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Movie Series - Halloween
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of nine films. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to Smith's Grove Sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister. Fifteen years later, he escapes to stalk and kill the people of Haddonfield, Illinois while being chased by his former psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis. Michael's killings occur on the holiday of Halloween, on which all of the films primarily take place. In 2007, a remake of Halloween, written and directed by Rob Zombie, was released.
Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_(franchise)
Boned When... (Login to Submit a Reason)
Halloween Comments (You must Login to Comment)
|I don't agree that Halloween 3 boned it because it was a failed idea (that Carpenter would have a new, different Halloween story with each movie). I don't think 3 is a bad movie anyway, but it's easier to just to ignore it in the scheme of the main story. Halloween 1 is excellent of course, probably the best slasher of all time and one of the only ones that was well regarded by main stream critics; 2 is considered one of the stronger horror sequels of all time as well. 4 was an alright return; but I can remember things going downhill with 5. Anyone remember that 'cult' that appears later and was left unexplained? H20 was also a nice return of Jamie Lee. After that, the Halloween series is a mess and not worth watching. I didn't even bother with the remakes. -- Submitted By: (Scots) on January 21, 2014, 7:03 am - (0 votes) - Login to Vote
|I liked all the Halloween movies including Halloween 3 -- Submitted By: (quimbyt) on January 9, 2011, 10:15 pm - (0 votes) - Login to Vote
|Halloween 3 boned it. THe first is a classic, and 2 was good enough to keep the series moving, but 3 was really pointless and bad. Despite some decent future movies(4, H2O, and the Zombie version of 2 are all pretty good), the series never recovered from the stupidity of 3. -- Submitted By: (ESmitty) on May 3, 2010, 3:41 pm - (0 votes) - Login to Vote
|You might say they boned when they did Halloween 2 because horror movies that film a sequel usually bone immediately. The reason they didn't bone at that time was that at the end of the first movie Michael Myers fell out of the window and when the Doctor looked out, Michael had vanished. Halloween 3 brought out all new people with a completely different storyline about a toy maker. It didn't totally stink but I don't see how or why they kept the Halloween name. -- Submitted By: (JoeBagODonuts) on April 27, 2009, 3:50 am - (1 votes) - Login to Vote


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(AP) – Art Bell, a radio host best known for a paranormal-themed nightly show syndicated on hundreds of stations in the 1990s, died at his home in southern Nevada, authorities said Saturday.
Nye County Sheriff Sharon Wehrly announced in a Facebook video that Bell died Friday in Pahrump. He was 72. An autopsy will be conducted to determine cause of death, she said.
Bell hosted the popular radio talk show "Coast to Coast AM" before he left the airwaves in 2002. He broadcast the show from his radio station, KNYE, in Pahrump.
The program focused on Bell's conspiracy theories and his fascination with the paranormal and unexplained phenomenon such as UFOs and crop circles. He served as his own producer, engineer and host, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Fans, including celebrities like William Shatner and singer Josh Groban, took to Twitter to praise Bell. Groban recalled staying up late to listen to the host's "one of a kind" voice and how "his shows were so weird & spooky but somehow managed to hold off your skepticism."
Former business partner Alan Corbeth said during Bell's 2008 induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame that nobody was better than Bell at understanding "how to create theater of the mind…"
At his peak, Bell was heard on some 500 radio stations nationwide. He retired more than once and had a brief run on SiriusXM satellite radio in 2013.
Bell, who grew up in a military family, became an FCC-licensed radio technician by the age of 13, according to the "Coast to Coast AM" website. He later enlisted in the U.S. Air Force while also starting his own pirate radio station.
A program of classic Art Bell shows, "Somewhere in Time" is heard on 1470 and 100.3 WMBD from 8 p.m. until midnight Saturdays.
Video Courtesy: Nye County Sheriff's Office
Community Announcement — Long time resident, and radio show host, Art Bell died today at 72 years old in his home in Pahrump Nevada.
Posted by Nye County Sheriff's Office on Friday, April 13, 2018

subset: commoncrawl


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Really early, like May 2011, y'all, I made a post about After Dinner Mint Triangles.
It didn't turn out well that first time. Tasty? Yeah, you betcha. Pretty? Not so much.
This time, I put in my best girl, Ashton, on it, and she made that recipe work!
2 pkg Grasshopper Cookies (or Thin Mints), finely ground
1 stick of butter (1/2 C)
1 1/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
Ingredients: (Topping)
10 oz vanilla almond bark (or candy coating)
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp peppermint extract
8 drops of green food coloring
1/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
1. Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth.
2. Mix with finely ground Grasshoppers. (Sounds gross, but they're cookies, not grasshoppers...)
3. Press into a non-stick foil lined 9x13. (We doubled the recipe, so we used a huge cookie sheet.)
4. Initial your work and be proud of it!
4. (for reals) place in the freezer while you prepare the topping to help it solidify more quickly.
1. Melt the vanilla bark/candy coating in the microwave, stirring ever 30 seconds until smooth.
2. Using a hand mixer (easiest), mix melted bark with cream cheese, peppermint extract, and food coloring. More if you'd like it darker, less or none if you don't mind the association of green and mint.
3. Spread the topping over your crust.
4. Melt the chips and drizzle over the top to decorate.
5. Store in fridge until ready to serve.
When I was giving this recipe to one of my residents who had really enjoyed the treat, she didn't know how to easily cut the treats into triangles. I'm not judging, but... Tip 2: Cut it into long strips, then make each strip into squares, then cut each square diagonally to create triangles.


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This questions comes up from clients now and then. Here's a scenario I dealt with a few years ago.
SCENARIO: Client has their eye on a piece of property they want to buy. They take out a line of credit against their house in order to purchase the property. Then the deal falls through. The LOC exists but the client hasn't used it.
The client gets the idea that they should purchase stocks with it.
What are the tax implications?
First of all, let's set aside the financial aspect of whether or not it's good to borrow like this to purchase investments (a totally different topic worthy of its own blog post) and just focus on the tax consequences.
Line of credit debt is deductible as mortgage interest if the total amount borrowed on the LOC is less than $100,000. This is true regardless of what you do with the money. (One exception: if you purchase tax-exempt securities, no deduction is allowed.)
If the LOC is more than $100,000, I would take the interest on the first $100,000 as mortgage interest, and any remaining interest as investment interest. Whether the remaining interest qualifies as investment interest would depend on what, exactly, you bought with the LOC.
One big catch to all this: you'd need to take Alternative Minimum Tax into consideration, because the interest likely wouldn't be deductible for AMT purposes. If AMT applies, it may be advantageous to elect out of treating the LOC as mortgage interest and instead treat it all as investment interest.
As you can see, this is just just scratching the surface of something that seems like it should have a simple answer.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / freedigitalphotos.net
"This blog post, along with comments that may follow, should not be considered tax advice. Before you make final tax or financial decisions, please secure a professional tax advisor to give you advice about your unique situation. To secure Jason as your accountant, please click on the 'Services' link at the top of the page."


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Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, Nicholas Reid recommends "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published five or more years ago.
After considering Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature, a long, detailed argument about the decrease of human violence, perversity leads me to consider an historical book about something violent. But at least it too has an angel in its title.
I picked up The Angel of the Assassination, a sturdy hardback with thick-paper pages, from a second-hand bookshop some years ago. A first edition, but not expensive – and I doubt that it has been reprinted much since 1935. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and assumed that "Joseph Shearing" was some forgotten non-academic historian of the day. Only now do I discover that "Joseph Shearing" was in fact one of the pseudonyms of Gabrielle Long, the prolific English author of thrillers, historical novels and popular histories. She was better known by her main pseudonym "Marjorie Bowen" under which name, at the age of sixteen, she wrote her first novel The Viper of Milan, a thriller with a Renaissance Italian setting. Published in 1906, when she was 21, it is still considered her best work. This must have been galling for somebody who kept turning them out until she died in her sixties in 1952.
The Angel of the Assassination is one of her works of non-fiction. Briefly, it's a life of Charlotte Corday or, to give her her full name, Marie-Charlotte Corday d'Armont, the young woman who killed Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution. Apparently in her lifetime she was more often called Marie than Charlotte.
She was a direct descendant of the playwright Pierre Corneille, whose tragedies, with their severe classical virtues, she revered. Her father was a very minor noble in provincial Caen and hence an enthusiastic supporter of the reforms in the earlier stages of the revolution, but not of the revolution's later radical turn. For a short time, she went as a novice into a convent, largely because her father could not afford to keep her. But with the revolution's suppression of religious houses, she transferred her piety to an idealised concept of the French republic, influenced by a cloudy version of Classicism and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
She and her provincial circle were Girondins, wanting a kind of decentralised federated France. But in Paris the more radical "Mountain" had taken control of the National Assembly, rounded up and executed the Girondin leaders, and proceeded to prosecute revolution with the maximum of Terror.
Against this background, acting entirely on her own initiative and inspired by her elevated republican ideals, 24-year-old Charlotte travelled to Paris with the aim of killing the "Mountain's" most ferocious orator Marat. She hoped to kill him in public, to inspire other Girondins, but he was confined to his home by illness. She diligently sought out his address then – poignant detail! – purchased a common, cheap kitchen knife in a Paris arcade.
The 51-year-old Marat lived with his mistress Simonne Evrard and his sister Albertine. On 13 July 1793, Charlotte persuaded them to let her into their apartment under the pretext that she wanted to give Marat details of a vast counter-revolutionary conspiracy. She was admitted to the tiny closet where Marat, who suffered a painful skin disease, sat in his bath writing. One straight and true thrust of the kitchen knife to Marat's heart and he was dead.
This was either extraordinary skill or extraordinary luck for a young woman who had never practised such violence before. Marat's mistress and sister threw themselves on her screaming, and would have beaten her bloody if their screams hadn't summoned revolutionary guards who arrested her at once. When she was arrested it was noted that there was no blood on her clothes. That is how true her knife-thrust had been.
Charlotte was hastily tried by a revolutionary tribunal and guillotined four days after the assassination. All the leading members of the "Mountain" (Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Desmoulins etc.) watched her execution. The obvious retrospective irony is that all of them were, less than a year later, to be executed in their turn as the "Mountain" split into factions, devoured itself, and was later overthrown.
Even Charlotte's enemies noted her calm and unruffled demeanour during her arrest and trial. The immediate result of her action was an increased round-up and killing of the remaining Girondins. Revolutionary presses wrote scurrilous, fictitious accounts of Charlotte Corday's sex life to discredit her. But when her corpse was dissected (by order of the state prosecutor), she was found to be virgo intacta.
This story has been told many ways. Our idea of the assassination is irreversibly influenced by Jacques-Louis David's famous image of the dead Marat, painted within months of the event. It was commissioned and consciously intended as revolutionary propaganda, and interpreted Marat as a martyr. In a way, this tradition was continued, long after the book I'm reviewing, in Peter Weiss's semi-surreal 1960s German play Marat/Sade (set in a madhouse). Weiss represents Marat as the rough but effective tribune of the people and Charlotte Corday as a jittery neurotic and repressed nymphomaniac. (If you can't discredit somebody for having a loose sex life, then you can discredit them for being repressed about sex.)
By contrast, Andre Chenier, France's greatest poet at the time of the revolution, wrote a noble poem in praise of Charlotte. (He was executed later in 1793). Similarly the young German Jean-Adam Lux, who had come to Paris to support the revolution, was disgusted with the Terror, smitten by Charlotte's final courage, and wrote a pamphlet in her defence. He was executed at once.
"Joseph Shearing" writes to a thesis. She sees Charlotte and her Girondin friends as typifying the vague, sentimental, unrealistic idealism of Rousseau. They were humane and they were brave – at least most of them (like Charlotte, like Madame Roland) went to the guillotine without flinching. They were right to protest against the excesses of the revolution. "Joseph Shearing" paints Marat as the bloodthirsty, sick, scrofulous fanatic, filthy in his personal habits and directly responsible for many murders. Hence, in her view, a man who richly deserved to die. And yet the Girondins lacked all sense of reality. France was then involved in a massive international war. The "Mountain", for all their many crimes, did at least mobilise the nation for victory. No Danton and Robespierre, no French republic.
What we end up with, then, is the story of noble, righteous and totally impractical provincial idealists at odds with base, filthy, murderous but practical Parisians. I'm almost reminded of 1066 and All That contrasting "wrong but wromantic" Cavaliers with "right but repulsive" Roundheads.
The Angel of the Assassination is written in a brisk, efficient, dramatic style, very descriptive and probably calculated to drive academic experts on the French Revolution spare. There are no footnotes or references. This is popular history. Nevertheless, I think it catches accurately some of the currents of the revolution and it is still worth seeking out. I have found advertisements for it on-line, so there are alternatives to scouring second-hand bookshops.


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Monki's Autumn/Winter 2018 collection was trendy and relaxed. And then they went and dropped a limited edition capsule collection of denim. Which is all that and more.
Imagine, just four pieces that are oh-so dreamy. The Swedish brand has taken the traditional workwear look and turned it into a denim flight suit that is ready for take-0ff. The perfect statement piece for autumn, it is comfortable, practical and very cozy.
You could go the head-to-toe denim and wear the fanny pack, baker boy hat and the scrunchie. Which would definitely win you major style points. Or you can mix and match.
The capsule will be available in selected stores and at monki.com from mid-August. To stay up to date with Monki's latest news follow them on Instagram @Monki.


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And so Ismail Lagardien took it upon himself to warn Business Day readers of the looming global "regse gevaar" (Echoes of the global far-right movement, March 5), represented by nationalist movements in Europe and a self-proclaimed "race realist" such as Jared Taylor, a soft-spoken American who also happens to be fluent in both Japanese and French.
I mention this because, unlike the self-assured monolingual leftist with his quasi-religious worldview denying ethnic or cultural difference, most "populist" heretics have actually gone to the trouble of living or learning about foreign lands. They also tend to respect or appreciate other cultures, and real diversity — as opposed to the fake kind of cramming members of different races into photographs or advertisements.
I suppose I have to congratulate Lagardien for at least noticing there has been some intellectual change in the world over the past decade or so, no mean feat in SA where we are completely out of sync with the rest of the planet, and doomed to become Zimbabwe 2.0.
Due to its farm murders, rampant violence and crime, South Africa has once again become a global topic, a cause célèbre. It represents something of an antithesis to civilisation, a new Barbary coast where Westerners suffer ignominy, discrimination, as well as grotesque killings and torture. It is ironic that Lagardien cites Rwanda as an outcome of "identity politics". In the early 1990s, Rwanda had much in common with contemporary SA, where an ethnic majority foists its will onto a minority. That majoritarian will-to-genocide was enunciated in the so-called Hutu Ten Commandments, including the 8th one: "The Hutu should stop having mercy on the Tutsi."
It is inconceivable that right-wing politicians in Europe, who are all polyglot and 'europhile', would ever create another world war, destroying their common heritage
Only the more conservative section of Westerners have any sympathy for the martyrdom of the Afrikaner people today; our so-called "compatriots" are completely indifferent, if not actually in agreement with the anomic freedom fighters attacking us on a daily basis, on farms and elsewhere. However, many young people in Amsterdam have told me that becoming aware of our history and current plight represented a "red pill" to them, changing their lives and outlook forever.
Typically, we are the scapegoats of the regime's many failures; its venality and inefficiency are not to blame for the lack of jobs and poverty. No, "They stole our land!"
In our society, the egalitarian extremism of the South African Communist Party or EFF is much more likely to lead to concentration camps and genocide than a few middle-aged men discussing Arnold Toynbee or Oswald Spengler. By the way, Spengler's mammoth work on The Decline of the West has just been published in a new Dutch translation, accessible to Afrikaners.
Lagardien accuses me of "racism" and "a tryst with the US far-right". According to the chaff currently dispensed at universities, race does not exist … but all whites are racist. Or at least they have "white privilege". A week ago some caller from KwaZulu-Natal named "Sue" literally sobbed about her white guilt on Radio 702. It reminded me of a well-known book title, Le sanglot de l'homme blanc (The Tears of the White Man) by Pascal Bruckner.
Perhaps that is the ultimate meaning of "reconciliation": to reconcile oneself with the decadent tristesse of such whites who have already surrendered three thousand years of logical thinking for the blind stupor of secular guilt.
Marine Le Pen is very witty, even if one does not agree with her. She once coined the term "semantic war" which is very useful. The bisyllabic "racist" is merely a weapon in the semantic war, but otherwise illogical and contradictory. It could also be countered with the rhetorical trick: "But I self-identify as black, so how can I be racist?" After all, in the cultural-Marxist wonderland we now live in, you may choose your race and your gender, so why should all whites not qualify for affirmative action and black economic empowerment if they literally just "tick the right boxes" on forms?
A Canadian member of the global "regse gevaar", Lauren Southern, was born on June 16 1995; there must be some omen there. In one of her many YouTube videos, clad in a very feminine, tutu-like evening dress, she confronts a PC feminist protestor complaining about her complicity with the patriarchy by stating calmly: "But I'm a man. I'm officially a man." This silenced the protestor completely because, within her secular religion, you may not question someone's "gender choice!"
Multi-cultural societies such as SA, Mexico, Brazil, as well as the more multi-cultural parts of the US and the EU, are intensely violent, with an undeclared war raging in the streets
Lagardien takes a leaf out of the diminutive French former president François Mitterand's book by alleging that any form of national pride or identity is synonymous with war, or, as he terms it, "blood". Empirically, we see exactly the opposite today. It is inconceivable that right-wing politicians in Europe, who are all polyglot and "europhile", would ever create another world war, destroying their common heritage. Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel and Viktor Orbán, to name a few, all want to end the new Cold War with Russia.
On the other hand, multi-cultural societies such as SA, Mexico, Brazil, as well as the more multi-cultural parts of the US and the EU, are intensely violent, with an undeclared war raging in the streets. The American military-industrial complex needs an enemy so as to keep the military order book full, so Europe must be kept divided, always under threat of a nuclear holocaust.
The internet has happily ended the cultural and diplomatic isolation of Afrikaners, still maintained by largely hostile Western embassies in Pretoria that are staffed by left-wing, career diplomats oblivious to the changes in our country and in the world. These days I feel more welcome in Europe or the US than in my own country where the Afro-Marxist extremism of EFF leader Julius Malema has come to define mainstream politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of books, have been written on Afrikaner identity. They all contain a common mistake, in the sense that we romanticised Africa. Inscribed on a bronze plaque at the Afrikaans Language Monument on the Paarl rock is a quotation from poet NP van Wyk Louw: "Afrikaans is the language that connects Western Europe and Africa … It forms a bridge between the large, shining West and the magical Africa … And what great things may come from their union — that is maybe what lies ahead for Afrikaans to discover."
Not only would the phrase "magical Africa" no longer be deemed politically correct, but it is simply wrong. There is no bridge; there is only a chasm, a divide, a somber feeling of dread and horror that our best authors have evoked here and there, almost in spite of themselves. Cultural difference does not usually manifest playfully, as a kind of logical puzzle in the way that Jorge Luis Borges describes it in some of his stories. More typically, as the Germans have discovered after Angela Merkel's open-border policy, it manifests as crime and violence.
Cultural difference does not usually manifest playfully, as a kind of logical puzzle … More typically, as the Germans have discovered after Angela Merkel's open-border policy, it manifests as crime and violence
History did not end in 1989 or in 1994. Rather, it paused in 1945 and restarted in 1989. Much of our modernity lay buried under the rubble of the Second World War, figuratively speaking. The power of the Soviet Union, bequeathed to Joseph Stalin by Winston Churchill at Yalta, as well as the Western baby-boomers' radicalism, imposed a largely uniform mode of thinking on the world, with many taboos. Leonid Brezhnev and Daniel Cohn-Bendit were only two sides of the same coin.
It is only now we are at last daring to question both Marxist-Leninism and cultural Marxism. While institutions remain largely "captured" by the red zealots, especially the universities and the media, individual minds are being freed, "red-pilled", to question the dominant ideology and to understand our culture and history afresh.
One result is a return of some old issues that have never been resolved and go as far back as Plato and Aristotle. SA is doomed to repeat its tortuous history, with indigenous whites either trekking away from or revolting against African lawlessness and attacks, with Britain abetting either side. In recent times, Britain has always chosen against us and for the communists, the radicals, the génocidaires even. The former British ambassador Baron Robin Renwick fraternises with Malema and is clearly impressed with him.
But as history repeats itself, we are returning to the 1890s when the injustices and atrocities meted out to us caused a world-wide wave of pro-Boer sympathy, stretching from the US to Russia, from Ireland to Italy. The high-handed contempt with which the ANC regime and the mainstream media treat us, being powerless and disenfranchised, as well as demographically swamped in a display of Hutu-majoritarian domination, may not last forever.
By: Dan Roodt/Praag


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Chocolate Instant Noodles Celebrate Valentine's Day in Japan
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
Myojo Foods, a subsidiary of Cup Noodles maker Nissin Foods, released shortcake-flavored yakisoba noodles in its Ippei-chan Yomise no Yakisoba line in December. The dried noodle package includes a "beam" of vanilla mayonnaise. Although the concoction seems to have garnered a less than stellar reception, Ippei-chan recently unveiled its next sweet installment: chocolate-flavored yakisoba.
The yakisoba (fried buckwheat) noodles contain cocoa powder. The salty chocolate sauce with "mystery chocolate cubes" incorporates cocoa powder and vanilla-flavored oil.
Myojo Foods will release the noodles on January 9 to celebrate Valentine's Day. Each package will retail for 180 yen (about US$2).
Soy sauce- and curry-flavored ice cream treats debuted at Nissin's Cup Noodles Museum in 2015. Nissin Foods has also offered many anime, game, and live-action franchise tie-ins alongside its impressive samurai commercials.
Potato stew-flavored soupsicles, anyone? For those adventurous souls who enjoy juxtaposed sweet-meets-savory flavor combinations, Japan's Gari Gari-kun line of popsicles offers creative treats. The ice pop brand has released flavors like corn potage and Neopolitan pasta.
Source: Livedoor News via Hachima Kikō


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Crystal Palace is an indoor amusement park with rides and games for those who don't know. We had been putting off going since they got the cards but with Coder going back to school this Tuesday, we couldn't really put if off any longer. After a ten minute struggled to get the car started (It can be tempermental) we were finally on our way. We left around lunch time so we could get there kind of early. The kids wanted a PB & J sammy before we left, a request to which I happily obliged, hoping to save a few bucks not having to feed them lunch at Crystal Palace (who's prices on food are practically criminal! 3$ for one corn dog!! I could run to the Sobey's across the street and grab a box of them for the same price!).
|Nelly flying on the airplane!
|Nelly with Coder, the pilot...
Next up were the air planes, which you sit in while they go up and down and spin around. Coder and Nelly went together on one airplane the first time, then Nelly rode solo later on in the day. Nelly also loved this and yelled "Look Daddy! Hi Daddy!" every time she went around. Coder, on the other hand, looked a little bored with that ride. Being a big boy now, he was ready for the big kid rides this time around. He insisted that he wanted to go on the roller coaster. After debating back and forth for a minute, Daddy and I decided to let him go, but Daddy had to go on with him. He tried the Roller Coaster last year with me and almost gave me a stroke by freaking out and basically trying to climb out of a moving ride. I was a bit nervous because this Coaster doesn't have over the shoulder harness just a lap bar. Last year he kept trying to pull his knees out of under the bar and I was sure he was going to fly out and fall to his death. Anyways, he went on with Daddy and did okay the first time around. The only part that scared him a bit was when it goes through a pitch black tunnel, but Daddy told him to close his eyes and he was fine. He loved it though and went on it about five more times with both Mommy and Daddy taking turns. At the end of it he was having a blast and holding his hands up in the air for the whole ride.
|On "The Bullet" Coaster with Daddy!
Coder liked going on the big monster truck ride, where you sit in a monster truck and go around the track. Next they went on the shooting star, which you sit down in a seat and it shoots you straight up about fifteen feet in the air then drops you down bit by bit. Nelly went on too and laughed her butt off on the way up. The drop down freaked her out a bit the very first time but she was shrieking with joy by the end of it.
|The "Shooting Star" was a hit!
We took a break for a bite to eat, the kids didn't really want anything so Mommy and Daddy got something and gave them a few bites. Daddy got a poutine and I got a Nacho with cheese and salsa. It came to almost 12$ just for those two things but they were a decent size and I couldn't even finish my whole nacho. Daddy polished off his poutine and some of my nachos. After we were done eating we went back for another couple rounds on the rides.
There is a big play park built like a tree house that they wanted to go on, but poor Nelly was too small to go in it, so Coder played on that for a bit while Daddy brought Nelly on some more rides. We stopped at the arcade for a few minutes while they kids ran around "playing" the games (They weren't really playing because we didn't have any change on us, plus it is a MAJOR rip-off)." Honestly, it didn't even matter that they weren't actually playing because they still had a blast.
|Taking turns "playing" the soccer game.
Daddy brought Coder to play Laser Tag while I brought Nelly to get some candy out of the quarter machine and we walked around for a bit. I kept asking her if she wanted to go back on the horsey but she would simply answer "No" and keep munching on her candy fruit (You know, the mini bananas, oranges, limes, etc). We never got around to playing mini golf this time and there were a few rides that they were both too short to go on, but other than that I would say that the day was a huge success.
|Riding the big rigs...
We left around 5pm after Daddy brought Coder for one more round on the roller coaster. At this point Nelly was starting to get a little drowsy so I knew we better head home before a melt-down happened. I thought it was going to be a major tantrum when I said it was time to go but I think that they were so tuckered out that they couldn't be bothered. They left without a fight and both of them passed right out in the car on the drive home. Overall, we had a great day as a family and I can't wait to do it again soon.
|Nelly ready to go home.,,


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What a sad day!
I want to start by saying that I am in no way complaining. My day has been simple in comparison to most and one friend's especially. "My Person" lost a family member this week, and it was someone who meant a great deal to me and my Mother. This man was the husband of my Mother's very favorite customer. She was my favorite too.
This woman was amazing. She had a standing 8 a.m. hair appointment every Saturday. Each Saturday she would show up, 30 minutes early, with breakfast for her, Mom and us. It was a weekly tradition that ended all too soon for my Mother. She didn't miss a Saturday, and she never forgot treats for me and Cassie. Sometimes her husband would take us to breakfast at McDonalds and then take us along while he ran errands. He was so good to us. I think they both must have felt sorry for us being trapped at Mom's shop all day long. In the summer they would take us to their house to swim with their grandson. (I don't think he liked 2 girls taking over his pool, and tv remote)
When she passed away, my Mother felt like she had lost her 2nd Mother.
We felt like we had lost a Grandmother.
Saturdays were never the same.
It's so odd. I was just wondering about this man earlier in the week. Mom bought me a shadowbox for Christmas to preserve a dress that his wife made me. I just so happen to have sent both the box and dress off this week to be created. I can't wait to get this back and hang it. This dress means a great deal to me. Shipping it to Mississippi with this box wasn't easy. If it gets lost in the mail, I will be crushed! If I could still fit into this dress, I would still try to wear it! It's been in a fireproof wedding dress box I bought at the dry cleaner. In the back of my mind I have always thought.......if this house ever catches on fire I will grab my "mini" (She called me Mini, because I was so tiny for my age) dress, my pearls and my photo albums......in that order!
(I'll post pictures of the finished product!)
Of all the places I could have wanted to be tonight, I wanted to be at the funeral home. Of course nothing ever works out the way I want. I wanted to be there for that person who is always there for me, while he is dealing with this. I wanted to make sure that he knew I care. This was one night I wish I had a 9-5 job.
I went to bed sad last night. My person was going through a terrible time, and I couldn't be there. The worst part was I hardly slept Tuesday night. I woke up Wednesday morning more worn out than when I layed down 7 hours before. My first thought was I need a vacation. Who else would I share this thought with? I text him that I either need a vacation or a full nights' sleep. I sent this text at 5:35 a.m. I'm sure he was stressed about his Grandfather, running on very little sleep himself, and entirely more in need of a vacation than I will ever be. I wish I had known he was dealing with all that, been there for him. I've thought about him and his family all day. He is strong, I have no doubt about that, but I would have still liked to be there.
Not that I had any great words of wisdom (thats his thing) or any way to comfort him. I still wanted to be close.
Because that's what you do for someone who is your person.


text: Join Amras89, Hardlydan and Tephlon12 for game talk and fun! This time, The Gamesmen talk about the notable shows at Comic Con. the new Ataribox, a new Wii U update, the upcoming Telltale games, and the Steve Jobs opera. Games discussed are Rocket League, Final Fantasy VII, Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders, Destiny, Destiny 2 beta, Need for Speed No limits, Injustice 2, Tekken 7, Dragon Age Origins, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, DOOM, Splatoon 2, and Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash.


text:
Locating Files:
find command is used to locate files on a Unix or Linux system.
find will search any set of directories you specify for files that match the supplied search criteria. You can search for files by name, owner, group, type, permissions, date, and other criteria. The search is recursive in that it will search all subdirectories too. The syntax looks like this:
find where-to-look criteria what-to-do
All arguments to
find are optional, and there are defaults for all parts. (This may depend on which version of
find is used. Here we discuss the freely available Gnu version of
find, which is the version available on
YborStudent.) For example,
where-to-look defaults to
. (that is, the current working directory),
criteria defaults to none (that is, select all files), and
what-to-do (known as the
find action) defaults to
find primaries.
For example:
will display the pathnames of all files in the current directory and all subdirectories. The commands
find . -print find -print find .
do the exact same thing. Here's an example
find command using a search criterion and the default action:
find / -name foo
This will search the whole system for any files named
foo and display their pathnames. Here we are using the criterion
-name with the argument
foo to tell
find to perform a name search for the filename
foo. The output might look like this:
/home/wpollock/foo /home/ua02/foo /tmp/foo
find doesn't locate any matching files, it produces no output.
The above example said to search the whole system, by specifying the root directory ("
/") to search. If you don't run this command as root,
find will display a error message for each directory on which you don't have read permission. This can be a lot of messages, and the matching files that are found may scroll right off your screen. A good way to deal with this problem is to redirect the error messages so you don't have to see them at all:
find / -name foo 2>/dev/null
You can specify as many places to search as you wish:
find /tmp /var/tmp . $HOME -name foo
Advanced Features and Applications:
The "
find into
xargs, which uses a space to separate file names. This can lead to problems if any found files contain spaces in their names, as the output doesn't use any quoting. In such cases, when the output of
find contains a file name such as "
foo bar" and is piped into another command, that command "sees" two file names, not one file name containing a space. Even without using
xargs, you could have a problem if the file name contains a newline character, as most utilities expect one file name per line.
In such cases, you can specify the action "
‑print0" instead. This lists the found files separated not with a newline but with a null (or "NUL") character, which is not a legal character in Unix or Linux file names. Of course the command that reads the output of
find must be able to handle such a list of file names. Many commands commonly used with
find (such as
tar or
cpio) have special options to read in file names separated with NULs instead of spaces.
Instead of having
find list the files, it can run some command for each file found, using the "
‑exec" action. The
‑exec is followed by some shell command line, ended with a semicolon ("
;"). (The semicolon must be quoted from the shell, so
find can see it!) Within that command line, the word "
{}" will expand out to the name of the found file. See below for some examples.
You can use shell-style wildcards in the
-name search argument:
find . -name foo\*bar
This will search from the current directory down for
foo*bar (that is, any filename that begins with
foo and ends with
bar). Note that wildcards in the name argument must be quoted so the shell doesn't expand them before passing them to
find. Also, unlike regular shell wildcards, these will match leading periods in filenames. (For example "
find -name \*.txt" would match "
You can search for other criteria beside the name. Also you can list multiple search criteria. When you have multiple criteria, any found files must match all listed criteria. That is, there is an implied Boolean AND operator between the listed search criteria.
find also allows OR and NOT Boolean operators, as well as grouping, to combine search criteria in powerful ways (not shown here.)
Here's an example using two search criteria:
find / -type f -mtime -7 | xargs tar -rf weekly_incremental.tar gzip weekly_incremental.tar
will find any regular files (i.e., not directories or other special files) with the criterion "
‑type f", and only those modified seven or fewer days ago ("
‑mtime ‑7"). Note the use of
xargs, a handy utility that coverts a stream of input (in this case the output of
find) into command line arguments for the supplied command (in this case
tar, used to create a backup archive).
Using the
tar option "
‑c" is dangerous here;
xargs may invoke
tar several times if there are many files found, and each "
‑c" will cause
tar to over-write the previous invocation. The "
‑r" option appends files to an archive. Other options such as those that would permit filenames containing spaces would be useful in a "production quality" backup script.
Another use of
xargs is illustrated below. This command will efficiently remove all files named
core from your system (provided you run the command as root of course):
find / -name core | xargs /bin/rm -f find / -name core -exec /bin/rm -f '{}' \; # same thing find / -name core -delete # same if using Gnu find
The last two forms run the
rm command once per file, and are not as efficient as the first form; but they are safer if file names contain spaces or newlines. The first form can be made safer if rewritten to use "
‑print0" instead of (the default) "
‑exec" can be used more efficiently (see Using
‑exec Efficiently below), but doing so means running the command once with many file names passed as arguments, and so has the same safety issues as with
One of my favorite of the
find criteria is used to locate files modified less than 10 minutes ago. I use this right after using some system administration tool, to learn which files got changed by that tool:
find / -mmin -10
(This search is also useful when I've downloaded some file but can't locate it, only in that case "
‑cmin" may work better. Keep in mind neither of these criteria is standard; "
‑mtime" and "
‑ctime" are standard, but use days and not minutes.)
Another common use is to locate all files owned by a given user ("
-user username"). This is useful when deleting user accounts.
You can also find files with various permissions set. "
-perm /permissions" means to find files with any of the specified permissions on, "
-perm -permissions" means to find files with all of the specified permissions on, and "
-perm permissions" means to find files with exactly permissions. Permissions can be specified either symbolically (preferred) or with an octal number. The following will locate files that are writable by "others" (including symlinks, which should be writable by all):
find . -perm -o=w
-perm is more complex than this example shows. You should check both the POSIX documentation for
find (which explains how the symbolic modes work) and the Gnu
find man page (which describes the Gnu extensions).
When using
find to locate files for backups, it often pays to use the "
-depth" option (really a criterion that is always true), which forces the output to be depth-first—that is, files first and then the directories containing them. This helps when the directories have restrictive permissions, and restoring the directory first could prevent the files from restoring at all (and would change the time stamp on the directory in any case). Normally,
find returns the directory first, before any of the files in that directory. This default behavior is useful when using the "
‑prune" action to prevent
find from examining any files you want to ignore:
find / -name /dev -prune ...other criteria | xargs tar ...
Using just "
find / -name /dev ‑prune | xargs tar ..." won't work as most people might expect. This says to only find files named "
/dev", and then (if a directory) don't descend into it. So you only get the single directory name "
/dev"! A better plan is to use the following:
find / ! -path /dev\* |xargs ...
which says find everything except pathnames that start with "
/dev". The "
!" means Boolean NOT.
When specifying time with
find options such as
‑mmin (minutes) or
‑mtime (24 hour periods, starting from now), you can specify a number "
n" to mean exactly
n, "
-n" to mean less than
n, and "
+n" to mean more than
Fractional 24-hour periods are truncated! That means that "
find ‑mtime +1" says to match files modified two or more days ago.
For example:
find . -mtime 0 # find files modified between now and 1 day ago # (i.e., within the past 24 hours) find . -mtime -1 # find files modified less than 1 day ago # (i.e., within the past 24 hours, as before) find . -mtime 1 # find files modified between 24 and 48 hours ago find . -mtime +1 # find files modified more than 48 hours ago find . -mmin +5 -mmin -10 # find files modified between # 6 and 9 minutes ago
Using the (non-standard) "
‑printf" action instead of the default "
ls or
dir utilities. You can use
find with the
‑printf action to produce output that can easily be parsed by other utilities or imported into spreadsheets or databases. See the Gnu
find man page for the dozens of possibilities with the
‑printf action. (In fact,
find with
‑printf is more versatile than
ls; it is the preferred tool for forensic examiners even on Windows systems, to list file information.) For example the following displays non-hidden (no leading dot) files in the current directory only (no subdirectories), with an custom output format:
find . -maxdepth 1 -name '[!.]*' -printf 'Name: %16f Size: %6s\n'
‑maxdepth" is a Gnu extension. On a modern, POSIX version of
find you could use this:
find . -path './*' -prune ...
On any version of
find you can use this more complex (but portable) code:
find . ! -name . -prune ...
which says to "prune" (don't descend into) any directories except "
Note that "
‑maxdepth 1" will include "
." unless you also specify "
‑mindepth 1". A portable way to include "
." is:
find . \( -name . -o -prune \) ...
The "
\(" and "
\)" are just parenthesis used for grouping, and escaped from the shell. The "
-o" means Boolean OR.
[This information posted by Stephane Chazelas, on Mar 10 2009, in newsgroup comp.unix.shell.]
As a system administrator, you can use
find to locate suspicious files (e.g., world writable files, files with no valid owner and/or group, SetUID files, files with unusual permissions, sizes, names, or dates). Here's a final, more complex example (which I saved as a shell script so I can run it often):
find / -noleaf -wholename '/proc' -prune \ -o -wholename '/sys' -prune \ -o -wholename '/dev' -prune \ -o -wholename '/windows-C-Drive' -prune \ -o -perm -2 ! -type l ! -type s \ ! \( -type d -perm -1000 \) -print
This says to seach the whole system, skipping the directories
/dev, and
/windows-C-Drive (presumably a Windows partition on a dual-booted computer). The Gnu
-noleaf option tells
find not to assume all remaining mounted filesystems are Unix file systems (you might have a mounted CD for instance). The "
-o" is the Boolean OR operator, and "
!" is the Boolean NOT operator (applies to the following criteria).
So these criteria say to locate files that are world writable ("
-perm -2", same as "
-o=w") and NOT symlinks ("
! ‑type l") and NOT sockets ("
! ‑type s") and NOT directories with the sticky (or text) bit set ("
! \( ‑type d -perm -1000 \)"). (Symlinks, sockets, and directories with the sticky bit set, are often world-writable and generally not suspicious.)
A common request is a way to find all the hard links to some file. Using "
ls -li file" will tell you how many hard links the file has, and the inode number. You can locate all pathnames to this file with:
find mount-point -xdev -inum inode-number
Since hard links are restricted to a single filesystem, you need to search that whole filesystem so you start the search at the filesystem's mount point. (This is likely to be either "
/home" or "
/" for files in your home directory.) The "
-xdev" options tells
find to not search any other filesystems.
(While most Unix and all Linux systems have a
find command that supports the "
-inum" criterion, this isn't POSIX standard. Older Unix systems provided the "
ncheck" utility instead that could be used for this.)
‑exec Efficiently:
‑exec action takes a command (along with its options) as an argument. The arguments should contain
{} (usually quoted), which is replaced in the command with the name of the currently found file. The command is terminated by a semicolon, which must be quoted ("escaped") so the shell will pass it literally to the
find command.
To use a more complex action with
‑exec, you can use "
sh ‑c complex-command" as the Unix command. Here's a somewhat contrived example, that for each found file replaces "Mr." with "Mr. or Ms.", and also converts the file to uppercase:
find whatever... -exec sh -c 'sed "s/Mr\./Mr. or Ms./g" "{}" \ | tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" >"{}.new"' \;
‑exec action in
find is very useful, but since it runs the command listed for every found file it isn't very efficient. On a large system this makes a difference! One solution is to combine
find with
xargs as discussed above:
find whatever... | xargs command
However this approach has two limitations. Firstly not all commands accept the list of files at the end of the command. A good example is
find . -name \*.txt | xargs cp /tmp # This won't work!
(Note the Gnu version of
cp has a non-POSIX option "
‑t" for this, and
xargs has options to handle this too.)
Secondly, filenames may contain spaces or newlines, which would confuse the command used with
xargs. (Again Gnu tools have options for that, "
find ... ‑print0 | xargs -0 ...".)
There are POSIX (but non-obvious) solutions to both problems. An alternate form of
‑exec ends with a plus-sign, not a semi-colon. This form collects the filenames into groups or sets, and runs the command once per set. (This is exactly what
xargs does, to prevent argument lists from becoming too long for the system to handle.) In this form the
{} argument expands to the set of filenames. For example:
find / -name core -exec /bin/rm -f '{}' +
This command is equivalent to using
find with
xargs, only a bit shorter and more efficient. But this form of
‑exec can be combined with a shell feature to solve the other problem (names with spaces). The POSIX shell allows us to use:
sh -c 'command-line' [ command-name [ args... ] ]
(We don't usually care about the command-name, so "X", "dummy", "sh", or "'inline cmd'" is often used.) Here's an example of efficiently copying found files to
/tmp, in a POSIX-compliant way (Posted on comp.unix.shell netnews newsgroup on Oct. 28 2007 by Stephane CHAZELAS):
find . -name '*.txt' -type f \ -exec sh -c 'exec cp -f "$@" /tmp' X '{}' +
(Obvious, simple, and readable, isn't it? Perhaps not, but worth knowing since it is safe, portable, and efficient.)
Common "Gotcha":
If the given expression to
find does not contain any of the "action" primaries
-ok, or
find \( expression \) -print
The implied parenthesis can cause unexpected results. For example, consider these two similar commands:
$ find -name tmp -prune -o -name \*.txt ./bin/data/secret.txt ./tmp ./missingEOL.txt ./public_html/graphics/README.txt ./datafile2.txt ./datafile.txt
$ find -name tmp -prune -o -name \*.txt -print ./bin/data/secret.txt ./missingEOL.txt ./public_html/graphics/README.txt ./datafile2.txt ./datafile.txt
The lack of an action in the first command means it is equivalent to:
find . \( -name tmp -prune -o -name \*.txt \) -print
This causes
tmp to be included in the output. However for the second
find command the normal rules of Boolean operator precedence apply, so the pruned directory does not appear in the output.
A related issue is the precedence of the Boolean operators. OR has lower precedence than AND, and NOT has the highest precedence. When in any doubt, add parenthesis to your expressions.
find command can be amazingly useful. See the man page to learn all the criteria and actions you can use.
copy paste from http://content.hccfl.edu/


text:
Friday, 07 February 2014 04:36 PM
Smoke and mirrors? Russian state television aired footage Friday of five floating snowflakes turning into Olympic rings and bursting into pyrotechnics at the Sochi Games opening ceremony. Problem is, that didn't happen.
The opening ceremony at the Winter Games hit a bump when only four of the five rings materialized in a wintry opening scene. The five were supposed to join together and erupt in fireworks. But one snowflake never expanded, and the pyrotechnics never went off.
But everything worked fine for viewers of the Rossiya 1, the Russian host broadcaster.
As the fifth ring got stuck, Rossiya cut away to rehearsal footage. All five rings came together, and the fireworks exploded on cue.
Producers confirmed the switch, saying it was important to preserve the imagery of the Olympic symbols.
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text:
|Keshelle Kerr-Davis
for Creative Wealth Bahamas
Nassau, The Bahamas… With many in The Bahamas uncertain about the nation's fiscal state, Keshelle Kerr-Davis is focusing on providing today's youth with the tools needed to succeed in tomorrow's economy. Set for December 7 -8, 2014 at Mario's Bowling and Entertainment Center in New Providence, the Kids Only Christmas Sale is indeed topical as The Bahamas prepares to implement Value Added Tax (VAT).
Kerr-Davis is at the forefront in financial literacy in the Caribbean, especially as it pertains to youth. A keynote speaker and presenter for over a decade, her book 'Your Child Can Become Wealthy' went on to become a local bestseller as her Creative Wealth company expanded as the voice to explain money matters to youth. She also serves as they youngest ever appointed executive director of The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce's Chamber Institute.
"This is now my sixth year doing this and this time it's critical for kids and their parents to participate as the nation is implementing VAT," said Kerr-Davis. "Parents and kids need to know now more than ever about money and how it works. They also need to know that as young business owners, there may be things they will have to consider when it comes to these economic changes."
This year's event will boast over 50 booths featuring youth-owned businesses, a parent's corner, and a showing of the documentary 'Startup Kids'.
|Gabrielle Jordan Williams
"I am excited to have Gabrielle join us this session," said Kerr-Davis. "Sometimes, kids need to be motivated by seeing someone their own age or hearing it from someone not so much older than they are now. I am looking forward to what she will instill in the young people and at the same time what she will take away from her first visit as a presenter in The Bahamas."
For more information, please visit www.kidschristmassale.com


text:
Another image I took at sunrise on the weekend up in cottage country here in Ontario. The Sugar Maples are in full red in that area.
Lovely shot Allan, beautiful colours. Nice sky too. The composition works well for me.
Am I correct in saying that it's the Sugar Maples that produce Maple Syrup ?
Forum Rules


text:
My family has been in the process of becoming a foster family since April of 2011. We finally finished our last home study last weekend and now all we're waiting on is our paperwork to be signed for the official license to be drawn up. I can hardly believe that our journey is really getting ready to begin. It feels as though we've been talking about it, preparing for it, reading about it and going to classes for it forever. Now, all of sudden, it's becoming reality! We are so excited to expand our family in this way and it could happen at anytime now!
Believe it or not, becoming a foster parent was my husbands idea. He told me that a friend of his in High School was a foster kid and his foster parents were really nice. That stuck with him all of these years. When my husband first asked me about becoming foster parents, I was NOT interested. He explained that he really wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids in our community. He went on to tell me about his friend in school and how his friend's parents had made a difference in that young man's life. My husband is a man of very few words...so that fact that he came out with all of these thoughts and feelings was a kin to the parting of the Red Sea--MIRACULOUS! LOL!
I really had to pray hard about this foster care thing, because up to this point I was NOT interested! I had always wanted to adopt. Growing up, my Mom's best friend adopted a beautiful Korean baby girl. I remember my Mom's friend having a room ready for a new baby way before her adopted daughter ever arrived in the U.S. As a child, I thought it was so neat that if you wanted a child badly enough that you could bring one home, from another country, that may need good parents and love them like your own. That has stuck with me for a long time.
Last year I met an incredible couple who had adopted this adorable blond haired, blue eyed boy. He is so darn cute! After getting to know them more I found out that he was originally a foster child that they adopted through the foster care system. (Can any of you hear the bells and whistles going off in my head??) My friend told me all about their family's journey into foster care and how much it had blessed their family. She was able to get me in touch with the right people and a year later here we are!
She is still and will continue to be one of the greatest resources I will have. When the Department of Social Services calls us in the middle of the night to place a child with us, she will be the 1st person we call or text. If we're not sure how to handle a particular situation, you know who we'll be calling. =) My husband and I are so thankful for them and their family for their support!
Maybe next time I write to you I'll have a little person playing at my feet or a baby sleeping in the next room. You never know. What I DO know, is that God has great plans for my family in 2012! Hopefully we'll be growing our family by a person or two---or three for that matter.
My prayer is: God, use our family to strengthen and uphold other families who are hurting. Please give us the compassion and patience it takes to "bring up a child in the way he should go". May we lean on you,Lord, each day for our every need and not forget that EVERYONE is valuable to You---even if our society may not think so. Amen
We're looking forward to 2012. Are you? I'd love to hear what you think might happen for you this year. God bless each of you.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Christmas and the spirit of giving
I have noticed in the past few years that I start getting excited for Christmas very early--like September! When the pools start closing and the wind starts to pick up I start thinking of Christmas. What I get excited for most is giving special gift to those I love and hoping they love the gift as much as I loved picking it out for them. Now, being a family with "just enough" money to go around, these gifts are not big or numerous, but somehow they always seem to be perfect.
The last 2 years I have secretly wanted to spend most if not all of our Christmas gift budget on giving to those who really need it. Last year I looked into a few homeless shelters in the area to give to. I didn't follow through, time caught up with me and the money was spent on presents...excuses, I know. I just didn't do it. This year I really feel like I have to give in some way.
It's funny how the Lord can impress things on your heart. Here are few ways that He has flooded my mind with the desire to give:
As much as I write this to inspire others to look beyond their own family and into those hurting around them, I also write this as a declaration to myself. I will no longer sit by the side with my eyes closed to the truth. I will get out there and give what I can and help where I am able.
James 1:27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
Proverbs 22:2 The rich and poor have this in common: The LORD made them both.
Please take a moment to visit the links I've included. If you have the ability to give to one of these organizations, I encourage you to do it. Samaritan's Purse is a great place to start as they have several less costly ways to give. You've got to start somewhere, right?! God bless you as you leave this blog. I pray that you will be compassionate to this cause and that you will find away to give or spread the word. Choose to not turn your back on them anymore.
The last 2 years I have secretly wanted to spend most if not all of our Christmas gift budget on giving to those who really need it. Last year I looked into a few homeless shelters in the area to give to. I didn't follow through, time caught up with me and the money was spent on presents...excuses, I know. I just didn't do it. This year I really feel like I have to give in some way.
It's funny how the Lord can impress things on your heart. Here are few ways that He has flooded my mind with the desire to give:
- Two weeks ago I got a gift catalog from Samaritan's Purse, an organization that help the poor and give them the care and hope to help rebuild their lives. They provide emergency medical care, build schools and churches, provide food and the means to sustain their own gardens and live stock. They give hope to families all over the world who need help.
- The next thing that had me thinking was a news report from abc's 20/20. It was about Native American children living at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It showed these families living in mobile homes with patched floors, ceilings that could crash in at any moment and more than 2 or 3 to a bed. One woman had 19 people living in her home. 80-90% of the adults living on this reservation are addicted to alcohol and reports were showing that the children were experimenting with alcohol as early as 5 years old. The documentary showed several little children crying over their parents being drunk. The school explained how many of these children come to school on Monday's not having eaten anything over the weekend.
- The last and most recent thing that I came across was a book study my Life Group started by Max Lucado called, "Out Live Your Life". This was taken right from his website: "1.75 billion people are desperately poor, natural disasters are gouging entire nations, and economic uncertainty still reigns across the globe. But you and I have been given an opportunity to make a big difference." Go to the link and check out the video--it's so moving.
As much as I write this to inspire others to look beyond their own family and into those hurting around them, I also write this as a declaration to myself. I will no longer sit by the side with my eyes closed to the truth. I will get out there and give what I can and help where I am able.
James 1:27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
Proverbs 22:2 The rich and poor have this in common: The LORD made them both.
Please take a moment to visit the links I've included. If you have the ability to give to one of these organizations, I encourage you to do it. Samaritan's Purse is a great place to start as they have several less costly ways to give. You've got to start somewhere, right?! God bless you as you leave this blog. I pray that you will be compassionate to this cause and that you will find away to give or spread the word. Choose to not turn your back on them anymore.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Summertime wrap up
This summer has gone by so fast. Here we are, already wearing hoodies and jeans. I do love autumn, but I'd like to share a few things we did this summer.
We did not go on a family vacation this summer, since my husband doesn't get his 1st week vacation until December. We actually didn't go to the beach either. We did start the summer off with a little weekend trip with friends. We went to their mountain cabin in PA. It was so beautiful. The cabin was set at the base of a mountain. They had their own access trail up the mountain with four wheeling trails all over the place. Even though we went in June, it was still cool up in the mountains. We had campfires every night. In all there were 4 couples that went our all of our kids too. In total we had 13 people there and we had so much fun!! Here are some pictures of our trip.
|All the girls decided to take a group ride together. From left to right: Me, Tina, my sil Lauren and our host Christy with her 2 boys-in front is Henry and behind is Ellis.
|My husband, Lonnie, and my son, Vaden, were getting ready for a little trail riding.
|My son was having so much fun pretending to drive the four wheelers.
|This was the view from the road in front of the cabin.
|Later, we took a ride out some of the back road around the mountain. Locals call this the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon.
|This is my lovely little family. <3
I decided after we got home from this little weekend trip that I was going to tackle potty training! :p Vaden is tall and solid, and I'm short and weak. He was getting too big for me to pick up for the changing table and frankly I was tired of buying, changing and throwing away diapers. He took to it like a champ! The first few times we went out during the day, I brought his potty and put in the back of the car. I was so afraid that he would wet himself. (By the way, he hasn't had an accident in the car or anywhere else for that matter--strange, but awesome) Check out this blackmail pic!
|LOL!!! Hey, it worked!
After he was potty trained through the day we took down his crib and got him a big boy bed. Nothing like changing everything for my poor kid all in one summer!
We spent a lot of time playing outside and swimming at my parents home in their cheap blow up pool. Honestly, when it's 100 + degrees in the summer I don't care how big the pool is, as long as it's wet! It could've been a tea up with coolish water and I would jump in!! My son learned to swim last year, but of course he had on several layers of flotation devices. This year he did really well with just swimmies! I am so proud of him. For a 2 year old, I think he swims well. It's really a shame that I didn't get any pictures of him swimming later in the season with only swimmies on. I tried to upload a short video that I had taken of Vaden jumping into the pool and swimming, but it didn't work so well. So I guess you'll have to use your imagination. :(
My Dad got us tickets to an Orioles game. I hadn't been to a game in YEARS--probably since Lonnie and I were dating. We really had fun taking Vaden to his first game. He enjoyed--but I think the best thing for him was using the urinals in the men's bathroom. That boy went at least once an inning. That's what I get for potty training! :)
My parents have a garden every summer and I of course go over and steal their produce. This year they had so many tomatoes that they were selling them at the end of their driveway. I picked so many tomatoes this summer that my hands actually got blistery spots on them from the acid! I canned several batches of marinara sauce and roasted tomato/vegetable puree and also just plain tomatoes. I ran out of jars and started freezing them. They were coming out of my ears! But this fall when I make pasta and we have that fresh tomato sauce, all of those hours on my aching feet hunched over the sink peeling tomatoes will have been worth it.
|These are several of the ingredients that I roast in the oven for my roasted veggie puree.
I use the puree for pasta, soup starters and for liquid in a pot roast done in the crock pot.
Well to round out the summer we had a visitor--IRENE. Hurricane Irene. My parents had a "if you're afraid to be home during the hurricane, come stay at our house" party. =) So my husband and I packed up our little family and went to my parents house to wait out the storm. It was nice because they had a generator in case the power went off, which it didn't. Our house was without power for 2 days. It was kind of strange being back in my old bedroom with my HUSBAND and SON. It made me think back to all of those times I would dream about who I would marry and how many kids I would have... I'm just saying it was a little weird--but nice too. We weren't the only ones hold up at their house. My brother and his wife and 3 kids were there and my grandmother came too. I'm telling you, we had a party. We waited all day for this storm to come and the sky was barely cloudy for the longest time. The kids had been couped up in the house all day. So when it was only drizzling a little bit, we let them go out and play in the rain. Vaden wouldn't go out in the rain without shoes and a rain coat. The other kids hit the door running-no shoes-no jackets. Kids are funny. Here are a few shots of the puddle jumpers.
|I had them racing in the rain to burn off some of that energy!
|Sophie was digging up mud with her toes--you should have seen her legs when she was done. GROSS!
|There was one big puddle that the kids kept jumping in. Vaden finally got it all to himself.
|They deserved a bubble bath after all of that running around in the rain. Cutie patooties!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Are you having a Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver day?
I never really watched the Brady Bunch or Leave it to Beaver, but their story lines have been talked about so much that the romance in these shows is not lost on me. Ever since I was a little girl I dreamt of being a wife and mother. I would dream of how my husband would be very handsome and I would have perfect children and my home would always be clean. I would wear an apron all day long to keep my 50's style, waist hugging, knee length dress clean for my hardworking husband to see when he came home. I would make it seem effortless to keep house, raise a respectful brood and have home cooked ~ from scratch~ meals ready for my husband as soon as he came home.
Some days, in my real life, I feel like my little family could be the Cleaver's or Brady's. Sometimes I feel like I've got my life under control. To me, that means: I've made time to spend with the Lord, my house is clean-or at least picked up, I've made a nutritious dinner, I've had plenty of time to enjoy my son-playing with him and showing him new things, I've got a plate of food in the oven waiting for my husband to eat once he gets home, my projects are caught up on and my laundry is mostly clean and put away. I love it when I can sit down at the end of the day and put my feet up knowing that when my husband walks in the door, he'll be impressed with what I've done.
I remember when my grandmother had her last stroke (she had several!). It affected her ability to swallow and talk. She loved to do both, so this was a HUGE struggle for her. She lived in Florida and I was/am living in Maryland. Hearing of her hospitalization, some of my family and I drove straight through the night to get down there to see her. It was so sad to see her and not be able to talk to her. She had a notepad on her table that she would write in to communicate with us. Not long after we got there, she decided that she didn't want to have a feeding tube put in. So, she chose to "go home". The hospital arranged for hospice to come and set up camp at her home. All of the family that traveled down to see her had been sleeping wherever we could find a spot at her house. When my grandmother found out that we were staying at her house, she immediately located her note pad and penned a little not to my grandfather. It said, "Is my house clean?". I knew what she meant. She meant, I can't stand a messy house. How can I possibly go home and be relaxed if my house is a mess? Honestly, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't be able to go home to die knowing that my house was dirty…it's just something in me.
That was an awfully sad story to tell, just to make the point that I come by this craziness genetically. I struggle with this a lot. Perfection is just an illusion.
Today, though, my house was a mess and I didn't make a home cooked meal-I nuked leftovers, and to top it all off, I had a Cleaver/Brady day! How could this be? I think it has something to do with the look that my son gives me when I ask him if he wants to go outside and ride his bike. I love the way his hair gets matted to his sweaty forehead because he's playing hard. I love the little mischievous smile he gets when he climbs UP the slide, knowing he's not supposed to. I absolutely tear up when we're outside blowing bubbles in the wind and I hear him giggle with the joy of figuring out how to blow just right to get the maximum amount of 'bubblage'. My heart soars when he runs ahead of me and turns back to say, "Chase Mommy", clearly egging me on to chase him down. Smelling the outdoors on his soft skin and in his hair as he lays his head on my chest for a hug makes me so happy. It makes me realize that there are something's more important in life than home cooked meals and clean floors.
Today, it didn't matter if my world wasn't under control; if it wasn't viewed with the perfection lens. The only thing that mattered was the happiness and joy of my little boy.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Will you trust Him with your treasure?
A talented writer at my church, Kim Weidner, wrote this essay. I thought it was beautifully written, so of course I had to ask if I could share it on my blog. With the Pure Freedom Tour coming to our church in just a few weeks, my heart has been examining itself and focusing on my own purity. I read her essay on Sunday and realized time doesn't erase what has been done, God does. I guess I always thought that once I was married that my "mishaps" would go away, but true sexual healing doesn't come with a ring, it comes from our forgiving Heavenly Father. I'm sure this essay will challenge you to self-examine as well. Enjoy this special essay from my dear friend.
A few words from Kim Weidner:
At a Baltimore art museum last week I examined (with my eyes only!) the delicate creations of Cartier, Lalique and Faberge (including two of the famous eggs). These bejeweled treasures of almost inconceivable fragility have survived for a century, moved with the most extreme care from collection to collection, gallery to gallery, continuing to bring pleasure and amazement to their viewers.
Also last week I examined with the eyes of an open heart Dannah Gresh's book What are you waiting for?, which explores very candidly the precious treasure of our sexuality, a gift created by God to be enjoyed within the context of marriage. This treasure was designed to reveal to us the glorious harmony of the godhead and the union of Christ to his bride, the Church. Gresh traces a very surprising Hebrew word through Scripture to show God's intention for us to be known intimately and respected through marital sex. Desiring to reach girls age 12-18 with her message about purity, true beauty and modesty, Gresh has created the Pure Freedom Tour, which GBC is excited to host on May 14. Moving beyond the themes of her tour, and targeting a somewhat older age group, Gresh's book does not pull any punches when it comes to addressing a variety of "uncomfortable" sex topics. I believe any parent of preteens/teens would benefit from reading it, as well as those who minister to our youth. It is an honest, straightforward appeal to girls about to make crucial sexual choices, as well as to those who have already made sexual choices with painful results. To the former, Gresh shows God's point of view compellingly; she urges the latter to seek with assurance the healing God will bring through honest confession and prayer.
We live in a culture whose messages about sexuality are in no way trustworthy. These messages need to be actively addressed and challenged in the home, as I believe they are in many of our GBC families. God's view of sexuality, the "big picture," not just the list of "dont's," should also be taught in both the home and church settings. I have taught middle school aged girls at GBC for many years, and find it interesting how squirmy and giggly they become when I mention god's ultimate intention for our sexuality in connection with some "spiritual topic" like the Trinity or communion or heaven. As if sex cropped up while god wasn't looking! Generation after generation treats this precious and beautiful gift of God as something indecent! So much is at stake when we fail to educate our children about the biblical picture of sacred sex. Remember, parents, we are helping to move our fragile, bejeweled treasures to sexually whole adulthood, toward fulfilling, Christ-centered marriages or vibrant, unencumbered singleness.
I wonder how many people reading this could honestly state that their lives are free from sexual brokenness. Yes? Praise God! Or have you, like me, been hurt by sexual experiences that fell short of God's beautiful and sacred purposes? I believe that the pursuit of healing sexual brokenness through confession and prayer is a necessary, if difficult, step toward strengthening and restoring marriages and becoming effective, Godly guides for our teen children. It is Jesus' redemption, not merely time, that heals all wounds. I am compelled to testify, with a deeply grateful heart, that the healing touch of our loving, forgiving Savior is more than just well-concealed superglue on the broken treasure of our sexuality; it brings true restoration and renewal. Will you trust Him with your treasure?
Thursday, April 21, 2011
3 things I've learned...
So, normally I write about things that God is doing in my life, however recently the things that have been going on in my world aren't things that I could share on a public blog. God has, however, been at work, and I wanted to share a little bit.
The last few weeks have been brutal for me and my family. We have endured several
hardships heartbreaks and have come through to the other side. I haven't written about them because they are quite private and honestly, they really aren't our stories to tell. But that aside, I have learned a few things through the whole ordeal that I believe are true for each of us when we are going through a tough time.
1. God is always faithful. He is consistently there. He listens to me cry out to him when I am broken hearted and when I finish spilling my emotions He reaches down and puts salve on my heart, he binds up my wound and refreshes my spirit. He is faithful.
3. God loves to show off his glory. At the end of a particularly trying time, I like to look back over the situation with a fresh perspective and just look at how the hand of God has moved. Sometimes really bad things happen in our lives. Someone close to us dies, or there is an accident, maybe a divorce or separation happens or an unexpected fight that leaves friendships severed....life happens to each of us. What makes it all worth going through is seeing God glorified through the circumstance. A death of someone close may make a friend of the deceased look at their own spirituality and send them searching for God's grace and love. An accident could leave the victim in the hospital with nothing else to do but "look up"---sometimes that all God really wants from us--look up and see his Glory.
The last few weeks have been brutal for me and my family. We have endured several
1. God is always faithful. He is consistently there. He listens to me cry out to him when I am broken hearted and when I finish spilling my emotions He reaches down and puts salve on my heart, he binds up my wound and refreshes my spirit. He is faithful.
Psalm 36:5 Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.
Lamentations 3: 22,23 The faithful love of the Lord never ends!His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.2. God cares that I'm hurting. I am a child of the King. He is my Abba Father--my heavenly Daddy. What parent doesn't care about their child when they are hurting? I feel sad when my son skins his knees, even if he isn't fazed by them, so how much more does our Father care about us when we have bruised hearts and spirits?! He cares when we are sad and hurt.
1 Peter 5:7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him...
3. God loves to show off his glory. At the end of a particularly trying time, I like to look back over the situation with a fresh perspective and just look at how the hand of God has moved. Sometimes really bad things happen in our lives. Someone close to us dies, or there is an accident, maybe a divorce or separation happens or an unexpected fight that leaves friendships severed....life happens to each of us. What makes it all worth going through is seeing God glorified through the circumstance. A death of someone close may make a friend of the deceased look at their own spirituality and send them searching for God's grace and love. An accident could leave the victim in the hospital with nothing else to do but "look up"---sometimes that all God really wants from us--look up and see his Glory.
Romans 9:22-24 In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.
He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom
he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory. And we are among those
whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
Ezekiel 43:2 Suddenly, the glory of the God of Israel appeared from the east.
The sound of his coming was like the roar of rushing waters,
and the whole landscape shone with his glory.
My hope is that you see the humanity in our God--that he isn't as stoic and cold as some may believe he is. He is warm, loving, kind and gentle. He isn't always those things, but then, neither are we. I have appreciated his comfort the last few weeks. I have reveled in his warm embrace and was able to relax when things got really tough, knowing that He was in control of it all and would see us through again. To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Shades of gray
I know it's been awhile since I've written. Honestly, several times since my last post I have thought about my life and what God was doing, and I realized that there wasn't any 'inspiration' per say but some conviction happening. I didn't realize just how much conviction I had been feeling until this passed weekend while I was at the annual GBC Ladies Retreat.
Our speaker was Tammy from Calling Levi. One day she spoke on gray areas in our life and how God's word and His truth are black and white with no room for gray. I seriously started feeling the Holy Spirit convicting me of the gray areas I had in my life. One of the bigger things, I have realized is, contributing to these gray areas is the media I allow myself to take in especially TV.
Our speaker was Tammy from Calling Levi. One day she spoke on gray areas in our life and how God's word and His truth are black and white with no room for gray. I seriously started feeling the Holy Spirit convicting me of the gray areas I had in my life. One of the bigger things, I have realized is, contributing to these gray areas is the media I allow myself to take in especially TV.
***Now-my purpose of writing this is not to condemn other people's behavior, or to tell you not watch television. This is just what God is doing in my life-and the back story that needs told to understand how I got to that place of needing conviction.***
Anyway... I started thinking about some areas in my life where I have gray areas. One of them was my need to justify homosexuality. One of my favorite shows is Glee, and I was really excited for Kurt to finally get his first real kiss...but then in my mind I'm thinking, the Lord tells me that homosexuality is a sin
(1 Corinthians 6 :9-11, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, 1 Timothy 1:8-11). Please understand that, like any sin, it is only wrong if the sin hasn't been confessed and repented of.
So I've written all of this to say, that it truly is a slow fade from black and white to gray. You don't normally wake up one day and decide to change the way you believe. No. It happens over months and years. It gets introduced into our lives slowly then we start to become familiar with it, then before you know it, you've embraced it and then the sin takes root in your life.
Interestingly enough the point that Tammy was trying to make, during her talk at the Ladies Retreat, was that Satan doesn't take a break from his work. He is continuously trying to throw us off of the path of truth. He works day and night to try to sway us from it. Satan is really good at his job--he's had hundreds of year of practice. There is only one truth, and that truth is Jesus Christ!
1 Peter 5:8 & 9 says, "Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are."
So I'm planning on limiting my access to TV and I will be making better choices when I do get to watch it. I'm also challenging myself to read more than just fictional books. So if you think about me, be praying that God would show me the hole that I have in my life that I am filling with mindless TV shows. There must be something that I get from them that I should be getting from God. Watch out for your gray areas! =D
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Lando Kal to Drop New 12" via Hotflush
It would appear that Berlin-based producer Antaeus Roy (a.k.a. Lando Kal, one half of Lazer Sword) has been quite busy these past few months. In addition to preparing his outfit's forthcoming second album and getting ready to drop live knowledge at SXSW tomorrow night, he's also releasing a new single via the illustrious Hotflush label next month. "Rhythm Sektion" b/w "Inquisition" is said to contain "kinetic percussion" along with "multi-layered paranoid rhythms," and will be released on April 9. You can check out the record's label art before then, below.


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Rescuers search for 500 people missing after flash floods in Indian Kashmir; 132 dead
SRINAGAR, India – SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Rescuers dug through crushed homes and piles of mud Sunday searching for 500 people still missing after flash floods sent massive mudslides down remote desert mountainsides in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said. The death toll rose to 132 with about 500 others injured.
The dead included at least five foreign tourists whose nationalities were not immediately known.
Bhim Sen Tuti, the region's police chief, said "Their bodies are lying on a trekking route outside Leh town, and efforts are on to retrieve the bodies."
Authorities until Saturday maintained that no foreign tourists were among the dead or injured.
About 2,000 foreign tourists were in Ladakh, a popular destination for adventure sports enthusiasts, when the storm hit Friday, burying homes and toppling power and telecommunication towers.
Authorities were arranging special flights to fly the tourists to New Delhi from Leh on Sunday.
Tuti also said at least 500 Indians were missing. "There may be more people missing because of the vastness of the area."
Thousands of army, police and paramilitary soldiers were clearing roads to reach isolated villages in the Ladakh region cut off by Friday's powerful thunderstorms, state police Chief Kuldeep Khoda said.
The injured were being treated at an army hospital and several makeshift clinics in and around Leh, the worst-hit town, Khoda said.
Officials said the missing people included 28 army soldiers.
Rescuers still had not reached about 5,000 people in Choglamsar, a village on Leh's outskirts, because of mudslides blocking the road, police officer Nawang Tsering said.
Mohammed Deen Khan, a social activist who tried to reach the village on Saturday, said the mud was about 15 feet (4.5 meters) high in some places. He said authorities were facing a shortage of bulldozers and heavy earth movers.
About 100 stranded foreign tourists, mostly Europeans, were evacuated from Pang village northeast of Leh, army spokesman Lt. Col. J.S. Brar said in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.
August is peak tourist season in Ladakh, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of Srinagar. It is a high-altitude desert with a stark moonscape-like terrain, and normally received very little rain.
The deluge came as neighboring Pakistan suffered its worst flooding in decades, with millions displaced and about 1,500 dead.


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Last week, voting for the 2014 KCRA 3 A-List came to an end. Up to the minute the polls closed, voters were busy supporting their favorite local businesses and brands. In all, voters cast a whopping 275,000+ votes for more than 8,900 nominees across 171 categories. Thanks!
Follow @SacAList Tweet #SacAList
Over the course of this week, the KCRA 3 A-List team has been busy sorting through the votes to determine the winners. We're pleased to announce that the 2014 winners will be announced section-by-section starting Monday, May 12th with three categories. Below is the complete schedule:
As winners are added throughout the week, you will find the most up to date list on the Winners Page.
Thanks again to all nominees and voters. We hope you join us in celebrating the winners of the 2014 KCRA 3 A-List throughout the year!
Published in: winners


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- tresextioAsked on November 19, 2013 at 07:39 AM
When inserting a file upload field, I cannot find where to translate the words "Browse..." on the button and "No file selected." next to it. Is this possible or not?
- JotForm DevelopercerenAnswered on November 19, 2013 at 08:53 AM
Hi tresextio,
"Browse" and "No file selected" texts changes automatically according to user's browser language setting. You don't need to translate them.
Thanks for contacting us.
Have a good day.


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Northwestern Holds 12th Annual Summer Writers' Conference
Workshops and panels will be tailored to writers of all genres
- Summer Writers' Conference scheduled for July 28-30 on Chicago campus
- Acclaimed author Nnedi Okorafor and English professor Juan Martinez to give keynote addresses
- Workshops will cater to all genres, backgrounds and experience levels
CHICAGO, Ill. --- Northwestern University beckons writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry to gather for three days of writing workshops at Writing Chicago: the Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference.
The conference will take place July 28 to 30 on the Chicago campus in Wieboldt Hall, 339 E. Chicago Ave. The early registration period is through June 30. Eligible Northwestern employees can apply for 100 percent tuition reimbursement.
This year's conference includes keynote presentations by acclaimed novelist Nnedi Okorafor on Thursday, July 28, and fiction writer Juan Martinez on Friday, July 29. Both speakers will read from their own work and converse about the process of writing and publishing.
Okorafor is the author of "Lagoon," "Who Fears Death" and "Zahrah the Windseeker."
Martinez, assistant professor of English at Northwestern, has published short stories in numerous journals. "Best Worst American" his collection of short stories, will be published in 2017.
On Saturday, July 30, the conference will feature live lit performances from Story Club. Storytellers will share true tales told live -- no notes, no net.
"As the only writers' conference of its kind in the Chicago region, this program is designed to attract a diverse audience, and to help students gain inspiration and build confidence, along with opportunities to network with other writers," said Stephanie Teterycz, director of Summer Session and Special Programs at Northwestern.
Workshop and panel topics include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, young adult and publishing. Events will be tailored to writers of all genres, backgrounds and levels of experience. The conference also welcomes anyone seeking a fuller understanding of the craft of writing.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn about a variety of topics from the dynamic use of setting to connecting with characters. There also will be manuscript consultations with workshop leaders.
Tuition for Writing Chicago: the Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference will be $675 for three days, $475 for two days and $250 for one day. Reduced tuition is available for students. Beginning July 1, people can register for $750 for three days, $525 for two days or $275 for one day.
For more information about the conference or to register online, visit www.sps.northwestern.edu/summerwriters, email firstname.lastname@example.com or call 847-491-3458.


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Team Sky's management at the Ruta del Sol say they are confident Chris Froome will be able to handle the high-pressure situation surrounding his first race of the 2018 season and fight for the win in the five-day event.
The Ruta del Sol is Froome's first race since news broke in December of his adverse analytical finding for salbutamol during the 2017 Vuelta a España. Sky's sports director Brett Lancaster recognised that the situation was an unusual one, but was succinct when asked by Cyclingnews if he thought that Froome would be able to handle it: "He's Chris, you know, and Chris will do that."
Having observed team leaders of all kinds and how they handle their duties during his career, Lancaster is confident that Froome will be able to perform on the road during the Ruta del Sol, despite the attention surrounding his presence in the race.
"He's good at doing that. As you know, in the Tour he's copped a little crap there from the public or whatever, but Chris just gets on with the job. He's unbelievable at doing that," Lancaster said.
"It's a whole 'nother thing, that mental side of things. But Chris will just crack on with it, as much as he can, and we'll go into this race and we'll treat it like any other race."
Froome returned an adverse analytical finding for salbutamol in the final week of last year's Vuelta, but as salbutamol is a specified substance, he remains free to race until the case has been resolved. Last month, Froome denied reports in the Italian press that he was considering a plea bargain in return for a reduced ban, and last week confirmed that he would start his 2018 season at the Ruta del Sol.
- Chris Froome returns adverse analytical finding for salbutamol
- Chris Froome: I haven't broken any rules
- Chris Froome to make season debut at Ruta del Sol
- Director of Ruta del Sol welcomes Chris Froome
- Opinion: Chris Froome should withdraw himself from racing
- Brailsford: At this moment we totally back Chris Froome
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com


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Manti in Sanpete County, Utah — The American Mountains (Southwest)
Big Fort
Erected 1854
—by Mormon Pioneers —
Location: 9 blocks in center of city
Marker Location
Construction: Rock, adobe, and
mud-filled wood frame
Walls: 12' high, 3' wide at base,
2' wide at top
Protection of settlers livestock
From Indian menace
Walker Indian War 1853-54
Jezerael Shoemaker, Mayor
In 1866 the Tabernacle Fort was constructed around this block.
Location. 39° 15.899′ N, 111° 38.233′ W. Marker is in Manti, Utah, in Sanpete County. Marker is on South Main Street south of Union Street, on the right when traveling south. Touch for map. Marker is on the lawn of the Manti Carnegie Library. Marker is in this post office area: Manti UT 84642, United States of America.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Manti Carnegie Library (a few steps from this marker); Cox-Shoemaker-Parry House (about 600 feet away, measured in a direct line); The First Presbyterian Church of Manti (about 800 feet away); Manti City Hall (approx. 0.2 miles away); Log Fort (approx. ¼ mile away); John Patten House Pioneer Memorial Cabin (approx. 0.4 miles away); L.R. & Clara Anderson House (approx. half a mile away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Manti.
Categories. • Forts, Castles •
Credits. This page was last revised on June 16, 2016. This page originally submitted on June 30, 2014, by Bill Kirchner of Tucson, Arizona. This page has been viewed 260 times since then. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on June 30, 2014, by Bill Kirchner of Tucson, Arizona. • Syd Whittle was the editor who published this page.