mopinko
mopinko's Journali'm afraid to click on the thread about the worst song ever.
i KNOW i will be attacked by earworms that will take AT LEAST a week to get out of my head.
tia
whassup lounge?
i'm just hangin around, swimming in my little sea of bullshit, gettin through the days.
was super looking forward to taking a art class w my youngest. she is working on a drawing certificate from the school of the art institute, continuing studies. great little department in a great school.
she is working on becoming a tattoo artist, and wanted that piece of paper.
the fall class we were gonna take was portrait drawing, which i was super looking forward to.
but the poor kid tripped over her own feet and broke 6 bones in one foot. took an mri to show the breaks after a month of hobbling around on a badly swollen foot.
she may or may not need surgery, but she def is not in any shape to be schlepping around at school on top of the apprenticeship that she is doing.
other than that, things are going. recently adopted 3 parrots. fun times. one is plucked to death, but i think she will break out of it here. the other 2 are former breeders, not tame, but getting quite attached to me.
i have one more parrot that is also a rescue.
my little farm is doing fine in spite of a terrible year for tomatoes. great year for chickens, tho. raised some truly beautiful chicks.
so, whaddup with you?
Peregrines—and a Photographer—Bunk Out at Chicago Man’s Apartment
A flower-box nest provides the perfect opportunity for some close-up shots of a plucky falcon family.Getting an in at a high-rise condo building is never easy—but it’s even harder if you’re a bird. The pair of Peregrine Falcons seen here fought an uphill battle to make their home on this 28th floor Chicago balcony, but they ultimately prevailed (with a little help from a tenant on the inside), and this spring successfully raised four chicks.
It all started four years ago, when the birds began dropping by the building’s balconies early each spring. In April 2014, the couple got pretty cozy on Dacey Arashiba’s terrace. Arashiba, an I.T. consultant, was delighted, but his neighbors, put off by the birds’ loud noises and poop, complained. “My building manager told me the birds had to go. Maintenance staff shooed them off the balcony,” Arashiba says. “And that was it. For a while.”
But in June, the birds came back. A week later, the pair had laid three eggs in Arashiba’s flowerbox (“I am an occasional, lazy gardener and hadn't replenished the dirt in a few years,” he admits.)
Now on the offensive, Arashiba called Mary Hennen, director of the Chicago Peregrine Program, who told him that falcons are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (and had previously been on the state and federal endangered species lists). It’s highly illegal to harass them (building management complied).
one of the little things that makes me so proud to live in chicago. srsly. we are some good peeps.
i see peregrines quite often. they have totally flourished on our artificial cliffs, as wise people knew they would. dont remember how long ago they were released downtown, many years ago. dont remember how many, but i dont think more than a dozen. but it went off like clockwork.
they moved right up the lakefront.
eta that i tried to link to the pics, but it wouldnt let me. anybody smarter than me who can do that, please.
they are amazing.
https://www.audubon.org/news/peregrines-and-photographer-bunk-out-chicago-mans-apartment?utm_source=engagement&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2015-09-24_email_wingspan_btntest
greetings. working on quitting.
it takes a special kind of stupid to start smoking at 60, but getting divorced after 30 years will do that to you. i swore i would quit when the divorce was final, but that is still dragging on after a year and a half.
was at a pack a day, and coughing like an old steam engine. so, i decided to start the quit by limiting myself to a half a pack.
it has been a month now, and it is working out pretty well. i have kept to my promise for the most part, tho occasionally mooching one or 2, or taking one from the next days stash. had one day when i was stuck in traffic half the day, and had picked up a pack when i hit the road. but that was the only big cheat.
from the start, i only buy one pack at a time, which is good. only broke that one on said stuck in traffic day, as i was in wis, where they are significantly cheaper than in chicago.
when i buy a pack i immediately split it in 2. it is making my very aware of my habit, because i am constantly counting how many i have left.
it is giving my something to answer my addictive voice.
it is getting easier to space them out over the day. gotta save that last one for after dinner. also not lighting up first thing in the morning, because every other day i have to go buy a pack before i can light up. so i make myself wait until i have had a cup of coffee.
the cough is starting to lighten up. i even slept pretty well the last couple nights. that there is the worst part. that cough kills my sleep.
one other good reason to quit is that my gall bladder has been acting up from time to time and my surgeon of choice will not operate on smokers. must be quit for 2 months. a pee test is part of the pre-surg testing. not knowing when or if it is going to act up enough to come to that hangs in my mind a bit, even when it is quiet.
once the divorce is final i will be on a fixed income, so i will have another good reason to quit. really looking forward to being a non-smoker again.
anyway, just wanted to say hi now, before the crazy starts to set in.
i dont really think of my chickens as food but,
i have had a rooster here and there. this year, tho, i raised a lot of chicks and so have quite a few "spare" cockerels. i also have several hens that have stopped laying.
i am going to have a good number of home grown chicken dinners this year.
that is a great feeling.
which is a good thing, because a lot of other crops have sucked this year.
ya know what kills me about carly?
she was basically an affirmative action baby.
her job at lucent was at a time when att was under a consent decree to hire more women execs.
another republican born on third base, thinking she hit a triple.
this (female) reporter thinks you cant rape a prostitute.
it's only "theft of services"
I’m not one of those women who believe rape victims are at fault because they dressed too provocatively or misled some randy guy into thinking it was his lucky night.
But when you agree to meet a strange man in a strange place for the purpose of having strange sex for money, you are putting yourself at risk for harm.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/952556/charges-send-mixed-messages-prostitution
wtff?
Question submitted by mopinko
The enlightening legacy of the Rosenwald schools
The tidy shingled schoolhouse, erected in 1927, sits back from Central Avenue in Capitol Heights, Md., nestled in a copse of trees. Originally consisting of two classrooms for seven grades, the building was officially shackled with the ignoble name of Colored School No. 1 in Election District 13, but it came to be known by its proud graduates as Ridgeley, for the area where it stood.
“You were expected to grow up and be a credit to your race,” says La Verne Gray, sitting at a wooden desk in her former classroom, which is flooded with light from a wall of windows. Her first cousin, Corinthia Ridgley Boone, 80, stamped her feet in excitement recalling the glory of the school, where she excelled as a student.
“Oh, yes, you were expected to be somebody,” Boone says. “Our teachers wanted us to be contributors to society.”
The cousins remember when congested Central Avenue was a two-lane dirt road and their town was thick with tobacco fields. Gray loved playing dodgeball beside the school. Boone was a ferocious reader. May Day was a glorious celebration, the girls in their starched white dresses, the boys in crisp shirts, weaving crepe paper around the maypole.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-enlightening-legacy-of-the-rosenwald-schools/2015/08/30/946b72ca-4cc6-11e5-bfb9-9736d04fc8e4_story.html
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Member since: Tue Oct 28, 2003, 08:34 PMNumber of posts: 70,076
