The one thing I thought I'd miss was bacon...

but this is just too much...

The Bacon Explosion is a woven mat of bacon filled with italian sausage and cooked bacon bits, then smoked for a couple hours.

Don't do this to yourself. Please.

I will eat the fruits of their slave labor...

but I will not eat their flesh.

Several months ago, Len decided to stop eating meat. Fine by me, I thought. So, we began eating vegetarian-only fare at home and I'd have the ocassional bit of flesh here and there when I went out with friends.

It was fine for a while, but then I really got to thinking about it and realized that if I didn't do it at home, why do it anywhere. That was almost four weeks ago. And I don't miss meat at all. In fact, on some level I'm a little disgusted by it. That is not to say that we have stopped eating all things animal-related. Cheese, eggs, milk, etc. are still part of our diet.

Going out can be a challenge. I recently celebrated a co-worker's birthday at Ted's Montana Grill, a restaurant specializing in Beef, Bison and Buffalo. The veggie plate, though, was amazing! Mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, squash casserole and slice tomatoes. Yummy! I am finding that collards not cooking in bacon are hard to find, in fact a lot of veggies in the South are cooked in some sort of smoked pork fat, but I can get around that.

So far, so good.

This Small, Small World

A few weeks ago, a nice lady sent me a message through my Etsy store and told me she loved my hand dyed fiber and asked if I would teach her to spin. She was so enthusiastic and I liked her e-mail presence so much, I told her yes, I'd be happy to show her the basics and if she wanted a real lesson afterward I know several people who would be great teachers (Sandy, you may be getting a call!).

Well, yesterday I drove out to Lawrenceville and met this nice lady for her spinning lesson. (Did I mention her daughter and I have the same first and middle name?)
Len joked that I would not be coming home, that my fiber stalker would kidnap me. He's right, of course. Who goes to a stranger's home based only on e-mail conversations? Apparently I do.

It was a great afternoon. And Gina is a natural spinner. She wants to spin sock yarn and showed me samples of handspun sock yarn that she had purchased from Etsy. Wow. Beautiful stuff, and really labor intensive. I was mighty impressed.

She seemed pretty disappointed with her progress, but in reality, her first hank of handspun is pretty fantastic. I loaned her my wheel for the week and I imagine she'll be buying her own before too long. She's coming by Knitch next weekend to return the wheel and potentially buy some fiber there.

Just helping to keep the crafting economy going!

By the time I find out about it, it can't be cool anymore..

I recently joined Facebook. I really don't know why I joined, but I will 'google' people I know every now and again and saw that Len had joined. So I did, too.

Haven't done a thing with it since, but I do intend to go rooting around in it sometime soon.

The weird thing is that since I joined, several people (that's three or more, folks)have told me how wonderful it is. Which makes me think it must not be cool anymore, since folks my age are getting into it.

I also joined twitter. That's because I got an e-mail from Knitch asking me to join. And, I do as I am told.

Keeping up with it all is surely going to give me headaches.

Long Time

I know, I know, it's about time.

I've not been blogging in a while -- probably because I didn't want to blog about my politics and that's all I've thought about lately. I get kinda worked up about politics -- in a flustered fit I told my mom last month that I'd never speak to her again if she voted for a certain someone. Didn't mean it, of course, but like I said, I get kinda worked up.

Now all the elections are over and I can commence to blogging, so expect to see updates on a regular basis from this point forward.

Storm Troopers

I never have a camera when I need one.

There I was, leaving my office's parking structure in downtown Atlanta on Friday, and a group of Storm Troopers walk past. A little further down the block was a family consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Ron, the twins and Harry Potter himself. As I continued my commute down Peachtree Street, I saw what looked like a wood nymph holding hands with yet another Storm Trooper.

Ah yes, the annual DragonCon is back!

The parade featured Dragons, characters from the Firefly series, Star Wars, etc. Apparently the real Weasley twins were in town last year for the event -- but refused to come back because Atlanta is too hot. I guess when you live in climate like the U.K., parading in full costume thought the Atlanta streets in late August/early September would seem a bit toasty. Of course, Chewbacca here didn't seem to mind.

No, I did not take these pictures, the good folks at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did. I need a tee-tiny little pocket camera to carry with me for emergencies like this one!

Drenched

Be careful what you wish for.

The Atlanta metropolitan area has been in a drought these last several years and the lakes and waterways surrounding the area have been diminishing and diminishing. As a result, we have instituted strict watering policies, residents have changed their car-washing habits, and shortened our showers, all in hopes of alleviating the water issues here.

Then came Kay.

Lake Lanier, one of the biggest lakes in the area, and a primary source of drinking water here, has risen 2.4 feet, the lake's biggest gain in two years. The lake is still 15 feet below full, but that 22 billion gallons it got last weekend really helps the problem. And with Tropical Storm Gustav on his way, the area is bound to get even more rainfall. The drought is by no means over, but this soaking is really important to the area.


Trouble is, not everyone wants so much water.

Down in southwest Georgia, roads are impassable, homes have been destroyed, and farmland has been seriously damaged -- all because of too much rainfall.

So, while we are celebrating our windfall of rain, our neighbors to the south are surveying their damage.

Geez.