Appalling

I just read an article that really riled me.  State Representative Sims (D), the first openly gay legislator for Pennsylvania, was not allowed to comment after the Supreme Court made their ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  The person who silenced him, and the other legislators who rose to defend his ability to speak, was State Representative. Daryl Metcalfe (R) citing that Sims was speaking against God's law.  Honestly?Rachel Maddow, the author of the article correctly states that there is a separation of Church and State, and regardless of that, anyone should be able to speak on the floor. But, apparently there is no freedom of speech in the state house. I find hard to believe as well.  

I greatly applaud the Supreme Court's decision on DOMA. I strongly believe that this is a civil rights issue more than anything else.  Civil unions are not the same thing as marriage and therefore are lacking in the ability for each couple to inherit, attend to medical issue, or cover each other's property. This is the major crux of the situation

If you want to bring God into this discussion consider this point; we are all God's children are we not?  So why don't we reward the children of God to have the same rights?  This goes for everyone, which we have all heard are equal in our Constitution.  This business about some being more equal than others flies in the face of what I have been taught as a Quaker.  I just hope that we get over ourselves and begin to realize that we should all be given the same rights as an American citizen and move on to other issues.

EverNote

For the last year I have been using an app called EverNote.  For those users of OneNote from Microsoft, it is very similar.  I also found out that Google has a similar product called Keeper.  All of these apps are available on every platform; PC, tablet, and phone as well as having the ability to sync between the platforms. They are all electronic notebooks where you can keep notes, pictures, and website clips all in one spot. The data is stored in the cloud so you never will be without it.

They recently came out with another function for EverNote, called EverNote Hello.  This is a way to track your human interactions by being able to scan their business card, or connect with them when you are in physical proximity by pairing your phone with them.  The idea is that if you are in a meeting with a group of people you can keep the contacts from that meeting and the minutes from the meeting all in one place.  Of course, it will also sync with LinkedIn and Facebook so that you can maintain a social network presence at the same time.  The idea is great, but the business card scanning, which is what I downloaded it for, does not work on my Android phone or my 5th generation older iPod Touch. Apparently the scanning feature doesn't work well enough for a "pleasant experience". I found a way to overcome that by using the main EverNote app to take a picture of the card because I don't want to merge these people into my personal contacts and every other app for business card scanning provides that feature.

I like EverNote a lot.  I have found the syncing can cause problems.  For example, I created a note with a few business cards on my phone and tried to sync them so I could update on the PC through their web interface.  After exiting the app on the phone I went to the PC but only two of the four were there.  It said I had a network problem.  I am sure I can clear that up when I get back home this evening and connect with my home network.  The nice feature I noticed was that one card that was scanned last night from an event that I attended, tagged the picture with the event name as I had just attended it and the end time had not been reached.  It was smart enough to know that I were I was.  A little creepy, but very helpful.

Bottom line is that these three apps will do the same thing.  If you use Windows 7 and above, you can do the same with OneNote.  However, if you do not use that platform, EverNote and Keep are independent of the platform and will perform very well.  My recommendation, along with a comparison article I recently read, give EverNote the highest grades.

Self Reliance

There is a movement afoot, at least in the magazines that I read, to become more self reliant. I recently read an article about a young couple who significantly changed their lifestyle to live on a 40 acre track of land in Wisconsin.  They built their own home and are living life pretty much off the grid.  It seems like a hard life, and I admire their tenacity.

I often kid with my husband and son that I want to be prepared when the zombie apocalypse arrives.  I want to know how to survive and live off the land.  It is not really the zombie thing that makes me want to do this, but I feel that a more simple lifestyle is really better.  Truthfully, without my electronic "buddies" I would probably be lost, but slowly learning how to grow my own vegetables and make things from scratch is a healthier lifestyle more than anything else.

There is a wealth of information out there on this subject and it makes my head spin, and the more I read about it, the more impressed with just how far technology has brought us.  Whether it is a good or bad thing, only time will tell.  In the meantime, I will continue to learn a simpler, more stress-free way to live.

Shoe Love

I, like most women I know, own a lot of shoes.  Not the kind that Imeda Marcus owned, but more than 30.  I will admit that for some unknown reason that I have not been able to figure out, love shoes.  Maybe it is because unlike other things you wear shoes for the most part can be worn in a fat stage and in a thin stage. I will also admit that I have several that I haven't worn for a long time.  I rarely come across a pair that is stylish AND comfortable but this morning while I was dressing I found a pair that I had gotten some time ago which are both. I immediately put them on.

For the last few years I have been getting out of the habit of wearing heels.  Now that I am working in a very casual office, I don't really have the need to wear pumps.  I had some that were wicked good looking, but I can't go dancing in them.  I guess as you get older the ability to teeter around in those skinny heels is lost.  Because I am relatively tall anyway, I never really got into the habit of wearing anything higher than 3 inches anyway and I probably own maybe one pair.  But, I really do miss the ability to wear them because they used to make me feel sexy and powerful.

I will probably never really understand why women love shoes even though I am a woman and I fall into that category.  To me a good pair of shoes makes my day. It is a mystery that my obsession with shoes continues to this day.  But it does and I will just deal with it.

Injury

On Friday night I was making pizza for dinner and I could not find my sifter for the flour.  I rummaged around the cabinet and all of a sudden I found my mandolin slicer!  Or rather my finger found it.  Blood was everywhere! I wrapped it in a paper towel figuring it would stop bleeding soon but no, it bleed, and bleed, and bleed.  I finally got my husband to wrap a paper towel around it and secure it with electrical tape so that there was constant pressure on the wound in hope it would finally stop enough that I could survey the damage.

Undaunted, I went on to knead the pizza dough with my uninjured hand.  Not an easy feat.  By this time the yeast was so bloomed I thought it would be no good. The pizza turned out okay but the dough was a little tough.  With all this going on, it was getting later and later and I really didn't have time to have it rise.  But I discovered that regardless, the crust was quite flat  - a little thick, but flat never the less.  It was supposed to be a flat bread pizza after all!

Having an injured index finger on your dominant hand is annoying.  One soon learns how many things are a challenge with that finger out of commission.  Take typing for just one example  A lot of mistakes for sure. But it is teaching me to slow down a bit and be careful where I place my hands.  The human brain is a wonderful thing, even mine which I am sure is short a few dozen neurons, and after a while, typing gets better.  One learns to adapt.  That's the moral of this story that all things heal and we find ways to do things that need to be doing.  For me, I found a recipe for pizza dough with no yeast.  It's much quicker.  I also found a new place for my mandolin - out of the way of delicate fingers.

A Nice House

We recently had a leak in our roof.  The next to last big storm we had opened up a large portion of the roof and my husband who was home at the time (luckily) came upstairs to find water pouring through the bedroom window.  Being the handy man that he is, he got what he needed and plugged the hole to save further damage.  After the rain stopped, he got some kind of material and patched the hole himself and then called a roofer.

The roofer called this morning to give us our options.  Of course there was the tear off option where the roof portion would be torn down to the rafters and then rebuilt (the more expensive option) or we could make do with a larger patch.  I am not sure which way to go because he didn't give me the cost, but requested to talk to my husband who has been dealing with him.  In this case I don't mind him dealing with my husband; but that's another entry.  At the end of the conversation, he remarked that we had a very nice house.

It makes me smile to have a total stranger tell me that.  My husband and I work very hard to keep up the house.  Granted my husband still has not finished the bathroom, and neither of us are very fastidious housekeepers, but we try to keep the place tidy overall.  If we know we are having guests over, we clean thoroughly, but generally that doesn't happen otherwise and there are clothes, magazines, and dust lying about. Especially now that the summer is here, we spend more attention to the outside.  So it is really nice to hear that our hard work has paid off.  Because, yes, I think we do have a nice house and I am pretty proud of it.

Bring the Inside Out

In the recent issue of Mother Earth News magazine there is an article about creating outdoor rooms.  It appears the newest design trend is to create the space outside your house as well as inside.  In the summer weather it is probably smart as being outside on a cooler summer day will help to reduce the amount of electricity used for indoor living.  When you use your outdoor grill you don't use energy using the stove.  When you sit outside and read, you don't use energy for light.

I have started to begin to create some outdoor spaces myself.  I have my veggie garden, my flower garden, my herb garden, my corn garden (new this year), and the patio.  I thought about this concept for a while and ended up starting a little corner of the garden which I call my tranquility corner. It is a little outdoor room where I can have my morning coffee and prepare for the day enjoying some moments of quiet.  I have a bird feeder there and some wind chimes to provide some distraction if needed. It is really quite lovely even though it is not totally finished.  What is left is to strip the grass there, put some flagstones down, and plant some fragrant step-able plants like creeping thyme in order to bring some scent to the area as well. I also want to get a little side table and maybe another little chair so that it is not so obvious it is a room for one.

I really like this concept of outdoor living.  Like many of you, I work inside an office all day and being outside helps clear the head.  Between biking, gardening, and meditating, I get to experience all that God has provided rather than just stick to man made things. I am fortunate that I have a little space to create this garden of mine and I hope that others can create one for themselves.