Happy Mother's Day

happy mother's day to my awesome mom!

she came out to help us move into our house.
she did much in many rooms.
here's a small sample below.
she sends me books.
she read books i send her.
there's so much she does and has done (and i am sure will do) for me.

thanks be to God for my mom!

the upstairs bedroom came out really cool. (particularly considering it started with lavender & butterflies.) mom started it all by saying we should paint an accent wall that matched the lampshade so we got some samples from lowe's and picked the color. then we got the curtains at ikea and they go just awesome with the bedspread and sheets i already had. i called mom at least three times for advice on how to finish up with the curtains since i had to hem them. definition for mom: someone who you can call with a question that sounds stupid but you really don't know the answer to and she doesn't make you feel stupid for asking. i ended up folding over 12 cm of material (according to the packaging the material shrinks 4% in the wash so i left some room for them to shrink when i do get around to washing them). i decided to just leave all 12 cm there instead of cutting any off. i think it came out okay. below here is a weird panoramic view of the room. the photo stitching software chopped the bed in half and stretched the door... but it still gives a pretty good sense for the room.






mom also helped decide where some pictures should go and we hung a few. the next best room that mom helped with is the front (is that the living room or the family room i think it is living room....) great room. i would have never thought of putting my bolder boulder poster down here but it works really well with the flower picture that keith took. i also really like the rug that my mom made which you can see of the left side of the picture on the right. she helped put books in the bookcase maximizing interest and space (although there is some blank space now it will fill one i find the box with the bibles). she originally had another picture hanging above the couch by the same artist but keith and i both really liked it in our bedroom (it has lots of details that are good for looking at when going to sleep) so that one ended up there and it isn't as good as the other one but it isn't too bad. the tables are purposefully not exactly lined up and my mom and i both like it that way. keith is stuck with us and our quirky ways =).

finally the downstairs bedroom that we kicked mom out of while she was here (so we could paint it) is finished too. the chocolate wall is really awesome. i think i'll try to get a different bedspread for down here (return the one that is here to our bedroom where i like it). maybe a chocolate and light blue star quilt. but the dark wall goes well with the nightstand and lamp in this room as well. so weirdly both rooms have accent walls to match lamps. but it worked out really well and both rooms look great.
keith is finishing the upstairs edging in the room with no bed and all boxes as i write this. so mom, don't worry we are making progress even after you left =). but it is a really good thing you came or we wouldn't have started and finished so many things!!!

now just to finish stuffing all of last year's finances into a box and get started organizing this year's stuff. you'll note my desk is overloaded with papers. though mom did put a picture and the vase in my area to spruce it up a little bit. as an aside to this post... quicken is lame-o. they stopped letting banks allow the download into the version i have trying to force me to upgrade. well ha on them because i am going to go open source... even though that will take me some time to learn the new program and get my data all in the right categories at least it will be free and better!

Chicken or the Egg Type Question

i read a reasonably interesting article from msn about how the economy for men is definitely down while for women it isn't as clear. basically women are more employed than men because they are in sectors that aren't as hard hit by the downturn. however women are in jobs that pay less than men.

so here's my question: do women work in jobs that pay less because (a) the jobs occupied predominately by women (who don't demand raises and still have a stigma of not being the breadwinners so don't need the salary) or (b) the jobs are low paying to begin with and men just don't want to work those jobs?

it is certainly more complicated than a simple question but what i am really trying to get at is maybe women still have some personal building to do in demanding raises or does more work need to be done in raising the pay rate of jobs across the board so that all jobs are worked by men & women because they all pay at appropriate rates.... that kinda rambled and didn't quite make sense... but no time to fix.

Go Metric

i heard on NPR that we are the only big country to not officially adopt metric. our non-standard friends are liberia and burma (or myanmar). needless to say we just aren't standard with the rest of the world. i didn't catch the whole npr story as i was listening while trying to write my synthetic scheme for tomorrow's work in lab. but basically i think the idea was we need to catch up with the rest of the world or it will leave us behind even if we are big. the rest of the world is still bigger. so anyways here's a link with some interesting information on how other countries made the switch to metric.

I Kept Looking for the Mistake

i get e-mail from spectrum magazine and i read the blurb for a story and i read it like three time because i couldn't believe it. here's the blurb followed by a link to the spectrum blog post.

Adventist Political Hopeful Speaks to Neo-Nazi Group

Tony Zirkle, a South Bend, Indiana, lawyer and Republican primary candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, District 2. On Sunday, he spoke to a Chicago group celebrating the birthday of Hitler. Recently, Zirkle, an Andrews University Theological Seminary student, raised the idea of segregating races in separate states. In 2006, he received 30 percent of the GOP primary vote in Indiana's 2nd District.

What's that book that he recommends in the video?

here's a link to the blog with video

If I had a million dollars.....

i would buy a multifunction solid ink xerox 8560 MFP/D

Local vs. Global

there is some emphasis in some places to buy locally from local businesses. and that makes a lot of sense in some cases. here's two instances of local business and than one case of a global business that i have encountered in the past week that show the positive sides of both.

today i went to the credit union to get a cashier's check. it was very quick, very easy with a low fee. now when i have gone to bank of america in the past it was a long ordeal to get the cashiers check and while i don't think there was a fee the interest rates on the savings account certainly make up for that. the credit union has okay rates, but the service is without parallel and they know who i am even though i don't go there very often.

the post office here where i have my po box i consider to be a local business though some would argue it isn't. but i think a great deal of the money spent ends up going toward people's salaries which are local people mostly. i could be wrong on this and should probably do research to back up that opinion... but they remembered that i wanted the american scientist stamps that just came out since i asked about them and so one of the employees saw me come in to check my po box and came to tell me the stamps were in. that's really good service.

finally an instance of where a global business is good for local people. i was at starbucks spending some gift card money (occasionally a student will give me a gift card to starbucks at christmas, don't worry it doesn't affect my grading). while i was waiting for my coffee a lady behind me recognized a friend behind the counter and the conversation included the barista saying, 'working here and getting health insurance.' yes in general i would say spending $2 on coffee (or more) is a waste of money but having an employer in the community that has health insurance is probably worth that price. so even though i don't often get coffee there i do feel better in that indulgence than buying something from wal-mart.

PO Box part II

another advantage to having to walk to a po box is sunshine. apparently us desk sloths don't get sunshine to manufacture our own vitamin D and thus are deficient. and this leads to all kinds of weird problems. so a few minutes in the sun (without sunscreen) would do us all good.