Who's in charge? I want to speak to the manager!
Have you seen all the things that are happening in our country? Ever since the election - HMM FUNNY COINCIDENCE don't you think?
My Little Pony game for iPad/iPhone
I like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan. I enjoy it, but from a slight distance. Nevertheless, I was immediately intrigued by the idea of a MLP game for the iPad/iPhone.
Papa John's Pizza is having an Obama crisis
The founder of Papa John's Pizza is kind of having a meltdown. Not a deliciously cheesy, saucy meltdown either - more of a "Republican rage" sort of meltdown.
Outfit Du Jour: Blue, brown and grey all over
This woman accomplishes a polished, casual look with skinny jeans tucked into brown knee-high boots, a grey sweater paired with a navy blue blazer with accent elbow patches and a cozy grey infinity scarf. The neutral colors of her attire allow a roomy black purse to complement her outfit tastefully. On a brisk, rainless day in Seattle, this outfit is a do!
Blue, brown and grey: yes!
Chic, casual boots
Black purse with gold hardware pairs well with other outfit elements
Occupy Sandy benefit concert planned in Brooklyn Heights
If you live anywhere near Brooklyn, New York, and you can possibly get to St. Ann & the Holy Trinity church this weekend, do it! Why, pray tell, am I telling people to go to church? Because St. Ann's is the site of Saturday's Occupy Sandy benefit concert. It's going to be a doozy, too.
I love it when local bands step up big for their communities. So many people are still struggling after Superstorm Sandy, and they need help. That's where Occupy Sandy comes into play: Several major bands are coming together to put on a show, with proceeds benefiting recovery efforts in the area.
Now, let's discuss the lineup for the Occupy Sandy concert, shall we? Bands performing will include Vampire Weekend, the Walkmen, members of the Dirty Projectors, along with Devendra Banhart and Cass McCombs. Yes, please! Tickets for this show are going to go really, really fast, so go now to see if you can snag a pair. The suggested donation price is $30 for two tickets. That's a bargain, people, especially to see musicians of this caliber.
Hopefully you'll be able to attend the Occupy Sandy show. It starts at the church (in Brooklyn Heights) at noon, and music runs until 5 p.m. That's a whole day of music and performances for a minimum $30 donation!
For those of us who can't make it there for the benefit, hopefully we'll get some videos from performances at some point. But if you can, get thee to Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. And then be sure to come here to tell me all about the show after you get back, okay?
Indigenous Peoples 2 - Navajo Nation and Uranium Mining
When explorers and settlers arrived in North America, their diseases and wars reduced the Native American population by an estimated ninety percent over a few generations. This left vast areas of the country unpopulated and ripe for exploitation. Numerous treaties were struck with Indian Tribes giving them rights to their ancestral lands. Unfortunately, the U.S. government repeatedly broke those treaties. The Indians were eventually driven onto relative small reservations in desolate areas. The fiction has been maintained until the present that these reservations are independent sovereign nations within the United States. Indian Reservations in the United States are administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior.
After World War II, the U.S. government was moving forward with both a nuclear weapons program and a commercial nuclear power program. Uranium was needed for both these programs. In 1948, the Atomic Energy Commission created a program to stimulate domestic uranium production. Fixed prices were guaranteed for purchase of uranium, initial production from new mines would be received bonuses above the fixed purchase price and air and ground surveys were conducted in order to locate new reserves of uranium ore. A great deal of ore reserves were located in the Four Corner area, where the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. There Navajo Indian Reservation is located in this area.
Many uranium mines were opened on or near the Navajo Lands. The U.S. government wanted the uranium, the Navajo were desperate for employment and the mining companies wanted the profits. Unfortunately, the contracts for the leases and royalties were poorly written and little money found its way to the Navajo Nation. The workers were not warned about the dangers of working in poorly ventilated uranium mines. Many miners suffered injury and even premature death from radiation exposure. Horrible damage was done to the environment around the mines with pollution of land, surface water and aquifers that fed wells.
The Navajo Nation fought back against the health threat and finally won regulations for radiation exposure after thirty years. They fought over environmental damage and instituted new policies for regulating new mines and reclamation of old mining sites. They also worked on the contracts for leases and royalties to insure that they would benefit from the extraction of resources from their lands.
With minor variations, this pattern has been played out on other reservations where uranium ore was found. After years of exploitation, injury and environmental damage, tribes have fought back with varying success against the impact of uranium extraction and processing on their tribal lands. The U.S. government once again has failed to keep its promises and obligation to the Native Americans who live on reservations. There is much more to be done to redress this most recent injury done to Native Americans.
Great Seal of the Navajo Nation:
2016 Candidate Lists Emerging: Democrat
The Democrats have two possible 2016 candidates with the potential to overwhelm the field, but it's quite possible neither will run. And it's also quite possible that one of them could run, but not overwhelm the field.
The two big fish:
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Why does the Secretary of State rank ahead of the Vice President? Let me count the ways ... the Clinton name, the prior near-successful presidential candidacy, the fact that Joe Biden is ... well ... Joe Biden.
- Vice President Joe Biden. He's run for president before, too, but not very successfully. He'll be 73. His tendency to say goofy things is legendary. That being said, he'll be the Vice President, and if he wants to run, that's worth a lot.
But neither one might run. And, frankly, if Biden runs he won't scare too many candidates off the field. So ... all the lesser fish:
- Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York. His father was famous for almost deciding to run, and then deciding not to. [But, if you're wavering at all, you're better off not running, since you're likely to lose ... so Mario Cuomo probably made the right call each time.] The governor of New York automatically gets some prominence, but Cuomo hasn't made much of a national impact compared to his GOP counterpart in New Jersey. But in terms of being able to organize a campaign and raise money, Cuomo would be strong.
- Gov. Martin O'Malley, Maryland. O'Malley gets a lot of buzz despite not being widely known, perhaps a sign of respect for his political skills and his presence near the D.C. Beltway. He also seems very interested in a run. He could emerge as a "default" frontrunner, in the same way the Bill Clinton emerged in 1992.
- Gov. Deval Patrick, Massachusetts. As with Cuomo, he'll get some mentions just because of the position he holds. He is also known to be close to President Obama. But he doesn't get much national buzz beyond that.
- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The ambition is there ... and with some to spare. Would he make a leap to a presidential run? Maybe. Would his reputation as the ultimate tough-guy politico help or hurt? Probably hurt.
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota. It all starts with the Iowa caucuses, and Klobuchar is wildly popular in neighboring Minnesota, and she has strong political skills. But her national profile is next to zero despite six years in the Senate.
- Sen. Mark Warner and Sen.-Elect Tim Kaine, Virginia. Kaine first gained prominence as Warner's lieutenant governor, but now they are both considered rising stars. Warner's Romney-like wealth and financial background might be a negative in a Democratic primary, so Kaine may be more likely to succeed on the national stage. But he's always been the junior partner. The duo can certainly claim credit for helping turn Virginia toward the Democratic column.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The former Kansas governor will be the public face of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for the next four years. How the public reacts will go a long way toward determining if she could be a serious candidate.
- Sen.-Elect Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts. Many liberal activists consider Warren the "next Obama," but she didn't set the world ablaze in her 2012 Senate race, and she has some baggage related to claiming herself to be Native American that other voters might not brush off as easily as Bay State voters did.
- Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Montana. The Democrats don't do well in the mountain states at the presidential level, but in the last two elections, they didn't need to. Schweitzer has no real national profile, but he is apparently interested in making the race.
- Mayor Cory Booker, Newark, New Jersey. Booker gets some mentions, but he is more likely to challenge Gov. Chris Christie in 2013. If he wins that race, he'll be a major rising star, but 2016 is not likely to be the year to try to cash in.
Sleep and working from home
Since I started working from home full-time seven years ago, the thing I have struggled with most is regulating my sleep schedule so that I can make the most of my work day.
The problem is that I am a born night owl: I work best at night, and I tend toward a late schedule, even when I'm not working late into the night. (Ever since I was a teen, staying up late at night to read has been one of my guilty pleasures.)
But I also function best when I get 8 or 9 hours of sleep. At best, the combination tends to eliminate much of my mornings as productive time, as even if I get up at a decent time, I tend to take a while to get "warmed up." At worst, though, it means that I sleep too late in the mornings, and it ends up being wasted time.
This worked out better when I worked late at night, but a few years ago, I decided to try to normalize my schedule a little bit, since I was sleeping half the day away on the weekends when my husband was home. I've managed to start going to bed and getting up a little earlier, but unfortunately I often use that late night time for reading now instead of working, so I'm still not getting up as early as my office-bound counterparts. Though that is, I suppose, the advantage to working from home.
What I've noticed most of all is that, even when I do get up earlier, I still don't manage to get much done with that time in the morning. Getting up earlier seems to result in me needing more time to "warm up" in the morning than I used to.
On the other hand, I know someone else who works from home who is a morning person. She often wakes up at 4 or 5 a.m. and starts work, but the downside of that is she is winding down and getting tired when clients still expect her to be working.
What about you? Are you a night person or a morning person, and what impact have you found your sleep habits have on your work schedule?
National novel writing FAIL
I love NaNoWriMo. I participate every year, and this past summer I even participated in the summer camp. I've even won a few times -- November 2006, the first year I participated, last year (2011), and again in August of this year (2012).
Unfortunately, loving NaNoWriMo doesn't always mean I'm a winner.
I've failed to reach 50k more times than I've succeeded, and right now I'm at a point where if I don't really buckle down and work, the same will happen this year as well. Halfway into the month, I have a not-so-stellar 8,000 words, when I'm supposed to be at 25,000 -- halfway through the 50k.
Don't get me wrong, I have every intention of finishing this novel. I love my novel. I just haven't been able to get moving on it this month.
Part of it is that I've been reading a lot. With several books due back to the library soon, I felt some pressure to read instead of write. Not to mention more than one of those books were really, really hard to put down until I was finished.
Another part of it is that I keep getting distracted by research. For instance, last night and this morning I was searching on eBay for 1920s postcards of Chicago and places around Chicago where my novel takes place. And we all know how addicting shopping on eBay can be! There were pages and pages of search results... and then I had to modify my search terms and try again... which meant pages and pages more.
And then, of course, there has been my other work. As a working freelance writer, I can't ignore my other writing work in favor of NaNoWriMo. In addition, I have part time work -- I work as a nanny, plus I babysit for two other families and run errands for a fourth -- that has kept me busier than I would like lately. It's good money, but it also means time away from my novel.
I still have hope at this point of catching up, but I either need to pound out massive word counts a few days, or get around 2,500 words a day for the rest of the month. Can I do it? I don't know, but I'm sure going to try!
What about you? If you are doing NaNoWriMo, how are you faring?
A sense of humor about politics
The election is finally over, but that doesn't mean everyone is done talking about it. If you need a break from the stuffy side politics, I highly recommend taking a time-out to read Duck for President to your child.
Written by the same author as Click, Clack, Moo, a hilarious children's book about what happens when the animals on the farm get their hands on a typewriter, Duck for President is about a duck whose political ambitions start when he decides he doesn't like the chores he has to do on the farm. So he holds an election, runs against the farmer, and wins.
But it turns out that running the farm is even harder than doing chores on the farm, so duck decides to run for governor. He wins, and then discovers that job is even harder.
Finally, the duck runs for president. You can guess how that goes. In the end, the duck returns to the farm and his old chores. Having experienced what it's like to do those other jobs, he has evidently realized that his chores aren't really so bad, after all.
The book's colorful, cartoonish illustrations and the repetitive, funny writing style all add humor to a story that otherwise might be a lesson in whether the grass is really greener on the other side of the fence. As with all good children's books, there is enough humor to satisfy the intended youthful audience, but also some degree of hidden humor to amuse the adult who is reading the book to the kids.
Whether your preferred candidate won or lost in last week's election, chances are you are probably sick of hearing about politics and the presidential race. Duck for President is a great way to laugh about it all instead!