appreciate your passion, I appreciate your support for this football team. Everybody can just calm down and know that we’re in good hands.


Coach RIcht's remarks elicited a strong ovation from the crowd gathered at the Walnut Creek Shooting Preserve.

Know what I am doing ?

2010 : 6-7 , 3-5 in the SEC

This will be his last season to know what he is doing, if things do not improve.

Pre Game, Baby!

all bets are off.

( lots of photos here, really hope it's not an issue with your download, 

and sorry for the gettyimages, I CAN NOT do screen caps with my

ibm keyboard  )

The family of the Groom did their deal and hosted , what in a normal wedding would have been the rehearsal dinner ( if they even do that in England ) ANYWAY, those wacky Windsors hosted a dinner party .. last night ( which is tonight here... )THE night before the wedding at the Oriental Hyde Park Hotel there in London. Dance the night away! No bride or groom , but their big day is tomorrow.

Her Majesty, Bringing it to the lesser royals!

She looks fantastic. 85 yo baby. Take that Sofia of Spain.

Edward, Earl of Wessex and Countess Sophie

Very good for them.

Camilla.... We may need an intervention here.

Why is she the only one in a short dress?

Again, the Queen of Freaking Spain is in full blown ball gown.

dowdy, dowdy, dowdy.

Princess Beatrice, what? Thought there was a 

Vegas theme to the night? I mean, your Mother is already not invited, and you wear this. House of York NOT doing well.

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Who? You are asking yourself?

Other than being the last Romanov looking Windsor, he is grandson of George V and a cousin of the Queen. You do not need to know them. But here is the thing. Neil told me this morning that William had turned down a Duke-dom, which I did not know. The couple above are Price and Princess Michael of Kent. His name is Michael, her name is Olga or something German. If you are not a Prince of something ( Wales..) or a Duke of Something.. then your bride takes YOUR name. So, unless something outstanding is done tomorrow, Our Miss Kate, becomes Princess William. This is way deep down in the Kyle knows to much about the royal family barrel. But we will see...

The smoking hot Prince Felipe of Spain

and his most photogenic wife, and the ONLY real competition Kate will have, Princess Letizia

Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece and Crown Princess Maria-Chantal . Again, you don't need to know them other than Maria is sort of an American, one of the Uber Fabulous MILLER SISTERS. The three most well married girls on the planet. Helps if  your dad is a gazillionaire.

Prince Daniel of Sweden and Crown Princess Victoria. Your run of the mill bike riding continental Royal you read about in the back pages of HELLO!. What England does NOT want. She is the Princess.. he was her.. PERSONAL TRAINER....

Sultan of Brunei who literally got rich off of batshit.
Turing guano into oil sure, and Mrs. Sultan I guess, who knows. They are here ONLY for the couture burka. Which we love.

HERE are more photos with out the watermark.

W2 : the final countdown

EIGHT HOURS !!

Or as they are calling it in London, " Oh dear God, where is Pippa ? "

I totally meant to go to bed early last night and get up really early to practice for in the morning, but Koda and I stayed up late watching the storms on Weather Channel. SO, not not sure if I will just stay up all night, or get a couple of hours of sleep, up by at least 3:30.

I think we are going to watch CNN, although BBC America is going to carry BBC/BBC coverage, which could be fun. BUT, as everyone knows, Anderson has that fantastic connection to the Royal Family. ( for anyone that might not know, Anderson's grandmothers twin sister was the mistress to the then Prince of Wales - soon to be Duke of Windsor - AND was the person who introduced him to Mrs. Simpson!!!  WHY don't they teach real history in the schools, why ?!? )

Thelma and Gloria

The Magnificent Morgan Twins

HERE

is what will take place in the morning.

Stupid Kyle did not realize that it is going to be " a normal " Anglican/Episcopalian wedding service, with stuff added. This is very interesting read it. Sing along with Jerusalem and MAKE SURE TO STAND during GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

There's got to be a morning after..

 We were the a million times less powerful northern end of the line of storms that caused so much havoc last night in the South. Rained as hard as I have ever seen it rain , for about 10 min, then cleared up. Was just crazy.

 Today was all wind and clean air! Our morning stroll among the windblown garbage cans.

 This afternoon on the trail things were just lovely. Makes such a difference for me when the air is clean. We were both all jolly.

 Been a LONG TIME since we here in the brumous finger lakes have seen this

 an already wet Koda sniffing a big rock...

 plopping into his swimming hole to get more wet

The swamp apple things, or rabbit apples what ever they are called popped up over night, so odd.. the rain must just make them explode.

Tuscaloosa

Too much to really wrap your head around, normal life at lunch , gone by dinner time. You just feel so sorry for people who are just trying, like everyone else, to get by. So many photos and videos out there, but this is the set that was just the most amazing. ( horrific? , what word do you use ?)

from the

Tuscaloosa News

30 Incredible Pictures of the Tuscaloosa Tornado

dinner

Chicken

RIce

Field Peas w/snaps

Children turn to page 52, pay attention while I read to you. Noah and the Ark is the lesson for the day, so follow me when I say.....

 Record Rain!

The wettest April in forever, I think, much more rain today. Really walking out in the park is like walking on sponge. It broke a little bit this afternoon and Koda and I were out!

 Even now some thunder off in the distance.

 High Spring here in the Hamlet.

 Yellow with the dark skies in the back.

 BUT, later on this afternoon we got a full arch rainbow.

Pot-o-gold, in Mendon.

W2 '11

TWO DAYS SIX HOURS AND 46 SECONDS

Tiara Gate!

Word literally on the street is that Our Miss Kate will walk down the aisle wearing this tiara borrowed from Her Majesty. Yeah, I was all about the Spencer tiara, but turns out that is just for the Spencer girls or wives ( William IS a Spencer...) BUT, this one is just lovely, and look at all the ones who have worn it!

The George III tiara (also known as the Russian Fringe Tiara) is a circlet incorporating brilliant diamonds that were formerly owned by George III. Originally commissioned in 1830, the tiara has since been worn by many Queens Consort. Originally it could be worn as a collar or necklace or mounted on a wire to form the tiara. Victoria first wore it as a tiara during a visit to the Royal Opera in 1839. In Franz Xaver Winterhalter's painting 'The First of May', made in 1851, Victoria can be seen wearing it as she holds Prince Arthur, the future Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. In a delicate veiled reference to the adoration of the Magi, The Duke of Wellington can be seen presenting the young prince with a gift, while Prince Albert looks on.[6]
When Queen Elizabeth, consort of George VI, first wore the tiara, Sir Henry "Chips" Channon called it 'an ugly spiked tiara'. Queen Elizabeth later loaned it to her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the future Elizabeth II as "something borrowed" for her wedding in 1947. As The Princess Elizabeth was getting dressed at Buckingham Palace before leaving for Westminster Abbey the tiara snapped. Luckily the court jeweller was standing by in case of emergency. The jeweller was rushed to his work room by a police escort. Queen Elizabeth reassured her daughter that it would be fixed in time, and it was. The Queen Mother later also loaned it to her granddaughter The Princess Anne for her marriage to Captain Mark Phillips in 1973.[6] It was put on show with a number of other royal tiaras in 2001.

Victoria wearing it.

This MAJOR story broke when someone " who looked like an insider " tried to place a bet that Kate would be wearing it on Friday . ( the story )

ONLY because it is eating up the internets today:

You tell me:

I was fully on the brother train after first viewing. But wouldn't the rents ( call #2 ) tell the brother? Best friend ? No backslapping in the hug.. which is what all straight men have to do..( and again, you would tell your parents first..)

Has Budweiser, the king of beers, come out with the first post DADT beer commercial ???? Do I have to stop drinking Canadian and go back, back back to my roots ???

Smaller, More Local Government. The closer you are to the people, the better for all...

Except when it comes to the homos, then big brother knows best.

Dateline Nashville : ( from the April 6th Nashville Bussiness Journal ) "Companies doing business with Nashville Metro government will soon have to pledge not to discriminate against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Metro Council approved a bill Tuesday requiring government contractors to abide by that guideline by a vote of 21-15, with three abstentions. A source of controversy in the business community, the bill drew sharp debate from council members Tuesday night.
Councilman Jamie Hollin, a sponsor of the bill, said after the vote that Metro had “sent a clear signal all around the world” that people of all kinds are welcome to work in Nashville. Advocates of gay rights agreed.
“If you’re willing to work hard, and you’re talented, you’re welcome in Nashville, Tenn.,” said Chris Sanders, chairman of the Tennessee Equality Project’s Nashville chapter. 
Hey you think the hair in Nashville gets that big all by itself ?!?  Music city is teaming with , well team mates! Seemingly harmless, right?

Not so fast you pinko musicians! The State GOP will have something to say about that! You can not run your city yourself! Those  orange checkerboard pant wearing boys in Knoxville stepped in to strip Nashville of the right to make up its own laws. "The measure sponsored by Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada of Franklin was approved 73-24 on Monday. The companion bill is awaiting a vote in the Senate State and Local Government Committee. The proposal would void a Nashville ordinance barring companies that discriminate against gays and lesbians from doing business with the city. Under state law it is illegal to discriminate against a person because of race, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin. The Nashville ordinance prohibits companies that discriminate because of sexual orientation or gender identity from receiving city contracts."

So, yes, the GOP wants SMALLER LOCAL Government, unless you break the Lord's rules, then, well.....

Let's talk about my Easter Lamb for a bit

Since y'all know, you read all this mess in reverse order of how it is written. You will find out as you go on, that I have spent my morning in the muck and mire of the current state of politics . ( my morning walk with Koda was pretty mucky and mirey as well we are SOGGY up this way...)

So, lets do a little palette cleansing here and talk about the lamb we had for Easter. Right off the bat, it was pricey! I just don't spend this much money on cuts of meat, AND it was one of the cheaper ones in the bin at Wegmans. ( larger photo here ) It was a simi boned whole leg of New Zealand lamb, never frozen. Now it was feeding six people , and I bet David would have liked it if I had gone for a bigger one, as he would have had more leftover lamb....
I am a tad impatient. Really, shock, I know. ADD was invented for me, as I am distracted by all things shiny. So, it is rare for me to have the patience to marinade things for a long time. I have learned my lesson and have come to the light about this. Marinading is a good thing . Although I still have trouble with the phrase " over night ". How do recipe writers know what time you go to bed or wake up?

So, around ten-o'clock Saturday night, I put into this big blue plastic bowl:

• one cup of olive oil
• one large onion sliced very thinly
• 7 or 8 cloves of garlic that I smashed pretty well
• half a cup of lemon juice and some zest ( you could just put in the squeezed lemons..)
• tablespoonish of mustard seeds
• a lot of fresh rosemary, that I smashed up with the garlic ( two tablespoons? it was half of the bunch I bought..)
• a couple of tablespoons of dried thyme
• a good amount of old bay
• A LOT of parsley
• salt and pepper on the meat

Plopped the meat in there and rolled it around for a while, getting everything coated , THEN placed it all in a tight zip lock. I think this may be the key, use a baggie that us almost the same size as the meat, sort of keeps it all right on top of it....

10:30 the next morning, I took it out wiped it off only, did not rinse it, added a little more salt and pepper ( lots of pepper ) and put it in a preheated 450 degree oven for 20 min ( I set a timer! ) and then cranked the oven down to 350 for one hour. If I had it to do over , I would have pulled it at 50 min, giving a little bit more very rare meat that some folks like. It rested for a good long time, as I had my first Bellini at like 11:00, and then moved on to drink all the white wine on the East Coast. Which could be why there are not photos of the entire roast when it came out of the oven, but it was lovely, all that olive oil soaked meat gets a really good dark crunchy crust on it...

David carved with an electric knife which really is the way to go, this is about ... 3/4's of the lamb? with a really good roasted bone for lamb stock, if you are so inclined. I just roasted these whole garlic heads along with the lemon Greek potatoes in the bottom oven. It really did turn out well, and I will follow this every time ( once a year ) I do make a whole leg of lamb. It was most tasty.!

Hello.. HE IS A NEGRO, can you not see that, you left wing fools....

2 + 2 =  why do you hate America.

TREMBLE! before the almighty power of the k+b !!!

Zeus was buff.

One day!  I key stroked my little screed on my hometown darling of a law firm taking on a little anti gay vibe and POW! BAM! they wash there hands of the whole mess. Sending their little Bushie lawyer out with the bath water. This was not a case for the oh so buttoned down, oak paneled King and Spalding, at all. ( and AND, like I said, that other little Atlanta company that does some business with K&S does NOT let controversy happen, EVER...)
Now this is not to say that poor- all -alone- in- a -big- bad -world Speaker John of Orange is not going to get his vigorous defense of his law... Former Solicitor General Paul Clement has left K&S, but he is taking his client with them, so it is the EXACT same lawyer , just with out the coca cola King and Spalding letterhead. All sorts of folks have their collective panties in a wad over this......

Lets start with our good pal Andrew Sullivan who thinks this is just a horrible miscarriage of justice : " "Memo to the gay rights leadership: the ends do not justify the means. Let DOMA have the most robust defense it can possibly muster and let us argue just as passionately for its unconstitutionality. When civil rights groups bully, they lose the moral high-ground. When you have men like David Brock leading the charge - and there are no means he has ever eschewed to achieve his ends - the danger is that we prove the far right's point. We must be better than them." - Andrew Sullivan, writing for the Daily Beast.
He is taking a much larger view of this that I think he should, and I am pretty darn sure that for King and Spalding this was a PURELY business decision. But lets go to his larger point and say that we do lose the high road if "we" dont let DOMA have its day in court. WHICH IT WILL GET.. in a big way, and we could easily lose. Can't some causes be above the law ? Yes, the most vile and disgusting criminal gets his day in court in the U.S.A., we have no KING handing out punishment, but this is not a person, this is an idea.... and IS it wrong for this law firm to just say, this idea is too vile ( or unconstitutional ) for us to handle. Let's use for example the most recent case with the godhatesfags folks. We covered it here, some guy spit of head gargoyle Shirley, and he did do it , lots of folks saw him, etc, and yet the jury found him not guilty BECAUSE Shirley Phelps herself is such a nasty nasty person... Jury nullification for sure, but sort of the same thing.... right ? ( and yes, OJ is an example of this as well, but it does not do my case any good, so we are leaving him out...) Doma will get its day in court WITH the full power and money of the United States House of Representatives, behing it, just not King and Spalding.

The anti Andy, always clean shaven, Hater-in-Charge, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins had this to say : ""Led by the so-called Human Rights Campaign, activists promised to target the firm until its attorneys dropped the case. Five days later, they did. Unable -- and unwilling -- to take the heat, King and Spalding took the cowardly way out. Once again we see how the activists who are trying to redefine marriage want to shut down any and all public debate. King & Spalding have proven that they are not advocates for the law -- but for a small but influential cabal that want to undermine policy and society." You know I instantly changed my face book stats to read " Proud Member of a small but influential cabal" as soon as I read this.

Even the GOP  comes out in the voice of Rep. Dan Lungren, Chairman of the House Republican Study Committee ( what ever the heck that is) with  : "King and Spalding’s cut and run approach is inexcusable and an insult to the legal profession. Less than one week after the contract was approved engaging the firm, they buckled under political pressure and bailed with little regard for their ethical and legal obligations."


From the HRC , not always a k+b favorite, but hitting the right tone here :" “King & Spalding has rightly chosen to put principle above politics in dropping its involvement in the defense of this discriminatory and patently unconstitutional law. We are pleased to see the firm has decided to stand on the right side of history and remain true to its core values. Speaker Boehner is likely to pursue continued defense of this odious law. However, law firms that value LGBT equality should remain committed to those values.”
Picking up on this idea, COULD the main Ivy Campuses bar King and Spalding from recruiting their law schools for the best and brightest IF they had kept this case? They all banned the military and ROTC over DADT... just a thought..

In the end, it is done.  I am not really saying that I had anything at all do to with it, I AM SURE it is just a coincidence that one day after I wrote that they should dump this they did and that I do get many many many hits from Atlanta. I will say that everyone does know, that once you lose the Hamlet of Mendon, you have lost the rest of the America, and the writing was on the wall...

AJC COVERAGE OF THE STORY.

UPDATE 


The Talking Points Memo website , breaks the dirty little secret that I said a few days ago, it was not the HRC or " gay rights groups" but Coca Cola that cause K and S to drop this READ HERE. ( the k+b has a good crystal ball when it comes to all things ATL related.... )



update update : This story is just taking off like a wild fire, We will be coming back to it.

and monkeys might fly out my ass...

What exactly is it with the Jesus freak types that HAVE to be victims? Seriously, I live in almost God-less Canada, and yet, on my cable system, there are seven or eight all Christianity, all the time, washed in the blood, big haired -YOU are going to hell ( unless you send me MONEY!! ) tv stations playing at all times. There is ONE Muslim in congress, and they are a TINY tiny tiny minority. Yet, God's own drunk and a fearless man, Newt himself, says this:


Let's don't even go down the road as to why all hater all the time divorced Paster Hagee has that big ass American flag behind his little stage and not something about God. News flash all you militant Christianists out there, the Mormons are wrong, if Jesus had wanted to come to America, he would have.....

EASTER 2011

Honey Mango Pie

Dessert Fail

It looked good on paper, or at least on the website. 

• Graham Cracker Crust ( this is a really good graham cracker crust, I was weak and just bought one, but if I do ever make one, I will use this recipe)
• four mangoes
• one can sweetened condensed milk
• three eggs
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1Tbl vanilla

Just chuck it all into the food processor.... really. Easy peasy. Then into a 350 oven for an hour. Seriously, doesn't that sound good ?

 My Mise en place

 Neil has this old circa 1979 

mack daddy of a cuisinart.

It could eat an oak tree.

 It takes a bit of time.

 There was a little extra filling, so I just

baked a little pudding

 It puffs up, the eggs and all

 It was just an odd texture and WAY too sweet. IF I make it again, I will leave out the honey, and add the zest and juice of one lime, and more cardamom, some ginger.. more spice.

We had a Wegmans white cake as well , which was a good thing.

My boys and their toys

Hey, I did my very best to go to Easter Vigil at St. John's. Took a shower and put on spring hued cloths... Neil and I both forgetting that I am deathly allergic to the major Christian Holidays . The church is full of blooming Easter Lillies...

slowly but surely

 The long cold wet Spring keeps c-c-chuging along. The lilacs are doing their best to get something started

 Things sort of re-flooded with last nights rain, really, BUT, it was warm today !

Koda , looking for this Easter Bunny that folks keep talking about