Finally Friday, at least for me.

It occurs to me that the week of PMS and redness is not the week to attempt to pack a child for a week-long camping trip.

Bunny is off to Crater of Diamonds and Hot Springs, with Fairy. In exchange, we get Bradlikin Skywalker until Monday, when he and Obi-Wan Chrisobi are off to church camp. Then 4 glorious days of just the littles and my hubby.

Tomorrow, we're going to try dump cake in a solar oven.
For those who don't know, dump cake is 1 can pineapple, 1 can cherry pie filling, 1 box yellow cake mix, 1 c. chopped pecans and 1/2 c butter sliced over top. You dump it in, in that order, and bake.

Saw X2 today as I cleaned. Wow. I like. A lot. May I say now how much I adore Charles and Eric, separate or together? And Nightcrawler was very cool.

"Put it out, unless you want to spend the rest of your days believing you're a six-year old girl."
"You'd do that?"
"I'd let Jean braid your hair."


Does anyone know anything about McDonald's giving money to MTV? Only place I'm finding this is Stormfront (thank you Google for sending me to Aryan Nationalist pages) and American Family Association. And anything that comes from the Rev. Don "Wildman" Wildemon is suspect.

I have pictures from the costume contest and doors at MWC. I'll post when I get home. I splurged for the photo CD. Bunny was definitely purple. And I am decidedly fat.

5 more hours today, and I am outta here until Sunday 2 PM.
My mail is running 2-0 on "your new vid is too confusing."

Thinking about Reagan and the 80's.

Things I remember:

1) The evangelical hysteria over his 3 names each having 6 letters. 666! He was obviously the anti-Christ and going to sell us out to the UN and the New World Order. Not only that, he'd been inaugerated facing the pagan Egyptian obelisk of the Washington Monument! And the official address of his ranch was 666! Augh! Augh! The Rapture should be happening any second folks!

2) His appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor. First woman on the Supreme Court. Yes, Reagan brought the Pro-Life plank into the Republican platform. OTOH, he appointed the 2 judges that have consistantly voted to keep Roe v. Wade the law of the land.

3) Unemployment that hit everywhere. By fall of 1982, 11%. That's One in Nine out of work. The number included my stepfather, a mechanical engineer. Then again, the employment boom of 1984-88 reduced it to 5.3%. I was working by then and could almost always just walk in and get a job.

4) Bloom County. Bloom County took him to task endlessly.

5) Land of Confusion. The video.

6) While Reagan Slept by Art Buchwald. Voodoo Economics, MX missiles and oil, all under his watch. A heavy recession hash indeed. But it turned around.

7) The Raisa/Nancy feud.

8) Dennis Miller talking about "Dukakis-Bush, break out the no-doze! They say Bush is just Reagan without the charm. That's like saying the desert is just like the beach without the ocean."

9) Nuclear angst so pervasive it spawned "Land of Confusion," "the Day After," "99 Red Balloons" and "Anything goes (when everything's gone)"

10) Welfare queens and demonization of the poor. Rampant homelessness from deinstitutionalization. But then again, in that era I had Protestant Work Ethic damage and believed the poor deserved to be because they were lazy. I've since learned that work doesn't always make one not poor.

11) Interest rates that were so high in 1980 that my stepmother could not make a living as a real-estate broker. Nobody was buying houses. 24% interest, folks. By 1984, when my stepsister's husband got his contracting business going, they were down to 10. by 1986, they were around 5%, and they stayed there for quite a while. These days, I'm getting 1.3% interest on my savings. I remember when it was 7%.


12) A revival of the moribund Space program. Nothing of note between 1975's Apollo-Soyuz mission and the 1981 Columbia launch and re-entry. Aerosopace engineers were back at work in the 80's, and not flipping burgers. Those of us who'd grown up with stars in our eyes from the Apollo missions were gratified and enthralled, and many of us went into engineering.

In the end, I think no president can be wholly blamed or credited for the economy on his watch. They can do things to improve or worsen economies, but they can only ride the trends really. Even the Shrub took the helm of a sinking economy. Granted, he ran it deeper into the iceberg insteaad of bailing.

MWC Pictures!

( our Door )

( The Masquerade )

Играем в колбасу! У кого длиннее?

We're No Longer playing the Sausage game!
see rosenho's journal for why.