Sorry, I don't have photos of Thanksgiving in West Virginia. I brought the camera only to find I'd forgotten the battery in the charger. If anyone reading was there, please send pics so I can post!

This evening we went to my kids' godmother, Martha Lindner's house. I've known her for about 15 years now. She's known my kids since they were born. Her late husband Sam died in about 1994. Martha often has wiener roasts and invites us. She has had 5 boys, and 4 are living. They are all 45 and over. The youngest died in his 20's of cancer. He had been living near Eaton and Steve actually knew him even before we moved here and met the rest of the Lindners. Anyway, 2 of Martha's sons came this evening. The youngest, Jim, has a newborn baby. His wife is 42 and people joke around about them being too young to have kids, why didn't they wait. LOL They have a sense of humor. Often they say complete strangers ask them "Is she YOURS?" (implying are you SURE she is YOURS? YOU guys made her? How? (old-fashioned way- it still works :) are you sure she isn't your grandchild? Are you SURE now?)Anyway, Adelaide Rose is the star of the show.
Hey I told them about my boss when I was at Chiquita, Joann, who had her first and only at age 42 and her husband was about 15 years older than she was at the time (second family for him)- and Emma is a great kid and for them, the timing was perfect! Kimberly from Chiquita had her last at 40 and beautiful Grace is the result...Steve's grandpa was the last kid in his family, born when his mother was 46! I know a lot of stories of women having babies in their 40's and hey, it's a good thing.

Micah having fun

awesome sky

Steve swings his mighty axe.

getting manly about fires

I can't imagine my life without this godly lady in it.

My kids' godmother, Martha Lindner

That's Martha's house behind them.

Nathanael with lessee, this gentleman is the husband of the late Sam's late sister.

Micah being manly and helping with the fire

handsome Nathanael

She smiles!

So cute!

Cute!!!

Adelaide

Nathanael posing with perfectly roasted marshmallow

Jim and Adelaide

Nathanael and marshmallow

Adelaide Rose Lindner

Adelaide Rose

Adelaide Rose's mom Diane at left. The lady holding her is Martha's niece, or something like that! Daughter of late Sam's late sister...

OK I'm trying again to show the picture I found online of the bug that crawled across my floor. (camel cricket)

Well as you can tell I figured out how to log in/log out of different blogs. The drop-down list doesn't do it and so I...well it doesn't bear repeating. The point is I wove through the technical labrynth required of me. I'm now worthy of the Immunity Necklace.

You can see my handsome boys here- handsome and silly and hairy, too- and you can see I gotta curly one and a straight-haired one.

We frequently go the Y. Micah goes more often than Nathanael. Nathaanel doesn't like the smell of chlorine and he has informed me that it's actually toxic. I believe that, even though I like the smell. It reminds me of Billing's Natatorium when I was a kid. Anyway, tonight was a typical night- and we brought Matt along- and Brian's family are members. I was amazed there was no blood shed. Matt and Brian sometimes fight like little wild men. Especially when they each want to do something exclusively with Micah. Micah's become quite diplomatic with these guys, and I'm proud of his character development. He recognizes their faults and wants to be friends with each of them anyway. He used to side with one against the other, but now he's beginning to look at conflict more objectively, then constructively. He's sensitive and learning to be firm with his friends, too. Especially when they fight with each other- Micah's learning to be objective in trying to help resolve things.

Nathanael spends a lot of time on the computer looking at funny jokes, Strong Bad and all that, weird pages people make full of random humor (his type of cerebral funniness, the kind of Monty Python buy-me-a-shrubbery-i-want-spam thought process he's so attached to)... and he spends hours and hours just designing fonts. Not just English but several alphabets or syllabaries. One he designed for the Cherokee nation but we have yet to hear from them. It's a very good font of Sequoya's work. The new font adaptation would pretty up the letters. :) Now let's let him tackle Korean (or not!!!). Nathanael also loves the outdoors, hiking, unspoiled areas (unspoiled meaning unpaved, uncut, untrailed, ungrazed, unrazed, and generally untrod except for a deer track or two. He's always looking up maps online and mapping out new hikes to take- following creeks as far as they will go, for example. Man, I remember doing that! I wish I could have retained more of the Lewis/Clark/Sacajawea wanderlust- I guess I am doing that but on a larger scale, because I always like to see new places.

I love both my boys!

Nathanael looking even more like Nathanael

Micah concentrating on those Lego's

More fun at the pool- Sarah and Micah and another girl

I don't know what Micah has drawn on his hand there. I just asked him- it's a smiley face.

Micah with Lego's

Micah after the swim watching TV with a friend

Matth and Micah

Micah (left), Matt (standing), and kids

Micah and Matt and kids

wider view of the indoor pool at the Y

The slide deposits MIcah.

Brian, boy, Micah, Matt, boy, lifeguard waiting their turns at the top of the big slide

Micah and a little girl he was undoubtedly showing off for

Matt being a he-man at the Y

Nathanael's usual expression

Matt and Micah playing Soldier. Matt and Micah and Brian play Soldier by dressing like army man and playing in the woods.

Arrgh. This so sucks. I have good pix to share and now I can't get them on THIS blog. They keep trying to go to Lisa's blog. I HATE that Picasa/Hello program. It is utterly user-unfriendly and I'm pretty smart with these things.

This is Brian. I'm trying to get this in a different blog, as well as the pic of Lisa below. But if you want to see some of the folks I work with, welcome here.

This is where we are!

Nathanael's band went to State in Dublin, OH last night and they earned a #1 rating! That's the FIRST time Finneytown has even GONE to State, let alone earn the best rating. They're a small school- of the 4 categories, they're the second smallest. Every school going is judged based on how large they are. They don't compete with each other- in other words, they could all get 1's or all get 5's. Of the schools we saw (8 in that particular group and there are a few dozen groups), most earned ones and the others 2's. The band teacher is to credit for much of their success. Very young and energetic guy.

I have got to start looking at other employment options at this point. I am struggling to stay afloat with all my payments. I'm already not using a cell phone- cancelled my Sprint- mainly due to their terrible customer service- and won't get another phone for a while. I'm going to be owing a lot of taxes since my employer doesn't take everything out that most employers do. The best thing is that the gov't still owes us for 2003 so 2004 should maybe balanced out...anyway, I do need something else. I like what I do but I just don't get enough of it to do. Every month is different. I could earn $2500 or $700. It's just not reliable. I have learned a lot but now I'm ready to go on and I need to know what I'm going to do. I don't want to get into a situation like I was in at Makino and Harris. I learned a lot there too but had terrible bosses/communication/circumstances. I liked Chiquita but got laid off like everyone else in my group. But I liked them giving me plenty of notice, etc. etc. and a good severance package considering the little time I was there. Now I need to take the composite of all my experiences and put it to good use. I like Rough and hope they hire me one day. I'm going to try to contact them. We'll see. Maybe. Hope. Pray!!!! Will also go back to Messina. They can get paid again to place me. :)

I posted this in a newsgroup in response to someone commenting about the Democratic party- why they have lost most Americans- Pardon, please, the lack of correct caps and punctuation- I was hurrying.

A (OK, admittedly, it was British) magazine ran the headline "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" This was my response to puzzled Democrats as well as those confused Europeans who don't understand the culture and issues here.
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Democrats alienate people by doing exactly this- calling 59,054, 087 people DUMB. Although I have an IQ of 140 and gave a very cohesive, well-written reason why I voted for him, which I posted earlier, SOME of the Dems are running home with their tail between their legs calling me dumb. WELL I GUESS DAMMIT I'M DUMB, THEN.

The Democrats are NO LONGER the party of the people. They are no longer the FDER Democrats, the Truman Democrats, or even the Kennedy Democrats. They are special-interest democrats, suburbanite democrats, feminazi democrats, agenda-ridden democrats, Blueblood democrats from the East, or Hollywood democrats from California. Did you notice Edwards could not even take his own state? NO southern state went for Kerry. The south used to be teeming with democrats- the PEOPLE's party, and most of the house and senate from the south was at one time composed of democrats. Even in 1984 about 3/4 of the senators of the south were dems. As of 2 days ago about 1/5 are. Dems are now out of touch with the south and midwest, they barely ever take any of those states. The ridicule Christianity or make a mockery of it. (That just doesn't jibe well with the 1/3 of Americans who profess to be Evangelical Christians.)They are arrogant baby boomers who have gone to Yale and Harvard. Look up some of Zell Miller's speeches- a lifelong Democrat who regrets seeing the changes in his party. The party that NO LONGER appeals to the regular people, working people, the VERY people they were originally the party of. They are OUT of touch. It's clear that a majority of Americans do not want the agenda the current Democratic party proposes. Many Democrats may even have some pretty good ideas, which are overshadowed by the ones with singular agendas, be it unrestricted abortion or the gay agenda. People would like to vote in favor of their strong unions, but why must THAT be tied to partial birth abortion? People in unions aren't usually for destroying babies in this obscene manner. That's ONE example of democrats being WAY out of touch with the people. Roosevelt and Truman are turning over so fast in their graves they look like rotisserie chickens.
That party's great "get out the vote campaign" failed, too. Paris Hilton and 50 Cent, who wore those annoyingly infamous"vote or die" shirts, did not EVEN VOTE. If you're a democrat, LOOK to your party. Give it back to the PEOPLE and not pompous elitists who disdain these old-fashioned values and family morals that, like it or not, so MANY AMERICANS are about, even if you are not. If you Democrats don't do that soon you are going to be a DEAD party.

So glad that Daschle is hopefully, hopefully soon to be gone too.

I'm ecstatic and proud to be in THAT city in THAT county in THAT state that has won the pivotal points for Bush. Although it's just a hair too soon to call it...it's looking good. It seems that more people than anyone realized were kind of feeling the same frustration with the special interest hijackers of the Democratic party, and feeling some amount of affection and respect for W. Maybe a few people finally realized they couldn't blame Bush for everything and anything.

OMG the cat must have dragged a mouse into the house and left it there- I just saw it scoot across the floor- either the cat is going to catch it or I'm getting an exterminator! We once had mice in the attic but at this point it seems my cats are too lazy to finish their work. We're usually careful about making sure the cats stay outside, but sometimes when the weather is warm we leave doors open. So-

Anyway, the election looks promising for Bush but it ain't over yet. Even if Bush gets Ohio there are a few conceivable ways for Kerry to win it, but it's unlikely. Of course last year it was a nailbiter to the end. So we'll see.

People have GOT to stop blaming W for job loss (of which many, but not all, have been gained back), outsourcing, hurricanes, and all-around bad hair days.

9-11 preceded the huge loss of jobs. It started with airlines and other related industries, and dominoed to everything else. Not to mention the dot com bubble burst earlier, during the Clinton administration, and I remember thinking then: They are going to blame the next president, whether its Gore or Bush, for this. And they have. But how can you ever blame 1 person for any of this?

Outsourcing- it's economics- if we have a strong dollar then as soon as whatever technology becomes doable in large quanties in little time, which is always bound to happen the better it gets, then any company's going to outsource. It would be nice if companies cared enough about their people to keep them and pay them 5 or 10 times what they pay someone in India or Korea. But it's economics and it won't happen. I've seen it happen several places I've worked and known people who have been gravely affected by all of these circumstances. I wish there were some one person to blame but there isn't. If you have a strong dollar the company's going to pay someone in a weaker currency. The Japanese complained years ago when THEIR jobs were outsourced to us (and so many still are). I don't think, now, that you can have it both ways. We can't have foreign investment in our country employing many Americans, and then say American companies won't employ cheaper labor overseas. Cincinnati would be in a bad way if Toyota, Usui, Makino, and so many other Japanese companies decided they'd only employ Japanese in Japan...I know it sucks so bad for so many Americans who lose their jobs to Mexico or Ireland or China where we can pay someone in another currency, they spend the currency in their own country which buys a comparable lifestyle to what the American who was paid in dollars was living. It just really sucks for people who had it good for a long time and then had the rug pulled out from under them. But there's just no one to blame. People blame Bush. Some people even could blame Kerry whose wife's company has about 1000 branches in England, France, India, etc. etc. etc., employing a whole lot of people who aren't American.

I'm not even a Republican. I'm independent. I vote for protecting little ones. I've seen there are a few Democrats that are for this as well. From Ohio, Mark Brown, or Sanders, for example. Kentucky's Ken Lucas. I could even go for some "liberal" ideas. But Bush has done a lot for me and others. He's paid my husband well in Iraq. Women are going to school and voting in Afghanistan. Saddam who killed over 200,000 people in Iraq is gone. He signed the ban on PBA and passed the Born Alive Infant act. His Spanish is pretty good (not perfect-his brother's is better) and is really sensitive to the Latino community. He bumbles sometimes, isn't much of a debater, and has goofy facial expressions. So it isn't cult of personality that keeps him going. He underwent a spiritual, Christian transformation and rededication in his life, so I think he has a genuinely good heart and cares about people. He's not a great military strategist but surrounds himself with a great team whose members are, like Condi Rice. He's sent me back a good chunk of my money- may be chump change to some but it really helped me. So yes, he has my vote.

This is ME in the Gifu newspaper.