Chameleon Blog

The blue was too dark, I think.

I'm not sure if I like this scheme either though. We'll see if it grows on me.

Article on Ecofeminism and Vegetarianism

Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals - Carol J Adams

I'm not going to comment on it yet, unless anyone wants to discuss, but I read it and found it interesting, so I thought I would share. Enjoy!

The Mystery of the Possessed Ceiling Fan Light Solved

So yesterday, the light in the ceiling fan started acting very strange. I turned the light on from the wall switch (it has a remote as well), and within a few seconds the light started cycling from really dim to really bright over and over and over again. C & D were over, so I called them both in to see it. There was some ponderings about whether it indicated pending lightbulb failure or paranormal activity.

I considered leaving the light on and seeing how long it would take to burn out, but I wanted The Husband to see it, so I turned it off and left it off until he got home.

I dragged him into the bedroom (get your mind out of the gutter!) as soon as he got home, and we both stood there and pondered the behaviour for a minute. Then R suggested that I turn the light off, and rather than walking to the door and flicking the switch, I picked up the remote. It was then that I noticed that the "Light" button was depressed and the LED that indicates that the remote is communicating was flickering.

Turns out that the light has a built in dimmer function that we hadn't realized was there, and if you hold the button down instead of just pressing and releasing, it changes the brightness of the light.

The really cool thing about that is that since we moved into this house, we've been cursing how dim the bedroom light is. Turns out it was just on a dim setting. So now we've got it turned up and can actually see things in the room, and all is well.

This post was *way* more interesting in my head than it is on screen.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Monkey and I had these for dinner tonight.

Pumpkin Pancakes

1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp cloves
1 1/4 cups buttermilk/sour milk
3/4 cup of canned pumpkin
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon oil

Combine all ingredients till smooth. Fry on a hot griddle.

From here.

If you're reading this...

let me know.

I'm curious to know who my readers are. And if you have a blog that I don't know about yet, feel free to link. I've got a wicked new extension for Firefox that is making it super easy and quick to check all of my favorite blogs daily.

Salut, mes amis!

There simply aren't enough...

hours in the day to complete everything I want to do.

Everything I *need* to do - maybe. Honestly, if I didn't have any interests outside of school, work, and family, I think I'd be doing just fine. I've learned (as unhealthy as it might be) to cope with little sleep and virtually no "down" time, in the interests of getting done what needs to be done.

However, there are too many things on the list of "wants".

I've developed an interest in Feminism, and trying to sate my desire to understand Feminism both as a theory and as a movement involves a mountain of reading and research that I just don't have enough time for.

That's just one example. I'd put down all of the rest, but I just don't have enough time tonight!

And then there's the desire to reach out and reconnect with friends and family that I don't spend nearly enough time communicating with!

I need to replicate myself.

Ignore this post

I'm only blogging this because I don't have speakers on my computer, and I want to remember to go to this site another time when I'm on a computer that does have some. Lazy, I know. More and more, I'm using this blog as my own personal bookmark page.

Very Funny Ads

But go ahead and click it. You'll probably have some fun there too.

Randomly appearing items of clothing

Whilst searching for a hat to wear to the store (shut up - I didn't want to spend 20 minutes doing my hair for 20 minutes of grocery shopping), I found a sweater in our front hall closet. It is black. Size small. Gap. It is definitely not mine, although I covet it. If it is yours, or you know who it belongs to, send a $50 ransom at your nearest convenience and I might think about giving it back. Neither The Husband or I have any idea how or when it took up residence. I'm hoping it came from another dimension. Wouldn't that be fun!

Ways to avoid housework...

There will be eight or so people here for dinner tomorrow night (I was hoping we'd pick up more strays - the more the merrier! - but so far it's just close family) and while my house is not a total disaster, it certainly isn't meeting the cleanliness standard I generally aim for (which some may describe as neurotic, but let's not go there). I'm having trouble finding motivation to clean, and in pondering my lack of motivation, I decided to procrastinate further by posting a list of things I have done thus far today to procrastinate (in no particular order).

1. Visit Sybermoms. Several times. Nope... still no new posts. Try again 5 minutes later? No. Maybe if I keep hitting the New Posts button every 90 seconds I'll find a good time suck thread? Nope. Damn.
2. Visit all of my favorite blogs (see list to the right and down). Read the last several months archives on a couple of them. Refresh repeatedly to see if Heather has posted yet today. Nope, not yet.
3. Check e-mail. Repeatedly.
4. Play with child
5. Bathe child (this didn't really help the procrastination though - as I cleaned the bathroom while she was playing in the tub).
6. Make breakfast for child (made more mess doing this).
7. Make lunch for child (and this).
8. Pack for child to spend a week at her dad's (yay! some laundry "put away").

Now, I have done a couple of loads of laundry and a load in the dishwasher, so I'm not really that bad off. The Husband has been helping me out with keeping the house in shape lately, which is always needed and greatly appreciated - between work, school, a doozy of a migraine on Thursday, and a general desire to spend just five minutes doing *nothing*, I've really needed the extra help. What I really need to do right now though is write a shopping list of stuff to pick up for tomorrow. And The Husband had to work today, so I'm SOL on getting his assistance on that one. Time to stop procrastinating by posting about procrastinating. *Sigh*

So I've decided to give up meat... again...

Alright, so I'm probably not going to go cold-turkey (pun somewhat intended) - it's going to take some time to revise my cooking habits, meal planning process, etc. Especially since I have two other people to think about, neither of whom I'm comfortable enforcing my own ethical decisions on 100%, so there will have to be some compromises made. For myself, I'm going to work on cutting out meat - substituting w/ meat alternatives. For the rest of the family, I'm going to start buying meat products from local farmers that use more humane methods of raising and slaughtering their animals.

This hasn't been an easy decision. Prompted by a paper I had to write for my applied ethics class, I had to look closely at my own views on eating meat. When I started out writing the paper, I was of the mind that eating meat could be an ethical action, dependent on the treatment of the animal. Through lots of reading, pondering, and lengthy discussion/debate with Andrea and Birch, I came to realize that my lines of argument on the issue were flawed. I'm not saying that I am 100% confident that I've come to the absolute correct conclusion, but I do think I'm a lot closer than I was a week ago.

Here's the final draft of the paper I submitted (and yes, it's very short - we're only allowed 260 words to state our argument, support it, object to it, and refute the objection):

Eating non-human animals is ethically wrong because it causes unnecessary suffering in a sentient being. When we eat meat to satisfy a preference, or because we choose not to use other alternatives, we are causing unnecessary suffering. We do not need to eat meat to have a healthy diet, and when we choose to, we are assigning more value to our taste preferences over the preference the animal has to continue to live and to not be inflicted with harm. How can we possibly argue that our dietary preferences are worth more than an animal’s right to life and freedom from unnecessary suffering?

One could try to argue that an animal can be raised in such a way that reduces it’s suffering, and perhaps even allows it to live a “good life”, and in that case killing the animal (in a humane way) for human consumption would not be wrong. However, while this may be a convenient feel-good argument, it does not change the fact that the animal is killed long before its life would have naturally ended, and that cannot be said to satisfy the interests of the animal. Also, we need to ask ourselves what right we have to determine when an animal has lived a long enough life, whether it be good quality or not.

Mmm Mmm Good

There is no better nacho than a Doritos Sweet Chili Heat. That is all.

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