“Cleanup on aisle nine; rhetorical blood on the floor.” It’s a pleasure to read this fine rebuke and wonder “What would I say if I ran into one of my senators in the Dom’s Natural Market aisle?” Sadly, I actually have things in common with at least one of my Illinois senators – I’d be able to talk to Sen. Obama about hybrid cars and maybe a bit about community organizing. Durbin would be a tougher case, but he’s gained my grudging respect since the Dems got into power – although my patience with the party leadership is slipping now…
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The Braid Blog – Two Communities Coming Together To Make… Oh, my Dog. Well, the old Holy Moly blog from holy-innocents.org has now been refurbished and pointed to the new onebreadonebody.org site. Redirected, too. The new site has a paltry “click here for more news and events” link on just the main page. Will have to inquire about having a “Blog” link added to the links template on the side as well. This was complicated; I didn’t realize David had upgraded the HI blog installation to WordPress 2.2, while this site is still at 2.1, pending a few plugins that…
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Via: Flickr Title: 05-25-07_1845.jpg By: GinnyRED57 Originally uploaded: 25 May ’07, 6.46pm CDT PST
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There was a swan jam on my way to work today — this pair were installed at the retention pond at the rear of our building to discourage a large flock of Canada geese from sticking around all summer, and of course they have a nesting site that their trainer built for them with bales of hay and bits of straw. A large work crew disturbed them today with a big sod-laying project, and both adult swans and their little cygnets took off for freedom. Problem was, they waddled all the way to the end of the parking lot and…
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I’ve been frustrated by my inability to post the occasional bit of flash or video using WordPress – the software is coded to be pretty strict about XHTML niceties, and the method for embedding anything involves a tedious routine: turn off the rich text editor, hand-code the embedded stuff or figure out the built-in but n00b-unfriendly custom fields, publish, and turn the rich text editor back on (which is a process in itself, as unless you’re a good WP codehax0r, you have to uncheck a little box buried in your user profile). So: here’s that weird Flash video showing how…
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Chicago Tribune | The Chicago Gardener Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are going a little crazy waiting for the 17-year cicadas to emerge. I’ve lived here 11 years, and apparently the noisy buggers that annoy the shit out of me every summer are nothing compared to the much larger swarms of noisy buggers that emerge on the 17-year cycle. As I was leaving work, there was a “puff” piece on the local news with a lady newscaster and a whole bunch of schoolkids dressed up in pink construction paper cicada hats. They were all mighty disappointed, because the cicadas failed…
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Boing Boing: Objectophiles who harbor passionate sexual love for buildings… Cory Doctorow: Der Spiegel has an article on the theories of Volkmar Sigusch, a German researcher whose studies of “neo-sexuality” have led him to assemble case-studies of men and women who fall in deep, passionate, sexual love with objects, from the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers to a toy steam engine. Back in 1979, Eklöf tied the knot with the Berlin Wall and legally changed her name to mark the occasion (“Mauer” means “Wall” in German). Ever since she was eight years old, Sandy K. was hopelessly in love…
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Lovely days like today don’t come often enough. It was warm, pleasant, and I had time to both tinker around online and dink around outside sticking plants in to my two whiskey-barrel containers. David drilled a whole in the one barrel that didn’t drain properly, and now it’s useable and not a yucky object that looks and smells like a swamp. I added a couple of handfuls of rock mulch to keep the drainage hole clear. Tore out some more of the prickly bush that insists on growing up through the roots of the one bushy pine shrub, and even…
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I’ve been having issues with the editing interface on this blog for a week or more, because I recently found out that the built-in rich text editor has some “hidden” buttons I’d like to use. I had been using a perfectly good plugin called WP-WYSIWYG, but there was no way to make an extended post using that method. And that was hanging me up, because that forced me to only do extended posts while using my home computer, where I have ecto, a cross-platform desktop publishing program. Meanwhile, I got suckered into trying the built-in editor because of the extended…
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This looks good – we would try it with the yogurt and without the cilantro, as my husband David can't have the sour cream and doesn't like the taste of cilantro. Simply Recipes: Chicken Curry in a Hurry Recipe If you want to use yogurt instead of sour cream, just make sure that the yogurt sauce never simmers. If it does, it will curdle. 1 Tbsp corn, grapeseed, or olive oil 1 medium onion, sliced 1/3 cup golden raisins (optional) Salt and freshly ground pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons yellow curry powder, or to taste 4 skinless, boneless, chicken breast halves…