• December 13, 2012 •

I called Pete last night & he said that he was just about to leave, so if I wanted to start dinner ... perfect timing! I had just walked into the kitchen to have "breakfast". Yeah, I know. I should have eaten SOMETHING yesterday, but when I get into the Matrix I completely forget food, time, everything. I finally used the brand new electric skillet Ann-Marie bought me. I made tarragon pork chops w/ fiesta blend veggies & gravy w/ stuffing on the side. It came out great! While I was cooking that (1 hour), I came in my office & loaded up the Microsoft card games I had installed from the Win8 Store. Great games! I really like having a relaxing game where I don't really have to think & there's NO TIMER! Most games today, even relaxing card solitaire games, have a damn timer attached. So much for relaxing if you have to beat a timer! I like the look & feel of these card games & I can take my time. I don't have to "worry" that someone is going to walk in & speak to me & then I'm going to "fail" because the timer buzzed. They have several games to choose from & while dinner was cooking I played Pyramid Solitaire. I broke 1 of my rules while cooking dinner. Never leave the kitchen! I have tried to drill this into the kid's heads over the years. You never know & ALL of these things have happened: Stovetop ... the cat or dog can knock the pot off onto the floor. Oven ... the heating element can go out & start a fire. Microwave ... the magnatron can go out or you can forget to put water in what you're cooking & set it on fire (Eve!). The point is, DON'T LEAVE THE ROOM! For this very reason I used to have a laptop sitting on the bar & I would sit there & pass the time while I was cooking. Well, both of my laptops are gone now. The 1st one belonged to the FD & had to go to the new Assistant Chief & mine lost it's screen. So what did I do? I came into my office & started playing solitaire. I got up after each set to check on dinner. Now, when using a BRAND NEW appliance that you're not familiar with ... REALLY never leave the room! That thing boils off water faster than anything I've ever seen. You have to add more water every 15 minutes during cooking when it's set to 300°. At 1st I was going to cook the pork chops in BBQ sauce & then thought ... no. Bad idea. I tried that in the slow cooker once & it burned. I followed a recipe online to the letter & ended up with charcoal. It would probably be worse in this thing. Boy was I right! Glad I didn't use BBQ sauce. Then a recipe I came across last night said to use spaghetti sauce. Hmmm ... no, that makes me nervous too. Could react like the BBQ sauce. Right again. Glad I didn't do it. Instead I used a pork gravy flavor packet mixed into a cup of water. Smelled GREAT! 1 set of solitaire later, I come out & the water was gone! WHOA! Add more water! FAST! Had I been just a few more minutes before checking on dinner, we would have had Cajun-Style. Never leave the room! I need to either get my laptop screen replaced, get the iPad I've always wanted, a new laptop, a new tablet ... something! Just in case you were curious what I wanted for Christmas ... there ya go. Either that or just sit at the bar & watch dinner cook for an hour. Sheesh! Anyway, dinner turned out great. After dinner we watched Chicago Fire & NCIS: Los Angeles & headed to bed. The FD got toned out to help a neighboring town on a very large grass fire last night. LCFD Christmas Party Saturday.

__________ is seen as an omen of bad things to come. Your __________, for example.

How much farther away from Earth does the moon move annually?

1½"—according to measurements made by bouncing laser beams off reflectors that the Apollo astronauts left on the lunar surface.

Memorize your favorite poems so you can recite them to yourself during stressful moments.

Now is the time to stock up on grocery staples. The time between Thanksgiving & Christmas is when most food coupons are issued ... check your circular. If you plan to buy it, then a coupon can save you money.

Saddam Hussein captured (2003):

After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is captured on this day in 2003. Saddam's downfall began on March 20, 2003, when the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to topple his government, which had controlled the country for more than 20 years.

Saddam Hussein was born into a poor family in Tikrit, 100 miles outside of Baghdad, in 1937. After moving to Baghdad as a teenager, Saddam joined the now-infamous Baath party, which he would later lead. He participated in several coup attempts, finally helping to install his cousin as dictator of Iraq in July 1968. Saddam took over for his cousin 11 years later. During his 24 years in office, Saddam's secret police, charged with protecting his power, terrorized the public, ignoring the human rights of the nation's citizens. While many of his people faced poverty, he lived in incredible luxury, building more than 20 lavish palaces throughout the country. Obsessed with security, he is said to have moved among them often, always sleeping in secret locations.

In the early 1980s, Saddam involved his country in an eight-year war with Iran, which is estimated to have taken more than a million lives on both sides. He is alleged to have used nerve agents and mustard gas on Iranian soldiers during the conflict, as well as chemical weapons on Iraq's own Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1988. After he invaded Kuwait in 1990, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 1991, forcing the dictator's army to leave its smaller neighbor, but failing to remove Saddam from power. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam faced both U.N. economic sanctions and air strikes aimed at crippling his ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. With Iraq continuing to face allegations of illegal oil sales and weapons-building, the United States again invaded the country in March 2003, this time with the expressed purpose of ousting Saddam and his regime.

Despite proclaiming in early March 2003 that, "it is without doubt that the faithful will be victorious against aggression," Saddam went into hiding soon after the American invasion, speaking to his people only through an occasional audiotape, and his government soon fell. After declaring Saddam the most important of a list of his regime's 55 most-wanted members, the United States began an intense search for the former leader and his closest advisors. On July 22, 2003, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, who many believe he was grooming to one day fill his shoes, were killed when U.S. soldiers raided a villa in which they were staying in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Five months later, on December 13, 2003, U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. The man once obsessed with hygiene was found to be unkempt, with a bushy beard and matted hair. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A soldier at the scene described him as "a man resigned to his fate."

Saddam is now in Iraqi custody with U.S. security and faces trial in front of a special tribunal on several criminal cases pending against him. The first began in October 2005. On November 5 of the next year, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was executed on December 30, 2006. Despite a prolonged search, weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq.

Selling your house? Don't do it yourself. If you list with a high-quality agent, you get the advantage of being exposed to their entire pool of buyers. Now who has a better chance of selling the house? Market exposure is everything. Between mistakes, lack of negotiating skills, pricing errors & general exposure on the market, you'll cost yourself more than the real estate agent commission. I would use an active agent who knows his or her stuff in the marketplace.

Synecdoche:

A figure of speech by which a less encompassing term is put for a more encompassing term or vice versa.

Shakespeare's Macbeth employs synecdoche when he orders a servant out of his presence with the command "Take thy face hence."

"Synecdoche," from Greek syn- ("together") & ekdoche ("interpretation"), is a good word to know if you're a budding author. Writers, & especially poets, use synecdoche in several different ways to create vivid imagery. Most frequently, synecdoche involves substituting a part for the whole, as in the example sentence. Less commonly, it involves putting the whole for the part ("society" for "high society"), the species for the genus ("cutthroat" for "assasin"), the genus for the species ("a creature" for "a man"), or the material for the thing made ("boards" for "stage"). Synecdoche is similar to metonymy - the use of the name of one thing in place of something associated with it (such as "Shakespeare" for "the works of Shakespeare").

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When you can, give a good, honest reason: "I'm swamped with work." "I give to other charities." "I have 3 kids in college & just can't afford it." There's no need to be defensive, & only provide your reason if it's sincere & helpful to your delivery.

Which of these are monuments in Washington, D.C.?

The Empire State Building, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, Grand Central Terminal, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument.

Answer: The Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, & the Washington Monument.

Which of these video games hasn't had a movie based on it?

A. Tomb Raider

B. Grand Theft Auto

C. Doom

D. Street Fighter

Which vitamin was discovered 1st?

A. Vitamin C

B. Vitamin A

C. Vitamin B

ABC. In 1747, Scotsmen discovered that something in citrus foods prevents scurvy. Though he didn't name it Vitamin C, I say he wins.

Who is the richest American?

A. Paul Allen

B. Warren Buffet

C. Bill Gates

Why did writer Rudyard Kipling paint his golf balls red when he lived in Vermont in the 1890s?