Watt's Up?

As I was busy doing other things the last few days, I'd forgotten to look at my calendar.* Now that night has fallen here on the Farm, and I've turned on a light by which to read, I thought I'd see what I'd missed.

February 8

Boy Scouts of America formally incorporated 1910

February 9

William Henry Harrison born 1773; "Soldier and ninth President of the United States. ... He died after only one month in office and was succeeded by Vice-President Tyler."

Nebraska admitted to the Union 1867 (37th state)

U.S. Weather Service established 1870. Originally under the Signal Corps of the Army, it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture in 1890 and "officially became" the United States Weather Bureau. 

February 10

Birth of some folks of whom I'd never heard.

February 11

Thomas Alva Edison born 1847 (died 1931):

American wizard inventor and electrical investigator; creator of the phonograph, the incandescent lamp (1879), and the motion picture projector (1887); pioneer in the field of electrical power distribution.

~~
Of note: 

1) The U.S. Weather Service was created by an act of Congress nine years before Edison invented the incandescent light bulb.

2)  The U.S. Weather Service is now The National Weather Service, an agency of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a part of The United States Department of Commerce. It has an annual budget of $5,500,000,000.

3)  An Act of Congress shattered the 100 Watt bulb, and-- according to that infallible source, Wikipedia-- effective 1/2013, the 75 Watt bulb, too. Who knew?

~~
* All uncited date facts from the crappy old book referenced here.

Mr. Big Food's Version of a Country Mouse Brunch Buffet

We-- Mr. Big Food, Daughter C., Miss M. and I-- invited some friends and colleagues out to Farther Along Farm for Sunday Brunch to mark the occasion of another successful event at State. Kudos to The Bart Man who orchestrated the event's Main Events. 

Mr. Big Food thought it would be fun to treat our out-of town guests, i.e., the City Mice, to some Good Ol' Country Food. He and Miss M. teamed up to be sure there were tasty Vegan selections.

A Country Mouse Brunch Buffet Menu

Beverages

Coffee
Tea (choose from several)
Green-Tea Sun-Tea
Orange juice
Water
Bloody Marys from scratch

First Course (out, as folks arrive)

Great BIG fruit salad (soaked over night in dry white wine and cognac)
Shrimp in (New Orleans' style) remoulade
Hummus
Assorted cheeses
Assorted crackers

Homemade muffins: bran blueberry, chocolate (vegan), cranberry (vegan) served with whipped butter/vegan "butter"

 Main Course (below)

Dinner Was Paid For

But we had to buy our own drinks.

The bacon was a nice touch. Thank you, Trisha!

For 90 minutes

she sat in the front row, took notes, paid attention...

and for all that, she didn't even get her own wrist band.

If you're in the neighborhood

you may want to check this out:

Mississippi Philosophical Association Meeting Program 2013
Hosted by Mississippi State University

Theme: Philosophy of Biology

Schedule below the fold

Happy Birthday, Babe!

One of the crappy old books I picked up at the Palmer House last week was Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them by Mary Emogene Hazeltine published by American Library Association (Chicago) in 1944. What a fun book! In addition to the calendar, Part II provides, among many other things, "Origin and History of Holidays and Holiday Customs," and "Time and the Calendar." Fun stuff.

I've taken to skimming today's entries-- not so much to learn who was born when, but to recall who is worth remembering to today.

Today,

February 7,

let's recall

Charles Dickens 1812-June 9, 1870. Great English novelist and social critic.

Sir James Augustus Henry Murray 1837-July 26, 1915. Distinguished editor of the scholarly Oxford English dictionary, completed in 1933 after 50 years of work.

Sinclair Lewis 1885- . American novelist, satirist of contemporary life. [He declined the Pulitzer.]

George Herman (Babe) Ruth 1894- . Baseball's greatest batsman; home-run king of the New York Yankees.

Thanks to Miss M., we've had a great deal of Dickens lately and are expecting more.

O.E.D. Can't live without it here at the Farm.

Lewis. One of those names I know. Pretty sure I have Babbitt somewhere on a shelf. But that's all I got. (Hey! What did you expect? I'm a vegetable farmer, not an English major.)

Happy Birthday, Babe!   

On a whim

I added Big Food, Big Garden, Big Life to Pollis, "The New Newspaper." I'm not sure it's showing up where it's supposed to be, though.

I'll keep you updated.

Custom Made at No Additional Charge

I am pleased to report that thanks to Mr. Big Food's unrelenting efforts in a small space of 50 square feet and wall heights ranging from 8-10 feet the prison-striped wall paper is history!

As you may recall, there is no law (Yet? That I'm aware of?) forbidding home owners from affixing wall paper to sheet rock which has not first been primed or painted. And I'll not be painting over wall paper. Daughter C. recommended steam-- and hey!-- if you have a now-previously very nice garment/drape/upholstery steamer you might as well put it to good use. Steam works remarkably better than diluted Downy Fabric Softener [insert trademark thingy]. There is one small problem, though.

No caption needed if you know what bare naked sheet rock looks like.

The original plan was to paint. There's still paint involved in the revised plan, but it comes after the walls are textured

because when you texture walls, you don't have to sand after you fix the gouges in the sheet rock.

After I'd sanded the bare naked wood door frames and mouldings, I was sort of tired of sanding. (Don't forget, I just sanded all the bare naked wood in the half-bath.) Texturing it is!

Steam also works remarkably well to loosen Joint tape. [Let me remark here that if it sounds like I know what I'm talking about it's due in large part to Bro. Mike.] Turns out that before I knew what Joint tape was, I'd managed to scrape away a whole Joint's worth in the worst of all possible Joints--

that crazy Joint at the Corner of Door Frame & Wall.

What did you do before 9am?

Commuters: I Feel Your Pain

Commuters' wasted time in traffic costs $121B
By CHRIS TOMLINSON | Associated Press – 5 hrs ago


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — An annual study of national driving patterns shows that Americans spent 5.5 billion additional hours sitting in traffic in 2011.

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute released a report Tuesday that found Americans are adapting to road congestion by allowing, on average, an hour to make a trip that would take 20 minutes without traffic. The Urban Mobility Report also says clogged roads cost Americans $121 billion in time and fuel in 2011.

It also determined that the 10 most congested cities are Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, New York-Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle.

The report is one of the key tools used by experts to solve traffic problems. But the institute advises that every community has unique challenges and require different, multi-faceted approaches to solving congestion.

I plan my Friday Starkvegas errands quite carefully so as to avoid traffic jams. Last Friday, just as Mr. Big Food and I were finishing up the last errand, I received an unexpected phone call from Daughter C. letting me know she was back in her office. She had my color wheel in her office-- and I really wanted my color wheel-- so we had to backpedal against the flow. No matter how you looked at it, getting to Daughter C.'s office required a Left turn. (No. Multiple Right turns would not have worked. See above: "every community has unique challenges." Just ask the Experts!)

You should have heard Mr. Big Food cussin'. It took us about three whole minutes to maneuver out of the parking lot and onto a side street so we could scoot through the back streets. What a waste of time! Awful. Just awful. You should have heard Mr. Big Food cussin'.

Surprisingly, I did not see this commercial last night.

Tip of the Cowboy Hat to Mr. Big Food's Dad for passing this along.

An Invitation

Dear Miss M.'s "Friend,"

We invite you to visit us at Farther Along Farm this Spring. The earlier, the better. There's nothing quite like grillin' steaks out on the patio listening to the Peepers in early March.

Most Sincerely,

Marica & John

BREAKING! Cats kill mice & birds!!

If I didn't have several other projects in the works right now,

• texturizing walls and then painting/glazing
• the Big Egg Conspiracy talk
• polishing floors before the hoo-ha next Sunday
• company coming*
• new books from the Palmer House to talk about
• &c.,

I could have a field day with this:

The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States

Anthropogenic threats, such as collisions with man-made structures, vehicles, poisoning and predation by domestic pets, combine to kill billions of wildlife annually. Free-ranging domestic cats have been introduced globally and have contributed to multiple wildlife extinctions on islands. The magnitude of mortality they cause in mainland areas remains speculative, with large-scale estimates based on non-systematic analyses and little consideration of scientific data. Here we conduct a systematic review and quantitatively estimate mortality caused by cats in the United States. We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact.

[my emphases]

There's data at the link!!!!! 

But alas! And quite fortunately, I think, I have walls and talks, and floors, and company and books to talk deal with. 

One comment, tough. This revolutionary research was funded by you. Not only are taxpayers paying these guys salaries, I bet there's an NSF grant tucked away in there somewhere. Author information.

Affiliations
Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, P.O. Box 37012 MRC 5503, Washington, District of Columbia 20013, USA
Scott R. Loss & Peter P. Marra
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Migratory Birds, Midwest Regional Office, 3815 American Boulevard East, Bloomington, Minnesota 20013, USA
Tom Will

Please note that there will be no intervention here at the Farm. Sadie killed a mouse the other day & we are gosh-danged proud of her. Were there to be interventions with respect to the feral cat hanging out here... . Just sayin'.

~~
Backtracking: here from here.

*There's talk A. Leland is coming.

No. Thank *you*!

Good to know about your blog I have read its is really very impressive i need more ideas can you please update your blog?

Thank you for Post.

Polystick

As Polystick requests, I have updated my blog.

Spam can be fun.

Mr. Big Food Laughed Out Loud!

I didn't do it on purpose, but I did something yesterday that caused Mr. Big Food to laugh out loud when he arrived home from work.

Mr. Big Food (laughing): Why is there a shotgun on the counter?

Me: It's loaded!!

Mr. Big Food (laughing): Why is there a loaded shotgun on the counter?

Me: I put it there so the dogs couldn't reach it.

Mr. Big Food (still laughing): What did you need the shotgun for?

Me: Those danged cats were upsetting the dogs.

Mr. Big Food (laughing harder): Did you shoot them?

Me: No. Of course not. 

Now, Mr. Big Food is not the sort of fellow that one would expect to see rolling on the floor, so I'd be exaggerating if I said he was rolling of the floor laughing his you-now-what off. But he was laughing pretty hard.

Mr. Big Food: I wonder how many other guys came home from work to find their wives had gotten the shotgun out?

Me (laughing): Probably not too many.

Mr. Big Food (rolling on the floor...): Be sure to discharge it before you put it away. And wear ear protection!

Me: Okay.

~~
Just so there's no misunderstanding-- I did not intend to shoot the feral cats, only to warn them.

Authoritative Sources & a Bonus!

Yesterday I bemoaned the sad fact that no one knows how to outline and alluded to the obvious fact that no one is going to learn by trying to outline using MS Word. I offered up my own version of the correct notation for varying degrees of subordination. However, at the time I could not find an authoritative source for notation beyond the second degree.

This has bothered me all morning, because-- you know-- I am all about authority! Just ask the experts!

Fortunately, the two crappy old grammar/writing books I looked at yesterday* are not the only crappy old books I have on the subject.

page 352 of Harbrace Handbook of English by John C. Hodges. 1941.  Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, Chicago

I. major headings
   A. subheadings of the first degree
        1. subheadings of the second degree
            a. subheadings of the third degree
                (1). subheadings of the fourth degree

I could be wrong, but I remember MSWord offering a choice of the parenthetical subheading. Of course, that's when I used MSWord back in the crappy olden days. Apparently MS has caught onto the sad fact that no one knows how to outline.

BONUS below

I Finally Figured It Out: This is What's Wrong with the World

Partial outline of Mr. Big Food's and my joint project. Do you see what's wrong with MS word's view of The World?

For the record, it goes like this: 

I.
  A.
     1.
        a.
           i.

Or something like that. MS Word does it like this:

I.
  A.
     i.
      1.
        i.

Why would you do that? Seriously? Why?

I just looked at some crappy old books and they all agree.

The Reason the World is Going to Hell in a Hand-Basket is that No One Knows How to Outline.

People don't know their i's from their MS i's. 

There. I said it.

Taking a break from all things wallpaper

to check the status of the TORNADO room. Yippee.

A SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP TONIGHT
INTO EARLY WEDNESDAY AND BRING DAMAGING WINDS TO THE REGION ALONG
WITH SOME TORNADOES. DUE TO A RARE COMBINATION OF INTENSE WIND SHEAR
AND INSTABILITY FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR...SOME HIGHER END SEVERE
WEATHER WILL BE POSSIBLE INCLUDING WIDESPREAD DAMAGING WINDS WITH
GUSTS UP TO 80 MPH AND A STRONG TORNADO. THIS ACTIVITY IS EXPECTED
BETWEEN 9 PM AND 3 AM FOR LOCATIONS WEST OF INTERSTATE 55 AND BETWEEN
2 AND 7 AM FOR LOCATIONS GENERALLY EAST OF INTERSTATE 55.

Hum. I'd rather be sound asleep BETWEEN 2 AND 7 AM.

Stupid SIGNIFICANT WEATHER OUTBREAK.

Final Touches

I think it's good to mix Heritage with Current Events, don't you? These final touches in the 1/2 bath seem to do the trick. Plus, they provide inspiration! Want to do some skeet shooting?

[Who says that, anyway? Do skeet shooting? How about shoot some skeet? Geeze.]

[And one more thing. This E-Z Thrower is cute but if you really want to do some skeet shooting, pull the one out of the garage.]

Heritage

I attribute the elements of the New & Improved half-bath to Mr. Big Food's Czech-Tex heritage.

Mr. Big Food's Mom gave me those green hanging on the wall things when she lived in Dallas. They've been stored away in basements and garages for years waiting for just the right wall to come along.

They found one!

The BIGGEST part is, of course, this crappy old towel:

 I ironed it!

PSA for Mississippi Readers/Citizens | UPDATED with Link to Bill's Full Text

Regarding MS House Bill HB485 to exempt weapon permit information, i.e. to not see Concealed Permit Holders'  names and addresses published in the paper.

Here's the email I just received (8:35pm Monday) from Elaine Vechorik. I'll update with more links.

Please share this!

The battle is not over.

 This just means the bill survived to come out of committee for a full house vote.

NOW is the time to contact your representative and ask him to vote YES on HB 485 Description: MS Public Records Act; exempt weapon permit information.


Newspaper article: http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/01/mississippi_house_committee_ok.html

From Will Longwitz
Protect gun owner privacy - call the House Tuesday.

Rep. Mark Baker's conceal carry privacy bill passed through committee today. It keeps the media from getting your conceal carry information and printing it.

Tuesday is the full House vote. I wrote the Senate version, but I am throwing my full support to Rep. Baker's bill, HB485. There is no time to lose. A Tupelo newspaper has requested all the records of every conceal-carry license holder in Lee County. We must act now. Your information could be next. Nobody has a right to your conceal-carry information but you!

Email your Representatives and call the Capitol tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 601-359-3770. Tell them to support conceal carry privacy. Support HB485.

UPDATE:

Here's the key bit:

HOUSE BILL NO.  485

     AN ACT TO CREATE SECTION 25-61-11.1, MISSISSIPPI CODE OF
1972, TO EXEMPT INFORMATION REGARDING PERSONS WITH A WEAPON PERMIT
FROM THE MISSISSIPPI PUBLIC RECORDS ACT OF 1983; TO AMEND SECTION
45-9-101, MISSISSIPPI CODE OF 1972, IN CONFORMITY; AND FOR RELATED
PURPOSES.

     BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1. The following shall be codified as Section 25-61-11.1, Mississippi Code of 1972:

     25-61-11.1.  The name, home address, any telephone number or
other private information of any person who possesses a weapon 
permit issued under Section 45-9-101 or Section 97-37-7 shall be 
exempt from the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983.

The full text is here. Take note of this:

316. 330  (18) Nothing in this section shall be construed to require
     
317. 331  or allow the registration, documentation or providing of serial
     
318. 332  numbers with regard to any stun gun or firearm. Further, nothing
     
319. 333  in this section shall be construed to allow the open and
     
320. 334  unconcealed carrying of any stun gun or a deadly weapon as
     
321. 335  described in Section 97-37-1, Mississippi Code of 1972.
     

If you've never read state legislation pertaining to concealed carry, I encourage you to do so. You may be surprised how regulated the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is!

A couple of weeks ago, Miss M. suggested

that I blog about my new lamp. And so tonight I shall.

I got it from Fred's. It's orange.

Fred's can be a great place to shop. I say "can" because some Fred's are better and cleaner than others. Fortunately, the Fred's in my little town turned out to be a great place to shop when I needed a new lamp for the redecorated Comfortable Guest Room.

Overview:

Note the

hints of orange.

Sadly, I didn't snap a shot of the white embroidered pillow cases with hints of orange.

As we all know, overviews do not a Comfortable Guest Room make. Attention to detail will give Comfort to your Guests. (I know because I read about this in a crappy old book.)

The first thing a Comfortable Guest Room needs is a Comfortable Dog

laying on a Comfortable Bed.

And because your Comfortable Guest Room cannot be too Comfortable, the next thing it needs is Comfortable Dog #2

sitting in a Comfortable Chair

along side Comfortable Dog #1 who is sitting Comfortably on a 30-year old something skin rug. 

More detail-- and a glimpse of Miss M. expecting something-- below the fold.

Pot Roast Thoughts

Thought I'd share.

That's Gotta Hurt!

Close your eyes and ran on through! Good boy!

Reminded me of being a kid back in the crappy olden days.

Doin' some explorin'.

Feelin' the Sunshine.

370 Days Later

I brought Missy to the Farm January 19, 2012. 

Here's the homecoming post.

Look how BIG Rocky was a year ago!

And for Nostalgia's sake, here're a few words from January 20:

I'm not entirely sure who is going to win the war on play fighting. But there is no question in my mind that they are bonding. There's something sort of tragic about Rocky independently sitting outside her box, which is far superior to his, while she's in a circumstance that is not at all different that what she was in a day or two ago. Right. She's in a new & improved box with Rocky circling nearby and me blogging about her. Poor Dear.

My hope is that if I can teach Missy some manners, they can be independent together!

Through the cage, they are nose to nose.

No one won the war because it's all in play! But they have learned how to be independent together. You should see them exploring the Over-grown Pasture side by side!

And talk about learning manners. Whoa boy! 

Missy now asks politely, "May I please reach across the table to sniff that beautiful pencil? May I? May I?" But then, somewhat impolitely, she says, "Hey! You're not paying any attention to me. I asked nicely and you ignored me so you know what? That pencil is mine. Thank you very much."

One thing is certain about Life this past year on the Farm. We have all come to realize that each of us is smarter than a dog. Most of the time. 

Recipes Page | UPDATED

The Recipes Page is now current through today! Allowing for some degree of error-- and I'm too busy to calculate what that might be-- all of the recipes from Mr. Big Food's Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourish Guide are categorized with links to each individual recipe post. 

UPDATE: all the recipes ... that I have posted are categorized. I have not posted all of the 11,000+ recipes in Big Food.

Most recipes have photos, or at least a link to a prior post with a photos. There's still work to be done with respect to micro-categorizaton. But at least I'm caught up with the posting.

Man we ate some good food late last year!

Tell me this isn't cool. Go ahead. Try!

Three (3) crockpots in one!

Unfortunately, it's not ours. (But it's cool!) It belongs to Rhonda who blogs at Make, Do, and Mend. She's got the scoop on where you can find this 3' long crockpot contraption. And she's got a question:

Why do people think homemakers must be bored?
There always seems to be plenty of things to keep me busy
and to keep me on my toes.

Homemakers' work is drudgery!

A Terrible Squabble

Daughter C. and Miss M. got into it today. Fur was flying! There was cussin'! They were throwing books at each other left & right. They pleaded with me to referee.

At issue were the definitions of the words, "farther" and "further."

It was ugly and it got uglier when-- after I'd gotten out my crappy old 1892 Noah Webster Dictionary-- I pulled out my brand spankin' new version of Elements of Style.

Page 153: The Copyright Page; Click to see the actual history of this volume.

Daughter C. and Miss M. were fooled by the 2005 version of this crappy old book into thinking it was a brand spankin' new book. But I digress.

And then, as arguments among and between The Girls often do, the argument took a turn and they were off arguing about the Vices and Virtues of Old English versus Middle English. (It's all about etiology, don't you know?)

When the dust had settled, I gave them their assignment for the day. No one looked happy-- I think they thought it was a holiday or something. But when I told them what it was, they perked up. Read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." 

Recipe: Buttermilk Pancakes

They match the table!

Mr. Big Food used up the last of our buttermilk and made a batch and a half this morning. We feasted and then froze the rest, because you can never have too many homemade buttermilk pancakes in your freezer.


BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

Makes about 1 dozen

2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 Tbsp butter melted
2 cups buttermilk

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add eggs and buttermilk. Add cooled melted butter last. Bake on hot griddle.

A Country Mouse Explores an Over-grown Pasture

My task was to inspect the perimeter fence.

I'm happy to report that it is intact. 

Saturday in Mississippi Part 3: Big Life!

Star Wars II

After a truly excellent supper of meatloaf/fake carrot-peanut meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and leftover cognac carrots we all settled in for a movie. Miss M.-- I think feeling rather squished on the couch (she's become accustomed to having it all to herself)-- decided to make a pallet.

Missy: A NEW BED!

Rocky: I'm so sleepy. LOOK! Auntie M is making me a new bed!!

Here's what I don't get. Anakin Skywalker was training to be a Jedi. Why didn't he rescue his mother from slavery as soon as he'd grown up enough to have the wherewithall to do it? The Jedi are supposed to be the Justice League from a Galaxy Far Far Away. Surely, they would have backed him.

Slavery is immoral.

And another thing. How old is that young Queen/Senator supposed to be? I mean, was she like 12 in Starwars I? "Maybe I was too young to be queen." Y'think?

Seriously, things are hanging by a thread.

By the way, as we were fixing supper we watched a classic episode of TOS. Khan.

Sunday is planting day.