Here are two links to the photos I shot during and after Irene.
Hope everyone is recovering and didn’t have too much damage. We did pretty well here, no power for just under a day, but the city looks pretty well powerless as of this moment…
Posts….
Earthquakes and Lightning (and Carrot Cake)
So, how about that earthquake? 5.9, and last night another aftershock, 4.5. I know, you California people, it’s just ‘rocking the baby.’ But we are not prepared, emotionally or structurally, for an earthquake that large, and ours have a different feeling, spreading wider distances because of geology. So. There.
A bit of music for earthquakes…
Apparently there is no ‘umbrella’ theory about preventing them, in the same way I pretend there is a way to ward off the rain when necessary. “Walk softly and carry a big umbrella” is my motto for cloudy skies. Of course, I lose a lot of umbrellas that way, because unnecessary, dry umbrellas get set down and forgotten. But I like to think of it as spreading a bit of insurance for the unsuspecting.
Since I can’t do much about the earthquakes, except walk around the house standing objects back up and straightening frames on the wall, I guess I better get moving on dealing with Irene.
The last big hurricane we had here began with an “I” you know. So, I have two days off to gas up the cars, get cash (in small bills), fill up the propane tank on the grill, buy cat food, move all the lawn furniture and such into our fancy new shed, charge all the electronics, find the candles, buy cat litter, freeze lots of ice cubes and bottles with water, (hmm, remove screens from windows? Have to check on that…) If I prepare properly and carefully enough, my ‘umbrella’ should be able to cause the storm to blow out to sea. If not, I have enough books in my To-Be-Read pile that even after the nook runs out of juice, I will not run out of entertainment.
In other news.
I’ve been working on this carrot cake for years now. I started with a recipe that bears so little resemblance to what I bake that I thought it might be time to re-write it! Any occasion that I should be bringing food, Timmy suggests carrot cake. (Of course, he would suggest it simply because it is Tuesday, I do believe)
I’ve baked it and tortured people with a 9 hour drive with a warm cake smelling up the back seat of a car, and we once had our hostess make an executive decision Easter morning and declare it breakfast. Pity the poor souls who came to dinner to find the desserts decimated.
House Specialty Carrot Cake (cupcakes)
- 2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- About 1 lb. carrots, grated.
- 1 16 oz can crushed pineapple, lightly drained (open the can, set it into the strainer upside down till you need it. Whatever juice is still in the pineapple goes into the cake, I don’t press it out)
In large mixing bowl combine and stir all dry ingredients to blend. Add all remaining ingredients and beat well until blended. Pour into a greased and floured 13×9 inch pan and bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. ( I have a lovely double-walled aluminum pan that I swear by)
Optionally, line or grease 30 cupcake tins and fill 2/3 of the way to the top and bake for 25 minutes (15-18 minutes for mini-sized cupcake/muffins). Frost cooled cake with cream cheese frosting or eat as is! (No frosting makes it a healthy muffin!!)
My husband has been battling the yellow jacket infestation in our yard. The moles and voles have been very generous, sharing their old living quarters with the flying attack squadrons. Husband has been flouting his greater size, larger brain and opposable thumbs in attempting to win the war. Which I appreciate, because those things HURT when they sting!
My “YEAR ON THE APPOMATTOX has been kind of put on the back burner this month, because of the unrelenting heat and humidity which make it unpleasant to walk through the area, and the absolute GREEN-ness of the area, which has offered little to see visually.
However, I went back last week, found this fellow 
and noted that the shades of green are starting to separate because each plant welcomes autumn in a different fashion. I think it will be a lovely view starting in the next few weeks, and I look forward to getting back down there weekly.
Friday afternoon, my dear mother-in-law, Evelyn is going in for a second back surgery. Suffice it to say it’s a nasty, painful procedure and all we can ask for are good, healing thoughts…
Can I just say This about That?
“Gays, if you want Americans to support gay marriage, why would you use pictures of fat bald men and ugly old ladies in wheelchairs as your poster child?” Erick Erickson
What can be said about this? It’s going around on the internet, and I can’t find an exact link, I don’t know if he was speaking in reference to this couple or not, but really? ( I don’t even know who this idiot is, to be honest, but apparently he is in radio)
I think this photo is the most telling of images, and a wonderful wedding photo. Not only that, but anyone who can look at these ladies and think they don’t deserve the opportunity to share their love the way that any heterosexual couple can just doesn’t get it.
I think they are better as a poster child for gay marriage than any wild, young, alternative-dressing, flaming, tattooed, punked-out hair styled, over the top couple that set off even the most dense persons Gaydar could ever be, (-not that there’s’ anything wrong with that-) because they are saying to America, “LOOK at us, we look and act and love and hurt and age like you. We already live next to you, and work with you. You know us, how can you say we shouldn’t have the right to what you have?” You can easily imagine these ladies as being your neighbors– they don’t offend delicate sensibilities. (There are some fabulous, wonderful, happy, goosebump-giving wedding photos of couples of this sort on their wedding day as well at the link above, and all over the internet. I love wedding photos.)
Many of us will reach a time when old, fat, bald or disabled identifies us, and if we still have a spouse, and if we can be as happy as these ladies are after being together 23 years…then we will be lucky, indeed.
When I was a child in New York, the little girl across the street moved away and there went the annual Easter Egg hunt that had been orchestrated from their driveway in the past. I hoped for a new family with children, of course. Instead, “the two ladies” (I’ll describe them as mature. Remember, I was 6 at the time, they could have been anywhere from 30 to 70 years old) moved in, complete with a number of yapping dogs, and they were ‘together’, although I didn’t understand it all, and lived there for a few years.
My dear cousin, who died a few years back at 93, had for decades as apartment neighbors down the hall, two elderly male ‘roommates’ who she called “the men”. They were great friends and companions to her. To think that today, these couples would be able to be free about who they were and make it all legal…
I’m a woman who is happily married to a man for almost 10 years. I found and fell in love with him, and I didn’t have to wonder about whether or not I could become his spouse. I would wish that for any human— to find love, and to be able to show the world their love and commitment via marriage if they so choose. (And so many heterosexual couples CHOOSE not to marry…..)
I would love to get a call from a certain brother of mine, telling me such happy news. Actually, I would probably be satisfied if said brother called from time to time to talk about the weather, but I digress. (If he called to say he was moving back to New York so he could get married and that the weather be damned, well…
)
A video was making the rounds a few years back, and it came around again, (but has since been removed by Youtube, so I will not link it to this blog, respecting the copyright owner) but if you saw it, you’d remember it.
A precocious little boy in a red shirt was introduced to two husbands. He quickly deciphers, and breaks down into bite-sized pieces this new information, (husbands are boys, and wives are girls so you two are both husbands) feeds back to the couple the things he found relevant (that means you love each other, and you are much alike) and then suggests they go play ping pong with him.
If only the adults in this world could be as sensible.
