I’ve found my new love. I’ve known for about a year now, but only today do I know the name: Ocumarian.

This is my contribution to our Thanksgiving dinner…

The scale of the graph is 0 - 200 degrees on the y-scale and 0 - 4 hours on the x-scale in 30 minutes increments. I’ll play around with the numbers later but this is a rough graph of the internal temperature of our 20lb turkey as it was cooking yesterday. It actually did help because I was able to monitor how quickly it was cooking and could more easily anticipate when it got close to the 180 degree mark. If we had gone strictly by the time chart it would have overcooked the bird by probably 45 minutes!

A few weeks ago a group of us went to see Sage Francis and company at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. The tour was promoting a website at knowmore.org. This site is essentially a corporation watchdog in the format of a “wiki”. Meaning: a site that is editable by anyone that comes by; Meaning: everyone can put in their two cents about any company they want to; Meaning: A collaborative effort of the informed masses to pay attention to which businesses we decide to open our wallets to.

Every time we open our wallets, we are voting and essentially investing and agreeing into that company’s policies, political views, ethics, and other worldwide impacts. I think it’s very important that we all take a look at exactly what these businesses are doing around the globe. Then, and only then, can we decide who we should support. Consumers have the power. Without us, they don’t exist.

A lot of people might think I’m turning crazy, but I’m actually having a lot of fun with my current math class. It’s the last Algebra that I have to take before going into Statistics.

I thought that I would share a few sweet problems that I ran across today. Not very difficult, but they just looked cool!

1) 4^{x + 1} = 13

2) e^-0.07t + 3 = 3.08

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I lie in bed in the mornings now and enjoy the sounds of Autumn. With the later rising sun, I hear the birds hollering their chaotic vespers. Gentle fall rains rattle the shingles, presaging harder rains to come. In quiet moments you can even hear the dry leaves shaking in the breezes, then lightly scratching the ground when they land.
Followed of course, by the high nasal wine of a two-stroke engine, as some neighbor straps on a leaf blower and shatters the morning silence.

According to Scott Huler of North Carolina, “somewhere along the line, Americans lost the ability to have fun without the help of Exxon.” I heard this commentary on NPR this afternoon on “Petro-tainment.” Says Scott, “Petro-tainment is what people get from any gas powered thing that is just like the manual thing in replaced, only noisier and smellier…” or something like that. I looked for the transcript for this, but could not find it. I won’t type the rest out for lack of time and fear of inaccuracy. You can listen to the NPR clip here.

The kid amazes me. I am fully aware that they are supposed to grow and everything, but it still shocks me when he gets bigger. Today he was pretty sick and spent most of the day snuggling with me on the couch, all curled up by my neck. Well, at one point he stretched out, and with his head on my chest his feet touched my knees! My jaw flew open. I can’t believe his body is nearly half the size of mine.

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I should have dressed up as “Scooter” Libby for Halloween. Someone just said on NPR that she had two kids come dressed as him. How very clever.