There have been over 4,000 United States military fatalities in Iraq since the current war began.
http://www.icasualties.org/
There have been approximately 100,000 civilian deaths in that same war.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Each year over 16,000 people are murdered in the United States.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Last year over 37,000 people died on the roads in the United States (less than previous years).
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
About 36,000 Americans die on average per year from the complications of flu.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm
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About three weeks ago I posted a link to this USDA pdf showing weekly and monthly food costs for families and individuals on different plans.
I can't imagine spending more than about $50 more over the next week, which will bring my total for the month to about $400, which is equivalent to the "low-cost" plan, as opposed to the "thrifty", "moderate" or "liberal" plans.
I really haven't been careful about what I've bought, and would consider myself to have bought quite a lot of unnecessary items. I want to see how low I can make that figure, but with Thanksliving and Kissmass coming up I might have to wait a while. Pretty soon I'll be comparing it to the figures for a family of three, not two.
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It's been a while since I last kept track of how much I spend on food, but I've been thinking about it recently and wondered what the average food costs were considered to be in the USA.
I found this USDA pdf which shows the "cost of food at home" on a "thrifty plan", a "low-cost plan", a "moderate-cost plan" and a "liberal plan" for people of various ages, families of two, and families of four.
Let me know what you think, do you think those figures seem reasonable?
I'm going to keep track of what I spend on food for myself and my wife over the next month, and compare it to the figures on that chart.
Now, in other news, I had intended to replace the kitchen floor this weekend. In fact, I had intended to replace it last weekend, but there were some reasons I postponed it a week. Now I sit down and plan it out I'm finding reasons not to do it this week as well. The main reason being that I haven't been keeping track of bills and I'm pretty certain I can't afford 128 sq ft of plywood and vinyl and nails and caulk and adhesive and the cost of hiring a nail gun and compressor. Also, one should always consider the fact that during the course of any project problems will arise that require another trip to a home improvement store and more money to be spent.
I really want a good floor in the kitchen, but I also want to be financially sensible, and don't need to build up too much of a balance on the credit cards. Oh well, it gives me more time to plan and prepare.
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By the way, for those who don't already know, the wife and I are expecting, due February 23rd.
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Today is weird.
It almost never thunders here in the bay area, but the sky has been flashing and rumbling through much of the night and now it is mid morning it is still at it.
I'm sure the locals are saying that it's earthquake weather, because they say that for all kinds of weather. Of course, there is no such thing as "earthquake weather".
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My 53 year old Italian American colleague told me about his dream, in which he was driving a red sports car through the country, didn't have to go to work, just enjoying driving by himself, he kept checking his fuel gauge and it was always full.
Sounds nice.
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I've gone through a fair number of email addresses in my time, but I have more simultaneously existing addresses now than at any time in my past.
I've always struggled to find an address that is relevant to me, easy to understand when spoken, and available. Also I feel a need to register every good address I find, but then I can't choose which one I like most from the addresses I have.
For a long time I had hotmail addresses. Some of those have expired through disuse now, but I still have kb.vegan@hotmail.
Then I moved to gmail, and registered 72scalemodeler to reflect my (temporarily dormant) hobby of building 1:72 scale models. I felt that address was rather long and unwieldy so I registered 72scale, but never got around to telling everyone.
Meanwhile for the past few years I have been paying an annual fee to Lunarpages to hold a domain for me, just to give me something else that I'm not doing to feel bad about, so technically there are email addresses @karlbarrow.com.
In addition to this, at some point, I registered a Yahoo address. I can't remember if it was for Flickr, or Blogspot, or something else, but I registered kb.vegan@yahoo.
Now, when we moved to Oakland we had to get our own internet service, which we got through AT&T. Along with that came another address, karlbarrow@att.net, but at some point AT&T and Yahoo became the same thing as far as I can see, as both my yahoo mail and my AT&T mail login from the same screen.
Recently I decided that explaining 72scale or 72scalemodeler to people was getting tiresome, so the search resumed for a concise, relevant, easy address. Once again I found myself compelled to register each one I thought of in case someone else snapped it up. Thus I found myself with firstriser@gmail (which I don't like much), unintention@gmail (which I like, but may be difficult for someone to understand), airspeed666@gmail (which I like, but for the first time in my life I was concerned that people would think I was satanic, the USA must be getting to me), and airspeed72@gmail.
In conclusion I have one hotmail address that I know of, five gmail addresses, one Yahoo address, one AT&T address, plus probably several more that I've forgotten about, plus those addresses related to various websites (livejournal being one of those), plus addresses at my website-in-waiting.
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I love working in my garden (I mean our garden), but what I don't like is working hard in the sun all morning and standing back at midday all hot dirty and sweaty and realising that it is hardly apparent that I have done anything at all.
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Gardening stuff deserves a real post on livejournal as opposed to a tweet or a FB update.
Today I pulled up one edible plant and one probably poisonous plant.
I pulled up a Mallow, which I knew was a "weed" when it started growing, but it looked like it would have pretty flowers so I let it live. Then I discovered that it grows really big really fast. Then I realised that the flowers are really small and not very showy compared to the size of the plant. Then I discovered that you can eat the leaves. Then I discovered that as it grows big it also grows huge strong and deep roots, making it very difficult to pull up. It doesn't have many leaves for the size of the plant, so I'm going to try selectively cultivating it from the seeds.
The other plant I pulled up (actually I haven't finished pulling it up, it also had deep strong roots) is something in the nightshade family. It's not potato or tomato or pepper or anything obviously edible, and it has lots and lots of black berries that stain everything purple. Apparently some nightshade berries are edible, but most are not so I'm not going to test this one. I have stains on my hands and arms from the berries.
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I'm trying to decide on a new mobile phone plan for myself and my wife, and I wonder if you good people have anything to say about the matter?
We currently have AT&T, but we don't get a good signal in our house. Hopefully this isn't because of the old wiring in our house causing electro-magnetic interference (I've heard it can do that).
Verizon have excellent coverage, but their plans seem so expensive and restrictive compared to the others.
T-mobile have better coverage than last time I looked, and their plans look less expensive than Verizon's, but they are also confusing. It looks like I have to get voice plans and then add data plans if I want them.
Metro PCS seem to have unlimited everything for a good price, no contract, you pay for the phones outright when you get them, but their coverage is mainly city-based. No good if someone wanted to go to, say, Saranac, MI.
Sprint have good coverage, their plans are fairly clearly presented and easy to understand, and they are a little less expensive than Verizon.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
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I love it when a party works out well and everyone has fun and talks with people they didn't know before and when nothing bad happens and when there's lot of wonderful food and drink.
We had about 46 guests yesterday, and lots of them brought vegan food (even though I was the only vegan there, thank you all so much!), and today we possibly have as much food as when we started and possibly more wine, but less beer.
I was a little concerned when it started raining in the early evening, I mean, rain in July in the East Bay? But it was only a short shower and resulted in a beautiful double rainbow, so it was ok.
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It turns out my sister is also an amazing photographer, as well as my Mum, it must run in the family. I should get myself a decent camera.
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I haven't posted on LJ for over a month. I have been lured away by the easy brevity of tweets and facebook status updates. No matter what people say, they take less thought.
I didn't work today. My workplace is doing a stock inventory over the next two weekends, and to avoid paying overtime we have been told to take specific unpaid days off during the week.
I took Missy to work, then went to an appointment, then went home and didn't get anything done until noon, when I got back to work on my current project (not counting the several unfinished projects).
As I have installed a shower over the bath tub we don't use the shower stall, which at some time in the past has had whatever wall covering it had removed and replaced with inadequate exterior textured paint resulting in leaks and rotting walls. I decided to remove it and make a closet in the bathroom and more space in the kitchen which is on the other side of the wall.
So far I have discovered: tiles badly laid over beautiful tile work on the shower floor, a mis-matched drain top just sitting on top of the drain body and held in by nothing more than tile grout or adhesive, and the fact that working in my crawlspace isn't much fun. While under there today I almost unscrewed the wrong pipe. I actually had the pipe wrench on it and had started trying to loosen it when I thought "hold on, why is there a cold pipe there, and where's the other hot pipe?". That was a close one.
One more project on the list is to convert my damp nasty dirty crawl space into a pristine insulated crawlspace with fire retardant antimicrobial 20 mil vapor barrier on the ground, rigid foam insulation on the foundation walls, and fire retardant antimicrobial fiberglass insulation between the floor joists, and fluorescent lights with a switch right by the entrance. Then I'll replace all the galvanized steel water pipes with copper pipes.
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I recently found http://www.zxspectrum.net/ which has hundreds of instantly playable Spectrum games from the Eighties.
I remember how absolutely rubbish the games I had were, although some of them were addictive all the same.
I also remember craving some games that I could never afford. The 3D games were the most desirable, and also most expensive. I would occasionally get a magazine (I can't for the life of me remember the name of the magazine) which had game reviews, cheat codes, and screen print maps of the platforms and levels games.
I have been surprised by how good and playable some of the games still are. It seems that 1985 was a good year if the dates on the website are accurate, but I'm not sure they are, because I find it hard to believe that games were still coming out for the Spectrum in 1992.
There's one problem. The website doesn't have any information on the games, and it's often difficult to work out what the controls are or what's going on in some of the more complicated games.
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If you squeeze my lizard
I'll put my snake on you
I'm a romantic adventure
And I'm a reptile too.
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The other day I received a Christmas card in the mail from my relatives in England. It must have got lost in the mail for five months.
Yesterday I received a package from Amazon.co.uk. It was a surprise anonymous gift of something from my Amazon wish list. How nice!
My Blue Moon rose and my Elle rose both have their first flower bud.
When I planted my Blue Moon rose I sowed ornamental garlic seeds around it, as I have heard that alliums are beneficial for roses. Months passed and I thought all the seeds must have got lost or eaten or something, but last week I noticed some of them are showing shoots.
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I like my dreams, there are things in dreams that I could never experience in real life. Usually not wild, crazy, extreme things, just little oddities. Bad dreams are an extremely rare occurrence. I would guess that I have, on average, perhaps one every two or three years.
For long periods of my life I almost never remembered dreams, but now I remember them almost every morning, and I'm glad. I almost want to live in my dreams, except that some people that I love don't visit my dream world often enough and I would miss them.
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Hello LiveJournal. I have neglected you. I've been neglectful of a lot of things lately. I haven't worked on the garden for days, maybe weeks, and the weeds have sprung up everywhere. The house itself doesn't deteriorate as fast (thankfully), but there is a list of things to do a mile long, and I've been ignoring it. I've been sleeping a lot, I've been tired. I've watched a few movies. The dishes haven't been washed every day. Birthdays have been missed, and things that require my attention have generally been ignored.
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Somewhere between being a bored child and being an adult with twenty times more things to do than I have time to do them in there must have been a time of balance.
Also, I feel crappy, I haven't eaten properly, and I haven't done much today. This is what happens when my wife goes away.
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