This is what I'm talking about

This is a woman after my own heart: In Defense of Buying Books.

Hubby & I are embarking on a year of (for us, at least) major austerity. We have money put away for emergencies, and are planning to dig far out of debt this year, with less eating out and other frivolities. We've both dedicated ourselves to a year of taking lunches to work (in these nifty things, no less), and I'm contemplating asking to go cut my days in the office in half (from 2 days to 1), which would save me a bundle on commuting costs.

But the one thing I'm having trouble giving up is book-buying. Part of it is what the blog post above mentions: I'm not just buying a book, I'm buying an experience. But part of it is that I want to seriously get back to writing in 2009, and I feel like if I'm going to try and get published at some point, it behooves me to keep the publishing business in business.

It's all about balance, so let's see if I can find a good stable point at which to spend. I may end up buying a Kindle, because part of my problem with buying books is finding a place to store them. Recently I've been buying books just to turn them around to the Book Thing, which isn't bad, I guess. It just seems wasteful somehow.

You can tell I'll be thinking about this one for a while ...

Wave of the future?

Now this is fascinating -- passive homes with no furnaces. Too bad they don't make vacation houses like this. I'd love to live in one for a week or two and see how they feel.

I wonder if we'll ever reach the point where people start tearing down their existing houses to build green houses like this. Enough people have done that to build McMansions -- maybe we could do it to make the world better, instead.

Now *this* is what I call Xmas

Blog 'miracle' saves Christmas for hard-luck family -- and it's even a Baltimore story.

This kind of thing renews my often-shaky faith in my fellow man.

Happy holidays!

Since I'm spending tomorrow cleaning house and Thursday celebrating Xmas with the family, I'm thinking this is my last opportunity to wish you all -- HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Is this the change I voted for?

Calif. evangelist to give inaugural invocation

I'm so furious about this I can't even form clear thought about it. This does not bode well for Obama's presidency.

All I can say is that I'll be sitting in the kitchen on Inauguration Day while this person speaks, far away from the TV.

I'm laughing and creeped out at the same time

This particular item--the Hitchcock "Birds" commemorative Barbie--is my own personal nightmare.

See, my parents, apparently wanting to see a movie and not having a babysitter, took me with them when they went to see The Birds - when I was an infant. I don't remember it, but I have a moderate fear of birds to this day. That fear was exacerbated by my grandmother's house, where I always slept beneath her bird's cage and beside her enormous indoor cactus garden. Scary stuff for a sensitive little girl, who was terrified of her grandmother besides.

I think the experience marked me somehow, in a way that makes me invisible to birds. I'm the only person I know who has had a bird nearly fly into them on multiple occasions. I'm like that perfectly clean plate glass window, only minus the bird splat mark.

Outrage

The Bank of America, after taking billions in taxpayer dollars to bail its sorry ass out, has decided to cut the credit line for Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. This has forced the window company to close, not only leaving the workers out of work, but leaving them without compensation they are legally entitled to--which is not being paid them on the advice of Bank of America.

The affected workers are holding a peaceful sit-in protest until they get their money.

Now keep in mind that BoA took that money precisely to keep businesses like this in business, not to keep it for themselves, which is what they are apparently doing.

If you want to show your support for these workers, sign the Jobs with Justice petition.

It infuriates me that through this entire bailout process, the fatcats are being taken care of, and the worker is getting screwed once again. I know that the Republican administration doesn't give a damn about that. I'm just sorry that we can't shove them out of office now for the incoming administration who at the very least might give a tiny damn.

And I'm sad to say that the payroll where I work is done through BoA. I wish there were a way to change that. I'd love to see them go out of business as the price for their lack of humanity. Bless the Illinois governor for suspending all state business with BoA.

ETA: Oops, so that same Illinois governor just got arrested on corruption charges. Whoopsie ...

The Obama brand

as analyzed by Howard Fineman of Newsweek - fascinating.

Safe? You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means ...

Take that, Peggy Noonan.

I, for one, don't feel a bit safer than I did right after 9/11. I felt safe before that simply because I lived in the fantasy-land that most Americans did, believing that no terrorist attacks were possible on American soil, despite clear evidence to the contrary (the original Twin Towers attack and Oklahoma City).

But all the noise the Bush Administration has made over the years about "keeping us safer" is just that - noise. We live in a society of security theater, meaningless and about as useful as feathers on a fish.