kmkat and her kneedles

"I'm voting Republican."

Not.

Thanks to soxanne, on whose blog I saw this.

John McCain, high energy prices, and the Enron loophole.

Thanks to Cursing Mama for the link.

I'm still alive.

You know what sucks? Food poisoning sucks. I spent all day either suffering diarrhea (I knew you wanted to know) or sleeping or taking my temperature (101.4 degrees at the highest) or simply lying in my bed moaning and whimpering. Now, at 8:30 p.m., I feel better than I have since 8 a.m. this morning. Still weak and tired and with a tiny fever, but time and OTC meds have taken care of the worst.

Tomorrow I shall post. Lots to say -- new camera, #1 back to NYC, socks OTN. But for now I think I'll go back to bed.

In the meantime, here is the yarn that is currently making me happy. I'm knitting a pair of very warm socks by holding together a strand of the beige Mega-Boot stretch and a strand of the Online green/black/blue tweed.

Oops.

Judging from yesterday's comments, I may have worried some of you bloggers, made you all anxious about whether your blogs met my impossibly high standards. Apparently my tongue was not shoved far enough into my cheek.

I delight in you all and will read your blogs whether you put up those navigation things and a preview post button and even if you have eighty zillion totally undecipherable CAPTCHAs. I may not comment in the latter case, but that is my loss, not yours.

My brain was not functioning quite at full power yesterday, so I forgot to link to Erika and Chris as I had intended. There, fixed.

Also, today as I was perusing blogs I remembered something. If you have one of these puppies that shows all the dates that you posted?

   

You are good to go. My thanks.

Anyway, thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and a million blessings on Cathy-Cate, who commented three (3!) times, plus worried herself silly about how to put those navigation things on her Wordpress blog. She figured it out! Thank you, C-C! I shall give thanks every time I read your blog :-) I think I am obligated to send you some chocolate now, right? Right.

Once again, thank you for listening to my little rant. I shall endeavor to be more agreeable and less, um, forthright for the immediate future.

Or at least until the medication wears off.

A wee rant about blog hosts.

I've been reading blogs long enough to have developed my own habits and my own set of pet peeves. In the furtherance of my "It''s all about me, all the time" effort, I am willing to share my gripes with you here. I am generous that way. You can thank me later.

TypePad:

I use TypePad. Amy uses TypePad. Norma uses TypePad. Vicki and Trudy and eurolush use TypePad. Whenever I click onto a blog and discover that the host is TypePad, I do a little happy dance in my chair. Until, that is, I decide that I simply must share something with the blogger, and so I comment. But if the blogger has turned on "Always require CAPTCHA" I weep with despair.

The programmers at TypePad must really, really have a thing about spammers because when this option is set, they require the commenter to fight their way through multiple CAPTCHAs before the comment is accepted. At first I thought it was just me -- maybe I was utterly incapable of typing the displayed letters and digits. Eventually I learned that TypePad always does the multiple CAPTCHA thing. This is extremely frustrating, for this commenter, anyway. I used to have my own blog set this way, but when I discovered what it pain it was on other blogs, I turned it off. I haven't had any spammers in nearly two years ::knock on wood:: Check your TypePad blog to see your settings (Weblogs | (click on the title of your blog) | Configure | Feedback) and consider turning off the CAPTCHA requirement. Thank you for your cooperation.

If you want a little protection from spammers after turning off the required CAPTCHAs, there is another option on that page that you might want to try: you can turn off commenting on your posts after a set period of time -- one month, a year, something in between. Seems to me that should help. I recently got a snotty comment on one of my first posts (September, 2006) so I turned off comments on posts older than six months. Try it; you'll like it. Maybe. Whatevs.

Blogger:

The reason I do the happy dance in my chair at TypePad blogs is because right up there at the top of every post are navigation links:

Maybe that doesn't matter to you. Maybe you read everyone's posts in your Bloglines or FeedBurner or whatever aggregator you use. Maybe you don't care whether you read every single post from a blogger. For myself, I always click on the first unread post in a particular blogger's feed in my Bloglines so that I read it in the blogger's chosen setting. Seeing the layout and appearance of the blog helps me recognize which particular blogger I am reading. (Yeah, lame, I know, but I gotta work with the brain I've got. Visual memory and all.) And once I read that post I want to read the next one without having to go back to Bloglines to get the link. TypePad makes that easy (see above). Blogger has finally made it easier, too.

or this:

So, please, if you use Blogger, go take a look at your blog and see if you have this at the bottom of your post. If you don't, fix it. Thank you.

I have never had any trouble with Blogger's CAPTCHAs for some reason.

Don't know why, don't care. It just makes me happy, and anything that makes me happy has to be a good thing, right? Right.

Oh, and while we are talking Blogger, there is another thing you should check in your settings. Do your commenters have to have a Google/Blogger account to comment on your post?  If this is what your comment page looks like:

you are making it very difficult, if not impossible, for many people to comment. I happen to have both a Google account and a Blogger account, but that does not necessarily mean I can comment. Don't know why, just know it doesn't always work. Makes me unhappy. Boo hoo.

If you wonder why you should bother, your might want to read the first part of this exchange on another blog I subscribe to. This is how wars get started. You don't want to be the cause of KnitWars2008, now do you?

WordPress:

WordPress is versatile and robust blogging software. It does not, however, automatically give that previous post/next post link thing that I like so well. I know it is possible -- both Chris:

and Erika (I think):

have it on their blogs. So, WordPress users, make a Kat™ happy. Check your settings and find that navigation thing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your check chocolate is in the mail.

* * * * *

Thus endeth my diatribe on blog software and hosting. Discuss among yourselves. After you have checked your own blog.

Again?

I bet you are (almost) as tired of hearing, WTF? It's snowing... again?!! as we in the Midwest are of saying it.

"It's like there's someone missing."

Front page article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

THE DECIDERS
White Men Hold Key for Democrats

Contest May Hinge
On Blue-Collar Vote;
Opening for McCain?

By JONATHAN KAUFMAN
February 19, 2008; Page A1

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- In a Democratic presidential nomination race that pits a black man against a woman, the victor may well be determined by white men.

The working-class white men who toil in the steel mills and auto plants here are part of a volatile cohort that has long helped steer the nation's political course. Once, blue-collar males were the bedrock of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. They became "Reagan Democrats," helping to propel Ronald Reagan into office in the 1980s. Bill Clinton won many of them back to the Democratic Party in 1992. Two years later they were "angry white males," resentful of affirmative action and the women's movement, who helped Republicans capture Congress.

Now this group of voters is set to help determine the Democratic nominee, and the next occupant of the White House. Working-class white men make up nearly one-quarter of the electorate, outnumbering African-American and Hispanic voters combined. As the Democratic primary race intensifies, some of these white men are finding it hard to identify with the remaining two candidates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

"It seems like someone else should be there," says Dan Leihgeber, a smelter in a steel plant here, who is supporting Sen. Clinton. "It's like there's someone missing." *

As the Democratic race moves toward primaries in blue-collar strongholds -- today in Wisconsin, Ohio on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22 -- the allegiance of blue-collar men is up for grabs. While Sen. Clinton runs strongly among working-class women, she and Sen. Obama are perceived equally favorably among working-class men, according to a January Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The two candidates have seesawed among blue-collar men in the primaries: Sen. Clinton won them in Georgia, Missouri and New York, while Sen. Obama captured the working-class male vote in New Hampshire, California, Maryland and Virginia.

Blue-collar men could also emerge as an important swing constituency in November -- either backing the Democrats' eventual nominee, or shifting to some degree toward Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, whose war record and straight-talking approach could make him appealing to many working-class men.

Marc Dann, Ohio's Democratic attorney general, frets about the reluctance of some of these blue-collar Democrats to embrace either of his party's candidates. "I worry about [the appeal of] McCain," says Mr. Dann, who lives in Youngstown. "It's not like watching an episode of Archie Bunker -- but there are real issues" that white male voters here have with Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.

Working-class men are generally defined as those without a college degree, including union members and workers with service and technical jobs, typically making less than $50,000 a year. They are especially crucial in Ohio, where they make up about 28% of the vote, as well as other battleground states including Michigan (about 27%), West Virginia (33%), Missouri (27%), Minnesota (27%), Pennsylvania (27%), Wisconsin (29%) and Iowa (34%).

In Youngstown, many working-class men say they will vote according to issues, especially economic ones including health care, free trade and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But in conversations in union halls, bars and factories, race and gender are never far from the surface.

"I don't think the country is ready for a woman president yet," says Duane Tkac, a burly vocational instructor at a prison here and a member of the local branch of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union. "The country is in too much turmoil. I don't think she can handle the pressure, the terrorists." He plans to vote for Sen. Obama.

Don Pompelia, retired from the Air Force, supports Sen. Clinton. "I'm hoping Hillary gets the nomination. But if she doesn't, I'm not voting for that guy. I'm going Republican," he booms as he picks up his morning coffee at McDonald's. "There are going to be a lot of people crossing over to the Republicans because he's black."

Back Into the Fold

After decades in which Republicans often successfully wooed blue-collar men, many Democrats see 2008 as a chance to bring them back into the fold, motivated by the worsening economy and their disaffection with President Bush. In the 2006 midterm election, union members and other working-class men voted for Democratic candidates by a margin of almost two to one, helping the Democrats win control of Congress.

Youngstown has been battered over the past 30 years by job losses and plant closings. Buoyed by unionized steel jobs that paid as much as $20 an hour, the city once had one of the country's highest per-capita incomes. But as companies have shuttered steel and auto plants, outsourcing jobs to nonunion parts of the country and overseas, the city's population has fallen by 50% since 1960, to about 80,000.

Few young people stay here; the average age at one steel plant is 55. Families survive because women have poured into the work force out of necessity, changing the dynamic within traditionally conservative families where women used to stay at home.

'Poster Child'

"For a lot of blue-collar guys over 40, Hillary Clinton is a poster child for everything about the women's movement that they don't like -- their wife going back to work, their daughters rebelling, the rise of women in the workplace," says Gerald Austin, an Ohio political strategist.

Mr. Leihgeber, the steelworker, says he supports Sen. Clinton for her experience and positions. He carries a book bag to work every day with his lunch and a newspaper inside and a Clinton button pinned to the outside. Some days, he says, he turns the bag around so the Clinton button doesn't show; he says he doesn't like dealing with his co-workers' derogatory comments. Mr. Leihgeber says he wouldn't be heckled so much for an Obama pin.

"People don't want to speak out against Obama because of the fear of being seen as racist," he says. "It's easier to say you want to keep a woman barefoot and pregnant....You can call a woman anything."

In national polls, white men overall have been more favorable than white women toward Sen. Obama. In a survey done in September by Pew Research, white men overall gave Sen. Obama more positive ratings than did white women, in categories including whether he was tough, smart, friendly and honest. In the same categories, white males gave Sen. Clinton consistently lower marks than white women did.

For some women, that confirms that sexism runs deeper than racism among many men. "My mother, who was the first woman lawyer in a big D.C. firm, always said that blacks got in before women," says Caryl Rivers, a professor at Boston University who supports Sen. Clinton. "Then the white guys figured everything had gone to hell anyway, so they might as well let the women in."

In Youngstown, Sen. Obama is seen through the prism of the city's changing racial makeup. Over the years, as Youngstown has become poorer, many whites have moved to surrounding towns and the minority population has increased. The Youngstown area is now one of the most segregated communities in the country, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

Everyday racial tensions and animosity run high. A white cook at a local bar says he won't bother voting in this election. "What's the point," he says, rubbing his skin. "We're already a minority." **

But for some white men here, Sen. Obama's appeal is that he is different from many black leaders they have seen in the past. "The guys I work with, they know Jesse Jackson and they know Al Sharpton. They call them all sorts of terrible things," says Robert Hagan, a locomotive engineer and a state representative, referring to these politicians' sometimes-inflammatory rhetoric and focus on black causes. "They don't talk about Obama like that."

Those here who dislike Sen. Obama tend to criticize what they call his empty rhetoric, his lack of experience and the fear that he would favor blacks and other minorities.

Many working-class men here say they are being lobbied by their teenage and young adult children to vote for Sen. Obama. And some of the area's newer businesses, such as its growing hospitals and the privately run prison, break down some of the racial and gender barriers found in the mills and auto plants that are still overwhelmingly white and male.

At a Teamsters hall here, a dozen burly men in gabardine jackets and baseball caps gather over coffee and overstuffed donuts for a union meeting of prison workers. "There is a misunderstanding that older white guys aren't going to vote for a black man," says Jim Marcum, a job counselor at the prison. "That's not true." Mr. Marcum says he voted for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. This time he plans to vote for Sen. Obama. "He's a breath of fresh air."

Natalie Grant, a black woman who works with Mr. Marcum at the prison, walks in and grabs some coffee.

"You really voting for Obama?" she says.

"Yes," says Mr. Marcum.

Ms. Grant laughs. "I knew there was some brother in you," she says. Mr. Marcum smiles.

Three years ago, Youngstown elected its first African-American mayor, Jay Williams, a 36-year-old with little political experience who ran as an independent promising to unite the city. Mr. Williams won with the heavy support of the city's black community -- about 40% of the vote -- but also drew white votes from working-class and college neighborhoods.

"A lot of people thought Youngstown was 20 or 30 years away from this kind of change," says Mr. Williams, who has endorsed Sen. Obama.

Women, too, have made inroads in local politics. In 1994, there were no women elected at the county level, where real power lies. Today, women serve as county commissioner and treasurer, and hold several elected judicial seats.

"We deal with women at work," says John Lesicko, a teamster official. "We deal with HR people. She might be a" -- he raises his hands to form imaginary quote marks and silently mouths a slur -- "but we deal with her."

Leaning Toward Clinton

Across town, 14 steelworkers brought together to talk about the election say they predominantly supported Sen. John Edwards before he dropped out of the race. Now 13 of them say they are leaning toward Sen. Clinton. They praise her experience and toughness in withstanding the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Former President Bill Clinton remains enormously popular here, with many blue-collar men saying that they like the fact that he would be in the White House as well.

"I think she has the right person in the bedroom with her," says Joe Marion, who works at the local prison.

Betty Ingramn doesn't buy it. The lone African-American in the room full of steelworkers, she works as a secretary in the steel mill and is the head of the clerical workers union.

"It's a race thing," she says of her colleagues' support for Sen. Clinton. "They can't handle it, an African-American being over them." As an African-American union official, Ms. Ingramn says she has battled constantly to be included in meetings and decisions.

Both Sen. Clinton's and Sen. Obama's campaigns say race and gender shouldn't be a consideration, and that they are targeting blue-collar voters with appeals to economic issues that hit working-class families.

"Some may call this the 'rust belt,' but that's not what I see," Sen. Clinton said in a visit to the General Motors plant here last week. "I see some of the hardest workers in the world. I see great universities and strong communities. I see a 21st-century manufacturing belt. An innovation belt. An opportunity belt."

Sen. Obama, in a visit to a GM plant in Wisconsin, similarly laid out plans to help workers and create jobs. "I won't stand here and tell you that we can -- or should -- stop free trade. We can't stop every job from going overseas," he said. "But I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements."

The real test will come in November.

"I think if we nominate one of these two, we are talking about McCain as president," says Bob Rodkey, a firefighter who doesn't like either candidate but plans to vote for Sen. Clinton in the primary. "I talk to a lot of my Democratic friends and they are going to cross over in November or not vote at all. We don't have a viable candidate. Neither of them is one of us."

Mr. Rodkey says he will vote for a Democrat in the fall. He plans to urge his friends to do the same. "Hopefully they will listen to the message, and not who's delivering it," he says.

* Somebody is missing? Gee, do you mean the white guy(s) who pretty much ran the world for the last 500+ years? That guy? Yeah, it's a real bummer he might have to share the power.

** You are a minority? You mean like the half of the U.S. population that didn't get the right to vote until 1920? Or the minority that required three constitutional amendments, plus another hundred years of denial of their rights, before they gained free access to the polls? You mean that kind of minority? Yeah, right, bro.

*** Not one of you? What, we are not all human? We are not all Americans?

Sheesh, some people make me so mad I just have to laugh.

So, how cold was it?

10:02 am, Wednesday, January 30, 2008; on the deck of Chez Kat™:



Same time, in the office of The Kat™:



The bitter truth:



The heater had already been running for over an hour.

* * * * *

(Yeah, I know that photo needs to be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. When it's this cold, even IPhoto doesn't seem to want to work properly.)

Borders says, It's the unofficial anthem of sweaters.

Quoting from the above e-mail I got today from Borders Books (emphasis mine):

Ingrid Michaelson is on a roll. Following her unlikely discovery on the Internet, four of her songs have been featured on Grey's Anatomy, and her catchy tune "The Way I Am" became the unofficial anthem for sweaters thanks to the popular Old Navy commercial.

Here is the music video from YouTube:

And here is another video of the song recorded at a Borders somewhere. Click on "The Way I Am", about a third of the way down the list of songs in the center of the page.

Now, I realize I am just a knitter and you are just a knitter and all the hundreds of thousands of us out there are just knitters, but which God/dess decided that a... chain of bookstores? got to decide what became the unofficial anthem of sweaters. Nothing against Ms. Michaelson's song -- it's very nice, catchy, pretty, engaging, yada yada -- but, c'mon now, something as important as The National [Unofficial] Anthem For Sweaters should be chosen by those who know and love The Country Of Sweaters. And who knows it and loves it more than we do, the people who labor over every single k1p1 and each k2tog and all those millions of stockinette stitches in between?

Maybe we need to contact Ms. Michaelson and demand a recount.

[/tongue from cheek]

Randomness: painfully convoluted sentences, John Mayer, ponderous thoughts, and even a little knitting.

To make amends for my little rant yesterday -- oh, and btw, thanks for all the bah-humbuggery appreciation y'all sent me, did my little heart good to know that humor still rules the world (I wish! It could do a better job than certain White (And Other-Colored) Men are doing at present, but that is a rant for another day) -- and did you see that Wendy commented (be still my heart, a celebrity comment! wOOt! (and did you read when Norma (yay! Norma!) blogged that "wOOt" is Webster's Word of the Year, except that they spelled it wrong, all the Kool Kids know it's spelled "w00t," not "wOOt") Thanks, Wendy!) -- I'm putting up this little YouTube number:*

Highlights to watch for:

• The sweet knit hat -- intarsia? stranded? -- worn by one of the graffiti artists. Yeah, I later realized it is really a ski mask, but still, it is an objet d'knit, and we all loves us some objets d'knit, doncha know?
• The awesomely perfect circles! drawn freehand! by that same artist;
• The skyline of NYC looking like something is missing, and we all know what that is, and it saddens us.

That album -- or "alblum," as my dear MIL used to pronounce it, and so did my husband, who argued with me for an amazingly long time that "alblum" was a perfectly valid alternative to "album" and whom I only convinced otherwise when I dragged him, alblumming all the way, to the dictionary -- came to live in my iTunes a week or two ago and I have been listening to it and smearing the music and lyrics all over myself, it is so good.

[ascends soapbox] As much as I love that song, I keep disagreeing with the underlying sentiment, that his generation is waiting on the world to change. The counter-culturalists of the 1960s and 1970s didn't wait. They stormed the bastions of convention helter-skelter and willy-nilly and Nelly-bar-the-door, and nowadays many of those counter-cultural values are mainstream, although sadly not so much universally practiced as universally proclaimed: ecological awareness, recycling, organic food production, planet-friendly practices, multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity, social justice. One cannot simply wait for the world to change into something that better suits one; one must be the change one wishes to see™. [/descends from soapbox]

On the other hand, the sentiments in "Belief" seem to me to express a profound truth that the world would do well to grasp:

But, hey, I'm not all about the lyrics. Listening to his pre-song comments in this video of "I'm Gonna Find Another You" I realized that, Doh, of course I like that song, it's... blues.

* * * * *

Now, as promised, a little knitting.

My first preemie hat for Jeanne:

Go on, knit her a couple. Quick, easy, stash-busters. You know you want to. Deadline is January 15.

Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (50% cotton/50% acrylic); Lake, Lime, and Berry.
Needles: US#6
Pattern: Basic hat from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, preemie size.

I was a bit unhappy with the size and shape it turned out to be, thinking that it was too wide for its depth, but an emergency e-mail to Jeanne and I was tactfully informed that 1, babies come in all sizes and shapes (well, within limits), and b, even preemie babies grow and often continue to need little hats. Babies grow? Who knew?

The uneven stitches smoothed out nicely after a quick run through the washer and dryer with the other laundry.

Yesterday's knitting scene:

In the interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that the New York Public Library mug does not contain coffee, nor even Sleepy Rabbit tea, as it did yesterday. Nope, that is Worcestershire sauce-tinted tap water, concocted to re-create the scene more accurately. Do I have mad food stylist skillz or what?

To remove the taste of the forgoing awfulness, please fondle the virtual cuddliness of the knitting:

#2 son asked me to knit him a pair of socks. Listen! Hear that? Hell freezes over.

He has steadfastly refused any and all of my offers to for him. He's a fashionista in his own way, that boy, and his self-image brooks no mother-produced garments. Oh, except for that Dulaan-destined hat he swiped from me last winter. And that glow-in-the-dark scarf I so laboriously knitted him last year at his request and which he wore about twice. Grrrrr.

But I am A Knitting Mother -- ya know, the ones who want to wrap the world in hand knits? So I immediately agreed to make him a pair of socks.

No wool, he said, Wool is itchy.

Okay, no problem, I said, and showed him a recently-received color card of Knit Picks Shine Worsted (60% Pima cotton/40% Modal®). He picked out the terra cotta and cream shown above. One reason I was able to agree so readily was that I had discovered the extreme speediness with which worsted weight yarn knits up into socks. Wham! Bam! Socks!

He sent me a link to these socks to show how he wanted his to look.

Don't guys have silly-looking legs? Why do they pose like that, so their legs look even sillier than necessary? Why do I care?

* Diagram that (so-called) sentence!

Tale of woe. And luck.

We have two housemates in our Minneapolis house. They pay us minimal rent and are responsible for shoveling the snow and mowing the lawn, plus having them there means the house doesn't sit empty for extended periods. Both are people that Smokey knows from work and are  responsible and pleasant folks. It has been a good arrangement for everyone concerned.

   

However.

Apparently sometime last May or June they started putting our mail on a particular shelf on a stand in the dining room but without saying anything about it. Until last weekend, when one of them happened to mention to Smokey that, Gee, he had a lot of mail on that shelf and didn't he want to look at it? Smokey brought home several pounds of mail to go through. Approximately 99.47% of what is addressed to us at that address is junk mail, since we changed our mailing address for everything important when we moved here in 1999. Except, apparently, for a couple of minor things: property taxes and homeowner's insurance.

We discovered that, 1, a city housing inspector had issued us a citation for a sagging gutter on the garage in June, which citation has since escalated to assessments and probable forfeiture of our first-born, and 2, our insurance had lapsed as of July 11 (yikes!)

   

In our defense, both property taxes and homeowner's insurance were part of our mortgage payment until late 2006, when we refinanced and they became separately billable. The city sent the 2007 property tax bill before the housemates started their tidying practice with the mail; Smokey saw it, brought it to me in Wisconsin, and I paid the taxes. But as far as the city was concerned, the Minneapolis address was our mailing address and so the inspection citation was sent there. We had never had to pay insurance separately before and [insert big "Duh!"] we never thought of it.

Today we are in the process of rectifying the errors. To our credit we had a little help in the dunderhead department, but still... I shudder to think of what would have happened if there had been a fire / burglary / flood / tornado / earthquake during the six-month period we were uninsured.

If you can't be smart, be lucky.

Why housework is such a drag.

I swept the laundry room today. Half a tablespoon of dirt, half a cup of leaves and fabric trimmings, and ::sigh:: half a gallon of dog hair. (Clog added for scale :-)

Gimme a break: a rant.

      

From our local paper, the caption alongside a photo of a car with a smashed windshield:

Mary V...felt lucky to be relatively uninjured last Friday when a large white-tailed deer crossed her path and landed on her windshield as she drove south on Hwy W just north of X. One of the first on the scene to offer assistance was Pastor Larry Y of Z. [Mary] told him that she was listening to Christian music when the collision occurred and felt that her faith played a factor in keeping her safe, aside from some minor glass cuts.

Okay, compare with this:

Smokey A, husband of kmkat, was driving south on Hwy B, when he struck a deer, but only lightly. The deer stumbled, then bounded away unhurt. Mr. A's vehicle suffered no damage.  Mr. A stated that he was listening to AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" cranked up pretty loud at the time of the incident. He credits the Australian band with saving both the deer and his vehicle.

AC/DC trumps your Christian music every time.

* * * * *

I am not dumping on Christians in general here, only on those people stupid and arrogant enough to feel that their God favors them over others. This rationale seems to have gotten a lot of play lately. Yeah, like the other children and mothers and husbands who died on That Bridge were somehow less... worthy. Gimme a break. It's pure chance, being in the right/wrong place at the wrong/right time. Get over yourself.

* * * * *

[/rant] Please return to your regularly scheduled (and less noisy) knitting and blogging.

* * * * *

In a totally non-ironic vein, here is an e-mail I got from Andrew yesterday. I had e-mailed him a screen shot showing that Hurricane Felix's path was project to go pretty much right up his backside.

Huh, National Geographic says that Hurricane Felix went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 51 hours, faster than any other storm ever recorded.  Then it made landfall in Nicaragua yesterday morning, moved inland over a sparsely populated area, ran into 7,000-foot mountains and fell apart.  "...Felix's remnants will be gone by Thursday."  So it was a hurricane with ADD or manic depression or something, look out everybody here I come oh forget it I'll take a nap.

Andrew

My thanks to those who expressed their concern for his safety. Once again, he is fine.