Nanci Griffith , Once in a very blue moon

And if I still miss you well you know what they say

Just once in a very blue moon just once in a very blue moon

today's word of the day is : fail

Aztec Camera Deep & Wide & Tall Original Video Clip

dinner

Grilled Ham Steak

Red Cabbage

 in a fig balsamic reduction

Summer Squash w/

onions, peppers and mushrooms

COLLEGE V PRO

From J. Ryckeley we get :

WHO LIKES WHAT WHERE AND WHY ?

How very interesting! I'm staring at maps all day these days, and yet more red and blue! SEC RULES ... guess it sort of sucks to be in the ACC.

• Alabama and Oklahoma win, with Nebraska and West Virgina coming in second.
• certainly not news to me that all of the Mid Atlantic and New England are bright blue .
• Florida is a little surprise, but so many of the Sunshine folk are from the Mid-Atlantic and New England - but with now FOUR Division one schools, you think they would at least be pink. Texas as well - but I guess the Cowboys are huge.
• Why is Georgia NOT bright red ?? .... not sure

P.O.F.

Coffee buzz kicking in.... let's do this.

About Last Night.

It is just NOT worth the blood pressure spike for me to watch any of the now running GOP convention. Broke the rule last night and watched Congressman Paul Ryan give his speech. ( was it his acceptance speech? I could not tell ...)

Neil and I have been together for 300 years and he is still still amazed/shocked at how this effects me.
" why are you so angry ?' he asked.
 It was not anger is was passion - and amazement.

For starters , I just can not believe that his overall effect is genuine. His " Tomorrow belongs to me/us" swagger of youth seems as put on as the gel in his 14 year old boy haircut. He is Mr. Work out - Mr. PDX 90 or what ever it is - and yet he ALWAYS wears cloths that look like they were handed down from his older chubbier brother - which is not what the fitness crowd does. He is rich, he comes from money, and his wife made a killing as a K street lackey - he could afford cloths that fit ( and the Romney campaign could, ala S. Palin - kick in a little RL Black Label and a tailor....) It is not just me on this one, others have picked it up. A hardly subtle toss to the the mother him or f**k him base...But this is what they want, the hang dog, "I'm jist a cheesehead boy come to save Amerca!" . When in fact he has never had a grown up job out side of the Government that he has so much disdain for.

It is very hard for me to wrap my over read brain around someone NOT knowing who Paul Ryan is - YOUNG GUN and all. But that is what I am told last night was : 

Hey! Nicky Arnstein, here I am : Paul Ryan/GOP style.

The Un-Palins

So here is he, the Pride of Janesville, Wisconsin, tossed American Idol style on to the big stage where he told bold face, fact checkable, deliberate lies.

It's all the internet is about this morning - going as far as FOX NEWS calling him out for the extreme amount of fibbing.

It is all anyone is really talking about today - NOT the glories of the convention. From FOX NEWS : ( FOX NEWS !! )
To anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

•  Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling. 
• Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing. 
• Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.
•  Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan. 

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

This is everywhere, I only used this because its the home base of the GOP.
THE even more interesting thing I learned much later this afternoon ( I started this post this morning, then got busy ) is that "The fourth episode of TLC‘s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” a show that makes “Jersey Shore” look like “Masterpiece Classic,” drew more viewers in the 18-49 age group on Wednesday night than the second full night of the Republican National Convention."

And tonight its the kick off SEC FOOTBALL for Mitts to compete with ... HA!

This would not have happened if they did not hate the gays

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sec. Rice brought down the GOP house last night in what they are calling a barn burner. I saw 20 seconds of it, and the only thing I said ( other than yelling war criminal at the screen ) was she has lipstick on her teeth.....

Gawker heard me.

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade - 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814

Sorry, I tried my best to live blog the Ryan Speech tonight.

just could not do it.

Koda and the Doctor

He is fine, just rebandaged and 5 more days of antibiotics .....

Joan Armatrading - - - " Down To Zero "

Bill Nye: Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children

burying the lead

or

At long long last, style wins out over content.

 ( Matt LOVES hurricanes... really. It is 10:47 and this is still his lead - his marching orders are pretty darn clear this morning )

Yep.

All anyone is talking about this morning is the hot blond in the red dress.

America !

Your golden fat boy of a keynote speaker is nowhere to be found, Governor Romney - just your lovely, sometimes ill - uber Mormon-Lady- who -lunches- and -sometimes -rides- horses wife. " How could you not trust me when I tell you my very smart , very pretty, very rich husband is what you NEED " 

Look - I am just like you - here in my one good Sunday go to meeting dress .

Let's Look at Ann !

This should so wait for morning.

 I am tired and sleepy and a little bit crabby that I had to read as much about the GOP love in tonight as I had too. I went over board way way early, pointing to the tv that Neil was watching, not me, telling him we were Jews and that was Nuremberg 1934. Riefenstahl and Godwin, both in a post about a dress!!!
It did JUST BREAK - by the WSJ and the designer ! So here goes:

 Mrs. Willard Mitt Romney,63- of Michigan, Boston, New Hampshire, Utah and La Jolla, California seen here in a silk,, knee length A line, three quarter length sleeve, belted brilliant red, almost a scarlet, Oscar de la Renta Dress. Tiny V and mans shirt collar - open to no necklace, appears to be a mans gold watch and cuff or bold bracelet,  gold buckle for the belt. I would go with black mid heel Jimmy Choos, could be wrong. It could be the nicest lab coat ever.

It is too plain.

The ONLY thing remotely interesting is the color, too plain, too matronly, too the love child of Mamie and June Cleaver. It is also an odd unfaltering length.. I hate this length, One inch shorter - seriously, one inch, would have given a little interest or 3-4 inches longer would have given the dress some presence. Yeah, Ill question the stylings of Oscar de la Renta - because this is not an off the rack dress - I can't find anything like it anywhere and I looked for a good 10 min. If the boys or anyone pop up with some real info in the a.m., I will update...

A little bit shocking in its blandness, when the only other time I have ever given one second of thought to Mrs. Romney's fashion sense, she was WAY out on limb with a big yellow bird eating her boob in a 900$ Reed Krakoff tee.

This is pure and simple dress by GOP committee. Irony not lost on me that ,add pearls, and she is the PERFECT 1950's tv housewife. Blonds and reds are a given, GOP doing a little Nancy Red is a given... figure out for yourself why CNN decided to show us she had to pee.

It does look very good behind a podium, frames her face and her, look! I did my hair my self, hair style ( she did not do her own hair ) Red nails, red lips... wind blown hair and wind burned face. ( she has a GOOD doctor...)

as for the cost, who can say. The Romney camp is avoiding this by saying the dress was a birth day gift from Governor Romney - cause that is what all men do....

These two are along the same lines, not close to exact or anything:

See what I mean about just a tiny bit shorter.. which you NEVER hear from me.

The left is a black silk with lace overlay : 3790.00 at Neiman Marcus

The right is a black and white wool silk twill : 2150.00 at Bergdorf's

But you know, the J. Crewed current First Lady spends way too much on her cloths....

I am really digging this new pink bird, on the angry birds......

or

How I spent tonight's Blond and Butter Fat show

aka

The GOP Convention.

I did turn it on for 30 seconds - really only to see what 

Mrs. Romney was wearing.

And I heard how hard up and poor they were while they were in college....

yeah.

Back in the Saddle Again!

SONG

 YEAH!

Back out on the trail, out first good walk since

Koda got hurt, he seems to be doing just fine.

We do go back to the Vet tomorrow to make sure though!

Ron Paul Supporters Revolt At RNC

Reince Priebus's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning

I am not watching one minute of this.... makes me a bad political blogger. I'll live.

said one blow hard to another....

A Giant Rainbow Clad Purple Penis Headed for New Orleans !

"It’s the government. It’s Obama. And I’m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans react to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this? [...] Okay, 6:45 p.m. Saturday night the Republicans announce that they’re canceling Monday. At 6:45 p.m. Saturday night, everybody is still under the impression that Isaac is making a beeline for very close to Tampa. It was an hour and 15 minutes later that the eight p.m. model runs showed New Orleans. I’m alleging no conspiracy. I’m just telling you, folks, when you put this all together in this timeline, I’m telling you, it’s unbelievable." - Rush Limbaugh.

R.E.M. - Oh My Heart (Live In Studio)

Matthew Mitcham Rome/Roam Ukulele Mashup

dinner

Grilled Chicken

 Oven Roasted Beets

Mixed Summer Squash w/

caramelized onions and chilies

Rorschach Test

This was burning up the interwebs today, everyone seeing what ever it is they want out of it.
My take is Reince Priebus is a dick - and Mitts is probably a racist.

SHOES

Per B.Day on the facebook

( hope she does not mind the repost )

So apparently this is what it looks like when two baby copperheads bite you in the yard but only manage a little bit of venom. Tom seems fine, and all the doctors and nurses are very impressed. 

HOMES FOR SALE IN 14506

Church / Cook Out / Picnic / Celebrate the First Responders of Honeoye Falls

 Dahn at work

 Myrte and Neil following along

 side dishes, there were hamburgers and hot dogs

 Hannah gets pasta salad

 The ubiquitous pasta tuna salad

 Jeffery and David

this baby had really big feet

dinner

This was like the very best thing I have had in forever.

Freshly picked , warm from the sun orange, red and yellow tomatoes w/

fresh cucumbers, little s, little p and some white balsamic.... 

GET YOUR LATE SUMMER ON!!

chicken, peppers, white fingerling eggplant,mushrooms, onions

marinated in some evoo, cumin, lime juice and zest and too many 

red pepper flakes!

My Koda-less walk

 I did not like the thought of walking our usual route with out him 

so, I just walked the other way

 The trail going the other way has many rules....

 this is a photo of some sort of small grey heron, that the wiki

says only lives in Europe - so , I guess it was something else

 It was a lovely afternoon

 This is a very ugly wedding that I came across on the way home

seriously, purple bath towels are NOT bridesmaid dresses -

and girls with that many tattoos should not ever wear strapless

purple bath towels.

HEIL WASHINGTON !

As we come into Convention season, a little primer of what 

they will all be doing, like every hour on the hour:

WHO WROTE THE 

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

( hat tip to the PRIDE OF B'HAM, Tom Wofford ! )

OUT of the Woods

 " Careful the things you say,
Children will listen "

The NYT revisited the Tyler Clementi case yesterday in a heart breaking story of loss and attempted redemption.

After Gay Son’s Suicide, Mother Finds Blame in Herself and in Her Church 

By KATE ZERNIKE Published: August 24, 2012 

RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — When Tyler Clementi told his parents he was gay, two days before he left for Rutgers University in the fall of 2010, he said he had known since middle school. 

“So he did have a side that he didn’t open up to us, obviously,” his mother, Jane Clementi, said, sitting in her kitchen here nearly two years later. “That was one of the things that hurt me the most, that he was hiding something so much. Because I thought we had a pretty open relationship.”

 In her surprise, she had peppered him with questions: “How do you know? Who are you going to talk to? Who are you going to tell?” Tyler told a friend that the conversation had not gone well. His father had been “very accepting,” he wrote in a text message. “Mom has basically completely rejected me.”

 Three weeks later, he jumped off the George Washington Bridge after discovering that his roommate had used a webcam to spy on him having sex and that he had sent out Twitter messages encouraging others to watch. ( the rest - I posted as well on facebook, if you have not ,please read the whole story )

I wrote about this story at the time, and have thought about it many times since. This article sheds much new light on the sad story of young Tyler Clementi, making things much more complex than I thought from the beginning , of what then seemed like a multi faceted story.

It is as much about the family as it it Tyler, a kid who on the surface was adapting well to being an out gay college freshman. The mother, or maybe the entire family belonged to a holy roller church all fire and brimstone that preached the evils of homo-sexuality - with the shit ton of guilt that puts on a child.

Here is the paragraph that put me over the edge, and brought you more than just a link to a sad story: "In the months after Tyler’s death, some of Ms. Clementi’s friends confided that they, too, had gay children. She blames religion for the shame surrounding it — in the conversation about coming out, Tyler told his mother he did not think he could be Christian and gay."

I am eyeball freaking deep in the so called leftist gay church - call it what you will. I was even deeper in it when Neil was going all over the country working for the LGBT  Episcopal group Integrity. I sit , watch and listen to these people go on and on about the good works that they do - their navel gazing to the point of  my violent vomiting. Each and every religious leader- to the person- fighting for an always bigger spot light and louder microphone to shout out to the world, just how hard they are working for the LGBT cause and the betterment of all people, " look at what a Saint I am ". Followed by weeks, months, years of back fighting and/or  glory hounding. The one word I hear BY FAR the most out of every one of these people is "I". 
So Forty years post Stonewall, where the VERY first post riot meetings were held in an Episcopal church, Forty years of " Jesus loves us all " , and the creation of all gay churches , forty years of talk talk talk  - and this young man, living in the shadow of New York City - not some back water podunk cowtown - " did not know you could be gay and be a Christian " ?!?  This is certainly not just to call out the Episcopal Church either - they all have a little blood on their hands for this one.

I rail about the totally feckless " religious left ' constantly. Seems to me, like they have the exact same weekly meetings that the anti gay religious right has - and yet they could not - after all that time, get a simple message out . This in no way takes a hint of blame off the hate spewing anti gay church, doing so so much damage to so very many CHILDREN, that they all claim to be working so hard to protect.
 I am now, VERY sadly to the point of being so jaded by everything I have seen and still see, that I fear they can't or maybe won't ever get their ( the totality of the liberal church ) acts together to get out the true message of pure love . Some mirrors are just too big and some heads are just too far up some asses......

Tyler Clementi
December 19, 1991 – September 22, 2010

dinner ( sort of )

Neil has been doing a FANTASTIC job on his/our doctor prescribed no/low carb lifestyle. I did a few major lapses while away, but came back to it easy today. Our only real and MAJOR problems are HOT DOG BUNS.
Seriously, I can not live with out hot dogs.... like several times a week. I can switch from my mayonnaise / Texas Pete condiment to just ball park mustard, which I do love almost as much.. and as a snack do just the wiener. But, every once in a while, once a week or so, I am going to need the whole package.

So, a little comparison shopping at the Wegmans this afternoon. Four hotdog buns....I am a BIG fan of the New England style hot dog bun, there is just less bread and it seems to be less fake - really just a folded piece of white bread. Dana, the go to girl on all things low / no carb , said to just go with a whole wheat  hot dog bun, if you were going to eat them - but I , wrongly, went with the lite one this afternoon, only gaining a gram or two in carblessness, and it really was not worth it - a very airy cardboardy bun.
Next time, as the weekly insane splurge, I am just going to go with the classic New England style and be happy... hey, no tater tots! so that is something.....

today at the farm stand

just a hole...

What you missed :

If a tree falls in the woods, OR some dip shit of a GOP Senator wanna be stops acting and starts being real - and the k+b is not there to blog about it : DID IT REALLY HAPPEN ?

The longest break in blog history - and it was fully not my fault, as the internets have yet to reach the great expanses of Pompanuck - at least not with a dozen or so people attached permanently to their mother boxes - I'm sure it works just fine when it's just Scott and Lisa wanting to see naked photos of Prince Harry.

You missed the usual food filled lovely time had by all - folks coming and going, games played, years taken off many a liver, and stars the way the Good Lord intended them to be seen. I think that we here in Mendon live in the middle of nowhere, but is amazing the amount of light pollution there is here compared to there. It had been years if not decades since I had seen horizon to horizon Milky Way... a true gift.

The bad news : I totally screwed up my photo taking. The first half of the week was uploaded into Neil's computer and sadly LOST when trying to switch them over to my k+b land base.... and the second half of the week  - well, I did not take that many photos because I was not blogging..... I am that much of an exhibitionist. But let's see a little of what we do have.

 This is how Koda spent most of his time there - 

constant wet dog

 This is an off the charts yummy panzanella style 

salad that team 2 made for night 2

 One with chilies, one with out

 Team 2
seen here with Dave's all day long smoked Brisket - that was just sym good!
and a bacon fat potato salad that was JUST as yummy the next day fried!

 Breakfast

 

 where the vast majority of the action happened....

 a dinner

 David and the giant bowl of corn

 Scott , Lisa and Joyce

Dahn made this very good pie:

KEY LIME PRALINE PIE

• 1 1/4 cups chopped pecans
• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp. jarred caramel topping
• 2 (14-oz.) cans sweetened condensed milk
• 6 egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons Key lime or lime zest
• 1 cup fresh Key lime or lime juice
• 1 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

Preparation

1. 1. Preheat oven to 350°. Bake pecans in a single layer in a shallow pan 8 to 10 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring halfway through.
2. 2. Stir together graham cracker crumbs, next 2 ingredients, and 1/2 cup toasted pecans until blended. Press crumb mixture on bottom, up sides, and onto lip of a lightly greased 10-inch deep-dish pie plate.
3. 3. Bake at 350° for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven to a wire rack, and cool completely (about 45 minutes).
4. 4. Sprinkle remaining 3/4 cup toasted pecans over bottom of crust; drizzle caramel topping over pecans.?
5. 5. Whisk together sweetened condensed milk and next 3 ingredients. Gently pour into prepared crust.
6. 6. Bake at 350° for 20 to 25 minutes or until almost set. (The center will not be firm but will set up as it chills.) Cool completely on a wire rack (about 1 hour). Cover and chill 4 hours.
7. 7. Beat whipping cream at high speed with an electric mixer until foamy; gradually add powdered sugar, beating until soft peaks form. Dollop or spread over pie.

 Neil had a dream about an old fashion 

wedge salad, and the group made it happen

dinner , again - I believe during the night of the incident.