tryingtogrok.new.mu.nu

December 30, 2006

A CAKE FIT FOR A DICTATOR

Posted by: Sarah at 09:46 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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December 21, 2006

CHRISTMAS

I can't believe it's almost Christmas.

This holiday season really got lost in the move. I chuckled yesterday when I was unpacking boxed that hadn't been opened since Germany and I thought, "Wow, it's just like Christmas! Oh wait..." In the rush to buy a washer and dryer, a fridge, a sofa, two armoires, new brakes, and a host of other house needs (still no blinds -- that's today), I haven't even thought about Christmas. Not to mention that it's warm here, so how can my brain process it when a store clerk wishes me a merry Christmas and I'm wearing short sleeves? Does not compute.

Also my husband's present is lost somewhere in the house. I had hidden it in the computer room in the apartment, but I've opened all the computer room boxes here and it's nowhere to be found. I came across his present to me, which he had hidden in his underpants drawer. I told him that was maybe not the best place to hide it considering it was laundry day. Thankfully I didn't really see what it was, because I had an a-ha moment that maybe I shouldn't investigate further.

I have to shop for Christmas dinner. But first I have to clear away eight thousand glasses and dishes and bowls and tupperwares off the countertops.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:21 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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December 20, 2006

PHONES

After six months in billeting at OBC, three years in Germany, and six months of just cell phones, we have our first home phone in a very long time. We've had it three days, and already I'm sick of the telemarketers. We've gotten so many pre-recorded phone calls that I can't even believe it. How freaking annoying.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:39 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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December 19, 2006

HOUSE

So here's the latest. The showers had some sort of child-proof anti-scalding contraption, but someone went way overboard with it. So instead of anti-scalding, it became anti-warm. Plumber came out and it's fixed; thank heavens because it was my third day without a shower! Dishwasher is fixed too, so now we can start washing all these dishes that have been in boxes since Germany. I'm still sitting on a folding chair in front of the TV, but we should find a solution to that today. Oh, and the brakes went out on our car, so that was another fun activity to pass the time.

All in all, I can't complain. Except for the fact that we spent about a thousand dollars today. And we still have bedsheets tacked over the windows.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:23 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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December 17, 2006

UPDATE

We're here.

We're a day late on internet connection due to a busted ethernet card, but now we're back in the saddle. Oh, and we've also discovered that our dishwasher is somehow not hooked up to any sort of water supply, and our shower doesn't have any hot water. And none of our furniture can fit through the doorway into our rec room. It's been a busy and fairly annoying two days.

But it's eight days before Christmas and the temps are still in the 70s. So we're lovin' that.

Also Charlie is completely freaked out by the move. He won't leave our side, which is unusual for the dog who hates to be touched. But he spent the first day walking around the house crying, so at least we're past that.

Five moves in four and a half years of marriage. Sheesh.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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December 05, 2006

63 MORE THINGS

When I wrote my 100 Things post, some guy commented that I was narcissistic for talking about myself so much. I cracked up, because isn't that the very point of a 100 Things post? I found a post on Keeping the Faith at Fort Carson called 63 Things You Never Cared to Know About Me. If you really don't care, skip it. If you want, read the extended entry.

more...

Posted by: Sarah at 11:12 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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December 04, 2006

WAITING

I'm sitting here waiting for the movers to show up. Back in April, I was so stressed about the move that I started planning and packing about six weeks in advance. This time, I was so loath to go through the process again that I started packing on Saturday. Whoops. But I guess we're ready to go, as soon as the guys get here.

And I just found out that Conservative Grapevine is back in business! I loved this site because it was a great way to read blogs I'd never seen before. Check it out if you're looking for a directory of interesting blog posts.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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December 01, 2006

BAMBOOZLED

AWTM is collecting holiday cookie recipes. I have a story to go with my favorites...

I sent lots of cookies to my boys during the deployment. Usually I'd buy those bags of pre-measured stuff and send cookies down to my husband and his platoon, and also to Red6 and his guys. But one time I had to make "real" cookies for an event back home, so I set aside a few and sent a little baggie to my husband and to Red6. And I got the following letter back from Red6:

I used to be bamboozled by the Terminator paradox...you know, Reese being the father of John Connor but also being sent back by John Connor? Well, now I'm bamboozled by your cookies. How the heck did you make those? They were incredible. I couldn't figure 3 cookies 16 ways, so I ate 'em all myself.

So now we lovingly refer to these as The Terminator Cookies.

2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Â½ cups all purpose flour (sifted)
1 tsp. baking soda
Â½ tsp. salt
1 package Dove candies

Combine the butter, peanut butter, and sugars using a mixer on a medium to low speed until light and fluffy. Slowly add eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined. Then mix in flour, salt, and baking soda. Cover and chill dough for 2-3 hours. Unwrap all the candies. Remove dough from refrigerator. Divide into 1 Tbsp balls and flatten. Place a candy in the center of each piece of dough and form the dough into a ball around the candy. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 300Â° F for 15-17 minutes or until tops of cookies start to crack. Let cookies cool on a baking rack or waxed paper.

Enjoy the bamboozling deliciousness.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.
--The Count of Monte Cristo--

While our troops go out to defend our country, it is incumbent upon us to make the country worth defending.
--Deskmerc--

ABOUT SARAH

In a Nutshell
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Contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, WWII, and the Star Wars Trilogy.
--Bart Simpson--

If you want to be a peacemaker, you've gotta learn to kick ass.
--Sheriff of East Houston, Superman II--

Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.
--Jed Babbin--

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
--President John F. Kennedy--

War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours.
--General Patton--

We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over.
--Full Metal Jacket--

Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed.
--Dick Cheney--

The Flag has to come first if freedom is to survive.
--Col Steven Arrington--

The purpose of diplomacy isn't to make us feel good about Eurocentric diplomatic skills, and having countries from the axis of chocolate tie our shoelaces together does nothing to advance our infantry.
--Sir George--

I just don't care about the criticism I receive every day, because I know the cause I defend is right.
--Oriol--

It's days like this when we're reminded that freedom isn't free.
--Chaplain Jacob--

Bumper stickers aren't going to accomplish some of the missions this country is going to face.
--David Smith--

The success of multilateralism is measured not merely by following a process, but by achieving results.
--President Bush--

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
--John Galt--

First, go buy a six pack and swig it all down. Then, watch Ace Ventura. And after that, buy a Hard Rock Cafe shirt and come talk to me. You really need to lighten up, man.
--Sminklemeyer--

You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting
--General Curtis Lemay--

If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained -- we must fight!
--Patrick Henry--

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.
--President George W. Bush--

are usually just cheerleading sessions, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but a soothing reduction in blood pressure brought about by the narcotic high of being agreed with.
--Bill Whittle

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill--

We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.
--General George Marshall--

We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.
--Buzz Aldrin--

America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.
--Dinesh D'Souza--

Recent anti-Israel protests remind us again of our era's peculiar alliance: the most violent, intolerant, militantly religious movement in modern times has the peace movement on its side.
--James Lileks--

As a wise man once said: we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. Unless the price is too high, the burden too great, the hardship too hard, the friend acts disproportionately, and the foe fights back. In which case, we need a timetable.
--James Lileks--

I am not willing to kill a man so that he will agree with my faith, but I am prepared to kill a man so that he cannot force my compatriots to submit to his.
--Froggy--

You can say what you want about President Bush; but the truth is that he can take a punch. The man has taken a swift kick in the crotch for breakfast every day for 6 years and he keeps getting up with a smile in his heart and a sense of swift determination to see the job through to the best of his abilties.
--Varifrank--

In a perfect world, We'd live in peace and love and harmony with each oither and the world, but then, in a perfect world, Yoko would have taken the bullet.
--SarahBellum--

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
--Ronald Reagan--

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
--E.M. Forster--

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
--Mark Twain--

The Enlightenment was followed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which touched every European state, sparked vicious guerrilla conflicts across the Continent and killed millions. Then, things really turned ugly after the invention of soccer.
--Iowahawk--

Every time I meet an Iraqi Army Soldier or Policeman that I haven't met before, I shake his hand and thank him for his service. Many times I am thanked for being here and helping his country. I always tell them that free people help each other and that those that truly value freedom help those seeking it no matter the cost.
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Right, left - the terms are useless nowadays anyway. There are statists, and there are individualists. There are pessimists, and optimists. There are people who look backwards and trust in the West, and those who look forward and trust in The World. Those are the continuums that seem to matter the most right now.
--Lileks--

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston Churchill--

A man or a nation is not placed upon this earth to do merely what is pleasant and what is profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is both unpleasant and unprofitable, but if it is obviously right it is mere shirking not to undertake it.
--Arthur Conan Doyle--

A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill--

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference."
--Dave Grossman--

At heart Iâ€™m a cowboy; my attitude is if theyâ€™re not going to stand up and fight for what they believe in then they can go pound sand.
--Bill Whittle--

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
--Alexander Tyler--

By that time a village half-wit could see what generations of professors had pretended not to notice.
--Atlas Shrugged--

I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he'd say, "That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too."
--Alabama Worley--

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists donâ€™t seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we havenâ€™t yet held talks without preconditions with.
--Mark Steyn--

"I had started alone in this journey called life, people started gathering up on the way, and the caravan got bigger everyday."
--Urdu couplet

The book and the sword are the two things that control the world. We either gonna control them through knowledge and influence their minds, or we gonna bring the sword and take their heads off.
--RZA--

It's a daily game of public Frogger, hopping frantically to avoid being crushed under the weight of your own narcissism, banality, and plain old stupidity.
--Mary Katharine Ham--

There are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
--James Madison--

It is in the heat of emotion that good people must remember to stand on principle.
--Larry Elder--

Please show this to the president and ask him to remember the wishes of the forgotten man, that is, the one who dared to vote against him. We expect to be tramped on but we do wish the stepping would be a little less hard.
--from a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt--

The world economy depends every day on some engineer, farmer, architect, radiator shop owner, truck driver or plumber getting up at 5AM, going to work, toiling hard, and producing real wealth so that an array of bureaucrats, regulators, and redistributors can manage the proper allotment of much of the natural largess produced.
--VDH--

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.
--Marcelene Cox--