Pandering, or a good political move?

I just heard about McCain's choice for VP. At first I was dismayed, because it seemed like he was just trying to pander to women voters. But the more I've heard about Sarah Palin, the more she seems like a good choice (considering that she is the choice; I won't argue about who should or shouldn't be his pick now that the decision has been made). I read this article, and she seems very conservative. Which is good, because McCain is not conservative enough to be the GOP's candidate.

Also, she has five kids. I'm always impressed by women, especially political women, who will have more than one or two children. Any amount of mothering is good, but in this day and age I am impressed by women who are busy mothers and don't apologize about a large household. It speaks volumes about her values and commitment, and I do believe a person's personal life is reflective of the type of civil servant she will be.

So, I'll still vote against Obama instead of for McCain, but at least I won't cringe when I do it.

The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize!

Sometimes I am crafty. Currently my only major crafty successes involve paint. For ceramics. Not paint to actually paint a picture.

I enjoy accessories, specifically earrings. Earrings rock and make me happy and I have a lot of them, but it's hard to pick the pairs out of my cute but small jewelry box. Especially because I have to find plastic backs so my earrings don't slide out (I wasn't smart enough to save the plastic backs when I bought most of the earrings, so I have like four roving plastic backs).

I needed a better way to find my earrings.

With inspiration from MSN Lifestyle and Anisha, I created an accessory board. I used a cork board I've had since high school (you know, the ones on which you tacked pictures of friends and Leonardo DiCaprio, funny comics, etc) and put the accessories on the board using quilting tacks. But the board looked trashy, like all my earrings were on a cork board I've had for 10+ years.

So, using my only creative talent, I painted the cork board in my current favorite color scheme (purple, green, and gold. Totally our wedding colors, totally an obsession, and totally dorky. But awesome nonetheless.). And I'm pretty excited with how it turned out. It's like a functional work of art. And it's SO easy to find my roving plastic backs now.

. . . and frightened Miss Muffet away

This post has a picture of a spider. So if that freaks you out, don't scroll to the bottom. Because spiders are gross, but I took and posted a picture of one anyway.

I have had our house bug-sprayed every month, like clockwork, since I bought it 3 1/2 years ago. So there is a pretty nice perimeter built up. Which is great, especially because this summer has been an infestation summer (see my tomato caterpillar story below) but we have been blissfully free of spiders. The first year I owned the house and started fixing my front yard, I made the perfect environment for black widows and had a major black widow issue outside (although I do hunt black widows, which Todd thinks is weird but I find highly enjoyable).

So, back to my bug-spray perimeter (I just realized this post is only about bugs, and I'm a total freak. Thanks for reading it anyway, despite the fact it might be giving you heebie-jeebies). There is a fairly large spider in our garage. It's nasty and large, but I found it dead. Which makes me really happy because that means my perimeter takes care of these types of freaky pests so I don't have to waste half a can of Raid on them (previous experience with this kind of spider, though, shows Raid has NO effect, and only the potent stuff from my bug man can affect it, which is uber nasty). This large thing was trying to live in our garage. Eew.

Caveat before spider picture: using the forensic skills I learned from The Bone Collector, I tried to show you how big this spider is, even dead. I realize some of you may live places where there are bigger spiders. And that is nasty. But if you do, please feel free to share. We'll try to make this the nastiest blog post ever. (Jess, your stories of hobo spiders in Spokane still haunt my dreams.)

How I spent my summer vacation

Aka: Using all my free Southwest flights to do fun things with Todd instead of sitting at home waiting for Todd while HE does fun things

Thanks to Southwest's awesome rewards program and my job that makes me travel a lot, I had a really fun past couple of weeks.

On August 2 Todd and I drove home from San Antonio. We (i.e. Todd) drove nine hours both days, but it actually didn't feel as long as it was. Road trips are fun. Especially with Dramamine. I had never been to non-San Antonio Texas, or New Mexico, or that area of Arizona, and I actually really enjoyed the sights. I thought it was pretty, especially the Texas part.

In New Mexico we saw the prettiest flowers blooming along the side of the road. I loved it. I took all our pictures through the window of the car, so they're not perfect. But if we had stopped for every picture I wanted to take, the trip would've been twice as long.

Arizona had tons of saguaro cacti. Like, a forest of them (we in the desert get our forests however we can). We also got to pass "nothing" in Arizona. Which some would say sums up a trip through the high desert. But it didn't. It was just hilarious.

And I was, of course, happy to pass back into Nevada via Hoover Dam. I love the Dam. It's also been fun to watch the progression of the bridge that will bypass the Dam.

When we got home I saw my tomato plants, which looked like this when I left, looked like this merely two days later, because of about eight of these guys. They're tomato caterpillars (with nasty horns) and were each about the size of my pinky. Maybe my ring finger. Stupid caterpillars eating my tomato plants that have struggled all summer. I got too much pleasure out of putting the bugs and my now-only-sticks plants into a bag and out in the sun.

This last weekend Todd and I flew to Baltimore so he could interview at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. That's our other choice for his residency, and his interview went well. Now we just wait until December to find out where we'll go.

We also got to spend time in Maryland with Todd's brother's family. I had only met them once, the week of our wedding, so we were so lucky to spend an entire extended weekend with them. We had a blast. Greg and Nicole were great hosts, and we had a great time with them and their kids. The entire weekend we had great weather. It wasn't too muggy, and the temperature was very pleasant. We got so lucky. I'd heard Maryland has really good crab and crab cakes, and Saturday I learned it was true--I had the yummiest crab cake ever. That alone wins me over for that residency.

We went to DC on Saturday and spent a few hours at the mall, which was fun. I love being a cheesy photo-taking tourist. We cooled off in this neat fountain by the National Archives, we saw the Washington Monument, and we took pictures of the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House. I've been to DC before so I was ok not going to every building, I just wanted to spend a little bit of time in DC while we were so close.

I let Sadie and Micah take a few pictures, and they did a great job. Before we left for DC I let Sadie take a picture of whatever she wanted, so she gathered her new cute shoes and took this picture. I love it. Yea for shoes.