Hobbit-Sense at OneFreeGarden.com

Another Quick Takes Friday!  Yay!  Most of these are lighthearted this week.  I’m glad to have one more week that I’ve actually been productive on this blog.  I’m trying to be better about commenting on other Quick Takes participant blogs, but I’m not there yet.  I plan to do so, however, and I will get to it!  Thanks for visiting and commenting even though I’m a bum about it.  On to the quick takes!

1.  I’ll start off with the one serious one.  Yesterday was the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.  This decision was based on the idea that we couldn’t possibly know what was inside a woman until the baby came out.  The logic was faulty to begin with, but now we have ultrasounds.  Some people say it doesn’t look like a baby for the first few weeks.  Well, I have no doubt PETA would say it didn’t matter that tadpoles don’t resemble full grown frogs at the beginning of their lives – if you kill them, you’re killing frogs.  Another point of irony is the lack of media coverage of the March for Life.  There were “tens of thousands” of marchers, but a march only “three blocks long” (according to the AP in two different places — see Gateway Pundit courtesy the CMR Reader).  If this were Catholics for Choice or an anti-war rally, do you think it would have gotten the same treatment?  On the bright side, profile in courage: a priest who was asked to serve as a fill-in chaplain yesterday at the Kansas state house had the fortitude to pray for an end to abortion. Go him!

2.  I really need to find my sewing machine manual.  I received a beautiful machine from someone at church, and I’ve actually used it, but not very often.  So, I managed to figure out again how to thread it and get the bobbin in, and hemmed a pair of pants.  I was very proud of myself.  Then I had to change thread to hem a different color pair.  This did not work so well.  I have broken a needle, broken the thread multiple times, and had the distinct pleasure of ripping out horribly sewn bits 3 or 4 times now.  Here’s hoping I figure out where I’m going wrong with the main spool.

3.  Wilma Flinstone + Spitball Attack = A Feeling of Vindication for last week’s quick takes:

Given my lack of sewing machine acumen, it may surprise some of you to know I have a degree in costume design.  From that lofty place of BA (just kidding), I can say this dress is all wrong for her.  Mrs. Obama has a larger frame and is more angles than curves.  You can’t just put a lot of fabric on her and expect it to help that.  It just made her look large and ungainly when she should look, as she is, statuesque and graceful.  That strap was hideous, and she clearly had no idea of what to do with the train that kept getting in her way – and who adds a train when they know the client will be dancing on national television all night?

4.  I hate when people embarass themselves in movies.  I change channels, I mute, I leave rooms – I don’t want to watch it.  It’s rather ridiculous, because it’s not like the actors are actually being embarassed – it’s their characters, but I don’t like it – I sit there and cringe. 

5.  This one comes at suggestion of my mother.  She’s noticed me sitting around with a notebook a lot lately.  What have I been writing?  Yes, blog posts.  Oh the irony.  I’m rather techno-savvy, I like to think, for a layman anyway, and yet I keep writing these posts out on paper first.  On the bright side, I’m less picky about writing utensils than I used to be for notebook writing (I prefer non-mechanical pencils and pens with flowy ink, but this post was written in an old ballpoint pen). 

6.  We are inundated with snow.  My high school senior brother actually started construction on an igloo in the backyard last night.  We’re fluctuating between heavy snowfalls and pretty cold temps (not as cold as those in the below-zero range, but definitely colder than Jen F’s Texan defrost drawer).  This is what we’ve woken up to quite a few times now:

My older sis and I made a great snowfort once when we were probably 6 and 8.  We – and by we, I mean she – burrowed into a snow drift in our back yard and hollowed it out.  (Honestly, I think I did very little – J was the one talented with snow, but she let me ride on her coattails, so that was good.)  We crawled in and made grand plans for the rooms we were going to dig out further the next day.  Then J rolled a giant snowball (another snow activity I sucked at) and put it in front of our “door.”  It must’ve melted a little bit that day, and then got a lot colder overnight and the rest of winter, because the snowball froze to the door and we never got back in.  Yes, it was tragic.

7.  To end on a fun (and funny) note, I have to share what my turtle did this week.  His name is Patton, after the general, and true to his namesake he goes after everything in his tank.  He’s been insisting in crawling between the suction cups attaching his island (called Sicily) to the wall of the tank and the wall, thereby detaching the lower two.  Well, apparently he managed to detach all of them, and set it truly afloat.  But it’s also where he sleeps, so he actually secured the bottom two suction cups by partially burying them in gravel.  I think he’s brilliant, but even if he isn’t, he sure has a lot more personality than I anticipated a reptile (esp. such a small one!) would have.  Here, check out the pictures:

I think he needs a bit of work on getting it straight up, but he is only a 5 inch long turtle in a 20 gallon tank.  It’s actually stayed – he’s been climbing on and off of it all week.  And here’s a close-up of the General and his command:

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Well, there’s this week’s Quick Takes!  Thanks for reading!

-Rosy