• 21:51 Replied to vamp-related HARO query. Bugs me when writers don't even acknowledge my e-mails. I've had zip luck w/ HARO, keep trying. #HARO #
• 21:53 I went to The Men Who Stare at Goats w/ my dad this p.m. Movie was disappointing, at least I spent time w/ dad. Cinema busy w/ holiday. #
• 02:08 @neilhimself Yes, I have a scan of my signature that I can embed in e-mail, etc. I don't know what it proves, either, but rcpts are happy #

"Let's go back to the beginning of Veterans Day. It used to be Armistice Day, because at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, World War I came to an end...Veterans Day, instead of an occasion for denouncing war, has become an occasion for bringing out the flags, the uniforms, the martial music, the patriotic speeches...Those who name holidays, playing on our genuine feeling for veterans, have turned a day that celebrated the end of a horror into a day to honor militarism. As a combat veteran myself, of a 'good war,' against fascism, I do not want the recognition of my service to be used as a glorification of war. Veterans Day should be an occasion for a national vow: No more war victims on the other side; no more war veterans on our side."
~~~~~~Howard Zinn

I have found a knitting pattern I must make. Oh, I get excited about a lot of knitting patterns, but usually not things that look like they will take me a decade to finish. This one is a) a lot of knitting and b) a lot of complicated knitting. But … I must own this knitted dress!

It’s the most incredible knitted dress EVER. I must possess this dress, and the only way I will possess it is if I knit it. Oi. It looks like a lot of work. It looks like the kind of thing I’ll be working on so long it drives me insane. But … wouldn’t it be something to own!

Though before I get all gung-ho about starting another even more endless knitting project, I still have to finish the endless shawl. I haven’t even put it back on the needles yet. I think I’ll do that sometime today and get back to knitting on it. I’m not all that far from finished, and I am certainly not starting a knitted dress that requires 12 skeins of yarn until I have finished the silly shawl. I’m not even going to let myself think about starting on the dress until I am WEARING the shawl.

Though I will begin considering what color to make it.

It’s Lion Brand (free) pattern. I’d link to it, but you have to register to see it. It’s easy enough to find though, if you want to find it.

• 17:40 Spent 2 hours stacking firewood, didn't quite finish, second cord just delivered! Gives new meaning to "sisyphean task" :) #
• 17:41 It's actually rather convenient to have huge pile of wood right outside the door, but...not very tidy & a pain when it's all snowy. *sigh* #
• 20:45 Long before Google, Kindle, Sony Reader & the Nook there was Project Gutenberg. Interview w/ founder Michael Hart: is.gd/4SbRI #
• 23:09 "...American self-absorption has clearly reached new heights. No longer just bowling alone, Americans are flying alone." is.gd/4Sfv4 #

Once the antihistamine really kicked in and I became almost totally useless, I worked on the coding in my blog’s template. Well, I said I wanted to do something mindless and useful, didn’t I? I didn’t get too far, but at least I got started on it. Maybe I’ll be able to finish it up in the next few days so I can upgrade Wordpress at long last.

The only other thing I accomplished today was taking a nap and hanging up more of my clothing, and now I just want Lin to get home so we can eat dinner. I only have one chapter left in the book I am currently reading. I want to read that and then go to bed. Tomorrow, will be another day of fire ant murdering in the garden. I need to be well rested for the upcoming battle!

The exact number of pots of boiling water I have carried to the back yard and carefully poured into the egg and larva filled mounds of fire ants this morning is unknown. I lost count when it hit double digits. Let’s just say the number is high. Many fire ants have died this day. Only two sunk their fangs into me.

Since it was such a beautiful morning, I decided to go get that gardening work done. I did get some weeding done, and two of the potato plants have had their dirt piles piled higher, but then I saw the mother of all fire ant mounds. The largest fire ant mound I had ever seen with my own eyes. They had invaded a ten gallon pot with a basil plant in it, and the mound was in the pot and growing along the sides. Then I saw the off-shoot mounds nearby. The horror!

So I set about filling, boiling, pouring, refilling, boiling, pouring … over and over and over. I’ve been at it for hours. I’ve finally had to stop. My arms were getting tired, and I was afraid of dropping a large pot of boiling water on myself (or heaven forbid, a cat who decided to get in the way at the wrong time). Also, the fire ants that aren’t dead are all kinds of upset right now, and they are everywhere. Safer for me to just call it a day on the fire ant massacre.

I think since these particular mounds are not directly in my garden or in soil I will ever be planting in, tomorrow when I go to the store, I will be buying the most deadly, most toxic to life as we know it, most horrifying fire ant poison I can find. This weekend we will be going around to as many stores as necessary to find the organic stuff that is safe to use around food plants. But something has to be done about this mega-nest NOW. I may have put a dent in their numbers, but I am 100% certain I did not kill the queen or destroy their community beyond repair. They have to be gone, and I don’t care what it takes to make that happen.

That has been my day thus far. Pouring endless pots of boiling water on fire ant mounds. Now I am hungry, sweaty, and tired. It’s time to take care of those things, and then, owing to the post-antihistamine wooziness I am beginning to feel as I type this, I think I’ll be finding something mindless but useful to fill my afternoon hours.

And tomorrow … the true Fire Ant Massacre begins. It’s WAR!

• 22:45 My review of Jeaniene Frost's *Destined for an Early Grave* has been posted to Blogcritics: is.gd/4RoMm #
• 22:46 My review of the superb documentary, *Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown* (w/ Neil Gaiman) has been posted to Blogcritics: is.gd/4RoLh #

The Austin Police Department is trying to find ways to ensure officers turn on their dashboard cameras, and to make it easier, they also want to switch from a VHS system to a digital system. I am all for leaving behind VHS tapes, but as far as getting cops to turn them on, it should be automatically triggered … not when the door is opened, as they are suggesting, but at the moment the flashing lights are turned on. Isn’t that the point when really interesting things start to happen?

Yes, I want a fully digital camera system where all stored files are completely out of access for the persons operating the police vehicle, and I want the control of when they said cameras are turned on to be out of the hands of those persons as well. They need to come on the instant the switch for the flashing lights is turned to the “on” position. That’s objective oversight, and it gets rid of all those nasty human errors when they totally forget to turn on their cameras when they are tasing, beating, or shooting someone (or in some other way being an ass).

Speaking of cameras:

Did you know that some tasers have cameras built in that capture footage when they are fired. I didn’t, but as it turns out the one used to tase a grouchy senior citizen in the area not so long ago, did have a camera. The footage played a big role in the county settling her lawsuit rather than taking it to court.

Yeah, when a cop uses a taser on a small elderly woman –no matter how cranky and bitchy– it’s pretty outrageous. When he tases her again when she is lying on the ground face down, screaming, and unable to move? That’s a nice out-of-court settlement.

I just wrote a rather angry and possibly offensive to some post, and I saved it as a draft. I’d have loved to hit post, but I’m entirely too busy this week to deal with an overflowing inbox full of hate mail and drama on my web site. Therefore, I will save it for later. Perhaps the need for that particular rant will pass. I will share with you the opening line:

Want to know how I can tell I am a centrist politically?

The lefty-liberals make me just as crazy as the far right-wingers.

That’s all for now, folks!

It looks like I need to go to our main neighborhood post office and complain about our postal person. I hate to do it, because this one is so much better than most of the ones we have had, but he’s been doing one thing that really has begun to annoy the hell out of me and has now completely inconvenienced me.

He doesn’t even try to deliver certified mail. Nope. Doesn’t come to the door at all. Doesn’t even get out of his truck. Just sticks the little notice in the mailbox saying he “tried” to deliver it and we weren’t home, so now we have to go get it at the post office. Every … single … time.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that one of those times (or more) I actually wasn’t home, but today not only was I at home, I heard him pass by and deliver the mail, which means I would obviously been able to hear someone knocking on the door too. But I didn’t hear anyone knocking on the door, because the mailman sped on by without bothering to try delivering the certified letter we should have received today. In fact, as quickly as he was cruising down our street dropping off mail in mailboxes, it seems to me he had written the little slip out well before he even got to our street … because he knew full well he wasn’t going to get out of his truck to do his job.

Well, since I have to go to the post office now anyway –to get the letter he just couldn’t get out of his truck to deliver– I might as well complain about this behavior. It’s entirely possible I would have never gotten up the motivation to go complain about any of the other annoying things he does, but alas, he has now forced me to go to the post office, so while I’m there, I might as well kill two birds with one stone and gripe about how badly he sucks at his job.