A collection of miscellaneous thoughts

On Barack Obama:
Yeah, I know I'm a week late on this, but I have to say something about Barack Obama's win. I got so tired of hearing about him being black. Yes, it's historic, but I didn't vote for him because he was black. I voted for him because I thought he was the best candidate for the job and because he stood for the things I believe in. If there are other reasons to be happy, so be it. But that's why I voted for Obama.

On other politics:
How the hell is Alaska's Ted Stevens even still close to being reelected as Senator after being convicted of multiple felonies? How???? What is wrong with the voters in Alaska?

PS: It sucks living in Texas and knowing your vote never counts. Not even at the local level.

On Fallout 3:
I knew I was resisting Daniel getting me to try his new video game. He kept raving about it, so I finally tried it Sunday. I was right. It ate my brain. I played it most of the day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. There went my 4 day weekend, but I don't care. I had fun. Besides, it rained all day on Monday and Tuesday. 5 inches total.

On Whole Foods:
That's such a fun store. Shame it's so very expensive to shop there. We went there Saturday and had fun wandering around. I picked up a bag of apples for a good price. Too good to be true. Turned out most of the apples were soft and couldn't wait for my to eat them over the week. So I ended up making cinnamon applesauce, and then I canned most of it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I got out my preserving cookbook, and I had all the equipment ready to go. Had all the jars and lids and had bought a nice big canning pot last year. So now I have 5 jars of homemade cinnamon (very yummy) applesauce in my pantry. That was fun. I may have to experiment with other recipes in that book.

On lapidary:
I learned to use the rock saw at the mineral shop on Saturday. Ended up cutting a whole bunch of slabs of tiger's eye and a couple of slabs of malachite. People can be so funny and nice there. Everyone just trades around extra raw stones. Guy gave me a piece of blue tiger's eye, and then someone else gave me a piece of Botswana agate. I traded them some of my tiger's eye, since I had so much.

On new vacuum cleaners:
We finally broke down and bought a new vacuum cleaner. Found a great deal on a bagless from amazon.com. $80 and free shipping. We used it today, and holy cow. We had to empty the container after every room because it was filled (FILLED!) with cat hair. I can't believe there was so much crap still in the carpet. Either this is really good, or our old one was really, really bad. Maybe both.

My great debate tonight: Fallout 3 or make a carrot cake. A healthy version from my Eating Well When You're Expecting book. Full of very yummy recipes.