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Froggy Bottom Cafe – second cup edition [CLOSED]
Come on in!
You guys are really talkative this morning! Not that anyone needs it, but have a second (or third) cup, shamelessy stolen from Andi.
and we’re set.
No cream cheese? ::::sniff:::
How do you do that? I mean cut out an image like that from it’s background? That’s so cool. I’m waiting til my son gets up to show me how to put another image into the cafe template without ruining the whole thing. I tried yesterday and almost ripped out my remaining hairs.
I got the image from elsewhere but all you need to do is to have software that will do a transparent or white background (it’s the same way I can put Marmotdude in other scenes).
What problems are you having using another image?
Only putting the image in the right spot, not knowing HTML. I’ll figure it out eventually with the help of my son who has an insanely full social schedule lately. He rolled out of bed at noon and went immediately out to lunch and then downtown to the museums with his college friends who are home on break. Hopefully he’ll be home to help me beautify an evening lounge, or you will have to put up with the same old same old.
the html and the image and a little description of what you want to do and I can see it can do it and then send the html, and any change I had to make to the image.
Also, for future reference, katiebird is an html wizard and most of what I do, I’ve stolen from her. So she’s a really great resource.
Thanks, dear; I’ll keep that in mind should computer boy not make it home in time.
If you do it and you don’t hear from me, it’s because we are having a big thunderstorm and I’ve lost power.
Lucky you! We almost never have good, violent, midwestern type thunderstorms.
What, no lox?!
Morning Laura and everyone, how are you all doing today….Waiting for the Wet Rose Parade????
It’s not raining where I am right now, but it is raining in Pasadena.
Geesch you guys filled up a whole cafe diary already this morning. The east coast must be the talkative end of the country. LOL
Hi Diane, you mean I didn’t miss the Rose Parade? I thought it was yesterday. It’s wet and gray here as well, but I’m dreaming of some sun.
It’s on Monday this year as they have a never on Sunday rule, that goes back to earliest days, so as not to disturb horses tied up at churches along the parade route.
Where it’s always sunny and warm.
Fantastic image. I am sucker for cool ways to frame things and this one is just perfect. I love how the shadow angles across the patio and follows the shape of the table leg.
Boat trip with the asklets last summer.
That looks like fun! Where is it?
It is on the south coast of Norway.
The view from the summer cabin is like this:
I didn’t realize you were in Norway. Then summer is a real treat for you, isn’t it?
I’m not – at the moment, I’m with curly in Manhattan. Heading home to Hoboken a little later.
But we go every summer to stay at the cabin and to visit family.
And true, the summers are brief and cherished.
Okay I get it now. Duh. That’s some summer trip. I’ve always wanted to go to that part of the world but I’m really scared of flying.
…why we have so many Norwegians around Puget Sound!
Click to enlarge.
A springtime view from the bluff walk at Rosario beach on Fidalgo Island, looking west across the San Juans toward the land of the free.
You know, I had to do a double take. That looked so familiar in the small view.
And, yes, I have heard that the NW coastline (and also Maine) and southern Norway’s coasts have much in common.
Now that I’m fully awake (thank’s for the refill), let me tell you about my interesting experience at dinner last night. I went over to my parents for their yearly New Year’s Day celebration (Hoppin’John as we discusssed yesterday). They hadn’t had this party in a few years but my mom felt like doing it this year. My aunt and uncle were there and some really close friends of the family — a grandmother, her daughter, her granddaughter and her son-in-law. I’ve known the grandmother and her daughter since I was 4 years old. They are mostly apolitical and when they do vote I’m sure they vote almost exclusively Republican (except for the years when my dad was a Democratic city alderman and they broke tradition and voted for him). The son-in-law is originally from a South American country and he owns his own contracting company. Being a minority company, he gets a lot of government contracts and he travels around the world doing work on U.S. properties abroad. Last night, in the middle of dinner, apropos of nothing we were discussing, he suddenly starts to tell us how he can’t believe how much the United States is hated in all the countries he travels to (“even Britain!”) and how it is the administration’s fault because they have stupid policies. His wife joined in and his mother-in-law sat their nodding her head. The 25 year old granddaughter was sitting next to me and she said under her breath “that stupid Bush”. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It was a great way to start the New Year.
That is wonderful to hear. My niece is spending the school year in Brazil and she has encountered alot of anti-Americanism, not just anti-Bush. I was hoping people around the world could keep the leader separate from the American people, but we did elect this boob a second time…
That is interesting Mary, do you live in Maryland, I seem to recall that. I wish I could sit around a family dinner and hear anti Bush sentiment. We haven’t talked politics in public since the election when it reached a zenith of disagreement. Yes I have Reps. in my very own family, but will not name names…lol.
I want to do a “I told you so” to those who voted for bush…..so bad, but of course I won’t, at least not yet.
Hey the Rose Parade just came on and Leann Rimes is wearing shorts, strange to see that in the middle of winter and on a cold rainy day…
I live in Red State Missouri. I know the feeling about “I told you so” — my very democratic dad and I were looking at each other as they went on and on about how stupid this administration’s policies are and my mom was glaring at us because she knew we wanted to say “told you so.” We held our tongue.
Obviously you have obtained a level of restraint I can only aspire to.
And it’s a level of restraint I didn’t come anywhere near while on the phone with my dad yesterday. He muttered some snide remark about the liberal thought police or whatever and my immediate response was, “Hey you better check with your boy about that, because you know he’s gonna outlaw independent thought in the next Patriot Act.” At which point my dad started talking about his new dog. (It is actually an improvement that he is no longer bending over backwards to defend BushCo.)
Great comeback, Indy. I can never think of anything good to say until hours later and then it just doesn’t work.
I don’t know why any of them ever start with me. One of the few things for which I have any native talent at all is argumentation — and I don’t really enjoy it, so the same process happens every time: they start, I try to dodge, they insist, I slam, they lose, we’re all unhappy. Seems either they’d learn or I would but I guess Stubborn lives in a couple places on the family genes.
Thankfully my dad wasn’t too pushy about it yesterday so there were only a few exchanges like that but mostly we had a nice conversation.
died when I was 14, and I often wonder what our conversations would be like now. I guess he’d be about 85 now, so mostly they’d be about where the hell did I leave my pants and what should I mash up for dinner, but I recall that he was a rabid supporter of Nixon and also a natural born bigot. He spat out the word ‘democrat’ like an insult. I often wonder if I turned out so blazingly liberal just to be different from him. My mom started out just like him but these days she may even be more liberal than I am. Time does that to many people.
Time does that to many people.
No kidding. Both my parents were peace, love & happiness hippies at 20, and whackjob bigoted conservative materialists by 40.
That must have been very hard for you, to lose your dad at such a tender age. I often think it’s easier for kids to lose parents when the kids are younger, than at that teenage time when the kids’ identities are all aflutter and twirling around and trying to figure out who they are.
I breezed right through my father’s death as if it didn’t matter much to me. We weren’t close, and his death made me a celebrity for awhile in my small catholic school, which I kind of liked. But when I got to be an adult I really longed to know my dad as a person, and to have him meet my kids and tell me I was doing a good job. I do envy women my age who still have their fathers…I just can’t even imagine what it’s like.
My dad died when I was 12. I think that shaped me in a lot of ways. My mother up to that point didn’t have a clue about being a parent or being a responsible adult (she was the baby of a big family who married a very strong and domineering man). While she was in the process of growing up, she turned to me a lot for help and I liked it. And I got a first-hand view of exactly how our society treated women and I already had problems with the way I was treated as a girl.
I was 11 when my dad died…but unlike other men of the era, my dad encouraged my mom to make her own way in the world. In 1965 or so, my dad showed her an ad in the paper for a part-time clerk in the classified ad department of the local paper. My mom looked at the ad and said, “I think they’re looking for someone more mature than [my oldest sister]”; at that time she was thinking about college funding. “I was thinking you should go for it,” was my dad’s response. She did, and got the job. My dad pitched in on housework, child care, and all the other miscellaneous tasks needed to keep a house going, as did all us kids.
She moved up in the ranks from part-time to full-time, to Saturday supervisor, then to supervisor of the whole department. And when Dad died of a unexpected heart attack, she wasn’t stuck trying to grieve his death, care for the kids, and try to find a job all at the same time; she had that support network at work who came together in times of crisis.
My dad was very masculine, but wasn’t threatened by my mom’s success, nor by taking on supposedly “feminine” roles. The term “feminist” wasn’t widely used in 1970, but I think it describes him…
My mother worked out of necessity but I don’t think it brought her very much satisfaction. She retired as soon as she could and had a pretty good govt. pension to cover the bare minimum of her needs. Thank God she made a good sum from the sale ofher house after we were all grown.
It’s great that you got to experience a father like that. My dad was very different and I’ve always suspected that had he lived we would have spent most of our time fighting.
In some ways my father’s death marked a positive turnaround for my family. He was an alcoholic and he used to drink away any money he made during the times when he was employed. So after his death my mother began receiving VA benefits for herself and the 4 kids who were still under 18, and suddenly we had enough food and the church stopped dropping off boxes of castoff clothes and weird assortments of canned food. But my mother remained bitter and overworked and largely joyless.
I’ve always felt somewhat guilty for thinking that in a lot of ways my father’s death was a good thing for me and eventually for my mother and my sisters. (And in our case, there weren’t the financial issues because we had a family business that was jointly owned by several family members.)
I felt a lot of relief when my mom died in 2002. I was 31, and for the first time in my life I felt free.
I hate it when these discussions get over to right edge because I never know if it is okay to keep replying. So if you want to continue this, just put up a new comment. I’ll find it.
My relief came much later when I realized that my mother would have stayed a ‘baby’ and either he would have succeeded in keeping me from becoming who I wanted to be or we would have been in an endless battle.
I don’t have a lot of restraint with people who act like assholes (including members of my family) but these people are really sweet and they key fact is that they NEVER talk politics. If we start talking politics they just politely wait for the conversation to change (and then go vote republican in the next election). It’s almost as if they are bored by politics. So, out of politeness, we try not to talk about it when they are around. The fact that THEY brought it up is what astounded me. (And helped me keep my mouth shut). It’s like a lightbulb went on in their minds.
Oh, that would be so awesome; to suddenly see little lightbulbs going on across the country. It would be fun to be on a nighttime flight when that happened.
great visual. And it captures exactly what was happening to me — I not only saw their lightbulb, but I realized that if THEY were seeing the light, other little lightbulbs were going on all over my red state (hopefully)
I’m glad you’re seeing progress. To see people who aren’t usually interested/willing to talk about it actually initiating conversation must be satisfying on some level.
In my family of origin politics is always a hot topic for conversation. Most of them are all nutjob conservatives, very passionate about it, racist warmongers who use faux science haphazardly to justify their views. I’m so far to the left I make Michael Moore look like a centrist, and I won’t brook bullshit either, so whenever I’m around we all have to don our flame-retardant suits because one of my dumb uncles or my dad will decide to have that one beer too many and then pick a fight with me, thinking this is his year. Never gonna happen, though, I haven’t lost a family debate since I was about 9.
My ex (a Rep.) and I talked about the fact that if a disaster hits you are on your own, I was kind of surprised to hear that from him, of course alluding to Katrina…and the disaster in chief, but at that point my son who is ever vigilant when ex and I talk, turned up the tv really loud and then I started with the ‘turn that down’…which after the back and forth ended the discussion….Family lives in fear of ex and I talking politics at all. Anyway, that is where the “I told you so” would have come in.
It’s amazing how the repubs manage to either control conversations OR make then so nasty that everybody decides to simply avoid substantive conversation. My dad’s family is very democratic. My Grandpa was an elected democratic city official as was my dad. One of my aunts worked for Senator Symington in washington in the early 60’s and another worked for one of the Democratic mayors in the 80’s. But my dad’s oldest brother converted to Republicanism when he started making a lot of money and he is so obnoxious about it that my dad’s oldest sister (a nun) made a rule a few years ago that we could not discuss politics at our Christmas gathering. I told her that I thought Grandpa would be rolling over in his grave to think that his family could not discuss politics. She agreed — but said it would just make the gathering “nicer”.
My youngest aunt got around the rule this year by giving my cousin a talking George Bush doll that we could all make fun of. And my uncle was amazingly silent this year.
During the of the reign of Bush II, I’ve felt an obligation to make an assessment as to how I got to my far left political view, I guess, spurred on by my wondering how the wingnuts got to theirs.
Conclusion: Genentic
My grandfather and his brother were founding members of our Democrat-Non-Partisan League here in ND. I have no doubt my grandpa is spinning at the speed of light since Bush II took the throne.
At Thanksgiving a couple of my brothers and I were talking politics to 5AM in the morning. At Christmas time we had to agree to a 2AM limit.
Omlette is ready must go.
I’m hopeful that we can convince some of these people to vote and perhaps even contribute towards a Democratic party resurgence “just this once.”
I remind my righty acquaintences that they can help us get rid of this mess with “just one” vote or one check. They can always go back when they have a genuine political party again.
I got a shock on Christmas Eve. We were visiting Hubby’s Talibaptist daughter and her right-wingnut husband. We were talking about what a bad year it had been, Katrina et al, and the wingnut bursts out, “I’ve decided that if these are the Last Days then Bush is the Anti-Christ!” LOL!
I’ve been wondering when those last days people would finally figure out that Bush fits right in with the concept of the anti-christ. Not that I have their wingnut beliefs. I feel like the character in Broadcast News that says — come on, you don’t think the antichrist is going to come with horns, no he’s going to look like someone you’d like. (I’m paraphrasing but you get the drift).
Here it is:
(shiver)
I remember that.
if there is such a person, is Reverend Sung Yung Moon, or however he spells his first names. He’s scary rich, transglobal and working behind the scenes to take over the world. Bush is just one of his puppets and probably doesn’t even know it. Bush is just not smart enough to be the devil incarnate.
You ET folks got up roarin’ today…another boring day in the foothills, a bit breezy, but nice:
Still nice and quiet in the neighborhood w/ the students and a lot of the CU faculty gone. All in all, a very pleasant time to be here.
Later
Peace
I really miss that ‘big sky’ out west. I spent a couple years in Evergreen and before that in Summit County CO.
Wow, it’s been busy around here today. We’ve been busy around the house playing and straightening. It’s my last day of vacation and I have been blessed with yet another gray, gloomy day outside. How is everyone else?
which is, if I recall correctly, an endless cycle. Seems like most of us are experiencing gloomy weather today, but at least it’s always sunny here!
Playing and straightening seem to work in tandem. Andrew throws toys over is head, behind him. We play until I can no longer look at the mess at which I try to put toys in their proper, mommy-assigned spot.
I envy your sunshine. It seems like it has been two weeks since we have had any significant sun.
Today is the first day it’s been really overcast in a long while. I’ve gotten very spoiled living down here…there are seldom more than 1 or 2 consecutive days of gloom. When I lived in Cleveland it wasn’t unusual to not see the sun for almost 2 weeks at a time. Boy was that depressing.
none here either since the afternoon of Dec 26, when we had a couple of hours of it. Tooks some shots then, and I’m hoping my frost-on-trees photos look good. (Got to get digital software loaded here… tis hard to wait.)
Next partly cloudy predicted for Thursday, when if we do indeed see the sun it will be over a two week stretch not counting the 26th.
The dismality of the overcast is compensated for somewhat by the very pretty frost-on-trees, which we’ve had almost continuously.
You’re looking at one very frustrated photographer waiting for some blue sky for a background. The sun teased the heck out me yesterday… around noon, then disappeared again.
Schedule for 1PM, dig out the waxless skiis for some cariovascular exercise, and go do some mental photos of nature’s beauty.
Weather update from socal….it is really windy and raining hard right now, I am about 30 mile south of pasadena. Not a good day to be in the parade.
It’s so funny to see everyone decked out in their finest, and then covered up with a rain poncho.
I turned on the parade and it looks miserable. What day is the football game. Tomorrow?
Isn’t it supposed to be today, I am not a football fan so don’t really know.
But I tell ya, it is pouring here right now with big wind gusts that’s blowing everything around here…gonna go out now and check the street, it flooded pretty good yesterday with the smaller rain we had then.
Are you on a hillside, Diane? Are you in any danger of sliding away on us?
Nooooo…I am on a coastal highland ‘flat mesa’, I guess you could say, far from any hills…..no sliding away for me.
I was just out and it’s miserable and cold, plastic cover has blown off of some boxes I had packed and placed under covered roof area, rain is just blowing in. Recovered everything and weighted down the corners, it should hold for awhile…
Hey we have WEATHER, yeaaaaaah….Winter is officially here in socal.
Well that’s good to hear. Sounds like you’ve battened down the hatches, and all you need now is a hot cup of tea and you can listen to the wind and rain. That’s one of my favorite things to do.
That’s what I need, a cup of tea on this dreary day. I hope that Diane doesn’t mind that I borrow this suggestion for myself. There’s still enough tea for her.
Course I don’t mind…my tea bags are currently located in my new place and I am in my old place so I will have some coffee instead…
I love dreary days, at least if there are not too many of them in a row, cause we rarely have anything except sunshine…nice to have a little change and then my weather envy can subside.
I thought I remembered that coffee makes you a crazed woman, Diane. I hope you are reunited with your teabags soon.
Well actually I am drinking water, and can only drink decafe coffee when I do on the rare occasion, which might be today!!!!
I don’t drink tea much either, that’s why its at the other place…usually just water or a little coke, my favorite.
Normally it would be the same day as the parade, but this year the Rose Bowl is the “National Championship Game”, meaning the winner can claim to be the #1 team in the country and about 5 other schools will spend the next 9 months complaining how they were screwed out of the game. 😉 (Yes, I’m a sports nut…)
Been sleeping most of the morning, trying to fight off the bug du jour…it’s wet and miserable here, good day to camp out inside and generally veg out. Trying to figure out what to do for dinner, so I can send the spouse out on a mission later…
Okay, back to bed shortly…
pandagon has a great post that goes quite nicely with cabin girl’s recent diary on relationships.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/28/8119/5320
i’ve posted a link to it in there.
My most difficult job so far has been being a mother, and not because it is just flat demanding or all the other mishmash everybody steeps on it. I’m talking that this job is really fucking hard for a feminist to tackle! My dad was very supportive about equal rights. I never thought I would have children. I worked and created and really loved my life and spoiled myself until things became a bit boring….found myself pregnant and gladly walked through that door. If I can take care of myself then perhaps I am ready to take care of someone who depends on me. Good Lord though children don’t give you raises for doing a good job or pat you on the back or give you an even bigger contract for impressive work done, and when they are teenagers coming from a gene pool of strong personalities not only have they drained you emotionally dry but then they add evil to the punch. I never had such a lesson in delayed gratification or believing in myself so completely without being supported emotionally by someone else as I have on this motherhood journey. Many is the day that I have sat in the mirror and wondered where in the hell the cheese moved to now and how in the hell did all these women before me make it through this shit with their sanity?
This is one of the best riffs on motherhood that I’ve ever heard.
It is emotionally draining, largely unrewarding, (especially in the short term) physically exhausting and regularly minimized by society to the point that I often felt (still!) that people view me as simple for doing it. It can definitely be a trap and it puts all of your dreams and aspirations and priorities in a blender so that you can barely recognize yourself of the very things you used to think were important.
And it’s not like there’s anyone you can send your resignation letter to, either.
It’s no accident that women are more oriented toward community and supporting each other. It really does take a village.
Men, however, are different.
A guy is hitting something.
Later, some other guy wanders over and hits something of his own.
If this ever happens again, it’s called a “relationship.”
I know that God must always come first, but here on earth, to what human being do I owe the most obedience and respect, wouldn’t that be to you?
The Prophet replied, your mother
OK, said the man, then who comes next?
Your mother, said the Prophet
The man nodded. And who comes third?
Your mother
And after my mother? the man asked
The Prophet answered, then your father.
Thanks!-I’m off to read it.
He and his brother are celebrating with a Chinese lunch.
He was just 13 when I met him, now he’s almost as old as I was then.
Which doesn’t mean anything, really.
Which doesn’t mean anything, really.
Sure it does — it means you are much closer to retiring.
🙂
I knew things were a little better this year than last.
Taken at 3:05 p.m. with the storm rapidly approaching. Now it’s into full rain, thunder, and lightning.
Whosh!
I love the sky like that.
Being in Kansas, I’d think you would have lots and lots opportunities to get pictures like that — only better because you sky is much more open.
Beautiful! Too bad you can’t capture the movement in a still photo. Don’t get electrocuted trying to get me a good storm picture!
I sort of did — the rapid movement of the trees is why it’s a little out of focus 😉
The lightning and the sheets of rain arrived together so I wasn’t tempted. I have always wanted to get one of those neat lightning pictures but I think we need katiebird or NorthDakotaDem to try for that in those places with lots of open sky. When lightning gets that close to me, it’s hitting a tree.
felt my nose tickling so thought I’d best come back to the FBC to see what’s up. Here in my rurallocation, I have seen some geat lightning light-shows. No lightning pictures so far. I think I need lightning-shots 101, or some such.
I have a pretty much open view to the south and east, so when the storms are moving west to east about 30-50 miles south of me would make for great shots.
One time I thought a strike had hit the house. Boom! The whole house shakes! Worse than 7.1 in N CA. We run outside quick to see if the place is on fire or not. No, which was good.
Next day we see where it hit. Three huge cottonwood trees too stubborn to be toppled by a bulldozer next to the road running past the west side of the farmstead took the hit. Well, actually it started on one, jumped to a second one next to it, then back to the first one, blowing back off both of them for quite a ways down. That was close enough.
My cousin and his girlfriend both got hit a couple of summers back. (There hadn’t even been any sign of lightning prior.) Knocked both of them out. She came to first, thought he was dead, then he came to, but was immobilized. She had to crawl down a trail for help. Got ambulance, then to hospital, treated them some how. Some stiff muscles, slight burns, etc, but they both came out of it fine in the end, with no lasting effects.
Best to be cautious.
Wow, that must have been scary. I’ve definitely always been way too cavalier towards lightning. I’m careful up to a point and then my fascination with storms overrides my common sense.
that I am working on getting your email — took awhile to get the image because things were a little hinky after the storm (noise on the phone line) but everything seems to be okay now.
Adjusted image and html coming your way via email in just a few minutes.
It’s raining — again. It has been raining here every two or three days and we’re starting to wonder if it stays this way the rest of the year. It’s really slowing down the digging of beds in our garden but I’m not panicking yet. We have until the first week in February before we put anything in the ground. Don’t know why but today’s rain has really turned on my joint and muscle pain as well as dampening my spirits. I’m sure that come July I’ll be begging for rain… humans are never satisfied, I suppose.
I’m in NC too, and it’s been gray and gloomy all day. We’ve had a bad drought since early last summer, so the rain we’re getting today is welcome. I think it’s supposed to clear up again and be sunny and mild most of the rest of the week.
an hour and a half east can make. The Roanoke River has been in flood stage the whole time we’ve been here. I think we do get three sunny days before the next prediction of rain. Maybe our being closer to the coast brings more rain that never makes it inland. Right now the catfish ponds are populated by even flocks of Canadian Geese over-wintering and seagulls seeking refuge for today’s thundershowers on the Outerbanks. The thunder is supposed to move over here later this evening.
It stopped raining here for a few hours but never stopped being cloudy. Now its raining again — its light rain but just enough to be gloomy. I hate it when its gloomy. A good thunderstorm is one thing — that’s kind of exhilarating but steady drizzle for days — I think I’m going to turn on every light in my house and see if I feel better.
Come hang out and eat at the diner!