Monday, April 30, 2007
An apology of sorts.
Dear Itsy Bitsy Spider,
I am sorry I asked James to kill you. Well, I am not really sorry, I guess I am just feeling a little bit guilty. I have seen you outside our front door for almost a week now. At first you didn't bother me. You were just like all the other little spiders living on the side of the house. Then you started moving closer and closer to our door. Yesterday you were on our door frame. Today you were just too close to the handle for me to deal with. I am tired of pretending that you don't frighten me. What if I accidentally touched you or you "accidentally" mistook me for some sort of spider food? You shouldn't have gotten so ambitious. If you had just stayed on the side of the house like the other three then we could have lived and let live. I am sorry that it had to be this way, but really, I feel you should take some responsibility in the matter.
Best of luck in your next life,
Little Miss Muffet
P.S. I would appreciate it if we could keep this between us. My son loves your song (although we sing a modified version at our house). I would hate for him to know that I was in any way responsible for your unfortunate end.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Our new fence.
This is James taking a break from his hard work! This is to the left of our house. This is the only part of the fence he has left to finish. Well he has to finish the small gate at the front, but that shouldn't take too long.
This is the front part of our fence. I will have to take a picture from the street so that you can see the fence face. I am so proud of James. Everything is screwed instead of nailed (to help prevent warping) and level. I will have to take a close up of one of James' panels and one of the "professional" ones so you can see the difference.
More pictures to follow soon! I took these this morning and he is now almost done. I am so lucky James is so handy (and handsome*)! We have spent right at $1,000 for the material for the fence. To get Lowes to install the same amount of fence that James did (I think they did the one in the back) would cost well over $2,500.
*There is a Canadian show we used to watch on PBS called the Red Green Show. At the close, he always says, if your wife can't find you handsome, at least she can find you handy (or something to that effect). So I was just making sure no one thinks it was one or the other!
Just like Daddy!
Jake does not really like hats. Well, unless it is James' Ole Miss hat. He is always trying to put on his Daddy's hat. I recently found a child size hat (for ages 5-10) that was the same color as James'. Jake will actually wear this one! He is so fair that I feel a hat is best to protect him a little bit more from the sun!
Grow, Baby Grow!
This first ultrasound picture was done on Wednesday April 11th. The heart rate was 133. This second ultrasound was done 8 days later on Thursday, April 19th. The heart rate was 167! Everything looks really good. I was so suprised to see how much the baby grew in 8 days! I have gained no weight, but none of my clothes fit. It looks like I will be in maternity clothes soon if everything continues so well! My new due date is November 27th. That is two days after Jake's birthday. After my appointment on Thursday I have regained the extreme excitement that I felt all the other times I discovered I was pregnant. I am 8 weeks 4 days as of today. We should find out if we are having another boy or a girl towards the second half of June!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Bad Mommy!
While I was on the phone with the Gas Company trying to figure out why their direct payment didn't go through (they had my bank account number wrong--they copied it off my check wrong!!), Jake got into my lunch box. He loves oranges, but he can't figure out how to peel them. When he finds one (I try to keep them out of reach) he just bites on the outside. He likes the way the peel tastes (so do I , but I don't eat it because on cleanliness issues). So, before I could take it and peel it for him he spits up (he does this STILL from the reflux) small pieces of peel (he was in no way choking). I clean him up and put my lunch box up. In the few seconds that I was in the kitchen putting things away and washing my hand he managed to get into this piece of Dove Dark chocolate. It had also been in my lunch box, and he managed to sneak it away somewhere when I took the lunch container away. I was horrified when I came around the corner and saw him. We don't really give Jake much chocolate or really candy at all. Occasionally I will break of a tiny piece of dark chocolate (if I am eating it) and give it to him, but that has only been since January. I googled caffeine amounts and serving sizes and he should be fine. He didn't even manage to consume one fourth of the piece and a serving size is five of them. A serving of dark chocolate has the same amount of caffeine as decaf coffee. But now I am hungry. Yes, even after cleaning up orange milk vomit. After I cleaned the chocolate off Jake he smells like a dark chocolate orange. That is my absolute favorite type of candy in the world!
Monday, April 16, 2007
Some information about Guntown.
Guntown, Mississippi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Guntown is a town in Lee County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,183 at the 2000 census.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Geography
Guntown is located at 34°26′42″N, 88°39′47″W (34.444966, -88.663087)GR1.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 11.8 km² (4.5 mi²). 11.7 km² (4.5 mi²) of it is land and 0.22% is water.
[edit] Demographics
As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 1,183 people, 443 households, and 337 families residing in the town. The population density was 100.8/km² (261.1/mi²). There were 482 housing units at an average density of 41.1/km² (106.4/mi²). The racial makeup of the town was 74.98% White, 24.18% African American, 0.34% Asian, 0.42% from other races, and 0.08% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.01% of the population.
There were 443 households out of which 45.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.2% were married couples living together, 21.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23.9% were non-families. 22.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.67 and the average family size was 3.12.
In the town the population was spread out with 34.3% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 28.6% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 9.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females there were 89.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $27,188, and the median income for a family was $29,783. Males had a median income of $27,868 versus $20,375 for females. The per capita income for the town was $12,456. About 19.3% of families and 24.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 34.5% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.
[edit] Education
Guntown is served by the Lee County School District.
[edit] Trivia
The name of Guntown is somewhat of a mystery for its residents. Some believe its name was derived from the fact that it was the site of an armory in the civil war era, while others claim (despite facts to the contrary) that Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth is buried there.
Correction: A recent newspaper interview with a resident of Guntown proves that John Wilkes Boothe lived in the attic room of an old home in his final years. He is buried in a family field cemetery just West of Guntown on the old road to Brice's Crossroad. The property is provately owned and seldom visited by those visiting the area. The resident interviewed own items and property that Wilkes Boothe left behind after his death.
Correction: Miss Emma Pressey claimed that she had an uncle who had a limp that lived upstairs in her house. She is related to the Booths. But there is no proof that John Wilkes Booth was living in Guntown.
[edit] External links
- Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 34.444966° -88.663087°
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
Correction: Miss Emma Pressey claimed that she had an uncle who had a limp that lived upstairs in her house. She is related to the Booths. But there is no proof that John Wilkes Booth was living in Guntown, or that he is buried in the Smith Cemetery.
With a little help from Wikipedia
Granny McLean and I were talking about Easter eggs over the phone on Easter afternoon. I told her I would try to find some more information on Easter eggs and here it is... More to follow soon on how Guntown got its name (another question she asked me about).
Easter egg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Easter eggs are specially decorated eggs given out to celebrate the Easter holiday or springtime. The oldest tradition is to use dyed and painted chicken eggs, but a modern custom is to substitute eggs made from chocolate, or plastic eggs filled with confectionery such as jellybeans.
Candy Easter eggs can be any form of confectionery such as hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in brightly-colored foil. Some are delicately constructed of spun sugar and pastry decoration techniques. The ubiquitous jelly egg or jellybean is made from sugar-coated pectin candy. These are often hidden, supposedly by the Easter Bunny, for children to find on Easter morning.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] History
Please check for inaccuracies and modify as needed, citing the sources against which it was checked.
Although claims are often made that Easter Eggs were originally pagan symbols, there is no solid evidence for this; the one source for information on a possible pagan Goddess who may have given her name to the festival, Eostre, does not mention eggs at all, and as there is no other available information on Eostre, there is no apparent connection to eggs. It is not until the 18th Century that Jakob Grimm theorised a pagan connection to Easter Eggs, this time with a putative Goddess of his own who he named Ostara, a suggested German version of Eostre.
The Passover Seder service uses a hard-coooooooooked egg flavored with salt water as a symbol both of new life and the Temple service in Jerusalem. The ancient Persians also painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration falling on the Spring Equinox. This tradition has continued every year on Nowrooz since ancient times.
In Christian times the egg had bestowed upon it a religious interpretation, becoming a symbol of the rock tomb out of which Christ emerged to the new life of His resurrection. It can also represent the darkness inside the tomb inside a hollow egg.
Easter egg origin stories abound—one has an emperor claiming that the Resurrection was as likely as eggs turning red (see Mary Magdalene)[citation needed]; more prosaically the Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent. In the West, eggs were forbidden during Lent as well as other traditional fast days. Likewise, in Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are prohibited during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" (a foodstuff that could be taken from an animal without shedding its blood). It was also traditional to use up all of the household's eggs before Lent began, which established the tradition of Pancake Day.
Another Orthodox tradition is the presenting of red colored eggs to friends while giving Easter greetings. This custom had its beginning with Mary Magdalene. After the Ascension of Christ, she supposedly went to the Emperor of Rome and greeted him with "Christ is risen", as she gave him a red egg.[citation needed] She then began preaching Christianity to him. The egg is symbolic of the grave and life renewed by breaking out of it. The red symbolizes the blood of Christ redeeming the world, represented by the egg, and our regeneration through the bloodshed for us by Christ. The egg itself is a symbol of the Resurrection while being dormant it contains a new life sealed within it.
One would have been forced to hard boil the eggs that the chickens produced so as not to waste food, and for this reason the Spanish dish hornazo (traditionally eaten on and around Easter) contains hard-boiled eggs as a primary ingredient.
In the North of England, at Eastertime, a traditional game is played where hard boiled pace eggs are distributed and each player hits the other players egg with their own. This is known as "egg dumping" or "egg jarping". The winner is the holder of the last intact egg. The losers get to eat their eggs. It is also practiced in Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, the Republic of Srpska and other countries. They call it tucanje. In parts of Bavaria, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland it is called Ostereiertitschen. In South Louisiana this practice is called Pocking Eggs and is slightly different. The Cajun's hold that the winner eats the eggs of the losers in each round.
[edit] Other decoration techniques
Easter eggs are a widely popular symbol of new life in Ukraine and other Slavic countries' folk traditions. A batik-like decorating process known as pysanka produces intricate, brilliantly-colored eggs. The celebrated Fabergé workshops created exquisite jewelled Easter eggs for the Russian Imperial Court. A 27-foot (9 m) sculpture of a pysanka stands in Vegreville, Alberta.
There are many other decoration techniques and numerous traditions of giving them as a token of friendship, love or good wishes. A tradition exists in some parts of the United Kingdom (such as Scotland and North East England) of rolling painted eggs down steep hills on Easter Sunday. In the U.S., such an Easter egg roll (unrelated to an eggroll) is often done on flat ground, pushed along with a spoon; the Easter Egg Roll has become a much-loved annual event on the White House lawn. An Easter egg hunt is a common festive activity, where eggs are hidden outdoors (or indoors if in bad weather) for children to run around and find. This may also be a contest to see who can collect the most eggs.
When boiling hard-cooked eggs for Easter, a popular tan colour can be achieved by boiling the eggs with onion skin. In the North of England these are called pace-eggs or paste-eggs. They were usually eaten after an egg-jarping (egg-tapping) competition.
Deep-fried chocolate Easter eggs are sold around Easter time in Scottish fish and chips shops.[1] The idea was invented in a northeastern Scottish takeaway as a sequel to the extremely popular deep fried Mars Bar.[citation needed]