Kristine’s Neighborhood

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.

That's Maldon salt on top. The peanut butter / honey filling is poping out the cracks. Next batch will be cooked less and have either habañero, cayenne, or jalepeño.

Molten Chocolate cups w/ peanut butter & honey centers...

Today I made stew, picked the remaining flowers, took a bunch of pictures, and decorated gourds.  There are still a few random blooms in the garden and of course the herbs are still begging to be thrown into a saucepot.

I found some Nastursiums, lettuce seed, monkey grass berries, mums, and a few red Zinnias. I took a few pics with a Lalique flower "frog" and some other articles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My stew smells good and it is cold outside so it will be welcome. I spent a few hours outside staining gourds that I wood-burned designs on.  They aren't done but look neat in the state they are in so if I never get back to them I can still use them for something. What I am not sure of.

I like taking pictures but my camera has been sucking lately.  Perhaps Santa will bring me a new one.

 

 

Seen in lower haight.

Go to a Vanderbilt Basketball game of course!

 

So far both our men's and ladies teams are undefeated. That includes exhibition games.  If our team scores more than 75 we get a free crunchy beef taco from Taco Bell.  We save our tickets though so no tacos for us.

Our Lady Dores are the SEC Champions.  That is a very big deal in college basketball.  They have won 4 of the last 7 tournaments yet they only draw a few thousand spectators per game.  The men didn't even make it into the tournament yet they get 15,000 to 20,000 people per game.  We have two great teams this year and hope for a great season.  Ladies season tickets are $32.00 for the entire season and the same seats for the men's team would cost me over $1,500.00 per season.  I have nosebleed seats for the men and they still cost $75.00 per season. If you add in the free tacos for the ladies the seats are about a dollar per game when they win.  There is no cheaper form of live entertainment so I strongly recommend supporting your local ladies NCAA team. Take the kids and cheer on the ladies.  Our girls are third in attendance nationwide and that is just sad.  These kids work their hearts out, miss holidays with their families and probably won't go on to become pros. All their stats are better than the men.

So Go Lady Dores!!!!!  You are the best!  We want a National Championship this year!

First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!

The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.

A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.

Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.

And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!

~ daisy

 

As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.

The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.

When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.

It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.

Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.

As always, thanks for your patience.

~daisy

Rhode Island legislators learned yesterday that Gov. Carcieri vetoed the gay funeral rights bill that passed in October.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Rhoda Perry and state Rep. David Segal, would have added “domestic partners” to the list of people legally authorized to make funeral, cremation or burial arrangements for their deceased partners. Heterosexual married couples already have these rights.

The Providence Journal reported that the bill was proposed after one man was unable to retrieve the body of his late partner from the state medical examiner for weeks because they weren’t married or next-of-kin.

Gov Carcieri’s veto message, said:

“This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

“If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the state of Rhode Island decide.”

The bill defined a domestic partner as someone who was in an “exclusive, intimate and committed relationship” with the deceased person and had lived with them for at least a year. The bill also said the couple had to be financially “interdependent” by joint mortgage, shared credit card or domestic partnership contract.

Gov. Carcieri said the bill would allow the decisions of a “partner” of a year to take precedence over “traditional family members.” He said a “one year time period is not a sufficient duration to establish a serious bond between two individuals.”

Rep. Segal said Carcieri took his opposition to same-sex marriage too far. He and Sen. Perry plan to override the veto.

Segal also said, “‘I think the man is heartless and this has become a bad joke that has carried on for far too long.”

Even in death we get NOTHING!

I think that gay people should leave their spouses in the morgue and let the state pay for the burials until it is Bankrupt.

Most of us call 'em leftovers. Because some people prefer not to eat food they consider "old" my mum decided to rebrand them as "plan aheads".

Homefries from Sunday, pan heated with fresh spinach and smashed garlic. It's amazing how much spinach reduces when cooked; one of my fav ways to consume my quota of green leafys.