Crazy

A new Costco opened in Kapolei today, and check out the best sellers:

Among the hottest selling items were two-for-one cartons of 18-pack eggs that caused a traffic jam in the produce area and $2,000 Chanel leather flap bags. The designer bags, which retail for $3,000, were expected to sell out by the end of the day.

A $2,000 bag?! Does that sound like what folks buy when our economy is tanking? Maybe the folks that are buying them have stopped paying their mortgages in anticipation of a bailout.

I'm Having a Hard Time Believing This

A Pearl City woman found $5 inside a coconut. Are you buying it?

Word Police

Check out this bit of reporting from the Honolulu Advertiser:

A man tried to steal a watch from an Ala Moana jewelry store without paying for it, according to police.

Tried to steal it without paying for it. As opposed to stealing it and paying for it, I suppose?

7 Quick Takes Friday - February 20

1. PalmPilot gave me a new iPod for Valentine's Day -- a cute little nano. It replaces the gigantic and heavy iPod that I've had for years, the one whose battery lasted about 20 minutes. I love the new one, and I have high hopes of listening to my new Teaching Company Famous Romans lectures soon.

2. I've been using Outlook for my calendar for years, but lately I've been using the task function like a crazy woman. As soon as I think of something I need to do, I record it as a task, and I can dump it out of my brain. And that's a very good thing.

3. Recording tasks and getting them done are two entirely different things.

4. I'm still trying to figure out curriculum for next year. We've been very happy with Omnibus, but Omnibus IV isn't out yet and I don't think I can just wing it while I wait for it. I'm looking at a couple of different options, but I can't make myself actually hit the order button on either one of them.

5. Trying to schedule our summer is a headache-inducer every time I think about it. Each one of us in the PalmFamily has a different schedule and none of it lines up right.

6. Those E-trade baby commercials crack me up. Not enough to make me send E-trade any money (been there, done that, and they screwed it up), but still, that baby is funny.

7. My old school (the same school my niece and nephews attend now) was badly damaged by a tornado yesterday. Blessedly, the tornado didn't hit during school hours. A couple of years ago, my mom's high school was destroyed by a tornado during school hours, and 8 students were killed while many more were hurt. Tornadoes are very rare here in Hawaii, but one touched down on the other side of the island earlier this month, causing some property damage and injuring one man.

For more Quick Takes, click here.

"zzz-mailing"

This report about a sleepwalking woman who sent bizarre emails gave me the laugh I've needed today:

The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman’s waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another said simply: “What the…”

The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking ‘zzz-mailing’.

"in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions"? Sounds like the comments section of the Honolulu Advertiser to me!

I'm Proud To Be a Navy Wife

Here's a 2008 review of the US Navy in pictures. Watch it and thank God for these men and women.

PS - If I were a guy, I'd want to work aboard an aircraft carrier. (Yeah, I know women work there, but not this woman.) I got to spend some time on the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk one day and witnessed flight operations up close and personal. That was super, super, super cool and the most testosterone-y place I've ever been.

(Hat tip: my beloved PalmPilot)

Justice?

2 stories in the local papers today:

~ Embezzler gets 10-year prison term:

A former personal assistant to retired newspaper executive Thurston Twigg-Smith was sentenced in Circuit Court yesterday to 10 years in prison for stealing more than $329,000 from her former employer.

~ Hawaii drunk driver sentence to 18 months for motorbiker's death:

He was killed March 31, 2007, when Sarah Whitford's car smashed into his motorcycle in Hale'iwa, knocking Fuiava 232 feet, according to Deputy Prosecutor Kristine Yoo.

Whitford, 27, was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison, five years of probation and was ordered to pay $7,777.48 in restitution to Fuiava's widow, Dorcas...

At first glance, you might think the local justice system places a higher value on $329,000 than on a man's life. And at second and third glances, too. It's a crazy world we live in.

Teaser Tuesday

Swiped from K at Prone to Wander:

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.

• Let the book fall open to a random page.

• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Like K, I have lots of books going right now. Here are 3 of them:

~Killer Angels by Michael Shaara - We're reading this for Omnibus III and I'm LOVING it! It's one of those books I've always meant to read, and it's not disappointing me.

Chamberlain thought: two things an officer must do, to lead men. This from old Ames, who never cared about love: You must care for your men's welfare. You must show physical courage.

~Our Sunday School is studying Through the Looking Glass by Kris Lundgaard.

Those who never feel his absence likely have never enjoyed his presence. But those whom he has visited with his love, whom he has refreshed, relieved, and comforted -- they know what it is to be left by him even for a moment.

~PalmPilot and I are sloooooowly reading through J.I. Packer's Knowing God together.

Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God? Do I see all the purposes of God as centering upon him?

I know Tuesday is probably over for you now, but feel free to share what you're reading.

Anyone Surprised By This?

I'm not. The ink isn't even dry on the "stimulus" bill, and Senator Daniel Inouye says it's really just the beginning:

Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said another stimulus package may be needed.

"That's discussion item No. 1 now in Washington," the senator told reporters at the state Capitol. "Some people are calling this bill the stimulus No. 1.

"If you listen to experts, they all suggest that if you are to really stem the tide, you have to go deeper than this. And, I must say, to a certain degree I agree with that."

Just wait for it. It's coming.

Aaah, This One Is Better

Here's a book meme I found at The Common Room that is a much better list than the meme I posted last month, although I'm not sure how Bridget Jones's Diary made this list (or the other one, for that matter). Here's the deal:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read (films don't count).
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Tag somebody if you like (Rebel that I am, I'm not going to do that. If you play along, leave a comment so I can check out your list.)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I just have no interest in these.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Will read this soon in Omnibus III)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Compare & Contrast

Well, really you can only contrast.


(Hat tip: The Anchoress)

A-Game

As you can tell, I'm really hurting for blog material, so I'm going to play K's meme. Here are the rules:

Copy, erase my answers, enter yours, use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions.
They have to be real . . . nothing made up! You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.
Have Fun!

1. What is your name: Anne
2. A four letter word: Able
3. A boy's name: Aaron
4. A girl's name: Anna
5. An occupation: Aviator
6. A color: Azure
7. Something you wear: Antiperspirant (aren't you glad?)
8. A food: Asparagus (preferably roasted)
9. Something found in the bathroom: Artificial tears
10. A place: Auburn
11. A reason for being late: Anne, late? Never!
12. Something you shout: Aaaaaaarrrr! (if you're a pirate)
13. A movie title: An American Carol (a really dumb movie I recently watched)
14. Something you drink: Avalanche Rooibus
15. A musical group: Aerosmith
16. An animal: Ant
17. A street name: Ala Moana
18. A type of car: Astin Martin
19. The title of a song: Arise, My Soul, Arise
20. Place you would like to visit: Australia

Wanna play?

It's a Big Day!

PalmBoy is getting his braces off this morning after having them almost 4 years. A couple of his teeth were slow to come in, but he has been patient. I can't wait to see his big metal-free grin!

UPDATE: They're off, and he's grinning like crazy.

Quote of the Day

From David Harsanyi:

Obama and Frank, men who have managed a total of zero businesses between them, believe they have the fiscal acumen to dictate when profits should be made in the (no-longer-very-free) market. What happens when the next president — one you might not have the same unfathomable adoration for — begins injunctions on profit? Well, then, I suppose, we can call it an abuse of executive power.

Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Dr. Helen)

Scare Tactics

I've never liked management-by-panic leadership, but it looks like that's what we've got:(italics mine)

President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

Have you ever been involved with an organization with that kind of leadership? That "It's an emergency! We've got to act now!" style? It always sends up a red flag to me, and it seems to defy wisdom principles of patience, caution, and careful thought. I just want to yell, "whoa!" and slow everyone down.

If we accept the premise that our economic system is collapsing and that we need to act NOW, why does it necessarily mean that we need to act with a gazillion dollar stimulus package full of everything that pushes the liberal Democrat agenda?

Dems and Tax Hypocrisy

Jonah Goldberg is right on, as usual, about Democratic hypocrisy and taxes. Here's a peek:

When moralizing conservatives get caught, say, cheating on their wives or challenging stall mates to robust Greco-Roman wrestling in airport bathrooms, liberals justifiably howl at the hypocrisy of it all. When liberals fail to pay taxes it’s merely, to borrow an old catchphrase from Daschle, “sad and disappointing,” but ultimately not that big a deal. If Democrats are serious about their arguments for raising taxes, shouldn’t they be downright giddy about paying what they already owe? And shouldn’t they loathe tax cheating more than anything?

Do go read the whole thing.

If Only

I like the Anchoress's stimulus plan:

Just give every taxpayer, no matter how much they pay or how little, a lump sum of say $67,372.42 Yes, I pulled that number out of my hat, but I’m pretty sure that’s how Mrs. Pelosi and congress do it, too.

Allow people to spend the money or make mortgage payments with it, and eliminate the many, many middlemen who are waiting around to get bailout money they’ll only mismanage, anyway.

There. That’s it. My 1-2-3 stimulus program.

1) Give all taxpayers that amount of money.
2) Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
3) Make people who don’t pay their taxes pay them.

What are the chances anything that sensible is going to come out of Washington?

In a Pickle

How bad can our economy be when things like this are manufactured, marketed and sold? This tagline cracks me up:

Are you sick and tired of trying to convince a jar of pickles to yodel using melodious mind bullets and sheer force of will?

Why, yes. Yes, I am. For your other pickle needs there's this and this.

Please don't ask me how I came across these.

Easy Supper

Last night I tried this pork chops and gravy recipe in my slow cooker, and it was yummy. Yummy and easy. And good left over for lunch. The PalmFamily determined that it was a do-over.

Everything Is Better With Bacon!

PalmBoy would read my blog every day if I made this permanent. You can go play around with it here. I did this one and giggled. (Hat tip: Jonah at The Corner)