I couldn't resist! LOL!

Talk about being pear-shaped. LOL! I love Google Image searches. Happy summer y'all! (That's Spokane, WA in the background)

4th of July

Wow, I'm just now getting a chance to tell you about my 4th of July! Its almost August. Sheesh!

Hubby and I met Lorna and the gang under the Space Needle for Seattle Beerfest. It was an absolutley gorgeous day and what better way to take advantage of that than drinking obscure beer imports with one of my favorite people in the whole world. My fav was the Honeymoon Nectar Sweet Honeywine from Mountain Meadows Meadery (CA). I also tried We're Only In It For The Money brewed in the Malt Liquor of Certain Death style. This baby clocked in 17% alcohol and was a definite party-started. *wink*

After drinking up all my liquor tickets, designated driver hubby drove our drunk asses over to North Seattle, where we were forced to park a mile away from our destination. We finally stumbled our way to Gas Works park then celebrated freedom from British tyranny with about 10,000 of our closest friends. We got there quite early, but it filled up quickly.

*Taste Like Home* Food Swap

I believe I blogged before that I was participating in the Taste Like Home food swap over I found out about at Megans Cookin. I got my first box of goodies last week the morning I left for Phoenix. Yay!

My partner in food was Ley from Cilantro and lime (Chattanooga, TN). Ley sent me the following:



1. A bag of seasoned, deep fried peanuts (which I fully intend to smuggle into the Mariner’s game next week)
2. Moon pies!!!! In vanilla, lemon and chocolate. I love moon pies! This is one of the main reasons I trekked to Mardi Gras every year (they throw out moon pies at Endymion).
3. Homemade suckers. These things are wonderfully sticky even in their package, so I can’t wait to dig in!
4. Homemade peach jam. I’m going to spoon this over crepes and whipped cream for my Saturday brunch. I cannot wait!

(Sorry about the poor photo quality. I had to use my camera phone, as my digicam was all packed away.)

Many thanks to Ley who took the time to put together this lovely box for me. I can’t wait to dig in.

My other partner was Kate from thecleanplateclub. To see Kate’s blog on what I sent her, go to thecleanplateclub

My Something!

You know what's better than coming home to a clean house after a long trip? Coming home to a clean house with a suprise package waiting for you at the doorstep (or just inside the door, cuz the dogwalker was sweet enough to bring it in for me).

My "Something" came from the Something Store while we were out becoming one with the wilderness (camping pictures to come soon). It's this Crack-A-Head. Some kind of spacey basil plant living inside this egg-thing. I had to crack the top like a hard boiled egg to water the seeds. Within a few weeks, the plant should start growing up and out of the top of this egghead.

May sound boring to you, but it goes along great with my cilantro, cherry tomatoes and baby strawberries I'm growing. :)

Sriday

I, like many Americans, work very hard Monday through Friday from 8am – 5pm. I also play very hard on Saturday and Sunday – all day, and usually into the night/early the next morning. This is all fine and lovely. But what ends up happening is that Monday morning, I’m exhausted from the previous Monday – Friday work week in addition to all this running around I’m doing on the weekend. So, I have a proposition…

Let’s add a new day to the week. One in between Friday and Saturday. We can call it Sriday. No work, no play. Just relaxing. This would be the day that you spend organizing that box of old photos, returning phone calls/emails/texts from friends, cleaning out the refrigerator. Or all those other things that are not quite work, not quite play, and don’t quite fall under your normal household maintenance routine.

If the day after tomorrow was Sriday, I could sleep in, get a pedicure, watch a dvd, get my tires rotated. And that would free up at least enough time so that I could spend an extra hour at Pike Place Market on Saturday and perhaps be in bed by 9pm on Sunday. Wouldn’t that be grand.
If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be hard-pressed to find 2 hours to watch a dvd, I would have thought you were just saying that to scare me. Little did I know…

Why this black woman celebrates Independence Day

I love the 4th of July! Fireworks displays put me in a child-like state of amazement and absolute giddiness, and can actually bring me to tears if paired with the right patriotic score. In my Indiana days, I spent the 4th on a blanket picnic with the Hot Girls and their dates, listening to the stylings of the Purdue Symphony Orchestra, playing Cranium or Trouble (gotta love the pop-o-matic bubble). In college, the 4th was spent reclining on the back of my car with [flavor-of-the-month’s name here] watching fireworks explode over downtown Houston from 5th Ward (where the free parking is). Back at home, my cousins and I spent the 4th in the “country” setting off whole packs of Black Cats and lighting Roman Candles for our dads to hold. Lighting the incredibly short fuse of a rocket display and running away dramatically a split second before the things went off. Ending the night making light trails through the sky with multi-colored sparklers.

But none of these things really get at the essence of why we, as Americans, celebrate Independence Day.

The celebration of Independence Day by Black Americans has always been a topic of contention, with some blacks citing that the Declaration of Independence did not include blacks, as blacks weren’t treated as humans (only 3/5 of a person until much later in history). I understand this point of view and have had many interesting discussions with my more militant friends over the topic. However, I believe that it is this very Declaration of Independence that would eventually pave the way for the events leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation - including the Abolitionist Movement, The Civil War and Reconstruction - and, later, the Civil Rights Movement. The Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Without the words of the Declaration of Independence, those opposed to slavery (for political, social, religious and/or moral reasons) wouldn’t have even had the right to fight for a change in the system. The fight for legislative abolishment of Jim Crow might never be if there weren’t laws in place securing the right to Safety and Happiness.

So, that is why this Black woman - whose own family members weren’t freed from the horrors of slavery until General Gordon Granger and his troops sailed into Galveston, TX to remind the Confederacy that slaves had been freed 2 years prior – celebrates July 4th with all the excitement and vigor she can muster. Because 232 years ago, the country’s founding fathers had the foresight to allow for protections for all US citizens, even those who were stranded here by the disgusting slave trade and have managed to become a valuable, contributing part of this Republic we now live in.

My Meez

My meez (see the picture at left) is really a lot like me. She has a really small waist and a HUGE rump (just like me!), and she's cheap as hell - I only outfit her in the FREE stuff. So, see, even a meez can dress well on a budget. She's also eating a hotdog and watching fireworks over a large lake. Yep, this meez is all Karla.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody! America is awesome!

Wanted: Random Items

I stumbled upon a link for a very cute website called the Something Store. You pay $10 and they will send you a random gift item from their inventory. Sounds bizarre, right? Well, I'm a sucker for surprises, so I purchased a random gift. I'm looking forward to whatever wonderfulness will show up on my doorstep in a few days.

Browse the website: they have some recently shipped "somethings" there for you to peruse.

http://www.somethingstore.com