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I woke up this morning with a stuffy, achy head and almost cancelled my plans to snowshoe with a friend. I'm so glad I didn't! Blue skies, fresh air and a little exercise are better than crack. Okay, I can't speak to that personally, but I've never heard of anyone overdosing on the great outdoors. :) Thanks for slowing down for me, Julie! Here's hoping that the Easter Bunny brings a new pair of snowshoes my way.
She's looking so much older. She's gotten so tall, and she's lost the curls and the chubby cheeks. But she's still got mischief in her eyes, and the energy to pull it off. She still calls me Mama sometimes instead of Mom. Lately she's been giving me lots of hugs and kisses, and telling me how much she loves me. This morning I had the fan in the bathroom on, and she turned it off, saying "I hate that noisy thing. I like peace and calm and quiet, awesome Mom. I almost said stupid Mom, but that wouldn't be very nice, so I said awesome Mom." Whatever you say, Chatterbox.
I'm trying to be more positive, so instead of continuing to complain about my least favorite season, let me just say, I love summer. Let me count the ways...or maybe not, that could take a while. But I keep looking at some of my favorite summer photos. I just don't feel like taking one more indoor or drab gray outdoor shot. Duffy was over here playing with Ainsley yesterday, and I was a little shocked to see how young they look in this shot, taken on the 4th of July 2007. Wish I had taken a photo of them yesterday to compare (we'll have to do that for sure this July 4th).
Homework. I am so sick of it. But I'm too tired to get really worked up. That's all.
To infinity and beyond. ILYTM.
Tonight I made The Pioneer Woman's Spaghetti and Meatballs for dinner, and it was fabulous. And I'm an Italian food snob. Rob said they were the best meatballs he's tasted in his life. He's hoping for meatball sandwiches tomorrow. FYI, if you decide to try them, I used 1 lb. of mild Italian sausage, and 1 lb. of hot Italian sausage, no ground beef. Anyway, it would have made a great photo of the day, but they took a lot longer than I thought they would to make and we were running late for the Backman family history night, so I didn't take a photo. I did grab my camera before we left, but realized when we got there that it was out of batteries, so I'm posting a photo from the cruise for my daily photo.
We were in Cabo, waiting out on the street for our tacos, and Kathleen picked up a Coke for Rob at the grocery store. Everybody knows that Mexican Coke is way better than American Coke, right? Right after she gave it to him, this truck started down the street. I whipped out my camera and took this shot as it passed by. Yes, the truck was moving. I couldn't have staged this any better. I'd like to credit my fabulous photography skills, but this was just pure serendipity.
Bonnie Parkin was the speaker at our Stake Women's Conference this morning. The brunch was good, and it's always fun to have a chance to visit.
There are several things I want to remember from her talk.
She mentioned President Eyring's talk about recording the hand of the Lord in his life in his journal. I haven't done this in way too long.
She said "it's pretty much impossible to be unhappy and grateful at the same time." I have found this to be true. All the more reason to recognize my blessings in writing.
She talked about a friend who was dying of cancer and was racked with the feeling that she hadn't done enough. She was blessed with inspiration that all of the things we should be doing (callings, scriptures, temple, etc.) are gifts for our benefit, not something to make us feel guilty. She said we don't receive 70% of God's love for doing 70% of our visiting teaching. He just loves us. Period.
I loved a story she told about her daugher-in-law's mother. She was in the same ward as President Kimball, and saw him wearing a new suit one week. She was a fabulous seamstress, and had some beautiful silk fabric, so she made a tie for him, and was on his doorstep to deliver it when she started doubting herself. But Sister Kimball answered the door before she could get away, and when this sister started to sort of apologetically offer her gift, Sister Kimball grabbed her by the shoulders and said "Susan, never suppress a generous thought." Love, love, love this. Definitely need to get better at it.
Rob's been on my case to get some cruise photos up, so I'm putting up an unprecedented 252 photos in one post. I'm hoping to backdate a few close up shots over the weekend. This is why I love the daily posting—it's just too overwhelming to pick my favorites from a field of 500.
I think the half-pipe is my favorite event. Caught the women tonight, and have the men on DVR. Can't wait to see some serious air.
For cold, coughs, strep throat, ear infections... Joey's had a nice long five-day weekend, stuck at home with a non-stop cough, ear infection, and possibly strep throat. We're up to six doctor's visits in 12 days. Robbie and Ainsley got checked the day before we left, see that post here. Then, while taking antibiotics for his strep throat, Robbie managed to get an ear infection, so Lupita had to take him in again while we were gone (thanks again!!). Yesterday I took Joey in and he did have an ear infection, and his throat looked like strep. He did pass the quick strep test, but we haven't heard back on the culture. Not that it matters much, he got antibiotics for the ear infection. Since Ainsley had a well-visit scheduled for today, they worked her in while we were there, and she got several shots. To top it all off, I took myself in with a sore throat today and am now also on antibiotics. Hopefully my quarantine will result in some time to go through my cruise photos and get some posted.
Another upside: While taking this shot of Joey, with our assorted medications in the background, I learned the secret of getting him to smile. I didn't want him to look too happy to be home sick, so I told him not to smile. And voilà, he couldn't stop smiling.
I meant to take my camera to book group tonight, but barely managed to remember the food I was bringing, so here's the after book group shot. Our book this month was Remembering Isaac by a local author/potter, Ben Behunin. My review is here. Like I said, it's not great writing, but it was a really great meeting. The author came and told us how he came to write these books, and it was a super-fascinating and inspiring story. If it were my story I'd be posting it here. If you have a book group, I highly recommend inviting Ben to come and tell his story. Even if you don't love the book, you'll love this. He brought some of his pottery, and I bought a small bowl. I love book group, and as usual, stayed up way past my bedtime talking to good friends there, which is why this didn't get posted until now.
Robbie was so excited when he first saw that The Lightning Thief was being made into a movie. I liked this series too, and told Joey that he could go see it with us if he finished the book. So he zipped through the first couple of books while we were gone and the three of us had a date this afternoon. Three thumbs up.
Meanwhile, Rob and the girls had a daddy-daughter date. They went and made necklaces, and then to Top-It for frozen yogurt.
Rob hates all the "Hallmark holidays." Evidence here. So a few years ago I decided we needed a tradition that would work for us. I remembered from my mission the "lover's day" celebrated in Catalan. It's St. George's Day, but I always heard it called the day of the book and rose. Here's the story on that. Roses are pretty and all, but give me a book any day. So that's our tradition—everyone gets a new book, all wrapped up and placed on their dinner plate. Our dinner is crepes with fresh strawberries and cream, because twice a year for conference breakfast is just not enough for those. This is now one of my favorite holidays, and you'll notice that even the photo/holiday scrooge is smiling.
Sadly, my birthday was the day we had to get up early to disembark. Claudia and Kathleen decorated my door.
We had one last breakfast together.
And I discovered that this is a really good time to get photos without a lot of people in them.
Saying goodbye...hopefully until next time.
We had one final day at sea, and I didn't take many photos. Here's our final round of cruise trivia, which was fun, even though we never came in first place, so we missed out on the prize lanyards. It's hard to go up against groups who are on the same cruise for the fourth week in a row. And even harder when the cruise directors have the wrong answers. For the record, a group of whales is a POD, not an ORC. And Michael Jackson's longest running hit was Thriller, not I'll Be There. We're not still bitter about it or anything.
Cabo was our favorite port by far. It's much smaller than Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, but cleaner, and so beautiful.
We had the best tacos at this place.
It was formal night back on the ship, and Kent and I had our birthday celebration. Our waiter, Ruiz, was awesome.
In Mazatlan we hired a van for all twelve of us, and while those in the front of the van listened to the driver's spiel about the different sites we passed, the back two rows had a slug bug war. We shopped for jewelry, toured the cathedral and went to the market to buy vanilla. I managed to make it through all the raw meat without hurling. Then we headed to the beach so Kathleen, Autumn and Aaron could go parasailing. After watching all three of them go up and come back down safely, Rob decided to give it a try too, despite his fear of heights.
Video was hard to shoot, with the glare of the sun, but here it is anyway.
He survived, and had a good time.
Here's a shot of the whales hiding because Rob called me out to see them. I love the light on the water though.
I did get a few whale photos. Although it's pretty overcast, I think this was my best shot. If you click on the photo you can see it better.
And other than that, apparently I decided not to drag my camera around all day. I know we went to an afternoon movie (The Invention of Lying) and a stand up comic after dinner (Carlos Oscar). I think this is also the night we made the mistake of trying one of the production shows, "The Piano Man." Mediocre dancers and vocalists butchering the music of Billy Joel, Elton John, etc. We had to go play a round of racehorse canasta just to try and forget it.
Unfortunately my parent kicked our butts, so that didn't really help. We paid them back in the airport on our way home.
Rob spent a lot of time out on our balcony, reading and spotting whales. He must have seen at least twenty in one week.
It was Superbowl Sunday, so we went down to one of the bars to save a spot and play cards.
If there had been something really cool in the first play, like a return for a touchdown, I might have stayed to watch the game. No such luck, so I just took a photo of the true fans and went back to our room for a nap.
It was formal night for dinner and they have tons of photographers with fake backgrounds taking lame posed portraits. This Iranian photographer got totally mad at Kathleen because we asked her to take photos with our camera at the same time. They looked like bad prom shots anyway, so we just had her take this one. You'll have to imagine how happy this made photo scrooge.
We switched our seating up for dinner—here is the all Ashton table.
Except Claudia, who came over to the dark side with us.
The dinners were amazing—three course gourmet feasts, plus dessert. Plus anything made by someone else just tastes better. It was a true vacation for me, not to have to plan, shop, prepare and clean up after meals. No laundry either. Well at least DURING the trip. It's been over a week since we've been home and I still haven't caught up.
This interactive, 60-minute online course introduces learners to a roadmap of steps and activities to move through the stages of handling a deceased member’s account. These steps ensure that we protect both the member’s assets and the credit union in the estate process. Focused on the fundamentals, this course logically approaches the steps taken by the credit union on behalf of the deceased member and in support of the estate representative or executor.
Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Andrew Hewett is speaking on "Is the golden age of non-government organisations over?". Mr. Hewett explained he was talking about international, non-profit organisations working on helping developing nations. He described the traditional NGO as ganger aid donations from rich nations to help poor nations. He argues that the role of aid to help developing nations had been over emphasised. There had been reductions in poverty in many countries, but income had become less equitably distributed.
Mr. Hewett also expressed concern about the number of NGOs and the questionable motives of some of them, such as those connected with some on fringe religions.He also asked about the NGO's response to climate change.
Mr. Hewett described new "disintermediated" aid models, where money goes more directly, such as "GiveDirectly".
To me it seemed that Mr. Hewett's definition of an NGO is far too limited. There are many non-government, not-for profit organisations which aim to help all of the world's population and by doing so still make a significant contribution to developing nations. Also the assumption that developed nations really do make net donations to poor nations needs to be questioned: an analysis of where the aid money goes and what other transfers and hidden costs there are may well show a net flow of money from poor to rich nations.
Mr. Hewett pointed out that the aid agency in Australia had been subsumed into the foreign affairs department, and this was a worldwide trend. To me this seemed to be just a recondition of the reality that the nations provide aid primarily to further their own interests, not that of the nation donated to. It would seem preferable for a nation to provide aid in further their national interests than use military force.
Mr. Hewett suggested eliminating the patronising language used by NGOs. He suggested tacking gender inequality. Also he proposed NGOs ceased the delivery of services role in middle income countries.
As an example Mr. Hewett highlighted Oxfam's partner "JOSH" in Delhi, which improved access to education for girls, without providing the basic services. Instead the organisation mobilises the community for their human rights, including education. However, I ask if countries would see this as an aid activity, rather than interference in the local political process.
Mr. Hewett suggested investing building practical empathy, such as by linking students in the developed world with those in the developing world on-line.
Mr. Hewett suggested Australian NGOs need to enter the debate on appropriate carbon emission reductions as this directly effects the developing world.
In my own work I help with NGOs which help with IT and so is applicable to the developed and developing world. An example of this is the "Sahana Foundation" which provides free disaster relief software.
After having two children and leaving a bad relationship, I knew it was time to make a change. I hated not being fit enough to catch up with my boys.
Health issues with family members passing away young due to heart-related problems was also a reason for wanting to improve my health.
I now have more energy, eat better and not interested in fatty or sugary foods.
The coaching keeps me on track. They are very supportive and it works – just look at me.
Work out at least three times a week.
Hoping for a bit of advice.
A week or so ago, upon starting up my car, the power steering warning light came on and the speedometer has stopped working. On top of this, all of the 'trip' details on MPG etc have been wiped leaving only total mileage showing.
The rest of the dash seems to be working fine.
I have checked fuses in glove box fuse box and all filaments seem in good shape.
I don't suppose anyone can shed some light on a potential fix or what might be causing the problem? I don't think the power steering & speedometer are necessarily related how ever it's strange that the problems came about at exactly the same time.
First thing to check is your battery, battery connections and "earth" leads between battery negative, chassis and engine.
Other than these known issues you would need to get decent diagnostic software (Multiecuscan or AlfaOBD) on the car and check / reset the fault codes. Is the power steering working OK? if it is it may be a CANBUS or ECU fault.
B.T.W driving with a faulty speedo is an offence (unless you are going to a garage or MOT station). If you have a GPS you could use that for now. If you do get stopped for speeding don't use the faulty speedo as an excuse, it might get you an extra ticket.
+1 for checking earths. My daughter's car did exactly the same thing. Earth lead LOOKED fine, with good connections to the chassis and gearbox, but inside the insulation around the crimped terminal that goes on to the body earth (and completely invisible to the naked eye), the copper was just green mush.
Hi peter how did you end up fixing this issue as I have occurred it?
This is my first shot at spoken word. I didn't practice very much, but my intentions are pure so that is all that matters. This piece was given to me one morning as I was waking up. So in a half fog, I started to hear this beautiful message come through. By the time I was fully awake I was just finishing the piece, amazed at the gift I was just given.
Thanks for listening. Share on Facebook and comment below!
Posted on December 19, 2013 by Al Fuentes and filed under Inspired Writings, Recorded Talks, Spiritual, Spoken Word and tagged spiritual inspirational love.
WEST CHESTER, Ohio (AP) — Authorities outside Cincinnati say police are still negotiating with a gunman who”s been holding a 10-year-old boy hostage at an apartment complex.
The hostage situation in Liberty Township, Ohio, began just after midnight Saturday. No injuries have been reported and the two have been given food and water.
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones tells WXIX-TV there was an altercation inside an apartment and that a man who doesn”t live there stayed behind with the boy. The sheriff says the man isn”t related to the boy.
Jones says the gunman later barricaded himself in a garage with the child. The vehicle is running with the heat on, but the garage door is open.
Earlier, the suspect fired more than 30 shots at authorities, hitting an armored vehicle and a robot outside the building.
Jones says negotiators are being extremely cautious.
An Act to create 84.30 (5) (br) of the statutes; relating to: the removal of nonconforming outdoor advertising signs along highways.
a. “Copy" means the advertising or other information or images on a sign face created to communicate to the public.
b. “Copy change" means the process of substituting copy on a sign face, which may include removing a face and substituting another face or other processes such as painting on wood, metal, or vinyl, affixing printed paper or vinyl to the face, changing the message mechanically, or electronically changing the copy from a remote location.
c. “Customary maintenance" on a sign includes nailing, bolting, fastening, cleaning, and painting; replacing its components with equivalent or similar components; except as provided in this subd. 1. c., replacing structural components, including upright supports; making copy changes; upgrading existing illumination for energy efficiency or worker safety; adding catwalks or handrails to address safety; installing an apron to a sign structure to display identification of the sign owner; or replacing the sign face. “Customary maintenance" does not include repairs that involve, within a period of 36 consecutive months, replacing more than 60 percent of the wooden upright supports of a sign or replacing more than 30 percent of the length above ground of each broken, bent, or twisted upright metal support of a sign.
d. “Destroyed," with respect to a nonconforming sign, means that upright supports are physically damaged such that, within a period of 36 consecutive months, in the case of a sign structure with wooden upright supports, more than 60 percent of the supports are broken and, under normal repair practices, would need to be replaced or, in the case of a sign structure with metal upright supports, more than 30 percent of the length above ground of each broken, bent, or twisted support would, under normal repair practices, need to be replaced.
e. “Sign face" or “face" means the material components of a sign on which the advertising or other information is displayed including any trim, border, or molding.
f. “Substantial change," with respect to a nonconforming sign, includes increasing the number of upright supports; changing the physical location; increasing the square footage or area of the sign face; adding changeable message capability; or adding illumination, either attached or unattached, to a sign that was previously not illuminated. “Substantial change” does not include customary maintenance.
g. “Substantially the same," with respect to a nonconforming sign, means that no substantial change has been made to the sign since it became nonconforming.
2. Notwithstanding par. (a) or (b), signs described in sub. (3) (a), (d), (e), (f), or (h) that were lawfully erected but that no longer conform to applicable requirements are, upon notice by registered mail from the department to the sign owner, declared nonconforming but are not subject to removal, except as provided in subds. 4. and 5.
3. Subject to subd. 4., a sign described in subd. 2. shall remain substantially the same as it was on the date it became nonconforming. To allow a sign described in subd. 2. to exist, to perform customary maintenance on such a sign, or to change the advertising message on such a sign, does not constitute a violation of sub. (3) or (4).
4. Except as provided in this subdivision, to make a substantial change to a sign described in subd. 2. or to erect additional signs shall constitute a violation of subs. (3) and (4). In determining whether a change to a sign constitutes a violation of sub. (3) or (4), the department may not consider any changes to that sign that no longer exist. If the department determines that a change to a sign constitutes a violation of sub. (3) or (4), the department shall notify by registered mail the sign owner and the owner of the property upon which the sign is located of the alleged violation. If the alleged violation is remedied within 60 days of receipt of the notice under this subdivision, the activity does not constitute a violation of sub. (3) or (4).
5. a. Except as provided in subd. 5. b., and notwithstanding subd. 3., a sign described in subd. 2. that is destroyed is subject to removal without compensation.
b. Notwithstanding subds. 3. and 4., if a nonconforming sign is damaged or destroyed by a criminal or tortious act, the sign may be repaired or replaced. If the sign is replaced, the replacement sign may not incorporate any elements that constitute a substantial change from the sign that was damaged or destroyed. The repair or replacement of a sign under this subdivision is not limited to activities constituting customary maintenance.
6. A sign described in sub. (3) (a) that is declared nonconforming as provided in subd. 2. may not be converted to any sign described in sub. (3) (d), (e), (f), or (h).
320,2 Section 2. Initial applicability.
(1) This act first applies to nonconforming signs in existence on the effective date of this subsection.
PressReady Blog – Tagged "5 PR Tips"
Congratulations - you secured an in person meeting with a member of the media! Now what? Whether you’ve set up a coffee date with someone you’ve connected with on email or social media, an introduction through a friend or if this is a brand new connection here are a few simple things to keep in mind to ensure a successful yet friendly pitch meeting with media. From location to picking up the tab, here’s how the pros do it.
Welcome to Hercules Transit Center Single Day Reserved Parking Reservation System. To use this program you must be a patron using the Hercules Transit Center in connection with your parking reservation.
Have your license plate number available before continuing, if you do not have a plate number, use the last eight digits of your VIN number. Misentering your plate number will result in ticketing and billing for permits that may not be yours.
Choose the desired station and desired dates of use from the menu. A computerized reservation system will determine whether permits are available at that station for the dates requested. Only 10 days of permits may be purchased at one time.
The license number of the vehicle in which the permit will be displayed.