Today is my husband's birthday. We are just going to have a quiet celebration at home. Money is tight, and he has said, like the good sport that he is, that his birthday presents are the power tools he bought to build the media cabinet. I normally object when necessary working tools double as gifts, (like a vacuum cleaner,) but if he genuinely enjoys wood working I suppose it's fair enough.
I did make him some really nice soap using coconut and olive oils and thirteen essential oils. It's cured enough to use. And I picked him up a couple of useful little gifts that won't necessitate any skipped meals.
Right now I'm making Mexican rice to go with the fajitas he requested for his birthday dinner. I baked the cake yesterday. It's a dark chocolate zucchini cake. Here is the place where I found the recipe:
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/dark-chocolate-zucchini-cake.html
I substituted the sugar for 1/3 cup of a stevia-milk sugar blend, and baked it in the slow cooker because we don't use the oven in the summer. It's not very sweet, but we'll top it with berries and serve it with raspberry sorbet.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Ay Yi Yi!!!
I've been receiving a lot of internet hoax spam lately. Yesterday I got one. I do not know the person who sent it to me. It was a petitiion for Congress to stop them from paying social security and medicaid to illegal aliens. Like they are a bunch of loonie fools and we have to stop them from ruining the country.
It wasn't just the spam that bugged me, it's the fact that our government has been working on healthcare reform and are being attacked from all sides. There is this huge misinformation machine, spreading all sorts of rumors and lies about the government. The goal seems to be to attack American confidence in our government in order to create fear and create obstacles to change. This thing about Congress giving SSI and medicaid to illegal aliens seemed like one more thing.
I snapped.
So I wrote a very assertive response to the email declaring it a hoax and lecturing the sender about fact checking before forwarding spam. I further stated that if the sender doesn't have time to check, please don't foward it to me. I included a link to a Snopes article, showing it to be a false rumor.
I looked at the substantial distribution list and didn't recognize a single name. I thought about it. All those people. How many of them don't know? How many will sign the petiton and forward the spam?
I thought about it again. Then I hit, "Reply to all."
Yes, I know. The cardinal sin of email etiquette. A couple of people have already responded to my email, letting me know that I only needed to respond politely to the sender. I am suitably chastized, and my cheeks are appropriately reddened. I do not normally behave like the scourge of the Internet.
Still. If I had it to do over again, I think I would. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
It wasn't just the spam that bugged me, it's the fact that our government has been working on healthcare reform and are being attacked from all sides. There is this huge misinformation machine, spreading all sorts of rumors and lies about the government. The goal seems to be to attack American confidence in our government in order to create fear and create obstacles to change. This thing about Congress giving SSI and medicaid to illegal aliens seemed like one more thing.
I snapped.
So I wrote a very assertive response to the email declaring it a hoax and lecturing the sender about fact checking before forwarding spam. I further stated that if the sender doesn't have time to check, please don't foward it to me. I included a link to a Snopes article, showing it to be a false rumor.
I looked at the substantial distribution list and didn't recognize a single name. I thought about it. All those people. How many of them don't know? How many will sign the petiton and forward the spam?
I thought about it again. Then I hit, "Reply to all."
Yes, I know. The cardinal sin of email etiquette. A couple of people have already responded to my email, letting me know that I only needed to respond politely to the sender. I am suitably chastized, and my cheeks are appropriately reddened. I do not normally behave like the scourge of the Internet.
Still. If I had it to do over again, I think I would. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
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