John and Liz's Weblog

Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife and the mother of my children!

Also, the cat’s out of the bag as far as my integrating our blog into the rest of our site.  I have been working on it (off and on) for some time.  I was playing with it yesterday morning but forgot to change it back.  Oh well, enjoy!

…and Anna was loving it.

All of America can now be glad that this two years of campaigning is now over. Is he who I voted for? Am I happy with the result? Definitely Not. It is however, the American way and I am forced to move on. President Barack Obama. Sends chills down my spine still. It will take some time to get used to that. I hope he will be as good a president as some 52-3% of the country thinks. I can always hope he will think differently and change his ways on some issues. He is only human after all.

Alright that is it for the political talk, back to the family stuff…

For the record, we are both wearing red underwear today.

I have been following the price of crude oil. Back when it peaked at $146 a barrel the price around WNY also peaked around $4.05. Now the price is about $63. Meaning the price is 43% what it was before so there for the price at the pump should be about $1.75 per gal. But it is not. It is about $3.20! I have to say I am kind of ticked off. Let’s go fuel companies!

I kind of feel like I am missing something here. I am not trying to complain when I say that but is there more to the whole economics of the oil industry that we really are a just not aware of?

Here is an interesting site that I found today regarding fuel price around the nation. It is a heat map of gas prices. It is really interesting to see the really striking differences from region to region and state to state. The middle of the country is green and the Pacific and North East are heavily red. Look at NYS. RED! Here I thought the fuel companies are to blame. It is the state! F*ing, bloated democrat run NY.

Here is some irony if you compare political maps with this map. The blue states tend to be red and the red states tend to be green.

Hey! Comments on Rebecca’s weblog aren’t working for me currently, so I have to say it here:

Chauncey “I like to watch” Gardiner!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA… I will never forget that.

My parents proudly displayed the ringing bell I made, in the way only parents can, and after a few seasons water got in the holes and broke some bulbs, and it was thankfully retired. To be replaced by a Christmas Star on the garage, much more skillfully made and planned out.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled political ranting and cute baby pics…

Some interesting observations are starting to come to light regarding the “excitement” over the presidential campaign. If you are a McCain/Palin supporter you have to be careful. Liz and I are pretty conservative when it comes to politics. McCain is far closer to what we feel is important that Obama. In fact Obama scares the %^*&(* out of us but that is another conversation.

A few months back Liz said “Let’s get signs for our front yard!” Partly to be funny, but partly to say that we truly support the campaign. I though about it and said no. We live in too blue collar of a neighborhood, with a wide socio-economic range of adults and kids (including maturity levels to), and did not want to attract attention. After all we have two children now. In terms of safety, it was not worth it.

Fast forward to about a week ago. I was feeling pretty glum about the race especially in light of all the poll information that was coming out. Then I was reading Father Jonathan on Fox News (”Eeww Fox News! How can you watch that crap?” is what I hear from people at the college) His post talks about Hushed Confessions people are quietly supporting McCain. Scroll down and read some of the comments. Wow! Venom, nasty stuff! Some positive comments but many very negative nasty ones. A few comments talk about how folks have put bumper sticker on their cars just to find that they have been ripped off and in some cases their car was then keyed!

Then yesterday on WBEN’s Sandy Beach show he did a show all about this topic. People called in and shared stories. Mostly they where about McCain/Palin or NObama signs being stolen or vandalized.

There seems to be a bigger undercurrent here than the media would have us believe. Of course this is not something you would find on CNN. But really, what the hell is going on out there that people can not root for who they want and not get attacked in some quiet, cowardly way? This sucks. Are some democrat supported so angry and paranoid about getting another democrat into office that they stoop to this? To me it says miles about Obama, his party and some of those that support him.

On a different note, in my very same neighborhood there are almost no Obama signs either. Don’t misunderstand, there are plenty of signs for local political races, mostly Democrats, but no Obama. May be the whole “I wont vote for that N*” attitude that I have heard (even from members of my very large family) expressed will give the race to McCain. It’s sad and wrong but I can only hope.

Last week the Zbrzezny’s were in town, and it was great to see them again, and meet baby Tyler, who is adorable. The girls enjoyed Aubrie’s company:

And Clara got to meet Tyler:

Me: Are arranged marriages still in vogue?
Clara: What?!
Me: Quiet. He’s cute, and he has a great family.
Clara: So that means I automatically have to marry him?
Me: Yup.

Clara’s not sleeping any better, but she seems happier, which is great. She’s smiling and cooing, although never directly at the camera, of course. Here’s my best attempt to capture a smile so far:

And some bonus pictures -

Thomas Engineer Anna:

Tree frog Clara:

And the girls being sweet:

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of John asleep yesterday in his desk chair at work to post, his colleagues were too slow in finding a camera. They were fast enough to gather around his desk and laugh and point before he woke up, though. We’ve had a rough few nights.

Hello!

Long-time-no-post. It seems whenever Clara is OK with being set down, Anna wants to be picked up. (who can blame her?) Anyway, it makes typing difficult.

I have been meaning to post about this for awhile now, really for real, so now that both girls are finally asleep, here we go.

Our dear friend Rebecca is going to run the Chicago Marathon next month!! She’s running to raise money for the American Cancer Society, in honor of her best friend Maggie, Uncle Jim, and of course our Tim. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected in some way by cancer. Cancer plays for keeps, but fortunately so does Rebecca - agreeing to run 26 miles and managing to raise over $2000 so far for the fight.

So if you want to tack a little on to support our friend and fight cancer, head over to her fundraising page:

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/RebeccaStigge

She has a snazzy picture of Tim on it, too, from the Benesch wedding.

Go Rebecca!!!

This weekend Liz and I went over to Peter and Katie’s house for dinner and then to pick any apples and pears they had left on there trees. We had a great dinner and walked away with an 18 gal container and 3 4 gal buckets full of apples and pears. They where all ready to be juiced! So I thought…

(1) The 50 year old juice press that my father brought home was not really in the finest shape. Some of the wooden frame was rotted. Not good for high pressure work. (2) 85% of the apple needed some kind attention, worms, rotten sections, worms, and… worms. (3) Once I put what was left of the cleaned apples (and I only made it though half) in the press, they where way to hard to press. I even tried my car’s hydrolic jack to move things along. Its only broke the frame of the press. Ugg… I decided it was time to set up our little kitchen juicer machine to try to salvage the day. It worked but what a mess. In the end I had 1 1/2 gallons of juice or cider. 1/2 gal of water more and I called it a day with 2 gals ready to begin fermenting.

The pears went a bit better probably because the fruit was almost flawless. I just cut it and juiced. 2 gals of pear juice ready to go.

So after severely neglecting my family on Saturday, Sunday was much better. Bills won to in dramatic fashion!