OmegaMom

Nothing major going on, no great thoughts shakin’, just hanging out in the sun…ahhhhhhh.

The chickens are loving the new coop.  The babies are loving their new digs in the "temporary" coop.

Our new tractor mower finally got put to use…then we promptly bent a blade on one of the (thousands of) rocks in the yard, which we discovered as OmegaDad cut a lovely swathe through the front yard where one side of the mower cut the grass 3 inches high, and the other side scalped the grass down to the ground.  Oops.

The wild roses are blooming, with lovely big pink five-petaled flowers peeping out of the greenery.  The roadsides hereabouts now have lupine blooming, too, and it’s a totally different lupine than I’m used to.  The lupines here are deep violet, with white tops; the lupines in Small Mountain University Town were blue all the way through.

In the news…

California started offering gay marriage licenses this week, and the state is looking forward to a boom as gay couples from across the country fly out there to get married…because California’s law states that these marriages are valid in other states.  (I’m not sure how it works, but that’s what I’ve heard.)  Coming this fall:  California constitutional amendment vote on a "protect" marriage amendment.  Which, as John Scalzi points out, would invalidate all those marriages being made.  Ahhh, the warm embrace of Christian fundamentalist love.

Fox News, trying to be hip, became tragically hip by accident when referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama’s Baby Mama", not realizing that "baby mama" is for unmarried moms.  Or did they?  After all, this is the network that has regularly let slip "Osama" in place of Obama, had an onscreen person seem to advocate assassinating Obama, and called the loving fist-bump that Michelle and Obama exchanged when he locked up the nomination a "terrorist fist jab" (first suggested in .  Oy!  Every time, of course, they backpedal.  I’m sure they mean well.  Really!  But for another point of view, let’s go back to Scalzi for an excellent rant.

The AP decided to start sending cease-and-desist letters to bloggers for quoting from articles and providing links.  A "quote" to them is five words.  Eh?  Whatever happened to "fair use"?  Bloggers, needless to say, are up in arms and talking boycotting AP news, using other news aggregators instead.  There was a meeting wherein AP, "backing down", offered to let bloggers use quotes at a per-word price.  A five- to 25-word quote would cost $12.50.  Oy!

The Phoenix Mars lander, at the Martian pole, scooped a hole in the ground and found "white stuff".  I look at the pictures and am taken back to Lubbock, TX, and environs, where half the places you dig, you’ll find satin spar gypsum.  In layers.  Alternating with red dirt.  Like the picture.  Alas, I can’t find any really decent pics online, though I know we have plenty in our boxes.  We also have some lovely specimens that you have to handle extremely carefully, or it will break into pieces.  Really interesting stuff.

Ah!  Forgot two items:  Boomerific has lost her home to flooding in Iowa; as a result of a "flood" of offers for help, they have set up a Target registry for replacing items lost in the flood.  And Karen (of the Nekkid Ovary) has had her lovely daughter Chloe Ellen.