Calm Water

As I walked my walk route yesterday, I felt a little guilty as I looked at the calm water just below me, knowing that there were many along the east coast being battered by angy seas.
Years ago, when our youngest was just a baby, we lived on the spot where the new house sits,just past the flagpole. It's gone now, but I see the old house next door is still there, along with the old Skansie dock. It's nice to see the dock still being used, though not for the building of nets.

Taku

My daughter in law's mom and dad watched their "ride" pass their home in Petersburg  this morning. They had reservations to leave for Bellingham today on the Taku, but as you can see, she's under tow though  they are still  hoping to get away today.
The last time she sent a picture of any thing other than a fishing boat was  when the Hanseatic passed by, on her way to transit the Northwest Passage, which she did and is now off the African coast in wonderful balmy weather.

Trick or treat

Jacob stopped by today in his halloween costume. He had a cool cowboy hat, a neck scarf, and cool cowboy boots. His mama decided to be practical and buy the real thing. He can wear his boots all through the winter and his hat will be great for keeping off the rain and who knows..if he goes back to visit his aunty in Colorado, he'll fit right in.

Tea time

Ing and I had tea the other afternoon...it was just after we had picked the last of the plums. She set everything up and then waited on me hand and foot. As a thank you, I read her some nursery rhymes. She didn't know it, but I had turned on my digital recorder and caught a bit of our conversation.  Have a listen :o)

Two Babushkas

What fun it is to dig through the drawers at someone else's house...and that is exactly what the girls did a couple days ago while mama did some grocery shopping. Okay, their last name isn't Babushka, but it's close :o)

Seaside circle

Good morning world....I slept 9 hours last night thanks to trying to sleep two nights on a single bed that was high in in the middle and made me feel as if I was going to roll onto the floor when I moved. Thanks Jim and Jeanne for the fun stay in Seaside, Oregon at your beautiful timeshare, thanks for the walk in the wild, wet wind along the shore, thanks for the popcorn done the old fashioned way,  thanks for sharing the debate and being another pubbie so we could make comments and not get beat up, thanks for taking me to the Warrenton Goodwill and the junk shops and most of all, thanks for us being able to be our true selves as only long time friends can  :o)

Thomas and friends

Jacob lined up all the trains at grandma's house and was quite pleased with the results. He likes to see if they will stay connected as  he pulls them. It's such fun watching their little imaginations at work.

Sleepover

The girls stayed at granny's last night so that mom and dad could go to a surprise birthday party for a neighbor. I am up quietly typing while they are still asleep. I remember those precious quiet hours in the morning as a mother.

Fly away

Summer is quickly flying away and I had to finally turn on the furnace just long enough to get the chill off the house, then it was back to the small heaters. I'd rather pay the light company for power than send my money to foreigners for their oil.
I watched a litte of the VP debate last night, listened to a little on the radio and then when I got home again, watched a little of the rerun on TV. It was hard to watch Biden smirk, smile and throw his hands up, and I think Ryan did a good job of carrying on with all the interruptions. Course I am bias, but for what it's worth, Ryan won easily.  Let's hope the Romney-Ryan ticket wins  the election and then maybe, just maybe, they will take on the many problems we wouldn't have if our present president could work with others.

Another goodbye

I lost my neighbor of 44 years yesterday. Lorraine lived across the street from me and when I saw her in the morning at her dining room table, I knew all was well.  The past two weeks she was in the hospital and then the nursing home...now she's taken that final journey to her  eternal home. I am happy for her that she is finally free from the suffering she went through and relieved for her children and grandchildren  who have been her caregivers.  Rest in peace, Lorraine.

 

And...something altogether different, but well worth watching. 

And....don't forget the VP debates tonight at 6:00.

Award

Our Gig Harbor Peninsula Civic Orchestra performed at the Puyallup Fair in September and when we finished, we were awarded this participation ribbon....it's our first ribbon and first award, hence the reason for the huge smile from our concuctor, Matthew Underwood. We are starting our 9th season and many of us who were at the first rehearsal are still playing plus the many who  have joined since and the one thing we all have in common is the love of makin music. Thank you Matthew for starting this wonderful, crazy, thing :o)
Oh...and I finally found out our December concert will be on December 15th, 7:00 pm at Peninsula High School. Just for fun, here's a sample of our last years Christmas concert.

Heading in

Son sent this picture last evening  of the sinking sun  as they headed into the Columbia River. Knowing they're almost home and safe must have been the reason I slept so well last night.

The New Yorker

Ouch!!! Here's another empty chair picture, but this one will be on the next edition's cover of  The New Yorker magazine. The article below gives a great explanation of why the debates and Obama's presidency turned out the way they have.

October 6, 2012

How the Liberal Media Ruined Obama

By Lisa Fritsch

It's not an "Incumbent Curse," as MSNBC would call Obama's performance at Wednesday's first presidential debate. It was not Obama's fear of coming across as the angry black man, as Michael Eric Dyson surmised, that prevented Obama from driving a strong debate on the issues with Mitt Romney. And it was not that Mitt Romney has been practicing since June for the debates, per David Axelrod's analysis. Nor was it a question of Obama losing the debate stylistically rather than substantively. And certainly it was not that Mitt Romney was untruthful, thereby catching Obama off-guard. The fact is that this Obama we saw last night and have endured for the last four years is a product of our liberal leftist media.

Obama was not ready last night, he has never been ready, and he will never be ready to be the leader this country needs, for he is the first president to have never been vetted.
My own mother observed that "it's the media's fault that Obama lost the debate. Watching the debate reminded me of a child set out on his own after being raised by parents who failed to teach him responsibility and accountability and let the child think that he was above being corrected or disciplined. This was the time that Chris Matthews could not jump in and tell the people what Obama meant to say." Indeed, Obama has been brought up by an adoring and overindulgent liberal media who have coddled him for the last eight years on everything from his appearance to Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and his caught-on-a-live-microphone secret handshake with Russian President Medvedev, where he promised that he will have "more flexibility after the election" to work with the Russians on missile defense. Additionally, we have the age-old public displays of media affection, including Dave Brooks' awe over the crease in Obama's pants and the "thrill up" Chris Matthews' leg. With a sycophantic media like this, who needs accountability?
Until Univision took Obama to task over his promise on immigration, Americans had rarely seen President Obama being held accountable by the media to match his word with his record. An unsteady, flustered, and out-of-gas Obama was bewildered as to how Univision's Jorge Ramos could have missed the "how to conduct an interview with President Obama" memo.
Wednesday's presidential debate revealed the same tight-lipped, flustered president -- unprepared for Jim Lehrer's reluctance to intervene and stop Romney from daring to question and attack his record.
This is not Romney's fault. It isn't even Obama's fault. It is the fault of America's leftist liberal media who have continually misled Obama into thinking he would never have to answer to his record.
And so the media is quickly back on task, as David Axelrod so aptly conveyed to CNN's Candy Crowley, saying, "I know you and others are going to be following this tomorrow and so are the American people." In other words, clean up this mess. Only the mess is Obama's record, and the media is right to cry. Americans' eyes are opening. They are no longer buying into the notion of hope, because hope now has a record: a record unemployment rate, a record thirty-two percent of Americans on food stamps, and record-high gas and commodities prices. Republicans have a candidate -- as evidenced by the debate -- who is not afraid to confront Obama on his record and who, most importantly, has the courage to run on his own good record and experience rather than good wishes.
This time is different. In 2008, the media was able to aid Obama in pulling the wool over America's eyes. This time, the media will not be able to take Obama out of the equation and make every pensive question about him the fault and flaw of the circumstances and people around him. In other words, the media was able to make 2008 race about electing Obama while at the same time never fully vetting or making known very much about him. The media made Hillary Clinton look whiny and weak when asking about the differences in the debate questions. They viciously attacked Sarah Palin, making the race about cults of personality and Saturday Night Live. They painted the Tea Party as bigoted racists who didn't approve of a black president.
But Obama is the president now, not the candidate, and the media will be unable to convince the millions of unemployed looking for work that their circumstances are just a coincidence in light of Obama's presidency. The media will be unable to mislead the many small business owners who have laid off employees for fear of rising taxes and insurance costs. The media cannot protect Obama against those Americans who have seen firsthand the devastation of Obama's last four years in office.
The media has given Obama a false sense of entitlement and has so glorified his very presence that what is being witnessed now is the total lack of humility and the unrefined intellect of a spoiled child. Obama simply has not thought through any of his platforms, because he has never needed to. He has never thought through the depths to which insanely expensive ObamaCare devastates the middle class, because he has not needed to. Obama has no answer for investing $90 billion in losers like Solyndra and green jobs, because Obama has not had to answer to anyone in the last eight years -- not as a candidate, and certainly not as president.
Now the same media who has spent four years coddling Obama is aghast at the dull and dejected child they have created. Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow want to know what happened to Obama. Where was the real Obama?
But the real Obama did show up. It was Obama in the flesh, without the benefit of media airbrushing and highlights. The true Obama and his A-game were revealed -- no teleprompter, and no softball questions pitched exactly to the left of the plate, where Obama likes them. Obama was unguarded and unprotected by the media, leaving him to face his kryptonite: accountability.
Lisa Fritsch is the author of Obama, Tea Parties and God and a national television and radio commentator with appearances on Fox News Channel. www.lisafritsch.com

Eastwood was right

The first presidential debate definately proved that Clint Eastwoodl was right :o)

Roger L. Simon

It was a bad twentieth wedding anniversary night for Barack and Michelle Obama. Twenty-five should be better. No irritating debates to deal with. It won’t even be an election year. Maybe they can celebrate with a Mai Tai or two in their new beachfront home on Oahu.
All the networks agreed last night, even the court eunuchs on MSNBC, as did the polls and the focus groups, that Romney won the debate. Obama looked like a warmed-over version of Richard Nixon, shifty and evasive in his answers. But Nixon was always infinitely more prepared than our current president and considerably more informed.
The fuddy-duddy liberal choir of the mainstream media looked shell-shocked. But secretly some of them may actually be relieved. Anyone with an IQ in triple digits knows that Romney would be a better president than Obama with the country and the world in the situation they are. And that probably includes Obama himself, considering the level at which he debated.

If Romney is elected, dad would be back and they (the media) would get to be kids again, living la vida loca while protesting until blue in their collective faces everything Romney does in the coming years. They get to be “against the man” once more. They don’t have to defend the man, such as he is.
A few of these media folks may even subtly throw Obama under the bus – a just deserts since he has done that favor to so many others. We’ll have to see. It did seem to me while watching the debate that even moderator Jim Lehrer, try as he might to help the president, was starting to realize Romney was the better man. Even Ed Schultz and Bill Maher apparently tweeted that Romney had won, not that they would ever change their views short of a waterboarding — or even then.
But, in defense of Obama, there is a more significant reason he did so badly in the debate than his own relative ineptitude and dyspepsia. Liberalism, his ideology, is economically indefensible. It doesn’t work. He had, in reality, no response when confronted by Romney’s positions. When it comes to liberalism, there’s no there there (hence the outcry on the Left that he should have insulted Romney more, about the 47% etc.).
If Obama and/or his minions begin to think or realize that, they are really doomed. This will not be a normal election. Their world will be upended. But if they do continue and win, it will be even worse, because the country, and even Western civilization, will unravel quite quickly thereafter.
But I am more optimistic. What we may have witnessed on October 3, 2012, is the death of liberalism. And it deserves to die because it is a greedy and self-centered ideology masked under the pretense of generosity and guarded fiercely by wannabe media potentates like Chris Matthews who had the next thing to an aneurysm at the performance of his onetime idol.
Liberalism will come back, of course, under one or more of a million names. But for now Mitt Romney has administered it a serious body blow.

Another interesting read.

Romney for president