Stuff Around the House

I finished my humongous fence. I'll post pics soon.

I put up a new mailbox post (yes, another one). I sort of ran into the old one with a UHaul truck and it's never been the same since. I like the new one. It's all wooden and mighty looking.

Our little garden is bearing fruit. Even the raspberries, which we haven't really planted yet. Awesome. Those carrots are going to be microscopic.





I'm developing my fence making skills, post digging skills, drumming skills. My new den used to smell like sheetrock, not it smells like flood. Yes, it flooded.

What else? Too many bands want to make use of my drumming skills. Gosh, it's late. I have to get up really early tomorrow.

Mighty looking new mailbox post.

That weedy grass really needs to go.

Newly Frugal Guy

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Living Traditions

Living Traditions Festival last night! It was pretty cool. We got there after 6:00, and the featured artists started playing at 7:00. First, they had this cool brass band from Luisiana (Rebirth Brass Band). During their show, some girls started fighting right next to us. First, Curly Hair Girl grabbed Very Fat Girl's hair, and some guy grabbed Curly Hair Girl and carried her away. Very Fat Girl then stuck her tongue to the other girl and shook her hips giving her attitude. It wasn't a pretty picture. Curly Hair Girl then came with Mildly Fat Girl (went to get reinforcements, I guess) and tried to get Very Fat Girl, but the little guy who carried Curly Hair Girl before tried to carry Mildly Fat Girl, and was doing pretty well until the girl fell over him. She then started yelling at him and sput on his head. Ten minutes after that, security came.

The band was great, though, and most people were up and dancing. After them they had a hip-hop band called Lifesavas. They were awesome too. Even the old ladies in front of us were up and shaking their arms in the air.


Lifesavas. Sorry the video's crappiness doesn't give the band credit. The rappers were good, but the rest of the band was just amazing.

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Oh No! Jehovah Witnesses!

We had a returned missionary speak at church today. His talk was really good, but he was pretty nervous and laughed at some really weird moments.

He told us about a member of the ward (let's call him "Pierre") who got baptized and did the temple work for his wife who had passed away. When he went back to the area and asked for the guy, they told him that he had died, so he said "Oh, no! Haha, what happened to Pierre!"

Then he told us about this other guy who was praying to receive inspiration to be able to join a good church, and half an hour later the Jehovah Witnesses knocked on his door and he said "Oh, no! What a horrible answer to my prayers!" Luckily, the sister missionaries came half an hour after that and saved the day.

Nobody laughed, but everyone was pretty paying careful attention after that.

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Taking It Easy

We've been having a little problem with our mailman: in two years we've lived here, he never closed our mailbox's door. It doesn't seem to be a big deal, but our mailbox is in the sidewalk, we have two schools less than half a block away, and hundreds of K-9 kids walk through by our house every day.

Scary.

Anyway, I called to report this issue, since I never see the guy, and leaving a note would be just as crappy. Since I reported it, the door has remained closed, but the day right after the call, we didn't get any mail, which was weird, since we get mail everyday (mostly junk, of course). I was worried that our mailman was mad at us and that he had kept our mail. I ordered a cable on eBay a while ago and have been expecting it, so I was thinking that the cable was in my mailman's garbage by then (I mean, how many people have use for an IDE to SATA HD adaptor?). I decided to doble check by e-mailing the guys who sold me the cable, and that's when I realized that they are located in Hong Kong. Nothing against Hong Kong, it just takes SO LONG to get stuff from there. Anyway, the guys were very kind and prompt in their response, and this is what they told me:

Hi,dear friend.

Many thanks for your letter.
According to our record, since we have received your payment confirmed by Paypal, and item was sent out on 2009-04-29 18:37.
And it normally takes 7-15 business days for delivery(Not include the Sat & Sun).

So please take it easy and wait with patience.

If there is any other inquiry,please feel free to contact us.And I will try my best to help you.

Good luck.

Best Regards,

Wise words if I ever heard any. I'm taking it easy now.

And I feel really bad for doubting our amazing mailman. I'm leaving some cookies for him next time.

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My Invisible Bookshelf

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I finally did it!

No, I didn't attach it to the main shelf. It's actually an inch away from it.

Cool New Book

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I just finished reading "What Obama Means," by Jabari Asim. And before you start rolling your eyes... well, the book is not so much about Obama as it is about the journey that African Americans had gone from the times of slavery to the present, and all the cultural and social steps that allowed a black man to be the president of the United States.

The section on black athletes, musicians, and other artists that paved the way for African Americans to be widely popular and even seen as models of what's cool is very revealing and very well done, as well as the chapter on the "Magic Negro," which explained not only what a Magic Negro is but also all that controversy with that song played in the Rush Limbaugh show.

Some random quotes I really liked:

As Maureen Dowd noted in the New York Times, "The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it." (Page 124)

As DuBois and other have put forth, casting excessive blamo on the less educated and economically disadvantaged allows successful blacks to hide their obligations to their brethren behind by-the-bootstrap myths of self-propelled ascent. In a speech delivered in 1934 on the day he resigned from the NAACP, DuBois outlined the consequences of such mythmaking in apocalyptic terms. "If the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat," he said, "they are doomed for all time." (Page 139)

This Is Just Too Much

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I just got one of those massive emails from a friend who was actually commenting how messed up the email's content is. Anyway, it is in Spanish, and it says something like this: "Mexico's economy wasn't doing well, and neither did the pharmaceutical companies, so why not make up a fake disease? That way the whole world will freak out, buy the vaccine, and just like that the world's economy will improve. We hear of all these people that are sick, but we don't know any, they haven't been on tv, we haven't seen pictures of any of them, blah, blah, blah."

It's funny, because a guy at lunch yesterday said "I am amazed that they still haven't blamed this one on Bush," but conservative pundits are going crazy blaming democrats for it. "Close the borders and get those illegal immigrants away," said Glen Beck (I'm paraphrasing. I really don't feel like listening to the actual sound bite again), not stopping to think that the cases that erupted in the USA are a consequence of Americans traveling to Mexico.

Here's the text in Spanish (I don't feel like translating, but just for the record, it's full of misspellings and grammatical errors).