Boring blog...

Travis told me the blog was boring. I told him to do something exciting so I would have more to write about, he then conceded that it really wasn't that boring afterall.

Saturday night we went to the STL Symphony and it's Lord of the Rings performance with the Children's choir and STL Chorus. It was amazing!! Around 2 1/2 hours long and just amazing the entire time.

We also watched MSU beat up Notre Dame at home, which was awesome. It looked like a great day up there for football, and we missed being there, and feeding the ducks and going to the dairy store for ice cream and the Roadhouse for lunch....all the sights and sounds and smells of game day on campus. It is too bad that we don't live closer.

So, for one evening, we had some excitement, now it is back to mowing the lawn, doing laundry and grocery shopping. Unfortunately, that is our life...not the most exciting, but it is our life!

An email that was forwarded to me.....

Friends, compatriots, fellow-lamenters,


We are writing to you because of the fury and dread we have
felt since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice-
Presidential candidate for the Republican Party. We believe
that this terrible decision has surpassed mere partisanship,
and that it is a dangerous farce on the part of a pandering
and rudderless Presidential candidate that has a real
possibility of becoming fact.

Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear
of what Ms. Palin and her professed beliefs and proven
record could lead to for ourselves and for our present
or future daughters. To date, she is against sex education,
birth control, the pro-choice platform, environmental
protection, alternative energy development, freedom of
speech (as mayor she wanted to ban books and attempted
to fire the librarian who stood against her), gun control,
the separation of church and state, and polar bears. To say
nothing of her complete lack of real preparation to become
the second-most-powerful person on the planet.

We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin
as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent
of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent,
and all together devastating choice for Vice President. Ms.
Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face
to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers
and great-grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and that we've
so demonstrably benefited from.

First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She
does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American
women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on
the Republican ticket could win over women
voters. We want to disagree, publicly.

Thank you for your time and action.

VIVA!

Sincerely,

Quinn Latimer and Lyra Kilston
New York, NY
womensaynopalin@gmail.com

Palin..yikes

Why are people giving her so much attention? She is a freak...she is an absolute right wing, bible banging, nut-job... Wake up people.... it is just incredibly scary....

Mystic Lake Camp

Yes, I'm a bit old fashioned...with a blog..go figure. I don't text message, and have never even thought of venturing onto Facebook....but..... When an old friend of mine, Jeff, suggested I go there to find the Mystic Lake Camp group, how could I refuse?

So, Facebook has this group full of Mystic Lake alumni! How cool is that? Lots of pictures and stories, and memories.

It's all good. This internet stuff is so cool sometimes.

School already?

Wow...I haven't posted since July? I guess that just shows how busy our summer was this year. It didn't seem that busy at the time, but with work and summer camps and a vacation here and there, it all adds up.

We went to northern Michigan at the end of July for a week that just went too fast. Came back to stifling heat and humidity, which was really depressing. The weather up north was perfect, and we spent plenty of time at the beach, and canoeing, and just hanging out eating our baskets of walleye. This year we broke up the drive by staying in Champaign on the way up and back, and even stopped at the Lincoln museum in Springfield, which was a pretty neat place, with very cool exhibits...make a trip if you are ever passing through Springfield, IL!

Next thing you know, school starts!! Travis had his first day yesterday and it went well, so far so good for 5th grade....we'll take it one day at a time, but I think he'll have a great year.

Wall-E

Pixar has gone and done it again.....just totally outdid themselves. We have watched the evolution of Pixar movies...from Bugs Life, to The Incredibles (with others mixed it)...then came Cars, and now this! Wall-E was amazing.

The Black household is pretty frugal, and we do fall into the "oh, it'll be on DVD in a couple of months, we can wait". But, over the weekend we decided to suck it up and splurge on the early show...that would be 10:30 AM...all seats are $4.50, which shocking to me - is a good deal.

Wall-E was so worth it, we loved it and it just was so good on so many levels...hard to describe. Overall, it is just darn good, and yes....we'll still go out and buy it when it comes out on DVD. At this point, frankly I don't see a reason to see movies with real people in them anymore. Well, except that Harrison Ford movie was good.....

Solar....so cool it's hot or is it so hot it's cool?

Our latest home improvement project involved going solar. Not totally solar as in 'off the grid' but a little solar. We decided to do solar hot water. Had Dan at G2 Power Technologies put in a couple solar panels on the side of the house and route it to a hot water tank. That tank will heat up from the glycol lines running through the panels.

The new hot water tank will then feed our existing tank, thus the existing gas heated tank won't have to fire up as much since the incoming water is hot! All in all it is pretty cool, and with our tax credit and hopefully a good break on our gas bills from not heating the water...it should pay off..well, someday. Just doing our part to lessen our carbon footprint I suppose.

Here are our panels:

We're home!

Wow...what a trip. We drove to Colorado last week to take care of a long to-do list. We did it all, well not all...we never did make it to Trail Ridge Road to see the 20 foot snow drifts.

We did visit our friends Miriam and John and the kids at their new house in Highlands Ranch, what a great house!! It was a fun night grilling burgers and watching the Redwings win.

Then on to Boulder to do the Bolder Boulder 10k which was a blast... painful after a few miles, but fun!!

Spent time with Ginny in Longmont, met up with friends at their new house in Estes Park and did a short hike in the snow up to Bear and Nymph Lake. Shopped at all the trash and trinket shops in Estes...what fun!!

We managed to stop in Lawrence KS on our way out to visit the Kansas hall of fame to see pictures of Steve's grand-dad...

So...whew!! We are home now...ready to mow, shop, do laundry and all the other fun post-vacation stuff we need to do..

I need a vacation!! :)