What's growing in the garden

As I've said before, one of the fun things with moving up here is seeing what will erupt out of my ground as the weather gets warmer. I missed photos of the grape hyacinths, the lily-of-the-valleys and most of the azaleas. But coming back from Field Day across the street (have I mentioned lately how much I love living next to the school???) with camera in hand gave me a chance to show off a little of what is out there now.

And I'm still trying to figure some plants out, so if you notice I have the type of plant wrong please correct me!


I have one bleeding heart in front of the house (and these are some of the final blooms on it). I think I want to plant more of these because the flowers are so cool, even though they only bloom in the spring.

I'm not exactly sure what this is, also almost totally bloomed out as you can see. Before turning brown the entire section of blooms were light purple. I first thought it was butterfly bush, but after a little research I actually think it might be lilac. I have about three of these in various spots around the house, but I think at least one is not getting as much sun as it would like, making it a little leggy.


I finally have azalea bushes! I have one that is still covered with flowers. The other 3 or 4 are pretty much done. None are huge - most are about a foot or two in diameter. But one lavender one is about 3 feet across and is right next to where we park the car so we can see it all the time.


A little patch of dianthus is growing in front of the house. I may plant some more of these because I like their spiky gray-green leaves.


My FAVORITE currently blooming. I've always wanted poppies, but never had the sun in Dallas for them. These are at the end of the driveway, actually on the side facing the neighbor. But they are impressive (you can't tell by this picture, but the flowers are about 4" in diameter.


I don't know what these little guys are, but they are popping up all over the place. Only about 4 or 5 inches high. I should know what they are, but got tired of looking in the books.


The hostas are coming up all around the house. Also something I never had much luck with in Dallas - snails, slugs and roly polys seemed to eat mine up.


I did a double-take when I noticed the size of these leaves. But I don't think it is an elephant ear - I think it is just a giant-sized hosta. I'll be interested to see if they grow bigger.


Alex holding one of the flower pods I've been finding all over the ground. I couldn't tell where they were coming from, but I think it might be from the sweetgum trees (however I haven't noticed them in the back yard, where we end up with a lot of "pokeyballs" from the trees).


Alex's favorite thing to find in the yard right now are these big thorns that have dropped off the same trees as the blooms. He likes to think of them as tiny swords. That's what he is holding up in front of him in the hosta picture above.


And I don't want to forget my viburnum. There are two of these blooming on the opposite side of the house from the driveway, so didn't realize they were there until I looked up from the table and saw these big snowball-looking blooms right outside the window next to the fireplace.

The yard guys are here today to treat the weeds. There are so many in the back yard that we have to just get rid of everything and reseed the entire yard. But hopefully soon it will end up looking as nice as the rest of the areas around the house.

Sunday tidbits a day late

Happy day after Mother's Day! I'm going to post my tidbits quickly - I'm having too much fun with Bonnie here to take too long on the blog.

- Extinction is a possibility for North American bats. "White-nose syndrome" has killed more than 1 million bats in nine states from Vermont to Virginia since 2007. Bats help nature maintain an ecological balance by eating tons of insects each year. But last month an annual inspection on hibernating bats in a large mine here in New Jersey yielded a count of only 750 bats, down from the normally 26,000 to 29,000 that are usually counted there each year. "White-nose syndrome" causes bats to awake early from hibernation and go in search of bugs that have not yet hatched, causing the bats to starve and freeze to death. Also a strange white fungus appears on the bats' noses which may be causing scar tissue and may make female bats unable to reproduce. This double-whammy of starvation and non-reproduction could be a fatal blow to the bat population.

- Bushmeat smuggling is a problem in the Newark airport. For those unaware, bushmeat is meat butchered from wild species, legal or illegal, and including elephant, monkey, antelope and rodents. It is favored by many Africans and used in many of their native dishes. Authorities consider it to be a potential carrier of zoonotic (animal-to-human) viruses like Ebola, HIV or monkeypox. Yikes!

Happy 7th birthday to my big girl!

Love her so, so much.

Happy Birthday...

...to my dear sister!

This is probably the first time I've ever had to dig out long sleeves on our birthday. Rain, high of 58 today, but I'm still going to have myself a margarita tonight (with my bean soup and cornbread!).

Sunday paper tidbits

Rainy day here in NJ, so kids are playing the Wii and Jim and I are surfing away. But it meant that I had no guilt in lingering over my Sunday paper with my cup of coffee.

- Work begins next month on the nation's biggest mass transit construction project in recent history. New York and New Jersey are building the first rail tunnels under the Hudson River in a century. It will employ thousands of people with many working deep underground in round-the-clock shifts (those of you who know my phobias know that makes me shudder). They will use tunnel-boring machines that are longer than a football field. So by the time 2017 rolls around it should ease the commute from NJ to NY which experts are projecting will have ridership that is 60% higher than it is today.

- 38 school districts in NJ are now offering Chinese as a foreign language. Very smart considering the article says 1/5 of the world's population speaks the language and it is the most used language on the internet. Interesting how different languages come in and out of vogue. Twenty years ago Japanese was the "hot" language up here; some schools still teach it while others have since dropped it. And schools in Summit, NJ, no longer offer German (Valda Carroll must be spinning in her grave). If Chinese is still offered when Grace gets older I'm sure she'll want to give a try, but I bet it is a really hard language to learn.

- Salamo Arouch has passed away. I wasn't aware who he was, but apparently he boxed for his life in Auschwitz. He was a Sephardic Jew from Salonika, Greece, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1943. During his nearly two years there he estimated he defeated 208 opponents with two draws. Pretty much had to fight for his life - the man who lost the bout was severely weakened, "...and the Nazis shot the weak." A movie was made about his life in 1989 starring Willem Defoe titled "Triumph of the Spirit." After Greece was overrun by Germany in 1941, 47,000 residents of Salonika were sent to prison camps. Only 2,000 survived the war.

Alex says this morning

"Know what kind of monster I'd be to scare Shaggy and Scooby Doo? A Lizard-Person. Half lizard, half robot and half person."

He then proceeded to hulk around the room showing me how scary it would be.

Some of the girl

A few new pictures of Gracie. She has started her first foray into team sports, joining the girl's softball league here in town. Luckily coached by Annie's father (one of her very best friends).


Hopefully learning here how to not throw like a girl. Love those cool pony-tail baseball hats.


Ball actually leaving the tee. Batting helmets are so big they look like football helmets (fine with me - better protection for those new adult teeth coming in).


Just stopped the ball and ready to throw it back in.


Grace and her other best friend Anna. It's a wonder how those girls can see under those big ol' hats.


My little ham before the first night of the school's spring variety show. She did a great job dancing to "Car Wash" and can't wait to be in the show again next year.

Water water everywhere...

Just as I think I'm getting used to this Yankee life up here, something happens to smack me back to reality.

This morning we got up as usual, and as I was in the kitchen about to make Jim's lunch I hear a sound from the basement sounding an awful lot like pouring water. Upon investigation, YES - not pouring but spewing water, with water all over the basement floor. We had lots of rain last night which apparently our sump pump did not like. I don't know if there is a clog in the french drain that caused this, but a point where two pipes are clamped together has sprung a leak, so every 15 min or so when the pump kicks on water starts spraying out from this connection.

I've got most of the water sopped up with mutiple uses of just about every towel in the house (saturate towel, spin cycle in washer, hot setting in dryer, repeat - I'm rotating about three batches of towels). Looks like we only lost one framed picture, a sisal rug (that I didn't like anyway) and a box of videotapes - most everything else that got wet can dry out and survive, and the really good stuff is on a shelf up high or in plastic bins. I'm patiently waiting the arrival of the plumber, going down and changing towels out that are trying to catch the occasional spray from the pipe.

Before moving up here I don't think I'd ever been in a basement in a house or seen a sump pump. I'm still a bit mystified by the pump - this big strange hole in the bottom of my house that water drains into. At least this is still covered by the home warranty, so hopefully I'm only going to be out $95 to get it fixed.

Sunday paper tidbits

I'm back with some more.

- In the spirit of downsizing our lives, many are downsizing their vacations. If you are looking for some place to drive to rather than fly, the website at freemaptools.com can help out with this. An option at the location I linked too can let you look at what constitutes a 500 mile radius around any point, with the idea that 500 miles can easily be driven in a day's time. When I draw a radius from Newark, 500 miles includes Columbus(!), all of New England, Toronto, and just about down to South Carolina. It can open your eyes to places to visit without the expense of airline tickets. But Jim pointed out that since our move our 500 miles includes many more states than from Dallas where most of your distance is still just Texas.

- With the recession many more families are embracing "slow parenting." Pretty much cutting down kids activities and having family spend more time together - adding more quality time with the family. Wow, we've been "slow parenting" for quite a long time now. Maybe we're trendy and didn't know it.

- Our newspaper runs a "Meet Your Neighbors" section on Sunday where they feature an interesting person in Central NJ that maybe would not normally get much notice. This week they told about Clara Kramer, 81-years-old, who is a Holocaust survivor. During the Holocaust when Clara was 15 she spent 20 months in a crawl space under the house of her sympathetic neighbor in Poland. For as horrible as it was - vermin, hunger, thirst, fear - if she'd left the hiding place it would have been certain death for both her and the neighbors who hid her. In order to occupy herself she kept a total of four diaries during that time that she and her family were able to smuggle out of the country once they escaped. The diaries eventually made it to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum where they were rediscovered and Clara was convinced to turn her story into a book. Just the thought of what she went through at age 15 makes me want to buy it. So I think sometime after Tuesday I'll go out and do just that - "Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival" by Clara Kramer.

Easter eggs and living room

Just a few photos from egg hunting.






This was when sweet Grace was evening out the number of eggs in the baskets (meaning she was giving some of hers to her brother). An Easter miracle!


Eating the loot.


Our new floor, new paint, and new entertainment center Jim and I put together. It kicked our butts, but it looks great.

Grace wanted her picture in front of the new furniture. The floor lamp is going to go away as soon as we get can lights installed in the ceiling. And for as beat as we were after all this, we then had to move the furniture back in the room.

The boy's wish

Alex tells us tonight "If I saw a shooting star in the sky I would make a wish that every day was Spring Break." We had a fun week last week - so sad it's over.

Working on the house

Just a few pictures to satisfy the curious.


Our pretty new floor (VERY much so when compared to what was previously here).


Grace was being a dog for some reason.


Jim touching up the little bit right up near the ceiling. It's hard to tell from this picture, but the walls look a million times better than when they were dirty, hole-covered pale blue. And these walls were extremely hole-covered. It's amazing how much crap the previous owners had hanging everywhere. Trim will get painted a lighter shade of green tomorrow, plus we have a trip to Ikea to get the new entertainment center. Yay!

The house is sold!!!

Yes, as of 5:45pm Eastern time today we are no longer multiple home owners (unless you count our portion of the rent house, but you know what I mean).

This has been the most stressful two weeks I've been through in a long time. As many of you are aware, this was the most nit-picky buyer EVER. And of course we had to bend over backwards to make things right because after about 6 months of two house payments we were totally ready to unload the old house, no matter how much we loved it and will miss it.

So now we are ready to hit the ground running with projects on our current house. Tomorrow the floor guys show up to take out the nasty parquet floor in our family room and put in some beautiful new hardwoods. A little bit of painting and a trip to Ikea and we'll pretty much have one room completely redone. It will be nice to get these things done, to finally make our house a little bit more "ours."

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Well, not as successful a trip today as we had on Sunday. Part of the problem is that we got on the road late because Mommy & Daddy had to spend time at the bank getting papers notarized/faxed/fed exed/etc for the impending house sale tomorrow (everyone please still keep fingers crossed on that). Plus art museums seem in theory more fun for your kids than what they really turn out to be (at least with an almost 7 and 4 1/2 year old). Looking back I should have prepared us a little more for the trip - I read that kids get excited seeing art in person that they've seen before in a book or on TV. But we decided on our destination just yesterday, so there wasn't much time to plan. The kids were excited at the beginning, but quickly devolved into hungry, tired, cranky little devils. But for as tough as it was to experience, I still feel it was worth it. If we don't expose the kids to museums they won't ever learn to love them. So for even a tiny trip (we probably drove in the car for as long as we were at the actual museum) I still think it was a good day.

Enormous column we saw upon entering the museum. Grace was impressed enough that she sketched it in her sketch pad.


As we enter this room the 4-year-old says (not too quietly) "Mommy, I see penises in here."


The Temple of Dendur. An actual entire temple inside the museum - very cool to see.


Graffiti from the 1800s can be seen throughout the temple.


The kids really liked this part because we let them throw coins in the water at the temple. Alex also liked that these little fences were made with chains similar to ball bearing chains - felt neat to run your fingers on.


We swung by the Medieval armor area on the way back to the car. Even though Alex was very cranky he was quite impressed with all the swords and guns. Just like a boy.

Tomorrow Grace and Jim have their "date" on Broadway. Grace is very excited about the whole thing (as she should be - I think they will have a wonderful time).

Central Park

We couldn't have asked for better weather yesterday to explore Central Park (and just a small part of the park - so much more to see). It was sunny and about 65 degrees. The Chicago song "Saturday In the Park" kept rolling through my head, even though it was Sunday. We didn't do much - had hot dogs and ice cream, climbed the rocks, listened to street musicians, walked around. The line to the zoo was way too long, so we skipped that. We also didn't make it up to the Alice in Wonderland sculpture yet either.


Kids excitedly waiting for the train to arrive to take us to NYC.


Little bit of park, little bit of city shot.


Alex showing off the last of his hotdog bun, soon to be devoured.


Forsythia like these in Central Park are blooming everywhere, even in our yard at home.


Sweet Grace posing in the daffodils.




Climbing one of the many rock "mountains" in the park. This was the kids absolute favorite activity to do that day, and this photo doesn't do justice to how big the rocks actually were.


Our surprise at FAO Schwarz. This is the first time Alex had no fear at all with a costumed creature. He turned to the guy after the picture and said "I have a stuffy at home just like you!"

No Sunday News Today

It's Spring Break here so no time to put any Sunday paper tidbits down to share. Hopefully I'll have some pictures posted soon from our fun day we had at Central Park today.

Alex's comment (among many)...

...regarding Monsters vs. Aliens:

"Thwee D is gweat!"

Sunday paper tidbits

Almost didn't post any today because a head/chest cold has me down. But I found a few items anyway.

- Such a big debate going on about what to do regarding "sexting" and the like by teens. You know, sending naughty pics of themselves either from cell phones or via social networking sites. Recently this came up here in New Jersey where a 14-year-old posted nude photos of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend, and she is now accused of distributing child pornography. Many feel this is too harsh a treatment for a girl who clearly needs some sort punishment/guidance for this (if arrested and convicted she would be labeled a sex offender), but unfortunately state laws haven't caught up to technology these days. I have no answers, but as a parent I can just add this to my list of things to have discussions with my kids about as they get older (and probably have them cringe at me bringing up).

- Killer whales live in the Gulf of Mexico. While orcas are typically though of as living in cold waters eating seals (or living at Sea World), there are actually some living in the Gulf, dining on tuna and dolphins. Fifteen groups of killer whales have been sighted in the Gulf since 1992, and some experts feel the actual number could approach 500 - a two-month expedition is scheduled to begin this summer which could help confirm this number.

- Swallows are not returning to San Juan Capistrano. While legend has it that the swallows returned to Capistrano each year filling the sky "like a rain cloud," reality now is that the swallows have hardly been seen at the mission in years. None showed up at the Festival of the Swallows this year. Many theories exist as to why the numbers diminished. Some feel the number of swallows never was actually as much as legend says; there is little scientific evidence that the birds migrate to the same spot year after year. Others say preservation work on the mission a decade ago knocked down the bird's nests. And still others blame it on Southern California bird population reduction in general, resulting from loss of habitats due to the building of homes and shopping malls. Experts have been brought in to try to lure the birds back, but nothing has made much of a difference so far. The locals continue each year to hold the festival, always with the thought that "there's always next year."

The family is off to see "Monsters vs. Aliens" today - Alex is overjoyed!

Sometimes...

...it's nice to know there is a pirate superhero looking out for you and keeping you safe from one hundred mean robots.

Daddy's gone so it's pancake dinner tonight

Showed a little pancake-love to the kiddos tonight. Alex got an extra "snake" pancake since he has one less letter in his name (Lord knows things have to be "even" around here).

Sunday paper tidbits

I couldn't find anything in the front section of my paper because I don't want to post depressing stories on the economy. Luckily there were some other interesting items as I got further in to the paper.

- Tonight is the season finale for "Flight of the Conchords" on HBO, and could possibly be the series finale. As I read the beginning of the article with dismay, it made more sense as I went on. It's a fairly difficult show to create - two songs with music videos per episode, plus the comedy in between. And Bret and Jemaine used up most of their pre-existing songs in the first season and probably used up all their new songs created on the long hiatus in season 2. But the article points out that the British model of television doesn't require its TV shows to run as long as they are making money. They tend to exist as long as their creators feel it is necessary - "Fawlty Towers" only had 12 episodes ever produced (John Cleese took four years off between creating the first 6 and the last 6 shows). Sounds like there is not as many "jumping the shark" situations with that scenario - and can explain why many cult-favorite US shows had short runs (two of my favorites, "Freaks and Geeks" and "Sports Night" ran for only 1 and 2 seasons, respectively). But hopefully there will be a season 3, and it will be good.

- At least two libraries last month pulled books due to the new federal law banning more than minute levels of lead in products for children. Apparently lead was present in printer's ink until it was banned in 1986, so any books printed before that year probably used the leaded ink. The CDC has come out saying lead-based ink poses little danger in children's books ("...on a scale of one to 10, this is like a 0.5 level of concern"), but a CPSC spokesman said in a recent interview that schools and libraries should take steps to ensure children are kept away from these books until more testing is done (this statement was then modified later that week to say the spokesman "misspoke" and they are not telling libraries to take them off shelves). Once again this misguided law has reared its head - while we need to protect children against defective, lead-tainted products, the concern over the books and the restriction of home-crafted, Etsy-type toys is taking things a little too far.

- Experts say that half of the world's 7000 languages may disappear by 2100. Last month UNESCO launched an online atlas of endangered languages, featuring more than 2,400 at risk of extinction. Language extinction has been around for 10,000 years - the norm in the pre-agricultural society was to have lots and lots of little languages, but as humans developed agriculture larger population groups could live together, developing larger languages. A language is considered extinct when the last person who learned it as his or her primary tongue dies. While many of these languages can be preserved, and many that have been lost because of the communities being forcibly made to drop them through discrimination, etc., should be, much of this appears to be just natural cultural evolution occuring.

The Daily Show

Thanks to my sister, we got to have an amazing time attending the taping of The Daily Show in NYC yesterday. Logistically it was a challenge - we had to get someone in line early enough to get good seats, get five kids covered for childcare in NJ, and get everyone else in line before 4:30pm (you show up at 4:31 you get booted to the back of the line and don't make it in).

Jim was coming straight from work, so that was taken care of. Kathy and David took the train in around lunchtime to get in line early. Since the babysitters are in high school, and I had to leave by 2:15pm to physically make it to NYC in time, Emma got to do babysitter duty for about 40 minutes (with both neighbors' phone numbers handy should any help be needed) until both high school girls made it to the house. But it all worked out in the end. Kathy was so worried about making it into the show that she ended up waiting in line for 2 1/2 hours, making us FIRST in line for the non-VIP tickets. Way to go Kathy!!!

So Kathy is there by about 2pm, Jim and I both show up around 3:45pm, David (who was exploring the area) was there a little after 4pm. We got briefed outside on how things work and got our tickets to enter which just looked like laminated sticky notes with a Daily Show stamp and a number written on it. At 5:15 we watched the "VIP" tickets file in - looked like it was about 65 people for that night's show. Then we got shuffled in through a metal detector and bag checking station to wait in an interior waiting room. From there we waited about another 30 minutes before they finally started putting us into the studio. It was SO COOL to see the studio - all the backdrops and props you see every night. The music is loud enough to get you pumped, but not so loud to be annoying (not that we need much of a reason to be pumped). And due to Kathy's patience with waiting, our seats were about the best we could get - third row back, center section, first row up on risers so no heads were in front of us.

The warm up comedian (Paul Mecurio) came out to make sure we know how to cheer and clap loudly, and he was actually pretty darn funny. Then after his bit he announces Jon Stewart, who comes out into the studio to all of us cheering wildly. It was a really awesome moment - very exciting. Jon asks the crowd for questions, and I got picked to ask one! Kathy was totally ready with one of the best questions ("Who would your all time dream interview be - Karl Rove or Dick Cheney?") but got too nervous to even put her hand up when faced with the opportunity. But I stuck mine right up to ask why he doesn't have his face on a bag like Stephen Colbert, and then hold the one up from Barnes & Nobel that Kathy brought to me as a gift. I honestly can't remember what he said back to me - that is where MY nervousness kicked in.

Then they started the show taping. Pretty much just like watching it on TV, except no commercials and you are VERY close to it. They had a skit where Aasif Mandiv had to hold a live snake, but the first take the snake looked asleep, so they reshot it after the show had finished. They also have an international version of the show which since it was Wednesday they needed to record the intro for it, so we got a little bonus show (and extra thanks from Jon for sticking around for both the International bit and the Aasif retake).

But one of the best bits was when he did his back and forth with Stephen Colbert at the end of the show. Because before they record the actual part that airs, these two joke back and forth with each other a lot to warm up. And they are VERY funny with each other.

Anyway, lots and lots of fun. I highly recommend it for anyone traveling up to NYC. As Kathy commented, Jon Stewart seems like such a nice guy on TV and seems like an even nicer guy in real life.




Jim got a better shot of this than mine here. The sign over the door you walk in from the street to enter the studio says "Abandon News, All Ye Who Enter Here."


The hanging banners in the waiting area with the pictures of (old) correspondents on them. I think they all said things like "Trustworthiness" on them except for the one of Jon Stewart, which said "Afraid of Heights."


Kathy, very excited about getting into the studio.

No tidbits today

I didn't have a chance to write up my Sunday paper tidbits for the day, what with our house full of guests right now.

I did lose my computer for a while to the kids all holed up in Grace's room this evening. When I logged back on just now I discovered 76 new pictures in my Photo Booth. Somebody has been having fun with photo effects...

Piece-able kingdom

Alex has toys that he says are "piece-able" - the ones that can pop apart and be put back together. He has even made a few piece-able that weren't originally intended for that. But this morning he informed me that "Mommy, my little toe is piece-able." At first I laughed it off, telling him that if it was piece-able there would be blood and toe guts everywhere (easily understandable to a 4-year old boy), but then he wouldn't let me look at his toe, wanted to keep it hidden under the blanket, and kept telling me "I just don't want to talk about it" (which usually means he's done something he knows he wasn't supposed to do).

Then it finally hit me - his toe's day of reckoning had come.

A week or so ago he was running through the house and really whacked his pinkie toe on the big metal tool box on the floor. After a lot of tears and a little blood, I realized that his toenail would probably be coming off at some point. And today's the day. It didn't bother him in the least; I'd tried to really explain what would happen and to point out that it has happened to me a couple times. So after it had hung on by a thread all day (that was the point he'd gotten it to this morning that he was hiding from me), he just ran in here and presented the toenail to me. So now we are keeping it to show Daddy when he gets home from work. Ick.

And I did clear the piece-able confusion earlier today, so he knows he did nothing wrong in pulling it loose. Thank goodness - I was feeling like I'd had one of those horrible parenting moments this morning that would give my adult son therapy for many years to come.

They're creepy and they're kooky...

Jim and I saw this house the other day when we ventured to Cranford to go to the movies. We decided it looked very Addam's family-esque, even down to the creepy, droopy trees in the front. You can't really see the sign to the right of it, but this is actually some sort of day spa. Yikes!

Quote featured in my new Real Simple

"What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone." - Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud

When Jim read it and I told him how much I liked it, he just looked at me and said "Women are so weird."

Sunday Newspaper Tidbits

Just a couple today.

- New Jersey plus five other states here in the Northeast are going to launch a month-long hunting season targeting the overpopulation of snow geese. I still think it is really cool to see all these geese around here, but of course I've only been here for 4 months. And I have seen the green nasty goose poop all over the path near the pond in the park close to our house. But the concern over the goose population really raised it's head when the plane went down into the Hudson after hitting a bird (was it ever determined if it was a goose? or just assumed?). Anyway, the overpopulation problem is largely man-made. Historically migrating geese would winter in coastal marshes in the southern U.S. and Mexico, feeding on the grasses, and the limited food supplies would keep the numbers in check. But as the geese have discovered fields of grain and corn on farms throughout the United States they began to alter their migratory routes. Now with food available everywhere the geese have become hardier and predators have become fewer, resulting in lots of birds. And these stronger, healthier birds are returning to the Arctic and laying more eggs and hatching more young. The results of this are massive "eatouts" on the tundra, where geese are ripping huge swaths of grass up by the roots, altering the ecologically fragile area that many other rare migrating shorebirds rely on. Unfortunately Arctic geese are not very tasty to eat. The article states it is like "chewing on a catcher's mitt." Maybe I should invest in a pressure cooker...

- In the stupid criminal category, an inmate who escaped from a Georgia jail was arrested trying to sneak back into the jail. Deputies found the inmate, who had escaped through a door to the exercise yard and over the fence, trying to come back in with 14 packs of cigarettes he had apparently stolen from a convenience store about a block away. Now he faces new charges for breaking out of jail and burglary. Stupid.

- Last tidbit: Watchmen is playing at the Cranford theater today at 3:45. We're getting a sitter to watch the kids so we can go. Yay!

Facebook

Okay, I'll start out by stating the obvious: I love Facebook. It is so fun to stay connected to all my friends and family, even if most times it is a one-line update of what they are currently up to, no matter how mundane it is. I also like how I've discovered people I slightly knew 20+ years ago that I now realize are extremely interesting and like-minded as me (and discover people I thought I knew who surprise me with their current views on the world). And while I probably do hop on more than I should each day to get an update, that time is getting smaller, and I find myself just briefly looking rather than spending much time on it.

But I also have a little dissonance with the whole experience too. I've been surprised by this small feeling of being "left out" that pops up every once in a while. Finding myself seeing a name from high school of someone that has friended multiple people on my friend list, and wondering why I haven't been asked to be a friend too. Or seeing "notes" that people post and noticing that I wasn't one of the 25 chosen to be mentioned down the side that would ensure I'd notice what had been put out there. I have to then remind myself that honestly I don't care all that much about keeping in touch with that person, or I would have sent them a friend request myself. Or that I really don't care that much what a particular person had written about themselves (of course this doesn't mean anyone reading this blog - I read ALL of what you guy post).

Speaking of that friend list, why is it when I want to cull some people out of it the ones I pick are all the ones with like 10 friends or less? So while Facebook may not send any message about you leaving to the person you are dropping, don't you think they would notice if their friend total suddenly drops 10%? So don't judge my shallowness by the size of my friend list - I now have morning-after regrets for a few of those. Yet I still keep searching for more...

Sunday paper tidbits

- Apparently many Christian computer users are giving up Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other technology for Lent. Not me. I think it's probably easier to give up sweets.

- An entrepreneur in New York City is selling Tap'd NY, which is simply bottled NYC tap water. Description on the bottle states "No glaciers were harmed in making this water." And the price is $1.50 versus $1.85 for the Smartwater sold in the same Manhattan coffee shop. This start up venture is doing pretty well. New York City has one of the nation's healthiest water supplies (the EPA declared doesn't even need filtration), coming from a system of 19 reservoirs and three lakes in Upstate New York. It seems the pride of being a New Yorker combined with good tasting water and the green element of not being shipped from thousands of miles away is a pretty good business plan.

- New Jersey held its first feral pig hunt in December and January that managed to wipe out half the estimated pig population. This is a good thing - unlike the peccary or javelina of the Southwest, these are entirely non-native creatures, likely descending from some pigs that got loose from a hog farm in the early 1990's. According to the story, feral pigs have become one of the most destructive invasive species on the planet, rooting up native grasses and plants, killing habitat for native creatures and pushing out other wildlife in an agressive fight for territory. The state hopes to find the remaining pigs by using the "Judas pig technique," where a pig will be trapped and fitted with a radio collar with the hopes that the collared pig will eventually lead biologists to the the rest of them.

Have a great week!

I am wondering...

Does "total snow accumulation of 10 to 14 inches" on Tuesday mean ON TOP OF the "total snow accumulation of 6 to 9 inches" predicted for tonight?